AI-generated transcript of Medford Charter Study Commmittee 03-02-23

[Milva McDonald]: I think we'll start. There's a couple more.

[Unidentified]: Recording in progress.

[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Laurel. Okay. Welcome to our meeting. We have a full agenda and we're going to start by reviewing and voting on the minutes from our last meeting. Has everyone had a chance to look them over?

[Unidentified]: Great.

[Ron Giovino]: I move approval, with the comment that Matt's doing a tremendous job. It's a very hard job to do. It's really good.

[Maury Carroll]: I'll second that.

[Unidentified]: Great.

[Milva McDonald]: OK, all in favor? Aye.

[Unidentified]: Aye.

[Milva McDonald]: Great. OK, awesome. Then we're going to move right on to the call and center presentation. So I'm going to hand it over to Laurel.

[Laurel Siegel]: Great. And I'm just going to go right into introducing Anthony who we've all met previously, who's going to walk us through some additional information about, you know, about the possibility of our retaining our existing charter versus starting fresh and some comparison with some other municipalities that are analogous to Medford.

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Thank you. I will make this relatively brief so that the body can have a discussion. So I believe everyone should have received a copy of the memo yesterday to go over the key points. We looked at the Medford charter from the perspective, the point of the memo. Oh, excuse me. The point of the memo was to present the city's charter from the perspective of a lay person in the city, trying to understand the structure of the government for the city of Medford. And essentially, as the memo lays out, we all think of the charter as a single document that sort of says X, Y, or Z, but in actuality, various provisions of the operation of the government of the city of Medford are spread out across a number of documents. There is the document that has the title charter, there's the enabling statute that was passed in the 80s, and then there are several prior acts adopted by the state legislature on behalf of the city going all the way back to The early 1900s, as well as several state statutes. So, pointing out a couple of examples. One is the operation of the school committee, and anyone who looks at the charter or at least the document that's posted on the city's website. would be surprised to see that the school committee is wholly absent from that document. In taking a look at the enabling statute, we can see the reason why. The enabling statute refers back to a 1903 special act that describes the operation of the school committee. However, again, two main issues with this as we think about an individual unfamiliar with the study of law and the research of statutes, is the enabling statute does not tell you the name of the document that describes how the school committee operates, nor does it provide any direction on how to find it. I've been doing this for a number of years so I could find it and I added it to the appendix to the memo. But again, that would be very complicated for I think a good number of the populace. Another what I think is somewhat interesting aspect that I that is, I think, a result or an outgrowth of the complexity of the Medford charter is this example about the mayor salary Medford is. It may be the only community or it may not be the only community, but it's there are only there are not many that I can think of that have the mayor salary being set by special act. But that is what medford apparently has done for. you know, a number of years, you know, going all the way back into last century. And I, in many ways, I think the results of that is the confusion around the operation of the charter. And specifically in 2002, another document that's attached to the to the memo, it articulates a process, which sort of inherently makes it seem like the mayor's salary could be set without a special act, but it's not entirely clear and it's not referenced in the current charter that you would find on the city's website or in the city's documents. And again, these are all issues from having a charter that hasn't been worked on in a number of years and that, you know, is a charter that is really an amalgamation of laws and statutes that have been passed since the incorporation of the city. The last section on the memo just directs the city to, or directs this committee, to three other cities that have a similar form of government to Medford. However, they have had charters that were adopted more recently. If you had the chance to follow those links and look at those city charters, they all follow a very similar structure. It's, as you can tell, it's very comprehensive, and the types of things that it covers in terms of who's got what roles and responsibilities, the limitation or the separation of powers selection of the particular officers, whether they're mayors or city Councilors, what to do in terms of vacancies. I can't recall off the top of my head, but there could be language in there about recalls. I know for a fact there's language in all three of them about initiative petitions. That's how citizens get items in front of legislators. And obviously, there's provisions about the school committee. And some of the newer provisions that we encourage, well, I won't say encourage, but newer provisions that I think many communities find helpful in terms of financial planning, which is capital plans, how you adopt budgets and things of that nature. And so with that, I'll turn it back to the committee to discuss and ask any questions that need to be asked.

[Unidentified]: Laurel, I see you speaking, but you're muted. Of course, sorry about that.

[Laurel Siegel]: Well, we've been on Zoom since eight o'clock this morning. You know, we sort of have this threshold question of amend our existing charter or start with a fresh document, which does not mean that, you know, starting with a fresh document does not mean that we alter everything in our local government. It just means that we start fresh. What, if any, are the merits of keeping our existing charter and amending it just so we understand that versus starting with a fresh start?

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I wouldn't say it's a complicated question, but I'd be hard-pressed to think about merits. I guess in terms of relatively, and I use this term loosely, simple amendments, In theory, you could send a special act that just says, that just adds a provision that, I'm trying to make up language off the top of my head, but adds a provision to the charter. Let's say we wanna, I can't think of any particular provision, but that adds something to the charter about some particular operation. If you were to do that in the way that appears the city has done over the past years, you would be referencing hopefully the most recent, amended legislation or amended language, and then you say, you know, we'd like to add, you know, these provisions, it would still be, it would still suffer from this question of complexity, and then there'd be a lot of research about, you know, you want to confirm that You are overriding the provision that you want to override that you're not touching the provisions you don't want to touch and things of that nature. The pros of starting fresh, and I think the last line in the section about the complexity of the current charter is that, you know, I think one of the ways that simplifies it is to, instead of referencing things that the city has adopted in the past, to say, notwithstanding any prior legislative acts, special acts, or acts of the city, we hereby adopt this new charter. And it could incorporate all of that previous language. And by incorporate, I just mean taking the text and plopping it into a new document. And therefore, there'd be no substantive changes, but you would have all of the information that you're currently having to search for in one place and clear language that says that it supersedes anything that existed prior.

[Unidentified]: We have questions from the committee.

[Laurel Siegel]: I think, you know, our goal tonight as part of our agenda would be to move ahead with making this threshold decision so that we can start thinking about the framework for our work ahead. Do we amend or do we draft a new charter? Again, you know, can incorporate any or all of the existing languages we feel is appropriate as we go through this process. So I want to give the group an opportunity to discuss that if there is a feeling of wanting to discuss that. Otherwise, we can move it towards a vote if there aren't any questions. Go ahead, Eunice.

