Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2026-04-27

Attendance

Jason Chen present · At-Large; Cal Finocchiaro present · Ward 6; Bradley Freeman present · President, Ex Officio; Maya Jamaleddine present, Arrived at 6:52 PM · At-Large; Manjula Karamcheti present · Ward 1; Elizabeth Kowal present · At-Large; John Obremski absent · Ward 2; Christopher Park present · Ward 3; Kimberly Vandiver present · Vice Chair; Ryan Williams present · At-Large

Agenda

1. CALL TO ORDER (0:01)
2. Attendees (0:40)
3. MINUTES APPROVAL (1:00)
4. PUBLIC COMMENT (1:10)
5. GRANTS
6. ​Acceptance of a Climate Leaders Technical Assistance Grant in the amount of $139,000 (1:40)
7. Acceptance of a FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant in the amount of $12,375.87 (49:53)
8. ORDERS
9. Informational order - Affordable Housing Trust Fund Board Update (8:25)
10. That the City Council authorize the Mayor to enter into an Intermunicipal Agreement (IMA) for establishing a regional Animal Control Officer position in partnership with the Towns of Wakefield and Stoneham. (53:36)
11. ADJOURNMENT (1:02:02)

Minutes

Appropriations & Oversight Committee Monday, April 27, 2026, 6:45 PM City Council Chamber, 1st Floor 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 MINUTES I. CALL TO ORDER Kimberly Vandiver Vice Chair Jason Chen Cal Finocchiaro Maya Jamaleddine Manjula Karamcheti Elizabeth Kowal John Obremski Christopher Park Ryan Williams William Bradley Freeman President, Ex Officio Devin Romanul Chair Meeting was called to order by Chair Romanul at 6:49 PM Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Kim Vandiver Vice Chair Present Jason Chen At-Large Present Cal Finocchiaro Ward 6 Present Maya Jamaleddine At-Large Present Arrived at 6:52 PM Manjula Karamcheti Ward 1 Present Elizabeth Kowal At-Large Present John Obremski Ward 2 Absent Christopher Park Ward 3 Present Ryan Williams At-Large Present William Bradley Freeman President, Ex Officio Present Member Devin Romanul Chair Present II. MINUTES APPROVAL 1 Motion to Approve the minutes by unanimous consent without reading made by Chair Romanul All were in favor and minutes were approved RESULT: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Maya Jamaleddine, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: John Obremski III. PUBLIC COMMENT When: Apr 27, 2026 06:45 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Topic: Appropriations & Oversight Committee Meeting Join from PC, Mac, iPad, or Android: https://cityofmelrose- org.zoom.us/j/99180785438?pwd=qMYQinOAw8kmkevcLzc0ZrGWEpNoc1.1 Passcode:263736 Webinar ID: 991 8078 5438 Motion to Open public comment made by Chair Romanul at 6:50 PM There were no comments on the floor or via Zoom Motion to Close public comment made by Chair Romanul at 6:50 PM IV. GRANTS

A. (ID # 2026-775): Acceptance of a Climate Leaders Technical Assistance Grant in the amount of $139,000 Motion to Recommend made by Councilor Williams Seconded by Councilor Karamcheti All were in favor and motion passed RESULTS: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] TO: City Council AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Maya Jamaleddine, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: John Obremski Comments and Discussion: Lori Massa presented the $139,000 Climate Leaders Technical Assistance Grant for solar panel design on a salt shed and heat pump installation at schools. This grant covers the design only and the city will apply for another grant to cover the implementation cost. The contractor will work 2 through the summer to complete the design plan. Motion by unanimous consent to take Item ID# 2026-749 out of order. All were in favor and motion passed

B. (ID # 2026-773): Acceptance of a FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant in the amount of $12,375.87 Motion to Recommend made by Councilor Williams Seconded by Councilor Vandiver All were in favor and motion passed RESULTS: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] TO: City Council AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Maya Jamaleddine, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: John Obremski Comments and Discussion: Cheif White proposed to utilize these funds to support the purchase of some critical life safety equipment, mainly 7 SCBA cylinders, self-contained breathing apparatus cylinders, and 3 multi-gas detection meters. The multi-gas meters are sophisticated devices that get used fairly a lot, so it's time to replace them when they get to the end of their life and we can't get any more parts or sensors for them. Additional funds from the city beyond this grant would cover other needs on the capital improvement plan. V. ORDERS

A. (ID # 2026-749): Informational order - Affordable Housing Trust Fund Board Update Motion to Recommend to Place on File made by Councilor Williams Seconded by Councilor Karamcheti All were in favor and motion passed RESULTS: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] TO: City Council AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Maya Jamaleddine, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams 3 NAYS: None ABSENT: John Obremski Comments and Discussion: The Affordable Housing Trust Fund board presented their mission to create and preserve diverse affordable housing in Melrose. Chair person Amy Tierney, Vice Chair Jim Oosterman and treasurer Joe Viola were present. The Trust is a statutory body that was established by the Council in 2020 in accordance with the Mass General Laws with appointed volunteers serving on it. They work to create, preserve, and support diverse affordable housing to meet the needs of low- and moderate- income households in Melrose. In Massachusetts, Affordable housing is generally defined as housing where a household spends no more than 30% of their income on housing costs. Melrose has just over 12,000 housing units and 941 of them are affordable, so that's just about 7.5%, and of that 941, 731 are senior housing. To support our work, we need to rely on many tools. This includes Chapter 40B, inclusionary zoning, state and federal subsidies, and tax credits. And the trust itself is a flexible local funding tool. In the guidelines in our application there are different types of funding we can provide, such as gap financing, enabling acquisitions of rehabilitations that create or preserve affordable housing, an opportunity to support pre-development costs to unlock potential projects, and the leveraging of other public and private financing. They also discussed the potential adoption of the Community Preservation Act (CPA), which could generate approximately $600,000 annually through a 1% property tax surcharge.

