[Danielle Balocca]: Hello and thank you for listening to the Medford Bites podcast. Before I get into the content for today's episode, I want to give a brief recap of last week's municipal election and thank all the candidates for coming on the podcast. Last week, the results of the election saw a few changes to city council with the election of Kit Collins and Justin Tseng. adding to the re-elected members that include Zach Bares, Nicole Morell, Adam Knight, George Scarapelli, and Richard Caraviello. The school committee also added Sharon Hayes and re-elected incumbents that include Paul Rousseau, Jenny Graham, Melanie Perkins-McLaughlin, Maya Quinn-Mastoni, and Kathleen Krietz. Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn defeated John Falco to win her second term as Mayor of Medford. Today's episode of Medford Bites is the beginning of a new season, and new episodes will be released each Monday. This season hopes to highlight community organizations, businesses, and to profile local citizens. Today's episode includes an interview with Alicia Hunt, Director of Planning, Development, and Sustainability for the City of Medford. I'll also interview Joe and Conrad, two youth from the Medford community. Please check the show notes for links to important information mentioned in the interviews, and I hope you enjoy. Hi Alicia, thanks for joining me today. If you could start just by introducing yourself, name, pronouns, and what you do here at the City.
[Alicia Hunt]: Hi, I'm Alicia Hunn, she, her. I am the Director of Planning, Development, and Sustainability. And what that really means is that we do My expertise has been in climate change and energy issues. And when Mayor Brianna was elected, one of the things she wanted to do was make sure that we were including climate into all of the planning that we're doing throughout the city and bring in economic development and housing. So I have an economic development director that works here. I have a housing planner. We have some federal funds. So I have a federal fund manager and then planners and we do land use planning. all kinds of plans plus we've been working on parks and open space renovations for the city and through it all we've just released a climate action and adaptation plan that's out for public comment right now and that we'd love people to comment on through January. But truly, it's a living document, so people could comment on it at any time, and we would take that feedback. But it is helpful to get comments on it. We have a website, gogreenmedford.org. It's the easiest way to get to it. And if you went to gogreenmedford.org slash climate, you would come to the page that's all about the climate work that we're doing in this city.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, you sent me your newsletter, and it's a lot of stuff you're working on all at once. So I'll be sure to put some links in our show notes so people can access those websites. So before we get into talking more about some of the specific projects that you're working on, I've been asking everybody about their favorite place to eat in Medford, what they like to eat there.
[Alicia Hunt]: So it's hard in Minford, because there are a lot of different places. And I have kids. So it's, am I going to my son's favorite restaurant or someplace that all five of us will be happy? But when I want to go and just get food for just me, it's usually lunchtime. And I love to run over to Tanosh and get one of their torta sandwiches. That's perhaps my favorite go-to lunch food here. Delicious.
[Danielle Balocca]: We've heard of Tanosh, too. And other people have talked about that place, too. Yeah, they're amazing. Awesome. Thank you. So I think we're particularly interested in hearing about what's going on with the parks and sort of how people can get involved. It's important to know about that.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, thank you for asking, because we're really doing a lot of outreach with the parks right now. So Medford has an open space and recreation plan. We updated it every five years. And that's actually part of, I would say, it's not exactly the law, but it's a state program. And if you get it updated every five years, you are eligible for particular grants. And so we do try to work from that, and that directs some of our work. But right now, we have landed on a couple of projects. We're doing a vision plan for Carr Park. And so the idea there is that we're taking that, we're saying, what if this was a clean slate? We were starting over, and what do people want there? And so we've run this process really differently than past years. Past programs with the city, the city would hire a consultant who would come up with a bunch of ideas, hold a session in City Hall to get feedback on them, go change their plan, maybe meet with the staff, and then come back with a final plan. And we said, that's not how we want to do parks in Medford. So first we asked the consultant to go out to Carr Park and she and I actually spent several hours, four different times, weekends, evenings, mornings, during the week, at Carr Park talking to people, noticing how people were using the park. We let people know we were there and we put out a survey. What do people want? And that was kind of the clean slate. Then we came back with a couple of different plans and some of those raised some controversy. So they got a lot of buzz and most people in Medford now know that this is going on. Controversy is not great, but buzz is. So then we held several more listening sessions in the parks and actually we were at other events too. We were down at the Mystic Arts Celebration and the Harvester Energy Festival. and got feedback on these plans. And we're actually meeting with the mayor and a number of staff from different departments today to go over all of that feedback and come together on what we think we want to see in the final iteration of this. We're going to release that. We're going to have an event. Well, we'll have the plans for display on Saturday, November 13th from 11 to 2 at Carr Park. Most of these