Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2021-06-21
Attendance
Christopher Cinella ; Jack Eccles ; Mark Garipay ; Jen Grigoraitis ; Maya Jamaleddine ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Jeff McNaught ; Leila Migliorelli ; Robb Stewart ; Cory Thomas ; John N. Tramontozzi
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Orders
- ORDER-2021-154 : Election of a Clerk of Committees pursuant to the Charter for the City of Melrose, Section 2-8: Appointments of the City Council
- ORDER-2021-134 : An Appropriation from Free Cash, Account 01-324001, in the amount of $50,000 to Planning Professional Services, account 011752-529000) for wayfinding projects.
- Information Item
- INFO-2021-1 : Request for Information - Vinton/Fellsway pipe breakage
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS & OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CALENDAR● JUNE 21, 2021 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:15 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Jeff McNaught Chair Absent Jack Eccles Vice Chair Present John N. Tramontozzi Present Shawn M. MacMaster Present Mark Garipay Present Jen Grigoraitis Present Leila Migliorelli Present Robb Stewart Present Cory Thomas Present Maya Jamaleddine Absent Christopher Cinella President, ex oficio Present
ORDER-2021-154 Election by the City Council Election of a Clerk of Committees pursuant to the Charter for the City of Melrose, Section 2-8: Appointments of the City Council Recommend Passage City Council
ORDER-2021-134 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash, Account 01-324001, in the amount of $50,000 to Planning Professional Services, account 011752-529000) for wayfinding projects. Recommend Passage City Council
INFO-2021-1 Informational Request for Information - Vinton/Fellsway pipe breakage Hold City of Melrose Page 1 1/21/2022 11:15 AM
Transcript
▶ 0:02 Jack Eccles: The hour being 715. This is a meeting of the Appropriations Committee. I am Councilor Jack Eccles, the Vice Chair. Joining me are Councilors Tramontozzi, McMaster, Migliorelli, Thomas, Grigoraitis, Garipay, Stewart, and President Cinella. This provides a notice of the quorum for the record. In accordance with the open meeting law this meeting is being recorded and broadcast in our local cable access channel MMTV as well as live streamed on the MMTV website and available for future viewing through the city of Melrose meeting portal at this time with no objection I will open public comment this is the portion of the meeting where any member of the public can come forward to speak towards any item on our agenda this evening motion open the floor for public comment
▶ 1:00 Motion to open the floor for public comment by Councillor McMaster, seconded by Councillor Tramontozzi. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? The floor is now open for public comment. Any members of the public wishing to speak tonight? Seeing none. Can we check on the remote? Oh, yeah. If there is anyone in the attendee of the WebEx meeting would like to speak, if you if you'd raise your digital hand at this time there is no one raising their digital hand all right is there an objection to closing public comment at this time sorry excuse me we have one gentleman who texts he put in the chat he would like to speak i am unmuting mr mcsweeney can you hear us well mr mcsweeney i cannot hear you hold on one second can you hear us i can hear you now
▶ 2:12 can you guys hear mr. McSweeney mr. McSweeney can you hear me let's try it again unmute him mr. McSweeney can you hear me we can hear you street water main break i did send a note to the council um earlier today and our questions are about the street reconstruction um as the as the email i sent uh spells out in 2016 the city adopted a complete streets policy and in brief uh that that policy which is a prerequisite to be participating in the mascot complete streets grant program which the city of melrose does participate in successfully the policy basically says that for any road project in the city whether it's new construction maintenance expansion or reconstruction you know that's an opportunity to apply complete streets design principles to the roadway with an emphasis on
▶ 4:00 an equitable approach to accommodating multiple modes of transportation the committee has been trying to find out from the city what the actual roadway reconstruction plans for vinton street are and the reason for our request is that that's a that's a direct access route to the roosevelt school and as an uphill portion of the roadway that's a perfect place to put a climbing lane which for members of the public who might be listening is essentially an uphill bike lane which allows for non-motorized travelers like families going to school to just take it slowly on the uphill portion while vehicular traffic motorized particular traffic and can pass them pass them on the uphill this is a really important um street um in our perspective
▶ 4:56 not only because it directly leads to the roosevelt school but also because there are no driveways on it which makes putting an uphill climbing lane a protected uphill climbing lane really feasible at that location so we very much appreciate the council's inquiry into the water main break we appreciate all the work that the city's been putting into reconstructing this and while we obviously understand that the water service is the key focus of this request we very much appreciate the opportunity to hear from the administration about reconstruction plans for this roadway and what opportunities the city sees to apply complete streets principles for our roosevelt families in that neighborhood thank you everybody and thank you very much for
