[Adam Hurtubise]: Welcome, everyone.
[Frances Mitchell]: Recording in progress.
[Milva McDonald]: We still have a couple of committee members that haven't arrived, but I'm sure they will get here. Welcome to the Medford Charter Study Committee meeting. We have a pretty big agenda, so let's dive right in. First item is new member status, and I don't really have anything on that. I was hoping to, but I'm sure we will know soon. And I know you all know that the mayor has put out a call for applications, so we should have a few new members, hopefully, sooner rather than later, by our next meeting, I would think. And I sent around the minutes from the last meeting. Did everybody get those? How do they seem? Good. Okay. Does someone want to move to accept them?
[Moreshi]: I'll move to accept.
[Andreottola]: Motion to accept. Second.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. The next item is to revisit public participation procedures. When we had early on in the process, we had voted to save public participation until the end of meetings. And it's been suggested that we change, that we consider changing that to have public participation after each agenda discussion item. Any discussion on that?
[Andreottola]: I was just wondering, where did this suggestion come from?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it came from a couple of members.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I'll own up to that. OK. I made the suggestion because when we met a few weeks ago and we were talking about the survey, we got pretty in depth with it. One of the members of the public, Phyllis Morrison, was on the Zoom with us. And evidently, she has a considerable amount of experience with doing surveys and such. And I think everybody else could probably see her either nodding her head or shaking her head or whatever as we were hashing things out. And when she did get a chance to speak at the very end, I thought she had some really good suggestions. And I think that's kind of her forte. And there might be other things that come up as we're talking about other topics. I thought it would have been very helpful to have had her feedback and input and suggestions when we were talking about the topic at hand, rather than later when we had disposed of the topic. Um, and I think there may be other things that come up in the future that a member of the public may have some knowledge about, or just any sort of a deep discussion that. Uh, somebody may have, um, some strong opinions of, and I think being able to, you know, our job is to listen and having the opportunity to listen as the subject comes up. and get their input may change the trajectory of what we're talking about, may impact and help us to make decisions if we're going one way, maybe we should be going another way. So I think having the public feedback at the point where the topic is being discussed and not later, I think would be beneficial. That's my opinion and my two cents. Great, thank you. Danielle?
[Danielle Balocca]: I agree with you. I just want to second what Eunice is saying too. And also just I think about like accessibility for people if there's like an item on the agenda that they want to give feedback about and they can't stay for the whole meeting. Yeah. Thank you. Any other Ron? Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I just think just, you know, when we, you know, we're opening up this, it has to be open to everybody. So I think we really have the chairperson, Melva, has to really be on top of timing and relevance. and making it clear that if they're talking about something that's not on the table at that point, we just need to ask them to step back a little bit. But it's not, I agree with you. There's a lot of valuable stuff that is extremely important and I think relevant at the time we're discussing it. I 100% agree. It's just that it opens the door to, everybody has that same opportunity. So it's just gonna be a lot of policing to make sure that we're on topic all the time.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, I agree firmly with just what Roger said. He took stole my thunder a little bit here. There's no problem with people coming in, but if it just keeps going back and forth and back and forth to somebody, Oh, I've got to say this and that we'll never get through a meeting. I mean, we saw a little bit of it when we had the public meeting at city hall that night, they come back up and come back up, come back up. We really just, we, The timeframe established to how long someone has an opportunity to speak really has to be held to.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you.
[Jean Zotter]: Jean. I agree. That's all I wanted to say. But let's try to keep people to three minutes that we set out for the... Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. Sounds like we've had a good discussion. Does anybody wanna... HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Moderator, the COB.: : Add anything or does somebody want to HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Moderator, the COB.: : Make a motion.
[Moreshi]: I would just, if I could. And I think I'm just building on what Ron and more. He said, I would be concerned if we did have a lot of people about the mechanics of this, I think, grouping all the public comment at the end. maximizes efficiency. And I do think there are other opportunities for people to weigh in. And I don't know that anything is definite after a meeting or discussion. So there's always generally opportunities to incorporate feedback, even if it comes later. So I guess I don't feel particularly strongly about it, but I would be inclined to keep the comments at the end and together just to keep things moving and
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. So most people have weighed in. Do we want to table this? Do we want to make a motion to make a decision? Do we want to keep talking about it? What do we want to do?
[Eunice Browne]: Motion to modify our public participation policy to allow for public to provide feedback topic by topic with the rule of each person has three minutes to speak.
[Adam Hurtubise]: A second. Okay, um.
[Ron Giovino]: Can I just amend that for a second. What if we what if we held it to one minute or two minutes that gives them a chance to give us a taste of what it is we want to talk about and then we have right as committee members to ask questions, but you know we may want to look at keeping the three minutes at the end. and just making sure everybody is specific by saying one minute or two minutes, as opposed to, because once you open the door, you cannot shut the door on anybody. Everybody has that right. So I think if somebody had a chance to talk for a minute, maybe there's something of interest that somebody wants to follow up with. And then that's a different conversation than public participation in my mind. So something to consider.
[Milva McDonald]: I would like to, okay, I would first like to throw out a suggested amendment that we, that it's for topics not related to planning. For instance, this current topic, I would say is related to planning. So, cause we have a lot of topics on the agenda and opening up the floor after everyone. And most people are maybe not gonna be that, interested in talking about our planning. So maybe modify it slightly that way. And was that you, Anthony?
[Andreottola]: Yes, please. I was just thinking, we're going to be getting three more members that need to be brought up to speed on the committee. And when you have a full 11 people, there's already a lot of us involved in a discussion. And to keep bringing in more people, I mean, I think it's going to make it more difficult for us to get anything kind of, you know, we're not operating under like Robert's rule of law. I think it could get really, really messy. I'm not against it, but I'm just saying like maybe it's not the right time to modify it maybe down the road when we're really kind of trying to get more input from people like We're still kind of in the planning phase of this. We still haven't had our surveys out, and we still have new members coming in. Maybe we could just wait a month or two, and maybe in the fall when we're really kind of rolling, it might be a better time for something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: That's thanks for that feedback and I just want to make sure that we stay aware that Eunice made a motion and um right now we're discussing that's you know we're discussing the motion so if um and we could change you could ask to amend it but Danielle you wanted to say something.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah I guess I wonder about limiting like comments on each like topic like in total like 10 minutes of public comment after each like so that because I think what I've heard from lots of folks in this group is like the importance of public participation. And so if we're trying to be inclusive of that to like, I don't know, it seems a little contradictory to say we don't want this public comment at this point, but we do think it's important overall. So I don't know if there's some way of balancing like maybe one to two minutes per person with a total of 10 minutes for each topic or something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks. So I just want to get clear on how this motion has been modified. Does someone want to restate what they, someone want to, I just thought I saw a hand. Cause there was some, Ron, I think offered an amendment and then there was a little more discussion. So.
[Ron Giovino]: I would amend it to one minute.
[Milva McDonald]: during the meeting. Okay, so the current motion is to modify public participation. Sorry, I'm writing while I do this. To allow public comment of one to two minutes each after agenda topics other than planning, and then we keep the public participation at the end with three minutes. Is that what I'm hearing?
[Ron Giovino]: And the chairperson has the rule.
[Adam Hurtubise]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So Eunice, you made the initial motion. Are you comfortable with the way it's been modified?
[Eunice Browne]: I think Maury has his hand up and then I'd ask you to read it back.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, go ahead, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: I think also in that train, I think that train of thought Danielle was right. No, maybe this conversation as Ron was saying, I would say no more than a minute and no longer than 10 minutes on each topic of our agenda, you know, cut it down.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Uh, okay.
[Maury Carroll]: I'm just throwing that out there.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: Just on that point, I think I agree. I wish we could do 10 minutes on each subject, but I think we'd be in a violation of open meeting laws if we cut somebody off. There was a group of, you know, 20 people, which could happen. We can't say, okay, we're at 10 minutes, you 11 people go, you know, can't speak. So I think open meeting law is either yes or no on everybody speaking or nobody speaking. That's why I like it at a minute because it really controls them.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so shall I read the motion as it stands? Yeah, please. Motion to modify public participation policy to allow public comment of one to two minute per person after agenda topics other than planning topics. And the three minutes per person at the end of the meeting remains. And the chair to enforce keeping on topic and time.
[Adam Hurtubise]: That's okay with me. I think it's a good, happy medium.
[Milva McDonald]: So did someone second it?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I second.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So all in favor? Aye.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Roll call vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, never done that before. I just, I'll just say each of your names, right? Ron?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. John?
[Adam Hurtubise]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Anthony?
[Adam Hurtubise]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. And I think I'm going to vote no too. All right.
[Maury Carroll]: Eunice, I'm a no. Oh, did you get more? Nova, I'm a no.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were a yes.
[Maury Carroll]: No, I'm a no.
[Milva McDonald]: Can we do that one more time? This is a little bit of a problem with our, um, missing members because we're an even number.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Um, you may have a tie.
[Milva McDonald]: Wait, say again.
