AI-generated transcript of Medford Charter Study Committee Public Info Session 10-19-23

[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone and thank you for coming to the Medford Charter Study Committee public information session. We're delighted that you're here. We are hoping to have a very engaging discussion about the charter. We're gonna begin by introducing ourselves and then we're gonna launch into our presentation on word representation and then we're gonna open it up to questions from you. My name is Melvin McDonald. I'm the chair of the Medford Charter Study Committee. We've been doing this since last December about, so almost a year. I just, I do want to say that I'm about to hand over the mic to the other committee members, but we have a few committee members that were unable to be here. Maury Carroll, Phyllis Morrison, Paulette van der Kloot, and John Moreshi. But right now I'm going to pass the mic and so you can meet the rest of our committee members that are here.

[Maria D'Orsi]: Good evening. My name is Aubrey Webb. I'm in Ward 8. I'm happy to be here with you tonight. And we were asked for our favorite restaurants. So I'll tell you, I love the takeout downtown from Sam Sam's.

[Anthony Andreottola]: Hi, I'm Anthony Antriodola. I'm a long time resident and I'm here, I guess to represent, my ward is Ward 6, I believe. Someone, correct me if I'm wrong, I live on Lawrence Road, so I voted the American Legion. But if we're gonna do favor of restaurants, I have to give Nappy's a plug. It's my favorite restaurant. And with that, I'm just gonna pass it along.

[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. I didn't say what my favorite restaurant was. I'm going to give a plug to Colette Bakery. And I also wanted to also give a shout out to David Zabner, who is our wonderful alternate on the committee. He was also unable to be here, but he's an integral part of our work. All right.

[Ron Giovino]: My name is Ron Givino. I've been in the city my whole life. I'm really enjoying this opportunity to help shape the charter. And without question, my favorite restaurant is Avelino's.

[Eunice Browne]: Hi, my name is Eunice Brown. I live in Ward 4. I'm a lifelong Medford resident. I live in the house that I grew up in. And favorite restaurant, that's a hard one. Used to be Carol's, but I suppose now it's the Ford for dining in and Alamo, I think, for takeout.

[Jean Zotter]: Hello, I'm Jean Zotter. I live in Ward 2, the Heights, and I'm not a lifelong Medford resident, but I've been here about 20 years. And my favorite restaurant, I have to say, I was at Tacuba yesterday. It was very good, although I have a ton of food allergies, so I couldn't eat most of the food, but it was very good.

[Danielle Balocca]: I'm Danielle Balaca. I also live in Ward 2, Fulton Heights. And my favorite place to eat is probably Goldilocks.

[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. So I'm going to hand it over to Ron to start our presentation. But first, I just wanted to say that this is a long process, and it's an involved process. We're looking at various aspects of our city government. executive branch, legislative branch, school committee, as well as budget processes, citizen participation mechanisms, and other areas as well. But recently, we've really done a deep dive into the question of ward representation for city council, and that's what we're gonna share with you tonight. So I'm gonna hand it over to Ron.

[Ron Giovino]: The subcommittee was NOVA, Gene, Eunice, and Maury, and myself. And I think you'll see from the presentation that they did an incredible job of really, really tearing down the information and the data that we share. So why don't we just begin? So this is what we were looking at. Next. Subcommittee was formed to investigate and research the options for city council composition specifically to gather research and data on the current at large Councilors versus a ward representation hybrid option and report back to the committee of the whole and tonight to do it in public. The subcommittee did their due diligence in their research, utilizing city demographics, election results, citizen surveys, interviews, statewide comparisons, and other resources. The current city council is made up of members, and each one of those members is elected on an at large basis, which means the entire city votes for them. The term currently is two years. So we looked at three options. One was to do nothing and just continue as is with the seven member city council, same term, same everything. Option two was to transition to a hybrid ward representative council, which means that each ward would have a representative. You wanna click one more, I think it adds. So we have eight boards in the city, which means there would be eight ward reps. And then to balance it off, there would be some at-large reps. That's where the hybrid piece is. So you're looking at a total of 11 or even as much as 13 or more. And the final option we had was to just simply increase the number of city councilors all still being elected in the at-large method of election. I'm going to hand over the mic now to Jean Zada. She's going to talk about the information on demographics that she's researched and found for us, Jean.

