[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the meeting of the Metro Charter Study Committee's Subcommittee on Articles 2 and 3. So first order of business is to accept the minutes from November 30th. Did everyone look at those? Okay. Do we have a motion to accept?
[David Zabner]: I would like to make a motion to accept.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. John, are you able to unmute? Second.
[David Zabner]: I am now.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Great. Minutes accepted. Awesome. Okay. So we, we had a couple of questions left over from our last meeting, and then we also had some things come up from the full committee meeting. So, um, I mean, we can go in the order of the agenda or we can sort of check in because David, you were going to, um, you were going to work on creating a document, right? Yeah.
[David Zabner]: I just spent the last 45 minutes working on that, and I'm partway through Article 2. Still not even all the way through that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, one of the things I thought we should do after the full committee meeting was review the recommendations for removals. So I don't know if, David, you had a chance to look at the minutes or to sort of see what some of the discussion points were. But, John, you were there. So do we just want to sort of re-look at that based on the feedback from that?
[Moreshi]: I think it's reasonable. I thought it was a real concern. I think we even talked about, David, the concern was limiting the executive's power. And I think that's something we had even talked about internally. So I was sympathetic to it. I'm open to it. I think I'd have to refresh, and I did it. I'd have to refresh what other communities do relative to the city council. appointments, I think they all generally sent them to, I think we just sort of copied and pasted on appointments, but then removals, we beefed up to comfortable. I would be comfortable taking a step back and mirroring other communities.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Moreshi]: I'd be interested in hearing what you think, but I still always start with the baseline. I like stealing from other communities when it seems to be working and, um, You know, I know we've all shared. Oh, I'm sorry, I keep cutting you off.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, that's okay. David, go ahead.
[David Zabner]: Yeah, so I think when we talked last time, we already kind of pulled it back and just said that city councils can remove by unanimous vote. Right. Multi-member boards and commissions, but not department heads. And if we want to pull that back even further, I think that's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, I think there were, so there was definitely the concern, John, that you mentioned about limiting the executive's power, but I feel like there was also concerns raised about legality issues, right? Because, you know, to have the power to remove given to a body that didn't make the appointment, kind of, could be a potential issue.
[Moreshi]: I suppose it could be, I guess.
[Milva McDonald]: And the Collins Center said there might be some case law, but I don't know. They didn't give us a specific reference.
[Moreshi]: Yeah, my memory is, again, this is generally, if you appoint someone to a multi-member body for a set term, you can't remove them unless you provide for how they're removed. So I don't know if there's any case law limiting a statute's ability to dictate how they're removed. I'd be interested to see it. My memory was always that you sort of, when you're creating the charter or statute, whatever, you set the terms of it.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Yeah. And I think, my understanding was they were talking about, because the city council wouldn't be the appointing body, that then giving that body the power to remove could present issues. But I could be misinterpreting or misunderstanding, but that's why.
[Moreshi]: They definitely were curious about it, which I think is fair. My memory is it was novel. But I don't remember exactly what the legal issue was. I'd be interested. I always think this stuff is interesting.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. They were definitely vague on it. They kind of implied that it could be there, but there was some vagueness to it. I feel like I've seen some charters that, I haven't seen any that give council removal authority, but I have seen some sections that give the person who's being removed the right to a hearing, which usually then I think happens before the council.
[David Zabner]: I think that I didn't see the call center kind of like directly pushing back against this as a bad idea. So I don't really know of any reason why we. Like, I don't have a strong feeling that we need to change it. You know, I'm comfortable with the way we decided it to be, but certainly if it's going to get the city into legal hot water, we shouldn't do it. But I don't feel like the call center gave us exactly that pushback.
[Milva McDonald]: They didn't say that directly, but they raised the question about it. But we also had some committee members who raised strong objections to it. So, I mean, obviously, this is, you know, one of the things that I want to do tonight is figure out how we're going to present this issue for a vote because, There's different components of this section regarding multi-member boards. I'm guessing that committee members might want to vote on some of them separately. This piece might not go along with it, but it might go along with the rest. That's all.
[David Zabner]: I think the thing that makes the most sense is, When I or we finish writing, you know, our 1st draft of these sections. We just send it to the large and say, like. We'd love some feedback and we'd love, you know, let's come up with a list of of changes that people are interested in discussing or voting on. Certainly, I don't think we want to be bullheaded and ignore the greater group's thoughts on these types of things. But also, I don't know that we need to kind of shrink from... I don't know that we need to be afraid of them making different decisions in the whole group than we made in the small group, if that makes sense.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. John, did you have a thought?
[Moreshi]: No, I think that's fair. But I will say I did. I guess I appreciated what they were saying more than just sort of.
[David Zabner]: And I'm sorry to have missed that meeting. Was it recorded?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I think they should be. It should be up.
[Moreshi]: I did want to share, because I had a thought similar to David as far as approach. I do think it's always, at least for me, difficult to wrap my head around things in the abstract. So to the extent we can put language together, share it in advance, and then say, let's talk about this concrete provision, I think that is helpful.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're talking about language just from whatever section this is to dash 10, whatever it is. Okay. So we can do that. I would like to be able to send it to the committee this week for our next meeting, just this particular section. And maybe another one if we can decide on something that we think is ready.
[David Zabner]: I mean, my hope was that by Monday, I was hoping to have all of Articles 2 and 3 done, especially, I mean. Having worked on this for an hour, the majority of the work is copying and pasting and making sure that there isn't anything. Uh, you know, making sure if that city council consistently making sure that Councilor is spelled consistently. And then just, you know, kind of checking it against the decisions we made to make updates. So it's pretty quick work, all things considered.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, and these are two very important weighty sections of the charter. And I don't know that we're going to go through every, I mean, some of the sections we may just sort of, as a committee, decide, okay, this we're going to use standard language. And the Collins Center is available to do the draft, do some of the drafting for us too. But if this is fine to go to approach these two sections this way. So I guess I just want to circle back to the removal procedure because we did hear at least two committee members raised strong objections to it. And so the question is, do we want to, and given the concerns that were raised, do we want to take that out in the draft that we are going to give the committee?
[David Zabner]: I'd prefer not to. Personally, I'd be more comfortable with a full vote, especially because I think it's so much easier to kind of present a maximalist draft. It's so easy to take a vote to strike that sentence or that other sentence. And it's a lot trickier, I think, to have a group discussion with 11 people or however many people are there about How we're going to phrase the addition, so I'd rather keep it in like. If we, as a group, you know, I think it's a good thing if if you and John and Eunice think that, like. This is actually not a power we want to give the city council. Of course, like, I think we should do what we think as a group, but. If we are still happy with giving that power, I think we should keep it in.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess I'm feeling after hearing, you know, some of the concerns that the Collins Center raised, I would probably vote to take it out. But if we want to see what the whole committee thinks, that's, you know, I think that's fine.
