AI-generated transcript of Medford City Council Committee Of The Whole 01-18-23

[Nicole Morell]: 21-053 Committee of the Whole meeting on this Wednesday, January 18th, 2023 at 6 p.m. Committee of the Whole is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Vice President Bears. Present. Councilor Caraviello. Present. Councilor Collins. Present. Councilor Knight. Councilor Knight appears to be absent. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Present.

[Adam Hurtubise]: President Morell.

[Nicole Morell]: Present. Five present, two absent. The meeting is called to order. There will be a meeting of the Medford City Council Committee of the Whole on Wednesday, January 18th, 2023 at 6 p.m. in the Medford City Council Chamber, later adjusted to Zoom, on the second floor of the Medford City Hall and via Zoom. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss paper 21-053, the Housing Stability Notification Ordinance and its review by legal counsel. The committee has invited Attorney Sharon Everett from KP Law, Finance Director Bob Dickinson, Chief of Staff Dina Nazarian, representatives from the Office of Prevention and Outreach, and representatives from the Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability to attend this meeting. For further information, aids and accommodations, contact the city clerk at 781-393-2425. Sincerely yours, Nicole Morell, council president. So the council has before us a draft ordinance regarding the housing stability notification language that has been in committee and is coming to the committee of the whole for the first time. We have also some comments from attorney Everett that came to our inboxes earlier today. I'm going to let Kit Collins, Councilor Collins, give us an update on what is before us tonight.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you so much, President Morell, and thank you so much to the city staff who are here tonight. And I know all these folks were present at our previous housing subcommittee meeting before this was passed to Committee of the Whole and provided some really excellent feedback and voices of support for this ordinance and context around, you know, what this aims to do in the community. So I really appreciate your time and being here tonight, as well as your past feedback. So, this draft housing stability notification ordinance for fellow Councilors who are not on the housing subcommittee and are less familiar with it. This ordinance is very similar to an ordinance that is already on the books and several of our neighboring communities. Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston. The ordinance is very straightforward. What it does is it creates a requirement that any property owner in Medford where they have a tenant at the beginning of that tenancy, they are to send to their tenant a document that the city of Medford will create that outlines basic housing rights and resources and also points occupants to where they can find out more about their housing rights and resources and organizations to provide more information about that. And also at the termination of a lease or if a homeowner is foreclosed upon for that same document to be sent to them and the goal of this is to promote housing stability in Medford by making sure that people know at regular times or being being able to catch people at certain moments when they're moving into a new place or moving out of it. So that everybody has the information that they should who to go to if you need help navigating a housing issue of any type, what type of resources are out there and how to get in contact with them with the goal of providing you know knowledge is power and we make sure that people are receiving this information through now structured channels that everybody benefits, tenants benefit, homeowners moving out of their homes benefit, and also landlords span to benefit by everybody being on the same page. So we've discussed this a couple times in the housing subcommittee. To recap our last meeting, we got more feedback from city staff from planning development and sustainability and prevention and outreach. And We also enjoyed a discussion around some implementation thoughts with this ordinance should it pass, which of course is not the purview of this council, but just, you know, city staff already thinking ahead to how this could roll out here in the community. The other thing that we mainly focused on in our last subcommittee meeting, which was in November, was asking legal counsel for a review of the ordinance and also a couple specific questions from the enforcement section. One being, if there are fines associated with noncompliance with the ordinance. So the question was, in the event of an unpaid fine, can the city issue a lien if there is a kind of ongoing noncompliance issue with the property owner non-payment to fines, does that become a lien? And in addition, there was a question, if there are fines accrued with non-compliant property owners, could those fines through this ordinance be directed to fund an affordable housing trust? Should we enact an affordable housing trust in Medford? And Attorney Everett has answered those questions for us in preparation for this meeting as well.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Collins. Going to Councilor Carballo.

[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President, is the attorney on online type to just to go over to the answers that she provided here in that letter I did represent the Council Collins just go over all the answers there.

