Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2021-09-13
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-2022-24 : Request for the authorization to issue $1.5 million bond to fund for the roadway component of the City's Multi-year Utility and Roadway Improvement Program
- ORDER-2022-18 : Acceptance of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant in the amount of $8,374,174.
- ORDER-2022-23 : Acceptance of Fifty Thousand Dollars ($50,000) from a FY2022 State Budget earmark providing grants to Councils on Aging
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● SEPTEMBER 13, 2021 Web-based remote meeting Remote meeting 6:47 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 Jeff McNaught Chair Present 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 Present Christopher Cinella President, ex oficio Present
ORDER-2022-24 Bond Request for the authorization to issue $1.5 million bond to fund for the roadway component of the City's Multi-year Utility and Roadway Improvement Program Recommend Passage City Council
ORDER-2022-18 Grant Acceptance of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant in the amount of $8,374,174. Recommend Passage City Council
ORDER-2022-23 Grant Acceptance of Fifty Thousand Dollars ($50,000) from a FY2022 State Budget earmark providing grants to Councils on Aging Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 9/16/2021 11:34 AM
Transcript
▶ 0:01 Jeff McNaught: Good evening, everyone. Can you hear me? Mr. Clerk, give it another minute here. Folks, we'll get rolling here. It took a minute here to dust off the WebEx cobwebs. Good evening. The time is 647, and this is a meeting of the Appropriations Committee. I am Councilor McNaught, the Chair of the Appropriations Committee. and in lieu of calling a roll call attendance joining me this evening are the following counselors we are all voting members of this body all 11 members vice chair Eccles counselor Tramon Tozzi counselor McMaster counselor McLeorelli counselor Gara pay counselor Gregor itis counselor Stewart counselor Thomas and President Sinella. This provides a notice of the quorum for the record. Pursuant
▶ 2:21 Jeff McNaught: to the suspension of certain provisions of the open meeting law, this meeting of the Appropriations Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. We will post a comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Melrose website and on mmtv3.org the public can find online access instructions to view this meeting at the cityofmelrose.org slash remote hyphen meetings this can also be viewed on the local cable access channel for the folks at home this is the portion of the meeting that we start out with every time it's public comment um you may come forward and speak to any items on the agenda but only two items on the agenda like to remind people of that to keep it to what we're discussing in
▶ 3:16 Jeff McNaught: this meeting um and if if there's no objections at this time i'll move by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment seeing no objections we're now open for public comment Mr. Clerk, do we have anyone in the queue for public comment? Let me find out for you. There's someone besides the speakers for tonight. I'm not sure. If anyone's here for public comment, please raise your digital hand. Just looking in the room now, I'm not sure. I see Mr. McSweeney has his, I believe he has his hand raised i'm not sure but i believe mr gumbeski may want to speak um maybe his first time i'm not sure if he's having troubles there he may also just be listening in um uh mr mcsweeney if you are here for public comment please let me know can you hear me yes yes yes
▶ 4:37 great thanks everybody uh finn mcsweeney 160 west wyoming avenue i am here um just to have a couple questions and comments on the road bond request um i'm not sure who is here to speak on it but i did just have a couple things i wanted to say um the first thing i wanted to say was that you know in my opinion in terms of the project mix inside the bond request i really wanted to commend um the dpw and director probate casales for what i think is presenting a really thoughtful um and considered request um of of what's actually being requested with the funds it checks a lot of boxes in terms of the plans and the priorities that the city has laid out over the past few years um and it's backed by a really great and clear memo um that explains the contents so i i think
▶ 5:27 it's great um in particular you know the transparency in terms of the feedback that melrose recently got from massdot on complete streets i think is really helpful for the residents to kind of think about how we're funding some of our roadway improvement projects going forward um the complete streets program has been really popular within melrose and it's great to see that um you know when massdot turns the funds off or slows down the funding to the city we're not just saying okay well we have to wait longer um instead we're actually prioritizing a funding request for one of those projects and what it means that it means that the city understands the value of the complete streets um type projects and the value they bring to melrose um so because
▶ 6:15 they're not only they're putting the bay state sidewalk project in here which is a complete streets program priority but also they are putting in some funding for the lower main um project which is another of the city's Complete Streets priority projects. So it's great to see, you know, the city laid those out in 2017 under Director Provecas Ellis's guidance. And these projects, when they were listed in 2017, were supposed to be completed in 2020, 2021. So again, it's great to see the city executing on the plans that had been sort of sitting around waiting for years for the right time. The question that I have, really the main question that I have is, why not more? I went back and looked at sort of the last 15 or so years of road bond requests.
▶ 7:07 In 2003, the city requested 1.2 million. I'm sorry, 2006. 2009, it was 2.2. 2013, it was 1.5. 2018 it was 1.6 and now it's 1.5 so the city budget has grown um in that time and inflation has happened in that time and it doesn't seem like we're really keeping up um with the the amount of the city budget and the amount of the city debt service that should be going to what is obviously a really high priority for city residents um and when you couple that with the fact that the debt schedule that's listed in the order, this is a 15-year bond at 2%. That's really cheap. When the city recently presented a $1.7 million bond request for the salt shed, that was a 30-year bond at 4%. I'd love to understand, do we have access to cheaper
▶ 8:09 funding right now how is the city determining the duration of these bonds and how is it that we're able to to lay out this proposed bond for for so much more cheaply than the the the salt shed proposal um because i do think that the past couple of years and covid have really really painted a picture of a city that is really hungry for faster progress on complete streets and faster progress on traffic calming. Everyone knows about the COVID bike boom. There was recently a traffic commission meeting where residents of Franklin Street were like begging the city to do something in the highlands to slow down speeding, to cut down on accidents. It's such a priority for the city um while the relative mix within this 1.5 million dollar request i think is really thoughtful
▶ 9:05 um and i understand that the dpw doesn't set the budget right the mayor's office does i i just love to understand why we're not putting more funding towards these types of projects which are which so many residents um want i think it's probably the number one thing that a lot of uh committee members here from residences, we want traffic calming, we want slower streets. It's great to see some of these in the funding request, but as a resident and as a taxpayer, I'd love to see the city do more. And I'd love to understand from the administration what the plans are for doing more, because if we're not getting as much grant funding, and this is going to be what we're going to get for the next three years, I don't think we're spending enough. I don't think we're
▶ 9:54 Jeff McNaught: prioritizing street safety enough in the city and those are my comments appreciate everyone for giving me the time thanks thank you Mr. McSweeney and I know you're an old pro at this but can you state your address for the record sorry 160 West Wyoming thank you so much I also want to acknowledge that Councilor Jamala Dean has joined us we are back at full force team of 11 and I I believe Mr. Gombeski has squared away his microphone issues. Is that right, Mr. Clark? I'll let him in right now. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Excellent. Thank you. My name is Neil Gombeski. I live at 197 Bay State Road. This is the first time I've attended a city meeting, so pretty exciting. I appreciate the opportunity to speak.
