10.13.2022 Southcoast Rail Public Meeting

good evening everyone we're gonna get started if you'd like to start getting your seats thank you for coming out on a rainy evening which promises to get even Rainier by the time you leave so I really appreciate you coming to learn about the status of South Coast rail which we think is very exciting so we hope you'll enjoy the presentation I first have the honor of introducing mayor Coogan who is going to welcome

everyone this evening Mr Mayor

first of all I want to thank everybody for coming out to this very important informational session related to commuter rail and Fall River I do want to thank a couple of our elected officials that joined us here tonight um Jenna master from Congressman Austin Colossus office State Representative Carol Viola I saw a city councilor Andrew proposa here also up in the back and it's good to see people turning out

I'm glad everybody else came out also I think we should make sure we ask our very pointed questions to get the answers we need to make sure we make an informed vote on a rail coming to Fall River um again appreciative that people came out in this weather and let's hear what these lovely people have to inform us about tonight thank you thank you thank you very much we're going to go

for about an hour we'll go through our presentation and then we're going to welcome your questions because we're being recorded by local cable we're going to have a microphone down here um so that when you have a question to ask we'll be holding the microphone I ask you to keep your questions short because that's the best way to retain the audience's interest and to get a good sharp response to your question so

we want to get everyone home safely tonight so we'll be keeping track of the time as we go forward I do want to tell you that we have interpreters here tonight for anyone who might need them we have Lolita who's doing the Portuguese Lolita's right down front here and then we have Laura who's doing the Spanish and she's standing in the back of the room so if anyone needs an interpreter please um go talk to Laura

or Lolita okay so um I'm very pleased to introduce Gene Fox how many of you know I can see by welcoming her as she as you came into the room Jade has been the is the director of Civic engagement for the project she lives in the region she's committed to South Coast rail she does all kinds of wonderful work for the project I know because I work with her

so I see what she does so she's going to do our presentation tonight we have other team members here who can answer other questions as we get to that point about construction and going forward but in the meantime it's my pleasure to introduce Gene thank you well thank you all um and as Nancy and mayor Coogan said I want to applaud you for your

so we're going to give you a sort of a construction update we're going to talk about noise mitigation the benefits of the project what we do for community outreach and some other details so this project continues to advance on time and on budget and I think given the climate that we've had to live through these last several years that's pretty remarkable as well uh the pandemic slowed a lot of things down it did not

slow South Coast rail down not one bit even though we had to have people in our crews travel in individual Vehicles because they couldn't be in the same one they got to the sites they got the job done so kudos to them the contractor on this leg the Fall River secondary scans 50 W white did a super job the Fall River Line you'll see here as of August was 81 complete and it's going to be

finished very soon at least the construction piece the middle burn to Bedford and the signals contract that's the larger one that's uh slated for completion next summer but you'll see that this project on this side started earlier than the other one and is therefore much farther along so again drive by Pierce and Duvall you'll see see a real MBTA Commuter Rail station our midpoint of construction was just

this past spring so we have the map here and you can see what we have on the left in the red is what we're building this is Phase One it basically is extending the existing Middleboro service down to Taunton Fall River and New Bedford we're using the Middleboro secondary line that's that East-West Connector and then going down rail that currently serves Freight and will continue to serve Freight

um on the the right hand map shows you the new stations we're gonna have six new stations in phase one as well as two layovers layover facilities are where the trains go at the end of the day and where they begin their work the following day they are not maintenance facilities they're really parking places for the trains um so the phase one major contracts um we did the 159 million to scansca DW white

um and that again we've got 84 of the track done and then a lot of the other civil work done the Middleborough Medford uh the Middleboro secondary and the veteran main line and systems that's larger one in 403 and a half million and that went to South Coast rail Constructors um and that's at around 30ish percent complete then we also have and you will see here next spring evidence of our

off-site traffic mitigation that is work roadway signals Crossings in and around station areas to help people move around the station areas and that was part of the environmental review section 61 findings so the Fall River Line is nearing completion the structures really look fabulous I was out there last Friday and very impressed even that the bike shelter looks fantastic and has electric vehicle

parking it has it's going to be it's going to be it's going to be very nice at Weaver's Cove Final Works does include some grading Paving the employee parking lot they're still wrapping up work on the crew building there and that'll go potentially into the early spring it's all very weather dependent what we get done there and then there's going to be a punch list as there always

is they're actually already working on some punch list items so you'll see them out loaming and seeding hopefully getting that done but but then after all of that's done and scans get DW white gives us a do we still have all the communications and Signal work that will be coming in and be visible in the city it just won't have the same level of equipment and visibility but it's a lot

