AI-generated transcript of Medford City Council Committee Of The Whole 04-13-22

[Nicole Morell]: 22-312, Committee of the Whole, Medford City Council, Wednesday, April 13th, 2022 at 6 p.m. is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Vice President Bears?

[Zac Bears]: Present.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Caraviello? I do not see Councilor Caraviello.

[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Collins? He will be absent.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Collins?

[Kit Collins]: Present.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you. Councilor Knight? I do not see Councilor Knight. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng. Present. President Morell.

[Nicole Morell]: Present. For president three absent the meeting is called to order. There will be a meeting of the Medford city council committee of the whole on Wednesday, April 13th, 2022 at 6pm. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the annual action and public service applications for the community development block grant funding. The City Council has invited Planning, Development and Sustainability Director Alicia Hunt and Grant Administrator Ashley Williams to attend. Representatives from the Public Service Agencies of Aging, Medford Public Schools, Mystic Valley YMCA, SCM Community Transportation Corporation, the community family, the immigrant community, Learning Center and the West Metro Community Center will also be in attendance. For information, aids, and accommodations, contact the city clerk at 71-393-2425. Sincerely yours, Nicole Murrell, Council President. At this time, I am happy to hand things over to either Director Hunt or Administrator Williams, whoever wants to talk about the annual action plan, and then we can hear from the public service agencies. Okay, seeing Alicia Hunt.

[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to say thank you and welcome to all our public service agencies. Ashley's actually gonna speak to most of this. I did wanna thank everybody for coming. And I did want to actually highlight for the service agencies that for many of you, this is an annual event where we come and explain about your programs and what you do to the Councilors. I do want to reiterate for you that this is broadcast on TV. So while you are only seeing sort of the other public service agencies here and the Councilors here in the room for the most part, that there are frequently members of the public that are watching this, and this does get replayed on public access TV and does get watched later. So this is also an opportunity to let the public know about the programs that your public service agency offers through Medford. And also some of our Councilors are new this year. And so this is actually the first that they may be learning about some of the programs that you all offer. So this will be helpful for them as well. We did send around to the city council last night and the public service agencies also received this in the last day. a summary of each proposal, how much was requested this year, what was awarded last year, and what the current recommendation from this office is for this coming year. That number, part of why we are here is to get the city council's opinions on this and whether any of those numbers should change, if those seem good. I will say that the amounts that are allocated does account for all the money that we expect to have available this year. We have not yet been notified of our final amount from the federal government. We have been advised by the federal government to hold these meetings and public hearings anyhow in this outreach, because this does need to happen in a timely manner for the entire process. And that if in the event our funding is cut, We will decrease all of these amounts proportionally. If it is increased, then we will have the opportunity to either increase some, increase proportionally, or to have some money held in the event that other needs arise. And I just wanted to put that out there as something that we actually have no idea, but we're open to comment on that as well. And so I'm going to actually turn this over to Ashley Williams. She's our CDBG administrator. She's been working with CDBG longer than I have. And so Ashley is in the best place to introduce the CDBG program and actually all of our service providers this evening. Thank you.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Director Hunt. Go ahead, Ashley.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: Hello everyone, thank you for coming. I know most of you have done this before, but for our Councilors and our reps from each agency that are new, welcome. We host this meeting every year to discuss the RFPs that were submitted for the Community Development Block Grant Public Service Agencies. So just the format of the meeting, what we do is we usually just call on each agency one by one, We just ask that you give a very brief because there are 11 of you, very brief kind of summary of what you applied for and why and the needs of the Medford residents. And then, really, it's just to be here to answer any questions the Councilors may have. And we'll just kind of go from there. I'm just going to go in order of the document that Alicia sent out. I believe it's pretty much alphabetical. So ABCD, Action for Boston Community Development, they are a new applicant. I'm not sure who would like to speak. I see there's two of you, Alexa and Josh. Can we unmute one of them?

[Nicole Morell]: I did just ask Josh on you. Okay, we got Alexia as well. Great.

[Jean Nuzzo]: Hi, good evening. Thank you for having us here. My name is Alexia Lane-Lewin. I'm the Director of Development and Grants at ABCD, and I'm accompanied by Josh Young, who's our Director of Neighborhood and Legislative Affairs. We applied for CDBG funding this year for the Mobile Homeless Outreach Team. MHOT is a program that we've been running for about five or six years now. And the goal of the program is to meet folks who are experiencing homelessness, where they're at, be it if they're living on the street, or maybe in their car but folks who are unhoused, and try to direct them into mainstream services. Sometimes these are individuals sometimes they're small families. We've had some success in other areas. This program is in Malden, Medford and Everett, but we are seeking CDBG funding to have more of a more of an impact in Medford specifically as the homelessness or houseless population in Medford is increasing over the last couple years, and in our partnerships with some of the other folks on the call right now, and it has become more of an issue of how to help steer people from houselessness into mainstream services into shelters be they. group shelters or even temporary shelter like a hotel for the night. Obviously in an area like greater Boston, this gets really important in the middle of the winter when it gets so cold and people's health and lives are at risk. And then also in the summer when it gets really, really hot too. And similarly, people's health and lives are at risk. The program is based in case management, service access, referrals, and then you know, very much just direct connection with folks who are experiencing homelessness and trying to provide whatever the immediate need is to help mitigate why someone might not be accessing a shelter or might be choosing to live in a different manner than in a shelter or accessing other housing needs. We requested $18,304. We're being recommended for $15,000. If we are lucky enough to be granted that amount and approved for that grant, we intend to maintain the same service level as proposed, which is to engage with 50 folks um, across the board with an initial, um, engagement and to provide base services for 40 of those folks. Um, we think that other funding that we have available to us, we're also also always doing public and private fundraising for this program. Uh, we think that we'll be able to mitigate the difference in what we requested and what is being recommended, but be able to keep the same service number. We've been recently joined by Ann Corbin, who's our Director of Housing and Homelessness Prevention. And so I just, you know, Ann, I gave the spiel, but if there's anything you wanted to add briefly, please do. We're first up, by the way.