have been at the park itself. So Saturday the 13th. And we'll have one version there. And we'll still be taking feedback on it because nothing is set in stone. Once we have what we think that the community wants, the city wants, makes sense, will take over the winter and start applying for grants. And some of the grant programs, you apply in the winter, some are actually in the summer. We need to put together a lot of money to do this renovation. And so that's the point where we'll start to figure out what's in and what's out. for certain, and we may have to phase the renovations. So we won't see really any renovations in 2022. If there are problems that we can fix easily, we'll do that. People may have noticed a bunch of bushes disappeared from the park. Those bushes were completely covered in poison ivy. That's the kind of thing, you know, if there are other problems that we can fix easily to make it a more usable park, we'll do that in the short run. So that's CAR. We also are doing some smaller projects. One is at Gillis Park. That's a baseball field only. And it is completely inaccessible, like legally ADA, but for anybody with any kind of disability. And so we've hired some consultants to come in, and their first pass at it is, how do we make this an accessible park? And when they come back with what's possible, then we'll probably be talking to people about, are there choices here? It's unclear if there are going to be choices, just because of the nature of how that park exists and is laid out. And we have no intention of changing the use. It's really about, you know, if you have somebody in a wheelchair who wants to come in and watch a game, or even on crutches, it's super hard, if not impossible. Or they have to sit up on the street on the sidewalk, and that's not very nice. It's not accessible. So then Morrison Park, we have a plan. That park never got any play equipment for kids under five, for toddlers. And toddlers want to use that park, and there's space. So we have some consultants who have been out there talking to families and are going to be doing some tabling sessions. The next one is actually this Thursday, November 11th. It's Veterans Day. And they're going to be out there from 9.30 to 11 to talk to people about the park. In this case, we're really focusing on toddler improvements. within the fenced area. Our tree warden is actually planning to plant more trees in Morrison Park. And so we're coordinating with her because we want trees to shade the area, but we don't need a tree in the middle of where we're trying to put toddler improvements. We want to put safety surface in. So we're also planning to replace the wood chips there with a more modern safety surface while we're in. And then at Logan Park, We have a lot of interest in doing some natural play areas So adding we thought it would be fun to find some of the things that we have around the city That could be used like we actually have a lot of tree stumps and stuff and to turn those into a natural play area so we have done some tabling there and some flyering and And we are going to be Sunday, November 14th from 1 to 3 at Logan Park to hear what people have to say and are interested in. And for both Morrison and Logan, there are surveys up on our website. So if you went to gogreenmedford.org slash parks, You can see more information about these projects, including the names of the consultants we've hired, and you can access the survey and give us feedback. If you're listening to this later and the surveys aren't still up, you can always send us email. Our email address is OCD. It stands for the Office of Community Development. So OCD at Medford-MA.gov. And that is, we'll go to our office and our staff will check it and forward it on to the right project.
[Danielle Balocca]: Awesome. Thank you. So some big things coming for Carr Park and Logan Park. And it's nice to hear about the ADA compliance that you're all thinking of. Are there any other projects that you want to mention?
[Alicia Hunt]: So we're doing a lot of small parks projects as well. Staff for the past year, year and a half, staff have been meeting with the mayor about once a month. to review a long list. We actually keep a spreadsheet of about 45 things that we're working on. All of those that I've mentioned are on there, but there are others. We have consultants working on an underpass under Route 28, over by Stations Landing, so that people, it mirrors the one that goes to Assembly Row, and that, all the consulting engineering work is fully grant funded at this point, and the state has agreed to pay for the construction once it's fully designed. So that one's pretty exciting. We have some others that are in design as well. And we also have little things. So we've heard a lot about basketball courts need to be resurfaced and tennis courts. And so as people have probably noticed, we've been just going out there and getting those done. We often apply for CPA grants to help pay for those projects. And we have a number of locations throughout the city where trees in parks are dying. They've reached their lifespan. And so the tree warden's been working to identify those, get those removed, and she has funding as well to plant additional trees. You'll probably see those going in in the spring because it's too late this fall to get trees planted as I understand it so far. I think we had a freeze last night. We're doing some other things, ADA improvements at Tufts Pool, at Wrights Pond. We have federal grant money that we can use for ADA improvements on public facilities. And so we've been using that as well. And then I've applied for grants to do a lighting upgrade at La Conte Ice Rink as well. And people may have noticed last winter, we actually upgraded all the lights at Tufts Pool to LED.
[Unidentified]: Oh, wow.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, it seems like you're very busy with all these projects. And is there anything that the community can do? You're asking for input on surveys. And I'm wondering about funding, if there's anything the community could do in terms of helping there.
