total time: 20.68 minutes
total words: 868
[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 me today. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and just a bit about who you are.
[Zac Bears]: Sure, I'm Zach Bares, he, him pronouns. I'm a Medford City Councilor, graduate of Medford High School, and been on the City Council for four years, running for my third term for re-election.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. So we've come a little, I don't know, come farther or just different from the first time you were on the podcast when we were recording in the shed in my backyard. But I'm going to ask you the same question that I asked you back then, which was, what is your favorite place to eat in Medford and what do you like to eat there?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, it's still Colleen's. And having a raspberry lime rookie, I had one last night. So it was great. It's the perfect. perfect summer, spring, summer, fall drink, and Colleen's is the best.
[Danielle Balocca]: I think when we talked the last time, they were maybe closed or closing for their renovations. And so I did have one of their limerick is in between now and then and now it is good. Great. So I'm interested in hearing kind of you mentioned you've been on the city council now for four years running for your third term. I wonder if you could just maybe start with reflecting on some of the things that you're proud of, stuff you've been able to do, implement, change, or start working on in those four years?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. It's been a wild four years. It's been a really long ride, especially with the COVID pandemic starting just in the first few months of my first term, I think. I'm definitely proud of how we handled that and the work that we did to support people in need during the pandemic. But in addition to that and that kind of casting a hole, it wasn't what any of us expected, of course, and certainly wasn't what I expected in my first term as an elected official. You know, in addition to that, I think we've done so much work to modernize how the City Council works and bring our ordinances into a better state of affairs, especially I'm proud of our full recodification of the zoning ordinance, which is now bearing some fruit with some very interesting and good new projects, and also is going to serve as a foundation for us to implement the comprehensive plan, climate plan, housing production plan, open space plan, and so much of what we want to see Medford become. And we're, you know, the council over the next two years, if I'm lucky enough to be reelected, we'll be working really diligently and hard on zoning changes to reflect these plans and this vision for what the city should be in the future. we've we've re we updated the city council rules revised them for the first time in a long time updated the committee structure we've passed i think just in this term at least 12 ordinances um working out updating our outdoor dining process banning polystyrene styrofoam we passed an ordinance requiring That we have a real public community process when the city wants to use surveillance technologies. And, you know, I could list a whole number of other things that we've done but I think we've just really, especially in this term 2022 and 2023 had a really intentional focus on. modernizing the operations of the city council, improving our ordinances, and focusing on zoning. I personally am also really, I've been working really hard around the city budget over the last two years. I mean, I was working on in the first term, but really took some deep dives and tried to inform the public about the budget situation, about how we need to improve our budget process, about the major needs that our community has for for spending on you know public buildings and having enough staff and teachers and fixing our streets and sidewalks and making our community really safe for you know, people using mobility device, any form of mobility devices, you know, walking, biking, we really need to invest in these things and we aren't, and we haven't, the city has not been investing in even just basic maintenance for a very long time. And so those are, that's a long winded answer for four years of work, but you know, really that modernizing our zoning, focusing and drilling in deep on the budget and making it clear to residents what the issues are and what the scope of changes needed to fix them and working to make the city council a healthier body and legislative body that communicates well together and works in unison to advance priorities that make the city better would really be the three highlights.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you and I have kind of a follow up question I think the budget and sort of funding for the city is, it seems like a big topic. I will I want to I am interested in sort of how like balance of power plays into the budget process but also. You mentioned zoning, and so I would imagine that zoning also somehow impacts budget and revenue for the city. Could you just explain what you mean by modernizing the zoning ordinance?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, sure. So I mean, there's kind of a few layers here. Just modernizing the zoning ordinance, the zoning ordinance had not been really significantly rewritten since the 1960s. So there was a lot of outdated terminology. The structure was unusual. It didn't reflect really, I think, the current day thinking around what a zoning ordinance should look like. There were a lot of things that weren't regulated like short-term rentals. So we basically took everything that was in the zoning ordinance, reviewed all of it for, you know, if any laws had changed, if there were words that didn't make sense, trying to reorganize it to be more readable and understandable. And we also included some new sections that have allowed for some new types of development. But it wasn't a that was just a recodification. So we took the existing code and we took out anything that didn't make sense to be there anymore. And we did add some some provisions. The next step is really the complete zoning reform step, which is changing the maps and districts, changing what uses and And basically what uses and types of things are allowed in different parts of the city. How tall can a building be? How many units can there be? What does mixed use zoning look like outside of the station landing area? So that's the next