[Eunice Browne]: My inclination, after looking at some of the Weymouth and Melrose and so forth, Pittsfield, I guess, And given that we seem to have things in so many disparate places and some of the laws have changed that have sort of rendered some of the things we have a bit obsolete, my gut feeling is to just start over. And it's a pretty daunting task, obviously. And if we were to do that, then I guess my question would be, maybe for the Collins Center folks, is how do we structure that? I mean, the outline that they originally sent us was, you know, 21 pages with about seven sections, I think. with subsections and things, the three samples that they sent us seem to follow that outline. And once the outline was populated with the meat, I think we were upwards of, I think one was 40 pages, another one was 60 some odd pages, but they were very comprehensive. So how do we do this if we start, over and start from scratch with, do we take a section and compare it? And we, the 11 of us, compare it to other places and then incorporate our needs and then bring that to the public for discussion? Or do we ask the public their input first? How do we do this? I guess. But that would be my inclination is let's just, you know, start over.

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: So, through you Madam Chair, we've had some discussion about this internally. I do remember vividly, our last meeting when everyone was sort of looking at that document and thinking wow there's, there's a lot to do here, potentially. I think the process that works best, and that We in the content or staff have seen work best is to actually to start very broad, both in terms of internal conversations, and in terms of the conversations that you are going to be generating in the public. And what's going to happen is you're going to find some key areas of interest that people are really interested in. having some change or having clearly articulated in those sort of broad topic areas, like perhaps separation of power, balance of power or citizen participation. as we continue to do this, we can turn those, you know, we have an idea of the section that those would ultimately fall into, but you're gonna get an idea about sort of the scope and the types of changes people wanna see. And then, so later on, we can sort of put those in the appropriate sections if we know that we're starting with something fresh, but you don't have to sort of clearly say, I want it to be section, you know, so-and-so about the mayor or about the city council. For your purposes right now in terms of gathering information and feeling what's appropriate to really spend a lot of the committee's time on, you can start with these broad categories, but knowing that you're going to ultimately adopt it into a, that you're gonna turn it into a comprehensive document rather than turn it into some section to amend some portion of what's already in existence.

[Laurel Siegel]: Ron, you wanna go ahead?

[Ron Giovino]: Yes. So I guess my question is, what's the harm with using the existing document as a base for where we adapt? Because to me, just logistically speaking, you can amend every word and punctuation in an existing document. At least it gives us and the public an opportunity to say, well, this is what it is now. I don't like this part. I want to amend where it says ABC and I want to change it to this. So I guess I'm trying to understand what the downside is of maintaining the existing and using that as the skeleton for what we're going to amend to. Because you're going to do that anyways, because you're going to have to pull the charter as it is now. and look at, you know, read it, this is what it is, instead of saying, let's create a new one. Oh, by the way, it's exactly what the old one says. So I'm just wondering if we shouldn't be using the existing charter as a document that we use that we'll slice up and edit.

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: So again, through the chair, I sort of, I understand the question. I guess I would, I guess sort of my, I don't want to, you know, the committee can do whatever it decides to, but I think there's sort of a two realities that that that come with that. So, number one, we've got a clearly I, I, I think one of the things I want to convey in the in the in the memo is that we've got to clearly identify the charter, what is effective what is in existence, and so on and so forth that would take a fair amount of research. I don't claim, or the the memo doesn't claim to say this is comprehensively what the Medford charter is. I pulled out some examples of how would I figure out what, you know, what the operation of the city is in these sort of key areas that jumped out to me as I reviewed the document and did some of the research. But there would be some time sort of clarifying, you know, what are the provisions that are actually in effect in the city of Medford currently? We're providing advice and support in terms of this charter review project, but I don't claim to sort of we're not claiming to sort of say legally, this is actually what the charter is in Medford. That would be a sort of deeper question.

[Wright]: Oh, cool. Sorry, Anthony. If I can jump in there and to take it one step further, because the Medford Charter is in various forms and various places, that require, if you're going to take the approach of, well, we'll change a word here, we'll change a comma there, we'll rewrite this sentence or paragraph. Every one of those changes then has to be individually reviewed but not only will the city council need to go through and the mayor, but they have to then send them on to the state house at which point both Senate council and house council are going to need to look up every special act, every amendment of that special act and get to the point where they can determine what exactly it is they're amending. And that I can tell you from experience, can take years. I mean literally two to three years is what it took us in several as I recall, because we took that approach, as opposed to just doing a document. We sent it in, and they then started coming back at us saying, okay, you've got 100 years of special acts here that form your charter. We need to look at every one of those. Geez, we're having trouble with this one. And, and they don't, they've got, you know, a lot of things on their plate so they don't like dedicate time to fought to complete this task from point A to point Z. They're kind of working on it, it's progressing, they're handing it off to other people. So it can take years. At that point, even when you do it that way, ultimately what you end up with is still an amendment of prior special acts. You don't have that one document that's been adopted at one time. That's much easier to look at. I mean, that's what Somerville, we did it in Somerville in 2010, well, Maryland, I don't know if Maryland's on.

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I don't believe Maryland's on the call yet.

[Wright]: Yeah. So Maryland, I mean, I believe that process started in like 2008, 2009, was approved out of the city hall at 2010, and was not approved at the state house level till mid or late 2012, as I recall. So, which is different than sending a document that says, we're going to wipe out all those special acts. And we're going to replace that all with the following charter, which from this point forward shall be the charter of the city of Medford. So that's the downside. The upside, I suppose, is if you want to stick with it, it's less provocative. inertia, you know, people are just comfortable with dealing with what they have in front of them. But I don't know if that is the progress the city of Medford is looking to make through this committee. That's something for you all to decide.

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: And I'll add just one more point is that you don't necessarily have to research every, do this research about sort of what the charter is. If you're starting fresh, you can start from the principles of governance. So rather than being bogged down in terms of this research, I mean, there will be research in terms of how the city operates in certain aspects, but you don't have to fully, this committee doesn't have to fully compile what the charter is and make sure that it fully understands it. It can start from the principles of governance and create a document from those principles that then says that it supersedes everything that came prior and put that forward and make that the new charter.

[Unidentified]: Thank you for that. Maury, you want to go ahead?

[Maury Carroll]: Hi everyone. I'm in favor of starting with a whole new clean slate myself. I understand what Ron's saying and maybe using the existing charter as an outline, but the history in this city is when we start doing a hodgepodge and taking a piece out of here and doctoring up this and changing, it never comes out the right way. We have an opportunity here to start with something clean, fresh and modern to today's times. And I think that's what we should be doing.

[Unidentified]: That's where I'm at. Mike?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: I won't belabor the point. I like the idea of starting fresh from a modern document and working backwards, which will give us a little bit of direction on the key issues that other municipalities are facing or or are putting into their charters, right? I think that's a valuable place to start from and work backwards. And then perhaps, you know, as we're going through a section, we can try and research what, okay, what does the existing charter say about these topics? Just to inform that, but I do feel like we should start with a modern outline.

[Unidentified]: Go ahead, Jean.

