AI-generated transcript of Public Works and Facilities Committee Meeting via Zoom

[Kevin Harrington]: Mic check one, two, check one, two. Microphone check two, check mic, mic one, two. We're good on my end.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Uh yeah. I mean, you get them to, yeah, if they want to speak, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. And I've already made the council members co-hosts. So, we're good there.

[Anna Callahan]: Let me know this is a meeting of the Public Works and Facilities Committee for June 3rd, 2025. This is the, I will restate that now that I'm on mic. This is the Public Works and Facilities Committee for June 3rd, 2025. This meeting will take place at 6 p.m. in City Hall. And if, I think I will go ahead and just start by having you call roll call. Great.

[Adam Hurtubise]: President Bears. Present. Councilor Lazzaro? Present. Councilor Leming? I don't see Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli? Chair Callahan?

[Anna Callahan]: Present. And today we are covering paper 24-034 from President Zach Bears. It is a report request from the Facilities Manager. Be it resolved by the Medford City Council that the Public Works and Facilities Committee request a report from the Facilities Manager containing the following information. One, a complete inventory of city-owned properties and city-managed properties. Two, cost to restore each property on the above inventory to a state of good repair. Three, cost to maintain each property in a state of good repair once restored. Be it further resolved that the Public Works and Facilities Committee invite the facilities manager to present and discuss the above report once completed. And we very much appreciate our facilities manager, Mr. Riggi, being here. Mr. Riggi, please take the floor. Let me, let's turn you on. I don't, this thing is not, ah, there we go.

[Paul Righi]: It's done. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for coming. Um, I could say that the facility since I've started this position have gotten much better. I'm proud of the work that we've been able to do for the city and continue to do for the city. And I'm looking forward to compiling this report that's requested by the city council. I think it's important to have a document that shows not only every building, but what the future of those buildings are in terms of what work may be needed in the buildings. and then what work to maintain the buildings and keep them going to what I call the best condition that we can leave a building in. I foresee though, I think to do the forecasting, I would probably have to hire a consultant to come in and inventory building systems and conditions of the building so we can try to get a real cost of what it would be to bring our buildings back to the condition that they were when they were built.

[Anna Callahan]: Can you give a timeline and a cost estimate for what it would take to provide the, and you got a copy of this.

[Paul Righi]: I have a copy of that. Actually, I started working on it in the background already. A timeline, I'd like to think six months. Cost, it would be hard to speak on because I'd have to reach out to one of our house doctors so they can compile a team to come together. I know just to give you a ballpark to do some work for the bathrooms renovation. That was probably about $50,000 to pull together for the team just for the bathrooms here at City Hall. So to do a more extensive one, I don't want to really put a cost estimate. I could always come back to you with a cost estimate for that. But I don't want to pin myself down on something or I really need to know an exact cost before I can say that.

[Anna Callahan]: Sure, but you're talking about a cost estimate for the cost estimate, right?

[Paul Righi]: A cost estimate to come up with, yes, what systems we would need, and then they would be able to provide cost estimates for what systems need to be replaced and give us a cost estimate on replacing those, yes.

[Anna Callahan]: Yep. Do you have a sense for, I mean, is a better process that you provide us with an estimate of how much it will cost you to do this report? Is that something that you?

[Paul Righi]: I mean, basically, most of the report is my time. Only item two would be an outside consultant. So yeah, I can provide you a cost estimate for that and then get the funding for that and start and get underway with that.

[Anna Callahan]: Great. I'm going to turn to my fellow Councilors and see if folks have questions. Oh, sorry. Your mic doesn't say your name on here. Oh, sorry. You're the... Thank you. Ms.