[Nicole Morell]: I do not see Attorney Everett on the call. Councilor Collins, did you address all of the answers or sorry?

[Kit Collins]: I just gave a real surface level. I wasn't sure if Attorney Everett, I was hoping she'd be able to join. I was gonna leave that to her if she was here. I'm happy to discuss what she provided over email.

[Richard Caraviello]: I was hoping that she'd just give us a brief synopsis of what- Yeah, I was too. Couple of pages that she provided.

[Kit Collins]: I'm happy to offer my interpretation.

[Richard Caraviello]: No, it's okay, thank you.

[Nicole Morell]: I do see Madam Chief of Staff has her hand up.

[Unidentified]: Madam Chief of Staff.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Morell. Just to address KP Law and Attorney Everett's attendance. I believe she's still away for medical reasons, family medical reasons, if I'm not mistaken. And I believe that the request that came in was written in such a way to suggest that she could submit written comments or attend. And so I hope that this is sufficient, but certainly if there's something I need to communicate back, I'm happy to.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Merle. I just wanted to clarify. I didn't mean that as a criticism at all. I wasn't clear. I'm really sorry to hear that, Attorney Everett, is going through that. I wasn't aware and, you know, didn't mean that as a dig at all. I just wasn't sure if we were expecting her tonight or not, but I appreciate her providing comment ahead of this meeting.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Vice President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. I certainly don't want to usurp Councilor Collins, but I would also be happy to just essentially I read the legal document. And what I read out of it is that essentially that the ordinance has been passed and neighboring communities has not been challenged and stands on strong legal grounds. And then specifically to the two questions that Councilor Collins brought up around the can funds be directly sent to the trust fund without an appropriation. and can the city place a lien for non-compliant issues? What I believe the Attorney Everett wrote was that we can't directly send the funds to the Affordable Housing Trust. They would have to be appropriated because this would be not under the zoning ordinance, but a general ordinance. And then as to the liens, we could put that in as long as we have ensured that the city has adopted chapter 40 section of Massachusetts general law under 40 you. So that's my very short summary of what Attorney Everett said over the devices and bears cancer saying.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Um, I wanted to just thank my Councilor my fellow Councilors for sending over the ordinance and for sending the legal comments over for review before this meeting as well. That was very helpful and I think especially helpful was the, including in our packets. the subcommittee meeting report from the last committee meeting you had about this issue. That was really helpful to give me some context and see what questions you guys had already asked, which you guys had already been very comprehensive. That was very helpful for me to see. The transparency has been very helpful and I also really appreciate that the ordinance is quite clear-cut. It's quite simple to understand and It's very direct, and I don't see, as the attorney also mentioned in the legal review, all of this has been done in other communities. There's nothing particularly that stands out too, too much. Sorry, I'm getting distracted by the noise outside my room, but it stands firmly on legal grounds. There is one suggestion that I would like to entertain, but I don't know if Councilor Collins, you have any idea of how you want to structure this meeting, if you'd want to go through the ordinance first and then have me propose what I wanted to propose, that's up to you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Morell. Well, I didn't go into this with a structure in mind. I didn't want to be deferential to you, President Morell, if you had thoughts on our workflow tonight. I'm happy to do a basic overview of the ordinance and maybe we can, I have just one also, just a short amendment that I'd like to entertain as well. If that sounded good to you, I'd be happy to just do an overview and we can take comments or questions as they arise.

[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, thank you, Councilor Collins. Yeah, I think if you'd like to do a short overview of the ordinance, I know we have five councillors here tonight, three of which are on the housing subcommittee. So we can provide a short overview and then we can have for any additional questions, discussion from councillors, and then also all the invited members of the administration on our call as well. I do just wanna, Madam Chief of Staff, is your hand up still or again? I just wanna make sure I'm not missing you.

[Unidentified]: Okay, great. Councilor Collins, please proceed. Great, thank you. Would it be helpful if I shared my screen? Sure.

