total time: 19.01 minutes
total words: 1452
[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist. And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our castmates.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right, Shelly and I are here today. Hey, guys. Thanks for joining us. If you don't mind just giving just a little introduction. So your name, pronouns and a bit about who you are.
[Nicole Morell]: Sure. I am Nicole Morel. She, her pronouns and I am the president of the Medford City Council.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Awesome. Thanks so much for being here. Yeah, thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah. So we'll start out with our question that we ask everybody on the podcast, which is, what is your favorite place to eat in Medford? And what do you like to eat there?
[Nicole Morell]: I think there's so many ties for favorites, but what I'm really thinking about right now is actually garden, the wantons and the chili sauce and vinegar. I love like a hot and sour and it's they're just so good.
[Danielle Balocca]: I realize we're doing this right around lunchtime too, so.
[Chelli Keshavan]: I'm with that. I am also a chili garden fanatic.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, I know. My husband is always horrified as I'm sitting there and I'm like, I can't feel my tongue. This is so good. I crave this.
[Chelli Keshavan]: No, thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great. Yeah, so we were realizing that we've never done a full interview with you. So we just have a couple questions just about kind of what led you to where you are right now as the president of our city council. So if you don't mind sharing kind of what motivated you initially to run for city council.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, definitely. I mean, so to go way back, I kind of grew up in like a very civically engaged household. My dad ran the community action public grant funded nonprofit, the anti-poverty agency in New Bedford for 30 years. So we always had conversations about kind of public policy around the dinner table. And my mom was a public school teacher. So I think I was always very civically minded. I've always kind of had an interest in politics and civic engagement. And what prompted me to run for City Council was I, as I got more involved and aware, just in local politics in Medford, I didn't really see my voice and my views reflected. And I thought, well, I'll take it upon myself and run. And I think I saw the way a lot of Campaigns were run and I think it felt like if you just did a lot of hard work, there was a really good chance of getting in. So I thought there was an opportunity and I went for it. And it worked the first try. My dad, going back to that civic involvement, always said most people run for office the first time. They do not win. So I was kind of prepared for that. So we had that moment to be like, oh my gosh, I won. And then you have all those great ideas, all those conversations with people on the doors, and it's like, I can start to do these things now. So, and I'm really excited to say that in the short time I've been on city council, I think, you know, if I were just a community member now, I could say, actually, I do see my voice and my views fairly well represented on the council, which is something that couldn't be said, you know, four short years ago.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Do you have thoughts around specific supports that felt particularly helpful in the process of running or in the, you know, when you were making the decision to run, like what pieces in your opinion need to be present in order to kind of bring this agenda to fruition for someone or like what is helpful?
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, one of the things for running that is something that it's a massive privilege that I will always go back to is I had a 9 to 5 job that was very respectful of my time. So on the weekends, I can knock doors. After hours, I can knock doors. I did not have a child at the time. I didn't have to worry about child care. So the ability to knock doors and have those face-to-face conversations I think were really important. And that's that comes from a massive place of privilege. I also did have because I was active in my ward Democratic committee, I had a few old hands as as they're called. So people who, you know, one person who's been in Medford, you know, for 75 years, could really speak to just the history of politics and things like that. And he was always willing, some of you may know him, Len Gliana, so he was always willing to just lend his historical perspective, which didn't always exactly align with my politics, but just like having that to be able to listen to, I think, and really understanding where I was running in a way I didn't before, I think was really important. So probably those two things, time, and if you can, an old hand, as they're called.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Is there like a blueprint, so to speak, for the person who may not have those types of connections? Is there a space where they can engage to kind of get the lay of the land if they wanted to?