of work still so we do accomplish an awful lot of our work um directly from the right way so there's equipment that is designed to operate on the right-of-way High rail equipment and it does a really great job but there are some times when access has to be via other access points um roads and and we've done that right here Horizon Way was one but we also have to and had done

an awful lot of 24-hour outages and what we do in those they'll last three to five days on average we have to literally take the track out of service so Freight can't operate but what we can get done is a culvert a bridge a new track in record time because the crews will work 24 hours over that period of time get an awful lot done and a relatively short period of time and then

the freight operator can get back in and operate as usual and the freight operator in this area mass Coastal railroad has been a fantastic partner to South Coast rail and they're they're also a visible presence here in the city there's several clients that they work with so we're very grateful to them the flower of a secondary line 10 week look ahead major construction is about to be done

you're going to see us wrapping up in the next couple of months the remaining station work is Paving and striping some some lights need to go in and then we have to test our signals and fiber cables and and that's again some seating and moment at Weaver's Cove we still had a lot of grading to do not a lot but final we're moving soils around there we're finishing the crew building

they're on the interior of it now it will pave the employee parking lot that's a secured area separate area and also we have fencing you'll see you'll see the fence Cruise along putting up fencing along the right-of-way it is not along the entire right away but it's primarily in areas where you have a dense population or or problems with people trespassing um we do expect to have one final outage

um we have another Culvert we're going to be looking at but uh the Lion's Share of the outages on this project are behind us so the off-site traffic mitigation work is uh with Newport construction that was awarded last April um and that's improvements outside of the Railway as I said before it's intersections traffic like sidewalks pedestrian Crossings and some signage um these basically help make connections

work better and we are right now wrapping up work in Middleboro we're moving on down to Taunton I think next week but in the spring you'll see us here in Fall River doing work uh President Avenue for American um yeah we're going to go so we'll do is show you some pretty pictures these are photos of the depot this is September so just a little over a month ago um we're very excited we can see

um you can see the equipment you can see the platform you can see the canopy structures but you can't see the bike shelter in this one well um then the next one is Freetown station right down the road so some of you folks in the north Fall River part of town may want to head up there it's on South Main in a summon it near the Mini Storage it's the same thing it's a side platform

with a canopy a parking lot signage in fact the only station that isn't a side platform is Taunton and that's a center Island platform so that has to have ramps and elevators these are pretty simple multiple ramp access stair access and then the 800 foot long platforms are fully accessible to everybody you get on or off any car whether you have a stroller a wheelchair or anything else

um here's a picture of the crew building and I will say it's farther along than that that photo reflects that was from July um again they're on the interior now and then you can see they're doing the prep for the pavement work at Weaver's Cove so that's that's a large parcel there and it has the four sets of tracks you need um or excuse me six sets of tracks that you need at the layover facility

um and the crew building so um let's go move on construction you've already lived through the best part of it our typical work hours have been 7 A.M to 7 P.M we did have the outages they go over 24 hour period they last typically three to five days we did have the occasional one that went a little bit longer and we've had some that have actually wrapped up faster than that we had

um quite the summer with dust so we do have a very uh elaborate dust monitoring program in place and that data is is retained and stored and monitored extremely closely the same is true with our Pest and rodent management we the stations in layover are going to look very much done they do now but again there's still an awful lot of work to do it's just not as visible we do have a noise mitigation program

and a lot of folks in Fall River have been notified the noise mitigation program was developed using FTA guidance that's implemented nationally and it uses a series of metrics that determine who has a severe impact the mitigation program applies to residential dwellings only there are a variety of things that an eligible homeowner could pick from track facing window replacement track facing door replacement perhaps

vegetation or mini split air conditioners there's a menu of things and we have a separate contractor who's working with eligible homeowners determining what the best the best course of action would be for each individual structure we have one final group we did it in three groups one final group of letters is an October mailing and we've had very good response I will say that eligible

homeowners have been responding and have indicated a strong interest in participating and there's some funding obviously associated with that depending on the severity of the impact so my big thing I know rep Viola hears it from me all the time and so does Mayor Coogan I'm very concerned about safety we have not seen trains run here in over 30 years the right-of-way has become something of

a recreational area for many people it's also an area to be mischiefs but people walk dogs take their kids on walks there are people who camp out along the right-of-way the 10 mile an hour clickety-clack train that sporadically traverses the area is going to be replaced by fast-moving Commuter Rail trains you will not know what direction those trains are coming from you can't tell and they're on you

before you know it and it takes 18 football fields for them to stop if they see something my goal is to educate every kid in every school building in our region the tracks are not a place to recreate they are state property but even beyond that they're not a place to play they're not a great shortcut to get to Joey's house they can be very dangerous and if everyone here could help me with that

