[Milva McDonald]: Okay, welcome everyone to our meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. First thing I'd like to do is we have new members, so I would like to welcome our new members, very excited about that. I thought we could all go around and introduce ourselves just briefly.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Oh, good, here it comes. Eunice. Oh, wait a minute. I see what's going on.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry, this is my bad. I changed the settings, so I need to... No wonder everybody was so quiet.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, what I was trying to say, Melva, is that we can't unmute ourselves. We can't start our videos, and the chat is disabled. So I don't know if you intended to do all that or not.
[Milva McDonald]: I intended to change some settings, but I may have gone overboard. But now I think everybody is. Because we usually have our videos on, so. Oh, yeah, yeah. That I didn't mean to do. Oh, that's what.
[Eunice Browne]: That's why you can't see all the smiling faces.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, now it should be fixed. Okay, now everybody can speak and everybody can be seen, right?
[Eunice Browne]: And the chat was disabled last I looked. Yeah. I don't know if you meant to do that or not. Yeah, I think so.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so welcome everybody. And as I was saying, we have new members, which is very exciting. So I thought we could briefly go around and just quickly introduce ourselves. And then after we introduce ourselves, maybe the new members can introduce themselves. So Danielle, I see your hand up. Did you want to say something? But you can be also the first one to introduce yourself.
[Unidentified]: You're muted.
[Milva McDonald]: You're still muted. Sorry. OK.
[Danielle Balocca]: I was just saying, I think it's set so that we can't unmute ourselves. So if we try to mute, we can't then unmute. Okay. Um, oh, sorry, introduce myself. Danielle, she and her pronouns. I don't know what else I live in Medford. I don't know, in my bio, it says that I'm a social worker, which I am. Yeah, I don't know if there's any other relevant details to share.
[Milva McDonald]: That's great. Thank you. Ron, you want to go next?
[Unidentified]: We also, we can't unmute ourselves as the problem, so.
[Milva McDonald]: I thought I clicked everybody. There, now you're good.
[Ron Giovino]: Can you hear me now?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Ron Giovino]: Great. Ron Chibino, lived in North Medford for all my life, and all around good guy. How's that?
[Milva McDonald]: Perfect. Um, okay.
[Ron Giovino]: Excuse me, Milva, just one second. Have you allowed, have you allowed the public in now?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay, good.
[Eunice Browne]: Uh, Eunice, you wanna say? Uh, sure. Um, Eunice Brown, uh, lifelong Medford resident as well, living in the Hillside area. Um, been following local politics for probably 35 years.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thanks. Jean, how come when I, there you go, you're good.
[Jean Zotter]: Hi everybody, Jean Zotter, she, her pronouns live in West Medford and I'm a public health consultant, so great to see you.
[Milva McDonald]: Awesome, Anthony.
[Andreottola]: Anthony Antriotola, been in Medford a very long time, my background's in substance use and mental health.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Let's see, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: Hi, Maury Carroll, been in Medford my whole life, 70 years and involved, extremely involved in the business community, as well as the political community and Looking forward to have new members involved in here. And I think we have a great project in front of us with a lot of work and hope everyone's on board for it. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. And I'm Melvin McDonald, she, her pronouns. I'm the chair and I'm really excited to welcome Aubrey, Paulette and Phyllis. Phyllis, do you want to introduce yourself?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yes. Can you hear me?
[Milva McDonald]: Yep.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Okay. So I'm Phyllis Morrison. I've been a Catholic educator for the past several decades. I've been involved in politics since my teenage years. And I've been a resident of Medford since 1997. And I'm very happy to be part of this group.
[Milva McDonald]: Great.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Welcome, Paulette. Hi, I'm Paulette Van der Kloot. Many of you will recognize me because I was on the school committee for 32 years. So I've seen on a lot of Zooms. My husband and I have lived in Medford for 45 years. Hard to believe since I'm only 42.
[Milva McDonald]: Fantastic. Welcome. Aubrey, I know we're still working out some red tape with Aubrey, but Aubrey, do you want to introduce yourself?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Hi, I'm Aubrey. And tonight I'll just be listening as a member of the public.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Oh, okay. So, um, the minutes, um, has everyone reviewed the minutes from July 6th?
[Maury Carroll]: I have, I'll make a motion to accept them.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor. Great. Okay. Thank you. Um, Okay. Um, now the next item on the agenda is the survey status. And I know we, uh, the survey status is going very well. Um, We should be, I think we should be done. We're definitely, I think, going to have it ready for our next event on August 14th at Wright's pond. Um, I'm working with Penny from the health department and Francis and Emma from the communications department to take the content that we all agreed on and put it into a format that's as accessible as possible. And Danielle is also going to help put it into Google. And we have some graphics that Emma created and it'll be ready for rollout very soon. So I just wanted to report that.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Is there a place where we can see the new members can understand what's going into it?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think I shared, it should be in the main folder that I shared with you all, but I will share, within the next few days, I will share the sort of updated version with the graphics and everything. I'll share it with you all.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, okay. So interviews are going pretty well. I think we've interviewed several people and all the interview reports are in the, in our main folder, which hopefully you can all access. Um, does anybody have any interviews set up that currently we have? Wait, uh, was that Eugene?
[Jean Zotter]: Yes, that was me. Uh, Eunice and I are going to meet with Rep Donato.
[Milva McDonald]: Great.