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, I mean, I think if, you know, depending, I'm not sure how active the Republican Party is in Medford, but I know the Democratic Party, there are ward committees, and that's a great way, you know, it's a great conduit just for those political conversations. You will, if you want, you can run to attend the caucus, and at the caucus, there's going to be hundreds, I'm sorry, there'll be the caucus, and there'll be the convention. At the convention, there's going to be hundreds of people like you. So even though they might not be from Medford, they're people who kind of understand the lay of the land of local politics. That's really great. Boards and commissions, if you have the time to be able to dedicate that, or just, you know, watch the city council meeting, watch a school committee, watch a ZBA meeting. It can absolutely feel like they're speaking a different language at first, But you start to kind of understand, like, what are the issues people are talking about? What are the issues Councilors are talking about? What are the issues residents are talking about? Because they're not always the same thing. And just kind of dip your toe in that way. There's also great, there's free trainings, they're mine, it's escaping me right now. The free trainings I can't think of right now, but one I actually did emerge, which is training for democratic women. I did a boot camp for that. So that's something else that was really helpful. And that gave information about you know what you need to do for fundraising and you know things you need to know here's how to pick. or narrow down your, you know, your five policy points that you want to talk about on the doors. And that was also just really helpful for the sense that I was in this room with like 40 other women who also wanted to do this, what feels like a crazy thing. So that was just like a network to be able to go back to, too. So I think there's Try to learn what's going on by popping into a meeting. Look for those training opportunities. There's also some great books. I think I read a book that's been around. It's kind of old. It may be 20 years old at this point. But it's literally called How to Win a Local Election. And some of this stuff isn't going to apply because it's written by someone not in Medford. I think they were in Texas or something. But there's some stuff that now is a total no-brainer, but then wouldn't have even thought of. Yeah, look for meetings. Google is your friend. Look for free trainings. There's lots of resources out there. It all takes time though, right? And we're not, not all of us have the privilege of time. Sure.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. No, I think when you were saying that your first time running, we don't have ward representation in Medford, so you were running against like a whole, you know, you had to get the votes of the whole city to win. I think that's like pretty remarkable. I think, you know, one of our focuses of the podcast is sort of thinking about equity in Medford and how we're sort of, how we, you know, what we're noticing in this like move towards increased equity in the city. And I think it sounds like the city is feeling that too and their ability to elect you as well. Absolutely. Yeah, one thing we wanted to ask you about, I know that you had mentioned this maybe has stalled a little bit, but the gender equity ordinance, if you could describe what that is and what's happening with it.
[Nicole Morell]: Sure, so the Gender Equity Ordinance was something that actually a lot of surrounding communities passed as early as the 80s. And it's something that when it was passed in the 80s, it was called the Women's Commission or some form of that. And then as we updated it for present times, Gender Equity Commission. But just understanding that in all ways, different genders are represented in city views in ways they might not be. with the current elected bodies. So it was a way of empowering folks, giving them the opportunity for a new boarding commission that they can look through things through the lens of gender equity, whether it's a new policy that school committee or city council is passing. And not to say that they would have power over that, but they would be a board that would be organized in this intention. And as this work goes on, they could say, hey, let's reach out to the city council and say, we have some thoughts on this. Whereas right now you might just have individuals that if they're paying attention can say, oh, this thing, you know, it's harmful, this is important, and something like that. So it's just establishing a new commission in the city. It's something that we actually haven't taken up yet this year. We've got a lot of stuff we're moving on, and that one's been, it's been a little challenging as far as, like, how much power we can give it, how much power folks want to give that body, because, I mean, I think there's, There's some bodies that actually can subpoena as a women's commission and things like that. So I think we're just trying to find the right balance of, we want to design it so it's a board that people who might be new to boards and commissions would be involved with, because I think, and they're doing important work, these people, but I think we tend to see a lot of the same people, you know, In these spaces in Medford and any city that they have the time to volunteer, they have the capacity to volunteer for these things, but you're not getting this representative view that you'd like. So we're trying we had been trying to design it in a way that we can make sure we have a representative from each board in the city plus 1 and things like that. And it just. It just got a little bit into the weeds. And I think we're just trying to find the opportunity where we can pull it back up. And I think one of the things we're waiting on there is just not having our own city solicitor right now and really wanting that like in-house opinion on something that's kind of like as a very, very specific aim. And we don't want to copy and paste maybe from something that was passed in Somerville in 1984 because, you know, It's almost 40 years since then. So, it's still on the radar. It's still important, but we just, it's something that unfortunately when you want to do it right, it can take a lot of time.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. So, it sounds like it's a commission that would oversee like new policies or how policies are made to be like explicit about gender equity.