[Nicole Morell]: I do also see Vice President Bears has his hand raised for a question, if it gives you a moment to just get yourself together. If you want to go with your question, Vice President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Sure, and thanks for the presentation and your important work. I was just wondering, you know, and I kind of think I already know the answer, but, you know, what's your relationship with the city's Office of Prevention and Outreach? You know, what kind of collaboration do you do with them?

[Jean Nuzzo]: Um, I think and would like to answer. I think she was just saying that she, she can't unmute. Um, so if someone could please unmute and Corbyn. Thank you.

[S_jvt8DRKHw_SPEAKER_18]: Thank you. Sorry. Um, so this actually just recently, we've always been involved, especially during the pandemic with, um, we have a task force for homelessness prevention. And the outreach department just recently joined that task force. So we've been getting a lot more referrals from the city of Medford from actually, I think there's also someone on there from Tufts that is also part of our task force. So we've been getting a lot of emergency referrals from them.

[Zac Bears]: Great, thank you. I just, you know, that's a really important partnership. And I think with the, you know, ABCD and that office working together, we can really help a lot of people. So thank you.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other questions for ABCD or anything else Alexia or Anne you want to share? Not seeing any, I will hand it back to you, Ashley.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: OK. Bread of Life, we have Gabriella here. If we could unmute her.

[MCM00000389_SPEAKER_07]: Hi, yes, I'm Gabriella Snyder-Stelmack, the executive director of Bread of Life. We're based in Malden, but our programs serve 13 communities. So thank you for letting us make this presentation. We applied for assistance for providing groceries at our Malden distribution site to Medford residents. Again, this distribution actually during COVID has been open to anyone from any community, but of course draws mainly from the Malden and surrounding communities, Medford, Melrose, Everett, a majority. About 5% of those who access this pantry are from Medford. So we've applied to help provide food for 400 unduplicated Medford residents. The average number of times that a resident will receive food during the year based on past years, there is around six times per year. So it is like many pantries, a supplemental. It's a full order of perishables. About 50% of what we pick up at the Greater Boston Food Bank is fresh produce, fruits and vegetables. We also distribute meat, fish, dairy, bread, and other products. And just as an overview, because of the amount of donations and volunteers, we have about 500 volunteers during the course of the year, we are able to leverage dollars very far. So it costs us about 53 cents a pound for food and about 80 cents a pound for a pantry meal. And we anticipate distributing about 29,000 pounds of food to Medford residents this year. Our other programs, just for those who aren't familiar with us, we have an Everett Mobile Market every week at the Lafayette School. That's grab and go as our Malden Pantry still remains. We have an evening sit down meal in Malden Square at a church that's open to anyone. Again, mainly grab and go, although we opened it to inside dining in September, and we do have some people coming in. We have a grocery delivery program to senior citizens, disabled residents, and COVID quarantined households. We do serve some Medford households weekly with that, senior citizens. I haven't applied, we're not applying for CDBG funds for that. We have a motel outreach, so in cooperation with housing families and other providers, we provide meals and groceries weekly to homeless individuals and families sheltered in local motels on Route 99 and Route 1, Malden, Melrose, Saugus. And we have an Everett backpack project where we distribute 200 to 300 backpacks of food that kids can eat them on their own during school and take home with them for students in the Everett Public Schools. Thank you very much.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Gabriella. Do we have any questions for Gabriella and Bread of Life? not seeing any, handing it back to you, Ashley.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: All right. Next up, we have Judy from Communitas.

[MCM00000389_SPEAKER_08]: Hi, I'm Judy Santamaria, the director of Family Support at Communitas in Wakefield, and I'm happy to be here. Thank you. We support people with disabilities and their families living in the Metro North community of Boston. So it's the 10 cities and towns surrounding Medford. We support, currently we're supporting 37 families in Medford, which is exciting across the lifespan. We have asked for CBTG funding to offset the cost of our recreation director. Recreation was hit particularly hard during the pandemic as we could no longer run in-person programming. So we collected no fees. We still ran programs every night, well, five nights a week virtually. And in January, we started running in-person programming again. Right now we have a circuit training program running in our parking lot. We're running bowling and we're running dance. The CVDG funding really helps to offset the cost of the director. And I wanted to mention it also that one of our most successful programs is the track program that runs at Hormel Field. And that's going to start this month. We usually have 45 athletes and we're doing that this year in collaboration with the Special Olympics.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Judy. Welcome. Any questions for Judy? Seeing none, back to Ashley.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: So next up, we have community family, Anne.

