[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so welcome everyone to the first meeting of the Medford charter study committee. Thank you all so much for being here and undertaking this endeavor, we're going to spend a lot of time working on this and Um, I'm pretty excited about it. Um, we wanted to start, this is a, this is just a sort of an introductory business meeting. We're not going to really talk about issues of substance tonight. We're going to try to just do some housekeeping. And so that we can hit the ground running in the new year. So what we first want to do is just sort of meet each other. Some of us have met each other. Some of us know each other, but, um, not everybody does. So, um, I'll I'm I'll start and, uh, and then I'll, let people know when to introduce yourself. Basically, just say your name, your neighborhood in Medford, maybe what your interest in charter review is, and if there's anything else you want to share about yourself, feel free. My name is Milva McDonald. I live in West Medford, and I'm really excited about being on this committee. I'm really excited to learn a lot. And Laurel Siegel is the other co-chair, and she's going to introduce herself now.
[Laurel Siegel]: So yes, I'm Laurel Siegel, and I live in Hillside. And I'm just really interested in taking a look at the charter and seeing what we might do to improve things and make things more current where the charter hasn't been reviewed in about 40 years.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thanks. The next person I'm going to introduce and I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to mention your name and then you introduce yourself. And please, if I mispronounce your name, please don't be afraid to tell me. So now you just want to, the city liaison is Francis Nwaje. Is that right, Francis? very, very close.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, and you could if you wanted to say a few words and introduce yourself, that would be great.
[Frances Nwajei]: Hi everyone, it's nice to see those of you that I already know, and to meet those that I don't know. I'm on here as the City Liaison. My official role is the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and my office is located at City Hall, first floor, room 101, right next to the Veterans Office.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Um, okay.
[Unidentified]: Recording in progress.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry. By the way, I just remembered to do that. We are recording this meeting, so.
[Matt Leming]: I heard Matt right as he said recording in progress. My name's Matt Leming. I'm a postdoc over at Mass General Hospital. I've also been involved in the Medford Charter Review Coalition for a good while now along with NILVA, Laurel, Mari, Eunice. uh, whomever else in this group was also on that, uh, committee. Um, yeah, I'm just excited to really delve into the issues with the charter and learn how it can be, um, improved as much as possible to meet the needs of Medford. And I'm excited to get started on this.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thanks Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: Hi, I'm Maury Carroll, lifelong resident of Medford. I live up on the Heights. I'm extremely excited about the opportunity to get involved in this and be able to look at the charter like Laurel said, it has been looked at since about 40 years from now. And it's time that the charter for the city of Medford gets into the 2020s and comes out of the 1980s. So, Thank you for having me, and I'm looking forward to working with everyone.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thanks, Maureen. Hi, Ron. We're just going around introducing ourselves.
[Moreshi]: Sorry, I'm late.
[Milva McDonald]: That's OK. John.
[Moreshi]: My name's John Marishi. I live near Wellington. And I've worked with legislation a lot. I love government mechanics and government policies that work well. So I'm really excited to get to do it in my own community.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Mike.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Hi, everyone. Mike Mastrobone here. I live just off Roosevelt Circle, Fulton Heights. This is my first journey into Medford government. I actually work in Somerville. I'm the budget director there. So we just went through this process. A lot of you guys might have keyed into that. So some of my favorite projects at work are modernizing local government. So really, I'm ready to join this process. I'm looking forward to it. So thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Danielle.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, Danielle Blanca I live in North Medford Fulton Heights area. Yeah, I'm just really interested to learn more about the charter and just hearing about how it hasn't been reviewed for so long is really interesting to me so I'm happy to be involved.
[Eunice Browne]: Great. Eunice. I'm in the Hillside area as well. I'm a lifelong resident of Medford. I live in the house I grew up in. I've been watching city council meetings for probably about 30 years, so I'm pretty tuned into what's going on. And I too want to see the charter come into the 21st century, everything from making sure we've had Since the charter was last reviewed, I think we've had three female mayors and the charter does not reflect that in any way in terms of gender and everything from that to looking at term limits, looking at the number of people on our elected bodies to removal of an elected official if we need to. Currently, we can't do that until the next election. So a lot of different things. Excited to get started, too. Great. Thanks, Eunice. Anthony.
[Andreottola]: Hi, my name is Anthony Andrea Toller. I'm a longtime Medford resident. I live in the Lawrence Estates, Medford High class of 1978. I'm not so much sure if I'm interested in is more is wanting to learn, you know, about the charter and how it affects our community and what if anything needs to change. how do we get to that point for our decision makers to kind of pull the lever. And thank you all for having me.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Ron. Oh, you're muted, Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: I'm catching up. I'm Ron Givino. I'm a lifelong my entire family's lifelong Medford. I've been involved in the city, volunteering in sports with challenged or disabled children, COVID. I was one of the infamous Columbus renaming school members. And, you know, I have five grandchildren all live in Medford and all my kids live in Medford. So I'm very much concerned about what happens once I'm gone, but I do live up in the North Medford area.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thanks. So, um, we do have one other member, uh, Jean's daughter, and, um, maybe she'll pop in at some point, but I don't see her here. So, um, I'm going to hand the meeting over now to, uh, Laurel, who's going to talk a little bit about. Some of the laws that we have to follow in the committee, um, and our meeting today with the call-in center. Um, the call-in center is going to help us a lot.
