total time: 19.16 minutes
total words: 1823
total time: 0.5 minutes
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[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. All right, thank you so much for being with us today. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name and pronouns and just a bit about who you are.
[Richard Caraviello]: Sure. My name is Rick Caraviello, and my pronoun would be he, him. And I'm a current Method City Councilor. I'm going on my sixth term. And I'm a current candidate for Mayor of the City of Method.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. And we are going to talk much more about your campaign for mayor. But before we do that, we just want to ask you the 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?
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, I have several places I eat. If you ever met me, I'm kind of a bigger guy. So I don't think I've missed many meals. But I pretty much try to frequent everywhere. A lot of the owners of the restaurants are my friends over the years. I go to the vault, I go to Razzo's, Bocelli's, Avellino's. So I pretty much hit the game at all times. Probably, I probably do Razzo's a little more than some of the other places. And it's food is always pretty good there.
[Danielle Balocca]: What's that?
[Richard Caraviello]: It's food is always very good there.
[Danielle Balocca]: Lots of Italian I'm hearing there. Do you have a favorite dish at any of those places?
[Richard Caraviello]: No, no, I always try to look at the specials first and get something that I don't have at home. And no matter what restaurant I go to, that's where I always look first.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. I did notice you're having a fundraiser at Casey's in Somerville.
[Richard Caraviello]: I, we, we had that last week.
[Danielle Balocca]: Oh, you did. Yeah.
[Richard Caraviello]: I, um, that was last week.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Oh, see, that already happened. I, I actually had my engagement party there, uh, many years ago and we, I used to live like right next door, but I was wondering how, uh, why you picked a place in Somerville.
[Richard Caraviello]: Uh, they were owned by, it's owned by a method family.
[Danielle Balocca]: Oh, interesting.
[Richard Caraviello]: I don't know if you knew that.
[Danielle Balocca]: I didn't know that.
[Richard Caraviello]: Nice people there. And that's why, that's why. And I'm also having another event. Um, in a couple of weeks, women for Rick Caraviello. Over at the board on October 5th.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great, awesome. We'll make sure to put that in our show notes so people can.
[Chelli Keshavan]: All right, Shelley, I'll hand it over to you. Yeah, so let's jump in. Rick, maybe you could start out by teaching us a little bit about the motivation behind running for mayor and some of the thought processes that have gone into your decision to consider candidacy.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you. Well, um, I've been on the council for, uh, this would be my sixth term, but it would be close to 12 years. And I just, I'm not happy with the direction that the city is going right now. I think I could, uh, I think I can do a better job, um, with, uh, things that are happening or not happening. I'm a little disappointed with, uh, We've had a tremendous building boom that's gone through the area and we didn't capitalize on it, which I don't know if you've been to Malden, see what they did in Malden. And they did that during the COVID time. Look at Assembly Square. I mean, buildings are still going up there. So Everett, I mean, and everybody has sort of passed us by. We don't have anything even in the pipeline. We're talking about a lot of stuff. but nothing has happened right now. As you can see your interest rates through the roof, um, building costs are high. And so we're seeing nothing happening here in Medford.
[Danielle Balocca]: So when you say like, um, building, you're talking about like housing business, all of the above housing.
[Richard Caraviello]: We, um, we have two 40 B projects that would probably put almost a thousand, uh, rental units on the market, which 25% of them would be affordable. And one of them is still stuck in court for three years. And the other one is sort of going through its process, but that was stuck in court for three years. And we just wasted legal fees on cases that historically cities don't win against 40B projects.
[Danielle Balocca]: And what's the role of the mayor in something like that?
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, I would assume that the mayor made the decision to challenge these in the court. It wasn't a council decision. But everybody talks about affordable housing. And unfortunately, this is the only avenue to get affordable housing is through these 40Bs.
[Danielle Balocca]: So one thing you're naming that's motivating you to run for mayor is sort of like the increase in business and building in the city. It's something that you're noticing isn't happening at the rate that you'd want it to.
[Richard Caraviello]: And that is correct. And I get calls from other people in development saying, if we come here, do we have places for our people to live? And the answer is no at the moment. But I'd say that's been a positive thing for me to run for mayor.
[Danielle Balocca]: Can you say that a little bit more, what you mean about that? There's no places for people to live.
[Richard Caraviello]: I'm sorry?
[Danielle Balocca]: Can you say what you mean about like what?
