[Ron Giovino]: So, I apologize for all the confusion in setting this meeting up. I'm glad we were able to get that done. Thanks, Milva, for doing that. It's just we've got to be better at that, I guess. So, let's just go right into, you know, the minutes from last meeting. Any issues? Anybody have any questions? It was pretty straightforward, I think. Any comments?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Motion to approve.
[Ron Giovino]: Second. All in favor?
[Ron Giovino]: All right.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, are you going to take minutes for this meeting?
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I'll take minutes. So the goal tonight is to see where we're at in terms of getting ready for the presentation for the Committee of the Whole meeting. I thought that I really want to move forward as much as we can to make sure that at that meeting we have a presentation ready and we also can get past this point and just check it off and see what our next steps will be after that. So tonight I just wanted to go through each of the updates that each one of us had from the last meeting. I think it's important, I know we did a little of it last meeting, getting opinions from each one of the subcommittee members to see where their thoughts are in terms of what the recommendation should be. You know, at the end, after we finish our discussion, I'd like to do that again just to see where we're all at. But the way I envision the presentation for both the Committee of the Whole and for the public meeting, which will be refined as we go along, is honestly a 15 to 20 minute presentation. The presentation, I know most of you have done presentations and I've been in sales most of my life. So I've done a lot of presentations and I think if you go beyond that, you lose them and the focus goes away. So my, This is my opinion. You can let me know what you think. I'm looking at a PowerPoint-style presentation that will list each one of our sections, which is each one of the members' presentation. And I think that the data is tremendous, but it's also overwhelming unless we focus it and make it make it presentation form. So my thought is that each one of us can take our part. And if you want to present, great. I recommend that we all represent our piece that we researched because that's the most efficient way. But if you don't want to do it, we can talk about that, figure out how to do that. But what's important is that we show the bullets But we also have all the backup. And I don't think the backup needs to be shown unless it's asked for. So, you know, the stuff that Jean and Eunice have is massive. And I think what we need to do is make conclusions from that, highlight some of the big things, and be able to, when somebody asks, because, you know, I think the voting data and the demographic data is extremely important to this discussion. But I want people to know that the work and the research has been done. And it certainly has been done. Unfortunately, it's not going to be presented in a 15, 20-minute presentation. I think if we focus on a three to four minute, maybe five minutes presentation and just go in sequence, whatever sequence we decide, is the right thing to do. And I also think that, I know we've added some research since our last meeting, and I'd like to go over each piece of that and come up with, you know, come up with our ideas for bullets and how we're going to present it. and whether after these two hours we're comfortable with where we're at, we'll decide whether the penciled in meeting for next week should or shouldn't be done. But my goal is to get 90% of it done tonight. I'm hoping that we don't need the meeting next week, but we will work through the presentation so that everybody can see it, read it and prepare for it. And then of course that presentation, once it goes in front of the committee, then it goes in front of it at the public meeting. So we'll have an opportunity again to edit as we want. But I do think it's very important that we come up with concise information, interesting information, tremendous backup at our fingertips when somebody asks for it. And I think we need a conclusion. And I think that we're close to that, all those things. And the fact that One of the things, when you sent out that charter blueprint, Milva, I was thinking that we would have to write the document that would have to go. But it's great that they're going to handle that because it's massive. It's massive. And I didn't even want to start that until we all agreed with the committee which way we wanted to go. But that's a great blueprint. If anybody's read that, that Milva sent out yesterday, It really shows you the type of technical piece that needs to be done when we're putting this together. It's not just, well, we want this. You got to really go through each piece. So thankfully, the Collins Center is going to do the bulk of that work for us, which is great. Okay, so if everybody's ready, I don't know if you all have you all looked at the shared document that Milva posted that originally just had the pros and cons, and now it's turned into a little bit, there's been some things added. Has anybody not seen that shared doc?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think Gene originated it, but that's okay.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, no, I've looked at it too.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay, so you can see that if you look at it, you know, it's just kind of- Can you put it up on the screen? I can, if somebody wants to share.
[Eunice Browne]: I can. I got it right here.
[Eunice Browne]: Jean's waving madly.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, wait a minute. Did she get muted? Yeah, I think she did. OK. Sorry, Jean. Wait a minute. Did that not work?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, no, that worked. Oh, there you go.
[Jean Zotter]: Well, I muted myself, but then once you mute yourself, I guess you can't hear me. Yeah, that's how. OK, so I'm not going to touch it.
[Milva McDonald]: No, you can, it's just, yeah, that was my solution to being able to, yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: I think in these smaller groups, particularly for each of us to stay unmuted, it becomes a little bit more of a conversation rather than having to like raise your hand and ask to speak.
[Ron Giovino]: Great. Jean, did you have something to say about?
[Jean Zotter]: No, I just wanted to be unmuted.
[Ron Giovino]: All right, so I've taken a look a little bit at the document, and I'm just dumping things in there for everybody to take a look at. I think that our banner is a nice way to label our presentation. I think this just describes what the presentation is, what our function is in terms of at-large versus ward. I think we're going to talk about the current makeup of the city council, what ward representation is, and then each piece of research, and each one of you will have your slides to go over. So it's kind of an overview, which I'll continue to work on and send it to, you know, but if anybody has any thoughts about it, if anybody wants to write the overview, In terms of, I think at the beginning we just state that currently the city council is this way at large, explain what at large is, and then we explain what ward representation is just so it's out there in the presentation. But I'm happy to do that if nobody wants to do it, but.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. Question? Yeah. We're doing this at the October 19th event. Right. And this is a piece of that. I think at least can somebody who's maybe more involved in planning the entire event maybe that's you Melva explain sort of, you know, What the, what the entire that's going to look look like, are we going to be going back to. You know, for folks that are there, maybe tuning in for the 1st time. Sort of, you know, going back to square 1 with a brief overview of what we've been up to since last December.
[Milva McDonald]: Honestly, that, I mean, I've been, I've had a lot going on recently, so I haven't really, and Danielle and I are going to work on that planning and we haven't yet.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, just so that we have some context for where this fits.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but knowing that this could be part of that evening will help us with the planning.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay, but Ron, you're talking about presenting this to the whole Charter Study Committee. Correct.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay. It was also my understanding that we would present it at the October 19th meeting, just to show that this is the kind of work we're putting together. I think it'd be a great quick presentation You know, again, that's why I really don't want it to be a long presentation. But if we just go out and say that the committee has decided to follow ward representation, after we've done all this work, I think it's a great opportunity to, because not only the people fill the room, but they're also on watching from home. So it may be a really, a good way to introduce the level of research and who we are when we present this. And again, you have to be in that 15 minute window because other than that, it's just, it's not worth it, but.
[Eunice Browne]: It gives us a great deal of credibility.
[Ron Giovino]: I think so. I think this is really our first subcommittee project. And I think people are already interested in the level of which we're handling ourselves with the surveys and whatnot. But this kind of is like our first shot at showing them this is the work. It's not just, OK, I'm picking this or that. It's So I think the work that everybody's done here is worth displaying for at least 10 or 15 minutes, and maybe we'll cut it down a little bit. And it also, when you hear this kind of stuff, it's our opportunity to let the folks know things like some awards go unrepresented. there's valuable information for people to really get to understand the charter. So it's a really good information piece that will cause a lot of discussion, I believe. And there's a lot of facts in this discussion that people need to know to wait, you know, to really understand what's happening. My opinion. And then, you know, as the committee can Our job is to go back to the committee with our presentation. What happens with it after that is up to the committee of the whole, so we'll see. So without further ado, I know, Jean, you have landed some valuable information. So maybe we can start with a discussion. on where you're at with your demographics and see if we can't agree on the focus for what your slide will look like.
[Milva McDonald]: So should I stop sharing at this point?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, I have some draft slides so I can show you. Okay. Slides I have. There's a major problem with the data, though. The data that Danielle gave me by ward shows nine wards, not eight.
[Adam Hurtubise]: No kidding.
[Jean Zotter]: Did you hear back from her? I haven't heard back from her. I did reach out to a city councilor and I said, because after the census, the 2020 census, there was a population increase and there was a hearing a city council about, there were three plans. Plan A was just keep the wards as they were. Plan B was to add a ninth ward. two more precincts. Plan C was to add more precincts, but not more wards. And so I just found out how the vote went, and I was told they voted for plan A, so they kept with eight wards, but I don't know why Danielle sent me nine wards.
[Milva McDonald]: So- The other piece that I don't understand is that McCollin Center told us that the state sets the wards.