[MCM00000389_SPEAKER_18]: Hi, I'm Anne Marchetta from the community family. We run an adult day health center, specifically for people with Alzheimer's and other memory impairments in Medford. We have a beautiful restored train station. I've been lucky enough to work with the city and have had CDBG money to provide some kind of pro bono services to Metro residents who are facing some difficult circumstances and need our help. a place for their elder or younger adult to be until we can get a payment stream for them. So it's a time-limited assistance with the cost of care and we provide a six-hour day. I think many of you are probably familiar with us. It's a six-hour day with nutrition, nursing care, a full day of therapeutic recreational activities, and we take advantage of our outdoor space as much as possible. And we call it the club. So the people who come to community family see it as not an institute, not an institution, but a place they're coming to spend time with their friends. And for families, we're providing a respite from the responsibility of 24-hour care so they can at least get some things done and have some time to themselves. And we also run our own transportation to and from our center with the help of SCM, who I know is here, who brings some folks from Somerville and Cambridge and helps us out as well.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Anne. Any questions for Anne? Seeing none, back to Ashley.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: Okay, so next up we have Pam from the Medford Council on Aging.

[Pam Kelly]: Hello, good evening everybody. My name is Pam Kelly I'm the director of elder affairs for the city of Medford. And this year we are again asking for some assistance with just some small programs that the Council on aging is bringing back as we are now open again to the public. and our full request is $35,342.50, and it's broken down to our home maintenance program. This program allows seniors to stay in their homes comfortably by having assistance of a senior, I'm sorry, not a senior, of one of our part-time positions come out to change out light bulbs in the ceiling so they don't have to climb a ladder, install air conditioners in their windows, change outdoor locks or anything that's going to keep them safe and comfortable in their own homes, and the handyman program is a part time position, and it's very helpful for the seniors. We do have. Of course, during COVID, the need wasn't as great because seniors didn't want to allow anybody into their home, but we're getting the calls back again. So that is a great service, and this is all through the CDBG. We are also asking for a request for our recreational transportation. Seniors have been home and isolated for two years. They want to get back out on the road. So we do day trips. with motor coaches. So this brings the cost of a trip, whether going to a show at North Shore Music Theater, a museum, a luncheon, we bring the cost of the motor coach down to almost free so that they can enjoy themselves and not have to pay an outrageous fee. And we try to plan about eight to 10 trips a year, as long as COVID numbers are down. Um, we also in our request, uh, this helps supply additional support for our social worker as her need has grown as the need for, um, one-on-one support with a social worker in house. And she also does phone calls or, um, in person and we'll visit them. So that is our request for the year. And, um, we appreciate the city for helping us.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Thank you, Pam. Any questions for Pam on the Council on Aging? Seeing none, go ahead, Ashley.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: All right, next up we have Jaina from Housing Families.

[Nicole Morell]: Am I missing?

[Jayna Stafford]: Hi, thank you. Thank you for me. So I'm Dana Stafford. I'm the director of homelessness prevention and legal services at housing families, and I'm one of the attorneys there as well. We are located in Malden, and we serve the Tri-City area and then beyond. So we serve Malden, Everett, and Medford. We are seeking funding for our legal services program. As part of our homelessness prevention and legal services, we find that a blend of case management, direct financial assistance, and legal services is the best way forward in the prevention of homelessness. Housing Families has a number of other programs that also go with the same mission. So we have units of individual shelter located in Malden. We have 100 units of family shelter run through the state. We have our Great Youth and Families program, which offers counseling and art therapy and parenting classes and all kinds of clinical supports. We have other resources for families, including food. We have permanent supportive housing, so people that are already housed but have case management supports to keep them housed. And then our program, Homelessness Prevention and Legal Services. I think this is my 16th time at this meeting, so I'm really happy to be here and I look forward to maybe next year, it will be in person. I'd like to talk a little bit about just some of the legal services work that we provide. So we have brief legal advice and information for civil legal matters. We have full representation, which is predominantly in eviction defense. We have legal and non-legal advocacy, and we make lots of referrals to other legal service agencies And then as I mentioned before, we have rental assistance and other financial supports as available. I'm happy to take any questions that anyone might have. And also I'd like to say that we also are on the task force with EBCD. And so that has been an excellent collaboration. We're really happy that Medford has joined us recently. And that is one of the positive changes that has come from the pandemic.

[Nicole Morell]: So thank you. Thank you, Jaina. Any questions for Jaina and housing families?

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: Seeing none, Ashley, go ahead. All right. Next up, we have Mark from Immigrant Learning Center.

[MCM00000389_SPEAKER_01]: Hi, everyone. My name is Mark Correa from the Immigrant Learning Center. We are located in Malden and we serve the greater Boston and certainly the greater Medford area. We've been around since 1992 and we give immigrants a voice by providing free English language programs for immigrant and refugee adults. We do this through our English language programs, our Public Education Institute, which educates Americans on immigrants and immigration, and our collaboration with George Mason University, which produces, conducts research. We have served more than 12,000 students since opening that came from 118 countries and now live in 89 greater Boston communities. The ILC is one of the only free intensive programs in the area that in one of the few in greater Boston that exists. And we are, we had a meeting about a week or so ago with the Department of Education who let us know that we are actually the only ESOL program they connect with that is in person. So we're very happy to be back in person again and thankful to our staff because it was a heavy lift to make that happen. I'm sure you all know. Our classes are intensive. Monday through Friday, we have morning classes and afternoon classes, which total 24.5 hours weekly. And more specifically, the Medford program supports our literacy program. So these are students who were unable to go to school in their own countries because of war, because of poverty, because of natural disasters. And so they don't even know their respective ABCs, you might say. So they're really the most needy of the people learning English. And we're one of the few places that you know, give that kind of service. And we give that thanks to you, thanks to Medford, who has supported us for, I believe, 14 years, maybe not as long as Jayna from Housing Families, but pretty close. And so I finally want to say, let me know if you have any questions. And most of all, thank you.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Mark. Any questions for Mark and the Immigrant Learning Center? It's great to hear you guys are back in person. I know that was a challenge the past two years we've heard from you. So it's great to hear. Back to you, Ashley.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: So next up we have Megan from the Medford public school after school program.