[Laurel Siegel]: So go ahead, Laurel. Absolutely. Before we do that, um, just a reminder to the members of the committee, um, please don't do that as part of this meeting. Um, but we had sent out an email requesting your phone numbers. Um, and if you haven't already, um, just so that we can easily communicate with all of you, if you can please just email us back with your phone number, that would be great. Thanks. Thanks for remembering. Absolutely. Um, all right. So we're going to keep the law review portion fairly brief because there will be additional review at our next meeting. But because we are anticipating providing advice to both the mayor and the city council, we are subject to the open meeting loss. And that means in terms of our communication amongst ourselves. that our deliberations must be done publicly, that we cannot be deliberating behind closed doors. That applies to our meetings, it applies to email conversations and other forms of communication. It doesn't mean we can't communicate it all amongst ourselves, but if we reach a certain number of us, a quorum of us, it has to be in a public forum. And so actually KP law will have a more in-depth presentation of this that we're expecting them to have at our next meeting. In addition, the city has provided some materials to me and to Milva, which we can forward to all of you for review. In addition to open meeting law, we're subject to public records law. We will take meeting minutes at all of our meetings and submit them to the city to be part of the public record. And also these meetings will be recorded and we believe, well, it looks like this one, this initial one is being broadcast by Medford Community Media and that should be the case going forward as well. And last, on the applicable laws for us, we are subject to conflict of interest law. Certainly, if there's any matter that any individual of us on the committee has a direct, could derive a direct benefit from us, we should remove ourselves from the conversation. But it also applies to certain things like receiving gifts from members of the public or other influences from the public over our decision making processes. Again, this is going to be more detailed in the future down the line, but we wanted to give you a heads up that, you know, these apply to our work here. So, as I mentioned, KP Law will be assisting us by providing us with materials on that. In addition, the city has entered into a contract with the Collins Center for Public Management at UMass. And their group, their goal is improving efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in local government. They have been working, somebody had referenced the fact that, you know, the Somerville process, both Somerville and Cambridge are currently going through charter review processes, as are many different municipalities around the state. And they've been a wonderful resource of information and will be for us as well. and they hope to be able to, depending on scheduling, to join us either for our January meeting or for our February meeting, and they can give us a lot of background on even what is a charter, what's included in a charter, what are our options, what are some models of what charters could look like. Our current charter is pretty stripped down and straightforward. It basically, with a couple of minor exceptions, tracks the statute. But there are a lot of other opportunities of different types of matters that we can consider. So they're going to give us that breadth of information so we have a good place to start from. That's pretty much everything.
[Unidentified]: Does anybody have a question right now about anything that I just went over? All right, great. Okay, great.
[Milva McDonald]: So now we felt like it was important to just agree on a code of conduct. And most of this stuff that we're gonna look at, it's pretty straightforward. And we just wanted to lay it out and all agree on this. So I've shared it. And we'll just go over it. Medford Charter Study Committee Code of Conduct, treat others with respect and kindness. Whether you agree or disagree with a fellow member's viewpoint or ideas, respond respectfully and constructively. Approach tough conversations and conflicting points of view with kindness, curiosity, and an open mind. And I think the open-mindedness is kind of the key there. stay accountable and present, come to meetings without distractions, ready to devote your attention to the agenda, actively listen and participate in the discussion, come prepared, review agendas, we'll always send out an agenda and meeting materials in advance so our meeting time is as efficient and productive as possible. Stay open to learning and ask questions. Our committee work will involve delving into complex topics around issues of municipal government, asking questions and waiting to form opinions until we've learned about the subject at hand will help us make informed decisions. Follow open meeting law. In all your communications around committee business, make sure you are complying with the guidelines set forth in the open meeting law. And no harassment or bullying and no disrupting or interrupting others who are speaking. Um, so how do people, do people feel like we can all agree on this? Yeah. Okay. Well, great. We will post this, um, and make sure you all have a copy of it. Um, and we just want to sort of set the parameters before we dive into discussions. And now the other thing that we have to do is set a schedule for meetings, which will probably be a lot harder, but Laurel.
[Laurel Siegel]: So we're going to start off just by doing a preliminary poll. I've got everybody up on screen of just raising hands to try to find days of the week that are most available for folks. And then we'll try to narrow it down from there. I think we pretty clearly do not want to schedule for Tuesdays, we don't want to be conflicting with city council meetings. And just to be clear, backing up a little bit about meetings, we anticipate that most of our work as a committee will be done on Zoom. We'll see, you know, it depends on how long this process is and what the world looks like at that point. But we anticipate that most of our work, there will be some additional meetings, you know, we definitely want to hold public input sessions. And we'll talk about as we move ahead with the process, what those could look like, so that we can make sure that we are getting robust input from our community. But that being said, just in terms of our regular meetings, we're anticipating for now monthly meetings. It may be that along the line, we decide we need them more frequently, but monthly meetings. So not including Tuesdays, if everybody who could be available on Monday nights could raise their hands, please.
[Unidentified]: And then for Wednesday nights, if everybody could raise their hands. They make a suggestion.
[Eunice Browne]: If Monday nights are it, can we try and stay away from, as we're staying away from city council nights, can we try and stay away from the school committee nights?
[Laurel Siegel]: We certainly can. Let, let, let me move ahead with the process, but certainly this is just, this is just step one. So, all right.
[Unidentified]: Thursdays.