[Kit Collins]: Okay, if I'm going too fast, please tell me to slow down because I have had the benefit of reviewing this in subcommittee and might skeet right through it. So, Chapter 49, housing. We have the stated purpose of this ordinance to promote the housing stability of Medford residents, and then we have a fairly lengthy section on definitions, which seeks to just make sure that we're on the same page with some of the terms that we are using when we use this ordinance, which is pretty straightforward. The definitions make up about a third of the overall ordinance. Entity for homeowner, foreclosing owner, essentially the parties involved in the landlord-occupant relationship and the places that they reside in.

[Unidentified]: We get to applicability, it speaks to who is involved.

[Kit Collins]: And this makes clear that we are talking about specifically residential spaces. This section also makes clear that this ordinance does not apply to rental units in health care facilities. This is applying to houses, this is applying to apartments, living situations, not boarding or medical situations. 4934 is the meat of the ordinance talking about the required notices. This is the thrust of the ordinance, and we have two sections here. We're sorry, we have four sections here, but the first two are talking about inception and termination. There is a notice issued at the inception of a tenancy. whenever a landlord enters into a new tenancy with a tenant under written lease, written tenancy at will, or oral tenancy at will, regardless of length. So that's saying regardless of the formality of the rental agreement, this ordinance still applies, and that housing rights and resources notice must still be issued to the tenant. It describes how the notice will be conveyed, in hand or by certified mail, in addition to by email if one is available. And this notice shall include translated instructions for how to readily access the included information and resources in languages other than English. That last part is something that we had a very rich discussion with the city staff at our last subcommittee meeting, how to handle the translation piece. This is something that some of our neighboring communities with this ordinance have done differently. Some of them include more translated text on the document itself. Some of them simply have a more simpler streamlined version, which is a translation of the sentence. This notice is important, please have it translated in major languages spoken in that community. So this we did finesse with the input of city staff for how to strike the right balance of managing city capacity and our limited translation resources with making sure that regardless of language spoken at home, this form would be readable and meaningful to everybody who receives it. And then termination of tenancy is extremely similar. It stipulates the same notice be sent just when the tenant or former homeowners is served a notice to quit or lease non-renewal or expiration. Later in this section, we have a couple amendments that were adopted from our last subcommittee meeting. We wanted to make sure that there was, you know, a structure for input on how to make sure that we are thinking about diversity, we're thinking about equity, we're thinking about how this will land with residents of different backgrounds. When this form is created, so we included Section C, the Board of Health Director or their designee shall consult the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Office of Planning, Development, Sustainability and the Office of Prevention and Outreach on the creation of the required notices. And finally, that there'll be a procedure for making sure on an annual basis that the notices are still relevant include all the information that they should just to go quickly through the remainder non wavability, this is to say you can't make a rental lease and landlord that says this ordinance doesn't apply that always applies. And finally, enforcement. Initially, in the first draft of this ordinance, we use the model of other communities, which said, which in other communities, this is typically enforced by the code enforcement officer. Through the subcommittee process, we reached out to the code enforcement officer. They said, this sounds like more of a Board of Health thing. We reached out to the Board of Health and Director O'Connor very graciously agreed that her office would be able to handle it and would be happy to handle enforcement. Thank you very much. And so that was one change that was made in subcommittee. And then this section also includes that the penalty, which he was I think very closely to other penalties levied for other ordinances in Medford, such as the snow removal ordinance with that maximum fine of $300. I think that's it. I also want to flag as I've been going over this, having reviewed the legal review that was sent to us earlier in the day. I am not, I'm 95% sure just for Councilors note, I think that those legal comments were provided on an earlier version of this ordinance. Maybe that. I think that a version was circulated for legal review after our first meeting of the subcommittee. And then the updated version was circulated after our second subcommittee meeting. So just just to clear up confusion, I think that the version with legal documents on it was an earlier version of the ordinance.

