8.9.2022 Water Board

appointed hour has arrived i would like to call this meeting of the watopa water board to order and before we begin pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting and or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived unperceived by those presence and are

deemed acknowledged and permissible and with that said item number one is citizen input yep roll call of president ontario present remember ferreira here remember collins here thank you thank you okay item number one citizen import we have no citizen input we moved item number two minutes of the june 1st meeting we're in our packets and if anyone has any questions concerns omissions corrections

chair will entertain i will make a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting second motion made and seconded all in favor aye moving on to item number two water maintenance um excuse me um can we as a courtesy take um the uh you want to take uh the rowing center out of order uh yeah if you want to so item uh item number five would be uh the rowan center

uh there are two items from the three league abatements and uh the no parking signs in front of that but however the board feels they want to proceed um why don't we deal with five first and then go to four and then we can talk about leak abatements okay that's really boring with everyone motion made to take items items five then four then three five and four then three okay item number five request for

deferment of sixty thousand six hundred and fifty eight dollars and one cent rent balloon payment from the watopa rowing center regarding the 994 jefferson street leaks mr clark excellent thank you very much uh president ontario uh i received a letter a while ago from the uh whatever center we haven't had a meeting in a while that's why it hasn't been in front of the board as of yet but uh there was a balloon

with the modified rent agreement that we had with the rowing center for the property at 994 jefferson street there was a balloon payment that was due um of uh sixty thousand six hundred fifty eight dollars uh one cent um the uh they uh sent a letter requesting that that balloon payment be extended out uh it was due uh july of this year 2022 uh they've requested uh that that payment be extended out to july of 2024

or later they request but they do stay july 2024 within their letter they talk about you know their claims of issues impacts on their program due to covid they do have a a very good program down there um with which they've invested a lot within the program within the facilities there you know there was just an event uh in the fall i believe it was the state championships that probably brought over

a thousand people uh down to that area into the city um that viewed uh the uh the uh state championships of rowan uh we do have uh paul coutier here from the uh from the board of the rowing center uh if uh the board would like to wave the rules to uh i i would um all right thank you thank you so much yeah thanks for having us on the agenda and

considering this uh opportunity for us so ultimately the um the balloon payment was originally agreed to with mr frilling on the water board three years ago when our group took over the what's up a rowing center's day-to-day activity if you will we started to pay our lease payment at that point in time with an agreement that we would make a balloon payment several years down the line which as paul alluded to

that we've gotten to now and we had kind of requested that maybe we could for lack of a better term kick it out extend it a little bit further partly due to the ability to use these funds in our opinion in a better more efficient manner to increase numbers for the program uh we've seen great numbers increasing uh in the last couple summers this year again numbers bigger than we've ever

seen we started our stem stern program which is sixth and seventh graders is kind of like a feeder into high school to get more and more kids there uh we're working with you uh united way we're working with boys and girls club so things are progressing the way that we'd like them to which is great we had our our treasurer marie pellegrino come up with a payment to make a payment of the interest that was owed

during those couple years to make up for it so the balloon pay would be a little bit less um but ultimately the the bulk of the principal amount uh would be hopefully kick back a couple years as we said and just kind of you know see how things are going and you know as mr cronin mentioned we put a lot of money into the building with you know water

and sewer and uh we now have heat and electric in the um the gym part of the building and uh kind of progressing moving forward at that point so we'd like hopefully that you guys would approve and allow us to push that balloon payment out a little bit further and give us the ability to continue to increase you know program numbers to be able to pay that off down the line does anybody have any

questions or thoughts my only comments are you're doing an outstanding job down there and the fact that this type of facility is here in the city yeah wow it's yeah it really is i mean you know a lot of us have grown up with the uh head of the charles and um you know the races out of quinsigamond and you know this is something that's going to evolve and be in the south coast area which

that's our that's our goal you know our goal is to be able to we have a relationship with the not many people know this but the head of the charles although is a race the head of the charles is a is a huge organization that is you know countrywide and uh we won um one of their gold cup awards this uh past year and we've been given two awards from head of the charles and

they've donated some dough to us and helped us in some purchasing of some boats and so they're a big supporter because they see what we're doing and we're so close to the city um being close to boston but being in an area like fall river serving you know um the kids that we do is you know it's it's pretty wild so it's progressing and uh really looking forward to seeing where this thing goes

over the course of the next few years yeah so just we have a couple of pitches up here that's uh one of the uh building that they've renovated with uh the bow house doors on the end to be able to get the uh to be able to get the uh boats in and out of the uh in and out of the facility uh down over here uh some of the votes

that they store outside of the facility

that's just not working best laid plans there you go yeah this is the dock uh down at the area they went through conservation permission to be able to get permission to do this uh dock down through the area um platform and then i believe at the end that's a special dock that's really low so low profile yep so the boats if you've ever seen one before sit incredibly low in the water so once the

boat sits in the water and the paddles extend out a regular dock the paddles will be way up in the air so they have a look what's called a low profile dock when you had the races um opens at the high school or prep school yeah so it was it was the high school high school aged kids but they were high school preps they were from all over the place how many were there i i heard

that they were um in the number of people there we were pushing 2 000 people total and that's kids you know that's kid's adult you know when everybody but i mean there were hundreds and hundreds of racers and boats it was yeah that's impressive that that's just fabulous our goal is to be able to do that multiple times a year and to be able to increase i mean the economic impact something like this can have on

an area's astounding eye-opening yeah if you ever developed the south coast sprints or something like that i mean it'd be yeah and that's it what we you know as board members again we're a a board made up 100 of volunteers only paid folks are our coaches and um you know for us we're there so we can you know walk down on the dock and see a bunch of kids jump in a boat and

you know there are three or four kids sitting in that boat right there that i recognize that have been there for the last three years and have been going there non-stop and they were just in a competition this past saturday and they made third place and i mean these kids have come a long way from never even sitting in a boat in the shower to being in a competition is it's pretty pretty rewarding to see i

got to tell you one question are there any are there any costs to the city for that property currently so the we do have a debt service payment from the water department because we did purchase that property um so there is a debt service payment that uh that is made every year we when we purchase that property we bonded it for a 20-year period other than that there is no cost to

us owning or maintaining that property okay and then you guys pay all your own utilities there aren't any we're not covering any utilities we pay all the utilities and we pay the lease payment to the water department with a um has a three percent um escalator every year so you're continuing your lease payment you're just asking for the bullying between them okay right when in in reality what

the balloon payment is and i'm not here to point fingers but the balloon payment was the folks prior to myself and the others taking over um did not make the payments that they should have made so we are essentially making up for the lack of payment prior to january of okay thank you when we took over um i believe also the balloon payment is not factored in our revenue estimate yeah correct it is not so

it's not impacting negatively on on our rate payers and that's paramount well i would uh i didn't mean to catch it no i don't have any questions thank you but i would make a motion to to defer the uh the payment to july of 2024 assuming that the rolling center stays current with its uh monthly lease payments i second that okay um it is very nice to see driving over the highway three or four

boats shooting down the pond yes yeah i my youngest had the opportunity unbeknownst to me to do the steam stern program so yes so we appreciate that in my household it is very nice to see um that the tahill piece of property going to to good use it was not for a very long time and it really isn't something that we are in a position to um uh to invest a bunch of money into uh right