[David Zabner]: John?
[Moreshi]: Yeah, I guess my thought, at least when it comes to the unanimous city council removal, is even I think when we talked about it, I thought it would be unlikely to ever happen. So to the extent that that is causing people concern, I guess if I never thought we were going to do it anyway because the problem would be resolved then, I think the, so I would be fine. I guess I don't feel strongly about it either way. I don't know how I'd vote on it, but I'm fine dropping it, I guess is what I would say. I think the larger concern would be review of appointments. You know, I think that is a more substantive, and to what extent do we want some oversight? Maybe it's not even what we talked about the first time of city council members having oversight and removal. I think that always seemed like the realer provision to me. And I do think the both items were sort of getting conflated a little bit. So I don't know, I guess I don't have any answer. So I'm sorry for being so squishy.
[Milva McDonald]: Can you say how you think they were being conflated?
[Moreshi]: Well, I just, it just, again, because we're talking the abstract. I seem to remember at one point trying to talk about there's two different avenues we were creating for removal. So maybe we made it. I don't know that anyone's opinion has changed versus one or the other, to be clear.
[Milva McDonald]: You're talking about the piece, there was the unanimous, the ability for the city council to initiate a removal with a unanimous vote, and then also the power to reject a removal with a majority.
[Moreshi]: Yeah. So I don't know even how we feel about, I think even in this meeting, we've just talked about the unanimous removal.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we have, right. I guess I feel like when it comes to a vote, I will probably vote not to give the removal powers to the city council.
[Moreshi]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: But that doesn't mean if other people will agree with me, so.
[David Zabner]: Let's just take a quick vote right now. Should we leave it in our draft or not? So I guess a motion to vote on leaving it or taking it out of the draft.
[Milva McDonald]: And when you say, are you saying to take out both removal precisions or powers or one removal power?
[David Zabner]: I'm saying to remove the removal by unanimous vote of the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. So the motion is to remove the provision from suggested draft, which gives council power to initiate a removal with a unanimous vote.
[David Zabner]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Does anybody second that?
[Moreshi]: I'll second it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So all in favor of removal? Aye. Yeah. I'll vote to remove it.
[Moreshi]: Against?
[David Zabner]: I'm against it.
[Milva McDonald]: And John?
[Moreshi]: I'll vote to remove it. Again, I don't know that it would ever even happen. So to me, I'm fine taking it.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. OK, so the motion passes 2 to 1 in favor. And then the other piece was the ability to overturn a removal. And that one, we have not talked about whether to leave that in or take it out. Any thoughts?
[Moreshi]: I mean, I do like something here. You know, even if it's, we don't call it overturning, some sort of notice, some sort of oversight, I think has value. So, you know, I guess my inclination would be to leave this, but just to be, this is just me, you know, that I don't want to speak, but I'm open to something. Frankly, I think there should be something. I'll do another review in advance of that meeting of other charters. But I think even notice is valuable, you know, to the affected party, but also the council.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, there's definitely, I've seen, you know, I think notice is standard language in general. Some of these are not very searchable.
[Moreshi]: Now I'm looking at Weymouth right now and there's notice. I don't think it mentions the council though. I think it's just the clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: That could be.
[Moreshi]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And just.
[Moreshi]: So one thing I thought was compelling was.
[Milva McDonald]: Hang on, I just want to, I'm sorry, I was just going to share one thing that's pertinent here. I believe, let's see, did I just click on this is Gardner and this is an example of. This is under. This is, no. The mayor may, with the approval of a majority of the members of the city council, remove any head of a department or member of a board before the expiration of term. That members of the school committee, right. Officers elected by the city council.
[David Zabner]: That's even more restrictive than the thing we're suggesting, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, no, I think that is what we suggested. Well, no, no, actually, the mayor, this says the mayor has to get approval. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, what we suggested was that the council could override the removal, right?
[David Zabner]: And we set a high standard to the override, right, of two-thirds. So this is, you know, effectively, the mayor would only need to convince three or four people
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, this is where you get the right to the hearing, et cetera. Yeah. OK. So that's just one charter, but we could look at others. But we can see that it's not unprecedented.
[David Zabner]: Yeah, well, and, you know, the thing I like about giving the city council kind of the ability to overturn or to reject or whatever language we want to use there is, again, I think that kind of the default process should not involve city council involvement, right? I imagine for whatever reason a person is being removed, it's not a happy, comfortable reason. And so it's probably better not to drag them in front of the city council or to have A big discussion and explanation and whatever else.
[Unidentified]: Exactly.
[David Zabner]: Yeah. But in the event of somebody, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Are we good with that or leaving that in or do we want to?
[Moreshi]: I am. I'm sorry. I'm good with that.
[Eunice Browne]: things that I'm thinking about here is, to be clear, I'm not on the committee, so I'm just chiming in here. But when you're saying that the city council can do things by vote of, are we writing in there whether it's majority or supermajority? That means different things now when there are seven of them versus down the road when there might be 11 of them. So, and he's saying, you know, the mayor may only need 3 or 4 people to persuade, you know, she might need 6 or 7. If our council becomes larger, and then the other thing that I know that we were banding around. at some point that I want to make sure that, you know, gets in there is when we're talking about how many days somebody has to do something, is it calendar days or business days? Do we want to be ambiguous about that for, you know, somebody 10, 15 years down the road? Or do we want to be clear that it's 10 business days?
[Milva McDonald]: So I think 45 was the number we had in there, right? So we can, we can specify calendar or business. I don't see a problem with that.
[David Zabner]: I've been thinking through this as calendar days. I think business days, business days is like a really not, it's a weird thing to put in your charter because it would be a real dumb discussion of like, well, was this a business day? Because for the. The city decided it's a holiday, but for the state, it's not like no, it's just yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, since we're talking, since we're talking about the number of days. I mean, we settled on 45, but there were a couple of comments at the meeting that concern again about discouraging volunteerism came up. And I think we talked about, we had talked about a shorter period of time could just be too hard, right? I mean, but I think initially we had talked about two weeks or three weeks or something, but I guess I'm just throwing out, do we want to reduce it to 30? I don't know.
[David Zabner]: I still have 30 days in my notes.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I thought we said 45. Okay.
[David Zabner]: Maybe I just didn't update it. No, no. Probably.
[Milva McDonald]: I could be wrong. I could be wrong. What do you remember, John?
