Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2020-12-03

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 present · Voting; John N. Tramontozzi present · Voting

Agenda

1. Call to Order (0:00)
2. Remote Meeting Information (0:30)
3. Public Comment (1:15)
4. Orders (2:35)
5. ORDER-2021-36 : Request to set a Public Hearing on Classification of Property for December 7, 2020 at 8:00 P.M. and subsequently determine the Classification of Property (2:46)
6. ORDER-2021-41 : Authorization for the Mayor of Melrose to execute a Power Purchase Agreement for Rooftop Solar Installation at Memorial Hall (46:15)
7. Adjournment (1:40:55)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● DECEMBER 3, 2020 Web-based remote meeting Committee Meeting 7:00 PM , 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 Present Maya Jamaleddine Voting Present Jen Grigoraitis President, ex oficio Present

ORDER-2021-36 Classification of Property Request to set a Public Hearing on Classification of Property for December 7, 2020 at 8:00 P.M. and subsequently determine the Classification of Property Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2021-41 A Agreement Authorization for the Mayor of Melrose to execute a Power Purchase Agreement for Rooftop Solar Installation at Memorial Hall Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 12/7/2020 5:44 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Christopher Cinella: We are recording. Okay, good evening. Today is December 3rd. Welcome to the Appropriations Committee. Time is 7 o'clock. With me tonight, I'm the Chair, Councilor Chris Sonala, and in attendance, we have the Vice Chair, Lila Migliorelli, and voting members, Councilors Tramontozzi, Councilor McMaster, Councilor Eccles, Councilor Garipay, Councilor Stewart, Councilor Jamaleddine, and President Grigoraitis, as well as Councilor McNaught just popped on. In pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and the Governor's March 15th, 2020 order imposing strict limitation on the number of people that gather in one place, This meeting of the Appropriations Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible.

▶ 0:59 Christopher Cinella: We will post an audio or video recording of this transcript or other comprehensive records as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Melrose website and on MMTDC.org. Also, I'd like to reflect that Councilor Thomas is also present. At this time, I'll entertain a motion for public comment. Motion to open public comment. Second. Motion to open the floor for public comment made by Councilor Stewart, seconded by President Grigoraitis. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Chair Cinella? Yes. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamal. Yes. President Grigoraitis.

▶ 1:57 Christopher Cinella: Yes. Yes. All right. The two people in the room are panelists this evening. There is no other individuals in the waiting room at this time. Motion to close public comment. Second. Motion to close public comment made by President Grigoraitis, seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli, Madam Clerk. Chair Cinella. Yes. Vice. Yes, Cesini Yes. Yes, yea yes. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. We have one order before us this evening. Two orders, actually. First order 2021-36, a request to set a public hearing on classification of property on December 7th, 2020 at 8 p.m. and subsequently determine the classification of property. I'll entertain a motion at this time to suspend the rules. I know we have Mr. Wilcox with us

▶ 3:17 this evening second motion to suspend the rules made by councillor mcnaught seconded by president Grigoraitis madam claire please call the role chair sanella yes vice chair Migliorelli yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes councillor Jamaleddine yes and president Grigoraitis yes 11 yes okay suspension if you want to bring just a little cut on i believe he has a presentation can you hear us yes i can screen is on yours when you're ready Okay, let me just get my video on. There we go. Good evening, everyone. It's that time of year where the tax bills are getting ready to go out.

▶ 4:27 I believe that the classification hearing for this year is new for about nine members, so what I'm going to do is just go over some of what the laws are and rules as far as the classification hearing, And I'll start to entertain questions after that. For this presentation, please feel free to follow along on our website. The assessing webpage has this presentation in an interactive form. So members of the city council or any residents or property owners can follow along during this presentation. I'm going to share my screen and kind of just go into everything. Before I start, I just want to just give you a quick update on 2020 operations in the assessor's office and kind of what has changed.

▶ 5:16 So as far as the law, nothing has changed as far as property tax. All of our responsibilities that were existing before COVID are still in place. So we are still operating to value every property at 100% full and fair cash value. I want to thank my staff. They've been unbelievable. pivoting with the circumstances and launching all sorts of new techniques for us to do our job and also serve the residents of Melrose. I want to thank Sarah, Janet, Jane, my senior worker, Bob, and my intern, Courtney. All of them have been really excellent in helping us move forward. Are you kidding me Jeff? You're not you're not muted Jeff Jeff. You're not muted. You can go on mute please. So, I just wanted to thank my staff operational and they've done a great great job. I also want to recognize Sarah, my office who during cobit actually successfully became a mass accredited assessment.

▶ 6:42 So, the office now has two full assessors, also by the state of Massachusetts, which is a great thing and she worked really hard and finished it during COVID. So, a couple of other projects that are going on in our office, we did go to our appraising software. We launched a full cloud version of appraisal software. And we started using aerial photography and artificial intelligence to conduct property. And so that that's groundbreaking kind of technology that we're taking advantage of being able to enter houses and kind of go on properties as we used to. So now what I'll do is just start the classification hearing. So, if everyone can follow along, I did send an agenda, but again, I'm sharing my screen. That's live right on the city's web page. So anyone following at home.

▶ 7:44 Can actually just go right to the city assessors web page, go to 2021 classification hearing and this is the presentation that we'll be using today for this meeting. The 7 slides and what we're going to do is actually. Just give this 1, 2nd, we're going to have 4 items to vote on the 1st item that we're going to vote on is actually whether or not to choose a small commercial exemption. In Melrose, we haven't identified any properties that would meet that qualification. So we've never implemented it every year. We try and look for properties, but because of the nature of the properties, we don't have any identified ones. Open space discount is the 2nd vote of the night in Melrose. We don't have any property classified as open space, but it is a state requirement to go over it. If we did.

▶ 8:37 The 3rd vote would be a residential exemption. The administration has not recommended a residential exemption, so that would not require a vote tonight. The 4th vote is kind of what we'll deal with the selection of a minimal residential factor or known as a tax shift. so with that i'm going to start the the quick slides and just give you a kind of a history of of where property tax is going and then ramp up to the shift slides so in this top um total levy by fiscal year this is from uh the start of this is roughly 2003 all the way to 2020 and what it does is it shows what the city um used for a tax levy you can see in 2019 to 2020 that's the override so for the most part it moves along at about a two and a half to three percent uh rate

▶ 9:36 every year and then when there's an override or a debt exclusion it would actually go up further than that over on the right hand side is just a property history of residential and commercial tax rates just to see where they are and how they go up and down depending on what the valuation of the market is for those years so that goes again from 2003 all the way to 2020. uh down below this is tracking the city of melrose's average um single family value but also the state average and you can see there's a similar value until about i want to say 2016 and then that's when the Melrose market really started to pull away compared to the state average. So I want to provide this. We do get questions about it. Here's your single family tax bill and the two optics

▶ 10:33 that we have here, one in red is Melrose and then the state average. And as you can see from 2003, they pretty much go up at the same rate until we have, you know, 2019 where we had the override. The last block that we have here is just a commercial shift history. Just so everyone can see where historically the previous boards have shifted. This is just for the city of Melrose. It starts at 1.48 and last year it was 1.63. What I also like to do is compare our valuations and our tax bill with all the surrounding communities. This graphic that I'm showing right now is actually for the whole state. Right now, I have pretty much just our immediate area, but you can, using this graphic, go out to the whole state and pull every single assessed value and every assessed tax bill for single families,

▶ 11:36 just so you can see exactly what's happening outside of Melrose and compare different changes based on valuation or tax bill. So, again, you can go in and type in 20 miles from Melrose, and it will actually move all those numbers and recalculate all the averages at the top of this. So, these are some of the interactive tools that I'm using to explain kind of property tax and kind of inform residents of how Melrose compares to other communities across the Commonwealth. So, the slide number 4, this is a direct export from Gateway, which is the Department of Revenue's website that tracks kind of our property tax. So, what you're looking at right now is just the assessments by class. If anyone wants a breakdown, please just after this meeting let me know, but all these codes are property codes, depending on whether they're commercial, residential, or even personal property.