B. (ID # 2026-774): That the City Council authorize the Mayor to enter into an Intermunicipal Agreement (IMA) for establishing a regional Animal Control Officer position in partnership with the Towns of Wakefield and Stoneham. Motion to Recommend made by Councilor Finocchiaro Seconded by Councilor Karamcheti All were in favor and motion passed RESULTS: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] TO: City Council AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Maya Jamaleddine, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: John Obremski Comments and Discussion: Anthony Chui asked for the support of the Council to establish a regional animal control officer position. This would be in partnership with the towns of Wakefield and Stoneham. This position will give us more capacity to help deal with some of the issues that our constituents are seeing. This shared position would fall under the health department, and we've also budgeted for education and events that might include rabies shots clinics at a discounted price. The cities are sharing equally in 4 the cost and resources. A recent issue for residents is off-leash dogs and this resource will help to educate the public on the leash law and assist in its enforcement. This role is one of the health department's main priorities and would not have any responsibilities in pest control. The cost is approximately $30,000 per year. VI. ADJOURNMENT Motion to Adjourn by unanimous consent made by Chair Romanul at 7:51 PM All were in favor and meeting was adjourned. 5 Commonwealth of Massachusetts CONTRACTOR AUTHORIZED SIGNATORY LISTING This form is jointly issued and published by the Office of the Comptroller (CTR) and the Operational Services Division (OSD) as the default form for all Commonwealth Departments when another form is not prescribed by regulation or policy. Signature for Corporation (C or S), Partnership, Trust/Estate, Limited Liability Company, State and Local Government Entity (must match Form W-9 tax classification) Contractor Legal Name Contractor Vendor/Customer Code (if available, not the Taxpayer Identification Number or Social Security Number) INSTRUCTIONS: Any Contractor (other than a sole-proprietor or an individual contractor) must provide a listing of individuals who are authorized as legal representatives of the Contractor who can sign contracts and other legally binding documents related to the contract on the Contractor’s behalf. In addition to this listing, any state department may require additional proof of authority to sign contracts on behalf of the Contractor, or proof of authenticity of signature (a notarized signature that the Department can use to verify that the signature and date that appear on the Contract or other legal document was actually made by the Contractor’s authorized signatory, and not by a representative, designee or other individual.) For privacy purposes DO NOT ATTACH any documentation containing personal information, such as bank account numbers, Social Security Numbers, driver’s licenses, home addresses, Social Security cards, or any other personally identifiable information that you do not want released as part of a public record. The Commonwealth reserves the right to publish the names and titles of authorized signatories of contractors. There are three types of electronic signatures that will be accepted on this form: 1) Traditional “wet signature” (ink on paper); 2) Electronic signature that is either: a. hand drawn using a mouse or finger if working from a touch screen device; or b. An upload picture of the signatory’s hand drawn signature; 3) Electronic signature affixed using a digital tool such as Adobe Sign or DocuSign. Typed text of a name not generated by a digital tool, computer generated cursive, or an electronic symbol are not acceptable forms of electronic signature. Authorized Signature Title Phone Email Address Signatory Name (As it will appear on contract Number or other documents) Acceptance of any payment under a Contract or Grant shall operate as a waiver of any defense by the Contractor challenging the existence of a valid Contract due to an alleged lack of actual authority to execute the document by the signatory. I certify that I am a responsible authorized officer of the Contractor and as an authorized officer of the Contractor I certify that the names of the individuals identified on this listing are current as of the date of execution and that these individuals are authorized to sign contracts and other legally binding documents related to contracts with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on behalf of the Contractor. I understand and agree that the Contractor has a duty to ensure that this listing is immediately updated and communicated to any state department with which the Contractor does business whenever the authorized signatories above retire, are otherwise terminated from the Contractor’s employ, have their responsibilities changed resulting in their no longer being authorized to sign contracts with the Commonwealth or whenever new signatories are designated. Please note: You cannot self-certify your own signature as a single signer listed above. Signature Date Print Name Phone Number Title Email Address A copy of this listing must be attached to the “record copy” of a contract filed with the department. Page 1 of 1 OFFICE OF THE COMPTROLLER ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER (EFT) AUTHORIZATION AGREEMENT FORM Complete this form to enroll, modify, or terminate an existing Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) agreement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts departments. Part I: Reason for Submission See Instructions on Page 3 New Change Cancel Enrollment Enrollment Enrollment Doc ument Included (Optional) Voided Bank Letter Check Part II: Account Holder Information See Instructions on Page 3 Account Holder Legal Name dba Name If different from above Legal Address Number, Street, Apartment/Suite Number City State Zip Code Account Holder Employer Identification Number (EIN) Social Security Number (SSN) Tax Identification Number 9 digits Part III: Financial Institution Information See Instructions on Page 3 Financial Institution Name Routing Number Account Number Account Type Only 9 digits Checking Savings If this is an Enrollment Modification, you must include your old financial institution information or your request will be returned. Old Financial Institution Name Old Routing Number Old Account Number Old Account Type Only 9 digits Checking Savings Part IV: Vendor/Customer Information See Instructions on Page 3 This is the person we will contact for any questions regarding this EFT Authorization Contact Person’s Name Contact Person’s Title Contact Person’s Phone Contact Person’s Email This completed form should be submitted to the requesting department or the department you are currently doing business with. (Revised November 2023) Page 1 of 3 OFFICE OF THE COMPTROLLER ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER (EFT) AUTHORIZATION AGREEMENT FORM Part V: Authorization See Instructions on Page 3 By signing below, I hereby certify that the account(s) indicated on this form is under my direct control and access; therefore, I authorize the State Treasurer as fiscal agent for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to initiate, change, or cancel credit entries to the account(s) as indicated on this form. For ACH debits consistent with the International ACH Transaction (IAT) rules check one: I affirm that payments authorized by this agreement are not to an account that is subject to being transferred to a foreign bank account. I affirm that payments authorized by this agreement are to an account that is subject to being transferred to a foreign bank account. This authority is to remain in full force and effect until the Office of Comptroller (CTR) has received written notification from either me or an authorized officer of the organization of the account's termination in such time and in such a manner as to afford CTR a reasonable opportunity to act upon it. Account Holder Authorized Signature Print Name Title Date Part VI: Verification from the Commonwealth Department See Instructions on Page 3 I hereby certify the Vendor/Customer is an authorized signatory and verified by internal records and verbal confirmation initiated by our department. VCC/VCM Document ID Three letter Department Code Signature Print Name Title Phone Number Date This completed form should be submitted to the requesting department or the department you are currently doing business with. (Revised November 2023) Page 2 of 3 OFFICE OF THE COMPTROLLER ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER (EFT) AUTHORIZATION AGREEMENT FORM INSTRUCTIONS All EFT requests are subject to a 5 (five) day pre-certification period in which all accounts are verified by the qualifying financial institution before any direct deposits are made. Part I: Reason for Submission Indicate your reason for completing this form by checking the appropriate box: New EFT enrollment, a change to your EFT enrollment account information, or cancellation of your EFT enrollment. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts reserves the right to request additional documentation such as Voided Check as verification of account ownership. Part II: Account Holder Information • Account Holder Name: Enter the accounts holder legal name (individual or business name), as reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). • d/b/a Name: Enter the d/b/a name if applicable. • Street Address: Enter the account holder’s street address. Enter the account holder’s city, state, and zip code. • Account Holder Tax Identification Number: Enter the tax identification number as reported to the IRS. If the business is a group, organization or corporation, provide the Federal employer identification number (EIN). If enrolling as an individual provide your Social Security Number. Part III: Financial Institution Information • Financial Institution Name: Enter your Financial Institution’s name (this is the name of the bank or qualifying depository that will receive the funds). NOTE: The account name to which EFT payments will be paid is to the name submitted on Part II of this form. • Routing Number: Enter the bank or financial institutional nine-digit routing number, including applicable leading zeros. • Account Number: Enter the account holder’s account number with the financial institution, including applicable leading zeros. • Account Type: Select the account type (Checking or Savings). • Old Financial Institution Name: Enter your Old Financial Institution’s name (this is the name of the bank or qualifying depository that has been receiving the funds). • Old Routing Number: Enter the old bank or financial institutional nine-digit routing number, including applicable leading zeros. • Old Account Number: Enter the old account holder’s account number with the financial institution, including applicable leading zeros. • Account Type: Enter the old account type (Checking or Savings). NOTE: Supporting bank documents must be in the account holder legal name only. Part IV: Contact Information • Enter the name, title, telephone number, and email address of a contact person who can answer questions about the information submitted on this EFT Authorization Form. Part V: Authorization • By your signature on this form, you are certifying that the account is drawn in the Name of an Individual, or the Legal Business Name of the person or entity who has sole control of the account to which EFT deposits are made. • The EFT authorization form must be signed and dated by the same account holder name in Part II and include a title and telephone number. • Submit this form electronically, or mail it with with the original signature in black or blue ink to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department that you are doing business with. Part VI: Verification from the Commonwealth Department By your signature on this form, you are certifying that authentication of the vendor/customer’s authorized signatory was conducted by review of the Contractor Signatory Authorization Form (CASL) or by another internal verification process, and additional verification was conducted to confirm banking or address change request. Departments should have multiple known vendor contacts to confirm any registration change. This completed form should be submitted to the requesting department or the department you are currently doing business with. (Revised November 2023) Page 3 of 3COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS | STANDARD CONTRACT FORM This form is jointly issued and published by the Office of the Comptroller, the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, and the Operational Services Division as the default contract for all Commonwealth Departments when another form is not prescribed by regulation or policy. The Commonwealth deems void any changes made on or by attachment (in the form of addendum, engagement letters, contract forms or invoice terms) to the terms in this published form or to the Standard Contract Form Instructions and Contractor Certifications, the Commonwealth Terms and Conditions, the Commonwealth Terms and Conditions for Human and Social Services, or the Commonwealth IT Terms and Conditions which are incorporated by reference herein. Additional non-conflicting terms may be added by Attachment. Contractors are required to access forms at macomptroller.org/forms or mass.gov/lists/osd-forms. CONTRACTOR INFORMATION COMMONWEALTH INFORMATION Contractor Legal Name Department Mosaic Department Code d/b/a Contract Manager Name Legal Address Business Mailing Address As entered on Form W-9 or Form W-4 Contract Manager Name Billing Address If Different Phone Fax Phone Fax Email Email Vendor Code Mosaic Transaction ID(s) VC Vendor Code Address ID RFR/Procurement or Other ID Number e.g. “AD001”. AD Note: The Address ID must be set up for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) payments. NEW CONTRACT CONTRACT AMENDMENT Procurement or Exception Type (Check one option only) Current Contract End Date Amendment Amount PRIOR to Amendment Or Enter “No Change” Statewide Contract (OSD or an OSD-designated department.) Amendment Type Collective Purchase Check one option only. Attach details of amendment changes. (Attach OSD approval, scope, and budget.) Amendment to Date, Scope, or Budget Department Procurement - Includes all Grants 815 CMR 2.00. (Attach updated scope and budget.) (Attach Solicitation Notice or RFR, and Response or other procurement supporting documentation.) Interim Contract with Current Contractor (Attach justification for Interim Contract and updated scope/budget.) Emergency Contract (Attach justification for emergency, scope, and budget.) Contract Employee (Attach any updates to scope or budget.) Contract Employee (Attach Employee Status Form, scope, and budget.) Other Procurement Exception (Attach authorizing language/justification and updated scope/budget.) Interim Contract with new Contractor (Attach justification for Interim Contract and updated scope/budget.) Other Procurement Exception (Attach authorizing language, legislation with specific exemption or earmark, and exception justification, scope, and budget.) TERMS AND CONDITIONS The Standard Contract Form Instructions and Contractor Certifications and the following document are incorporated by reference into this Contract and are legally binding. Check ONE option: Commonwealth Terms and Conditions Commonwealth Terms and Conditions for Human and Social Services Commonwealth IT Terms and Conditions COMPENSATION Check ONE option. The Department certifies that payments for authorized performance accepted in accordance with the terms of this Contract will be supported in the state accounting system by sufficient appropriations or other non-appropriated funds, subject to intercept for Commonwealth owed debts under 815 CMR 9.00. Rate Contract (No Maximum Obligation). (Attach details of all rates, units, calculations, conditions or terms and any changes if rates or terms are being amended.) Maximum Obligation Contract. Total maximum obligation for total duration of this contract (or new total if contract is being amended): Page 1 of 2 Updated 2/23/2026 Mosaic Transaction ID(s) PROMPT PAYMENT DISCOUNTS (PPD) Commonwealth payments are issued through Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) 45 days from invoice receipt. See Prompt Pay Discounts Policy. Contractors requesting accelerated payments must identify a PPD as follows: Payment issued within: 10 days % PPD. 15 days % PPD. 20 days % PPD. 30 days % PPD. If PPD percentages are left blank, identify reason: Statutory/legal Ready Payments (M.G.L. c. 29, § 23A) Agree to standard 45-day cycle Only initial payment BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CONTRACT PERFORMANCE or REASON FOR AMENDMENT Enter the Contract title, purpose, fiscal year(s) and a detailed description of the scope of performance or what is being amended for a Contract Amendment. Attach all supporting documentation and justifications. SUPPLIER DIVERSITY PROGRAM (SDP) PLAN Does the Supplier Diversity Program apply? YES If YES, the Contractor’s annual SDP commitment for this Contract is NO If NO, and the department is an Executive Department, enter the appropriate exemption: ANTICIPATED START DATE (Complete ONE option only.) The Department and Contractor certify for this Contract, or Contract Amendment, that Contract obligations: 1. may be incurred as of the Effective Date (latest signature date below) and no obligations have been incurred prior to the Effective Date. 2. may be incurred as of , 20 , a date LATER than the Effective Date below and no obligations have been incurred prior to the Effective Date. 3. were incurred as of , 20 , a date PRIOR to the Effective Date below, and the parties agree that payments for any obligations incurred prior to the Effective Date are authorized to be made either as settlement payments or as authorized reimbursement payments, and that the details and circumstances of all obligations under this Contract are attached and incorporated into this Contract. Acceptance of payments forever releases the Commonwealth from further claims related to these obligations. CONTRACT END DATE Contract performance shall terminate as of , 20 , with no new obligations being incurred after this date unless the Contract is properly amended, provided that the terms of this Contract and performance expectations and obligations shall survive its termination for the purpose of resolving any claim or dispute, for completing any negotiated terms and warranties, to allow any close out or transition performance, reporting, invoicing or final payments, or during any lapse between amendments. CERTIFICATIONS Notwithstanding verbal or other representations by the parties, the “Effective Date” of this Contract or Amendment shall be the latest date that this Contract or Amendment has been executed by an authorized signatory of the Contractor, the Department, or a later Contract or Amendment Start Date specified above, subject to any required approvals. The Contractor certifies that they have accessed and reviewed all documents incorporated by reference as electronically published and the Contractor makes all certifications required under the Standard Contract Form Instructions and Contractor Certifications under the pains and penalties of perjury, and further agrees to provide any required documentation upon request to support compliance, and agrees that all terms governing performance of this Contract and doing business in Massachusetts are attached or incorporated by reference herein according to the following hierarchy of document precedence, the applicable Commonwealth Terms and Conditions, this Standard Contract Form, the Standard Contract Form Instructions and Contractor Certifications, the Request for Response (RFR) or other solicitation, the Contractor’s Response (excluding any language stricken by a Department as unacceptable, and additional negotiated terms, provided that additional negotiated terms will take precedence over the relevant terms in the RFR and the Contractor’s Response only if made using the process outlined in 801 CMR 21.07, incorporated herein, provided that any amended RFR or Response terms result in best value, lower costs, or a more cost effective Contract. AUTHORIZING SIGNATURE FOR THE CONTRACTOR AUTHORIZING SIGNATURE FOR THE DEPARTMENT Signature and date must be captured at time of signature. Signature and date must be captured at time of signature. Signature Date Signature Date Print Name Print Title Print Name Print Title Page 2 of 2 Updated 2/23/2026 TABLE OF CONTENTS DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY RESOURCES PON-ENE-2025-014 CLIMATE LEADER COMMUNITIES DECARBONIZATION TECHNICAL SUPPORT GRANT PROGRAM City of Melrose I. THE COMMONWEALTH STANDARD CONTRACT FORM II. BACKGROUND III. ATTACHMENT A: DOER PON-ENE-2025-014 IV. ATTACHMENT B: GRANTEE RESPONSE V. ATTACHMENT C: SCOPE OF GRANT AWARD VI. ATTACHMENT D: BUDGET VII. THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS STANDARD CONTRACT VIII. ATTACHMENTS: a. COMMONWEALTH TERMS AND CONDITIONS b. GRANTEE AUTHORIZED SIGNATORY LISTING c. W-9 FORM d. EFT FORM BACKGROUND 1. The DOER has selected the Grantee to receive Climate Leader Communities Decarbonization Technical Support Grant for projects described in the Grantee’s response to the PON. 2. The DOER approves the expenditure of funds as described in Attachment D (Budget) for the work planned and described in Attachment C (Scope of Grant Award). 3. The Grantee agrees to complete the projects described in the Scope of Grant Award (collectively referred to as “the Project”). This agreement (Agreement) incorporates and makes part hereof certain attachments and forms which have been provided and accepted by the parties as part to this Agreement. Copies of such agreed upon attachments and forms are attached hereto set forth in their entirety and made part of this Agreement by reference: THE COMMONWEALTH STANDARD CONTRACT FORM BACKGROUND ATTACHMENT A: CLIMATE LEADER COMMUNITIES DECARBONIZATION TECHNICAL SUPPORT GRANT ATTACHMENT B: GRANTEE RESPONSE ATTACHMENT C: SCOPE OF GRANT AWARD ATTACHMENT D: BUDGET THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS STANDARD CONTRACT ATTACHMENTS 1. COMMONWEALTH TERMS AND CONDITIONS 1. GRANTEE AUTHORIZED SIGNATORY LISTING 2. W-9 FORM 3. EFT FORM ATTACHMENT A – Climate Leader Communities Decarbonization Technical Support Grant Application Materials The Program Opportunity Notice (PON) was provided to the municipality via Commbuys, the Commonwealth’s procurement website. DOER PON-ENE-2025-014 Climate Leader Communities Decarbonization Technical Support Grant Program Bid #: BD-25-1041-ENE01-ENE01-110104 ATTACHMENT B – Grantee Response All documents listed below are available to DOER fiscal staff at: https://massdoer.imeetcentral.com/p/cgAAAAAAB-yoAAAAAAAAAAs • Final Attachment A- Heat Pump.xlsx • Final Attachment A- Salt Shed.xlsx • IMEG Heat Pump Project.pdf • WS Salt Shed Solar PV Design.pdf • Signed form B.pdf ATTACHMENT C – SCOPE OF GRANT AWARD COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS SCOPE OF GRANT AWARD AGREEMENT By and Between Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) and City of Melrose (Grantee) Overview This Contract is for the DOER PON-ENE-2025-014 Climate Leader Communities Decarbonization Technical Support Grant Program to provide grant monies to municipalities to pay for a consultant (Consultant) to assist certified Massachusetts’ Climate Leader Communities by offering funding for technical support that generates both recommendations and engineering design documents to implement projects that align with the Grantee's Climate Leader Communities Municipal Decarbonization Roadmap. Program Schedule The Grantee shall contact the DOER promptly if the Grantee cannot complete work prior to the end of the grant period, which shall be 9/30/2027. Disbursement of Funds • All disbursements must be submitted during the fiscal year in which they occurred • Disbursements shall be made per receipt by the DOER of the following: 1) A signed copy of the contract between the Grantee and the Consultant. 