▶ 10:44 I just wanted to speak in favor of the road bond. I'm a little biased, too, but particularly to sidewalks here on Bay State Road. We've lived here in Melrose for about seven years. I have three young children now, one that just started kindergarten down at Horace Mann. I don't know if any of you all have, you know, had the opportunity to walk on on Bay State Road or kind of come up this way. But, you know, the street's very dangerous. There's at least two, maybe three blind curves. there's a couple blind rises the streets narrow um it's used as a cut through i see loomis armored cars driving up and down my street in the mornings and the afternoons they clearly have no business you know they're not doing business on my street they're using as a cut through
▶ 11:33 um with the howard street being under construction we get a lot of cut through traffic but just broadly you know people use our street to get from main street to route one and And it's been nice that there were some speed limit signs put up and some other signs. But as someone who I see the traffic every day, that's really done nothing to slow people down on the street. And so with me having young kids, I would love it if my daughter would be able to walk down to Horace Mann for school at some point. and but that's just not feasible given you know how how dangerous the uh street is um my neighbors on my right have a daughter in at horseman they have a son who goes to high school my neighbors
▶ 12:21 on the left just have a have a new newborn um there are other kids on the on the street so i mean there's all there's a lot of young kids on the street and beyond just the young kids you know people use the street to walk on you know people commute or whatever and it's just it's just really an unsafe street um i had walked around and i don't know if anyone else saw saw this but i sent off to um to uh jeff that i put a little petition together and and everyone on the street or everyone that was home on the street signed it so i don't think it's uh i think everyone would be more than happy to give up five or six feet of their yards for a for a sidewalk so i definitely don't think this is going to cause any controversy with with anyone who lives on the street um i think that's
▶ 13:06 Jeff McNaught: about all i have so i appreciate the time and i'll stop joining on thank you thank you mr gombeski mr clerk do we have anyone else in the queue uh not at the moment no we do not i'm just noticing who our speakers uh guest speakers are and i think they're good here um so if there's no one else in the queue um i'll move by unanimous consent if there is no objection uh to close public comment seeing no objection public comment is now closed there are orders before us this evening that require input from non-council members therefore if there is no objection at this time i'll move by unanimous consent to suspend the rules seeing no objection the rules are now suspended and we will move on to our first order
▶ 14:09 Jeff McNaught: of business which is order 2022-24 a request for the authorization to issue 1.5 1.5 million dollar bond to fund the roadway component of the city's multi-year utility and roadway roadway improvement program and i believe we have our city treasurer miss armada and our dpw director miss proak is ellis here with us this evening is that right mr clerk yes that's correct um i've unmuted them both i'm making them panelists now all right council mcnaught would you uh like me to start the i had a brief presentation that was in iqm2 uh sure yeah that'd be great thank you i didn't see you there welcome to both of you thank you for being here this evening the floor is yours are you able to allow me to share if it's easier i can
▶ 15:49 alternatively send you the presentation and you can share um yes could you please do that it's only five slides okay elena yeah i just made you the presenter so you should be able to share your screen perfect with the powerpoint there please perfect okay sorry i closed the powerpoint so that i could send it to you so i just need to reopen sure just going to look for a thumbs up from the counselors if iqm2 is working for you at this point oh there's been some trouble seeing some no's everyone see this yes okay um okay thank you for um hearing this request for our fiscal 22 road bond i'm just briefly going to describe how we fund our roadway multi-year roadway and utility program and this request itself. So our program, as you know from many presentations that I've given in
▶ 17:56 the past, is a combination of our paving, water system improvements, sewer system improvements, inflow and infiltration reduction, national grids, gas main replacement projects, other private utility work, such as the Eversource work that's going on right now. and this whole program really stems from our roadway condition assessment so this is a map that I believe you've seen before that shows our roadways all color-coded in four different categories from poorest to poor to fair to good slash excellent and we target the poor and poorest streets in this condition assessment and then we look for the utility needs we work from below ground up we do all the utility replacements and then ultimately we pave we do any complete
▶ 18:49 streets improvements and then we do beautification like tree planting other line painting signage those sorts of items and this is also something you should all be familiar with our annual construction calendar this just shows um the projects that we have ongoing right now um and the list up at the top here are the streets that we're still presently working on completing for this fall and the the first year of the road bond um reflects completing these improvements supplementing our chapter 90 allocation and then the next year of the the road bond reflects these improvements that are blue here are the water mains that we're working on right now and then next year we'll be paving those streets so the road bond also supplements
▶ 19:42 the chapter 90 money for next year for those streets and then the third year would be the streets to get water main next year which is a list that we're still working on but in general our program is funded um through a number of different sources we get about 525 000 per year of chapter 90 money we've estimated chapter 90 has us estimate how much it would cost to improve to keep all of our roads at um at a high level of service or high high pavement condition index and we found that that requires over $2 million per year. So, to Finn's point, we would love to have more money. The last bond was $1.685 million. That was in fiscal 19. We were budgeted in the capital plan this year for a $1.5 million allocation to handle the next three years,
▶ 20:42 um but we can always spend more if there are more funds available in the future we get private utility contributions from national grid or sometimes we just make them restore the roads in their entirety after they've worked depending on how much they're disturbing we have developer contributions sometimes when larger developments are going on we apply for a lot of grants right now we have complete streets we have the community mitigation fund that we're we're spending now. And MassWorks is one that we've successfully gotten for the Highlands and Essex Street. And then we have free cash, we have rideshare funds, different special funding sources that come up from time to time. So in total, we're trying to spend, you know, ideally
▶ 21:27 we'd be spending that $2 million a year. We typically aren't, but we are definitely spending north of $1 million per year. And then this is the specific request for this road bond. You all got this in a table um that i uploaded to iqm2 a few couple weeks ago um so it should be fairly familiar but the the mix that we have right now is 350 000 to supplement this year's road program uh 170 000 to do um it would be asphalt sidewalks on bay state road that's what was in the community the um prioritization plan for complete streets and as finn mentioned the the funding for complete streets used to be available to us as soon as we had spent the prior allocation, we could apply again. It's very competitive and we wouldn't necessarily get it. But now we're not eligible
▶ 22:17 to apply for four fiscal years after we get a full allocation. So there's no way we can keep up with the projects that we had hoped to do. And Bay State Road was one of the highest priorities that we had going into the program in 2017. And we really couldn't let that one wait any longer. I've been hearing about that since 2015 when I started as a very high priority for sidewalks Brazil Street we're doing water main right now we've done sewer we've done water we've done gas and next year we'll be paving one way or another but we wanted to improve the aesthetics in the neighborhood and replace the sidewalks with concrete do some tree planting a little bit of beautification from that street so that's the 130 000 that's there city hall parking lot we've been applying
▶ 23:07 for grants um to redo the parking lot and address the drainage and flooding issues and do some some green infrastructure for storm water the grants that we've applied for across the board have told us they won't pay for the paving um because the paving is usually not what meets their grant criteria and so we need money to supplement so that we can keep applying for grants for that project and hopefully get some money for the green infrastructure and then we pay for the paving out of the road bond um and then we have next year's road program streets which are mostly our water streets from this year and then the 300 000 for fiscal 24 um to supplement whatever the streets are that are in that next um next program so that's all i have um i will stop sharing and
▶ 23:58 Maya Jamaleddine: if you have any questions uh for or for catherine as well or i believe um patrick delarusso may be also here if you i know there were some questions during public comment about um bonds and interest rates and such uh that catherine or patrick would have to speak to so far i have councillor Jamaleddine in queue if you had your hand up i didn't see it because the presentation was up um council Garipay thank you for that presentation by the way uh director paracas ellis um council Jamaleddine we'll start with you and then we'll go to council Garipay um thank you um um thank you so much i would i would like to echo um chair um um on, you know, on the amazing work with this presentation. We appreciate all the work that you've been doing, you know, all this time.
