City Council - Regular Meeting

Alright folks. Councillors, take your seats. I'm gonna call this meeting to order. Is a meeting of the city council. It is Thursday, April 23. My name is Lance Davis presiding. I use hehim pronouns. Please note that video and audio of this meeting will be recorded and may be shown on light shown live on local access government channels and on the city of Somerville website and will be available for future review. May the clerk please call the roll.

This is roll call. Councillor Ewing Campin? Councillor Link? Councillor Scott? Present. Councillor Klingen?

Present.

Councillor Strazo? Here. Councillor Saeed? Councilor Wheeler? Here. Councilor Hart? Here. Councilor McLaughlin? Here. Councilor Mbaugh?

Present.

Councilor Davis? Here. With eight councillors present, we have quorum.

Alright, thank you. And I'll just note that Councillors Ewen Campin, Link, and SAIT are all traveling this week. And I encourage folks that when traveling, especially with families, it's okay to miss a meeting. Before we could do the hybrid thing, it was quite normal that folks would miss a meeting every once in a while. Now that we can do it hybrid, everyone wants to dial in from overseas, and that's honorable and respectful, and I appreciate that. But it's also okay if you wanted us miss a meeting, we're recording them. We'll all take care of stuff that's here. So, that's why they're not here this evening. Before we get going, I'll let you know that pursuant to rule 32, let it be known that the city council salutes the flag of The United States, and let us recall our oath to uphold the constitution and the laws of the commonwealth to the best of our abilities and understanding. We begin our meetings with a moment of silence. Are there any counselors wishing to say a few words this evening? Councillor McLaughlin.

Thank you, mister president. I'd like to remember Larry Iarmello, also known as mister I, to high school students at Summerville High. He was my sophomore geometry teacher, and he gave me the greatest lesson that a teacher could ever give someone. He failed me. He gave me an F in geometry sophomore year of high school, and would not let me pass, and told me that you can do better and you expect more. And, that was a great life lesson for me, to have someone say like, you should hold yourself to a higher standard. He could have passed me along. He could have just given me a d and moved on, and I would have never learned a lesson. But that was a very valuable lesson that I learned that I attribute to him. I'm very sorry to hear of his passing.

He did a lot of great work for a lot of young people in the city.

Councilor Bah? Councilor Klingon would like to sign on to that one. Councilor Bah? Just sign on as well? Okay. Councilor Klingon?

I just want to say that I have fond memories of mister Ioannello as well. He was also my math teacher in high school. And he will be missed.

Alright. Seeing no further no further comps. Councillor Clearing, something further. Go ahead.

I just wanna keep Charles Lasage Junior in our prayers this evening. He's my brother-in-law, my my wife's brother, and

he passed away and won't miss him. Thank you. Okay.

Would everyone in chamber please rise however you are you are able in remembrance of the aforementioned individuals.

Thank you.

Madam clerk, next item.

Agenda item 1.3, approval of the minutes of the regular meeting of 03/12/2026.

Seeing no discussion. That item is approved.

Agenda item 2.1, a citation by councilor Strezzo, commending Gary Rogers, Community Action Agency of Somerville, Office of Housing Stability, and De Novo Legal Services for their work with housing justice.

Councilor Strezzo.

Thank you. Can we have the people that are here to to, receive the citation come forward? So Carrie Rogers has he hasn't been doing this alone, but he's been in a huge battle for to stay in his home. His apartment building was was sold, and the new landlord upped his rent. And the the his neighbors and he created a tenant attempted to create a tenant association, a union.

Summerville office housing stability cast were right on it alongside with them and he challenged some really unfair and dubious practices to just try to relinquish Summerville, long time Summerville tenants from their homes. And it takes a lot of guts to stand up for housing justice and for you know it feels in your heart is right. And we have to celebrate the small win sometimes. It's not a small win, actually. This was a process of years, years, and may I say many standouts, and some where my dog also showed up to say and support as well.

But it takes a lot of strength, endurance, and courage to do this. And and, Gary, you went you had to go to court, and you had Summerville behind you and a lot of advocates behind you, and you got through to the other side. And I don't want to paraphrase as much as I I wanna allow this floor to be for you and housing advocates. I'm happy to sponsor Gary Rogers and anyone else who would like to speak. I see Cass here. I see some other great housing advocates. But Mr. President, at your indulgence, may I sponsor Gary and and any who may wish to speak on this item?

Councilor Scherzer would like to sponsor Gary Rogers and others. And others. Any any discussion? Seeing no objection.

Thank you.

Folks, when you when you do step up, just please let us know your name for the record

so

we Yes, can sure we get that

my name is Gary Rogers. I'd like to read something that I wrote last night. With the citation, I have changed my view. Now feel like I won more than I thought I would. The picture is clearer for me.

I understand now why this case has excited many and why I have been misjudged by some that made me question myself, which is understandable too. But in the end, I realized what I chose to do was rare and it took courage. I am proud of my obstinance. I have had it all my life. Hopefully, taking this path may become less rare.

In a way, finally, and amazingly, part of the housing crisis has been dented and tempered by a case involving a small neglected attic apartment and a hardworking tenant in Winter Hill. Instead of running away in fear feeling that they can't fight back when speculators and corporate landlords try to price them out of their homes with abominable rent increases, chase them away from where they grew up, living near where they have worked for many years and even decades, and have friends close by, I have now showed them that they can stay and fight and even win on the first try if they learn their tenant rights, the rules to follow, for help when they need it, and there are lots of helpers, and quote, wow, I can't believe you did it, will be something you hear a lot like I have. You will feel proud. Courage. Courage is the virtue that leads to all the other virtues.

Thank you.

Okay. Hi everybody. My name is Samantha Wolf. I'm an organizer with the Community Action Agency of Somerville. Just wanted to introduce who's up here. We've got some of the CAS team and CAS executive director. We've got Somerville renters committee member, community members who've showed up for countless rallies and court supports. Michael, who is also part of the Sargent Avenue tenants union, and also Emily from De Novo who represented Gary the whole way through. So, thank you so much for this, Counselor Strzoka. It was really meaningful to us.

Thank you. And I just really want to mention that it's, I know that you who work alongside Gary as well, advocates and also you can remember you, it's constant hard work. You get constant numbers, constant calls, constant just cries for help at times. And I always think about you, and I always I sometimes say a little prayer for you because I know it sometimes feel like just like a sea, and keeping hope and keeping endurance and keeping just the momentum and the spirit and love in in your hearts for this. It's evident, but I want you to know it's it's not missed either.

I know it's a constant action of endurance. So, I really want to make sure that you know that too. So, thank you. Thank you. And, this

is exactly why we need rent control.

Alright. Thank you all for being here. Counselor Schreze, do you want to do a quick picture?

Yeah.

Alright. So, let's take a break any any discussion? Any comments? No. We'll take a picture.

Alright. We'll take a brief recess recess to take a couple pictures, and we'll come back as soon as the pictures are done. All right. I'll call this meeting back to order. So, that item is approved.

And, let's see. Let's go through the grant of locations, then I'll go through the items we're gonna take out of order so we don't folks don't have to remember too long. So, madam clerk, next item.

Next item is agenda item 3.1, a grant of location from Eversource, applying for a grant of location to install 3,520 feet of conduit and four new manholes, 32441, three two four four two, three two four four three, and three two four four four, in Prospect Street, Charlestown Street, South Street, Windsor Street, and Medford Street, from 9 Medford Street to appoint a pickup at 51 Prospect Street.

Mr. President, I, along with about a third of Ward 2, are recused from this item. Thank you.

The barrel, let the clerk reflect that Councillor Scott is recused from this item. So, now declare this public hearing to be open. Is there anyone here to speak on the item? Say again? Rick Branca, online? Apologies if I got your name wrong. Please feel free to correct me.

Yep. Thank you. Councilor Rick Branca is correct. Thank you again, members, for allowing me to speak. My name is Rick Branca here on behalf of Eversource Energy in the Greater Cambridge Energy Program. This program was previously approved by the energy facility citing board in 2024, and we respectfully request that you grant approval of these grants of location.

Okay. Anyone else here to speak on the item? Anyone online please use the raise hand function if you'd like to speak. No? Okay. Seeing no further comments I declare the public hearing to be closed. Is there any discussion on the item? No? Alright. Seeing none, that item is approved. Next item.

Agenda item 3.2, a grant of location from Eversource. Applying for a grant of location to install 60 feet of conduit in MacArthur Street from Utility Pool Pole 122 over one for point of pickup at 8 MacArthur Street.

Alright. I now declare this public hearing to be open. Is there anyone here to speak on the item? Alright. We have Jackie Duffy online. Go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Jackie Duffy Eversource would like to install 60 feet of conduit in MacArthur Street, and this is to provide electric service to 8 MacArthur Street.

Okay. Anyone else here to speak on this item? Anyone online? Use the raise hand function if you'd like to speak. No one? Alright. I declare this public hearing to be closed. Is there any discussion? Alright. Seeing none, that item's approved. Next item.

Agenda item 3.3, a grant of location from Eversource applying to install 49 feet of conduit in Summerville Avenue from existing manhole 20,630 to a point of pickup at 737 Summerville Avenue.

Alright. I declare this public hearing open. Is there anyone here to speak on the item?

Jackie Duffy, Eversource would like to install approximately 49 feet of conduit to supply electric service to 737 Summerville Avenue.

Okay. Anyone else here to speak on the item?

Anyone online? Seeing none, I

declare the public hearing closed. Is there any questions, discussion? No? Alright. Seeing none, that item is approved. Next item.

Agenda item 3.4, grant of location from Eversource applying to install 28 feet of conduit in Horace Street from utility pole 173 over three and a half to a point of pickup at 31 Horace Street.

Alright. I now declare this public hearing open. Is there anyone here to speak on the item?

Jackie Duffy, I would like to install approximately 28 feet of conduit to supply electric service to 60.

Anyone else here to speak on the item? Anyone online? Mary Mello, online. Go ahead. You're unmuted on our end.

Barry Mello, are you able to unmute on your end? Is she unmuted? Waiting to see if the technology catches up with us in

real time. Can you

hear me? There we are.

Yes. Go right ahead.

Alright. Sorry about that.

No problem.

I own 31 Horace Street and 60 Medford Street. So I'm curious on the the grant location says 31 Horace, but, Jackie, you had just mentioned 60 Medford Street.

Right. We're going it's it's servicing servicing sixty sixty Medford. Medford. It's It's a, development that's going in there.

Okay. Alright. That's kinda what I wanted to confirm. What's the time frame that this is looking to happen?

Right now, we're I'm working on an easement for everything that's going in there. I I wouldn't know. I'd have to go back to the division because I don't know. I can take you you can I'm sorry. They can give you my number and you can call me and I can we can speak offline about this when the work will start, if

that works for you.

That does. That does. Okay.

Appreciate you. Okay. Thanks, Mary. Okay. If you have any questions at all, they have my number there at some of them.

Okay. Appreciate it.

Alright. Thank you. You're welcome.

Microphone on. You'll all be able to hear me better that way. So, Mary, please send an email to city clerk contact, all1word,@SummervilleMA.gov, and we'll respond with Ms. Duffy's information, and hopefully you guys can get that squared away. If there's any other issues then let us know. You can reach out back through the clerk's office as well if there's continuing concerns. And I appreciate it. Anyone else here to speak on the item? Anyone else on line? Okay. Seeing none, declare the public hearing to be closed. Are there any questions, comments? Councillor Scott?

Thank you, Mr. President. Ms. Mello can also reach out to me. (857) 615-1532. I'll be glad to connect him and do any follow-up needed. I am thrilled to announce that there are no double poles or dangerously leaning poles on Horace Street. So this one, I move to be approved tonight.

Alright. Any further discussion? Alright. Seeing none, councilor Scott moves to approve. That item is approved.

I also

Sorry. Alright. Miss Bell, I hope you're still listening. We're gonna correct. I the what did I say?

The title is City Clerk contacted City Clerk at Somerville.

Okay. So, the email that you should send an email to is cityclerksummervillema dot gov. And or contact your your board counselor, counselor Scott, as you said, he'll be happy to help facilitate that communication.

Okay. I got that. Senior clerk at sumo Next item. Mass dot gov.

Mary, j t has my phone number also.

Okay.

Love when we solve problems in real time.

Government on its best. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. Next item, madam Clark.

Agenda item 3.5, a grant of location from Eversource applying to install 25 feet of conduit in Pearl Street from existing manhole 18868 to a point of pickup at 181 Pearl Street.

I now declare this public hearing to be open. Is there anyone here to speak on the item?

Anyone online? Jackie Duffy?

Jackie Duffy, Eversource would like to install approximately 25 feet of conduit on Pearl Street to supply electric service to 181 Pearl Street.

Alright. Anyone else here to speak on the item?

Anyone online?

Mary, I see your hand is still up. Did you want to speak on this item as well or was that for the the prior item? Put her hand down. Okay. Very good. Anyone else online? No. Alright. So, I declare this public hearing to be closed. Is there any discussion? No? Alright. Seeing none, then that item is approved. Alright. Folks, we have a number of items we're gonna take out of order tonight.

I'm gonna read through them. If you if you are here for an item that you don't hear me mention right now, please let one of our counsel or IGA staff know because we do have an executive session later this evening. We're gonna make a real strong effort to not leave you all sitting here when we disappear into that room to do executive session stuff. So, we go through the list here, if there's something that you're to just observe or to, you know, whatever the case may be, IGA staff and our clerk, there you go. Folks in the corner here, let us know and we'll do our best to make sure that you can hear your item before we go into executive session.

So, in this order we're going to take up item seven fifteen, which is proclamation of Arab American Heritage Month, item 4.3 which deals with firefighter equipment, item 4.6, which deals with to support Harvard academic workers, item 7.2, which relates to the SMEU Unit D negotiation or contract, I guess. Let's see. Item 8.4, which, sorry? After eight dot four, right? Okay.

So, yeah, eight dot four, which relates to 90 Washington Street, that's gonna be sort of an update. Then we'll take up item six dot a, which is the finance committee report. Related to that will be a supplemental item, which is 10 dot two. Then we will have a presentation, an eight dot two, which is a presentation regarding combined sewage outflows. And then we will go into executive session. So, if you're here for anything else at some point before we get to that point, let the folks over there know and we'll make sure that we don't keep you around longer than we have to. So, with that, seeing no objection, we'll take up item seven one five. Madam clerk.