2) Consultant invoices provided to the Grantee detailing the Consultant’s services, tasks completed, and charges for services provided. 3) A REQUEST FOR PAYMENT FORM along with the Consultant invoices to the DOER. • Final payment shall be contingent upon receipt by the DOER of a one to two-page summary (Final Report) of all work provided by the Consultant and the progress of the project for which the Consultant is providing services for, as further provided below. Grantee Warrant to Keep Facility Open For projects involving services or construction at facility(s) owned by or under the control of the Grantee, the Grantee hereby warrants and certifies that there are no present plans to close or sell the facility(s) for which the grants funds are designated for, and that said facility(s) will not be closed within the next five (5) years of contract Effective Date. Administrative Costs No administrative costs are allowed for municipal Grantees. Publicity The Grantee will coordinate with the DOER on all publicity regarding this project. Reporting and Other Required Documentation A. The Grantee shall have a program to combat fraud, waste and abuse of funds and shall incorporate into its program guidance provided by the Office of the State Comptroller. B. Quarterly reports: The Grantee shall be required to file progress and financial reports once every quarter, unless specifically exempted in writing by the DOER. Quarterly reports are due by 5PM four (4) days after the completion of each of the following quarters: a. Oct 1 – Dec 30, 2025 b. Jan 1 – Mar 30, 2026 c. Apr 1 – June 30, 2026 d. July 1 – Sept 30, 2026 e. Oct 1 – Dec 30, 2026 f. Jan 1 – Mar 30, 2027 Quarterly reports shall include: a. The progress and status of activities performed in relation to the Scope of Grant Award including an explanation of any delays or obstacles encountered in meeting the performance schedule as well as a description of efforts taken to resolve delays; and b. The actual costs incurred to date by the Project, breaking down all costs in such manner as the DOER may prescribe. C. Final Report: The Final Report shall reference and detail the work completed as outlined in Attachment B, Grantee Response along with the final invoice and the Request for Payment Form. The Final Report shall be submitted electronically to the Green Communities email address, green.communities@mass.gov. D. Ownership of Reports and Other Required Documentation: The deliverables shall be owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and treated as public documents. Following the completion of the contract, both the Commonwealth and the Grantee retain the right to make further use of the deliverables. ATTACHMENT D - BUDGET Check one: X Initial Budget Budget/Account Amendment. Maximum Obligation before this Amendment: $ PRIOR MMARS DOCUMENT ID: (for reference - if applicable) CURRENT DOC ID: . [See Instructions for Additional Guidance on completion. Insert as many additional lines as necessary.] A B C D E F G H I Budget Account Object Description Initial Indicate Amendment Enter “YES” if New Amount Fiscal Class Amount / or Add or Amount Amount is a After Year Amount Prior Reduce prior FY Amendment to +/- budget Amendment reduction or a current FY “Carry-in” authorization for Federal Funds FY26 70067056 P01 $138,998.00 $ $ FY27 70067056 P01 $ 1.00 $ $ FY28 70067056 P01 $ 1.00 $ $ FISCAL YEAR SUBTOTALS AND TOTAL MAXIMUM OBLIGATION FOR DURATION OF CONTRACT FISCAL YEAR: 2026 SUBTOTAL (or New Subtotal if Fiscal Year Subtotal being amended) $138,998.00 FISCAL YEAR: 2027 SUBTOTAL (or New Subtotal if Fiscal Year Subtotal being amended) $ 1.00 FISCAL YEAR: 2028 SUBTOTAL (or New Subtotal if Fiscal Year Subtotal being amended) $ 1.00 TOTAL MAXIMUM OBLIGATION FOR DURATION OF CONTRACT $139,000.00 OFFICE OF PLANNING AND CITY OF MELROSE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT City Hall, 562 Main Street Melrose, Massachusetts 02176 LORI MASSA Telephone - (781) 979-4190 Director & City Planner M E M O R A N D U M TO: Mayor Jennifer Grigoraitis Melrose City Council FROM: Lori Massa, Director OPCD Elena Proakis Ellis, Director DPW cc: Kerriann Golden, CFO/Auditor Lauren Grymek, Chief of Staff Maya Noviski, Senior Planner DATE: April 1, 2026 RE: Climate Leaders Technical Assistance Grant Acceptance The City of Melrose has been awarded a $139,000 Climate Leaders Technical Assistance Grant from the Department of Energy Resources (DOER). The funds will go towards the design of installing solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the City’s salt shed in the DPW yard and the design of installing heat pumps at the Performing Arts Spaces at the Middle School and the School Department Central Administration Offices at the High School. The City’s salt shed, which is located in the DPW yard, was recently constructed and was designed to support solar panels with the intention of installing them when possible. This project would allow the City to use clean energy for a portion of the onsite electrical consumption. The City has been working in phases towards the decarbonization of the Middle and High Schools in line with the City's Decarbonization Roadmap. With heat pump project these areas of the schools would both be electrified and also function independently so that the systems serving the remainder of the school complex can be operated in unoccupied modes when only these spaces are occupied, resulting in further energy savings. With this technical assistance funding both projects would be construction-ready and the City would be eligible to apply for the Climate Leader Communities Decarbonization Accelerator Grant for implementation. Melrose is one of only twenty-eight communities that have the Climate Leaders designation. We hereby request that the City Council accept the grant from DOER in the amount of $139,000. The grant agreement document is attached for your reference. Thank you for your consideration of this request. FIRE DEPARTMENT Fire Headquarters, 576 Main Street John J. White Melrose, Massachusetts 02176 Chief of Department Telephone - (781) 979-4404 DATE: March 31, 2026 TO: City of Melrose – City Council RE: FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant Award _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Honorable Members of the City Council, I am writing to inform you that the Melrose Fire Department has been awarded grant funding from the Executive Office of Public Safety & Security Department of Fire Services in the amount of $12,375.87. The Department proposes utilizing these funds to support the purchase of critical life safety equipment, seven (7) self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) cylinders and three (3) multi-gas detection meters. The seven SCBA cylinders will be utilized as spare bottles, allowing personnel to remain in immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH) environments for longer durations by supporting rapid cylinder exchange during extended or consecutive fire incidents. This added capacity reduces operational delays and enhances firefighter safety by ensuring continuous and reliable air supply. The multi-gas meters will be assigned to each frontline apparatus (Ladder 1, Engine 2, and Engine 3), ensuring that every responding unit is equipped with dependable equipment to monitor hazardous atmospheric conditions and support safe decision- making on scene. This funding will allow the Department to improve equipment reliability, reduce the risk of in-service equipment failure, and strengthen the ability to safely and effectively respond to emergencies. The Department respectfully requests approval to proceed with the purchase of this equipment utilizing the awarded grant funds. Thank you for your continued support of our personnel and the safety of our community. Respectfully submitted, John J. White Chief of Department OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS STATE HOUSE BOSTON, MA 02133 (617) 725-4000 MAURA T. HEALEY KIMBERLEY DRISCOLL GOVERNOR LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR March 31, 2026 Chief John White City of Melrose 576 Main Street Melrose, MA 02176 Dear Chief White, Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security and the Department of Fire Services (DFS) has awarded the City of Melrose Fire Department $12,375.87 of funding for the Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant Program in State Fiscal Year 2026. With each new challenge, the fire service in Massachusetts demonstrates its ability to adapt, overcome, and continue providing the excellent level of services that the citizens of the Commonwealth have come to expect. Please know how thankful I am for this, and how grateful I am to be able to provide your department with this important equipment. The contract, terms and conditions, and other documents for this program will be provided to you by DFS. Please contact Tim Moore at DFS with any questions about this award at 978-567-3721 or Timothy.Moore@mass.gov for contract terms, conditions, and other award documents. Sincerely, GOVERNOR MAURA T. HEALEY LT. GOVERNOR KIMBERLEY DRISCOLL COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS | STANDARD CONTRACT FORM This form is jointly issued and published by the Office of the Comptroller, the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, and the Operational Services Division as the default contract for all Commonwealth Departments when another form is not prescribed by regulation or policy. The Commonwealth deems void any changes made on or by attachment (in the form of addendum, engagement letters, contract forms or invoice terms) to the terms in this published form or to the Standard Contract Form Instructions and Contractor Certifications, the Commonwealth Terms and Conditions, the Commonwealth Terms and Conditions for Human and Social Services, or the Commonwealth IT Terms and Conditions which are incorporated by reference herein. Additional non-conflicting terms may be added by Attachment. Contractors are required to access forms at macomptroller.org/forms or mass.gov/lists/osd-forms. CONTRACTOR INFORMATION COMMONWEALTH INFORMATION Contractor Legal Name Department Mosaic Department Code City of Melrose Department of Fire Services DFS d/b/a Contract Manager Name David Clemons Legal Address Business Mailing Address As entered on Form W-9 or Form W-4 P.O. Box 1025, Stow, MA 01775 562 Main St, Melrose, MA 02176 Contract Manager Name Billing Address If Different Chief John White N/A Phone Fax Phone Fax 781-979-4403 781-662-2304 978-567-3179 978-567-3121 Email Email jwhite@cityofmelrose.org David.Clemons@mass.gov Vendor Code VC6000192115 Mosaic Transaction ID(s) CT-DFS-1000-2026FFEGRANT00000000 Vendor Code Address ID RFR/Procurement or Other ID Number e.g. “AD001”. AD001 BD-26-1021-DFS-DFS01-126740 Note: The Address ID must be set up for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) payments. NEW CONTRACT CONTRACT AMENDMENT Procurement or Exception Type (Check one option only) Current Contract End Date Amendment Amount PRIOR to Amendment Or Enter “No Change” Statewide Contract (OSD or an OSD-designated department.) Amendment Type Collective Purchase Check one option only. Attach details of amendment changes. (Attach OSD approval, scope, and budget.) Amendment to Date, Scope, or Budget Department Procurement - Includes all Grants 815 CMR 2.00. (Attach updated scope and budget.) ✔ (Attach Solicitation Notice or RFR, and Response or other procurement supporting documentation.) Interim Contract with Current Contractor (Attach justification for Interim Contract and updated scope/budget.) Emergency Contract (Attach justification for emergency, scope, and budget.) Contract Employee (Attach any updates to scope or budget.) Contract Employee (Attach Employee Status Form, scope, and budget.) Other Procurement Exception (Attach authorizing language/justification and updated scope/budget.) Interim Contract with new Contractor (Attach justification for Interim Contract and updated scope/budget.) Other Procurement Exception (Attach authorizing language, legislation with specific exemption or earmark, and exception justification, scope, and budget.) TERMS AND CONDITIONS The Standard Contract Form Instructions and Contractor Certifications and the following document are incorporated by reference into this Contract and are legally binding. Check ONE option: Commonwealth Terms and Conditions Commonwealth Terms and Conditions for Human and Social Services Commonwealth IT Terms and Conditions COMPENSATION Check ONE option. The Department certifies that payments for authorized performance accepted in accordance with the terms of this Contract will be supported in the state accounting system by sufficient appropriations or other non-appropriated funds, subject to intercept for Commonwealth owed debts under 815 CMR 9.00. Rate Contract (No Maximum Obligation). (Attach details of all rates, units, calculations, conditions or terms and any changes if rates or terms are being amended.) Maximum Obligation Contract. Total maximum obligation for total duration of this contract (or new total if contract is being amended): $12,375.87 Page 1 of 2 Updated 2/23/2026 Mosaic Transaction ID(s) CT-DFS-1000-2026FFEGRANT00000000 PROMPT PAYMENT DISCOUNTS (PPD) Commonwealth payments are issued through Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) 45 days from invoice receipt. See Prompt Pay Discounts Policy. Contractors requesting accelerated payments must identify a PPD as follows: Payment issued within: 10 days 0% PPD. 15 days 0% PPD. 20 days 0% PPD. 30 days 0% PPD. If PPD percentages are left blank, identify reason: Statutory/legal Ready Payments (M.G.L. c. 29, § 23A) Agree to standard 45-day cycle Only initial payment BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CONTRACT PERFORMANCE or REASON FOR AMENDMENT Enter the Contract title, purpose, fiscal year(s) and a detailed description of the scope of performance or what is being amended for a Contract Amendment. Attach all supporting documentation and justifications. This contract is for funds awarded through the Department of Fire Services’ FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant, in accordance with the FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant Program Notice of Funding Opportunity, the contractor’s FY26 Application, and the attached Contract Addendum. Funds for this program will be disbursed on a reimbursement basis only. SUPPLIER DIVERSITY PROGRAM (SDP) PLAN Does the Supplier Diversity Program apply? YES If YES, the Contractor’s annual SDP commitment for this Contract is NO If NO, and the department is an Executive Department, enter the appropriate exemption: Non-construction grants to public entities ANTICIPATED START DATE (Complete ONE option only.) The Department and Contractor certify for this Contract, or Contract Amendment, that Contract obligations: 1. may be incurred as of the Effective Date (latest signature date below) and no obligations have been incurred prior to the Effective Date. ✔ 2. may be incurred as of , 20, a date LATER than the Effective Date below and no obligations have been incurred prior to the Effective Date. 3. were incurred as of , 20, a date PRIOR to the Effective Date below, and the parties agree that payments for any obligations incurred prior to the Effective Date are authorized to be made either as settlement payments or as authorized reimbursement payments, and that the details and circumstances of all obligations under this Contract are attached and incorporated into this Contract. Acceptance of payments forever releases the Commonwealth from further claims related to these obligations. CONTRACT END DATE Contract performance shall terminate as of June 30, 2026, with no new obligations being incurred after this date unless the Contract is properly amended, provided that the terms of this Contract and performance expectations and obligations shall survive its termination for the purpose of resolving any claim or dispute, for completing any negotiated terms and warranties, to allow any close out or transition performance, reporting, invoicing or final payments, or during any lapse between amendments. CERTIFICATIONS Notwithstanding verbal or other representations by the parties, the “Effective Date” of this Contract or Amendment shall be the latest date that this Contract or Amendment has been executed by an authorized signatory of the Contractor, the Department, or a later Contract or Amendment Start Date specified above, subject to any required approvals. The Contractor certifies that they have accessed and reviewed all documents incorporated by reference as electronically published and the Contractor makes all certifications required under the Standard Contract Form Instructions and Contractor Certifications under the pains and penalties of perjury, and further agrees to provide any required documentation upon request to support compliance, and agrees that all terms governing performance of this Contract and doing business in Massachusetts are attached or incorporated by reference herein according to the following hierarchy of document precedence, the applicable Commonwealth Terms and Conditions, this Standard Contract Form, the Standard Contract Form Instructions and Contractor Certifications, the Request for Response (RFR) or other solicitation, the Contractor’s Response (excluding any language stricken by a Department as unacceptable, and additional negotiated terms, provided that additional negotiated terms will take precedence over the relevant terms in the RFR and the Contractor’s Response only if made using the process outlined in 801 CMR 21.07, incorporated herein, provided that any amended RFR or Response terms result in best value, lower costs, or a more cost effective Contract. AUTHORIZING SIGNATURE FOR THE CONTRACTOR AUTHORIZING SIGNATURE FOR THE DEPARTMENT Signature and date must be captured at time of signature. Signature and date must be captured at time of signature. Signature Date Signature Date Print Name Print Title Print Name Print Title Jennifer Grigoraitis Mayor Jon M. Davine State Fire Marshal Page 2 of 2 Updated 2/23/2026 Department of Fire Services and the City of Melrose Contract Addendum for Discretionary Grant Agreement FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant Scope of Work and Budget Authorization: The Department of Fire Services (DFS) is authorized to administer discretionary FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment grant funds in accordance with Line Item 8324-2000 of Section 2D of Chapter 151 of the Acts of 2020, Line Item 1100-2515 of Section 2 of Chapter 140 of the Acts of 2022, and 815 CMR 2.00. Introduction: This entire agreement (the “Grant Agreement”) between the parties consists of the following documents: (1) the Commonwealth’s Standard Terms and Conditions; (2) the Commonwealth’s Standard Contract Form; (3) this Addendum; (4) the FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant Notice of Funding Opportunity and Application Form BD-26-1021-DFS- DFS01-126740; and (5) the Grant Recipient’s (the “Grantee”) application for FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant funding. Grant Project Description and Budget: The awarded funding shall be used only to purchase the equipment listed below. The quantities and unit prices of these items shown in the Grantee’s application shall be considered estimates only and may be adjusted at the discretion of the Grantee to account for changes to market conditions, the Grantee’s operational needs, or the total grant award amount. All items listed shall be construed to include any ancillary equipment typically necessary for operation of said equipment (batteries, chargers, mounting stations, carrying cases, etc.). Department Description of Allowable Equipment City of Melrose Combustible Gas Detector/4-Gas Meter SCBA Bottle Total Award $12,375.87 The funds may not be used to serve as a match for a federal grant. The funds may not be used for construction and all applicable local and state procurement requirements must be adhered to in the use of the grant funds. Grant Manager: The DFS and the grantee will each assign a grant manager with respect to this Grant Agreement. It is anticipated that the grant manager listed in the Grantee’s application will not change during the term of this agreement. In the event that a change is necessary, the party requesting the change will provide prompt written notice to the other. The DFS Grant Manager will monitor the grant and grant-supported activities to ensure compliance with grant requirements, work closely with the Grantee to assure successful completion of the grant performance goals, provide technical assistance upon request, and review and approve required reporting/reimbursement request documentation. The Grantee’s grant manager will serve as the interface between DFS and all Grantee personnel involved with this program. The Grantee’s grant manager will oversee the projects and activities that must be executed to meet the grant funding goals, will monitor the grant to assure the objectives are being met, funds are utilized efficiently and communicate necessary adjustments to the DFS grant manager if challenges arise, will facilitate regular communication with the DFS grant manager, including status reports/updates, participation in site visits, review of performance against the Grant Agreement, and will provide accurate and timely reporting to the DFS grant manager. The grantee’s grant manager is Chief John White, who can be reached at: 576 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176, tel: 781-979-4403, email: jwhite@cityofmelrose.org. The DFS grant manager is David Clemons, Director of Operations, 1 State Road, Stow, MA 01775, tel: 978- 567-3179, email: David.Clemons@mass.gov. Reimbursement Request Process: The DFS agrees to disburse funds on a cost reimbursement basis. All costs requested for reimbursement must be listed on the DFS FY26 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant Reimbursement Request Form. Appropriate supporting documentation