[Adam Hurtubise]: No. Ron. Yes. Uh, yes.
[Milva McDonald]: No. Yes. No. Yes. Anthony.
[Adam Hurtubise]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess I said no and I shouldn't change my vote. So that is a tie, so. I don't know what happens in a tie.
[Maury Carroll]: I mean, we're not supposed to have- I'll make a motion to table it until we have an item out and the other members are here. I'll make a motion to table.
[Milva McDonald]: Motion tabled. So motion tabled, okay. Okay. Thank you, everyone. Okay, so the next item is, okay, so I sent around a draft work plan. I call it aspirational. Did everyone take a look at it? I just think it's important for us to have a goal and it doesn't have to be set in stone, but I just wanna open it up for discussion and I know there may be some members who had some thoughts about process, so. Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, I guess I'll start. Are the Collins folks not on the call today?
[Milva McDonald]: No, they're taking the summer off. They'll be rejoining us in the fall.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay. So I'm just going to give you my thoughts. First of all, I think that the public meeting was very successful. I think that combined with you know, looking for new members has really started a great conversation. I've had a lot of good conversations about the charter. I just want to, I just think we need to step back a little bit to talk about process. So I have notes here, I'm just going to read to them. On March 2nd, we voted to create a new charter, not change the existing charter, create a new charter. My concern is that the charter, as the Collins folks will tell you, is a massive document. It also is a document that if anybody's tried to find rules and regulations for school committee, they really don't exist in our Medford charter. So in eight months of doing this, and I know we're all working extremely hard, We're, we're kind of like we're kind of stuck on the obvious big issues that we're looking at the city council has made their three amendments known. We've been talking, you know about, you know, leadership and the executive branch. I think the one thing that we owe the public in the process and the legacy of what the charter is supposed to be is that we have a true process. And to me, that process is about creating a document that citizens will be able to start their own process when they don't like something in the charter. I think that that's an extremely important document because when we do this, and when it's on a ballot, The way I envision it, the ballot's gonna have a charter. Do you want the charter or not? It's not necessarily, to me, in my mind, I think what we have to combine with the charter that we end up deciding on is we also need to give the citizens a process that if they see 90%, they like 90% of the charter on the day of election day, they can vote for that charter and know that tomorrow they can fill out this form and start this process. So I'm very much concerned about how this process goes and how we attack each issue. Because if we're creating something new, we need to really get deep, deep down and figure that out. So I'm suggesting tonight that we form two subcommittees. One subcommittee is to work with the Collins Center to really research the details of the existing charter in combination with the Mass General Laws. The second subcommittee would be to create that form of change where citizens can fill it out and, you know, The next level of this is to form a permanent charter review board where you would come and you'd have that discussion and give you a platform after we're done. It's not us, but maybe a seven panel group that would convene twice a year that you can fill out your form and have that discussion. So I think the best gift we give to the city is to have a process in the future that allows us to make changes. I think, you know, believe me, I know how hard we're all working. I think subcommittees may be the option that we can really start getting down and dirty in subcommittees and come up with a presentation to the committee of the whole that says two things. This is the charter, take a look at it and make your changes because we have to vote on that. And number two is to create an atmosphere for people to be able to vote on this charter, knowing that 75% of the charter, they're like 25%, they don't, but I'm not gonna vote no on the charter because of that. Because I also know that there's a process established by this committee that allows us to make changes much more frequently than every four decades. So, those are my thoughts. I think that when you look at the massive undertaking that we have, I think subcommittees are a great answer to get some of the grunt work done And I think we somehow, and I'm not, this is just, you know, my thoughts as I stare out my window and look at the water, but it's extremely important that we leave behind a process that people have that say, I don't like the way this is done. Well, here's the form. You tell us what the charter law is now, what you want the change to be, and then it's a simple form. What do you want? What's the charter rule? What's the law that you want to change? What item number? what's the change you want, and explain to us why you think that's an important change. I've also commented too that, although we're just beginning our interview process, a lot of the interviews, if you read the interviews, are talking about the problems that the city has and something that they wanna see changed. But there's very little in the interview that says, how about if we do it this way? And so we have to start creating a base for people to not only just complain, because it's easy to find the problem, it's really hard to find the solution. that interaction. So those are my thoughts. I wanted to be brief, but those are my thoughts, and I think we can have a real positive impact into the future of what the charter does.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Jean?
[Jean Zotter]: Well, I want to thank you, Milva, for pulling together a work plan. I think I wanted to see one for a while. So I appreciate seeing like a timeline, at least something we can work off of and sort of figure out if we can do this or not, or at least have some goals for ourselves to think through. For the public engagement piece, my vision would be that fall winter period when we're starting to get into the, details of what the charter looks like that we continue our public engagement and not just view these two months as our public engagement but continue through those pieces, maybe even going to the public on particular sections that we want to hold a hearing on. And the focus groups, which I'm talking about later, won't be able to happen until the fall. So I just wanted to throw that out. As far as what you were saying, Ron, I know there's two subcommittees already proposed. One is looking at like writing the ordinance or writing the legislation, which could do what you're saying for the first piece, which is comparing it to what the current charter is, I think you're suggesting. The other piece, I don't really understand what the board would do, but that could be something that would be in the last section of the charter, which is really how do we keep the charter going? What are the processes to review it? We could consider something there. Those are, so thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Danielle.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I think I guess I agree around that there's like that provision for like how do folks like voice what they want to change in the future. That seems like it's part of what we would decide and when we're deciding about the charter. I thought that what the call center had done was like compile what our charter looks like and what state law is, I do like. I, I think that like there's, we are able like as this group to have some confidence and like what we, and like the sort of thoughts we have about what the charter could look like and like presenting that to the public and sort of seeing what I think along the way. It's been eight months and we haven't like talked really that directly about many of these questions that we have about the charter so I would like to see like us getting into some of that conversation which is I'm grateful for mobile for making that this sort of timeline, but I feel like we're all in agreement about the elements that we want to include and getting started on it. If the subcommittees are what helps that, I think that's a great idea. But I think we are also members of the public. So our thoughts, I think, are also important in how we translate what we're hearing in these interviews to what we want to see happen with the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Eunice and then John. Yeah, thanks.
[Eunice Browne]: Ron mentioned something about the enormity of the task and that we voted back in March to create a new charter. I think what we're doing, we're not going at this from the first floor. We're going at this, we're starting in the basement, the foundation. And so as I said before, it's a tremendous amount of work. And I don't think that we've hit upon some of the key elements. Maybe I'm off base here, but we've talked about the executive branch. We're going to talk more about it tonight. We've talked about the city council. I don't think we've taken a dive into the school committee section yet at all. I don't think we've taken a dive into the budget process either. And I'm sure that that's going to take a few meetings to get through and talk about and hash out. I think as far as, you know, the executive branch, which we'll talk about later, I found it very interesting to read the, comments from in the interview that you guys had with Chiefs of Staff Nina Nazarian about the executive branch. So I think we need to be paying some close attention to what she has to say. And then, you know, we've only just begun getting public feedback, aside from, you know, the public being a part of our meetings, we've had our one session, we've going to get the survey out soon. We'll have other focus groups, all the other things that are coming. And then the other thing that struck me, you know, pardon me for looking away to my desktop here. But the hashing out, you know, January, February of next year, hashing out and drafting the final report, that's going to take a tremendous amount of time. And you've got the you know, subcommittee for the language part. I had an experience a number of years ago writing a set of bylaws for an alumni association for my high school alma mater. And I took a look at it today. It was six pages and there were, you know, about eight of us that sat around a table every couple of weeks working on it. And when you write something like that or this is so much more impactful what we're doing, every word matters. And you might spend, we would spend, you know, an hour and a half or two hours on a Tuesday night and get through literally five sentences because every word matters. And what we're doing here is leaving a legacy to the city of Medford and I think that that's going to take a tremendous amount of time. So I think it's great to have goals. As you said, it's aspirational. I think, you know, I'm looking at thinking this is at least tacking on another three months to this before we're ready for prime time. because we have so much to do. And the public engagement part is we need to give that its due. And if that takes three, four, if we start in the fall with some other sessions and focus groups and stuff, and that takes us to Christmas and we break for the holidays, we might wanna pick some of that back up in January, depending upon where we left off. And as Phyllis pointed out, when we talked a few weeks ago, as a member of the public, using some of the survey demographics to find out where we're not hitting, are there components of the community, either via age range or ethnicity or something else that we're not drawing in to contribute to what we're doing. So then we have to switch gears and figure out if there's a way that we can reach out to any particular group that's missing. So it's aspirational. We have goals, but I think we need to add a few months to this. Thanks, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Dawn.
