Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2020-03-12

Attendance

Christopher Cinella present · Chair; Jack Eccles present · Voting; Mark Garipay present · Voting; Jen Grigoraitis present · President, ex oficio; Maya Jamaleddine present · Voting; Shawn M. MacMaster present · Voting; Jeff McNaught present · Voting; Leila Migliorelli present · Vice Chair; Robb Stewart present · Voting; Cory Thomas absent · Voting; John N. Tramontozzi present · Voting

Agenda

1. Call to Order (0:00)
2. Public Comment (1:01)
3. Orders
4. ORDER-2020-72 : Appointment of Elena Proakis Ellis to serve as Director of Public Works, effective March 30, 2020. (1:40)
5. ORDER-2020-75 : Authorizing a Bond in the Amount of $1,425,471 to pay costs of purchasing and equipping an aerial ladder truck for the use of the Fire Department. (42:14)
6. ORDER-2020-73 : Acceptance of the 2020 Senior SAFE grant in the amount of $2,552.00 for the Fire Department. (1:37:29)
7. Mayor Update (1:42:37)
8. Adjournment (1:49:50)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 12, 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 Christopher Cinella Chair Present Leila Migliorelli Vice Chair Present John N. Tramontozzi Voting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Jeff McNaught Voting Present Jack Eccles Voting Present Mark Garipay Voting Present Robb Stewart Voting Present Cory Thomas Voting Absent Maya Jamaleddine Voting Present Jen Grigoraitis President, ex oficio Present

ORDER-2020-72 Appointment Appointment of Elena Proakis Ellis to serve as Director of Public Works, effective March 30, 2020. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-75 Bond Authorizing a Bond in the Amount of $1,425,471 to pay costs of purchasing and equipping an aerial ladder truck for the use of the Fire Department. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-73 Grant Acceptance of the 2020 Senior SAFE grant in the amount of $2,552.00 for the Fire Department. Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 3/25/2020 3:14 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:03 Christopher Cinella: Good evening, everybody. This is the meeting of the Appropriations Committee. I am Counselor Cinella, the chair, and joining me tonight are voting members, Vice Chair Migliorelli, Counselor Tramontozzi, McMaster, McNaught, Eccles, Garipay, Stewart, Counselor Thomas could not be with us this evening, but we have Counselor Jamaleddine and President Grigoraitis. This provides a quorum for the record in accordance with the open meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast on our local cable access channel MMTV as well as being live-streamed. And just for the folks at home, things look a little funny. We have separated the desks a little bit just due to the coronavirus as a precaution. So at this time I'd

▶ 1:01 Christopher Cinella: entertain a motion for public comment motion open public comment second a motion for public comment by councilman miglorelli seconded by councillor eccles if anybody from the community would like to come forward to speak it doesn't look like we have anybody so i'd entertain a moment the motion to close public motion closed public comment all right the question is made to close public A double comment by Councillor Stewart, seconded by Councillor Eccles. We have a few orders before us this evening. First one is order number 2020-72, the appointment of Elena Proakas Ellis to serve as the director of DPW effective March 30th. Motion to suspend the rules to hear from the petitioner. Thank you. I would, thank you.

▶ 1:55 a motion by councillor Tramontozzi to suspend the rule so we could hear from miss pro akasella seconded by councillor mcnaught i'd like to come forward and say a few words and then we'll open it up for questions sure thanks for coming down tonight thank you all so i believe mayor birder had intended to be here because he had a few words he was going to say but um i'm sure with everything going on he must have been pulled away so um i'll just tell you a little bit about myself and i'm very excited to be here i'm excited for the opportunity to have this position i've been working for the city since 2015 as the city engineer and then since september 2019 as the assistant director of dpw for water and sewer i started out my career back in i went to wesleyan

▶ 2:48 Paul Brodeur: University graduated in 1996 doing earth and environmental science and music at the time and then I worked for an engineering company right out of school camp dresser McKee and decided that I'd like what the engineers were doing better than what I was doing so I switched over to engineering and the rest was history I decided to get started probably probably wise what did you say I said the first paragraph anyway I don't need this at all because I she can she's smarter than me that's one of the reasons why I hired her or I'm hoping we hire her that's really obviously up to you we did as I'm sure you know from the postings we did an extensive solicitation with a very well thought-out job description that included a wide range of things some of

▶ 3:42 Paul Brodeur: which are very traditional in terms of public work services and some of which are a little bit more what we think of as a modern department doing in terms of energy efficiency and transportation and and the like and have we had a terrific pool of candidates I'm happy to say that the best candidate was right in her own backyard Elena's resume if she hasn't gone through it yet I think it's in front of you uh is impeccable it is the the schools that i couldn't get into and locations um some of the greatest parts of the country but the remarkable thing about the about the resume and the experience is that it is um it is absolutely directly in line with what a modern department of public works needs to do science science and engineering is a big big part

▶ 4:37 Paul Brodeur: of what we do obviously Thorp an operations piece and well as well and some of the business of of any city department those those nuts and bolts but where elaine is stirring lies you have already seen for the last four or five years and that is in knowledge of engineering both under the ground and above the ground now that having been said this is not her first stop uh in the in the department of public works world having worked in other communities and also has extensive experience in the private in the private sector so in in adding up all the factors that go into a decision like this um she really stood out in every way and i know you all know that because you've had the opportunity to work with her in the past the portfolio will expand if i do have

▶ 5:30 Paul Brodeur: one concern with her appointment is that engineering is is one of her loves and in many respects she won't be doing that anymore she will be supervising that among other things but this is the absolutely the right person at the right time to move our city forward in the Department of Public Works and with that I will turn it back over to Ms. Proekes. Thank you, Mayor. So I'll give you the quick synopsis of the rest of the resume and then outline a few of my priorities and then if you have questions. So following working in the private sector right out of college, I decided that I wanted to switch from science to engineering and went out to UC Berkeley and got a master's environmental engineering and then uh had intended right from the get-go to work in the public sector

▶ 6:27 that was one of the things i put even on my grad school applications was that i wanted to work in the public sector and so when i got back to massachusetts i got a job with concord public works and i was their water and sewer engineer for eight years then decided to go back into the private sector for a brief period of time while i had kids and wanted a little more flexibility of work schedule there they are over there um and but as soon as they reached the age where i wanted to go back to a 40-hour work week i applied for the job here it was the perfect fit and i knew that at the time and i've been very happy to be here in melrose i think it's a terrific city there were so many things i loved about it coming in and i love it even more having been here for

▶ 7:15 the last four and a half years so with that some of the things that are priorities to me in terms of as a dpw director as paul said it's it's less engineering and it's more management i'm very comfortable with that i've done a lot of personnel management a lot of project management a lot of budgeting so one of the things i'm most excited about is the personnel management end of things we have a terrific team we have a DPW that gets a lot of work done and I'm excited to help that group of individuals grow increase their professional development their training there I want to build a culture of safety I know that's been a big topic within the DPW and I'm excited to bring that to the next level teamwork I think we have a lot of divisions that work

▶ 8:11 extremely well together and I want to continue that and figure out ways to do things better and more efficiently with the excellent staff that we have working together across all the different divisions and then taking a lot of what we've done in engineering and expanding that out to the the other divisions the operations divisions we've done a lot in the last four years to get our data systems better in line with modern technology to get our GIS layers up to date all our utilities we now have the tools that we need within the engineering division to inform decision making and to be a smarter operation than we are right than we were previously when I started and now we need to take that to operations we need to start better tracking the operations

▶ 9:02 work that we do linking that back into the gis so we can use that data when we're out in the field if we find problems have a systematic way that we log them in and then we use that to inform our capital program of where we need to invest our our time and effort and money um so just holistically getting all of our our technology and our divisions more in line with where we've now brought the engineering division so those are some of my priorities um happy to take any questions for sure um president Grigoraitis thank you thank you for being here and thank you for your family for being here as well i just this has been a big week of firsts here in melrose and it's really exciting to have what i believe it's only thursday it's only thursday um the

▶ 9:49 Jen Grigoraitis: first female dpw director here in the city of melrose in 2020 and i just want to say as a someone who's identified as a woman for all the young women and girls out there thank you for showing what leadership and a career path in stem can look like for people um i think the only downside of promoting someone with your excellent credentials is that then it creates a hole in your existing role so knowing that you'll come into the role with no with something with needing to replace your job and without an assistant dpw director can you talk a little bit about your plans for managing staff and filling those vacancies sure so we've been very proactively trying to fill the two vacancies that we have right now the assistant director of

▶ 10:28 administration and finance and the facilities manager and so we've conducted marianne long conducted first round interviews with a whole bunch of applicants in order to speed up the process before i was selected as the candidate for this position and then i've been conducting second round interviews this week we've completed the interviews for the assistant director of administration and finance and we hope to make an offer tomorrow if not tomorrow with everything going on then early next week for the facilities manager as you can imagine people in the facilities field right now are scrambling they are in a very difficult position both of the top two candidates that we've narrowed down to are in facilities in university environments