for all costs must also be attached, including: 1. Copy of invoice 2. Proof of payment – Cancelled check or similar other proof of payment documentation from the Grantee’s official accounting system or financial institution showing that the transaction has been completed. Period of Performance: Approved expenditures may not be made until a contract has been executed between DFS and the grant recipient. Expenses incurred prior to execution of a contract will not be eligible for reimbursement through this program. Grant recipients must take delivery of equipment no later than June 30, 2026. Equipment delivered to the recipient after that date will not be eligible for reimbursement through this program. Reimbursement requests must be submitted no later than July 24, 2026. DFS will only reimburse for costs incurred through the grant performance period, June 30, 2026. Grant Monitoring: The Department of Fire Services will conduct grant monitoring through either a desk-based review or on-site monitoring visits, or both, in order to obtain additional information or verify information related to grant spending, grant-funded activity, or grant award outcomes. Advance notice, when practicable, will be given prior to a site visit. In accordance with 815 CMR 2.00, the Grantee shall maintain records, books, files, reports, and other data in such detail as shall properly substantiate claims for payment for a minimum retention period of seven years beginning on the first day after the final payment under the grant. Any and all records pertaining to this grant are subject to inspection or audit by DFS at any time. DFS reserves the right to request, and the Grantee expressly agrees to provide, any additional records or documentation DFS deems necessary, at any time and for any reason, to verify that grant funds are being expended in a manner consistent with the stated purpose of the grant. Findings of non-compliance with any portion of this agreement may result in a demand for funds to be returned to DFS. Changes in Scope of Work or Budget: The grant project description and budget are fixed and any change would be a “material” change in the contract. “Material” changes to the project description (adding, deleting or altering items) or budget lines (deletions, additions or changes to items) will require both parties to execute an amended Standard Contract Form and Grant Agreement. Contract amendments may not be made retroactively and must be made prior to the grant end date. Opportunity to Consult with Counsel: Grantee acknowledges that it has had the opportunity to consult with counsel of its choosing in the review of this Agreement, that it is encouraged by the DFS to do so and that the Grantee is fully aware of the contents of this agreement and its legal effect. Representations: The individuals signing this agreement attest that they are competent and authorized to enter into this Agreement on behalf of their respective agencies. Approved by: Approved by: City of Melrose Department of Fire Services Jennifer Grigoraitis, Mayor Jon Davine, State Fire Marshal Print Name and Title Print Name and Title Date Date April 2026 | Presentation to Melrose Affordable Housing Trust Melrose City CouncilIntroductions Amy Tierney, Chair Jim Oosterman, Vice Chair Helena Widtfeldt, Clerk Joe Viola, TreasurerWhat Is the Melrose Affordable Housing Trust? • Established by City Council vote under M.G.L. c. 44 §55 • Volunteer board appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by City Council • Supported by City staff in the ​​Office of Planning and Community Development Mission MAHTF seeks to create, preserve and support diverse affordable housing to meet the needs of low- and moderate-income households in Melrose over their lifespan, in collaboration with municipal and community partners.Why Are We Here? • City Master Plan Melrose’s • 2022 – 2027 Housing Production Plan goals Commitment to • Alignment with state housing and planning priorities • Community values: inclusivity, stability, and Affordable Housing sustainability • Stable housing strengthens families Why This Matters • Diverse housing supports economic vitality • Local action helps protect community character What Is Affordable Housing? • In Massachusetts, Affordable Housing is defined as housing that is deed-restricted to be affordable to eligible low- and moderate-income residents without paying more than 30% of their annual household income • Includes subsidized, deed-restricted, inclusionary units • Naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) is not deed-restricted • In Melrose, inclusionary units are set for households earning up to 80% of Area Median Income (AMI) • AMI is set annually by HUD – Melrose is in the Boston metro area 2025 Income Limits (by AMI) HH Size 30% AMI 50% AMI 60% AMI 80% AMI 1 $34,750 $57,900 $69,480 $92,650 2 $39,700 $66,200 $79,440 $105,850 3 $44,650 $74,450 $89,340 $119,100 4 $49,600 $82,700 $99,240 $132,300 Housing Needs in Melrose • Rising home prices and rents • Median s.f. home ($970k) up ~42% since 2020 • Median condo ($525k) up ~8% since 2020 • Avg rent ($2,959) up ~29% since 2020 • Seniors seeking to age in place • Young families and workforce households (i.e. retail workers, municipal employees, healthcare workers, etc.) • Residents with disabilities and households on fixed incomesMelrose by Population: approximately 29,871 the Median household income: about $133,953 Numbers Median home value: about $970,000 d Median rent: about $2,970 per month Total housing units in Melrose: about 12,711 Total rental units: about 4,169Who Is Struggling With Housing Costs in Melrose? • 30% of all households are cost-burdened • 13.9% are severely cost-burdened • 3,173 homes are owned by households over 60 years old • Renters experience higher cost burden than homeowners • Seniors face limited affordable,appropriately sized housing optionsWho are the Key Collaborators Around Affordable Housing in Melrose? • City of Melrose • Melrose Affordable Housing Trust • Melrose Housing Authority • Melrose Affordable Housing Corporation • Congregational Retirement Homes/Cefalo Memorial Complex • Private and nonprofit developers • State and federal partners – North Suburban Consortium Affordable Housing in Melrose Today • Total housing units = 12,711 • Total affordable units = 941Types of Affordable Housing in Melrose • Units monitored by various entities • Affordable housing for seniors remains limited relative to needWhere Affordable Housing Is Located in Melrose • Affordable housing located across multiple neighborhoods • Variety of housing types and scalesAffordable Housing Tools • Affordable Housing Trust • North Suburban Consortium (NSC) • Government subsidies • Inclusionary Zoning • Chapter 40BRole of the Melrose Affordable Housing Trust • Grant funds in order to create, preserve and support affordable housing • Guidelines and Application for Funds • Parameters for funding • Defined Selection Criteria • Sets Goals for next 5 years • Leverage City, state, and federal funding • Partner with nonprofit and private developers • Steward long-term affordabilityCurrent and Recent Trust Activities • 2025 Massachusetts Housing Partnership Technical Assistance grant (January 2025 - October 2025) • Meet several times a month as a Board and in subcommittees with MHP Technical Staff • Developed Mission Statement, Goals & Strategies reflected in Guidelines & Application • Melrose Affordable Housing Corporation (MAHC) project at West Wyoming Avenue • Private owner approached MAHC regarding buying 3 units • MAHC worked with private lender and NSC to secure financing for $900,000 purchase • Trust granted MAHC $140,000 • Yielded 3 deed-restricted affordable units in perpetuity • Held a public listening session with Melrose Housing Authority & MAHC • Mayor’s Melrose Minute Trust Goals Over the Next 5 Years • Community education and outreach • Develop minimum of 3 community outreach efforts a year • Sustainable and diverse funding sources • Identify sources to secure $3M over 5 years • Affordable housing development and preservation pipeline • Support creation of 150 or more homes for rent or ownershipHow We Do This Together: Today and in the Future • How the Trust works • Collaborates with various City departments & boards to support affordable housing initiatives • Coordinates with interested stakeholders • Engages residents through public meetings and future listening sessions • How the Trust is funded today ($519,901.28) • City appropriations of free cash • Developer contributions through inclusionary zoning payment in lieu • How Melrose can expand impact of Trust • Community Preservation Act (CPA) • Strategic use of City-owned property • Possible expansion of funding to Homeownership Down Payment Assistance, etc. • Expanded nonprofit and private partnershipsHow City Engage in Affordable Housing Council Can conversations and efforts Partner with the Trust Support the Trust through Free Cash appropriations Place CPA on the ballotThank You/ Questions Melrose Affordable Housing Trust Amy Tierney, Chair Jim Oosterman, Vice Chair Helena Widtfeldt, Clerk Joe Viola, Treasurer MELROSE AFFORDABLE HOUSING TRUST FUND Guidelines and Application Fall 2025 Melrose Affordable Housing Trust Fund Guidelines and Application TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I: INTRODUCTION a. Mission statement b. Administrative structure c. Roles and responsibilities Part II: POLICIES a. Goals and strategies b. Eligibility activities for project funding c. Affordability priorities Part III: PROCEDURES a. Application process b. Selection criteria c. Project monitoring and compliance d. Funding application 1 Part I: INTRODUCTION Established in 2020 by the Mayor and City Council, the Melrose Affordable Housing Trust Fund (MAHTF) provides for the creation and preservation of affordable housing within the City of Melrose to promote greater diversity and racial equity in the community and for the benefit of low- to moderate-income households in accordance with the provisions of M.G.L. Chapter 44, Section 55c. These guidelines detail the operational framework and funding parameters of the MAHTF. They are subject to amendments and modifications in accordance with the changing needs and resources of the MAHTF. a. Mission Statement MAHTF seeks to create, preserve and support diverse affordable housing to meet the needs of low- and moderate-income households in Melrose over their lifespan, in collaboration with municipal and community partners. b. Administrative Structure i. Board of Trustees The MAHTF is administered by a five-person Board of Trustees (“Trustees”), including the Mayor or Mayor’s designee. Trustees serve for two (2) year terms and are appointed by the Mayor. A Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer and Clerk are elected annually by the Trustees. ii. Staffing Members of the City’s Office of Planning and Community Development provide staffing support to the MAHTF. The City Treasurer serves as the Custodian of Funds, managing expenditures of the trust and periodically providing an accounting of activities to the board. iii. Meetings The Board typically meets on the second Monday of the month at City Hall. iv. Funding The MAHTF primarily receives funds from payments as specified in the inclusionary housing requirements in Melrose’s Zoning Ordinance. The Board will be seeking other funding sources such as donations and making requests for free cash. c. Roles and Responsibilities i. Powers As outlined in the MAHTF ordinance, the Board is given 17 powers, 2 including but not limited to: the right to receive, purchase, and convey real or personal property; purchase and retain real or personal property; sell, lease, convey any personal, missed or real property; execute deeds, assignments, transfers related to any transaction of the trustees; employ advisors and agents, such as accountants, appraisers and lawyers; and borrow money. The Trust ordinance limits powers in two ways, 1) the conveyance of any real property shall require the approval of the Mayor and City Council; and, 2) any debt incurred by the Trust shall not constitute a pledge of the full faith and credit of the City of Melrose. Part II: POLICIES a. Goals and Strategies To help accomplish the following goals and strategies, the Board will follow an implementation plan that outlines specific tasks for each strategy with an expected timeframe for completion. Funding - Identify sustainable and diverse funding sources to secure $3 million over five years to support the work of the trust. i. Establish a process for accepting donations to the trust fund. ii. Work toward the implementation of a real estate transfer fee with most of the revenue being allocated to the trust fund. iii. Participate in teaching the community about the Community Preservation Act and advocate for the city’s adoption of the statute. iv. Request an annual allocation of free cash be directed to the trust fund. Development – Over the next five years, support the creation of 150 or more homes, for rent or ownership, affordable for people earning up to 80% AMI. i. With the city, identify one to two municipal sites to use for affordable housing development. ii. Support the permitting process of at least 1-2 developments that include affordable homes. iii. Explore programs that may support homeownership or housing access for low- and moderate-income households. 3 iv. Develop process and criteria for allocating trust funds. Education & Outreach - Develop a minimum of three outreach efforts a year to educate the community about local housing needs and build support for more affordable housing. i. Build out the trust’s webpage with information about the trust and housing resources. ii. Initiate an annual Melrose Minute segment to focus on the local need for more affordable housing and the work of the trust. iii. Build trust with community partners through quarterly meetings to share ideas and identify areas to collaborate to address local housing needs. iv. Review upcoming City events and identify opportunities for the trust to participate. b. Eligible Activities for Project Funding The MAHTF is seeking applications for projects that will result in increased housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income households in the City of Melrose. Eligible activities may be periodically amended by the MAHTF board. i. Acquisition Includes costs associated with land/property acquisition for future affordable housing development. This may include acquisition-related costs such as closing costs and a certified real estate appraisal to establish fair market value, required for funding. While this funding activity is primarily intended for non-profit and emerging affordable housing developers, it could be available in other circumstances. ii. Predevelopment Includes determining the viability of residential development on a particular site, including costs related to architectural, engineering and consultant fees; financialfeasibility analyses; 21E report; pro forma projections and other costs associated with examining the feasibility of an affordable housing development. Up to $75,000 is available per project, but the Board will consider a larger award if a qualifying proposal warrants it. For non-public proposals, funds allocated for pre-development activities will be secured by a mortgage and promissory note to be converted to a forgivable loan upon the creation of affordable housing 4 on the site. iii. Rehabilitation Includes support to rehabilitate existing housing into affordable housing. iv. New construction/Redevelopment Includes gap funding, where there is a demonstrated shortfall of private and public funding, to support the development of new affordable housing or the redevelopment of a site into affordable housing. c. Affordability Priorities The MAHTF defines low- and moderate-income as those earning up to 80% of the area median income (AMI) as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Development (HUD). However, the Board will give higher weight to development proposals that include some units for households earning 60% AMI and below. For informational purposes, the table below outlines the 2025 income limits by area median income (AMI), provided by HUD, for the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy Metropolitan Statistical Area that the MAHTF intends to support through funding: 2025 Income Limits HH Size (by AMI) 30% AMI 50% AMI 60% AMI 80% AMI 1 $34,750 $57,900 $69,480 $92,650 2 $39,700 $66,200 $79,440 $105,850 3 $44,650 $74,450 $89,340 $119,100 4 $49,600 $82,700 $99,240 $132,300 Link to HUD Income Limits for Melrose Part III: PROCEDURES a. Application Process i. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. All submissions, scheduling and communications will be through the City of Melrose’s Office of Planning and Community Development. ii. City staff will review applications and may request additional information prior to review by the MAHTF Board. Staff may recommend that Applicants submit a Preliminary Application to seek initial feedback on a 5 proposal, which may include an in-person conversation with the MAHTF Board. iii. All applicants that submit a Final Application will be expected to meet with the Board to discuss their proposal and answer any questions. iv. Trustees will score proposals according to the Selection Criteria outlined below and vote on the application request. v. Upon approval, the MAHTF will issue an award letter including the purpose and scope of the project, projected timeframe, approved funding amount for the project and the structure of funds. Awards structured as loans will be filed as mortgages at the Registry of Deeds. Upon denial, the MAHTF will provide a letter stating the reason(s) for the denial. vi. Awardees are expected to provide annual updates to staff in the Melrose Office of Planning and Community Development throughout the term of the funding allocation. b. Selection Criteria The Trustees will apply the following scoring criteria in its review of applications. Proposals must receive points in each category, receiving a minimum of 50 points to be eligible for funding. Meeting every criterion may not guarantee a funding award. Total Selection Criteria Description Points The applicant has completed development projects of similar scale and scope as the proposed project. The applicant is 25 Development Team capable of financing, developing and successfully managing Capacity projects upon occupancy. Applicants will receive consideration for contracting with a development consultant and/or partnering with a more experienced affordable housing developer. The applicant has demonstrated that the proposed 25 Development development is financially feasible, identifying sufficient Feasibility and financing sources for all project uses. Site control has been Timeline obtained (if needed) and there is a clear path to receiving necessary zoning and other public approvals. The proposed timeline is realistic and achievable. The proposed project will create new rental or homeownership affordable housing opportunities that target lower income 25 Affordability households. At a minimum, units subsidized with Trust Fund Objectives support must be affordable at 80% AMI or lower, however projects serving lower income households (i.e. 60%, 50%, 30% AMI), and those that provide a greater portion of total affordable units targeted to lower income households will receive higher evaluation scores. All units created with MAHTF 6 resources must meet and comply with requirements established by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) for the Subsidized Housing Inventory (SHI). The proposal maximizes access to affordable housing and includes additional project elements such as (but not limited 15 Other Housing to) services and programming appropriate to the targeted Objectives populations, perpetual affordability restrictions, preference for disadvantaged households, green building practices, and/or the inclusion of spaces that benefit members of the general public, as appropriate. The proposed project is consistent with the goals/objectives of 10 Alignment with City and meets the housing needs identified in the City's Housing Plans Production Plan and Master Plan and addresses gaps in the current supply & cost of rental/homeownership units in Melrose. c. Project Monitoring and Compliance The MAHTF, with support from the Office of Planning and Community Development, will work with the Commonwealth’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) and the project sponsor to ensure units funded by the MAHTF and intended for the SHI meet all requirements to be counted. This will include annual monitoring of the units. d. Funding Application Application material requirements can be found in the funding application form. 7 CITY OF MELROSE HEALTH DEPARTMENT DEDDDDDEPTDEPARTMENT DDEPARTMENT HERE Board of Health Health Director City Hall, 562 Main Street Frank Brincheiro, MD Anthony Chui, MPH Melrose, Massachusetts 02176 Lillian Kelly R.N. Telephone - (781)979-4130 Carol Ann Licitra, L.M.H.C. health@cityofmelrose.org To: Members of the Melrose City Council From: Melrose Health Department Subject: Proposal for a Regional Animal Control Officer Position Date: April 1, 2026 The Melrose Health Department requests the City Council’s support for establishing a regional Animal Control Officer position in partnership with the Towns of Wakefield and Stoneham. This proposal builds on the existing Intermunicipal Agreement, through which the three communities already share several public health positions. The success of that collaboration demonstrates the value of coordinated regional services and provides a framework for expanding our shared capacity. Animal control needs across the region have grown in both volume and complexity. Incidents involving domestic animals and community education require a consistent approach. Currently, each municipality manages these responsibilities independently, which can lead to gaps in coverage, uneven enforcement, and limited ability to provide proactive outreach to residents. A regional Animal Control Officer would allow the three communities to respond more effectively to these challenges. This shared position would strengthen public health and safety by ensuring timely responses to domestic animal-related incidents. It would also promote consistent enforcement of regulations such as licensing, vaccination compliance, and leash laws, while expanding our capacity to educate residents on responsible pet ownership and the prevention of zoonotic diseases. By distributing the cost of the position across three municipalities, the regional model offers a cost-effective approach that enhances service quality without duplicating resources. Given the success of the current Intermunicipal Agreement, the addition of a regional Animal Control Officer can be implemented efficiently within the existing administrative structure. A regional Animal Control Officer represents a strategic investment in public health, community safety, and intermunicipal cooperation. Sincerely, Anthony Chui Regional Health and Human Services Director achui@cityofmelrose.org (781) 979-4130