[Jean Zotter]: So that's what I was wondering, did the state The city council maybe voices their opinion, but then the state does their thing, and maybe the state added.
[Eunice Browne]: I think what happened was, and I'd have to go back and listen, and this was like well over a year ago, I think. I remember these hearings, and I think what they ended up doing was Two wards got to be too big. Some of the precincts got to be too big. I think it might be Ward 2 and Ward 7, I think. It's like 2-1, 2-2, and then 2-2-A. and 7-1, 7-2 and 7-2A or something like that. I think in both cases, it's Paul Donato's territory, if I remember correctly. The precincts got too big, and so one of the precincts got divided.
[Ron Giovino]: That could have been a by-product of when they changed the state reps areas involving the Malden and Metford. Maybe that was it. But we also know that the election results show no Ward 9.
[Milva McDonald]: And you just made me think of something. Maybe the information that Danielle is using is related to state rep.
[Jean Zotter]: Right. Is that different? I mean, I thought that was the same as our wards.
[Ron Giovino]: We would still have a Ward 9, which would mean that there's a separate, you know, I don't know, a good question to answer, but I just, I don't think it's possible that there can be a Ward 9 with nobody knowing there's a Ward 9.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. Yeah, that's what, so you're going to see demographics. I'll show you what I did just so you can get a sense of what it would look like.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: But I'm going to have to fix the data, I think. So why don't I share my screen? Let's see. Hopefully you can. Okay, it says you've disabled screen sharing. Okay, try it now. Okay. All right. Okay, everybody see that so I have, I have five slides right now. but we can, so this is just general demographics based on the 2020 census. So that's our population from 2020. The census updates it every year. So they project that our population in 2022 is even higher than that at 65,399. And it's been increasing for a while, since at least 2010, maybe. So Medford's growing, I guess, is one takeaway. And we might have more awards, who knows? We're pretty evenly split between men and women. We have 22.5% of our residents are foreign born. That doesn't mean that they're immigrants. It could mean they're naturalized citizens and they just were born in another country. So they don't break that down. Almost 30% speak a language other than English in the home, which I thought was- Fascinating. and speaks to the need for us to do outreach in other languages if we really wanna reach all the residents in Medford. People under 65, of people under 65, about 5% have a disability. We have approximately 8% who live under the federal poverty line. And then they don't give like homeowners versus renters, but they do like a housing unit. So of our housing units, little more than half are owner-occupied. So just like comparing that to the survey responses, you can sort of gauge where we are and who we're missing.
[Adam Hurtubise]: And then by- Did you create this page, Jane?
[Jean Zotter]: I took this from the census data.
[Milva McDonald]: This is great. Is there a way to break down that 73% into
[Jean Zotter]: No, the age, so no quick facts they give you for the census just does 18 and I just I made that up they don't they just give you 65 and older and under 18. So this is what's left. I don't know if Danielle has, you know, you can download all their data and it's a lot more robust and maybe Danielle could give us that. If there are particular things we wanna know more than race ethnicity, which is what she gave me by Ward then. So then if you wanna look at race ethnicity, 71% of the residents are white, and then the rest are either Black, Asian, or identifies having two or more races. Ethnicities counted differently. That's separate from race. So you'll see that about 8% identify as being Hispanic. These numbers don't add up, so I don't completely understand why. There could be.
[Ron Giovino]: could be doubled up right.
[Jean Zotter]: yeah so that's you know, and this is this white versus other races. I think 2010. It was like 75%, so we're also becoming more diverse over time. So this is the, by ward, what we could do. It has nine wards in it, so. And these wards don't match up. But this is how we could present the data.
[Ron Giovino]: This is what City Hall gave you?
[Jean Zotter]: Yes.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay, interesting.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, I got some funky data from them to know why she gave us nine words I just have to understand that but this is how we get the data fixed, we, you can see that some words. these wards, one through eight, align with the current wards. You know what I mean? They might not line up with the current. But if it is like this, you could see that some wards are significantly more diverse, almost minority-majority, eight and nine versus others. And if that is true, it would, when I update the data, it would speak to ward representation may help diversify
[Milva McDonald]: Well, especially if I recall correctly, the majority of the city councilors in the last 20 years have come from wards two and three.
[Jean Zotter]: Which are more white, if this is right, if this is right. And then I also have a slide about Hispanic, non-Hispanic, but it's nine wards. Oh, interesting. I thought it would be higher, but Brazilians don't always identify as Hispanic. And so I think some of our populations may not identify as people of color or as Hispanic. And so we just have to take that under advisement. So when I update the data, these are the slides I was thinking of presenting. How do they look?
[Milva McDonald]: The thing that I thought would be, you know, would be really interesting is to look at the demographics in relationship to the data that Eunice had collected. And like I said, just looking at this now, we see that, you know, most of the Councilors, if I'm remembering correctly, we can check it in a minute, come from wards two and three, which are the most white wards, but we don't really know. We can't really. We can't rely on this.
[Ron Giovino]: In the order for the presentation, I think Jean's piece is perfect to lead into what Eunice is going to show in terms of the same wards. The issue is, you know, there's information here, and I'm just going to be the timekeeper of this presentation. Now, there are good five There are at least four, well, if I had to take out a slide, obviously slide number one is enormous and slide number four to me is the second most important. Slide number four covers most of slide number two, would you agree, Jane?
[Jean Zotter]: Well, this is the city overall.
[Ron Giovino]: Right.
[Jean Zotter]: I could add this data to slide one, like just... Right.
[Ron Giovino]: So in terms of your thinking out loud about your presentation and what your role was, how you did it, and then you're going to get into these numbers, and you're also going to... I just wanted to be a... I don't want people to get lost in all the data. And I think, you know, I think your first slide is excellent. And I'm just wondering how we get slide four into that slide two.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think one and four, we could use both of those, right? Did we see three, Jean? It looks like a map.
[Jean Zotter]: Oh, well, I didn't know if we do have nine wards. This shows where the, this is the plan B that they were voting on. This is where the ninth wards would be.
[Ron Giovino]: So that map doesn't show a 9th ward.
[Jean Zotter]: It does. It has this right here is that 9?
[Ron Giovino]: The one on the bottom?
[Jean Zotter]: Where did you get this map? There was that article I sent you and they had a link to the documents around my hearing.
[Ron Giovino]: So was this plan, what was plan A then?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. Plan is what we have right now.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay.
[Jean Zotter]: I just put this here. So I was like, where are, where would the ninth word be?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. As a matter of fact, if I remember from the city council conversations, It's the Wellington area that's growing considerably. With a lot of new apartment complexes going in. I think. Then I know that there's a plan out there on the table that's going through zoning and things that the area where Cappy's is, somebody wants to put an apartment building there. There's a plan percolating where over by Wellington, over where Kiss 108 is and stuff, there's going to be a mixed use type of area going in there with housing and commercial and so forth. So the idea is that that whole area is growing quite a bit. And once it does, I think each ward is supposed to be 4,000, not registered voters, but people. And so if that area grows as people. If we have 65,000.
[Ron Giovino]: Right 1000 wouldn't be the number it's precinct.
[Jean Zotter]: I think each precinct.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, because the, um, so that area, you know, is is purported to be growing over the next several years. And I think, um, Sandy Gail, who is the elections manager prior to Melissa. Um, you know, she had said, you know, we can do something. You know, we can leave things as is now, or we could. make a bigger jump and add a ward because 10 years from now, we're going to need it. So when all of these things sprout up.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, let's hope that there's that kind of growth. I think we just have to deal with what we have right now because I think it's a great point. I think it's something that should be in the back of our minds that the 11 members being eight and three could easily be nine and two if we had to. So our plan kind of could be adjusted right on the fly. But, Jean, can you go back to this slide?
[Milva McDonald]: If we had nine wards, you mean?
[Ron Giovino]: If the world changed the way it was. No, if we have 11 and three at large, if we added- Oh, then it could easily- Easily go to nine and two, is my point. Can you go back to slide four, Jean? I just want to see that for a second. So this is by percentages, but not by numbers. Right.
[Jean Zotter]: So each ward's around 6,000.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. So I'm just thinking that if inside, so your slide one is a general number of that pie chart is a general mix. And then your slide four shows, detailed by Ward, what the makeup is.
[Jean Zotter]: Just for race. Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: Right. So I guess the fact that they're all semi-equal in terms of size, I guess that proves that the percentage works. In other words, there's no one ward that's twice the size of Ward 5, which would make the 86% in Ward 4 and 3.