[Moreshi]: I just wanted to say, if I understood the intent of your work, Milva, correctly, and thank you for doing that, I actually think it's exactly what I would suggest that we do, because we do have a big task. A charter is 10 articles, but if we break it down, mayor or city manager, if we want, legislative, school committee, budget process, et cetera, it's gonna move. We do it a chunk at a time. And I think having subcommittees focused on those and then developing a draft for the whole committee to review, provide substantive input with larger context from the subcommittee, from our outside help, I think is the best way to actually, to wrestle with the complexity here. I think we need something to react against in order to come up with how we want the city council to work, how we want the executive to relate to it and so on. Um, and I think public input is really important and everyone's touched on that, but I think having the public react to something really makes it useful. You know, uh, to a certain point, asking general abstract questions, um, isn't going to give us a lot. I think we have to give them something. So I think if we could come up with draft city council and discuss it internally, and then that's subject to a hearing of its own potentially. or some other opportunity for impact, I think would go a lot further than just sort of asking the public what it thinks. So if, again, if I understood you correctly, I think that's exactly what we should do.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, John. So I just wanna just to summarize kind of what the vision is or what my vision was when I made the work plan. just want to point out, if we were an elected commission, we would have 18 months. And currently the target end date is about 15 to 16 months. So, you know, we maybe will need to extend it somewhat, but my hope was that while we don't have the call-in center for the summer, they're going to rejoin us in the fall, that we would take time and hash out sort of the sort of overarching issues. That's why we're going to do executive branch tonight. Um, next month, um, well, we can address city council and not necessarily the details, but just kind of the overarching. And then if we make tentative decisions, then, uh, the kinds of meetings John was talking about that when we have our next public engagement sessions, listening sessions, um, we can choose to focus them or not, depending on where we're at. Um, so even, you know, we will talk about these things. We'll maybe take the pulse of where the committee is at, but it doesn't mean we're making hard and fast decisions. But we'll, we'll make, we'll get enough of a sense of where we're at to get things to, to, to start at, start, um, assigning the subcommittees. And then those subcommittees can hash out language and then we can then dig into the details. And if it turns out that we need to change course at that point, we can. Um, Ron, um, the issue of the, um, The, uh, including, uh, creating a process. I mean, that is, that can, that will be addressed in the charter. I mean, I think in general, that's addressed by P by whether or not you want to add periodic charter review into the charter. Um, but if you have other ideas, we can definitely talk about that when we get to that section. Um, So, um, Ron, go ahead.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I hear what everybody is saying. I just think that as this project goes forward, we're going to realize the things that we just don't know. And I think that kind of a document allows us to say, well, the tax collector department really hates this rule. Well, when would we, would we necessarily get that if we couldn't do, you know, have this form available that they can not just say, I don't like it this way. They can say, here's the, here's the law we have to follow. Here's why I want to change. That's all. That was my suggestion. The other thing too, and I was wishing the Collins Center would be here is the ability, do we have an ability to put a non-binding amendment on the, the election in November. And I say that because some of the major issues like the mayor, what kind of mayor, how long the mayor at large, it's kind of like a formal survey of people who are coming to vote. I would just like to explore with them if we have an ability to put a non-binding referendum out there that doesn't hold any weight other than we hear from the people. It's just an advantage for us to know that, well, in November, people voted to have a mayor, people voted for a year term, and people want at large for this. I just think it's an opportunity that we should look at.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't believe that as a body we can put a ballot question on, but as a group, I mean, there is a way for a group of citizens, I believe, to do that. I could be wrong. If somebody wants to research this, they can, but as a body, I don't think we can.
[Moreshi]: They can. But I think I'd have to look at the language. I don't, and I'm sorry to cut you off, but non-binding public policy questions are permitted. They're generally by the state rep or state senate district. So we'd have to look and see whether they could relate to a city specific matter. That's a question I don't know.
[Andreottola]: I can take that. I believe we got a legal opinion from the mayor a while ago. And it could be done, but the time is running out. I actually brought this up at one of our first meetings. And the committee chose not to pursue it or to kind of really get to explore it. And I think the time is getting late. It would have to really be done. I also think it would conflict with, you know, we don't know the city council may be also putting their three questions down as non-binding. I heard that that was still a possibility. I read it somewhere, but I think had we done it earlier, it might've been something that we could have planned for, but I don't think it's, I think that ship has sailed at this point. Uh, but you know, you can, as a citizen, I believe, uh, you have to get 10 signatures and, uh, and bring them to the election office and you can't have a put on, on the ballot. Or you can go in front of the city council with it and ask them to have it put on the ballot.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Andreottola]: Yeah. And I think it's 45 days before the election. Something I could be wrong on the days, but it's it's it's 45 sticks out of my mind, but it's section chapter 53.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, John. Gene, you have something to say?
[Jean Zotter]: I just wanted to clarify the process that I thought we were using, which was to go to the city council mayor. And then the city council would create the charter ordinance that would then go to the mayor for signature and then could be mean you mean our final report.
[Milva McDonald]: and the draft, whatever draft charter we submit, yeah. It will go before the city council and the city council and the mayor would both have to approve it and then it would go to the state house as a home rule petition. And then if passed, it would go to the voters. And if it all went through, it would be known as a special acts charter.
[Jean Zotter]: There's one option when we met with Zach, Milva and I met with Zach, we talked about potentially putting it as a non-binding resolution before it went to the legislature to show that there was widespread city support, even though we're not required to have it before it goes to the legislature. But since it's been denied in the past, That was one thing we talked, that is an option, but I don't know if the timeline Anthony was mentioning applies to that avenue.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't, that wouldn't be for this November anyway, cause we don't have a draft charter.
[Jean Zotter]: Right. It would be in. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Anthony wanted it this. Anthony, you wanted this.
[Andreottola]: I just want, I wanted to just put some of the basic questions on, on just for, you know, people want to, you know, award representation or do they want whatever, you know, just to get a sense of, you know, what the community was. Okay. was looking for, but we're doing it through surveys and public participation now. So I think we already started a course, you know, and that maybe it's, you know, we should just kind of stick to it. And I just have a question and, you know, just we're in the process of drafting a charter, a complete new charter. When it goes to the city council, The city council, am I correct, that city council can take pieces of it, take it in its entirety, discard what we do, or it's not just a vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I think that's right. That's my understanding.
[Andreottola]: So, you know, when a lot of the stuff that, you know, we're getting into like detail, like where, you know, I think we really need to focus just on the general stuff because it's, we're not the final, we're really not the final say.
[Milva McDonald]: That's right.
[Andreottola]: And what this charter's gonna be.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Andreottola]: And if the city council wants, you know, 17 city councilors, that's what's gonna go on the, that's what's gonna go on the charter. I think we have to understand that. And that's why the input we get from the community is so important that we can go to the city council and say, well, the citizens want this. And I really think that's where our focus needs to be right now.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. And when we submit it and we write a final report, it will include all the arguments and the rationale for the decisions that we made and the way we laid it out. And much of that will be based on public feedback, but I imagine it will be based on other things as well. Okay, thanks everyone. We don't really have a decision to make on the work plan. I think we got a lot of good feedback and And I think, I didn't hear any big opposition to the sort of general process laid out in it. Okay, so moving from, on the subject of public participation, the survey, we definitely, we shortened it by quite a bit, which I think was probably the right thing to do. And we, based on last meeting's discussion, we added the ranked issues section. So, does anybody want me to, has everyone looked at it or? Okay, so where do people think we're at now with the survey?
[Andreottola]: I have just one question. And on the survey, I kind of liked it. Just on the ranking, just the question of balance of power. I think that's kind of a loaded kind of question to ask the public to rank. Because of course, everybody wants there to be a balance of power. But it's almost kind of like saying, well, we don't have a balance of power now. And we haven't really kind of got into that yet. What is the proper balance of power? Is it important? I'm not sure. Maybe it is, but I don't know who is supposed to have the power in a city structured like Medford. Do we, you know, is it our job to kind of lean, you know, shift the power, you know? And what are we asking people when we ask them to rank balance of power?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're just, my understanding is we're just asking them, the ranking question is just a list of issues and they're ranking what's most important to them. So if they're very concerned with balance of power, they would put that as maybe one top I don't know. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't
[Eunice Browne]: In terms of the first question there, and again, I'm looking at my desktop, what type of government would be best for Medford? Mayor slash council, city manager versus council, not sure, no opinion. I think a large part of Medford may not understand or know that there's another option besides the mayor council option. So I think asking them that question without
[Milva McDonald]: Um, I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it I don't think that we can in a survey, I don't personally think we can in the survey get into pros and cons and it would be really hard to do it in a neutral way, I think, but I don't know.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, you know, that's probably not the place for it. But again, I think if, you know, if I was somebody, you know, picking up this survey at, you know, some event, you know, over the course of the summer or the fall or something like that, I wouldn't, you know, I might not know that there was another option and, oh, okay, there is another option. So what, you know, why is one better than the other? You know, maybe the other option is better, but I don't really know anything about it. So I guess that's where then you answer no, not sure, no opinion. Yeah, that was my first thought. And then just a couple of others in the top issues, One of them, one that came to mind was recall mechanisms for elected officials. Okay, and then just two other quick things in the demographic section. I noticed that there was a home. tick off box for on the age under 18. Are we distributing this to students?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I would think it would be awesome if some high school students filled it out. But actually, just to speak to the demographic section, I'm hoping to ask the Board of Health to help with the survey. And I think they have done surveys before. And so my hope is that I can take whatever demographic sections they've used in surveys before. I should have written that into the draft and I apologize. So that was my thought about demographics because I realized kind of halfway through that I didn't really know enough to create a demographic section for a survey myself.