now so i i think it's a it's an excellent opportunity for uh for a youth program like that just for a history how the water department got involved in that property for the board members and everybody out there um the uh southward topper pond is always an emergency drinking water supply for the city of fall river um so we uh when atlantis charter school was moving into that area we worked with them uh to

allow them access plus then also secure 14 acre site for a future water treatment plant that building was about while we were constructing the roadway we had water department had no use for that building we were about two weeks away from demolishing the building and not using it and then the rowing center the original members had the idea and proposed it and we were able to to move forward

since the new team has taken over the new board they've made every effort to to get back uh in line and you've had no issues with it with everybody so well that's great to hear okay so we have a motion and a second and i would request a vote all in favor of extending the debt service uh the balloon payment correction the balloon payment until july of 24 uh under the proviso that uh every uh

thing else remain current and if that is the case the chair would entertain a vote there all in favor aye aye so moved um that takes us to item number three thank you all very much thank you thank you and i will keep you in the loop um chronicle was down on thursday of last week and i believe they're going to feature something on thursday but i'll keep you on the loop so you can

definitely see our beautiful building in action okay thank you very much thank you okay yeah that's true i rode in high school and um we didn't have racing shells we rode dory's but um boy that's a terrific terrific system okay moving on to item number three um that is request for approval to place no parking signs on either side of the atlantis charter school drive uh access driveway um

that's number five oh i'm sorry you know what i gotta put on my borrowed collapses again correction item number four request for approval to place no parking signs on either side of the access driveway just a point of information that property belongs to us that driveway is ours yeah exactly so as i mentioned before that driveway that's not actually a city roadway or anything like that

that's a access driveway for atlantis charter school across water department property so it's owned and maintained by the water department that's why this is not in front of the traffic commission it was requested by mike labossia that some no parking signs be put up in that area the grass area in between the sidewalk and the roadway has has become uh rutted and uh pretty much beat down by uh traffic

there's a heavy um there's a heavy presence during the school let in in school let out of cars parking off the roadway there and damaging the uh the road and all the grass the uh we also had a staff member that was cut in the grass over there earlier this spring and i was almost hit by a car that was going off to park to get their kids so it's something that i think we we should

do uh we're gonna work with the traffic department to get the signs up and uh then they'll be able to uh uh enforce the enforcement once the signs are up well how is this going to affect the uh park down there is there parking for that area that um i i apologize i don't know yeah so the floor of a picnic ground uh we have an mou with dcm um in relation to that property the

water board does we so we drafted an mou and then it was approved by the waterboard so that mou states that there isn't any parking on the sides of the roadways down in that area for the park's use and that's directly right in the mou so that that will help enforce it um as of recently i've even heard in that in that picnic area that cars have been known to drive all the way down to the

picnic edges and stuff so i think this may help alleviate some of that um uh use that shouldn't be occurring over there um you know there are there is parking that there is a small parking lot next to the rowing center uh there is additional parking uh off the side of the roads in the industrial area of 994 jefferson street um with the uh with the walkway um all the way down you know

paige walk way down the side of the roadway so i have had a request just to put it out there i have had a request that we open up and allow parking in uh the other parking lot that we do have there across the street from the rowing center that's currently fenced in i am reviewing the rowing center's lease agreement as well as uh dcm mou to see any impacts that that may have current agreements

is that the area the harbor master storage his boat yes currently the hubba master does have a boat that he still is here for emergency use on the south of tupac well it's necessary it's unfortunate but it's necessary um so the um just one question no parking signs will be provided by the traffic department uh are they going to install them yup i've had discussions with laura she doesn't have any issues with

supplying them and having her staff install them can they enforce traffic laws on that as soon as the signs go up so from my understanding again since it's not a roadway it wouldn't need to be put into ordinance because that's how they enforce it in out of public right of way if it's within our private property posted there's no parking they'll be able to enforce it okay so we will have to go into ordinance

um well it's on water department essentially private property it's got it's kind of a uh gray area i guess you would okay you would say um you know i'm going to have discussions with laura to see whether she wants to put it in ordinance if she does and it's enforceable because it's private property but it's right now we're just trying to make this more of a deterrent yeah i make a motion to move forward and access

second on the motion made and seconded all in favor okay getting back on track item number three proposed leak abatements and we have uh 438 second street 242 harrison 166 nashua 547 north main um 52 forest 27 alfred 311 ludlow street 11 4th street 213 haskell 520 locust 99 crawford and 99 sprague i've reviewed these are there any questions from the board regarding these leak abatements uh just quickly on 1101 okay

you're just curious what that if we could just summarize what that say again please if we could just summarize what the what that yep so 1101 was a uh was a leak uh so 242 harrison street uh that person received an extremely high bill back in 2021 510 2021 was bill issues date the read date the the the report was to us that there was a shower leak um in a three family

uh they were not aware of it you can see afterwards their bill did uh go back down uh the bill that they put in for was over twice what their average bill was as you can see is recently the bill that was just put out though does show that there was another week our staff has been in contact with them or has contacted them or attempted to contact them to let them know that readings show that

there is another potential to get the property

um i chris you said 1101 correct me yeah i did i was just cracking sorry yeah so i started looking at 1069 too i'm like okay maybe 1069 is more important i apologize and i'm like okay let's review that one 1101 so that's uh only because of the the size yes that's the the yeah 547 north main street um so yeah that was an extremely large bill over ten times what their normal bill

was uh as you can see it started almost the quarter before uh picked up and probably ran through a full quarter and they probably got it at the end of the quarter the report was to us that it was a washing machine that uh hosed i believe that blew on a washing machine and wasn't uh wasn't discovered for a long period of time

roughly consistent usage yeah exactly we came back down to constant usage 86 000 cubic feet yeah pretty pretty substantial yeah that was running pretty well 47 north men what is that building 547 north main is that the apartments on the right yeah that's what i was thinking next to the uh library no no i don't know that's much further down further down yeah the libraries like the banks 79 oh that's right yeah

so it's probably i'm thinking you know there's a font that's on the right-hand side as you go down i think that's binoc properties i think okay you mean after stepping stone yes okay yeah that's a lot of water yeah pretty much i had had a question um and mr purlin had answered it for me on a number 10 69 um harrison street yeah the harrison street property because his latest reading is right

actually even higher than what he's getting the abatement for um forty thousand four hundred cubic feet three months that's extensive we will be granting him um if everyone is in agreement with the abatement for 34 400 cubic feet are there any further questions or um inquires as to these abatements and if there are none the chair would entertain a motion to accept the total of eight thousand five hundred and

twenty five dollars and ninety four cents in permitted abatements for this meeting motion made a second all in favor aye very good thank you um okay uh item number six ratification of contract for furnishing water main materials in accordance with arpa water main material contract ferguson water works mr clark thank you very much board so uh once we started getting into the design of the uh opera contract uh upper

contract one what we're calling one main replacement opera contract one um it became very obvious to us that there is a currently a supply issue of water works materials being duct line pipe fittings valves hydrants this is a nation slash global issue uh and i think a lot of uh everything in the construction industry right now is is tough um so what we just what we uh opted to do was