▶ 5:48 Jack Eccles: providing the opportunity to um facilitate remote uh comment thank you okay that is no one else seeing no one else um without objection the floor is now closed for public comment the first order on our agenda tonight is order 2021-154 election of a quirk of committees to pursue into the city charter for the city of melrose section 2-8 appointments of the city council i believe president snell you plan to speak on this uh thank you uh vice chair Eccles i um just want to briefly just give an update on the process that we went through over the last several weeks we had human resources post that position we had several applicants apply i had a committee set up that helped with reviewing the applicants we whittled those
▶ 6:46 down to five and then for a first round and then we had a second round of interviews so I'm delighted tonight that we finally have Andrew coming before us this evening so thank you there's no objection welcome you to come up and say a few words I will suspend the rules I make a motion to suspend the rules second motion to spend the rules by councillor Garipay seconded by councillor Tramontozzi on favor opposed okay good evening for those of you that don't know me my name is Andrew Gabriel I would start I would like to start by thanking everyone for being here tonight I would especially like to thank the City Council for allowing me to speak and for President Sinella for allowing me to speak as well. Just to give you some background on me, I worked for the Secretary of State for
▶ 7:50 two years. There I was instrumental in helping administer the public records law and ensuring government transparency. And this all began years ago in the high school. There I was tasked with writing a report on local government and learning about the ins and outs of local government and so i did the research and learned a lot and that literally sparked my interest in municipal government and local government and so i aspire to pursue a career in public service at that point and that's something i knew i wanted to do so i am here tonight and i look forward to bringing my knowledge of my expertise to the city of melrose and to work with the city council and the whole city as a whole and i i thank you for this opportunity and look forward to being a
▶ 8:45 Jen Grigoraitis: public servant in this city thank you are there any questions or remarks from councillors councillor thank you vice chair eccles i had an opportunity to interview andrew and just wanted to echo how impressive his resume is and how impressive he is in person he really articulated his passion and dedication for public service he brings a wealth of experience on issues like public records and records retention he has familiarity with open meeting law and engaging and running public meetings and he actually talked really passionately about his work in retail and how that has prepared him for customer service and I think any of us who have ever had a retail job can certainly understand that he's bilingual he speaks Arabic which I think brings
▶ 9:33 Jack Eccles: some needed breath to our city services and he talked a lot about wanting to understand the style of each counselor and figure out how he can best work with us which in a position where you report to 11 different people I think that's a really key distinction to make so I'm really happy to have him before us tonight and I hope that you'll be joining us thank you thank you make a RECOMMENDATION FOR PASSAGE SECOND SECOND UH SO WE HAVE A MOTION FOR RECOMMENDATION FOR PASSAGE FROM COUNCILOR GUERRERO SECONDED BY PRESIDENT SINALA ANY DISCUSSION SEEING NONE ALL IN FAVOR ALL OPPOSED THANK YOU VERY MUCH THANK YOU THANK YOU ORDER THE SECOND ORDER ON AGENDA TONIGHT IS order 2021-134 in appropriation from free cash account zero one dash three two four zero zero
▶ 10:27 Jack Eccles: one in the amount of fifty thousand dollars to planning professional services account zero one one seven five two dash five two nine zero zero zero for wayfinding projects i believe we have a member of the administration here tonight to speak on this um and the rules are under suspension so we have miss chanera bataglia to to kind of talk on this order hi um am i okay well i denise already um sort of introduced what we have before you um essentially we're looking to build off of the way finding and creative place making work that we've been doing over the last year um we sort of started our effort looking um very much looking at sort of these way finding signage concepts but then sort of public art kind of took up a lot of our
▶ 11:21 time learned a whole lot about managing a public art program and that was obviously a really positive experience to sort of see that implemented to have um you know kind of opportunities for people to get out and see these new works in the community during covid and now we're really interested about getting back to the signage component and the way finding um for the ability for it to you know enhance active transportation um you know there there's research that shows how it can you know make people more likely to uh you know obviously ditch their cars but also just be more likely to walk someplace when they know exactly what the distance is or they know exactly where they're going um when we did our engagement process uh about a year ago we you know we heard
▶ 12:11 from hundreds of people and there really was a strong response towards this idea of wayfinding but um we never really settled on an exact signage concept we sort of left off with a couple conceptual ideas and when we first presented that to the community at our webinar it was very split so there was really no clear indication that one approach was more favor than the other so So we were sort of interested in using this as an opportunity to re-evaluate kind of the identity, what people sort of see as the identity in Melrose, and how that would translate into a signage and wayfinding campaign. Signage meaning all different sorts of things. So there's some, you know, some parts of it is more landmark signage, just to kind of tell you, you've arrived in this district or you've arrived in Melrose.