[Milva McDonald]: But they can't be. That's part of the law.
[Ron Giovino]: That's what I'm saying. So this chart is fine.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, we can put numbers in. The data I have right now, which again, we're not sure is right. Most of the wards are like 6,400, 6,700, so. I'm just fascinated that she gave you nine wards. I know. And I feel like she must know, because she's doing all this planning. So I don't know if we'll find out.
[Ron Giovino]: Is there information anywhere that says how many people are in Ward 9?
[Jean Zotter]: Yes, the data she gave me, it's 6,402 people in Ward 9.
[Ron Giovino]: Very, very weird. Because they'd need their own location to vote.
[Jean Zotter]: And it adds up to the total population number from the census. It adds up to, all the wards add up to 59,659. OK. Well, that'd be interesting information.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And if we do have eight wards, which I'm convinced we do. I would like to get the numbers for that because it's relevant to what I looked at with the question of the Lowell case. The allegation was that the Voting Rights Act was being violated And if somehow we had a wards we and we had a majority minority district, then that could apply to Medford as well right now it doesn't look like we do, but we don't really know how. Right.
[Jean Zotter]: Hopefully, Danielle will email me back. Sometimes she takes a little while, but I have, I can't, even if we don't meet next Thursday, I could just update folks via email and send out like an updated slide.
[Ron Giovino]: And the other point too, is to think that how does that information impact what we're trying to decide ward versus at large? It does in a little bit, but it really doesn't differ from the fact that You either believe in Ward representation or you don't. So it kind of, the ninth is there and it's something we are aware of and it's something that we need to find out about. But it shouldn't change the philosophy of whether to go to Ward versus Adler.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I agree with you. Yeah. But it's just somewhat relevant to what I, you know, evaluating the significance of the Lowell case in relationship.
[Ron Giovino]: And it also reminds us, too, that in the article that we end up rewriting, we will have to talk about 10 years from now and how the, who handles that change. And, you know, I'm sure the Secretary of State's Office of the Commonwealth gets involved in it. It's, it's.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I, you mean. Yeah, we'll have to look at other charters and see, like, I don't know if there's provisions for if the wards, if the number of wards increase or decrease. I know that Lowell's ward, Lowell used to have 11 wards and they now have eight. So they decreased significantly.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, maybe when we put in a provision in the charter as a whole for when the next review would be, it could be stated something like next review 10 years from the date that we complete our work and it passes with the residents, or should the state reward us or re-precinct us, you get the point. We will review this charter in 10 years or if a ward is added, whichever comes first. Yeah. because we would have to then change wards and precincts for the next election, you know, after that.
[Ron Giovino]: It just shows the importance of having a mechanism to amend this document on the fly, not every 40 years.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, yeah, when we get to the section of the charter where we decide, you know, if We want to put in a regular charter review and how often that should be. That would be, you know, then we'll see what happens, but I think it's a good question for the call and center when the state does the, you know, evaluation if the ward. make up changes, how does the, how do cities account for that in the chart?
[Jean Zotter]: All right, I'll stop sharing. So you're saying slide one and slide four.
[Ron Giovino]: What I'm saying in terms of the, your intro is, what your presentation is about trying to understand the true demographics of the city to understand, reach our goal of achieving diversity, throughout the election process and the government representation. So yeah, I think my opinion is one in four is going to give you 45 minutes of discussion. Your challenge is going to be just like now. I mean, how long have we spent, Wes, learning this for the first time? There's going to be questions. I think, you know, obviously the map doesn't really do too much for the president.
[Jean Zotter]: That was more for us.
[Ron Giovino]: If we had words, I wanted you to see where... No, but I appreciate the fact that you have, I know you have much more data so that when a discussion points to some particular item that people really want to know, I know you're going to know the answer because you're going to be the subject expert. So that's what I'm, that's what I, that's what I'm thinking. And I think slide one is tremendous. It just shows that you have a full knowledge of what the demographics are currently and adjusted for this year as well. And then I think that slide four is the easiest one for me to read in terms of ward by ward it shows that the balance is pretty With few exceptions, like in Ward 9, 8 and 9, people should understand that that's the reason why we want to be more diverse with board representation. So I think it also proves the point of what our recommendation looks like it will be.
[Eunice Browne]: Can I make a suggestion on that particular slide? I wonder if underneath each block there, you could Indicate and I can give it to Eugene where the voting places are in each word because if somebody said. Oh, geez, what's with word 3. Then 3 is the American Legion in the temple. It gives people a landmark.
[Ron Giovino]: Right, and just to that point, Eunice, I think that in the presentation, if we identify each other as the experts, if that question comes up, I'm sure we would defer to you as the election expert that would know the answer. So as long as we're providing the answer, I think that this slide is filled with stuff. If somebody said Ward 3, if I said who's Ward 6, I'm sure you would know who that is. Yeah, I have to look it up these days myself, but I'm- No, but I mean, you would be able to, I'm just saying, you would be able to back up that information very quickly. So if we have, the way I am, is Jean's our demographics subject expert, you're our election subject expert, Maury is historical, Milva is case study, and I'm just your host for the day. But I think that.
[Jean Zotter]: Oh, we should do a map. Once we know what our words are. It'd be nice to have a map that we can.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I. Nice to resolve that.
[Jean Zotter]: We need to get an accurate map of. This isn't it but and it's not a very good one but it'd be good to have a map just to show the. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: It's really hard because when you look for a map on the internet, there's just many different maps. Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: It's frustrating. I've got to imagine the candidates have a very accurate, clear map that they have. They have to.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so. They have to, because they're campaigning.
[Ron Giovino]: Have we asked the Commonwealth of Massachusetts if there is a map that exists? I mean, they have to know where it is.
[Jean Zotter]: They do have a map on their websites. But it's not, I was playing with it, because I thought I'd take a screen grab of that. But it's like the, you can't really tell where the word lines are. I don't know. It's not very user friendly. So it's not. In terms of labeling, you mean? I looked at that map too. Yeah. Did you find it? It's like not labeled well.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with you. Yeah. And the best one, there is one floating around that's all those different colors. I think it was like posted on Reddit or something. But we just don't know how recent it is. Right. And I would think that the city maybe would have it on their website or we could get it from I mean, it does actions, right? Yeah, it seems like it should be on the Oh, here's more. Seems like it.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I just mean, I think he kind of that discombobulated.
[Jean Zotter]: Alright, so I'm gonna stop sharing. We'll go to the next.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay, so are you comfortable gene with? Do you think there's anything else that's necessary? I mean, I think this is very, you know, well put together. I think I love pie charts, I think they're very visual. I think you've got the key data that talks about the city and your slide four is really the breakdown. And that will also, your slide four will also lead into Eunice's presentation about election results.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, and I'll have backup slides if people have questions.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I'm confident about that.
[Jean Zotter]: All right. Great, I'll stop. Thank you.
[Ron Giovino]: Very nice. Okay, so next up is... Hi, Mari.
[Maury Carroll]: Hey, how are you? I'm going to try to get into my laptop instead of my phone. So I'm out here and try to get back in. I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm flat out here. No problem. Okay. Thanks.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay. Okay. So at that point, uh, three, four minutes and 11 seconds, Jane's presentation, we move right into it. So Eunice, it's a natural flow from the demographics to talk about historic election information, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I share, please?
[Ron Giovino]: Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: You should be able to.
[Eunice Browne]: All right, let me, let's see, how do I do this share screen? Okay, and then I want to go to files. Yeah, how do I do this? I'm trying to find, how do I do this to get to my, my desktop? Oh, okay.
[Ron Giovino]: You just click on your presentation.
[Milva McDonald]: So when you click share screen, you'll see a bunch of little screens and then you pick one.
[Eunice Browne]: It says whiteboard and iPhone, iPad.
[Jean Zotter]: you don't see your desktop. Sometimes you have to pull up the thing you want, have it open on your computer, the thing you want to share.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that will help. Let me try that.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, so.
[Maury Carroll]: Hi, how are you? Just really flat out here. And there's going to be a lot of background noise. We're busy here. So probably best to keep the mute on.