07:15, a mayor's communication proclaiming April 2026 to be Arab Arab American Heritage Month.

Madam clerk, could you read the item before the mayor comes up?

Whereas for over a century, Arab Americans have been making valuable contributions to virtually every aspect of society in medicine, law, business, education, technology, government, military service, and culture. And whereas since migrating to The United States and the city of Somerville, people of Arab descent have shared their rich culture and traditions with neighbors and friends while also setting fine examples of model citizens and public servants. And whereas they brought with them to The United States their resilient family values, strong work ethic, dedication to education, and diversity in faith and creed that have added strength to our great democracy. And whereas Arab Americans have also enriched our society by sharing in the entrepreneurial American spirit that makes our nation free and prosperous, and whereas the history of Arab Americans in The US remains neglected and defaced by misconceptions, bigotry, and anti Arab hate in forms of crimes and speech, and whereas issues such as civil rights abuse, harmful stereotyping, and bullying must be combated in the forms of education and awareness, and whereas they join all Americans in the desire to see a peaceful and diverse society where every individual is treated equally and feels safe. And whereas the city of Somerville stands against all forms of hate including anti Arab bias and Islamophobia and is committed to standing with Arab American residents of Somerville and the Commonwealth.

And whereas the incredible contributions and heritage of Arab Americans have helped us build a better nation, now therefore be it known to all those present that the mayor of the city of Summerville respectfully proclaims April 26 to be Arab American heritage month. Proclaimed on this April 2026 by mayor Jake Wilson.

Thank you. Mayor Wilson, you have the floor.

Mister president, thank you. Good evening, everyone. Proclamations are typically very joyful, celebratory, feel good things. There's some heavy stuff in this one as you heard. It's a sign we have to do better as a society. This is us recognizing that and aiming to do better as a city. Everyone, everyone should feel immense pride about who they are, where they come from, and what they're contributing to to our our city and to our society. To our Arab American neighbors, you help make our city what it is. I hope you feel embraced and welcomed and and part of the fabric of the city of Summerville. Happy Arab American Heritage Month everyone. Thank you.

Mayors, would you like to request have someone else Otherwise, we haven't we need a member of the council to sponsor someone. But I understand there's someone else here that we were

Mister president, I didn't know I had that power as mayor.

Well, you can make the request through me, mister mayor. I'd be happy to For you? Yeah. I was like we'd

like to we'd like to request that that we hear from the public about this, please.

Okay. Mister mayor. Mister mayor. Just so that we understand what we're what we're embarking on here. This one speaker, multiple speakers? Just we know how many spoke to each speaker. One speaker. Very well. And who is the speaker? Please yeah. Please step forward and introduce yourself.

Yeah. Thank you.

Apologize for little glitch here. Usually, we've got this a little bit more smooth out ahead of time, but our apologies. Welcome. Glad to have you here. Please say your name for the record so Kirk can get it into the minutes and go right ahead.

Thank you very much. My name is Elmarishe and I'm the executive director of the Center for Arabic Culture. And the Center for Arabic Culture is located here in Mount in in Somerville. Mister mayor Jay Coulson, president Lance Davis, and members of the city council on behalf of the center for agriculture, its board of directors, and the Arab American community here in Mansfield and around Massachusetts, we thank you so much for this beautiful recognition. Since 2006, the Center for Arabic Culture has been working as a force of change through arts and culture.

And Somerville has been our home not just as a location, but as a family and a community to connect with, build bridges to, and grow and thrive together. Where whether through the city hall, the office of immigrant affairs, the Somerville Arts Council, and all their vibrant teams, CSE has been working to support the community and has been supported in very meaningful way over the years from the city. Somerville has been our home and we are very proud of that. And I would like to take this opportunity to say that the Arab Americans in Somerville and in Massachusetts, since their early arrival more than hundred years ago, has been an integral part of the community and we're thriving to build home in this country, working to support their community socially, economically, and politically. Early Arab immigrants settled in cities in Massachusetts since the eighteen eighties, and they were key figures in the textile mills and shipyards and participated in the also historic nineteen twelve bread and rose strike.

Boston South and once a vibrant neighborhood known as Little Syria, which shared space with growing Chinatown, the area featured Arab language newspapers, local grocery stores, and churches that served as a community anchors, and from there Arab Americans went on to live in around Massachusetts including Somerville spreading their culture, cuisine, music, business minds, and their strong belief in family and hard work. Today, Somerville is the home of a very vibrant and diverse Arab community. Communities from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco to name a few, all call Somerville their home and work to enrich its culture, economic and political life, hand in hand with their fellow neighbors. The Center for Arabic Culture through our mission in that is secular non political through arts and cultural events and activities of building bridges and connecting cultures, believe that art, language, and culture are the grassroots pillars of building a community through which bridges of understanding, empathy, and humanity between all its groups are cultivated and will render the community stronger stronger on all fronts. A matter that will allow all of us to express who we are culturally, socially, and politically, and contribute to our community in a democratic and humanistic way.

And, again, on behalf of the Center for Agriculture board and community, we are blessed to call Somerville our home and look forward to keep working with its leaders and fellow neighbors to build a strong, aware, and rich community. I would like also to thank everybody who is who has attended here from the larger community and from the Arab American community. Thank you for showing up and showing support. We appreciate you all. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Any discussion? You wanna take a couple pictures, mister mayor? Yeah. Alright.

So that item will be placed on file. I'm gonna remember to do that before we take pictures this time. And we'll have a brief recess for a few pictures, and then we'll come back after the pictures are taken. Thank you. The item we'll take out of order is item four dot three.

Madam clerk.

Agenda item 4.3, a resolution by councilor McLaughlin that the administration update this council on the ordering and maintenance of firefighter equipment such as fire engines, ladder trucks, and all other fire apparatus.

Council McLaughlin.

Thank you, mister president. This is just a request for information, but it comes from discussions with the fire department about concerns with their equipment, particularly their engines as well as other equipment. I think they're stuck in the hall now, but I would like to sponsor Mike Jefferson from the firefighters union to speak on this item.

Do you want

to lay this one on

the table till they're able

to make know there's like there's a lot

of lot of traffic out in the hallway right now.

Right there, but sure.

Alright. Let's lay this on the table briefly while we let folks work their way through the crowd. Madam Clerk, we could take up then item four dot six.

Agenda item 4.6, a resolution by Councillor McLaughlin, Councillor Mbaugh, and Councillor Klingen in support of Harvard academic workers.

Councilor McLaughlin. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm not sure I've told any of you, but I go to Harvard. Have I mentioned this at all in a conversation? Very proud of this for someone who grew up in this community to go to this school. Learning a lot, but one of the great lessons I've learned from both students and professors is that economic inequality, the affordability crisis is affecting everyone. And, that includes Harvard workers and students. We saw just the other day that a Harvard union has gone on strike for their rights. And, we also have the Harvard academic workers, which is represented by the same union who are going to be voting for a strike soon.

Just some of the things I've seen there, again, growing up here, you assume everyone who goes to Harvard, everyone who works at Harvard is affluent. And I've seen students and people working there going into food lines to get food, trying to scrounge up whatever meals they can get. People paying over 75% of their income in childcare. People worried about their documentation status and whether they're gonna be protected by the federal government when they encroach on the school. So, this is a universal problem for all of us, affordability. And, it extends to Harvard students, it extends to workers. And, I'd like to extend the opportunity for to sponsor speaker, Ali Stanton from the Harvard Academic Workers Union.

Councilor McLaughlin would like to sponsor Ali Stanton. I see no objection. Please just, formally state your name for record and go ahead.

Thank you. My name is Allie Stanton. Good evening counselors and neighbors. I live just a few blocks down the road on School Street and I'm a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School where I study how viral diseases like yellow fever are transmitted by mosquitoes. In case you didn't know, the effects of climate change will likely soon be bringing those mosquitoes here to Massachusetts.

I've also been a member of UAW since I started graduate school in 2018. Being a union member has changed my life as it gave me the ability to afford necessary mental health care during a difficult period of my life through my graduate student union's co pay relief fund. It also enabled me to support and advocate for my coworkers as a shop steward for several years and join other Massachusetts UAW members in the auto industry on the picket line when they were on strike in 2023. It's my most fervent belief that a better world is possible for everyone and that a strong union in every workplace is a large part of how such a world can come about. That is why when I began my postdoctoral appointment at HMS, I again chose to spend a significant amount of my time organizing my coworkers into the Harvard Academic Workers Union, which is also part of UAW and represents more than 2,600 non tenured Harvard employees in teaching and research positions.

Our union has been bargaining with Harvard management for around twenty two months and has unfortunately seen little movement on the items that are most important to me and my coworkers. These issues include the increasingly unstable position of visa holders who make up well over half the bargaining unit. Harvard has refused to commit to denying immigration enforcement access to employee information without a warrant, and recently attempted to reduce the quality of our health insurance to the point that it was no longer compliant with J-one visa requirements, putting those individuals in immediate jeopardy. Among my coworkers at HMS, and I'm sure this is true for many Somerville residents, I found out a major issue is the extremely high cost of childcare. I know many people with babies or young children who tell me that they spend upwards of 75% of their take home pay on daycare.

This issue affects all genders, but it's a particular obstacle for women in the profession. Harvard offers more generous financial support for the cost of childcare to its tenure track faculty, but our kids are just as important and just as expensive. Through my employer's persistent though my employer's persistent crying to the press would indicate otherwise, Harvard is wealthier now than it ever has been in its nearly four hundred year history. When the Trump administration made deep cuts to science funding last year, my coworkers and I helped restore nearly all of that funding by protesting here in Massachusetts and in Washington DC and by winning a lawsuit filed on our behalf by UAW. The university has rewarded us with massive layoffs and terminations for which we received no severance and increasingly short appointment lengths, sometimes two months or less, in an already outrageously precarious employment arrangement.

I myself do not yet have written confirmation that I will still be employed when my contract is up for renewal on July 1. This is in addition to Harvard's policy of time caps for non tenure teaching faculty, unique amongst its peer institutions, in which talented and often award winning educators at the end of a fixed term and non renewable contract are let go for the sole purpose of hiring someone new at the bottom of the pay scale. The university has also attempted at every turn to strip workers of their union membership and even their employee status based off of arbitrary metrics like funding source and a comically expansive definition of who's a supervisor. I and many of my coworkers are fed up with this injustice and are ready to take action to win a strong contract, including a strike action in the coming months if necessary. It would be very meaningful to us to have the support of the city council of my beautiful home of Summerville, where I've lived for many years and hope to live for many more so long as my employer and my landlord will allow me to afford it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anything further, councilor McLaughlin? No. Councilor Bahn.

Thank you, mister president, and thank you to my colleague for putting this forward. It's and to Ali for continuing to demonstrate courage over fear. You know? This is really necessary. As also a member of UAW myself, you know, I think that this resolution reflects some of his long history of, you know, supporting organized labor.

So we always support fair wages, workplace protection. So academic workers, including teaching assistants and researchers, play a critical role in higher education but often face job insecurity and inadequate compensation, like you mentioned. So supporting the organizing efforts is consistent with broader commitment to economic justice and workers' rights. Thank you for standing up for these values.

Councilor Hart and councilor Schroeder would like to sign on. I saw councilor good. Councilor Scott would to like sign on. Councillor Klingon and then

Councillor Wheeler. Thank you Mr. President. Through you, as one of the co sponsors of this resolution, I just want to thank Allie, my constituent for coming up here today and speaking on behalf behalf of her brothers and sisters who are probably walking the picket line with the other clerical workers down at Harvard University. I just kind of want to echo what councillor McLaughlin said.

You know, we've been we've been down on picket lines with thirty two BJ and the the other local one zero three, they have like an they have like a trade union that's like made up of three unions. But come seeing a lot of these academic unions come along and the solidarity that's been there with I mean, just to have that type of power to be able to have solidarity when when the cafeteria workers of Unite Here Local twenty six or or thirty two BJ, the custodians go out. I just think it gives that much more power to fight against Harvard and the the massive amount of power and money that they have. And as you had said, it's it's only fair. It's only right.

Everybody has the the right to organize. And I hope that you all come to a resolution fairly quickly. And I'm happy to to support. I don't want to see you have to strike but if you do I'll be out there with you. Thank you.

Council Wheeler.

Thank you chair. I deeply, deeply appreciate the work and the risks risks that the members of your union are are taking to stand up for yourselves and for others including the many people who may be in too precarious a situation to speak out themselves. I am a former teaching fellow, which is what they call their teaching assistants. And anybody who's been anywhere near that knows the pay is willfully inadequate and the the other conditions as well are desperately in need of change.

I think it's nothing short

of absurd for an institution with the many many billions with a B that Harvard has to be paying the academic workers who represent and perpetuate its stellar academic reputation every day to be paying them so abysmally and treating them in a way as though they do not need livable pay, livable conditions and equitable conditions as well. So, thank you.

Any further discussion? Alright. Seeing none, that item is approved. And we will now pick up off the table the item that was laid on the table which is 4.3. Councillor McLaughlin, back to you.

Thank you, mister president. I'd like to sponsor Mike Jefferson to speak. Councillor McLaughlin would

like to sponsor Mike Jefferson. Any opposition? Seeing none, please step forward and state your name for the record.

Thank you, Michael Jefferson, president of Sommelier Local seventy six. Thank you, mister president. Thank you, councilor McLaughlin, for sponsoring me to speak tonight. I understand that it has been a packed night already, and I believe there's more speakers. So I will be brief and to the point. And I wanna stop by addressing that. I do realize that the city over the last two years has spent millions of dollars to purchase new apparatus. There's a national nationwide issue right now with getting these pieces of apparatus to us in a timely manner. But that is something our international union, the IFF, is taking up on the federal level testifying to congress to fix that issue. I would also like to acknowledge our mechanics and how they do a phenomenal job maintaining our fleet when companies go out of service.

But the rapid rate that they are going out of service is incredibly difficult for them to keep up with the workload. And I've seen a lot of negative comments when we post stuff about our mechanics not doing the work, and that is just not the case. They work diligently and tirelessly tirelessly to keep our fleet up and running to the best of their ability, so I wanted to put that on the record. I don't have the exact numbers of traffic calming devices in the city. I will say a week ago today, I reached out by phone, by email, and left a message with the transportation department.