[Megan Fidler-Carey]: Hi, thank you. Councilors for this opportunity. It's always a nice time to check in. I am excited, like somebody said before, to have this meeting in person so that we get to physically say hello. Thank you for this opportunity to provide scholarships. That's what we've asked for our CDBG funding for for the last several years and continue to, especially knowing that next year a lot of families will be going back to work physically and depending on this scholarship for after school, even more than they have the this year and couldn't last year, we provide scholarships for families who are working working families who need the childcare after school, we have an after school program at all for elementary schools that runs from dismissal until six o'clock, and the after school program is, you know, one of the typical programs we offer snack homework help physical unstructured play, and also structured activities. We've spent a lot of time this year specifically working with social emotional learning and kind of relearning how to be good neighbors in society. The behavioral challenges have been exorbitant this year, something like we've never seen. Working in schools this year is really hard. You'll hear it in my voice that, for those of you who know me, that we're all fighting a million colds. We're all, everybody's short-staffed at every level. It's been very challenging. for all of the adults in the system and for the kids. So I know that parents really rely on us. So we wanna be able to provide this and give as much access as possible to parents who need this service. So thank you so much for this opportunity to be able to provide scholarships again. So we ask parents to prove, they have to prove to us that they're working and prove to us that they need this money. so that we can provide more afterschool. And it's just a great service and it's really nice to be able to partner with the city and be able to brag about the fact that the school district has this partnership and that we're using this community funding in this way. So we really appreciate it and thank you so much.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Megan. Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Morell, and thank you so much, Megan. Purely out of curiosity, do you have a ballpark of how many households this level of funding is able to provide tuition assistance to?

[Megan Fidler-Carey]: Yes, so households is a good question because, you know, some have more than one. We provide a sibling discount, but some households send one or two or sometimes three students. So we've been able to find anywhere from 10 to 15 households. Thank you.

[Nicole Morell]: Any other questions for Megan? Council, Vice President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Megan. I'm sure you know literally better than anyone here, you know, how packed these programs are. So I'm not going to get too into the weeds on this. But you know, Is there anything that the city council could be doing to provide additional support to the afterschool program? I know we're talking about the CDBG and I'm 100% supportive of this, but I'm just wondering in what other ways we might be able to assist you guys and maybe get a few more students and families into afterschool programs.

[Megan Fidler-Carey]: So for those of you who don't know what Councilor Bears is referring to is another giant challenge that families face So, some families face the affordability of the afterschool care and that's where this funding comes in but other families face just the availability of afterschool care. So in our city, we're unfortunately don't have many options for families we've got our in school afterschool programming that's at the schools, and that's what I represent, but very few alternatives. And those programs are full, they're maxed out, the demand far exceeds the capacity. And when I say capacity, I mean space in the buildings to have proper afterschool programming, you know, that play that I was talking about and the unstructured part. And staffing is really difficult because it's a strange time for people to work to ask people to come in from two to six. So, we face those challenges of staffing and space, but also more than that, the city just doesn't have very many options the way that the council could support us, I think would be to somehow You know, I'm not sure what we could do to attract better or more private. I would say more because we've got some great private options just not enough. You know other districts that I've spoken to have a big boys and girls club or they have a big YMCA, and we've got a small option with the Medford Youth Center but it's again not enough space. I just wish that we had, you know, some. We could invent some and big empty building that could be a great big center for after school programming for students. I know that's unreasonable to think about but I think trying to attract some alternative options to the city would be the best way that the city that you all could support us. In that because it's not it's not a resource issue, except for space, because as soon as we can let more people in off the waitlist the tuition that comes in from that would fund the staff and would fund the supplies that we need so it's not a it's not an issue of money. it's really just an issue of capacity and and i'm not sure how to crack that Not, I've been pounding the pavement looking at other districts to find out what they do and nobody has, we have one of the biggest in school programs at the Brooks after school program is the biggest in school program I can find in the Commonwealth. So that's saying a lot, but it also is one of the biggest wait lists that I can find. So it's just a matter of options. I'm sorry, I don't mean to take up so much time with that, but thank you for asking Councilor Bears, because I know that a lot of people are working on this together to support Redford families.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, thank you so much. And I really appreciate the thoughtful answer. And the thoughtful ideas about what we can do. And one of the reasons I wanted to ask is that we actually have a lot of great community organizations on the call right now, and maybe might have sparked in somebody's head listening to you an idea that maybe we could partner on. So, you know, if that happened for anybody, feel free to email me or the city council or whoever, and we can try to make some connections. So thank you so much.

[Megan Fidler-Carey]: Thank you. I know West Med for Community Center's on here, so I'll be talking to Lisa soon.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Awesome.

[Megan Fidler-Carey]: Thank you.

[Nicole Morell]: scholarship program is that just purely based on a ranking of need, you know, does most does like say one school tend to have all of the families and it's not necessarily other schools or is it equitably distributed, or how does that work.

[Megan Fidler-Carey]: um it's it's seems to be equity to equitably distributed but not by design it's not like. we've got too many at one school, so we're no longer taking them at that school. It's just happened to be that the families that have applied for the scholarship, it works out across the district.

[Nicole Morell]: Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions for Megan? Turning it back to Ashley. Thank you, Megan.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: Thank you. So we have Lindsey from the Mystic Community Market, YMCA.