▶ 12:59 other kinds of signage could be trail signage or historical markers or you know other sorts of things that could identify important important points in the city things like updating the kiosks or adding more of those and then directional signs like I mentioned that would be targeted towards both pedestrians and cyclists and also vehicles and you know some other benefits the same way that sort of people are maybe more inclined to walk someplace when they know exactly where they're going we finding can have positive benefits in terms of cars you know if people are more likely to know exactly where they're going or know that they could access parking maybe not right at their destination but nearby you know anything that we could do to
▶ 13:47 cut down on travel times and get more cars sort of off the road is part of whole concept so feel free to ask me any questions thank you thank you i have councillor thomas councillor mcmaster anyone else wishing to speak at this time councillor thomas thank you mr Eccles good evening uh welcome um it says here that there's three vendors that we're going to send bids out to have any of the vendors worked in melrose before are there any signage examples that we could see in present day um so we haven't gotten that far obviously so part of what this work would entail is kind of getting things in a position to take it to bill to bid um which requires more detailed design drawings and whatnot so we're not at that stage yet but i think you
▶ 14:34 know if we we would definitely want to preference we would definitely try to preference i think a local um sign maker if possible sure for some signage like temporary signage we put up earlier um for uh advertising the the art projects um we put up kind of the yard signs and we used i can't remember the name but a local guy he was great so you know whatever we can to keep our money local we definitely try to do have there been any discussions about changing the welcome to melrose signs or the welcome to melrose sign on the foulsway well you know But we definitely kind of heard about the sign, and some people kind of have complaints about it, both that it can be kind of an obstruction, but at the same time, those signs are pretty
▶ 15:28 nice, so we're definitely not trying to get rid of good things that people like. That would be part of this process, would be kind of evaluating what signage we would want to keep we want to replace um definitely prioritizing things we could add in new kinds of locations i think replacing existing things would be probably a lower priority and especially those landmark signs are also quite expensive so that would be and the estimates of fifty thousand dollars you know there's a a good faith estimate you can get what you want done for that fifty thousand dollars i think so i mean a lot of the signage the directional signage is just a couple hundred dollars so um we really can do any combination and i think if there seems to be
▶ 16:13 Shawn M. MacMaster: a really big emphasis on wanting trail signage we could kind of bolster that if people really want it to be want to see bigger things you know we could we could prioritize that i think we just really want to hear um a little bit more about what people are interested in sure i'm sure there's gonna be some need in ward seven for trail um yeah exactly exactly thank you very much thanks Councillor McMaster. Councillor McMaster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Ms. Schnurrish. Thank you for being here. Please thank Ms. Gaffey for the supplemental memo, in particular the second part of the memo, the wayfinding implementation at 30,000 provides the breakdown that I think we needed to know. Can you just provide a little additional context for the first part of the memo, the wayfinding
▶ 16:55 design and engagement at 20,000? Put that in context, is that 20,000 going to Selbert and Perkins for that continued work or what what specifically sure is that going to so we're not actually committed to working with them either so I think we actually will probably have to take it out to bid we just need to do the three quotes because we ended up you know having to extend our contract our previous contract a little bit so we're not necessarily committed to working with them but yes that money would go towards the consultant to basically help us run the final engagement push you know post a survey analyze the results you know narrow down kind of present the three concepts find out what people like and don't like about them narrow down a
▶ 17:46 Shawn M. MacMaster: final design and then create those kind of detailed I guess they're called design development drawings that would then be in a position to go to the fabricator so the tasks under those four bullet points will be outsourced to somebody may not be silver perkins um no money will none of the twenty thousand dollars i assume would be used to compensate staff time it's all outsourced um i mean staff time would definitely be spent on it um we just i guess our money sort of i don't exactly know where so there's no expectation that this would sup the 20 000 would supplement the staff of city employees but that the money is being used entirely to retain outside parties right to do the work right exactly that essentially
▶ 18:38 Mark Garipay: that being work that is just not really in our in our wheelhouse doing that kind of design work thank you and that's a conservative estimate council yeah uh thank you for being here just um and thank miss gaffney for the uh the work she sent or the email she sent uh the information on it um i see that there's three uh three concepts on here and one is being the victorian one and looking at the map it's kind of tough to see is there any in the historical district any of those signs that would be in the historical district i know there's an ordinance right now that states on buildings they have the all signage on buildings has to go in front of the historical district commission um i'm assuming that would that you would get them involved ahead of the
▶ 19:28 game on that yes definitely and i think um you know i think any signage that would be in the historical district we would want to kind of coordinate it with any other kind of historical signage we might do outside of the district so you know we might be able to have some consistency there but we would certainly engage um the historic district commission and also the historical commission great thank you very much councillor mcleary thank you uh mr chair um thank you ms schnerbeck tagli for being here tonight um just have a question so the three the three concepts were presented to the committee there was no consensus on the three they were they were presented both to our wayfinding creative placement committee and also to the public at a