[Jean Zotter]: So what we have here is our current ward map so it shows you where the eight wards are. And one of the questions the committee had was how representative is our elected bodies or elected officials. How one question we looked at is how representative is city council school committee, the mayor, when compared to the population of Medford as a whole. So this first slide shows you overall demographics for the city. We have approximately 60,000 residents, and our population has been increasing since 2010 or even earlier. We're equally divided between men and women. About 23% has been born in another country, and approximately one out of three residents speak a language other than English in the home. In Medford we have a high proportion of people who may need language services in the city or who speak another language with their family. For people who are under 65 approximately 5% identify as having a disability. Income-wise, almost 8% live in poverty, and about 20% have incomes above $200,000. We're also pretty evenly divided between homeowners and renters. Approximately 55% of our housing units are owner-occupied. This pie chart shows you just the age breakdown with, I can see it better on yours, But with the majority of adults being 45 to 24 years old. And this is all data from the 2020 census and also data that the city of Medford put together for their last budget. Then I just want to recognize that the city's Office of Planning and Development and sustainability helped me get data by ward because one question we had is, do we have some words that are more diverse than other words. And so this chart here shows you by ward. the racial makeup of each ward. And you can see that some wards are predominantly white, where Ward 7, which is where if you vote, you would be voting Mystic Towers or McGlynn, is a minority majority ward with 51% non-white and 49% white. Oh. So just so you know, I'm manning both at Zoom and letting people in and presenting. Okay, so here is ethnicity, which is counted separately than race. And just looked at ethnicity by ward. We don't see a huge fluctuation, Hispanic, non-Hispanic by ward. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Eunice, who is gonna talk about historic election results.

[Eunice Browne]: Thank you, Jean. What we did here, next slide, what you'll see in the next few slides illustrates in some different formats the wards from which both candidates for city council came from and the wards from which actual candidates who were successfully elected came from. I looked at data from the time span of elections from 2005 to 2021, which is nine election cycles. The first slide shows a count of the number of candidates who ran for office, the green parts of the graph, and the number of candidates who succeeded, the blue, and candidates were counted more than once if they ran and succeeded more than once. So, for example, in Ward seven, three unique candidates ran during the time period of the nine election cycles that we're talking about that would be candidate Jeannie Martin candidate Brian Chamberlain and candidate Michael marks. Ms. Martin ran once unsuccessfully. Mr. Chamberlain ran twice and he was not elected. Mr. Marks, Councilor Marks, we all know, ran eight times successfully. So that's where you get, let's see, yeah, Ward 7, 11 candidates who ran and eight candidates who succeeded. So Marks would be eight. Martin would be one and Chamberlain would be two, adding up to 11. With this slide and the next slide that you see highlight is that in Ward one and Ward four, we have had the fewest amount of candidates who have attempted to run and absolutely none who have been elected over the nine election cycles. The slide that we're looking at now is similar to the last one, except that each candidate has been only counted once. And again, no candidate has succeeded for election in either Ward 1 or Ward 4. Wards 6, 3, and 2 have had the most candidates, as you can see, who ran. And the most Councilors who've been seated have come from Ward 3, which are the folks who vote in the American Legion and the And then the last couple of slides have similar data just shown in a different format with the percentages. So as you can see, wards three, wards two, wards six have had the most, you know, most candidates and the most successful candidates, Next slide, ladies. Exactly. So, historically, over the last nine election cycles, that has been where both the candidates have come from and the actual politicians who have actually been seated. So it proves pretty interesting. Thank you. And Melva, do you have a question?

[Milva McDonald]: Hi, one of the things that the subcommittee looked at as we looked at this question was the case of Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell, Massachusetts, like Medford, has eight wards. And in 2017, a lawsuit was filed against the city alleging that their at-large system violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. by denying Asian American and Hispanic and Latino voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. In 2019, without conceding a violation of the Voting Rights Act, the city settled. So right now, Lowell currently has hybrid ward representation for city council and school committee. And we were interested in this as we looked at Medford's demographics. And when we learned that Medford has at least has one majority minority ward and a population that is continually becoming more diverse, this was an interesting case for us to look at. Because it's also research has also shown that ward representation increases diversity in elected officials. Thank you.