[Milva McDonald]: Just wave your hand at me if you want to unmute because it's set where people can unmute themselves for security reasons.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, so let's see. So I think we got it here. So this is what I put together. When I did the other data, I went all the way back to 2001, I think it was, to do the data on elected officials. But for the election results, I only went back to 2015, kind of figuring I'd start with the post-McGlynn era. Um, to current and then I'll update it adding 2023. Um, after the election, um. Which won't help us for the October presentation, but it'll help us down the road. Um, so I have. 4 tabs with all of the election data. With the candidates for each election, their grand totals, and then the, as you can see their data. each ward and precinct, and then the write-ins and the blanks, and then the overall turnout, as well as the turnout by ward and precinct. For 2021, I had indicated their home precincts, any childhood precinct. Some of the electeds have grown up here and so forth, but I haven't gone back and done that with the other ones yet. 2019 is the only year that on On the city website, it didn't have the ward by ward breakdown. So I'm going to have to see if I can get that from Melissa or maybe backtrack to Adam Hurtubise, I'm not sure. So what I thought I would do, my thought process for my piece here is to start out with a summary of the other data that I had put together, which I know is in our folder there. Going back to what Melva was talking about earlier about the representation by ward and precinct where wards 3 and 2 have had the most electeds represented, 1 and 4 have had none, what things will look like.
[Ron Giovino]: Since 2015? I'm sorry, what? Are you saying since 2015?
[Eunice Browne]: No, going back to 2001. Okay. We can put that data up too as well so that we can indicate what ward representation has looked like by ward, the number of terms served by you know, the Councilors, um, and so forth. And, and then, you know, the turnover started happening over the last few years. Um, and then going into now focusing a little bit more from 2015 to the present, um, you know, that's where I'm kind of trying to figure out what we're looking for. You know, and of course, taking this data and putting it into any sort of charts and graphs. So it's a little bit easier for people to digest as well.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay. So can I just stop you for a second and just excuse my questioning. I just, I'm trying to work together here so we can understand what is our, what's the purpose. And I think, If I'm looking, you know, obviously we're not going to, this is the backup piece. But I think what's important is to look at how many candidates from whatever year, 2001, 2015, whatever year you choose, I think 2001 if you have it, how many candidates of the seven candidates elected over those elections came from which wards. So if there were, since 2001, there were 12 elections or 11 elections, that would mean 77 candidates were elected for city council. So if a total of 77 is the number, whatever the number is, wherever you take that data, to see a chart that says of those 77, 8 came from Ward 1, 9 came from Ward 2, and then that could be a pie chart that people can visually see the number. So to me, in terms of the focus on Ward versus at large, This, that would show that, and it would show in your piece, it would show that some wards have not had any representation. Some wards may have two, some other wards may have 35%. I think that's a really solid. pie chart, and the other pie chart I think is really solid, is to look at the bottom there where you talk about registered voters versus how many votes were cast by those folks. So that also tells you that people were organized enough to register, but they didn't care enough to vote. or not to care enough or just couldn't get to vote. So I think those are two really great pie charts that says, and you have it there, percentage of vote. So that's a really, to me, if one ward is voting 23% and another ward is at 52%, that's a great number to show.
[Eunice Browne]: Right, I think, you know, looking somewhat historically, you know, you'll see and I think more probably knows a bit more about this than I do is that the turnout at the temple. Um, you know, is always off the charts, um, over at the Roberts, you know, it tends to be very high as well.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, do you think that, do you think, excuse me, do you think the temple has elected more city Councilors?
[Eunice Browne]: If you looked at those numbers, do you think that was in my, um, other presentation that I did a few weeks ago? Um, I have that and. Going back to 2001, let's see, the temple is three months.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Makes sense.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. From the 2001 point to present, in Ward 3, which would encompass the American region and the temple, and I didn't break it down between the two, 11 ran and six were elected, that being Camuso, Brianna, Stephanie, Knight, Mayato, and Morell.
[Ron Giovino]: So you'd have to count them for each election. They would count as another one. So out of the 77, if Camuso won four times, that's four. And then you continue to add those. But what this I'm thinking is that Milva's case study of Lowell really feeds into this, because we're going to be talking about the fact that certain wards, based on certain demographics, are not voting. No.
[Milva McDonald]: So one thing I agree with you, Ron, but I just wanted to make a suggestion for the I think the the information that you talked about for about over X number of elections in 2001. I was thinking maybe a graph, because the pie chart, there's actually two wards that are absolutely zero. So they're not even going to have a piece of pie, you know what I mean? So I almost think visually a graph would look better, because you could see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
[Jean Zotter]: And then there's literally no bar. How many elected? It could be the number of people elected from the chart. Yeah. Can I ask a question about the registered voters versus actual voters? What is the, what's the framing of that? Because I don't want it to be, or it could come across as saying these wards turn out voters more, and the other wards just don't vote, and so that's why they don't have represented it. I'm just, it's a complicated reason why some people don't vote. And we just have to be careful how it's framed.
[Ron Giovino]: Right, because that's a total another issue. I agree. I understand what you're saying. However, the vote is the vote. I mean, there's another issue there that you're talking about. I understand, you know, why does that happen? Why is
[Jean Zotter]: Some people have to work two jobs, they're lower income, there's no child care. There's a lot of barriers to voting that, and that kind of being like a, we just have to be careful how we frame it.
[Ron Giovino]: I think my point would be that, what would change if there was a specific candidate for this specific ward that is at 16%? Do we think, and I think, yes, that the number would go up. to a much more inclusive number. And I think that what this shows is the current system does not do that, which is.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think one of the things that we've talked about is that the possibility of board representation increasing voter engagement. So if we look historically and we see that voter turnout is consistently higher in the wards that actually have people from their wards elected, then maybe, maybe that's what I, that's to me, that's what we would look at. We would look at that for that reason.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, I like that framing.
[Ron Giovino]: Yes, I agree with you.
[Eunice Browne]: I think if you look at it, you know, and going back to like at the, you know, the tempo that has You know, a high turnout, you know, that's Ward 3 and as I said, you know, 6 have been elected over, you know, the last. 20 something years, and you go over to where there's, you know, 15 to 16% of turnout. which is 71 and 72, which is Mystic Valley Towers and the McGlynn School. And then you go over to who's been elected, who's ran and who's been elected in 20 something years. Three people have won in that time period. And the only one that's been elected has been Michael Marks. Thank you.
[Ron Giovino]: So I think it's a really great demonstration, what we're trying to say. I think, is there any way, Eunice, that we can find out how many, I know we can find out how many folks were elected out of each ward. Can we find out how many candidates were in each ward?
[Eunice Browne]: Oh, that would be good. Yeah, I have that, actually.
[Ron Giovino]: It'd be interesting to see if the number of candidates is relevant to the percentage of voting. And that proves that point. Not only does it suggest it, it actually would prove the point that, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Maury wanted to say something.
[Maury Carroll]: Yes, Maury. Oh, thanks. Yeah. This is the history of Medford elections running probably over the last 30 years, that these polling places have pulled out their vote and other ones have not. And if you look at ward representation, you would think that maybe in the lesser wards where there's been no representation, they have a candidate and he gets them to come out, you're gonna see the vote increase in those particular wards. You know, this is nothing, but this is just a carbon copy of what's going on in this city for years. You know, you had a view on these five, you want these top five places, you know, the temple, book school, West Bedford Fire Station. You were virtually guaranteed a finish in the top seven. You know, I mean, if you look where these candidates are from, they're all from that area too. I mean, if you look at, you know, like the one that we, in front of us and you see the numbers, how they drew at, at, at, at the temple and book school that, you know, they'll slate those people basically, and they get their vote out.
[Ron Giovino]: 100% agree. And I think that that's one of our goals is to provide. the diversity in representation. And that's what ward representation we will be able to prove should accomplish. And I think that that data that Eunice has, if we could analyze that and find out if the correlation between not having a neighbor running means you're not interested. And if that's, we would accomplish that by putting a candidate in every ward.
[Eunice Browne]: So, 1, go back to what you were saying. So how many candidates?
[Ron Giovino]: So, if you could come up with how many candidates come from which wards.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So, in other words, the, the 50, 51% ward, how many candidates were out there?
[Ron Giovino]: And again, I think from 2015 is fine for data, but if you wanna go further back, that's fine. And the other thing would be contrasting that to the under 20% turnout wards, finding out if there are any candidates on that, just as part of proving the reasons why nobody would, a lesser amount of people voted in a particular ward, and could we correct that by putting ward representation together. And also, yeah, I mean, I think looking at the amount of registered voters and the percentage of people who cast votes by ward, and then the other piece is how many candidates were elected from each that live in whatever wards. And then the other piece is how many candidates were on the ballot, you know, divvied up by the eight wards. Am I, yes, Amilva, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: So the other thing I think is important about the voter turnout, and to me, a graph showing each ward and what the voter turnout is, not the literal number, but say the percentage. Like we have a much higher percentage of voters coming from this ward and this ward. Another reason that that's significant is that every candidate is looking at this data that we are looking at. So they're covering the whole city, but when they're campaigning, they're going to focus their energies where the voters are. And that means that if there's a ward that doesn't have a big turnout, for whatever reason, they're not going to get as much attention from the at-large candidates during campaigning. And that could carry over.