▶ 11:19 where things are just insane right now so we've had to reschedule one of our two interviews to early next week one is one will happen tomorrow the other will be early next week so we hope to have those vacancies filled within somebody accepting an offer within about a week and starting the job within a few weeks so those should both be great the nice thing about the only vacancy then becomes my own position and the nice thing about that is that's the position that obviously i'm the most comfortable having to fill for the time being so we will put out an ad for that position we do have some great talent in-house we might have a candidate in-house but that will remain to be seen once we see what we get from

▶ 12:05 Paul Brodeur: we do want to go out to the public i think it's a really important role and we want to be sure that we're soliciting uh resumes for that yeah just to be clear about about the process because obviously we had we had several holes to fill but um hopefully it's obvious that we wanted to set the table um without telling the new director it's kind of like you know hiring a new baseball manager you don't hire the whole staff and then say you're up and these are the people you're going to work with we obviously wanted to give it you know now that it's Miss Proekes give her the opportunity to a redesign the roles a little bit if she thought it was more appropriate to her vision and make sure that the people

▶ 12:45 John N. Tramontozzi: that get selected fit in with her with her philosophy and her work point councillor Tramontozzi did you have a question yeah thank you mr. chairman first I want to thank the mayor for bringing this appointment before us I appreciate that i think you're going to be a terrific director for public works i appreciate our past experience and all you always being available to answer any concerns that i've had in in the ward or even citywide attending neighborhood meetings you were always there i appreciate that and i'm sure that will continue as well you know i respect the fact that you're You're a professional engineer, and I know that may not be one of the specific requirements that we have for the director of the Department of Public Works, but I think it's critically

▶ 13:38 John N. Tramontozzi: important to have our public works director have that professional engineer background, so I welcome that, and I'm glad that you come equipped with that, especially now you can oversee while that vacancy is still there. You're going to be filling two roles, I'm sure, and your experience with the water and sewer. I know we're going to have budget seasons coming up pretty soon, so we're going to have a lot of issues with that. I know you're on top of things with water and sewer as well, so I think that's also welcome. The challenge, yes, of course, the management aspect of the department will be a challenge, but I think you're up to it, and I look forward to working with you, and thank you for putting

▶ 14:20 and their availability for this job. Appreciate it. Thank you. Councilor Yarobek. Thank you for being here. I just want to let you know that I fully support this order, but I do have just a couple questions. You mentioned a little bit about your vision for the department. What would you say the top three priorities are going forward for the department? Well, I guess there are different ways to interpret that, I guess my top three priorities coming in are my first one would be getting to know all the staff meeting individually with every every individual who works in the department and finding out what's working in their minds what's working what's not where Thorp the most room for improvement and and just getting a feel for whether we have the

▶ 15:13 the right people doing the right job. I'm very interested in making sure that people are within the division that they want to be in, not that we have a ton of flexibility to move people around, but I think you get just a better end product when people feel motivated and feel that they're doing what's of interest to them, and I want to be sure that we start with that foundation of people liking what they're doing, feeling that morale as high in the department and also you know it's been a long period of transition and i think people need to get back into a comfort level so that would be my top priority my next priority would be budget season Thorp Thorp a lot to take in on the budget Thorp a lot to understand

▶ 16:01 in terms of how the funds have traditionally been spent in every division how they've trended over the years making sure that we're um we're setting ourselves up properly for the coming fiscal year and ensuring that you know we're growing in areas that we need to and that other areas that can be level funded or where we've underspent in the past if we need to cut from some areas to grow in other areas i want to make sure we have all that in place i think that'll make for a smooth transition into the next fiscal year if we get all that in place um and then my next priority would would really be the uh the technology and the tracking of what we're doing i think that's a huge one if we want to to be certain when we go into areas especially on the utility end of things

▶ 16:56 Mark Garipay: that we're uh that we're dispatching our crews out to the right items every day we need to to have a better understanding of what we've been doing and where we've been and what the results have been to be sure that everybody's being put in the highest need areas operationally. One of the things that's impressed me over the years is that I think the Department of Public Works employees have been able, they've been cross-trained and they fluctuate between different departments depending on the season. Yes, absolutely. result of some of the open positions and the engineering position being open do you see a delay in any of the spring projects roadwork or no the great thing is so we've been short staffed since for two years now since we had a position

▶ 17:45 cut from engineering for budget reasons so we've been working with three engineers myself and two others for the last two years and we just hired a deputy city engineer so we just added that fourth person so really it's it's not where we want to be ideally ideally we want all four engineers but we're actually once I move into the director role assuming that's the will of the council then we go back to what was the status quo for the last three years or two years of three engineers in the division so I think it's it's going to be seamless we have our projects laid out for the upcoming construction season one of the benefits of our what we've called our multi-year roadway and utility program is that it's all planned several years in advance where we're

▶ 18:34 working our way through utility improvements followed by roadway improvements and so the projects just move up to the next the next cycle each year so this year the roads that were paving are the year are the roads that we did water main work on last year the National Grid has completed gas main work on so it's all pretty well laid out Thorp not a lot of um guesswork to do and then on top of that we have most of our work on the roadway end of things is performed by on-call contractors who we already have under contract so we don't have to bid the items that we do need to bid are on the water and sewer ends and we have consultant support on both of those okay thank you mr chairman if i if i just add to that because having had the opportunity to

▶ 19:18 Paul Brodeur: interview you know in a group setting and then falling in a one-on-one setting that came through in a lot of what she said in a very subtle way and is a priority of a different kind and that is customer service what the DPW has always prided itself on is responsiveness to your request to our constituents request and meeting those needs if we can't or aren't obligated to meet those needs explaining why in a forthright fashion I think it didn't come up because it's embedded in the culture of the department and it's reflected in her comments when it went through through her testimony tonight and also through our interactions with folks out in the community on engineering projects making sure that they understand why things are happening why things might

▶ 20:11 not be happening my schedule might get delayed we recognize that that is very very very important to the reputation and the good work that the DPW does and I know that she embodies that and it's make it will make that part of her leadership credo as well yeah actually to add to that it's the customer service aspect of Public Works that's what I love about Public Works having worked in both the private and the public sector in the private sector I was working largely on the same types of projects just from the consultant end but you lose that that frontline interaction with the public and I one of the things I enjoy the most about my job is interacting with the public I always say that we can't always make everybody happy we can't fulfill every request but

▶ 21:01 my goal is always to have people leave happier than they came and to understand why we're doing what we're doing and you know most of the time we can't fulfill fill people's requests and that's great but as Councilor Tramontozzi mentioned we do a lot with neighborhood outreach when we're going into neighborhoods to do work we do neighborhood meetings we've developed this model of meeting out on the street corner closest to the project and we find that's how we get the best attendance and the best questions and they turn into little block parties to the residents all get to know each other at the same time and and it's a very just a it has a positive feel to it that I think the community has appreciated

▶ 21:56 Maya Jamaleddine: thank you so much for coming today and for being able to answer all our questions I really appreciate your applying for this job and looking forward to working with you you've mentioned before about a training that you would like to start for you know the DPW staff can you tell me name one of the trainings that you would like to have one of the big ones that I'm interested in doing is more on excavation safety because we do a lot of of work in-house and ensuring that we're following all the proper protocols for when we're we're digging in the street and that we're using trench boxes when we need to that we're wearing hard hats wearing safety vests all of that that is one element of training that I think we I'd like to see everybody who works on

▶ 22:49 those those types of projects receive that training we've also we've just a A lot of us have just been through the OSHA 10 and the OSHA 30 training. Anyone who wants to do that training in the department who hasn't done it yet, I want to be sure that's opened up to everybody, including staff in the office. And then Thorp just a lot of really division-specific training. For instance, if somebody who's presently working on our forestry crew is interested in becoming a certified arborist, well, we don't have a certified arborist right now, so that's something i'd like to promote is you know is there anyone who wants to start down that road of that training um water and sewer system operators we have some folks with licenses

▶ 23:34 Shawn M. MacMaster: and others without we're not required to have any more than what we have right now but it's it's a great opportunity for people to gain some additional knowledge and also help their own careers perfect thank you okay you're welcome counselor mcmaster thank you mr chairman thank you miss paracas ellis for being here thank you mr mayor for being here mayor i just had a couple questions regarding the process you talked about the process for filling the the position involved an extensive posting can you talk a little bit about what that posting process entailed and in broad brush i can that's really probably better directed to the human resources director but like all the major positions in the city it is circulated on the city website and to

▶ 24:23 Shawn M. MacMaster: um Mass Municipal Association and presumably to particular professional publications that deal with those kind of specialty um specialty jobs like engineering DPW those kinds of things okay um beyond the uh the posting was there any type of search that occurred in tandem or was a district posting where we sought applicants for the position I'm not sure I understand the crowd we we posted we posted but there wasn't there was nothing beyond that other than we put out the posting and people people applied correct and okay and so and I think what I mean by searches it was more of a more of a local more of a local search or statewide search I have no idea about the circulation is the professional publications that the that the ad went into okay I know that we did

