total time: 23.63 minutes
total words: 1721
[Danielle Balocca]: The following interview is with incumbent mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. Information for the intro was taken from Brianna's campaign website, as well as the City of Medford website, which are both linked in the show notes for further reading. In 2001, Brianna decided to run for city council and won a seat at the age of 21, at that time serving as the youngest city councilor in Medford's history. With a bachelor's in criminal justice and psychology, Brianna went on to get a law degree and open her own law practice in 2009. During her time as a city councillor, among many other accomplishments, Brianna helped start the first high school girls hockey team in Medford's history. She also fought for important community programs focused on uplifting underserved children and families. After serving nine terms on city council, Brianna was elected mayor and sworn into the office as the 32nd mayor of Medford on January 5th, 2020. During the past 18 months, Brianna has led the city through the COVID-19 pandemic while continuing to plan new ways for the city and school system to grow and change through the launching of a new comprehensive plan, upgrading and renovating more than 30 parks and open spaces, and creating a social justice roadmap. Brianna is now running for her second term as mayor. All right, Brianna, thanks so much for joining me today. Before we start out talking about your campaign, I've been asking everybody kind of their favorite place to eat in the city and what they like to order there.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I'd have to answer a few things. I think for breakfast, I love to go to Magnificent Muffin. They have gluten-free, dairy-free bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches that are my favorite. So somebody in our office will always pick it up once a week for the staff. I love a good haddock marinara from Bichelli's or bucka chuck from Carroll's. They also have a great lobster roll. So those just to name three, but there's just so many great places to eat in Medford.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's nice. That's good to know about the dairy-free Magnificent Muffin. I'm always looking for that.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, dairy-free butter.
[Danielle Balocca]: So yeah, it's delicious. Awesome. Well, thank you for that. So yeah, I know you've been really busy, it sounds like. I don't know how all of you guys get to all the different things, the events for your campaigns. But I'm just kind of curious to hear what's leading you to run again for mayor, but also just sort of your path to how you arrived at local politics. In the intro, we talked about you were very young when you started out. So I'm always interested to hear about your motivations there.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, I was 20 and in college at Endicott studying when I decided to run for city council. It was just something I brought up to my father and mother because he was a local business owner. He knew the players. It would always be on TV. And I, you know, over time noticed that it was really no younger representation and barely any female representation. At a crazy young age, I decided that I was going to take a shot. And once we did, it was early on in this campaign season. And we just worked really, really hard going door to door. Probably gave out about over 60,000 brochures to get elected that first time. And luckily, it happened. And then I just continually kept getting more involved in different issues and kept saying, I think this might be my last term, but then I would just get more and more involved. And especially when I had kids, I wanted to be part of, you know, city government to know what was going on within our city and in our school system. And that's kind of what led me to run for mayor. I never expected it. Even if people would ask when I was younger, I would say, It's not my plan, but if the city, I feel the city needs me, then I would do it. And I think probably three of the biggest issues at the time were, first and foremost, everything that happened at the school, at the McGlynn School with the loaded gun magazine. And it was thrown away and then covered up. And I kind of was the one that people came to and trusted. And to this day, I've kept those people confidential. But in the end, we were able to change the administration. We have a wonderful principal there now who's doing a great job, and ironically my daughter went there the year after. Also, development within the community, it was just kind of always who you know, and certain players would be able to come into Medford and develop sometimes almost whatever they wanted to the point where our Zoning Board of Appeals would shut the door on residents and at one time voted for a 500-unit project behind closed doors and then the board, most of the board ended up resigning. So it was, you know, got pretty involved in the development aspect and then we have a lot of city maintenance issues that need to be tackled and at the time there was a lot of our fire station needs and the fact that I was really pushing for a combined police and fire station and it just didn't happen and a number of things were going on so over the holidays people were pushing in the fall, so then over the holidays that year, my husband and I really discussed it in depth because we had three young children and it turned into, can we really, should we do this? Can we do this? Is it right for our kids? At the end of the week or two, it turned into, we need to do this for our kids. And that's ultimately, especially the situation at the schools. is what kind of pushed me to run for mayor and I did it for the right reasons. I did it for not only the kids and the students and the teachers but for families and just to try to make Medford a better place all around and do the right thing always. Everybody should be afforded all the opportunities and that goes from age, you know, infants to big-time developers, you know, everybody should have the same opportunities, things should be done fairly, to the book, legally, and I just, that's kind of what my focus is, you know, that and making sure I always listen and act and respond. I think that's kind of what people have appreciated over the last, especially the last 20 months, just being responsive, being more transparent and communicating as much as we can out to the public as possible.