[MCM00001474_SPEAKER_08]: Hi, everybody. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. My name is Lindsay Smythe. I'm the director of fund development for the Mystic Valley YMCA. We are based in and serve Malden, as well as Medford and Everett. Our largest program in Medford at this time is the Mystic Community Market, and that's the focus of our request. I want to thank the City Council and City of Medford staff for all their support in past years, especially the past two years. Our Mystic Community Market is a state-of-the-art food distribution center that was developed in partnership with the Greater Boston Food Bank. And our partners here in Medford were co-located at the Walnut Street Center over on Mystic Avenue. We opened about three weeks before the pandemic hit, and our plan was to have in-market, which we call our food pantry, in-market shopping from shelves, glass front refrigerators, and wanted to bring as much dignity as we could back to the experience. experience to reduce the stigma and increase, sorry my dog was contributing in the background, increase access to food resources for Medford residents. We've done that, but we have not been able to maintain the indoor full choice shopping option that the market was designed to be. We had to pivot very quickly, as so many places did, to serving outdoors. And we went from a budget of and program plan to reach 5,000 individuals with about 250,000 pounds of food to serving about 10 times that number of individuals with 2 million pounds of food in 2020 alone. So needless to say, the Mystic Community Market was you know, designed to serve the Medford community, and we really feel, especially with the support of this grant, that we have been able to do that. Last year, we were able to serve 5,200 Medford residents, over half of whom are children, with weekly, up to weekly groceries. On average, our households that get groceries from the market come two times a month and they get about a 30 pound bag or box of shelf stable items fresh produce protein and bread dairy all sorts of other things when we have it, we get a lot of wonderful donations through food link. and our partners at Wegmans and Aldi's markets. So we are looking to have level funding this year and it looks like we're being recommended for that and we appreciate it. Our aim is to really maintain this level of service. We've dipped down from the pandemic spike, but we are looking to just be able to maintain that level of about 5,000 to 5,500 of Medford residents being served by the market, and that falls in line with the estimated percentage, based on greater Boston food bank data of how many folks in Medford are still living with significant food insecurity. We just quick, we run a lot of different programs, but in Medford our focus is the Mystic Community Market, the Medford Youth Center that Megan mentioned, yes, yes, yes, more capacity for after school programs, please. We are at capacity with our school age program and working to rebuild and drop in, but it's not enough. and we do operate a smaller youth community center at the Willis-Savv Community Center at the Housing Developments on Exchange Avenue. Again, happy to answer any questions that you might have.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Lindsay. Any questions for Lindsay and the YMCA community market? I see your hand up, but I think it might just be still up.

[Zac Bears]: No, my bad.

[Nicole Morell]: That's okay. Thank you. All right.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: Great, turning back to Ashley. Thank you. Next up, we have John from SCM Transportation.

[John Keegan]: Hi, folks. My name is John Keegan. I'm the executive director at SCM Transportation. SCM is Somerville, Cambridge, and Medford. So the city was part of starting us 40 years ago. Primarily we work with seniors and folks with disabilities. A lot of that is with seniors in an attempt to keep them engaged in their lives and healthy. And we do that through transportation, strangely enough. Most of that transportation is to medical appointments, whether it's the hospitals, there's an awful lot of that, but also people's personal doctors, et cetera. We work mostly through greater Boston. So a lot of medical appointments are in Boston, but also strangely enough, up on Montville Ave and Stoneham, we take a lot of people there, up to Lahey and Burlington, Cambridge, et cetera. We also do a couple other things. We do some transportation to the Medford COA. That's not part of this discussion really. And also, as Anne mentioned, we do some transportation with community families. You know, we service about 130 trips per month, taking people to appointments. It's somewhat of a labor-intensive process. You know, we have to pick them up at their homes, we bring them to their appointment, and we bring them to the door. So we call it door-to-door for a reason just keep people as safe as we can. We're fully accessible, so we're able to take folks with wheelchairs, which is important out there more than you might think. So we do a fair amount of wheelchair trips. Let me just see if there was anything else. Oh, it's a free service, which is something that makes it very in demand. We can't really serve the demand You know, as a sideline, you know, we have a dispatch and reservations person who will talk with people about other opportunities, you know, to sort of create a holistic travel plan. We try not to let people make too many appointments through us. We want to distribute it through the community. And MedFed, now that things are coming back to in-person, You know, we'd like to see a little more diversity in our clientele, and Pam has been helping with that. And prior to the pandemic, we had done a couple of meetings over at Warkling Court, for instance, and we'd like to kick that up again and just make sure that people know what's available out there to them and that they can, and know how to access it. Basically, people sign up. There's not many criteria. If you're over 60, you're pretty much in. There are a number of rules for how to schedule trips, and there are some timelines, et cetera. And so since we're on public TV too, if anyone out there is interested in that, they can give us a call, 625-1191. And you'll get someone who can explain all of that to you. And I'm happy to answer any questions. And I do wanna say thank you. We've been with Medford for a very long time.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, John. Thanks for sharing that contact information for those watching. Going to Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Morell. And thank you, John, for the presentation. Just to clarify, you said 130 trips per month. And are those all to Medford residents?

[John Keegan]: Yes, that's all Medford residents.

[Kit Collins]: It's very impressive. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you, Councilor Collins.

[John Keegan]: I won't bore you with all the other places we go and all the other cities.

[Nicole Morell]: Any other questions for John and SCM? Seeing none, back to Ashley.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: Okay, so our last agency. We have West Medford Community Center. I know we have a few representatives. Terry, are you going to speak?

