total time: 25.02 minutes
total words: 1186
[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. 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 guests.
[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. Alright, thanks so much for joining us today. If you don't mind introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and just a bit about who you are.
[Matt Leming]: Matt Leming, he, him, his. I moved to Medford in 2020. I'm a member of the Community Preservation Committee, and until recently the uh, charter study committee. I'm a, uh, scientist down at Mass General studying Alzheimer's diagnostics using artificial intelligence. I'm also a, uh, reserve naval officer, uh, commissioned last year, and I'm a candidate for Medford City Council.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks Matt. And I think the last part is what we mainly want to talk about today, your candidacy for City Council. But before we get to that, if you could just share with us your favorite place to eat in Medford and what you like to eat there.
[Matt Leming]: Oasis Café. Coffee and Balina de Echuva, I am there almost. Every morning I was actually just there before I came here. So it's just a nice little place on Harvard and Maine. I just go there to read a magazine. They have amazing coffee. I also need to give shout outs to Uh, Bob's, May's cafe. I always get Chinese takeout from there and Alexander's. So I would say that those four places probably make up like 70% of my diet these days.
[Danielle Balocca]: It's a real South Medford feel. Yeah. We just, so Oasis comes up a lot with like all ages. I think I interviewed a seven year old who also is their favorite place was Oasis. I also, Chili Garden comes up a lot and I finally tried them this weekend and it was like, some of the most incredible Chinese food I've ever had.
[Chelli Keshavan]: We have plans. I love it. So maybe let's jump in. If you could tell us, Matt, a little bit about your sort of path to local politics and the pieces that brought you to this moment.
[Matt Leming]: Right. So I moved to Medford during COVID. It was just after I finished my PhD. I got a job here and I immediately fell in love with the place. It was Like, I just really like the vibe, I really like the people, and I started looking around thinking, okay, you know, I'm a postdoc, we don't really make a whole lot of money as really career scientists, I was renting with two roommates, and I started looking around on Zillow, like, okay, if I want to buy a med for, like, what are my options? And I couldn't really find anything below like $600,000, which for my salary would require, like, it would require, the down payment for that loan would require more than one year salary for me, 6% mortgage rates. And I was kind of thinking, okay, what is happening here? So, I got involved in a lot of affordable housing activism. I ended up joining a local Unitarian church and with the folks there just started getting involved in groups like Housing Medford, Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, and eventually getting to positions where we were Just constantly annoying and talking with city Councilors about passing different ordinances like the Affordable Housing Trust Getting involved in state-level advocacy that would discourage Speculation housing speculation by big real estate companies, you know just through through you you I put on and well me and As other members of the Church of Social Justice Committee, we put on a forum about affordable housing, just trying to educate people on these issues. It's a very complex topic. It spans just like, you know, it sort of, there's this weird intersection, affordable housing, between like just the global economy, the demand side of it, as well as just the very local city council level stuff, so building affordable housing. And so the goal of that was really to educate people. And so the day after the 2022 elections, a couple of the city councilors approached me. They said, look, we see that you're really involved in this. We see that you're really passionate about these issues. Would you be interested in potentially Running for City Council and my initial reaction was like, oh, okay. Well I'm not totally sure but you know, I talked with I talked with a lot of people about it. Just the prop just the very weird back-end process of like campaigning, getting like door-knocking, getting the technical infrastructure up. And I said, okay, you know, I'm a young person. I have generally a lot of energy. I have the ability to sit in committee meetings for several hours at a time. So I said, okay, yeah, let's do this. So that is, yeah, that is how I decided to get involved.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Nice. So I love that affordable housing is absolutely a priority insofar as the work that hopefully will come. Can you speak to sort of additional change priorities if you were elected?