▶ 25:12 Paul Brodeur: have applicants from I don't think we we did we did have and speaking to the global recruitment not specifically to the directorship I can tell you we had folks as far away as South Africa we quite frankly didn't treat that as an entirely serious proposition but it was very interesting to see the breadth or the geographic diversity anyway of the folks who reached out it was posted in american public works association uh job listings and emails and everything thank you um and the mayor one of the things i appreciated was the public input that you sought through um listening sessions can you just talk a little bit about that and how that um informed um the process that sure i appreciate the question so um as you all know we did a listening session not specifically

▶ 26:06 Paul Brodeur: directed at who who would you like to see be the next um department of public works director but more how do you think dbw is doing what would you like to see dpw embrace in terms of programming and work ethic focuses whatever the case may be and folks were able to participate in an actual meeting in the cassidy conference room that had good turnout that focused a lot on i'll put a lot of it under the rubric of sustainability we also had a great deal of input from the public via email that input was a little bit more all over the map i guess i'd say there wasn't one thing that every single person routinely said you know it's got to be the roads it's got to be trees it's got to be better plowing or anything like that the email i don't think Thorp any

▶ 27:02 Paul Brodeur: significance to this the email tended to focus a little bit more on what i guess i'd think of is traditional dpw tasks like pothole filling road conditions and things like that the folks that showed up at the meeting game in general were more talking about sustainability energy those kinds of issues and was there any other um input that you that you thought sought whether you know cross departmental or line staff uh to help inform your your decision uh i had conversations with um a conversation with the staff down at the city yard of the folks that were on the search the initial screening committee i guess you'd call it included the the superintendent the planning director our current interim director

▶ 27:53 Shawn M. MacMaster: of dpw extensen and marianne long personally we obviously perhaps it's not obvious check some references talk to my colleagues in other cities and towns about um both about specific candidates and about what they thought more generically were important things to look for Thank you, Mayor, for the diligence that you put into the process. Just a couple of questions for Ms. Paracas-Ellis. How do you see yourself working with us as members of the City Council as Councilor Tramontozzi knows 95% of what a ward alderman does is DPW related and Thorp a lot of interaction. So what should we expect in terms of that interaction from you? Well, first off, I think you'll find that I'm very responsive.

▶ 28:42 I try to respond as quickly as possible to questions or concerns, both back to the councillors or to constituents who've contacted you about different issues. When you have more extensive requests for information, I traditionally have been always happy to pull the information together and get it out when we could, given all of our hectic schedules but um i'm interested in transparency and just answering whatever questions you have as they come up and making sure that your constituents are happy with our services as a dpw and having worked with you over the last couple of years i know that that is within your nature you talked about some of the neighborhood meetings we participated in several

▶ 29:31 Shawn M. MacMaster: together and you do bring a strong commitment to customer service and to in a strong sense of i think responsiveness as well in terms of the interactions that i've had with you as you know we have an aging infrastructure which presents a number of challenges is there any low-hanging fruit that you see that might be more easily addressed than some of the large scale problems that we confront as a city well i think the um on the capital end of things i think we're in great shape with our programs that we tend to use the mwra grant loan money for on water and sewer so in terms of larger capital repairs i think we're on the right track and we'll just keep going on that track in terms of the lowest hanging fruit right now i'm not sure if the

▶ 30:25 council is aware but we had applied for a asset management grant for the sewer system through mass dep and we were informed recently that we did get that funding or we were at least on the draft intended use plan the state puts out which means we should be getting the funding um come the beginning of the fiscal year so um i think that's going to be an easy one for us to tackle because it's i think it's sixty thousand dollars of grant funding and then i believe it's a twenty thousand dollar expenditure for us from the sewer fund to start better tracking our operations on the sewer end and i think that's going to pay dividends in terms of our ability to stay on top of problems and stay ahead of problems thank you the mayor referenced customer service we just talked a

▶ 31:13 little bit about that being a good manager obviously involves recognizing that we can always do better are there any opportunities that you see to enhance the very strong customer service foundation that we have currently in dpw i think we need to get more information available online that's probably the biggest one i think for the most part i've been very pleased with everything i've seen from our department in terms of customer service in terms of you know when when we're out on the street filling a pothole repairing a sidewalk when the public comes and talks to our crews they're respectful and informative and and so I think historically they've been very good so it's just building on on that foundation of what

▶ 32:02 Shawn M. MacMaster: we already have my last question is on day one you probably thought about what it's going to be like when you walk into the office any thoughts on what the first thing is that you're going to do i have a strong feeling it's going to relate to coronavirus which is not the best way to start out but i think you know i i can't don't spoil it again yeah i i can't envision a scenario where that's not still the top priority um in a couple weeks so well i'm very pleased to uh support um uh the nomination and i'll be voting um in favor of the tonight you are a consummate professional your resume is exceptional my interactions with you have been extremely positive neighbors with whom i've interacted after our

▶ 32:52 Shawn M. MacMaster: neighborhood meetings have offered their compliments so i think the mayor made a very smart choice here and i'd like to again thank you congratulate you appreciate your service to date thank you mr mayor and i'd also like to thank your family for being here your your children look a little young to maybe appreciate one of them as a way to appreciate what's happening but as the president said a short while ago this is an important day for the city of melrose and i think they will look back with great pride when they really understand what this means for you and your family and for all of us in melrose so congratulations thank you Thank you both for being here I know that I've worked with you briefly I've known you

▶ 33:39 Jack Eccles: for a short eight months and I'm excited to work together even longer. So one thing that I think we can all agree is very important is data driven decisions can you talk about what you've done downstairs in your office that's kind of taking some outdated you know physical copies of records and digitizing them. So we have the geographic information systems layers, they were created for our utility systems in 2007 and then they weren't really kept up to date after that. So we've been, as we've been doing other work in the city such as when we put a camera through a sewer pipe, we now link the video and the report from that inspection back to the pipe on the map so that when somebody calls and says you know i'm building a new house and i don't

▶ 34:31 know if Thorp a stub available for this new house on the sewer i can actually launch a video from my desk in a matter of seconds and watch what the inside of that pipe looks like and see exactly where that connection might be made so all the all the little things that all the bits of information that we get in we're trying to link those all back into the gis so that we can access that information one of our biggest projects excuse me that's been ongoing for the whole time i've been here and we're making some headway but but the slow process is digitizing all of our water and sewer tie cards so that is the connection from the main in the street over to each house each of the 8300 water and sewer customers on the sewer side we have

▶ 35:19 these books that go back to the 1800s and each page is a sewer connection and on the water side someone had the wise idea of creating two versions of every card so we have one version here at City Hall and one version at the City Art and they don't always have the same information so on those we have 17,000 of them and we've been having senior citizen volunteers scanning them in our office some terrific volunteers who've been coming every week for years and so on the water side we now have the a through M streets 100% scanned and on the sewer side we have 30 out of 130 books now scanned but when when we have a problem now we had a sewer back up at someone's house that was caused by some work that National Grid was doing and this was a few months ago I was home I

▶ 36:09 got a call on a Saturday evening I opened up my laptop typed in the address we happen to have both the water in the sewer card I was able to convey all the information over the phone to our crew and they knew exactly where the problem was what caused the problem so that's that's some of what we're doing the other just real quick I love this stuff so I could talk about it forever but the other big one is our roadway condition assessment that we just finished last week so I'm proud to say that we have a new map we're doing this every three years our staff drove every street in the city and ranked with 13 different parameters on a tablet every segment of every road in the city and then we put it all through an algorithm back at our office and it spits out a

▶ 36:55 Jack Eccles: rating for every segment of every road and then we make a color-coded map we split them into four categories so now we know when someone calls and says my street is the worst street in Melrose we can say well actually you're the 38th so that's a tool that we use a lot and we're excited that we've just updated that I just have one more question one thing I was happy to see included in the job description was sustainability conservation and climate change initiatives could either be talked about something that you is ongoing or you'd like to see come up in the coming years on that front I'll start with some bad news or I'll start with what I think the hardest thing with that we're probably going to deal with in that respect in the next several years is recycling

▶ 37:42 Paul Brodeur: costs I know you all know about it you know what is happening with the marketplace around recycling we are in a very very favorable position right now and unusually favorable position what that unfortunately means is the shock to the system that other cities and towns are going to face when the new pricing hits is going to be significant that does not mean we are in any way going to back away from recycling but we are certainly going to seek to do it to kind of react to the market to a certain degree and do it better do it more aggressively do it more purely if you will and try to get try to get to a place where we're where our habits are better and where we're you almost have it's almost like cholesterol these days Thorp good recycling and bad recycling

▶ 38:29 Paul Brodeur: we need to do better and we're playing yeah as I'm sure I think you all know we now have the recycling record coordinator back online fairly recent hire she is terrific and she has already started work in that direction so I think we will see some progress there but that's something you can expect for us to have conversations about quite a bit over the coming over the coming couple years and I did have an opportunity to meet with jrm today and also to tour their recycling plant actually with my son yesterday and it it really brought home the point of that it's the quality of the recycling that we're putting in our bins that is what is driving a lot of what's happening in the market and it's very important that everybody follow the the recommendations