▶ 12:37 property and these are all the valuations so the total valuation for fiscal 2021 is uh 6 billion 76 million and and that includes the whole city so all property it does exclude exempt parcels so if you look at the bottom uh the value of the exempt parcels is is below that over on the right hand side top right hand corner um this actually explains what the levy limit is and how it's calculated in massachusetts we have proposition two and a half we're limited by how much money we can levy through taxation from one year to another this um this graphic on the top right hand side explains um all the different factors so we take the levy from last year we apply a percentage of uh two and a half percent we factor in any new growth which is allowed by law and then

▶ 13:31 And we add any debt exclusions, this debt exclusion that we're looking at right here is for the high school or middle school project a few years back. So, the total allowable levy based on all those numbers is 68,878,709. Right below that is what we call the tax calculation for just 1 rate. So this would be a factor of 1. if the city council decided not to shift the taxation, this is the tax rate that would be needed to raise the revenues to support the budget for 2021. So without any shift, the tax rate would be $11 and 33 cents. On slide five, what we're doing here is we're actually getting into the shift amounts. This year, the city of Melrose is allowed to shift up to 1.75 by law. And this is 71, believe it or not,

▶ 14:33 71 different options that we have. So if you're on this graphic at home or at the meeting, you can drag it all the way out from a one factor all the way to 1.75 and all these numbers will change. So the percent increase will change, the tax rate will change and the dollar increase for both the commercial side and the single family assess value. When you look at the graphics on the bottom, you can see that a shift lower than, let's see what it is here. It is a shift lower than 1.60 would actually be a decrease on the commercial side. So that's where you see kind of the flip as far as the graphics, anything 1.6 below, you'll see a decrease in negative amount over last year. So that's kind of what's happening

▶ 15:28 Once you get up to over 1.6, that's when it starts going positive on the commercial side. For this meeting, I chose to really look at 1.60 to 1.70 because historically, that's where the council and the Board of Aldermen in the past have landed. But feel free to look through all 71 different options allowed under the law. On slide 6, this is just another version of the shifts that are available, but what we did was we did a max and a minimum, and then the actual calculations for the tax bills in the graphic over on the right-hand side. This is also interactive. Right now, I'm showing you 1.6 to 1.7, but you can go from 1 to 1.75, as we did before, and all of this information will update depending on what selection you choose.

▶ 16:25 This last slide is just some of the terms, because a lot of this stuff is only used once a year, maybe you're not familiar with certain terms. this is what the Department of Revenue defines as all these different factors starting with CIP. So anytime you see CIP, basically it's going to be commercial, industrial, and personal property. So that would be anything downtown, that would be anything used for businesses, industrials kind of shrinking, but that was where Washington Street was, now it's apartments. Personal property is tangible assets of the business, so it could be conduit or telephone lines, or it could be a typewriter or machinery in a business. We do tax that and it is under the commercial tax rate.

▶ 17:19 Levy is pretty much what we take in from property tax and there's a bunch of other terms down here. Feel free to So take a look at it, but everything I believe that's in the presentation is defined in this slide right here. So, what I'm going to do now is just kind of go back to this slide here. By law, this meeting, what we're trying to do is to look at a minimum residential factor. On this page, you can see the 0.96 factors. That's what we would be voting in. Each one has an impact on the single-family or residential side and the commercial side. My only recommendation for this meeting is for the board to select anything from a factor of one all the way to 1.75. At this point, I can take any questions that anyone has. Thank you.

▶ 18:14 John N. Tramontozzi: Do you want to shut the presentation down just so I can see folks? I don't know if they still need. I'll have you down, Councilor Tramontozzi, but just a quick show of hands, though, real quick, because I couldn't see everybody. All right. Thomas. Councilor Tramontozzi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Mr. Wilcox, thank you for coming in to provide us with the presentation. And I have reviewed the presentation, and I have just a couple of questions that I'm getting a lot of people from me or from elsewhere. But Wilcox, you mentioned that the 1st vote we need is the small commercial exemption and based on historical experience with the council, we have voted. Um, I would at some point would be suggesting that we have a motion to not adopt a small commercial exemption would be in order.

▶ 19:32 John N. Tramontozzi: Mr Wilcox also, you said the selection of an open space discount for the same reasons historically we have not. And we don't have that that there'll be a motion to not adopt that 1. Um, you mentioned the residential exemption, you said that we do not have to vote on that. Can you further explain that? Sure, I get feedback also based on the administration would have to put that in front. So I believe a vote from the mayor or recommendation would have to come before the council could vote on it. I can get an answer from the solicitor on that, but that's my understanding. Since there is no recommendation one way or the other by the administration, we do not have to act on that. But just historically, correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Wilcox,

▶ 20:27 John N. Tramontozzi: since a significant percentage of the property in Melrose is residential, we have always traditionally and historically agreed not to adopt the residential exception. Is that correct? You're muted. Okay, it's all, it's all a shift in the residential class. So, but cities like Boston have a lot of non owner occupied towns like Tisbury have 2nd homes. So, what they do is with a residential exemption, they shift it to the non owner occupied. So Melrose is 90% plus owner occupied and that that's been the reason in the past. Correct. But it doesn't prevent us from, at some point in the future, adopting to help, say, seniors, for example, senior citizens or veterans in a small amount or some amount if they're a resident and they meet certain qualifications such as age and income.

▶ 21:40 John N. Tramontozzi: We could always adopt something like that in the future, correct? Yeah, the city council actually has the maximum, I believe on the senior exemption, and I believe we have every local option for veterans. So the city of Melrose has always been very forward thinking and very accommodating to seniors and to veterans for property tax exemptions. That would be completely separate, but we have adopted the option and we've gone to the max. Correct. All right, good. Thank you. I wanted to clarify that, that, that there's a difference between the owner occupied a residential exemption that we're talking about in this. So, basically, the selection of the minimum residential factor is what's a priority this evening.

▶ 22:22 John N. Tramontozzi: And so it's just just as an explanation, the shift causes a shift to, if we want to reduce a residential tax rate, we'd be shifting to the commercial base to be a higher base to offset the reduction in the residential rate. Is that correct? That is correct, up to roughly 75%, correct. Right. But on the other hand, you don't want to necessarily overburden the commercial establishment because, obviously, we want a commercial base. We have a commercial base, as small as it may be, but we want them to survive. And so we don't want – I don't think, personally, that the shift should be that great. I think we have done a shift, as you mentioned, and I think what we can do that today without a significant burden on the commercial base, but yet give the residential tax base a little bit of a break as well.

