Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2026-09-03
Agenda
- CALL TO ORDER
- Attendees
- MINUTES APPROVAL
- Appropriations & Oversight Committee Meeting August 17, 2026 7:15 PM
- PUBLIC COMMENT
- GRANTS
- Acceptance of a Massachusetts Gaming Commission Community Mitigation Fund Grant in the amount of $51,300.
- Acceptance of 2026 Green Communities Grant in the amount of $122,081.
- ORDERS
- Acceptance of Donated Parcel for Conservation Purposes
- ADJOURNMENT
Transcript
▶ 41:05 committee. I will motion by unanimous consent to adjourn. Seeing no objection, we are now adjourned. Good evening. The time is 8:06 on Thursday, September 3rd, 2026. This is a meeting of the Appropriations and Oversight Committee. My name is Daniel Romal. I am your chair. Joining us this evening are Vice Chair Vandiver, Councilors Chen, Finocchiaro, Kowal, Park, Williams, and President Freeman. This serves as notice of quorum for the record. In accordance with the Open Meeting Law, this is being broadcast live on MMTV. At this time, I'll motion by unanimous consent to approve minutes without reading from our most recent meeting on August 17th, 2026. Seeing no objection, those minutes are now approved.
▶ 41:55 I will now motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment. Seeing no objection, the floor is open for public comment. Do we have anyone here for public comment? Do we have anybody online? Nobody online. All right. We got interesting stuff on the agenda coming down for public comment, folks. All right. Seeing no participants, I'll now motion by unanimous consent to close public comment. Seeing no objection, we are now closed. All right. Item 1 on our agenda, item number 2026-1619, acceptance of a Massachusetts Gaming Commission Community Mitigation Fund grant in the amount of $51,300. Do we have anybody from... I know we're looking... Okay. All right. Come on down. Good evening, everyone.
▶ 42:48 Good evening. My name is Daniel Thompson. I'm the senior environmental health specialist for Melrose Health and Human Services. I don't want to speak too long, so I'll get to the chase. I'm excited to share that we have been accepted by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, to receive a grant for $51,300, and this is given to us through the Community Mitigation Fund program. These funds will be used to mitigate the community impacts associated with Encore Casino in Boston Harbor, while strengthening economic opportunity, public safety, public health, and quality of life for Melrose residents. So with this grant, we will see great progress with multiple departments within our city. I can speak on the full aspect of it, connecting police department, mayor's office,
▶ 43:40 but I'd really like to just focus on the health department's usage of this grant. So Health and Human Services, as well as Recreation, will be able to expand the gambling harm prevention efforts through enhanced youth screening, messaging campaigns for youth and parents, and regional public health collaboration. We work with Melrose Public Schools and other community partners. The project will strengthen early intervention, increase awareness of gambling-related risks, and improve access to behavioral health and financial support resources for vulnerable populations within our community. So together, this grant will help the city address these local impacts of expanded gaming by supporting small businesses, improving emergency preparedness,
▶ 44:31 preventing gambling-related harm, and enhancing recreational opportunities for older adults. And if there's any questions, I can touch on some of the other departments and what they plan on using those funds for. But if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer. All right. Thank you so much for coming down. Up first, I have Councilor Finocchiaro. Thank you. Thank you for being here tonight. Yeah. I just wanted to focus a little bit on the messaging to the schools. Yes. I have high school children. I know that gambling is, I think, becoming, especially online gambling, very popular and very addictive. So I would love to see some assemblies or something in the high school. Obviously, you could get into the middle school, too.
▶ 45:17 Yeah. I'm not sure you're going to need to do this in the elementary school. But that I feel like, only just because I- Not with my children, but I feel like I see it firsthand with a lot of high school kids- Yeah ... we talk about it a lot, and I just think that it would be really great to, like I said, some assemblies or some kind of campaign, like you said, messaging campaign in the high school specifically. Mm-hmm. I think with this grant, it would be great to, I know you have money allotted there, but- Mm-hmm ... shift some more money in there and kind of focus on that. I know it's all important, but I know that that is, I'm sure you know, an issue right now. Yeah, absolutely. And it's something that our youth action team will be involved in
▶ 46:00 with the schools. And yeah, I can definitely take down that recommendation to support more or lean more on some assemblies for that specific purpose. Thank you. Yeah. Other councilors? Vice Chair Vandiver. Thank you. Thank you for being here. If you could briefly touch on the other departments as well, that'd be helpful. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So, some of the other departments that will be allocated the grant funding is the mayor's office. So, they would be able to bring back the Downtown Pop-Up Holiday Market, which would take place at the Melrose Family YMCA courtyard. Our police department would be able to provide incident command system training for patrol supervisors and command staff.