[Moreshi]: I don't remember.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Well, then it's probably 30, and I don't remember it. OK, then I think that's reasonable.
[David Zabner]: Initially, we said like 15, and then decided the next week that 15 was actually really brief, given that. I think it was 30.
[Eunice Browne]: OK. I'm happy with 30.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I think that's fine. I just wanted the memo that the Collins Center gave us had example language from the Somerville draft charter, which has 45. And it basically, though, kind of says what we independently came up with, which just the mayor shall refer to the city council and file with the city clerk the name of each person the mayor desires to appoint. City Council, this says 45 days to vote to approve or reject. With approval, okay. Actually, yeah, no, maybe that actually says they have to vote, so it's a little different than what we said. Okay. The other thing that the Collins Center gave us, which I wonder if we want to think over, is the language from the Fall River Charter about Recruitment efforts. Do you remember that? We didn't include this, but they it's just. Basically, I don't think we included it. I hope I remember mine. The mayor shall annually post on the city's website in February a list of all vacancies on multi-member bodies. Such listings shall include guidance on applying to serve on a multiple-member body. The mayor may also notify any civic, business, neighborhood, or service organizations in the city of multi-member body vacancies, members of multi-member bodies, and appointments. made by the mayor to other committees as established by the charter and ordinances must be city residents. That's another piece that came up should we require that people be city residents. if a member resigns, removes from the city, or is otherwise unable to complete the term, the mayor shall fill such resulting vacancy. So that actually doesn't require the mayor, but it kind of encourages the mayor to make sure that the mayor gets the word out, right? So it just speaks to an intention that recruitment efforts be made, you know, significant recruitment efforts be made. And I know that that's sort of come up, I think, in the city in general. So I just want to just throw out, do we want to include some language like that?
[David Zabner]: I like it. I think it'd be great to include it. Yeah. And honestly, even the specification that appointments should be voters, I think, well, should it be residents or voters?
[Milva McDonald]: This says residents, but
[David Zabner]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that must be, I mean, you could say registered voters, but I don't know.
[David Zabner]: Well, the difference is that would allow the mayor to appoint, say, like a non-citizen who resides in Medford, which I think is probably good. So I think resident is good.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, and this also says that the person has to stay living in the city. So if the person moves, they can't serve on the multiple member body.
[Eunice Browne]: Right, which has come up recently. Don, what do you think about this?
[Moreshi]: As far as the recruitment provision, I guess, to me, that feels like something that is more of a policy than something that should be in a charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, okay.
[Moreshi]: As far as residents go, I agree with Davidi. You know, there are people who aren't citizens that could bring a lot of value. Yeah. And then, you know, it's funny, I'll be candid. So I grew up and lived in Malden for a long time, and I had to leave the the library board of trustees when I moved because I was no longer a resident. So I do have some bias, but I would have loved to stay on if I could. I understand that it's an issue in the city, but I don't know.
[David Zabner]: We can probably leave some wiggle room and say you have to be a resident to be appointed and not say that you have to be on the committee.
[Moreshi]: I didn't think of that, but I actually think that's, I think that's a good idea.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what we can do is we can say that you have to be a resident to be appointed. And then, I mean, these positions tend to have terms, right? Ours doesn't because it's an ad hoc committee. But like, so if you moved six months before your term was up, this provision as written would require you to leave the body. But if we left out that part, the person would have to be a member to be appointed, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that they couldn't finish out their term. Eunice?
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, you have some boards there, like the Zoning Board and the Community Board, which are making decisions that are hugely impactful on Medford. I would think that you would want a resident. On those committees, I mean, even this committee in and of itself, we're making huge. You know, life changing to the city decisions that we're bringing back to for voting. I would think that, I feel pretty strongly that one needs to be a resident to serve on any committee in the city, unless there's a compelling reason, like it's something that's more chamber of commerce-ish, serving the business district or something like that, and it's somebody who has a business in the city. I'm, you know, I feel pretty strongly that somebody should be at minimum a resident and I would also wonder about other qualifications for some of the boards as well. You know, as I said, so many things have huge impact. I haven't seen anything. The application to join a board, which we all filled out to be on this, is kind of sparse. I would think that some of the boards and commissions, certain qualifications would be required to sit on them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think maybe that gets into what John was mentioning, that like there's certain things that maybe aren't charter material, because we can't like, I mean, I mean, John, you make a good point, even saying that this little recruitment paragraph might even be a little bit, you know, more like policy. So I feel like those are more policy issues. And it's hard, I think it's hard when we're doing this to sort of sometimes think, you know, because, you know, putting too much in the charter almost could not be a good thing to, you know. So, I don't know. But, and even the boards you named, I mean, one thing that's unclear, and this came up at the full committee meeting is, which boards are going to actually be governed by this provision of the charter. Because I don't necessarily think we need to know exactly which ones are in order to write this provision of the charter, because some of them are formed by state law and some of them aren't. So, but I don't know if the ones you mentioned, you know, they could even be governed by state law.
[Eunice Browne]: We don't know. Maybe John knows.
[David Zabner]: Eunice, I have to say, with all the sympathy for John's thing, you're probably right that you should have to be a resident to serve and not just be appointed. OK. Especially given how famously flimsy American residency law is to begin with, right? That's true.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, I think it's, you know, admirable on the one hand that, you know, because John grew up in Malden, that he'd want to stay on a board where in a place that he cares so much about, you know, be like, if I moved from Medford to Malden, I grew up here, you know, and I'd want to maybe stay and finish what I started. But on the other hand, you know, Is anybody serving on a board or commission part of the job in and of itself is to make decisions for the city or make recommendations? And I think at bare minimum, you need to be a resident to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so this came up as it came up at our full committee meeting, but it also came up again as part of the language from the fall river charter, but also included the recruitment materials. So. David, you said you thought it would be nice to include the recruitment stuff. John, you said, well, that's more policy. And I kind of, now that I, even though I thought it would be a great idea, I'm sort of maybe agreeing with John now. I don't know.
[David Zabner]: But- I think we should definitely include the parts. There were some parts of it that were the mayor's shell.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[David Zabner]: The mayor's shell. Annually post on- I think those parts are great.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so David, can you add, you have this memo that we got, right?
[David Zabner]: I'm, did you, where did you send it? I'm not seeing it.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll resend it. I'll resend it to you. So, and you'll have this language. So the parts then that would stay just so we're all clear are the mayor shall annually post on the city's website. Well, this even says in February. That's the other thing is though, I'm not sure exactly what Medford's process is and maybe that date doesn't work for Medford. You know what I mean?