[Ron Giovino]: 100% correct. I think that's absolutely right. I think why wouldn't you focus on the area that you're most comfortable with? And it also happens to be a high-producing vote. So I think, yes, percentages is very important. I think that's how you would identify it. But those numbers are going to be really crucial. I think this is going to prove the opinion of, you know, this should result in a much higher turnout that's spread out equally over the wards. That's my opinion.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: That makes sense. And I also think that the information that you can provide, Eunice, by giving us those in the same format that Jane is, that allows for Milva's pros and cons presentation, which we have to work on.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, am I doing that presentation?
[Ron Giovino]: Well, whoever it is, I mean, you wrote it. So somebody will do it, but we all have to agree on that. And we'll take the data that we come from these two. And the things that we're talking about is that, you know, doing the pros and cons will allow us to talk just like this with bullet points. So I like it. I think it's, I think if we do graphs, um, of the eight wards, not nine, we could definitely prove the fact that it definitely would have an impact if you move the candidates to ward representation, right? I like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, wards one and four, we know, have had no representative. Yeah. And even other wards have only had one.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, it'd be fascinating to watch how the at-large candidates will work the room if that changes the balance. And it sounds a lot like what happened in Lowell, not as serious as Lowell, but it sounds like a solution to make sure that everybody understands what's happening to get representation.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, Maury had his hand up, I know.
[Maury Carroll]: Maury, go ahead. Quickly, I don't think this is a good This this particular year, this was 2 years ago, correct?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, 2020 is 2 years ago.
[Maury Carroll]: I think if you went back 10 years prior to this, you'd see a completely different screen. And the reason I'm saying that is. If you look at all the high numbers, you know, and I'm not going to focus on names, but you know there's a slate out there that's pushed out of a certain area. And there's people here that you know lived in the city for two and a half years from from South Medford, that's pulling down what, 500 and some odd votes in West Medford, you know what I'm saying? No one even knows this person, but because they're part of a slate, they get the advantage of that. So I think you should discount this one and go back 10 years ago if you really wanna see how the different individuals that weren't a slate as such feared throughout the city. I think that's a fairer comparison than a model like this.
[Adam Hurtubise]: How difficult would it be to get these charts further back?
[Eunice Browne]: I'll tell you, I see what Maury's saying and to an extent I agree with him. My only pushback would be two things. Number one, I think this notion of slates with the people that we're dancing around talking about are here to stay.
[Maury Carroll]: I'm not saying that's true, but I'm saying if you want to take a broader look of how representation went throughout the entire city, or on an individual basis, you had a whole different type of candidate running it. I don't care if they run as a slate or if they run as whatever they want to do. But if you want to look at true representation between the wards and precincts, I think you have to go back 10 years where you saw more individuals running on their own than running as a group. That's what I'm going to say. I don't care how they run. And I think you can see it as we start
[Eunice Browne]: If you go back to 2015.
[Maury Carroll]: I don't need to see the numbers. I already know it. You know that.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I don't think we need to use any names. I think we just need the graphs.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Just the numbers.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we have this data. Anybody on the committee can say, we can request it. You know what I mean?
[Ron Giovino]: One thing to Maury's point is, and again, this is a workload issue, and I don't know how long it took to create this document, but if we pulled 2010 or 2015 as an isolated election and gave the same numbers, that would show, well, this is 10 years ago, it's pretty much the same, or 10 years ago, it's completely changed. And I think that's valuable data for us to understand current situations versus the 10 years ago, give us some balance. But if we can do it, I don't think it's necessary. The fact is that whatever the environment right now, we're trying to make sure that there's a balance throughout every ward. So, so- How about I do this?
[Eunice Browne]: Because it is, it is time consuming.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I know, I know. I don't want that. Right.
[Eunice Browne]: You know, good.
[Ron Giovino]: You know, it is- There's so many more subcommittees for you to join, Eunice.
[Eunice Browne]: We don't want you to- I'll be doing this for school committee too. You know, but in, you know, pulling together the graphs, I don't know how to do graphs. I can do that.
[Jean Zotter]: I can do that with you, Eunice, if you want.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, well, we can do a zoom together on that. But then pulling things together, maybe what I'll do since I went back as far as 2015, I have the other data all the way back to 2001. But if I go back to 2001 for this, my head might explode.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, yeah, no, no, no.
[Eunice Browne]: What I'll do maybe is I'll go back to Maury's point, back to 2010. I'll do 2013, 2011, and 2009.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, my point, I'm just saying take a picture of 2010 or 11, whatever it is, 2010, and that's good enough to compare it to the one you've already done. So it gives us, whatever happens in between is not, that's just really, a lot of detail, but if we said in 2010, the numbers in Ward 7 were still at 20%, then we've conclude that there's not, the numbers are lower than Ward 2. That's all I'm saying.
[Milva McDonald]: One picture. Was the average of the voter turnout over the period that we, we looked from 2001 to now and saw where the, actual elected representatives, what wards the elected city councilors have come from, and then look at the average of the turnout over that time. I don't see what, I don't know, I guess what I'm trying to say is what's the goal of looking at isolated years and isolated candidates in terms of this discussion? Because what we need to decide is, Is ward representation the right move for the city in terms of putting, you know, recommending that for the chart? So that's the only, we just need to take all this data and crystallize it into whatever point we need to take from it to lead us in the right direction for that decision, right?
[Ron Giovino]: I agree with you. I'm just, to what Maury had said, we take a snapshot of 21, then we can go with that, and I'm fine with that. But if we wanted to say that in 2010, this was the number, when we took a snapshot on 2010, the numbers either are similar or they're not. I think that's important as we move forward, because if what Maury's saying is correct, and in 2010, the percentages were even, than the voter turnout. Yeah, you're right. Maybe that tells us a different story. I don't think it will. I don't think it will, honestly. I think 2010 will look very similar to 2021. But it's just, do we want to put that effort into creating that analysis? And I don't know what the effort is. That's why I was asking Eunice, how much would it take to put this chart together for 2010?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I mean, if the data were in an Excel spreadsheet or something like that, where I could export it over for my purposes, it would be easy. But this is all just hand-typed in.
[Ron Giovino]: So let's pass. I think, unless anybody else objects, I think this does give us a snapshot of the most recent. You know, people can, it's not going to be the make or break of whether we go Ward or not, but it's certainly evidence that supports.
[Eunice Browne]: I can go back a couple more elections.
[Ron Giovino]: I wouldn't go, I wouldn't go more than one more, honestly. It takes a lot of work and I just don't think it's worth, I think it's over-analyzed. If you wanted to do 2015, if the only thing we're missing here is that for some reason Ward 2 had 19% and Ward 8 had 58%. That would be dramatic, something that we would want to think about. But even in that case, even in that case, if let's say that everything switched around and Ward 8 had 52% and Ward 2 had 17%. Same case, just different wards. It's still talking about a disjointed balance of voting in the wards as a result. And to Maury's point, if in five years, there was no candidates coming out of Ward 2, I would bet that the number would go down.
[Eunice Browne]: I'm thinking just looking over here going to, Uh, 2013 looking at what's on the. City site, you know, and again, it's it's hand. Typing it in, so you're looking at. Does it give me the information? No, it doesn't.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, one thing I know more he wants to speak so I just I don't want to die does like I said it's a lot of background music.
[Maury Carroll]: I don't think if you go back 10 years ago, you're going to see much of a change as far as where the heavy boat turns out, but I think you'll get a, you'll get a better feel for. a little more action in the other wards than the huge comparison, the huge disparity, I should say, between what you see here from two years ago. You'll see a little more balance, but not much. The top ones are still going to be the top ones.
[Milva McDonald]: One thing I'm wondering that might be a question, we're going to have a graph showing since 2001, what war, you know, what words have been represented in terms of actual elected city councilors. And we may get the question, well, what about, um, how, you know, how, how many candidates have come from ward one? You know, were there any candidates from ward one? Maybe that's why there's no city councilors from ward one. So maybe what we should do is also, um, have a graph showing this is how many candidates over the past 20, since 2001 have come from Ward 1, this is how many candidates have come from Ward 2. Because somebody could say, well, how do we know that even anybody ran from those wards?