▶ 46:54 And our elder services, also one of the populations that's most affected by gambling are our seniors, and the Council on Aging and the Milano Center would be expanding their arts, cultural, and entertainment programming for older adults to try to take away the interest in casino trips because they are exposed to gambling. Thank you. Of course. Other councilors have questions? Councilor Chen. Thanks for being here. Do you have a history of how often we've gotten this grant, and do we apply for it every year, and is it usually about 50K that we can keep counting on? Correct. Yes. I would have to double-check for you, but I believe this is the second or third year in a row that we've received the grant.
▶ 47:46 So, we do have a framework in place. We are familiar with the grant and using the grant properly. So, I can double-check with our Director Anthony, and I can get back to you on that for the exact amount of times. Councilor Finocchiaro. Thank you. Through the Chair, I think I know that this has come across our desk at least twice. So yeah. I just want to make a motion to recommend. Second. Motion to recommend made by Councilor Finocchiaro, second by Vice Chair Vandiver on discussion. Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman?
▶ 48:35 Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor. All in favor? That motion passes and will be referred to our next full council meeting. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Up next, ID number 2026-1618, acceptance of the 2026 Green Communities Grant in the amount of $122,081. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Lori Massa, the planning director, and Elena Purroy-Casellas. And do you want to take it away first? Sure. Okay. So, the Green Communities funding is funding that we're eligible for each year, provided that we've completed our prior project and that we've submitted all of our reporting on the prior project, and then we become eligible again. The library was our most recent Green Communities grant, and that's all wrapped up
▶ 49:30 now. So this year we applied for two projects. One is more of a community-based project that Lori will talk about, and the other is the second phase of the controls project at the middle school. So right now, you may recall that during the supplemental budget process, you did approve funding to do phase one of the controls upgrade for the middle school. So this is all the HVAC controls, and all the sort of back-end system that allows us to more efficiently control the temperature in the various spaces, the airflow, things like that, that translates into a lot of savings on the energy end of things. So, we did most of that phase one project this summer. It was a $300,000 project. We did get some incentive money from National Grid.
▶ 50:26 And then this application was to do phase two, which is the remainder of the controls. It's another $300,000 project. We applied for essentially about 100,000 from Green Communities. We are planning on getting about 110,000 in National Grid incentives, and then the city contribution will be approximately 90,000 that we plan to put in from, you may recall that we have facilities capital money that we've put in the operating budget now, $500,000 a year. And so we plan to do our $90,000 contribution from that recurring facilities capital funding. And another part of this grant that we applied for, for a much smaller amount, $9,500, is for community engagement related to Mass Save programs and hiring MassEnergize, who is a nonprofit that specializes in getting
▶ 51:25 messaging out there to communities. And so this would be an extension of the city's energy advocate work and the Melrose Energy and Climate Group, to contact residents and property owners more specifically about the advantages of heat pumps and all that goes into the sustainability aspect and kind of cost savings with installing heat pumps. Terrific. Thank you so much. Any councilors with questions? Vice Chair Vandiver. Thanks. Thank you for being here. When this work is done and put in place, do you have an expectation for the lifetime of that work and how long this would cover those facilities for? So the controls work, I believe the control system that we have in the middle school right now is original to the building, so it's approximately 20 years old.
▶ 52:22 So we would hope to get a 20-year lifespan out of the new technology. Obviously, technology changes really fast. And so, it's hard to predict if 10 years from now there'll be a system that makes things so efficient that it's worth the capital cost to replace it all again. But, for right now, I would hope that it would last a couple of decades. Okay, great. Thank you. Up next, Councilor Finocchiaro. Thank you. This is great. I mean, it sounds like we're spending like $90,000 out of pocket, but then reaping the benefits, savings going forward. Yeah. And so, sort of like a no-brainer to me. I think it's great. I'd just like a motion to recommend. Motion recommended by Councilor Finocchiaro. Second.
▶ 53:10 Second by President Freeman. On discussion, up first I have Councilor Kowal. Could you talk a little more how you're going to spend the $9,500? Like what kind of outreach are you doing? Is it flyers? Is it meetings? Is it sort of how are you going to get that information out to people? So, the focus is going to be mostly on mailings and social media- Okay ... as two effective ways of engaging with residents. Do you plan to do any sort of meetings, like at the senior center or anything like that to sort of capture that audience? So our energy advocate has been really successful at kind of tapping into a lot of different populations and works closely with Erica at the senior center to have events.