▶ 39:18 as to what goes in the bin versus what goes in the trash so I think we're gonna try to do a little more outreach on that as well I mentioned the website before and Sam our new solid waste and recycling coordinator is going to be also managing the website for DPW and hopefully we'll be getting a lot of information out to to improve that in terms of other sustainability initiatives we are we've been actively working through the municipal vulnerability assessment program we did our mvp report last year we applied for an action grant this year for redesign of the city hall parking lot to mitigate flooding and to add green infrastructure and we received funding as you all know so we're now actively in the design process

▶ 40:07 Paul Brodeur: on that so that will be an exciting project i think we need to make every every decision that we make in terms of facilities has to have a component of sustainability considered it's not always going to be the driving factor but it has to be every time we're replacing hvac we're replacing lighting we're redesigning a space where we can have more natural light or have something else that that brings down our energy costs we just have to think about that in every decision that we make i'd say i didn't mean i didn't need to leave you with the feeling that that there was no good news certainly we milrose continues to be a leading municipality uh in this area the it's probably best to think about that is absolutely a part of the job description

▶ 40:54 Paul Brodeur: and the role but the most important part of the role is working in concert with planning with our sustainability coordinator and integrating those concepts into everything that we do and we'll continue to pursue that you know be a transportation road design that's four square within dpw um certainly certainly trash but some of some of the other things in terms of like facilities where it would be facilities plus um martha grover and her sustainability role having that input making sure we're making the best decisions we can great thank you both i look forward to supporting this order and working with you soon I don't believe Thorp any other questions up no actually no questions but just wanted to say

▶ 41:43 Christopher Cinella: thank you for coming tonight and I'm very excited about this position it's a critical position for our city Elena you were one of the first people I heard of in the city that I've heard you know outstanding remarks from and you kind of proved it tonight going through all of your credentials and plans for the future so I look forward to working with you and excited about this higher thank you thank you any other questions no so what is the motion to recommend second we have a motion to recommend by councilor Tramontozzi seconded by councilor mcmaster all those in favor aye any opposed hearing none the motion passes for a recommendation to the full board thanks very much thank you appreciate it our next order is order number 2020-75 authorizing a bond in the amount

▶ 42:29 of 1,425,471 to pay the cost of purchasing and equipping an aerial ladder truck for the use of the fire department. And just a reminder, the rules are still under suspension and we have Chief Kalina with us tonight if you want to. Good evening. Good evening. A prepared statement. Those of you that don't know, my name is Ed Kalina. I'm the fire chief for the city And I respectfully request adoption of this order regarding the purchase of a new ladder truck, also known as a aerial truck. The purchase of this truck is desperately needed to replace our current ladder, which is 13 years old. The ladder, a ladder truck for the city is a very critical piece of equipment used to remove trap occupants

▶ 43:38 windows or roofs used by members to ascend to the roofs rooftops and upper floor windows to ventilate the structures in buildings during structure fires it's also carries extrication tools the airbags bottles a variety of ground ladders of assorted sizes it's pretty much just a big toolbox but it's critical to our operation replacing our ladder now is critical due to the fact that we've had to place it out of service many times for mechanical issues over the past few years and it's currently up in the shop now for multiple issues however was noted that Thorp some corrosion developing on the frame of the truck we placed in the 2007 ladder truck which far exceeds its usefulness as a frontline piece of firefighting

▶ 44:32 apparatus is extremely critical at this time the truck is tired and becoming unreliable and spending more time in the shop the National Fire Protection Agency the NFPA recommends frontline apparatus being serviced 10 to 12 years and then then move it into the reserves the men and the women of the department deserve to ride on operate and work with safe equipment so that they can provide as they always do their finest quality of service in a safe and efficient manner the purchasing of this new ladder truck will also well not only improve our operation efficiency it'll be a great asset to the city for the next decade plus I appreciate your consideration and hope you support this order happy to

▶ 45:25 John N. Tramontozzi: answer any questions that you may have Thank You counselor Tramontozzi Thank You Mr. Chairman, so as you know, public safety is one of the most important priorities for myself and as I feel for the city. This aerial ladder truck is indeed a critical piece of equipment for the department. By the way, how many aerial ladder trucks do we have? We own two. Two. And is this one the oldest of the two? No, this is the youngest of the two. what happened how come such i know you said it's 10 to 12 years is the average life is there was anything in particular about this particular truck that uh deteriorated quicker than the others no the truck runs hard in the city you know Thorp a lot of responses training we're constantly out moving about it's just the wear and tear of a truck

▶ 46:24 John N. Tramontozzi: what would happen with them with this where we replace it do we get any do we sell it we junk it do we get anything for it I would like to keep it as a reserve because it still has a useful though not as a front line and replace our 25 year old ladder truck which is the e1 so the older one is 25 years old That's not used as a front line. This one here is a 13 year old one is the front line one. That's correct. And then it's funny that a 25 year old one is probably in better condition than this one, maybe. No. No? We've spent countless tens of thousands of dollars keeping it afloat. But again, it's 25 years old and Thorp problems with that as well. The amount that we're looking for, I suspect putting the cop before the horse, this isn't

▶ 47:24 John N. Tramontozzi: being put out to bid yet because we don't have the funding source for it, but do you anticipate that this is the amount that's going to be required to purchase such a piece of equipment? It's a lot of money. That's why I'm- Extremely- Is that what they go for? Have you shopped around? Do you know- That's what the truck is going for with equipment. Equipment is aging as well. It's a truck and equipment. equipment is aging as well so it's a truck and equipment I don't I don't imagine Thorp many companies that sell these type of equipment Thorp two to two or three manufacturers that make tractor-drawn aerials so Melrose is a tight condensed city so navigating around is it's challenging especially in

▶ 48:05 John N. Tramontozzi: the winter time we would obviously they'd be put this off the bid when that time comes to get the best price and the best quality. I have some questions about the funding source. I guess that would be directed to Mr. DelaRusso, if you want to come forward. Good evening. Good evening, everyone. Obviously, this is a capital investment, so this isn't coming from our general budget, city budget. in order to purchase a piece of equipment like this you have to go through the bonding route which means borrowing money could you could you tell us the process and how that is accomplished uh yes i can and if i may um i'd like to just pass out a handout briefly which i think we're going to be able to reference during the conversation all right should be one

▶ 49:03 for everyone please if i have one too thank you thank you um first and foremost i believe you all should have an amortization schedule that looks like this one page that says ladder truck equipment 1 million 425 471 should be in your packet no this separately besides outside of what I just gave you oh okay yes you also through the chair should have the long order format which was this page identifying the language that provided by bond counsel for the truck if you don't have that I can make that available right now I don't see I have that okay it's attached to the water all All right, thank you. So, those two items, we always put in any request to do any bonding. But we also provide and always strive to keep up to date,

▶ 50:43 which is what I just passed out, which I'll take a moment, if I may. Some have seen it, I think, on the council. Others have not. I think it goes directly to your question, Mr. Tramontozzi, outside of the mechanics of actually going to the market, which the treasurer-collector can speak to afterwards. But what we have here in Melrose is a 30-year debt management program. It's been here and in existence since I actually was part of its development back in the early 90s and what this shows you in the very front sheet you'll see two bars one is the gray bar on the bottom that's debt that's already been issued and the dock bar on top of it that's called projected debt that's debt that is in the queue to

▶ 51:43 be issued or to be considered by the council in that black bar is the ladder and a number of other capital projects that the administration is working on now. But this is everything that we know of to date that we are considering going to fund through a bond through this chamber at some point over the next, I would suggest, within two years. But if we turn to that page here, What this shows you, and the numbers will demonstrate it, is that approximately 75%, actually it's more than that, of our debt is paid off within ten years. The number right now is 78.2% of the city's debt. It's a position that we strive to hold. We provide this model that we've developed for the community. It strives to hold no more than 5%, no more than 5% of the city's operating budget in debt.