[Jean Zotter]: last week in August or first week in September. We're working on a date.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. And Rick, can I ask a question? Yeah, sure.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I was trying to find my raise my hand, but I'm not that quick.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Um, I've been reading through some of the server days that you posted for the new members to enter in the shared files. but are there any members left to be surveyed that we could take on as a new member or I could take on as a new member?
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. So the remaining city council members that we have not interviewed include Adam Knight and George Starpelli, but Ron, were you in touch with them?
[Ron Giovino]: Yes, we just not have finalized the date.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So if Phyllis, if you're interested in maybe, maybe Ron, you can communicate with Phyllis and you two can do those interviews.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And then we actually have only interviewed one school committee member. So, and, and the only other, let's see, I have Anthony, you were going to contact Paul Rousseau. Is that right?
[Andreottola]: I've, I've tried to contact him. I haven't got a response back yet.
[Milva McDonald]: He's away right now. He's away for, for a couple of weeks. Okay. So hopefully we'll get him eventually. Um, and then, um, Eunice, you were going to contact Mia and Kathy Kreatz?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, they're still on my list to do.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll get to that next week. Um, so Sharon Hayes and Melanie McLaughlin, nobody, you know, they're, they're open if any. I could do those four. Okay. Paulette, do you and Phyllis want to do those together? Sure. So Paulette and Phyllis.
[Maury Carroll]: She wants someone to go with her.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sorry. Can you repeat that, Maureen?
[Maury Carroll]: I'd be happy to go with Paulette on those if she wants someone to go with her also.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. I mean, it's OK if three people go. Oh, that's OK. That's fine. They can go together.
[Maury Carroll]: We've had good success with two. But if someone can't go with Paulette with those, I'd be more than happy to go, as you well know.
[Milva McDonald]: So all right. I have Paulette for those. We also, we've interviewed some department heads. Anthony, you were still trying to get in touch with the superintendent?
[Andreottola]: Yeah, I haven't been able to get in touch with the school. I don't know if they're closed right now.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah, I mean, it's summer, so. The school office is never really closed. It's not, not in any school division, none.
[Milva McDonald]: Does any, do any of the new people want to join Anthony with the superintendent?
[Phyllis Morrison]: I would love to do that.
[Andreottola]: Okay, great. If you can get in touch with her, I'd be more than, just let me know.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Okay. Anthony, this is Phyllis. Do you want me to try to get in touch with the superintendent?
[Andreottola]: Please. I haven't had any success.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I can also be helpful in that.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I think I will make the initial call. If we all have each other's emails, I'll let you know if I get anywhere with that. That's great.
[Milva McDonald]: So and just just so everybody knows, I mean, we've some people, the interviews can be done on Zoom or in person. It's, you know, however it works for the people involved. The other people I have contact, but I haven't heard back, but I think they're important people to interview are the elections manager and the CFO. So I'm still working on that. The communication.
[Jean Zotter]: This is Jean. I'll join you with the elections commissioner. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I can never get through to them. I'm going to. Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: Cause I want to get the demographic data by ward. Right. Having trouble getting that. So, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I will, I put you down for that. And then we also have we, we also had talked about interviewing past city officials. And so there's a lot of people open on that. Let's see, you guys are meeting with Donato, which is great. And. Ron and Maury, you were going to contact John Falco?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, I'm happy to contact almost everybody in the past and so forth and in the future. I'm not entirely sure. I was tied up in business right then. Things have changed. So I have full time availability.
[Milva McDonald]: So the other people on the list, in case these spark an interest in any of the new members, is Michael McGlynn, Stephanie Burke, Michael Marx, Robert Penta, Bob Miyako, Patricia Brady-Doherty, Paul Camuso, and Bob Skerry. And there may be other people. You know, happy to add other people to the list if you think they're relevant.
[Andreottola]: I'd like to add, if possible, I'm sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry for jumping.
[Andreottola]: I'd like to add, yeah, if possible, and I'd be willing to do it, the police chief and the fire chief, I think their perspective will be valuable as well. I mean, just for the people who are involved right now with, you know, with government.
[Maury Carroll]: You're talking about the former chiefs? The present ones.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And any, anybody who wants to conduct an interview who doesn't have a buddy, I will, you can count on me to be a buddy, but if you have a buddy, that's great.
[Ron Giovino]: No, but just one suggestion, this lump of folks that we haven't got to, whether it's some, you know, because of the summer, we haven't reached out to them at all. Maybe you should send an email from the chairperson just and see if they get any feedback and then we can assign it to somebody just so we at least let everybody know that we're touching everybody and they don't want to You know, you don't want to hear what nobody called me. So maybe we should just, those that have no information on it, you can just send a blanket email out and see if we get any hits off.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That sounds good. Before I do that.
[Maury Carroll]: But I would also list all the members of the committees. So they might have a comfort feeling with certain members and non-certain members. So that's a good point, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette, you wanted to say something?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'm interested in both Michael McGlynn and Stephanie Burke. And frankly, someone should interview me.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we did have you on the list, but I wasn't sure whether you, you know, we could, okay.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I assume that you have some list of questions for everybody or?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we have a sort of a very general questionnaire that, you know, can be used as a starting off point, but obviously different departments and different people will, you know, speak to certain aspects of the charter, depending on what their position was.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'm kind of thinking that September might be better for some of these people.