to move forward with the uh contract for the purchase of just the materials uh a portion of the materials it's about a third of the contract that we went out to bid for uh 12 inch pipe 10 inch pipe in this main inch pipe along with the associated valve fittings so that way when we uh this was about a month and a half ahead of uh bidding out our construction contract that way uh

once we got a contractor on board we'd be able to uh have that material ready for the contractor to be able to use because if not the contractor was it's almost two months behind that point uh to be able to get them fully on board where they can cut their purchase orders for the purchase of the materials so we didn't have a uh meeting uh within that time so i uh went ahead and uh and

uh approved the purchase we went out for full competitive bid there was a number of bids that were received ferguson waterworks was the uh what is the low uh apparent uh response bitter uh and uh we move forward with uh issuing a po for uh for that amount so this is ratification and purchase this is not uh any impact on our pay is funding this is fully funded 100 percent from our dollars just

point out that once again all standard meet american water works standardization and all products will be manufactured in the u.s of ag yes correct so we took our standard specifications that we use on uh that we require our contractor to submit on and use during the construction projects those were the same specifications that we put up a bit paul going forward um the june 1st letter from um from mr

trout at ferguson water works and i'm sure this is going to i'm sure board is familiar with this kind of pricing the prices set forth and the agreement are subject to adjustment and the event manufacturing pricing has increased and or surcharges imposed on products shipped after the date of this agreement so i think we'll probably see a lot of that as we get into this arpa funded and the lsrp

yeah it's definitely you know we put out a bid uh we do a contract with them uh they can put us on notice whether there may be increases whether we acknowledge that notice or not is all dependent on contract uh bid terms and everything like that as you know mass procurement has very strict uh guidelines for uh bidding and uh contract requirements and stuff like that so one thing anybody can

stuff a letter in um but that doesn't mean that we have to honor it so um that's that's uh you know in relation to that letter but uh you know i think uh yeah one thing that we are going to see um and we have seen already is drastic increase straight across the board um you know today we were just meeting with uh the the contractor that uh uh you know

the board is reviewing tonight to award the opera contract too um and he's already said that uh his uh granite curb um manufacturer said that over the winter there will be a 20 increase on granite curving so he wants to work through the project if he's awarded the project tonight he wants to be able to work through this project as quickly as possible walk the whole entire project identify

curbing that's needed throughout the entire project to get it ordered so that it doesn't absorb that increase or have to either absorb that increase or try to get that increase out of us which is uh difficult but you know right now all across and i think we saw with our chemical biddings for the for this year uh every commodity right now is a volatile market that uh is all over the place you

know to have uh the price of dr lion pipe um go from uh four you know 12 inch duct line pipe to go from 40 bucks a foot up to 72 dollars a foot it's it's tough so you know and i think this is something that we're going to be dealing with for years to come you know as you know it's it goes up it never comes back down to where it was doesn't ever seem to

i don't know all right then um the chair would entertain a motion um to gratify the contract for furnishing water main materials in accordance with article water main material contract the award to ferguson water works in the amount of 833 400 dollars and 94 cents um do we have a motion motion made seconded all in favor hi thank you very much okay item number seven um i'm going to ask um paul to uh give us a

brief overview of what's been going on um with these service replacement i've attended the meetings with the epa in the state with mr furling and i think it only fair and reasonable to say i've never seen them play hardball the way they are doing it now with us the epa and the state have made their point and we are going to be under increasing pressure to conform with the new lead service replacement guidelines

the ones currently in effect and for the changing lsrp for it comes into effect i believe in october first at 24.

so um i'm going to ask mr furland to give us a little overview on that if you would yeah so at the last meeting i spoke briefly about the n-o-n that we received as well as our responses that we've given to dep and epa i provided with those to the board since then we've had the president mentioned there's been multiple discussions conferences with epa and dep we did bring out outside

legal counsel as the board did approve in the last meeting they have been assisting woodward current has been working as a technical advisors as well assisting uh we've at the last conference we provided them a pretty substantial uh letter from myself as well as two memos at woodward who current prepared uh wanted explaining about the financial burdens that the city has not only in relation to lead but also in

relation to csos in relation to increased operational cost um and as we just spoke of the volatile commodities market that we have to uh that we have to deal with purchasing from so those discussions uh as president ontario said epa and dep is heavily leaning on wanting the city to be responsible for full lead service replacement all the way from the main all the way into the meter as well as going back and

replacing all the 2 800 or so partial wedge services that we left in our prior lead replacement program um i am currently working to uh you know they've submitted a draft acop um to us uh with a uh with a high number uh they want to see everything done within the completed within a 10-year period which puts a a substantial financial burden on our rate payers i've estimated the cost of removing all

the wood services within the city at 23 million dollars so without uh subsidies or grants that would be fully burdened on the rate payers so 23 million dollars over the next 10 years um i didn't build in cost escalation over those number of years into that number but i would imagine that there would be some escalation as well you know there's a couple of things that that were limited by uh you know to go

out and say that all right next year we're going to put out a contract for a replacement of 3 000 red services you know how do you even do that in the construction season is one of the things that we have to look at you know that's pretty hefty task um you know let's say a contractor could do two a day you're talking a hundred day construction season for that type of work

you're only talking you know two two hundred at that point it is so it's it would be a pretty substantial contract if we're gonna if we're gonna be going down a road like that and a pretty substantial impact to our ratepayers again one of my biggest concerns again is our ratepayers we are a uh we are a low income community there are a lot of people within the community that are below the medium household income

so all those things need to play into account as well as everything else that's on the table you know at the end of my letter that i sent to them i said you know you can't look at this with tunnel vision you need to take everything into the picture you know we're dealing with the cso impacts from the cso that we've had for the past 25 years and are going to continue to have moving

forward uh that's a huge financial burden on the city and our ratepayers you know so we're dealing with things like that we're dealing with uh aging infrastructure so we have a water treatment plant that's that's 40 years old you know it's in good working condition our staff does an excellent job but it's still a 40 year old plant so that's going to need more service more maintenance than a brand new plant would

uh so dealing with all those those things and looking at the whole entire full spectrum is something that uh that i've been working to paint the picture um to epa and dep so they don't get the tunnel vision just on led services you know don't get me wrong um i speak for myself and i believe i speak for everybody in this field that public health is a major concern for us we do not want any

issues or concerns with public health our drinking water is safe our corrosion control throughout our system does work that was that was tested back in 2005 and was still running the same alkalinities and phs they're a little bit higher which is even better than what we were back then um so our water is safe to drink and and so i don't want anybody to be scared that our water is unsafe to drink

the only way that lead leeches into the water is from the service pipe uh feeding the house so again you know this is going to be an ongoing and fluid situation uh the end of this week i do have a uh two-week status report that uh is due to dp and epa just of the work that i've done over the past two weeks which i've been going through redlining and modifying their proposed acop um

and then uh two weeks after that we have a follow-up meeting uh with them to go over uh to go over what's uh you know my modifications to that as well as any other additional information that we want to propose and talk about but um you know one thing that i do want to bring to the board's attention that uh you know there's a lot of talk out there about different funding sources uh and i think

this sport knows that i will reach the moon and stars if it doesn't cost our rate payers i will go down follow any path uh to try to get it so it doesn't uh affect our ratepayers and it's nice to be able to talk about that and say that there's this option in that option but i don't like to depend on options i like to depend when they sign and give us the big check