[Jean Zotter]: I'm on board with starting with a fresh charter. I just think if you're someone who doesn't completely understand city government and you wanna know how things work, it's really complicated to, it's almost like it's hidden. And to have to look through all those different acts, which go back, is it a hundred years almost? Goes back a hundred years. To know that you have to do that to figure out how city government works seems not like how, doesn't make it very transparent to people. So I would like it to all be in one place that someone could find easily on our website, know how city government runs. Thanks.

[Unidentified]: Thank you. Any other comments or questions from the group?

[Danielle Balocca]: Go ahead, Daniel. Yeah, I think just some people have sort of said this already, but I think like the, I do think I'm on board with the sort of clean slate idea, but in the process, sort of being transparent around, like, what is existing now and what would change, what would the change be? Because I could see somebody looking at a new charter and thinking, oh, that sounds great. But what, what, what is changing? What are we, what are we maybe letting go of or adapt or adopting and with the new charter so I think like, in that we talked about kind of outreach to the community so that it was transparent for people.

[Laurel Siegel]: I would think that we could certainly make that clear through the process. First of all, even within the document, you know, as we would present it initially to the community could point out, you know, where language already existed. And then, and then, you know, having a summary document that we could prepare as well, that could guide the community and understanding what was existing and what are we proposing that's different. So, I mean, Anthony, what What have you seen done similarly in other communities?

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I'm trying not to put my thumb too hard on the scale, but I have seen, and I believe Marilyn is on the call, so she can chime in, but I believe that it's an easier process for all involved starting fresh. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but in some respects, it may be hard to sort of fully articulate, yes, that we know X, Y, Z is the process or is part of the charter or not sort of based on where the city is now. The fact of the matter is, know it'd be hard to believe that too many people have looked at that 1903 operation of the school committee you know on a regular basis to say oh this is how it's supposed to run versus it's always run that way and we've continued to do that um not to say that that's right or wrong but that happens with there's a variety of operations that the city does that in many ways get taken for granted both by the citizens receive those services as well as the people who provide them. So that can take more time and more effort and maybe more uncertain than some people may appreciate.

[Unidentified]: Are there any other thoughts or discussion on this? Go ahead, Jean.

[Jean Zotter]: Well, I'm just thinking about framing. I don't know if I'm jumping ahead, but I think if it's presented, we're starting a whole new charter. People might get nervous. They might think everything's up for debate, but I, what I'm hearing people say is we know how things are working. Let's put it all in one document and then kind of open it up for some amendments. So it might just, we might want to think carefully about how we present this because a whole new charter could come across to some people as we're going to a town manager or something, but that's not what we're talking about. I don't think at this point until we get community input. So.

[Laurel Siegel]: I agree, that's a good point of just being careful about the messaging that, you know, we're not necessarily looking to alter, you know, everything that's existing. And it's really about the legal framework, as Anthony has said, where, you know, it's such a patchwork of references to prior laws, as opposed to having it be incorporated into our own city's legislation.

[Unidentified]: I have a question. I'm sorry. I have a question.

[Laurel Siegel]: Right now, it's only a discussion among the members of the committee. And at the end of the meeting, we'll have opportunity for public participation.

[Unidentified]: I have a question. Who's iPhone?

[Laurel Siegel]: Again, at right now, this is a conversation just with the members of the committee. And at the end of the meeting, we'll have public participation.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Or I put that person in the waiting room. I think they're messing with us.

[Laurel Siegel]: Yeah, I agree. So, um, you know, I think at this point, um, unless people disagree, I would suggest that somebody make a motion on whether to whether or not to, go ahead, Eunice, you have a question.

[Eunice Browne]: To go back to, I think what Jean might've been saying a few minutes ago there. So we currently have the strong mayor form of government and then the council and the school committee. So are we presuming that that is what we are keeping and what the community wants? or are we... No, no.

[Laurel Siegel]: Yeah, at this point... Or could we actually change our form of government? Well, so what we're discussing at the moment isn't necessarily about the substance and what the nature of any changes would be. It's really about the format, whether we're trying to incorporate the changes, the amendments to the existing charter, or if we're going to start with a clean document. Um, and so this, by making this decision tonight, it's not, it's not taking anything off the table for future discussion about, uh, you know, what we may or may not choose to do. Okay. Based on the input that we will solicit from the members of the community. All right, so go ahead, Ron, you have a question.

[Ron Giovino]: I just wanna make a motion that we adopt creating a new format for our charter. I second that.

[Unidentified]: Thank you, Anthony. Any discussion on that motion? And seeing none, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Wonderful, anybody opposed? All right, thank you very much.

[Laurel Siegel]: All right, next subject, speaking of public input, is to start discussing more in depth about public outreach. The first item would be discussion of the format of our first information session. And again, Anthony, you said that you could assist us a bit with What that might look like in terms of content and how we approach our first information session.

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Yes, I am. I have to do some research. I apologize. I didn't have the time to add that to the memo. So I don't have any specific. I don't have any specific information for this meeting about how to move forward with public comment, but I, I am. I know that the committee was interested in potential survey questions, if my notes are correct, for eliciting information from the public.

[Laurel Siegel]: Well, so yeah, we were discussing two elements here. One would be our initial public information session, which we probably want to try to hold sooner rather than later. And then also, whether it's concurrent or staggered, starting a public survey process that we would have possibly multiple layers of surveys, preliminary surveys that are more overarching and broader questions, and then subsequent surveys that might be a little bit more detailed. So any advice that you can provide for either of those so we can start the process of soliciting that sort of feedback.

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: So between now, well, two things. So between now and the next meeting, I will have done more research on that to send another memo to the council, I mean, to the committee. On the topic of public input, it's kind of a chicken and the egg situation a little bit is at this point being so early in the process, You have the sort of Herculean task of being open to as much input as you can possibly receive from the public, but also keeping it on task of things that are in the charter, but aren't necessarily about trash pickup or sort of the day-to-day things that people experience with municipal government. The reason why it's a chicken and egg sort of situation is that as you talk about maybe framing these up and coming public sessions, you may want to talk amongst yourselves right now or at some of your meetings about what the charter the topics in the charter that may be of interest to the committee so that you can sort of, you can frame your meetings and say, we wanna talk about the process for citing of new school. This falls under capital planning, but you might sort of create those broad categories that people can talk about so that you can sort of direct the conversation at information gathering sessions without being overly restrictive.

[Laurel Siegel]: Maury, did you have a question in your hand raised earlier?

[Maury Carroll]: Yes, slightly. I just, I think we're so far not ready to bring this to the public at this point. You know, we don't even know who we are or what we're doing at this point. We need to discuss the game plan amongst ourselves and what direction that we want to see for charter. And, uh, and once we have some sort of a direction this group has that bring it to the people to say, no, this is what we're, we're, we're investigating what we're researching. What do you have to say about it? Where do you want it to go? But I think we're putting the cart before the horse to ever think you can go to the public at this point.