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I know and I appreciate that sort of, I've been hearing a lot about change and like people's like thoughts about change and change being kind of, it can be slow and incremental and one of the things that I talk about in the intro for you is the girls hockey team at the high school and thinking about how like what we do today is like really going to impact our kids, you know, like our the future generations. Yeah. And so It's funny, my mom actually, I played lacrosse in high school and college. My mom had started the team at my high school. And so, you know, I really like that forward thinking about what we want for the future is like something I've been thinking about a lot in these interviews. And I wonder sort of in a second term what your sort of like top priorities would be for continued change.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, and just to touch on the hockey program, I worked with a number of families that had young girls that wanted to play hockey and have the same rights as boys did playing hockey for our high school. And that was before I even had kids. That was before I even knew my husband. And ironically, now my daughter, who's in fifth grade, is on two hockey teams, Medford and the Americans. And I'm hoping one day she'll play for the high school. And we have great news. I don't even know if it's been shared yet, but we have U.S. star who's from Medford, Brittany Lanzilli, who just got the coaching job at the high school. So we have a new coach there who's going to be doing great things. We're thankful for all the past coaching that has gone on at the high school, but pretty exciting times right now. So your question with regards to the plans and why I'm running for a second term, I I think the most challenging, toughest part of the last 21 months has been COVID. And we've spent a lot of time on COVID, making sure, again, that we communicate and are transparent. And my job turned into making sure people were healthy and safe and sane, in a way, because mental health is such an issue, especially now. So through it all, with the help of the Board of Health and the superintendent and the school admin, all we've done to make sure testing, we've been testing our students and got them back safely, as well as our admin. We on the city side have done a lot of planning. The first year, especially 2020, we took to plan and we've started to implement those plans, but there is just still so much more to do. So some of the focusing we did was on our parks. We have 38 park projects that we're working on. Just did a grand opening for the five tennis courts at Duggar Park. Today was supposed to be Barry and Playstead, but we had to cancel because of the weather. We did new basketball courts there. We have the, this is your neck of the woods, we have the car park design that we're working on. We implemented handicap accessible tables at our pond and pool. So things from handicap accessible tables and chairs all the way up to the car park redesign is kind of what we're working on. And we've already started planning for phase two. And we've put in, I think, about eight applications to CPA, which will be just improvements you'll see over the next year, year and a half. We've done a tremendous amount of work and planning and implementation for our fire stations, new roofs in some locations, new kitchens, new windows, new bay doors, apparatus flooring has been redone, and we also just this week picked our design consultant, our OPM for a potential new fire headquarters, which is exciting and it's just something I want to see get done. We also took a year to assess our streets and sidewalks and that was released, that plan was released over the summer, so we are actively trying to crack seal the 95 streets that need to get crack sealed so they don't fall into disrepair where you need millions of dollars to fix one street. And through that, we've learned we have $175 million worth of work to do on our streets alone. And that doesn't even include the water and sewers and sidewalks. We have over $30 million worth of work to do on our sidewalks. And I just want to be on the forefront in trying to plan and get that done. Thankfully, we have some of the ARPA money that we'll be able to use on water and sewer and street infrastructure. But there's just so much more to do. We've also did our first ever comprehensive six-year capital improvement plan that we've already started. implementing. We have another five years to go. We've worked on a comprehensive master plan. We're about at least a quarter ways through that and that's going to help. It's a community-driven process where we want community input to create a vision for Medford for ten, thirty years down the road so that we know what people want, where they want it, and what to tell developers and how to reimagine our city that will benefit everybody from vitality to inclusiveness. We want to work on that to get it done. So we were able to start with our new Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability, which was a merge that we decided to do early on. in the term with Energy and Environment and the Office of Community Development so that there's an environmental lens on everything we do. And it's worked and it's going great. And I could probably keep going, but we also, for the first time, in 2020 when I was, after I was inaugurated, one of the first things we did was create a human resource department. So Medford had never had human resources and that's something that a city of our size needs so badly and we were able to start that from scratch, implement policies and procedures and we have a lot more to do. You know there's some, I always say there's 95 to 99 percent of amazing employees out there, but there's some people we need to hold accountable in order to get things done, and we're doing that work, and we have more we want to accomplish and more we want to do to make sure everybody's just working hard and getting things done for our community.