[Laurel Siegel]: Okay, um, it, you know, there, there is no one night that as we expected, um, that is great for everybody. We've got five Mondays, six Wednesdays and six Thursdays. Um, one of the things that Milva and I had contemplated is alternating days of the week, um, be to try to accommodate everybody's schedule, understanding that not everybody is going to be able to make every meeting. Um, I could say that. Um, and so first of all, let's just, how do people feel about that instead of having a set one day a week, but that we alternated and did one day, one month and one day the next month.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Switching would be, would be valuable to me. Yeah. I've got my, my wife works late Mondays. And then I think I just think in terms of if we don't have a perfect day for everybody, let's, let's try and do the best we can for as many people as we can.
[Eunice Browne]: I agree. All right.
[Matt Leming]: It also depends on which day of the month for me. So some Thursdays, depending on which Thursday of the month, I can't make it.
[Laurel Siegel]: Exactly. I want to get a little bit more granular here. So Wednesdays, I know that some of us already have a conflict on the first Wednesday of the month. There is a standing board meeting that I am a member of, so I would not be able to participate on the first Wednesdays. Of those who can do Wednesdays, second Wednesday, please raise your hand.
[Unidentified]: Okay, and third Wednesday, please. And fourth Wednesday.
[Laurel Siegel]: And then we will do the same thing for Thursdays. And Milva, please chime in if you have your own conflict. I personally cannot do third Thursdays because I have a standing board meeting that I chair. So I cannot miss that.
[Unidentified]: But for first Thursdays, everybody, I'm sorry, it took me a moment.
[Danielle Balocca]: I think I'm one of the only ones that can't do Thursdays, but after February, I should be able to do Thursday once a month with no problem.
[Laurel Siegel]: Okay, so first Thursdays is eight of you plus Danielle at a later date.
[Unidentified]: Okay, and then second Thursdays. And fourth Thursdays. Oops.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: We missed third.
[Laurel Siegel]: I cannot do third Thursday. I don't want us to schedule when I can't. I'm sorry, if everybody could raise their hands again for fourth Thursday, so things flipped around and I couldn't get a count. Okay. So, based on that, if we were to alternate, it looks like either the fourth Wednesday for the first Thursday of the month are the days that are best for everybody. So, you know, again, it might be a little confusing to alternate and particularly there where they're butting up against each other, and we might have to sort of spread things out a little bit, but are people generally good if we go with that? And then I think we should then look at a calendar of what that would mean for our January meeting. So the date that definitely the most all of us could be available for is the first Thursday.
[Unidentified]: I'd be good with that.
[Laurel Siegel]: Yeah, unfortunately, actually, I already have a conflicting meeting.
[Matt Leming]: Would it be fine to kind of send out a doodle poll about this, even if it's not like. Over open meeting laws.
[Laurel Siegel]: Yeah, I mean, in terms of our schedule, we can. The difficulty is, you know, particularly where we're heading into the holidays and trying to set up everybody's schedules, at least as to the first meeting. I don't know if you have any particular thoughts on this. I think, you know, if people want to go with that first Thursday, I can look at moving my existing meeting. It's not a board meeting that I have that night. It's just another committee meeting that I have scheduled. So I could look at rescheduling that If for the 1st meeting, we want to go with the 1st, Thursday, and then certainly what I could do is do after that. But that way, at least, because we particularly we're working with the call and center and trying to get on their schedule. So it's important that we get back to them with a proposed date as soon as possible.
[Milva McDonald]: What date is the 1st, Thursday? It's January 1st.
[Laurel Siegel]: Thursday is January.
[Danielle Balocca]: Would it be the same time? Sorry. That's next up. Because if it was later, I could do that.
[Maury Carroll]: Why open it on Thursday? How about opening it on the Wednesday? Is everybody available?
[Laurel Siegel]: Because we have more people who can do Thursday than can do Wednesday for the first meeting. But we could also, if it's the fourth Wednesday, that would push us out to the end of January for our next meeting, as opposed to early in January. Okay, let's just, let's take a vote of, let's go with January 5th, which is the first Thursday or January 25th, which is the fourth Wednesday. So everybody who is in favor of doing it on January 5th.
[Danielle Balocca]: Depending on the time, like I could do either one. Okay.
[Laurel Siegel]: So we can discuss that a little bit. You know, this meeting we had set for six. We could push it to 630 if people have a preference. These meetings we anticipate could be long and we don't want to go too late into people's evenings. And so we'd like to start them by 630. So I don't know if that factors in, if that's late enough for you, Danielle, to consider.
[Danielle Balocca]: Not for January, but after that.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. What would work for you for January?
[Danielle Balocca]: It's probably too late, eight o'clock on a Thursday. I understand that's way too late.
[Laurel Siegel]: Sorry, I just wouldn't be able to do it. We want to be respectful of everybody's schedules, but as much as we'd love to have everybody participate. Let's go back. January 5th, everybody who thinks it makes sense to schedule our first meeting for January 5th. Let's get started. Four, five, six. I'm sorry. Every time I ask for a vote, the screen scrambles on me. So if you can just keep your hands up for a moment. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Okay. I've got seven people saying January 5th. And then the alternative is Wednesday, January 25th. People who want that as the date. Okay. I think we are set with January 5th being the date of our first meeting. Any strong preferences, 6 p.m. versus 6.30 p.m.?
[Moreshi]: The later, the better for me, just in terms of getting home from work.
[Laurel Siegel]: Any other opinions?
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: I'm fine either way.
[Laurel Siegel]: All right, so we will plan on 6.30 as a regular meeting time. Our first meeting will be on Thursday, January 5th, or our next meeting will be on Thursday, January 5th, and then we'll further communicate with the group about scheduling meetings after that. Great. All right. We knew this was going to be tough. Everybody in this group is involved in the community in different ways, and we all have a lot of commitments, so thank you for being patient.