[Nicole Morell]: It's really a commission to make sure that, yeah, you know, historically it was a commission or when these other seas passed, it was commissioned to make sure women had a voice when they often didn't have a voice in politics. And now in present day, it's, you know, it's expanding that umbrella and making sure those folks, you know, those underrepresented folks, you know, whatever their gender identity is making sure that they have a voice and just specifically focused on these issues. So yeah, and it may be stuff that isn't, you know, even talked about at school committee or city council, it may go the other way where they say, oh, we have this policy that we think Medford should adopt. So it's kind of like, I think the idea is a two way street. And I think it's also, you know, just fostering maybe it's events or bringing in speakers. So just kind of, you know, building that group, probably not dissimilar for some of the ways the Human Rights Commission works, where I think it's, you know, having these certain focuses, sometimes it's policy, sometimes it's more, you know, broad events and things like that, and just trying to adjust what the needs are, and also what the commission wants to focus on.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I'm on the Charter Review Commission, and it seems like there is no mention of gender or women in our current charter. And we had a conversation just about how There's like that, you know, since that hasn't been reviewed in so long, there's a way that the city is doing things like, you know, that might not reflect what we have in our kind of policy, but it would be great to sort of update how those things look on paper for sure.
[Nicole Morell]: Right. And that's a really good point, because I think, you know, I think this was something that was brought up in the debates, the last session on the council was kind of like, we have a woman mayor, we have this number of women politicians, this is an outdated thing, we don't need this anymore. And I think you bring up a really good point, Danielle, where it's like, this is the kind of random bips and bobs that actually, you know, it's like, oh, we forgot to write about women, or, you know, this kind of stuff. But it's just like, you know, sometimes we're on scary times and wouldn't it be great to codify that, that we exist and we're allowed to hold power in the city and things like that, that, you know, it doesn't seem like we have to do, maybe we do.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Allowed slash expected slash built in space, codifying equity.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, exactly. It was really nice to see at the State of the City, all three, like three women being the speakers, plus Terry. It was a cool thing.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Danielle and I were texting each other. We're like, do you see this? There are only women running Medford tonight. Like, I'm not sure what's happening with the ordinance, but we should talk about it.
[Nicole Morell]: Right. Yeah. I think that was intentional. I'm just really wanting to put that on display. The school committee has always had, not always, but in recent years has had a fair number, if not mostly women representatives, but it wasn't always the case on city council. We're still quite underrepresented. It's two out of seven. But just seeing that incremental shift and then seeing that the positions of power on each body and then the mayor, I think it's really important, like optics matter. And I think, yeah, it was really good to see that.
[Chelli Keshavan]: I mean, that's so, people segue us so nicely. We were, I think one of our additional questions kind of speaks to your sense of impact in this role as president or like what your hopes around impact were versus like maybe what has happened and thoughts on like the space between those pieces or maybe there's not space between those pieces. But yeah, just thinking about, How you've leveraged the role to sort of push the agenda to your point to the, you know, reflecting the values that you were wanting to see spoken up for.