[Danielle Balocca]: You mentioned community input in some of this planning. What's the best way for the community to give input?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: We always are checking our emails, but for example, the Comprehensive Master Plan, we made sure that we not only are doing surveys that we love people to fill out, we have an interactive map on the website where you can go to a certain area and plug in your thoughts. And that's the number one thing people seem to love, just that interactive map. We also are trying to get community booths at the Oktoberfest and any type of events we do. There's been car park tables so that people can give their input. There's been the comprehensive plan that we're really trying to push out. So contacting anybody on our staff, going on our website medfordmass.org, there's always ways, always surveys that can be filled out, always ways to get involved. And we got even the composting that we brought in a composting program to Medford to make it affordable for our residents. And that was like something like 900 people filled out a survey, which is we're getting like 900 to 1,000 people filling out different surveys, including our parking. We're bringing parking enforcement in-house, which everybody's excited about, and that input. whether it be the community meetings or surveys, just highly, many people were involved. And we want to just continue that. And you have many more community meetings planned for a number of different things we're working on. Seeing that all get followed through is something I'm really excited about and I want to be part of. And I want to just continue to hire the right people to do the right jobs based on experience. And that's the way you can move a community forward. And I see that as being a difference that I'm trying to make.
[Danielle Balocca]: It sounds like a lot of changes you've put in motion that you hope to continue to work towards the end result that you're hoping for there.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And there's still so much more to do. Like this morning I was reviewing public art that we're going to put out at La Conte Rink, just like we did at the pool. And I'm excited to continue the hard work. Every day there's something new. There's always like four or five or six different emergencies that need to be tended to or fires to put out. But I love the job. I love helping people. trying to solve problems. I love even just being responsive and it seems that people appreciate that even if you're not giving them the exact answer they want to hear. People are just happy that there's somebody in the mayor's office that's being responsive and that, as my whole staff will tell you, just community responsiveness and customer service are just top priority.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's definitely been my experience. I feel like, you know, I haven't lived in Medford my whole life, but I feel like when I think about city government and, like, politics, it all feels very inaccessible to me. But it's been, like, really cool to see, like, you've been very responsive, like, in reaching out to email. A lot of the other city Councilors and school committee members have been, like, really accessible, which I feel like is really great. And, like, I don't know that that's all cities' experiences with city government, so.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, I'm glad.
[Danielle Balocca]: I'm glad to hear it.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, there's some great people in politics here and great people working for us. They work really hard and go above and beyond what you could ask for.
[Danielle Balocca]: And you mentioned the public health or the health department earlier and I had heard about a program that was implemented during COVID. Are you okay? Is that what it's called?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, actually, that's a funny story that came out of a mutual friend of ours, Sara. Sara and I were talking right when the pandemic hit, and she was part-time. And I said, Sara, we need to make sure that our seniors are okay. She's like, I know, we do, we do. I said, we should create, you know, we should get volunteers to call and make sure all our seniors are okay. And she's like, yeah, yeah, we should do that. So then, you know, it got brought to the Board of Health and the Prevention and Outreach Office and between Sara and Brooke and Penny and Marianne and myself and then the hundreds of volunteers we were able to assemble, we called over 11,500 seniors ages 65 and over, many of whom needed food to be delivered, many needed medication to be delivered, and also some that just needed mental health help because of the isolation, and some that just would ask the volunteers to give them a call once a month or once a week, and they did. These volunteers went above and beyond, some calling 50 to 100 people, some calling hundreds of our seniors to just check in, and I think that that went a long way.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, yeah, I feel like the term that we were using was social distancing in the beginning of COVID, like that really like that to me is a social connection, right, a real opportunity to build community, and I feel like that's something that I think I took away from being the pandemic like the community kind of felt like it came together in a way and that I think it didn't have to go that way but it did and like so I don't know I try to think about like physical distancing versus social distancing and that that feels like a real like I have a friend in the health department Alicia Gambia oh yes Alicia yeah and she was like you know telling me about the program and like it seemed like a creative solution to maybe some of the work that was less successful because of COVID but to really create that opportunity It's really cool. I feel like we don't, we haven't heard enough about that program.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: No, I know people, people who, even people who volunteer just, just loved it. We were able to get, like I said, hundreds of volunteers through that. And then we also increased our emergency medical response team. Um, even my husband and I just signed up to, and we'll get emails when volunteers are needed. So yeah, it went a long way. And between that and the robocalls that I made sure I did once or twice, you know, once a week or every other week just to keep people informed, I feel like that's what I hear most from our seniors. They're just so happy to have been. They felt good knowing the city cared about them. And I'm proud of the program, and it was my idea with Sara, but I can't take credit for it all, because we couldn't have done it without volunteers and our staff that just worked around the clock to make it happen. That's great.