[Alicia Hunt]: So usually the type of funding we go after are state and federal grants, and they're on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sometimes they ask us about community input and whether we've gotten it. When we announce that we're having public meetings, it's actually really helpful to have people turn out for them, because then we can show that the public is interested. Getting email about these parks helps too, because we actually keep track of them all in a spreadsheet so that we know when We're applying for grants. We can say like we've heard from people that this is not just somebody in an office making a decision The other thing that sounds funny is sometimes residents do know about private grants that are very helpful if it's small if it's like $2,500, $5,000, $10,000. It's probably something that you as a community group could go do, let us know, we'll help you out with it. When we're doing a big renovation, a big project, we're usually looking for numbers that are hundreds of thousands of dollars. I will tell you that, so the Riverbend Park Dog Park, that was actually done with a private grant that residents found for us. They became aware that there was a foundation that funded dog parks and we got a $250,000 grant from them. So there could be grants like that that we may not just have heard of. And so those are always helpful to hear about as well. Also things that fund climate change, we try to keep a pretty close ear to the ground on those because in the parks there's stuff like tree plantings, there's wetlands, there's creating rain gardens, but one of the things that I'm really looking at now is heat impacts of climate change. So we are looking at adding spray features and water features, spray parks, and water fountains into our parks, because those are things that we'll need as part of climate change. It blows my mind, but a commercial grade water fountain in a park that's hooked up to the water system in a way that's, even if there's already irrigation there, you need certain things to keep that water separated from the irrigation water. And so it's a minimum of $10,000 to install a commercial water fountain at a park. So that's I think just helpful for people to have an idea of the scale of the cost because We would love like if somebody said well, I found this private entity that is funding water fountains at grant at parks if it's at least $10,000 per water fountain and I'm definitely interested and if it's like $500 it's it may not really actually help the project. That's good to know. Yeah, and
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, I appreciate it. Sounds like a lot of transparency and community input around the planning of these parks. And I hope people can get... I know people are excited, I think, about the changes that are coming. I hope people can give you lots of input, too.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, it's helpful. Hopefully, you can put in the show notes on our Go Green page. We have a contact us. And on there, you can sign up for our newsletter, which we try to send out every three to four weeks about what's going on. And we are on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Our handle on all of those is GoGreenMedford. And so it's great to have people follow us and comment on what we're doing. We don't want to be working in isolation. We have about seven staff up here that are full-time, and I usually have between five and seven interns working with us at any given time. So I like the interns because it brings fresh perspective to what we're doing. If they turn over every six months or a year type thing, you have new ideas and new thoughts on how we're doing and what we're doing. That's great.
[Danielle Balocca]: It's great to hear about all the community input, and thank you for sharing those ways for people to get more consistently involved too. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time today.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sure. Come back and talk to us anytime. We've got all kinds of interesting things going on in the city. Yeah, it sounds like it. Thank you so much.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks to Alicia for all this exciting and helpful information. I wanted to make sure to mention that on November 18th at 6 p.m., the Community Development Board will be hosting a public hearing on Medford's zoning recodification. The meeting will take place on Zoom, involving a presentation and discussion of the drafted proposed zoning ordinance. As Alicia also mentioned, you can sign up for the newsletter for a comprehensive list of events and updates from the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability. Now on to the next interview. All right, guys, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Can I just ask you to introduce yourself? So say your name, your pronouns, your age, and where you go to school.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: My name is Joe Hogan. I'm 10 years old. My pronouns are he or him. And I go to school at the Roberts Elementary.
[Danielle Balocca]: Awesome. And what grade are you in, Joe?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: I'm in 5th grade. Hi, my name is Coni. My pronouns are he and him. I am 9 years old. I go to Roberts Elementary and I am in 3rd grade.
[Danielle Balocca]: 3rd grade, awesome. So 3rd grade and 5th grade. So guys, I've been asking everybody on the podcast to share their favorite place to eat in Medford and what they like to eat there. Do you guys have a favorite?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Yes, mine is by far Colleen's ice cream.
[Danielle Balocca]: Do you have a favorite ice cream flavor?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Cookie Monster. or I would also like some ice cream from Colleen's cookie dough.
[Danielle Balocca]: Nice. I heard you guys are donut fans, too. Is that true? Yes. Donuts. Nice. Awesome. So I wanted to just ask you a couple questions about kind of what you guys like to do in Medford, what you appreciate about it. So I also interviewed someone who was talking to me about the park renovations. So I was wondering if you guys have a favorite park in Medford or what you like about the parks.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: My favorite park is Carr Park, which is very close to my house. And I've been going there my whole life. That's what I like about it. My history there and all the fun things there. And they're also renovating it.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, we'll talk about that in a second, but I want to see Conrad. Do you have a favorite park in Medford?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: I would say Card Park too, because there's just a lot of rooms to play sports. Yeah. I love playing sports.