[Terry Carter]: Yes, I will. Thank you. Good evening, Councilors and the CDBG administrators, as well as the other agency representatives on the call. It's good to be among you once again. I'm always awestruck by the amazing work that's being done across the breadth of the city by our sister agencies. And I certainly wish you all well in your pursuit of funding for this cycle. At the West Bedford Community Center, I direct elder services and we're a day drop in program, three days a week. and the $21,000 level funding that we've asked for and been recommended for is a significant offset to the part-time salary of the Elder Services Director. I guess to put it in a nutshell, what we're really trying to do as a program is And it's similar in many ways to some of the other things that you've heard this evening is we're trying to maintain the ability of ambulatory seniors, primarily to, you know, to have an independent lifestyle. And as they come to the center, they have the opportunity for regular social contact with, you know, friends from the local community. I mean, we're primarily populated by folks that live within probably walking distance, mostly walking distance of the center, although we do have visitors that come from different areas of the city and certainly in some cases from the surrounding towns that also have connections to West Medford. Nutrition is another component of the program. We have a schedule of meals three days a week, lunch is delivered. We're in partnership with Mystic Valley Elder Services for the delivery of those meals and in support for the nutritional goals that we have. And there are many seniors that visit our program that it's a significant part of the nutrition that they have during the course of their day. I think the other thing we try to do is to help seniors manage, again, those that are relatively ambulatory, their health considerations in terms of fitness, balance and strength, in regular exercise. One of our auxiliaries at West Medford Senior Club, they have an exercise program three days a week. We've offered yoga at least one day a week for a number of years through a local provider. You know, the aim again, once again, is to make it low impact and governed by the abilities that folks have who come down to the center. We're also looking at ways of helping seniors to, you know, kind of deal with the everyday things that, you know, they have to cope with in their lives, whether it's, you know, financial health, again, physical health, nutritional services, And I think the other thing was trying to expose them to the arts as best we can through collaborations with organizations that belong to the Metro Arts Council. So there's a number of things that we wanna do intergenerational programming, certainly so that we can foster conversation between the younger members of the community, older members of the community, so that history and culture can be passed down to the next generation. Because many of you know this, some of you may not, West Medford, the West Medford community is the traditional heart of the African-American presence in Medford going all the way back to just after the Civil War. So there's some significant historical connections that we want to make sure that we can maintain and pass along to the younger folks that are coming up in the community. So we've used Zoom pretty extensively up until the time roughly a year ago that we were able to let folks back into the building, so to speak. And slowly but surely, we've moved away from virtual and more into the physical space. And the program is ramping up and growing week by week. So we're pretty excited about that. You know, to have a day like today where you, you, you have 20 seniors, um, in the space, um, it brings a smile to all of our faces and the laughter and the, you know, the, the chaos is, is, is great. It actually, it's a great thing. Um, I'll stop there. Um, and I certainly am happy to take any questions. Lisa Crossman, our interim, and new-ish executive director is on the call. I believe the president of our board of directors, Stephen Douglas, may also be on the call. So if you have any questions, not just for me, but for any of them, I'm sure they will be happy to respond.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Terry. Any questions for Terry and the West Metro Community Center, or Stephen, or Shelley, or I thought I saw Chelly in the corner. There we go. Or Lisa, if anyone else wants to speak. Yeah, unmute you guys. Should see the box there, Stephen.

[SPEAKER_14]: All right, perfect. Thank you. Hi, Stephen Douglas, president of the West Medford Community Center. Chelly Keshavin, vice president. We are currently sitting in the city council's chambers because we thought we could be in person. but we're here.

[Nicole Morell]: I do apologize about that. It was noticed as Zoom only. I apologize.

[SPEAKER_14]: Not a problem. I didn't fully read it. That is all my fault. The only thing I wanted to say is thank you, Megan, for what you said about the afterschool program. I was not aware that the need was as great as it was. We at the West Medford Community Center have an afterschool program, but we haven't historically pushed it or advertise it because we didn't think there was much need. Come to find out listening to Megan, we have needs. So I just wanted to say thank you. And we'll be talking more about our afterschool program.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Steven. And I apologize again for that. Any council vice president bears.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President, and yeah, apologies, Steven and Shelley, that you're down there, although you get to be in the city council chambers, which are a beautiful big room. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you to all of the folks tonight. I think the work that you're all doing is really impressive. I also just wanna note, and I think it's in the spirit of what Terry said, it's nice that everyone stayed. to listen to what everyone else was doing. And so in that level of support and community and connection that has been built, I think is really valuable. I actually went to the West Bedford Community Center after school in the old building before the new building was made when I was at the Hervey School. So I'd love to, if there's any way that I can help support that work as well, I'm happy to do it. But just wanna thank everybody for everything. I do have a quick question for Ashley and Alicia, but I'm willing to hold that until after other folks have had a chance to speak.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Bears. Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Like Councilor Bears, I just wanted to thank everyone for speaking to us tonight. I've personally learned a lot in the last hour about all of your projects, about how they can help our community, They've given me some more ideas, I think a better perspective about how we can tackle issues here in Medford. So I'm very grateful for that. And I can't wait to see, you know, these projects go forward. I can't wait to see us work together on these issues. And yeah, I'm just grateful for all of you for being here today and for participating in this meeting.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Morell. I just wanted to echo My other two Councilors already said thank you so much to everybody for your presentations for informing us about the work that you're doing and for the work that you do in our community. I couldn't heap enough praise on all of you for filling such vital needs in our community. Some of you are more familiar going into this meeting than with others. I know Mr. Community Market, Housing Families, ABCD, I've referred a lot of people to in my experience with the Mutual Aid Network here in Medford and Somerville, but so grateful to all of you for your work. And I'm excited to, you know, when we're of the discussion, I'd make a motion to report all of these out favorably, but I also just want to say, you know, for going forward, if there's anything that we as Councilors can do to support your work, to allow you to continue your operations more robustly, you know, please, please feel free to reach out, you know, speaking only for myself, please feel free to reach out to me at any time to let us know what we can do, what can we do to more fully support you throughout the year in addition to this grant cycle. So thank you again.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Collins. And then we do have one comment to read into the record. Vice President Bears, I don't know if you wanted to ask your question before then, or if you'd like me to do that now.