step. Zoning. I would say indirectly impacts revenue because what zoning does is it changes the conditions for people to build on their private property. It doesn't require anyone to do anything. We can't make anyone build a new building unless they want to. But by allowing different types of buildings and areas than what we currently allow, like for example, if we allowed, you know, a large biotech lab instead of a one story warehouse, if that project were to happen, that would bring in new tax revenue to the city. And that's, you know, that's very good. And I think that's where we want to go. But I say indirect because you're setting conditions for future actions by private property owners. So even if we change the zoning over the next two years, we probably won't see the fruits of that for five to 10 years. And so we change the zoning, then someone decides, OK, it makes sense for me to build this. Then they spend three or four years building it. And then the city realizes that new revenue from this new building. So it really is more of a medium to long term influence on directly on the city budget and it's not something that you can say if we zone this we will get x dollars because you don't know that someone will actually build something so that's where the kind of uncertainty piece comes in it's it's not a guarantee but it is a way for us to try to try to influence and encourage people to um, to make new, build new projects. And of course, it's a way for us to set the conditions of what we would like the future to look like. Um, we won't get exactly what we want on every site exactly when we want it, but we can say, here's the, here's, here's our vision of what we think our law should allow Haines Square to look like, or Medford Square to look like, or West Medford Square to look like, or Mystic Ave to look like. And then we also have to have the staff and the capacity in City Hall and an engaged city council who are able to work with the members of our community to actually make those projects become real.
[Danielle Balocca]: A lot of pieces. It sounds like something that zoning ordinances can do is maybe set the conditions that might attract businesses like that to Medford, like a Kendall Square sort of situation. Exactly.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. We'd be very lucky if we got anywhere near what Cambridge has in Kendall Square. I mean, the amount of revenue that that's brought in to Cambridge and what they're able to do in that community to fund their schools and their library and have these amazing safe streets and well-maintained public buildings is impressive. And I think it's one of the tools, zoning is one of the tools that we can use to try to go in that direction. But again, it is a medium to long-term tool. The longer we wait, the more the things we need to do will cost, and the more students will have to go without air conditioning in high school, without the facilities. There's so much active harm that happens by waiting. So that's kind of the balancing act, where we can't just say, well, we'll wait for the growth from the zoning to happen before we do anything, because there's so much negative that will happen in the interim if we don't act sooner.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, so I mean, I think you're kind of getting at my next sort of question, which is, how do you hope to continue the work to keep changing things, keep improving things? What are some of the things, like you mentioned, sort of the safety of the schools, just conditions for students, teachers, city hall, all those things? What are you sort of hoping to continue to work on and change?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I mean, I think we've The council has been really intentional that the budget process annually needs to be better and that we need a much better understanding of what our need is for both operating, so regular recurring staff and program expenses, and for capital needs. So for repairing buildings, building new buildings, keeping our streets and sidewalks well maintained, designing new streets and sidewalks. We need to know those answers. The council really, you know, has been asking those questions. We haven't been getting the answers as much as we want from, I think, the city administration, certainly not at the pace that we want them. In June, we were able to reach an agreement, President Morell and I, with the mayor to improve the budget process next year by starting in January instead of May, and also to create a financial task force, which should be really looking into those two questions I just asked, you know, what are our needs and how are we going to fund those needs? The specifics of that, we're still working out I certainly have a lot of ideas but you know, as just one Councilor who's looked at the information. We have, in my opinion, the need for 30 to $40 million a year, and new revenue. You know, our current property tax levy is in the $130 million and our current total general fund budget is about $180 million. So, you know, you're talking about needing a budget that's about 20% plus bigger than it is now to really be doing what we need to do. And that's today. In five years, that number will be higher. In 10 years, that number will be higher. Just the cost of our needs will keep getting higher the longer that we delay funding them. So we really need an intentional plan in the short, medium, and long term. What needs are we going to prioritize? I know there's a priority for a new Medford High School, priority for a new fire headquarters. Fixing streets and sidewalks and making them more walkable, bikeable, and safer for everyone is a huge priority. We also have 30 staff on the school side and as many as 20 on the city side who are funded by federal money right now, and that's going away next year. And additionally, we have a lot of departments that are understaffed and a lot of staff who are underpaid. So there's, you know, the library and many other places you have low pay paraprofessionals. So Those are huge needs. Those are needs that are in the tens of millions of dollars a year, in the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars over the next 10, 20, 30 years. And we need a really intentional plan to fund those things that I think is a combination of things. I think it's a combination of our bond capacity, the new growth that will come from new development, but also the override and debt exclusion tools that are really the only tools the state gives cities and towns to raise significant sums of money. I would love the state house to give us different tools and allow us more exemptions and better ways to mitigate the impact of tax increases, but they are unwilling to do that. That leaves us with very few tools to solve these huge problems.