▶ 23:29 Yeah, any of the shift is fine with me. I don't have any formal recommendations, but that is correct. Historically, we've gone about the same percentage to spread the tax burden, but that is up to each board every year to decide. 1 of the 1 of the shifts that I was looking at was a 1.68 shift. Can you just give me a little bit of an explanation on what that would do in terms of what the current rate. Is for residential and commercial and what would change if that was adopted. Sure, and if I could just have everyone follow along on slide 5, 1.68 would increase the residential single family by 167 dollars. And it would increase the commercial average commercial 663 dollars and 94 cents. Okay, and that is that is a rate that we have used in the past most recently just a year or 2 ago. So it seems that I'm suggesting.

▶ 24:36 John N. Tramontozzi: Although, you know, certainly others will have, I think that's somewhat a balance in between the higher and the lowest rates. And it's, you know, any tax increase, frankly, but especially in these times. but we in order to pay our uh bills and uh to balance our budget uh we have to set the rate pursuant to the claremont massachusetts guidelines and um but uh but anyways thank you for that explanation and at this time i'll um i'll hold off and doing anything further and let others say what they say thank you thank you thank you mr chairman and thank you mr wilcock i want to first take a moment um and thank you for this great presentation um it's it's dynamic it's easy to follow it's so thorough um i also want to thank you not for this but also your work on

▶ 25:36 Leila Migliorelli: the covet 19 website and all of that great data there that goes out and above and beyond your job And it's been a really helpful tool for residents. I know I pointed people there too, when they're looking for information. So, thank you so much for that. I did, I had the opportunity to watch last year's meeting so got myself reminded myself a little bit of what went through what went through the process last time and just wanted to ask a double check. You said, so that if we were to keep everything the same, it would be a rate of eleven dollars and thirty three cents that would keep it the same, which would. Is that correct? So, so a factor of 1 is basically the same rate for commercial and residential historically. We haven't done that for a long time, but that would be popular where communities only have a small amount of commercial.

▶ 26:30 Leila Migliorelli: So that is an option that's on the table. We haven't done it here in the 7 years. I've been here or the previous years that I know of, but that is an option. Okay, thank you. So then just walking through a little bit about, you know, thinking about the increase for residents versus commercial, and I know something that was discussed last time was, you know, trying to keep in mind our small business owners and, you know, the tax burden facing them. But then on the flip side of that, I suppose we should also look at how many of our small business owners actually own their space and whether that cost gets, those savings gets transferred on to the business owner. Do you happen to have any information about that, statistics or anything?

▶ 27:14 Jeff McNaught: Not individual statistics. I know that depending on the lease structure, sometimes they pass property tax through. Sometimes the tenant is responsible, but that's a year-to-year building by building. I would say they're responsible one way or another, whether it's in their rent or they pay it directly, and there's a mix. I don't know the percentage, but there's probably a healthy mix throughout Melrose. Thank you. That's actually all I have for now. Councilor McNaught. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Wilcox, for being here. the second um what uh vice chair Migliorelli was saying i was actually fortunate enough to be in one of my first couple meetings last year when when i saw this uh presentation given and saw

▶ 28:06 Jeff McNaught: the praise that you got from that council because it was the first time they had um had the benefit of such an interactive i would call it a document but it's much more than that i don't know what the right word is but um thank you for for making it easy for us uh essentially um i'd also like to mention um um how lucky we are to have you in this role i know you've worked for other cities and towns um salem texbury weston just to name a few just finished up your um a year of being the president of the mass association of assessors i think that's what it's called um so we're extremely fortunate to have your talents in melrose and again that's echoing count uh vice chair Migliorelli sentiments that um you've done you do a great job with everything you do so thank

▶ 29:00 Jeff McNaught: you that's my long long-winded way of of opening up um and um to council trim and tozy's point he mentioned three things that we don't have to deal with um so before i get to any questions i was going to make a motion to not accept the first three items um so that we can clear that up and then we're only working on the minimum residential factor so that would be an emotion second all right i won't read them um unless you want me to mr chair please do okay a motion to not accept the um let me read this correctly rather than my chicken scratch uh a motion to not accept a granting of a small commercial exemption a selection of an open space discount or a granting of a residential exemption it's just a point of order if i could uh council mcnutt we may you may

▶ 30:11 want to just make that those motions separate as uh three separate motions a motion not to accept the first one but and so forth that's fine let's go one by one uh making a motion uh to not accept the granting of a small commercial exemption so we have a motion by council mcnaught to not accept the small commercial exemption second second by councillor Garipay any discussion madam clerk sheriff sanella yes vice chair Migliorelli yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay yeah counselor stewart yes counselor thomas yes councilor malady yes president Grigoraitis yes eleven yes okay okay make a motion to not accept a selection of an open space discount

▶ 31:23 second so motion to not accept an open space discount made by council mcnaught who was the second i know vice chairman really seconded that clerk please call the roll chair sanella yes vice jim magliarelli yes councilor Tramontozzi yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes council of Jamaleddine yes president Grigoraitis yes 11 yes and and the third motion is a motion to not accept the granting of a residential exemption which are made by companies to not accept the granting of a residential exception seconded by vice chair migliorelli the discussion Chair Sinella? Yes. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes.

▶ 32:49 Jeff McNaught: 11. yes okay so those have been removed we still on discussion overall council mcdodge did you have anything else to add uh i was just gonna um suggest another number not making a motion for it of um 1.65 um that keeps us in line um with what we did last year percentage-wise I do realize last year and it lowers it for both the single family and the commercial. I would say significantly it does, but it gives everybody a break. Last year, I believe we were in the realm of single family went up about 700 and some odd dollars and commercial went up over a thousand. It was either 11 or 1300. I don't have it in front of me. But this gives everybody a pretty significant break during a year that I think everybody needs

▶ 33:51 Jeff McNaught: it. So I don't think that we need that. And believe me, I know that there's businesses that make a lot more money than others do as far as being a profit center, but there's very small businesses in Melrose that don't. So I think it's important that in the year of this pandemic and in the world that we live in that we we keep it down as much as we can for both and i think that meets a happy medium at 1.65 thank you honestly thank you mr chair thank you mr wilcox for being here um thanks for the detailed information and your time this week to let me um understand uh understand uh this whole presentation um well a lot of my questions have been answered but um did have a couple when we're talking about the commercial uh what falls into the commercial uh

▶ 34:48 Mark Garipay: commercial um bracket um do the we've had a large increase in in okra village jack flats um some other larger apartment buildings is that as their for-profit businesses does that uh is that part of the commercial tax base or does that go into residential You're on mute. I'm on mute. Good. The commercial value would not include the jack flats or any of the apartment buildings. Those would be all under the residential rate. Anything from assisted living facilities to large apartment buildings are all at the residential rate. The only one that's at a commercial rate would be nursing homes. and is that a um that's nothing that's voted on locally that's a state state or federal law or so that law was is actually part of the massachusetts constitution when they came out with the classes

▶ 35:58 Mark Garipay: of property back i believe in 1980 before my time so a long time ago it's class one so that does include it uh the uh the mass association of assessing officers did look to challenge that or fine tune it but it required a major vote but it is a state law that that we cannot create our own in melrose okay um and you had mentioned you'd given us a graph on the first page that had the percentages of what we um what we've gone up i think over the last 10 years what the shift has been um but historically um that's the shift but is it a split of typically 50 50 would you say historically over the last last couple of years um as i look at it i see you know 1.65 looks to be a pretty pretty even split between commercial and um commercial commercial percentage increase uh

