[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, thanks for joining me today. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and a bit about who you are.
[Roberta Cameron]: My name is Roberta Cameron. She, her pronouns, and I am the chair of Medford's Community Preservation Committee. That's what brings me here today to talk about the Community Preservation Act.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Yeah, we're going to talk lots about CPA in just a second, but before we do that, if you don't mind just answering 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? Of course.
[Roberta Cameron]: So just yesterday, I don't happen to go out to eat very much, but just yesterday I happened to stop by Deep Cuts for a sandwich and I had their Cuban. That was very good. And I also wanted to make a call out to Bread Cafe that is over on the east side of the city. I've had their pastries provided at many events that I've gone to recently, and they are absolutely delicious. They have a combination of Haitian specialties and familiar, uh, things familiar to American tastes. So I am definitely going to go back there and get some more.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. That's up by Target, right?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, it's across the street from Target.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you. So if we could just start out by just describing what the CPA is.
[Roberta Cameron]: So CPA is a program that enables the city to raise money through a small surcharge on local property taxes. It was enacted by the state legislature in 2000, and in 2015, a group of Medford residents led a campaign to adopt the Community Preservation Act locally in Medford. So we adopted it with a 1.5% surcharge on local property taxes that might come out to depending on how much your property is valued at might come out to around $100 a year or so that adds up to about. $1.5 million of local revenue that we raise, and that's partially matched with the state also provides some money based on how much we contribute locally. So our total CPA revenue is about $2 million a year that can be spent specifically on these purposes, open space, outdoor recreation, historic preservation, and affordable housing.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you. And could you tell us, like, who decides how we spend the money that comes through the Community Preservation Act?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, so after Medford voted to adopt the Community Preservation Act, City Council passed a local ordinance that creates the Community Preservation Committee. We are a total of nine members. Five members represent other boards and committees, including the Community Development Board, the Conservation Commission, Housing Authority, Historical Commission, and Recreation Commission, and four members appointed by the mayor. And so this committee has the responsibility to study what are the community needs and priorities and then to recommend how to spend CPA funds. No CPA funds can be spent without first being recommended by the committee and then approved by city council in that order. So the committee undertakes public outreach, holds a public hearing every year and gathers input from other community boards and committees looking at other planning that's going on that's led by staff or consultants in the city to help us understand what the community needs are. And we accept grant applications from city departments or from local community partners, organizations, sometimes even, uh, private residents might submit an application on behalf of, uh, a public project. Um, so that's, that's essentially, and so this grant application process, the committee oversees and then decides what, which applications, which grants to award, um, to, um, the applicants.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, yeah, it's it sounds like kind of a range and a broad range of ways that the money can be used. And yeah, I remember taking, I think I remember taking like a survey about this maybe a couple of years ago. And I was like pretty excited by like any of the options. It really, it was kind of hard to choose like where to prioritize those things. And I don't know, I always kind of imagined like the word preservation to mean kind of like keeping something the same. And this sounds more of like an innovative process, but I wonder where, like if you could tell us where we might see the impact of the CPA in the community of Medford.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, there's so many things I can't possibly list them all we've actually over five years that we've been distributing Community Preservation Act funds, we've spent approximately $10 million on 90 projects all across the city. And one of the things that I find most exciting about CPA is that we've been able to spend a lot of that money making public spaces that are safe and accessible, both out our parks and recreation areas, as well as some public buildings. So some of the significant projects that we've done are renovation of Harris Park, including a beautiful water feature that's in Harris Park. The Chevalier Theatre, we've done several projects, including air conditioning at Chevalier. So before Community Preservation Act, even after the Blumenreich Presents began putting national acts, we could only have shows about nine months out of the year because three months, it was too hot for them to have performances. So now they can have shows throughout the year. We've also made accessibility improvements to Chevalier Theatre. and some other improvements. We were the first community statewide to get CPA funded emergency rental assistance out the door in response to the COVID-19 crisis in the spring of 2020. And in the past couple of years, you've seen improvements across many parks and schoolyards all around the city, thanks to CPA. Some of these improvements weren't funded by CPA, but I think that CPA kind of helped us to think more proactively about how we can use whatever funding is available to be able to bring all of our parks up to date. CPA funds have been preserving historic landmarks, especially the Royal House, the Isaac Hole House, which is on High Street next to the Unitarian Church, the Brooks Estate and Palms Wall. Those are some projects that are very often brought up as we should do something with these. And we have been actually so that's exciting. And finally, I wanted to mention that we're supporting redevelopment of walking court, which is going to replace a rundown housing site built in the 1960s owned by Medford housing authority. with still Medford Housing Authority, but a modern elevator building, adding on top of the units that are there now, I think it's 150 some units that are there now, we're going to add 54 additional elderly and disabled units. And then a second phase is going to add townhouses and Medford's first elevator accessible building for families on that site. So some really incredible work that we've been able to do. And it's not, I mean, CPA funds at $3 million a year is a drop in the bucket, but we can use this money to leverage bigger change by tapping into other sources of funding that are possible by putting in that local money first.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Yeah. And you're kind of tapping into this a little bit already with sort of the projects that you're mentioning that kind of make changes to buildings to make them more accessible. I wonder, like, so our kind of theme of this podcast is always kind of thinking about how to evaluate kind of like inclusivity and equity in the city of Medford, how we can be what we're doing, what we can be better at. And so I wonder how the CPA sort of advances those two goals of equity and inclusion.