[Ron Giovino]: It is actually in the draft.
[Eunice Browne]: That I was going to talk to the board of health. And then the other, the last thing is, you know, how long have you lived in Medford? And I think I would somehow, I'd be very interested in the answer as we get to that. Do we do that in five year increments? Do we do that in 10 year increments? Again, maybe the board of health will, you know, have something to say about that. I'd be very interested to see, you know, I kind of, weight it out for myself, doing the 0 to 5, 6 to 10, 11 to 15, and so on. You don't want too many choices. And when I got to the sixth choice, I think it was 25 years plus. But I would actually be more interested in people that are getting, seeing how many people respond that have been here 30 to 40 years, 40 to 50, and then maybe the 50 plus, you know, category. So finding a way to finesse that so that we're getting the opinions. And I think in a lot of cases, the opinions of some of the younger, newer residents might be different than the opinions of the, older, longer term residents. So finding a way to all that information would be interesting and important. Okay.
[Andreottola]: I would, I would argue that that's maybe a question we shouldn't ask just because I think in taking a survey like that, I wouldn't want to, you know, kind of, are they trying to get, you know, the opinion of people who've been here a long time, or does it matter, I've just lived here six months, or, you know, what are you going to do with that information? You know, do you wait, you know, like people who've lived here a long time, what they, opinions matters more than people who've lived here less or vice versa. You know, I think we should just ask, in a way, just ask people their age just in general, if they want to give their age and not ask about how long they live in Medford, you know, just to kind of, you know, have kind of make the survey seem very neutral, you know, for, you know, who we're trying to solicit for opinions.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Gene and then Danielle, and then Maury.
[Jean Zotter]: Just to respond to Eunice's concern that people may not know what some of the terms are, or you could, it would make the survey a little longer, but you could add a text box after each question to say, tell us more. If you want, please tell us more. And then someone could type in there, I don't know what a city manager is, or I don't understand enough. It would be hard to do the pros and cons, I think, in a way that would be helpful in the survey. But that's a way to capture some of the feedback or understand the nuances of each question, if that would be helpful.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Thanks, Jean. Danielle?
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, so I was going to say, maybe you'll talk about this later with the focus groups, but if we wanted to also include in that line about providing your information. If we wanted to say, could we contact you for a focus group? And then also, I tend to agree with Anthony about the time in Medford, but also, do we know if like the questions will be like connected in how we see them. So would we be able to say like this person who's this age and lived here for this long answered these ways or is it just kind of like we get an idea of the range of how long people have lived here that have answered the question or like I don't know if we know if those are connected in like the results.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point. I'm guessing, maybe not, but I don't know. We are gonna use whatever the city uses to distribute surveys and gather the results. So I, yeah, I don't really know.
[Andreottola]: I just like to say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: You wanna go ahead, Anthony, and then we'll hear.
[Andreottola]: I just, you know, and after our last meeting, you know, I started having flashbacks to, statistical research in grad school, when I'm sorry the lady, the woman was speaking, you know, who did some surveys and stuff. I remember a professor telling me, you know, you really have to try to make your surveys clean if you want to gather, you know, the data to, you know, to be able to analyze it, to get, you know, to have it be meaningful. I remember all like the, you know, the data has to have, you know, so it'll be valid. And, you know, you have to have the right amount of people, the right group. And it, the way we're asking questions is making it, it's going to make it very complicated. to actually, you know, extrapolate, you know, to analyze the data so you can really say something, have something to give to the city council, say, hey, you know, the people want this and we, you know, we have the data to, you know, to back it up. I think that's gonna be important that the survey has, you know, is clean, that, you know, we're not asking like, all different questions that we're going to have thousands of different answers.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I want to hear more about how you would define clean, but first I want Maury to speak because he says hand up.
[Maury Carroll]: Thank you. I kind of like the idea, the question that, and I'm going to follow up on what Danielle said because that's where I was going that way to give us some sort of a comparison of how long someone has lived in the city compared to the kind of answers they're giving us. And, you know, you'll have to have an opportunity if they're relatively, let's say within the last 10 years or 15 years in there, in a certain age bracket, more than likely did move from another area so forth. So they have experience from other cities and towns that maybe they previously were in. And I think that kind of information may be, you know, extremely vital to us of looking and trying to put it all together of, you know, this is what people that are younger and They've only been in the city for, like I said, 10 years or so. That gives you an opportunity to compare. It's compared to someone that's just gone through the mill that's been here for 40, 50, 60 years. It's just business as usual. So I kind of like keeping it in there and having the ability to kind of look at the age bracket and compare it to the length of residency.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Maury.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, just quickly, I think not sure no opinion or two very valuable valuable data responses. So I'd like to leave those in there. As far as the demographics goes, I would suggest that there'd be a line in there that you do not want to give that information. So that way it leaves it open. So nobody has to do it. And to Danielle's point, I think it's a great idea to get them to do a focus, but then you lose the anonymity of the survey when they have to fill in a name and how to be contacts. I don't know how we get to that point other than to say, you know, send an email here if you're interested in focus groups. But just, I think the survey, to Anthony's clean point, not having a name on there at any point really is a good comfort zone. Those are my three points.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, great. So I want to just sort of go through what I've heard about the sort of specific issues that we might want to tweak in the survey. But before we do that, I feel like there's a bigger sort of more overarching concern that Anthony expressed about the whole approach of the survey. So I just want to hear more about why you think it's not clean and what you think would make it more clean.
[Andreottola]: Well, like I said, I'm just having minor flashbacks to grad school and doing my research. But it's going to be randomized. So you want to just get a sense of the population of the city of Medford. But now you're trying to break it down into like, very small categories, old people, people who've lived here a long time, people who've lived here a little bit of time, like you're going to need to do like a lot of, you know, to have that be valid and to have it, you know, be reliable, you're going to have to do a lot of surveys. And you're going to really have to, you know, crunch them using kind of a formula and analyze it. And, you know, I haven't done that in years. I don't have the bandwidth to do it. And I don't know if other people on the committee have ever done that kind of thing, but you can't just write something down because you get some numbers and you just kind of guess that they mean something. You have to analyze it and you have to follow certain rules. believe me, I forgotten half of them. But if you guys are up to it, you know, God bless you. But you're taking on like it by doing it the way you want to, the path you're going, it's going to be a lot of work. And I hope that you're able to get the information that you're trying to, that you're striving for. But I think it'll be very difficult, you know, by the way we're doing it.
[Milva McDonald]: So if I hear you, you're talking specifically about the demographics section?
[Andreottola]: Not the demographics, just the way you're asking the questions. You know, with the maybes and opinion, like, I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, okay. So you'd rather have yes or no?
[Andreottola]: Well, yeah, if you want clean, if you just want, you know, if you just, it depends on what you want. You know, if you're just, trying to come up with a narrative and say, this is what we think the people of Medford want. Or if you really want to say, hey, these are the numbers, and this is how we did the survey, and this is how many people we talked to, and break it down by who said what. That's a lot of work. And, you know, if you're going to go that way, I suggest you try to get a Tufts grad student or a Tufts professor to help you do, help us do the survey.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Jean.
[Jean Zotter]: I have done research. I've done NIH research, but this isn't like a randomized control trial that we're doing. So I think Anthony, the level of, results that you're expecting is not sort of the purpose of our survey. I see the survey as one of our many methods of collecting input into what the charter should be. It doesn't have to be, you know, representative I mean, you could do statistical analysis to say, okay, if we got 10% and looked at our demographics, I don't think we're gonna be able to do that. I just think we want as many methods to get input as we can, and we should get the word out about the survey, but I don't want us to get so bogged down in making this like a research type survey that we get lost and don't get it out in time. That would be my, Because we're not just doing the survey we're doing focus groups are doing public hearings we're doing interviews. So we have a lot of methods and when we do our report we can say these are the limitations of our survey. That's often what you do is you say you know we only reached 5% of the city residents seemed like we were heavily weighted with the older adults like I've. work on things like that. So I think that we can say what the limitations are of the things that we've done. I just don't, I caution us to not try to be too perfect that we end up not doing all these methods. Because the more methods we have, the more broad opinions we get, and that will be helpful in our work.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'd like to just wrap up this survey section. I wanna just move forward and be able to put out the survey after this meeting. So the issues that came up were in terms of the ranking list. Someone wanted to add an item on recall provisions for elected officials. And there was a question about whether we should remove balance of power from that list. So, Um, I'm fine with adding the recall provision if there's any. I mean, we don't, unless somebody has an objection, um, to just add that to the list and see how it gets ranked as an issue. Um, okay. And, and I, and in terms of balance of power, do people feel like that needs to be on there? I feel like it's an issue that we've been hearing about a lot. So I feel like it's.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I think it makes sense to keep it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, okay. And the demographics, um, we're going to, there was a suggestion to include prefer not to say, which I think is a good one, but as I said, I'm hoping, um, I can get more guidance on that from the health department. Danielle's suggestion about the, um, focus groups. We can maybe do it in an anonymous way that Ron suggested. If you'd like to participate in a focus group, email us at blah, blah, blah. Um, Okay, so beyond, did I forget anything that's important that we need to change in the survey or include in the survey? Okay, so can we, should we vote on moving forward with the survey?