[Matt Leming]: Yep. So the three, okay. So the three parts of my platform that have been really trying to push. So I've been studying a lot more than this, but the three parts of it is affordable housing, which I just talked about. Medford needs to build more. We need to make it so that people can live here without putting 70% of their income towards rent. We also need a way to pay for that. So one of Medford's biggest problems right now is that there's not enough money coming into the city. Like if you look around the city, there's just a lot of storefronts that are sitting empty. A part of my platform is a commercial vacancy tax to discourage that kind of speculative squatting. And generally trying to make Medford a place where people want to go in the evenings, people want to spend time. The third part of that is inclusivity. So trying to make local politics in Medford generally a place that more people around the city feel like they can easily enter into. So when I first moved here, I, you know, I'm a person that really likes to be involved in wherever I'm at. I was just a student government nerd just all throughout school in my very, um, it's probably overly extended educational period. I was just involved in committees all throughout that. And so I was like, okay, well I want to get involved in real government now, you know, like local stuff. Um, and my experience with that was I submitted, like, you know, the city put out a couple of advertisements about, you know, apply to the city board or whatever. Um, I can't even remember which city board it was at the time. And I very carefully prepared a resume. I submitted it to them and nothing happened. It was like putting a piece of paper into a black hole, no response, nothing. From the city's perspective, an experience like that is really not that important. Like it's just, it's barely a blip on their radar, but to somebody who wants to get involved, who's not necessarily, doesn't necessarily know what's going on, that experience just is, what that says to them is, okay, there is a very high barrier to entry. I need to know people. I need to like network around the right circles. And that really should not be the experience of people who want to get involved. Right now, the people on city boards are generally, you know, I work with them a lot, they're wonderful people, but they're generally all like sort of know each other, come from like the same groups. And my goal is to try to reach out to pockets of people or engage people who know those pockets of people and say, okay, you know, we don't want you to just feel welcome. We want to actively reach out and say, okay, you know, can you get this person who doesn't really know a whole lot about the city and just have them apply to a board, have them apply to a committee, have them engaged in events that gives them a voice in local politics. Like this is a hugely important topic. It affects our lives. Much more than I think a lot of people realize so that's One of my goals as a city councilor.
[Danielle Balocca]: I know We were on the Charter study committee together till recently and that I think you described that process perfectly. We're like I I was like, oh, well, I must not have gotten into this. And then I was notified like, oh yeah, you have like two days to decide if you want to do this. And then like noticing like the other people on the board, like, you're right. These are people that are like on lots of other things. Like they're known to the city. They're all kind of like known entities. And my, my, um, understanding is that they're just kind of appointed by the mayor. And so like, definitely like some kind of different, more inclusive process. And I think every one of us was white in that meeting too. So like, Um, you know, like very smart people motivated for that type of work, but also like we could use some other, right.
[Matt Leming]: You know, and I mean, there's, I mean, there's, um, sort of a lot, a lot of areas just where there's work to be done there. So, you know, I, I consider myself to be a progressive. Um, but I'm also like. One of my goals really in doing this is to try to build bridges between people in the city. So one thing that I hear a lot, you know, as a relatively recent transplant to the city, my method for getting to know more about Medford history, Medford politics, is just to go up to people who've lived here for a lot longer than me and say, Oh, hey, just, you know, tell me about this or I'll say something that's like, just my working theory of how something works. And then one of the older residents will say, Oh, that, that doesn't work. They try that 20 years and I'm like, I'll just listen. You know, so my, my really my way of sort of knowing what's going on is just to kind of like listen to people, get them talking. There were some listening workshops that we had in grad school and they've been incredibly helpful just for communication for me in general. What, like the stories that I kind of hear around Medford is that there's sort of like, there's what people call old Medford. So I'm friends here with people whose families have been around since like the 1600s, um, like multi-generational or like lifelong residents. And I'm friends here with people who they moved here relatively recently. Medford is one of the fastest growing cities in America. There was a recent article about that. And sort of what people are like what people tell me is that in terms of politics There's like these two groups tend to clash what I really want to want to do is to reach out to the is reach out to residents that have been here a while and residents that, you know, are more recent because that's just the reality that we live in. A lot of younger people do tend to live in multiple cities, I think, you know, but they're still stakeholders. They still need to be involved and say, you know, let's try to make this work for everybody. Um, you know, I, I'm a Unitarian, so I very much care about making sure that anybody from any race, religion, gender identity, sexuality feels engaged, needed, in the process, supported. I'm also a military officer. I feel like it's very important to me to make sure that veterans, first responders, et cetera, know that they're appreciated and know that you know, I really want to have them in the fold. And so that's, and I'm very aware that there's been sort of conflicts going on there in the past, but like, I really just want to try to fix, like, heal that, naive as I may sound, and say, okay, um, You know, we need change in Medford. We need to build things. We've been in gridlock for a while. Not a whole lot has been built. What can we do to make that work for everybody?