[Maury Carroll]: It might be better, Paulette, though it might become a conflict of interest if you're on both sides of the fence. Don't you think it might be better where you could be trapped into both sides of the fence just to maybe stay on our side and let's conduct the interviews and not become an interviewee, you know what I'm saying?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: It's just that by chance I happen to be the longest serving anybody for a long time.
[Maury Carroll]: Changing yourself you only said 30 years I thought it was more like 50 but now just 30 32 32 more don't ask to were the worst, whatever, it doesn't matter what will just to protect us that's all I'm saying whatever committee thinks is in the best interest.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I don't care. I think it might be a good idea to interview Paulette because of her longstanding time in the community and all those years that we may not have anyone else's memories of those times, particularly with the school committee. I mean, I think she may have some valuable information that we may not be able to get anywhere else. I agree with Mari that there's both sides of the fence, but it should be known right up front that she became a member of this committee on this day, but we still, because of her history, and her longevity. We wanted to survey her to find out her thoughts and her knowledge on what we're seeking for.
[Ron Giovino]: Can I just make a point that I think I'm thrilled that Paulette is here, really. I think it's a huge amount of knowledge. I also think that during this 10-year project that we're on, we're going to hear Paulette's views on everything that we're doing. So she's going to be here. So when we're talking about something, we're going to hear right from her at the moment. To me, an interview, putting her on the record doesn't make sense to me it makes more sense that she's sitting in that in the, you know, the center square here for talking about school committee, and which school committee seems to be the real black hole of what we're trying to do here too so I'm thrilled that all that's here.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah. Well, the other point to that is this committee is going to change over 10 years. And I think we need to, and what happens if Paulette can't be with us? I think we should have that information documented. It would be to do the survey.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we're going to be done before that.
[Ron Giovino]: That was a joke. It's really probably eight or nine.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Okay. I guess being new to the committee, I haven't caught on to the Yuma yet. I apologize.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. It just doesn't feel like 10 years once we're done. Yeah, probably. So are there any thoughts of any other people that we should interview that I didn't put on my list? Anthony mentioned a couple. OK, so what I'm going to do is, in the minutes, I will write down who volunteered for who, and then I will leave. I will write the list of people that no one's volunteered for and I will write the email from the committee to those people. Does that sound like what we, yeah. Okay, great. Awesome. Okay, now. Um, public. Okay. So last meeting, we reviewed public participation procedures, and now we decided we, we kind of had a tie, I think, um, in the end. And so we decided to table it. Um, and now we have more members. So, uh, uh, just to. In case the new members don't know what we had voted on initially was to hold public participation until the end of the meeting. And it's been proposed that we change that policy and have public participation after not every agenda item, but the substantive agenda items that involve discussion of actual charter. And rather than holding it until the end of the meeting. Does that make sense? Danielle.
[Danielle Balocca]: So one thing I just thought of is like maybe a compromise between the two. If there's like a way to, to like plan the agenda so that those topics are like at the end of the meeting, maybe this is already how you plan it. But then we would like be able to talk, have public comment after those items, because we've already gone through sort of our items that we don't want the public to comment on.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good, that's a good suggestion. Anybody have any other discussion on this topic?
[Ron Giovino]: Can we just slow down just for a second for the two new members? Because they're going to be voting on this. I want them to have an understanding of what we're talking about. And I think it's not as simple as it's really empowering the chairperson to have the ability to accept comments. We've had situations that during a vibrant discussion, there's been some great comments in the chat, and we pushed them back to the end. If you could just explain your, what you summarize this, so when they're voting, at least they have an understanding, or if they have any questions they should ask.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's, I'm happy to, but I want, I also want to just give committee members an opportunity to maybe be part of that, so it's not just me laying it out. And Danielle, thank you for that suggestion. Any other thoughts? Paulette?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So from past, since I haven't watched all the meetings, I wasn't quite certain whether the concern was that people were making comments that made the meetings go on forever and ever, whether that was what was driving that. If that's not the issue, then I would feel much more comfortable with allowing public to address the specific question that is before us at the time for a limited period of time and then have more public comment at the end. But I didn't know whether there was an issue.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I think there wasn't an issue it was it was sort of voted on, and I think the arguments were that saving public participation at the end would just create more efficiency in the meetings is that people's understanding.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, it's a lot more difficult to control time and control the amount of time each participant has if you are doing it after every topic. That was the only thing. I don't think nobody, really, the reason why this came up is because there were some valid issues brought up in the chat because they couldn't speak. And it would have been relevant to the discussion at that time. So you're right, Paulette, it is valuable to do. The issue is the management of, when we get into a hot item, we're going to really have to stick to the time. You know, you've got this time because we have to get, keep it moving. And at the end, well, you have general participation. So that's really, I think that's the, my understanding anyway, that's the root of, you know, the issue is that when do you have involvement and then you can't control the mic the whole time.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thanks. Okay. So I'm going to go Maury and then being Jean, and then Danielle, and then Phyllis, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: I'm gonna follow up on what Ron said. It's all about the timeframe and moving the meetings along every night. So, I mean, if we're gonna allow whatever timeframe you're gonna do on each topic that we're doing, whether it be seven minutes, 10 minutes, or 12 minutes, or whatever the case is, are we gonna be able, number one, to get through our agenda? And number two is, if I'm on the outside looking in, trying to make a comment on something we're doing, am I gonna get cut off? I mean, so, I mean, You know, damned if you do and damned if you don't. So I mean, so my philosophy is right now at this point is we run our meetings and we open it up at the end, whatever the case may be. I'm going to stick to that. And that's always been my position. I'll stay with that.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you, Maury. Jean.