▶ 20:13 you know online open house webinar okay and there's no like it was like 30% 30% 30% so there really was no clear winner okay so then we were hoping like one would really stand out we were like oh okay we could just go do that but the results really told us that it's not just about figuring out exactly what signage people want but like what what is the identity they're trying to capture right so the 20,000 would be used to go back to the drawing board on all three or I don't think no so I don't think we go back to the drawing board I think we would present those three concepts and kind of get more insight on what people like and don't like about each of them and then use that to come up with the best concept or something that maybe captures a little bit of each
▶ 21:00 Leila Migliorelli: of those things and so I think we would probably want to host some kind of survey or you know maybe you know i'm not sure if in a person sort of forum could work but we definitely want to present um sort of the different concepts and see what people like and they don't like and and they do kind of range in they can range in cost so you know that would be part of the equation too okay um also the the estimates for the signage um how are those uh arrived at so the consultant that we worked with on the first part that's just okay those are prices that they're sort of seeing and they've they've worked with a number of communities this is sort of their bread and butter doing this okay finding creative placemaking work so I would just I would sort of challenge the plaques
▶ 21:48 Leila Migliorelli: it's at 150 each I don't know what materials are thinking of using but as someone who does this in my day job it's usually more than that so I would just i don't push back on that process for for some of these i would assume those are like kind of an aluminum plaque yes still um it's it could i've seen it up to like three times that cost so just something to to know when moving forward and working with the consultants thank you and we would also i think try to have as much installation done you know in-house as possible so whatever DPW is able to do we would love to have them assist any other councillors wishing to speak seeing no one what is the will of the committee motion to recommend for passage second motion recommended made
▶ 22:45 John N. Tramontozzi: by a councillor greatest seconded by President Sinella all in favor aye all All opposed? This motion passes. Thanks for coming. Thanks so much. Have a good night. And the final order on our agenda tonight is order info 21, excuse me, 2021-1, request for information, Vinton slash Felsway pipe breakage. And that's sponsored by Councilor Tramontozzi. So if you'd like to introduce the order. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. vice chair but chairman for this evening i had requested this information informational item as we all know about the water main break on vinton street the fellsway i wanted to get some information and i wanted to get some answers some questions that i had you know what caused the breakage what's going to take to repair what's the cost who's responsible
▶ 23:44 John N. Tramontozzi: for the class and so forth since my initial request i have and i have been in communication with the massachusetts water resources authority they've been giving me some weekly updates and i appreciated that specifically mr sean nathan at the he's the director of intergovernmental affairs and he's been kind enough to keep me posted with some weekly updates his last weekly update was last tuesday wherein he said that the contractor rjv has activated water services to the homes the crews have removed temporary bypass and cleaned up the overall site all remaining items have been demobilized traffic detour signs have been removed and vinton street is officially open and operational that's the last update that i had i've been by there
▶ 24:40 John N. Tramontozzi: on numerous occasions watching the construction. I appreciate the fact that the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority has stepped up to the plate and did the repairs there. But there still is left unanswered questions. What caused it to begin with? And what's the overall impact to the city and cost? It appears to me that still paving needs to be done, final paving, there's paving and markings and stripes that have been placed on the roadway. And I'd like to get some further answers. I think Mr. McSweeney had some good ideas and suggestions about what's going to happen with that roadway as a passageway to the Roosevelt School and to the Fouseway. My thought is that I would like to hold this in committee, invite the Director of Public Works to appear before us,
▶ 25:43 John N. Tramontozzi: and be prepared to address any of the concerns and questions that we might have. That will give us an opportunity at a later date at the next hearing for her to give us a presentation and what would be the next in line. Point of information, our director of public works is here this evening and she's planning on speaking. There you are in the back there, I didn't see you. Well, come on over if you want. And actually, I have two members of the MWRA. Terrific. And I prepared a presentation if you'd like me to- Yeah, my apologies, I did not realize that you were here in the anticipation of this. I thought it was just going to be taken up at a later date. Perfect, let's do it. Okay. thanks chris i didn't let me know thank you mr chair um um through and through you to the council
▶ 26:46 um yeah i'd like to introduce myself i'm david kopis i'm the chief operating officer for the massachusetts water resources authority and with me is corey barrett our director of construction we've prepared a short powerpoint presentation with some photos of the construction in order to be a responsive counselor to the concerns that you raised but before we get started i'd like to take a minute to thank everyone in the room for their partnership and for their patience with the mwra as we as we move to repair this water main and reconstruct the surrounding area director elena proicus ellis counselor and others who are involved on behalf of the city of melrose we appreciate your assistance in getting this job