▶ 25:02 Maya Jamaleddine: My question to you is, when you show us the calendar of the work that's going to be done, the construction work, is this public? Yes, it's up on the website. Okay. And the second one, can you explain a little bit more about, you said that the grant for the paving and the parking lot, the city hall parking lot is not gonna be given. Do you mind explaining a little bit more of why and what is it that's gonna take us to get it back? So, the grant for the…the grants we've applied for for the City Hall parking lot have been municipal vulnerability preparedness MVP grants. And so, they're geared toward climate resilience and nature-based solutions, green infrastructure. And so, we applied…I want to say our application was for roughly $700,000 or $800,000, and
▶ 26:08 A large component of that was for the gray infrastructure piece, the paving itself and curb work and the like. And the MVP program, initially they said they wouldn't fund the whole project, but they would fund just the design. And so we now have a completed design that we put out to bid or that we are ready to put out to bid. So then we apply it again for the construction and that one got denied. And the feedback we were getting there was just that there was too much gray infrastructure that doesn't meet the criteria of the grant for nature-based solutions. And so by being able to fund the paving on our own and only apply for grants for the stormwater and flooding improvements and the water quality improvements, that meets more of the intent of those grants.
▶ 27:00 Maya Jamaleddine: and so we have a much higher likelihood if we apply again of getting one of those grants okay thank you is it open for you know any kind of feel and to be able to include more greens in it or is it just that's the decision and we won't be able to get it back yeah we would love we can't get it back we have to apply again and we would love to have more green infrastructure in the project but they're really with the groundwater so high in that parking lot we were actually very limited in what we could do to improve the flooding you know you can't put in a lot of infiltration basins and things in an area where the water is practically at the surface there's nowhere else for the water to go so that would be more the go-to for more of a green infrastructure solution and
▶ 27:53 Mark Garipay: the paving is just it's always going to be paving and so you know there was no way to green up the paving component of the project we did apply for actually one new grant for the green infrastructure part of it that we haven't heard back yet for mass DEP so that's a stormwater grant and we'll see if we get that but we would still need this money for the paving one way or another thank you appreciate your work thank you thank you college of Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Perway-Casellas, for being here. Just a couple quick questions on the $350,000 for the FY22 road program. So, is it safe to say that was covered, that those projects were started in Patois through the bond in 2019, the 1.6, is it 8.5? Is that?
▶ 28:50 No. So the 1.685 had a very specific list of projects, and the only carryovers that we haven't completed yet from that original list are the sidewalks on Woodland and the paving of Lower Main Street. So the $400,000 that was originally allocated in the fiscal 19 road bond for Main Street was originally supposed to be done sooner, but because of the National Grid work and then the Eversource work, we delayed that paving. We still have 400,000 for the southern end of Main Street, and then we have, I want to say, about 100,000 to 150,000 left for the Woodland Ave sidewalks. But everything else that's on that list is being funded out of Chapter 90 and out of contributions from National Grid, Plus the supplement that we have listed there for.
▶ 29:50 For this road bond, and is it common. To come back for a supplemental. For the city council to to do some of these roads when you're doing these type of projects, or typically when you're working with national grid, does that usually cover everything? No, so this is so we're not asking for supplemental money in terms of. we didn't um like overspend or this road bond has been in the works for a long time this is supposed to be our fiscal 22 23 24 road bonds so um we the last road bomb was supposed to cover fiscal 19 20 21 and we did the only things we didn't spend were the projects that just didn't get done and those are the ones that are carried over that i just mentioned but um for fiscal 22
▶ 30:41 Mark Garipay: we always had assumed that we were going to need this supplemental money to be able to complete the projects in the manner that we think they should be completed if we don't get this vote we just don't do as much work this year um we just leave some work on the table for next year to fund out of chapter 90. and do we um do we have a line item in the budget i should probably know this i apologize for uh roads um for we have any unexpected repairs or are they gonna they come out of free cash typically we have potholes we have sidewalk repairs um but we don't have any capital money for roads or for sidewalks or capital line items in the operating budget okay uh thank you and then i just had one other question regarding a project on the uh on the spreadsheet that you
▶ 31:30 Mark Garipay: had given out and if i know i talked to um i was reached about this was uh the work that's being done on felton place in upland street and i'm looking at this we did some design building national grid paved upham street and then where and we did felton water work and we opened up upham street right after just curious why we wouldn't have why we wouldn't have reversed that after we just paved it that was a miscommunication in uh when bonnie had just started and National Grid had come in and they were coming in to do their pavement restoration for all their backlog of projects that they hadn't yet paved. And they handed out notices on Felton Place saying that they were going to be paving and on Upham Street. And at the last
▶ 32:21 second, like the night before the paving was supposed to happen, I found out that they had handed out these notices and made a frantic call to say, you can't pay Felton Place. We're doing water main work on Felton Place. Take Felton Place off the list. And so they said, okay, we're just going to do Upham. It didn't occur to me to say to them, don't do the intersection right at Felton Place and Upham. We just didn't get into that level of detail. It was a very rushed um you know calling off the dogs work and so i didn't realize that their up them portion that they were going to do was going to go past the entrance to felton place so yes we are going to be we have torn up their new pavement and we will be repaving it but we were one day away from having
▶ 33:09 all of felton place done by mistake just because they didn't they notified vonnie she had started maybe a few weeks before and she just didn't she thought that work was already approved and was going forward and just didn't realize okay thank you i just wasn't sure the utilities companies i'm assuming typically flexing we're going to put it off until we were done but i appreciate that yeah no they would have had we had we asked them to wait they would have waited it it just slipped through the cracks and and we we work very closely with the national grid gas group to phase all of these projects we just issued our annual letter to say where we want them to work next and where we need them to restore and then
▶ 33:49 Cory Thomas: they'll come in and do that restoration so it's a good collaboration it was just a mistake thank you Thank You councillor Garipay do any other councillors have questions councillor Thomas Thank You mr. chairman Thank you so much for all the work that you guys have been doing this summer. Great project over at Hoover School, the Complete Streets project looks great. If anyone hasn't seen it yet, they should go up to Hoover School, check out Whitman Ave, Park Street, Echo Street. This bond is great, as you know, and as we discussed at great lengths, Echo Street was not part of the Complete Streets project. So having this bond money available to finish off Echo Street, it's greatly needed, you know, to have a project like the Complete Streets funding that we have and not do Echo Street, you know, that makes no sense.