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. And on previous interviews with you, you've talked, you've gone into some more details about what an override means, what it looks like, the two percent, the two and a half, like all those things. I won't make you go into that again. People can listen to that episode. And like, you know, our current mayor has talked about like her like her different ideas and hesitations around some of those things. But it does seem like, you know, part I'm working on with the group to sort of study our current charter that there are some just sort of. Ways that the city, our city government is structured that. Like, it sounds like there is. It's sort of an imbalance of power and who gets to decide the budget or who gets to decide what goes in the budget or sort of be part of the budget process. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like what happens is you're sort of presented with the budget as a city council and you sort of have to say yay or nay. But yeah, I wonder if there's anything that you think about that you'd like want to see change there.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I mean, you know, I really appreciate the work that the Charter Study Committee is doing. Charter review is so long overdue. That's something I think people of all stripes agree on. My biggest issue around the charter is this balance of power, separation of powers question. We learn it in elementary school, middle school, high school, government, three branches of government, and they each balance each other out. Here in Medford, we don't have that in the same way, the way that our charter is written right now. And the way that a lot of charters are written, quite frankly, around the state gives the mayor an incredible amount of power over many things, especially the budget. As you said, the mayor writes the budget. She presents it to us. We can either vote yes, vote no, or reject it, or sorry, or cut it. And if we vote no, um the state has basically said well after 45 days it'll happen anyway so we can't even really vote no we can either say yes or we can cut things um and that's not a collaborative process it's not it's not a fair balance of power and it doesn't you know allow the council to have any real significant authority in saying here's what we think the priorities of the community should look like um and i think that's Not a good system. I just don't think that's a good system. I don't think it's a democratic system. We proposed on the council some amendments to address that. this year, but because of how the process works, you know, the mayor is the one who has to let those move forward. And she said, you know, I don't feel comfortable at this time. I think it needs more legal review. I want to see the full charter process play out. So that's where that happened, but it would have allowed to cancel the proposal that we had to amend the budget, essentially to move funds between different parts of the budget. We couldn't increase the budget higher than the mayor's total amount. But it would give us a real voice and saying here's where you know we're elected to here's where we see priorities, I think, until a new charter is implemented, which I hope will include something like that within it. We I'm hopeful that the agreement that we made in the budget process that we create. We'll at least give the room for formal consultation, even if we don't have the formal authority to actually require changes. At least we can be a voice in the process earlier and suggest changes, which would still only be up to the mayor to allow to happen or not.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, it's an interesting process, learning more about the charter. And you're right, ours is very antiquated. Almost nobody uses model charters anymore. And it does give the mayor, whoever is in that position, almost absolute power over things. And you have to think that it's not really a great situation for anyone, because even the mayor is sort of, I don't know, it sort of feels like a no-win situation. But it also reminds me of when you're talking about recodifying the zoning ordinance, it sounds like there's a lot in Medford City government that's sort of like, we've agreed this is how it goes, but nobody wrote it down or made it part of the charter. And so, yeah, it seems like just even just putting it all in one place, whatever that might be, will be helpful too. But yeah, I don't know, could you explain a little bit about the proposals that you made in terms of changing the charter during the city council meeting?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, so there's a few different ways to change the charter. One is you collect signatures and elect a charter commission. Another one is you write a proposal and the council and the mayor submit it to the state house and also You have the voters vote on it, which is kind of what happened in 1986. And then what we were proposing was another avenue, which is you can make amendments to certain parts of the charter without the council and the mayor can do that, without doing a full charter review. And that is You can change, essentially, these balance of power questions. So you can't change how many people are on a city council or wards and at-large representation or terms of service. But you can change certain pieces. We proposed three. One was what I just described, that the council could amend the budget. The other one was that the council would confirm the mayor's appointments to boards and commissions. Right now, we only confirm certain ones that are required by state law or by ordinance. And so that would open up that process to be a little more open and transparent and public. It wouldn't just be that the mayor can decide who's on every board and commission. And then the third was that the council would have the ability to hire its own research legal or other staff to support the council directly. Right now, we only get that if the mayor appropriates those funds. So we don't have the ability to actually get our own support for the projects that we're wanting to do unless the mayor also agrees for that to happen.