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, I get calls from, I've been getting calls from developers who want to come bring their business to Medford. And they're saying, if we come here, do we have a place for our employees to live? And housing isn't a premium in Medford. And they say, you know, when you're turning away, 800, 900, 1,000 units of permits, which are not impacting neighborhoods, that says something.
[Danielle Balocca]: And so what would you do differently?
[Richard Caraviello]: I would hope that we can get these projects back on track and get them done. I mean, we're losing millions of dollars in tax revenue by them just sitting idle. And never mind the amount of legal fees that we're spending to defend these cases that are not winnable.
[Danielle Balocca]: So these are criticisms of like our current mayor's job but what about like what would, how do you, how do you think you would approach the office or think like sort of reason like what what are kind of your priorities for what you would do as I think we should, we should have sat down and negotiated.
[Richard Caraviello]: on day one, instead of immediately sending them off to court. I mean, the one that's almost ready to come through, at the end of the day, we ended up losing 50 apartments, and we didn't really get anything out of it, other than wasting three years of nothing and lost tax revenue and building permit fees.
[Danielle Balocca]: So yeah, again, I think like, this also seems like focusing on the job that's currently being done, but like for you, where would you start? What would you wanna do if on your first day as mayor if elected?
[Richard Caraviello]: On my first day in office, first of all, I would talk to everybody in city hall first. And my thing in city hall was the word no will no longer exist. So I'm tired of hearing from people saying I go to departments and all I hear is no, no. I don't want that word no to exist anymore. Government is there to help people, not just shut the door on them and say, no, I can't do anything. The answer should be, let me see what I can do to help you. And I want to plan to redevelop areas of say Mystic Avenue is 50 years of no development there in our, you know, and then on the past election, our current we have ran on on stopping development on Mr. Gavin you and now here we are another three years later, and nothing's going on there, Mr. Gavin you was the gateway to Medford.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, you said, so I want to go back to what you were saying about City Hall when you say like, you're hearing a lot of people saying no, and that their job of government is to help. What do you think? So like, what do you think that and like, can you say more about like that? What are what is being said no to?
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, yeah, I know the mayor talks about changing the culture of City Hall. You know, we have we have so many vacant positions there. That's that, which, which is a really a big, big issue there. But, you know, we're short staffed in most of the office because when either people just aren't coming, you know, we can't hire them. And let's say when they go there, they're tired of making phone calls to departments and not even getting the phone picked up. And then when they get there, sometimes they get a little bit of attitude, but people tell them no. We don't have a city solicitor to guide us on any of our issues also. I mean, we have legal stuff piling up that sit there and do nothing.
[Danielle Balocca]: And so I do hear that like hiring across the board in lots of cities and lots of just like businesses has been difficult recently. I do wonder too about how the budget impacts that. Like, what are we able to pay people? Like, is some of this like not being able to solve problems related to financial resources that the city has?
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, it's a little bit of both. I mean, we're not known as the best payers in the municipal world, I think we have to increase the salaries of department heads in order to attract people here also. That's part of the problem. I mean, you know, you're looking for a city solicitor that, you know, you want to pay them, you know, not a lot of money and that's an issue. So, I think restructuring some salaries would have to be done, you know, going forward, not on day one, but that's a discussion that has to be had with the council because that needs council approval.
[Danielle Balocca]: And when they did vote on that in the council, did we recently vote on increasing salaries at city hall?
[Richard Caraviello]: Um, uh, some, uh, some of them did get increases, uh, some didn't.
[Danielle Balocca]: But how did you vote? Did you vote on that? And how did you vote on that?
[Richard Caraviello]: I voted in favor.
[Danielle Balocca]: In favor of increasing salaries. Yeah.
[Richard Caraviello]: I mean, let's say we don't listen to these people need to need to have a living wage and I'm in all in favor of that.
[Danielle Balocca]: Okay. Though Rick claims in this interview that he voted to increase salaries for employees of City Hall, in a April 25th City Council meeting he actually voted no to increase cost of living raises and salaries for City Hall employees. A link is provided in the show notes to those meeting minutes and the following is an audio clip of that vote.
[Nicole Morell]: 23-059, proposed wage adjustment for non-union personnel, eligible for third reading, April 25th, 2023. Do I have a motion? Approve the third reading. On the motion of Vice Chair Bears to approve the third reading, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. Yes.