[Danielle Balocca]: So you talked a little bit about the way that your plans that you've started to implement and work on are including this lens of equity, but I wonder if you have thoughts about equity, like how to make Medford more equitable in the future.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, I think we've made great strides, but we have a lot more to do. About a year, maybe 14 months ago, we put out a social justice roadmap that kind of outlined everything we've been doing, everything we are working on and that we plan on doing. And with that, we also had a few, two community conversations just to hear about people's lived experiences, because I think that's how you gain the knowledge to know what is needed in our community. With that and also our municipal vulnerability preparedness grant work that we're doing, we actually have liaisons going out into the community in trusted locations to learn about what people need. And we've worked a great deal on food insecurity and housing needs, especially during the pandemic. But there's a lot more work to do. One of the main priorities I want to work on, and I actually just sent a woman an email today, is with the ARPA funding, I really want to try to get somebody in our communications team that can translate in different languages. Because I think knowledge is power, and getting more people involved in everything we do is a powerful thing and something that we need to work on. So we were able to get the translation line item finally approved in the fiscal year 22 budget. That's probably the number one thing I want to work on in the next couple months, just getting somebody that can translate as much as we push out information-wise in especially the three different languages that are spoken other than English in this community. So we get people involved in our comprehensive plan and find out what the needs are of our community so we can shape our planning going forward.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great. Yeah, thank you for that. So you've talked about, you know, you've been a resident of Medford for a long time and your whole life, right? Is that right? Yeah, my whole life. Born and raised, yes. Yeah, and so you've had different sort of interactions with the community, like in those different roles. I wonder if you could say kind of like what you most appreciate about this community or, you know, what it is that's like keeping you connected.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I just, I think it's the people and the diversity of what we are here in Medford. I think, you know, I get a lot of complaints all the time, but knowing what, like I said, our employees work on on a daily basis, and then knowing we have volunteers and people that are willing to step up no matter what they're asked, you know, we have finally we implemented last week our 19th mini food pantry and at the vocational school and throughout this pandemic we've increased that number to 19 and everybody, it seems that everybody's stepping up to fill those pantries. So many people stepped up for the R U OK? program. We have volunteers that serve on boards and commissions and It's never a problem getting people to help out. We just had, I think, three or four community members, just wanting to volunteer, step up and read seven lengthy applications for an OPM for our fire headquarters. I just had to ask, you know, and they're educated, you know, they have other things to do, you know, just people who are really busy and they're still willing to help out. So I think just not only our diversity, but it's just everybody wanting to work together for You have that few percent that are loud and upset, but the majority, almost this whole community is willing to help a neighbor, help a friend, get involved and do great things so that we can just continue to make this place a better place for everybody who lives here.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and we're talking too about like future generations. I feel like it's just such a good example to perpetuate and like to show our kids right like this like we can help people like to help people when we can right and like and Yeah, I feel like it's such a important value for them to see yeah All right help and educate.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I just was talking to Melanie McLaughlin from the school committee, and we're working on a Like I said, a mural for La Contre Rank and I made sure I sent the designs back and said, I want to make sure these are diverse, I want to make sure, on every level. And what came back was a young girl on a piece of equipment so she could play hockey. And my kids were like, what is this picture of? And I explained, this little girl's playing hockey. How's she playing hockey? She's sitting down, my son said. I said, well, we're trying to show that anybody can play at any time. And she maybe doesn't have, something's wrong with her leg, or she has a disability. And the awareness it brought to my son. So inclusivity on all levels is just so important.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great, thank you. All right, so now it's time for the more fun questions, hopefully. These aren't fun and informative. So if you could share something about yourself that might surprise us.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I wear a lot of hats. Mom, Mayor. But probably one of my, other than being with my children, one of my favorite things to do is coach. So I've been coaching basketball through St. Francis and St. Joseph's now for six years, seven years. And then Girls on the Run is something that I love to coach. We've been doing it for myself and about nine other coaches have been doing it for four or five years. one of the best ways to give back and this year our Girls on the Run team has 27 girls, most of them are third graders, they're the cutest little peanuts and just being able to influence them and have some fun once or twice a week with our students and kids is probably one of the best things I can do to give back to my own community.