[Eunice Browne]: That's something that in the other set of data that we looked at a few weeks ago, that I did put together and just going back to see if I can find it in my own. you know, like Ward 1, you know, had in that span of time, four candidates, none of them got elected, but that is, what I didn't go back to do then was preliminary data, any primary or preliminary election data. So let's say somebody ran and got knocked out in the primary. I wouldn't know that because I didn't go back to look at that, you know, But if somebody ran in the primary and made it as far as the general, but still didn't get elected, then I have that.
[Ron Giovino]: I think we need to focus on the general election. I think there's other obstacles when we're talking about primaries and who voted and people caring about the primary.
[Milva McDonald]: And we can just say that this breakdown of candidates and where they're from in terms of the wards applies to the general election. Right, yeah, it doesn't work.
[Ron Giovino]: Can you produce that, Eunice, number of candidates by ward and number of elected by ward?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: So to me, that's much more valuable than any other data that you would gather.
[Milva McDonald]: I think those are really... I think that's right. I think that's the most important.
[Ron Giovino]: I agree. So if you make that your... And then once you have those numbers, I'm sure Jean can help you just enter that data into a bar graph and it produces, it'll produce for you that we'll be able to see that. But to me, in terms of, I'm concerned about the level of time and effort has to go into all that work. But if you were able to produce number of candidates, number of elected by ward, and then also demonstrate the percentages as best we know them. I think that's gonna give us that nice look at, you know, what's happening.
[Milva McDonald]: When you say percentages, Ron, what do you mean?
[Ron Giovino]: The ballot cast percentage.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Voter turnout.
[Ron Giovino]: Voter turnout, yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. the percentages so that we can see if where the voter turnout is the heaviest.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, do you think, Jean, that's, do we can, is there a way, I don't know, it should be three separate bar graphs or would you put it all on the same bar graph just to demonstrate?
[Jean Zotter]: I don't know.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Would you put it on three separate ones?
[Jean Zotter]: You might be able to do two. You could do elected with a graph next to it, voter turnout.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: And then you could do candidates.
[Ron Giovino]: And with again, the percentage percentage next to it. Okay, that's good. Excellent.
[Milva McDonald]: And, and I think the main, you know, the main point about the voter turnout is that, you know, one of the concerns is that the fact that voter turnout that there's this discrepancy in voter turnout, and that we see that most of the elected officials come from the wards with the high turnout, There's a concern that other wards are not getting the same level of attention, certainly during campaign season, and potentially, you know, because both of the voters are coming from particular wards.
[Ron Giovino]: And I think that once we present this in the correct way, I think when we go through the pros and cons, that information, that comment that you just made could lay in there as part of the summary for sure. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So yeah, the challenge always has been with this is getting it distilled into the visual points that we are most important.
[Eunice Browne]: Right, right. I mean, you know, for for us who are knee deep in this, you know, and we're kind of we're on this committee because we're kind of, you know, this is our thing. But for sort of the more casual observer, you know, how do you make it?
[Ron Giovino]: Well, and you're right, that's the challenge. Make it make it interesting, brief, and correct. We can do that. We're good. I like that idea that you present. If you presented those three, those two bar graphs, and in the work that you did to get there, I think that's a solid presentation to follow Gene's presentation. And again, I think the conclusions will come, to me, the conclusions will come after we get to, and then we're gonna talk about the Lowell's case study, we're gonna talk about history, we're gonna talk about the interviews and the surveys, and then we'll come back with the pros and cons, and then our recommendation. So that's the way I see it laid out. If anybody, I'm talking a lot tonight, but I'm just trying to get to that point.
[Jean Zotter]: Just as far as time goes, I do have to work tonight. I wasn't sure. It sounds like we have a lot we have to do.
[Ron Giovino]: No, we actually don't, because it's time to, we're at eight o'clock and I'm sticking to the timetable. So I think we're ready to move to, I think the next pieces are more, let's talk about what the expectation is. And unfortunately we'll probably have to do another meeting on Thursday, but it should be brief. So we have those pieces. Next piece would be Milva's case study to understand Lowell. And I think you've got that pretty covered if you.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't want to call it a case study because that sounds like I did like high levels of research. I mean, I did look into it and I found information out, but case study sounds like you're going to write a book or something.
[Adam Hurtubise]: OK. All right.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. And it would be very short. I mean, all I have to say is what happened. Why, you know, what were the things that caused the move to get to ward representation? And like I said, if genes demographic information changes, and we find out that there's a majority minority ward, then it's much more relevant. But even without that, I think the main point is that It's not whether Medford has a violation of the Voting Rights Act. It's that- Correct. The point is that they moved toward representation because ward representation is more representative and it increases diversity on city councils.
[Adam Hurtubise]: That's a key point.
[Milva McDonald]: That's pretty much accepted.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, no, I think that the city doesn't need another lawsuit for sure. So I think that's absolutely, you're absolutely right on what you are discussing there. So I'm confident you can do that with a few bullet points. And if anybody needs to know, talk it out or whatever, we can have discussions about this if it's one-on-one, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so me, I'm going to be like, you know, two minutes.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, that's good. So the next piece is about interviews, surveys, and the city of Malden interview in particular.
[Eunice Browne]: So what about Maury's piece?
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, no, I'm skipping that. I'm going to move that down to the next level. But I think this is just something we can quickly do. Milva, you know more about the surveys and the interviews Do you want to handle that? Or do you want to just have me put it in?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't think, I think we need to wait. I think the survey, I think the only point to make about the survey is that as of now, the survey shows that a strong majority is in favor of ward representation. And we've also gotten, you know, very significant feedback at our public events. And we've had, we don't know what the final, I mean, I, You know, I doubt it would, it will change so drastically as to go in the other direction, but the survey is open until December 1st, so. But I do think we can say that right now we have 365 respondents, something like that.
[Ron Giovino]: Maybe you can say that, and also that we've done, we've completed several interviews. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Not the results, I mean, the results are mixed.
[Milva McDonald]: I sent the interview, you know, I pulled the relevant pieces of the interviews out because I thought it would be interesting for us in our discussion.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it is mixed. You're right. It's not all.
[Ron Giovino]: It is mixed. I don't think you can come up with a conclusion by that. I just think that it's a piece of the research we did and it kind of, you know, saying how many surveys have come back and saying that we've done interviews, I think is maybe important if you want to if you wanted to, you know, maybe the City of Malden interview is not important. We can just lump it in with all the other interviews that we've done.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, you know, I think when we look at the interviews, you know, there was, I mean, most of the ward representatives, I mean, all our interviews aren't in there because we didn't talk to school committee members about ward representation on city council.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Right, right, right.
[Milva McDonald]: but of the people that we talked to, the city councilors and a couple of department heads and people who work in the city. Let's see, I think we, what did we have? Four city councilors so far? No, five. We've talked to five. Rick, Justin, Zach, Nicole. We haven't talked to Councilor Scarpelli and Councilor Knight.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, I think it can be just a good quick bullet to say, you know, part of our research has been to interview as many as we possibly can. None of the information is conclusive. But, you know, we've done all this and there's 365 surveys that have come in again.
[Milva McDonald]: I think you're right. Maybe for the public, presentation that we're talking about for the committee? I don't know that.
[Ron Giovino]: No, I'm talking about the public presentation. Yeah. So I don't know, is that do you think the city of Malden is valuable to talk about? Or we should just skip it in the interest of time? It'll come back again. It's gonna come back again, because there's a lot of information in it.
[Jean Zotter]: What if we did instead of Malden, it could be an antidote, but or whatever, however you say that word. But just how many cities have ward Like just a snapshot of across message.
[Adam Hurtubise]: It's that you know that information.
[Jean Zotter]: I thought the Collins Center.
[Milva McDonald]: Did they, um, I don't know that we have actual numbers across the state. We do have that Excel spreadsheet that sort of includes 59 cities. I mean, there's also a lot of towns that might have mayors and that might. So we have the 59 cities. I'll ask them if we can get those, because that actually, I think that is significant. I know that Medford is one of the very few cities that doesn't have ward representation.