Transcript

▶ 0:01 Devin Romanul: Good evening. Progress. Welcome back from April break, everybody. Woo-hoo. For the parents in the room, fantastic to be back in school. Good evening. The time is 6:45 on Monday, April 27th, 2026. This is a meeting of the Appropriations and Oversight Committee. My name is Devin Romano. I am the chair. I'm also joined this evening by Vice Chair Vandiver, Councilors Chen, Finocchiaro, Karimcheti, Cowell, Park, and President Freeman. And Williams. Oh, and Williams. I'm sorry. Look, you know what? Unreal. Councilor- It's because you were sitting back in your chair. My big hair was hiding it. Exactly. Forgive me. As well as Councilor Williams. Working on my type one for standup tonight. If you wouldn't have said anything, I honestly would've just-

▶ 0:51 Devin Romanul: This serves as a, believe it or not, a notice of quorum for the record. In accordance with the Open Meeting Law, this meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV. At this time, I'll motion by unanimous consent to approve without reading the minutes from our most recent meeting on April 6th. Seeing no objection, those minutes are now approved. I will now motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment. Seeing no objection, the floor is open for public comment. This is the portion of the meeting where members of the public may speak on any item on tonight's agenda. Comments expressing any viewpoints on other matters are also welcome. Do we have any members of the public who would like to

▶ 1:29 Devin Romanul: have a chat? No. Do we have anybody online? No one online. All right. If there's no objection, I will motion by unanimous consent to close public comment. Seeing none, we are now closed for public comment. First item on our agenda tonight is ID number 2026-775, acceptance of a Climate Leaders Technical Assistance Grant in the amount of $139,000. Joining us this evening is Lori Massa. Good evening. Thank you for coming. Hello, good evening. Thank you for having me. So I'm here tonight to request acceptance of the $139,000 of the Climate Leaders Technical Assistance Grant. This is from the Department of Energy Resources. And this money would go towards technical assistance for the design for placing solar panels on the salt shed in the DPW yard,

▶ 2:20 and also, the design for installing heat pumps at the middle school auditorium and the high school, the administrative offices there. So both of these projects would advance our climate goals of electrifying our buildings, and then also with the heat pumps for the middle school and the high school, those portions of the building would be able to be heated and cooled in separate from the rest of the school, which would have big energy savings. And also with this project, with the design of the project, we would then have the construction-ready plans to be eligible to apply for Climate Leaders Community Decarbonization Accelerator Grant for implementation. And we are a climate leader, and so therefore, we have the ability

▶ 3:15 Cal Finocchiaro: to apply for these grants, and the number of applicants is fairly low at this point. We're pretty progressive in our energy sustainability efforts in Melrose. So, we hear it, we'll likely get the grant to implement these projects. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. We're also joined by Councilor Jamaleddine. Good evening. Thanks. Up first, I have Councilor Finocchiaro. Thank you. Thank you for being here. So you sort of answered the question. I think I was premature with my asking a question. So the grant is for the design of both- Mm-hmm ... items, and then once the design is done, you'll know approximately what the cost would be to get them implemented? Yes. That would be part of it.