No response by phone. No response by email. But if I had a guess, I would say there was hundreds of speed bumps, flex posts, raised crosswalks across the the city. And I would like to say that the studies show that one speed bump can delay a fire response by three to ten seconds. One device can slow a response, each device, three to ten seconds.

Think about that if your house is on fire. Think about that if you were having a medical emergency or your loved one was having a medical emergency. On average, a fire engine weighs 36,000 pounds and costs 1,000,000. A ladder truck on average weighs 70,000 pounds and costs $2,000,000. There are 10 fire companies in Summerville.

Six engines, three ladder trucks, and a heavy rescue. And in 2025 last year, those companies ran just shy of 16,000 calls. These apparatus are being exposed to thousands and thousands of contacts with traffic calming devices a year responding to emergencies. The toll it is taking on our fleet is unprecedented. Sixteen and thirty five ton trucks with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of intricate mechanical workings inside are not designed to constantly speed up, slow down, or go over a hump, speed up, slow down, go over a hump, repeat, repeat, repeat over and over again.

These humps are causing wear and tear on our suspension, causing issue on our brakes, the alignment on our trucks, and overall parts are wearing way too fast, long, shorter than their lifespan should be. Flex posts are ripping lines out from under our trucks. They are wreaking havoc on the undercarriage of our vehicles. Many instances, our drivers have no choice but to drive over these flex posts and take them out because these streets have become so compact and condensed that the cars have nowhere to pull over and to get out get out of our way. And I don't expect civilians to take their personal vehicles and drive over those flex posts to get out of our ways.

I'm not sitting here advocating for that. But it has become a nightmare to traverse these streets and our trucks over the last few years. A major issue that I have is no one has asked our drivers for their input. Privates drive the apparatus, not lieutenants, not captains, not the district and deputy chiefs who drive the SUVs, not the chief and the assistant chief who drive SUVs. It's the privates.

And this isn't like the military where as you stay in longer, you move up with rank. In this profession, you can stay a private your entire career, and many of us do and are proud to do that. But it's these men and women who drive these trucks day in and day out, go over them in the morning, and have the firsthand perspective of the adverse effects these streets are causing as well as the increased difficulty navigating through this city. Their knowledge and experience is invaluable, yet no one looks to them for input. I wanna thank mayor Wilson for coming out and riding along with us on Ladder 3 and getting a firsthand look at what it's like to be in one of these pieces of apparatus.

I encourage all of you to do the same. Go to the station in your ward. If you're at large, go to the station in your neighborhood or of your choosing. Go at rush hour so you can see what it's like in gridlock traffic. Go at rush hour so you can see what it's like to have to go over flex post because these cars have nowhere to move out of the way.

There needs to be more consideration for our fire apparatus the men and women of some old fire department when drastic changes are being made to our city streets. We deserve better. These members should not be coming to work and driving Waltham and Stoneham fire engines or a Medford ladder truck. It destroys morale, but more importantly, they deserve up to date frontline working apparatus to be able to perform their duties to the best of their ability. The same way your citizens and your constituents deserve to feel safe in their homes knowing that some of the fire has the equipment they need to do their job and can respond in a timely manner.

Three people last summer were rescued in the North Street projects over an aerial ladder on a truck that was 31 years old. Thankfully, there was no issue. But how many times we want to run this risk? We have been extremely fortunate, but eventually something will go wrong. We are working with old equipment because our frontline pieces are out of service. That is not fair to my members. That is not fair to your citizens. And to close and bring this back, like I said, full circle to the the purchase of the new apparatus. This city has now invested millions of dollars on four new pieces of apparatus that should all be here by early next year. Shouldn't we all want to protect that investment, get the most out of these new trucks, and not have them constantly being maintained, spending tens of thousands dollars a year annually to repair them.

Again, I urge you I I really respect and appreciate that you let me come up and speak tonight, but I urge you to take this matter seriously because it really is a matter of public safety. And thank you.

Thank you. Councilor MacArthur, anything further? No.

If there's no comments, I'd like to refer to public health and safety.

Public health and safety. Any discussion? Councilor Wheeler?

Thank you, chair. I just want to say first of all thank you for for coming and talking to us about this. I want to say it's hard to hear. It's hard to hear this. You know some of the streetscaping work is speed bumps.

Know there are are ways that the hope has been and some of the evidence has shown that these improve safety. And you know, may be something where there's a need for us to be taking more voices into account and more perspectives into account than we have been. I think you can't make a decision well balancing everything if you don't know the experience of people who are running into problems with it every day. So I really hope that we are going to make a shift to really taking this information as part of what is informing our decisions about our streetscaping moving forward. I'm not sure what that balance looks like, but I do want to make sure we're making a balance with the best information we can.

Thank you.

Councillor Scott.

Thank you Mr. President. I'm not on public health and public safety. I'm glad it's going into committee. But as a counselor who's going to be watching that later, I hope when that discussion happens that there's there's gonna be some data on what the frequency of breakdowns are on this equipment and how long this equipment is out of service so we can see how that's trended over time to help understand not only where we're at today but how we got there.

Saw Councilor Clearing and then

Councilor Schozzo. Thank you, Mr. President, through you. Thank you to Councilor McLaughlin for bringing this forward and firefighters for coming and speaking today. I also look forward to that conversation and looking over the data.

I've had frank conversations with President Jefferson in the past regarding, you know, what we've been told and what we've been shown in terms of, you know, whether it be response time or whatever. So, I think it's know it's high time that we actually take a good look at this as counsel Scott said you know with the with sort of the the rollout of the speed humps and sort of and if we can you know what we can glean from that. Other than the fact that it's kind of common sense if you have a huge vehicle going over a speed hump, you know, that many times. So I really think it's also just a number of calls that these guys respond to men and women respond to on a daily basis. I think it's a lot more than we realize because if you don't see a fire on the news, but they're constantly going to gas calls.

Mean, it's, you know, it it's constant as far as how many trips they're making and how much this is wear and tear. In an urban city like this and the amount of calls they get, medical, what have you, the wear and tear that is putting on the trucks, it's definitely something that we need to we need to consider especially with four new pieces of apparatus coming in. As councilor Wheeler said, you know, I get many many requests. Constituents really wanna see these speed humps. I, you know, I struggle with the balance between public safety of, you know, saving lives and and and also public safety of saving pedestrian lives because of the amount of cut through traffic we have and the amount of speeds at which the cars are going through.

It's it's nothing that I grew up in the city. I've never seen anything like it. It's just so many cars on the road. And so, yeah, I think this is an important conversation to have and I'm glad we're having it. And I'm glad that the the the firefighters union has come to speak up on this. Thank you. Councilor Chesca.

Thank you, Mr. President. Through you to our firefighters, thank you for coming to speak on this. Thank you for your persistence and also just for making sure that this is front and center of attention and we know that this is this issue much to our dismay, been now three administrations long,

which

is unacceptable because we need the right people in the room when we talk about street design that it isn't just one department or another. When we do get this conversation to public health and public safety, I am asking the administration or department heads that will be there through to the administration to really be thoughtful on who is going to be there to discuss this and I do request that mobility be part of the conversation at least in this this meeting because I I don't understand why that would not be included. They are the ones that help make this this the street design on this and the projection of the years ahead. In addition to that, through you to the chair of public health and public safety, are you planning on putting this forward at the next public health public safety meeting?

Through the president, I was gonna request for the IGA's office to follow on consul Scott's request for information. So I'd like to have that information before the meeting. If we could have that before that meeting, yes, I would take it up.

Personally, I was hoping that it would not be in the more recent, what, May meeting because there are firefighters who are hosting an autism meets event and I know that there will be numerous firefighters at that event and if they want to be part of this conversation or listen to part of this conversation, they may not have that chance. I So do want to bring that to your attention, but we're with you. I'm with you, and we'll we'll right this wrong and fix this. Thank you for being here tonight.

To the chair, we can wait. We can wait.

Very good. Thank you for raising that that conflict. Any further discussion? Alright. Seeing none, night item is approved with a copy to public health and public safety. Next item out of order, which is seven dot two, I think. Right? Yeah. Seven dot two.

Agenda item 7.2, a request of the mayor requesting the appropriation of $719,817 from the salary and wage stabilization fund to various departmental personal services accounts to fund the retrospective portion of a collective bargaining settlement with the Somerville Municipal Employees Union Unit D.

I see Assistant City Solicitor Matt Serugou. Good

evening, president. Through you, this is an appropriation of funds to fund the retroactive component of the the unit d agreement that settled earlier this year. The the contract was ratified by the council at that time, this now just funds the the three years plus that the was retroactive on that contract.

Any questions? Council Wheeler?

This is not a question, but being satisfied that this appropriation is appropriate and wanting to support the coming together of the union and city negotiators, I move to approve this item.

Motion is on the table to approve. Any discussion on the motion? Still can talk about it.

Kudos to everyone, mister president. Let's Scott? Kudos to everyone on this. I'm just happy to get them paid. Alright.

Any further discussion? Alright. Let's lay this item on the table till we have enough members here to actually take a vote. Got a thumbs up. We got enough here? Okay. I can't count I guess. Alright. So, motions to approve. Do we need a roll call on this one? We don't need a roll call

on this. Oh, yeah. See, there you go.

This one's easy. Alright. No further discussion and that has improved. Thank you, solicitor. Next item, madam clerk.

Next item is agenda item 8.4, an officer's communication from the director of economic development conveying an update on the 90 Washington Street request for proposals.

Who do we have from the administration to speak to this item? Director Nikki Williams.

Mister president. Councilor Scott. I think there is a desire for some of the counselors to take a photo with the firefighters in here.

I'm happy. You know I always love a good recess for pictures.

Quick recess for pictures. Alright.

We're gonna we're gonna take we're oh, here we go. Mister Demers here. Alright. Very sorry for that. No no worries. Hold on one sec. So, councilor Scott.

I'm just saying there's a we're perilously close to losing quorum. I understand.

I I see folks hovering. I think we still got what we need

here. Alright.

Thank you. And, mister Mersby, please introduce yourself for the record and then you can speak to the item.

Alright. Thank you. Through you, mister president, my name is Ben Demersby. I'm senior planner with the economic development team with the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development. I'm going to keep these remarks brief this evening, just giving a quick update on 90 Washington Street. So, for this item, we shared a memo ahead of time just kind of describing where we are in the process for the 90 Washington Street request for proposals to select a development partner for the site. We received two proposals. Currently, we are reviewing the technical proposals. So, each of these proposals includes both a technical component. This includes things like site plans, the more qualitative elements of the proposal, and then also a financial proposal, so the financial offer for the land.

Currently, are reviewing the technical proposals with the ninety Washington Street Civic Advisory Committee. So, we'll, we have a few more meetings with that group. And then, following that, we'll be coming to the council in May. On May 11, we'll be having a discussion to really dive into the contents of those proposals and bring in the financial components. So, I'm really just here to answer any questions. Didn't want to start deliberating on these two proposals this evening. We're going to really get into that in May.

Okay. Just so for, in terms of process, as Mr. Chambers said, we have a sort of a schedule of discussion points laid out that I've worked with IGA to sort of put forth. This the intent here is a is the the first introduction, high level overview. We will have opportunity both in open executive session for the degree that there's topics that are appropriate for executive session to to have that opportunity as well. I think the key point I think tonight is I understand is is that I believe attached to this item in the agenda are all of the relevant documents, if I understand correctly. Did that happen correctly? Yes? Okay. And I believe there's probably also an easier way for folks to get to, or there will be soon. Is the public website open yet?

Yes. So, public website is up. If you go to summervillema.gov/90washingtonredevelopment,

all of

the documents that we shared for this item this evening, so that's the two proposals, a copy of the RFP that was released to which these proposals are responding. And then also there is a summary memo there from the city's real estate consultant on this project, HRA, that does an initial assessment based on criteria in the RFP of how each of these two proposals scored.

Okay. So, those are available at that website as well as attached to this item or this agenda for tonight, depending on how folks like to get to their public documents to take a look at. Always, folks can reach out to the city council, you know, send us your thoughts. We would welcome that as we move forward in this process. So, in terms of the process, high level questions, any discussion questions for Mr. Demers at this point? No? Alright. Seeing none. We look forward to digging into it. Councilor Scott, go ahead.

Mr. President, I just wanted to congratulate everybody on getting it to this point. I look forward to the in-depth discussions. And for members of the public, there was a meeting, I believe, of the Advisory Commission just last night. A very spirited discussion and I think a very helpful one. And the recording for that is already posted on that summervolleyma.gov90washington page. It takes a little digging, but it's down on the right hand side. So, you'd like to watch the deliberation of your neighbors who have been engaged in this process for a while, I recommend folks to go check out that video.

Thank you. Excellent. Very good. Council Wheeler?

I am a member of the ninety Washington CAC and I wanted to make one observation about this process and and echoing the comments of one resident who spoke at yesterday's meeting who is is here this evening. It is a little disappointing that we in this process only resulted in two proposals and that at least by my judgment they might not have both been quite as fully baked at this point as we might have liked. And I'm just just curious in the future how we can approach this kind of process so that we are making sure the network casting is as wide as possible and we're attracting all of the parties that that might be interested in this. Thanks.

That's a question that I suspect probably would benefit from a little bit of work before it's answered. Is that something you can I believe so? Come back, speak to the process. Director Nakarni, I see you.

If you're going to speak, please come up to

the microphone and introduce yourself.

Hi everyone. Rachel Nakarni, Director of Economic Development. I was wondering if it's worth just a quick rundown of the advertising process that we went through, if that's helpful at this point or if that should wait for another time.

I feel like it might be a bit out of scope of the current meeting with our long agenda but I do appreciate that there was a lot of staff work that went into this.

Yeah, we'd be happy to provide to anyone who needs that interested in that what went ahead what that process looked like.

Thank you. Thank you, director. Thank you, council Wheeler. Alright. Any other discussion? Alright. So as I said, this is the it's not even really the first discussion but it's it's set up the next few several stages. As mister Murray has laid out, the council will have a a key role in all of this. So stay tuned and we'll get to dig into it a lot more. And we have and just to be clear, my understanding is that is that, you know, the the council does have discretion to recommend not not forwarding either of the the proposals if that is if if that is the body's decision.