[Eunice Browne]: One question, Melva. Now that we've kind of agreed on what we have, are you going to be running it by somebody who's a bit more expert in surveys than any of us are just to make sure that, you know, we haven't made like a glaring error?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the health department is gonna help. And so I'm sure if they see something that's like, oh, this is never gonna work, they'll tell me. Okay. So I'll move forward with the health department then. Great. Thanks everybody. Okay. Now, The next is our deliberation on the executive branch. I think that's next. Yeah. So I sent around some materials. One was the chart that we had, it was just sort of revisiting what we had gotten from the Collins Center. And the other was, A sheet that came from a nonprofit organization out of Washington state that helps municipalities with issues and I and I thought it was just an interesting layout of pros and cons. Um, and then the other, I don't, I think I left the national civic league modern charter in there. It didn't necessarily, um, they, they actually, I don't know, has anybody ever looked at that before the national civic leagues model charter? So they actually recommend city manager and there was a whole argument in there for why they do. And that was why I put that there. Um, and also just for historical reference, the articles from, um, the Medford Mercury in 1986 when Medford switched from city manager to mayor. So those are the materials that I thought would be pertinent to the discussion and I'll just open up the floor. Oh, let me just also say, I also put in the deliberation planning handout what our current charter says. And, um, as far as community engagement reference information so far, all we've heard is a preference for keeping the mayor, but it's a very limited amount of data at this point. And so far in the interviews, nobody has expressed a desire to switch to city manager. So, um, So, and let's open it up to thoughts. What are people's thoughts on this?
[Andreottola]: Well, I just remember what the folks from the call center said about city managers being problematic with their very far and few in between people who have the skills and who are available to be city managers. And there's a shortage and they're often far more expensive than a mayor. And they kind of sold me on it being not a very good idea. And I just wanted to remind people of what they had said to us. That's it.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. John and then Danielle.
[Moreshi]: I have a few thoughts. I agree with what was just said. That was one of the things I want to bring up. So thank you. The other thing is I do like having a mayor. I do think there's community aspect to it that people like, you know, rallying around one person. In terms of qualifications, people do hire staff. So to the extent we're worried about that, I think it's manageable. And as was just pointed out, city managers It's not easy to hire one, so we might run into that problem anyway. I think transition from current practice to now, it's worth keeping a mayor in mind. If we're talking about something that people embrace and adopt, deviating too far from what we currently do might be a red flag. Change is difficult. And I had another point and I forget what it was. Oh, I do think there's always a real inclination, I totally get it, to take politics out of government. And I think when we think about what that means, we're thinking about sort of corruption favoritism, a hundred percent, we get that stuff out. But, you know, deciding how to prioritize things, that's politics too. And I think it's important to have those things. And I think an elected mayor does that. So I just say I like having elected mayor and those are my reasons.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Danielle.
[Danielle Balocca]: I won't talk for too long, because I just want to echo pretty much what John said. I think the elected element of having a mayor and sort of a community-based position, I do appreciate.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. Eunice?
[Eunice Browne]: I see pluses and minuses, definitely, to both. I think my biggest concern, and I think I mentioned it when we hit on this months ago, Mayor, the mayor gets elected, does the mayor actually have the skill set to run a multi-million dollar corporation, which is essentially what a city is. But I think in reading through what you sent us, the part about, you know, I think it was Daniela, somebody mentioned, or John, You know, they hire the department heads certainly that are allegedly skilled in their area of expertise, but also the point of hiring a chief administrative officer to balance any shortcomings that the mayor might have, I think is key. And I think that kind of offsets the idea that a city manager would come in with allegedly the skillset to manage a city. But if you have the mayor and then a chief administrative officer, or maybe the chief of staff that we have now, or something like that. But I also think that we need to be, and we'll get into this with the interviews, is the idea of what piece, what, what form of government works best for Medford, based upon, and I think, you know, based upon some of the interviews that have been held already, especially those of the staff in the executive office, what, given where we are now with the issues and problems that we face, which largely stem from having had a mayor for 30 years. We need to pay attention to the fact that we need to consider a form of government where we're not in that predicament again. I suppose term limits could probably take care of that in one fell swoop. But I think we need to be listening closely to you know, what our current executive branches is saying about the issues and challenges they're facing in terms of what might work best for the city.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. Anybody else? Jean?
[Jean Zotter]: I am personally more in favor of mayor versus city manager. Given personal experience I had when I worked at the state and gave significant funding to a city that had a city manager and found it, I think the argument for city manager is that it takes it out of politics. My experience was that the city manager was responsive to a city council that was very divided. and the staff and the city that were running the program that we were funding felt unsupported by the city manager who was trying to manage the divided city council. And so it didn't seem more effective to me, but that was one city. At the same time, I think one of the biggest comments we've gotten from people that we've heard from so far is that they feel like the balance of power is not that there isn't a good balance of power in the city. And that is one way to address the balance of power is to have a city manager who's responsive to city council. There are other ways to balance power in the city that if we don't go in the direction of the city manager, I think we should explore other ways You mentioned term limits might be one. There are other options to have more of a balance of power that we should consider but city manager might address some of the concerns from residents. It's just my experience is it didn't really make city government more effective. That would be my worry, especially if your city council is very divided. City manager may not really know how to respond to divided city council in a way to run programs. But that was just one city. I did research Arlington, Amherst, a lot of places do have city managers, and I don't know that they're not being effective. And I'd be very curious to know why it seemed like people were very unhappy with Medford when it had a city manager, and that's why we went to the strong mayor. And I don't, like the articles you sent didn't really say what the issues were and why we switched. And it'd be good to know what the history is on that, if anybody here knows.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe somebody does, but Ron, let me hear from you.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, just quickly, I'm prepared to vote on whether we go manager or mayor, but I also, you know, there are so many subsets to this that we can, like Jean says, redefine that position. But, you know, as far as, you know, I think we've, I think we've had a lot of input as to understanding it. And I think there's a lot of tweaking we can do in term limits and powers and whatnot, but mayor versus city manager seems, for me personally, is a cut and dry. I'm voting mayor through this whole process, and I would like to get into the more details of defining those roles and powers.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks. So we've heard from a lot of people, and I'm hearing sort of an overwhelming sense in the committee right now that mayor is the way to stay. I just wanted to reflect back on a point that John made that I think is really important, not just for this discussion, but for all the discussions we'll be having, which is that, you know, we, the reason we decided to create a new charter is because the charter is almost non-existent. It's a two pages and it interacts with all these state laws and special acts, but at the same time, Um, having a ton of change might, might be hard, might be hard for, um, for us to get, get through. So, and this is just kind of the first example of, um, a major issue that we faced that if, if, if there was, um, a feeling among the committee that, oh, maybe we should switch to city manager, that would be a major change. Um, I'm not hearing it. So, um, I think. I don't know, I mean, I think if we do vote tonight, I mean, I think it would, it will just need to be a tentative vote. I'm also hearing that there's a lot of pieces that are gonna interact with this decision while there's a strong preference to maybe stay with mayor. There's also a lot of details around that, like balance of power, like avoiding an entrenched situation that would be addressed down the line for sure. in our future discussions. So, and we also clearly, if we did a survey and we found out that like a thousand people answered the survey and 90% of them said city manager, then we can always come back and revisit it. But not sure that that will happen, but we can leave ourselves open to that. So if we did vote, I think I would suggest that it would be a sort of a tentative decision, but it would be a good step in the right direction of, being able to get into some of those other issues that have come up in this discussion.
[Eunice Browne]: So, yeah, I think you're right, Melva. I think, you know, we need, we're at a stalemate if we don't know which way we're going to go in terms of everything else that we have to do. because each path is a bit different. But again, I think you're right. I mean, we have to open ourselves up to, you know, there's a sector of the city that has experienced both forms of government, but I think there's a larger swath of the city at this point that has only experienced the mayor council form of government. But I think we have to be prepared for the fact that maybe after people, you know, some surveys go out, we do some focus groups and other things and people learn about the two different types that, you know, maybe, maybe the city will surprise us and, you know, we'll have, you know, 90% of the people telling us we need to go in a different direction. Yeah, we have to. do something now. And I just like to sit here or we go one way or the other. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, was that you?