[Jean Zotter]: Well, we had a 4-4 vote. I was in favor of allowing for discussion after substantive topics, not each agenda item, but just the ones that were related to substantive topics on the charter. But I just want to let the new members know that we already voted to keep the comments to three minutes. and that people could only comment once unless we felt like we really wanted to hear more from them. So far, we haven't had a lot of people attend our meetings, so I don't think it would be a big deal, but if more people came, it could potentially be. But I just want the new members to know that we had already voted on those things.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks for pointing that out, because that was important information. Danielle and then Eunice.
[Danielle Balocca]: I just want to respond to something that Ron said about the chat, because I think we have to consider that as public participation. So if the chat's open and people are commenting, that's equivalent to somebody, I think, speaking in the middle of a presentation. So I think those are two separate issues. So I think if we were creating a time for public participation, that's a way of containing it. And I think our decision about disabling the chat is related to that, right? Like if we're running these by Zoom. And I think, you know, I think Jean's right about like, there haven't been a ton of people showing up to the Zoom meetings, but we did have a good amount when we did the in-person things. So I think like having a structure to this will be helpful for when we do have more people, hopefully do have more people coming.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thank you. Phyllis and then Eunice.
[Phyllis Morrison]: This may be something that everyone knows already, but are the agendas available to the public before the meetings? So they know the topics that we're talking about. Perfect. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep.
[Eunice Browne]: For me, it goes back to, you know, having the topic at hand. and maybe somebody having a particular expertise in that area where their commentary would be relevant at the time and might help us with something that we haven't thought of or that is not our bailiwick, so to speak. So I think that that's That's why I brought it up initially. And Danielle had a really good point the last time. Sometimes people can't stay for the whole meeting. So for them to have to sit around, you know, for it's seven o'clock now we have another hour and a half to go. Somebody had a comment on this, they have to wait until you know maybe 815 to say something. And, you know, some people can't hang around that long. So that's why another reason why I think being able to speak at the time is important, but I also think having whatever, if we decide on three minutes or two minutes or whatever, to stick to that for the efficiency. And we haven't had a whole lot of people on these Zooms. We don't want anybody hogging the floor, so to speak, but we also want to hear from people. And if it's getting to a point where it's going on and on and on, then it's up to the chair to manage that, which I know that you're very adept at doing. OK, great.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Was there any conversation about someone monitoring the chat? Could we appoint someone to monitor the chat for the meetings?
[Milva McDonald]: We had a couple. We had a couple of Zoom administrators, but that's sort of, yeah, that's fallen by the wayside. I would have to find new ones at this point.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah, but you wouldn't even have to really do that, Milva. If we knew that that was coming, we could say, like, next week, OK, Ron's going to monitor the chat when we're talking about a discussion, and they could let you know. I mean, that's something that we could do as committee members. We could just monitor the chat.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we could do that.
[Phyllis Morrison]: You know, and someone specifically appointed for each meeting. That way it wouldn't be, oh, I think I see some in the chat. It would, someone would be monitoring the chat for the meeting. Rotating.
[Ron Giovino]: I just, I've been thinking what Danielle had said in terms of the chat. I agree. It's just that I think we'd be in violation if we chose the relevant chats. I think we'd have we'd be obligated if we open that chat to, you know, read 100% of those chats not pick and choose what the relevance worse, and that's going to that is a time factor so I think that you either have to. read all the chats or shut the chats off and let people raise their hand. So that's, I understand what you're saying, Danielle, but to me, if I wrote something that didn't get read, I would see that as a violation of my rights to be a part of the open meeting, so.
[Danielle Balocca]: I think we're agreeing, John. Yeah, I agree. I think I was saying it similar.
[Milva McDonald]: Great.
[Andreottola]: Hi.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony and then Jean.
[Andreottola]: I just want to say, I think this is totally unnecessary. We've had one or two people comment in four months, and we're spending so much time on when people are going to be able to talk. We didn't have a problem with the three minutes at the end. Why are we doing this?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's all I got to say.
[Jean Zotter]: Great, Gene. I think we should just disable the chat. It didn't work so well when we had the public meeting. It was hard to monitor the chat. If you disable the chat and then people just have to speak, it makes it much easier for you, Milva, as the chair.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. Thank you. Um, do we feel, call it, go ahead.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Um, I just wanted to Anthony say, I think my feeling is there's a perception, and the perception is if you're being told and you know the school committee has gone through various different issues like this. If their perception is being told that we're not being welcoming to people's. Um, I think that's a very negative. thing to broadcast. And I think it's much more welcoming to say, okay, everybody can participate after a relevant topic with time limits. I certainly think it's worth trying. And I think perception is really what the whole thing. I understand that you haven't been doing that, but when I read about the discussion and the 4-4 vote, to me, it was about perception.
[Andreottola]: I don't think it was. And I don't think it's negative to have people wait to the end. I didn't think my comment was negative. We're wasting time right now. And we've already wasted half another meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Are we ready to take another vote and maybe not end up with a tie this time?