Ultimately, it would be the SRA that would choose that, you know, which of a proposal before them is that they elect, but that is an option before us. To that point, if we feel that these aren't aren't sufficient and we can do better, we do have that option. We're not we're not sort of I wanna say stuck with these because I don't I don't wanna diminish the value of what's before us, but there is a we have a lot of a lot of options on the table and we're gonna do our diligence. I've, as I said, laid out a process for us to have plenty of opportunity to do that with with the information before us. But wanted to get this all out to the public ahead of time so that the council members and the public all have an opportunity to dig right in as much as you like and give us your thoughts.

So, thank you Mr. Demers. Seeing no further discussion then, that item is I guess placed on file. Alright? Alright. Very well. Next item is six a, the finance committee report.

Thank you chair.

One moment, Wheeler. We're gonna read the item into the record, then I'll

Oh, please. Go ahead.

Dropped my papers. Agenda item six a, committee report, report of the committee on finance meeting on 04/21/2026.

Council Wheeler, take it away.

Thank you, chair. And before I give the report, I move to sever one of the items. That is item six A7, the Nibble Kitchen contract, because there was apparently some ambiguous wording in it and it has been replaced by an almost entirely identical item as I believe you mentioned before.

Okay. So councilor Wheeler moves to sever which item was the It was

6A7. That's ID 26Dash0512.

26Dash0512. As seen objection, that item is severed. Go ahead with the report, and then we'll take up after the report sorry. After the report, we'll take up the related submission, which is the replacement for that end. So, go ahead with the report, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Chair. The Finance Committee met on Tuesday, 04/21/2026 via remote participation with all members present and with the help of Clerk Delaney Fisher Casio. We took up a 19 item agenda. We approved a $125,000 state grant for lighting retrofits at Dillboy Field, replacing older fixtures with more efficient LED lighting. We discussed the importance of aligning the new lighting with dark sky principles.

We recommended approval of two library gifts, a 30,000 contribution from the Carnegie Corporation recognizing the city's historic Carnegie libraries and a $300 gift for materials at the West Branch Library. We approved an approximately $47,000 appropriation for ash tree treatments needed every two years, which protect hundreds of our trees from invasive pests. We approved an approximately $32,000 transfer to cover unplanned costs related to ADA compliance for city websites and signage, restoring funds after work was already completed ahead of federal deadlines. Several community preservation act items were considered together. We recommended a $400,000 appropriation for the Kennedy Schoolyard project and a $228,000 transfer to the Open Space Reserve to support that funding.

And also a reduction of the Kennedy Schoolyard bond with a matching amount from $2,000,000 down to $1,600,000 lowering our long term borrowing costs. We also approved a contract extension for the Blessing of the Bay Linear Park project. Project. We recommended approval of two infrastructure bonds, approximately $8,300,000 for water main rehabilitation and $2,000,000 for sewer work including in the McGrath Corridor ahead of the state's changes to McGrath to address aging infrastructure. So to be clear, this is not changing what the pipes are, it's just fixing the pipes, noticing where they are wearing and repairing them.

This will be repaid through water and sewer enterprise funds and indirectly through people's water and sewer bills. We approved two fire department grants, approximately $49,000 for an auxiliary vehicle and approximately $30,000 for safety equipment for new recruits. There was discussion of the recent issues in Quincy and elsewhere regarding toxic chemicals in some firefighter equipment, and city staff recognized this and emphasized that the equipment is being selected with those issues in mind. We also recommended two police department transfers, 35,000 for animal control staffing due to unexpected leave, and $325,000 for medical costs associated with line of duty injuries. Police department staff explained that these medical costs are uneven over time and can be unexpected.

They certainly were in this case. The committee spent significant time discussing the approximately $232,000 body worn camera grant. While cameras are widely seen as a best practice for transparency and accountability, we discussed the substantial ongoing costs estimated by, and this is my math using some of the city's estimates, to total about $430,000 per year. And the need as well for clearer policies on use, oversight, and access to footage. Councilors raised questions about how footage would be used for supervision and training, expectations for consistent camera activation, and how much flexibility the city will have to shape these policies over time.

Given these open questions and the ongoing review of the Surveillance Technology Impact Report, the committee voted to keep this item in committee. Chair, I ask that this committee report be accepted as submitted.

Alright, today's discussion on the committee report. Councillor Scott.

Thank you Mr. President and I thank the chair for that thorough review. Finance committee does a lot of deeply technical work. I do want to point out for members of the public who might be curious about the body worn camera discussion. It was a very interesting one with lot of thought and nuance.

It occurred to me one of the things that surfaced in that memo, mister president, is that by accepting this grant, we are fundamentally committing to a a budget increase to the police department. As I've mentioned, $430,000 and one component of that is the hiring of an additional position, at least one additional position to help operate the system. You know how I feel about midyear appropriations to create midyear positioning requests. So we are assure you that we will continue to discuss this in finance, but I just wanted to highlight that this grant acceptance actually has a much wider ranging much wider ranging impacts. And as we approach a budget season where we have requested that the schools prepare a million dollars in cuts, I have a hard time figuring out how it's going to be justifiable to put a half million dollar increase into the police department.

But thank you for that,

president. Further discussion on the committee reports? Alright. Seeing none, the report is approved. That puts a few items before us for a roll call vote and then after which we'll take up the item that was severed with them before us. Madam Clerk, on the roll call votes?

Yes. That puts four roll call votes in front of us. The first being six a eight requesting approval to appropriate 46,500 from the street tree stabilization fund for FY 2026 ash tree treatments. Councilor Yuan Campan? Councilor Link? Councilor Scott? Councilor Klingen?

Yes.

Councilor Strezzo? Yes. Councilor Sait? Councilor Wheeler?

Yes.

Councilor Hart? Yes. Councilor McLaughlin? Yes. Councilor Mbaugh?

Yes.

Councilor Davis? Yes. With eight councilors in favor, the meeting. I'm I'm take the six water main rehabilitation program. Councilor Euncampan? Councilor Link? Councilor Scott? Yes. Councilor Clayton?

Yes.

Councilor Strezo? Yes. Councilor Saeed? Councilor Wheeler?

Yes.

Councilor Hart? Yes. Councilor McLaughlin? Yes. Councilor Mbaugh?

Yes.

Councilor Davis? Yes. Eight councilors in favor? The item is approved.

Yes, ma'am.

Brings us to agenda item six a 10, a request of the mayor requesting authorization to borrow 2,000,000 in a bond and to appropriate the same amount for the annual f y twenty twenty six sewer system rehabilitation McGrath corridor. Councilor Euncampan? Councilor Link? Councilor Scott? Yes. Councilor Klingen? Yes. Councilor Schrezo? Yes. Councilor Saeed? Councilor Wheeler? Yes. Councilor Hart? Yes. Councilor McLaughlin? Yes. Councilor Mbaugh?

Yes.

Councilor Davis? Yes. With eight councilors in favor, the item is approved.

Final one.

And six a 13, a request of the mayor requesting approval to reduce the borrowing authorization for the Kennedy Schoolyard renovation project from 2,000,000 to 1,600,000. Councillor Euncanpin? Councillor Link? Councillor Scott? Yes. Councillor Klingen?

Yes.

Councillor Schrozzo? Yes. Councillor Sait? Councillor Wheeler?

Yes.

Councillor Hart? Yes. Councillor McLaughlin? Yes. Councillor Mbaugh?

Yes.

Councillor Davis? Yes. Eight councillors in favor, the item is approved.

Alright. That puts item 26 dash o five one two before us. Liaison Radasi on that item.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Yasmin Radasi, legislative liaison. We would like to request to withdraw this item. As councilor Wheeler mentioned, there was an error in the wording for the title of the item. The old version, which is the one we are asking to be withdrawn, says that it's for a lease extension. But the documents that were reviewed on Tuesday at finance committee and the discussion that happened was based around the fact that it's a new lease. So the new item that we have submitted is referring to approval for a new lease with the option to extend.

Okay. Any discussion? Alright. Seeing none. So that item is withdrawn and that then we'd like to take up out of order item 10 dot one. Madam clerk or is it no. Is that right? That's not

10 two.

10 two. Thank you, mister chair. 10 dot two. Madam clerk, would you read that one for us?

Agenda item 10 dot two, a request the mayor requesting approval of a five year lease with option for renewal with BWB Square LLC for Nibble Community Kitchen.

Please, Howard Azi.

Thank you, mister chair. We're seeking immediate approval of this item just because we had discussion and finance committee on Tuesday. Again, the documents that were attached to the old version of the item with the incorrect title are the same. The discussion centered around the same item that is before you now. The lease does expire in May, that's why we're hoping to have it approved tonight.

So conceptually, same tenant, same use

Same tenant, same location.

Just a different word on the document. Otherwise, exactly Different.

I think the terms were updated and the price proposal is different, which was discussed on Tuesday.

Very well. Council Wheeler?

Thank you. And chair, just to be clear, this was unanimously approved in the finance committee, these documents.

Okay. I did look into this and have a conversation in terms of we're taking up a new item tonight that wasn't on the agenda when it was posted earlier this evening. But as was said, since it's effective the exact same concept, it was already duly noticed and discussed certainly within our ability. So, see no objection. That item so that is before us. Any questions? Any discussion on that item? No. Okay. Do we need a roll

call on it? We do need a

roll call. Let's take a roll call on that item.

Roll call on agenda item 10.2. Councilor Ewenkampin. Councilor Link. Councilor Scott.

Yes.

Councilor Klingen.

Yes.

Councilor Schrezo. Yes. Councilor Saeed. Councilor Wheeler. Yes. Councilor Hart. Yes. Councilor McLaughlin? Yes. Councilor Mbaugh?

Yes.

Councilor Davis? Yes. Eight councilors in favor. That item is

approved. Alright.

Still in our out of order items. That brings us to item eight dot two. And actually, madam clerk, let me just ask. Before we get to eight dot two, because while while I'm told this is gonna be a a an appropriately length item, these tend to it's a it's a it's a topic we love hearing about and they sometimes take a little bit. Is there anyone here in the chamber that's here to hear about an item that we haven't discussed yet? Okay. CSOs. You read it in the already did do that? Did I jump out of here? No.

You're fine. So I have a flat. I will I'll

be back.

Yeah. Okay. Madam clerk, go ahead.

Agenda item 8.2, an officer's communication from the director of infrastructure and asset management conveying the April 2026 draft combined sewer overflow plan.

Director Reich,

thank you much for your record. Richard Reich, director of infrastructure and asset management, and a surprise to no one, there will be a deck. Anyone who bet the under on the number of slides wins this time. Cambridge, Somerville, and the MWRA will submit a draft updated combined sewer overflow CSO plant, NASTA EP, and US EPA on April 30, which will start a five month public comment period and extensive evaluation by EPA and DEP, will culminate in a final plan in 2027. The plan employed a detailed hydraulic model of the sewer system that has been refined over the past thirty years, leveraged a water quality model that's been calibrated with a decade's worth of data, used a Cornell University peer review simulated rainfall based on climate change projections to 2050, making our CSO plan the first in the nation that estimates the impact of climate change rather than looking backwards at historical rainfall data.

This is the most sophisticated CSO plan in the country to date and the first to be taking these bold, progressive next steps of a higher level of control, getting to zero discharges in a future typical year and only suffering discharges under extreme storms that cause other system failures. Dozens of staff at MWRA Cambridge and Somerville, along with a small army of consultants, have been hard at work on this plan for four years. That team includes some of the nation's best wet weather experts, many of whom, myself included, have deep experience with implementing the prior MWRA long term control plan here in Boston. We are frankly and rightly proud of the work that we have done, all that we've accomplished, and are excited as professionals to be on the cutting edge leading the nation in the next generation of CSO management. We are clear eyed that the CSO and other desperately needed regional infrastructure improvements will be expensive.

We're talking billions with a B. It's important that we keep the impacts to ratepayers in our minds. This council knows very well how difficult it is with our annual water and sewer rate increases on our constituents' finances. Every other community in the Commonwealth shares those concerns. We collectively, Cambridge, Somerville, MWRA, the other 41 MWRA sewer communities, the state, need to examine how we will pay for this important work.

With the draft report completed, we are excited to enter the next phase, to have a regional conversation about our analysis, our conclusions, the data, the findings, Greater Boston's priorities, each community's concerns, and our collective goals. We do not expect DEP and EPA to simply rubber stamp the draft plan. Sincerely hope that a positive collaboration with the advocates, the stakeholders, the regulators, and the state leaders will improve the final control plan. With that said, we can start the presentation. That probably would've been a better background for the diatribe, but we can move on to the next slide now.

So, just in terms of procedure, this is an update. I updated the council in October, item 25 dash fourteen fifty one. The the slides for that are attached for reference. As with that item, this item actually does not require a formal city council vote. However, it has a huge impact on our water and sewer rates.

So I felt it was appropriate to come before this body, lay out the plan, and perhaps get some initial reactions to it so that we can frame the submission of the plan correctly as as we go to the next steps. I will point out that following that October presentation, the council did pass resolution twenty five sixteen seventy seven, which said that the city council respectfully calls for our state delegation to advocate for policy changes that would result in MWRA playing a role in stormwater management. That item has been sent to the state delegation and is a conversation that we need to have. Alright. So, what happened since the last time on the next slide we met?

When I presented the plan in October, it was a $870,000,000 plan that allowed limited discharges during that typical year. The following week, MWRA staff presented that same plan to the board of directors. There was some pushback from the advocates and MassDEP, which led us to negotiate with DEP for a one hundred and twenty day extension. The deadline for filing the report had been 12/31/2025. It is now a week from tonight, and we are feverishly attempting to hit that deadline.

We held an additional public meeting in January with some more information, very well attended, have reworked some of the plan that was presented again to the MWRA Board of Directors. The Board of Directors voted to approve that plan, or technically they voted to allow staff to submit that plan, which is now a $1,690,000,000 plan that gets to zero discharges in that future 2050 typical year, which leads us to our report submission date of April 20 of April 30, which the team is trying frantically to meet, and I think at this moment we're considering April 30 at 11:59 to be our deadline. On the next slide. So, this is an important shift, and there's a lot of words on this slide, but they are important for the record and for everyone to understand. The variances, are the regulatory mechanism that requires us to do this plan, require the partners who are at Cambridge, Somerville, and MWRA to examine solutions quote and unquote up to and including elimination.