▶ 53:59 And so for example, today there was an energy bill clinic, and that was hosted here because it's gotten quite large, and it had a really great turnout. So at those kinds of events, there are a lot of seniors that come, and then there's a whole bunch of people with different expertise from National Grid to HomeWorks Energy that does the energy audits that kind of help people to answer questions, but also suggest different energy saving measures and to make their home more comfortable. So- We already do that work, but then with this grant opportunity, having this kind of specialized piece of... I believe it's new. It's a new kind of area that Green Communities has allowed for this kind of community engagement. And so,
▶ 54:55 yeah, we were fortunate to get it to add to that work that's already being done in the community. Great. Thank you. Perfect. Up next, President Freeman. Thank you. First, I love the idea of community outreach. And through the chair to Councilor Kowal, I actually received an email from the energy advocate just a couple of days ago asking to use the chamber for a session that he's doing to educate the landlords on the benefits of energy efficiency and how the city can work with them. So I think this is a great addition to that. My question on the Green Communities grant as it relates to the middle school, I remember you were both before us back in April talking about the Climate Leaders Technical Assistance grant, and that's for heat pump installation at the middle
▶ 55:38 school. Will this project work in concert with that? Is this the next step of that evolution? Yeah. So that project is sort of separate. So the Climate Leaders project, we're looking at heat pumps that will be designed. We don't have construction funding yet, that was just for design funding for heat pumps for the performing arts and central admin spaces. These controls will tie in with that system. They also tie in with the new heat pump chiller that we put on the roof of the middle school last summer. So these are the controls that run every bit of HVAC equipment in the entire school. So all the classroom unit ventilators, all the air handlers on the roof, each one has automatically actuated valves and such that
▶ 56:27 are all controlled through this control system. So if we put in these heat pump systems, they would also be tied into this control system. But it's not solely for new equipment or old equipment, it's for every piece of HVAC equipment in the entire building. That's right. And I assume that this will help with those weekends when a sports team comes into the gym, and they found that the heat was not turned on or left on in the winter. This will enable quicker turnaround for all that and to ensure that the- Yeah. - systems are all operating properly. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. Terrific. Up next, I have Councilor Chen. Yeah. Thanks. I'm really glad to see this on the list because the municipal HVAC
▶ 57:06 and building efficiency comes up always at the top of the list of cost savings. So I was wondering if you had just a sense of how much we're spending on electricity and gas and power right now, and how much we could potentially save. I know this is a very short or a good ROI project, but just to give... I think $90,000 is nothing compared to what we're going to save here. Yeah. So unfortunately, I don't have that at my fingertips, but there is a spreadsheet from National Grid when they calculate our incentive payment that has that information, and we can get you that. Terrific. Council Mark. Right. Thank you both for being here, and I'd just like to add a comment that I commend you both for securing this grant.
▶ 57:47 You can't get some money unless you actually apply for it, and I know in order to apply for it, it's a very laborious, tedious process in which you have to make sure that all your I's are dotted and T's are crossed for previous phase and things like that. So, congratulations to you both for doing this, and I certainly appreciate it. Thank you. And I want to acknowledge also that some of our Energy Commission members from the public also put time into helping us with this application. And National Grid, with their support with the... We're part of this community solutions program where we meet with them monthly to talk about efficiency projects, and they've also been instrumental in helping recommend the best ways to maximize the points we get with our applications and
▶ 58:34 actually get the grants. Wonderful. Any other councilors with comments or questions? I believe we have a motion on the floor that's been seconded. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Vice Chair Vanderberg? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor. All in favor, that will be reported affirmatively to the next full city council meeting. Thank you, Director Broweky, also Director Massa, for coming in. Last but not least on our agenda, order 2026, 16.20, acceptance of donated parcels for conservation purposes. All right. I am Lori Massa, the planning director, and I'm joined by Ingrid Winkler, who is