other than that i have to depend you know i have to assume that the burden is going to be on our rate pays and that's what i have to plan for and i think that's what the board needs to plan for too unless we are guaranteed by contract and x amount of dollars for a certain project i think we just need to be leary about what is agreed to without financial backing behind it so

just a kind of a little overview of uh of what happened i know that's one of the later item agendas but it's directly made related to this item the gender as well so just a little bit on this item agenda this is a proposal from woodward current for uh 750 000 this runs through this says three different phases essentially phase one would be going through uh and looking at our inventory we really want

to go through kind of scrub our inventory we have a list of lead services that are identified through through out the city when i started looking at this a couple of months ago when we started having this issue there was three or four different lists out there i combined all of them i had some staff go through some of those but it wasn't a full comprehensive uh you know we kind of merged them all

and and that's that's where we got um to go through and actually look at every single one verify it to cards um and then verify all the cards as something something totally different and that's just an alleged service so in relation to the revised leading copper rule uh that is going to be in effect in 2024 you need to have an inventory of the material types of all services within your system

not just lead services so all 21 000 services that we have in our system uh we have to have ident we're supposed to have identified what the material makeup is whether it be lead plastic copper yeah for some of the larger stuff uh we're lucky that we have very little iron pipes within within our system uh as as services coming coming into houses um so that's the first thing that we're

going to do is work on that full-blown uh inventory because one of the things that they look at in the revised lead and copper rule they don't only look at your known lead services they also look at the number of what you call unknown services so they want to know how many lead services that you have and then any unknown so if you don't if you can't prove that it's plastic or copper they

automatically assume that it's unknown possible way so this will work through uh through that um so first we'll work on uh the uh the lead service inventory uh kind of while we're doing that we're gonna work on a revised lead service replacement plan so that'll work through based on the inventory and some other things how we plan to replace the rest of the led surfaces throughout our system moving forward um

that's phase two uh phase three uh will be inventory inspections now this is a pretty crucial thing that needs to be done um this is pretty much taking the all those inventories that we went through the unknowns and everything actually being able to go out in the field and verify and say um okay yep this is a wet service uh let's go into the basement this is a plastic this is copper

very uh time-consuming uh even just gaining entry uh is is going to be difficult on this portion but that's what this uh that's what this does include so that's the total of the three phases the total project for the budget is 750 thousand dollars on july 1st dep issued a a program which is 100 principal reduction uh through the srf program um so in other words we uh we're going to

get a loan from srf for 750 000 but then they're going to give the whole entire loan when the project's complete so essentially this work is going to not cost our repays anything that program became available they put it out on the street on july 1st uh july 5th we submitted our application um our application was reviewed our application was it was a first-come first-served basis so

i wanted to make sure we were first we were first and uh so far i don't even know whether anybody else has taken advantage of the program uh but we were first they went through they reviewed the pros uh our submittal and they approved it um so this will be 100 principal reduction that's great however what a task um just just arranging to get in to do the inspections is we're talking about notification appointment

schedule look at how long it takes us to change one of these well you know we haven't gotten that's not even all of us right we haven't gotten to to that point yet but i would um just for conversation at this at this juncture state that it is that i would recommend the board take the position that it is condition of receiving water service that you comply with this lead service inspection

program no if hands butts stalls or anything as i said at the outset i have never experienced in all my time the epa being as hard-nosed as they were they they believe me when i tell you they they were not deviating from script at all um and in fact asked that we become a shining example of lead service replacement it's going to fall on somebody's back to pay for this but they are

going to mandate that we go on that we and our customers remove the lead service from the curb stop to the water meter that's private property so you know if they can pull the service through well that's great if they can't you're talking excavation lawns driveways sidewalks whatever it is it is it is a substantial impact uh substantial and variation in cost and again um that's why the cost estimate

for uh the work is uh you know at 23 million dollars it is a substantial cost yeah you know and again uh i just want to repeat you know um myself and we're committed to providing safe clean drinking water we want to make sure that there isn't any contaminants we as well as the epa and dep want to get the let out but we need to make sure that it's at an affordable pace

for our ratepayers yeah that that's the whole thing i mean everybody wants to get the let out i mean let let's face it we want to do i i did have a question for tom ty um woodward and curran is going to be developing a database and then trying to link it in have house munis flexibility for getting notices onto the utility billing area as far as service type

that would be my that was one of my questions is with this database are we going to try to utilize munis to try to incorporate it into you know the property cards or however we're doing that yeah so you know the overall i feel that we're going to have our own it's going to be a big enough database that will maintain our own service database moving forward um one of the things in the revised 11

copper rule that is going to be required required is an interactive map that's public facing that does show all of these there is a follow-up grant that we've applied for through epa and we expect for it to be awarded to be able to develop that publicly facing map but whether whether it be i don't know if i would want to bring this data into the muni system or if we would want to keep it on our

own separate database that we maintain munis is good but sometimes it can be a little bit cumbersome well no munis that's my fear is that eunice isn't that flexible and you're being a little more charitable and i'd be on munis as far as his goodness is concerned but the utility billing software has the map and parcel and meter size and type the service cards themselves don't have that data

if you go to look at a service card you're not going to see you know parcel l 25 stuff which is the ultimate for us to collect any money that is yeah so just one other thing that we're working on and it's going to be vital in this also uh if you remember we we're implementing an asset management software uh called utility cloud uh we're under a five-year agreement with them moving forward

and uh our staff has been rolling that out tom i believe we do have all of the accounts all all the services within there as well as meter information we're doing meter installs through youtube utility cloud now and everything like that so utility cloud is kind of going to probably be the basis for database for us i'd like to see that yes someday play with that a little bit yeah we've

gotten uh you know so uh meter installs uh we're transferring from fulcrum which was the old software we used into utility cloud um all of our hydrant data and tracking automation has been in there um you know so we're slowly rolling out different uh different aspects of it uh you know kate's been uh involved with with the uh software transition tom has been uh older in my office and uh george garcia our gis

asset management coordinator he's kind of been our uh yeah champion for the whole entire software and he's really been moving it forward so well my only other thing is so if i look at the schedule of this it's approximately a 208 week process just to figure out what we're going to need to move forward which is a four year process and they're asking us to comply in 10 years comply with all the removal of lead services

they want us to comply with this stuff building off full inventory their initial um in the initial acop had 30 days so again it isn't cake this is luxurious the red lines uh going back on the acop are gonna have a lot of modifications again this is uh you know if you look at this um some of the the inventory stuff is a lot shorter phase uh as you get to

we had built in a lot of time for the verification because we know that's going to be a lengthy process does woodward and current enter do they plan on setting up the appointment schedules themselves uh they've talked about you possibly using the subcontractor for that um so wms was mentioned uh potentially as a as a sub when we changed out meters in 97 we had four people whose job was just making out work orders

to get meters out i wish hindsight being 20 20 i wish we'd on those uh forms when we took them out i wish we'd indicated what the services were we never we never did that yeah but one thing i i did want to bring up and just for discussion purposes we didn't have many wheel valve problems which tells me that we retrofitted the t8 meters that we had

in at the time put t10 heads on them we had a bunch of t8s about 20 almost 3000 of those and i i'm just guessing i'm wondering if those were lead services on those because i didn't want to take it they would have had gate valves and not ball valves and that was one of the big because you can't freeze those services you know you can do them on the fly but you