This is consistent with CSO guidance across United States, and in fact, with what is done abroad as well. And, every long term control plan that has been approved in The States and elsewhere always allows for a limited number of CSO discharge in a typical year, so that first submission was in line with that. Now, notwithstanding that, President, throughout the outreach and engagement process described in the report, the partners clearly heard from stakeholders and the regulators that even a single discharge in that typical year would not constitute elimination, and that was the goal by which we were being held. So, because that would require a change in designated use in the state, is reluctant to change the use of the Mystic and the Charles. So with that feedback in mind, the draft plan was modified to do this first in the nation and possibly the world to get to zero discharges in a typical year, setting a new standard going beyond any identified plan.

Next slide. So, what is that recommended plan? The $1,290,000,000 On the next slide, you can see for the Alewife Brook, it is a few storage tanks in Cambridge, some limited sewer separation in Cambridge, and then the primary method Sanford Cambridge is a micro tunnel. Micro tunnel is a nine foot diameter tunnel board, fairly shallow. It would go essentially from Mass Ave in Cambridge, wrap around Clarendon Towers, and terminate at Dillboy Field.

This is actually the same plan that we had presented before. We were going for this level of control for the ELWife all along. On the next slide, I will highlight one piece of construction impact that I think we we will want to talk about during the public review period is that for for this to to work, we would need a mining shaft to be in Dilboy parking lot. The construction of that, which would last two to three years, would require construction laid down in Dilboy. So some of them will have to figure out what to do without parking or snow emergency area in Dilboy for that duration.

There would also be permanent footprints that only removing a few parking space permanently. Construction impacts would would be largely along Illwhite Brook Parkway, about 20 trucks per day loading up the soil that's excavated from the tunnel. On the next slide, can see the performance of that. The graph on the left are volumes of discharges and the graph on the right are frequency. You know, we designed this for that future typical year, which is sort of an esoteric idea.

So, what we wanted to do was run that performance against the past ten years of actual rainfall data. So, you see the red bars are what was discharged in reality, what we reported, and the blue bars are the performance of the new system. And as you see, you know, if you think of a typical year as an average, you would expect half of the time gets exceeded, half the time you're successful, and it does in fact reduce the frequency to about half, and the volume significantly. Moving on to the Mystic on the next slide. We are still moving forward with what we call the MROS project, the 95 acres of sewer separation and a new stormwater outfall to the Mystic, and also a 7,400,000 gallon storage tank in Assembly Square.

On the next slide, you can see the sort of layout of this. This is one of the things that changed. We increased the size of that tank. Before, we had a limited number of CSOs at that location. We're now getting down to zero. And to get to that extra volume, we had increase or almost double the size of the tank. If you're not orientated, that's basically the parking lot by Staples where Christmas Tree Shop used to be. And of course, would have to negotiate this with Frit and integrate it into the development plans for that last development parcel. Again, on the next slide, you can see the performance of this. We only have red bars.

The red bars indicate the historic discharges at that location. There are no blue bars because we get to zero in all instances for that. So, designing around that future typical year manages to capture all of the rainfall that we've experienced in the past ten years. So, we're almost over performing with this design. On the next slide, can see where the largest number of changes are, and really in terms of the dollar jump from the 0.9 to the $1,300,000,000 is in the Charles River.

There's sewer separation in Cambridge and in Boston's Back Bay, some storage tanks in Cambridge Magazine Beach in back neighborhood of Cambridge, as well as some storage tanks basically in Jamaica Plain. On the next slide, you can see the performance, some of the construction impacts there. Extensive Extensive sewer separation in the Back Bay. The the magnitude of that construction is expected to to require twenty five years worth of work. There'd be closures of Magazine Beach and some impacts on the Esplanade to facilitate that construction.

And then finally, the performance here is very similar to what we saw for the Alewife, essentially reducing the frequency so that they would only spill every other year. The total number and the total volume significantly reduced. We can move on now to the financial capability analysis. This was something that was not prepared in October, so I can run through that now. On the next slide is sort of a description of where we landed on the cost share between Cambridge, Somerville, and MWRA.

Right, wrong or indifferent when the Clean Water Act was passed and outfalls like CSOs were permitted by EPA and DEP, they needed essentially a throat to choke for each one of those discharge locations. So, each CSO was permitted to a political entity. So, some of those CSOs along the Alewife and Charles are permitted to Cambridge. Somerville has one on the Alewife and one on the Mystic, and there's a small number of outfalls on the Alewife and Charles that are permitted to MWRA. Curiously, Boston was not named as a permittee on any of those.

All of the outfalls along the Charles on the Boston side of the Charles are permitted to MWRA. So, we used that as the basis, at least for the sake of argument, to share the costs of the $1,300,000,000 plan among the three parties. And on the next slide, you can see the cost breakdowns for the various alternatives. DEP and EPA did ask us to submit the financial capability analysis for all the alternatives that were considered. So, these next slides show the alternatives that were not in fact proposing, but just for the sake completeness, we'll run through that.

The EPA methodology, as I've told the council repeatedly over the past ten years, in my opinion is not terribly applicable to Massachusetts Massachusetts where we've got very high income and very high cost of living. They define an affordable sewer bill as anything less than 2% of median household income, which again, we've got a high median household income, so that gives us a high threshold, but we also have a very high cost of living, so 2% of that in a household is a lot more significant than elsewhere in the country. That notwithstanding, this would be the only thing that we could turn to for relief, to say, oh, this plant is too expensive, or It goes too far. And as you can see by those metrics, we do not have that avenue for relief. All of the alternatives, with the exception of sewer separation, all fall within the mid range burden, and only sewer separation rises to that high burden level.

That's using the first methodology that's been around since the 90s. There's a second methodology that they've more recently adopted, on the next slide, that allows us to break it down annually by rate increases, but it does essentially tell the same story. If you look on the next slide, residential indicator over time were only in the mid burden for the recommended plan, that typical year plan, and only hit the high burden for sewer separation. There is one other methodology that EPA allows. The next one is the lowest quintile of income as opposed to just straight up median.

They look at lowest quintile, but even by those metrics, while more of the years fall into the median burden by EPA standards, we would not qualify for any relief. So what would that do to our bills? On the next slide, again, you can see that sewer separation is the outlier. You know, were we to be forced to do sewer separation, bills would increase by about nine fold, but the recommended plan, the typical year plan would see like a 200% increase from, you know, a typical single family bill being $852 going up to $2,006 So, a threefold change there. But I would also point out that that isn't that much higher than what we're projecting the baseline to be.

The baseline here for evaluation purposes assumes no additional work for CSO. It does include work that we anticipate needing to do within it includes, for example, the debt service that we're taking on for Poplar Street Pump Station, which is substantial, but also additional recurring work that we need to do. It also includes MWRA projections for needed investments at the Deer Island treatment plant. Deer Island treatment plant is approaching thirty years and as with many building systems or mechanical systems, that's about the lifespan of them, there's going to be a lot of anticipated work at Deer Island. Our MWRA assessment is anticipated to go up even without CSO

work.

On the next slide, of course, we will be before Finance Committee and probably Finance Committee of the Whole next month to talk about our rates. So we're we're at work, you know, looking at this as part of the evaluation about all of our other needs as well. So you'll you'll we'll be taking a deeper dive into that. But before we leave this topic, I do want to just sort of highlight on something that's a little bit easier to read on the next slide. Again, we're working on the rate proposal right now, so these numbers will change slightly, but they will be in this ballpark.

That again, just the baseline without CSO, you know, we'd likely be looking at rate increases in the neighborhood of 15% for the next couple of years, again, to meet those needs of Poplar and other. We really need to start planning for these CSO programs and pay, self finance them the way that we're anticipating self financing it between us and MWRA, we'd be looking at 20% this year, 17% for the next 3%, and then leveling off and getting down to 2% about ten years out. Just trying to give you sticker shock now before we come in in a month. Now, it's important to highlight some of the other things that we learned. Again, we've used sophisticated computer models and took a very deep dive on this.

And we learned a lot about our collective system. So, on the next slide, one of the counter intuitive things that we learned that is important for everyone to understand is that surprisingly, full sewer separation does not eliminate overflows. It again seems counterintuitive. If you separate the sewers, how do you still have overflows? Well, guess technically on paper, they would no longer be combined sewer overflows because we would have a fully separated system.

But the lower reaches of that system are very old pipes. They were, you know, built in the the late eighteen hundreds, and they were built in areas that were were frankly filled. Like, all of Boston's back bay was a bay. What is Assembly Square and Foss Park for us was once a marsh. As councilor Scott knows, we filled the Millers River, which used to be our border with Cambridge, and replaced it with a pipe.

All of those pipes had limited capacity based on what they were anticipating in the '17 in the eighteen hundreds, and all of those pipes had relief points. So and the other thing to to understand is that it's impossible to keep storm water out of even separated sanitary sewers. So, when you combine the fact that we've got a lot of upstream communities with that inflow into their separate sanitary system and downstream pipes that have limited hydraulic capacity, even if Cambridge and Somerville separate our systems, you would still have overflows. The other thing the water quality model clearly shows is that there are multiple sources of pollution. Yeah, you can move to the next one.

There are perpetual perpetual sources of dry weather flow, there's storm water that happens every time it rains, and then CSOs only in those intense rains. And to give you an idea of the relative contributions of those sources on the next slide, you can see that storm water, even just focusing on bacteria and not all the other pollutants, storm water is the largest source in both the alewife and in the mystic. On the next slide, we have another very important conclusion from our efforts, and that is these climate change storms, particularly anything with a five year recurrence interval or less, are really blockbuster storms. And they will completely overwhelm our collection system, not just the MWRA interceptors, not just the things that are subject to combined sewer overflows, but all of our pipes. This will result in human contact with wastewater, the same public concern that CSO mitigation seeks to mitigate.

On the next slide, you also see that there's oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Maddie. Go back one. Just to explain this. Where you see a black dot, that is a manhole that is successfully handling the flow.

Where you see a red dot, that is a manhole where the system is surcharging and causing flooding. And flooding on a sanitary could be backup into a house or flooding on the surface. But our hydraulic model, is built out with a lot of detail for Cambridge Summerville and for some reason Belmont, you see a lot of failures there. The absence of a red dot in Arlington and Watertown is just because we don't have very many mottled manholes in those areas. But we can extrapolate from this and expect that those communities, although they don't have the sophisticated hydraulic model that we do, will be facing those same same problems.

Then, on the next slide, we also did model street flooding. So, again, these are two bad things to happen coincidentally. With the sanitary system surcharging, we've got sanitary waste coming up to surface. We also have surface flooding in areas where the sewers are separated, then that is an indirect route for that sanitary waste to get back into the rivers. So, that leads us to some some conclusions.

Know, the the conclusion is that climate change is going to cause significant problems in our systems. Sanitary sewer overflows and flooding toward all of Eastern Massachusetts. Elsewhere, but who cares? We're just going to focus on Eastern Massachusetts. Those larger storms, anything larger than the largest storm in the 2050 typical year, will therefore cause health risks and water quality impacts that are identical to those of the CSO discharges.

And pollution from non attainment pollution from other sources causes non attainment of those standards. So, really, the take away here that, you know, we've done this work, Cambridge, Somerville, and MWRA have done work that we really need to have our neighboring communities understand. The region must invest in and complete local system improvements, flood mitigation, capacity increases, storage, storm water treatment, all the lovely things that we've been doing for the past ten years before higher levels of CS control can produce any tangible benefits. The other thing that a number of us working on that have concerns, the size of the CSO infrastructure needed to manage those, if we just look at it as a CSO problem and not do those upstream system improvements, is massive. And and we have doubts that some of that is constructible.

If we're able to then, if the communities are able to do upstream work, that downstream sizing gets significantly smaller. Which brings us to the next section here, which is the context for this regional plan review. And, I hope you all find this as clever as I thought it was. It might just be my sleep deprivation. But, municipal freedom may give national strength, but it complicates the commonwealth in the commonwealth when water ignores municipal boundaries and regulatory programs for stormwater and wastewater are separate.

Right. Right on. We've got a couple people. You're probably also sleep deprived. On the next slide, to sort of graphically show that, the the only things that that this team was developing in the course of this evaluation were those CSO solutions.

We've identified problems that need solutions. The the the climate change impacts to local systems need to be addressed. The storm water pollution from all of the communities in the basins. Upstream storm water and flood solutions throughout the other communities. Those are all things that will need to be addressed as we're racing towards 2050 and climate change.

Now, on the In an ideal world, we would pause and just figure out those other pieces of the puzzle and come up with a single integrated plan. However, the regulatory reality is that we have a regulatory deadline for the CSO, and I don't see the state pausing this to then do another four plus years of of planning work elsewhere. So, we will be proceeding, but we have to keep as we're evaluating this, we have to keep those other future needs in mind so that we don't overextend ourselves on the CSO side, seeing no benefits, and then are facing other problems regionally. And this also gives us, on the next slide, a Massachusetts provincial problem, or a problem with our parochialism. All of those storm water permits are issued to the individual municipalities, 35 in the Charles, about half of which are even outside the MWRA service area, and 21 in the Mystic.

So, to solve those stormwater water quality problems, each one of those communities is on the hook to do work. Looking at the capacity issues, the 43 sewer communities in MWRA are on the hook for operations and improvements to their local systems, the same way that we are. They need to mitigate that storm water contribution to their separate sanitary systems. They need to address flooding and capacity issues in the face of climate change. And, as I said earlier, MWRA is also anticipating significant upgrades at Deer Island, and so these 43 member communities are also the ones to pay for it.

MWRA does not have a money printing machine. MWRA's only source of funding is what the member communities provide to it. So, on the next slide, just to wrap up this regional thought. Yes, we have a combined sewer problem, but it's actually more of a common sewer problem. As I discussed earlier, the problem with the discharges isn't just associated with the fact that Cambridge and Somerville have combined sewers, it's a capacity issue in the downstream portions of the system.

Honestly, MWRA doesn't have any there isn't any physical or logistical way to expand the capacity of those systems. Again, were built and then the urban environment was built around them. There's no physical way of increasing that conveyance capacity, so we are very much limited. I'll also point out that in the in the previous plan, while, you know, Cambridge did a lot of sewer separation, there was a lot of work in Boston, Chelsea, elsewhere, there wasn't a lot of work in Summerville, but the the work that was done in Summerville was in alignment with a system optimization plan that MWRA developed. Early days in that CSO plan, the plan was to call for very large tunnels.