[Ron Giovino]: Thank you. So in order to do our conclusions, we looked at some strengths and challenges and we're showing you what we got from surveys, emails, comments, discussion, but in no way do these reflect necessarily the opinions of the subcommittee or the charter committee. But we're going to present a bunch of them to you now just to provoke some thought. And then we'll have some question and answers. Hopefully, you all have some really good question, answers, and comments. So let's go through the list of strengths. This would be the strengths of going to ward representation. It guarantees that at least one council would come from each ward. Fewer candidates on the ballot may make the voting process easier to use. Makes running for ward office more accessible. Cost of running campaign and campaign ground game gets reduced due to a smaller voter pool in each ward. Next one, okay. A small constituency gives ward Councilors the ability to foster more direct relationships with residents and gives residents the opportunity for improved communication with their ward rep. We heard that a lot in the surveys. Eliminates duplication of work. I guess to explain that it really has to do with chairing certain committees, subcommittees of the council and being able to assume that a citizen in a particular ward would go to their ward rep first and not go to somebody outside their ward first. So hopefully there's not two councilors working on the same issue at the same time. Next. World representation increases diversity of representation. At large elections and minority representation in local governments is the information we gathered from the American Journal of Political Science. Increased number of Councilors means more individuals to fulfill the work of the council. This again is chairmanships and things like that. at large representation will still exist with a hybrid council. So there will be several slots available for an entire city at large campaign. It's easier to address needs in each neighborhood because those candidates would come from that neighborhood and those Councilors. The hybrid reward system is the predominant method throughout the Commonwealth. Approximately 80% of local governments in Massachusetts use that form of government. Okay, little challenges now. Ward representatives focus more on their ward needs and not those of the whole city. Self-explanatory. Voters cannot vote for or against the entire council. You would only be voting for at-large positions and the candidates from your ward. Ward boundaries may not reflect how communities see themselves. Ward representation may result in unequal workloads for Councilors. And this has to do with the makeup of each ward, what's in the ward, residential, education, buildings, businesses. So they're not all equal in terms of what goes on in their wards. If you don't support the ward candidate who gets elected, will they serve your need? No comment. Ward representation may limit voter candidate options, because you don't get to vote for everybody. Some people believe that all city councilors should represent the whole city. Ward representation may divide the city. Adding additional councilors would increase the city's budget. Just do the math, and if you have seven now, we go to 11 or 13, that's additional salaries. Okay, I want to thank the committee for doing such a great job of getting down to the details. Now it's time to listen to what your comments are, your questions, so we can have a really great discussion about where we go from here. So if you have a question, comment, concern, you can just raise your hand on Zoom and we'll get to you. Or if you're in the hall here, you can just come up to the mic. Okay, Paul, you have a question for us?

[Paul Garrity]: Yes, my name is Paul here at Cedar Road. And the one question and the one area that I've been looking at for quite a while is the amount of data that the current council has to work with in terms of a resource. And so my question would be, if you increase the number of representatives, What tool set, will the Charter Committee evaluate what type of tool sets or resources might also have to be added in to allow the additional or the larger number of representatives to be working from the same database of information? Like saying, well, I'm doing more work because my particular award is being underserved. Well, how do they know that? So my question is, If we increase the number of councils, what tools would the charter commission entertain to support the increase in the number of councillors to give them the appropriate data so that they can be making a balanced decision both for their individual wards and the city as a whole?

[Ron Giovino]: Thank you, Paul. I appreciate the question. It's a great question, and it's kind of a follow-up to our first public meeting where you brought this up, and I think it's an extremely valid point. And as you mentioned at our meeting, our last meeting, there is certainly a large cost to doing it, and there's also a large cost to not doing it. The subcommittee did not include that analysis in our presentation tonight. It's certainly something that should be, and I'm sure it will be, as we're going forward. But you make a good point that the less data that everybody has now only increases the problem by going to a larger council. But your point is taken. data sharing and understanding what's going on and access for the Councilors to see what's happening is very valid. And I believe that it's on our docket from your comments last time and I appreciate you. It goes to everything we're gonna do. So I appreciate you saying that. Did I answer that question?

[Paul Garrity]: Thank you, yes.

[Ron Giovino]: Okay, great. Are there any other questions or comments? Did we do that good a job in the presentation? We're interested in your comments too. We'd like to have a, while we have you, it's nice to know that you have an opportunity to explain why you won't like any of the choices that are available to us. So please feel free. Okay, we have Inri.

[SPEAKER_14]: Yes, hi. This is Inri Gallagher, and I was wondering what the population is of the different wards. Are they quite equal quantity wise?

[Jean Zotter]: By law, they're required to be equal size. I'm trying to remember what the exact population is. We can go back and look at the, I don't think we have the amount there, but there's eight wards and we're around 60,000. So they're all pretty close in size.

[SPEAKER_14]: Okay, which I figure that makes sense. And because, you know, having having only one assigned, I like the idea, I'm definitely in favor of the representation by ward. I think that's very meaningful and will be worthwhile, but then we'll only have at large three potentially city Councilors and that's good to have the hybrid approach. But if you had something going on and you wanted to speak, you could always speak to another Councilor that if something's going on in a different ward, it's not like you only have to go through your Councilor because that's where you live, I presume, right?

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, absolutely correct. I mean, it's a, we think it's a slight advantage to be able to know your ward representative because he's in your ward, but certainly our expectation is that the entire council continues to work for everybody in the city just like they do now. It's just an opportunity for everybody to, and communication would be better too, because each Councilor would be able to communicate back and forth through the award, or the at-large reps would be able to cover that as well. So we think that it will improve what we do, but it doesn't change that a Councilor is a Councilor for all the people. Okay, we have Chris.

[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, hi, I'm Chris to catch I live in Ward one, obviously one that doesn't have any representation, and hasn't had one for some time. So I just want to commend the committee and actually looking at this issue because it's been something that's been bothering me for a while. I'm only a resident here for five years and I've come from another community. where there was ward representation. And I appreciated that because it gave me a person to contact if I needed to bring something up, you know, that was important to the city council. I've tried doing that in the past here in Medford to deaf ears, to be honest with you, which was really disappointing. So I basically had to go down to three, four Councilors before I got an answer, even a reply. you know, to a question that I had. I think the hybrid approach is the right way, to be honest with you, because it does give you the ward Councilor representation that you need for issues that you may have specific to your ward, but it also allows you to talk to the at-large Councilors if you need something that's a little bit more overarching, you know, for the city itself. So no questions, more comments, I guess.

[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Micah?

[Micah Kesselman]: Thanks. Yeah, I'm Micah Kesselman. I'm in Ward 5 on Main Street. If you already covered this, because I came in a little bit late, so apologies if I'm asking something that's been answered already, but have you talked a little bit about how term duration, changes of terms and term limits and everything would factor into this, and also what the transition would look like for the current city councilors? And if not, can you just give us an idea of what you're thinking?

[Milva McDonald]: We have talked about term limits a little bit, but we haven't dived deeply into that yet. It is a question on our survey, which by the way, we have a survey. Hopefully all of you who are tuned in have taken it. If not, it's on our website at medfordmed.org slash charter study. There is a section in the charter called transitional provisions that once we make decisions on what recommendations we'll make and draft a charter. There will be a section drafted called transitional provisions that will cover any transitional issues that might be relevant. But we haven't discussed those specifically yet because we're still in the process of deciding on what our recommendations might be. Does that answer your question?

[Danielle Balocca]: Okay. We'll just put the link to the survey in the chat for folks on Zoom. Ann Marie.

[SPEAKER_14]: Hi, thank you, I'm back. I had a lot of questions, but I was muted and I didn't realize. So I have a couple quick ones if that would work out for everyone. My first question was, no one ran in a ward, then that ward would not have a rep, no one, you know, ran or no one chose to represent. Well, that basically wouldn't mean we won less Councilor, correct?

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, there are specific provisions for when a ward does not present a candidate into the election. It will be added to the charter, but basically it's, you find somebody. And pretty much that's what the, Massachusetts tells you if nobody runs from your ward, find somebody. So once we go to ward representation, that will be part of it. Every ward would have representation. There's also provisions, as Melva says, for when a ward rep moves out of the ward, So there are a lot of provisions that have to come into play when you're making this kind of decision. But certainly to your question, if a ward does not present a candidate, you go back to the ward and you find somebody.

[Danielle Balocca]: OK, understood. Oh, sorry. Who's been giving us guidance on some of these questions. That question's come up before. And their impression was that this very rarely happens, that there isn't a ward where no one runs, typically.

[SPEAKER_14]: Okay, thank you. And then my other question is, you posted the survey link, which I've replied to, and I've passed it along to other people. So thank you for making that available. And then for the slides, are those going to be posted, or are they available that you've shown today?

[Milva McDonald]: Yes, all the presentations from all our meetings are on the webpage on the city website medfordmed.org slash charter study. You'll find this presentation and any other presentation that we've had at our meetings. So you can see, you can look through the history of our meetings. There's other great information on there as well. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_14]: Thank you. And that covers my questions. Thank you everybody. You're doing a great job.

[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you.

[Marilyn Davidson]: Marilyn. Yes, Marilyn Davidson I'm in West Medford. I want to thank you all for so much hard work. And I want to also say I strongly. would like to see us move to the hybrid form of government and for all the reasons that the subcommittee presented. And that's my only comment.

[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.

[MCM00001269_SPEAKER_10]: Maureen. Yes, thank you. And first of all, thanks to the committee. This is great, and your presentation was really wonderful, very clear, and I appreciate the work that you've done. My question, I am from West Medford, and my question is, what is the thinking behind the number of three to four at-large members? Why that number? I don't know if it's based on other cities or towns, but that's what I'd like to know.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, so my understanding is that you need an odd number of people on the council. So if we went to eight, if we went to representing all eight wards, we would need at least three to make that odd number. Not sure why it's not one. It could be one, yeah.

[Ron Giovino]: In looking at making it a candidate-friendly election, most cities and towns choose to have three at large as opposed to five people fighting for one seat. So you don't really have an option. When you go to the ward representation at eight for us, and we're really changing it as an act of the statehouse and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But that could be done as well. But for our purposes, You have to have an odd number, like Danielle says, and also we think three is very reasonable. Some folks have an opinion of five, which really grows the council, but it's a matter of having an odd number.

[MCM00001269_SPEAKER_10]: Great, thank you very much. I really think that the hybrid model seems to be one that would best serve the people of Medford, so thank you again for the presentation.

[Danielle Balocca]: Steve?

[Steve Schnapp]: Hi, thank you. I'm Steve Schnapp. I live in Medford Square on Hillside Ave. I've been a resident since 2011. I lived in Cambridge for 33 years before that, which has a hybrid system. I had a couple of questions. I noticed in your presentation about the demographics that approximately 23% of the city is foreign born. And you said about 29% speak a language other than English at home. These seem to be significant numbers to me. And I'm just curious, have you done any research about the ethnicity or racial makeup of the councils in the last, I don't know, 25, 50 years or school committee? Have there been members of either of those two bodies who have been people of color or foreign born? Thank you.

[Jean Zotter]: That's a great question. We have not, we did not, for this presentation, pull together the race, ethnicity of our elected officials, but we did...

[Eunice Browne]: I think you have to go back a bit, and I'm certainly happy to do a little bit of that digging for you, Steve. Other than what we recently have of the past council or two, I think we have to go back a little bit to find some diversity. I know that there's been a bit a while back and I'm happy to dig into that a little bit more for you.

[Jean Zotter]: I would have Steve is whether the city actually collects that data. Because you do have to be careful about assigning race to people if they're not identifying what their race is. So that would be one question I would have is, does the city collect that data? Is it something we could find?

[Eunice Browne]: I think it's more kind of what is sort of obvious, which is not the best way to be doing things. Yeah, I don't know that the city necessarily collects that. The city clerk may have some of that information. I think it would be more, you know, from what one would observe, which is not necessarily the best way to go about doing things. I can ask the city clerk, but I don't really think that there's any data there.

[Steve Schnapp]: So I appreciate adding more work to your load. Thank you for that. You're working very hard on this and it's much appreciated. I'm just wondering if you feel that having ward representation in a hybrid system would give more representation to people who have not been represented very well at the council or the school committee.

[Jean Zotter]: The research seems to suggest that ward representation does create more diverse elected representation in a city. So that's, we have in the slides, which you can look at, we have a paper that we cite. So it has been, when there's been civil rights challenges around voting rights, that has been one of the solutions that has come out of legal processes.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree. I think Jean said that well. It also, as also was pointed out in the slide, it makes running for office more accessible because it's financially more accessible and there's less ground to cover in a ward. The other piece is that, as we saw in the Lowell case, It's also the voters, when you have a majority minority ward, if there's ward representation, then that ward has an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. And that's what we saw in the Lowell case. And that was one of the reasons that that case came to the fore and was settled the way it was. The only other, oh, go ahead.

[Ron Giovino]: I just want to add quickly, Steve, when you When we make any kind of decision like this, the committee was very conscious of not putting our opinions into this presentation to make it a clear expectation. We will be voicing our opinions soon. But to your point, when you make a change like this in any kind, you need to set up measurements to see if the changes work. Right away, every ward will have a representative if we go to ward representation. So that's a guaranteed fix. So we've already improved, but to your point, I think we do need to, and we will establish more goals to measure against the decisions that we make. I hope that answers your question.

[Jean Zotter]: And the only other point I wanted to make is Medford is becoming more diverse over time. We didn't have the data to present the trends, but over time we are becoming more diverse, not less. So we will probably see other wards increasing in their diversity. Steve, did you have any more questions or was that it? If you have a question, raise your hand again. Okay.

[Danielle Balocca]: Emily.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Hi, thank you all for doing this. We appreciate your work. I have a question about I recognize that this presentation is about City Council and the prospect of there being ward based representation for just that body. But I was wondering if you have plans to look into school committee and what that would entail in the future.

[Milva McDonald]: Yes, we are this week, I believe the first meeting of this school committee subcommittee will happen, actually it's next week. And they will be digging into that topic and looking at maybe some of the similar things we looked at, but also different things because it's a school committee has different issues. So yes, we are definitely going to be doing that.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay, and I just have one more follow up question, which is, what is the timeline you all have in mind for, this is more of a general question about your work and your presenting of your work. When do you expect to present your sort of final recommendations? And how do you do that? Who do you present it to? And where does it go from there?

[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Our target date is about a year from now, the fall of 2024. That could change, but that's what we're aiming for. And what we will be doing is presenting first to the City Council, and then the City Council will make a presentation. We'll create a final report. The City Council will look at the recommendations, vote on them, and then it goes to the mayor. And if it clears those hurdles, then it goes to the state house. And at that point, if it clears the state house hurdle, then it goes to the voters.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Excellent, thank you.

[Danielle Balocca]: Micah?

[Micah Kesselman]: Yeah, I'm just curious. You alluded to it really briefly, but are there any specific financial constraints that you're operating under for the increase in the council size? Or is it mostly just don't explode the budget, obviously? Yeah, it would be nice to just hear if you could speak more to the finances of it too, because it is potentially a very large financial jump, and how we're going to be able to budget for it. Which by that said, though, I still just want to be clear, I'm super in support of having the word representation. I think it makes a hell of a lot more sense than what we have right now.

[Ron Giovino]: Well, thankfully, Micah, that's not under our umbrella. It is a concern, absolutely. I'm sure it'll be a consideration for those people who vote, and as it goes up the ladder. But it's not something that we've considered. We know it is an issue to add four to six members to a city council. But we also, my opinion is you can always decrease salaries, too.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, as Ron said, that's not under our umbrella, but in the scheme of the city budget, I don't think that four councilors will explode the city budget. But, you know, that's... We're looking at what's best for the governance of the city. And that's so that's not really part of our wheelhouse that we're looking at.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I want to repeat something that Ron said earlier, which was there's a cost of doing this and a cost of not doing it. And like thinking about the cost of adding city councilors versus the cost of, you know, leaving people out of participation in city government. So it looks like for now all the questions that we see on zoom unless they want to give a few minutes to a few moments for other people to raise their hands if they have questions comments. To make it clear, you can take about the charter that aren't related to the presentation that you just saw or aren't related to work representation.

[Leonard Glionna]: Good evening. Thank you all for all the hard work that you're doing. My name is Len Gliona and full disclosure, I am a candidate for Medford City Council. I live at 86 Chandler Road in Medford. My question is, well, first of all, I have not taken your survey yet because I haven't finalized my thoughts in terms of one issue. I do support ward representation and I do support retaining a two year term for mayor and city councils. What I'm, troubled by, if that's the proper word, is the issue of the mayor serving on the school committee as chairperson or as just an additional member of the school committee, as ever does. So the question is, based on your survey results, do you have a sense of what the community is thinking on that issue?

[Milva McDonald]: Thanks for the question. Our survey is open until December 1st. So at that time, we'll be releasing, we'll be able to talk about the results. But the question of the mayor being on the school committee is definitely on people's minds. And this subcommittee is gonna look into this more extensively, but, just generally what we know is that it's not it's very uncommon for a mayor not to be on a school committee but it's in terms of the mayor being the chair it's about 50 50. There's plenty of communities where the mayor is on the school committee but not the chair but it's quite uncommon for the mayor not to be on the school committee. So

[Leonard Glionna]: Just to follow up to that, Madam Chairperson, with the mayor as chairperson of the school committee, do you believe or feel that the school committee gets more listening time in terms of the budget that the school committee would propose for the mayor to present to the city council?

[Milva McDonald]: I don't feel like I know enough at this point to answer that question. We do have quite an expert on our committee, Paulette Van der Kloot, and I'm sure she will have some well-informed answers to that question. But as the subcommittee starts meeting, they'll be looking at just those issues. I can say that the fact that the mayor is on almost all the school committees in the state leads me to believe that there's a good reason for that. Um, so that that I will say, thank you, Madam Chairperson.

[Eunice Browne]: Paul. And just to follow up on that, our school committee subcommittee starts meeting on, I think it's Thursday evening the 26th. And that meeting will be published on the city calendar and on zoom. So anybody that is interested in that facet of this journey can certainly tune into the zoom and ask questions and so forth and follow us along the city council subcommittee met what probably a half a dozen times to get to this presentation and I assume that the school committee subcommittee will be meeting equally as many times as well. And then we will likely be coming before you with a presentation about that piece as well. So anybody that would like can certainly, the agenda will be posted probably by next Tuesday to follow open meeting law. So feel free to tune in and join us. Sorry, now Paul, we're ready for you.

[Paul Garrity]: Thank you. This may be outside the scope of this meeting, but has the segment on the charter review dealing with the budgets been addressed yet? And if it hasn't, is it posted up on your site?

[Danielle Balocca]: I'm repeating it. We had a little trouble hearing you.

[Paul Garrity]: OK. Can you hear me now? My question was, is that has the section that the charter committee is going to review relative to the budgeting process, has it been handled yet or is it to be handled? And if it has been taken care of, the minutes posted up on the charter's site.

[Danielle Balocca]: Are you speaking about the issue that the city council is working on that they propose to change?

[Paul Garrity]: Well, I understood that as part of the charter review, there will be a segment on budget process. Is that correct?

[Jean Zotter]: So we have a model charter that a lot of cities follow that we're working from, and there is a section in there on the budget process and how the budget process would go. So when the budget would be submitted to city council, what are the powers of city council around the budget? So we will be diving into that. We have not started working on that yet.

[Anthony Andreottola]: Okay, thank you very much.

[Milva McDonald]: I would also add that the charter can outline budget processes, but there are also state laws that we can't, we have to make our, whatever we come up with conform to state law. So we will be looking at the budget process and there is room to do that, but we also have to make sure that it aligns with state law.

[Paul Garrity]: You have an idea right now when that might be coming up on your calendar?

[Milva McDonald]: I don't, but it's going to be soon. It's going to be soon. I would say maybe December.

[Paul Garrity]: Thank you.

[Danielle Balocca]: Next we have Ken.

[Krause]: Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Hey, thank you. Uh, Ken Krause, uh, mystic street, West Bedford. Uh, first of all, thank you for all the amazing work you're doing, um, on this issue. And also I want to compliment you for how you conduct these meetings. Um, it's very impressive how you take the information, present the information and engage everybody. My, my question is if, um, through your research, you've seen any, um, evidence of an increase in voter participation when a community, if you have this kind of instance, where a community went toward voting. Because my sense is that perhaps, in addition to more people running for council, that the voters might respond and be more likely to vote if they have a candidate that's going to specifically represent them versus participating in an election when there's seven at-large candidates and they may feel less likely to get, you know, the representation that they would get if they had a ward representative. So I was just curious if any of your research showed any kind of an increase in the voter turnout, the voter participation when a community went from at-large to ward voting. Thank you.

[Milva McDonald]: That's a great question. I'm going to look that up and we have not looked at that specifically so I don't, I'm not aware of studies but I there's, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look into it. Thanks for bringing that up. One thing that we did try to do was get information on. voter turnout within each ward in the city and we've been unsuccessful at that because we hoped to be able to see if the wards that had candidates from their wards had higher voter turnout. We were curious about that. And the other piece is that candidates will naturally look, they know, will naturally look at where voters turned out and focus on those wards. So that was another thing that we wanted to look at, but we haven't been able to get specific information about voter turnouts in individual wards. It's related to what you asked, but not exactly what you asked, but it is a great question and we will look into it, thanks.

[Leonard Glionna]: Just to follow up on Ken Crouse's question, it's a very good question. I know in the city of Everett, which does have ward representation, 55 individuals pulled papers to run for public office, whereas in Medford, 22 pulled papers, one opted not to stay on the ballot. So 55 in Everett, 21 in Medford. Everett is a smaller city than Medford. But what Everett has is three newspapers, and we have none, which makes it prohibitively difficult for a candidate to reach 60 plus thousand people. You can't place ads anywhere to let people know you're even running. So just That's just a thought. I haven't looked at the other cities yet around Medford that do have board representation in terms of the number of people that are running for office. Thank you.