[Nicole Morell]: kind of two main roles, and then like a lot of unofficial roles, but the two main roles are to chair the meetings. And then also you essentially set the agenda. I decide, you know, or I mean, I try to decide, like, I'll talk to vices or bears, but, you know, and of course, I'll ask folks for what kind of meetings or what subcommittee meetings they want. But, you know, I set the calendar for what our committees as a whole are. So that, you know, it helps me, you know, planning out, it has to come from the council, but then planning out when we're going to have these meetings. So it's in some sense, it's kind of an agenda setting role. I'm not going to ignore fellow Councilors if we pass a resolution for committee of the whole, we're going to have that. But it does, it's a little bit agenda setting as far as like priority or how soon or making sure things move along. So as far as chair, I mean, my hope was, it's just like, making the council a little bit more, you know, comfortable place for people to speak up. I mean, we're still not quite there. I mean, even just the building, just by design of the building itself, it's very intimidating. You know, these giant high ceilings, the lectern, you know, you've got cameras in your face, and the TV screens right there, you have to stare at yourself as you're talking, and that can be really challenging. But just making sure to try to make it clear that this is a space where we're going to be respectful. We're not going to yell at each other as much as we can. And everyone is welcome to speak, which has always been the case. But saying it's welcoming and doing the things to try to make it welcome are two different things. I'm absolutely not perfect on it. It's very challenging to manage people that are passionate about things and really want to be heard. So it's a fine balancing act of, not trying to cut anyone off, but you're kind of always waiting a little bit, you know, for not someone to cross a line, but it's like, you know, I don't, you know, no one's getting talked bad about, no one's getting like yelled at as much as I can stop it. So it's trying to manage just people who are really passionate about things, you know, all matter of things and making sure people feel heard and we move along in a timely manner and things like that. And then, yeah, going back to the agenda setting, it's just making sure that the issues that we're focused on get moved along, that we're able to just schedule those meetings. And we do keep a pretty robust calendar. You know, we, the council meets in some form, like usually at least twice a week, you know, and everyone else has a full-time job in addition to that. So it's challenging, but that's how we're trying to move, or I'm trying to move, I think, some of the more progressive ideals forward. Of course, you have to have a progressive majority to get those resolutions passed to then schedule those meetings, which is where we are now, but then just making sure that we're actually having those meetings that are called for and the right people are invited and we can get the insight and information we need to move forward.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Yeah, I guess we're wondering also if there's anything that you're particularly excited about that is in the works or anything that you want to update us on about what's happening.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah. So, I mean, we've made progress. We've actually advanced some really big things in the past few weeks. We finalized some things that have been worked on, honestly, for years at this point. One was the Housing Stability Notification Ordinance, which is a series of paperwork that landlords have to reside so folks, the renters know the resources available to them. So, it's just, you know, Ideally, just a minor extra step of paperwork. So renters know the resources that should they, you know, ever, you know, be housing insecure or anything like that. They know the legal resources. They know that public offering resources and things like that. The other was the CCOPS ordinance, which is citizen control over public surveillance use. that's something that's been in the works, I wanna say at least for four years, honestly, it's probably longer. And very simply, this is just asking anyone in city departments who are asking to use new surveillance technology to come before the city council, tell us what it is, provide a report by the end of it. And the city council does have to vote on it, but understanding that we are not experts, we're not claiming to be experts, but I know I voted for it because I believe there's power in knowing what's out there, knowing what kind of tech is being used. And I think there is, you know, some of this, a lot of this tech that's coming out, you know, can be questionable and it has a whole lot of issues. So understanding what is being out there, what is being asked to be used, and then also how it's being used after, you know, if it's approved, getting that report, just a very, a yearly, very short report on how it's being used.
[Danielle Balocca]: Is that beyond like body-worn cameras for police?
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, so I mean, it's stuff, the idea is that it's things you can't even think of, right? I mean, I think we all, not to say we all, you know, if you do digging, it's, maybe this is like an oversimplification of it, but I think, you know, if we think of like, say, pharmaceutical companies, they have this great new drug, and they bring it to doctors and are like, cool, let me give this to my patients. You know, I believe, stories I've read, things I understand, similar stuff may happen with, you know, just city departments that some company comes out with XYZ tech, it's gonna solve all your problems, here you go. And I think the hope is that, you know, the city council and just in general, just the public, learning that XYZ tech, you know, may be put in, we can pause and say, hey, hasn't been tested, is this actually going to do what we want it to do? Or, you know, just letting people know it exists. Because I think, you know, there are issues with surveillance technology, as we know, it's, It's notoriously not good at all as far as identifying facial features of black and brown individuals. It's developed and tested by white folks, so it's like the technology has a number of issues. So I think just understanding that stuff as it comes forward. So there are a lot of things that, things that kind of count as different types of surveillance that are in use by the city that were exempted, you know, just making sure that like it's stuff related to like elections and poll pads and things like that. So it's not just what the police are using, you know, it could be some new thing from the parking department. So just understanding like surveillance tech is kind of increasingly everywhere and just making folks aware of what our city is using or maybe asking to use.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Sure. I mean, I sort of saw CCOPS as an opportunity for Medford to kind of choose best practice in setting a precedent for what is inevitably coming and just wrapping our municipal sort of civic minds around how tech will interact moving forward. Exactly.