[Danielle Balocca]: So, I think 1 of the things we try to focus on in this podcast is sort of the idea of equity and inclusivity among the city. And so I think it's something that we've seen change a little bit over the last couple of years, like, having more. representation in city government from folks maybe who have been less represented, like women, like folks of color, renters. I'm wondering how you see the issue of equity in Medford and sort of what your kind of goals would be in terms of increasing equity in the city.
[Richard Caraviello]: I'm all in favor of a fair and equitable process for everyone.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And maybe also how your role as mayor might support, you know, like folks of color, women you mentioned with the women for care of yellow event at the Ford, I have no issue with women are people of color.
[Richard Caraviello]: Let's say I'm interested. I think everything should be fair and equitable everybody.
[Danielle Balocca]: I mean, I'm glad to hear you have no issue with women or people of color. I feel like that. But how do you imagine increasing representation of those folks or outreach to those communities? How do you feel? Because I think what we've been hearing in the last couple of years, especially around 2020 when city council was voting on making racism a public health emergency, How do you imagine we can do better as a city in sort of including those sort of different groups of people?
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, first of all, I think if you've been in City Hall lately, you'll see it's mostly women in there. There's a lot of women of color that have taken, we have a Diversity Director Frances Nwaji has done an outstanding job since she's come on. I give her credit, the mayor credit, that was a good hire. But we also didn't have in the past, we didn't have human resources either. So we now have a human resources director, which is a positive thing too. I think, you know, everyone that gets hired will be interviewed fairly and we'll go from there.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Do you feel like women in City Hall hold roles where their decision-making power has weight for, you know, the direction of the city or choices that will affect people?
[Richard Caraviello]: Most certainly. Well, our board of health director is a woman. Our diversity director is a woman. Our HR director is a woman. Our superintendent is a woman. So women pretty much dominate the political scene in Medford.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. And those are like, those, like I said, are hires of our mostly for the most part hires of our current mayor. And so how would you continue or expand or like, how would you sort of make that, you're mentioning staff and I'm wondering about like residents, constituents, like how are we like including those people, engaging those people in our city that maybe haven't been engaged.
[Richard Caraviello]: If you, if you look at the boards and commissions, they're both, uh, they're both men and women, uh, people of color. There's a couple of boards that I, wasn't happy with because I didn't think they were diverse enough, especially the charter commission. I didn't feel represented the city correctly because on that board, there's no person of color. The largest population growth in the city of Medford is Asian and there's nobody from the Asian community on that board either. So I was a little disappointed with the makeup of that board. I thought we would have learned from our mistakes that we made with the Mr. Tuck School by just putting one group on the commission there.
[Danielle Balocca]: And so what would you do to change that?
[Richard Caraviello]: Like, how would you change how that, how those things are- When they're appointed, I think you need to take a look and see who's on the board and just appoint everybody fair and equitable from all walks of life in the city of Medford.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. And like, so let's say like those boards, like I'm on the Charter Review Commission, which I would agree lacks a lot of diversity. But we applied for those positions, right? And let's say no people of color or no people of any sort of, I mean, there's also a lot of people that are older on that committee and a lot of people that have lived in Medford for a long time. How do you imagine we can get more people to apply that have varied identities?
[Richard Caraviello]: I think the mayor should have reached out to more neighborhoods to encourage them to apply. I, one of my major concerns in the beginning was I wanted to see a representative from every ward on the Charter Commission. So that was my, one of my things right from day one.
[Danielle Balocca]: So like ward representation in that sense is important to you?
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, no, I wanted to see a representative from every ward of the city on that Charter Commission. Usually the NOC is, everybody's from West Medford that's on the committees. And that's always been, you know, because listen, I get it, people volunteer this week and you try to take the volunteers, but all the volunteers always seem to come out of the West Medford area. But I think we could have reached out and did a better job.
[Danielle Balocca]: So something you would consider doing yourself if you had the job would be to change that outreach model?
[Richard Caraviello]: Yes. Yeah, I mean, the mayor or other people in the office, they could have reached out to other people and try to sway them to get on these committees.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Talk about your opinions or your perspective on volunteerism, right? Like from my experience at the HRC, I think one significant boundary is that the amount of time required to participate effectively is often not available to folks who are marginalized in a multitude of ways.
[Richard Caraviello]: First of all, you're talking to probably the most person who's volunteered the most out of anybody in the whole city over the last 30 years than me. I've been on boards, commissions, food banks, library, you name it. Rick Caraviello has been a volunteer for 30 plus years, long before I got into governments. I was always a community volunteer.
[Chelli Keshavan]: But is that without another source of income?