[George Scarpelli]: Riggi, thank you for being here today. That was my question. The catch-22 is how much are we gonna spend to see how much we have to spend? And I think, obviously we need that to get done, but I think it'll be interesting to see how much before we move forward to do that. I think that we all know that a lot of our buildings are in tough shape and they need some work. So it'll be interesting to see what that cost analysis would look like. Um, you know, if you're saying that it costs that much money just to look at bathrooms and we're looking at looking at fire stations, city hall, I'm assuming not the schools, but I know we talked, look already in the process right now with the Heckner Center that hopefully will be a part of that process and then many other buildings. So it's, I know that's a daunting task task for one man, so one person to try to do that. I think that just to give people an understanding in neighboring community, their team that we have here, facilities team over at Summerville. They have, I believe, two city facility managers plus assistant managers and supervisors, and then a team that work under them, which are mechanical teams, electricians, painters, plumbers, and carpenters. They even have a locksmith. So this is something that, you know, obviously this has been an historical weakness in Medford that we didn't have a team together. And I know this is a great start, but it'll be, for one council, be interesting to see what that analysis looks like to weigh it to, you know, whether we spend it actually doing it or we spend it actually looking to see how much it should take to get done. So thank you.

[Anna Callahan]: Do I have questions from other councilors? can you let Zach in? President Bears?

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Chair Callahan. Thank you, Director Riggi. I was wondering, you know, I think something that would be useful as part of this is, you know, a spreadsheet that we can make available on the city website, just listing, you know, address, name, assessed value, and then any other kind of pertinent data for all of our city-owned buildings and as well as our city-owned properties in general. I think just having that inventory piece is really helpful. I'm sure you have a version of that that you use in your day-to-day already. But that's, I think that's a key first step and, you know, being able to put in your assessment on the condition of those properties and buildings, I think is really valuable. And then we can move to this kind of bigger question, you know, what, what is it going to take to restore or renovate or maintain or replace buildings given their condition and their, their life cycle? And, and I wonder, you know, I think, you know, going to the house doctors is certainly one option. And if they're able to do, I'm sure the bathroom project was relatively detailed work because, you know, we're planning to actually specifically install and replace bathrooms in the building. I'm wondering if, you know, a slightly more bird's eye view might be more affordable than that detailed work. But also I think it might be worth considering if, if we're seeing a very high estimate from the house doctors or something else, maybe going out to bid on something like this, or also maybe doing something similar to what DPW has done with the roads and sidewalk assessment and the water and sewer assessment, where we had that done and presented to us to inform the long-term financial plan of those capital assets. Just some thought that I'm also just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about, you know, where you started when you came in versus what resources and materials you've been able to develop up to this point. And then maybe as well just talk a little bit more about what you would be looking for in an assessment like what we're talking about. So I know those are pretty general questions, but I just think going through that in a little bit more detail would be helpful for everybody involved to hear. So thank you in advance for humoring me on that.

[Paul Righi]: Sure, no problem. First of all, I actually have a spreadsheet with every city-owned building on it, and that's what I'm using with square footage and assessed values. So that's actually something probably I can help adapt to get up on the city website. I can I interrupt you for one second?

[Anna Callahan]: Could you at least provide some version of that just to the city Councilors?