[Ron Giovino]: So I'm making an executive decision to wipe out the Gary Christensen piece. I think the interviews, surveys, the fact of how many cities and towns do or don't have ward representation should be part of an intro, an introduction at the beginning, just to let them know and then go into the details that we have. So why don't we, I'm just going to put a note here. Does anybody want to work on the intro, or do you want me to do that?
[Milva McDonald]: You can work on it. And you can read it. I also, I know David and Phyllis interviewed Patricia Brady-Doherty, and there are some other that I, so I just got those, so I'll put those into the document.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay, but like you say, that's valuable. Yeah, that would be, We can talk to it, but the details would be something we'll use as ongoing.
[Eunice Browne]: I suspect that Patricia has some ideas that she's not supportive of wood representation. She's not. Right. I had come across something, I sent it to Milva, but the gist of it was, some Facebook posts and comments from a couple of years ago that Patricia had made in response to one of the candidates running last time around discussing wood representation. It's not something that she's in favor of, and I would imagine that David and Phyllis's conversation, when we get the results, we'll bear that out. But I thought that she had some interesting points. we seem to be very much leaning towards word representation is a good idea. I think that we need to present the reasons why it might not be a good idea too, because I think people need to see both sides. There are cons to word representation, and I think we need to put that out there.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, there is that piece of the pros and cons that does exactly that. And I think that, in my opinion, the reason why we're here is to make a decision based on as much information as we have. We're not going to please, if we please 50.1% of the people with our recommendations, then that's government. But I think that our pros and cons need to really be, you know, honed in on and I'm going And I'm going to work on it a little bit. And then I think next meeting, we should definitely start with pros and cons. Absolutely, your point. We can't just be predetermined. We want to show everybody that we came in here with an open mind and pros and cons we need to understand.
[Milva McDonald]: So, and we should and we could maybe try to put these into more validity, you know.
[Ron Giovino]: Correct.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, I'll work on that.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, I mean, I can just, I just read, I can just add, I don't, well, let's see.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, let's, let's, let's just table that for the next meeting that will, I'll hone it down a little bit, and then we'll have a discussion to edit it. Cause it is, it is.
[Milva McDonald]: I can, I'll add some of the things from that.
[Ron Giovino]: So you can do that and I'll look at it and anybody else can look at it and add whatever else you want to add. I haven't seen the, uh, Patricia Brady Doherty's thoughts. I know I've read a lot of altering thoughts about it, but somebody has to make a decision and that's why we get paid the big bucks.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. If only. So I think the concerns that have been, I think that we're going to see in that interview report include an increase in politicization. I don't know exactly what ward bosses are, but a concern about, and maybe that's that concern about a ward councilor having sort of undue influence over what happens in their ward. And one ward representative would mean fewer city council members would be interested in fixing hyper-local problems.
[Ron Giovino]: It's just, yeah, I mean, that's one, that's an interesting take on it. I just don't, we're not empowering any ward bosses. So giving, you know, we haven't discussed giving extra powers. I know we've talked about, you know, a ward representative being able to veto certain projects. That's not what we've been talking about. So, um, I don't, there's danger in everything, so.
[Milva McDonald]: yeah and and that may not be the like i think in maybe the other way we've heard that concern expressed is that you know maybe other Councilors might just defer to the ward Councilor right yeah and that's the article you sent the journal article right that happens or
[Ron Giovino]: And also they feel identified with their neighbor as their government rep, and they'll probably talk to them more. So there's that side too. I mean, it's interesting. There are no right answers to this.
[Jean Zotter]: Well, nothing is perfect.
[Ron Giovino]: We certainly know that. It's good to think of the cons and whether there's a way to... 100% and I would encourage you all to look at the pros and cons before our next meeting, just so you can, you know, put them, add to them. I would suggest when you add to these, put them in red so we know they're additions and people will focus on them. But everybody should look at the pros and cons because we'll spend a little time, you know, making sure that We do, like the unit says, show that we started out on both sides of this issue. All right, so I'm going to move the interviews and surveys in the introduction just to say, you know, we did that. That was part of the research. Maury, are you prepared to talk about the history of, you know, the olden days and how it worked? And what are your thoughts on what will be on this presentation?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, but it's, it's, it's, it's really no different than what I said at our last meeting and I'm going to follow up even what you understand what the interview with that. You know, any of the former Councilors are against any kind of thoughts of Ward Alderman. They just, they're at large people, that's their mindset, and that's all they're willing to accept, you know? And even I've talked to, and I don't know how you want me to do it, because I didn't go through the whole survey with these people, because a lot of it, You know what I'm saying, because some of them just don't have it. They're interested in, you know, term limits.
[Ron Giovino]: I think the focus of your piece is more about the time we did change government. Yes. What were the circumstances that everybody decided it was time for a change to go to a strong mayor and, you know, set up the government the way it is with seven city councilors? That's a, that's a, you know, I understand people have opinions and whatever and the old, you know, old school like us have different opinions of what's happened in Medford, but I think what we want in this piece is an idea of, and I can help you with this, I'm, you know, I hold the baby in one hand and I can do research on the internet and the other, but You know, I can look up some of the stuff that, you know, back that was what happened when we changed our plan of government. And I think for people who have not been in the city for more than 40 years, for them, it's all new stuff. And I don't think it has to be really detailed. I think it just has to say, you know, this is the last time that we looked at this government and the changes were made based on this, this, and this. Not that, you know, the people from government 35 years ago probably wouldn't like what we're looking at doing right now. It's more about, this is what happened 30 years ago. Go ahead, Laurie. You're muted.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, sorry.
[Maury Carroll]: Sorry about all the noise yet but thank God it's going to action. Yeah, I think, I'm going to tell you, Patricia Brady Gardner, I don't know if they got into the brass tacks. She was really, when the, I went to a strong mayor government, she was a voice in that. I'm holding off. I talked to Penta and I know Nova, and I reached out to Nova today. I'd like to have Nova there because Bobby's going to have the most knowledge of anybody. I mean, he was a writer of this document that we have now as a charter. He's going to be, and he'll expound and he'll remember every T being crossed and every I being dotted. So that's why I don't want to do that alone. I like to have, you know, and I was just talking to him about it today. So I told him I'd reach out to Milver and that we would coordinate, you know.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, is it something that we can, we can, if we focused on the composition of the city council, which is what this subcommittee does, I know there's, more valuable information that everybody else has, but are we able to put that piece together in time for the subcommittee? I mean, the committee of the whole meeting, and then be ready for the, I'm just looking at a timetable.
[Maury Carroll]: Do we have the ability to do it, or do we just eliminate it?
[Milva McDonald]: We can do that, but I guess my question is, how does this piece of this history inform our decision-making process now?
[Maury Carroll]: Oh, I don't think it makes any, it's just, I think it's more of a stepladder for how we went from plan E to where we are now and how do we make it better from where we are now to moving forward.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, I know, I'm just saying, I'm not, you know, I love this stuff and I find it fascinating and I wanna know about it, but I don't know how much it needs to, like, I don't know what's the argument.
[Maury Carroll]: No, I mean, I don't really think we need an emphasis on it. You know, it's just, it's ancient history.
[Milva McDonald]: There's one thing I can tell you is, you know, in 1986, there was not a charter review. It was just a switch from plan E to plan A, straight switch from plan E to plan A with one exception, keeping the city council at seven members. In 1978, when there was a charter review and Bob Penta was on that elected charter review commission, The proposed charter did have ward representation in it, but the public voted it down. Failed. Right. And the general consensus about why it failed is that it kept to the city manager. Right. So we can talk to Bob Penta and he can talk to us about 1986 and the switch to plan A, but he was also on the commission that said, yes, let's switch to ward representation. But the main driver at that point in history, as I understand it, was the executive branch. And they failed with the charter review and the charter commission, so they went this other route.
[Ron Giovino]: It was more driven by the strong mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: So, but I mean, like I said, I'm fascinated by it. I love looking at it.
[Ron Giovino]: But I don't know. I think we will look at it. Maybe a different subcommittee will be talking about that when we're talking about the overall.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So it's good to have the history of the information, but I don't know if we're using it to make an argument about why or why not to switch toward representation.
[Ron Giovino]: OK. So I'm going to move that we do not put that in part of the presentation, but know that we have our subject matter expert at the table when we do present. Is that fair?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, and we're definitely going to interview Bob Penton.
[Ron Giovino]: You okay with that, Maury, if we do it that way?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, he's nodding his head.
[Maury Carroll]: He's nodding.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay. All right.