messaging I would appreciate it one final message on safety is we also haven't seen great Crossings or worried about drain Crossings gated Crossings with lights and things we can't play dodging with those skates when those skates come down and you don't have any great Crossings in the city here but you certainly do in Freetown and elsewhere across the region those Gates come down they need stock

they don't may try to get around them so seriously we are so excited about what this means for the city for our region we deserve this we deserve this connection but we also recognize that there are inherent dangers associated with anything like this you put in a new roadway you've got dangers you increase speed limits you have dangers well here we're doing something that is very

important for our Economic Development future but it has dangers and we need to make sure people understand they need to stay off the right-of-way and I have worked very closely with the city on that with homeless populations and I will continue to do that finally what are the benefits for Fall River well it's been over 60 years since we saw commuter rail here um Oliver Wendell Holmes used to ride

the train from New Bedford to Boston to come back in summer on the beaches but we haven't seen trains in 60 years and it was a vital connection what happened what happened with the interstate highway system happened and every car in the driveway happened and it was easier and more flexible to go in your car Well Route 24 in the Southeast Expressway open the same year and both were over

capacity inside of a decade we see them all backed up the minute you take some cars off by adding a lane there's backfill we need reliable connections to our the financial Hub the recreational Hub the medical Hub the educational Hub that is Boston and Boston deserves to see what we have here as well so we see tremendous opportunity coming out of this primarily economic development but

also connectivity that we just haven't had in so many years we the benefits that are associated with your vote are something I'm going to defer to right to my colleague Randy hunt and he's going to speak about some of these benefits that are coming from this vote that you've all been hearing about and he has he's he's a CPA he can explain it a lot better than I so Randy hunt please be careful

this is the largest Podium I've ever seen in my entire life he's actually a smart car parked inside I am randy hydes I'm the senior director of the administration for South Coast Rail and we've I wanted to talk about the assessment because there are many many questions about the assessment that we've been receiving so I'm sure that in the Q a there may be some more but I wanted to cover a few things so that

everybody understands how that works the assessment itself you can find the formula if you go to the easiest place I can find it is m a legislature.gov gov so M.A is in Massachusetts legislature.gov uh look for bills and laws and if you go to the chapter you put in 161 a which is the organization of MBTA and the law under Mass General law and you can find what we're talking about tonight in sections one six and

nine what are the definitions one has all the definitions including every town that's currently in the MBTA service area with the exception of horn which added itself back in 2015 so there are a total of 175 communities that are in the MBTA service area section 6 specifically deals with how a town or city joins the mpta service area and it spells out what the question on the ballot question has to say and then it's

only one page long I'm not actually I don't want to make you afraid of this stuff all of this stuff is very short and here's the whole thing from all three of those that I have printed out today in very large type um so here's how this formula works the formula is defined in section 9.

all right and the best way I can explain it is let's simple it down to let's pretend like there are just two communities in the MBTA service area okay so we'll just imagine that I live in one of those everybody here lives in the other both of the towns have a most recent population census of ten thousand people all right so essentially the first part of the formula is we're going to divvy up the

assessment that the MBTA imposes on all of the towns all of the communities in the MBTA service area by population so I didn't even want to put you can take the slide to something else if you want to so we don't distracting this I I was going to do some slides but I think we can follow each other here so there's two towns ten thousand population each the assessment in our example is a

hundred and twenty thousand dollars that's what the MBTA is going to assess to all of its member talents and in our examples only two of them so ten thousand you do it on population sounds to me like 60 Grand to one sixty Grand to the other simple enough that's the first part the next part is the formula recognizes that some towns and cities get more service from the MBTA than others

Boston gets the most amount of service and then there are towns that bring Boston that get less service so the formula puts a weight on how much service you get from the MBTA so in this case the town I live in gets all of its RAM and its buses its Paratransit services from the bride you know all of that stuff comes from the MBTA so in this example I get a weighting of two

but the town the city that you live in is only receiving a single railroad station and pays for its bus service to the Regional Transit Authority so you're in a different situation so your town gets a waiting of what now we multiply the senses by those weightings ten thousand ten thousand in my town we multiply it by two so now we use that twenty thousand number compared to your town which is

multiplied by one so ten thousand follow me here so that means I'm going to have to pay two thirds or I'm going to be assessed two-thirds of that fee because I have waited twenty thousand the other Town Ten Thousand so that means I'm going to have to pay eighty thousand of a hundred and twenty thousand and then your town pays only 40.