[Danielle Balocca]: Right. And like these issues like affordable housing, I feel like if we're looking at it as like two sides of the city that I could see both having a perspective of supporting that, right? Like the people that have lived here forever being priced out of it, or the new generation is not being able to live here, right? And younger folks like yourself, like wanting to wanting to own property in this city. Both of those groups are being excluded.
[Matt Leming]: Affordable housing does tend to be one of those. It is a very polarizing topic and it's something that needs to be approached. handle carefully. So, you know, young people, we don't want to be paying like 70 plus percent of our salaries and rent. We want to be able to invest and buy. Um, I went to the senior center the other day for one of their events. I started talking to people and they were saying, you know, we don't want our, like, we don't want our home prices to be completely devalued. So, you know, you're talking about affordable housing. Well, this is our entire life's income and that. That's their nest egg. It's a matter of balance. I think something that everybody can sort of get behind in terms of affordable housing is we do need to build more. Rezoning in the city is incredibly important. Like there's affordable housing that can be built on top of, for instance, storefronts in Medford Square and South Medford. And so the rezoning process is critical in making sure that there is money in Medford to actually pay for those affordable housing projects when they come around. So, recently the City Council, with a lot of lobbying from Housing Medford, passed the Affordable Housing Trust, and this is basically a pile of money that can be used to build affordable housing. like a lot of other municipalities had that. It took us a while to get there, but now we're there. And so the idea, what needs to be done is to come up with revenue streams to sort of build up that pile. And then once rezoning is done, once, you know, that process happens and there are people really trying to push that through, then we are actually able to build housing in more places that residents need it without necessarily devaluing the properties of seniors who've invested their entire life's income into their property. So there are ways to make this work for everybody. that city, that city councils can affect.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. That's so interesting. Um, so it sounds like you're, you've been involved in a lot of, um, committees and other groups in the city. Is there any, any work that you want to amplify that you're involved in right now?