Same as is done in a lot of other cities. The price tag on that was going to be 2 to $3,000,000,000 in nineteen eighties dollars, like significant. So, reevaluated that and really tried to eke out as much capacity in the system as they could. And they found a lot of it in Somerville. So, Somerville of the eighties and nineties gave up lot of storage capacity in the pipes.

So, that was sort of our contribution to that effort. But, it does sort of explain why we see those large jumps between that historical typical year and the performance of the system under that historic typical year, which is pretty much in line with what MWRA had projected. And then when we layer on climate change and we have so much more CSO activation and volume is because the Somerville system is right at capacity. There's nothing left to give there. So, what happens next?

Moving on to the next section and the slide after that. We're coming into a formal public review and comment period. Submit this month, five months of public comment. DEP and EPA are the ones that then synthesize all of that public comment, and ultimately DEP is the one that makes a decision on the content of the final plan. The substance of that review on the next slide is technical in nature, yes, but it also needs to be big picture.

Should we do more? Should we do less? And importantly, how should we pay for it? We can move to the next slide, which is just adding up those three previous discharges again. The red bars are the number discharges in a given year, the red line is the volume which can then be read on the right hand axis, and the blue are the performance of the recommended plan.

And I want to point out that the years in which you do see discharges, one, that the frequency and volume is significantly reduced. But the years in which you do see discharges are in themselves very wet years. 2021 had hurricane Ida. 2023 had a block buster storm where almost two inches of rain fell in one hour. That's something that that, know, by statistics only happens four times a century.

So, the performance of the system is is actually pretty good and only spills when we have these blockbuster events that cause other system problems as well. On the next slide, it's just another breakdown of the numbers of where we are, and again, a reminder that MWRA isn't a magic source of revenue. MWRA gets its revenue from us. If if you look at our sewer bills, about 60% of the money that Summerville sewer department collects in bills goes directly to the MWRA. Summerville, along with Cambridge Boston is like number one by a mile in terms of contributions to MWRA, but we're right up there.

So, coming into the home stretch here, I would say that we are at a historic inflection point. Again, you know, we're dealing with sewers that were built in the eighteen seventies. You know, Denise Taylor likes to say that men wore top hats and women wore corsets back then. I'd add that it was not allowable for them to switch then. Ulysses S.

Grant was the president, and we were reforming after the civil the first civil war. I'm assuming a second one is coming soon. It's it's also interesting to remember when we're talking about the overflows from these, and I'm not saying combined sewer overflows, they're just overflows, the way the pipes were built. Those pipes that were built were just conveying storm water and waste water away from people and to the rivers. The first regional sewer treatment plant wasn't even built until 1952.

So getting into the river was the objective. We're now layering onto that a much higher standard, a a very good standard, but, you know, we're working within some constraints. MWRA was created in 1985, essentially adopting all of that old infrastructure. In that first round of CSO long term control plan, 35 projects, almost a billion dollars, 88% reduction in total CSO volume, and 94% of that remaining is treated. We're now moving on to the next phase of that, and again, by October DEP, we'll have to make that final decision following a public comment period.

And again, looking out towards the future, we're designing towards the 2050 climate conditions, but these are big expensive projects, and if funded the way that we're currently assuming they need to be funded, the debt service on them would extend into 2070, at which time the system that it is seeking to rehabilitate will have had its bicentennial. Wrapping up. That was a lot of information, and that's only a fraction of what Greater Boston needs to consider as we review the draft plan. I know painfully how difficult it is to get people to talk about sewers, but this is the moment that that we as a region need to have that in-depth, detailed, and well educated discussion about sewers. We have a legal and moral obligation to eliminate CSOs.

However, we cannot ignore the finding that cities and towns throughout the region will face widespread sewer and drainage system failures caused by large climate change storms that will result in water quality and health risks that are even worse than CSOs. Cambridge and some of them are enthusiastic to share what we have learned with our neighbors and help them prepare for what they will need to do to protect their communities. Massachusetts must tackle these problems, all of these problems. That preparation must include serious consideration for funding those efforts in a way that does not unduly burden sewer ratepayers for a generation. Like other regions, addressing CSOs, Greater Boston is tackling a project a problem created by over a century ago.

Other regions are still working towards the milestone we reached in 2015. We are now advancing advancing to the next more difficult phases of that effort that are in. We are further challenging ourselves by considering climate change, something no other CSO effort has ever done. And eliminating discharges for all but the most extreme storms that will cause many other problems. Problems.

No one else in the nation is doing that. The CSO planning effort thus far has included extensive community process, six public meetings, 29 events, six meetings with watershed advocates, 19 meetings with EPA and DEP. The technical team thanks everyone involved with getting us to this point. The community members, the advocates, the regulators, the scientists, the regional partners, the people who have been willing to talk about sewers with us. Thank you all for your valuable input.

I personally like to give a shout out to our engineering staff. Gina and Stephanie are with us tonight, which means that she they're losing a couple hours of production on the on the report, which give them give them a round of applause. I I know I'm biased, and and I I am are a bunch of rock stars. These are rock stars among rock stars. So, you know, that's thanks for that.

And, I also want to thank mayor Wilson for his unwavering support throughout the process and his commitment to leading the next steps as we have to trumpet these findings with our regional partners and his peers and other communities. The work contained in the report represents some of the most technically sophisticated analysis performed in the nation, and the progressive recommendations of the plan are well aligned with our values. We hope to have an active engagement with the council, our constituents, advocates, the stakeholders, our delegation, state leadership as we develop the draft as we review the draft plan and define the final updated CSO control plan. With that, I would entertain all of your questions.

Thank you, Doctor. Doctor. Reich. First off, I just wanted to let folks know the in terms of analyzing the whether we hit the over under, the gaming commission is reviewing your use of that bumper slide for long soliloquies at both the front and back end of your presentation. Before we get to think I had Councillor Scott and Councillor Klingon, one question for me. Would it help if we ate fewer vegetables? No? Okay. It was worth asking. Councillor Scott.

Thank you, Mr. President. You know I love a good subsurface infrastructure conversation. I'd like to congratulate our director on a new record, I believe. You always go into the historical perspective, but I think this year including a two hundred year long timeline chart is a new record.

I just you know, there's an impressive amount of information here. The maps on slide 28 are very impressive, but I did want to get some clarifying information about slide 17. Slide 17 we were talking about the cost share. It showed the three entities that are sharing costs, but it didn't have any numbers on there about what percentage of the project cost is being borne by each entity. And before we say it, the follow-up is going to be MWRA gets their money from us. So we are also funding a piece of that. But just as individual contributor entities, how much is each one of those?

That's a great question. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head. Can get them to you. It was because we went by CSO by CSO and the for each CSO, so I don't have the bottom line or top line, but I'll get that

to you. Yeah. I mean, it's just I would imagine it's not as crudely simple as counting out how many of those are have SOM prefixes versus MWR prefixes.

We we we did slice the data a few different ways and then average basically three different

we

sliced the data three different ways for each outfall and averaged it for each outfall. But I can

get you the final tallies. Yeah. I'm just curious because I think it will help folks to understand. Any kind of cost increase this large, any project this large is gonna hurt. And I think it is very helpful to be able to tell folks, look, you're not in this alone.

The other municipalities are also paying into this project and this is how the costs are being shared. So I'd like to be to answer that when folks ask me questions about this because they will ask all of us questions about this. I did want to check on slide 25. I really appreciate the preview on the rate increase. And this is showing, if I'm understanding this right, the base rate is staying the same, but we're going to have a 20% usage increase on that in fiscal year twenty seven? That's going to

be the ask. Yes, through the chair. As you recall, last year we made significant adjustments to the base rate to get us more in line with industry standards. That change is still, think, appropriate against industry standards so that the only change will be on

the volumetric. Okay. And then, I guess my final question, Mr. President, through you is, you know, last year during the presentation on rate increases, one of the big key features was the anticipated implementation of a storm water infiltration fee. It was anticipated you can think of it as a rain tax or you can think of it as a pavement tax, which might be a better way to look at it.

They had in there pretty significant contributions to our revenue here. And the proposed implementation, I believe, was midway through the fiscal year. We're three quarters of way through. I was wondering if there's an update on the implementation of that.

Yes. I'm very sad to report to the President and the Chair that we are not ready for prime time on that. As we as as you know, we've got a new finance director for water and sewer. He is completely outstanding. He was my best kept secret. He was my finance director in IIM since we invented it. We've now taken on water and sewer, and he is uncovering a lot of data anomalies in the billing database that we are fixing. So, we we made the decision that we need to fix the billing before we implement a new billing paradigm. So, we're we we have biweekly meetings. We're working through it.

It is just painfully long and hard to get there. We're still working on how we will implement the storm water fee, what we want to do is run mock bills so that we see exactly what it's going to be before we roll it out because we don't want any surprises. We frankly have had enough surprises from the water department in bills, so we don't want this to be we wanna make sure that we get this right. So, that's a long way of saying we're still working on it. It's not ready and it won't be ready for July 1.

Okay. Starting the fiscal year, we still won't be ready. So, we're potentially, because we're cleaning up old problems, a consistent theme in the water and sewer departments, We're potentially not seeing that roll out until mid fiscal year twenty eight then.

Mid fiscal twenty seven. Mid fiscal twenty Okay. '7,

Alright. And when we do that, I mean I know you've done studies on how much revenue is anticipated to come in there. Obviously that's going to add another row to this chart here. But will that row potentially reduce that downstream impact? Downstream is a funny choice of words here I guess. The usage rate increases in future years.

Yes. Through the chair, the idea is that you know, it would essentially be revenue neutral with the sewer bills. So the sewer bills would relatively be smaller, and the storm water bills would relatively be larger. But the sum of the two across the whole city would be the same. And and what we're trying to make sure is that we're that the the increases and decreases are hitting the right properties. That's right. Yeah. And and that's that's where we're having a lot of difficulty getting it all ironed out.

And, mister president, that's really the point that I was trying to get to through this line of questioning, which is the storm water tax payment tax that was proposed last year, and there was a great deal of discussion about it, is functionally just another revenue stream that can reduce the amount of increases that we'd see in people's usage rates. It is a way to put the disproportionate or let's say the appropriately proportionate share of our costs on the entities that have enormous surface parking lots like Target or Assembly Row, honestly. Those those properties just disproportionately contribute to our storm water, our sewer overflow problems. And it is a difficult pill to swallow to know that the consumers are going to be looking at these massive increases in their with our property tax to put an increased share of that on commercial property owners. This will be a way the storm water fee, as I understand, is a way to actually put that burden on the ones who have those big and permeable surface area parking lots ease the burden on you and your neighbors.

So I know there's a lot to untangle down there, but especially in a year where you're going do we're to that. And

and Bah.

Thank you, mister president. Just a couple of just quick questions. Through you to director Reich. So, you said this is the draft proposal. When do you expect that you'll be submitting it finalized to for consideration?

So, we expect to hear again, the the public comment period is five months and then there'll be one month for DEP and EPA to synthesize all those. They're gonna get get them all all along, but they're they'll have an additional month to synthesize that and then give us direction. Because, again, at the end of the day, it's it's DEP who is the arbiter of of water quality and and permit compliance. EPA is is also there because we're not a delegated state. So the the essential content of the direction from the state, we will receive on Halloween.

We will then have five months to revise the report. And, again, as to say, I we're we're we're not anticipating this is just gonna be a rubber stamp like, yes. That's great. Do that. Do do the draft. You know, we we anticipate there's gonna be some rework, remodeling, new cost estimates. So we regulatorily get five months to then do that, and that would then land us submitting the final report in May '27.

Mr. President, another question is just so you

you showed that well, you

said two things. One, even if we did complete sewer separation we would still have overflows. Yeah. Okay. I just want to confirm that.

And the second was, you showed that the bills, if we were to do complete sewer separation, we could see like a, I think it was like a $7,000 quarterly bill versus 800 and some dollars right now. Have you run any other models that would you know, of course speaking with our friends of the Owl Wife Brook, I you know, and then I said the last time that they were up here speaking that you know the Owl Wife Brook is an important little waterway, you know, to me having grown up in that area, but also just having, you know, the fact that it overflows to the point of, you know, waste getting it onto the the the path that's over there. Have you run any models where we could do even a partial sewer separation in a certain area that might have an impact, a positive impact in that area? So the plan that we've put forward has substantial

improvements to the ill wife, and then this plan would only spill in very large storms. And those storms again, we don't have a detailed model of Arlington's sewer system, but I strongly suspect if it behaves anything like Cambridge's, Belmont's, and Summerville's, that the storms where we're discharging, there are sanitary sewer overflows in that same part of of Arlington's system. So the the combined sewer overflow problem there is not the only source for when those when those happen. So that's that is why Cambridge Riverville and WRA are in agreement that this is the the right level of CSO control. And it does not use sewer separation because sewer separation, particularly in that area, is extremely difficult.

You know, like Millers River, there there was a Tannery Brook that was was closed and and is now a combined sewer. And then, everything was built right up against that. So, there's no real way of increasing the capacity of that Tannery Brook Drain. And when we're looking at these climate change storms, were we to separate, we would have huge flooding problems because we couldn't move the water. We we looked at anything else.

The only corridor that we could identify would be Mass Ave in Cambridge. And Mass Ave in Cambridge is so filled with other utilities that the the capacity of that storm water conveyance pipe is extremely limited. So, we're we're very limited in as what what we can do as far as sewer separation on that side of town.

Thank you then. Just last question along the lines of councilor Scott's question about the the rain score or whatever we're we're calling the official name. You know, it definitely is in the right moving in the right direction to appropriately water tax the the big parking lots and stuff. But like if we I just worry like if we became reliant on like say like that particular bill, say of like Target over over on Summerlab. And then like they have the option of putting in like a big tank, right? And then that would then affect the amount that they were paying.

Yeah. And in fact that's a feature not a bug. And one of the things that we're seeking to get right in terms of the finances of the fee and then what private property owners can do to lower their fee is that we would love Target to put in a huge tank rather than us build a 5,000,000 gallon tank. If Target builds a 5,000,000 gallon tank to reduce their storm water fee, we get the same net result. Probably dollar for dollar is more cost effective for us. And and so that's part of the philosophy here. We just have to make sure we get the finances on it right.