[Paul Righi]: That would be I can I can provide what I have. Thank you. Send it over. Um, I think what I first started was starting going to every building on get my own assessment of the building. Um, And I actually did that before I even talked to people that worked in the buildings, I wanted to get my own take on what conditions the buildings look like before I could get. any jaded responses or be swayed in a certain way. So I knew what buildings looked like before I started working with people and actually started diving in. What I found was that the city buildings were overall not taken care of to what I would call my standard. And I have very high standards. And my feeling is that a building has to be functional for those not only coming into the building, but the people that use it every day for work. And if they don't meet that requirement, something's wrong with the building. Case in point, the fire stations. When I got here and doing a tour with the Councilors and going really through the detail and listening to the firefighters and getting more information about what they were living with, I think we've corrected a lot of those issues. We started with windows. Fixed the bathroom that had a major hole in it and engine for which should have never happened and getting those kinds of things done. It's something that I look at at every building and seeing the work here at City Hall. But even the police and DBW and library, they were brand new buildings that didn't have any kind of preventive maintenance programs. So to get preventive maintenance programs for the HVAC systems, the sprinklers weren't even being inspected in those buildings. To get those inspected, to ensure that the emergency generators are not only tested, but they're load tested once a year. So we know that if there's a blackout, the generator will come on and carry the load that they're designed for. So it's those kind of issues that I've encountered that I feel that we've corrected and we still have more to do. We have three different house doctors, so I wouldn't go out, I wouldn't reach out to just one, I would reach out to all three to get pricing to do this. And yeah, it would probably be more of an overall look of, okay, look at our HVAC system, look at the lighting systems, look at the flooring, windows, tell me what you think needs to be addressed, when it needs to be addressed, and let's put some cost to that. So it doesn't have to be the detail as we did at the bathrooms, but it would involve 18 buildings, so it would be an extensive list.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, I'm directory and one other question I had is just as relates to not just the buildings but the non building properties, you know, parks to the own lots that are unused. Do you have any sort of engagement around that.

[Paul Righi]: And I do if somebody draws me into it. Technically, I don't. But so I try to not involve myself in that. But if somebody from the DPW comes and asks for help, actually, I was asked to about the new playground in McLean if I could help getting a gutter and a downspout put on a structure there. So if I'm brought into the process, I'll gladly help any city department.

[Zac Bears]: Got it. Yeah, I think it might be worth us also maybe engaging some of our DPW folks and maybe even planning office folks just to make sure that those those capital assets are included too. I mean, it really, I think that the, I'm not necessarily saying you, but, you know, for the council to engage those folks. You know, now that we have the road and sidewalk assessment and we have water and sewer, and we have you on board with our buildings, I think we just need to make sure that that fourth piece of what we own doesn't get left out in the long run. You know, our parks and the non-building structures on them, as well as just a full full catalog of, um, city owned lots around around the city that maybe aren't even being used for really anything right now. Or can't be used for anything in the long run.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, Before we move on to public comment, I just wanna see what you think about a little bit of a timeline. Do you think that if you can get us that database, just the spreadsheet, in a couple of weeks, is that reasonable? Yeah. Okay, beautiful. And then do you think you could get us an estimate by a month or two from now, like an estimate, sorry, an estimate of how much it will cost to get the cost estimate? I should be able to do that would be beautiful, right? If you can get those things the next month or so, that'd be really helpful. And then I think we can, um Maybe. Uh, maybe what? What accounts are think about us revisiting based upon that estimate and making a decision as to whether we want to, um Request. That that full, um, estimate of seem reasonable that we revisit that in this committee?

[Kevin Harrington]: Makes sense to me.

[Anna Callahan]: Okay, so that'll be our plan. And so once you get us the estimate for the estimate, we can let you know whether, you know, what we think about moving forward with that. Wonderful, great. I will open it up for public comment. So if there's anyone, I do not see anyone in the chamber. If there's anyone on Zoom who wants to make any commentary on this topic. Ken Kraus, we are asking you to unmute now. Great, go ahead.