[Nicole Morell]: Right. And this is something that is like one of my main frustrations that I speak about and some other Councilors speak about where federal policy, state level policy is kind of woefully behind the eight ball as far as tech. So we're left, at the municipal level, we're just like, okay, what can we do? If they're not gonna write something about privacy and surveillance and security in Congress, or they're not gonna do it at the state house, what can we do here? And I think it was important for me to say, this isn't a comment necessarily on anything that's happening now. It's just understanding that technology that we can't even conceive of is going to come down and we have to figure out how to deal with it. Otherwise, they're making the decisions for us.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Yeah, just building in checks and balances. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Nicole Morell]: And then the other big thing we just passed. And again, this two of these just passed for first reading, so they have to go over a second and third reading. There's generally usually not a hold up between those but is the affordable housing trust. So that gives additional kind of like buying and spending power within the CPA. So that's exciting to that gives us more power to And basically gives us the ability to put funds into an affordable housing trust to buy or finance affordable housing and just really increase the affordable housing opportunities within the city.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And if I'm not mistaken, affordable housing also sort of was tethered to like efficiency and sort of climate stuff in terms of making buildings like as, I'm lacking the words here.
[Nicole Morell]: Green.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Resilient. As green and resilient as they can be.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, I think as we're seeing this stuff come down, you know, as this is like kind of like the newer policy written or suggested, you're seeing that folded in as much as possible. So, definitely.
[Danielle Balocca]: Love it. Those are exciting things for sure. Yeah. We do a lot. Yeah, we're busy. Yeah, no, and I, when you were talking too about sort of your role in kind of maintaining order in the chambers during meetings, it's something that I have noticed, like I think that I started watching city council meetings, like at the beginning of COVID, I think lots of people are becoming increasingly engaged. And it was, it seems like a hard job. I've noticed like though a difference over, you know, over the last couple of months and like how, you know, I think it's like something to. Thank you for being able to step in at those moments and it's probably not easy.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah. I appreciate it. I'm trying and I don't think there's not a night that goes by after a meeting that I don't sit there and go, oh, I should have done this or that sooner or said this. Sometimes people say things that you can't ever anticipate and you're just not ready to respond because you're on your toes. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Awesome. Well, thank you. Is there anything else that you want to plug before we wrap up?
[Nicole Morell]: Um, I mean, just the fact that, you know, city council meetings. They're on TV, they're on Zoom. I know they can be a bit dry, but for folks who might not be paying attention, I really encourage you to. I think we all tend to have, a lot of folks have kind of like that qualifying event that they're like, you know, I wasn't paying attention and now this happened and I dialed in. I'd love for folks to be involved before that kind of like transformative thing that's upsetting like pulls them in. You know, we work for you and also just to, let folks know. I think sometimes what we actually have powers to do on city council can get a little lost. So we focus on zoning, approval of the budget and ordinances. And then of course, you know, if there's an issue that we can be in conduit to a city department to letting them know, we absolutely can do that. But those are our big three things. We have a few things here and there as far as like small approvals and stuff like that. But those are our big three things. So if you have something that you care about in those areas and ordinances can pretty much cover anything. So there's probably something you care about related to that. That's us. And we're always, always, always, always eager to hear from people because there's a lot of people who, not a lot, but I mean, there's a small amount of people who have been very good at getting the city council's ear for a very long time. And we know there's many more people in the city. So we'd love to hear from everyone.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Great.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you so much.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Of course. Thank you guys. Hopefully we'll talk to you again soon. Yeah, definitely. Appreciate the chance to come on. Thanks.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrik Idonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites. Never Bites. Good job.
|
total time: 19.01 minutes total words: 1452 |
|||