except that also in section 9 it says all of the money that you pay for regular ridership services from your Regional Transit Authority you can credit off of your bill and you can credit 50 percent of any of the ride like Services Paratransit services that you pay for off of your bill so let's say in this example I don't do that I get all of my service from mpta so I'm going to pay 80 000 done

in the other town where you're going to pay 40 you get to offset those costs that you expenses you pay to your RTA in this case certainly let's say that that cost is a hundred thousand dollars that you pay a year all right and ten thousand of that is for Paratransit this is wheelchair services that type of thing all right if you do that math you get a hundred percent of ninety thousand and

fifty percent of ten thousand put them together so it's ninety five thousand dollars of that hundred thousand that you get to offset against the forty thousand that I just said was going to be your fee well you don't get any free money but it wipes out the Forty thousand with a cushion of another fifty five thousand that like I said you don't get that money but it zeros out the assessment now what are the facts

in Fall River The Waiting of these cities and towns that are part of the MBTA service area range from 18 for Boston so whatever their population is in Boston which by the way has the largest population in the state we multiply that times 18.

there are some other towns that are multiplied by nine some other towns by six as you get further out from Boston and the ones that are furthest out but inside the 128 Beltway they get a multiplier of three Fall River has a multiplier of one it's one it's never going to change to another number under the current law so what happens is in Fall River the assessment that we've calculated as a pro format calculation

would be about six hundred thousand dollars of fee to be in the MBTA service area but how much does Fall River pay to serve it to the Regional Transportation authority a million five hundred thousand dollars that more than offsets the six hundred thousand and leaves you with a cushion of nearly a million dollars so there is no net amount of money that Fall River will have to pay to be a BTA

by voting to become part of the service area that's a fact and I would also add these two things one is that by this law section 9 the very first section part of that first paragraph it says that MBTA service area fee cannot go up by more than two and a half percent a year it actually has to go it can go up the inflation calculation but no more than

two and a half percent a year so the inflation is two percent it's two percent if it's three percent it's two and a half it stops at two and a half now I would invite you to read the contrast that you have with your RTA and I think you might find out that what you paid at the RTA can't exceed two and a half so my CPA hat on and say that that kush

and the nearly a million dollars that you have before you would have to pay a nickel to the NBTA the net is actually going to grow not get smaller as time goes on and then I make this last point which is everybody in the state pays sales tax one point of that sales tax goes to the MBTA and that comes out to be somewhere around 170 580 million dollars a year

that one penny out of the total sales tax that you pay we've been paying them here in Fall River for years for decades but not getting any service at all from the MBTA so now by joining the MBTA service area and not paying anything for that benefit now that one penny on your sales tax and you're paying will actually go to work for it so I hope that helps with some of the

questions about that but if you still have questions about it feel free to come down and we'll hand you a mic so you can do that do I have any questions about that now okay then we need we have the mic it's right there oh it's just mine okay come on down like prices right hi I'm Mary feidelberg I'm a resident of Fall River and um there seems to be a bit of a question on

the funding source for this are we talking principally about Federal taxpayer reallocations money that came from Capitol Hill to Beacon Hill for this project construction the state-funded 100 percent of phase one of this project with what funds with State funds state funds the bond issue that is out there that we use there's a bond issue that we are going to help repay as well as taxpayers of the state

that that is correct the MBTA has to pay its interest in principle on the bonds that are purchased the people that buy those bonds get interest on that money so yeah it works like any bond chains and and the funds that we are getting for this project we are getting 30 years behind other communities within an hour of Boston within 50 miles of the city limits as I understand it we Taunton and New Bedford municipalities

that's true and we haven't gotten any particular interest or break for having been kept in the hinch of lands all that time we're getting the same handshake people got 30 years ago we're getting the same terms okay I'll leave that as a comment I don't hear well I'm not sure about that also I understand from the people who are building this that the rails are built to carry 30 percent more weighed than

they were built originally to carry Freight with iron iron locomotives and iron cars is that correct that it's 130 pounds per three feet commuter rail actually Scott you may have a better idea of that or Kenny we are we are changing our class what we can handle on it so when class one is free um class five okay so they are not going from 107 pounds per three foot rail to 130

because that's what I was told by people building it and laying the rail yes

Scott Kelly's with our team uh we are going after the last round that is that is the standard rail that the MBTA requests us to use and it's also what fra requires us to use for Freight in this year so okay so it's a better product it's a better product and it's a freight grade rail okay and it is and we need a four we need a sixth spur 68 acre layover yard for what

purpose that is miles from the Terminus which is itself what a half mile from Battleship Cove the center of our Waterfront you know tourist business you can direct that question back we did a thorough analysis to determine where the best spot for The Layover facility was and I also want to open up the floor to other questions but I will tell you this that of the five areas we looked at this was the one that