[Ron Giovino]: I'd like to amend it to delete the chat. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yes, hi everybody, it's Frances. I'm the city liaison to the Charter Committee and the DEI director for the city. I'm just asking for clarification because I've heard the term or the word relevant being used. So in my role, I have to ask, what do you consider relevant? And according to who decides that the topic is relevant? So I want to urge you to be very careful of that. And my suggestion would be, if a public has something to say, they be given the right to speak. Now, if I show up and I want to talk about train tracks that has nothing to do with the charter study, then of course, that is clear and that is direct. But please be very careful in terms of determining what is relevant, because that's really personal opinion. That's just my two cents.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Jean and then Danielle, and then I'll restate the motion as I heard it.
[Jean Zotter]: Frances, that's a great point. I think the way we phrased it last time is on process issues that the committee is trying to decide we wouldn't open up After each agenda item that it would be more when it came to charter related topics.
[Frances Nwajei]: And so, it is, if it is a public meeting that is open for the public to attend. It is my understanding that the public is then a participating member, granted, and has the ability to comment on any aspect of the meeting.
[Jean Zotter]: Right, I think that the public participate. I'm the one in favor of opening it up after the agenda items but I've tried to more explain what we talked about. that we would have comment when we were talking about charter specific agenda items after those items and then have the public participation at the end that could go to any item on the agenda. I don't know if that was, is that where we were? I think so. Okay.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah, as long as the public has the opportunity to speak and is not prevented from speaking on any item that's on the agenda. then it's fine, but if we do start saying, you only get to speak at this piece and you only get to speak at that piece, then we do run the risk of violating people's rights.
[Ron Giovino]: I agree 100%. I'm just thinking that the verbiage should change from relevant to on topic. So it's not a, we're not judging. We're just making sure that if we're talking about trains, everybody's talking about trains. So I think the words on topic are much more, much different than relevant. I agree.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I see Danielle and Phyllis both want to make a comment and why don't you two do that and then I'll restate the motion and go from there.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I just really quick but just to make like specific examples so like last meeting we talked about mayor versus city manager as like a topic that's related to what we could address in the charter review. And that's like something that I, that's an example of like when we might allow for public comment right after so people can make remarks exactly about that but like we're also talking about our outreach efforts tonight and like I think the public could have a time at the very end of the meeting to come up with that but it might not be time to take. hear from everybody about that topic in the moment.
[Frances Nwajei]: If the member of the public is not able to stay till the end, right, then we have indirectly removed the opportunity to comment.
[Danielle Balocca]: So we need to make... Don't other meetings run that way?
[Frances Nwajei]: There needs to be a decision where you decide that you're going to open it up for the public to comment after each agenda item, or everybody's going to wait at the end. And your agenda actually states that ahead of time. That's why you put the agenda out.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Frances. And I want to hear from Phyllis, but first I just want to say, I'm hearing a little background noise. I don't know if other people are hearing it. And if anybody, I don't know where it's coming from, but okay, that's awesome. It stopped. Phyllis.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Well, I think I have much more clarity now that I like Ron's word on topic, much better than relevant. I think that's right to the heart of it. But the one meeting I attended in person, what I've heard at that meeting was we want input from the public. We want the public to speak up. We're looking for ways to find input from the public. So we have to be welcoming, but within limits. And I think changing that word from relevant to on topic is a very precise statement. It's on topic. We're not going to, you want to talk about the train tracks later. Right now we're talking about the city council. That's important. But I think I have to, you know, one of the reasons why I wanted to be more involved is I do have things to say about this and I do want the public to be reached out to more. This is the Medford City Charter, you know, And I think the more input we can gain, the better. But I think the specificity and what Francis is saying are very important. And laying it out, I think on the top of every agenda, it should stay exactly the way the public will engage on topics. And then maybe at the end of the meeting, leave time for general discussion, like new business or other business or something like that. But I do have to thank Ron for that clarification. I think that's a much more concise point on topic.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Okay, so this is the way I hear the motion on the table now. Motion on the table to disable the chat and open discussion after charter-related topics and at the end on any agenda topic.
[Maury Carroll]: Does that sound like what we- Is there a time- Time limit. Is there a time restraint being put on for the discussion on each agenda topic?
[Milva McDonald]: You mean for the public? Yes. I think since we had already decided three minutes, I think we would keep it, that would apply to both.
[Maury Carroll]: So no matter what, how many participants are on, that's what we're gonna do?
[Milva McDonald]: I think that, is that, Ron, you didn't, did you intend to change that in the motion?
[Ron Giovino]: No, I suggested go to two minutes, but I said, I think, I think if you limit, if you say the last five people can't speak, you're totally in violation of the meeting.
[Maury Carroll]: That's I think I brought that up earlier.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. So I I'm suggesting two minutes so we can drive that. And the chair, we also have to put the rules of the chairperson is in charge of determining on topic and determining the time. Exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Danielle, what was your comment?
[Danielle Balocca]: All right. I'm raising what Frances said. It sounds like we can't pick and choose when we allow participation after a topic. We have to either allow it after every topic or save it all for the end.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what it sounds like.
[Danielle Balocca]: So this, what you're proposing, we couldn't do.