▶ 34:45 Cory Thomas: So having this bond money available is great and will really, really shape up that whole neighborhood. I did have a question about the bond money itself. um is the bond money could we use any of that bond money to um fix streets that are partially paved by utility companies there was a big gas main replacement as you know between beach have appleton and all the cross streets it's great to see that these are slated to be partially completed and paved this fall but roads that are partially paved is there any way this bond money would be available to fully pave those roads so we actually try to avoid the partial pavement as much as possible so in that neighborhood we've now identified that we're going to do appleton elliott
▶ 35:35 and irving as part of our water main program next year and when we do water and national grid does gas national grid kicks in half the cost to repave the full road and then we put in the other half and so those three will actually get full replacement um but they just have to wait an additional year for us to do the water main projects um so actually if in that fiscal 24 list if we were to actually put street names down there most likely those three streets will be on that list um but the other streets where where we're working where we're not working and national grid is working we have them do curb to curb replacement if the street is in good or excellent condition because we don't want them digging in our streets that are in good and excellent
▶ 36:20 condition so we make them do curb to curb but when they're in fair condition we do usually have them do from one foot out from the trench to the nearest curb and that's really we could move toward a program where we pay to pave the other portions of those streets but we would really look to do that when the streets are in poor condition or poorest condition or um when we have some other work that we also need to do on those streets um so we're trying to just make the most economical use the most efficient use of all the money that we can so when a street's already in fair condition and they pave half of it it's only getting better and if it's not up for full paving yet by its condition we don't really want to spend that
▶ 37:09 Cory Thomas: money that we really need to spend on the on the really bad streets okay thank you very much for that explanation and i'm very happy to hear that appleton elliot and irving will be getting full pavement treatment next uh next year uh and i know the neighbors on those streets and and possibly a member of the city council i will be happy to have some of those streets uh repaired especially on appleton so thanks for having us just to clarify it the paving would be in two years because the water main would be next year it wouldn't be completed at the end of the at the end of the water main replacement if we like to allow it to go through one freeze thaw cycle so you don't have settlement in the brand new road so so we phase it so the construction happens one year and the
▶ 37:52 Leila Migliorelli: paving happens the next year so it would probably be spring 2020 spring 2023 when it would be paved Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councillor Thomas. Councillor Migliorelli? Thank you, Chair McNaught. Thank you, Ms. Proek, for being here again tonight and sharing with us your plan for this $1.5 million bond. I think we can all agree that one of the top things we hear from our constituents is about the consistency of our roads and sidewalks. And I know we just heard from a constituent today who had gotten injured on a sidewalk. So it's nice to see that we're making this investment in our streets and um roadways and sidewalks i have a question about the mr mcsweeney brought up um why not ask for a larger bond two two
▶ 38:42 million dollars to kind of help us um get to some of these other projects that that are in need of help i believe this is how it was budgeted in the cip and so um patrick are you able to answer that question? You're muted. It's acting up. We can hear you. All right. You can hear me for whatever reason. It's been acting up a little bit tonight. That's a great question. We try to do like every other thing is that we're trying to come up with a a mix that works citywide um one of the interesting um dilemmas if you want to call it that is that um we could probably spend five million dollars a year on the roads and still not be where we really want to be um so the objective and it's it is every year as it was this past year is a couple things one is we always seek
▶ 40:07 the climate well to increase their chapter 90 allocation and i think probably every year i can recall typically you hear that i'm increasing it from 200 million to 300 million and and year after year for some reason often most of the time it doesn't materialize that would be a great help secondly is that we do use free cash this past year we used 320 000 of free cash approved by this council to do sidewalk street repair um set traffic radar speed signs traffic studies so we we do make use of that free cash and the goal every year is to is candidly to allocate as much as we can um and through and the mayor would tell you that as well as elena from these other funding sources so that it's just not the bond we're trying to bring up that numbers close
▶ 41:03 to two million as we can get it um and again i want to just emphasize to keep in mind that this is um a critical need as everyone here knows but just as a ladder truck is a critical need um capital equipment public safety is critical need building repairs memorial hall part of the debt program and if we true try clearly to um create that what i've always talked about is that balance so that um maybe everything isn't getting funded 100 but we're at you know we're getting there um 75 plus that's always a strategic goal we can accomplish that year after year after year and have a couple of years that we can put extra revenue towards it um i'm in because candidly uh as everyone's indicated here and so eloquently spoken earlier um the need is there
▶ 42:03 and we just need to continue to try to capitalize on that use every resource we can really did you have any other questions no thank you so much mr de la rusa for explaining all that um and uh yeah hopefully we can allocate some more resources to this in the future thank you absolutely thank you okay next we have Councilor McMaster you're on mute can't hear you can't hear you but why don't we go to Councilor Grigoraitis we'll come right back to you Councilor Grigoraitis thank you Chairman Knott and Councilor McMaster I'll be brief I actually had a follow-up question Mr. della russo to your response to counselor Migliorelli um i guess just an observation that if the recommended best practice for us is two million dollars and we're consistently below that
▶ 43:12 Jen Grigoraitis: the the gap is just going to grow and while i know we did put a lot of free cash toward um sidewalks and roads this year which was great my understanding for the sidewalks was that that was to catch us up on a backlog of on um of repairs that some of which went back um over a year so i think you know just as we think about the city's bonding capacity and our priorities like how do we get out of this problem where we're sort of consistently playing catch up to meet basic infrastructure needs um we know that free cash ebbs and flows um and if we're really talking about bonding at 2 percent. That seems like a really low rate in order for us to close that gap so that we're at least maintaining existing infrastructure and not playing catch-up.