[Ron Giovino]: Thank you, Len. That's a great point. I think that the Charter Committee is not gonna get a new newspaper for the city, but I do agree with you that Our hope is that whatever decision we make will increase voter turnout and candidate turnout. And based on our surveys and our interviews, and everybody has an opinion about it, and hopefully we'll make the right choice to make sure, that's a goal, is to make sure not only diversity, but also to increase the voice of the citizens for sure.

[Danielle Balocca]: I think we've got a hand raised.

[Milva McDonald]: Do you have more questions? OK, well, I think that If there are no more questions, I think we will close. Do any of the committee members want to say any final words?

[Danielle Balocca]: You want to say that if you are able to do the survey, there's a place for comments, a place to kind of give us your contact information if you want to be kept in the loop about charter review stuff. But thank you, everyone, for participating tonight.

[Ron Giovino]: I just want to thank everybody for their great comments. I do wanna say that if you're wondering where this Charter Review Committee is headed and will they cover an issue that's important to you, I strongly suggest to stop waiting and get information to us either in the survey or write to us in the email. Help us guide this whole process because the process is the process of Medford, it's not the process of this committee. And so if you see like a lot of comments that were things that you're concerned about the more the merrier, we know it's a major task but we need to hear input from all parts of the city.

[Jean Zotter]: I was just going to add one thing. We're hoping to do listening sessions in every ward. So stay tuned, we'll be posting that, putting that out on social media and having that come out through the different communication channels.

[Anthony Andreottola]: I just wanted to plug, what is that date for the library? 11th? Okay, yeah, we will be having a first listening session at the method public library on November 5, and it's real important that you know we've been doing surveys and we have quite a garden, hundreds of responses already but you know that it's you know we also need some qualitative data you know we just can't just rely on surveys so we actually want to hear from people you know what uh what the community wants what people people's ideas so we can kind of aggregate that into our data so uh when we do present to the city council we can you know we can speak for the you know the citizens of Medford and uh in a manner that kind of gives us the opportunity to get this charter passed and to the Statehouse. That's been a problem in the past, the past attempts to get charter change in Medford. So your input is crucial. And I encourage people, if you can't make it, try to encourage somebody else to come so we can hear from them. Thank you.

[Eunice Browne]: And to echo what Anthony said, what we're doing here is only as good as the input that we're getting from all of the citizens out there. So those of you watching tonight on Zoom or watching tonight on television, share what we're doing with your friends. Let them know what a city charter is and how important it is. This is how we govern our city. And there'll be a provision in the charter for it to be reviewed on a regular basis. We chose early on after a whole lot of discussion as a committee to basically write the charter pretty much from scratch. And we're laying the groundwork for the future in the hope that, you know, whatever interval that we put in the charter for it to be reviewed again, maybe 10 years down the road, when you know we're all, you know, wherever we are gone fishing as they say that The party that comes after us doesn't have to necessarily rewrite the whole thing. They need to tweak it to the times of 2032 or 2035 or whatever. So the charter will already be in place. to have everybody's input as to what you'd like. So go out there and when you're on the soccer fields with your kids or at the playground or at Ford Tavern or wherever it is that you go, talk to your friends and neighbors about what this is. and encourage them to take the survey, tune into our meetings. As Milva said, everything is on our part of the city website and Medford Community Media has all of the replays of our meetings as well. Subcommittee meetings, monthly meetings, we meet every first Thursday of every month. at 630 on zoom. It's posted on the city calendar, all the subcommittee members meetings are posted as well. You can join us for any one of them and tune in and see what we're up to.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks, Eunice. And Eunice alluded to the decision that we made relatively early on to create a new charter as opposed to revising the current charter. And if you look in our old meeting materials, you'll see the reason for that. Medford's current charter is pretty bare bones. It comes directly from Mass General Law. It's a plan charter, plan A, and very few communities in Massachusetts still use a charter like that. So that's one of the reasons. But there are other reasons as well. I did want to correct. We were trying to recall the date of the listening session at the library and it's Wednesday, November 8. So that will be at 7pm and we hope to see you there. Our regular meetings, as Eunice said, are the first Thursday of the month and those are on Zoom at 7pm, so the next one is November 2nd. think that's the that's just take our survey and as you said, please spread the word so we can get as much feedback as possible during this process. And we thank you again for coming. And we hope to see you at another event soon. Good night.