▶ 52:54 So that we never balance the books or fund items that go on the credit card and that we could actually cause tremendous stress to the operating budget both on the school side and the city. And what this model provides us is also the capacity in the out years as you can see as you proceed through the model. tremendous capacity so that no matter what administration is in office with the needs of the community on a capital basis can be responsibly funded food debt responsibly that's not the same I'll say approach that a lot of other communities use we use it we always have 5% is a phenomenal number we've held it for years um it's something that i'm very proud of and i'm proud of the boards and the councils

▶ 53:48 that have worked to literally to make that happen and it provides us an opportunity to always always have capacity to address our needs on a capital basis without jeopardizing the sensitive operating budget of the city one of the things we always um come back to is that we really are a bedroom community 95% plus residential we're not going to see Amazon coming to town so in that sense we realize we're not going to have a new growth of large capacity just based on our demographics so what the model does the model accepts that premise and we live within our means and by doing that the council this council the council after you the council before you always had confidence that they were doing the right thing for the community and they weren't putting the community

▶ 54:43 in harm of any kind to back that up if you take a look at the last bond rate in this past October from Standard & Poor's it's dated October 17th 2019 I think everyone if you haven't had a chance to look at it it's out there if you like I'll give you a copy to send me an email I'd be happy to provide it with you but if you take a look at this report because this community has a double a plus rating which is one step away from Triple A one step away from Triple A and if you go right into and for the purposes this evening just I just want to highlight with what I think is sort of what we are embracing this evening taking one more debt for the community if in fact the council approves this order under the section it says strong debt and contingent liability profile

▶ 55:43 this was a standard and poor's rating agency and it reads as follows in our view Melrose is debt and contingent liability profile is strong total Total governmental fund debt service is 5.4 percent of total governmental fund expenditures and net direct debt is 53.4 percent of total government fund revenue. Overall, net debt is low at 1 percent of market value and approximately 78.2 percent of the direct debt is scheduled to be repaid within 10 years, which are in our view positive credit factors. So by having a positive debt structure, and debt is actually good, let me qualify it. Managed debt is the best, which is what we have in this city. This is the best managed debt because it proves to the outside world, stand and oppose Moody's

▶ 56:51 investor services that we invest in our community and by investing in your community you're retaining value and enhancing value which helps every single citizen you're also minimizing the interest cost when you do go to market you get the very finest rates that the market can bear you'll get a lot of people that actually bid on your bond which we've been talking about earlier that's one of the profiles you can get seven eight or nine bidders that's phenomenal people that will be within very thin margins just to secure a note for Melrose because Thorp so much confidence in this community so it's really a very proud thing to know and to have we often don't talk about it but it's something that we it's done intentionally and we strive to keep it

▶ 57:36 just like this you'll never get a request for debt in front of this council that doesn't have this and also if I'd like to turn to the first page right after it and if you take a look briefly in the Thorp a number of columns Thorp five columns and if you take a look in under 2020 it has the net debt the amount that this act city was actually committed to fiscal 20 the year that we're in three point three million plus then it's a five percent limit it that's the limit five percent of our budget which is the maximum we would commit to debt for the fiscal year Thorp our projected budget the budget we're living in now for 20 and that's 3.91 percent that if you check that number on the far right it goes 3.91 3.62

▶ 58:29 right down to 2.73 after 10 years 2029 that's how the model works in the very next page It demonstrates to you the capacity in the far right column each year that you could have taken on more debt service should the community have desired to do that. So if you look at the first number, it's 947,523, 1.2 million, and it goes on from there to 2.5, 2029. So it always provides you assurance that by supporting a note, the anticipated debt of the community is being projected and it's also being serviced in such a way that you're not overextending. We also use very, very conservative rates for interest. The Treasury can speak to that if you'd like to this evening, which makes it a further additional assurance that these figures will be held and that they're going to be actually less

▶ 59:35 come in less than what we anticipate but that's that's the nature of how this model is is developed we work with our certifying bank for southwest hilltop securities hand in hand with this model it's a model that we jointly have together and through them and through us we're able to you know keep the city's debt portfolio in a position that we can actually talk about doing three or four projects right now prior to july 1st so it's a it's a good um opportunity to have that conversation tonight is this is this particular uh debt service for fiscal year 21. great question i should have that schedule for that yep for the yes for the ladder truck we're looking at a period um the first debt service payment will be due 6 15 actually 23 a principal and interest of over 35

▶ 1:00:34 000. um it's typically a eight years bond two years of temporary debt service typically we try to do and the treasurer can speak to this if we care to is we try to go out on a temporary basis for a year or two depending on the other bonds or the notes that are that we're considering so that when when we are able to go to market which would be when you actually turn this stock bar to the lighter gray which meant we went to market we actually bonded it not not considering taking on that debt then we would turn that darker bar into gray so we typically do a couple of years of temporary interest we try to minimize the issuance cost so instead of it doing one two three times we try to do it on a collective basis if possible so we're

▶ 1:01:29 John N. Tramontozzi: not paying for the same I'll say service more than once if we don't have to so that even that part of it is thought out so it's it's a great question so is this is this particular bond for the lot of truck the first one that we will be issuing for that fiscal year Thorp actually two of the notes that we're considering one would be the salt shed that's also before you as well as the Memorial Hall renovations and we could speak to those two at that time together but yep considering those three because this is if you 1 million for and it's approximately I'm gonna guess it's about one third of our five percent limit so So the other bonding proposals would, Mr. Flavin, why don't you come forward.

▶ 1:02:21 I'm a dummy when it comes to this stuff, so we're going to have to speak in dummy terms. 5% is your amortization, your payments off the debt schedule, certain things. It has nothing to do with the 1.4. What you owe on an annual basis is the piece that you're looking at, that first year. On the right side you'll see, what, 80, I don't know the number. the principal or 35 35 right so that's that's minuscule against them they wouldn't have that yeah so so you calculate the what the 35 the payment uh principal interest towards what you consider to be the five percent and again you all i mean you're all new to this we've been doing it a while and this yeah this is a process and these are these are estimates these are educated guesses

▶ 1:03:05 that we've done numbers of a number of years in this situation he's going to order the truck it might take two years to get here we aren't borrowing a dime until we get that if we need some money we go out and do short-term interest debts short-term interest things where they're giving the money away under one percent so we usually shave a couple of years off we can do up to three before we have to make a principal payment so we take advantage of those short-term interest rates blast them out and do this for the purposes of this presentation you're getting amortization schedules at five percent that's a whole that's a whole other kettle of fish what you have to understand about muni bonds is they are sold for their tax exempt basis so when we

▶ 1:03:47 go sell this bond 1.4 million and we go to the actual street what the the underwriters usually do is give us a slug of money and they you know like 600 they might give you i mean the last time we did the school modules we got 700 000 we took that 700 000 and reduced the amount of the issuance so although the authorization authorization might have been 5.650 we've only borrowed like 5-1 or 5-2 and we split it out among the other things in that situation so this is not a black and white situation it's a bit arcane and it grows over time you know you figure it out over time that's why why they sit me in the seat I sit in and why I work with professionals at First Southwest and Bond Council. So I don't know if that makes it any clearer.

▶ 1:04:37 John N. Tramontozzi: Well, the debt service schedule that we have here is an estimate, really. They all are. Right, because one thing I looked at was it's a coupon, 5%. I mean, we can borrow money at 1, 2%. they do is they give us that slug of money and then they charge they put a coupon on it of five percent that we pay back down the line so it makes it more attractive to the guy trying not to pay taxes on his interest people go out and buy these for the interest-free the tax-free income but are we but did we actually paying five percent on the borrowed money we will but we're going to get that slug of money and reduce it up the front the premium band bond premium they give you a premium up front so that they can charge that image that money down the thing and then sell it on the

▶ 1:05:23 John N. Tramontozzi: street well um when they sell it on the street is it it's at four and a half or five percent and these are restaurants and typically we're seeing three and a half or four now i was going to say five five seems a little high that might that made the glory rate maybe less than that i'm going to stay with what we've done for years right exactly so when we go out to to bid it and get it it may be less than the five percent that we made i mean today who knows it might be higher let's hope not no but i'm not paid to prognosticate i'm paid to just execute and this is how we execute them this is what we do right and in in the reality is too we would only go and bond what the what we uh actually need so if it turns out that we can get this lot of truck for

▶ 1:06:10 John N. Tramontozzi: correct less than a million force it's just a million that's all we're not going to be bound by by this 1 million for a general obligation bond right now just what I know that I just want to make it clear that this is not set in stone and we won't know that necessarily until it's time to actually make that purchase we put it out the bid but but it but it's a lot of money we know it's Thorp going to be a lot of money, but as Pat said, we do have some debt that's coming offline- All the time. All the time. And we could replace it with some other debt. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Good. Well, thank you. Great point. I'll open it up to others who might have questions. President Grigoraitis? Thank you.