[Matt Leming]: Well, okay, so, I mean, you're involved. You're involved in this as well. And I resigned when I began the campaign, but I would say that the Medford Charter Study Committee is hugely important. It's also probably one of the more boring I want to say tasks most misunderstood things but part of my platform and It's not it's not front and center because I'm aware that most people don't really aren't really too aware of like what the charter is Or it's important, but the time I did spend on the Medford Charter Study Committee I realized how critical it is to really, you know changing things in the city So But basically taking a step back, Medford has a charter, which is sort of like its governing document, you know, the constitution for the city. And so far what we've kind of, what we did on the Medford Charter Study Committee was we realized that Medford's charter, you know, it's uh, just not a very well written document. You know, it's, it's very incomplete. If you read the whole document, you don't really know how the city government in Medford works. A lot of it defaults to state law in many places. And so it needs to be, uh, reviewed. It needs to be, um, uh, changed potentially and as a city councilor I've kind of glued myself to supporting the work of the Charter Study Committee just because you know what You know, it's a committee that is taking expert feedback. It's a committee that's taking public feedback to understand, you know, just review all these issues like do we need at-large award-based representation? Do we, like, should there be term limits? Should we have a strong mayoral system. What should the relationship between the city council and the mayor look like? And these issues are very critical for sort of forming the political landscape within Medford. So that is a piece of work that I would really like to emphasize and really like to point out the importance of it. Just Generally speaking, the work that's being done by the Community Preservation Committee is also very important there. So, they're overseeing the state-funded affordable housing projects, which is Walkling Court, and really trying to get more units into that and collecting public feedback for doing that. I'm on the Community Preservation Committee, so that is a project that is hugely important as well. Really, any affordable housing projects that do come up in Medford, because they only come along once every few years, and when they do hit, it's very important to have the city be ready to support that as well as they can.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. And Charter Study Committee, we're having an event on June 8th. This episode might come out after that, but we will have one also in the fall, I believe, too. So something to look out for. And like you were saying before, the importance of entry into city government by applying and working on some of those boards. And you're right. I think that the charter has a lot to do with lots of people's complaints about the city, and they have no idea that the way that our charter is written or not written, whether the case may be that it has a lot to do with what people maybe have. observations about their dissatisfaction with some of the way that our city government works. So I've learned a lot from it. And it's, I encourage people to.
[Matt Leming]: Yes. The meetings are public. Anybody can attend. They're very educational. Okay. And you know, we're not, I don't think it, everybody should be expected to be an expert on, uh, municipal charters, but just attending one or two meetings, it becomes pretty, uh, pretty eyeopening. Um, But yes, as a city councilor, I really want to, I will support the work of the Charter Study Committee that they're doing in the future. So at this point, like,
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, yes, and if people can't make it to our event there is an episode from last year with Melvin McDonald Who's the chair of our study committee? She's got a brain for this stuff that I don't so really important. I know it was amazing.
[Chelli Keshavan]: I also just I appreciate you noting that that I
[Matt Leming]: document is incomplete and possibly poorly written because I think when a lot of folks look at legalese it's really easy to think like well I probably just don't get it and the capital necessary to say this is this is a mess it needs to be rewritten is helpful yeah no it uh I mean when people say like when people say you know charter review they think oh you want to change everything about the city and it's like okay so you know we the charter should be changed but we're not even like we're not even necessarily suggesting like like substantial political changes it should just be better written you know the document should be in a state where if somebody reads the entire thing and they're not an expert in state law they should be able to know how metford operates and it's not currently in that state i think our charter is like what like a couple pages of that and most charters are like
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, there's no mention of like women in the charter or even the school committee.
[Matt Leming]: I think so just like lots of stuff Yeah, well we could talk about this forever, but um, thank you for sharing so
[Danielle Balocca]: just have a couple kind of more personal questions about you. So you do seem like a community oriented guy, like you've shared a couple of just like, sounds like you kind of immediately attached yourself to some like community building groups in the city and, and the Unitarian Church. So I wonder kind of what you most appreciate about the Medford community.
[Matt Leming]: Really, it's The people that are willing to dedicate so much of their free time to making this place run. I mean, y'all are a great example of that. You're running a podcast just about Medford topics. Not to be taken for granted like the you know, their local journalism has been decimated in recent years and just having Outlets that people know what's going on. It's usually important. There was the former chair of the Medford Charter Study Committee Laurel she recently resigned to take a job in City Hall, she spent so much of her time making a community arts center happen. There's just different groups like Safe Medford, Housing Medford, there's all those city boards we were talking about earlier. Those are by and large, a few of them have minor stipends, but by and large, it's people dedicating their free time just to make the city run. that is some like, I'd say like, that's what attracted me most about it. Just like the amount of people who really want to just dedicate a huge portion of their lives to making this place happen. So that is what I appreciate about it.
[Danielle Balocca]: Um, and could you share with us something about you that might surprise us?
[Matt Leming]: Okay.
[Danielle Balocca]: Um, we got a little teaser before we started.