▶ 4:01 Ryan Williams: And then you'd go back to request another grant? Right. Okay. Yes. And you think that the $139,000 will cover the design, or do you foresee it being more than that? We've gotten estimates and are confident with that number. Okay. All right. Thank you. Up next, I have Councilor Williams. Thank you. It's great to see that we're continuing Melrose's very strong history of sustainability and energy innovation. I know Martha would be happy to see the work that she sort of kicked off move forward. And I want to make a motion to recommend this to the full council. Second. We have a motion to recommend by Councilor Williams, seconded by Councilor Karamcheti on discussion. Up first, I have Councilor Chen.

▶ 4:47 Are we putting this out to bid for two different contractors, one for an HVAC designer, and then another one for a solar architect? We actually have the contractors in place already through the proper procurement. So Elena Proakis-Ellis is a partner in this project, and so she would have more detail on exactly who those people are. But we have checked that we are able to use those contractors to continue the design. So for the salt shed, it was originally designed with the intention that we would put solar panels on that, so we're able to use, I believe it's Weston & Sampson to continue the design within the law of being able to use the grant and also the state procurement laws. And then the same for the middle school and high

▶ 5:43 school project. Thank you. Up next, I have Councilor Park. Thank you. Lori, thank you for presenting this. As you know, through our previous meetings during the capital improvement project, I'm a big fan of trying to decrease costs anywhere we can. I'm curious, have you done anycost analysis savings and potentially what we could be gaining in terms of installing these solar panels on the shed as well as the heat pumps in the schools. I don't have that information, but we do work with engineers that come up with those calculations. So, that is a big advantage, not only advancing our climate goals, but reducing the utility costs. Absolutely. It'd be a great thing for us to broadcast that in addition

▶ 6:35 Bradley Freeman: to just using it from funds outside of the revenue that we, or the levies that we get from the city, but, just a way that we're proactively trying to save money for the city itself. So- Yes ... I would love to see those numbers at some point. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Any other questions from my colleagues? Oh, I'm sorry, President Freeman. It's quite all right. Ms. Massa, thanks so much for being here. I think this is a great project and exciting for the city. Can you just talk a little bit about timing here, in terms of how long will this technical assistance study take, and then when will we be looking to apply for the next step of any available grants? So we have the contractors in place, and I believe that they will be working through the summer.

▶ 7:18 I don't know the exact deadline, but this is a kind of quick turnaround- Mm-hmm ... for getting the study done. And then we would apply, sorry, I don't remember the date of when the acceptance for the Decarbonization Accelerator Grant is happening, but we'll apply for the next round. Awesome. No, that's good to hear that just that it's a quick study. Mm-hmm. Recognizing that we're one of the few communities that have this designation right now, it's great to hear we'll be in the queue for that grant shortly. So thank you. Wonderful. If that is the last of the commentary, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes.

▶ 8:03 Devin Romanul: Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. Motion passes. All right. Wonderful. That will be presented at our next full council meeting. Thank you very much. Up next, I know that we have some overlapping meetings tonight. We're doing well. Everyone's dance card is full, so, as a professional courtesy, I wanted to make a motion by unanimous consent to take item number 2026-749, an informational order on the Affordable Housing Trust, out of order. Seeing no objection, we'll take these items out of order. So up next, we have ID number 2026-749, the informational order on the

▶ 8:49 Affordable Housing Trust Fund board update. And we have assorted members of the board here before us. Feel free to introduce yourself. Yep. Hi. Good evening. Thank you, Chair Romanul and City Council for the opportunity to speak tonight. We're excited to talk to you about the work of the Affordable Housing Trust, some of the housing challenges that we see in Melrose, and how we can partner moving forward. And we'll do brief introductions. My name's Amy Tierney, and I am the chair of the trust. And joining me tonight are my colleagues on the trust, Vice Chair Jim Oosterman and Treasurer Joe Viola. Our clerk, Helena Wetfeld, had to go away on an unexpected business trip, so she sends her regrets and is not here tonight.

▶ 9:42 I know you have the presentation, you have our guidelines, so we just want to run through it and leave some time if you have any questions. But we just wanted to start with what the trust is and why it exists. Whoops. Okay, so here we are. So the trust is a statutory body that was established by the council in 2020 in accordance with the Mass General Laws section. There's over 100 communities in Massachusetts that have affordable housing trusts. The trust is a volunteer board, appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council. We have four board members that are volunteers, and then a designee of the mayor's office, which is currently Ms. Mesa from the Office of Planning and Community Development.

▶ 10:33 We spent a lot of time in the last year, since we've all been kind of up and running, thinking about what our mission is and trying to be transparent and thoughtful about guidelines and next steps. So I just want to kind of take a moment and think about what the mission of the trust is. We want to work to create, preserve, and support diverse, affordable housing to meet the needs of low and moderate income households in Melrose over the span of their entire lifespan, in collaboration with both municipal and community partners. So that's kind of our overall mission. And so why is this work so important right now? I think you can't read a newspaper or turn on the news... We have a housing crisis in the US and in Massachusetts.

▶ 11:25 You see that at the state level with a lot of state priorities. Along with, it's been clear in our last housing production plan that affordable housing is an issue that's important to the city. So we look at Melrose, and we're not immune to all of that. Housing affordability in Melrose is becoming increasingly out of reach for many residents or people who would want to move here, particularly young families that either want to move here or stay, our local workforce, and our seniors who are looking for continuity of housing over their lifetime, whether they want to stay in their house or we don't have enough... housing stock if they want to stay in Melrose and age in place. So, I thought we'd just ground it in,

▶ 12:26 affordable housing gets thrown around a lot, and what we're talking about as affordable housing with a capital A for our trust purposes is, in Massachusetts, affordable housing is generally defined as housing where a household spends no more than 30% of the income of the household on housing costs. Let's see. I don't know why this keeps doing that. But in Melrose, the inclusionary units that are de-restricted, they serve households earning up to 80% of the area median income. And you'll see in the chart, HUD sets the Boston metro area, and these are the 2025 income limits. And so, what this really means is, in Melrose, for a family of four people earning up to $132,000, they would generally qualify for affordable housing based on their

▶ 13:28 income. So, just to look at a little bit of what's happening locally. It's been more than since 2020, but from 2020, the past few years, you can see we have a sharp increase in both home prices and rents. Single family homes are approaching $1 million, and rents are nearing 3,000 a month on average. So, this is creating real pressure, as we said, for our seniors that are trying to age in place, for families, for people who work in our community. And, for people who may have grown up in Melrose and want to come back, we're hearing that's not possible. Just as an example, the Melrose Emergency Fund this year, it disbursed over $11,000 in one-time rental or mortgage assistance, and I mean, that's a lot of money for

▶ 14:29 people, each individual, up to 11 grand. So it's a real issue here, and I think we just want to bring light to it, and try to help collaborate to have some better solutions. Obviously, these numbers change all the time. I mean, they're dynamic numbers. But these are the numbers from the census website, the latest census. And as you can see, the median home value is at $970,000, yet the median household income is 133, which is not much above the 80% of the AMI. So, it's a real issue, and that's borne out by the data. I think this is an interesting slide. It was taken right from our housing production plan, and I think it just shows that over 30% of Melrose households are cost-burdened, which means they're spending more

▶ 15:29 than 30% of their income on housing. And nearly 14% of that are severely cost-burdened, which means they're spending more than 50% of their income on housing costs. And if you look to the right-hand column, that's the light green, I guess, blue. It's hard to read, but that's the renters. And this affects renters. We have 30-- Over 30% of residents are renters here, and 50% of renters are severely cost-burdened, meaning they're spending over half of their income on housing costs. We also see large numbers of older homeowners. Over 3,000 homes are owned by households of over 60, who may be house-rich because their houses are worth more, but they're cash constrained because they're hard to keep up and their income is

▶ 16:35 set or static. So, this just shows that this is across the community. This is a broad community issue. It's not just about seniors. It's not just about commuters into the city. It's really everybody. And no single group can do it alone, solve it alone either. This work is about collaboration. The trust, obviously, we want to be a mover on this, but we need to collaborate across city government, with the housing authority. I see Mr. Corona here tonight, through non-profit partners, developers, as well as state and federal programs. So, where does Melrose stand today? Oops. Oh, how do I go back here? Am I back? Oh, shoot, what did I do here? Let me see. I don't know how to-- Here we go. Here we go. Sorry. So, this is today.

▶ 17:42 We have just over 12,000 housing units, and 941 of them are affordable. So, that's just about 7.5%. So, the next slide. What is this? There we go. This just kind of shows those 940 units, you see that 731 of them are senior housing. So, it's disproportionate in terms of the type of housing stock. There's not a lot of family or units for single people. And on the side, just talks about which monitoring organizations areResponsible for monitoring those. And then enter wise. Sorry. Okay. Affordable housing is all across the city, located in multiple neighborhoods and housing types, which is important for creating an inclusive community. They should be, in our view, spread out throughout the community,

▶ 18:50 and this is a heat map of where they are now. To support this work, we need to rely on many tools . This includes Chapter 40B, inclusionary zoning, state and federal subsidies, along with tax credits, and the trust itself is a flexible local funding tool. So that brings us to what is the role of the trust, right? You see in the guidelines in our application, there's different types of funding we can provide. And through application, we can provide gap financing, enable acquisitions, and rehabilitations that create or preserve affordable housing. There's an opportunity to support pre-development costs to unlock potential projects. And really to leverage other private and public financing. A lot of these types of deals have many different

▶ 19:52 facets of financing. Mr. Vella is more adept in those types of issues, but a lot of the state funding or federal funding requires local. They want the local community to have some skin in the game, and that's our hope, to be able to kind of bridge the gap on some of those. We can do grants, loans, forgivable loans types of funding from the trust. And we do have in our guidelines, we've tried to create pretty transparent guidelines, with clear selection criteria that would emphasize the feasibility of the project, the affordability of the project, and also to align with the city goals. So, this is what we've been up to. We all came together only about a year ago, a little bit over a year ago, and we were lucky enough to hit the ground

▶ 20:51 running. We got a technical assistance grant, and we worked for about six months, with MHP, which is a housing partnership, to kind of thoughtfully develop our mission statement as well as our goals. And I want to stop here. We don't want to spend a lot of time on the slides, but I really want to let Jim talk a little bit about, we've made one grant since we've been in existence, and I think it's a good example of what we can do. Yeah. So let me talk a little bit about that. So, I was a founding member of the Melrose Affordable Housing Corporation. And we were founded a number of years ago by citizens of Melrose who just really wanted to make a difference. So that is a private, nonprofit organization,

▶ 21:43 run by its own board of directors, not affiliated with the city or in any way. They contract with Melrose Housing Authority to be their management agent, but that's the connection with the housing authority. And so properties that would come up available for sale that the Affordable Housing Corporation would think about buying, and then use federal funds from the North Suburban Consortium to hold those properties on the city's housing inventory. So those would be in perpetuity, listed as affordable housing rentals. And so an opportunity came up for the Affordable Housing Corporation to acquire a three-family building in Melrose. It happened to be adjacent to one that they already owned. But,

▶ 22:26 through their years of being in business, they didn't have a lot of money. So they were able to leverage the properties that they had, along with some traditional bank financing, and got financing from the North Suburban Consortium using HOME funds grants, but they were still short. And they were very anxious to be able to tap into the most affordable housing trust fund money. And for many years, that money had been sort of lingering out there, that it was there, but there was no trust established. And so when we got the trust established, we sort of knew that this organization was going to be waiting for something. And so we were really happy that we were able to put some guidelines together with

▶ 23:05 the assistance of MHP, and came up with a very formal plan to be able to fund them and be able to give them $140,000 of our limited funds, which enabled them to be able to finalize that purchase. And now there are three rental units, family rental units in Melrose that are now deed-restricted in perpetuity as affordable, capital A, affordable units. And so us being able to be nimble and be able to provide that financing relatively quickly, is still not as quick as what cash-paying investors would buy in the open market. But it was really important that we be there for them. But you might see that that's not a big amount. We don't have a lot of money. We never had a lot of money to start. I think we had about $650,000,

▶ 23:57 which was a combination of payment in lieu of units the developers had paid in. I think there was some old free cash money that was in there, but not a lot of money. And so to give $140,000 out depletes almost 20% of our assets. So we can't do that very frequently. But we were glad that we were able to do it, at least for the Affordable Housing Corporation to start. So, it's an example of sort of where we've worked with a local organization to collaborate on creating more affordable units. Thank you.I mean, a good value too. We have three for $140,000 of our money, and that we now have three units in perpetuity. This is just our goals for the next five years. They're detailed in our guidelines, but we want to aim to

▶ 24:47 expand community outreach. We think it's an important issue that sometimes isn't talked about or understood. And so we really want to be out in the community. And we've started to do that in different ways. We've had listening sessions with the affordable housing trusts, I mean, the housing authority and the corporation to try to get their input. So we look forward to engaging the community. Probably our most important goal is to find sustainable and diverse funding. And to create in five years, it's a big number, but we hope to create or support the creation of over 150 homes or more for rent or for ownership. And so how are we doing this? Today, it has to be collaboration. In this last year, I've been lucky.