yeah and that's another thing just to point out and both of you know if the valves hold in the house it's it's pretty good it's a good thing but what are the uh what are the chances uh we're gonna end up draining you know a a two-hour three-hour job now is a full day and going back to take off the screens on all the faucets and yeah yeah a lot of variables you know

especially with this lead service replacement on how it goes and they're still talking they want it by 2015 correct we started no five yeah and they're giving us 10 years well their current 20 yeah that they've laid out to us gives us gives us a 10-year window they're claiming that by the regulations we only have five years left but the aclp uh as they laid it out would give us ten years uh i

disagree with you but i'm not in it correct but they did tell us that we were in year five and year four begins september yeah so we may only have 48 months to do it's not funny um wow you know my response to that is that we still are under an aclp from 2005 and we followed that acop excuse me it wasn't an aclp but it was an aco we followed that and we will continue to

follow it just as member collins pointed out commissioner collins pointed out just just the inventory what alone wow at this point i'd make a motion to accept the proposal because that's what we're what that's what this item is correct to say um yep to accept woodward and carn's proposal to move forward with the um inventory replacement plan yep so that allows me to go into contract with them for the second

all in favor aye moving on to uh item number eight technical support for the management south with tufa this sort of dovetails in with the rowing center this is a study of the south with tupper yep correct you may have dartmouth this is based on that presentation that you put together in march i believe yeah okay so so you know we did start last year uh s b we got some uh grant from funding from

bay coast bank uh last year to be able to move forward with uh a baseline study an initial phase one of the south with tupper pond and the algae issues within the southwestern pond we went through it as as mr collins mentioned we did have a presentation on our findings from year one and we are moving through in year two uh umass david has done some work on their

own already this year so we are not be kind we have been uh we have been maintaining um but this is work uh for this year continuing through the rest of this year that will be uh that will be done by um by umass dartmouth woodward and kevin was our second technical advisor as well on this project they reviewed what umass has proposed and proposed and are an agreement with the sampling that they want to do

as well as umass dartmouth found from through some of their past research some very uh good um modeling that we'll be able to take advantage of and we won't need to uh reproduce so they'll be able to get some good loadings from that uh from these you know looking through their analyticals data from past uh from past um things that they've done on three years ago so um in front of you is forty nine thousand

five hundred and fifty dollars uh for the uh for all of the work um the uh all of the funding for this is provided uh by an air mark from the state so there is no impact to our rate payers as the board members may know we are we do have an intermunicipal agreement with uh westport antivirus to collaborate together for improvements uh to the south watappa pond as we're all within that watershed

this earmark was secured by senator rodricks as well as uh uh rep schmidt um to go uh and it was uh it was to go uh to westport uh for work on southward tougher pond uh as i've been the lead on the project uh i've been i'll be administering this uh for that work on the southwest aquaponic there is uh there is a another grant that i expect will be announced very soon

an award for additional work on the south with tupper pond but again this has no impact to our rate payers and this is to continue on our work our hope is by the uh by the end of this year um and going into next year we'll be able to uh uh be able to come up with some really good ideas on what we'll be able to do to uh mitigate it you know and

it's gonna take a multi-prong multi-pronged approach if we've talked about wealthy multiple times we'll have to deal with hot infrastructure and improvements to that infrastructure for the runoff that comes from the surrounding communities agricultural impact homeowner impact and different things then we also have the in-pond you know historical phosphorus and sediments that are in the

bottom that do also contribute to the food source of the algae and whether that ends up being a an oxidation that that's done or some type of some type of encapsulation of that like they've done on staff and pond that's what we're trying to determine now so through the data that we had there last year the data that we're going to get this summer uh as well as uh you know

if we need to look at additional loadings next year by the end of that we should be able to have a full plan to be able to move forward with the future treatments going back a long time and i realize i'm guilty of waxing poetically about the good old days but um um dr gerard blaise when he was at the treatment plant had considered slaking that pond with bentonite and encapsulating the bottom

to knock the blue green down i wonder yeah you know uh i i don't think they i i don't think you know that's currently one of the options that's been preferred um to uh to encapsulate the uh bottom of a pond with pentonite may also affect other um you know creatures or habitats within within yeah that's within the pod structure um you know i know staff had found again they did a uh

aluminum oxy i believe it was uh treatment uh which uh essentially goes down uh oxidizes the phosphorus and encapsulate it encapsulates it for a number of years it's not a permanent fix it's it's almost a band-aid on on it but it does it does reduce it but you still need to fix all of your infrastructure that feeds down into the pond you know i look at just this year to tell you the

truth and this year um from my visual inspections i feel that the algae growth within the pond is down tremendously from past years there's still a very good tanning color within the water but that's natural for that for that water but i think that the algae growth is down you still have areas of the pond that you can see down three feet depending on which way the wind is blowing again too

as we know these algae blooms this doesn't move with the wind but comparatively to last year or the year before uh even with wind direction taken into account and stuff like that uh there was a lot there was a greater um impact i believe uh two two areas um so you know i think that an explanation of that is we haven't had much rain this year so we haven't gotten any runoff from the watershed so you

don't get the agricultural runoff you don't get the over fertilization runoff you don't get the runoff from the grass clippings and all that stuff that is a huge loading into this pond um so you know and again that's i'm not a scientist but just with my uh knowledge and history of it i i feel that uh based on my observations that that has had a a huge impact this year so uh it's not

just going to be encapsulating it it's not just going to be uh fixing the watershed it's going to have to be a combination of both wow very good all right the chair would entertain a motion to accept uh forty nine thousand five hundred dollars for technical support management southwater of pond university of massachusetts school of marine science and technology i get a motion to approve the expenditure soon

second second assuming that we make a correction in that the paperwork and the actual item is forty nine thousand five hundred fifty yeah and the agenda item is listed as forty nine thousand five hundred so we're gonna make corrections at 49 550.

so and avoid an open meeting law complaint 49 550 to correct the scrivener's error on the document presented okay so the motion is to accept forty nine thousand five hundred and fifty dollars seconded all in favor aye hi so moved moving along just gonna kind of hope that we're all gonna be little ones okay next item on the agenda water main and roadway improvements change order number two to santa

construction management resident inspection 798 thousand 100 percent opera funded um are there any okay excuse me all right so mr furlong what this will be the this is in our change order number two for sam tech yeah so if you want uh later on in the meeting under updates uh you can see that change order number one uh was it proved administratively by myself as it was under ten percent of the case okay

that's what kind of helped me yep um and uh just to speak on that change order number one change over to what number one was uh forbidding um so the initial contract was for uh design of the project uh change order number one was for uh bidding uh of the project to keep that process moving uh this change order is for construction management and resident inspection during the construction portion of the project

okay so the 163 700 is engineering services during construction six hundred and one thousand three hundred dollars in resident inspection and project management of thirty three thousand yes grand total of seven hundred and ninety eight thousand dollars um

are there any questions i i was a little confused about um you know excuse me i was not confused about this issue i was on the other one for fiscal do we have any questions from the board this is the project management for the the material the material the duckline pipe that we just approved the material on is that for this project that's for this project yes and the later award to fiscal