▶ 27:35 done quickly and effectively and as we always do we try to leave the area in a better state than when we started i hope when we're completed with this that you'll agree that we've done that so if you could go to the first slide please i can describe what happened on the evening of tuesday evening of april 27th around eight o'clock at night our operations control center received low pressure alarms and around the same time we received calls from the melrose dpw about water leaking at the surface near the intersection of vinton street and the lynn fells way this is a picture that we took at that night when we arrived on the scene you can go to the next slide this is an overview showing the location of the mwa water mains
▶ 28:32 running down fells way and then up vinton street and again the location of the break highlighted there you can go to the next slide please um and this is a photo of the intersection the roads were closed there was water all over and detours had to be put in place and mwra crews began isolating the main to shut down the break right away go to the next slide please and then so so we did receive low pressure and no water complaints from residents of melrose because of the amount of water that was leaving the main there was a reduction in pressure which affected many melrose residents when we were able to isolate the main those pressures resumed and people were able to get their water again and this is a picture right after we isolated we brought in
▶ 29:30 a pipeline crew from our emdebury yard in chelsea to clean up the intersection and our our primary focus was to get the road open in time for morning commute traffic which we were successful in doing i'll take the next slide please and then the next morning we met out on the site to survey the damage to see what what the damage was done to the road to try to figure out what we needed to do to repair and what other utilities were impacted we um trying to think how to say we we reached out to a contractor rjv construction and were able to establish an emergency construction contract for them to come on the site to do the repairs and i'll talk a little bit i'll i will try to address your concerns um counselor through the chair about the causes of
▶ 30:31 the break but then i will turn it over to ms barrett to talk about the actual construction activities and the and the cleanup efforts so you can go to the next slide please so this is a this is a schematic of the mwra service area in the vicinity it's part of the fells service area receives water from the gillis in the spot pond pump stations up to the fell storage tanks and then flows by gravity through our section 70 pipeline down the fells way and section 79 pipeline up to the wakefield border and at the time the excuse me at the day of the break we were supplying the area from gravity from the storage tank and at about two o'clock that afternoon we received a call from the wakefield water department that they had a large break
▶ 31:30 at their pump station at the end of our section 79 pipeline and they were at the pump station they heard loud banging and then one of their pumps ruptured and they called us to assist in shutting the line down and they had damage to their facilities up there and then later that evening we had the break in our main one of the contributing factors we believe to the break in our main was the fact that the main when it was constructed was constructed through ledge section where they removed the the natural rock but then they threw the rock back into the into the um the trench and set the pipe on the rock which is a construction technique we wouldn't use today because if there's any movement in the pipe the the shards of rock can push against that cast
▶ 32:28 iron pipe and potentially damage the pipe and we don't know for a fact that that's what occurred but when we excavated as you'll see later we did find evidence of the of the pipe sitting on ledge and one of the things we wanted to do was just correct that by making sure that the pipe was reinstalled using proper techniques that we would use today. We did review all of the hydraulic data that we have. We have pressure sensors in our system. We did not see any evidence of either pump operation or any of the work that our crew was doing. The area that's highlighted in red was out of service, and our crew was filling that line because we had done some maintenance work on that line and there was no evidence that any of the activities of the crew lined
▶ 33:19 up with either of the two brakes nor any of the pump operations with either of the two brakes so we basically don't have conclusive evidence as to what caused the failure either of the failures however we did spring into action to repair and to make sure that the pipe was properly vetted so that if the ledge contributed to the failure it wouldn't contribute in the future so i think the next slide starts to talk construction i'll turn it over to ms barrett to talk about the repair activities thank you good evening everyone our first order of business was to get the road open and passable for the abutters so that they could get their cars out and get to work so we brought our JV in we met on site that the break occurred on Tuesday night we met on site
▶ 34:11 at 730 on Wednesday morning and by 10 o'clock our JV had equipment on site and started doing the road repairs so you can see that they were just grading that that's an overview up near the railroad the slope of the tracks looking down that they just leveled the whole road so at least it was it was safely passable for the residents to get to their driveways next side so here we exposed our 20-inch water main it was an old cast-iron main and you as you can see the shards on the right of all the ledge and and also if you look closely on the right on the left photo on the right side you can see all that ledge that's still in place on the sides of the trench so we knew right way that we needed to to replace the pipe with proper bedding so that was the first order of
▶ 35:02 business next slide please then we also looked at other utilities of the cities within within the roadway and so we televised the drains and the sewers and we noticed that the sewell had cracks in it so we replaced um 275 feet of six inch sewer and we installed new sewer manholes on vinton street as well so that is the um six inch sewer being installed next slide please that is the piece of pipe where the actual brake broke that is our mwra 20 inch main you can see the lateral crack so and on the left picture and then on the right you can see it laterally right around nine o'clock on the pipe so now we installed new we replaced the cast iron pipe with new 20-inch ductile ion pipe and obviously we excavated out the the ledge that was found