Right. Through you, mister president. That's my comment is just like in case if we start relying on certain revenue streams, you know, like we often do and then we, you know, we end up in shortfalls and then does that go back to the to the ratepayer again, you know. So just, you know, and I don't expect that they'll be going out and putting in these, you know, different places, putting in massive tanks overnight, but just, we could be talking way down the road. Yeah. The way they work.

That's all, mister president.

Councilor Schazel.

Thank you, mister president. I will start where shall I start? I wrote all over it. I guess we'll go right to it. For some of our newer counselors, I am someone I'm a traditionalist in some ways, and I have not supported the rate increases by yearly by year, which have increased from 11% and then 15% per year and have gradually just increased.

Why? Because I feel like our lowest income residents and our residents on fixed incomes who are teetering by and holding on, that it gets harder for them every year, and we are contributing to that sustaining our residents to be able to stay in our community unless we're looking for a certain kind of demographic of Summerville resident only, and I think that's really unfair. In the past, I have proposed for the water and sewer department several directors ago to create some kind of first in its kind ratepayer assistance program or something to help our residents out. Would like to follow-up with you Mr. Reich.

If we ever did get the recoup back from the consultants we paid for several years ago, that just ghosted us but we paid probably what triple digit $100,000 to?

I do not know off the top of

Yeah, the city several years ago hired consultants to look into a repair program to help residents pay for their water and sewer bill increases, and I guess they just never appeared. Every single year the city council is asked to make 15% increases on our water bills and water and sewer bills and 1115% and I want to point out to this one slide that says rate approval coming soon to proofread that to our newer counselors this is your first water and sewer conversation rate change we have the option of approving the rates or we have the option of not approving the rate increases. So we need to make sure that that is not a misleading slide. In addition to that, I am worried about our most our lowest income residents, including alongside shout out to Counselor Hart, Ward 7 and North Street, and the residents there, their SHA property, as in Ward 4, which is also a large Summerville Housing Authority property. Now the residents of the Summerville Housing Authority do not pay their own bills, own heating bills and electricity bills, but the Summerville Housing Authority does pay the water bills.

So my question to you is, especially with the teetering and the confusing world of whatever federal funds are being stripped from HUD projects and housing authorities all over the nation and tighter budgets and we don' really know what increases how have you accounted these rate 20% increase of water and sewer bills and all the extra additions that you were proposing that we approve at our decision or not. How have you accounted for the housing authority water bills and the lower income residents water bills this year?

To the president, as we've discovered from that consultant's recommendation that went much further than it should have before it was reviewed by someone who knew what they were talking about, under Massachusetts general law, it is not allow allowable for a utility like water and sewer to provide an income based subsidy within that utility. The by Massachusetts law, it the the bills have to be based on usage, not income.

If I may on that point, yes, that is correct. So they probably just literally Google searched the consultants, Google searched that this was impossible, but we paid them as consultants to tell us something that we already knew so I want to bring that up.

We're in agreement on that.

But the question mister Reich Mr. President Threed and Reich, Director Reich is, when we're talking about 20% increase, how has this rate suggestion increase taken into account how this is going to affect Summerville community corporation who has scattered site low income properties and how are we figuring out how this is going to affect some rural housing authority and what they can do for their residents and how this affects their water bills.

Through the chair, I suggest that we have a future session to discuss that and bring in some other departments that are better adept at that. I think it should be part of the rate discussion this year.

Mr. President, through you, thank you very much for that and I look forward very much for that conversation. Additionally, when we do have the public comment section, I am specifically requesting that the administration and the departments that set this up have one with the Council on Aging and the Somerville Cambridge Elder Services Department with the Council on Aging Board and that the public hearings are held in the daytime for some of our fixed income residents or retired residents so they have a personal chance to be able to attend these meetings and not at 6PM or 7PM and in person. Thank you. Can I get a commitment from that or a something or I don't know? Well, I Administration or Director Reisch?

We can certainly work around that that idea because apparently now that's my problem.

Councilor Bob, and then councilor Hart, and then McLaughlin.

Thank you, mister president. Thank you, doctor Reich, for your presentation, and to your staff for all the work that you're doing. I should have said thank you, neighbor. But so I guess just maybe Thank my question goes back to, like, where the during your last presentation, I'm always just curious about, like, how we arrive at this cost distribution, like, because you said, you know, there's so many different communities within. And so, like, what how do we get to this, you know

To to the to the president and to everybody. We needed to, in the development of this plan, Cambridge, Somerville, and MWRA had to come to an agreement on how we would share the cost for the purposes of doing this financial capability analysis so that we could run the numbers and see what it does to our bills respectively. I will also point out that the MWRA advisory board, which as you know, I'm the chair of, is also now doing some outreach to its member communities and and taking the MWRA share and letting them each of the 42 member communities know what their share of that is. It is very much my position, both as director of infrastructure and asset management and as chair of the advisory board, that this cost distribution is not fair to the sewer rate payers of Cambridge Summerville or the other 30 43 member communities. That we, as a region, need to find Basic principles, this is a very good plan.

This is something that we should do as a region. It is aligned with our regional goals. We should not be suffering sewers combined sewer overflows to continue. But the the the generation of sewer rate payers that would be paying this off, the debt service off through 2070, those aren't the right people to be paying for this plan. I am very much of the of the position that the state needs to help us find another funding source, which is why I'm I'm sort of imploring, you know, not just, you know, us, you know, Summerville reaching out to its delegation, but everyone in Eastern Massachusetts reaching out to their collective delegations.

As I said before, simply pushing this on to MWRA is not a viable answer. I I in in one way, as director of infrastructure and asset management for Summerville, it would be great if our share was less and we pushed some of

that cost

onto MWRA, but that then just comes back on us. Again, 60% of our bill goes straight to MWRA. So, we increase MWRA's cost, we're still gonna see a good portion of that. Know, Charles River Watershed Association very rightly has trumpeted the success of the prior plan. Boston was a laughingstock.

And the cleanup of the harbor is a significant not not just sort of, you know, Boston pride, but it's also allowed for fantastic economic development. Like, if if you think about the Seaport District, that wouldn't exist if the harbor was still in the the shape it was in the eighties. Now, who made the money off of the Seaport development? It's not the ratepayers in Stonem. It's not the ratepayers in Wilmington.

But the ratepayers in Stonem and Wilmington are the ones that that paid for the infrastructure that then allowed for that development in in Seaport District. We need to have a serious conversation about who's going to be reaping the benefits of this and put in a financial mechanism by which that it's distributed correctly. I wish I had a soapbox to sort of demonstrate.

Thank you, mister president. Thank you, doctor Reich, for, you know, for that. So, what is, like, Boston's commitment in this?

So, Boston thus far is not directly contributing anything to this. The the only contribution as the costs are currently allocated, you know, for for this analysis and discussion purposes, are through what they pay to MWRA. That is just sort of the regulatory framework in which we sit, whereby all of the outfalls on the southern bank of the Charles were permitted to MWRA, not to Boston. I wish I had a better answer than that. There was there was a smoke filled room.

Hamilton might have had something to do with it. Jefferson was iced out. I don't know.

So and just the last question slash comment, like, would you agree that the solution to climate change is it was the pressure not building storage? Yeah. So,

again, the modeling that we've done, given the constraints of infrastructure that MWRA inherited from the eighteen hundreds, sewer separation is not the solution. We have to look there's targeted sewer separation for sure. Like, the MRAS project gets us about 80% of the way there just by doing 95 acres, but you can't go beyond that. So, it's a mixture of some very targeted sewer separation where it works, but largely it's around storage, which, again, there there's national precedent for that. You know, most even London, Paris, Tokyo, they have tunnels.

That's that's usually the the way that these large volumes are dealt with.

And and just one last follow-up is that because as we know, this the climate change and the storms are gonna intensify. So if you build, like, a storage tank and then are you planning to expand it when, you know, it intensify? You know? Because as we've seen, if if you've done your model, then you know that that's so, like, at what point are you gonna say, hey. This is like this is not a fix.

So I I I think that that and it's it's interesting. I was just talking with some of my national colleagues that specialize in in this area last night, there was a national weather conference with people from all the Springfield's, Massachusetts, Missouri, wherever the spring the Simpsons are from. And there's a realization in this industry that you're never done, and and frankly, they're looking at Boston. They're they're looking at this plan. As I say, most of the other communities are striving to get to the point that we got to in in 2015.

And and it's very clear that once they get to that point, there's gonna be the next. And and, you know, from a technical standpoint, I do stand behind this plan. I think this is the right plan. But it also likely means that there's gonna be more work that needs to done in 2070.

Thank you. Councillor Hart, and then Councillor McLaughlin.

Thank you, thank you Director Reich for the presentation, and to your whole team for the immense amount of work that has gone into this. I want to build on my colleagues' previous questions and just in terms of, you know, the fact that Boston, you know, none of these outfalls were permitted to Boston. When you said that that Somerville had given up a lot of capacity in previous decades, that was new information to me that really highlights the injustice of that situ you know, circumstance even more. So, I just wanted to highlight that as well. And, as you, you know, I really appreciated slides 33 through 38 where you're laying out the real, the reality that these problems that we're looking at are regional.

They are driven by storm water, which is driven by climate change, and that it's very hard to come up with a regulatory, you know, compliant solution when you're trying to separate out just one piece of this very interconnected system. So, given that though, you know, and when we're talking about climate change, you know, we often say that, you know, you can't negotiate with the climate. The science doesn't really care about, you know, the the regulations or whatever. And so I guess, you know, especially, like, I applaud the MRAS plan and all of the work there, but I guess I am still having a hard time understanding why we can't you know, the given the level of impact, expense, disruption of, you know, residents' lives along the L. Wife Brook, and then we're all we're you know, we're gonna invest invest so much into the storage tunnel,

and then

it doesn't you know, we won't be able to expand it. And it doesn't take into account storm water, you know, other solutions in terms of storm water mitigation. I just wonder if you could speak a little bit more to that because it's it's hard for me to feel good about the great investment and and hardship that people are gonna go through when it won't really be flexible enough to continue meeting the needs in a climate change world?

That's a very good question to the chair. So, regions that have more successfully navigated some of these things do have a a broader scope than what we were limited to here. Right? Like Milwaukee is sort of the the standard that they do a ton of work in the upper reaches of of their system, in the more suburban landscapes in storm water control. And and by doing that, by and again, we've we've got that sort of two pronged problem.

We've got the inflow coming from the upstream communities and capacity limitations down here where we are. So, the the thesis that I have and and a bunch of us have on this project, yes, the the the Alewife storage tunnel has limited capacity of of x is, you know, is not sort of scalable in and of itself. However, as these other communities are are addressing those system capacity issues and the upstream reaches, that then will reduce the amount of inflow that gets into the interceptors and will have a further CSO reduction benefit. So, I think that's actually it's a technical part and also a jurisdictional part of this regional conversation that we need to have. But, as I say, we need to move forward on both of these fronts.

The Alewife Tunnel is is sort of the the biggest piece of infrastructure that we can cram into Ward 7. We we we really can't do anything bigger than that. And to get more benefits and and and more reduction in those overflows, work needs to be done in Arlington, in Belmont, in Lexington. So, we we really need to set up as a region that the means by which Belmont, Arlington, and Lexington are doing that work that will then have those benefits. So there's there's plenty of engineering that we can do to to demonstrate that as the next, you know, on slide 27, it might sign sound a little flippant about Massachusetts being very provincial.

We need to get beyond that and start collaborating more as a region. And I know that's very difficult for us. Right? We we we pride ourselves on our very our independence within small jurisdictional areas. But, when it comes to this problem, we need a lot more collaboration.

Can I ask a follow-up question? Thank you for that. I appreciate that. And on collaboration, I know you are, I'm guessing you're familiar with the community plan that has been put forward by the Friends of the Alwight Brook, and which involves a lot of collaboration with Cambridge, for example, in developing, you know, more engineered wetlands and things to deal with the storm water. I wondered if you could, it's a little bit outside of the scope of your presentation, I know, but I wondered if you could speak to that a little bit about if that's a possible avenue or if there's specific limitations or false assumptions that you see in the community plan.

Thank Yeah, to the chair, thank you for bringing that up. Think Save the LY fork has been doing some excellent advocacy work in raising awareness around this. And, you know, that plan does have some great ideas, but it also does have some fatal flaws. It deserves attention. Right now, as I've sort of stressed, we are hurtling towards our April 30 deadline.

We have absolutely no bandwidth to do anything additional. But, you know, perhaps not starting on May 1, we might give ourselves a day off, but the plan is to is to actually take the the Save the Ill Life book plan and and put it apply the same rigor to it that we've had to apply to our own. Because, a an administrative order by consent or or some other administrative order that binds us to do these things. So in in both the analysis of the performance and the cost estimates, we made sure that we we had a sufficient level of conservatism so that we're not then surprised, you know, five years, ten years down the road on what we're we're held to. There are some great ideas in there.

We want to apply that same sort of rigor to to that analysis, And and our our hope is to have that done well in advance of the June public meeting on this. Excellent.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Councilor McLaughlin and Council Wheeler.

Thank you, mister president. This is a slide that showed basically how we're gonna get no assistance from anyone on this. Could we pull that slide up real quick? Which number it was? It was earlier one. It's shows a bunch of red bars. Was it seventeen?

At twenty, maybe.

There we go. Yeah. Quick question that I probably already know the answer to. I assume this does not take into account the previous three years of rate increases that we've had?

It actually does.

Oh, it does? Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So, the EPA metric, and again, metric of communities, you know, largely in Indiana or someplace, are able to apply that 2% and negotiate with EPA for a longer term to comply with the needs. What this basically says is that under that federal framework, we don't have an avenue to negotiate out of any of this. Okay.

So, no help coming. Still the point to make. You know, I share counselor Scarezo's frustration with this because we just spent the last three years telling people that once we finish with these rate increases, it'll flatten out and now we're being asked to do the same thing again. And I just wonder what's gonna happen after all these rate increases happen. What's gonna be the next project that forces us to increase these rates?

And I hear basically talking points about finding a different method for paying for this, but I don't see anyone including myself have any plan about what to do about this. So, just voicing my frustration on that. I know there's consequences to not doing this as well, but it's a hard pill to swallow to tell people that we're just gonna keep increasing these rates because of water from another city or water from up the river on a state land that we have to take care of this. That's just my frustrating point. I did have another point about assembly and the tanks that we might build there.