▶ 1:06:55 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you all for being here. At first, I just wanted to thank Mr. Flavin for your service to the City of Melrose. My understanding is you'll be retiring and that you've been with us since 2006. Thank you for all that you've done. Thank you. and i have i think questions for both the chief and for mr delarusso chief can you talk a little bit about i'm assuming Thorp been advances in aerial ladder truck technology since 2007 will there be any additional features on this vehicle that will enhance our ability to respond to fires and or enhance the safety of our crews the truck the manufacturing of the trucks uh the electrical harnesses are a lot better today than they were 13 years ago when we purchased our last one so

▶ 1:07:36 Jen Grigoraitis: the current truck we have an onboard hydraulic generator that produces power and now on the new trucks they can just run right off the power of the tractor would need the additional so that would provide more space for more equipment because the truck is the truck size is the truck size and where will this truck be housed which station right here at center house and then for mr delarusso for um as you reference Thorp a couple bonds that are currently before this committee are those the anticipated costs of those bonds included in these projection numbers you're absolutely correct and that's a great question these projection numbers right here that are before you with this that again the doc

▶ 1:08:21 that includes the ladder it includes the salt shed it includes memorial hall it includes the BB an estimate for the BB and it also includes money ten million dollars for the library project if that is actually embraced by the community those are the projects that we have in the queue that we're anticipating may become commitments to the community again through the council's approval and it's also one other that we're contemplating which would be another road bond come the fall to continue the process that we've had in the past and once that gets formulated and again moving it to the council at the right time but that's exactly correct so we are we are putting in here everything so that by approving this you're not discounting the other

▶ 1:09:15 Robb Stewart: projects that i just brought up and addressed and everyone can see black and white anticipated costs and in the run out and it should always flow that way by design it should always flow down thank you thank you yep thank you great question that was a great question thank you mr chair thank you for being here tonight um i'd like to come back to uh the the fleet of trucks that you have uh available and with this addition because it's not a replacement it sounds like it's more of an addition can you talk about the the total number of trucks that we have available uh in morose well just a correction it would be uh would be getting rid of the oldest ladder truck so we'd still maintain the current fleet okay so the 25 year old truck you're you're going to just sell

▶ 1:10:05 Robb Stewart: it off okay is there uh specific plans of selling is is that projected in all this do we have a disposal cost or is that something like in more tbd i don't have a disposal cost i i actually wouldn't even know what what the market would be if i truck that old okay what's timing for that what are you thinking in terms of getting rid of that timing wise well for the construction of a new truck once uh it goes out and gets approved and we decide currently today we're looking at 333 working days all right for manufacturing so you're looking at about a year and a half sure before delivery sure okay okay that that's a lot more clear because when i when i first heard it sounded like you're going to maintain three ladder trucks but that's not

▶ 1:10:52 Robb Stewart: the case okay and you answer a lot of questions about the bonding it because the five percent was it sort of stuck out like a sore thumb but that really is something that will be what the market will bear as as we get down to when we issue right yeah i mean Thorp the part i left out i mean they put the coupons out there and then they always vary up to four and a half five percent but when we go to market we get typically get six to eight bids um go on the street and we we have to take what's called the true interest cost so they take that van bond premium and they apply it into the into the numbers and come up with the true interest cost and usually the bids are within 20 or 30 basis points of each other

▶ 1:11:45 Mark Garipay: and that's how they get to buy it is buying through that coupon sure and then when i retire you know six months and i want to put some money away and have tax-free interest i'll buy some melrose municipal bonds there you go that's very helpful that's very helpful um that's all thank you sir thank you very much counselor a lot of my questions have been answered but uh i do have a couple uh with regards to the ladder truck that we're going to be taking offline as it's going to be more or less a spare truck it won't be used every day or that's correct um and now that it's a year and a half out my question was going to be is there any investment that we're going to need to put into that to keep that up and running structurally or you had mentioned that the current current

▶ 1:12:41 ladder truck has got some potential structural issues and that's correct and what we do is preventive maintenance we'll deal with the issues as they arise you know exhaust things like that oil changes greasings so but when it's not running every day the preventive maintenance is performed on engine hours so the more the engine operates the more you have to have the PM to prevent the major problems some of you may may not know that the engine was basically blown and it costs a significant amount of money to get that piece back into service plus not being able to use it for three months so you know a good preventive maintenance program would prevent those types of things so that's why you need to have a good solid backup

▶ 1:13:36 Mark Garipay: not for an everyday running because it's old but it can run in a short term with this type of ladder truck it's it's two piece get the power and you get the ladder that's correct useful life the same on both components that sometimes the power the tractor so to speak might have a you a lesser useful life than the than the ladder another component does it if it's anyone ever looked at maybe doing one component of the other or it's a useful life on both components the same well we've looked at that but so the tractor the tractor part of the truck is what carries the hundred feet of hydraulically driven aerial and it also carries a large amount about a hundred and seventy feet of ground ladders of assorted sizes plus all the equipment Thorp a lot of stress on the

▶ 1:14:33 rear axles but the the aerial itself has to be stress tested every every year and Thorp a lot of when you're operating and moving it Thorp a lot of twisting and talking so um when they find weaknesses that you know you then you can't operate it it has to be fixed so that's that's some of the minor problems that were developed we found now with the latter one it's in the shop about it's going to be about a month while those are getting fixed so it can have be safe for the men and women to operate on it the reason why i asked that i was just trying to see if you could spread out the fleet aging because we're going to have two two pieces of apparatus coming up and in 10 years that's going to be closer to two and a half two and a half million dollars so if you can spread it out or

▶ 1:15:23 Mark Garipay: age it out i was just trying to see maybe the hit down the road maybe less that's correct but the two pieces that we're seeking uh this year the two different types one's a pumper truck and the other one's a hero um with with regards to the the truck the main truck that's going to be a spear the only place it it fits we all know is in in main street correct where um what do you think you're going to be able to store that uh when the time comes well if you'd like to give me a new fire station that'd be i'd find a spot for it but uh i have some ideas uh possibly tenting it on one of the outside station properties or actually building a garage, like a steel structure to house it, things along that line.

▶ 1:16:14 Mark Garipay: But we have about a year and a half to figure out some sort of resolution to that. I just have one question for Patrick. I think we know the answer to this, but if we're looking at the debt service on the ladder truck, you said everything's included in your projections. So, in 2024, we have an annual debt service of 217,982, correct? Yeah. I believe the first principle will be due on the ladder in fiscal 24. Twenty- Two years of- Twenty- 186 and 31, 875 for- The 214, 875? No, the one above it. And then the one above it, 217, 982, 78. Yeah, so take the 217-982, and that's included in the variance for that fiscal year on chart 2, correct? So we still have $1.229 million that you could go out and do other projects with.

▶ 1:17:25 In the variance, you have a, you have- And you're looking at 24, what, are you on the second page? You have to be careful with it, because this stuff won't come online. Because this stuff won't come online, you see it drops off to $898,000 and all this other new stuff comes online, so if you go spend $1.2 in 2021, you're going to be $400,000 short two years from now. You're going to knock that number way down. That's the number for that one year. If you go authorize something for 5, 10, or 15 years, whatever you pull out of that, it So I think the answer to your question would be the layering, what we try to do again is that we layer as debt rolls off that we would look to put a debt comparable in that sense

▶ 1:18:22 Mark Garipay: so that you're not creating a higher level. So debt would be consistently rolling off and then you come up, replace, keep it constant. BUT AS IT ROLLS OFF, THAT GIVES US THE OPPORTUNITY TO EMBRACE THIS NOTE. THE VARIANCE IS KIND OF THE GAP THAT IN FAIRY WE WOULD HAVE AVAILABLE IN FAIRY, YEAH. FOR ONE YEAR. FOR ONE YEAR, CORRECT. SO REALLY YOU'VE GOT TO LOOK THREE YEARS OUT, SO WE'RE LOOKING AT ABOUT EIGHT OR NINE HUNDRED THOUSAND, SO ON AND ON. OKAY. ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. COUNSELOR McMASTER. THANK YOU, MR. CHAIRMAN. THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING HERE. THANK YOU. CHIEF, JUST A FEW QUESTIONS FOR YOU. Will this vehicle be custom built? Yes. And I think that's an important point for the public to understand, considering that

▶ 1:19:08 Shawn M. MacMaster: the request is to authorize a bond in the amount of over $1.4 million. But to put that in context, an engine would probably be around 700 to 750,000, is that fair to say? That's correct. Okay, and this is a much larger vehicle that has a greater capacity. Do we have the current capacity, Chief, to store the truck that you have in mind at the Main Street station, considering the space there and other vehicle-related needs? The space at headquarters is tight. Anybody that's been there realizes that. But the truck would be specced out and engineered to fit into the station. So I think that's a good preface to the following question, Chief. Is there any trepidation about moving forward on this particular purchase for the truck that you have in mind

▶ 1:20:07 Shawn M. MacMaster: with the uncertainty of our public safety buildings? Obviously, I would like wider doors, but I don't have any concerns because it would be spec'd out pretty much identical to the current specs of that truck. So, by moving forward on this purchase, and this goes back, I think, to what the President alluded to, are we going to be missing out on a future opportunity to have the structural features to this apparatus that may not be conducive to the current environment at Main street but that might be conducive at um a larger building beyond the doors that you referenced is there anything else that we could potentially have on a ladder truck beyond the doors um that in an ideal world we could have if the the space um was different right now

▶ 1:21:08 yes you would have be able to have the truck designed to accommodate more cabinetry to put more equipment on the truck could be higher not so much wider and we actually wouldn't want to go up that much more in height anyways because we have the uh the trestle over at uh on uh morrow street we have to try to get under you know the truck is long um i don't know the exact uh length of it offhand if orlando said she'd tell me because we engineered it for the rotary The roundabout. The roundabout, yes. It's all about the tractor-drawn part of the apparatus, the cab. We would be able to have more, a wider cab, a longer cab. We're kind of restricted that way because of the archway of the station. And how does the length of the cab,

▶ 1:22:09 what, if any, role does the length of the cab play in your ability to respond to... it would be more more room for the members inside the cab so currently like we want to keep our medical bags and everything has to be secured down in the cabinet locked down with webbing so god forbid there was an accident equipment doesn't fly and injure the the members on the piece so anytime you're building our cabinetry then you're taking away riding positions and things like that so Thorp a Thorp a what they call a clean cab concept now where we're not putting our scarf bottles inside the cab because we're trying to uh reduce the carcinogens that the members being exposed to carcinogens so when you take the the bottles out of the cab

