Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2019-06-10
Transcript
▶ 30:34 are now open for public comment and we welcome any members who'd like to come forward to speak on these rates first good evening everyone good to see you joe pelrine 70 howard street i just have a few short things i'm going to keep it sweet so i got here just a few minutes ago and i heard mr del russo speaking about indirect cost um of employees that are not directly in the water and sewer i'm taking it is that what we were talking about and i'm just curious on that what kind of formula was used to get to that point like if someone's answering the phone one day a week are they getting billed the whole time to the water department so that's just i'll listen in and hear what you guys have to say on those things and then we'll go from there next a few
▶ 31:53 years ago the city of melrose up until a few years ago every department had a line item for water and sewer so they Park Department had five hundred thousand the City Hall had a hundred thousand the schools had five hundred thousand and then that kind of mysteriously disappeared and I don't understand why we're not having a line item for each department head for water and sewer from where I can see do we have any grip on what each department is using for cubic feet you know is the school department how much are they using the public works how much are they using i'd be very curious to see that as i feel this is a hidden tax by putting the water and sewer the whole city onto one bill with no accountability as far as i can see anyways the revolving accounts we have a lot of money in
▶ 33:02 those accounts and i'm always asking why are we borrowing money when the city of melrose hired a consultant who developed this plan and told everybody in this room in the city that we could spend that money for repairs if the pump went down at upham street we wouldn't have to buy borrow money we could just use this money that the ratepayers all put in a savings account basically yet the city of melrose is saying oh we can't spend that money because it'll affect our bond rate well if we were to take the money out and spend it on a repair and it affected our bond rating how long would it take how many months to get the bond rating back up to where we are now and if that's the case that we can't spend it because of this bond rating
▶ 34:01 maybe we should create a different account so that when we put money in we can take money out without affecting our credit and then just the overall cost of the water and sewer and Melrose always kind of comes back and gets blamed on the MWRA so I've kind of looked and I don't see any huge building projects coming down that would cause us to get nervous and say oh we're going to have to raise the rates so i don't think it's that the mwra is charging a lot of money it's just i think the city of melrose is putting a lot of people on this account and spending money in other places that should be used to pay for their them all right thanks a lot you guys thank you Thank you. Hi, I'm Jerry Morose.
▶ 35:17 Again. I'm not as eloquent as Mr. Pellerine. I wish I were. He hits on some of the major points. Municipal use. Do we even know how much it is? 400,000, 500,000? How much are we socking it to the rate payers for what the tax payers should be paying? In some ways they're one and the same, but in other ways they aren't. And if you don't understand the legality about how you need to differentiate between the two, you need to do some homework. In regards to the water and sewer rates, the rate structure we have now is only marginally a tiny bit different than it was in 2012 when we got into a hole. That's what the city auditor is always responding to is 2012. messed up because the rate structure was bad we had a year that didn't use a whole lot of water
▶ 36:26 the city and actually it was only a small amount really that we were in the hole for and the department of revenue revenue provides that you can actually fund the deficit in one year with the next year's rates it really wasn't this huge thing that's been represented here somehow oh my god we're going to fail as a city if we go into a hole a little bit but the truth is is that the water rate structure being primarily on the volumetric side it fails the test of is it is the structure commensurate with the experience of the system it fails the test it also exploits the residents that when there's high water use in a dry and hot summer the city just rake it in money hand over fist with all the money just grabbing it all in and then we see
▶ 37:12 these subsequent binges on spending things and give it more to indirect cost and everything else because there's plenty of money in water sewer let's just go and take it the fixed charges of our water and sewer system ought to be much higher than they are the consultant which we don't even need to pay a consultant to know this but the consultant affirmed that a water and sewer committee meeting this year that they could be in the fixed charges ought to be at least 25% I think he might have said 20 to 25% but he's even responding to the political push from people within Melrose to not go higher a competent rate structure that's based on the costs of providing service to the residents would have it much higher by the way every one of those five hundred and