▶ 43:58 Great questions. This is – no, it's a matter strictly or candidly of policy. Each and every year when we look at the program, what items are in the queue outside of roads? items do we probably most need to fund and I'll go back to the ladder truck perhaps that wasn't on the radar two years ago it's on the radar now items like that we have to as the model does allow room or those kind of projects to be funded. The other point on the rate itself, 2%, that's projected, illustrated. It's not the rate that we use in the debt model. Specifically, we use 5% for permanent and 3.25% for temporary. Historically, we do better than that. However, I'm going to caution that we do not want to deviate from our practice this has worked so well and assume rates are going to be at that level
▶ 45:09 at the time we actually go to the market it could be a year it could be two years um but before we even permanently bond this the rates if they're going to hold i would um would hope so but with what we've seen in the marketplace with all the and i will say it's fluctuations between um the the COVID-19 impact and all else, it truly, truly behooves the community to take a conservative approach here. One of the orders, actually, it's funny, happens to be on this evening, is the request to the city council to approve 8.4 million of opera money, which is really focused on the COVID-19 and its impact, the pandemic on the community. That would not be here if it wasn't real. And by that, I mean that the sensitivity in the market
▶ 46:07 that everything is not okay. And at times like that, we want to take a step back and say, you know what, if we can get 2% terrific, and to your question, if we see that in the future and holding terrific perhaps we can allocate you know a greater level of bond money to the next time we go up on roads um and however again today i'd be a little bit uh be a lot cautious concerned that i don't want to um make an assumption that i i cannot control i we can technically as a community control the amount that we actually request to be bonded upon the approval with the city council whoever we don't have any control of the market rates so it's always exposure and that's what i have to protect us against but that's an excellent question
▶ 47:00 Robb Stewart: thank you no further questions thank you council Grigoraitis we'll go back to council mcmaster to see if your microphone is working it's not working yet um you can either um call me uh call uh Mr. Clerk, or you can put your questions in the chat. We can ask them that way for you. We'd be happy to do that. For the time being, I'm going to move on to Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Perales-Cazales, for being here tonight, as well as you, Mr. De La Russo. You did pretty much answer my question that Councilor De Rita had followed up with, Because I, too, feel as though without understanding the details of finance at a basic level, our money is going twice as far at 2% than it is at 4%.
▶ 48:04 Robb Stewart: So it seems to be that it is an opportunity, maybe not now, but in the near future, if things stabilize, to take advantage of this. because when you have money as cheap as this you can do a lot with it and that isn't a bad thing when it's this cheap so i would encourage the administration to carefully monitor that and try to take as full advantage as we can within the bounds of constraints that you have of every policy. I did want to come back to Ms. Paroi-Casales. At one point when you were talking to Councilor Thomas regarding some of the partial streets, it's been some experience of certain neighborhoods where there are specific areas that are extremely bad, but it doesn't warrant the whole street to be rated at a lower level overall um and you know there's a couple of
▶ 49:09 Robb Stewart: situations in my ward and i'm sure you know a lot of people of course the town where uh you know virtually once a month you have to fill potholes and the road is terrible and by the spring it gets all chewed up is there any consideration for addressing those specific areas uh and i know you don't want to go and pay because you're going to repay but when there are certain very focused tactical areas that may make a big difference for the neighborhood is that something that you can consider so we actually rate the streets street segment by street segment so block by block um gets its own individual rating so there really shouldn't be sections of streets um that are really bad unless it's an unusually long block I suppose but but the way we do
▶ 49:58 our ratings should account for that we do occasionally have streets that will have one really bad area Grove Street last year was a perfect example where we had an area that was just deteriorating very quickly it is on the list for water main work um it was not something that we wanted to fully repave um in advance of its turn because we really needed to do that water main work first someday um and it wasn't at the top of the list for water or for paving so we did do some temporary repairs um and we did the same on upham street maybe three years ago so in in higher travel areas we will occasionally do that uh but we really try not to do that because it doesn't tend to be an efficient use of the funds
▶ 50:52 so we do it really just in extenuating circumstances otherwise we just do our best to patch the potholes try to improve the road condition temporarily and and then when the road deteriorates to the point where it does pop up on the list then we will address it more holistically okay i'll take it offline with you to uh um cite a couple of specific examples that we have and we can go from there okay appreciate working with us thank you thank you mr de la rusa did you want to mention something so i may and um i appreciate the the opportunity just before i forget i do want to also mention about the refinancing aspect of what we do we're constantly looking to see if there's any debt that we have on books right now that's been permanently bonded
▶ 51:39 typically it's a 10-year window that we like to see if we have a chance to bring it down to a lower rate that's something that we work with for a southwest certifying bank and on a regular basis and catherine can speak to that too but i didn't want to i do want to put that out there that we're not um at all ignorant of the need to do that because it does pay dividends if in fact you can capitalize on that that's all thank you thank you if i can mention one other um one other item related to the bond question is that another consideration that we have if the council is looking to spend more money on paving in general is that on the streets that we're really only paving because we're doing water work we do have the option of using um
▶ 52:33 Jeff McNaught: a couple years ago we did a loan through the water fund to specifically spend on the streets that we tore up for water work so that is another potential funding source would be bonds from the water fund which you know are they're still loans for the city but it's also a different funding source so just something to think about that we have taken advantage of in the past thank you for that and mr clerk um council mcmaster has put two questions in the chat if you could read those um i believe they're for both director proakis ellis and mr de la rusa however you you'd like to chime in and answer sure so question one for the 250 000 earmarked for the city hall parking lot will that hinder or interfere with our ability to expand