[Andreottola]: I just like to say I'm old enough to remember the the city manager. Yeah. And, and, you know, if you think there's a lot of dysfunction, and, and, you know, the, I won't even say what, what branch of government, it was worse. And there was a lot of opportunity for nepotism and different forms of minor corruption in the city. And the city manager was beholden to the city council. And it really wasn't good. And a lot of the city managers also at the time that they were planning on building the old high school, which was the new high school when I was coming up. I'd like to just put it in the form of a motion that we table the discussion about sitting manager until we are motivated by the public to re-engage with it and kind of not like have a tentative vote on continuing to explore, uh, you know, the role of the mayor, but not a city manager, unless people, uh, you know, kind of compel us to do that. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. So, um, that, thank you for that motion. Um, I just want to hear from Maury before we get, look for it.
[Maury Carroll]: So I'm sorry. That's okay. That's quite all right, Anthony. Thank you. As Anthony has, I lived through both forms of government here for years. And I'm going to reiterate what Anthony said there. The city manager, he answered to the city council, because the city council elected him. Whatever they wanted, the majority, four out of seven, wanted that. That's how it went. And it was like the old boy club, let's whip them on Tuesday night and then all go out and have dinner and drinks afterwards. And it was strictly as the strong survived. This way, and you had nobody that's totally accountable because you couldn't, the public had no input in electing the person who was running the city. You know, this way, the accountability is there, whether it's two years, three years, four year terms of the mayor, but certainly if the public and the community doesn't go along with the way the direction the city is going in, you can go to the polls and you can voice your opinion, where you have no say in a city manager type government.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thanks. Okay, so I just wanna say what I understand the motion to be by Anthony, that we continue deliberations on mayor as executive branch and table discussion of city manager unless public data steers us back to it. Does somebody?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I second it. I'll second, yeah, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: And are we all in favor? Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. Great work, so we made a big step forward, I think.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yay!
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so interviews. Have I shared the folder with everybody? I feel like Anthony, you can't access the Google folder necessarily, right? So I'm trying to send them to you. I'm sending them to you individually, but has everyone been able to access the Google folder? And that's where we're dropping all the sort of reports from the interviews. Um, and so far we've done Nina Nazarian, Zach bears, the mayor, uh, Jenny Graham, Jenny Graham. Thank you. And Alicia hunt, but I haven't finished that report yet. It'll be in the folder soon. Um, so what I guess I'm, so I just, I wanted to sort of touch base on that. Um, make sure everybody has access to those that ask if there's any questions on any of the reports. And then I also just wanted to see how the scheduling of the interviews is going. And if anybody's heard back from anybody, Maureen and I are gonna be talking with the city clerk soon. That's the only one right now that I have currently on the books. Um, how, how, and Nicole hopefully is going to get back to Danielle soon. Hopefully. Um, Ron, have you heard from any of the other city councilors?
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I've updated the spreadsheet. I have, I have Kit. Kit Collins is scheduled. Um, Justin saying, uh, George Scarpelli, Rick Caraviello are all wait while we waited for the holiday to pass the budget and the holiday to pass. So, uh, we'll be having those in the next couple of weeks.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And have you heard from Adam Knight and not yet?
[Ron Giovino]: Nope.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.
[Eunice Browne]: Um, and what about to, um, Mia and Kathy and, um, uh, Jean and I are going to do those together sometime in the next, within the next month.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Mia and Kathy, you're doing right. Okay. Great. And Anthony was going to, at some point, get in touch with Paul Rousseau, I believe.
[Andreottola]: I plan on doing that this week, and the superintendent of schools. And I'll reach out to him over once I connect with them.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, because I'm going to join you for that one? Yeah. If anybody doesn't have a buddy for the interview, I'm happy to be that person. Anthony, I also had you down as superintendent.
[Andreottola]: Right. I'm reaching out there as well. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And I've reached out to the CFO a couple of times on email, and I think I'm going to actually pick up the phone because I actually think the CFO is very important to talk to other people. I mean, so what we don't have anybody signed up to talk with a couple of school committee members. I mean, we could talk to every school committee member if we have the bandwidth to do it. I don't know. Um, if anybody is interested, the people that we don't have scheduled are Sharon Hayes and Melanie McLaughlin. Um, and then the other positions that. I mean, elections manager is probably an important person to talk to. There is an election section in the charter. We haven't gotten to it yet, but once we get to it, I think it would be really valuable to have feedback from the elections manager. Um, so, but you know, Maybe that can wait till fall. Okay, I think, and the other group of people that we haven't really gotten a lot of people to volunteer for is the former elected officials. Paul Donato is kind of both, but he is taken. but we had a bunch of people on the list. Wait, Ron and Maura, you were gonna get in touch with John Falco, correct?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, you want if you reached out to Johnny already or you want me to? No, I have. Okay, that's awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we have Michael McGlynn, Stephanie Burke, Michael Marks, Bob Penta, Bob Miyako, Patricia Brady-Doherty, Paul Camuso, Paulette van der Kloet and Bob Scarry are also on the list and nobody has signed up for them. Is there any, anybody want to tackle any of those or we'll just
[Eunice Browne]: Why don't we try and get through what we've got first, the current stuff.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, just know that they're there. And if anybody wants to talk to those people and set up interviews, just sign up on the sign-up sheet or let me know.
[Ron Giovino]: Nova, just one point, too. I think as people are listening to this broadcast, they should know that if they're interested in interviewing, they should be able to apply for us to meet with them and interview with their knowledge base.
[Milva McDonald]: That's true, yeah. Thank you.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, so. Milva, can I just ask a quick question? For those who have done this, how are, I've looked at the reports that have come back. Are you just basically asking the, you know, going through the questionnaire question by question and recording the response, or is it more, you know, free form or is it in person versus Zoom?
[Milva McDonald]: We've done, I've only done them in person, but it could be done via Zoom. Different people have different, I mean, the question, I always send the questionnaire out beforehand. In general, people don't fill it out because they're busy, but then we can use it as a basis to sort of start asking questions. But generally with these interviews, the person that you're talking to has sort of a specific area of the charter that they sort of connect with or interact with. So what I have found is that people generally get talking and they nobody that I've interviewed so far has been at a loss for words. They've all been really eager to share their thoughts and their experiences in city government and their ideas. But the questionnaire is always there if you need it. And in Nina Nazarian's case, I mean, she's still intends, I believe, to fill it out and send it to us. So we might also have that, in addition to the report from the interview, we'll also have the questionnaire that she filled out herself. So people are, and that's the other thing we can do. If we don't have the people power or the time to interview everybody individually, we can ask them to fill out the questionnaire. So that's another option.
[Jean Zotter]: Is everything in one super folder? Because I have links to different things, but they're not all. It'd be great if there was one folder and then we could see everything.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I'm not the best with Google Drive, but what I can do maybe is make one folder and then put all the folders in the folder.
[Jean Zotter]: Yes, that would be great.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'll share that folder.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, that'd be awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: I can. I can do that. Yeah, that shouldn't be too hard and and you know that's way easier than sharing everything individually. Because as soon as I put it in a folder that's been shared it's automatically shared right. Okay. Yeah, awesome. Thank you. Great. Okay, so focus groups. We have the suggestion at our public information meeting to do focus groups. Jean kindly volunteered to sort of help with that. So maybe, Jean, you can talk about that. And then we also have the Google tracking. But if you want to start with the focus groups, go ahead.
[Jean Zotter]: So I have experience supporting focus groups. But I did reach out to Penny at the Board of Health to see if she'd help me, because I've never trained focus group members. So Penny said she'll help me. I wanted to tell you a couple things. Timeframe is Penny and I are looking to do a training so people can do focus groups in September, and then focus groups would happen October, November. and maybe in December. So that's not going to be this summer, but training in September, focus groups October, November, December. My thought is that the committee members would run the focus groups. So I'm proposing that Penny and I would train you to run focus groups, and then you would help this process by running the focus groups. Usually there's one or two facilitators of a focus group and then you have a note taker. So we could have one facilitator and hopefully we'll have more members by September. And so that's my proposal. So it would require that we're all kind of committed to this and that you're all willing to run the focus groups. I would also do some myself, but that was the thinking And as far as who we would do the focus groups of, we have suggestions from the public hearing, such as different age groups. So we could go to a senior center or senior housing, we could go to public housing development, we could try to, you know, if there are immigrant groups that we're not able that aren't showing up or particular populations that we feel like we're not reaching. Penny does have ability to have some of her staff do translation so they could come and interpret. they could translate some of our stuff for us. So she's willing to commit her staff to participate in the focus group so we could get non-English speakers. We could have a non-English speaker focus group just to get a variety of input. But the who we would do them of would leave up to this group to decide who you want to reach. So that's just kind of the overview in a nutshell and wanted to see how people And as far as like, if it sounds intimidating to run a focus group, we would train you. The training would be like one and a half hours. I would give you a script. So I would write up a script that you would approve. We'd all approve it. So you would have a script with questions that you would ask. So you're not just jumping in with no support at all. And then we'd have the minutes from those focus groups that could help give us information. So are there any questions or thoughts about that proposal?