was best the ideal is to have it as close to the end of the line as you can this was the best we could do it was land that we we knew would be well suited for it it was a temporary station it's a Depot it was temporary with retrofitted ties and and um and lines until I believe it was it was presented to the government accountability office which is the bipartisan Congressional office

and then all of a sudden we had 24 7 construction to tear up the old ties and rails and replace them well they if they were torn up they needed replacement I will tell you that was we've been working on that for 15 years um slowly chipping away at it so that we could support the freight operation that we're working down here but as of last summer the original plan that was in

your own materials was that you would retrofit every piece of training train line between south of Weaver's Cove no movers Cove up they got new lines and rails Weaver's Cove up has all new everything that's on this on this contract that we've been talking about tonight is all new rail yes but until the summer it was going to be retrofitted below Weavers no I don't believe so yes it's in your own

materials well you have to point that out but I live in a lot I live right on the track and we were notified by the MBTA that there would be all this noise and everything because there were these last minute changes they were going to tear out I I don't I don't believe that's actually not materials then share those materials with me because we've just spent the last of the summer

putting down Newbury Hill I know I know but the plan until then was that it was going to be retrofitted here yeah so I thank you for your time and I'm sure that um that the LNG people from Enbridge Canada and an Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas will be very happy to have a facility that can carry liquefied natural gas tankers thank you hmm okay this uh yes anyone who'd like

to make a comment or ask a question this gentleman is coming in we'll come back and then we'll go to you okay and um thank you like to tell us who you are yeah my name is Robert Tamara I'm the father of a resident and uh first of all I'd like to thank you for your presentation and I have a few questions because we've been trying to get numbers for a

long time this is about numbers you know there are no free lunches everybody knows that we can agree that there are no free lunches correct okay now the issue you were talking about the the credit in 161a and uses an offset what we have the MBTA forever and they're going to be always increases I'm looking at other communities the MBTA and reading the Boston Herald and seeing these articles about the debt that the

MBTA is in looking at the perspectives of how they have to raise revenue um the how do you it's not going to offset the assertive is not going to offset this forever I mean could you can you truthfully say that it's going to basically be a watch forever uh well we're talking about apples and oranges here and uh and I'm watching a TV show too so nice and done I appreciate it well thank

you we used to do that I yeah I did that I did many shows called the little knowledge is a dangerous thing I thought it was absolutely titled so was that was that you know what time that was my title for my own show I'm not casting Inspirations I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a dispersion and you're welcome to use the title if you like but I'd like to talk look uh

we're talking about two different things the MBTA as everybody knows is working through financial hardships okay the assessment is in law it's the law now I heard on one of your TV shows that you said that well they could change the law but I could that's not actually an argument that's a deflection because yes we can change the law about anything at all okay well so the law is the law and

it's been followed since 2000 so for 22 years we've been following this actually the formula went into effect in 2006.

but we've been following this law in it's very well spelled out as I explained it and so the Fall River will have a cushion well more than the amount of the service fee that it will be charged they you know forever if we don't change the law and if you want to say them all then we can do that but yes okay in fact what I pointed out earlier was

the RTA actually can raise its prices by more than two and a half percent we cannot so all that would do is expand the cushion over the years I will I have another question well I'm just going to go back to you you can't change the law oh I didn't say you guys the MBTA according to the definition in 1618 section two is fundamentally an entity until itself it's a body politic

and they can do anything they want now on August 10th they started they shape this by the way they changed the zoning laws did they not and it's actually a lawsuit in Rockport right now about them changing the laws for for zoning hey here's here's what we'll do if you had you had sounds like maybe a legal question and we have our attorney here we have to address those things they will ask another question that

maybe we can answer and then we can have our attorney answer okay well no he doesn't need to answer the fact is there is a lawsuit about the constitutionality of the law change so that's that's not for debate I'm not an attorney but they did change the law which affects communities and is a loss and pending whether they win or not it's not the issue actually what we're doing here though

I'm sorry I meant to say that but it's true well as I said to just to wrap up you have we you know I'm not pro I'm not saying Pro a con here I'm not I'm not advocating for either side I understand I'm looking at the long-term effects on the people of Fall River because Fall River this is a forever deal and the reality is that the people of Fall River this

these are a couple of stacks that I pulled um and this is from the U.S Census Bureau the median household income in Fall River if it's forty six Thousand Seven dollars the per capita income State average is 45 it's less than 500 less than your household our immediate income is per capita income is twenty six thousand our poverty level is almost double the state average this community

is looking at a debt override a another 6 million for another High School in this so obviously as a concerned citizen I'm worried about the kind the kind of financial impact that this would have on us and I appreciate the fact that you've tried to clear it up but as far as the law being changed laws get changed all the time thank you I just like to point out quickly though that also with trains