[Frances Nwajei]: Think about how confusing it would be. Think about somebody from a migrant community trying to follow the charter, which is already complicated in itself, as you all know. to determine is it appropriate for them to speak. So you either, you know, we're either saying, you know, where public participation is available after each agenda item, each member of the public will have two hours to speak about, to speak to that agenda item. I'm sorry, two minutes, did I just say two hours? What is wrong with me? I'm sorry, two minutes. cancel that universe, cancel that. Two minutes to speak to that agenda item. Or we're saying, you know, all members of the public will receive an opportunity of two minutes to speak to any part of the agenda item that was presented at tonight's meeting. You know, so you're making it clear. Clarity brings the accessibility. And remember, you do put your agendas out ahead of time. So if there is something that someone is really interested in, they will make every effort to be there for that part. Yeah.
[Phyllis Morrison]: So, Milva, one other thing I might suggest is that at the end of each topic, the chair or who's ever standing in your place that evening if you have to be away says okay, at this time, does anyone in the public want to speak to it after each topic, and then we're cleared that way. So everyone had their chance to speak to that topic.
[Milva McDonald]: If that's what we vote, absolutely. Maury. Wait, you're muted, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: As Frances knows, I never disagree with you, Frances, but this time I have to. I have to a little bit, okay? I just think, you know, I'm gonna go back to it again. We can't get caught up on each agenda item with all kinds of conversations and so forth. And people wanna bring things up. The school committee has their rules on how public participation is. The city council has their rules on how public participation is. And I think we have to establish that also. That's my only point.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Ron. Do you want me to restate the motion? Or do you, after this little bit of discussion, do you want to modify it at all?
[Ron Giovino]: You know, we do need to move to a vote. I just think we eliminate the chat, give the rules of two minutes per discussion item, and the chairperson manages the discussion. you know, being on topic. You must stay on that topic. I know what Francis is saying, but Francis, if you saw item, agenda item number nine, when we're in agenda item one, It's really not the time to give your opinion and step up. So the on-topic piece I think is extremely important.
[Frances Nwajei]: The on-topic is important. On-topic is different from relevant. Relevant is based on somebody else's choice.
[Ron Giovino]: And also there's a general participation at the end of our meeting. Once everybody's done, if you want to say something, go right ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: So just so I'm clear, Ron, are we changing the motion to open discussion after every agenda topic for two minutes? Okay, so the motion on the table is disable the chat and open public participation after each agenda item for two minutes per person. And I don't, we don't necessarily need public participation at the end if we do that, correct?
[Ron Giovino]: Well, we may. Somebody may want to say, are you guys ever going to address this issue?
[Milva McDonald]: So we'll keep public participation at the end.
[Ron Giovino]: OK. But the on-topic piece is a very important piece.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Ron Giovino]: It's the only way we're going to control it. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So the motion is disable the chat, open discussion, public participation after each agenda topic for two minutes, and have a public participation session at the end for three minutes per person.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Right. And do you have in there that it's controlled by the chair?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Good. Okay. So is there a second? Second.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I second that motion. Roll call vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Roll call vote. Anthony.
[Adam Hurtubise]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Norm. No.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Paulette. Yes. Ron. Yes. Eunice. Yes. Phyllis. Yes, I seconded it. Yes. Okay. Danielle. Yes. I think I missed somebody missing me. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: And I am no. And I believe that's six yeses and three noes. Yes? Did I count right? OK. Okay. So we now have public participation after every agenda item. So I suppose we start that immediately. And that means I will ask if any members of the public would like to speak on this topic of public participation. Okay, then we move to the next agenda item, which is deliberation on the city council composition. There will certainly be many other things that we will be discussing regarding the city council, but this is just to talk about, we've heard a lot from the public, from people we've interviewed about city council composition, and we've heard from the call-in center, Has anyone had a chance to look at the materials in the handout? Okay. So the deliberation topic and question is, does Medford want to move to a hybrid system of ward-based and at-large city Councilors? And I know that you've looked at the materials I sent, and we also have Eunice, who I would like to ask to speak first because she has been doing some research on Medford. On where city councilors have come from.
[Eunice Browne]: So would you do, would you go ahead and do a thing? I do have a spreadsheet, Melva. I couldn't figure out how to put it in the. The drive, but I think you have access to it from when you and I. Had a meeting a couple of weeks ago, so I've added a lot of tabs. If you can.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let's see. I have to be logged into the, this is just gonna take a little minute. I have to log into the charter study. I'm logged into my personal email and I don't think I have access through that, but maybe I do. Let me just check. It was in Google, it was a Google sheet, correct?
[Eunice Browne]: Right. And I don't know if I will, will I have access to be able to jump from tab to tab? Okay. Do I have to do that with that or will you have to do that for me?
[Milva McDonald]: Probably not. Unless you shared it, but I can work on it here. I have it right here. So. Okay.
[Eunice Browne]: Should have eight or nine different tabs on it at this point. This is the one, right? Yep. Okay. And I see it has a whole bunch of tabs. If you have to jump from tab to tab, that's fine. So what I did here was I went on the city of Medford website. There are election results from 2005 to 2021. And what I did was I went through and made spreadsheets of different variations of things. I only used the general election. I did not use primaries or preliminaries. And my goal was to get the ward and warden precinct data. Let me see. Yeah, OK. So we go from 2005 to 2021, which is nine election cycles. It's general election data, not preliminary. It's candidates elected or not. And going to, so I can't see the bottom of this. Going to Ward and Precinct Data, which I think is the second tab. Yeah. So let me see if I can. Yeah. Going to the second tab, it will show the different woods and precincts that they are from. Sorted that way.
[Frances Nwajei]: Down at the bottom of that tab too.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Down at the bottom. Sorry.