▶ 59:31 the city's conservation agent, and Paul Moore, who is a conservation commissioner. And so we're here tonight to request the acceptance of a parcel of land. It's 4.8 acres, and it's in the southwestern portion of the city off of Dexter Road. This came about because there's a property that needed a slope protection special permit from the planning board, and the applicants who are here tonight, that's Sean and Laura Zackley. They proposed to carve off the back portion of the lot, and donate it to the city for conservation purposes, as part of that permitting process. And so, we worked with the Conservation Commission to make sure that they were on board with us and then the planning board conditioned as part of the approval of that project, which was to
▶ 1:00:30 build a single-family house, that this back portion is donated to the city. It is a lot of value because it's contiguous with other conservation parcels. And we'd love to accept it to add to the amount of land that's devoted to conservation in the city. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Do either commissioners have any commentary they'd like to add before we go to questions? No. All right. Councilor Finocchiaro. Yeah. Thank you. I just have a question. So this was part of their original purchase? Yes. And then now they're just cutting off a section and donate... It's conservation land? Right. So a new parcel line was kind of drawn so that it's a separate piece of land. Okay. Councilor Chen. Does the city need to spend any money taking care of this every year, this new
▶ 1:01:41 land? No, but do either of you want to comment on that further? If you've looked at the map, you'll notice there's a pond there, and it's quite a nice property if you haven't been down there. Assuming it's accepted as conservation property, it's worth checking out. It's a nice area. We will probably want to monitor the pond if we're made aware of any issues there, just as we do with all the other ponds. I'm sure you're familiar with the great success we've had with the water chestnut just out at El Pond. We also do some work with Towners, which is right nearby in Swain's Pond. So, we'd want to monitor it to make sure the pond was healthy because we do know there have been reports there's neighborhood kids that go fishing in it.
▶ 1:02:33 If I'm not mistaken, this was a sewer issue shortly a few months ago. Sorry, different pond. So anyway, I wouldn't say there's any known costs, but it would be adding to our conservation land in the city that we would be responsible for stewardship and maintaining the land properly and the water quality. So it's hard to say there would never be any costs associated with it, but I wouldn't expect any ongoing maintenance costs that we're aware of at this point. Okay. And is this an area that'll be frequented by the public, including these kids who fish, and- I would hope so. Then do we need to, I don't know, make sure it's mowed and make sure there's no safety issues and clean up- So a large part of conservation is we don't want to see it
▶ 1:03:23 landscaped. We don't want to see it mowed. We want to see the area in its natural state. I don't believe there's any trails on this yet. So we do have volunteer trail stewards program, where these are residents that wander the trails just as part of their normal daily life, and they report onto us if there's trees down or any other issues. Sometimes we get kids that have bonfires and whatnot, areas that need cleanup. So we try to keep tabs on that, but as we said, I don't think there's any trails here. But most of what we do is driven by volunteers. We do a lot of volunteer work. We have budget, but it's not, as I'm sure you guys are aware, it's not a huge part of the city's budget. So we try to keep our costs low and do what we can with
▶ 1:04:15 volunteer help. Thank you. Yep. We'll follow up next. I have Vice Chair Vandiver. Thank you. Similar, my question is for the everyday resident of Melrose, would they be able to access this land in some way or appreciate it? I'm trying to look whether there is road access that wouldn't go through someone's property or would people be able to see it? It's attached to other conservation land. It's not conservation land yet, so there's no paths or anything like that on it as far as I know. I think the new homeowners can access it pretty easily because it's attached to their backyard, and that, neighbors in that area. But it's just the open habitat and green space for the city. Yeah. If it was possible to make that
▶ 1:05:17 also accessible to the more general public some way with a path, I think that would be an added benefit. But certainly it's nice to have the green space for its own sake as well. Up next, I have Councilor Finocchiaro. Thank you. If I remember this area, so I think Dexter Road is sort of like, is it a paved road going back there? Yeah. But there's homes on Dexter Road, correct? Yep. So, the conservation area is behind a lot of these homes. What I like about this, and I appreciate you guys donating the land, is that it is owned by the city, and it stays conservation land. So as far as development goes, it just adds to the beauty of that area, right? So I think this is a great thing. And motion to recommend.