[Milva McDonald]: And the meeting will, it'll be recorded, Danielle, so Uh, you know, you'll be able to watch it and hopefully. I mean, Colin center should be doing a presentation and KP law. So you'll be able to watch those. Okay, great. So. The next piece of business we need to take care of is. We need a secretary right now. I'm taking minutes, but, um. It's very distracting for me to take minutes. So we would like somebody to be the secretary and be willing to take the minutes and submit the minutes. The minutes will have to be submitted to the group and then we will approve them. And then once they get approved, they'll be submitted to the city clerk. Is there anybody who is really interested in taking the minutes and being the secretary?
[Unidentified]: I can tell you that's not my thing.
[Matt Leming]: So I'll do it if there's no like eager volunteers.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Well, um, let me, let me also say that the other position that we need is we need someone to volunteer to be the zoom administrator, which means, um, we'll set up the meetings, but, um, that person would be made the host and then, um,
[Laurel Siegel]: could handle whatever zoom business needs to be handled like basically letting people in, you know, because we can't necessarily keep an eye as as people are coming into the meeting or paying attention to people raising their hand or putting comments in the chat. questions in the chat, because it's difficult for us to do.
[Milva McDonald]: And making sure it's recorded, etc.
[Ron Giovino]: Just a quick question. I assume we're in the City of Medford Zoom process there. So I know that during the Columbus stuff, it was, you really had to block off the times, you really had to coordinate with the city. So I don't know if there's somebody, I mean, somebody from the city, Lisa Evangelista was really The liaison for us and she would control the meeting. So, um, you know, if there's other meetings that are on the zoom, Uh, they preempt some of them. Some of our meetings may get cut short because there's another one that's already been scheduled. So it is, uh, it's, it's quite a check, quite a task.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're still actually working on, right. This is not, um, On the city zoom account right now, and we're still working on, um, Connecting and on that. So, but we so far have not. We don't have anybody from the city to do this at this point. Frances, I see your hand up.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yes, hi. I just wanted to say that I do believe that the city will be issuing a Zoom account dedicated for this meeting.
[Unidentified]: Oh, OK.
[Frances Nwajei]: So I don't think that we'll run into that situation that you mentioned, Ron. OK. But there'll be shared accounts.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. So, and that would be great, but it would still, we still need somebody to do the Zoom business. Does anybody feel like they want to be in charge? Thank you so much.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: John, I'm happy to split it with you too, as well, or like we can work on a backup system. Yeah, I'm fine doing that. We can trade off.
[Moreshi]: No, I appreciate that. My wife has it all the time, so I can always bother her too.
[Ron Giovino]: A backup secretary may be necessary as well.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. So, so I have both. Oh, wait, here's Jean. This is, this is the job of this was okay, great. Hi, Jean. Oh, she's connecting. Hi, Jean. Hello. Welcome. Just to give you a recap, we've we've done introductions and we've went over a code of conduct, which I'll be sharing so you can see that. And we set up our next meeting, which is going to be January 5th. And right now we're, we just had John and Mike volunteer to be Zoom administrators. And we're looking for a secretary to take minutes of our meetings. But do you want to introduce yourselves before we get back to that? I know it's hard for you because we've all introduced ourselves.
[Jean Zotter]: Um, uh, and I apologize. I thought the meeting started at 6 30. I had the time wrong. That's okay. We're just glad you're here. Okay. Uh, I'm Jean's otter. I live in, um, the Heights and North Medford and, um, she, her pronouns. I'm a public health consultant. I have a law background and I'm very sorry that I am late.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Well, like I said, we're happier here and, um, And I said this at the beginning of the meeting, but we're just sort of doing housekeeping at this meeting. And so back to the question of secretary.
[Matt Leming]: Sorry, we scheduled the next meeting for January 5th at 630, if you want to take note of that, Jean.
[Jean Zotter]: OK, thanks.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I could do secretary work.
[Milva McDonald]: And, and, you know, maybe as we move along somebody, you know, if it gets to be, if you don't want to do it at every meeting or we can, we can, some other people will step up or we can pass the job around a little if necessary.
[Laurel Siegel]: All right. As Matt said, we may want to, you know, if people want to consider this, we can talk about it in the next meeting, but also have a backup secretary so that if there's a meeting that Matt can't be at, we have somebody just on call to be able to do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, for sure. The other thing that we wanted to talk about was public participation procedures. Laurel, do you want to lead that?
[Laurel Siegel]: Um, you know, we don't have a real firm structure for this. Um, but you know, just considering the flow of these meetings, um, and, um, you know, we want to have the opportunity to consider the matters that we'll be discussing as we move ahead process. Um, but this is very much public process. So we also want to have the opportunity for, um, any members of the community who want to participate, to speak up. Um, one of the ways that we could do this is similar to how they handle it for city council is every. Subject matter that they address. Um, they have the full and complete discussion among the members of, in that case, the council here, the committee. Um, and then once we have had a full discussion, if there are members of the public who would then like to speak to that specific matter that we are discussing. that we could open up the conversation to them. And then, I suppose, similar to city council, again, at the end of the meeting, if there are other topics that haven't yet been discussed that somebody from the public wants to raise, that we could allow some time at the end of the meeting for additional public comment. That's one possible structure. We're certainly open to other ideas if people have other thoughts or let us know if you are comfortable with that suggestion.
[Ron Giovino]: Just one question. I'm sorry.
[Laurel Siegel]: Ron. Oh, go ahead, Laurel.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, Ron, go ahead and then just as I'm thinking this through, I assume that there'll be members of the public who want an opportunity to present things that we're not even looking at as well. So, I mean, I'm sure we need to come up with a process that's beyond. what we're discussing, I'm sure there will be members who want to come to us and give their formal. I know people have, you know, taken a deep doc, look at this charter process. So I assume there'll be presentations from the public as well. So that, that needs to be, I mean, rules are.
[Laurel Siegel]: So that that's why what we had proposed was, you know, similar to city council. And when we get done with our agenda. then there is also further opportunity for public participation if there is a matter that somebody would like to raise that hasn't been already on the agenda for the night. To try to address those situations to allow that time for other conversation and other topics that somebody may want to address.
[Matt Leming]: Just to be clear, I've only been to one or two city council meetings. Is there a time limit on how much individual members of the public get to speak on any particular subject?
[Laurel Siegel]: Yes, there is. And so that would be an additional item to discuss. I don't want to lose Anthony though, because he had raised his hand.
[Andreottola]: Sorry.
[Laurel Siegel]: No, no, it's fine. It's fine. Anthony, did you still have a comment?
[Andreottola]: Yes, actually I have a question. Do we have a timeframe on this process? Because a lot of the structure I think will depend on, you know, are we looking at, you know, six months, a year, two years? What is, you know, what, do we have any idea of how long this process will take and how many meetings or, you know, is it a, is it a, you know,
[Laurel Siegel]: We don't have a defined time period. We did specifically ask the mayor that question if she had a time period in mind that she wanted us to be working towards. And her response was essentially that it's more important that we do a thorough job here. Um, so we could certainly talk about what our goals might be, um, as a group and a, and a projected timeline that we might want to aim for, but we're not operating in under any particular deadline for this process. Um, you know, certainly we want to be as expeditious as possible. We don't want this to drag on for years and years, but if we find as we're, I think part of it is. There's so much that we don't know that we don't know yet. Once we've had those briefings from the Collins Center and the opportunity to learn more even about what the options are, what can be contained within a charter, that that might better inform the depths of this project and how long that might take us.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: I just, to that point, I know we have every six months, we got to give a status report. I also want to be clear that we are an advisory piece of this. So at any point, somebody could take this off our hands, I assume, and say, OK, we're coming up to an election. We're coming up to, we need to get this on the ballot, blah, blah, blah. So that can always override us, is my understanding. Is that safe to say?
[Laurel Siegel]: I think it's where we're in a pointed committee. In theory, it could be it could be disbanded or modified at any time by whoever is the executive in office at the time.
[Ron Giovino]: I just mean, we don't have the key to we'll let you know when this thing is ready to go. It's we're just, you know, we're just doing the groundwork and then the decision will be made at any point. We're not the authority on in terms of this decision. So just to be clear on that.
[Laurel Siegel]: Eunice, you had a comment?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I would assume that the Collins Center, if they haven't already, should be able to tell us, since they've done this with other communities before, what other communities who are similar to us and who are looking to do what we're looking to do, how long it has taken them. I know I did a little poking around earlier today and came across, I think it was Watertown, where they seem to have done it in about 10 months, but they looked like they were having two meetings a month. So maybe some, I suppose, how long it would take us is predicated on how much work we actually have to do versus how much did they do. or they needed to do versus, you know, do we want to meet once a month, twice a month, three times a month, you know, whatever our schedules and desires allow, but there should be some sort of a guideline out there that the call-in center should be able to tell us about, you know, keeping in mind that we're going to do the most thorough job that we possibly can.
[Laurel Siegel]: And absolutely, we'll confirm whether or not they're able to join us for our January 5th meeting. But that can be one of the questions that we ask then. And certainly, we may decide that we want to meet more frequently. And another possibility, we don't know whether we want to go down this road, is whether we want to form some subcommittees that can be advancing on particular topics simultaneously, rather than just relying on the full group meeting once periodically. So, you know, we're still at this very early stage of not knowing so much, and wanting to give ourselves the flexibility rather than setting in stone what exactly the process is. Mike, you were next.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you. So, I want to, and maybe I'm happy to take a backseat if you want to stay on this topic of length, but I want to go back to public participation that you asked about. I think what's, I'm usually a reader of minutes rather than a watcher of meetings for for Medford City Council but I think What's important to me is continuity of flow and meeting the meeting goals, right? I think letting, or I don't wanna say letting, having public jump in after every discussion topic, I think is a little bit potentially detrimental to the discussion that we're having, right, in an ongoing way. And it might make it hard for us to get through our meeting goals, right, if we're constantly getting sidetracked. What, what might make sense and I'm happy to hear any anyone else's ideas, but maybe if if residents have comments on the topic of the meeting. that would make sense to do at the end where we can listen to what folks have to say if it's on the topics of the meeting. And if we can do a good enough job of laying out what the next few meetings are going to be, that might be a possible solution. And then we could also hold something like an overflow meeting, things we didn't cover or we don't plan that haven't been on an agenda. It's more like a listening session. I think that might be something that we could do. I just, I think I feel pretty strongly that letting folks pop in and out, in and out. I think that's difficult. One, to get participation. People won't know what's happening, like when they're supposed to be ready. And two, I think it might kind of disjoint the conversation. And on the topic of length, I think it's important that we hear from the Collins Center first before we sort of can really gauge that they'll definitely have some, some info for us.
[Unidentified]: Jean, you want to go ahead? Sure.
[Jean Zotter]: It sounds like we're still working out a lot of the particulars, and I may have missed if you talked about this already. But are we thinking of any community engagement strategies? Okay, yes, we will be okay.
[Laurel Siegel]: Yes, we'll formulate that plan for community engagement. So at the moment, we're just talking about our regular committee meeting. Okay, great. So, um, Mike, a valid point, I guess the counter to that is that if we save all of the community input for the end of the meeting, then it may be that, you know, there is relevant input to a particular topic that we want to have a more full discussion about as we're in that item on the agenda. And so saving everything for the end, then we sort of have all of that built up rather than it be part of the conversation on a particular topic. I'm not saying that one way is right and one way is wrong. It's just as a counter to that. So, Matt.
[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you. Just really quickly, I'd like to make the point that I've seen in public meetings before, when the public does participate, that if the speaking times are not strictly enforced, then some individuals can just end up speaking for very long periods of time. So I think there should be At least somebody in charge of keeping it like any individuals public comments to a very strict time period just to ensure that no one person gets. a more time to speak than X other members of the public just to make sure that everybody has the time to say something in these periods. That's just the point I'd like to make. So it should be very strictly enforced on this committee.
[Laurel Siegel]: And I'm seeing a fair number of nodding heads. So I think that there is general agreement on that. And we'll just have to decide on what that limit might be. John, you had a comment.
[Moreshi]: Yes, I just want to say I did appreciate Matt's comment about the interruptions of flow if we have multiple opportunities for public engagement. And I appreciate your desire to have the conversation informed, but what if we move the public comment period to the beginning of the meeting? Then we'll have the opportunity to take in comments that are on point and then engage with them as we go.
[Laurel Siegel]: The issue there might be, and thank you for the suggestion, is that because we will not yet have had the conversation about the topic, that they may not have the comment to make until after that conversation has taken place among the committee members. any other thoughts and otherwise we may just need to take a vote. And again, it doesn't necessarily have to be set in stone in perpetuity. This is to get us started. And then as we feel our way through the process, if we find that this is not, that whatever we've set up isn't working, we revisit it and try something else. So I think unless I'm... Misunderstanding and not to dismiss your, your comments. Certainly we can all vote on on John's suggestion as well. But the primary ideas seem to be. Discuss the topic and have the, the community input. Following the topic that's being discussed with an additional time at the end of the meeting for any other comments, not necessarily specific to the meeting agenda. versus have our meeting agenda and then an open period at the end of the meeting for public input. Am I correct in those being the two primary options here? Okay, so everybody in favor of option A for comment as individual items are raised.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I just make one more comment first? I'm sorry. I just thought of one more thing that And we won't have the call-in center at every meeting, but we will have the call-in center at many meetings. And if the call-in center is at the meeting, then would the concern that Mike raised about breaking up the flow be more relevant than if they weren't at our meeting?
[Laurel Siegel]: I'm not sure that it would just because, you know, I think they're making a presentation in which case it would be following the presentation. We would have our discussion and there would be the comment from the public or they would just be available as we're moving through the agenda. I suspect, you know, we'll see how these things flow. I suspect it's going to be the former anyway, that, you know, as if we're bringing them into the meeting, it's going to be to make a specific presentation or have a specific to find conversation with us as a committee?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, definitely. I just wanted to throw that out there as another piece of the puzzle, that it's not always going to be just, you know, that we are going to have a call-in center at many of our meetings. Um, they'll go ahead. You can go back. Okay.
[Laurel Siegel]: And I don't want to cut anybody else. You know, if anybody else has any other thoughts here, but otherwise, if, if, if we're sort of good with the options as they stand right now, um, can you repeat them? Uh, so yeah, I will. So the first option is people can raise their hand, but it would be, um, two. Uh, after every, uh, agenda item, after a discussion among the committee members to have an opportunity for anybody from the public who would like to speak to that agenda item, speak to that agenda item with then a period at the end of the meeting for additional public comment if there are other topics. That's option one. Option two is we go through our entire agenda as a committee and then we save all public comment for the end of the meeting. So those are the two options that are being presented right now. So, Please raise your hand for the first option of public comment after individual agenda items.
[Unidentified]: And please raise your hand for public comment at the end of the meeting. Okay, so that rules. All right, so for initial structure,
[Laurel Siegel]: Um, does anybody know off the top of your head what's what's the time limit for city council.
[Unidentified]: Um, three minutes, three minutes. More you had something to say. You're on mute.
[Maury Carroll]: It is three minutes as far as. comments per individual. I was just going to follow up on what Matt said, if we had gone along with the first thing that letting people keep them to a strict time frame of commenting on the agenda items is important as far as moving the meeting along.
[Laurel Siegel]: I think even if we're having a public comment period afterwards that we want to to ensure that everybody gets an opportunity to talk. We're going to want to have strict limits. What do people think of three minutes, or are there other suggestions of other time limits that we might suggest? Eunice, you had a comment.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think in addition to staying with a pretty strict time limit, allowing the same person to only speak twice, for example, so that they can't, you know, keep returning to the virtual podium time and time and time again. And I think, you know, there could be some latitude where, you know, if we only have a few people joining us on the meeting, then, you know, a little bit of latitude, but if we have a larger crowd of public participation, then you know, as Maury and others have said, you know, move the meeting along. We don't want one person, you know, monopolizing. So I think the time limit and the number of times are both important. Thank you. Mike.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: I agree with all that. Definitely want to limit. Yeah, don't want one person just running it back. I think, not to belabor the point, I think three minutes is a great starting point. And let's see what our participation looks like, right? We might get a whole mess of people, but we also might be here by ourselves every meeting. So I think starting it this way is totally a reasonable way to start. And let's commit to not being set in stone. That's my opinion.
[Laurel Siegel]: So would everybody be okay with a three-minute limit and not speaking more than twice? And again, you know, we'll have our first few minutes and first few meetings, and then we can revisit things.
[Andreottola]: Can I mention something? Can we table that until we understand exactly what, you know, what if there was somebody who has something, someone we really want to hear from who has, who has really kind of researched something or really has some knowledge they want to share with us or has some experience. You know, are you going to limit every one to three minutes? If you are, then, you know, vote for that. But if no, we don't know what what or who might want to come and share information with us. So I don't know if limiting, starting limiting participation before we even have any is necessary.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, Milva. I just, I think that that's a good point. It's important that people be able to speak. And if they have things that might take longer than three minutes, but I feel like these guidelines that we're creating now are, as we said, they can be flexible, but they're to apply to our committee meetings. And we are hopefully gonna have other forms of public participation. So as we go along, we'll be talking about maybe having other meetings that will be all about public participation, and those might have different guidelines. And we'll also be talking about investigating other ways like surveys and things like that. So I don't think that the end time at the end of our meetings will be the only opportunity for public participation. So I don't know if that makes a difference.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think it was basically Milva's point. I think that the, specifically the end comment period should very much strictly be limited to three minutes since, you know, if we do see somebody that happens to be an expert that's coming in at that time period and we just say, hey, you should get the ability to, you should get the right to speak for longer during that time period. I don't think that that would look very, that would be, very fair or just like have a very good look to it. But if somebody does have a unique expertise, then yeah, just echoing exactly what Milda said, there should be potentially another avenue for them to present at a meeting or if they want to. But that public comment period should be fair, in my opinion.
[Unidentified]: Danielle?
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I think it was going to say something similar, but like if there was somebody in the community that had some sort of expertise that perhaps they could be on the agenda or be like plan to get a presentation from just such such as K.P. Lahr, the call center.
[Unidentified]: And then, Eunice, you have your hand raised.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think the concern that I have with Leaving the public participation to the end and not going topic by topic is, I would hate for us to put a topic to rest, you know, for example, term limits, put a topic to rest. And then at the end during public participation, somebody or a few people bring up something that would totally change our outlook and our, you know, how we, might, whatever, you know, resolution we might come to versus doing it, you know, as we debate each, each topic, you know, people may have some very valuable input that could get us to look at things in a completely different way. So that would be my concern with not going topic by topic.
[Unidentified]: Any other input? Go ahead, Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, I just think this, the, the discussion is not going to limit us to, you know, it's a, you know, 703 the end of the discussion I think we have a lot of options of subcommittees and inviting people to give presentations, plus we're all we don't have, we in this group don't have limitations either. we can speak for as long as we want. And if I said, I want Mr. Jones to come back and explain what he said, I don't think that this group would say, no, he ran out of time, we're done. So this is just to keep order so it doesn't get 2 o'clock in the morning and everybody's checking off, I didn't get to speak. This is the rule to speak, but certainly to gather information. I think we still have several options to do that. And I know that this is our first meeting where we're trying to establish the process. But the reality is our goal, our mission statement, is to gather the research that provides an educated decision on what we're going to do going forward. So time is not going to decide that. However, waste of time will. That's my point.
[Laurel Siegel]: Okay. And similarly, I think, um, Eunice, to your point, um, given the nature of this committee, um, if we had felt that we settled a matter earlier in the meeting, but then somebody brought a relevant, you know, point to our attention, we can always just reopen the conversation about whatever matter it was. You know, we're, we're not subject to some of the same rules as, you know, city council and it being. You know, a motion that's been approved and, you know, and being governed that way we have some flexibility to reopen matters if we feel that it warrants more discussion.
[Unidentified]: All right, so I, you know, unless people want to vote again, you know, the initial vote was for.
[Laurel Siegel]: having the public comment wholly at the end of the meeting. And so far the conversation has been about limiting public comment to three minutes per person and only having an opportunity to speak twice. Are we all generally in agreement? Again, this is to get us going. And if we find it's not working, we revisit it. So, but anybody feel strongly otherwise and otherwise we'll just set that in motion. All right. sounds great mila did you have any other topics you wanted to talk about with respect to public participation or generally our procedures.
[Milva McDonald]: um I don't think right I don't think so right now um. Does anybody does anybody have anything that they wanted to bring up that we haven't brought up tonight.
[Laurel Siegel]: Right, so we will back out to the column center and confirm whether or not they can attend our meeting on the 5th and it's possible. We may have, and we need to confer with the city because they're also contemplating having KP law do their presentation on the legal requirements. And so, whether we can fit both of those into our into 1 meeting, or if we need to split those out.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And I'll be sending out meeting minutes and for, and to the committee. And once, once they get approved at our next meeting, I'll, I'll send them to the clerk. But the main points I think were the meeting, which is January 5th, six 30 to eight. We all agreed on a code of conduct. Matt is volunteered to be secretary, at least for the next meeting. And John and Mike are going to work on, be the Zoom administrators. And we discussed the public participation. I'll put it all in the minutes and send it out.
[Matt Leming]: Also, I've been taking some meeting minutes since I was appointed about 630. So I'll send those over to you.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Great. I think it's the Collins Center presentation, I think will be really enlightening and helpful and sort of help us figure out, lay out our plan and our goal and what our approach is going to be and what we're going to be shooting for. Mike?
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sorry, I should have asked this when you said when you asked if anyone had questions. One thing that I was that I just want to either flag or talk about if we have time. I'm fine flagging it and dealing with it later. If we're going to use any sort of, if there's like city preferred collaboration, like a Google Drive or a OneDrive or something like that. I've just seen that be really helpful in being able to access what's going on in Somerville's process. just to see, you know, the minutes and things like that, right. It's one thing to have them posted on Medford's website. But I think it would be another thing if we had like a like a public collaboration space. So just something to think about maybe for next time.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I love that idea. And what do you think about that, Laurel?
[Laurel Siegel]: Well, I'm just I guess I'm not there other than meeting minutes what types of materials would you see as living in that collaboration space.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure, presentation slides, definitely meeting minutes, definitely like running tally of, well, I just think for me, it's the only way a lot of people will be able to access it if they can't log in live, right? So the meeting minutes become really essential and the slides, I think, links to the videos, which I know people can get at Medford Community Media, but I just think, having as many sort of points of contact are beneficial.
[Laurel Siegel]: Yeah, we can certainly speak with the city and you know, my understanding is that essentially they're going to have a dedicated page on the city's website, which will then have links to all of these materials, but we can certainly verify, you know, whether they're all going to be compiled into a single, I agree with you, you know, having everything in a single location instead of, well, you've got to go search for a meeting on Redford Community Media and you've got to go look over here for the meeting minutes. Absolutely, but my understanding that we can confirm is that they're planning on having a web page that basically would have links to all of our resources. That sounds great. Matt had his hand up next, and then Ron, we can go to you.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, this might be obvious to everybody, as mentioned a few times. Can you just reiterate what The Collins center is in their relationship with KP logs. I wasn't entirely sure. I feel like that was just mentioned.
[Laurel Siegel]: There are wholly separate entities. KP law is a law firm that is providing legal advice to the city, particularly where we don't currently have a city solicitor. At least last night, last I heard, we did not have an active city solicitor. So they are providing legal advice to the city. Um, Collins center is its own entity. Um, they are part of UMass and what they do is they advise local governments on how to improve, essentially improve the efficiency and of their governance. Um, and so they have provided similar advice to many other municipalities, um, and have a lot of good packaged materials and information about What is a charter? What can a charter include? What are some models of existing charters or even breaking down? Because part of the conversation initially will be, do we amend our existing charter or do we start over with a whole new charter? So that's where the call-in center comes in. So KP Law will really only be involved for that initial meeting, at least as far as I know. Um, to break down the, the specific laws that we're beholden to as a city committee having to do with open meeting law and conflict of interest. So, Ron, you were going to speak next.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, just again, going back to the Columbus renaming, there will be times, I'm sure in the next 15 years that we do this, that we'll have live documents that Google Docs will allow us to get into, active documents that need to be updated, presentations that will need to have your input and an opportunity to just put them right there so everybody can see them. So I would definitely, some kind of Google Docs type program would be.
[Laurel Siegel]: Absolutely, there is utility to that. We just need to confirm that the interplay with open meeting law, because whether that constitutes deliberation and therefore can happen in that kind of setting, we need some clarity on that. But I don't disagree with you. I use Google Drives for many different organizations because of the utility and flexibility that they give. Um, Eunice, go ahead.
[Eunice Browne]: I think that the city has most of its, if you go to like the city council page. I think they're meeting minutes and agendas and things are all in Google Docs. Yeah, but I think some of the things that you mentioned talking about on the Collins Center. You know, that would be a good thing to have in Google Docs. Good thing to have in our, you know, home on the city website. What is a charter? What is our charter? What are examples of other charters? What kinds of things can we revise and change and amend in our charter? Those kinds of things. So that when people are looking, I think there's a lot of people out there that don't really understand what this is all about. So anything that can educate them about what we're doing. And then the other thing, and I think this is might be either for the Zoom administrators that we've got or for Francis, our city liaison. But reaching out every time we have a meeting scheduled, reaching out to what's his name, Kevin Harrington, who is our the station manager at Medford Community Media to ensure that if we can be shown live as we are tonight, I don't know whose responsibility it is to get us a slot on government access on various nights so that we can be live as much as we possibly can. And I do know that they also have a YouTube station now They have one, Medford Public Schools has one. And so they simulcast school committee meetings on, so you could be watching on Zoom, a school committee meeting, have it on channel 45 if you're on Verizon and have it on YouTube, all three simultaneously if you wanted. They now have a city station as well. So that would be another way. So reaching out to, the station and making sure that, you know, we're, we're, you know, getting on their schedule as well.
[Unidentified]: So, Frances.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yes, hi, I just wanted to respond to Eunice, I'll reach out to both Kevin and Kat at Medford Community Media to see if that's possible. And once we have a running schedule of our alternating Wednesdays and Thursdays, I can present it to them to see if that will help.
[Unidentified]: Okay, great. Great. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I think we're at the end of our agenda. Um, so on January 5th, we look forward to seeing almost everybody. Um, and we will record that meeting. Um, and, and, uh, you know, it, it will be available and hopefully we'll have presentations from KP law and the column center. Um, and we'll be able to dive in. So to you all soon.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you very much.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks everyone.
[Frances Nwajei]: Thank you have a good night and whatever you celebrate and a happy new year since we're not meeting till 2023. That's right. Thank you.
|
total time: 12.04 minutes total words: 1068 |
total time: 3.58 minutes total words: 326 |
||