[Laurel Siegel]: What would you say, Anthony, then the timing here? I guess going back to what are our steps and our timing here for how we move through this process?

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Again, that's a bit of a tough question. I think that you have a fairly large body, so I know that there was some discussion with council earlier, so I don't want to step on any toes, but I believe you can sort of partition some of this stuff off into a subcommittee if you want to start having the discussions about public comment. I think it is better to do it sooner rather than later to at least discuss how you want to do it. But to the gentleman's point, I think the committee may be served, if people are of the same opinion, to discuss what people want to see or where the interest is so that you can have more directed discussion stakeholders elected, appointed, everyday citizens when you start to elicit that feedback.

[Unidentified]: Jean, go ahead.

[Jean Zotter]: One of my concerns is people don't know what the charter is. like the comment that we might not get a lot of feedback if we don't do some initial outreach just to make people aware of what the charter is, like the flyer is great, it's a good start. I wonder if maybe before we start taking comments, we just do some things that help get the word out about, I don't know, Danielle, can you have us on Medford Bites? I don't know, like something like, can we just start getting, have some information sessions just say, this is the charter, this is what it is, this is what it does, without really asking specific questions. That was just one thought. Maybe before we dive into getting feedback, we start getting people excited about what we're doing and how the charter informs government and what, if they get involved with, to give us input, what it could mean.

[Unidentified]: Ron, do you want to go ahead?

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I guess I vision it a little bit. I agree with everything that's been said. So we're just barely crawling at this point. However, I think we also talked about education and putting this in front of the public. And I think it's not harmful to think about, you know, I want the public to understand that these meetings will be a regular basis. They will have opportunity to do this. And I think the first one should be a presentation about what we're doing. get it out in public, let people read about it, let people talk about it. And it's certainly an opportunity to do a half an hour presentation on what our organization is and what we're trying to do and how that works. But then, you know, maybe leave a half an hour open to folks to get up to the mic and say, this is my expectation. I think it's a good time to do it early because we have no answers. We have no rebuttal. We have no no basis for communication, but it can't hurt to understand what the folks in public are thinking about what we're trying to do and what they want us to be aware of as we go through this process. The second thing I think it does, the education will provide for a great forum to talk about the survey and talk about, we want to hear from you now so we have a basis when we're going forward to the next meeting to understand what you are looking for. Because, you know, really, You know, at least my goal is to make sure that when we're done the public says yeah I knew this was coming, yeah I disagree but I understand the process. And if we accomplish that I think we win. So, I'm looking at it from a different perspective that we move forward with an educational type presentation, see who shows up. give them the microphone and it's a good opportunity to give them three minutes to say, this is what I want to see. And none of us on the committee will be able to rebut or say we can't commit to anything because we're so young in the process. So that's just my thought process.

[Wright]: If I could add something to that again, Frank, right. I'm sorry. I don't think my name's on it because I'm out of state actually taught this evening, but so I'm using an iPhone. I think based on my experience, I think when you start talking to the public about a charter. You have to really go right back to explaining what a charter is not necessarily what methods charter is, but what is a charter. How is the city constituted, why does it exist. I mean, the charter is basically the document or the series of documents, in Medford's case, that the state legislature and the governor, through a period of time, have created that allow Medford to exist. All cities and towns in the Commonwealth are what are known as political subdivisions of the Commonwealth. And we only exist because they let us exist. So I don't think A lot of even. elected officials at the local level are aware of that. They think they have certain ability to govern themselves and are sometimes surprised that something requires a special act. So with that in mind, I think any education needs to start at a real fundamental level and you can build up to how Medford functions on a practical level and under what aspect of the charter or charter provisions, those activities on a day-to-day basis or elected government provide for that type of exercise of power in Medford.

[Unidentified]: Eunice?

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think going back to both what I understand Maury's point, but I think going back to what Ron and Frank just said, I think, educating, you know, from the get go is really important. I think there's, you know, as I've said before, I mean we have 40,000 some odd registered voters in the city. And I would venture to say that. You know 80 90% of them have no idea what a charter is and most of them don't know what we're doing. You know we're on our fourth if you count the housekeeping meeting last year but third meeting and we've had no more than probably five members of the public join us. Um, you know, I've seen, you know, a lot of the, um, you know, I think Laura, you've been putting out the notifications for the meeting and so forth. You know, I wish they would generate a little bit of discussion and they don't seem to, um, I, I don't, I think there's a lot of people that don't know what is happening, nor do they know what a charter is and why this is imperative to the city. Um, So I think just getting out there, like Ron said, and Frank said, and not even relating it back to Medford so much, but what is a charter? And then letting them, as they grow to understand, letting them say, well, I'd like to see this, and I'd like to see that, and then that will help us come at this in such a way. It's too many people, like all things Medford, you know, people don't know what's happening and this is the very basis of our government, and they need to know. So, it frustrates me to no end.

[Unidentified]: Anthony, you have your hand raised.

[Andreottola]: Hi. I thank everyone for the input tonight. Don't know if anything was mentioned at the beginning of the meeting. I came on a couple minutes late. I like to raise the idea of a non-binding ballot question or questions. Again, like people are beginning to talk about tonight. I honestly don't think that many of Method's citizens are particularly interested in the language of our charter. I think they may be interested in change and what that change might involve. And I think a ballot question or three or four ballot questions worded well by this group could really influence and move the city in the direction of adopting a charter and engaging the city council and the mayor and actually getting this done. if we're going to expect the public to be involved in, you know, just changing language, educating them about, you know, this charter, honestly, do they care? Or do they care how our city operates and who's involved and how long are they here for and what their role is? And I think by actually asking them, in the form of a ballot question would give this group so much ammunition and charge us to really make these changes and adopt the right language to meet those needs of the community. I mean, if we start changing language when we don't even know what people want, what are we really doing?

[Laurel Siegel]: Absolutely. And, and, you know, so this discussion and, and following on our discussion last time is really about how we can get that, that word out. That's certainly one possible vehicle. We did discuss this a bit at the last meeting, but Anthony Wilson and Frank, do you have thoughts on, on using that sort of mechanism here versus other ways of sharing with the public?

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Well, first I wanted to ask Marilyn to chime in. She's one of the most experienced individuals at the Collins Center, having done these for years across the state. If she had any thoughts on the timing. And I would just say that there are also channels of uh, gathering feedback from the public. So it doesn't have to be such a, the committee doesn't have to think about in certain terms, such a linear process that you have to wait for one thing to happen for another. You, um, you know, everyone has lives. And so there's, you know, times you can commit to things, but in theory, the committee could sort of receive feedback as it has discussions about topics, um, depending on how it structures, how it does those things. Marilyn, I think you're on the call.