[David Zabner]: I think annually is good enough. And honestly, I think we could even say monthly. It's, you know, just like keep the thing up to date. It doesn't need to be a huge announcement.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then it says such listing shall include guidance on applying to serve on a multiple member body. And then the rest of it is about notifying civic businesses is a may, not a shall. So those are the only shells. And then it says members of multiple member bodies and appointments made by the mayor to other committees as established by the charter and ordinances must be city residents.
[Unidentified]: But that in that part we want to keep.
[Eunice Browne]: I think that the appointments of our boards and commissions are not uniform, like they don't all start January 1 or March 1 or whatever. They are sporadic. So I think posting something once a year, I think Brianna's done a pretty decent job of getting the word out maybe once a quarter. Yeah. I like the idea of, you know, going to the civic groups and things like that for things to, you know, encourage some more. volunteerism and participation, you know, posting it on, you know, the Mayor and the Medford Mass Facebook group, you know, certainly only reaches anybody who spends a whole lot of time on Facebook, you know, without a viable newspaper, you know, getting any information out as we've talked about ad nauseum in this group is difficult. But then again, I think, It came up a long time ago, maybe when we first started this, or maybe I heard it somewhere else. I can't remember. But going to certain groups, I think maybe Francis might have said something about this way back when. I think it was in the context of trying to, recruit minorities and people of color and so forth, that it has to be inclusive to everybody rather than going to certain groups. I can't remember what the discussion was, but it was almost like not being, going to certain groups to recruit was actually not a good idea. Nova, are you, is that something vaguely familiar?
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe, maybe. I don't recall specifically. But I think that's the part that is not, you know, even in this fall river language, it's a may, not a shall. So it doesn't even require the mayor to do it. It's kind of more like a suggestion, right? And I think, you know, that John made a really good point about it being sort of policy.
[David Zabner]: Yeah, I think the thing to do is, john unless you you have different thoughts is let's take all the bits of that that are the mayor shall or anybody else shall must um and and the bits that are uh the mayor may or somebody else may we yeah just um i certainly don't think we want to be setting i i'm always trying to write this with the idea that it's going to be a document for a thousand years i certainly don't think we want to write too much about uh, kind of either the policy stuff or like, you know, the mayor must appoint somebody who speaks Portuguese to every committee. And it's like a thousand years from now, will there be any Portuguese speakers in Medford? I don't know. Um, so probably a better idea to, to not, to leave that up to the policymakers.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and even the first one where it says the mayor shall annually post in February, even if you leave off February, what if we just said the mayor shall post on the city's website a list, all vacancies on multi-member bodies? And that just means that the mayor has to post when there's a vacancy. And it doesn't, okay. I will make sure you get that, and then you can add in, but specifically adding in the piece about the residency requirements. Great. OK, so the other piece was we had discussed auditors, right? So I looked around. There are several cities that have them. I think that in order to decide whether we want to do that, I feel like I need more knowledge. You know, one thing I believe that it would be an added position. I don't think that it would replace the CFO and it would not necessarily even replace the annual independent audit. So it would be an added position. And so I feel like that's one question. Do we want to add another position at this point? And And, you know, it would be the council's person. This would be the city council's person. That's how it seems to work when there's an auditor. So I sent out some, you know, some examples of charters I found that had, did anybody have a chance to look at any of them?
[David Zabner]: Yeah, I was just looking over them now. Some of the examples seem to basically copy what the CFO does. The one for Watertown seems like the one that's most closely aligned with what I had in mind.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let's just, I have that right here, so let's get it.
[Eunice Browne]: I can get a job description for what the CFC.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I, I did. Um, I got, I asked for job descriptions of clerk and, uh, CFO and I heard right away and they said, we'll get them to you next. And then I never got them and I haven't followed up. Sorry about that. I can get a response. I just didn't get the descriptions yet.
[David Zabner]: Um, honestly, even though it seems to copy a little bit more than, than what I was thinking, kind of what the CFO does.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, Yeah. John, go ahead.
[Moreshi]: Sorry. I feel like I'm cutting everyone off tonight, so I'm going to try.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, you're not.
[Moreshi]: I guess my thought on this broadly is I think an issue has been council staff. I think it's reasonable for them to have a staffer or, um, But I guess I am less concerned about having an auditor or a clerk of the council. I think those things, when I think about those things, I always think of them as a way to give the city council a staff person. So I wonder, thinking about how everyone else feels, but maybe we just give them the authority to have a staffer. And then they can appropriate the money for it and then dictate what exactly that person does. Appointing an auditor, for example, I don't know. Frankly, I don't know enough about what an auditor does to know whether that's a real need that the council has, but if they have a staffer and something comes up, I would think that staffer would be able to get docs from the relevant agency and review them, so.
[Milva McDonald]: So, David, you had some specific ideas about what kind of oversight you thought, and maybe there was some other way besides an auditor to do it, but if you want to restate that?
[David Zabner]: Yeah, I mean, the basic idea is at the moment, we don't have a person in Medford City government who is going to check, not if the numbers line up, but if things like processes and procedures were followed correctly, right? Already the independent audit is going to check, did money disappear from the accounts? Did, you know, was somebody buying an outrageous number of Snickers bars, that kind of thing, but nobody's going to check. um you know did the mayor hire their best friend uh to build the new city council building or you know whatever um and so i was thinking that it would be good to have somebody invested with that kind of authority um and john i like completely do not disagree that if you know if the city council has that authority and has the ability to hire somebody and give it to them, like, I think that's fine. I think that basically covers it. I think the one advantage of having the explicit role of an auditor is that it's somebody, it's somebody's job, right? Like we, you know, in, in the charter, we've assigned that role to a person. I don't know that that's like, It's it's not such a big difference, but I would. You know, like, fight about it, I guess I see kind of giving the city Councilor staff as whether that be. Actually, I really like in water towns again, they have the analyst and the additional staff. Sections those are really great.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, let's look at that.
[David Zabner]: If we wanted to put that language in there instead of language about an auditor, I think that would perfectly reasonable. or something similar. But basically the idea is I think somebody should be, somebody outside of the mayor should be looking at what's going on in the executive branch.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the analyst is kind of, yeah, this is a person that would specifically help them with ordinance writing and things like that, which is, I think, one of the things that they've expressed a desire to have.
[David Zabner]: Well, and then it says, all officials of the city shall cooperate with the analysts in the performance of this oversight function. Like, that, for me, is the... Like, that's the critical bit that would make... That's the auditor power that I want to give to a... So, if we go back to the idea of, you know, maybe not putting...
[Milva McDonald]: too much in the charter or this staff part, just the council may hire staff by ordinance as the council deems necessary, blah, blah, blah. And then because that also has the line, all officials of the city shall cooperate with employees and consultants of the city council on the performance of their oversight functions. And then it would be, you know, wouldn't necessarily specify I don't know. It does the same thing, right? It just doesn't have all the rest of it. Do you agree?