contract is for the construction great question

we moving along to item number 10 water maintenance building complex change order number two this is the one that had me a little confused um this is tabisco contracting i on the third page there's some notation and some scratch outs and could you explain that to me yep so that was uh modifications uh that were made so we have stantec dis assisting with uh tomorrow's site on this project uh during their their

review uh they've uh identified some um just some errors as they went through and uh so their total as base per the contract uh is shown in the in the far right hand column so the 256 353 09 yes is the total all right that's because as the contractor laid out some of his uh um some of his um overhead and profit and different things it wasn't late it took into account subs which wasn't

part of it and everything like that so the stantec broke it down totally independent so that it can be followed did visco approve those um modifications by signing the change order the yes okay are there any questions concerning the change order if there are no questions or further discussion entertain a motion to approve uh the change order for 256 353.09 um all right mr terry in uh speaking of mr furling

because i had some questions um there were there were questions because the uh contract time was supposed to increase um right so that was one thing actually uh like i could bring to the board detentions thank you very much for that uh on this uh on the aia document it states that there was a zero days increase the increase was actually 30 days that was a error from the aia document

with so with that being said as long as the construction amount the contract sorry the change order amount stays the 256 350 309 will you have uh stock revises for the 30 days and then it have it be resigned yeah then it will be something different if that's what the board approves that's what i will sign for the board versus him having to come back to the board to approve the change order the next time

for the 30 days

okay so the the motion is to approve the 256 350 309 correct with the modification of contract time uh to be extended out by 30. with okay with the modification of contract time okay

item number 11 contract award art rub water main replacement contract number one bisco contracting 10 million 604 127.54 cents wow substantial contract wow weren't we just talking about the price of materials yes so if you want i can give you just a brief overview of this contract i think that would be more than appropriate thank you so this contract would be award uh to the uh low bidder of fiscal contracting court

uh their low bid including alternate warden was 10 million 604 127.54 um the uh contract includes a replacement of about 7 700 excuse me seventeen thousand seven hundred linear feet of uh water main uh on various streets throughout the city um and it also includes uh recon full reconstruction of the affected streets of sidewalks curbing uh and uh roadway uh replacement um so it is you know again as as we talked

about a little while ago the cost impacts with all of this work is pretty substantial and has been kind of across the board this does play in pretty close to the engineer's estimate as you can see on the recommendation letter um but it's it's substantially higher than past contracts that we have that we have had in the past one thing about this uh contract so this uh is uh a hundred percent funded by oppa um

so there is no uh uh there is no impact to the ratepayers uh initially the contract won so initially arpa the arpa committee committed 13 million dollars to water main replacement and rebuilding of the affected streets the uh the plan uh that was proposed to them based off of historic uh numbers uh was to be able to do this contract uh at about eight to nine million dollars and then be able to do a subsequent smaller

contract uh following up when we went and received these these bids it was obvious that we potentially may not be able to follow up i have presented this to the opera committee which i am a member of as well just for clarification but i did present this to the committee explained to them so the full program cost including design construction management and oversight construction contract

materials purchase contract in police is slated to uh currently slated to stay under that 13 million dollars so the offer committee has approved me spending uh that 13 million dollars on contract one uh to be able to move forward so again the uh the bid spread as you can see from the sheet was anywhere from the uh 10.6 uh up to 16.2 um there was uh there was four bidders uh there was a number of uh

companies that that took out the bid documents but this was a pretty uh substantial substantial workload the contract does have removable full removal of lead services from the main all the way to the meter on 36 lead services within this contract since it's 100 percent grant funded and there's no impact on our rate payers we also do have an additional allowance within the contract for

some removal of additional led services as well as uh some other allowances uh that was slated within the contract total of 17 000 feet 17 000 feet this is going to this will be one of the biggest contracts that i've undertaken is so you know and this does hit some uh some pretty uh some pretty uh highly visible streets i i noticed president avenue mentioned yeah 3 000 feet from robeson to ellsbury yeah

president is going to be pretty surprised that that won't cause any problems at all president abb oak road ray yes so there's some other streets that the gas company is impacting uh so we've coordinated uh our work with the gas company uh so once we're out of those streets uh it'll be a fully reconstructed streets that water and gas won't have to go into for yes that'll be great i was um very pleased to read the

relevant references that um came back um with uh with ms britton um about bisco it's good to to hear you know i've been from we've been familiar with bisco for years but it's good to see that other people share our confidence um i noticed that they talked in i believe the city of taunton and um town of bristol rhode island that's good to know yeah they are a uh they are a local contractor um

to fall river they do have this project as well as a sewer project as well as our water maintenance building they've done a number of our past water main replacement projects for us as well i know it i found interesting that uh there's cement relining over in providence yeah you know we did that uh yeah a couple of years we did it years and years ago you know i'm sure chris remembers we started doing it again

probably about six to seven years ago um but you're just going to be specific on the streets that you want to do it on yeah you got to have the right mains i mean for sure but that's good to know all right are there any uh do we have any questions regarding this um if there are no further questions or discussions could we add 200 lead services to that

if we came up with a list tonight we would vote on this tomorrow okay yeah um that's going to be a whole other thing you can talk about that on the item 15.

yeah yeah yeah so why don't we just start with this 10 million first so the chair would entertain a motion uh to accept the contract award to the low uh qualified bidder of bisco contracting company in the amount of 10 million 604 thousand 127 dollars and 54 cents

okay we're moving on to item number 12 water department staffing update yeah so again i just wanted to have a discussion with the board uh at our last meeting we did i did talk about uh current staffing issues that we do have throughout the uh department we continue to have those staffing issues numbers down at the plant we haven't uh we haven't gained anybody um water distribution um

we've gained one step excuse me two staff members so we had a we had a co-op student that was interning with us that we hired on full time in the uh he was from diamond um so we hired him full time in the water maintenance division that's great and then we have another we had another staff member that we've recently brought on but i think we're still down a total of five within that department um so

um staffing down at the treatment plant again we're down two shift operators as well as our maintenance operator this is going to come down to uh being able to pay our staff more which plays into um increasing our rates that's essentially what it comes down to if we want to pay our staff more and be able to uh be able to hire licensed trained professionals to work for us

we need to be able to pay them more this goes into again i'll let what we talked about earlier with the lead service and the capacity rating you know one of the issues that i'm having and i spend a lot of time expressing to ddp and epa is our capacity to be able to pay if i'm talking um needing to increase my pay scale to be competitive within the market that increases our rates if we're

talking about material cost our chemical cost and everything being double of what it was three years ago that's increasing our rate as well as putting unfunded mandates on us is also something else that increases our rates so again we don't live in a we don't live in a vacuum in relation to one of these issues but again i just wanted to update the board that there hasn't been any uh major

changes within our staffing or within our rates i continue to try to work with the administration uh if there is anything to be increased it would require uh to go back to the union through the collective bargaining agreement uh as well as any uh non-union members would uh would require a change to ordinance so with everything coming down we're really it's going to get harder and harder it's

i don't know how we're going to raise rates you know it's a tough thing because you know i've spent a lot of time over the past couple of months looking at a lot of different things and one thing that that is out there is a financial capacity guidance from the epa this is a guidance that was originally put out in 97 updated in 2002 and just recently updated in 2001.