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, this is a really important value for us and we try to reflect throughout the program on how we can address equity and inclusion. So, first of all, we try to recruit broad representation on the Community Preservation Committee. Whenever we have openings on the committee, we look at the current committee composition and try to fill gaps to make the committee more representative geographically, economically, by age, race, gender, and have both renters and homeowners serving on the committee. And when there are openings on the other five boards who contribute to who are represented on the CBC, we ensure that those positions are well advertised also to try to broaden the representation. And we're always thinking about how we can share information more broadly, gathering public input through public events and surveys, sharing announcements on the city's communication channels. reaching out directly to organizations to broaden our applicant base so that more organizations know to apply for CPA money and extending benefits ultimately to Medford's vulnerable communities. It's really difficult in Medford that we are lacking a communication infrastructure that enables us to reach all different members of the city. So that's a problem that we're putting some thought into. and haven't solved that problem yet, but would be really interested in learning how we can do more. Another thing that we're doing is encouraging or even requiring inclusive public engagement in planning major capital improvement projects that are going to use CPA funds. So, for example, the Carr Park Master Plan and Gillis Park Master Plan, which recently these projects recently broke ground for construction, we initially paid for the planning for those and required a public visioning process as part of that planning. So another example is McGlynn School Playground. It's a perfect illustration where the school department had initially come to us with a request for a $500,000 grant. just to replace the surface of the existing playground without addressing the drainage or structural problems. So we asked the PTO and the school committee for their input and they proposed that we change direction. and asked us, instead of just replacing the surface of the playground, to fund a plan for the schoolyard before actually undertaking any construction. So the result of that was that the school community and the community at large worked together to develop a vision for a brand new, inclusive, fully integrated playground for children with and without disabilities. And we anticipate that that's going to get under construction very soon. So the McGlynn School has really waited a long time to see improvements to their playground, but I think the patience is going to pay off. The existing playground was designed without any user input, and that resulted in a space that really fell short of the needs of the students, as well as having a lot of structural problems to it. But CPA is transforming the way that Medford plans parks and playgrounds going into the future. So, um, more broadly, I just wanted to point out CPA funded improvements to parks and historic buildings are investing in public spaces that are more accessible and meet a wider range of needs. Not every project serves every population, but we hope that the full range of projects is providing something for everyone. And of course housing to serve low income households with different needs is also. supporting a more inclusive city. So from wheelchair lifts in public, in historic buildings, to playgrounds with accessible water features, to Medford's first family housing site that will be served by an elevator. The amount of funding that we have is really small compared to the need, but we're leveraging the program to make more inclusive spaces for the public to gather and participate in the community.
[Danielle Balocca]: I think one thing that I'm certainly learning and I think other residents are learning in the past year or so is the budget in Medford and how sort of inaccessible that can be to folks. And the way you're describing how people might be able to give input to CPA and sort of how even just like if it's this project that we aren't sure how much of a priority it is, we get a grant to sort of figure that out and maybe propose that to the city. It sounds like what you're saying is like this can be an accessible way to access funds that like maybe that, you know, outside of our larger city budget. So I really like that. I think it's important that people can hear that and can know that. And I know you guys are planning an event coming up. Do you want to share anything about that?
[Roberta Cameron]: Sure, so the event we don't have yet details on the time and location of the event and hope to share that very soon, but we are looking forward since we've been now funding projects for five years. These projects wouldn't have happened without tremendous work by all of the stakeholders by The community volunteers across many boards and committees and organizations around the city, city staff, the elected officials who have done so much work to actually make these projects happen to apply for our money. and to do the work that we've spent $10 million on. So we'd like to celebrate all of that work and bring together all of our grantees and our committee members and stakeholders to celebrate the work that everyone has done to make Medford a more, you know, beautiful, preserved, safe, accessible community. So I look forward to sharing the details of that event soon.
[Danielle Balocca]: Me too. And this actually brings to mind, are your meetings public? Are they meetings that the general population can participate in or listen to?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, our meetings it's we're bound by public by open meeting law. Our meetings take place once a month. Sometimes the dates move around, but typically I think that we are on the second Tuesday, every month and our meetings have for the last couple of years taken place remotely via zoom, but we're moving to a hybrid format. We hope to continue that going forward where we meet within City Hall, but anyone can participate and attend remotely if they choose. So those meetings are posted on the City website, the City's calendar, and we also have a webpage, preservemedford.org, where you can find a lot more information about the Community Preservation Act and about the projects that we've funded to date. There's a map of all of those projects and a list of how much funding was given to all of them. And it's possible to learn more about the applications and the people, the grantees, the partners who were awarded the grants. through the information on our webpage. So that's preservemedford.org. And you can also follow us on Facebook to receive some announcements about opportunities to participate or to apply for funding. Great, cool.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Is there anything that we haven't spoken about that you think is important for people to know about CPA?
[Roberta Cameron]: I think we've covered it all. Thank you so much for this opportunity to share this with you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, thank you too. And, you know, I look forward to hearing more details about the event and we'll be sure to update folks with that, but thank you so much for your time today. Yeah. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Casherman. Music is made by Hendrik Irenys. 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.