▶ 1:06:14 Motion to recommend made by Councilor Finocchiaro. Second. Seconded by Councilor Kowal on discussion. I'll just note, I'm thrilled this is in Ward 7. It has some of the best conservation land in the city, if I do say so myself as a totally unbiased observer. I just did want to ask, or I'll just say a point of order for my colleagues. This is actually a very steep slope that leads right into Malden. I was just looking at the map. It's Beachview Ave in Malden, and then you just go straight up into... So it would be difficult to access from Melrose. But I wanted to ask, how long has this area been in conservation? How long has it been a conservation land for the city of Melrose? Just out of curiosity, because I know that's a relatively recent development
▶ 1:06:59 relative to the rest of the city. So how long has the area around this- Yeah ... new parcel been- Large contiguous- ... conservation? ... council here. It's been a long time. I'm not sure. Yeah, nothing recent. Yeah, I'm sorry. So just before the meeting, I was kind of refreshing my memory on some of the parcels around it, just confirming that they were conservation land and whatnot. And if you look on the GIS mapping and with the parcel owners and whatnot, some don't even show as owners. So I think some of these lands, I can't say this for certain, but I think some of them go back quite a ways. I know there was a large chunk. We just had this with some other properties. When was a lot of land was given to the city and just kind of in one fell swoop?
▶ 1:07:47 Yeah. Tax title properties that were just transitioned to conservation land, like in the '70s, I think '80s and before that. Yeah. So- But a lot of properties that were just taken for tax reasons, like in the '30s, '40s. Yeah. So I mean, I- The city had for a long time. Yeah, I don't want to say that that's when this happened, but it kind of maybe looks like maybe that's what happened for some of them. Yeah. I think most of the conservation parcels in the city are from that. All right. Terrific. Well, for those looking to do some elevation work in Melrose, the runners amongst us- ... join us. It's a beautiful area. Any other questions from colleagues? We believe we have a motion on the floor and that is seconded.
▶ 1:08:31 Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor? All in favor, that will be reported affirmatively for our next city council meeting. With that, that being our last item on our agenda, on that motion by unanimous consent to adjourn. Seeing no objections, we are now adjourned. We're back with legal and legislative, and on our agenda is ID number 2026-1630, renewal of the Intermunicipal Agreement for Shared Health Department Services among the City of Melrose, the Town of Wakefield, and the Town of Stoneham for three years. Welcome back to the hot seat, Mr. Thompson.
▶ 1:09:21 Great to be here. Thank you. All righty. Again, my name's Daniel Thompson. I'm the senior environmental health specialist in Health and Human Services. And well, now we're going to be talking about our Intermunicipal Agreement between Melrose, Wakefield, and Stoneham. So this agreement, I'm just going to say IMA for short. The IMA started back in January of 2023, and since then it's proven to be the most successful framework we've had for our health department and human services. One of the most difficult challenges that local boards of health have to face in Massachusetts is completing our statutory requirements set forth by the state and Massachusetts Department of Public Health. It's very challenging because there are so many things that we're responsible for.
▶ 1:10:16 And with this framework, using our Intermunicipal Agreement, we're able to fulfill every statutory requirement that we have, not only in Melrose, but also in Wakefield and in Stoneham. On top of that, we're also able to fulfill these requirements while also improving on our abilities to respond to environmental health needs, communicable disease prevention, community health trends, and other emerging public health challenges. The IMA has also proven to be the most fiscally responsible framework for our community. Shared public health services allow the communities to leverage grant funding and shared infrastructure more effectively, and this helps expand our overall capacity, which includes our ability to do health inspections, our nursing
▶ 1:11:02 services, our substance abuse prevention programming, data analysis, and all sorts of community wellness initiatives that we hold. In addition to the regulatory and fiscal benefits, our IMA has also strengthened our capacity to respond to shared challenges that we have in the community. Some of these challenges range from, again, substance abuse, chronic disease, mental health concerns, and other social determinants of health. So really renewing our Intermunicipal Agreement, it allows us to continue building on the strong framework that we already have set in place. It allows us to retain our very skilled staff, and it helps maintain the continuity that we have within our department. So tonight, I respectfully request support in renewing the agreement for another
▶ 1:11:59 three-year term so that Melrose may benefit, or continue to benefit from our regional model. Any questions from councilors on the committee? Any questions from non-voting council members? What is the role of the... Oh, Councilor Finocchiaro. Sorry. No, go. I was just going to say, as long as you feel like this works for the department, and it seems like it works for us and for Stoneham and Wakefield. I would love to continue this setup that we have here. So just make a motion to recommend. Second. Motion to recommend made by Councilor Finocchiaro, seconded by Councilor Vandiver. Upon discussion? No? Okay. Madam Clerk. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Vandiver? Yes. President Freeman? Yes.
▶ 1:13:05 Chair Kowal? Yes. Okay. With that, it passes as we're reported to the full council at our next meeting. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here tonight. All right. That is the only and last item on our agenda, so I will now motion by unanimous consent to adjourn. Seeing no objection, we are adjourned.