comes Economic Development opportunity and we're also doing the Route 79 project which opens up I don't remember how many Parcels but a number of parcels that will have that water view it's going to be fantastic so now people are really going to start kicking the tires and I think that when you get that investment the economic development investment it takes a lot of the pressure off the homeowners and the

taxpayers I do appreciate that perspective and I agree to a point but the reality is that people will fall river can't afford the present rents and driving up the rent if you looked upon his apart from the majority of people in the city it's actually a negative impact rather than positive so thank you very much thank you and and I'm sorry I didn't I neglected to ask um if there are any elected officials who wanted to

make a statement or ask a question because we usually do that first um thank you I know most of you here and I really appreciate that you took the time to come out and hear the update that we've been getting quarterly and weekly from South Coast rail this is a transformational project that we have been talking about and working on and working toward for absolutely 35 years and um I truly appreciate the concerns and

issues and questions people have Because unless you've been following this day to day like we have you know and our roles as elected officials you know and then you stop tearing assessments and things like that that can be scary and that warrants questions and to ask those questions I'm so confident I just want to thank Randy and Gene Gene you've been with this from day one Randy I've had the opportunity

myself and rep Sylvia to and rep Schmidt to work with Randy in the legislature he is a CPA he would be the one to guide us each year send us those emails um the bottom line is we're very very very excited about this and the opportunities continue to ask the questions South Coast rail make sure if you're not already sign up for their newsletter is a phone number there's an

email you can ask your any question you want and as we get closer to the end of 2023 you're going to be hearing a lot more about it as we launch the first train and one of my fun jobs I I'm going to start a committee on how do we get all of you on that first train ride how many of you can we fit and um and how do

we do that but it's exciting it's going to bring a lot of opportunity to this community and it's about time we have what the rest of our cities and towns who are within 50 miles of Fall River have we deserve it thank you thank you very much um just a quick note I want to thank Gene Randy pleasure to see you again and uh this echoed the words that my colleague

has mentioned I'm glad to see so many people here because this obviously started it's only several weeks ago we started hearing these concerns more and more about an assessment this is where the answers are I'm so happy that you're here because we want to hear from all that we possibly can about what's happening to the future of our city so thank you all very much thank you a gentleman here wants to ask a question

around the mic rophone thank you my name is Antonio Texas I'm a resident of Fall River I am concerned on November 8th we're gonna have a vote that the residents are the ones you're going to decide if the railroad goes on or not and I'm concerned because he spent already millions of dollars before the people of a river of voice and I think that's totally wrong what happened if the people for River Falls know thank you

that is also in the chapter 161a section 6. last sentence and I'll read it to you so I Get Around

The Authority may not provide service to a city or town that fails to join the transportation area unless such city or town was receiving Service as of July 1st 2000.

so it's a simple answer and and uh it's very black and white there will not be service if Fall River isn't a part of the MBTA service area

um my name is Nelson Vasquez I'm a resident of the city of Fall River first of all I want to say uh for the presentation I know it takes a lot to organize presentation uh you brought up section six and you just said it just now it's black and white if the city says no there is no service provided unless such thing that you just said correct do I have your confirmation on that

we cannot provide service to a community that is not part of the MBTA services so if if the voters of Paul Rivera says no in this election or out of the equation correct we're out of it completely I'm only going to Venture as far as telling you what Mass General law says okay okay um if it were the case that it did not pass then it would be the city itself

that would have to decide what next steps are well the reason why I bring that up is because on two separate occasions I've heard that if the city says no then there may be a potential attempt by the estate delegation to initiate some process to undo the vote of the people if they say no and and I'm here to say I'm here to say if the voters All Fall River say no and if

there's an attempt by our state delegation to override that vote the no side of the campaign that I'm part of because I know there's a yes side I'm part of the north side we will initiate article 5. of the Declaration of Rights by Constitution and with but that said with us didn't say delegation present we will hold you accountable if if the city of Florida says no because the vote needs to be respected

period and that is what our constitution says in the state of Massachusetts are so sacred and if the people say no it's no and if you do if you do not agree with that we will hold you accountable but once again I want you to say thank you for the presentation and uh as they say you know let's see how it goes a different opinion um all right this gentleman and the next one

thank you Colin Dyer is also a resident of Fall River and again thank you for the presentation it was a very informative um I do have one question um basically regarding how we're taking a vote now when this project has been worked on for years um when was anyone on the stage informed or when did anyone on the stage find out a vote had to be taken by Fall River New