[Contreas]: Yes. Yes, I'm right here. I appreciated Frank's comments and the comments of the committee. That's all true. But one of the things, one approach that has worked in other communities is that you have a meeting and you send invitations to people. You send invitations to people who are serving on boards and commissions. You send invitations to people who run, you know, civic organizations or, you know, neighborhood groups that are active. And you do use that time to explain generically what a charter usually, what a charter contains, what it is, that it's the community's legal foundation. And so you do a little theme setting in the front, but, basically, you're going to hear from the people who are pretty much engaged in some aspect of the city's government in some way or another. And they may bring in other people too. So you don't have to think about just reaching people who don't know anything or don't know all that much about how Medford works in terms of a structure. Get the people who are living it, who are working inside it. They'll have, you know, that's a way to get some ideas as what to what's working and what isn't.

[Unidentified]: Ron, you have a question.

[Ron Giovino]: I just want to call everybody's attention in one of our email packages, we received an opinion regarding non-binding referendums. And if you'd look through that, it distinctly says that the way it works is we prepare a non-binding referendum, we present it to city council, that goes to the mayor, and then it gets to go on the ballot, which means that it has to be a defined referendum question. It means it goes through the exact same process that we're going to have to go through when we do this charter. And if you don't get permission from the city council, the mayor, you can get 10% of the voters to do it just to put it on there. My understanding of what Mr. Andrea Tolar is talking about is more of a survey, and I'm all for that. I think we can really press that and educate and get a really solid survey out there.

[Andreottola]: But the- No, that's not- Oh, I understand.

[Ron Giovino]: I understand. I understand. But what I'm saying is, the referendum question, and those legal scholars on this call can correct me, but I read the opinion, and the opinion talks about going to the city council, getting their approval, then getting the mayor's approval to get it on the ballot, which means we have to have a defined, a referendum question is not, what do you want us to look at? We're looking at the mayor for three years as opposed to two years. Then they can give their opinion on that. So I don't know if the legal scholars on this call can correct me if I'm wrong, but that, to me, is what I read in the opinion, is that adding a non-binding referendum is the same process that we're going to go through to get this charter going. So I just want to open that up that we did receive that.

[Unidentified]: Thank you, Ron.

[Contreas]: Yeah, it's a similar process. It's not exactly the same process, because when the charter is on the ballot, that's a binding question. The issue with public opinion advisory questions is whether people understand that it is simply advisory. If you say, do you want a larger council or do you want a council composed of at large and both at large and ward members, if the commission ends up not recommending that, then people are saying, well, you didn't do what I asked. So there's some potential blowback there.

[Unidentified]: Mike, you had a comment?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Yeah, this is tangentially related. Laurel, tell me to stop if I'm too off track. But it comes out to the position, I think, that we find ourselves in, which is we want to know where to focus, because we don't know where to focus. Like it's like a sort of circle where we're not exactly sure what is, we want to make sure that residents are telling us what is critical to them. but they're gonna need us to educate them, right? It's this circle. And I think it may make sense, at least in terms of before we really get focused on what survey questions we, sorry, what survey questions we want to ask or what outreach we wanna strive for that we understand at least from the call centers perspective, what the key, like, we've got the outline of a modern charter, but like, maybe if we would go through all of the key topic areas that we want to, that are out there and possible so that we can start identifying those and be able to ask those questions. We don't necessarily know what we don't know yet. And I just think like that, and I'm not sure how set in stone the schedule for meetings is, but like that might be a great kind of first step before we start developing materials, right? That's my opinion on kind of where it feels like we need to do that first to be able to share that with other folks.

[Laurel Siegel]: Any other thoughts on this process from the group? Personally, just volunteering my own opinion here is I do like the idea of having an information session. you know, part and parcel of various other forms of outreach. Obviously, we'll have to be well prepared for that information session to be able to give a strong framework to what it is exactly that we're doing and what some of the possibilities are that we're contemplating. But really looking at that first public session, obviously these meetings are public, but first real interaction with public as an educational opportunity for certain. And, you know, we'll receive feedback as part of that process, but really to educate people on what it is that we're doing. And I do like the idea of doing that fairly soon so that we're not operating in this, you know, quiet little corner by ourselves so that we are very much doing this out in public and reaching people and hopefully encouraging them to attend these meetings and listen to the conversation as it's moving ahead. Go ahead, Eunice.

[Eunice Browne]: I think in terms of thinking a little bit in terms of a timeline here, since it's now the second of March, and if we keep on track as meeting once a month, by the time it, I mean, I know that, you know, a couple of you put together a flyer, which looks great and things, but I would say two things. One is that if we want to do some sort of information session that we would want to be, you know, getting our ducks in a row and getting our collateral all prepared and so forth, to have that session, you know, and if it's going to take us a meeting or two to get to that point, I think we want to make sure that we have that session no later than the middle of June. And I think, you know, Laurel, you probably, you know, are thinking well before that. But We don't want to be, I don't think we want to be doing any sort of Zoom or Alden Chambers sort of thing in July or August when people are away. Things like that have happened before. And, you know, the response has been, you know, people trying to push things through in the dead of night, so to speak, in the middle of July when nobody's around. So I think we wanna make sure that we get something, some sort of public session done before people break away for the summer. But by the same token, this is a municipal election season and there's all sorts of fairs and festivals and things throughout the summer that go on. So we would want to, by the same token, have any sort of flyers or other materials and so forth done and ready for public consumption to get out there and take advantage of Circle the Square, Clippership Day, you know, whatever other things go on during the summer so that we can get out there and get our word out as well. So, you know, as I said, if we continue with this once a month meeting, you know, then, you know, April and May, we would need to make sure that we've devised our message and our materials and so forth so that we can have something at the latest by early June. So that would be my thought.

[Jean Zotter]: Jean, go ahead. I guess I want to second Marilyn's suggestion that we start with people who are involved in actively involved in the running a government like boards and commissions, community leaders, civic leaders, that could be the, it'd be an open meeting obviously because we're, but that would be, we could invite them and have sort of a more general information session and then get some broad feedback. The second piece is, and I may be jumping the gun, but I'm raring to have some kind of timeline where we like, so, and I'm willing to help with that. So I don't wanna make a suggestion and not be willing to help with it, but it'd be great. And I don't know if the Collins Center has done this for other, like if we could map out, okay, which pieces are we gonna tackle which months? And that might just help us think through how we wanna do outreach beyond the general outreach. But I'd be willing to try to pull something together if, but I'm assuming people like Anthony and Marilyn and Frank, maybe you have better ideas about how, if we have 18 months or less now, how we would go through time-wise working on this, just to give us something to shoot for.