[Richard Caraviello]: It was just something I did. I'd always been a volunteer. Like I say, I've been on the Chamber of Commerce. I say, you name it, the Library Commission.
[Chelli Keshavan]: But you also had an income available to you while you were volunteering.
[Richard Caraviello]: I consider myself semi-retired, too. So I have an income, and I volunteer.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And also, you're married, right? So you have access to a partner.
[Richard Caraviello]: I am married for 47 years. I have three children and I have eight grandchildren.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Right. But a lot of male careers are built from decades of unpaid labor performed by female partners. Right. So, for example, when we're talking about women participating commissions, we often don't have access to that.
[Richard Caraviello]: I'm confused with the question.
[Danielle Balocca]: So I think she's saying that like What allows folks to volunteer is like an assumption that they have an income that supports their family so like I can volunteer at night because I don't have to work at night I work during the day to support my family, and my wife watches our kids so that I can do that work right like. So and I think what we know about marginalized communities is they might not have the time to volunteer, right? So if they were given a stipend, or if there was some other, or child care was provided for volunteering for these positions, that would attract a more diverse audience, or a more diverse pool of applicants.
[Richard Caraviello]: There are some boards and commissions that do pay stipends. Not too many of them that do that. That was something that would have to be discussed about changing the board. So, but you know, childcare is always an issue. I know we, I know we lack childcare, afterschool childcare in the city of Medford. And I've been an advocate of moving that forward, you know, increasing childcare. Listen, the days of the mom staying home, When I grew up or kind of my mom always worked also so I'm on the fire both work. But, you know, you don't see the latchkey kids anymore, where kids go home with the key and you wait for your parents get on those days. We need to expand our after school childcare programs. That's always been an issue of mine.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. We were talking a little bit about the Charter Review Committee. I wonder if you have any thoughts about the reviews to the charter. You mentioned feeling it important to have representatives from each ward on that committee. How do you feel about ward representation in general?
[Richard Caraviello]: My honest opinion is I was never a proponent of ward representation. I think it gives you bigger governments with less representation. Anybody from any part of the city can call me and I'm there for them. Where sometimes they feel afraid to reach out of their ward or whatever to call somebody.
[Danielle Balocca]: So not a proponent of order.
[Richard Caraviello]: If it's the will of the people, that's fine. Whatever the will of the people is, that's my personal, I just think it just gives you better government, I mean, bigger government with less representation.
[Danielle Balocca]: Oh, I think too, like, there's, you know, and looking at the, at how Medford is structured, we have 7 city councilors and 8 wards. So there's already automatically, like, parts of the city that aren't represented, even if we, even if those 7 city councilors were equally distributed among the city, which we know they're not. But I think too, one of the things that the charter is looking at is balance of power and the mayor has an incredible amount of power right now. If that were your position in the future, what are your thoughts on balance of power for our city government?
[Richard Caraviello]: I've always believed that the council should be a partner in government. From the day I've been elected, that was always a peeve of mine that the council was always left out of things. I've served with three different mayors, and our charter says we're supposed to meet with the mayor every month. Am I correct with that? I'm not sure about that. It was part of the charter. In 12 years, I don't think we've met with all three mayors a dozen times. I'd be lying with that. I've always been a proponent of being a partner with the council because you need the council. I told the people that are running for council that if I'm elected mayor, I want them to be a partner in government. If it means changing some of the structure, that's all well and fine, but they need to have more say.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Phil, do you have any other thoughts? I think I'm just reflecting on maybe goals for the role or, you know, when you're talking about partnering with the council, my head goes to sort of longer term, how you might use the full term, um, you know, to serve the city or what kind of change priorities you have, um, or what your long game might be, those kinds of.
[Richard Caraviello]: Mike, uh, on, on the, on the term limits of the two year term versus the four year term. Is that the question you're asking?
[Chelli Keshavan]: No, I'm just curious. I feel like a lot of the conversation has been around what happens if you do get elected. I just wonder what your long-term thoughts, hopes, plans for Medford might be.
[Richard Caraviello]: My long-term hope is to bring the city together. You know, you hear about the big discussion about new Medford, old Medford. I want one Medford. I want to bring everybody back into the middle. We've seen, we've become a divided community over the last few years. And I don't like that. I don't like that at all. I think we should be united. I think there's a happy medium where the new residents are happy, and the old residents are happy. Listen, everybody knows it's part of the gentrification of cities. But I'd like to bring everybody back into the middle and make it inviting for everybody, not new or old. I want to serve everybody.