[Frances Nwajei]: So go the other way.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Oh, here we go. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: There we go.
[Eunice Browne]: Is that what you want? That's what you're looking for? Exactly. So it's sorted by ward and precinct data. And it's those elected and those not elected. So you can see in Ward 1, you had Ann Marie Cuno, Michael Ruggiero, Robert Capucci, and Kelly Catalo were the only five city council candidates in nine election cycles that came from Ward 1. And you'll also note in column I that not a one of them were elected. If you go down to Ward 2, you get Stephen Colacelli, John Falco, Robert Fitzpatrick, so on and so forth. So if you jump over to the next tab, Melva, Ward Representation, I put it into a more, you know, I wasn't able to do the graphs that I had hoped to, but I put this through like this. So in nine election cycles, Ward 1, which votes at the Andrews or the Firefighters Club, there were a total of four candidates and none elected. Ward 2, which votes at the Roberts, a total of 10 and four elected, John Falco, Zach Bears, Breonna Lungo-Koehn, George Scarpelli. As you can see, you can go through the rest of it there. And what it boils down to, basically, is that over that period of time, wards three and two had the most electeds. Wards one and four, over nine election cycles, had nobody. Zero.
[Milva McDonald]: And we have from ward six, we have three. And ward seven, only one. And ward eight, two.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, right, exactly. Um, throughout my, you know, going through the data and things I used in order to get address data to be able to determine the wards. I used campaign finance reports. I used the city assessor database. I used the mass land records database as well. There were a few blanks that I wasn't able to find address info for because the campaign finance reports on the city website only go back to maybe 2009 or 2011, so some of the real old ones I couldn't find any data on, but they weren't elected anyway, so it was a little bit less important. I did note that Breanna Lungo-Koehn moved twice throughout this time. She left her family home, moved into a starter home with her husband and then moved into another home. Her ward and precinct may have changed. Councilor Knight has moved a couple of times and Curtis Tudin who ran twice but was not elected moved once. The other thing that I took a look at was now that the field has been set for 2023, I can tell you that there are 12 candidates running for city council, nobody running from Ward 1 or Ward 4 or Ward 6. There are two candidates running from Ward 2, two candidates running from Ward 3, three candidates running from Ward 5, two from Ward 7, and three from Ward 8. So that, you know, may change things up a little bit. The other thing that I took a look at that I thought was pretty interesting, and you can get into it now or if it's not appropriate for now, is the amount of turnover and term served and turnover that we've had over these nine election cycles. If you jump to the very last tab, Milva, it says list of terms to the far right down at the bottom. Yeah. You'll see that over the course of not only these nine cycles, I went back a little bit further, Councilor Penta served for 18 terms. Wow. Yeah, 36 years. Councilor Mayaco for 15, Councilor Marks for 10, and so on and so forth. So when we're looking at term limits, that might be something that we might wanna think about. In 2005, 2007, and 2009, we elected the exact same council, those three years. Burke, Camuso, Dello Russo, Rihanna-Lungo-Koehn, Mayako, Marx, and Penta. Then after that, we started to get a little bit of turnover here and there. Things started to change a little bit more dramatically once Mayor McGlynn chose not to run again. Since then, we've had a little bit more churn with more expected with three open seats this time around.
[Milva McDonald]: So well, thank you so much for doing this. It's really valuable. I see Danielle has her hand up, Danielle. My eyes are sufficiently glazed over.
[Danielle Balocca]: I wanted to say thank you also, Eunice. This looks like you put in a lot of work, and it looks really awesome. I was wondering if we could all be able to see it. Yeah, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm definitely going to put this in the committee folder. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: It brings up a lot for our conversation, for me, at least. But I'll wait till we get there.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: Nice job, Eunice. I think what it's showing to you is that the incumbents have a huge advantage at large voting. where people that may not have the finances to go against these people that if you're just working in your own little area, your water, your dictate, your spot, that it shows you a need for it, I think. It's the same old, same old, and it's certainly proven by these numbers.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna stop sharing. You're gonna all get this document. Um, basically what I, what it's, what I just sort of jotted down is based on 2005 to 2021, in terms of actual elected Councilor, we've actually had zero representatives from ward one and ward four. Um, ward three has had the most with six, then ward two with four, and then ward five, two, ward six, three, ward seven, only one, and ward eight, two. So. And for our next council, there are no Councilors from wards one, four, and six. And I believe we're losing our ward six Councilor, Rick Caraviello. So that means ward six would also be, am I right about that? probably yeah I'd have to go back and look at it but he's not running for city right I know but I didn't know if there was anybody else from Ward six and I don't think so yeah so nobody running from six so that's at least three wards that will not be represented in our next Council for sure. Um, so that's also something to think about. So based on this data that Eunice has put forward, um, based on, um, Some of the other materials that I sent you. Um, the other issue that when we talk about city council composition for Medford to know, um, The chart that I sent that spreadsheet that sort of outlines, uh, 59 Massachusetts communities. Um, There's how they elect the city councils, the school committee, the term limits, et cetera. Based on that, you can see that Palmer and East Longmeadow are the only other two cities that have seven member councils, and both of those cities are significantly smaller than Medford. Every other city has at least nine and often nine to 11 seem like the most common. And also very few cities have all-at-large councils. I believe there were only 10 out of 59, including Medford, that have all-at-large. And 48 have hybrid systems of at-large and ward. So it also seems very uncommon to have a completely ward system, which we don't have the option for in Medford anyway, because we have eight wards. So, and the other thing I just wanted to point out the other piece information I put on here was the information from our community engagement efforts. Just pulling up summary points based on the feedback up to now, it looks like there's overwhelming support from residents for ward representation and the survey results will show if this holds. Diversity on the city council is a strong concern and ward representation is seen as a possible solution. And representation of all neighbors is a concern that could also be addressed by ward representation. We also had other points. So I just wanted to throw out sort of a little summary. So let's, I want to open for discussion. And Anthony, was that you? Go ahead.