▶ 53:29 the main street firehouse should a determination be made to expand and build back on the lot especially if we decide to go with a joint public safety building that's an excellent question and it's one that we we absolutely took into consideration during the design phase of that mvp grant that we got and we did not account for anything in that back area just behind the fire station all the way out to the um to the limit of where the the first two rows of parking are the one right along the building and then there's a travel aisle and there's another row of parking we we didn't have anything in our design in that area assuming that someday that area would be taken up by an expanded building and question two can you explain the
▶ 54:23 interest rate differential between this bond and the previously proposed salt shed bond yeah i don't have the salt shed um objection in front of me however throughout the model as i indicated there might be um i don't have a different um coupon rate um technically it reflected in the salt shed at the time it was reported before the council um there is there is that would be what um the certifying bank provided us at that time again it's a projection it's uh an illustration we always however we do the exact same thing um for the road bond as we do with the solid shed as we do with the library we always in the model itself carry the higher rate for purposes of not deviating from the five percent limit for for the city because candidly once you make a determination
▶ 55:23 at the budget hearing as to what will be the debt service for the next year we all need to be as certain as we can that the number that we're allocating will be sufficient to pay the debt the only obligation that has a higher precedent over debt is pension obligation following that is the debt obligation so we tried again as i mentioned earlier and it's and it has worked so well with the city council in particular that supports the approach to to use the higher rate for the purposes of budgeting for illustration purposes you actually may get a rate that may be more actual at the time but again the time is yet to be determined when we're going to market and we simply want to ensure that we're not over committing in any sense any one of these projects
▶ 56:11 at a rate that we can't support well that would candidly hurt other projects that perhaps are in the pipeline that we are slated to be funded um so a great question excellent question um and again we always shoot for the low straight candidly everyone everyone benefits allows more projects to be done in the future and also reduces the cost of the actual costs at the time thank you mr teller so council mcmaster assuming nothing else in the chat um no more questions okay um thank you council mcmaster council uh vice chair eccles i didn't ask to be put in the queue but thank you must have been waving to someone uh council Garipay yeah i'd like to make a motion to uh recommend the sort of the full council for
▶ 57:06 passage second second we have a motion to recommend for passage made by council Garipay seconded by vice chair Eccles Mr. Clark will you please call the roll chair McNaught yes vice chair Eccles yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor McMaster he's voted yes in the chat councillor Garipay yes yes councillor Grigoraitis yes councillor mcgillery yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes councillor Jamaleddine yes president sanello yes 11 yes the motion passes um we'll be moving Moving on to our next order, which I believe, Mr. DellaRusso, you're with us on this one as well. Thank you, Ms. Armada. Next we have with us Mr. DellaRusso. We also have Margot Fleischman and Hannah York from the mayor's office.
▶ 58:43 Jeff McNaught: This is in regards to Order 2022-18, acceptance of the American Rescue Plan Act. also known as ARPA, acronym A-R-P-A, a grant in the amount of $8,374,174. Mr. De La Rosa, we'll let you take it from there. Thank you. Good evening, and I appreciate candidly being here. It's an order that will benefit clearly the community as a whole, and it's going to require great study and diligence to complete the program in a way that's going to be most beneficial to the city. I believe, through the chair, that my god, Fleishman has some initial comments you'd like to make on behalf of the mayor, if that would be okay. Absolutely. Ms. Fleishman, the floor is yours. Good evening. I just want to confirm, is the mayor not with us?
▶ 59:42 Paul Brodeur: I can't see. I wasn't being able to see the participants. He's unmuted. Didn't see him on our list. Hello there. Happy to have him. So with that, I think I will just turn this over to the mayor, who will be able to give some opening remarks relative to the memo that we presented to the council. There I am. Good evening, everyone. I very much appreciate the time. It's good to see everyone rested and relaxed after another outstanding Victorian fair, which the Patriots did a game one as well as the fair did. but we had a good showing from our new quarterback. In any case, just some brief opening remarks about the ARPA funds. We all know how important they are to the city. The technical names are a little bit funky, but they're important as we go along.
▶ 1:00:45 Paul Brodeur: So the Coronavirus State and Local Recovery Funds Program, which we know as ARPA or ARPA money is intended to provide to states, territorial, local, and tribal governments some support in responding to, writ large, the economic and certainly public health impacts and other stresses of COVID-19 and in their efforts to contain impacts on our communities. In this case, Melrose is receiving a little bit shy of $8.4 million over a series of payments. To give you some context, particularly for folks that might be watching in town, because I know that you folks, the council, are well aware of what's going on with the allocations. And they vary wildly in some respects by community, though with some sense of order.
▶ 1:01:45 Paul Brodeur: So as an example, Malden, as a so-called metropolitan community, will be getting a little bit more than $34 million. There's about 60,000 people in Malden. Medford, which isn't a so-called metropolitan community, is getting $48.5 million. and that's for 57,000 residents, and our other neighbors, Stoneham, Saugus, and Wakefield, all get roughly the same on a population basis. That is just the way the various formulas work, but it's important to understand that context, I think. So, hopefully, you've had a chance to read the memo that was contained with the packet and was, I think, circulated a little bit before that the program does allow for funds to be used in ways that best suit the needs the needs of each
▶ 1:02:37 Paul Brodeur: community as long as the use fits into one of four broad statutory categories again this is part of the federal language that controls where arpa money can be spent so number one perhaps most obviously to respond to the covet 19 public health emergency or its negative economic impacts To respond to workers performing essential work during COVID-19 public health emergency by providing premium pay to eligible workers, to replace revenue lost during the COVID-19 public health emergency, and four, to make necessary investments in water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure, again, with some restrictions on possible uses within that category. But as such, the city, we will be taking great care to identify projects that fit into one or more of these eligibility categories.