[Eunice Browne]: But wouldn't the mayor be able to come back and say, we don't have the money for you to have more staff?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that's a good question because a lot of things, a lot of charters that I've seen say the council may hire staff subject to appropriation. Whatever that means.
[Eunice Browne]: If the mayor is doing the appropriating, You know, and maybe the mayor, whomever it might be, you know, however, many years down the road, isn't going to want that auditor. You know, breathing down his or her neck to find out if, you know, her staff members, you know, purchasing, you know, a gazillion stickers bars. Right. She can just, he or she, the mayor can just say, I'm sorry, but there's no money for you to hire. You know. the Snickers bar police.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think they, I think if it were in the charter, that couldn't happen, but I don't. John, do you have thoughts on this?
[Moreshi]: So, you know, it's interesting looking at a Weymouth and Watertown in section 2-6 is access to information. Oh, excuse me, no. Yeah, 2-7 in Weymouth and then Watertown is 2-6. The access to information provision.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Moreshi]: And so I guess if we steal sort of, if you go down to 2-7, like other staff, I guess my recommendation would be to do this other staff language.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Moreshi]: They can create it by ordinance. And then that person will be able to assist the council in whatever their duties are, which would include this access to information, which is subpoenas, finists, or oaths, like, you know, issuing a subpoena would be, would be next level, but presumably they could support the council in doing that. So I guess I would like to give the council that flexibility. They need a staff person for a variety of functions, but I think we all experience that in our jobs, right? A priority comes up, your boss needs you to do it, and you do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I kind of agree with that. What do you think, David? that would be basically sort of borrowing from, we wouldn't call it additional staff, because it would just be staff. You know, the question to me is that question of that phrase that I have seen in several other charters, subject to appropriation. You know?
[Moreshi]: That's true. You know, it's funny. I have not really looked at the budget statute. I know the mayor under state law has all the power, most of it. But to a certain degree, I wonder if that's just sort of the playing field we have to, and the council has to navigate.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't know. That's right. So I think what you're saying is even in the charters that don't say subject to appropriation, there still has to be an appropriation, right?
[Moreshi]: I would think so. You'd have to appropriate the money. I don't know the interplay between required charter roles and budget.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this language says that the council can establish support positions by ordinance. So that means that I don't know if then that requires the mayor to budget for those positions.
[David Zabner]: That's what we don't look at mom.
[Moreshi]: I'm trying to scan some by the way.
[David Zabner]: I like again. I think it's I'm happy to just kind of write it up and we'll see what the on center says about it and. You know, maybe we set a should we set a limit to the pay for this person? Probably not. No. We could say they can't be paid more than a city councilor or something, or more than the mayor if we wanted. But I think aside from that, I don't see any problem with this language.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And maybe that phrase, subject to appropriation, is what maybe that's what sort of controls the amount. I don't know.
[David Zabner]: I don't, yeah, I don't think we should make it subject to appropriation because I think that, um, I think Eunice is exactly right that it kind of defeats the purpose if the mayor can just appropriate them $0. Um, I like this, this section, the section that just says, you know, the, the city council's gonna pass an ordinance saying how much they get paid.
[Moreshi]: Um, that's my inclination. You know, I'd be interested to know the, you know, if the call center wants to weigh in on the practicalities, I'd be really interested. But, I mean, this language doesn't account for it. The Watertown Charter is pretty new, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think it is. Okay, so David, are you going to add that language too?
[David Zabner]: I'll add that as well. Do we want to then drop the clerk of the council or do we want to keep both of these kind of clerk of the council plus staff? We won't call them additional.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we're just talking, we're just going with staff. Does that sound right? Yeah.
[David Zabner]: And that means dropping the clerk of the council.
[Eunice Browne]: I think so. I would leave it as open as possible because different editions of the council, I mean, this group seems to want, um, you know, uh, solicitor or something or their own legal council, but three councils down the road may feel like they need something more or something different. So I think leaving it, you know, open. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, I agree with that.
[David Zabner]: Although I'm super comfortable with the just calling it staff. I think so. The question I'm asking is, in Watertown, we see Section B is Berkeley Council and Section D is additional staff. Do we want both of those sections or just Section D?
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like we just said just it wouldn't be called additional, obviously.
[David Zabner]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[David Zabner]: How do you feel about that, John?
[Moreshi]: Oh. I'm fine with that. I guess my only question then is, is the city clerk by default somewhere the clerk of, who will play that role? Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: The clerk of the council?
[Moreshi]: Does the city clerk necessarily play the, effectively the clerk of the council role by default in some way? Because that's who's the clerk of the council now.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Moreshi]: So maybe we'd want to create flexibility to just say, you know, I don't know, the additional staff.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we're not getting rid of the city clerk.
[Moreshi]: No, I know. But it's interesting. City council shall appoint blah, blah, blah, a person nominated by the council president who may be the city clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Moreshi]: I just think that's interesting.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're saying they don't have to? I'm trying to see where their city clerk section is in here. Is there a city clerk?
[David Zabner]: If you look in the chat, you can see what we currently have written out for ours as well.
[Eunice Browne]: I think that goes back to wondering what the job description of the city clerk currently is. Yeah. How much of his time does he spend on a daily basis, weekly basis, whatever, on city council activity versus what else does he do? I think we all see him and know him as the guy who sits up there and next to the president and takes the minutes and so on and so forth. How else does he fill his 40 hours in a week?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this is from the charter, right, David? The city council shall elect a city clerk to serve for a term of three years.
[David Zabner]: I don't remember where we got this. This is just what I have in my notes that we agreed. Oh, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So we made a list of it. Okay. They do select an appointment. Keeper of vital statistics of the city. Custodian of the city seal. All records. Administer oath of office. That is what the city clerk does now. Issue licenses and permits as may be provided by law. Powers and duties permit. Yeah. He performs weddings. Okay. So we left the clerk of the council in.
[David Zabner]: So at the moment, Medford does not have a clerk of the council. So in our last meeting, we added a clerk of the council.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. And the clerk of the council, right now, those duties are done by the city clerk.
[Moreshi]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Pretty much.
[Moreshi]: Has that been an issue, having their own clerk, or just the need for staff?
[David Zabner]: No, I think when we discussed when we discussed adding a quirk. It was the idea was it's one way to provide the city council with a staffer.