[Maury Carroll]: I'm going to, I'm going to make as much background noise as I can.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. No. Okay. So you're okay. You heard what I said. Are you okay? I don't know what you said. I'm good with that. Okay. So we're going to, we're going to take that off for another day.
[Maury Carroll]: Absolutely, whatever you wanna do, makes sense.
[Ron Giovino]: So we're at the point where, and there's just no time to discuss pros and cons right now. So we're at the point, let me just, I just wanna summarize where we're at. It's a presentation with an introduction, what we're here to do, the existing composition of the city council. Jean's gonna give her presentation on demographics. Eunice is going to give all the information on the election data, as we've talked about in detail. Milva is going to talk about Lowell and what happened there, whatever we're going to call that. And I think the interviews and the surveys I'll talk about in the intro is something we do. And I also have a piece on what happens if a ward does not have a candidate. I think that's a quick, valuable piece. And then we do the pros and cons, which is something that we should all prepare for next week to have a discussion about each item and figure out what's important, what can be eliminated, and what's important that can be added. So, and then we should have another vote of what we are going to recommend. and then a detail of next steps, whatever that may be. Does that make sense? I do want to stay to the clock, so we're getting to that point. Does that make sense that that's our next plan of action? Is everybody available for next Thursday?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Ron Giovino]: And I won't talk as much, I promise. Don't blame me. Melva doesn't use the mute button on me.
[Milva McDonald]: I was just going to say, I think that the what happens if someone doesn't run an award. Do you think that's a question that we save in case it gets asked?
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, we can. Absolutely. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: And then I also just want to say, I think, you know, the pros and cons are important. I think that Our sort of charge or our job as a subcommittee was to go come back to the committee of the whole with recommendations. Yes. So I feel like we should think about, we should, you know, think about that and see where we're at again.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: And that part of the pros and cons is kind of like, well, we weighed them, but we still, you know, we still felt that, whichever decision we made was, you know.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, and I'm just reverting back to Eunice's comment about the fact that we want to appear that we entered this with an open mind and that if we show the pros and cons, we accept the fact that our solution is not perfect, but it's the best choice we have to make what we have.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, absolutely. And the whole committee has to vote also. And they need the pros and cons in order to do that. And they may have lots of questions. You know, after we do our brief presentation, they may have lots of questions. And we'll have, hopefully, the information to answer them.
[Ron Giovino]: If we do this debate on pros and cons, we'll be much more powerful in our presentation, for sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And we're just making a recommendation. I mean, you know, and then on October 5, the whole committee will make a decision. Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: based on you know in that decision that decision is still just a strong recommendation because the people will vote for it eventually so it's all yeah well yeah first let's get through the city hall first yeah it's all non-binding it's all non-binding until it gets uh on the ballot so it's uh yeah you're right you're right but i I think we really accomplished a lot tonight. I'm also thinking that if we eliminate some of these items, our presentation can be stronger and more detailed and still stay in that 15-minute framework. So that's great. I do think pros and cons are going to be a big piece. Does everybody agree that that's a good format?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes, okay.
[Ron Giovino]: Short and concise, but very accurate and very impressive. So keep people's attention more than if it gets dragged out and all that whole nine yards. If anybody has any questions on their presentation piece, you can text any one of us. I think that I'll send out the agenda and also the minutes, but it will, it will consist of, um, you know, understanding what we're going to be doing next and what our next steps are. And I think it's, I think it's looking pretty good, Jean.
[Jean Zotter]: Before we leave, just, we need to open up for public comment.
[Ron Giovino]: Yes, I will.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, and before, so I'm gonna, I'll look at the pros and cons since you thought I would do that anyway. So I'll look at that for sure. Um, should we, before we open it up, should we just do another straw poll just to see where, whether any of, you know, we're collecting new information all the time. So, yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: I'm fine with that, because our job, again, our job is to not show both sides. Our job is to show that we looked at both sides, and we have to start, you know, we have to, the process has to be, we do our due diligence, we make a decision, then we move on to the next two million and a half issues that we have to talk about. So, the conclusion will be nice. Yes, so let's vote. Melva, you want to start? whether you're in favor or in favor of.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm still in favor of hybrid ward representation, because I feel that it's just going to give greater representation to people in the city. And it will, you know, basically for all the pros, I think.
[Eunice Browne]: I am still undecided. I see where the data is bearing things out, but I'm very interested in hearing and seeing the interview from Patricia Brady Doherty. I think that there may be things that are not data driven, that I've seen her bring up before, that I would like to consider. And I'm not sure that the general public is necessarily considering those. I think that they may think that word representation is the answer to our problems, but I'm I want to give some more thought to some of the other points before I come to a decision.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Fair enough.
[Jean Zotter]: Jean? I'm still in favor of ward representation, although I have, I think, more misgivings about it. Those articles Melva sent did It seemed like no matter what people did, whenever they moved to ward representation, housing production slowed 20%. And we have a huge affordable housing crisis. So I don't know. I think the cons, there are serious cons about ward representation. But it's what people in Medford seem to really want. And I am concerned. about certain wards having a lot of representation and other parts of our community not really being very well represented. So yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: So you're in for a yes.
[Jean Zotter]: I'm in a I'm a yes. Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, I'm totally in favor of the ward representation, you know, I've seen my entire life between plenty and a strong mayor console is that large, and not so much. the disparity of representation as much as I've seen how the city has fallen behind every other city. The city was on top of it, everybody was chasing us and now we're holding up all our neighbors. And that's for me from a lack of government and the right mindset. And to me, I think it's time for a change and to get more voices involved in it for more of a, an overall picture of where the city should go between not only the business commercial district, but the residential districts and new families moving in here. They have to feel included and they have to have people they can go to, as well as the entire community. They need people they can stay in touch with. So if they have someone that's in their neighborhood that's representing them, they're going to be more comfortable to approach them than someone that if they live in one section of the city and all the other representatives are another, they don't even know how to get ahold of them. So I think those are a lot of the merits to what we're doing here. That's a yes, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Laurie. That was so eloquent.
[Ron Giovino]: I got it. Yeah, and I'm obviously in favor of ward representation for many reasons. Diversity, bringing candidates into the process a lot easier and more economical. And I just, I believe that a council will represent the entire city, but just have an ear to their particular ward. So I'm in favor of the change as well. So we're four in the yes, and one is undecided, but that's pretty good. All right. So we have some work to do for next week, 6.30 next week. I'll send out the agenda. I'll get it to you by the end of the week, Melva, so we can not have the scrambling around to get our, get us on the page. I have, we have one member of the public. If we're ready to, Bill? Is he, can you, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I think he should be able to unmute.
[Bill Giglio]: Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, we do. I know. I just want to say thank you once again to you guys. I try to listen every week, every meeting. You guys are doing a wonderful job. I, myself, like, like Mari and you, Ron, I'm definitely in favor of ward representation. I grew up with ward representation of Vermont and I think it works. Some people don't, I happen to think it does in many different ways. So that's just my opinion. My question is, do you guys, and I think you might've said this earlier, is there an average so far of how many people are actually taking the poll yet?
[Milva McDonald]: Right now, as of today, we're at about 366. Okay. I was just curious. Yeah, we're hoping to get significantly more than that.
[Bill Giglio]: Yeah, no, I know I see it. I see it posted a lot. I was just curious if people are actually taking it. All right, well, thank you guys again. I really appreciate all the work you guys are doing. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Bill.
[Ron Giovino]: All right, Maury, you have your hand up or you just wanted to say?
[Maury Carroll]: You get unmuted. That's my signal to Milva to unmute.
[Ron Giovino]: Unless you want to listen to Madonna. Any, is there any other further comments?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, real quick directed to Jean for a second. I know you've got your work cut out for you with your piece of this. I don't want to bog you down with doing the graphs and stuff. I can get Aubrey or David.
[Jean Zotter]: If you want to ask them if they're not available, I don't think it'll take too long.
[Eunice Browne]: But on the one hand, I feel like, you know, we've been sitting here for the last two hours discussing it. And you kind of know what we need. Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: So I don't want to, you know, because you've got your own be honest, the hard part is that calculate, you know, coming up with the calculator, all the hard work.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. I if we Either you can just send me the data and I can make them for you or we can do it via zoom.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, let me let me see where I am at the end of the weekend.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Anybody else better want a motion to adjourn.
[Ron Giovino]: make a motion to adjourn.
[Maury Carroll]: I apologize for being late. Listen, feel free to send me something to remind me, because I'm a little crazy these days. Got you, sir. Yeah, yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: Thanks, everybody. Great meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, everybody.
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