[Unidentified]: I was giving Marilyn a chance to chime in. I'll let her chime in.

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: After this. So, a timeline could be a lot of this is driven by the committee in the community. I think Frank told the story earlier about how Somerville's took two years just in the legislature, but there's also a significant amount of time at the municipal level. So different communities can take more or less time. It's hard to sort of ballpark the timeframe. I know that you have a sort of marching orders that have in them their own sort of timeline, but it's hard to say how much you will or won't get done in that timeline. You probably don't want to artificially cut off discussion on items that you may not be thinking about right now, but later on may become important to the community and to the members of the committee. So timelines aren't bad, but just to be careful. In terms of structuring, I think this conversation really is about structuring the conversation so that you get something, you want to get something done at some point in time. This is, in many ways, my personal opinion. So feel free, Marilyn or Frank, to override me. And I think I said this at the first meeting, but it might be good to look at that first section that is in the model, the preamble. And it sounds simple, just talking about the values of the community. But that might be a good place for you as a committee to start thinking about what you want to see out of the charter or what you want to see out of Medford at a variety of levels. And that doesn't preclude bringing the members of the public in during those meetings or inviting them. That could be a good place for various boards and commissions and civic organizations to say, we're working on the charter. That's about the operation of our city. And in many ways, we can talk about we want our city to be, that could be a good entry point to start to get meaning to get to meaningful conversations later on about actual, you know, the more boring meats and potatoes operational questions later on.

[Wright]: If I can add to that, I think if I was in your position and given what you have before you at this point, What I would want to do perhaps was to take the models that Anthony provided last month, along with one or more of the example charters that he provided this week. and sit down and look at maybe pick one of those for one of those other cities and say you know whichever one you're most comfortable looking at and say go through it and say what does medford how does medford address this particular thing all right so somerville has a two-year mayor medford has what you know four years whatever Same thing with city council. City council is formatted this way, Medford as well. And then we could look to put citations in with that. And if you go through the whole document, those are kind of the clear examples that everyone's aware of, your mayor, your city council, your school committee. But the day-to-day operations of the city, I think you need to have an understanding of how the charter addresses that. And if you look at whether it's you know, whichever one of the ones that Anthony sent over that you're comfortable with, and you try to cross-reference that to Medford, then when you go to an information session, you as a group, as a group of individuals, will be able to better understand your charter. And I think, having looked at other cities who have, you know, newer charter models, where you might end up. Not necessarily substantively, but at least from the point of view of understanding where you're at now and as a document where you're headed, not necessarily, again, substantively you can decide whether you want wards or at large or two-year terms versus four-year terms or seven members of your school committee or nine members, whatever. But I think you need to understand everything and where it's located and what it could be in the future. And I think once you have a sense of that you don't have to fully know where you want to end up but once you have a sense of that so you feel like you can carry on a discussion, then I think you're comfortable, you'll be in a position of being comfortable to go to the, whether it's the community leaders as Marilyn referenced, or ultimately the public generally. You can do that in a way that I think you have some level of success.

[Contreas]: I also think it's important for the committee, maybe after you have the initial information session to identify the issues that appear to be of highest concern. Some of the charters that you read You will see, as I think I mentioned before, that they're very similar in certain of the articles. But the ones that are most community-specific, the mayor, the council, the school committee, would probably draw the most attention. of some concern to me that you don't leave those to the very end because it does affect how the rest of the document does get written. You don't have to make a decision initially, but you have to make it fairly soon into the process. And it will help as you read a couple of charters and get a sense of what other communities have found to be the important issues and concerns that they want to stress in those provisions.

[Laurel Siegel]: I do want to speak since we've discussed this over the last couple of meetings. In terms of meeting frequency, if there is an appetite among this group, I think it's certainly possible to contemplate meeting more frequently than once a month as a full body. The challenge that we saw at the start was finding dates when everybody could be available. This was actually the only day of the month when we offered it up that was available for the full body. But it may be that there's some trade off that some people can attend some meetings and some people can attend others. Also, we wanted the full group to be together for some of the initial discussions and threshold decisions. We certainly can look into forming various subcommittees with the caveat that, you know, all subcommittees are subject to the same rules that we are as a full body. It's all public notice, public meeting. So, you know, we just need to make sure that everything is being complied with to the extent that we have subcommittees. So all of that can be discussed. If people have interest in increasing the frequency of meetings between now and our next meeting, we can pull the group again to see what dates might work during the month. We could try twice a month instead of once a month if that is what people are interested in doing here.

[Unidentified]: people's thoughts on that.

[Danielle Balocca]: And this actually might not answer the question that you just asked, but something that Marian was saying about, like, people's knowledge of our current charter. And I guess my understanding is like, there's a bunch of folks in this group who are studying the charter that kind of like, why this group was maybe formed. And so I wonder if there's going to be an opportunity for people to share maybe what they, what maybe their ideas or priorities are for looking at the charter and what Like, I don't know, like, if there's going to be an opportunity sort of for us as a group to sort of think about what our priorities are.

[Laurel Siegel]: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you know, we could add that to the agenda for next month, people would like. But just back to my question, you know, as a whole among the group, are people interested in meeting more often than once a month? you know, as opposed to, you know, down the line having subcommittees to address discrete topics.

[Unidentified]: Go ahead, Mike.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: I think it's worth giving a shot, at least maybe doing some sort of, we could just do some sort of polling offline to see if there's a night that that kind of catch as many people as possible. I think it makes sense to keep us moving, especially early on. We could, we could drop off later.

[Unidentified]: Sorry, I support that. I'm in for more.

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think so. I mean, even if we went to like an every three week model, you know, we would pick up a few more meetings. And I think as far as whatever our mandate was of 18 months or something, I think if we're starting from scratch, which is what we've decided, I think that the end game needs to be a bit open-ended. I don't think that we can safely say you know, okay, in 18 months, we're going to have this done. I mean, that's, so we're at the beginning of 2023, that would put us to the middle of 2024. I mean, I think, you know, maybe we have it in our head. Let's see, so this is 2023 and we have a municipal election. Anything that we do gets put on a municipal ballot. So we're obviously not going to, meet the mark for this election. So now we're looking at 2025. So I think that's kind of what we have to be shooting for. I mean, I know it's a lot of our time and energy and effort and things like that, but I don't think that we can quite have an end game if we're going to start from scratch. I think we have to be very deliberative in what we're doing and when it gets done, it gets done.

[Unidentified]: So Maury, go ahead.