[Danielle Balocca]: Love sports. Do you have a favorite sport?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Football.
[Danielle Balocca]: Football, awesome. And so yeah, Joe, you mentioned that they're planning to do some renovations to Card Park. Is there anything you guys would be excited to see change about the park?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Um, so I like the park in general. I like all the, um, stuff to play on, to climb on. And then I just like the big field for playing baseball, football, and the courts for basketball and hockey. But I would like to see, um, some hiking trails. I realized that there's some area behind Carr Park that they do own. and that they can't build on. And I'm a big hiker, so I would like to see some nice hiking trails back there. That would be cool.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, kind of make use of some of the natural space that's already back there.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: What about you, Conrad? Anything you want to see added or changed?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: No, not really, but I want the fields to go away. I like playing baseball and, like I said, football.
[Danielle Balocca]: You want to save the fields? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. Yeah. And what other stuff do you guys like doing around the city?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: I like going to the library. That's definitely a big part of living in Medford for me. And I'm very excited for the new library as well.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, we just heard it's going to hopefully open in January. Yeah. Nice.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: In January. Nice. And then all the other many parks in Medford. There's Victory Park, there's Carr Park, there's Tufts Park, there's a bunch of ours. I think there's Pleistead Park, Hickey Park, a bunch that I can't remember.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, we do have a lot of parks.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: There are still a lot of parks. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: And you mentioned you like to hike. You like to go to some of the fells, trails in the fells and things like that. Awesome.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: I would say the library too just because they have fun and games there and I actually got a thing to go earlier because I'm not leaving Yeah, and I also like doing bike rides.
[Danielle Balocca]: So you're going to get to go to the library before it opens?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, for Ice Cream Social. Wow! So, during the summer, we both entered a Medford reading contest. And they said, like, five people that had the most minutes read, and five people that were raffled out, get to the end of the contest, got to go into the new library before it opens for an ice cream party and a tour.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's so cool. So you guys read a ton of books over the summer.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and not only that, I got laughed out. And I was, I probably was one of the top ten. I didn't get the most minutes read, but I was definitely close.
[Danielle Balocca]: Awesome. That sounds like a cool competition. So you guys get to go have ice cream in the new library before anybody else, huh?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Wow, that's exciting. What about other stuff? What do you guys like to do on the weekends or after school if you're not at the parks?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: On the weekends, I like hanging out in my yard with our neighbors who have become our family. Just playing football or me sitting on the couch playing Minecraft.
[Danielle Balocca]: Minecraft, nice.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: On a rainy day, I would play Minecraft too. Same with my brother, I would also go outside and maybe play some football with my friend Brennan.
[Danielle Balocca]: Nice. Nice shout out to your neighbors. That's what I've been hearing from a lot of people is like, that they feel a sense of community in Medford and like friends are kind of like family, right? Especially during COVID when we've been spending a lot of time with a lot of the same people. Yeah. Where are you going to add something?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Shout out to Brian Bollinger. And Cam.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks guys. Is there anything else that you, you know, you feel like is important that you want to share with the people that are listening?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Um, I definitely want to mention my school and all the great kids there that I have made friends with over the past six years. And all the great programs at my school, like the band, which I do, I play a saxophone, and the winter enrichment classes.
[Danielle Balocca]: What are the winter enrichment classes?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: I hadn't heard about that. They are classes that you can take after school. They cover multiple topics like there's one for Legos and there's one for theater and there's One for martial arts and yoga and stuff.
[Danielle Balocca]: Cool.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Awesome.
[Danielle Balocca]: And you've been, so you're in fifth grade, so you've been at the Roberts for your whole school career so far, right? Yeah. And so you'll go to middle school next year?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Middle school, yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: How are you feeling about that?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Very excited.
[Danielle Balocca]: Do you have any advice for Conrad for the rest of his time at the Roberts?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Anything you'd tell him? Number one, play the saxophone. Very fun instrument. Number two, take as many classes as you can, like the band classes and the enrichment and anything else that pops up. And Number three, don't get too excited for middle school right now. It's definitely not time yet.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's a wise advice, Joe. Take advantage of what's offered to you. It sounds like you guys have a lot of options and things you can be engaged in in school and outside of school. What about Conrad? Do you have anything you want to say to your brother? Any advice for him?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: No, not really.
[Danielle Balocca]: Awesome. Anything I missed? Anything else you guys hoped to talk about today?
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: That's good for me. All right.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you guys so much for coming and for being on the podcast.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: You're welcome.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you so much to Alicia, Joe, and Conrad. If you have questions about the episode, ideas for future episodes, or feedback, please email medfordpod at gmail.com. Stay tuned for more episodes. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites!