Ways and Means Committee Meeting 12-01-25

All right, this is the City Council's Committee of Ways and Means.

This is Monday, December 1st, 2025. We're at 6 p.m. I'm Councilor Smith.

Present.

DiPierro, Councilor Hanlon, and Councilor Pietrantonio. Present. We have all members present.

Can we please stand and salute the flag?

I pledge allegiance to the flag. All right, we have two items on the agenda. The first item is an order up by Council Stephanie Mons as president. and others are requesting approval to accept and expand a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation in the amount of $100,000 to be used for watering trees.

Move to invite Mrs. St. Louis before us.

Motion made and seconded to invite the tree warden before us. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Please come before us. Oh yes, there's also a correspondence on your desk with some questions from the city council members and Mr. St. Louis' responses as well. Patrantonio.

Thank you for parenting and thank you for answering these questions. But just for the residents can hear it and see it. These trees that are going to be watered, I see you say Everett trees, but then you also possibly could be some down at the Santilli Highway, the gateway we might be watering too? Is that what...

Yeah, those are pretty low priority. They have restrictions. Those are a pretty low priority compared to the street trees. If they're not looking well, I do want to keep open the opportunity that we might run over and water them if they start to look like they're dying from drought or something like that. But those have been doing pretty well this year, so I'm not too worried about them.

So we're responsible for them not to water them, not the state. Is that what you're telling me?

That's correct. Yeah, we're watering those. We're taking care of those.

So they're going to be under our watch?

Yeah.

Okay, how is the trees being watered right now? I think you answered from a grant right now?

Yeah, so we've received this grant in the past. And so right now we're spending a little bit of that money that's being paid to city staff to water the trees on overtime. But most of the trees in the city right now that are being watered are being watered by DCR.

Okay, so we do have city staff watering on overtime.

Correct, yeah.

Where does that overtime come from?

These grants. These grants.

Is it coming out of DPW budget?

No, no, it's this grant. It's a reimbursement grant.

It is from the grant. Yeah. And I see planning controls that grant. Yes. So with DPW, if we send DPW up there to water trees, you take it out the grant money and reimburse. How does that work?

So they'd be paid directly out of DPW. I would file a reimbursement with the state. They reimburse it, and then we do a... We trade it from the grant account and back into the DPW account.

So the state holds $100,000 and then when we use some of it, you have to submit an invoice to the state and they reimburse us? That's how it works?

Yeah.

So how much has the city spent so far, do we know? How much have we got reimbursed from the state? Let me ask you that.

So just for watering, I'm not sure. So currently at our last grant, the last grant was for $150,000. We've spent... maybe around 130. Okay.

I got no further questions.

Thank you. Councilor Hanlon?

Just quickly, of all the trees that you were talking about are located on city streets? Yes. Nothing in parks or anything?

The ones in parks are a low priority. I do want to keep the option open that we might go over and water some of those if they're not looking well. But the ones on city streets are the highest priorities. They're the ones that tend to struggle the most.

We planted a lot of trees along the river down by the big stores on Revere Beach Parkway. Last year we had, or the year before, we had, I don't know, 40, 50 kids down there planting trees. They belong to us, right? Do you know what I mean?

Um, so are you talking about?

Where Costco is, that area.

Okay, yeah. So for the most part, those aren't going to need as much water because they're planted in a wetland. So those were planted with the idea that they weren't going to need supplemental watering.

Do we have a look at them and see how they're doing?

For the most part, they're doing well. Most of the ones we've lost were due to rabbits. And so if you look at them now, a lot of them have little white bands around them, and that's to protect them from wildlife. Okay, thank you.

If I may, from the chair, how do we water them? Do we have a water truck?

So the city has a water trailer that was rented this year, and in the past it's had a water truck. For internal use, that equipment is kind of pulled in different directions all over the place, because that same truck is being used to water flowers. and to water other park spaces and to water islands. So it's actually hard to get that equipment in order to use it to water trees. So that's why we're looking to spend some of this money on contractors.

Okay, so some of this grant is going to be spent on contractors to come out with their water trucks.

And that's why when we water with DPW, it's usually done on overtime. It's done when there's nobody else already using the equipment.

All right, thank you. Councilor Pietrantonio.

So the only watering piece that we have is that toll behind, which I've seen. There is no other watering... Tanks or anything like that that the city could use besides the water and the toll behind. That's the only thing we have.

I think the tow behind has actually since been returned. That was a rental from United Rentals. The traditional truck that we've used in the past is that red bucket truck. It's the small pickup truck with the boom on the back. And that also has a watering tank in the bed. that holds I think about 275 gallons and that was returned I think two weeks ago we just got it back it was down for repairs for most of the summer

Who tells the staff we have to go water? I do.

You do. You keep scaring me because you say low priority. Isn't every tree a priority?

I would love to. We do not have anywhere near enough money to water all of the trees I'd like to water.

Yeah, you're the tree warden. You scare me when you say it's low priority. I mean, I, again, worked in DPW 28 years. I had tree crews in all my 28 years. I think every tree should be a priority. I mean, if we plant them, we should water them. I know you got water bags out there, correct? They all got bags on them? Correct. And you got two bags on each tree? Correct.

Why two? because we want to keep the water bags off the trunk of the tree whenever we can, and so having two bags on it spreads the water out so that we're watering the root zone, and that encourages the roots to grow out rather than staying in a little tight ball around the trunk, which is less stable.

That's something I just learned tonight, because I only put one bag in.

Yeah.

Okay, that's good to know.

It ends up being a little bit more water, which is the downside of it.

How often do you think you have to water treat? I know it depends on the weather and stuff.

What would you think? Summertime drought conditions, twice a week. Once a week? Twice a week. Twice a week. During drought conditions, yeah.

And how many hours do we talk, and does it take to do a round in the city?

A round of the city, I'm not sure, but I would come up with a rough average of around seven trees an hour.

How many trees have been planted this past year?

Oh, this past year? Maybe about 80, something around there. 80? Yeah.

And we only water the ones that we planted. We don't...

So the minimum is to water for two years. I'd prefer to water more like three to five years, but we realistically just don't have the staff and funding to do that.

And who keeps track that these trees are two years? We don't have to widen them. Who keeps track of that?

I do.

You track all that? Yep. Okay.

All right. I'm good. Thank you.

Any further questions?

Move to excuse our guest. Second.

Motion made and seconded to excuse our guest. Thank you, Mr. St. Louis. What's the pleasure?

Move to refer to the body with favorable action. Second.

Motion made in second for favorable action. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? The ayes have it. Will the clerk please read item number two?

Item number two is the order of my counsel, Stephanie Bezos, President. not requesting the approval of additional amount of $455,000 to be appropriated by borrowing from the Everett Police Station Roof Improvement Project.

I do see our Procurement Officer and our Head of Facilities here if we have questions for them.

Yes.

Motion being seconded to invite up our guests. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Welcome. Thank you for being here. I hope you had a good holiday.

Thank you.

Thank you. Could you just introduce yourselves for the record, please? My name is Kiara Freeman, Chief Procurement Officer.

Angelo Febo, Director of Facilities.

Councilor Hanlon.

Thank you. I have to tell you right off the bat that I've been doing this for a long, long time, and there's questions that have never been brought up, and I just thought about it as if I was borrowing this money myself. How would I go about it? So I'm going to ask you the same thing. This is for $455,000 by borrowing for the Everett Police Station. Who do we borrow it from?

I believe that's by bond. So I think they're going to issue a bond for the additional one. So explain to me how that works. I'm not sure of the complete underwriting process. I think that's more handled by the treasurer's office. So I think once we do... potentially receive approval here. I think what happens in bonding is it's an underwriting process before they can go out for the bonds and then the funds come back in with the most favorable issuer.

OK, so when we do that, there must be an interest rate. We borrow $100,000. We're not going to just pay $100,000 back. So you said it goes into a bond. How does that work? We're paying someone for that, for the borrowing. That's $100,000. We're borrowing that, and we have to pay them an interest, right? And do we know what the interest rate is?

I'm not sure of the interest rate. I'm not sure if this is an individual borrowing or if this will be grouped together with other approvals, which would probably be better for the cost of issuance. I'm assuming it's something to that capacity where these get rolled up into one big borrowing with multiple.

Okay, it doesn't make any difference. So what would be an interest rate of any kind of borrowing that we would do? Because I've never asked these questions, and I don't know how we go about doing that. What is the interest rate we'd have to pay?

I think it's not a standard number. I think it depends on the time of the year, the type of market that's in, and the amount of money. You want the bigger the bond, the more investors are intrigued by it and want to provide those funds. I'm not sure what the markup here at the municipality for the interest rates and how they gather.

Okay, so bonds that you pay for them when it's due. You don't pay like a monthly payment. You just say you took out a bond for two years and at the end of two years you pay the... The bond plus the interest, is that how it works?