▶ 37:09 Mark Garipay: with residential 2.57 compared to 2.59 just curious historically over the last number of years would you have to know what the percentage split was not just the shift so as far as the uh the years that i've been here i believe this is my sixth classification hearing and uh listening to the assessor that was here before uh most of the time they tried to have the same percentage wise on both the residential and the commercial side so that would be more closely aligned this year to the 1.65 where it's roughly two and a half percent on both the commercial and the uh residential side but that is up to the board to decide for this year yeah sorry too many things going on here on the screen um all right thank you uh and just curious

▶ 38:05 Cory Thomas: um i know this you debt exclusions the middle school uh any idea how many more years left on that to answer that I can't find the information it started before I believe I was here but there is an answer I can get that for you from the auditor's office no problem thank you very much council Thomas thank you mr. chairman mr. Wilcox thank you again so much for being here and being so professional and so prepared you've answered so many good questions already the website that you link to on the assessors page for the record and for the people watching at home could you give the address of the city of melrose website where they can find this interactive tool you're on mute again yeah it's the city website under the assessors um i can give you the direct

▶ 39:03 Cory Thomas: url it's um stay with me one second cityofmelrose.org assessor that that will get you exactly to the page the uh the document you're looking for is 2021 classification hearing on the sidebar on the left and that will launch the uh the dashboard by power bi yep and again i wanted to thank you as well um for taking some time this week to work with me on that um it was really interesting to see um how you could break it down by each percentage uh increase or decrease uh down the dollar of how it directly affect your residential tax bill so i think it's a great tool for the community um residential and commercial owners in melrose uh if people have a chance to go by and and check it out they really should uh and they can see

▶ 39:54 based on the numbers that we come up with tonight what the increase is going to look like in their residential commercial tax bills so thank you again for being so prepared and being such a help to the city. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else for the first time? Councillor McMaster? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Mr. Wilcock. I just had one question relative to Councillor McNaught suggestion of a 1.65 shift. I'm unable to pull up a second screen here, so can you tell me what that would translate to? Yeah, just give me one second. Let's see. So as far as the 1.65, you're looking at an increase on the average single family of $180.18, or 2.57% over last year. The tax rate would be $10.95. On the average commercial bill, you're looking at an increase of $386.21, and that would be an increase of 2.59% and a tax rate of $18.70 per thousand.

▶ 41:07 Jeff McNaught: Thank you. That's all I have for now. Anybody else for the first time? Councilor Thomason? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Wilcox, at 1.65, you said residential will be 10.95 and commercial 18.70? That's correct. What are the current rates for residential and commercial 2020? The residential rate is $11.05 and the commercial is $18.58. Thank you, sir. Councilman McNaught. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sorry, I didn't clarify that earlier, Council McMaster, and thank you for doing that. Highlighting what the difference is between last year and this year, and to say it differently, there's about a $500 savings per household and about a $700 savings per commercial business, if you have that right, Mr. Wilcox?

▶ 42:16 Jeff McNaught: Yeah, last year was a huge year with the override. So it's not a typical year, but it's a lot low, correct? It was roughly a 10% from just the override. It's quite a bit less this year. Yeah, and to put it differently, single family households went up 700 plus dollars and businesses went up roughly 1,300. So this is significantly less and I think fair and balanced in keeping with the percentages that we've tried to match year over year. That being said, I would make a motion to move ahead and to shift the burden at the 1.65. 2nd, Councilor McNaught is motioning to. Shift the burden to 1.65, seconded by. Councilor Thomas on discussion. Councilor. Yes, thank you. Mr. chair and thank you. Council McNaught and I will support that motion. The reason the difference between 1.651.68 is not significant.

▶ 43:33 John N. Tramontozzi: except that I was hoping to give the residential homeowners a little bit more of a break in light of what we've been experiencing in these difficult times with COVID and all. But I understand it would have saved them a little bit more money, but it would have assessed the commercial rate a little bit higher as well. So I think that's fair. It's reasonable. Again, I wish that we didn't have to raise taxes at all on the real estate here in Melrose, but I will support adopting a shift of 1.65. Thank you. Councilor McNaught. Through the Chair and thank you, Councilor Tramontozzi. Just to highlight the differences between those, It would have saved households $13, which is why I saw 1.65 as a more advantageous for businesses who would have paid an additional 200 plus dollars.

▶ 44:44 So, I appreciate the spirit of compromise. Thank you. Okay, anybody else on discussion? Seeing none, Madam clerk. Yes, yes. Council of training and. Yes, consular McMaster. Yes. Consular. Yes, consular Eccles. Yes. Consular. Yes, consular Stewart. Yes, counselor Thomas. Yes. Consulate your melody? Yes. president Grigoraitis yes 11 yes unanimous okay great well thank you mr wilcock still there um do we need to vote on the actual uh hearing as well um historically there's been a recommendation to the whole board and the actual vote is to the uh full board uh one just item if uh when we vote for the full board if we could do the minimum residential factor and not the shift number uh legally i think that that covers us um so there would be the nine uh point nine six six six

▶ 45:57 Christopher Cinella: zero number would be the official vote it's okay for the appropriations but i think when we do the actual classification hearing we should we might might have that number in it great thank you madam president you got that thank you okay onto our next uh order this evening thank you for coming time 2021-41 an authorization for the mayor of melrose to execute a power purchase agreement for rooftop solar installation at memorial hall i believe we have this rover coming on i'll bring her in yes i'm going to pull her into the panelists right now okay martha can you hear Yep. Martha, the screen is all yours. Okay, great. Kristen, are you going to make me a, what is the word, presenter? I'll share some, I'll share a few things, but first I just wanted to say thank you

▶ 47:15 to uh for having me here and um we're kind of under the gun as usual um at the end of the year every solar developer in the state of massachusetts is racing to get projects done and contracts signed so here we are we just learned that this is your last meeting of the year so we had to uh really rush to get this get this in so the the question before you tonight is we're seeking your approval authorization for mayor broder to sign an agreement uh to install solar a solar array on the roof of memorial hall so i what i thought i would do is just give you a little background um on where we are where the solar industry is and um why the rush um so in just in terms of um i know you guys are new and this is this is this is the first rooftop

▶ 48:12 solar project that you've approved most of you or you've seen but um as you know the city has the city has a goal of you know reducing fossil fuel use and switching to renewable energy where possible and because we're very um landlocked the only opportunities that we have for solar on municipal buildings or is it on municipal buildings um because we don't have a lot of open space so we have put solar so far on every available rooftop including the entire high school roof middle school um the dpw a few years ago we'd love to put it on a few more schools but they all need new roofs before we can do that most of them do even the new ones need new roofs now before we can put solar on them. So when I saw that you had approved funding for a roof

▶ 49:07 replacement memorial hall, I reached out to the developer select to, it's a rooftop that developers have been very interested in because it gets a lot of solar access. It's good size. There isn't a lot of equipment up there. All of the mechanical equipment is behind the building, not on the roof um so it's a great opportunity um select is the is the chosen solar developer by a consortium that we belong to an energy buying consortium called power options they represent they have about four to five hundred members cities towns at universities and healthcare, large healthcare organizations. And so they go out and procure our electricity supply, our gas, and also they competitively procure this developer. So we can

▶ 50:06 we can go to this developer without issuing an RFPA because they've already done that on our behalf. And so I reached out to them in July. They sent in their engineers. We sent them bunch of data they look at the electric panel they look at the roof um they collect a lot of data and information actually um before i forget is kathy pager brought around i think she also wanted to be she's still on the she's in the meeting yes yeah i think she also wanted to be available to answer questions okay when we get there i'll bring her in great um so we got a proposal from them in August. There was some more back and forth and what we have now is the power purchase agreement and a lease. So the way that solar works for cities and towns is