▶ 1:23:00 Shawn M. MacMaster: the packs that we wear where do you put them so we need more space so if you had a bigger cab you could build in a in a closed cabinet to be to get the equipment out from the exterior so yeah I mean I think it presents a dilemma because we obviously want our firefighters to be to be comfortable and to be safe and to have proper storage space but at the same time this is something that's needed it's something that I know I raised with the prior administration and I appreciate this being one of the first requests made by the current administration because it's it's really long overdue and i'm inclined to support it but again just i think it's compounded by that uncertainty of not knowing the future of our you know of our

▶ 1:23:55 Shawn M. MacMaster: public safety buildings and that's something that we've all inherited it's something that the current mayor has inherited and it presents no easy answer Thorp no easy Thorp no easy solution to this but Thorp no doubt in my mind that firefighters deserve more than they currently have that takes me to the question of a replacement plan as you referenced that it's standard for a ladder truck to have a service replacement plan after or for to be taken out of service after 10 to 12 years but typically there there would be or there should be some sort of uh a replacement plan do we currently have an apparatus replacement plan uh in the city no has there ever been an apparatus replacement plan uh not that i'm aware of i mean chief o'brien um had scratched at it but

▶ 1:24:48 Shawn M. MacMaster: um you know these are big ticket items and it's it it all depends on the uh i guess it would depend on the sustainability of being able to afford all of it so we always try to get a little bit more out of it but Thorp Thorp a cost risk to that too so one of the things to think about chief because i don't think it has to be codified in an order from from the council or even a directive from the mayor's offices perhaps being you know proactive as still a relatively new chief with a considerable amount of leadership experience having served as captain before now um you know maybe coming up with some sort of uh an apparatus uh you know replacement plan um that would i think maybe prevent us from 15 years from now and who knows how many of us will be here being in the

▶ 1:25:38 Shawn M. MacMaster: position that prior councils have have found itself in which is last year and the year before i believe the vehicle maintenance line item was about 34 and i know last year you had to come before us and request i think an additional 75 000 or maybe a hundred thousand dollars all of which is needed but i think you know i'm the type of person who tries to look around the corner and think 10 steps ahead i know that is the value that our current mayor shares as well so i think to the extent you with your expertise can provide the tools that maybe help us plan you know moving forward so we don't find ourself and that i think i think that might be helpful it's easy to talk about because i can't take credit for it um and it's a baby step towards

▶ 1:26:27 Paul Brodeur: what you were talking about and that is um last year and the auditor will correct me from if i'm wrong um the council at that time had the wisdom to set aside i think was out of free cash don't $250,000 in free cash as a kind of a capital reserve fund so that the order that we're going to be discussing on Monday around the pumper truck is going to show a $500,000 cost. The cost of the item, as you pointed out earlier, is $750,000, and $250,000 of that is going to come from monies that your predecessors set aside, recognizing that this expense is coming up. Again, it is not a full-term funded capital plan, but it's the beginning of a recognition, again, that started before I got here, that we need to get away from the kind of crisis management purchasing,

▶ 1:27:27 Leila Migliorelli: if you will that has kind of been the historic pattern for some of these big ticket items in the past thank you mr mayor and i'm inclined to vote to support this tonight thank you thank you thank you councilman migliarelli um thank you chairman um just a quick question most most of the questions i have um have been answered but um chief kalina just following up on a question that counselor mcmaster had do you have a sense of what the cost difference would be if you were to get the fire truck that you would want if you had the appropriate sized station to house it in it would most likely maybe be a hundred thousand dollars more because it's really just in the the uh the build out of the cab the tractor we can't go too long because we want to be able to

▶ 1:28:14 navigate around streets but uh you know our ladders here's a reason the ladders lay on their on their beams and it would be better if it was up on a vertical for pulling them out so you have to the members have to struggle a little bit harder to get them out but the reason why they're designed that way is because we have to get the truck in the archway so that extra eight inches i know you visited the station and they back you can see that Thorp not much room for any error YOU KNOW IT TAKES ALL OF IT TO GET IN SO UM BUT THAT'S IT IT'S ALL IN THE DESIGN THE ENGINEERS ARE ACTUALLY FIGURED IT ALL OUT HOW TO GET IT IN AND OUT SAFELY THANK YOU UM A QUESTION FOR MR DELARUSSO UM THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE TONIGHT I THINK UM JUST FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PUBLIC AND

▶ 1:29:06 Leila Migliorelli: PERHAPS THE COUNCIL I KNOW WE'RE LOOKING HERE AT YOU KNOW A 1.4 MILLION DOLLAR BOND UM GIVEN everything that's going on in the city right now that we're preparing for this crisis i wonder if you could maybe share any thoughts that you might have on how you're preparing financially if we do have to make some sort of emergency commitments to residents you know people who might be disproportionately affected by the covet crisis if you could talk a little bit about that how this that sort of planning is different than this type of planning yeah if i may i'll do the chair Thorp a couple of things um one is that we're we've already directed departments that any expenditures that are related to this to this um matter before us now that we cognizant

▶ 1:29:59 to document it and to provide us with the details at the um the end of the um event if you want if I can call it that for the sake of because the times where with you know we're out of state emergency if there are any federal state funds that we may be able to get to reimburse us the most difficult thing is that if you wait till the end and then try to go back and recreate with why you spent the money and where it's a lot harder so we're taking we're proactive in that sense we also um have an emergency fund for the community which has over 189 000 in it right now That's also part of an opportunity to help those that become necessary to use those funds. We have free cash that is still uncommitted of just under $3,480,000 between now and July 1st.

▶ 1:30:57 And as you're aware, we have a rainy day fund of over $2 million. So from my vantage point with the mayor, I think we're very confident that we can take an adverse situation and really have no impact on our day-to-day operation, which is everything. Because we want to continue the continuity of service in the community, and oftentimes it's no different than if you had a reduction in state aid mid-year. You want to always position yourself for that happening in your planning, which is what we do, so that everything happens on Monday that happens on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and you don't see services impacted. That's the number one goal, and it's a great question, and it's something that we're very

▶ 1:31:48 sensitive to. As I indicated, we've already put policies out. but I also spoke to Rick Stinson just today about products for cleaning, et cetera, because there will be an enhanced expenditure for those items, and we are making provisions to address that cost as we proceed so that everyone's, if you use that term, on the same page. So they minimize the surprises. It's always what you don't know that hurts you, not what you know. And in our position, the more we know and the sooner we know, better we can prepare for it and that's a that's that's our job and so that's what we're doing in the mirror I want to commend the mayor again I think some of the leadership as far as setting these protocols up has been you know truly

▶ 1:32:38 Paul Brodeur: noteworthy and again it's such an unpredictable situation but thank you that's a great question if the council would my I will address it a little bit fuller more fully at the end of the meeting we are keeping an eye on the bottom line to be sure and there are certain impacts that we're going to see in terms in particular loss of rental income through the schools and to Memorial Hall but as mindful as we as we are of that please understand the public should understand that we are making decisions based on what is best for the public health and safety of the community and if we have to take some I I don't want to say financial risks, but that will drive our decisions about spending. We're not going to be profligate spenders by any stretch, but we will do what it takes to keep the community safe.

▶ 1:33:30 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Councilman Melodin. Thank you so much for coming today. You've mentioned that the older truck you would like to get rid of. Correct. and then you're gonna keep one of the trucks do you know not that we can tell about if we're gonna assume how long do you think it's gonna serve us more well then it gets into yes certainly you know another seven years okay not longer because the NPA standard recommends retiring at 20 years. So, great, so now that would take me to another question. So if, and I want to, hopefully we have other constituents that are thinking the same way, but I don't know, I had this question, so if we take these two trucks and we sell them, might be very crazy question or thought.

▶ 1:34:42 Maya Jamaleddine: sell them wouldn't help us to get, you know, replace it with another truck that can serve us for longer term. When you say sell the two trucks, you're talking the 25-year-old? So now your plan is to get a new truck, right? But we have two other trucks that are still in-house. If we sell these two trucks and replace them with another truck, is that something that's going to cost us more money? I'm not sure I totally understand the question, but if we sell both ladder trucks, the 1995 truck and the 2007 truck, and we purchase a new truck, and we'll only have one truck, So then when that truck goes down for maintenance or mechanical failure, we will not have a truck to put into place. No, I'm going to.