[Krause]: You have the floor. Hi, Ken Kraus, 50 Mystic Street, Medford. I'm also on the board of the Francis Schweier Auditorium in Gene McJim. And I represent the friends on the capital improvements committee of the show, your commission. Thanks to Councilor bears for initiating this and for the committee for taking this up tonight. I agree that this is importantly needed for the city facilities. Friends have been an advocate for the hiring of a facilities director for many, many years. And we were delighted when Paul Riggi was hired for this position. As you saw tonight, he is extremely capable. And his addition to the city administration has been fantastic for Chevalier in particular, but for all the city buildings. I would like to, um, sort of put in a plug that Chevalier sort of be high on the list, uh, regarding this, this project, uh, this evaluation, the, um, uh, timeline that Paul put out was, was, uh, was nice to hear because I, I was figuring it was gonna take a couple of years to get this completed and, and obviously a lot of expense, but, um, the, um, needs for Chevalier are unique. I think in that, uh, it's one of the most active city buildings and also perhaps the only one that generates income for the city. So it's really important that we keep it, um, in the state of, you know, good, good repair and competitive with other performing arts venues in the region. You know, it probably gets more visitors, uh, than any city building other than the library and perhaps city hall. And the use has changed from when it was a high school auditorium. And, and even when, uh the improvements were made in the 90s just for example like the the elevator that's there the one of the two elevators that goes to the balcony the one that goes to the balcony you know it was designed for patron use and now it's carrying um you know full kegs of beer and uh pallets of beverages up to the balcony the bar that's up there that didn't exist before it's being used daily to take people down to the recreation department and the youth center so It really needs to be evaluated in terms of its future capacity and use when it gets time to upgrade those. We have an advantage with the Chevalier Commission and committee that I mentioned is that we have a capital improvement project list of about 25 projects with cost estimates and potential funding sources already in place. That was started by Victor Schrader when he was the economic development director so we have a lot of resources available. And the other thing that I think could really help with terms of survival is going to be an expensive project but the Massachusetts cultural facilities fund has a specific category. that the city would be eligible to apply for. It's a systems replacement grant. It's part of their feasibility and technical assistant grants. And I'll just read the description. This is designed for organizations without full time maintenance staff, which is what Chevalier is. And it's a 20 year capital needs assessment of the building and its mechanical systems. So that could save a lot of city expense in terms of looking at the Chevalier building alone. And I would hope we could explore that opportunity. The, the grant applications are due in January, and they would be awarded next May. So just put that on the. on the list of things to look for in terms of potential funding. And then the last thought I had was, you know, Paul mentioned we want to get these buildings up to the condition they were when they were built. But, you know, we also need to keep in mind best practices for today and the future. And I would hope that this evaluation looks at ways to improve energy efficiency. Chevalier just replaced all its interior lighting with LED, which was huge. But I hope they will look at the buildings in terms of further energy efficiency. For example, could solar panels be put in on the roof at Chevalier? It strikes me as it could be a potentially good candidate. So hopefully this evaluation of the building needs is not just a state of good repair. It also looks at making them as efficient as possible and that all the modern best practices are taken into account. So thanks again for bringing this forward. And I look forward to it happening. Thank you.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Do you have any comments on the comments?

[Paul Righi]: No, I enjoy working with Ken. And I really am proud of the work that together we've done at the Chevalier. I don't know if you've checked out the new lights inside, but if you go see a show, it's very impressive. Amazing.

[Anna Callahan]: Any other public comment? Oh, we do have Matthew Leming, Councilor Leming, who is not on the committee, but maybe he is on the committee. Oh, great. Glad to see you here, Councilor Leming. We're having you on mute.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I'm here for my My own public comment now. Sorry, sir, that I was sorry for being late. I was caught up in traffic. So and apologies if some of these if this question was already addressed earlier, Mr. Wrighty's comments. But even though you don't have a cost estimate for repairing all of the city owned facilities, is there Sort of a ballpark range that you have that we should be thinking about. I know I can ask you versions of this question before for other projects, but like, what order of magnitude should should the council. And the rest of the city be thinking about this and like, 1Million, 10Million, 100Million.

[Paul Righi]: It's probably within one of those ranges. I do better probably telling you to maintain buildings. There's two trains of thoughts on maintaining buildings and that you can use your assessed value of building And they say anywhere between one and 3% of an assessed value of building should be your yearly maintenance budget for that building or other people say square footage assign a dollar amount per square foot and that becomes your maintenance. For replacements it's You know, it's also a figure that you would look at over time, because I know that the Chevalier has a brand new heating system, fairly new heating system. So you look at that, you would forecast for say 10 years, 15 years out, and you would hit certain milestones. And each year would become a, assigned value based on what was assessed as being due on that year. So it may scare you if you look at a figure, say $50 million. But then if you're looking at over 10 years, it becomes $5 million. So you want to look at it two different ways. You would look at it as the total value, which I really don't want to put anything to that right now. But you would also then look at how many years to do that. So it lessens the blow and you can actually prepare much better for it. And you would also see there could be a year, year seven of it, which may be a major year because you have four different building systems across the city coming up at the same exact time. So it makes budgeting much easier for you also.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so we should be Oh, sorry.