mace 2001 may still be in the draft version but i don't think it's actually been listed as a final guidance by them but looking at it and it takes into a lot of a lot of circumstances and they actually have almost two different ones they have one that kind of looks at water and then folds in sewer then they have one that looks for cso and then kind of folds in

water so i've been playing with a little bit with the two different models and uh as low as our medium household income is uh and the burden that that's onto our rate phase you know they talk about um anything above a two percent burden uh starts to play into a high um impact onto uh onto the ratepayers so um you know and i i think we're going to be bumping up that up against that ceiling sometime

in the future so when it's going to be or where it's going to be depends a lot on you know impact of this acop as well as possible other you know mandates that come across or cost increases within our operational cost with the acop pending i think the economic situation in the city has to be weighed to see what the impact i know the epa is speaking about social justice or environmental justice we're

we're putting an awful burden on a low-income population and i don't see a way i just don't see a way around it yeah you know again and um they need you know again one thing it needs to be some type of burden we just want to make sure that it's not too much of a burden yeah yeah absolutely and it's we want to be able to find that balance that where we're able to provide the

clean safe drinking water and clean wastewater and also be able to maintain for every pace yeah public health is job number one thank you um item number 13 lead and copper rule compliance update yes we've sort of been talking around this but i should have probably waited until now no i you know i think uh a lot of the information that i wanted to uh get to the committee uh to the board i i spoke

with under uh the previously related items uh if the board does have any questions feel free the only thing i i i'd like to say and get it out on the record as soon as they are dead serious about this lead service replacement program uh we argued um mr furlin did a outstanding job of presenting a case that you know we should not be burdened with the private side that's private property belongs to the homeowner

ep has totally refused to even entertain anything along those lines and so much so that the new lead guidelines call for the replacement of those lead services on private property from the curb into the domicile it's something we've never done before and now we're going to be required to do it who pays for it is going to be the 64 question correct because it may fall on the homeowner

yep by regulation uh you know by even the revised lead and copper rule it does not mandate that the uh does not mandate that it's the cost of the city it's mandates that the city has to do it but it does not mandate that the cost of it the water department because the cost of it is not the water department so so previously when we walked by it and said we're doing this you have the

opportunity to replace your line at your cost now you can't even give them that opportunity you simply have to say we have to replace it and then potentially pass the cost directly along to the homeowner yeah so that's what that's one way that's one way to do it um you know if somebody totally refuses that needs to be fully documented moving forward so there's a lot of different steps um and the uh

it has to be our contractors so there's a yeah that general concept but yeah it's there's a couple of different ways to to skin the cat as we go along here it's just finding the way that works i happen to live on delcar street and that was one of the streets was done in the first couple of years of the 42 sip not because i was there my neighbors were tossing dirty loads of laundry in the

mayor's office at the time but we were experiencing really dirty water and as uh the contractor came down the street they went to each of the homeowners and said we'll pull yours your side while we're here they did it after hours on um they started about four o'clock in the afternoon uh they charged each homeowner a set fee it was all the same and by gosh people did do that but in response to commissioner collins the

310 cmr which is the the bible of the department of environmental protection states that a system is not required to bear the cost of replacing the privately owned portion of the line however the department is in charge or responsible for replacing that line so this is going to become a very complicated and quite acrimonious unafraid situation because unless they can give us the money out of our bar or some other

piggy bank somewhere um it's going to have to be paid for and it's going to have to be paid for by individuals that in itself is going to open up you know questions of betterment charges of long-term financing wow okay moving along item number 14 updates on ongoing projects um first one our water main roadway improvement change order number one thirty thousand five hundred that was yes

so that was administratively approved um yeah underneath uh because it was underneath the 10 of the existing contract that was for the bidding bidding phase of the watermelon replacement improvement the oppa contract so that was the engineered cost of the bidding phase okay and the second part of the update is on the bioreserve discovery center project and again that last one was 100 opera funded just to let you know

so uh just wanted to go over the buy reserve discovery center this is something that's been talked about i think for probably since the viral research which started 20 almost 20 years ago the fire reserve discovery center is a place that was talked about to be able to be an educational center or a visitor center type base place for the buyer reserve as the board members may know we have about 18 000 acres

on the other side of the northwood tupper almost 5 000 acres of that is uh water department property uh combined with freetown state forest land in lakeville but owned by the trustees of the reservation that make up the south coast buyer reserve that was originally started back in 2003 it may have been signed into law the southeast fire reserve was created by an act in the legislation

so the discovery center is something that's been talked about for a while and a couple of years ago prior to covert in 2019 michael barcia got roger williams to come in one of their one of their architectural and marketing teams of students to come in and kind of took them around at the tour of the fire reserve we looked at multiple different sites uh uh where a center could be located or

how a center could be located and we've one of the sites we've had uh the water department has had its eye on for a number of years um because of its uh you know adjacentness to the northwest up upon uh it it almost borders the pole tupper pond it's just a piece of land uh that that goes down the side of it so this is what's known as adirondack farm it's uh

historically ten years ago that the current family had a petting zoo out there uh it is still an active uh they've had it as an active uh fond farm um but with uh with the the homeowners getting older uh the father um uh passed away last year and the mother's left the wife is left with it you know in the house by herself and uh she's getting older and again we've had open dialogue with them

uh we've been able to talk with them to uh to kind of secure to hopefully secure the property we're working with them right now to finalize uh some of the details but i wanted to talk a little bit about the project uh about the funding that we have lined up for the project but the partners that we have lined up for the project uh and the different type of programming that we

claim to be able to have out on the site uh so funding first thing that i want to talk about so currently there's an old farmhouse on it's about a nine acre site um you narrow up in the front next to blossom road and then opens up into the farm fields in the back so right over here is a farmhouse bond uh auxiliary building and then it opens up into the fields behind uh behind the house

um so funding that we're looking to use um is uh we've already applied for the land grant through eoea that was due a couple of weeks ago uh we submitted that and that would be for paying for 75 of the vacant land portion of the uh of the property uh we're submitting so it needs to be in by september 1st a cpc application for additional purchase as well as modifications to the house and that will be

that will be submitted by september 1st for the eligibility round i've also submitted to the bristol county opera committee for about 1.2 million dollars some of that funding to go towards the purchase of the land as well as additional funding for renovation of the property to be able to turn it into the discovery center and business center i think right now this is really a good

point in time to be able to get into uh into this project um you know it's tough where the water department but uh our connection to the bio reserve our connection to being able to protect our watershed uh and all of our uh of the north foot upper pond is uh is pretty is pretty good um so the house up front would turn into a uh the bio the educational center visitor

center the bono back would be used for different exhibits or classroom space and stuff like that uh the farm fields would be worked uh possibly with a partnership of either bristol aggie uh they've potentially shown some interest we've also talked to durfee and diving about doing some uh uh some gardens some gardening out there to be able to do uh farm-to-table uh type meals um within their uh within their

culinary arts programs um so we're looking at a couple of different uh options and partners to be able to work with to be able to leave that back farm area as a farm area you know it makes an excellent site because of it's kind of coming into the entrance to the buyer reserve so this is coming down here you have a full river road you come in blossom and then you're

able to go up and continue up blossom road to get out to any of the trails over by reservation headquarters or you go out um yellow hill to be able to get to any uh any of the rest of the buyer reserve up in there um some of the partners that we're looking at getting together on this project um naturally so trustee's reservation in dcr our original partners within uh the