▶ 51:01 because we are a non-profit and we don't pay taxes and a large component of how developers finance solar development is through the federal tax credit it was 30 up to last year this year it's 26 and on january 1st it goes down to 22 so that's why there's a mad rush to sign contracts in 2020 um and so what we what they do is or what a city or town does and what we've done in the past is we um pair up with a developer enter into an agreement with them these are 20-year agreements for them to to own develop um install they they buy all the equipment so there's no upfront cost to us and there's no ongoing maintenance costs the only thing that we agree to do is by the power that the system produces over the term of the contract at a rate that is less than what we

▶ 52:04 currently pay for electricity um the other piece of how they make their money is through state incentives in 2000 it was it was called the s-rec program up until the end of 2018 when the state issued a newest new incentive program um and with all incentive programs what happens is over time the incentives decrease because as as adoption um increases as the as the um equipment costs and installation costs and panel costs etc go down then the incentives go down so what we're looking at now are much smaller incentives than what we had say in 2014 for the high school project um that definitely impacts the the rate of the ppa rate that we're that we end up paying um the other the other problem for us is that being in national grid territory national grid covers

▶ 53:07 the entire state um the these incentives were issued in blocks and these are declining blocks national grid territory is already in block 10 um meaning that the first nine blocks have already been filled with capacity so we're we're in so um not only how do the incentives start out smaller but they've gone down in the last um two years i'm in being in block 10 as a comparison eversource is only in block five so the national grid's capacity got eaten up and a lot of that is because national grids territories out west and there are all these huge five megawatt systems that are being built out there that ate up all of their capacity so it's really hard for us in eastern massachusetts to make projects work but we're squeezing this one in um and what we're trying to do is take

▶ 54:05 advantage of um the capacity that's still available in what they call block 10 and this year's itc investment tax credit so the developer using all of that information and i'm going to try to share uh here it is try to share my switch documents or do i have to you see the solar ppa summary we have a select energy yeah solar ppa summary yeah yeah i'm sorry corey did you have a question i'm can't hear you they'll raise their hand rather just to let me know oh i thought i saw his hand so anyway this is this is how the money works um so the system size so this is just a one pager um that kind of sums it all up uh and then there's the 75 pages of the lease and the um the ppa that that you had a chance to look at but the system size is going to be 63.8 kw

▶ 55:24 with annual output it'll it'll produce about 63 percent of memorial halls usage in a normal non-COVID year. And our current electric rate, less non-KWH charges, is 19.5 cents per kilowatt hour. And what they've come up with is a PPA rate of 19 cents per kilowatt hour. And it's a fixed rate over time. So what they do then is, over in the chart, estimated annual cumulative savings, They take what we pay without solar for electricity, and then this other line is electric costs with solar at this 19-cent rate, and then the difference is the savings. What they're calculating here is, I think, a 2.5% increase over time in electricity prices, which is what the Federal Energy Agency has historically found that electricity rates go up by that percentage every year.

▶ 56:31 And so the year one savings are pretty small. We saw the same thing with the DPW project, but over time, savings of upwards of $76,000. And these are all savings that Memorial Hall would realize right in their electric line item, utility line item. What's unique this year is that didn't exist three years ago is Chris Wilcock, who you just heard from, brought to our attention and solar developers are having to adjust to this, is that the department of revenue revenues decided that um it ruled or whatever you call it that they do that um when a solar developer leases roof space for the purposes of making money um for revenue they they are subject to property taxes um so what solar developers do is is pay something

▶ 57:35 called a pilot and um these are the pilot amounts that they've calculated chris has reviewed it i've asked him for a second review um just to make sure before we sign the contract i don't think he had time to do it before his presentation tonight i'm sure i'll hear from him tomorrow but these are the pilot amounts that the city would get over the 20 years so this is in addition to the savings um that the memorial hall would get on their electric bill um so the last thing i wanted to show you i pulled this out from the from the um agreement is just a diagram a site plan of the solar this is a you know the area where they're putting solar is you know a raised roof and it has um it has these uh copper ledges so it it won't be it won't be

▶ 58:37 visible from the street so that's one of the concerns of the historic district commission um and the layout there um is also i think they'll have the inverter up on the roof and and the um and the uh the revenue grade meter but what they'll have to do is um with every solar project you need to have a disconnect at ground level um so that in the case of public safety responding to a fire or something going on at the building they can go right up and and um pull and disconnect the power to to the solar so that disconnect is going to be located in a hidden kind of a in a little kind of a nook on the right side of the building as you're looking at it from main street we found a good location for that and the other good news is that we found

▶ 59:29 a a chase inside the building where the conduit can run down to the down to the ground level because the weird thing that we've learned which i didn't realize is that the electric meter from from Memorial Hall is way over by that transformer, several feet away from the building, just sitting there and they can't even put a bush in front of it. National Guard won't let them do that. But in any case, that's the design. I met last night with Memorial Hall trustees, and Kathy can speak to any questions you might have about their concerns, but they were all generally in support of this. There's still a lot that needs to happen, including roofing replaced, engineering and designs and final plans.

▶ 1:00:25 Mark Garipay: What we're trying to do now, and this is typical process where we just enter into an agreement, but then the developer then starts really spending money to flesh out this project. I think that's it. I will take questions if anybody has any. Could we? Madam Clerk, yeah, thank you. Do we have questions? Councilor Garipay? Would you like me to bring in? Yeah. Mr. Chair, thank you, Ms. Grover. I appreciate your time this week. answering my questions on on this um i do have a couple questions i'm in you know we talked yesterday and i was um i'm in support of this um but on one of the screens the previous one you showed us a savings over 20 years of 76 000 between it was that just for the power or was that

▶ 1:01:35 Mark Garipay: including the okay so i didn't i don't think i saw the screen up there what is the savings or what's the payment in lieu of taxes? Do you have the total dollar amount of what that was? I, I'm going to say it's probably somewhere around 11, $12,000 over the years. It decreases over time because of depreciation. So it starts out at 700 and then it, excuse me, it goes down. So I think that, yeah. The taxable, the taxable, I'd like to have Mr Wilcox can just take another look at it. He's still here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He said he was going to look at it. That was that was 1 of my questions after we talked yesterday. I'm here if you need that question. Did you have a chance to look at it? I sent you an email right when I got off. So I approved as the range on the taxation. The 1st year starts at 765 dollars going all the way down to a final year and year. 20 of 4.

▶ 1:02:40 Mark Garipay: $128.87. And based on the calculation, that meets state law. Thank you, Chris. Thanks. And what is the total life of these panels? It's a 20-year contract. It's a 20-year contract. They generally, they say today's panels could produce electricity. You it's not at 100% production efficiency as what they are the first day that they're installed, but 25 years or some still out there at 30 years old producing electricity. And we are voting tonight to authorize the mayor to sign into a lease agreement. Two agreements, the lease and the power purchase. Leasing the power purchase. Okay. And we're under time constraints for that. Now, with this contract we're getting involved in on the lease, is there a deadline? And this is not

▶ 1:03:48 Mark Garipay: going to happen until we do the Rupert Memorial Hall. Right. And, you know, we're, I think we approved that seven months ago. The RFP has not even been issued. Is there a deadline where this has to be up and running and installed because i would assume that the memorial hall roof we're looking at another six months right um is there any way that i'm expecting that this probably would not get installed until september of next year at the earliest given the you know the piece which things are happening especially under covid especially now i'm finding that everything keeps getting delayed because everyone keeps having to quarantine for two weeks but um yeah they're they're they're flexible as to when they can actually do the construction it's just that we need to

▶ 1:04:39 what happens is in order to in order for select to get the the itc credits under the 2020 rates we need to sign the contract which then they go and buys pre-buy some of the equipment which technically starts the construction and they can claim the tax credit in this tax year um but there's no rush and one of the nice things is that um the state in a re revision of the smart incentives they gave cities an extra six months because they know that we are slower to do things commercial, where there are a lot of decision-making points. There's no deadline in order to provide them with a new flat surface roof in order to install? No. All right. Thank you. One question is, I know you presented last night to the trustees of Memorial Hall.