[Moreshi]: I would just keep I would, I would just say drop it and give them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree with that. And and and then the staff is just, you know, it gives them more flexibility. Okay. All right. Okay, so that's good. What other questions did we have that were outstanding? Let's see. We talked about removal, qualifications, we made resident and that's... And what did we have? Term limits, that was the other thing, term. That is a huge one and I feel like In some ways, I feel like maybe the term limits question should be taken up just with the whole committee. What do you guys think?
[David Zabner]: My plan was just to write two years for all city councilors, four years for the mayor. And then, again, when we ask for a review of the sections, I think even we as a group can say the first thing we would like to vote on is the term limits issue for all three different groups that we're talking about, right? At large, the ward based and the mayor. So that's term length you're talking about, right? Sorry, yes, term length.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay.
[David Zabner]: Term limits, I'm completely against term limits, personally.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, go ahead. I feel like the term limits discussion, maybe we should just have that as a deliberation topic in a meeting with the whole committee, because there's a lot of... My experience is that people have strong feelings about it one way or the other. I don't know. So I feel like we should just have that discussion with the committee. What do you think, John?
[Moreshi]: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm with David. I don't like them generally, but it's a value judgment. You know, there's really no... So I do think it would be important to put people the way in. And if our recommendation is not to do them, then that makes our work easy. Or we don't even have to recommend anything. We can just say, you know, this is a sensitive issue.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Moreshi]: What are you guys thinking?
[Milva McDonald]: That's what I was thinking. Yeah. And I might try to get some materials together. I mean, you know, the studies, I looked for studies, and a lot of them are on state government and national government. There aren't a lot on municipal government.
[Moreshi]: I had the same issue when I tried to look.
[Milva McDonald]: I did find that paper that was written by an NYU professor for a charter revision committee in New York City. And so I was going to read through that and see if there was any... And he put a lot of references in that paper and see if there was any materials that... And so that's what I thought. I'll just put some materials together, send them to the committee, and then maybe we can have that discussion as a committee because...
[David Zabner]: You might want to reach out to the Bloomberg Center at Harvard. They do all kinds of city leadership nonsense. So they may have resources. And if you need somebody to talk to you there, I have a friend who works at that center.
[Eunice Browne]: OK. Thank you. What about somebody in one of our first listening sessions mentioned, was it the Tisch Center? Or is something up at Tufts?
[Milva McDonald]: That's at Tufts. I thought, aren't they more international? Policy, am I wrong about that?
[Moreshi]: The Fletcher School is the diplomacy school, but I think Tisch is trying to be state policy, not Tisch, excuse me. I don't forget, but they have a new center that is state policy focused. I've seen them cited in some articles, I believe.
[David Zabner]: Oh, the College of Civic Life. I had no idea that existed.
[Moreshi]: It's new. It's like maybe two years old, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the little research, I mean, a lot of what I found echoes what you said at our last meeting, John, which is kind of like term limits tend to be really popular conceptually with voters, but the results that they think they're going to get from term limits don't usually. aren't really realized by term. So I'll try to come up with some information and share that. And we'll just talk about that as a whole. The other questions we had. Well, we have that question about the, I feel like what we've come up with is actually given the city council president a good deal of power in terms of acting mayor, et cetera. But it was, you know, how much power should the council president have in terms of behavior of Councilors, attendance of Councilors? That came up.
[David Zabner]: Oh, I got to say, I'm sticking with what we said last time, which was just that, like, I don't think there's any power we can give the mayor or the city council or president in this case. That isn't too much power. Like, I don't think that there's any kind of middle of the road. Aside from if we wanted to explicitly say, you know, the, the. The city council can buy a all but unanimous vote, censure a member, but what does censure mean? It means we don't like you. They already know that they don't like you.
[Milva McDonald]: I think they can do that.
[David Zabner]: I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with you. And I feel like they can censure even without it being in the charter, right?
[David Zabner]: I'm just saying literally the only half, the only I think like reasonable thing we could write are things that yes, absolutely they can all work each to do.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. Eunice? Yeah, I was the 1 that, you know, brought up this in regards to, you know, the attendance issue in particular and 2 things come to mind. I had been going back and forth with president morale on this for several months because of 1. specific circumstance, and I just emailed her again last week. I have not gotten a reply, and I know her term is drawing to a close, so I'm hoping that I do. But, you know, I pointed out, you know, the attendance record that was in question, which she's well aware of, and I said, if there was anything that could be put in the charter that would have Is there anything that she would have liked to have seen in the charter specifically that might've helped her, empowered her to deal with the issue in a different way than basically not dealing with it at all? But the other thing that she pointed out to me months ago is that there's no provision in the charter at all that city councilors attend meetings. So, you know, The individual, you know, wasn't really in any sort of violation, um, because there was, so I'm wondering if there's. Kind of going back to basics here is. Maybe writing up a job description for city Councilor. You know, and school committee and mayor stating, you know. That, you know. anybody elected and serving must attend meetings because there was nothing that she could do. And it was just kind of eye-opening. There was no rule broken, no infraction.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. I mean, the council makes its own rules in terms of how often they meet, et cetera, right? So that's not, yeah. I guess I see the issue, but I feel like it's really hard to address this because the reality of the situation is that the city councilors don't have a boss. I mean, unless you call the voters their boss. And so even the council president is only really presiding over meetings and doing other maybe tasks. They're not the boss of the Councilors, right? I mean, it's not like an employment situation where... So I feel like it would just be really hard to address it in the charter. I don't know. What do you think, John?
[Moreshi]: No, I agree. And, you know, the way I always think about, there's different ways. And again, I'm not weighing in on the individual you're talking about, just generally. I think there are different ways to be good at a legislative job. You know, you can be somebody who slugs it out in the committees and generates these really thoughtful, informed ordinances. You could be somebody who throws bombs and makes the case for things. You know, both of those in a real way are a good way to be a city councilor. You're doing your job. Or you could just be someone who doesn't care about ordinances, and you just help the people in the community as a constituent relations person. So, you know, I don't know. I mean, to me, at this point, they're not anyone's, they don't have a boss. And this is actually, this is why I like one-on-one races and awards, because then someone's not showing up, At meetings, that's one person can make that case against another person. This person doesn't need to show up for work.
[David Zabner]: Whereas now... And I think at the end of the day... Oh.
[Moreshi]: No, no, I'm just rambling now.