▶ 35:57 within the trench we put in filter fabric and proper bedding and then we polywrapped the new pipe and installed so we installed about approximately 255 linear feet of new 20-inch water main of the mwras and we also installed a new 20-inch gate valve at the top of mitten street to isolate the line to be able to pressure test it and we did that so here is the new gate valve going in at the top of the street on the left side and on the right side we capped the new pipe to pressure test it next slide please so then we also worked on the city of melrose's 12-inch water main that ran up the street the 12-inch water main was very close in our trench at the top of the hill as we got near the bottom it widened the distance the separation distance
▶ 36:46 increased a little so there was concern with the contractor when he was installing the 20-inch main that he he could possibly lose the city's 12-inch main and create a whole nother problem so what we did right away was install a temporary bypass so it was around 480 feet of temporary bypass that was installed and then that impacted the three homes on vinton street so we provided temporary water services to each one of those homes when we finished doing one other thing on the on the 12-inch cities when we finished doing those we replaced those homes the services with new services after we pressure tested and disinfected the city's water main so all told we replaced around 455 feet of the city's 12-inch main and then we installed three new 12-inch gate valves
▶ 37:38 for the city as well and that was there was a gate valve at the bottom of the hill that had was problematic with an isolation and then we had to go back another valve and we had issues there so we replaced two valves at the bottom and then we also installed a new valve at the top of the hill same that we did with our line so that you could you could isolate and pressure test so then we moved on to the catch basins in the drainage system for the dcr so we installed two new catch basins on vinton street one a little bit further up on the railroad track side and then one right at the intersection as shown in the left photo there on the right photo what we also did we improved the dcis drainage system because we were told there was historically drainage
▶ 38:23 problems at that intersection so we we ran an additional 12 linear feet of 10 inch pvc pipe from that new catch basin on the left out to the 15-inch drain in the middle of the lindfels parkway and so we installed a new drain manhole in the lindfels parkway and tied in that drainage system and then as we finished up then we milled and paved on vinton street this is again this is temporary pavement that we put down good practice is to allow the temporary pavement to settle before you put your permanent pavement on top and we discussed it with the dpw and the city had requested that we allow we normally do a minimum of 90 to 120 days but best practice is to allow it to settle over a winter and that's what was discussed with the city so
▶ 39:18 the deal is that we will allow this temporary pavement to stay till next spring so that we'll get a full winter season of settlement and then next spring we'll come back and we'll do the permanent pavement and at that time we'll do pavement markings again as well so another thing we did was we installed when we did install the new 12-inch water main we installed a new hydrant for the city and so that there's 10 roughly 10 feet of new six inch pipe connecting that into the 12-inch main and then on the right we did the traffic loops and the next photo i think is just yeah the pavement markings so at the intersection and up into the street and um all the water that you can see running down the street is really just we had cracked a hydrant to just test the
▶ 40:07 drainage to make sure that the drainage was was operating properly so and i'll take over from here so in in the process of shutting the line down an mwra isolation gate broke and so our crews were out in fellsway today digging to do a repair on that last remaining gate we're hopeful that this is the last thing we need to do to repair as much as we like to be and work in melrose we it is our intent to be finished working here and and not bothering you any longer so we're working to replace that gate valve and and then i believe the gas company is scheduled to be working in vinton street replacing their gas lines so that when we come back next year to do final paving for vinton street and out in the fells way and and re mark everything we're hopeful that we will have
▶ 41:03 done everything and we will have improved the city's water lines we will have improved the the storm drain system for dcr we will have improved your sewer lines and hopefully left good quality pavement and markings behind and I believe that's it mr. chair if there are any questions we'd be happy to answer any questions councillors should speak of councillor Stewart councillor Thomas councillor German tizzy let me start off with council councillor stir thank you mr. vice chair and thank you for being here tonight I appreciate it the one question that came to mind when you were speaking is are there other pipes on rock that we need to be concerned about so it's we don't I guess I'd say that many pipes have been constructed over the
▶ 42:01 years in rock I mean we we're constructing pipes today that are in rock and you're working your way up a hill you tend to find the rock is high and that's why there's a hill there and so it's not so much that the pipe is in rock as it is the condition of the bedding that was used when the pipeline was constructed and so we so we don't know what the bedding looks like in all of those pipes so we have pipes all throughout the MW area service area and we probably have pipes in ledge all throughout the mw service area the pipes that we construct are not constructed with poor bedding we put good bedding in our predecessors design standards show and say that things are constructed in good bedding but obviously in this case there was a section where the bedding was
▶ 42:54 Cory Thomas: poor um and um and it exhibited itself by the the pipeline breaking um so um i guess long story short we don't know for sure for certain um and um there's really no way to tell okay thank you thank you mr counselor thomas thank you mr chairman uh welcome thank you very much hello director how are you um thank you for the presentation um every everything you showed us today and your response and everything that was done looks like it was done professionally and a wonderful job um i was actually on site i think i was the first one to call you um i was i was down at the baseball field next door um that's another story um is is a break further down the line like uh at the at the pump station the linden station in marlin is that usually a