▶ 25:46 I've done a lot of research and listened to a lot of how this happens across the state, and these are kind of complicated financial packages. It's hard for affordable housing to compete in this market. And so you have to be nimble, and you have to be willing to collaborate with whoever you can to get things done. You say today, you can see, I think that's our current balance, just over a half a million dollars. And as Jim said, so far I think we've just had one, I think when Mayor Broder established the trust, he had one free cash, and then the balance is from payment in lieu's. So we look to see... Oh, I went forward. But I wanted quickly, one of the opportunities, the biggest opportunity we see in terms of creating our

▶ 26:41 pipeline of financing is the CPA. So, Joe has more experience in that, so I just wanted him to high level, and we're happy to take some questions after, just kind of what the CPA could do for the trust. Sure. And we've had this discussion at the committee level, talking about sustainability, and now that we have a housing trust and we want to fund these programs going forward, how do we capitalize it? And essentially, the CPA allows communities to enact a surcharge against your tax levy of no greater than 3%. That funding is able to be used for affordable housing. It's able to be used for open space and recreation and historic preservation. We would have to work with the council to get it on

▶ 27:31 ballot to see if the citizens of Melrose would be in favor of adopting the CPA. But, again, one project using a reasonable amount of funding to deed restrict housing into the future, it's a great use of the funding, but how are we going to be able to fund those kinds of projects in the future? And just to do a very back of the envelope and rudimentary calculation here, using the assessed value of the average tax assessment at 1%, the average household at the average assessment would pay $97 a year in surcharge funds. Broken down by quarter, that's about $24. So that's at 1%, and again, I'll caution, it's very rudimentary back of the envelope. But you could see that trying to extrapolate and say what that means to the

▶ 28:40 community, we would add... Sorry, I'm consulting my notes here. But we could add upwards of $600,000 a year in CPA funds. And again, CPA is there's 10% for housing, 10% for open space and preservation, and 10% for historic preservation. But you could see that any portion of that could help us to come up with a fundable sustaining mechanism for the housing trust. I didn't want to do too much of a deep dive. I know you probably have all these facts at your fingertips, but it could mean a lot to be able to capitalize the affordable housing trust with CPA funds going forward in the future, and the many programs that it allows you to fund. Well, thank you very much for this encyclopedic information.

▶ 29:38 I'm sure we're just scratching the surface, but I want to entertain any questions from my colleagues. Up first, I have Councilor Jamaleddine. Thank you. Thank you so much for this. It's amazing. Not to mention the amazing work that you guys are doing. So thank you for all the work and hours that you framed to make this happen. How many families currently is benefiting from? If you have that. Yeah. I mean, we don't run the affordable housing, all of those in that chart, those partners. So right now, there's 941 units, so that's households. Some are seniors. Some are either the housing authority and such. So it's 941 units right now. We didn'tWe can't take credit for any of that. We helped with three.

▶ 30:38 Maya Jamaleddine: We helped with three, yeah. But I think we just wanted to level set where we are here. There's a lot of work to be done, and housing's expensive, so we get that. But, we think we need to try as a community. And if we're reviewing our numbers, we see that it's increasing, the people that are impacted by the burden and that are joining this population. It's increasing over the years, especially the last year with everything that our country is going through now. My question is, you mentioned about the CPA, and to put it on the ballot, have we explored, or have we proposed it, or how do we go by that? Well, I believe, from my research, and there's two ways. People can petition to put it on the ballot, residents, or the city

▶ 31:47 council, by a simple majority, can put it on the ballot. So it has to come from you guys? No, obviously there would need to be some support from the community and our hope is that it's not just affordable housing, it's parks and rec. It's the people- It's parks ... in historical, there's a lot of different things the CPA can be used for. So we would be happy to support it, but I don't think procedurally we need to put it on. Yes. Yeah. And, I'm sorry. Yeah. My last question is, do we know how many city or neighboring cities are adopted already, and joined this program? The CPA. I did have that. How many cities have adopted CPA? I think statewide it's over 200. Yeah. It's over 200. It's like 50, well, I don't have the ex-

▶ 32:39 Yeah. I have- 200. Over 200. Yeah. I have 201 municipalities in the state. And nearly 73% of the communities that have trusts- Mm-hmm ... have CPA. It is by far, because it's sustainable. These projects take a long time to design and build and put financing before. And if you don't have a sustainable pipeline, it's hard to count on that. So, that is by far the biggest revenue for most of these trusts. But it's not only for the trust- Yes ... is I guess what we're saying. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Yep. Up next I have Councilor Williams. Thanks. Thank you for an informative presentation that laid a good amount of groundwork and also got into what the trust does, because I think that's really important, and I really appreciate the

▶ 33:30 Ryan Williams: amount of work you put into this. So, I wanted to talk just for a moment on CPA. I'm super excited. We talked about this. I'm super excited to hear that you guys are bringing this up. I think whenever we mention CPA, I like to call out that CPA has different ways you can exclude certain groups of people at the ballot. Yes. So one of those groups is low income families, and one of those groups is seniors, and that's a great tool to balance the additional cost, which is modest, as you said. But some people, they don't like any additional cost. It's a good way to balance that with the benefits that we get. Interestingly, of the 200 and some communities that have adopted CPA, we live in a bit of a drought bubble.

▶ 34:19 Ryan Williams: The immediate northern communities of Stoneham, Saugus, Melrose, don't have it. Boston and a lot of the Metro West and South communities all have it too. So it would be great to see Boston be a leader in that. I'm all in. I would be excited to do something like this. I'm excited that the affordable housing folks are on board. I know the historic preservation folks are on board, so I think it's a conversation that we can have, for sure. Even though the state, I don't know if we mentioned this, the fact that the state provides a matching grant for all of our CPA contributions. It used to be quite generous. It's a little bit less generous these days, like 20%, 23% now, instead of 30% in the past.

▶ 35:04 Manjula Karamcheti: But, it's still great money, and it's free money that we can put towards our parks, our playing fields, historic preservation, purchasing properties, purchasing conservation land, et cetera. So, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate your presentation and your comments on the matter. Up next I have Councilor Carm Treti. I didn't think it would be my turn already. Thank you so much for your presentation. I really appreciate it. I am so happy that you exist and appreciate the level setting that you've been doing over the past year, thinking about goals, present tense, but also how we might move forward in partnership together. So I'm just curious about, and if you haven't, again, you've been around a year, so I'm

▶ 35:51 Manjula Karamcheti: curious what you're thinking about in terms of big picture and strategy, particularly around being proactive when properties are coming on the market before they get to the private developers. Are you thinking about a strategy with that, and how might you think about working with the city, and sort of rallying folks so that we can be proactive in our housing production plan, but not have to wait for proposals where we're very reactionary. Mm-hmm. Which I think we've fallen into in our current situation. So I'm just curious how you're thinking about that big picture. Because we're not developers, we're not in the market for acquiring properties. But we are interested in finding those opportunities and helping

▶ 36:44 those developers, for-profit and not-for-profit developers, find those and perhaps navigate a system. Part of our funding could be used for pre-development costs, for expenses incurred with finding out how can I put units in here that I can set aside as affordable and still be, if I'm a for-profit developer, it's still a profitable business decision. So we can do that. So we think we can help with some of that. Again, our funds are limited, but some people have asked us if we're going to do rental assistance, down payment assistance for first-time home buyers. Well, that's a great lofty goal, which we think would be fantastic for low and moderate income first-time home buyers. Those units that they purchase are not necessarily deed restricted.

▶ 37:32 And so while the initial buyer may be low or moderate income means, that doesn't add a unit to the housing inventory that we'd like to have. We'd love to get to that point. And one of the things that our technical assistance consultant pointed out to us early on was, we should set a goal as a trust fund of having $5 to $6 million. And wow, where do we get that? But when we get to that point, those funds invested in the right place can be sustainable to provide rental assistance, down payment assistance. I think right now our larger long-term goals, which is probably in the next three years, is having enough funds to support developers navigate a system where we can provide some funding, and we can provide some resources so that we can get

▶ 38:24 Manjula Karamcheti: actual units on the ground. So I think there's some big long-term goals that we'd love to get to. Yeah. I think we're really feeling right now that we're sort of a bit hamstrung on funding. And so let's not go down that path yet. When we get there, we'll love to have... When we've got $10 million in our Affordable Housing Trust Fund raised from a number of resources, yeah, then I think that we could do all kinds of stuff. But I think what I'm hearing you say, to build that foundation and that ability to be proactive, and really plan the investment that the city makes, will allow for that to happen. So us thinking about how city council partners with you, how the mayor's office partners with you, how we try to move forward with something

▶ 39:11 like the CPA really matters in terms of us kind of having control of our approach to affordable housing in a way that is planned and purposeful, and does what it's supposed to do, allows people to move to and stay in Melrose. Right. I think there's a lot of nonprofit community affordable housing developers. But for them to come, it has to be worth it, and they have to see that the city is- Right ... supportive and has supported the City and can help with some local funding. Because like I said, a lot of these fundings are, we obviously aren't going to fund an entire... It depends on it. If it's a smaller, some trusts do, they can help purchase a single-family home or a duplex. But you know how much a single-family home costs here on the market, and

▶ 40:01 Kimberly Vandiver: so it's all about being nimble, but we need to have enough capital and sustainable capital to be able to have those conversations. Appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you. Up next, I have Councilor Vandiver. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. I really appreciate it. I wanted to ask, kind of drilling on a couple of the slides with graphs. I don't know if I can get back to them. Ooh. So you had one graph showing the breakdown of units by household type, which I- Mm-hmm. There we are ... think is really striking that so much of our affordable housing is concentrated in the senior population right now, and so little for single room or even families. So I'm really glad to hear that those three units that you did were family units.

▶ 40:52 Kimberly Vandiver: And I wonder if you could speak to if that is where you see the need or if the need is still with the seniors because they're in a really tough position. Not to pit one group against the other, everybody's struggling with housing costs, but if you could speak to where you see the most need right now and how you could focus on that with the funds. Yeah. I mean, I can't. I don't want to... I would be surprising. I don't know all the data. I know that we've had many conversations with the housing authority, and they have a huge backlog for government-owned affordable housing, six months to six years. And I think a lot of that is senior housing that they monitor. So that certainly is still, there's just not enough.

▶ 41:47 But I don't have the data on the breakdown of who, in terms of, obviously, if there's families, there's only 150 units that are deed restricted. That's not very much, given we have almost 30,000 people here. So I don't have the data. I was just going to add, we talked about being nimble- Mm-hmm ... and being able to leverage funding. A lot of affordable housing is opportunity based. As part of our effort to make funding available to the development community, we could have an RFP and have developers tell us what they would do with the funding and make policy decisions on what kinds of programs we wanted to fund. So in addition to the nimbleness and allowing developers to To leverage resources from other

▶ 42:48 Kimberly Vandiver: state, federal sources of funding, it also would allow us to sort of- Control it. Yeah ... yeah, control what kinds of projects we're looking to fund based on the review of a proposal. Mm-hmm. So let the development community tell us how they would use our funding best. Thank you. And, I also was wondering about the slide before that, the pie chart showing, I divided those numbers, so it looks like 7.5% of- Mm-hmm ... affordable housing units in Melrose today. And I know we have some things in the pipeline, so maybe another percentage point or two is kind of possibly in development to get added to the sustainable housing inventory. I know our goal from the perspective of Chapter 40B for that percentage would be 10% to be filled in.

▶ 43:45 Kimberly Vandiver: But, I guess I was also thinking about what would that chart ideally look like? It would probably be a lot bigger than 10%, right? Given, we're talking about 80% of the median income, meaning, I don't know what percent of the population is at or below 80% of median income, but like- About 30%. 30%. So, I just wanted to ask for that number and kind of emphasize how different that chart ought to look and how great that really shows that the need is. Yeah. I guess I'll add to your comment, question, is that the chart can be a bit misleading as well, because one of the things that we're charged with is building affordable housing, capital A, capital H. There's naturally occurring affordable housing in the city. We know that.