[Danielle Balocca]: Sounds fun, yeah. You know, it must be cool for them to see, like, city officials sort of integrated in some of those, their day-to-day stuff. Like, sometimes we'll see you drive by and we'll be like, talk to my son and say, hey, there's the mayor.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: It's pretty cool, yeah. And my daughters have always been in the program, so I don't even think it's anything special that I'm coaching. I always say it's Coach Aoife and Coach Kelly, they only have boys, and they still take the time to volunteer for girls on the run. And then when you have Coach Nevers, who's a teacher, who just is always there. She's been coaching with us since the start. So those are the people that impress me, not necessarily myself. As kids in the program, my daughters have benefited from it greatly, and my now oldest is running on two cross-country teams because of it. And I go to the middle school meets, and even when they just went into sixth grade two years ago, our Girls in the Run girls got like top seven out of ten, and it was just pretty awesome to see that we've helped shape, you know, running something you can pick up for life, and we're helping to shape hundreds of girls' lives into the future. It's pretty awesome.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I'm hoping to talk to Aoife, too, about Girls on the Run on the podcast, too. And it did strike me that, you know, she does have two boys. And I think it's equally as important to see, like, moms, like people, for boys, to see that example of, like, empowering girls and the importance of having that space. It's powerful. Absolutely.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I have two girls, so I'm always saying girls can do anything boys can do. And now my little guy is seven, so now I With him having older sisters, I say, well, you can do anything girls can do. You can always try as hard as your sisters.
[Danielle Balocca]: Some strong role models for them there. Cool. And so I'm wondering, too, about any advice that you've received that you would pass on.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Some of the best advice I've been given lately, because I've spoken to a couple classes at the high school. I don't know even remember who necessarily gave me the advice, but if I can give anybody advice, it's try to always keep your cool. I told the students that you're going to have tough times in life. You're going to have people that confront you or that might upset you over email, or always take Take a minute to take a deep breath. And if you need a night before you respond to that email or that letter or you get confronted and you say, why don't we talk about this tomorrow? Take a few seconds or even 24 hours to digest it, to gain a calm head so that you can respond and not regret what you say. And always try to get your feelings out the right way versus just being responsive. being too negative or yeah. So that's kind of what I've been telling people because I've been asked that question a couple times in the last couple months.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and Zach Bares was on here too and he had some similar advice sort of about like what it feels like when there when it feels like people are just in opposition to each other and like how to sort of be able to work in your role in that way when like there's when it seems like people are just kind of constantly in conflict and how to like respond to somebody who's approaching you in that way right and still be able to move forward. So those are all the questions that I prepared for you, but is there anything else that you want the voters to know about or anything that I haven't asked that you want to share?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I always just conclude by saying I'm an email or phone call away. I usually try to start booking appointments at 9, 30, 10 in the morning so that I can make sure I clear out all my email as much as I can just to start my day off right. And in between meetings, I'm checking email. I don't take a lunch break unless I eat while I'm responding to residents. And I try to respond to phone calls, even sometimes I'll I try to take in all the information. If I go out for a walk and somebody stops me with an issue or a concern, sometimes I won't even remember to respond right away to being approached. But a month later, I'll say, I have to continue to work on that. Or I remember so-and-so said this was an issue. I just try to take everything in and always do the right thing.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Yeah. So email is a good way to get in touch with you. Email's good. Yeah.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Email's good. And I'm trying to be as responsive as I can.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I know. It's much appreciated.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thanks.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thanks so much for coming on and good luck next week.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. I appreciate it. Six more days. We got this.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you for listening to this interview. A link to the campaign website is listed in the show notes. For any feedback or questions about the podcast, please email medfordpod at gmail.com. You can also subscribe and rate the podcast on Spotify and follow the podcast on Instagram at medfordbytespodcast. That's M-E-D-F-O-R-D-B-Y-T-E-S-P-O-D-C-A-S-T for updates about upcoming episodes and other announcements. Thank you to all who have supported this podcast, but especially to my wife, Brittany, Guys, what's the name of the podcast?
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