[Matt Leming]: This was something that we were sort of, that I was like, kind of, that I was kind of like kind of like, I was like, okay. Um, so I, you know, I'm a product of an military family. I went to 13 different schools across five States before I turned 18. So I've kind of been, I, you know, there's a lot of moving around there in high school. I. was voted my, my superlative was most unique, which was something, it was something that I really, that I was really proud of. Cause like, you know, I, I tend to dress like in a very like standard nonchalant way, but I was always hanging out with art students in high school. And so when I got the most unique superlative, like my best friend was just kind of jealous. I was like, you don't even dress weird. So I was like, yeah. So it was a point of pride for me.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Cool. Begs the question, what does unique mean?
[Matt Leming]: Well, yeah. So the full story with that one was in high school, my first involvement in student politics, I'm kind of hesitant to even share this story, but basically there was I ran for student body president on a joke campaign speech and it was a speech that was like broadcast four times across classroom TVs and I ended up like just memorizing a speech staring straight at the camera and just like saying and just saying like okay my platform is to make, if you vote for me, Matt Leming, we will have puppies and kittens rain from the sky. We will have three-day weekends every week. And it was such a unique experience because I think everybody talked about, everybody was talking about it for weeks afterwards. I won the election and It was just such an interesting experience for me because before that I was kind of like this quiet kid in the class. Like, you know, I was in honors courses, but like I was saying, I was hanging out with art students, so I didn't really, like, know them too well. Just not, like, kind of nonchalant. But, like, after that, it was, like, suddenly, like, everybody was, like, wanting to get to know me. And, you know, I was, like, the head of student government, so it was just, like, this such a weird 180. So yeah, that was my, no, just, and I did, I worked my teeth out in that role, even though it was a Joe campaign speech, I spent a lot of time, um, as a student body president in my high school. Yeah.
[Chelli Keshavan]: I mean, speaking of campaigns, do you have, thoughts to share with folks around your upcoming work and potential ways to get involved, jump in, contribute?
[Matt Leming]: Yes. So, you know, if you want to get involved, volunteer, then, you know, mattLeming.com, there is a volunteer signup form if you would like. Something that's very important to mention about local campaigns is that, you know, the people running these things, we're most of us are not personally wealthy people. I mean, you know, I'm a, I'm a postdoc. We're actually, I'm actually doing some work in union organizing down at Mass General, um, because we're not paid a whole lot at all. Um, and we're not personally wealthy people. So, you know, if you, if anything in this sounded appealing to the listeners and please uh, donate if you don't think you have the time to volunteer, um, or just, just donate to whatever your favorite local candidates are. It's hugely important, um, to us. These things cost $25,000 to run a local campaign. Um, and you know, if neither of those things, and please vote November 7th, um, that is the general election date. So, you know, it's, local politics, hugely important, affects a lot. Generally speaking, the odd-numbered election years don't see quite as much turnout. We would really like to see more, as many people as possible. So, yeah, that is my kind of plug, ways for people to get involved.
[Danielle Balocca]: Is there a primary for the municipal election?
[Matt Leming]: There is. So that's September 12th. It's So the, the primary is a little bit weird because I believe, so the way it works is that if there are, there are seven city council seats, if there are, um, less than 14, if there are 14 or fewer declared candidates, then they don't have a primary and go to the elections office to like, but I believe this is how it works. If there are more than there are like, you know, you know, 16 or so declared candidates, then they will have a primary on September 12th. The top 14 of those then go on to the generals. So in election years where like you know, it's like a state rep level thing. The primary is like the most important election. Um, but in you in municipal elections, it's the general election on the 7th. That's really the most important one. So yes, vote on the primary as well though. That would be very much appreciated. September 12th and then November 7th.
[Danielle Balocca]: Oh, thanks Matt. Thank you. Yeah. Well good. And good luck in November.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much.
[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 Hendrick Guidonis. 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.
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total time: 25.02 minutes total words: 1186 |
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