[David Zabner]: At the end of the day, like, you know, I'm trying to think through the rules we could set up, right? You know, maybe they don't get paid or they get removed from their post if they miss five meetings. Well, what's going to stop the city council president from opening and closing five meetings in rapid succession to kick somebody who doesn't like off the council. Okay, if they don't show up to a meeting for three months, well, you know, our nasty person who doesn't want to do their job is going to show up to one meeting every three months. And that's not going to solve the problem. In the same way, I mean, if we required them to show up to uh every other meeting at a minimum right like you could just show up and pull out your phone and sit there plan uh candy crush the whole meeting and and that wouldn't really i don't think we can compel them to be good Councilors um there's just and it's entirely possible that there's some angle that i'm missing but i i can't off the top of my head think of any angles that that would allow us to compel them to do their jobs
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, if this person were to have run again, given the fact that meetings are in-person, poorly attended by the residents, and not attended via Zoom by residents, if a Councilor has enough buddies that think he's a nice guy, you know, they could get elected again and continue the same behavior because 90% of the city isn't paying attention.
[David Zabner]: I think that's just democracy. I think that's just democracy. I wrote it as a joke, but maybe Article 11 should establish the city newspaper. These are information problems. I'm still mostly joking about establishing a newspaper in the charter. But I think at the end of the day, in a democracy, if nobody's running against you to do that, like, it is what it is.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree. I mean, as unfortunate as it is, I don't think we can manage that in the charter. Although, if you do hear back from Nicole, and because you asked her a specific question, President Morell. Yeah. If she has a specific response, then it would be, you know, of course, we would be interested in hearing what her suggestions. One thing that you reminded me of David, that now I can't find what is the information access is access to information. Were we including this? Had we already decided to include a section like this?
[David Zabner]: I think we had. Let me double check.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, this is a city with a city manager. Obviously, we wouldn't do that. But this addresses some of the concerns we've heard about, you know, the mayor not having to show up at city council meetings, et cetera.
[David Zabner]: Yeah, so we definitely included somewhere that the city council can force the mayor to show up to meetings. Okay. Yeah. And where did we put that?
[Milva McDonald]: Because I think there's other charters too where it's a whole section, right? It has to be 2-6 because that must have been in the generic charter too. Let me see.
[David Zabner]: Yeah, so we discussed oversight. And the thing we said was compel mayoral attendance of meetings, plus city employees include multi-member bodies. So you can also compel the, the attendance of members of multi-member bodies. You have to give 10 days notice and a yearly state of the city report is what we have at the moment. This does seem more complete. So I might also, let's see. And, you know, remember... I like section B here of this. So it might be good to include that as well. Or section A and B. Although subpoenaing still seems really intense.
[Unidentified]: It does seem intense.
[David Zabner]: I mean... So I might include section A and B without the subpoena bit.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it's just a word in this context, right? It's semantics, but it does give a certain feeling. Yeah. Because they're not a legal body that's doing a legal subpoena.
[Eunice Browne]: I think having this section in there, and this is on my to-do list to bring up, is really important because one thing that you'll hear the council say time and time again is that they don't have any real authority to compel anybody to come before them. If they wanted summons or subpoena or require or request or whatever word you want, the Department of Public Works to come before them to talk about potholes on Main Street, he doesn't have to, unless the mayor tells them to go show up and talk about the potholes on Main Street. Right now, I think we've all heard, things about the last election and the folks in the elections office don't necessarily have to answer to the city council or anybody doesn't. So I think requiring not just the mayor, I think the mayor should be required to meet with the council maybe once a quarter in a committee of the whole to talk about issues that come up, but I think that the council should also be able to request that any city employee or at least department head come before them to answer questions.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, that's basically what this section says. It doesn't say, you know, so-and-so has to show up at the city council meetings every month or every six months or whatever. It just says the city council can say, you gotta come before us, right?
[David Zabner]: Which I think is good. I don't want to set a quarterly requirement and then hear a year later that it's too often or not often enough. Let the city council decide how often they want the mayor to show up in the room with them.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, yeah, you know, I mean, hopefully the council wouldn't abuse the power and call the mayor at every single meeting and say, you have to tell us this and this and this. But, I mean, right now they do do this, except it's a request, right? Whereas this makes it, It just gives them that much more authority to say, you know, to require it. And this specifically says the mayor, and the mayor doesn't specifically have to show up now.
[Moreshi]: I would happily take this whole section and put it in.
[Milva McDonald]: Even the subpoena witnesses administer oaths and require the production of evidence part? Yeah.
[David Zabner]: Actually, the more I think about it, yes. I'm the same. Yeah. I like it.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So will I need to send this link to you, David? OK.
[Unidentified]: I've got it. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So I have that you're going to modify that section, the access to information section. We were just talking a little bit about rules, right? There is a section that does address, but it's very vague. It just says the council can adopt their rules. And it says they have to have regular meetings, right? Is that how you read that? It doesn't say how often, it just says they have to be regular.
[Eunice Browne]: I wonder if we could include in there, and I'm thinking of this specifically, you know, well, maybe making it blanket across all bodies, elected city council, school committee, anything else. One of the complaints that I've heard is that the time that some of these meetings are scheduled at, particularly on the school committee side, where they're scheduling meetings at 4, 4.30, 5 o'clock in the afternoon, where the general public just simply can't attend. I'm wondering if there's a way to you know, under the rules of procedure indicate that, you know, meetings, you know, must not start any earlier than 6pm or something like that.
[David Zabner]: I wouldn't want, I don't, I think they need to have meetings when they can have meetings, but yeah, I don't want to take, I don't want to handcuff people that way, especially, I mean, man, if you, if you need to have a 12 hour day, like, I think we have to trust our democratically elected officials to meet when they can meet and do what they got to do.
[Eunice Browne]: Basically eliminates public participation in a lot of cases.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, a four o'clock meeting, you're saying? Yeah.
[David Zabner]: I mean, I think in the same way, if you, like, you know, there are people who work night shifts, there are people who need to put their kids to bed at 7pm, right? Like, they can't attend. It's, I don't think that, and those norms could also change, right? Like, I would be very uncomfortable putting something like that into the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree and I just think we have to be careful about micromanaging. The other thing about this section here, like what I've noticed is some of these sections that I look at and I see them in charters and then I see them, some sections of the charters are lifted straight from state law and they're just sort of reiterated in the charter. And I don't know if this is one of them,
[Moreshi]: Milva, if the subpoena issue makes you uncomfortable, Melrose does not mention it, but looks like Framingham, Watertown, Weymouth do. I wonder to what extent it's an inherent power. I really don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I mean, it's not just, it says subpoena witnesses administer oaths and require the production evidence. So I don't know. I mean, that's a good thing.