▶ 38:01 thirty thousand or so indirect costing every one of those five hundred and 31,000 of indirect costs has nothing to do with use of water it's a fixed charge if you're not recovering all of those in a fixed charge you're not recovering it if you're not recovering the fixed charges of all the other personnel in the water and sewer department that were paying directly you're not covering that those fixed charges with fixed fees it doesn't have to be a one-to-one correlation but except for the fact that the city of Melrose is price gouging its ratepayers you would get into a hole again if you are actually trying to make things if you weren't making things better and we had a bad problem so we got municipal rates that we're pulling from the from the ratepayers the
▶ 38:56 municipal water fees that were putting on ratepayers the indirect costs that will put in on rake pays and again thank you for the city solicitors budget not to be in there again this year you know it shows how egregious it is that it can be half the city solicitors amount one year and none in another year it feels kind of arbitrary to me nothing about the city solicitor it's about what the finance people in the Melrose presenting this budget to you were saying if we we would actually do some real work to reduce appropriately infiltration and inflow, we could also reduce a lot of the costs that we're paying right now to MWRA. And again, this is not rocket science. The sooner we do it ahead of everybody else in the MWRA, the better benefit Melrose gets.
▶ 40:03 And in fact, we'll realize a financial benefit if we do it ahead of everybody else. If we don't do it with everybody else and we do it commensurate with all the other MWRA communities, we will be saving some water, but the problem is is that we're still going to have our high expenses to MWRA. Again, I want to challenge you as aldermen that you don't have the privilege this year of claiming ignorance. You don't have the privilege this year of relying on misrepresentations that have come year after year and after year from our city government you don't have the privilege this year of saying oh well you know we couldn't fight it this year if you're going to be a real representative on this board if you're
▶ 40:59 going to do the right thing ask the right questions let's see real document let's see timesheets of who's spending what time if it's so much time it shouldn't be that difficult to document but these broad platitudes at all this person spending 50% of their time this person spending you know what do we get we got 50% by people 100% by a person in the city 80% 70% 50% these are all administrative positions that were saying the water and sewers is doing if you vote for this budget if you vote for these indirect costs and vote for these water and sewer rates you are then complicit in the fraud that is the Melrose Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund and the rates. I'm using harsh words. I've used less harsh words in the past. Has anybody really tried? I've seen a couple of you make a good
▶ 42:01 attempt, thank you, for trying to do something. But in the end, when you just rubber stamp the misinformation, you rubber stamp the misrepresentations, you rubber stamp the price scourging of the citizens of Melrose, the rate payers of Melrose, you are complicit with that. Again, I ask you, this is, you know, your only time hearing water and sewer, but does it really have to happen tonight? Because if you pass along to the full board, and then the full board, who are one and the same, just vote again, you're not doing something for the citizens of Melrose. And again, if you're running for office this year, you especially should be ashamed of yourself for running for office and claiming that you're for transparency
▶ 42:45 and you're for standing up for the citizens and the rate payers because I haven't seen it in this room. There have been some laudable attempts by a few of you, but when everybody votes in the end for something, it's the people who vote against something that's wrong are the people who are the heroes. The people that go along with what's wrong are the people that lead to, at a minimum, dysfunction in government. and it can go way beyond that. You know, I can't finish here right now without saying that the tiers that we, the fraud of tiered rate structure that was brought upon Melrose needs to end. It's an absolute fraud. And I know that, oh, wink, wink, nod, nod, but charge the hospital more money by the tiers,
▶ 43:40 but you're hitting a lot of people that shouldn't have to be hit. you can actually assess a commercial rate for water and sewer you know that but yet we hear protests by you the only protest we hear from the board of aldermen oh the poor mom and pop grocery store in main street using 400 cubic feet per quarter we can't raise their rates more than other people's well 400 cubic feet per quarter that they're making money on is a lot less water and a lot less money than a good family that's using 2,500 cubic feet per quarter that you're socking it to them with a tiered rate structure. And, oh, by the way, we don't have to worry about MWRA. On May 1st, it was over 100% capacity. On June 1st, it's at 99.8% capacity.