[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, I'm all in favor of more frequent meetings, I think, especially in the beginning, you know, to get the ball rolling with us and getting us all on the same page. So you can count me in.

[Laurel Siegel]: So yeah, well, we'll put together a survey to send out to the group to see if we can find that, you know, again, that's the difficulty is finding dates when all or most of us can be available. But we'll see what we can, you know, get into scheduling. And then, you know, do people have the appetite? I mean, as Eunice was rightly saying, if we're going to be contemplating a public information session, we'd either be aiming for having something by June or delaying until the early fall, most likely, just so we can make sure that people are around and we're not hitting the mid of summer when everybody goes away. So, you know, we do not need to flesh this out tonight. We don't want to flesh this out tonight. Um, but in terms of a, a goal that then we can start working further on at our next meeting, um, do we want to aim to have something ready by June?

[Unidentified]: Yes. Meaning what?

[Laurel Siegel]: A public information session in June that we would hold in June.

[Unidentified]: Okay.

[Laurel Siegel]: seeing a lot of nods, so I think everybody's on board for that. All right, so we'll start talking about that more in depth at the next meeting about, you know, the framework of what that might look like and what research and information we need to have ready in order to be able to hold a session like that.

[Andreottola]: So unless there's further- Can I ask one of the, is there any chance of ever meeting in person? Is a group, maybe at City Hall or at the library or something. Zoom is great, but I'm a kind of in-person kind of person. I think of two years of Zoom meetings and I get a little, my eyes start to twitch a little bit.

[Laurel Siegel]: And, you know, it's not that we couldn't ever do it. You know, we can certainly discuss that. I know there are varying preferences among this group of meeting in person versus Zoom and considerations of availability and health and safety and all of that. So, but nothing's off the table. And actually to that point, you know, we're waiting to hear from the state government because the authorization that empowered public meetings to take place on zoom is up this month. I do understand that the house voted on this in the last couple of days and passed an extension to that but it has not been taken up by the state senate yet. We're waiting to hear whether we're even permitted beyond this month to continue to have zoom as a format. It sounds like things are moving in that direction and it will be extended, but we won't know until they address that.

[Eunice Browne]: Great to have a hybrid option.

[Laurel Siegel]: Yeah. All right, so what I was going to do is transition to discussing that the informational brochure, which is one of our first pieces of being able to have public outreach. And so I had shared that, or actually Milva had shared that out with the group. And thank you for some help from Mike with laying it out to make it look nice. So I'm happy to get any thoughts on the content, the format, you know, and then we can talk more about best ways to distribute this. Go ahead, Mike.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: I'll just say super fast, if there's any changes that we want to make, I'll take notes and then I can do a revised version as early as probably this weekend.

[Unidentified]: Fantastic. Thank you.

[Laurel Siegel]: Anybody have any thoughts or comments on the content or the format. Go ahead, Ron.

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, just briefly, I like it. I think it's exactly where we are in this process. I think it's a good thing to get out on the city's webpage and as many places we can get it. I think it's a great job. Good job, everybody.

[Unidentified]: Any other thoughts? Yeah, Gene.

[Jean Zotter]: I'm not sure we should do this, but do we want to say anything about we're one of the few cities that hasn't amended like do we want to make a case for why. I think Anthony Did you say we're one of 10 cities that hasn't amended their charter. Since the ability to. I forget exactly what you said but we're, we're kind of in the minority of how we do our charter and I just didn't know if we want to say anything about why this is important.

[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I believe that I said that there are not many chart there are not many communities that I'm in the salary of the. also the salary of the mayor or the city council by special act, which, which Medford has done a number of times.

[Jean Zotter]: It was our first meeting it was around land governments and governments like we're one of the few that still goes with the plan a versus.

[Contreas]: Yes, I definitely are.

[Jean Zotter]: I don't know if that just makes it muddy. I'm not sure it's needed, but I don't know.

[Contreas]: I'm concerned because people don't know what plan A is and they don't know if there are plan Bs or Cs. Okay. It's just a little bit inside baseball. Okay.

[Eunice Browne]: Could we include something on it that, and I guess maybe this is a little bit more difficult now that we're going to go to more frequent meetings, but to say something like, you know, the committee meets regularly and all the meetings are, you know, open to the public or something like that, you know, and maybe that's along with the want to know more piece, but if you'd like to attend a meeting, you know, something about our meetings.

[Laurel Siegel]: Absolutely, yeah. That was a part of the original text, and we sort of pared it down a little bit because we were worried we were getting too wordy and filling the page too much. But I think we can certainly, because some of the original text was want to know more, including how to attend a meeting and recordings of meetings, and we sort of listed out a couple of items, then the web link. So we could add some of that back in, for sure.

[Unidentified]: Other comments, thoughts on the brochure flyer? Looks great. Wonderful. All right.

[Laurel Siegel]: Thank you, everybody. So, certainly, we can push this out online. But then the question also becomes, we want to start getting this out into the physical world. We talked a lot about different potential locations in our last meeting. which included, you know, houses of worship, different places, community centers and senior center and City Hall and the library and other places where the public gathers around the community. And, you know, basically, Francis, would you be able to assist us here in terms of our ability to have any limitations on, you know, number of copies we can have printed by City Hall and if we're, you know, anything along those lines. So we know what we're working with here.

[Frances Nwajei]: Yes, I mean, if we have materials that we need to get printed between City Hall, the school department, we could make sure that it gets done.

[Laurel Siegel]: Okay. Is there, is there

[Frances Nwajei]: There's no limit, Mayor did not indicate a limit, she indicated a willingness to assist us in getting it done.

[Laurel Siegel]: Wonderful, wonderful.

[Andreottola]: Will it be translated into any different languages?

[Laurel Siegel]: Absolutely, that was one of the things also. We've gotten some preliminary information on costs and we would want to have this translated into the key major languages that already the city is translating its other materials and its website into. Again, Francis, I know you were able to get us some rough information about available resources and costs. Do we have any sense of of budgetary limitations, or if we said, well, we have this one page form and we'd like to have it translated into these four or five other languages, whether we have that ability to do that.

[Frances Nwajei]: I think that it's easier when we actually know what we're working with. If we're doing a one page form, that's one thing. If we're doing a simple flyer, that could very well be something that could be handled in-house by our community liaisons, right? But if we're doing something that's going to be quite a few pages, I think that we would want to round it out and ask for, you know, and provide like an estimated budget.

[Laurel Siegel]: Okay. So initially, at least we're just talking about this one page brochure. So it sounds like that would not be an issue for us.

[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah, initially if we're talking. Yeah, initially, if we're talking about the one page brochure, if there's a template for it, I could field it out to the resources that I provided to you and get an actual quote from them of exactly how much that's going to be. And then that could be sort of our launching pad so we know what we're dealing with. There's some charge per page and some charge per word.