[David Zabner]: We don't want people lying to the city council. And we want the city council to be able to require the production of evidence. So like, I think it is scary language. It makes me uncomfortable. But I think it's also exactly the thing. At least I would mean for it to say so.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we can let's let's leave it and see what everybody else says too. Okay, so the only other piece was we talked about term. I just wanted to throw out, we were talking about term lengths and we said we were going to suggest four years for mayor and leaving city council at two. But we did talk about potentially, I think the only city I found that has the split terms for city councilors was Framingham. And they have four years for at-large and two for ward. And that was a possibility that people had mentioned. But I only found one city that does it. You sure Melrose doesn't? It's possible, and because, you know, things like this tend to change, so maybe I didn't see that. It's possible.
[David Zabner]: I mean, if y'all are comfortable with it, and from what I remember, our last discussion sounded like you were, I think we should recommend exactly what you just said, and also recommend let's have those discussions and those votes, right? Let's talk about all three. Yeah. Uh, the term, yeah, just go into it with the assumption that that's going to be something further discussed by the larger committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, um. So. I was going to say, we're talking about the term lengths. One of the things to think about, too, with the term lengths, and it's hard to really know the answers to these questions, but is the effect of term lengths on, well, there's budget issues with elections, but now we have elections every two years anyway, so that's, we wouldn't be putting another burden on the city, like with staggered terms, for instance, might do that. But it's also the voter turnout and things like that, that an off-year election that doesn't have the mayor, say, would definitely change the outlook for people. No, that's a real concern.
[Moreshi]: Yeah, so what do you think?
[David Zabner]: I think we're already also, like, the thing that makes the concern even more valid is the fact that, you know, in a ward election, we're now talking about hundreds of votes, possibly total. Exactly. But on the flip side, in a ward election, each city councilor has a very small number of houses that they, whose doors they have to knock, and people they have to excite, and people they have to pull out. Which is, you know, that's part of what makes me personally uncomfortable with wards. I don't have a strong feeling, I'm uncomfortable with both options, right? They're both difficult. But I certainly think four years is much too long for city councilors.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[David Zabner]: Especially if we have one who's not doing the job. And two years is, I cannot imagine our city functioning if we change mayors every two years. I can barely imagine the city functioning if we change mayor every four years. Yeah. So, like, I think these are very reasonable numbers.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree with you. City Council, it just, four years does kind of feel long, but then they're at, you know, the election turnout issue, then you, you know, but interestingly, and I know this is going to be, it's in the, I filed the interview report in our interviews folder, but Paulette and I, interviewed the superintendent, and she was very flexible on everything, but the one thing she probably said made the strongest statement on was that she thought that the school committee member should have four-year terms. Okay, David, thanks for letting us know about that. Because from her point of view, I mean, what you're talking about with this running the city as the mayor, I think she was feeling the same way about the school, the schools, you know, that they would get, you know, you get things going and you're working on them and then, and then you have a, you know, and then people have to leave or, you know, they're, or they're running for reelection. So, and, and the other sort of interesting thing about that was I was sort of looking over the Excel spreadsheet I had, which talked about term links and actually is, It's uncommon for city councilors to have four-year terms, really, in almost any city. That Framingham is an exception, and it's only at large. But there actually are some cities that give school committee members four-year terms, but not councilors. So maybe they've experienced that. The operations of the school is maybe more like the operation of the city, the two-year term is limiting.
[David Zabner]: Well, I could see wanting to have also on the school committee overlapping terms. But luckily, that's not our- Not right.
[Milva McDonald]: It will be ultimately, but yeah. Okay, so we'll leave that at two and four. Okay, so did we cover everything, all the outstanding issues? I feel like we kind of did.
[David Zabner]: I think we did. And I'm working on the draft in the public folder, so y'all should be able to see it. I'm hoping to get it done this weekend.
[Milva McDonald]: So the one thing that I want to be able to do is to finalize. I'll pull out the sections on the multi-member bodies so that we can finalize a vote on that. And I can't remember what exact number that is, two dash whatever, but. Two ten, okay. So I'm going to say two ten. Is there another section that we feel is ready for prime time that we can take to the committee for a vote? I mean, one thing that we haven't decided on as a whole committee is the number of city councilors.
[David Zabner]: Um, we have not, the other thing I'll say is as I was going through it today, and I don't think we have time to discuss it right now is, um, we have not discussed the role of a vice president, um, in any way. Uh, at least not to my memory. So that's, I mean, we can kind of keep the, there's a pretty much every city that has a vice president does it the same way. I haven't seen any cities that don't have a vice president. I also don't know that we really need a vice president, but. Given that it's so standard, I assume it's probably a good idea.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it might, usually when the president isn't there to run the meeting, the vice president runs the meeting, right? That's, yeah. And if the president had to assume the mayor, for instance, then the vice president would become the president. I guess that's how I see it.
[David Zabner]: So I'll just lift the standard language that I've seen in other places about the vice president, and that'll be perfectly fine.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I just was hoping to get through a couple of sections of it. Like maybe the parts that required more discussion and that we could sort of say, okay, those are done at the next meeting. So we could either, I mean, maybe we should talk about the access to information section or. or maybe we should just go back to the composition because we, like I said, we decided ward representation to recommend ward representation, but not the number.
[Moreshi]: I think that makes sense. My memory is, and I think the city council, excuse me, the whole committee will be the same way where you'd be like, well, nine seems too few and 13 seems too many. And I feel like I could be wrong that 11 is just inevitable.
[David Zabner]: And 11 is super standard, even across cities half our size, so... Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we'll try to nail that down at the next meeting. All right, that'll be the goal for the... I'll put that in the agenda for our January meeting. So, do we feel like we are a wrap as a committee?
[David Zabner]: I imagine we'll want to have one more meeting, maybe. But let's see based on the text, and we can email about it.
[Milva McDonald]: See based on what you mean, what you're going to complete?
[David Zabner]: Exactly. Yeah, if there's anything further we want to discuss about it.
[Milva McDonald]: So next meeting.
[David Zabner]: And feel free to start making comments in that document, if you'd like.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if we can do that.
[Moreshi]: It's interesting because the document is public, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Not yet.
[Moreshi]: It's a deliberation without notice. Yeah, I don't think we can.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we can't make it.
[Moreshi]: Don't do that.
[Eunice Browne]: I'm going to be sending that out with the meeting notice, Milva, so that we can all sort of digest it.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, as soon as David is done with it, which I'm not sure when.
[Eunice Browne]: No pressure.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I will definitely share with the whole committee because we'll have to decide whether we're going to, you know, adopt it or what parts of it we want to change. So at the very least, even if you're not done by like a few days from now, I'm going to lift to 210. So and send that to the committee. Okay.
[Unidentified]: All right. Yep. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you. Second. All in favor? Aye. All right.
[Unidentified]: Have a great night.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you all. That was great. Good night. Night. Happy New Year.
|
total time: 36.92 minutes total words: 3186 |
|||