▶ 1:05:42 Mark Garipay: We're not, they don't vote. It's like some of the other commissions, they don't vote on the actual leases that gets approved by the city council and the mayor and the administration. But they are the custodians of the building, and I know that it sounded like they're in support of it. But did they take an actual vote to allow them to move forward with putting a product or solar panels on their building they're not getting into a lease but um i mean i'd like to did they actually take a vote on it and if not i would personally like to see before this project gets done that they do ratify and make a vote to give them approval as custodians of the building well i'll let kathy speak to that if you'd like to the one thing that

▶ 1:06:35 i heard long clear is that they are all very much in support of it and continuing down the path There are certainly, even after we sign this contract, opportunities for things to go south if the structural engineer doesn't, if the engineering doesn't work out or any number of reasons. and they brought up some good concerns and questions that they'd like to know more about like drainage for the new roof well how will it will it accommodate um uh you know snow drainage and other things that um so so they i think that the plan is to keep them informed and perhaps have them weigh in when we know more when we get closer to the design phase in the in the permitting phase kathy is that what you want mark they did not take a vote last night

▶ 1:07:26 because they don't have the authority to vote on the contract or lease agreement that the city enters into they do support putting solar panels on the roof as they said you know anything to lower the carbon footprint however they were very concerned about structural design of it and they They want to be, they requested to be kept in the loop before anything went ahead with construction, which will happen to these will keep them in the loop and then they will vote on it because the other half of this is, it has to go before the historical commission. We say, we can't see it because of those panels, but until they see the design, the historical commission could say, no, that's not going to happen. So very involved as soon as.

▶ 1:08:12 The construction and design phase happens and that was their request. And I am, as I mentioned, I support this, but. I would like to see them. Vote to approve to allow them to use the room for the building, not to negotiate or vote on the contract or vote on the list that's on the city council. But I think to dot the eyes cross the T's, it would be good to, especially when we have this coming forward. 1st, to have them vote to approve it just so it's on record and also have the, you know, the historical commission also. So, yeah, that's what I'd like to see is as a motion. I'll make that motion at the end. Thank you and that was the request also, Mark. So, thank you for that. Councilor Stewart? Thank you Mr. Chair and thank you Ms. Pagoda-Rodera and Ms. Grover for

▶ 1:09:12 Robb Stewart: helping us understand this a little bit better. I do want to echo the concerns that I think you have expressed through the Memorial Hall Committee in that we're dealing with a historical building of significance in town that has from what we heard seven months ago a lot of issues from a maintenance perspective and we had voted to put a new roof on it but my concerns are that you know we're putting this new roof but we're also putting a significant new structure on top of something that is I think of great value to the town beyond the the goals that i know we have for the net zero which i do support so it's a balancing act here that i think we need to weigh carefully uh at this point i'm a little hesitant uh to support this

▶ 1:10:15 Robb Stewart: without understanding further information about what the impact is going to be so i would ask ms grover um what contingencies we have built in to this leasing if we come if we come to the point where structurally it does not look feasible or it looks like it's at risk uh and uh how we could potentially back out of uh a 20-year lease that we've we've signed up for um help me understand what what um what safeguards we have in place currently safeguards built in for um oh is that me okay um in in the contract in the ppa and one of the one of the crucial things that require that is required by our inspector um building commissioner are stamped structural stamped plans by a structural engineer and if those cannot be provided and that's something that's

▶ 1:11:20 Robb Stewart: that the developer is on the hook to get um then it's done and they'll they walk away and um they can't go further so that's that's um they haven't done that work yet because there's a cost to it and they you know it's kind of the chicken and egg thing i think um but that that will definitely be part of the process and i think that i would expect that the building commissioner would look very closely at that question well that's comforting it sounds like we do have uh gate post milestones in place to assure on an ongoing basis that as this project develops that we will not compromise um both the integrity of the structure of the building as well involves the, the, the beauty and, you know, quite honestly, the, the, I think the, the treasure that we have in in this in the city. So that that is my main concern. It sounds like it's been addressed. So thank you, Mr. chair.

▶ 1:12:28 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you to both on this particular and in this global for coming tonight. Thank you, Chair Sonnella, and thank you, Ms. Grover and Ms. Pigott-Broder for being here tonight. I am wholly in support of this, and I want to thank you, Ms. Grover, for moving this forward. It's so critical that we seize these opportunities when we can. And I also want to thank the Memorial Hall Trustees for their support of this, because I think particularly on such a building of historic and kind of emotional significance in this community, I'm so glad that they see the value in this. Um, I just wanted to ask a quick question about the, is it the historic district commission? Is that the who we're talking about would also need to weigh in on approval of the plan.

▶ 1:13:14 And do you know what the time timeline would be for that? I'm assuming it would be pending approval tonight, but when that would that would come before them. Do either of, you know, no, I can well, I can. We 1st have to get approval from them for the roof project. So that will go before them. And then this, once the roof profit is decided on, then this will go before them. But I don't know the timing of that. It depends. We're pushing trustees, we're pushing hard to get the roof project started and that's off. Main focus with and Denise presented to trustees last month that she's starting that. So, I don't have a timeline for when. roof is going to get down i'm hoping denise's goal is to hopefully start the roof project

▶ 1:14:05 june july of next year and that's why i believe mom said maybe in september after this it could happen but the reason as i understand it in my conversations with the city planner denise that um ideally she would take both the renovation project and this design to the hdc to the historic district commission at the same time and have them consider all of it um probably in the spring if if if things came together at the same time um the only caveat to that what my trustees requested very clearly as long as having the solar panel before them if that at all slows down the roof project from being approved then they want it put aside right i want the roof project approved first that was their caveat yep thank you for that clarification

▶ 1:15:03 Cory Thomas: dr thomas thank you mr chairman um miss piggo uh berta thank you for being here and miss grover thank you so much for being here uh and thank you for your continued important role uh and sustainability for the city of melrose um i'm happy to hear that the um aesthetics won't be changing of memorial hall uh with the placement of these panels uh on the roof um like many people have echoed i think it's a great idea to put uh solar panels on as many buildings in the community that we can uh it's great to hear that they're you know on the middle school in the high school uh some of the other schools in the um dpw building um well the terms of the rfq for i mean the rfp for the roof will that have to change in order to accommodate the panels on

▶ 1:15:52 Cory Thomas: the roof i mean kathy that might be a question for you i actually don't know that that would have to be the planner but my impression is we're going forward with the roof project as is and the solar panels will work around the roof project all right so so the panels will you know be adaptable to the the new roof when the new roof is built and installed that's the priority is that two million dollar project is the main priority okay great um martha um for current buildings that have solar panels um who is responsible for the upkeep and repair uh you know say in the middle school or the high school or the dpw building the the developers the the um organizations that own them the only exception to that is um so that's true for the system on the dpw and most of the panels