Depending on the term of borrowing, yeah. There would be monthly payments or quarterly payments depending on how they set it up. Sometimes you could set up a bond and you don't pay. maybe for the first two to three years or five years and then you start paying. And so then you're gaining interest on some of those funds before you even start paying out. I'm just not sure of the markup here.

Who pays? What department pays that? The Treasurer?

I would say the Treasurer's Office will probably handle the outgoing payments or incoming.

Okay, so the interest is like, it must be accrued every month. What's the time period that it's accrued?

I'm assuming so, yeah.

Monthly, too. Okay, and... When we pay it back, do we pay it back as a lump sum? I mean, we don't pay monthly payments. If I were to borrow from the bank, I'd pay so much money per month.

Yeah, I'm going to assume there's some type of quarterly or monthly setup depending on the... The amount of borrowing or payments that we have issued out. It depends on the call, the call order for the bonds.

And the treasurer, I suppose, would know what all this is going on, and he says, okay, it's time to be paid back $50,000. So he writes a check for $50,000.

to some method, yeah, whatever the calculation is. There's definitely a calculation for each borrowing that will let you know what's up for call and what's up for payment.

And we probably never pay in advance, do we? I mean, before the bond is due, let's say in five years, and we pay it off in four years, do we never do that?

I'm not sure. It might be advantageous for us to do that, to free up capacity if necessary.

Okay, thank you.

You're very welcome.

Councilor Pietrantonio.

All right, Angelo. Refresh my memory. We were up here. We approved $220,000. Yes, last year, yeah. And now we're back up here looking for $653,000.

An additional $455,000.

Can you explain to the people why?

So initially we went for a less expensive option, which is a re-roof. After we, there's been a considerable time since then. There's also been a delayed start with a new procurement officer. So there's been some delays in between. We retested the roof, had some moisture scans, infrared scanning done, and there's been more than... Moisture scan results show more than 40% of the roof contains wet insulation. We've also added the garage, which initially was just 12,000 or 13,000 square feet of the main roof. Chief wanted the garage added to it so we also have this additional roofing on top of it.

So this will be a total roof replacement, removal of all the existing roof assembly down to the structural decking, replacing the material that will meet the current building codes. So with all that. It's a considerable... There's no timeline for a new police station. I know that we discussed this before, but this is life and safety. There's also a lot of equipment. that needs to be disconnected and reconnected, heating and cooling. There's wiring that's connected to the emergency communications that needs to be handled carefully, connected to mass port. We want to make sure there's an operable rule for the foreseeable future of the police station. So that's why we're here, and that's why there's...

We all agree that building is way, way past its lifetime. We all know that.

The building was built in 1980. It's got infrastructure that predates 9-11. Yes, hypothetically, we need a new building. But the roof is not going to wait. It's not going to hold.

Yeah, I mean, I don't want that same problem up at the high school where we waited, we waited, we waited, we waited, and we ruined this room. I mean, I know that whole story with the high school. I know that. How much is square footage-wise? The 200,000 covered, how much square feet compared to this?

12,000, 12,000, 13,000 square feet. We just added the garage roof, which is an additional 4,600 square feet. So a total, correct me if I'm wrong, Chiara, I think it's a total of like 16,000 square feet.

Yep, 16,750 square foot building.

Yeah, you know, I know we got a letter, a correspondent from the chief saying because of the evidence that the car's leaking in the garage and he's worried about the evidence. Absolutely. So can we tell the chief to pay it out of the 1.5 they just got from the bus? Do you think we can get any money out of him? Is that a yes or a no? Oh, you don't want to answer. You defer it. You can defer it to the purchaser.

I didn't. I wasn't even aware about the 1.5 that they got.

I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing.

Okay, so we are going to do a complete roof. Yes, complete roof down to the structural decking. Replace it with all new material. Both structures, the garage roof and the main roof. Is this the same company that's doing the high school? No. Totally different. We're going to go out to bed for it, but we've had a team. Kiara brought in a team, expert team. They did moisture scan. with infrared. They took samples. There's even some asbestos remediation that's about 600, 700 square feet. It's a more in-depth comprehensive test of the roof and what's needed, especially with the deterioration that's happened since last year, since we met.