[Zac Bears]: If I just may ask my question really quickly. Thank you, Madam President. Alicia and Ashley, were there any folks who had applied in previous years who didn't apply again this year, or anyone who had received a grant in previous years who wasn't involved in this year's process?

[Alicia Hunt]: You want me to, Ashley? So the one that I am very aware, there were two that did not apply this year. Mystic Valley Elder Services didn't apply. They, last year they applied for a program that was sort of, I would say, tangential to their mission. It was around supporting seniors with computers and getting on computers. And actually that program never ended up running. this year. And in the process of that, they did actually tell us that they do get extensive funding from the state and other sources. And they kind of implied that they do a lot of work in Medford and didn't need to tap this particular source of funding to support that work. I think several of these groups have actually mentioned. that they get food and support through Mystic Valley Elder Services. So they're still fully operational in the city. They're just not tapping this funding for their work here. The other one is the Consumer Advisory Commission. The directors in that office retired in January. I asked the mayor for an update on it, and they said that they're working very well with the Attorney General's office, to make sure that all the consumer affairs issues are heard and handled accordingly, and that they have received just a very few inquiries, but they are working with the attorney, the mayor's office is working with the attorney general's office to follow up on the paperwork and inquiries the city's received since the women retired. So they did not ask for funding for that at this time. That's what actually allowed us to fund. This was the first year that ABCD, at least in recent years, as far as I'm aware, has asked for funding. And that allowed us to fund the homeless outreach mobile unit this year because those two organizations did not request funding this year.

[Zac Bears]: Got it, thank you so much and for refreshing my memory. I noticed ABCD was new and everyone else was still getting pretty much what they asked for. And I was like, where'd that come from? So thank you for refreshing my memory.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Director Hunt. Any other questions or anything anyone else would like to add before I just, I have one comment to read to the record.

[MCM00001493_SPEAKER_06]: I just, if you don't mind. I just want to touch upon a few things. Thank you again for everybody coming, our Councilors, all our agencies. I just want to reiterate that these amounts that we're recommending are estimated amounts based off of last year's allocation. We can allow up to 15% of our total award from HUD towards public service agencies. So the numbers we're working with are what we worked with last year. Usually we like to notify an actual amount by like mid to the end of May. We're not expecting to know that amount by then. HUD has not announced their awards and allocations to for the CDBG grant yet. So I just want everyone to kind of keep that in mind that these are an estimate and you may hear from us. It may be slightly different. We're hoping there's not much change. If it's less, our plan is to just proportionally decrease everybody by whatever, just proportionally across the board. We have not yet made a plan for if it's more. that there's gonna be some further discussions on that. But once I know, you'll hear from me.

[Nicole Morell]: Great, so knowing that procedurally, will the council still move forward on the same timeline? Okay, I'm seeing Director Hunt nodding.

[Alicia Hunt]: We were told by specifically and directly by HUD that we would still, they would like us to continue to hold the public hearing that is planned for, I believe the date is May 3rd. It's the first Tuesday in May. and that we will go forward with the estimated numbers at that time, with the notice to everybody that if the allocation changes, actually we should include what our plan would be. Would it be proportional? And this will be true for all of the funding that we will have in that larger budget as well. And I did just actually want to mention just one other thing. These are wonderful public service agencies. We're thrilled to have them. We're thrilled to have these programs. It is helpful for people to be aware. These are not the only public service agencies operating in the city of Medford. We have a wealth of public service agencies helping. This funding is restricted to supporting peoples with low income. And so there are restricted, there are wonderful programs that are nonprofits that would not be able to do programs suitable for this. for this particular part of the funding. And there are other programs working with low-income populations in Medford that do not apply for CDBG funding. And I just sort of wanted to acknowledge as well that there are other wonderful agencies out there that not many of us actually also partner and work with as well. But thank you to all of you who are here this evening. We appreciate it.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Director Hunt. Any further questions from the Councilor or anyone else would like to speak? Okay, I do just have one letter to read into the record, if you could bear with me. So this is from Barry Ingber, who lives at 9 Draper Street. So the comment goes, I'm sorry, I'm unable to attend either in person or by Zoom this evening. I thank you for the opportunity to submit my comments by email. I first became familiar with the Community Development Block Grant Program in 1977, when I began my first job as a community organizer in Binghamton, New York. The low income community and its advocates were fighting to get the city to utilize the funds as they were intended to be used on behalf of its marginalized populations rather than ways to supplement the city's revenues to support basic operations. The problem was not unique to Binghamton nor to 1977. The theft of funds intended for under-resourced folks has been consistent across the country and across the past half century. I believe that Medford has done better than most communities in this regard, but that is a low bar. I know almost all of the organizations submitting public service applications, several of them quite well. They're almost all excellent and critically important organizations, but only two are nonprofits based or firmly connected to our city. Medford is sorely lacking its own nonprofit infrastructure. There are no incorporated or staffed NGOs here advocating for low income people nor for immigrants. In most cities, the folks from 26 Bradley Road would have a nonprofit resource and ready to help them, but not here. Since the demise of TRICAP, we have had to depend on Boston's ABCD to provide essential services. The ABCD is most certainly not Medford's anti-poverty agency. People have to leave Medford for legal assistance, for emergency services, for crisis intervention services. Medford has no viable community development corporation. I support the organizations applying for funds for the coming year, but looking to the future, it is time for Medford to utilize its CDBG funding as well as funds from other sources to develop and maintain our own local NGO network. I ask that the city council and the city's planning department begin now to develop a plan to accomplish this. Thank you. And that is the end of the comment. I mean, not to completely take this down this path, but I am curious, Director Hahn or Administrator Williams, is it something in the city's power or something the city is looking at to find a way to kind of resurrect an anti-poverty agency for the city or for a grouping of cities like TRIPAC was?