[Anna Callahan]: No, no, you go ahead, Councilor Laming.

[Matt Leming]: So we should be budgeting 3% of the assessed value of a given building towards maintenance or some other calculation. Has the city historically done that or have we not?

[Paul Righi]: I would say most cities and towns do not do that because the cost, if you look at your 3% of your assessed value, the cost of it would be astronomical. That's why most people use dollar per square foot. It's a range usually from like $1.50 to $2.70. So you figure out a mid-range in there. It's much less, but still, I don't think a lot of people plan that. It's not really a sexy budget item when you think of maintenance and buildings. So it's something that's always hard fought, but something that you have to fight for. Luckily, Medford has a city council and a mayor that understands the value of buildings and starting to turn that tide.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so I think, I think a good way to phrase this in terms of the, uh, which is another one of those questions that I don't expect to have the answer to right now, but maybe it's one thing to think about and get back later is what if we had put up that sort of a maintenance budget, would it have been able to sort of save some of the buildings in Medford that aren't doing so well right now?

[Paul Righi]: I think you would not have so many priorities on a list in buildings. That's the one thing about spending money on maintenance is that you can preserve systems and items in buildings for a longer period of time. So if the money was provided for the last 15, 20 years, right now we wouldn't feel like that everything was a priority that was coming my way. So, and that's what hopefully by doing, asking for this maintenance plan, that's where you're doing for the future and leaving for the future, that it doesn't become these priorities in every building all over Medford.

[Anna Callahan]: And can I clarify, it sounds like maybe it does help lower the overall cost.

[Paul Righi]: Yes, if you do maintenance on an HVAC system that has a 15-year life expectancy, you might be able to get that to 20 years. and you can ensure, you know, so things like that also increase life expectancies and it's easier than when you need to replace it because you've been taking care of it. You may not have to replace the whole thing. You may only have to replace certain components.

[Anna Callahan]: Anything else, Councilor Leming?

[Matt Leming]: Nope, nope. I think I do think that to sort of like sell this to the public, it would help to say something, to say something like, oh, well, we, you know, wouldn't have had to close down the studio if that building had been better maintained, or we wouldn't have to spend this much money on our new HVAC systems if we just put this much money into it in previous years. just what I was kind of fishing for was individual stories where we could have done better as a justification for as a stronger justification for this plan when illustrating to the public in the future. But now that was unsatisfied.

[Anna Callahan]: Great. And do you think that in the two weeks, you would be able to also just add a column that was like the, whichever estimate for maintenance you think would be preferable if you want to do the like 2% or some sort of per square footage maintenance estimate in that spreadsheet would be great. Perfect. Any other comments from councilors? I want to thank you so much for coming out. It has been really great to have you here. We look forward very much to the spreadsheet and then the estimate for the estimate. Do I have a motion on the floor?

[Zac Bears]: Motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn. Second.

[Anna Callahan]: Fantastic. There is a motion to keep in committee and adjourn from Councilor Bears, seconded by Councilor Leming. Clerk, when you're ready, if you would call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: President Bears?

[Zac Bears]: Yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming?

[Zac Bears]: Yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli? Chair Callahan?

[Anna Callahan]: Yes. Five in favor, zero opposed. The motion passes and we are adjourned. Thank you.

Anna Callahan total time: 5.73 minutes total words: 435	George Scarpelli total time: 2.03 minutes total words: 173	Zac Bears total time: 3.94 minutes total words: 309	Matt Leming total time: 2.36 minutes total words: 183