▶ 1:03:32 Paul Brodeur: Mindful, of course, that there will be a future federal audit of all funds spent, which to why Hannah York is on the call with us is because we saw the need to get an outside expert, given the serious nature and the amount of funds in play, to vet all spending proposals through an independent expert to make sure, as best we can, that they comply with all federal and state law and regulation. As you might imagine, our priority is to use these funds to invest in the city in meaningful ways that are also financially responsible, to help us achieve our goals, preserve our ability to continue to respond to the negative effects of the pandemic, in the years ahead. I think it's very important to note that. And we are also endeavoring to make
▶ 1:04:22 Paul Brodeur: sure that we are not duplicating any programming or efforts that are underway with other branches of government at the state or federal level in areas where the need does exist on the ground here in Melrose. And I do want to stress again that these funds are mitigation for COVID impacts for the next several years, and we cannot expect to get additional funding depending on what course the pandemic takes over the next three years or so. It is important to note that our over $8 million allocation is not insignificant. As I mentioned before, other communities are getting substantially more. And clearly, you've heard from the conversation you've had about the bond authorization for highways, for roads, that even the $8.4 million will not be enough to meet
▶ 1:05:17 Paul Brodeur: every eligible need that will be identified over the course of this process. So, we also want to be very cautious about using these funds in such a way that could potentially present a fiscal cliff once our funding is expired. By that, I mean, as an example, we don't want to incur an ongoing HR expense unless we are 100% confident in the out years that we either won't need that position anymore once the COVID-related need goes away or that we have a plan for funding that after that money goes away. By way of detail, these funds must be obligated, must be committed by December 31st, 2024, and spent by December 31st, 2026. So the uses that we settle on particular around major capital investments for things that have to be actionable for planning and execution
▶ 1:06:23 Paul Brodeur: within the timeframe we mentioned. So as a general proposition, we want to invest in things that have the biggest community benefit, the biggest bang for the buck, if you will, and are consistent with sound financial planning with a goal towards deploying resources in effective ways that are sustainable over time. And with that, by way of intro, Mr. Del Russo and Ms. Fleischman and Hannah are all available, I believe, for statements and, of course, to answer any questions any council member may have thank you mr mayor and before we do that i'm just going to have council mcmaster do a quick sound check again and have a lot of problems thank don't worry he's not speaking next council master you there can you hear me mr chairman we can thank you all right
▶ 1:07:11 now be quiet we're going to move on to uh miss fleishman and mr de la russa mr can i interrupt just one second mr chairman do you know if it would be helpful for particularly for members of the administration who aren't directly addressing the council to shut off their video to improve bandwidth i am uh i am no i.t director if that helps i'll take your word for it um sure excellent yeah thank you so good evening counselors and i will just uh to chime in and concur with everything the mayor just said very much in line with the memo that we presented you and also just to give you a sense of the regulatory environment that we're living in with these funds um i spend a lot of time with the um the guidance for reporting that we will
▶ 1:08:16 have to be following in the year and years ahead and um the the system that they have set up is quite specific and in some cases considerable in terms of the documentation that we will have to provide to justify these expenditures. And I think as the memo pointed out, we have no final authority the way we may have in the past with the state of someone to come and bless our expenditures. So we have to be very thoughtful and carefully vet every project that we do undertake, mindful, again, of that possibility of a federal audit and clawback if we do something that the feds don't like. But then also, we do have reporting requirements for specific to our type of governmental unit. Beginning this October, we'll have to start reporting and then ongoing
▶ 1:09:07 throughout the years of ARPA and, of course, retain our documentation for a period of time afterwards. So, that is part of the process, front-loading as we go forward the information so that when the reporting time comes around, we will be prepared to directly report to the federal government on the use of these funds consistent with the statute and consistent with the reporting requirements. I'm happy to pass it over to Patrick if he has something to add. Hi. Thank you, Margo. Yes, by May. I would ask if for a moment we could bring in here in New York, the Clifton Larson, to give her perspective on what she's seeing in other communities. Again, she is versed very well in the guidance and the requirements for reporting.
▶ 1:10:02 And then from there, obviously, I will be happy to speak after that, too. Hannah, if you're there. I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes. And if you could also perhaps speak a little bit about revenue replacement, that it's an ongoing process that we're working towards. It's a federal formula that most people, unless you're Albert Einstein, can't figure out. But I'll leave it at that. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you, Patrick. So, first, can I just say I have really enjoyed working with this team on this project. I think that Melrose has set up a fantastic group of people to work on this. Everybody is very willing to do the upfront work that we need to do and reviewing projects upfront to make sure things are going to be allowable.
▶ 1:10:52 I think that puts Melrose a step ahead of a lot of communities who are still trying to wrap their arms around this program. Just as a couple, a little bit of background information on it. First of all, the Treasury has issued what they call the interim final rule, which gives much more detail. It's about a 240-page document that goes into all the details of what you can and cannot spend this money on. I'd want to point out that part of that name is interim. so this is not the final final rule uh throughout the interim final rule they have questions um that they pose to the readers that they basically opened it up said you know gave a certain amount of time where people could comment back and then they're supposed to be coming out
▶ 1:11:40 with a final final rule um any day now so one of the things that i have cautioned and i think it's you know, the team at Melrose has been very cognizant of is, you know, we don't want to go too far down the planning pipe until we get the final ruling on certain items. The most risky being, as Patrick pointed out with the revenue loss calculation, I suspect that's going to be an area that has the most changes. The current, the current way of doing it is that you have a base year. I'll kind of do the short non-accountant version of it. There's a base year that you have to compare all of your future revenue loss to for the city of Melrose that is fiscal year 2019. So basically the gist of it as we take all the revenues that the city of Melrose has received
▶ 1:12:40 during those years we back out certain ones that the federal formula says you can't include and then we're going to compare it to calendar year there'll be a calculation for calendar calendar year 2020 one for 2021 22 and 23 so there are four calendar year calculations for that revenue loss one of the things they have a set 4.1 percent assumed increase in year-over-year revenue that you can use instead of going back and calculating four or five years of your own. If you can prove that your own is higher, then you can do that. Very few people can do that. So most are just using this at 4.1%. What they are not allowing you to do, though, is to make adjustments for known and planned revenue increases. So if you budgeted a large revenue
▶ 1:13:34 increase from one year to the next. And that inherently is going to show that you didn't have as much of a loss as if you had held everything equal from 2019 forward. So if you think about your tax levy, if your 2019 tax levy just had the standard increase from year over year, then that's going to show your normal revenue loss would have been for that time period. When you have a budgeted increase, override, items like that, that actually will offset some of that revenue loss that you may have had in your local receipts or from other sources. So that's just something to think about. Like I said, this is not final yet. There may be some adjustments to the formula. There may be some adjustments to the allowability.
▶ 1:14:25 With the revenue loss, though, you can't just take that money. So whatever calculation that comes out to, you can't just take that money and put it back into your free cash or into your, you know, other stabilization type funds. That actually has to then be spent on governmental services. The idea of it is that you're going to use that revenue loss to help get your governmental services back to their pre-pandemic place. So, it's fairly wide open what you can use it for. With about four or five specific expenses, you can't. One of which is replenishing rainy day funds or reserve funds or stabilization. You cannot use it for debt service payments. You cannot use it for funding OPEB. And there's a few items like that that it's unallowable for, but outside of that, it can be used for basically thinking any general, you know, outside of those couple items, general government type services.
▶ 1:15:23 So the revenue loss is probably the one that has the most questions out there, the most that we're watching for. I have a team of eight consultants that are working with dozens of communities across the state, and we're watching every time new questions come out, new compliance documents come out. We're keeping up to date with everything, and we'll be using that information to help the city to make the best decisions and to comply with all the reporting. Thank you, Ms. York. Just to add to that, what we've established is right now we have a team of 14 people that work with the COVID-19 task force. I think if you recall, we had set that up earlier for the CARES Act. So it's a model that's actually following that.