[Alicia Hunt]: This is the last, the first, well, I have been very aware that we don't have sort of that direct here in the city. All of these agencies, there is a certain amount of economies of scale that I've always felt were important. If you'll notice, many of these agencies said they're working in three cities because that gives them an economy of scale that makes sense. That's not to say that we shouldn't have one, but we are frequently compared to Cambridge and Somerville and each of those cities have at least a population that's at least 30% greater than Medford's off the top of my head. Our population is close to 60,000 and theirs are close to 100,000. So you do need a certain size population to be able to support such a thing. We have been working with the Outreach and Prevention Office and many of these agencies on this idea of a resiliency hub, which for those who are not aware, the concept here would be that it would be a physical location where people would be used to coming for services and support that it might have after school programs or youth programs. It might have offices for anti-poverty programs for people to come directly to visit. And then part of what makes it a resiliency hub is that the city would then support it to become off-grid capable and such that if there was a major disaster here, that building would continue to remain functional. And the place that people are used to going for services would still be functional and they could go without having to be told, where do you go in the event of an emergency? They would just know it would be natural. In many communities that look at that work, they start by saying, oh, who are our NGOs and who has a building and who wants to be the host of this? And in Medford, we said, we don't have that. And so we've been trying to work with outreach and prevention to create a network and to create a core and to have these conversations and discussions about whether we could help support such a location. learnings of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network who have really been fostering this idea is that it's better if this is not a government-run location because many of the people who need support and services Often don't trust governments and that's not about Medford that is about government and the people who are who need the help the most often are undocumented but are often people who are just not used to trusting government. And so. that as it may be, the recommendation is that it would be something that would be owned by a separate entity, managed, run by a separate entity, and the government would help and support, which is what we've been trying to do and foster that. We have not explored the legal framework of an NGO to support that work. It's actually an interesting question, which I will raise at a meeting with the group tomorrow. We're actually working on a grant for another grant round to support that work to see what the options are with creating an NGO. sort of naturally assume that they were created outside of the government because NGO stands for a non-government organization. And so it seems awkward to me that the government would create it. We certainly could support it and foster it. So it is an interesting question. It is actually in line with the resiliency hub work that we're doing. We've been talking a lot with the West Medford Community Center, with the YMCA and the Mystic Market in particular, as both organizations that have locations to start to talk about what's possible here in the city. And we are trying to think big and outside the box. But if anybody would like to give us, you know, like a Lindsay, I don't know how big, like an 80,000 square foot building, maybe 100,000 square foot building that could host a lot of this stuff that we could afford at a reasonable price. Are my numbers in the ballpark there? You're muted. Oh, sorry.

[Theresa Dupont]: I can't speak to the square footage of the space. Our president and CEO Debbie Amaral has been in some conversations with the city trying to look at, you know, just this topic, where do we go next? And how do we make it? How can we help be a part of a solution like this? So I think it's an early conversation. And thinking about the realities of you know, one, I hate to say the term one-stop shopping, but that concept of being able to have a multi-service center for the community. You could be very right about square footage. My spatial reasoning is a little bit off, but I'll let Debbie speak to that at another time. I think in general, the conversations have been large.

[MCM00000389_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.

[Theresa Dupont]: In terms of space needed for certain programs, yeah.

[Alicia Hunt]: We appreciate the comment. And actually, if we could request, can you please forward us the comments so that we can have it for the record for our CDBG reporting? I can do that. Any written comments, it's important that we have for the record.

[Nicole Morell]: Absolutely. Thank you, Director. Any further discussion?

[Zac Bears]: Do I have Colin's motion?

[Nicole Morell]: Okay, on the motion of Councilor Collins to report the paper out favorably, seconded by Vice President Fares. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Here comes the roll call vice-president bears.

[Zac Bears]: Yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Caraviello is absent. Councilor Collins. Yes. Councilor Knight and councilor Scarpelli are absent. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Morell.

[Nicole Morell]: Yes. For in the affirmative three absent the motion passes. Do I have a motion to adjourn on the motion of councilor Collins to adjourn second by Councilor Tseng, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Vice President Bears. Yes. Councilor Caraviello is absent. Councilor Collins. Yes. Councilor Knight and Councilor Scarpella are absent. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Morell.

[Nicole Morell]: Yes. Going forward three absent the motion passes. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you everyone for taking the time to be here and for your service to Medford. It's all much appreciated.