[Andreottola]: Hi, Sam. I'd like to volunteer to help. I've worked running groups for probably the past 30 years. I did it for a living for most of my professional career. But I do have a suggestion on maybe if we could, like there's one group that I really think is important that we get feedback from. And that's the, you know, like some of the city commissions, like the disability commission would be a great group of people to get their input, you know, from the perspective of being a disabled person in the city of Medford and, you know, and interacting with government, because I think there is, there are significant barriers there. And we really want to include that in our charter, you know, have access for everyone. So that's one group I'd like to get in. And I'm sure there are others that I haven't thought about right now, like seniors or, you know, immigrant groups and stuff. But I really think it's important that we hit some of these, you know, target populations so, you know, they have equal participation in the process.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. I'm not sure if talking to city commissions, if they're subject to open meeting law, we might just maybe not have to talk to the whole commission or do it at an open meeting. We can work that out probably pretty easily. Any other thoughts on this?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think we need to make sure that we're going out to them too. In terms of the, you know, conversation that we had at the last meeting, when we were talking about events and so forth and things like this, I had put together a spreadsheet of different venues around the city where we could hold, you know, various kinds of events. And I think we need to make, I sent it to Melvin, you know, it can go up on the drive, you know, whenever, but, You know, I think we need to be going, making sure that, you know, from the very basic level that we're going out to the various areas of the city, and making sure that we hit almost every ward and precinct, or at least every ward individually but. Beyond that, as Jean mentioned, some of the immigrant groups and things, I think maybe going to some of the churches where some folks may congregate with folks. I think we need to, anywhere that people who may be like-minded or a similar might congregate. The seniors, certainly, maybe the public housing, going over to Walkling Court, maybe. They have a community gathering space there. As a matter of fact, it's where I go vote, the Fondacaro Center. other areas as well. So I think we need to be going to them in the various areas of the city and making it as easy as possible for people to participate. Sometimes it takes you at night at six o'clock, 10 or 15 minutes to cross the city. with traffic and so forth. If you're in West Medford or wherever, it could take you forever to get to City Hall. So I think we need to be going where they are. People are going to go out if they have to go around the corner. They have to go clear across the city. They may not.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks for that units and also thanks for gathering that information on that spreadsheet on locations. I think it will be helpful in deciding where we're going to do focus groups and what groups we might reach out to.
[Jean Zotter]: And just a difference between a focus group and say a public hearing is it's a smaller number. Yeah, well, so you're at maximum 10. You really want to have more of a conversation. So it's a different level of input than having a large group come.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: Are people, is everyone here willing to be a focus group involved in the focus groups? Is there anyone who feels like they can't be or is everyone willing to do this?
[Adam Hurtubise]: That's fine. Okay.
[Moreshi]: It depends on the time for me. It's hard for me to commit to things outside the meeting right now. I just had a baby and it's just taking up a lot of my time.
[Jean Zotter]: Congratulations.
[Moreshi]: Thank you. Congratulations.
[Jean Zotter]: Maybe you want a break. No, just kidding.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I'm gonna put, I'm gonna say we'll put this on the agenda again for next month and we'll try to organize the trainings for September and we can start scheduling them for October and discussion will continue on where and with whom. Great. Now, in terms of the, oh, Maury, go ahead, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: I'd be happy to help if I have the time to help Jean put this together as far as the focus groups and locations and so forth like that. So I'm available. Beginning of the week is a lot better for me than when I get it to Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I'm out of the picture, but anytime, day, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'd be more than happy to help.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. So the other thing that Jean did was make this awesome Google track.
[Frances Mitchell]: Recording stopped.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, wait a minute. That was me pressing the wrong button. Hang on.
[Frances Mitchell]: Recording in progress.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry about that. Jean, should I share it?
[Jean Zotter]: Sure. One of them is easier to read.
[Milva McDonald]: This is what it looks like. And we'll put this in the folder for everybody. This, basically it takes every section of the model charter and plugs feedback from different sources. So the first is the June 8th public hearing and then emails. And what happened to my, did the form not get in there? I thought I did the form. Oh, maybe there's no, maybe there's no form feedback on those topics. I think it's in the other article. Yeah. Okay. That's what it is. So, so anybody can sort of go through this and see what public input. So when we, when we start deliberating more on these issues, and of course, division of powers is there, but the executive branch, if we see there's very, there's a lot of, there's, well, I mean, comparatively with the amount of feedback we've gotten, a lot of it falls under city council, but, and then with mayor, we have a lot of, we have a lot of talk about term limits and term lengths. So, Ideally, Jean, you didn't wanna be the only person that was gonna fill this out, say, right?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, I think the question, there's a couple of questions. One is do we, we haven't put the interviews here. So this might just be our public hearings, things we get via email or the form. We could try to put the survey results here potentially. But if there are a lot of things that come in, then I would like help in putting it into this. It's actually a good exercise to get familiar with the model charter and to try to think about where things go. So I found it helpful in understanding the model charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, like for instance, I put a couple of things under the wrong category. Jean, when you pointed it out to me, I put all the term limits under the same. Yeah, I think that's what it was. Anyway.
[Ron Giovino]: Are you going to share this out or just give us a hard copy?
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, we're going to share it. I'm going to put this in a folder so it can be shared with everyone. And, you know, at this point, I mean, maybe the survey data will be easier just kept separately. It might be hard to put it into this form. I don't know. We'll see. But, you know, we're hopefully we might get more emails. We might get more answers to our public form. And and we're gonna have more public meetings. Focus group information might go in here too. And it will just sort of hopefully be a pretty easy way for people to go, oh, what's our public feedback when we, let's say, when we discuss the school committee? You know, what's our public feedback so far? This is what we have. Not much, but we'll get more.
[Ron Giovino]: Just just a quick question for Jean. This is the same document that Collins gave us with the three townships. What they used to is that this is the actual articles of the charter, correct?
[Jean Zotter]: This is the, they gave us like a, just a blank model charter. Yeah, the generic charter. And I use that, those articles and the sections that they gave us.
[Ron Giovino]: I'm just curious how it differs from what the call-in center gave us at the beginning of this process.
[Jean Zotter]: This is what they gave us, but I think the one you're referring to is then they did one that had the three cities.
[Adam Hurtubise]: How they do it right.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that was, that was sort of just to so that we could each look at how those three other communities. the charters in those three other communities, but this is more, these are all the sections and the articles and the sections in the generic modern charter, which will be the basis of the charter that we create. And this is giving us what the public has said in relationship to all those things.
[Ron Giovino]: Got it, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so thank you for doing it, Gene, and we'll build on it for sure. But I just wanted you to see that and it'll be shared out with you soon. Okay, so events. We have an event set up at Wright's Pond. Is that August 14th, Danielle? Is that what day it is? I think it is. I think so, it's a Monday. So yeah, and you know, it's not, it's just, we're just gonna give people ice cream, maybe have a couple of activities and hand out flyers and basically make people aware. Although one thing I didn't do was the Circle the Square report. So that was, basically I sat at Circle the Square. I talked to about 44 people. A few people had opinions, but most people didn't know anything about it. So it was a way to, and get the word out to some people that this is happening. So Danielle and I are going to maybe get together soon and talk about it. But if anybody else is interested in organizing the Rights Pond event, hanging out at the Rights Pond event on August 14 in the evening, just show of hands, is there anybody that wants to do that? Ron, awesome.
[Ron Giovino]: I have a quick question. Do we have a traveling show set up, you know, like a banner or a table that we standardly are using or what handouts we have? We should get a banner.
[Eunice Browne]: That's all we have.
[Ron Giovino]: We should get a road show together.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I was actually, I had that on my list too of, you know, I think we need some sort of a signage or a banner or a branding or something so that we look like we're, you know, a professional organization.
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody who wants to make that, that's fine. I'm not just, I'm not doing it.
[Eunice Browne]: That's all I'm laying out. The city should be able to help us. I mean, they must, you know, have a banner place. I mean, the Mustangs have banners for all sorts of things. There must be some sort of a template out there. We would want it in, you know, our colors, the blue and white and things like that. And Medford tried to study.
[Milva McDonald]: If anybody wants to research making a banner and finding out what the cost is, I'm fine with that.
[Danielle Balocca]: Quite expensive. I guess that's my only thought. It's like the time that it will take and the amount of money if we have any money to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So we can figure that out, but we also have the farmer's market on August 31st. And I'll bring that up at our next meeting because see if anybody wants to spend any time sitting at that table.
[Danielle Balocca]: If the survey is ready by either of those dates, we could also do like a QR code so people can take it right there too.
[Milva McDonald]: The survey will definitely be ready by then. Okay, awesome.
[Jean Zotter]: I think I signed up for the farmer's market.
[Milva McDonald]: You did. Thank you, Jean. And did you say you were also interested in a rights bond?
[Jean Zotter]: Maybe.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll keep you in the loop. I'll keep you in the loop. And the other thing, we probably should at some point set a date for the kind of event we had in June, maybe have one in the fall. Does anybody have any thoughts about what month we should go for? Maybe not September?
[Eunice Browne]: I would go October. October and November.
[Jean Zotter]: Do we have to do it at City Hall? Could we do it at like the West Medford Community Center or?