[Chelli Keshavan]: How do we do that?
[Richard Caraviello]: That's a hard thing. That's something that I want to do, both as a person, whether I'm on the council or mayor or not, it's just something I believe that should happen. We should be a warm and welcoming community to everybody who lives here. I don't want people to feel left out because they just moved here, and I don't want the people who lived here all life to feel like the new people are pushing them out. And that's what I hear as I'm going around to people.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, no, I think that is an idea that probably brings a lot of peace to people. But I do wonder like the how, because it sounds like it would take some conversations and some work to sort of bring people together. It would.
[Richard Caraviello]: It would take some work. I'm not going to tell you that's an easy task. It's going to be a task. And I think by more community events, involving both old and new when we do something. So everybody feels involved, not just the new people doing stuff or the old people doing stuff. I think we can do things together.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Yeah. Any other things that you want to make sure that you mention that we haven't asked you about?
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, probably my proudest achievement as a city councilor was bringing the library to Medford. Something I worked on for four years and I brought it, I brought it to the library with a funding source. So, and I also sit on the, I'm the vice chair of the, of the, of the public library foundation, which we've helped raise $6 million to defray the cost. So we essentially own a state of the art, a state of the art library for close to 50 cents on the dollar. And no one, not many communities are saying that and people, people are amazed at what we've done. to bring the library here. And I say, we actually brought it in under budget. And right now that's probably one of the greatest resources in the community. I was also instrumental in bringing the art center that's gonna be opening to Medford in a couple of months. When the people from the Cannabis Commission, not commission, but the Cannabis Theory of Wellness reached out to me, they said, we have 5,000 square feet of space. What can we do with it? And he says, the art community has been looking for a home for the last 20 years. This is perfect. They agreed. I reached out to my fellow Councilor, Max, who was part of the arts commission and the art people. We hooked them up together. And three years of waiting for it to get approved, we're going to have an art center for free. I'm right on Mr. Galloway, which is, again, another source of pride for myself and the council. Yeah, it looks beautiful, the pictures that I've seen. Yes, it's going to be great. It's going to be great. They're going to have a home. They're not going to have to worry about for, you know, I know eventually they're going to have to start paying rent, but at least they'll have, you know, so many years to start saving some money. And so when it comes time to have to, you know, have to start paying, they'll have it.
[Danielle Balocca]: Anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up?
[Richard Caraviello]: That's about it. Anything you want to ask about me?
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, we do like to ask a fun fact. Something about you that we might not know or something that might surprise us to learn about you.
[Richard Caraviello]: Like I said, I've been involved in many things over the years. Part of the reason I got involved, I was never really a political person, I served as president of the Youth Hockey Association. And back then, the old MDC, which is now the DCR, was going to condemn the building. And they were going to tear it down because there was no funding. And I started going to our local representatives and staying there at the state house. And finally, I found a friend, the late Senator Shannon, who delivered half a million dollars to the rink, kept it open, and that's why it's still open today. And, you know, my picture hangs down there at the rink with then-Governor Weld to keep it open. That's been a real source of pride for me, too. Like I say, I just take pride in what I do. I've always been a community person. You know, like I say, I still work at the food bank, even though, you know, a lot of people have passed off, and then I do that every week. I belong to the Medford Kiwanis Club. I still sit on, I'm still the vice chair of the Public Library Foundation. I was a president and executive director of the Chamber of Commerce. I also, what you didn't know is, as my term as president, the executive director passed away. And I sat in as executive director for two years with no pay until they finally brought someone in and then they had the money to pay somebody. I really do take pride in my community.
[Danielle Balocca]: That was the Chamber of Commerce you were just saying?
[Richard Caraviello]: Yes.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you. Um, any other, anything else you want to mention before you wrap up?
[Richard Caraviello]: That's anything you want to ask me.
[Chelli Keshavan]: I know you mentioned the Ford, maybe just the Ford.
[Richard Caraviello]: That's, I think, I think, uh, that's about it for me. I mean, we're running, uh, I, you know, I have a bunch of house parties happening at different places, but, uh, you know, coming down to the last, uh, 60, 70 days and I'm just trying to, you know, I'm on the phone every day, making phone calls, trying to beat the, you know, beating up the pavement a little bit and just trying to be as active as possible.
[Danielle Balocca]: All right. Well, thank you so much for your time.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[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.
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