▶ 43:48 Cory Thomas: a precursor to a break further down the line so without knowing what the cause was of either of the breaks it's hard for us to know what the relationship is between the two whether something caused both or whether the response to the first caused the second it's really hard for us to know for sure the problem is is that we we don't have the data to analyze to be able to say it with any certainty what the cause was and like i said the response was great and everything that you've done to date has been top-notch it looks great i drove on it the other day for the first time um i'm just kind of wondering if this was preventable uh you said that there was work being done on the fells way from tremont street up in up the fells way towards saugus um but work was not being done
▶ 44:37 Cory Thomas: across vinton street was it no okay and then there's railroad track work going on right now as well it's been said there's been a number of heavy heavy machinery heavy equipment going over those roads is there any way to tell if that was a cause of this water main break I don't I can't imagine a scenario where it was I will admit that when we first arrived on this I mean I live right off Perkins Street although on the other side of the line in Stoneman I drive this intersection all the time like every day and I saw all the construction activity that was going on down there and my immediate thought was what did they do but there really is no indication that there was any relationship to the work
▶ 45:19 Cory Thomas: that was being done on the railroad tracks to what occurred in our system and is there you know is there any way you know when that when that break happened in Wakefield at the pump station in Linden there's no way of testing the system or flushing water through to see if the system is intact or it's vulnerable in any spot so so when their break occurred and we and they were able to shut the line down I guess we could have there there is a technique where you can do leak detection along the line and we actually did that after we isolated the second break to make sure that the Melrose lines weren't damaged just to make sure that there wasn't an active leak and we didn't have another potential catastrophic failure on I guess when the
▶ 46:10 when the leak occurred or the break occurred at Wakefield system and we shut down we didn't arrange for that to happen and if we had arranged for it it would have been something we would have done in the overnight hours anyway because it's the kind of thing you do when it's quiet and the only time it's quiet is like when everybody goes to bed and there's no cars and there's no trains because you're actually using an acoustic technique to listen to the water spraying underground so I'm not sure even even had we arranged it which I wish I could say I thought of that and I arranged that I did not but even if we had we wouldn't have gotten there before 8 o'clock at night and it would have happened anyway sure and then you said it was low pressure alarms that went off
▶ 46:56 after the linen linen pump station break did any of them reach into Melrose or Or was it solely in Wakefield? No, it was on the second break. It was the break on the Vinton Street line that created the low pressure alarms. Thank you very much for being here and answering my questions. Councilor Cervantesi? Thank you. Thank you so much for being here and I appreciate the response from the MWRA. Can I safely assume that the MWRA's has taken on full responsibility for the for the work project in other words when the city of melrose is not going to receive a bill for the cost of the fixes is it so the the work replacing the melrose mains that we the the mains that were replaced we agreed to pay for the cost of
▶ 47:48 replacing the mains in melrose where they were coincident with the trench when we were excavating and replacing our own line so in other words the area where the rock excavation was and so we agreed to pay for for that replacement work we paid for the sewer line work and the drain work which was it turns out it's dcr strain anyway there are additional length of main that the city contracted with RJV to replace which in which increased the amount of footage of the total work that was done but we we replaced at our expense I want to say the 255 feet plus one of the valves that was necessary to get in isolation so that we could replace your main and we did your sewer work as well and the temporary water service work we did the paving is going to be us the
▶ 48:43 curbing is us the the hydrant we paid for the hydrant or they paid for the hydrant we wouldn't pay for the hydrant okay we paying for the hydrant um et cetera so so the bulk of the work yes but there is some work that the that the city opted to do above and beyond um what we believed was necessary as a result of our break incidental while you're down there with the open up uh you know replace with up-to-date pipes i'm assuming the curb to curb final paving will be done by the mwra contractors yes correct right yeah if i could just jump in um so the city because rjv construction was out there doing the water main work um the city pursued uh an emergency procurement through the state and got approval to have rjv do the additional work um under a
▶ 49:35 a contract with the city without going out to bid because it wouldn't have made any sense to to bring in another contractor what we found when we were trying to isolate that section of our main in order for the authority to to replace it was that there was one valve that needed to be replaced in order to isolate the main and the authority couldn't have done the work that was in the area of their trench without that so we asked them to pay for that because it was required for them to do the work when we were doing our shutdown after that we found there was another valve right in the intersection that was not part of this work that we couldn't get a good shutdown on so we asked our JV to do that separately and then we actually had them go a little further up the hill
▶ 50:27 up Vinton Street beyond the MW areas work limits in order to replace some extra water main because we didn't want to be repaving the road and and not having our whole water main replaced in the whole area where the pavement will be so that's the additional we had sufficient funds in our operating budget to cover those costs so we didn't have to seek any free cash or any additional authorization it was all through our operating budget excellent you you know, logically made sense to do that. So, and again, thank you to the MWRA and the contractors in the city for your quick response to the whole situation, appreciate it, thank you. Thank you, Councillor McMaster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here.