▶ 1:35:46 Maya Jamaleddine: So and I'm sorry if I'm not explaining it right. I'm going to try my best. So now you're proposing to purchase totally new truck. OK, so that we're done with that. Hopefully we're going to approve it. Now we have two other trucks that your plan is to sell one of them and to keep another one. If we sell these two combined, would that help us to replace it with another one? So we will have two new trucks. Two trucks. Well, yeah, but then you'd be looking at about the same amount of cost. So I don't think you would- It's not gonna, okay. And then you'd have two trucks in or around the same age. So it would be better to try to hold on to the seven truck for a few more years and to get that gap so that you constantly will always have a good good piece of

▶ 1:36:38 fire apparatus fair to say that the resale value of a fire truck I assume is pretty low in terms of like we tried to flip it after five years a new truck after five years or newer truck it's not a ton of money Thorp a market out there but not not in a population like Melrose got it okay thank you any other questions and what is the will of the committee motion to recommend second we have a motion to recommend by councillor Tramontozzi seconded by councillor Garipay all those in favor aye any opposed giving none this motion will move to the full board thank you thank you very very much next order may I make a motion to ACCEPT THIS DOCUMENT INTO THE RECORD FOR TONIGHT'S MEETING SECOND SECOND SO WE

▶ 1:37:29 Christopher Cinella: HAVE A MOTION TO ENTER THE DOCUMENT BY MR. DEBORUSO BY PRESIDENT GRIGORITAS SECOND BY COUNSELOR ECHOLS ALL THOSE IN FAVOR AYE ANY OPPOSED HEARING NONE WE'LL PUT THAT INTO THE RECORD THANK YOU NEXT ORDER ORDER 2020-73 THE ACCEPTANCE OF A 2020 SENIOR SAFE GRANT IN THE AMOUNT of $2,552 for the fire department chief would you like to speak to this yes this is a grant that we applied for it's a small grant it has its has its specific target and we decided we wanted to target the seniors in the community we've gone out to the the senior center and some of the other mid-rise apartment buildings that hold the seniors and had lectures and I don't have reading materials, pamphlets, videos to put on a nice presentation and now that fire prevention is open this would go

▶ 1:38:41 into that office and what we'd like to do with the funds is purchase some updated videos because the ones that we do have, they're on VHS tapes, and I don't know if Thorp any players that work out there. So I'd like to try to purchase some updated materials, DVD or Blu-ray, things like that, and some materials to hand out to the seniors. And that's pretty much it. Any questions? Council Stewart. Is there any matching requirement? Thorp no matching. Great. Motion to recommend. We do have a quick question by Councillor Stewart. Yes, I was just wondering how you distribute this? How does this get distributed? How can we communicate? How can we help you in terms of this being available and that they have access to this

▶ 1:39:42 for our senior citizens? Well, so the senior center will call and they'll schedule a yearly or biannual meeting at the senior center. and invite myself and uh police chief lyle and we'll go down there and we'll just talk to the seniors so you run this entirely through the senior center then no no it would be run through the fire department but victorian fair we usually have excuse me the ambulance down in the alleyway in a booth and we'd be able to put some materials out there if someone wanted to stop by okay and we we haven't had an open house in the last couple years because of the condition of the floor But years past, we've had those types of materials out for the kids and all the seniors.

▶ 1:40:26 Shawn M. MacMaster: But my supplies for the seniors has diminished or gone. Okay, great. Thank you. Council Member McMaster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chief, does the money solely go towards supplies and other things that you need to support presentations, or is there anything else that's worked into the grant or do you have any flexibility to use it for any other reasons as long as it's used for the target so for senior education so what do you see specifically the money the the costs being tied to most likely the the materials the handout materials any type of curriculum development for any type of targeted um trainings that your Yes, I could, though he works, Captain Gibson is the fire prevention officer, he works a

▶ 1:41:17 Shawn M. MacMaster: day schedule. So any training opportunities may, he would just go, however, if we were to try to train additional staff it would be on an overtime basis and I believe some of the funds could be used for that purpose. In terms of content or curriculum development, one thing to maybe think of, Chief, is the opportunity for trip and fall prevention as you know that's the number one call that fire departments and our police departments respond to for for older adults in that you know as your age increases particularly over the age of 70 a trip and fall can be particularly debilitating leading to other adverse health outcomes so to the extent there might be an opportunity to use this funding to work in concert with our council on aging and with the mayor's office the expertise that he

▶ 1:42:07 brings from his time at the executive office of elder affairs and maybe developing some sort of a focus on trip and fall prevention that might be a worthwhile endeavor i couldn't agree more thank you chief thank you mr chairman thank you all right we had a motion to recommend by council Tramontozzi i didn't catch the second second by councillor eccles all those in favor all right any opposed all right this motion moves to recommendation for full board thank you thank Thank you for coming. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Make a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Oh. Is it indulgent just to talk a little bit about the latest information that we have about COVID-19? Sure. Thank you again for your indulgence.

▶ 1:42:55 Paul Brodeur: I'm sorry I show up at every meeting. And when I said during the campaign that I would be communicating, I thought I'd be communicating about a range of subjects, not just public health or COVID-19 and I want to stress as much as I can that this is a rapidly changing situation and that folks need to stay up to date through the website and the other channels that the means of communication the city has made available the reason why I say that is because I just got an inquiry about an email that set out a you know a particular thing the city was doing and someone said, that doesn't make any sense based on what you put out. I said, well, it was true when we put it out because that email went out to someone at 9.30 this morning

▶ 1:43:43 Paul Brodeur: and things changed from, you know, I think in the afternoon around that particular piece of the puzzle. So folks really need to help us by staying up on things. And I know it's been challenging for the administration, for the schools, for our employees, for you guys, and most importantly to to our residents it affects your home life your work life education recreation all those things this morning i had an opportunity to participate in a meeting led by mayor walsh of boston and mayor curtatone of somerville of essentially a gathering of mostly metro mayors and some town administrators and folks like that and they what was made available to us were some of the leading public health experts from the united states and italy and

▶ 1:44:31 Paul Brodeur: china to give us some insights about their experience and i'm not here to scare anyone i want to make that clear we are we are well positioned to deal with this but they did stress the need for among other things social distancing that is why the chamber is set up the way it is today and that will drive continue to drive decisions that we make going forward well so what we have done today again this is with an eye towards not just preventing but mitigating or containing spread that those are the real focuses of the public health community today we have cancelled as I think you all know a wide variety of public meetings and opportunities the schools will be closing at noon tomorrow for aggressive cleaning

▶ 1:45:26 Paul Brodeur: the senior center is closed i bring that up because i want folks to recognize that some of our city departments you might have an idea of what they do but they do but they kind of do more one of the things that the closure of the senior center impacts is the ability of folks that rely on them for meals to get them and i want to assure the council that we have a plan in place working with mystic valley elder services to do our best to make sure that there is continuity there while the senior center will be closed to the public it will be staffed so in the event that folks don't get the message certainly there'll be ability to take phone calls and guide people through whatever problems they may face we will continue to provide

▶ 1:46:13 Paul Brodeur: transportation in a somewhat restricted way for folks for seniors that need access to routine medical appointments we're keeping the library open but are closing uh or eliminating all the programming that um that just like anything else may change um very rapidly depending on what our best information is um and that is going to keep up the the city rem the city hall remains open and we are at the service of the public we did put out some communication a little bit earlier today saying that while we will be open obviously the the best thing you can do in terms of social distancing is not to come here if you don't have to and we tried to remind folks of some of the services that might that are available either online or by phone so you can avoid a

▶ 1:47:08 Paul Brodeur: trip in here unless it's unless it's absolutely necessary and we will continue to update as we go along one thing that was brought up by some of the public health experts is to the best of your ability this goes to every one of us in the public there is good information out there and there is misinformation out there and one example the head of the division of partners that essentially deals partners health care that deals with this kind of stuff said there there is a myth or rumor circulating out there that this virus releases a neurotoxin that will kill you that's an extreme example but I would really urge people to the extent they're looking for information respectfully suggest that Facebook or Twitter or the like may be right but the best thing to

▶ 1:48:01 Paul Brodeur: do is check with the CDC through their website or through the Department of Public Health through their website and if you still have questions about that you can check in with our health director of the Board of Health please do your best to educate yourself because the only way we're going to be able to manage this is if again we are respectful professional uh compassionate and empathetic and we will continue to try to do that that having said i will probably every time i talk to you about this return to the basics and i almost don't need to write them down anymore you got to wash your hands soap and warm water do your best it's almost impossible to not touch your eyes nose or mouth clean things that are frequently touched that's what we're doing in the schools and in our

▶ 1:48:51 Paul Brodeur: public spaces to the best we can with household cleaning sprays those kinds of things cover your mouth cough in your mouth like this when you're inclined to do that and perhaps most importantly if you are sick do not come to work sometimes i understand that is easier said than done and that there can be obstacles for families depending on your circumstances to make that to make that work but you still have to do it it's a matter again it's a matter of not just your health but the the healthier friends neighbors and co-workers and to the again that is a step towards containing this and mitigating it and make it making it easier on us all as a community to get through so we're going to keep plugging away we appreciate your interest in your diligence

▶ 1:49:41 Paul Brodeur: and your cooperation in accommodating a meeting such as this and in the format that we that we need to pursue it right now obviously the um me and my staff are available for any questions you may have please do your best to keep up to date with the information that the city or the cdc or dph puts up and that's that thanks guys thank you mayor broder thank you for the update here we had a motion to adjourn by councillor garrapin seconded by council mcnaught earlier and all those in favor

Original documents

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