[Laurel Siegel]: OK, great. Ron, you had a question?

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, just on Tuesday's snow emergency, I got messages from City Hall on text, email, Facebook, voicemail. If there's a resource that we can use where they can put a link up to this or just email the actual document, you know, I think it's a great resource to tap people, people listen and read that. It's up to the mayor, but you know, I think it might be a good resource.

[Laurel Siegel]: Absolutely. I would think that, you know, certainly there are a variety of different newsletters and announcements that go out on those various media from the city that I would imagine if we requested that this be incorporated in. Go ahead, Eunice.

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I'm letting the group know that I was watching a city council committee of the whole meeting a couple of weeks ago on the budget. And I think it was Councilor Bears who may have mentioned something about budgets from the various boards and commissions. And I know that I've seen in prior years during the budget hearings in June where some chairperson or whomever from some of the various boards, I've seen it with the historical commission, And a few of the others where they come before the, the city council and request a particular line item in the budget for x amount for whatever their needs might be. So I'm wondering if, you know, it would be advantageous for This group to draw up a budget of what we think we might need in the next 18, or at least in the next fiscal year from, you know, July 23 to July 22. 24. And have one of our representatives go before the council and request, um, you know, to have an actual line item in the budget for, um, you know, whatever printing we might need, whatever, um, you know, maybe if we're going to have some, you know, various meetings, uh, other, other materials, um, that we might put forward refreshments for meetings, whatever else. Um, so that we actually have something official that we can draw down from, uh, instead of, you know, asking for, you know, a few thousand here or there, a few hundred here or there, we actually have a budget and, you know, we can go forward with.

[Laurel Siegel]: Uh, Francis, do you have any insight into that process from, you know, the perspective of the city? Is this something that we should be pursuing or are we I'm not clear on how the mechanism for funding our costs for this.

[Frances Nwajei]: Unfortunately, I don't have any insight on that because I don't know if that's for committees that already have established stipends. The two committees that I have don't have stipends associated, so they don't have budget line items attached to them. And I did ask, but I've not received a clear response yet on that. folks that I asked were not aware of that.

[Unidentified]: Okay. All right.

[Frances Nwajei]: So, I mean, it's, I would say that whatever you feel that would be beneficial to moving the work forward, it is worth, like, making a request, even if it's generalized, so that the idea is already out there, that some funds are going to be needed, especially when it comes to translation. There is a limit on the amount of translation and the type of translation that the community liaisons can actually engage in.

[Laurel Siegel]: Would you be able to assist us then if we want to pursue that with what the proper procedures are for?

[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah, I can definitely find that out. Is it okay if I circle back to something that Ron said? Ron, you had mentioned some avenues of communication that you had received and you said something about a link. Could you just repeat that? I was trying to take notes.

[Ron Giovino]: No, what I was saying is that during the snow emergency, I get texts, emails, voicemails, Facebook notification. I'm just saying that kind of a flyer would be nice if we had a link that they could go to because it's, you know, you wouldn't put that document on a text unless there was a link to it. That's all I meant.

[Frances Nwajei]: Great, great. Okay, gotcha. Thank you. Okay.

[Laurel Siegel]: And we will certainly ask that this be added in some manner to the Facebook page. I'm sorry, not the Facebook page, the website page that we have on the city's website, that, you know, that there will be a link to that. And it'll also enable us to better use it for social media posts or however we might want to use it. Gene, you had a question?

[Jean Zotter]: Did you? Oh, no, I am more just on the budget I think you have to start with the mayor is my understanding I think city council can't add money to the budget. This is probably would be in the charter but they can only remove, they can only remove so the request should go to the mayor first. That's all.

[Laurel Siegel]: So we'll do some further research on this and also look into how quickly and what costs and mechanisms are for having this brochure or flyer translated. Go ahead, Frances.

[Frances Nwajei]: I know you mentioned possibly having an information session in June. Were you thinking about using the chambers asking so that I can start to look at what is already scheduled there and what dates are open and get back to you with that ahead of time?

[Laurel Siegel]: I would think that for this initial session, chambers would be the ideal location. So absolutely.

[Frances Nwajei]: So I'll work with the city clerk to see what's already on the calendar and what's open.

[Laurel Siegel]: Wonderful. Thank you. All right, so we'll work on fleshing out these details and getting the translation going so that hopefully, maybe by our next meeting, we can launch this brochure. Certainly, if we have things ready earlier than that, we'll communicate that out to the group and make it available. With that said, it is already 8 p.m., and so I'm gonna turn this back to Milva for the remainder of the meeting.

[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you, everyone, and thanks again to the call and center for your great information and guidance. It's time for public participation and I just want to share some guidelines. Any Medford resident may speak for up to three minutes, if all members of the public who wish to speak have spoken and time allows. Members of the public may speak for an additional three minutes. Speakers are asked to provide their full name and address for the record and to address only matters related to the city's charter. The committee's values support a welcoming community of mutual respect for all, and we value your perspective. As you share your perspective, please uphold these values. Okay, it looks like Bill Giglio would like to speak.

[Bill Giglio]: Hi.

[Unidentified]: Hi.

[Bill Giglio]: Hi. Thank you. Yep. Yep. My name is Bill Giglio, uh, Wynton street. Um, I'm actually glad that you just read that last part off. Um, so I've been in attendance, uh, for all, I think you guys have had three or four meetings so far. Um, I did apply to be on this board, uh, this panel, but I wasn't chosen, but however, um, the panel that was picked, you guys are doing a great job and you're more than capable of this task. Um, would I like to say about at the tail end of the last meeting, the human's right commission chair, Shelley had called in and truly diminished the good work you guys are doing with some explicit racist remarks and unnecessary comments that were flat out uncalled for and unnecessary. The city's never going to move forward with anything, you know, with anything with this type of nonsense continues. I was kind of disappointed that either chair didn't stop, you know, didn't step in to stop it, but I do understand you guys might've been caught off guard. I definitely did reach out to a couple, several city officials who I definitely have heard back from and I do appreciate that. Again, I wanna thank you guys for all you're doing and the volunteer time that you're putting in to make Medford a great place to live. Thank you again.

[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.

[Bill Giglio]: Yep.

[Unidentified]: Any other comments? Okay.

[Milva McDonald]: Then I think it's time to adjourn. Do we have a motion?

[Unidentified]: I motion to adjourn. I second.

[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor? Aye.

[Andreottola]: Aye.

[Milva McDonald]: Great.

[Andreottola]: Good night, everybody.

[Milva McDonald]: Good night. See you at our next meeting. Recording stopped.

[Andreottola]: Hi, everybody. Thank you.