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

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you, Councilor Collins for that run through. The amendment I was going to propose, I think it came to my mind when I was looking at the legal comments that were sent and it seems like you guys have already addressed it. It was the one regarding emails. And as a young person, oftentimes it's easier for us to find documents via email. It's easier for us to, oftentimes we misplace papers, And that's not only a young person thing. It might happen to anyone. And so having it in record and email is certainly, I think, beneficial. And your subcommittee already made that edit. So I'm very grateful for that. I also wanted to note, I'm very grateful for the lens that you guys have put on equity as well, and making sure that all residents have will have access to this ordinance, the benefits of this ordinance, the language stuff that you guys as a subcommittee have put in there has been, I think is very helpful and very, I think very shows how much we as a council are paying attention to issues of equity and access. So I just wanted to express my thanks for that as well.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Vice President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilor Collins. And thank you to all the staff who've been with us through this process so far. I just again want to really emphasize and thank the PDS office Board of Health and everyone else who's worked with us on this. You know, it's really, and I think this is, you know, we talked about fines we talked about enforcement but really the conversation that we had in the subcommittee meeting is that, you know, this is primarily to start an education tool. And, you know, the goal is to get this information out as broadly as possible to as many people as possible so that they have the information that they need about their rights and and duties around. Housing stability. So just wanted to put that out there to say that on the two issues that we raised in our last subcommittee meeting, you know, one, I think it's clear around whether we can directly send any fines from this ordinance to the affordable housing trust. The answer is no. So I don't think that that's gonna require further amendment. I do think that it would be, you know, I don't know if we wanna include it or just make a side recommendation that, you know, the mayor, if any fines are accrued under this ordinance, that the mayor appropriate them to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund if and when that is created. But I'd really be open to kind of not trying to shoehorn that into the ordinance in any way. And then secondly, when it comes to, you know, liens for unpaid fines, I think my preference would be that we address that at a later date if necessary, considering that the purpose here is going to be really educational and not, you know, leaning hard on enforcement, at least to start. And if we find after some time of implementation that there is a need to go back and amend this, you know, then I would be comfortable certainly doing that at that time. And finally, I just want to say that to Councilor Tseng's point, another goal of this is that you know, a lot of this information is available on the city website. But I think also having a copy of this specific notice be available on the city website and be available in different offices around the city is another way that we're hopefully going to be able to get this information out and use the work product that's created with the notification documents to reach people who may otherwise not have this information. So that's just my thinking on the outstanding questions as they are. Thank you.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Vice President Bears. Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Morell. I appreciate the discussion around this. I would tend to agree with Vice President Bears on how to proceed with the two questions around how do we dispense with fines that Attorney Everett was able to answer for us. It seems like the issue of how to deal with liens, that's Maybe maybe more of a systemic not systemic that's that's a question that could be applied to a multitude of ordinances in the city. I don't feel the need to attach it to this project. I appreciate the recentering on the theme of this conversation and the theme of this ordinance in general, which is to make sure that, you know, with, while we're devoting city resources to this project, that that's in service of housing stability, it's in service of making sure that people know their rights, it's in service of making sure that people know their resources. City staff works hard to make sure that people know these already. The point here is to cross pollinate with all that work that's already done and have another tool for getting it out into the city. And I think that it's the right use of our focus to make sure that city staff are able to use this to continue getting the word out and adding to that toolbox. And then if the way that we're dealing with fines and enforcement becomes an issue, that can be a conversation that we have in the future.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Councilor Caraviello.

[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President. Do we have a fee, a fine structure yet of what other cities are charging for fines?

[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: I don't have a comprehensive look, but I know that in the three other housing stability notification ordinances that we reviewed for Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston, their penalty, their enforcement structure was the same as ours. It was a penalty of $300. And I think that that is governed by, I think the state statute is mentioned in the text of the ordinance, but it's statutorily defined.

[Richard Caraviello]: Will this be enforced by the Board of Health or the code enforcement officer?

[Kit Collins]: Board of Health.

[Unidentified]: Thank you. Vice President Bears, is your hand up again or still up? I'll go with still up anyway.