I think in the beginning the goal was to kind of come in and do a recover to try and save money knowing that the goal overall was to do the building. But when you have a roof that's more than 30 to 40% saturated, it's like a cost thing. You'll pay more for the recover than you will for the full replacement of the roof because most of it is saturated. We were hoping not to find fiberglass because the building was built in the 80s, fiberglass is more of a thing in the 70s, but it presented some of that. So this just gives us an opportunity to be responsive to the full scope, understanding that there's so much on what insulation under it.

Is there any damage inside the building that we got to worry about?

So we've remediated that over time. I mean, there's still leaks. Below, it's a steel deck. Below that, there's equipment, HVAC equipment, piping and whatnot, and there's any wet tiles that have gotten wet, we've replaced them. But it's been, you know, nothing major, no.

We don't have to worry about no structural damage, correct?

No, and if there was any damage to walls or we've painted, you know, we've replaced Blueboard, and any sheetrock or anything like that.

We're also carrying a budget hold for structural engineering in the event that when they do get in there and open things up, that we have some money allocated to that for any of the issues that we see.

So if there's any decking that's rusted out or damaged... Can we still occupy the building?

Absolutely. We don't have to worry about leaving the building? And man, it's going to be a tough building to work around.

Yep, but we have a plan. And initially, we were going to do this in the winter, which was going to be much more expensive than the number you have now. Plus, just again... The logistics of it, because it's a busy, it's a 24-7 building. We're going to do this in the spring. and we've already have a plan where the crane's going to be. We've discussed all this.

So if this gets passed, when are you looking to start?

We're looking to go out to bid in January and start construction as early as August 15th.

It hasn't gone out to bid yet.

Yeah, I don't want to put it out to bid until I'm sure that we have the full budget for the project.

Where do we get these numbers from?

This I got from STV. They are the project manager. So we also hired ARM consultants. They're a root consultant. So we had them come out and do some test cuts, give us a proper estimate for the work. That's why we came up with the $455. With the two that we have, the additional $455 gives us a budget of $655 to fully fund the project and put it out to bid.

So we already gave you the two something, so you're picking up another $4.55 to bring it up to the $6.52.

Exactly. Yes, sir.

Okay, okay. I mean, I hope... We get a bid that ends up like the high school where we allocated, I think, $10 million, and we only spend in $57.57. Can we use any of that money? Do we know, have we looked into that, where we can shift that money over?

I think we need to understand, so what I understand is that for the ARPA funds, there were certain projects that were vetted to have those funds used. I'm not sure if this was one of the projects that were part of the buckets of money that could be used. I think we would need to come back before council again to see if this project would be allowed to to use those funds. I may be speaking out of term, but I think that there was certain work that allowed ARPA funds and some that didn't. And I'm not sure if this is one of the ones that were vetted for.

Yeah, I know there's some criteria for using ABBA funds. I mean, we use it on the school because of the kids. I would think public safety. And there's a plan. Public safety would be a priority of our ABBA funds, wouldn't we think? I mean, I would think, you know, if a normal guy sitting here, I think that would be a good reason to use it, public safety.

If I may from the chair, ARPA funds had to be signed off by the end of 2024 for what they were going to be used for and then spent by the end of 2026. Because the police station was not signed off as a project in 2024, we cannot use the funds. So there's no way getting around that?

No. Even though we already allocated the funds to something, we couldn't shift it?

they can be shifted to a project that already is funded under OPER so if you wanted to give out like additional small business rental assistance any project that was already funded under OPER you can shift the money to one of those projects but you can't Make it to me.

And add a new project to it.

Correct. Okay. Well, potentially the build-out of the building, you know. Right now we just did the roof.

I mean, it's a public safety building. We need a roof. We need a roof. I mean, we know, like I said, not to repeat myself, but that building should have been demolished years ago. Another thing we've got to worry about. Eventually, we're going to have to be pre-placed in that building. Yes. I mean, this is sad. We have to spend over $600,000. And we're going to probably, it could be demolished in four or five years.

This will buy us 30 years. So hopefully we'll have a... A new police station much earlier than that.

Well, they'll have a new council here in 30 years, I know that. All right, thank you. Thanks, guys.

You're welcome. Any further questions from the floor?

No. Move to excuse our guests. Thank you.

Motion made and seconded. Thank you both for appearing. Thank you. All in favor of excusing our guests? Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much.

I move to make a favorable recommendation to the full body. Second motion.

Motion made and seconded for favorable recommendation to the City Council. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? The ayes have it.

Motion to adjourn. Second. Thank you.

Motion made and seconded to adjourn. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Aye. Meeting adjourned.

What's that?

No, I was going to ask, they spent the 220, but you asked that.