I would just encourage the director through you to talk to the planning department about this because we're looking in that exact area to double the amount of development there. And there was serious conversations about underground parking. Parking. So I wonder how that will play into a potential tank being there. Just something to consider for the future. Thank you though.

Councilor Wheeler. Councilor Klingen is waving a big It's on that the Do you mind if you go? Okay.

Yeah. Three minutes here. It's just on the point of the the what director Reisch has said about somewhere in Indiana. The thing I don't understand about Somerville is that under by all other metrics like all the time we hear that we are economic an economic justice community, we are a environmental justice community. We're like, we check all these boxes yet the most anchoring thing was when you said that the MWI or whoever the deciding body is, they look at our sort of median income and they feel like we could actually pay more than what we're asking like that you know when it comes to the to the rate.

So I'm sure we'll be talking about this when we actually have a discussion about rate increases. But, I just, you know, why would somewhere in Indiana get get a break and we can't catch a break on this?

To the chair, I'm not afraid to go on camera in my opposition to the EPA federal guidance on this. I've voiced these concerns to the EPA and to EP. They understand my frustration with it and the non applicability of those standards to Massachusetts, and yet we're still beholden to them. Councilor Wheeler.

Thank you chair. Thank you director Reich and to your staff for this incredible hard work for an extended amount of time and the complexity of this work. I'm very aware of only knowing the tip of the iceberg and trying to wade in and ask questions, know, fully owning my immense ignorance on these topics. One of the things in in your presentation that I was a bit confused about and interested in were the points you made starting around slide 28 about sewer separation not eliminating overflows. And I want to make understanding these points well.

You were if I'm understanding and please step in and explain the downstream pipe capacity going going to Deer Island, the the limitation on that capacity means that even if we're doing immense amounts of sewer separation in Somerville and Cambridge, there's a limit on the benefit that we would get from that?

That's that's exactly it. Yeah. The upstream communities, even though they have separate systems, are still contributing storm water to the overall system. The downstream pieces that do that final, you know, link to Deer Island have limited capacity, and there's really no practical way to increase that. So, we just so happen to be at that crossroads.

And even if we were to do sewer separation and remove that direct storm water contribution, we're still stuck in the middle of those two forces. And, you know, if we were to do sewer separation, technically, it wouldn't be called a combined sewer overflow, but it would only be a victory on paper because the the because of those capacity constraints, we would still let those locations have hydraulic relief. Because the the alternative to that, like if we did sewer separation and then walled up those those overflows, those pipes would surcharge, and those pipes would then surcharge, you know, Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington, Medford, Everett. Like, it it would just back up into the system, and everyone's basement would flood with sewage. So, you know, yes, a a discharge to the river is very bad, but everyone's basement full of sewage is objectively worse.

So, you know, that's why I say we we would still have an overflow of of a sort to prevent that, you know direct impact to houses.

Thank you. And I was also interested in connection with these slides, this sort of Renaissance slides, the points that you and your team were making about problems with storm water as a source of pollutants itself. And am I under am I understanding correctly for slide 30 that the relative annual proportions of e coli by source, this is basically saying that there's storm water that is running into rivers on a regular basis. Small small scale rain that might not cause it a CSO. And then there's a small number of CSO incidents, I mean hopefully a small number in a given year.

So are we sort of, we're looking at a larger proportion of pollutants from storm water over you know 200 incidents.

Yeah. To the truth, that's a good way of looking at it because the the storm water discharge happens every time it rains including those smalls. So that there's a cumulative effect of bacteria reaching from those small storms as opposed to the rarer occurrence of the CSOs. The CSOs do have a significantly higher concentration than the storm water, but it's just because there's much larger volume of storm water at a lower concentration that, you know, the total mass balance is that there's more. You know, the other thing we did with the water quality model, you know, we were able to model it and see what the reduction in peaks are.

And so, this plan does a very good job of reducing those peaks. But, it doesn't actually do much in terms of total numbers of days that it meets the criteria for fishbowl and swimmable, because again, that storm water problem is pervasive. You know, it happens almost every week and then just hangs out almost every week. So, you know, if we truly have the goal of fishbowl and swimmable, Charles and Mystic, the stormwater also needs to be addressed.

Thanks. And then I know you know trying to to wade into these things and it makes sense the What's community that?

Was that a pawn after the fishbowl and swimmable you're wading into these facts?

I like that. It was unintentional plan. Trying to make sense of things like the community plan from Sea of the Alewife Brook and you know acknowledging that everybody involved has good intentions and is bringing different perspective. One of the things that I'm trying to understand a little bit are the assumptions that are going into the future models around climate change and storms. And you know there there are some people who warn that what was month once a once in ten year storm may become a once in two year storm. I'm curious about the sort of range of assumptions that that you, your team, and MWRI are using.

Yeah, thanks to the chair. That that was the product of almost a year's worth of intensive work. We brought on some climate experts. We even had it once we're nearing the conclusion of it, had it peer reviewed by Cornell University, one of the cities. It it it was it was a serious amount of work, and there there were I'm not gonna do any of it justice right here at the podium, but in in the report, there there's a write up in the report itself and also a memo in the appendix that steps through all that.

And it was a fun process because not only were we on the sort of cutting edge of the science, but Cambridge, Somerville, and MWRA had to agree with all of those assumptions. So to get a Zoom meeting full of engineers to agree on those kinds of assumptions was a feat in

and of itself.

Thanks. And then just going back to, I forget which counselor was prompting you to comment on sewer separation possibilities in the area of the Alewife Brook. Is is my sort of understanding why it makes sense to be doing the separation in the 10 Hills and Ward 4 kind of area that that we're planning to do, but not in the sort of general vicinity exercise that a little bit. That it's about the difference in the nature of the current current pipes and sewer systems, the relative cost and complexity that would be involved.

Matti, if you can jump to slide number 10. The main difference is that for MROS, we were able to find a corridor for a new storm water pipe. Right? The sewer separation then leaves us the problem with where does the storm water go? And we've got to get the storm water to a body of water.

In the case of Emross, in that side of the city, 10 Hills and of Foss Park area, that dark dark blue line, even though there's some challenges there, like, you know, we've got to get under 93, we've got to cross over MWR Water Main, we have to get around there's a Eversource high voltage transmission line. Like, there's there's stuff that we have to get over, above, and around. But we're able to do that. We're able to to shoot basically right down along the Fells Way and get to to Mystic River. So, you know, we're successfully able to put in a pipe to handle the storm water.

Now that said, that pipe has capacity limitations, which is why we're stopping at the 95 acres. We might have a little extra capacity that we find for, you know, five, maybe 10 more acres, but not much more than that. Which is why, you know, this plan on this side doesn't extend up into Gilman Square. Like, we can't get Gilman storm water out there. But, we're able to get storm water.

Over in Ward 7 and and the Alewife, there simply isn't a corridor, a realistic corridor, to move that storm water. Again, as said, the least bad route that we could find was Mass Ave and Cambridge, and that has a litany of problems. We have to get over the Red Line Tunnel, which is surprisingly shallow through there, and and a whole bunch of other things. So, you know, really as as a technical team, we came to the determination that it's it's simply not feasible for us to do sewer separation on that side of the city. As much as I'd love to do it. I mean it's my neighborhood.

Thanks. And then I guess my final question is, you know, just what does happen in a twenty five year storm? You know, I I was seeing from the projections for the Mystic and the Charles and the Aleaf Brook, the improvements look great for the the typical year and looking back at at that 2015 and onward period, how bad do things get

post this So so again, you know, that that twenty five year storm is a single event. It's a blockbuster event. And I'll to have get you the exact number, but I I think the reduction in volume is 36. Do you remember off the top of your head?

I think it's 36.

I'm I'm gonna make a a wager on my own memory. If if I'm over under 36%, I I owe you a dollar.

I'll hold you to that. Thank you. Thank you, chair.

Any further discussion? Liz Honor Dasey, do have something to add?

Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Chair. I just wanted to flag that IGA has been working with our state delegation to figure out some kind of help at the state level in terms of funding. Just wanted to put the request out there that if there's any counselors that are interested in helping with those efforts to reach out to IGA so that we can coordinate our efforts and so that we don't duplicate those efforts at the state level and we're making sure we're consistent in our asks. Thank you.

Very good. Is there something else you wanted to add? No? Okay. Alright. I see no further discussion. That item is placed on file. Thank you Director Rasch, as always. Brings us to our next item that we will take out of order, which is seven dot one. We're gonna go into executive session at the next item, Councilor Schrezza, so we'll have a moment in between the open session and executive session. Madam Clerk, would you please read item seven dot one?

Agenda item 7.1, communication oh, so sorry. That is swapped the page. Agenda item 7.1, a request of the mayor requesting that this council convene an executive session to receive an update on collective bargaining negotiations.

I see we have the assistant solicitor, Siri Goo, here. Would you just please let us know? Is this an item that is appropriate for executive session?

Yes. The law department has reviewed the agenda and the subject of this executive session, and it's appropriate for executive session.

Very well. Then, we will take a roll call vote to go into executive session.

Roll call to enter executive session, Councillor Ewenkampin? Councillor Link? Councillor Scott?

Yes.

Councillor Klingen?

Yes.

Councillor Strezzo? Yes. Councillor Sahid? Councillor Wheeler? Yes. Councillor Hart? Yes. Councillor McLaughlin? Yes. Councillor Mbaugh?

Yes.

Councilor Davis? Yes. You're in executive

Alright. Very well. We will return to open session following the conclusion of executive session. Alright. I'll call president.

To think

the Executive Session to open session. Councillor Ewenkampin? Councillor Link? Councillor Scott? Present. Councillor Klingen?

Present.

Councillor Strezo? Present. Councillor Sait? Councillor Wheeler?

Here.

Councillor Hart? Here. Councillor McLaughlin? Here. Councillor Mbaugh?

Present.

Councillor Davis? Here. Eight councillors present, we have quorum.

Alright, thank you. No votes were taken in executive session other than the vote to adjourn from executive session. We have one plus one item left to take out of order. Madam Clerk, could you please read five dot two?

Agenda item 5.2, a request of the mayor requesting approval of a home run petition to authorize the appointment of special police officers.

Unless there's any objection, we'll take up to get that together with item 10 dot one, madam clerk.

Agenda item 10.1, a request of the mayor requesting approval of a home rule petition to authorize the appointment of special police officers.

Liz Amarduzzi.

Thank you, mister president. The administration would like to request we would like to withdraw item five two with 10.1 as the replacement for that. Matt Syrigu will be able to speak more to this but this is based on feedback that was received from counselors at the last meeting and between the last meeting and tonight. So, the new version in 10.1 reflects some of those changes as well as some other language.

Thank you. Assistant Solicitor Sergu, I asked earlier today for an opinion from the law department as to whether it's appropriate for us to take up 10.1 this evening given that it was a supplemental item, wasn't properly noticed. You the law the law office provided that opinion that it was that it was appropriate because it's essentially the exact same issues. But could you please just sort of confirm that my understanding of that is correct?

That's correct, council president. Through you, the opinion of the law department is that the scope of the current Home Rule petition being presented to the council tonight is within the scope of the agenda item that was posted for the city for tonight's city council meeting at least forty eight hours in advance so the city council can continue to consider the matter.

Okay. Thank you. On the substance of the HRP before us, did you want anything you wanted to say before we get into discussion?

Yeah. Just at a high level, the the Home Rule

Petition creates a process for appointing special police officers in the city of Somerville through the chief through the mayor with confirmation from the city council. These these special police officers would now be restricted under the amendments discussed with various stakeholders and members of this council, would be restricted purely to Somerville Housing Authority properties and in and around properties occupied by Somerville Housing Authority occupants with the ability to exercise some police powers in relation to police duties directly driving there from from that position. So, it essentially creates a system for appoint for for providing police powers to some of the housing authority officers. The old charter contained a process to do this. The new charter omitted that language of this special act is designed to to reproduce that authority and put some more clear cut guidelines on how that authority would be bestowed upon new Somerville Housing Authority officers.

Councillor Scott.

Thank you Mr. President. First, I want to start off with a giant thanks to Attorney Siragu for the work that he put in on this. As I mentioned last time, there were several concerns I had about this. The new language is very narrowly tailored so that the special police officers that are effectively deputized are they it's not like, you know, old Boss Hog cartoon, you know, Duke's Hazzard.

They can't they don't just stop at the edge of the property. They can do police job related to stuff that happens there. And even if they were driving from Clarendon to the Mystics and they saw something going down, they'd be able to intervene. So that said, it was really important to me that this be very narrowly tailored so as not to create a separate third class of police that would be outside of the civil service process. Another thing that got cleaned up and fixed in the intervening time was the one fifty e exemption, which would have excluded these officers from collective bargaining, which is kind of a problem because they're already in a union. So appreciate the work done to tighten this up.

It

is ultimately in as I understand it, in the goal of bringing the Summerville Housing Authority officers under the authority of the Summerville Police Chief so that standards can be elevated and maintained and and the expectations of these officers have supervision from our direct police department. So given the changes on language, given the work that was done to tighten up and just the exemplary work by attorney Siragu, I'm comfortable with the language as written here. And I just appreciate all the effort. So I'm comfortable with approving tonight, sir, unless there are

other objections. Thank you. Councilor Councillor Cleen.

Thank you Mr. President. Through you. I actually haven't seen the latest draft. My computer died and don't have a plug but I'll take Councillor Scott's word for it. But my question is just with regards to the original version that we saw, it seemed like we were trying to address like many types of special police officers. So my question is, are those officers doing the details or what have you like under the 2006 act, they're just going to stay under that provision and this will just pertain to housing police alone.

Council president, through yes. Exactly.

The the 2006

special act remains a special act of the state legislature. This does not supersede, revoke, commend that. That special act is limited to retirees and limits the types of police duties they can perform to a particular to details, basically. So so that is just a separate special act that would remain, and those officers can continue to do, those retirees can continue to do details. But this would be specifically for Somerville Housing Authority officer.

Okay. Thank you very much. Based on the changes that I've heard were made, I want to move this forward as soon as possible. Thank you. Other

questions? Discussion? Councilor Bah?

Thank you, mister president. Just given the fact that this was an omission, you know, I don't think that it it merits a lot of debate. So approve.