[Zac Bears]: Oh, there you go. A little bit of both, sorry. Okay. Yeah, it's Chapter 40, Section 21B. And that's the, you know, first violation is a written warning and then subsequent violation is $300.

[Nicole Morell]: Any other discussion or questions from Councilors? Any members of the public who'd like to speak or any members of the administration that have been part of this whole process have anything that they would like to add at this point?

[Unidentified]: Seeing none.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Sorry, just that we're looking so it's a 90 days from but it's not voted on yet but so we have a few months to try to put something together we already have resource list and we have tenants rights lists and stuff but I just want to make sure that we have sufficient time to put a good notice together with the translations and how we're going to do that.

[Nicole Morell]: Yes, correct. It's 90 days from passage Council Collins.

[Unidentified]: That's correct.

[Nicole Morell]: Great.

[Unidentified]: Thank you.

[Nicole Morell]: Back to you, Vice President Bears. Again, I don't know if you put your hands back up or you put it down or not.

[Zac Bears]: I am so sorry. This one was truly accidental.

[Nicole Morell]: Okay. Anyone else who would like to speak at this point? Seeing none, do I have a Councilor Tseng?

[Justin Tseng]: Oh, I just wanted to thank the city staff for coming to this meeting for providing feedback and past meetings and through the whole process. It was really helpful to see the suggestions and feedback that you guys had. So I just wanted to make sure I thank you guys as well.

[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. And I'd like to echo that as well as anything we try to do as a council. It's all for not if it's something that doesn't work for the staff that's actually tasked with enforcing it or they have the expertise in this area. So I really appreciate you all being on the call and for all the time you've given to the subcommittee on this. I'm going to Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you so much. I apologize for monopolizing a lot of time during this meeting. Definitely echo those words of thanks. Really, the collaboration with staff on the drafting of this ordinance was a really gratifying process. And you guys are the experts. We're really grateful to have your support, both your support for the ordinance and your support in making sure that it's the right ordinance for our community. So I would like to make two motions, and the first is just a small one. There was one of the comments that Attorney Everett included in her legal review. Though it was on the old version of the ordinance, it still applies. She found that the word property occurs in the first section on definitions, but it doesn't occur anywhere in the ordinance. So I would put forward a motion to strike the definition of property from section 42, sorry, section 4932.

[Unidentified]: Mr. Kirk, do you have that language? Madam President, I have Councilor Collins moving to strike the definition of property from section 4932.

[Kit Collins]: And just for clarity for those, in case I didn't explain it well the first time, we defined the term and then we used it nowhere in the ordinance. So that's why we're just cleaning that up. But that's why I'm proposing to clean it up.

[Justin Tseng]: Okay. I'll second it.

[Nicole Morell]: Seconded by Councilor Tseng.

[Unidentified]: Mr. Clerk, please call the roll when you are ready. The roll call. Vice President Bears. Yes. Councilor Caraviello?

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes. Councilor Collins?

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Knight is absent. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Morell?

[Nicole Morell]: Yes. Five in the affirmative, zero in the negative, two absent, the motion passes. And Councilor Collins, please go ahead.

[Kit Collins]: Motion to report the paper out to the full council.

[Nicole Morell]: On the motion of Councilor Collins to report the paper out to the full council, seconded by Councilor Caraviello. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll when you're ready.

[Unidentified]: Vice President Bears? Yes.

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

[Nicole Morell]: Yes. Five in the affirmative, zero in the negative, two absent, motion passes.

[Unidentified]: Motion to adjourn.

[Nicole Morell]: And the motion of Councilor Collins to adjourn, seconded by Vice President Bears. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Unidentified]: Vice President Bears.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes, that's a carry on. Yes, that's a Collins. Yes, that's a night is absent, Councilor Scarpelli is absent Councilor Tseng, Yes, President Morell.

[Nicole Morell]: Yes, I've been the inferno during the negative to absent motion passes the meeting is adjourned.