[Milva McDonald]: We don't have to do it at City Hall. The issue with doing it outside City Hall is the hybrid aspect. So I don't know. I mean, it's not that it couldn't be done. It just means we have to somehow get the equipment.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, plus the televising is just not possible.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the Metro Community Media goes to West Metro Community Center. The library has all the equipment, so we could do the library. You know, people have raised issues about parking at the library, but I don't know. I think, should we try the library this time?
[Maury Carroll]: High school has all the equipment too.
[Milva McDonald]: High school as well? Yeah.
[Maury Carroll]: They have the access station right up there.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I will, I will look into dates available dates for October at the library or the high school.
[Eunice Browne]: I think if we're, if we're considering the library. I would go, I would just stay with city hall. Because the parking is better. You know, I mean, they're, they're pretty much, you know, I mean,
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, the parking is better.
[Eunice Browne]: The parking is better. And again, you know, we've got everything there. The other thing that I wanted to bring up and, you know, piggybacking on what Ron said, if we're going to go out and do some of these groups and events and different things, you know, I think we have to get, you know, a roadshow set up. I'm happy to talk to Francis about the banner.
[Milva McDonald]: Go for it.
[Eunice Browne]: We have some money. So, you know, or if not a banner, at least, you know, you know, like the political signs that people shove in their lawns that we're going to be seeing everywhere in a few weeks. Yeah, you know, a couple of those that we can prop up on a table or something like that that shows who we are. And then if we're going to be doing events in other places, whether they be focus groups or anything else, do we have Or does the city have or can we get any sort of a sound system, so that, and I'm even thinking of, you know, rights pond. I mean, how are you going to. Are you going to try and do any sort of presentation or is it just one on one.
[Danielle Balocca]: We imagined what I think and maybe you can correct me is like a table where we will have information but I was also trying to plan some sort of interactive like Jeopardy style game where folks could like learn about the charter, but also ask questions that they might want to and then hopefully be able to have an option of answering the survey and getting some ice cream. Yeah, that's basically it.
[Eunice Browne]: How are you going to do that with a crowd and have your voices carry?
[Danielle Balocca]: Like one-on-one, not like to a group of people. People can come up and talk to us as they want to.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, kind of like Circle the Square was. Maury, did you want to say something?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, and that is, DPW has that all set up. They have a portable podium and a speaker system that's available that's used for a lot of different various events throughout the city. So if you're looking for that kind of stuff, that's readily available through the city and DPW. Great, thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: That's good to know. Okay. Now we just have to set up. I mean, at this point, because it's summer, I mean, we do have a lot to do, but I, I'm not going to suggest trying to have another meeting before August because it's summer. And, you know, does that sound right to everybody? So that means our next meeting will be August 3rd. Okay. Awesome. Now, believe it or not, we may be to the end. So wait, is your hand still raised Maury or. Okay, great. So we're gonna do public participation. 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. And it looks like we have Matt, right? MP, yeah. Great.
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: Okay, very good. Yeah, so I finally have three minutes, but I have three topics to hit up, and I'm really glad that you all have decided to kind of change this around in the future. Perhaps people like myself will be able to talk during the meetings. But anyway, I mean, I kind of watch this meeting. I've been considered previously if I should like apply to this meeting. And I kind of, you know, I see some kind of things that like, you know, like I was saying in the chat, you know, two thirds of the meeting in, the committee was stuck on the fifth element out of 12. And that's basically, that's I think a situation people generally kind of want to avoid. I know that sometimes when I'm like, creating agendas and stuff like that. I'll ask for people to think about certain things that will be discussed and take notes before showing up. Sometimes that can make the meeting a little bit more efficient. But I really wanted to raise my hand or whatever and support what Anthony said, because this question of asking for people's age is, I think, Anthony said something that was really important. I don't know if everybody really kind of registered with everybody's trying to figure out what exactly is the data that you want. You really have to know why do you want that data because you really have to ask, what is the point of getting everybody's age? It might be a nice little thing to have. People are curious what older folks or longer living people here have to say rather than younger people. But the question is, is that just something interesting or that's really data that's going to be useful as far as changing this charter? Because if you really do all that age stuff, then you're really kind of taking on another role of trying to figure out if you're sampling correctly. My guess is that by putting in these questions like age just because of curiosity, but not because they're necessary, would wind up revealing that certain groups were oversampled. And then you would have to have this other issue of how do we make sure that we do all of like proportional sampling to the different populations in the city. And there's many, many different populations in the city, depending on how you break them all up. So, I mean, I think like that is basically, that's a job for people that are like serious data analysts. And that's a job where you can probably get a lot of information from City Hall about how they try to do a better job. for sampling certain populations. But yeah, I really think that the group should kind of figure out what is the data we actually need to figure out how to create the right charter. And that should be focused on, because I know when I'm filling out surveys, and I know a lot of people who are filling out surveys, every single one of these little questions can get really annoying. When I'm like, how many more questions are going to be? They want my age, they want to know my neighborhood, they want to know how long I've lived here. You know, it can just wind up frustrating people and you could wind up seeing a smaller retention rate, as far as how many people fill out the whole survey, but you know I have two other items that I've already spoke for probably more than three minutes I'll probably just keep it at that.
[Milva McDonald]: No, you can keep speaking.
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: Okay, well then. Okay, so the second item is. It's some things are not clear to me when I watch these meetings. And one of them is how much of the input can the actual members have versus the public now, my understanding is this committee has a responsibility of coming up with some recommendations and then bring them forth the city and the public will vote on them, but there seems to be some times when the committee is actually. almost, I don't know if this is fair, but kind of putting the thumb on the scales being that myself as a committee member, I want a mayor. I don't want to, because I remember how bad it used to be a long time ago. And it's really, it's kind of concerning to me if people, I know like a few months back, there was this discussion about change the whole charter or just amend it. And the majority said, let's just change the whole thing. But it seems to me like this may be a little bit premature if you're still kind of working on surveys of asking the public what they want and we haven't to the focus groups yet. should this committee be kind of voting on, well, I've got a soft spot for McMayor Coke rather than, you know, make City Manager Pepsi before the public has really, really, really been heard from comprehensively. I think that's something to kind of consider as a group kind of comes up with an understanding of how do we, how does the group kind of come up with its recommendations. Is it really really based on the city, the populace, is it more based on what people internally kind of have prerogatives for, or is it like it seems like the group is going to have to continue to kind of try to negotiate, you know how much impact the personal preferences the committee members have. and the public by and large, when the group has already understood that many people in the population really haven't even grokked these concepts yet, the possibilities. So it does seem premature about that. But my last thing, I think my camera just went out. My computer just went off. Hold on. Well, my computer went to sleep, so if y'all can wait. Anyway, I can continue to talk. I don't know, can you hear me?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. If you want to just make your final point, go ahead.
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: So this whole thing about the mayor versus the city manager, this is a particular issue when if you have people in the particular committee who were saying, I have a soft spot for a McMayor rather than a McPepsi city manager. And they say, well, I remember, you know, 40 years ago, what it was like, or I've been to some place and it wasn't all it's cracked up to be. And I start to think, well, there's trade-offs with everything. There's trade-offs with having a city manager. There's trade-offs with having a mayor. And a lot of times when groups are coming through this process, they kind of have to figure out, and the public too, what are the trade-offs that we can live with? Because people can say things like, Maury said something that at least you have a say over the mayor, but you don't have a direct say over the city manager. Well, I mean, I think I have something to say that I think a lot of us can agree with. Down at City Hall, you don't have that direct say over every single person there except for the mayor, all the department heads. That's indirect. You know, all the staffers on the departments, that's indirect. These are people that are part of the bureaucracy. And thankfully, thankfully, these people are making the city run. these people that are in the bureaucracy, independently of which way the public swings because we're so angry at McMay or Koch this year. That's something really, really to consider. And I think that when we say, well, I remember all the bad things about the city manager, or I remember when the Collins Center said this is the drawback of the city manager, I think like we're only, you know, this discussion could be richer if instead of saying, well, I remember the bad things about the city manager, The commission, or the committee rather, would go around and take a look at different cities. How does the city manager work for them versus the mayor? What are the drawbacks they have and what are the benefits? That's the kind of process I think that a lot of times committees should be engaged in, rather than just kind of a personal appeals of, well, I prefer a place with the mayor. because it might just be at the end of all of this process that this whole community decides, you know, what we have right now, this is actually working a lot better and we're afraid of all the unintended consequences that could happen if we change it. I mean, that's really something to be open to is that we might just say, the public might just say no, just like they did like a couple of decades ago. But anyway, I'm glad you all listened in and these are just some things to reflect on. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you so much for your feedback. And we hope you return. Okay, any final details? I think we're ready to close up where it's exactly 8.30. The meeting was actually, we lengthened the meeting to two hours this time. So we actually are right on the dot, which I'm very impressed by.
[Maury Carroll]: I'll make a motion to adjourn.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Mark.
[Maury Carroll]: Second.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, all in favor. Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. Aye. Aye.
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