Bedford and secondly when did when you did find out when was the city informed of this because a lot of people in the community including myself are puzzled how this project has been going on for years and we're taking a vote on this this November right before the project happened to um another let me just say that if you want to speak please raise your hand and come let's just not have remarks from the audience okay

yeah thank you um it's a good question and the communications between the mpta and the City of Fall River and New Bedford were struck by me a year ago September exactly found out a year ago that's when I found out one year ago actually I happen to know that five years ago it was brought to the attention of the Cities but at that time there was no sense of urgency and then we've had some transition

board so it kind of fell apart to Randy picked it up and ran with it again and that was over a year ago yeah I appreciate that I know you said September the local paper and he said the city found out in April that's why I had to ask questions please if you would like to speak wait and hold you raise your hand and like someone else okay thank you thank you uh Michael Farris 79 Highland

Avenue Fall River also uh have a business here on the urban planner landscape architect I'm actually working on the waterfront project with 79 project I've been blessed uh in my career to live more of all over the world and to see that this type of a project come to fruition has taken a long time especially that the spaghetti Ram Veterans Memorial Bridge so the economic benefits outweighs the

spirituals and to not Embrace this project and vote for a positive outcome of a communal rail to this city we're blessed to have this opportunity a lot of cities a lot of towns that I've worked on this is the last piece of the puzzle this is the first piece of the puzzle so by the end of the day when we have this new Urban Boulevard and a commuter rail and we have 20 acres plus

or minus of Redevelopment opportunity this is what will actually generate and help our Gateway City especially to balance off our affordable housing to walk your great housing into the development itself so Kudos I support this project again bringing my family back here to live here after living and working all over the world this is a great accomplishment for the city and for pretty thank you so much gentlemen

we'll make these the last two questions but we will hang around afterwards so that we can talk more questions between ourselves no we can't ma'am I asked you please wait I'd be happy to wait but I'd like to say it in front of the group okay go ahead okay my name is Brian Kirk and I uh I have some questions that haven't been addressed yet um I've been following this for years

Gina has seen me at all the meetings for a number of years last time I saw the time to travel from Fall River to South Station was one hour 45 minutes someone just told me it's now one hour and 30.

it's it's pertinent because the people that are going to use it as a commuter 15 minutes can make a difference between staying in their car and getting in the train right we've always said it's a 90-minute ride I don't know when we maybe when we were initially talking about different configurations we might have said it could take up to an hour 45 but for this what we put through the

Viva review is a 90-minute ride from both Fall River and New Bedford do you have the breakout like I know it's an hour from Middleborough into Boston approximately what is it from Fall River to Middleburg well that's probably going to be the other 30 minutes so when you come out of the depot station here in Fall River you're only stopping a free town before you go oh and I'm sorry but you have to bang the

right yeah that's right and are you planning on making an Express between Middleborough and um South Station because I'm talking to Scotland there are several people that have asked for that and it's a great question and it's not on South Coast rail to figure that out railroad operations I think we had this chat earlier railroad operations figures out all our schedules who gets to park where when and what

time the trains leave and when they don't and if we were to do to come up with an Express which I believe is awesome so former New veteran mayor lang used to say well just get one train that stops at the University cities Bridgewater JFK um I thought that made perfect sense but railroad operations didn't have a way to make that work at the time okay and since someone would be

taking a time to time our trips are we going to be in zone 9 or Zone 10 as far as I don't even know that yet and we will not know that until we're ready to to rock and roll okay I got a few more I'll let someone else get with you well thank you it's good to see you again thing this gentleman right here yes I'm sorry thank you uh Joe Carval from Fall River

so I'm I'm a lot more familiar with the Weavers coach I think I ever wanted to be uh and my question and and shame on me I haven't read the environmental impact statement as yet I have uh but but that land was contaminated for years and years of as you well know Gene uh by by shell so so what remediation actually took place uh given that for years we've been told I mean we prompted mayor after

mayor to take the land by by eminent domain yeah I remember and and yet uh you know that could never happen because it was polluted so badly right right so so one question is what kind of remediation took place and is it is it truly because you know New Bedford had a middle school that was built on top of it I'm aware of that yep so yeah nobody wants that yeah can I hear you and we

did work very closely with shell in fact Kenny's right next to you if you could hand him the microphone we worked very closely with shell they were Wonder beautiful and we have set it up so it still has some contaminants on it but we closed a lot of the monitoring Wells Kenny if you could just go into a little bit more of that this is a Kenny from vhp Kenny Caputo who's been also with us

for many many years and he's helped us navigate some of these more difficult Waters among them uh shell and Weaver's Cove thank you Gene and uh the matter of contamination is complicated one very scientific as well and I'm not going to try to fool anybody here I'm not a super scientist in remediation however however the uh I will say that shall had what they call an extraction system in