[Danielle Balocca]: Is that because there's no city solicitor or would that be different if we did have a city solicitor?
[Zac Bears]: That's just true across the board, whether or not we had a city solicitor. It's just, you know, essentially it It's a charter issue, right? The charter says that the mayor appropriates funds. The charter says that the mayor hires and supervises all staff. The charter says, actually, in some places that, you know, the city council does not confirm, you know, boards and commissions. So it really is just fundamentally a charter issue, even bigger than any sort of staffing issues or open positions.
[Danielle Balocca]: This is great information, and I think we're into my curiosity now and more of just general your general kind of hopes, but anything else that you want to share about kind of what your priorities would be for kind of change making for third term.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I'll just wrap up on the charter and say that one of the reasons we proposed what we did is that it could have happened faster than a full charter review. So we could have actually been voting on it this fall if we had been able to move everything through. And then, of course, the charter review could have changed it later. But yeah, honestly, a lot of what we've talked about are my big three priorities. uh for the next term one is the we have an rfp out to hire a consultant To do the zoning reform. I think that's going to be you know dozens of meetings over the next two years and several proposals, uh To do different things for the zoning ordinance, you know redoing the map districts uses dimensional requirements, uh updating and adding in more Things now that we have this new zoning code in practice. Um, so that will be uh one priority um the second when the charter study committee sends a draft charter i think we will spend quite a bit of time reviewing that we're the next step in the process you know you will send a draft to us and then we'll do our process and due diligence um to see what what you came up with and what we what we would like to um include in that and the third and the biggest one is this big question about um really our future as a community uh what what are we going to do to fund these significant needs that we have for major capital expenses on new buildings and maintaining buildings, building and maintaining a safe street and sidewalk infrastructure, and making sure that we have the funds that we need to keep staff from, make sure we don't have layoffs, to hire new staff, and to make sure that our staff are compensated fairly so we get, so that our staff get what they deserve.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Is there anything that you want to plug in terms of like any events or like places where people can see more information about your campaign?
[Zac Bears]: Absolutely. Yeah, my website, ZachBears.com. You can see my 2023 platform. I have a new biography up. And also all my news updates and everything that I've sent out for the past few years is on there. You can also sign up to volunteer, donate to my campaign, and then want to do a huge shout out to the whole team of folks on the Our Revolution Medford slate. We are running together. We have the fantastic 2023, 2020, 2024 Medford People's Platform, which really is a blueprint for Medford for all of us, the Medford that we want to live in. And we are in full gear. We are doing Canvas launches every Saturday and Sunday. We're doing Canvas launches Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursday nights. We will be having phone banks. We will be having different kind of social events and field events. Really, the next six, seven weeks, we will be pounding the pavement trying to talk to tens of thousands of our neighbors and get them engaged in this collective work to make Medford better. really hopeful and excited that folks listening will jump in and be a part of that work.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you. Anything else you want to share before we wrap up?
[Zac Bears]: I want to say thank you to you and Michele, who I know couldn't be here today. Your interviews have been really helpful, especially as we live in the news desert of Medford that we now live in, which I do hope will change soon. Although I haven't heard anything, but I just am forever hoping that it will change, and we really need it. a newspaper and we need news coverage, and you guys are serving a really important role in helping to fill that gap, and I know you guys are doing it as volunteers, so it's much appreciated.
[Danielle Balocca]: Oh, thank you. We enjoy doing it. Well, thank you so much and good luck in November.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you so much. I'll see you around and talk soon.
[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 Giedonis. 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.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Never Bites.
[Danielle Balocca]: Good job.
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total time: 20.68 minutes total words: 868 |
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