▶ 1:16:23 and what we've established is also an actual and we're automating it an input form just for the can't see it but for the purposes of comment tonight it's called a city of morrow's opera project request form and it highlights the different areas for particular areas that the mayor alluded to and that the bigger larger segments and what we then do is we have the department had actually peer down what the request will look like and we put it through the entire task force the documentation has to be sufficient as was indicated earlier to meet an audit the requirement to maintain that documentation is significant and the fact of the matter is and I have to stress this, is it has any and all projects must make that tie in to address a COVID-19 pandemic
▶ 1:17:22 related matter. It's not set to the side. If you go through the information that's been put out, they put out what's called a frequently asked question, Department of Revenue and the treasury. And this one here, for example, is 41 pages. And it comes out about once every month now. And it's extremely technical as far as the regulations and what is permitted or not permitted. And I do want to stress that oftentimes it would not be a surprise to see that some of the um allowances have been adjusted or modified to better fit the need on these documents so there's a tremendous amount of attention that anyone that um works on this part these projects have to pay here to everyone receives copies of this i i myself send them out to all the members once a
▶ 1:18:25 month um particularly these past three and four months just so just to keep everyone on the same page so that we do meet it's a meaningful meeting and they can come to the table with concepts projects that they're considering that they believe is the best interest of the city and we can work together as a task force to address that and again through the mayor's office make a determination as to which projects need to go forward and when it's not an open-ended game literally you have um a couple years december 30 um first 2024 to make those decisions to get the programs to get the procurements in place and you have until the two years thereafter to actually expend the complete funds again the 8.4 million it's um something that we are responsible
▶ 1:19:19 for it does not go to the state for confirmation unlike kia's this will be treasury we'll be auditing this our process here and every year will be audited by the outside auditors as well um so it's intensive i don't want to disenchant anyone there's nothing easy about it it's not light work it's it's it's um intense work but i think it needs to be i think just expand these kind of funds, we need to be sure that we're strictly in compliance and that we're doing things to the best interest of the city as a whole. Thank you, Mr. DeLaRusso. Yes, thank you. I believe first up we have Vice Chair Eccles. You did have your hand. You're waving to someone at home, Vice Chair Eccles. You broke up for a second. You did say my name. I'm definitely in
▶ 1:20:13 Jack Eccles: yeah right now thank you yeah you were first yep thank you mr chairman awesome so um thank you mr dellarosa miss fleshman mayor brother for being here um the first question i have is uh kind of just to talk a little bit about um the revenue replacement aspect of the rescue plan money do we have a good picture of what that is since it is the most flexible form of of using this money I'll ask Keanu if I may to address that. Yes. So we have a, what I call preliminary calculation on that for this year. Preliminary, because as I said, they haven't come out with the final, final rule. So based on how they currently have it defined, we do have a calculation for that for the first year. That being said, and I alluded it to it in the discussion on how that calculation is
▶ 1:21:09 done because the city of Melrose had that, had the override in 2020, I think was the first year it happened. That really ate into most of the loss. So in reality, the city of Melrose doesn't appear by the federal calculation to have had a great revenue loss. So for this year, but then once again, like I said, it will happen every December 31st. It goes by calendar year. So at the end of this calendar year, we'll do the calculation again for 2021. But unfortunately, you know, because of the way the calculation works, it doesn't make allowances for those, you know, items like override and other things that does offset the loss that you guys did realize in local receipts. Gotcha. That makes sense. So it seems like most of any disbursement
▶ 1:22:06 Jack Eccles: arpa funds are going to have to fall into the the other buckets that's right correct awesome cool and then um we did we did receive a little bit of a few constituent inquiries about the use of the arpa funds i just have two questions kind of based on what we got um one one of which being um do we have any plans to maybe use these for any housing related tasks i understand we don't have an itemized list but has anyone have there been any preliminary discussions about maybe possibly contributing to the Affordable Housing Trust, if that would be an appropriate use of these funds or kind of other ways to directly help families in need in Melrose? So I'm going to jump in and then let, I'm sorry, I was going to say I will jump in real quick and
▶ 1:22:50 Paul Brodeur: then let Hannah make sure I'm not saying anything incorrect. So the trick to a lot of this is the particular application of the fund. So we have received a couple of requests, one from the Affordable Housing Corporation and one from a nonprofit that deals in food insecurity. What we cannot do is, as I understand it, is put this money into a trust fund. And it is ultimately, in some respects, designed to be, in part, stimulus money. So there are things that would be terrific investments or terrific financial practices that we simply can't do. The one that a lot of communities that are a lot more flush than us in terms of their upper money are talking about things like, well, can we cut taxes or can we pay down our pension obligations?
▶ 1:24:00 That is a hard no, and so the details matter in what the proposal might be. ended. Does that make sense? Did I get anything wrong? Yeah. So in essence, we can't put it just in a truck because that's not spending the money, right? So what I have seen other communities do for those who might need help with mortgage, you can absolutely use the money to directly assist those in need with rent assistance, mortgage assistance, food insecurity assistance. So what I have seen done in some other communities is the town works with one of the housing, not-for-profits for them to review applications because they're set up more for that. And then once they're approved, the town or city can actually cut the check directly to the homeowner
▶ 1:24:51 Paul Brodeur: for assistance. So you can run programs like that, but just putting it into a housing trust is not something that is allowable under this. And to put a little bit of another perspective on it is uh to a certain degree as we think about these things in cooperation with the council and the community is um is there another place is there another place to access those funds meaning if there is if there is a a state arpa commitment to um rental assistance uh eviction prevention we obviously want to make sure that our residents uh that may have a need are aware of that right now and that we are not using these funds, which are substantial but not bottomless, are accessing that because there is some programming like that up and running
▶ 1:25:47 right now. And again, that's just a snapshot of one particular area. Yes. So, Mayor Broder is absolutely correct. There are several other grants out there, like the ERA grant that does emergency rental assistance. In fact, I was on a call a couple weeks ago with the state and they're looking to try to put together a website where people can go and find out about all the different funding sources and how to get help on different particular issues. So I think that's something that they're working on getting out there, but there are a lot of different grants going around helping a lot of different, very specific type of support services that are needed. Well, thank you both so much. That actually answered both my questions.
▶ 1:26:35 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. you vice chair Eccles I think we're at two minutes left here we're running very close to the having a gavel into the city council and I've got two councillors in queue at this time president Sinella and motion to recess appropriations we have a motion to recess by president Sinella seconded by councillor Migliorelli mr. clerk will you please call the roll. Chair McNaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor McGrady? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Cinella? Yes. 11 yes. Motion passes. President Cinella, take it away. I think we've got about 90 seconds inside the deadline here.