▶ 1:16:57 on the high school middle school and they come to they come and check and you know all of these systems are monitored so they know when there's no production and um although um the guy who owns the system on the high school lives in california so a couple years ago when we got 100 feet of snow and there was no production for two couple months because the snow took so long to melt he kept emailing me what's going on what's going on he didn't understand how much snow we had gotten that year but um in any case uh they we do have three arrays on the middle school that we actually own they were grant funded um when this is when the school was built and so we we maintain those okay uh it sounds like that was 2015 um with the california panels um 11 feet of snow um

▶ 1:17:53 Cory Thomas: So, if there's roof work that needs to be done, you know, the roof is constructed, the panels are put on hopefully by September 2021. then there's a roof leak. Knock on wood. There won't be say there's a roof leak in December of 2021. do the panels need to be removed? And is the contracted panel provider that would take those off? So the roof it could get at the. Yeah, and if, you know, and the, we have had no problems with the roof at the middle school or at. dpw at all um caused by the um the solar any leaks at the high school it's totally unrelated to the solar um there are other sources of those leaks but um yeah they would come and just move the panels or move the section of the panels and put them back it's pretty it's a pretty simple

▶ 1:18:45 Cory Thomas: process solar's been around now for long enough um sure and and so the the the roofing vendor and and the panel vendor would work in conjunction with each other. They have mutual agreements with each other too. One help the other. And the same goes for the warranty. I mean, it's right in the contract that the roof warranty would continue and not be at risk at all by the solar. That's great. And then just lastly, is there a service contract built in to the roof and or the solar panels when they're installed? They are on the hook for maintaining or taking care of anything that goes wrong with the solar. I'm assuming that the roof installer would be subject to their warranty and their labour and warranty service.

▶ 1:19:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: All right, that's great. Thank you both for being here and happy holidays to you and yours. Have a good night. Thank you. Councillor McMaster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you both for being here. I certainly support the sustainability efforts here and thank you miss Grover for identifying the opportunity. I did have some public safety considerations and some concerns. I just wanted to raise and ask questions about and to the extent you can answer these miss Grover feel free to, if you can't, I understand if it's not within your purview. The 1st is, do you know what percent of the roof would actually be covered with the panels? All I have is the preliminary design. It's not a, it's not a final design. It's just a slight plan.

▶ 1:20:29 Shawn M. MacMaster: I can't answer that from based on what they. I've provided us so far. So, presumably the plans wouldn't include an anticipated weight assessment for adding panels and brackets, which, of course, would have dead weight. It's basically a design plan, but it doesn't get into the specifics of. Um, square footage weight and other considerations like that is that comes later when they calculate the snow and wind loads. On that all part of the structural engineers analysis. In addition to the weight of the panels and the racking equipment and. Um, and the, the inverter, et cetera. And Councillor Stewart mentioned contingencies in the lease, and I'm wondering whether or not that would also apply to public safety contingencies, because I think it might behoove us to also, if it hasn't already occurred, and forgive me if it has, but a public safety assessment from the fire department.

▶ 1:21:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: I don't know a lot about solar panels, but I do know that adding any type of a structure to a roof could cause ventilation challenges in the event that there was a fire. I do appreciate you mentioned the power cord, which is certainly comforting. I think, though, it wouldn't completely get rid of it's always generating power. So working around it, it would still pose some hazards. and so i guess my question is as it relates to contingencies um could the lease also um apply to you know being content approval being contingent upon uh a public safety assessment assessment conducted by the fire department and if not i think what i would be inclined to do and i know consulate Garipay mentioned a motion with a contingency of um you know approval uh limited

▶ 1:22:32 approval and scope from the board of trustees but also contingent upon a public safety assessment doesn't it needs to always do that with all of the plans like the roof assessment will go through by department martha yeah and i think that's part of that's part of the inspection and the um the other the other thing i can let you know is that um we've conducted trainings for the fire department on responding to um fires on buildings that have solar on them and i know that they've uh done those periodically over the years and we definitely hosted a whole series of them for we for the entire department it was all it was over several days to make sure that they could all participate after we installed the system on the school um so um i i would think

▶ 1:23:30 Shawn M. MacMaster: that um the chief would be open to um you know a conversation or you know a big subject just you know inspecting it in some way or having or updating their training etc in order to accommodate those concerns yeah and i think that you said something earlier which i think is right on point is that we do live in an age now where you know panels are not unusual so it is certainly something that uh our firefighters are getting more and more used to and i appreciate our training efforts which i wasn't aware so thank you for doing that um it would just be uh nice and i think beneficial if there was some sort of assessment prior to the the plan being implemented should the fire department say based on the size of this roof and any other considerations of ladder

▶ 1:24:19 Shawn M. MacMaster: placement you know offer their expertise you know in question maybe the plan and be able to have some dialogue that might be uh somewhat collaborative as opposed to the panels just going where you know the the contractor wants to put them so i i wouldn't i would encourage that and if that is part of the process i think that's that's great if it's not um i would like to see that see that happen thank you counselor thank you chairman um thank you mrs grover and mrs spoiler for being with us tonight i'm very excited to hear that this is um about this project um with the insurance um uh would we have any changes in the insurance in terms of uh if we if we add these uh panels on the building insurance

▶ 1:25:18 no the standard the insurance requirements are the identical to what we already carry for liability and um umbrella insurance or yeah it wouldn't it wouldn't increase it would just be it would just be added to the number of assets okay perfect and um you've mentioned that they would be responsible of the maintenance um and if in case um you know for any um unknown reason um it has to be removed they will be responsible of removal yeah okay thank you anybody else for the first time council Garipay second time Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to make a motion to recommend for approval with a vote of approval by the Memorial Hall Board of Trustees before the solar panel work starts. Second. The motion is to approve this if it gets approved by the trustees of Memorial Hall, a by Councilor Garipay, seconded by Councilor McMaster.

▶ 1:26:39 Leila Migliorelli: Any discussion on that? mr chair mr chair my motion was to approve a motion for approval but before any work starts on the solar panels have the memorial hall board of directors approve the project so it's on record okay um vice chair did you have a question on discussion um but i was just trying to understand i mean we're wait so we need to have the i'm just trying to understand what councilor Garipay motion is and why i mean is is that normal like a do are we supposed to wait it sounds like there's i guess my point is that it sounds like there's a lot of steps in this whole process um and checkpoints for things to be addressed and i don't know if holding approval until the memorial hall board votes on it is what's standard honestly of course for approval

▶ 1:27:43 Mark Garipay: i want to move forward with giving the mayor the uh of the approval to move forward and enter into agreement but before work starts on the project we have the board of directors vote on it and approve it so they have questions that they have also on the project if they decide that they do not want this on the building then they're the custodians of the building so my assumption is that it would never happen so i just want to button that up and and and have it on record that they approve the project by a vote so we've got a few other questions here um counselor gemalini um i also would like thank you sherman i would like to uh clarify so our vote will be uh based on the uh their votes so if they vote no that mean our votes would would be held is that what you

▶ 1:28:44 Mark Garipay: mean if they don't know as the custodians of the of the building it is my understanding that that the project couldn't move forward because they're not voting on the actual actual contract or the lease they're voting on they'd be voting on allowing um allowing the solar panels to be used on their space which is the rule right so we are voting on the contract only uh and then after that it's up to them if they're gonna move forward or no correct i'm recommending for approval to allow the mayor to vote to to enter in an agreement in a lease to purchase solar uh power and in the lease agreement on the panels but before the project of the installation starts i would like to have the board of memorial hall board of trustees approve the