buyer reserve those are the ones that signed with us those are the ones that put money in that are actually partners with us already so we expect them to be very active within this center trustees of the reservations we've already have had some initial discussions with them they have a new president who's very um very related to being able to take urban culture and be able to relate it out to the nature in areas

that they have partnerships in so this is kind of playing right into there right into their ball field autobahn society we've had some discussions with them they're currently working in the city on a couple of different projects some educational programs at talbot which i've taken the classes for tours down to the edge of the north with tupper so you know to be able to get them in and partner with them

they have a very nice property in dartmouth but this area next to the buyer reserve they don't have a large foothold and i think they'd be looking for a nice spot to be able to kind of work out of for this area um there are some other partners on on the uh on the page uh that you have that are listed uh so trust these are the words dcr naturally would be another partner um

with this but uh you know for purchasing the property again watershed protection water department would be would all be underneath the custody of the water department and then we'd look for our partners to assist us with uh renovations and programming to be out there one of the other big partners actually i want to mention that i'd be looking at would be the floor of a school department yeah um

you know my whole entire thought is to be able to get what i call an educational ranger uh that would be somebody that would be able to spend time in the schools teaching the kids about the buyer reserve because how many people really know about the buyer reserve and what we have available on the other side of the pond um so we start to teach the kids they go home they ask their parents and that would

get more people excited about it so he'd spend time teaching about that teaching about the water cycle teaching about our watershed then he'd also be able to do programming out here on the site or different areas throughout the bio reserve other form of properties to be able to do it so i'd be hoping that the school department would want to partner with us on some type of educational range of moving forward

so overall our uh plan and this was uh done by the community partnership center of roger williams when they came in in 2019 again they they did concepts for about three of the different sites uh this being one of them we would take to look to renovate the building uh which this is the initial house and then put an addition off to the side uh we'd have a gallery space classroom space and then

this would be an open lecture hall or uh or space to show exhibits the second floor would turn into kind of an office space for the staff some renderings that were done by them kind of a look at the front of the building what it potentially possibly could look like going into the gallery area classroom space from the front of the building this would be the second floor area and then the lecture hall area potentially

off to the side that could either have different exhibits or be used as a community meeting space or a lecture area so again that's something that i just wanted to bring to uh the board's attention right now there's a lot of different moving parts in relation to this project uh again uh land grant uh is out there and actually i made i think it's tomorrow a meeting with the rep michael bossier's

meeting with the representative i'll be out there on set as well to look at the property the cpc grant which we have submitted this for eligibility and funding in the past and they were excited about the project have asked us numerous times if we're bringing this project back in front of them so i would i hope that cpc provides us the support that we're asking for and then the opera committee

it was in front of the council at the last council meeting i was unable to attend that meeting they were looking for some additional information which i've subsequently provided to the council and i've i would imagine it would be lifted from their table at next week's meeting which i plan to attend in case they do have any uh additional or follow-up questions so again you know this is this is going

to be a long process um you know we're looking potentially uh by the time we get all the grants in place and the nursery thing aligned the possibility of about a year till we get to the purchase and then we'd be looking at potentially a year to a year and a half of renovation we've had discussions with diamond to assist us with these renovations as well um you know some of the board

members do know that they've assisted us at the reservation headquarters you know electrical plumbing hvac the construction department property maintenance has all has all done a ton of work out there this would be another project that would be looking to partner with them on is there a potent is there a potential that the property is not sold to us so is it like in a trust like my con my concern obviously is

um you know what i mean the parents it sounds like have made some kind of verbal yep so so again our lawyers are working with them right now just to uh to get into agreement again until uh all the paperwork signed there is always the possibility um there is a bunch of hurdles that would have to become overcome uh in relation to the property uh so the back half the final farmland

of the property is in chapter 61 of farmland protection uh which gives the city the last uh less rights uh last rite of refusal um so there is uh some uh there is some um options that we do have but again uh you know we are working towards uh solidifying you know the property owners uh know us very well uh they know what we plan to do with the property um

this is the property that was at the donkey tied up up front right yeah yeah

they know what our mission is they know what our vision is and they

all right moving on moving along guys in 15 other potential manners discussion this is interesting the resolution by the city council to obligate 11 million dollars in bristol county opera funding yeah so um you know this is something that i wanted to bring to the board's attention as well uh i expect that this will be uh this was a resolution at the last city council meeting uh and i

expect that they'll uh they'll be discussing at this meeting um it was referred to finance i expect that it potentially may be on the finance uh committee agenda when it comes out later this week for next week's meeting so i'm going to have a busy week next week at city council it sounds like uh but anyways um this uh this was put in by council michelle dion uh and uh it's asking that

uh the balance of the bristol county opera funds totaling 11 million dollars uh be slated for water and sewer projects uh as well as an additional nine million dollars uh from the city's opera funds uh so that would be a total of an additional 20 million dollars uh slated towards water and sewer infrastructure projects within uh within the city um you know i've been questioned uh

on this um and uh and my answer is yes the water and sewer department does this need this money we have currently uh sewer uh cso federal mandates uh that need in projects uh that total well above this amount that need to be completed prior to 2025.

we had the discussion earlier about the lead service removal which would be eligible for opera uh funding that this could be used for um you know i put together a list when opera funding originally started uh i believe it was march of 2021 was when the initial law was was passed into effect um the i put together a list of uh of 392 million dollars worth of projects that need to be done within the water and

sewer department um i've narrowed that list down to uh mandated projects or potentially mandated projects because i included the lead service approval uh that need to be done over the next couple of years uh and we're in the uh we're in the 70 million dollar range with that so any dollar of opera funding that comes that comes back to the water and sewer department essentially minimizes a rate a future rate increase

to the rate payers you know it's not going to take money off this year uh it might not take money off next year but it's all on how the bonding comes into play so if we uh are doing a project and the project is costing us 10 million dollars um the bonding may not come on for three years once the project's complete and uh that's one of the bonding would hit our rates

but if we don't have to bond for that to make some 10 million dollars in three years that's when the reduction in a you know the effect on the rate will be seen so whether it's a reduction of the rate or whether it's a reduction of how much the rate increases which is more likely is is how it would play out so again you know this money can be you know um

and one other thing that's talked about is the capacity of the department you know and our capacity to do this work by the mandated date of spending the op of funding we have projects again that are mandated to be completed in line with the opera funding so we don't have a choice whether we do them or not you know the capacity of our department when i uh speak of taking on projects and stuff like that

i'm looking uh you know i look at projects five years out you know i already have five years booked and i'm looking at uh further out from that you know so to take it to to be thrown in uh specialty projects or odd projects that now get kind of throws that out of balance but all of these projects that are required to be done are already factored into the capacity of our department so our department does

have the capacity to uh to move forward with these projects and we don't have an option so we have to have the capacity but again uh you know i expect that this will be going in front of the council um you know i would you know uh hope that waterboard would uh like me to uh definitely advocate for the water department to get this funding and uh hopefully uh be able to minimize any

rate increases to our ratepays would you be looking for a vote to support or approve this resolution if that's what the board i would absolutely make a motion to support mr furland uh in whatever way the board may find it possible second all in favor aye and so moved uh is there any further business to come before the board if there are none i'll have chair to entertain a motion to adjourn

second one second all in favor