▶ 44:25 The dividends of water conservation and appliances are paying off. Carver Reservoir can supply way more water than we're drawing out of it. and when you look at the curve over the years, you see that we have wet years and dry years, but we aren't in desperate danger that somehow Melrose has to socket to some people over 2,000 cubic feet just to make a point. That's not it. And I've got to say, what is it, the recycling coordinator, executive assistant, how much is theirs being applied to water and sewer? Really? I think it looks like here, I don't know, maybe 30%? I'm sorry, that doesn't fit it. Inflow and infiltration is the big thing. The citizens... The citizens, the rate payers who are being gouged
▶ 45:22 with prices so that we are not just near the top of the MWRA but by extension near the top of the entire country and that we have the leakiest pipes, did I say that again? The leakiest pipes in the whole mwra gallons per day per inch diameter mile the leakiest pipes in mwra that's what we should be ashamed about that's wasting resources that's hurting our environment all the energy that goes to producing to to treating that water that we allow to go in there that more water goes into our sewer system from outside people's houses than from through their appliances and their toilets and their sinks that's what we should be ashamed about that's what we should be doing and this budget these rates the tiered rates the municipal use not paying for itself
▶ 46:18 none of those are addressing what melrose should be doing please step up you board of aldermen you soon to be city council let's do something with a different name let's do something different all right thank you thank you any other members of the public wishing to participate in a public hearing tonight motion to conclude second the motion to conclude the public hearing made by Alderman's work go seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle all in favor on discussion yes are we going to have any commentary from city officials during the public hearing tonight it's I guess it's the will of the committee we might do that now we can also do that when it comes up in the agenda I'm it might not it might be the only time we get to talk about or
▶ 47:10 hear about the determination of water rates because there's not actually a water rate order in our agenda tonight is that a motion to suspend or I guess we're still under in the hearing so they could just come forward if you'd like that perhaps they could answer some of the questions that the residents have asked i'll uh make that motion to uh well i don't want to read that let's just close it sure okay so um we have vice chair Boisselle retracted his uh second of the motion to end the public hearing is that i'll withdraw okay so the motion's withdrawn so we would be happy to hear from city officials um to address um the comments we've heard and then as alderman medeiros has pointed out we don't have a agenda item on water rates so that'd be fine to talk
▶ 47:59 about as well i guess mr schiller will come up good evening everyone good evening thank you mr so i give a presentation now later or just to answer questions whatever the role of the board is we do have a brief presentation i can walk you through if that's the wheelchair i think that's fine um water and sewer rates and operations and is a is a year-long subject matter for um for the department and several departments in the city many of you know we have a water and sewer rate committee and that committee meets on a monthly basis the second half of the fiscal year to look at all things water water and sewer rate related what i prepared in addition to the information that i passed along friday which included the proposed fy20 budget both immunis
▶ 49:11 form and very similar to what you saw last thursday in excel i also submitted friday the fy19 current budgets which shows our year-to-date expenditures so those three documents came to the board on friday but this foot is passing around right now is basically a summary in an organized manner of all the documents that we've studied over the past fiscal year as a committee i just want to walk you through them because they tell a little bit of the story of how the water and sewer rates that are before you and budgets that are before you were created so the proposed sewer we there is no change to the water rate being proposed there's no volumetric change no change to the base fee on sewer there is no volumetric change being proposed the only change
▶ 50:04 being proposed on sewer it has to do with the base fees and i submitted in exhibit one a red line document that shows what exactly what we're doing as transparent as can be also included in the package as exhibit two is a summary from raftelis so this year um we brought raftelis dave fox back for those of you who've been here a while dave did the original rate model for the city he created it and he helped create the rate structure that we put in place several years back he came back and updated that model he updated that model by updating revenues bills existing bills of the 8 200 plus accounts that we send out sometimes four sometimes monthly now he updated the model to adapt to monthly billing and he looked at our updated debt schedule the memo