▶ 1:29:38 project so it's on record that they're they're with it they're for it kathy is the board going to meet on that at some point to approve this as as it stands last night they have no authority to approve a contract between the city what the building the city owns and what the mayor decides what they will vote on as custodians building is the actual design like when the hvac project it went before them for input and approval that's the normal course that's their authority so it will happen but i think it will take place but this is two separate issues it's the voting of the lease and the uh ppa by you to allow the mayor to get into con into agreement and when the design and the implementation happens the board of trustees will meet again to review that and

▶ 1:30:36 decide whether the installation can happen correct papa yeah which is kind of the same thing i'm asking for yeah yeah so i just i'm agreeing with you max i agree i agree and i heard that loud and clear from them last night yes i can imagine that we would want to go forward without their approval and vetting all of their concerns once we have a more solid design and we you know we know more about what it's what it's going to look like how all those concerns and contingencies are going to be addressed mitigated um yeah they were all your concerns that you guys addressed tonight they loud and clear stated last night they have all it's all the issues you get brought up got brought up last night and it was the question last night was what are we approving

▶ 1:31:35 Jen Grigoraitis: here tonight and they weren't approving the contract they just wanted to make it very clear that they will be the ones that approve the design before it even goes to the historical commission and then it'll go from then if they approve the design because if they decide they don't want it it it doesn't happen okay um president Grigoraitis thank you chairman snella i i certainly agree with i think we're all in agreement that the trustees should be making this decision i guess for me i feel like we're kind of overstepping a little bit it's like a checks and balances thing like our role as the council is around the appropriating and the contract and that's what's before us and i certainly i'm not sure we have the ability to direct the trustees to do

▶ 1:32:20 Cory Thomas: one thing or another i think we can certainly i mean i think we've clearly stated tonight that we want that to be the process and that will be the process but i think that's what i'm struggling with on this this motion i think we're kind of going a little bit outside of the four corners of what's before us it sounds like too that the motion that's made is that that is going to actually happen what i'm gathering that they are going to vote councilor thomas thank you mr chairman uh miss grover uh you talked earlier about a need to uh move forward with this project prior to the end of the calendar year uh we might lose um some of the deals we have oh the deal might change in 2021 is that correct yeah so we probably don't want to hold this up um

▶ 1:33:10 Cory Thomas: and risk losing you know the current deal we have in place with the solar panels Ms. Piggott-Brodore, are the trustees scheduled to meet in December beyond last night? No, they met last night. The next meeting is in January. Is there a historical commission meeting in December on this? No, but nothing would go before them because they will vote on the design, and the design hasn't been done, And the design doesn't happen until we go enter into a PPA and lease agreement. All right. Thank you all very much. Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I do want to echo President Grigoraitis concern. That's what initially struck me as a little bit outside the bounds of what we're talking about.

▶ 1:34:04 Robb Stewart: I feel as though there's really no basis for us to make recommendations or not. so um i i don't think i could support as is that motion um i think our role is uh specifically to vote on the lease and tpa which we have decided um and which we have discussed i think we start trying to uh manage any activities beyond that uh we don't have in my perspective i don't know how we even control that uh from from a legal perspective for example uh you know do that that would that it would we have to write that in i think they already have certain boundaries that they have spoken of um that they've already put into uh the contract but to uh try to assume that uh another step is going to happen i don't see that as valid so i i just wanted to uh echo that

▶ 1:35:04 John N. Tramontozzi: sentiment thank you mr chair council chairman yes uh thank you uh mr chairman um similar to councillor Stewart’s um argument i'm looking at from the the legal perspective this is a contract here what we have before us this is uh florida 2021-41 which is an authorization for the mayor of meadows to execute a power purchase agreement so we're if we agree to that order we're authorizing the mayor to execute a the the agreement we don't have any authority uh to uh to change anything or amend that agreement it is as it is however uh miss grover maybe you can answer this for me this the the agreement that is attached to this order is is not signed correct right it's just it's a draft of an agreement but there's nothing prohibiting the mayor and the uh the contractors

▶ 1:36:12 John N. Tramontozzi: from approving or adding to that agreement without coming before the board we're just authorizing the mayor to execute an agreement are we authorizing the mayor to execute the agreement as as part of this contract as part of this giving him the authority to negotiate an agreement and the amendments to that agreement taking into consideration what we're discussing tonight i'm not that's way out of my lane that would be a van campen but i mean my understanding is that um Um, typically, I mean, we, we actually, we actually have made a couple edits to the agreement that you received. They're not substantial edits. Like, I made Kathy. The recipient of the invoices instead of. City hall, for instance, a few minor edits, we haven't sent it to the developer yet for their.

▶ 1:37:21 John N. Tramontozzi: um you know final sign off so i suppose they're technically there is still an opportunity to make some amendments or changes to it but um my understanding is that we really can't make changes substantial changes to a contract once it's once the city council has approved it that's what campaign has advised me that we generally need what we give what we give you is what the mayor signs correct so so essentially what we're authorizing is the mayor to execute the contract as provided for us for review as part of this order yeah you know minor changes you know um certainly are considerable it can be considered but i'm not sure that any of the concerns that that a counselor Garipay has um asked about and has been discussed here tonight are are within

▶ 1:38:23 John N. Tramontozzi: that contract and are we in a position now to amend the contract ourselves and put some sort of language in the contract before we authorize the execution of it that you know i'm looking for guidance here um miss pickett broder you you certainly have your hand up if i may um and correct me if i'm wrong my understanding is this can happen the construction can happen without the approval of the soldiers and sales memorial building board of trustees because they are custodians and that is their role as trustees of the building i would assume that that is correct so it sounds like this is your language in the contract that says nothing is to be done in terms of construction until the trustees are consulted I didn't I

▶ 1:39:21 didn't see that language this contract it refers to we discussed that I discussed that with Rob but it refers to approvals permits and there's language in there that would cover anything that the city requires it doesn't get that specifically yeah it's in there all right if you're comfortable saying that that's in there um then then fine i just didn't see the actual language specifically addressing um the issue of the trustees but um thank you thank you that helps a lot and uh thank you mr chairman uh mr chair i'll uh withdraw my motion what is the will of the committee Second, so we have a motion to recommend passage made by. The constantly seconded by advice chairman. Any discussion on this seeing none, not a clerk, please call the roll.

▶ 1:40:28 Chair smeller yes. Vice Jim, yes. Consulate Tram and Josie. Yes. Council McMaster yes, not. Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. 11 yes. Great. Thank you, Kathy and Martha. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. thank you and i just want to say i always this year has been a tough year and this um council i've been here 12 years and you have given a lot of support to memorial hall this year and i truly truly appreciate it thank you thank you i'll entertain a motion to adjourn at this time motion to return second okay counselor mcnaught making a motion to adjourn i believe you seconded it as well i'll take another second which i think counselor stewart might have done so

▶ 1:41:36 So, please call the roll. Chair Sonnella? Yes. Vice Tim Migliorelli? Yes. Councillor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councillor McMaster? Yes. Councillor McNaught? Yes. Councillor Eccles? Yes. Councillor Garipay? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Thomas? Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. 11 yes. Councillor Kate? Yes. Councillor Kate? we are now adjourned have a good night good night good night

Original documents

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