▶ 51:15 Shawn M. MacMaster: Mr. Kobus, you mentioned that there was no indication that the work on the railroad contributed to this problem. As part of your fact finding in the aftermath of what happened, was there any type of investigation into what work was occurring the day in question. So the day of, earlier that day in particular, and the day before or days before. From the railroad contractor? No, we didn't spend a lot of time looking at what the railroad contractor was doing because the railroad contractor was not touching or operating our pipes or the town of Wakefield's pumps town of Wakefield's pumps or pipes, and it seems that whatever was occurring was some type of pressure situation within one of our two systems and not in any way related to
▶ 52:08 Shawn M. MacMaster: construction activity in the vicinity. So we didn't spend a lot of time looking any further into it than that. So considering that there was ledge that you found and there was rock underneath the pipe, Is it unreasonable to think that hammer drilling, if that was happening on or around the tracks, wouldn't necessarily create a situation where rock may create a vibration or friction on the pipes and result in the pipes being compromised? I guess if you look at the distance where the break occurred from where their abutment work is occurring the distances I mean we replaced 250 feet of pipe from where the break was down so 250 feet is kind of a long way like we we help me with you're the construction person help we
▶ 53:08 we we very often if someone is doing blasting or some type of rock removal work in the vicinity of an MWRA water main, we will require them to put particle velocity detectors if they're within a certain number of peak particle velocity, sorry, within a certain distance of our pipeline. And that, the location of the break was well beyond where we would normally require that. And you would think if their work were to have created the situation that it would have occurred where our our section 70 pipeline passes right underneath the bridge continues on the fells way a mere you know feet away from from their work and you would have thought that that would have been the section that would have been impacted so i i don't i really don't believe that
▶ 54:01 there's any um it's a good it's a good question but i don't believe that there's any relationship because of the distance I think one of their nuance that maybe isn't obvious to the council because you're not as familiar with the system is that the pipe that broke that pipe doesn't serve anything in Melrose at all that branches off the fells way up in the street and feeds Wakefield so this issue at the Wakefield pump station that occurred earlier that same day that line that it's only function I don't know where it goes beyond Wakefield but its function in Melrose is just to get to Wakefield and that pump station is one of the first things in Wakefield after it crosses the line so you know as an
▶ 54:48 Shawn M. MacMaster: engineer seeing that that happened first and then that the break in Melrose cropped up later in that same day on that same branch you know there in my mind there's no way they're unrelated and and the the issue in Wakefield happened first so the chances that something local to the vinton street issue were the original cause of the problem just doesn't it just doesn't add up it's a good point it sounds like the uh the source of the problem as you said miss paracas ellis was the pump station in wakefield that makes sense i think the you know the question is where they're confounding factors that may have contributed or intensified what happened and mr copus uh you had you had mentioned where the work
▶ 55:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: uh was being done and if work if the if the break happened somewhere further away from where any work on the on the bridge was being done something that counselor thomas mentioned just comes to mind is i think many of us have heard from constituents about freight trains increased activity concerns about weight on the tracks and just whether or not at a certain point further away from perhaps where hammer drilling or something else was happening if that may have compromised the integrity of the pipe so that's just I think that's why we're asking these questions because there are you know certainly maybe what we're asking wouldn't be the cause but wondering whether or not it may have contributed to it you're falling on the
▶ 56:25 Shawn M. MacMaster: sword here sir and I think that's admirable in terms of an agency but if If there's some culpability from the freight trains or from the railroad, I don't think the MWRA should be held responsible in terms of the questioning and footing the bill as you've come before us tonight to say that you've done, which we appreciate you. we appreciate you know what you what you have done to rectify the situation and uh the opportunity that it's presented through the department of uh public works to make some other needed uh improvements uh in the area so thank you for that thank you councilor master i have council Garipay in queue but we do have to start uh uh full council yeah um all my questions have been
▶ 57:09 answered if there are no other counselors wishing to speak what is the will of the committee at this time oh yeah am i able to make just one other comment um just in response to the public comment i didn't want to leave that unanswered the comment from the ped bike committee so we have dpw's gone out and measured the road the pavement that's down right now is temporary as mw i mentioned that's just the binder the road measures between 26 and 27 feet at the lower end and then it widens out up around the bend near the tracks and so we we think there's a good chance that we'll be able to fit a climbing bike lane on one side we did with the painting the temporary painting that's there right now we did try to shift the center line a little bit i don't know that it was shifted
▶ 58:01 as drastically as what i had hoped at least it doesn't quite look like it when i've driven it but we should be able to fit have an 11 foot lane on the downhill end and a 15 foot lane on the uphill end which would allow for the the four feet adjacent to the curb to be a climbing bike lane when we do the final paving so it is our hope that we can accommodate that and finn is exactly right our complete streets policy requires us to consider complete streets elements every time we do a project whether it's an emergency repair or or just part of our paving program and we absolutely consider that every time thank you motion to place on file second motion to place that in the file made by council chairman tozy seconded by council Garipay