place on that land at the southern end of the facility very close to where the crew building it's about 1978. yep and uh on the purchase the full investigation was done the monitoring Wells have been left in place and it is shelter's responsibility to continue to Monitor and make sure that there are no residual uh leftovers that could possibly impact the community in any way as you know we're in the

upgradient side of the contamination we're not doing anything and it's not our land on the other side of the tracks on the river side of the tracks where there could be more problems and there's more investigations and more remediation going on at the MBTA we're working with shell on the purchase of the property did satisfy themselves that the site had been remediated and the use this is key

thing here the use was an allowed use over that uh over that cap so basically our yard now acts as a cap on that site with a use that is is allowed by the dep and I hope that helped yeah thank you to a point and and thank you for that uh however given that the remediation of of the the plume and the contamination was never done began as I as I said right

around 1974 yeah 78 uh so with all deliberate speed really uh no one was holding shells uh oil fields to the to the bone or whatever uh so how how satisfied should we be that shell and and I know that shell is still they'll always be responsible as long as there's any contamination there that shell is it's on shelf time and God knows what my opinion is of fossil fuel companies for God's sakes so

uh so I think we need to be extremely Vigilant that shell is continuing to do what they're supposed to be doing and and speed the damn process absolutely and actually because we were in there and we were working so closely with them they actually made a lot more progress than they had been making

so anyway to your point we're working very closely with show we're going to continue to work with shall we actually close some of the monitoring well so we didn't need um so that we could consolidate that and we're watching it very closely we'll continue to do so and if I make it my second quick question uh and that has to do with with the financial status of the MBTA again yeah we have a we have a

congressman uh Congressman Lynch who actually had talked about having the federal government move in and take over the NBTA I mean the Orange Line closed for for a month uh another section is going to be closed but all kinds of issues that have to do with with once again that this community that I was born and raised in 76 years ago now uh really can't bear any burden addition original financial burden for people

here no you're absolutely right about that and I will say all of us know all of us that have been involved in this now most of those issues are with the Subway Lines for which zero was invested for maintenance over so many years we have brand new everything here um so God willing everything should work well I but I understand everyone has their issues then BTA has some hurdles to overcome but we've also ordered new

coaches via the MBTA buy level coaches we're getting totally refurbished locomotives that's all on our dime South Coast rails time but it is on on MBTA to keep us going and we'll have to be looking you don't need that in Fall River to pick them up I very much appreciate your your comment about the the water views yes because as you said that all I could think about was a 14-story building going to go up on

Weaver Street blogging a lot of folks deal with the river right well that's that's a runoff right into the river anyway it's good to see you again too it's been a while we're going to take one more of this gentleman over here

hi my name is Steve Colby elker uh I am relatively new to Fall River I moved here about 10 years ago in large pot because I was confident this program was coming I lived and uh grew up in Boston and I worked in Boston and over the years of working in Boston my co-workers became people from Fitchburg people from Worcester people from Lawrence all coming into Boston on commuter rare and when you talk to those

people this is what you hear okay new housing went up businesses came and the quality of life looked okay and they would not it's like a prison I hate to say this nobody wants the prison coming to their community nobody wants it to go people who have commuter rail love to meet around and I I think that this is going to be a great project like one a question I have is any town that has

a commuter rail that expanded to declined to accept it the way we're considering doing it they were all already in place when the law was enacted with the exception as Randy mentioned of born that decided to become part of the service area so when back in 2000 the 175 communities already had they were either commuter rail towns or adjacent towns which we were not here and one other thing about housing there

there is I understand I'm not clear on this but I understand that there is a special zoning that is required if you're going to get a Commuter Rail station your city or town has to allow more dense zoning that is more residential units within a certain radius of the rail system so you can expect to see a lot more housing coming into I think coming into the city that's been you know some

some very wealthy towns haven't appreciated this because they don't want more dense housing but my understanding is that that's the rule if you want commuter rail if it comes to you a town you've got to allow for more dense housing more housing should improve the situation in the city thank you so much we'll be here after I do want to point out the ways that you can get in touch

with us if you want to follow up on other questions you don't answer the phone so you don't return I'm really speaking to everyone so could you hold your question for after please no you don't return calls so this is these are the ways you can reach us we do return calls we make site visits to um people who are near the construction uh Gene does them Joe does them

um I I write some of the answers to these questions so I know they get answered so if you have any issues please don't hesitate to reach out to us we appreciate your patience this evening and we will stay around and Nancy and answer any other questions you have we're also going to post this video a link to this video on our website and we'll let you know when that's available

I hope it's not raining too hard but again thank you very much for joining us thank you