▶ 51:05 summarizes everything that dave did and then also may also includes on page two his recommendation to maintain and not reduce um the rates exhibit three in the package is a package it's a document very similar last thursday it shows all of the dpw staff and where we charge our salary exhibit four is our mwra assessment this is a document that gets released in march it's what we based our budget these are the figures that are before you this evening combined water and sewer is a 3.7 percent increase in Melrose. The water increase was 2.8 percent and the sewer percent change from FY19 was 4.1 percent. The next exhibits show consumption history in Melrose. This is water that's brought into the MWRA. We also make it a habit to see
▶ 52:22 who our top users are and if you have time and you want to look through the list the top users are heavily residential based what we included and it's labeled exhibit 7 is the rate impact of what the proposed changes are to the average consumers note that majority of our consumers nearly 85 percent are in the area highlighted green and they will see about a 4.95 per quarter change exhibit nine is something that the committee has been looking at greatly over the last year it's a it's a history of rate changes since 2012. they're all listed including the one year where there was a double rate increase and including last year and this year where we have realized the lowest increases possible exhibit 10 is a new document to the package and it's something that we looked at
▶ 53:32 before we set the rates exhibit 10 is off is from data that the mwra puts out from local communities and what it is is a community comparison of average yearly household usage and you can see that Melrose is closer to the middle than the top on this average sheet exhibit 11 is something that is once again new we've shown this information before but we now track municipal use on a monthly basis when the option to switch to monthly was proposed to the residents of this community i took it upon myself to propose it to our staff to check monthly usage on all of our municipal accounts we go out we read them and now we're starting to compare this year we're starting to compare 19 to 18. this is a month by month location by location summary of all municipal
▶ 54:35 use in the city the last document in the exhibit is portions of a presentation that our engineering group gave the mda gave the water and sewer rate committee i'm not going to go through the details of what it is again i submit it as part of the record because it's something that the water and sewer committee worked extremely hard at over the course of the year all i do want to make note of at this moment is the second to last page you can't make out the colors but the shaded areas are areas that by the conclusion of 2020 our engineering group would have will have studied and will have identified and corrected I and I and extremely thoroughly to our new standards this is something that personally as the director of department I'm not ashamed of this I'm very proud
▶ 55:35 of the work that our engineers do on a daily basis and this map summarizes this that by 2020 over half the city will have been thoroughly investigated for i i is there room for improvement of course there is but the effort is there and that's something that i just wanted to know so that's the package that i've passed out related to water and sewer budgets and water and sewer rates um patrick and i are both here i i would be remiss if i didn't publicly thank ken truesdale and mary worler there are volunteers that were appointed by this board they're exceptional they they're volunteers they're not paid they volunteer their time to come monthly and they also spend a lot of time studying the information that we pass out we deal with it on a sometimes a
▶ 56:23 daily basis weekly basis it's part of what we do here is an administration but for two volunteers to step in and um and truly represent the residents of melrose to the highest level is i appreciate that input and i know that everybody on the committee does as well thank you i imagine i'm sure we will talk more about this in the other departments i want to thank you very much mr shenna for that that i think is very helpful i imagine you have this an electronic format yeah yes and similar to the other document received we were working on it all day trying to make sure we had all the information it will be passed along electronically in color so that it can be included as part of the record so yes so i would like to make a motion now in
▶ 57:10 terms of the um the public hearing uh agenda item that this get added um to that and the record and i'm sure i may make that again for the other orders as we go forward so that the information is there a motion to add this packet of information was passed out to the public to the materials for the public hearing second made by Alderman Medeiros seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle all in favor so I'm not clear on if this concludes our public hearing motion to close the public hearing right okay motion to close the public hearing is made by Alderman Medeiros and seconded by Alderman Mortimer. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So we've closed the public hearing, but I'm sure we'll hear more about this as we get through our agenda tonight. And we