▶ 44:37 There are people who rent below market. There are people who have low housing costs because they paid off their mortgage many years ago, so their expenses aren't that high. So there are people that live in the city that have naturally occurring affordable housing. So we're focused only on the portion that is deed restricted, part of that inventory. The other part is, we talked a little bit about 40B, is that I think collectively, our committee has talked a lot about 40B and about this 10%, this magic number of 10%. Keeping in mind that when the city reaches that safe harbor goal, for a project that's a 40B project, not all of those units might be at an affordable level. And so we gain units

▶ 45:24 to the inventory to reach that safe harbor, but we're not necessarily gaining units that are satisfying the needs of those people who are making 80% or less of the median income. And so we look at this chart and say, "Do these numbers really mean a lot? Where is the number? Is it greater, is it less than?" I think what we keep coming back to is, wow, this is really not enough. Mm-hmm. And our goal is to get more. And is 20% the magic number? I'm not sure. We haven't talked about that. Mm-hmm. Terrific. Thank you. And last comment is thank you so much for bringing up the importance of the Community Preservation Act and to my colleague for including some details about that, I think really important.

▶ 46:06 Cal Finocchiaro: I'm also in favor and hope that we can move on that soon. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilor Vandiver. I just want to note we've got a couple of other items on our agenda, and we got about 10 minutes until our scheduled full council meeting just for PIF purposes. But up next I've got Councilor Fernald-Quero. Thank you. Thank you so much for the presentation. It was very helpful for me to kind of understand what you guys do and how it interacts with the city and- Mm-hmm ... affordable housing. So, sounds like the CPA is really kind of an important piece of this. So I'm just kind of trying to think if that wasn't, say that we brought that to a ballot and it didn't get passed. So which it's like, all right, you don't want to think about that, but I'm just

▶ 46:48 saying, are there other housing trusts or I don't know if other cities around us have them- Mm-hmm ... I'm not really- Yeah, no ... aware of them, but do they use CPAs? How do they fund themselves or- Yeah, I think over 73% do have the CPA. But I do- Over 73%? 73%- Okay ... of the communities that have affordable housing- Okay ... trusts have CPA. Mm-hmm. But if we don't get it, we'll try to continue to support projects that come up. We'll look for other ways of... Another way is city-owned parcels. I know, I participated in the... They're having a study on the two parcels that are becoming online. That is a way to move affordable housing along. Mm-hmm. So, we will continue to push, and I know that the

▶ 47:47 CPA and bringing something to ballot is not done without some thought and some risk. But I think it outweighs... The benefits are so clear. I think it would be really important to get out to the community what that is. But yeah, we'll continue to try to do our work and educate people and work where we can- Mm-hmm ... until we have enough money to do more. Yeah. And as far as the CPA, and this might be something that I have to look into, is it a fixed percentage that lives kind of... Is it 1% for the life of the- More than 3%. Okay. You can elect as a community to do 1%- Okay ... 2%, 1.5%. And that stays like that or does it have an out? You can change it. Okay. I think you probably have to put it back to a ballot-

▶ 48:36 Ryan Williams: Right. Okay ... to change the percentage. So yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. More of like informational if people are listening- Yeah. No, it's important ... today. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome Up next, I have Councilor Chen. Question's already been answered. Thank you. All right. Fantastic. And second time around, I have Councilor Williams. Have you guys talked to the Community Preservation Coalition? I have not talked to them yet. Yeah. But I have- They were very helpful when I was researching this several years ago. The staff was very helpful. They only have a few staff. Mm-hmm. But they're very responsive, and they have a ton of information on how to create a committee, et cetera. Yes, I have seen their information online.

▶ 49:12 Devin Romanul: Yeah. Same. Thank you. It's like first source for doing it- Yes ... getting it done. What is the will of the committee? Is that motion placed on file? Second. Motion made placed on file by Councilor Williams, seconded by Councilor Karamcheti. On discussion. Do we require a roll call or this can just be... All right. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The ayes have it, and this will be reported out to the full council meeting. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate your time, and thank you for all that you do for our community, and for taking the time to volunteer for our city, and being here tonight. All right. Up next on our agenda, ID number 2026-773, acceptance of FY26

▶ 49:56 firefighter safety equipment grant in the amount of $12,375.87. Joining us this evening is Chief White. Thank you, Chief. Good evening. Good to see you. Hi. Melrose Fire Department has been awarded a grant from the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, Department of Fire Services, in the amount of $12,375.87. And we propose to utilize these funds to support the purchase of some critical life safety equipment, mainly seven SCBA cylinders, those are self-contained breathing apparatus cylinders, and three multi-gas detection meters. I just came here to ask you to consider to accept this and approve this award. I'd be happy to answer any questions. These are very good things that we use almost every day at the fire department.

▶ 50:58 Naturally, cylinders, we always need supply of air when we respond to fires. And the multi-gas meters, they always come in handy. Most homes, luckily in Melrose, have CO detectors, and when they go off, we get called, and we can verify if it really is CO, or maybe their meter is not working properly. And also, for natural gas detection. We use those all the time. They're pretty sophisticated devices. And naturally, they get used fairly a lot, so it's time we have to replace them when they get to the end of their life and we can't get any more parts or sensors for them. And take any questions. Thank you very much. Up first, I have Councilor Finocchiaro. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I just have a quick question.

▶ 51:46 It's great that we received this grant to cover the safety equipment. Do you foresee there's any additional funds from the city to go towards this equipment? We have put in for, in the capital improvement project, we put in for also SCBA harnesses, the whole pack, but also more spare bottles. Come in very handy when we had a fire in January one night, and we used up all our spare bottles putting the fire out. And unfortunately, we had mutual aid covering the city, but as we rolled back into the station to refill all our bottles, we got another call from the house fire. Fortunately, the mutual aid companies were able to respond, but we were caught flat-footed. We didn't have any bottles filled with air.

▶ 52:36 We had to fill up the bottles we had up. And so these bottles will be used as our spare bottles. We'll keep the station to just swap in and out as we need to get back in service as fast as possible. Okay. So this amount will cover a certain amount of equipment- Yes ... but then you have another request on the capital. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Terrific. Up next, I have Councilor Williams. Yeah. Motion to recommend to the full council. Second. Motion to recommend by Councilor Williams, seconded by Councilor Vandiver. On discussion. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti?

▶ 53:18 Devin Romanul: Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. Motion passes. All right. The motion passes and will be brought before the next full council meeting with a recommendation for passage. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, folks. All right. Last and not least, ID number 2026-774, that the city authorize the mayor to enter into an intermunicipal agreement for establishing a regional animal control officer position in partnership with the towns of Wakefield and Stoneham. Joining us this evening is Mr. Anthony Chu. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. The floor is yours. Yes. Thank you, and thank you to the council for having us tonight.

▶ 53:59 I'm excited to ask for the support of the council to establish a regional animal control officer position. This would be in partnership with the towns of Wakefield and Stoneham. As you guys might know, we already have a very strong partnership with them. There are three shared staff members. We have been working with Wakefield for over 20 years, and Stoneham joined us in 2023, in a regional format. It has both been a cost-effective way for us to deliver services, and also address issues that have been similar across all these communities. This position, while I have enjoyed my time serving as animal control officer on the side, I believe this position will give us more capacity to help deal with some of the issues that our constituents are seeing.

▶ 54:43 We want to be able to provide more education opportunities as well, and also work on enforcement. So this position would be a shared position. This would fall under our department. And we've also budgeted for education, so we're going to have events that might include rabies shots clinics at a discounted price. We're going to try and provide those. We'll also be able to help the clerk's office in kind of increasing enforcement as well, for permitting. Happy to answer any questions council may have. Thank you very much. Up first, I have Councilor Jamaldine Thank you. Are all cities sharing equally this position? Meaning schedule-wise and hours? Yes. We will have a 33% cost-sharing between each community.

▶ 55:36 In terms of time and resources, similar to our positions, we spend some more hours in certain communities during each week, depending on the need. But it works out about even across the span of a year. So, when we have continued issues in one area, we'll try to address them and then move on to another. So, it may not be exactly equal every week, but it'll shake out to about the same. And where would be the person holding this position located? Is it in all the three towns or cities, or specific base in Melrose? Yeah. So we hope to have space for them here. Space is a little tight here at City Hall. But we are going to provide space for equipment and services in each community. We'll try to establish a schedule, but I think

▶ 56:25 part of it is going to be dictated by what comes up. So bite reports and responding to bite incidents are one of the main jobs. And so, should there be more incidents in one community that day, we would prioritize those and have them go there first. And historically speaking, do we know if Melrose has been equally requiring that support as the other neighbors as well, or is it... Yeah. So I think it's hard to say for sure. So I've been doing the Melrose response for a while, so I have a pretty good idea of how many responses we get. Recently, Wakefield actually parted ways with their animal control officer position, so I've also been filling in there as well. So I have a general idea of how much we've been seeing over there.

▶ 57:10 It's very similar in capacity. And then also Stoneham as well, I was not serving as that role, but we have someone doing that part-time. And they've been doing a really good job, but they're also very limited in their hours. And so, I think by increasing their hours, we'll be able to meet that need as well. So no community I think has a much larger need than the others. Okay. My last question, I promise. That's it. Do you think that this amount of hours is enough for Melrose? Yeah. I think we're splitting 40 hours across three communities. I think this will be enough. I think part of the beginning stages will be to establish expectations. So one of the things that we've been hearing about is off-leash dogs.

▶ 57:53 We want to send the message to the community. So we'll both be there with presence as well as sending out informational flyers and other ways of communication through the city. I think once we kind of set expectations, I think people will respond better, and we'll see less of those incidents, and then it'll come down to enforcement after. Awesome. Thank you. Terrific. Up next, I have Council Pork. Thank you. Anthony, you and I, as you may recall, when I first came on board, you and I had a discussion about what can city council do to help your position and your department. We talked about this position, among other ones that you would have on your wish list. And my question to you-- I have two questions. My first question is,

▶ 58:40 is this particular role the most pressing in terms of your needs right now? Meaning, since we do have limited funds and free cash, is this something that you think is the best spent or use of our money? I think there are other priorities that we also do value. I think just this part of it is one of our main priorities only because we want to be able to meet all the statutory requirements, and so by law, we do have to respond to every single bite report. And those come and go. I think in the colder seasons, we see less of them. But overall, we do need to address all of them, and I want to make sure we're in compliance, as well as being able to address any concerns that the citizens have. So I think this is one of our bigger priorities.

▶ 59:24 Okay. And the second part of my question is, does this overlap? You and I also have had discussions with a very ambitious high school student, with regards to rodent control. Would that overlap in this person's responsibility as well as pet control as well? I don't know that this would overlap with the rodent control issue. Our inspectors have been working with the construction here and developers here in the city on more of an IPM approach, so integrated pest management approach, rather than a bait box and poison-based system. We've been really working with them to try to establish more of a cleaning up of the property, storing of trash properly, removing trash in off hours. We've been trying to work with them on that to try and limit rodents.

▶ 1:00:10 Kind of a holistic approach rather than just poisoning is more successful. So I think to answer your question, this position wouldn't really address that, but our inspectors have been trying to work with them on that. Yeah. Thank you. Councilor Jen. Thanks. Do we know what the bottom line cost to Melrose would be for this position? Sure. So, based on some of the projections, both the lower and the higher range are about $30,000 a year. So that's including the position as well as a budget for supplies and sheltering, and $1,000 split across three communities for education as well. And then would we let go of the Stoneham animal control person now? Yes. So there would be a transition period with them.

▶ 1:00:57 Cal Finocchiaro: They're solely in Stoneham, and they work part-time as dispatch right now, and police. Terrific. Any other questions? Councilor Conopiero. Just want to say I'm very excited to see this. And I think the city really needs an animal control officer. You've been doing a great job, but it's not your job. And we've had one for years. I know this is a split role, but- I think it's really important. So with that, I'd like to make a motion to recommend. Second. Motion to recommend by Councilor Forno Chiaroc, seconded by Councilor Karamcheti on discussion. Just quickly, I wanted to say thank you for thinking of a way to be able to bring this position back, but also be cost-effective in terms of what we had available for this

▶ 1:01:43 Devin Romanul: resource. So I just appreciate the way you approached this, and I'm psyched to support it. Excellent. Thank you. Terrific. Absent any other questions, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The ayes have it. The motion passes and will be brought before the next full council meeting. Thank you, Mr. Chu. Thank you. With that being our last agenda item, I'll now motion by unanimous consent to adjourn. Seeing no objections, we are now adjourned. Good evening. Good evening. The time is 7:53 PM on Monday, April 27th, 2026. I am Council President Freeman. This meeting of the Melrose City Council is called to order. In accordance with the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law, this meeting is being broadcast and recorded by the Melrose Cable Access TV and will be

Original documents

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