[Andreottola]: Yes, please. I, in regards to diversity, do we have any idea if ward representation would make it easier for people from different backgrounds to be elected? Do we, do we know what our, how our wards, the makeup of our wards?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Is there a benefit, you know,
[Andreottola]: that we can kind of push with the public you know what I mean because people have mentioned it to me like oh we'd like to have you know a more diverse city council and what representation will do that but I don't want to go to ward representation and find out that it's actually making it more difficult for somebody from a different background to be elected. So I don't know if there's any way of getting that data.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Jean is working on it.
[Jean Zotter]: Jean, you want to? Yeah, I've reached out to Henry Malorin and the city planning department, but I'm not getting anywhere. No one's replying but or when the Henry replied right away but didn't quite understand our question. So we're working on that so I'm trying to get that Anthony so that could be a piece of what we look at.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we definitely would get that information at some point, but the other piece, which I believe Maury has mentioned tonight. people have brought up and members of the public have also brought up is that ward representation in general can make it more accessible to run because you don't need as many resources to run in a ward as you need to run in.
[Adam Hurtubise]: At large.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, you don't need as many resources to run in a ward.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: As you do for an at large.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Isn't that demographic information something we could get from the census?
[Jean Zotter]: Not easily. I've been playing with the census today. I was going to reach out to my epidemiology friends and see if they could help me, but I've been playing with their maps not easily. But I'll keep at it.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Danielle and Maury, do you still have your hands up? Or are they old hands?
[Danielle Balocca]: Mine's still up.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, Danielle.
[Danielle Balocca]: Unless more you want to go first.
[Maury Carroll]: No, go ahead. My hand's not up. I'm sorry.
[Danielle Balocca]: No, I'm just very eager to talk about this topic. So I think in listening to people talk about this topic, also with our interview with Nicole Morel, I think there's a couple of things. And with, Eunice, what you put together, I think it kind of shows some of the deficits of the way that we're electing a city councilor right now. One which being not all wards are represented. We have seven city councilors. If we moved even to ward representation, would we would cover that gap, but also we'd have an even number so thoughts that I have. Also something I thought about, I think that having ward representation does make it easier to run in your ward. I think it could also kind of increase that issue that we see with reelecting incumbents, because if you're running against your neighbor, it might be harder to sort of make that decision. So I do think this is sort of linked with term limits, like we were talking about a little earlier. So I think one thing also that came out of some of our conversations were, This the staggered model so that we're not maybe in one year reelecting a totally new council so there's no like, you know, people that have been on there for a while to sort of onboard new members. And so one thought that I had was word representation, which would have. you know, eight wards, plus three at-large Councilors, which perhaps could have a longer term. So, like, let's say you had that ward of Councilors were elected for two years, at-large Councilors served for four years, because we know there's more resources involved in running for that, and, like, you're covering, like, the whole city. So, and that would provide that sort of staggered hopefully stagger, maybe my math, my math could be like different and how we stagger those two. But, and then, cause one thing I think the call center said was if you have like odd numbered, if you like stagger the wards, that's like not the voter turnout changes. Cause you're not, not everyone's showing up to vote for those. And then like, so an example of the term list, it would be like, let's say anyone who serves on city council can serve 12 years. So that would be more terms for an at-large Councilor, but in fewer terms, but the year for the, for those at-large Councilors. Um, but the number of years would be the same. So just to put it more plainly, my thought is like, my initial thoughts are like having the eight ward Councilors that are elected every two years, plus three at large Councilors that are elected every four years. I just want to throw it out there.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Thanks Danielle. You know, your comments bring up, um, you know, the intention was to have this sort of straightforward deliberation question, but nothing, everything's linked in the charter. And so your comments kind of bring that to light that, you know, that your ideas about ward representation are connected to term lengths and possibly term limits. So yeah, Ron, go ahead.
[Ron Giovino]: I completely agree with what Danielle is saying. I think that in the interviews, we've heard that a lot. My concern is, and I'm going to make a motion in a second, but my concern is that when you start staggering, there's that risk of I'm running in a same year as the presidential election, I'm going to get 7,000 votes versus, you know, I'm running in a nothing election because there's no mayoral election if we go four years. So there's that. I think the Secretary of State would have some say in how to do that. So all this stuff would have to be vetted. I agree with you. Four years for an at-large staggering was my original thought, but there are rules and regulations that we would have to follow. For the record I am completely in favor of a hybrid that includes wood representation. I just think that we don't, I know we want to get to the end point here and I think my motion is to decide that the committee will go forward with research and development of a a, I don't know what we even call them amendments or a chapter in our, in our new charter that says, uh, I think this is the time we start forming subcommittees to develop this thought and to present to the whole so that we don't have to do, uh, you know, the legwork and, oh, I didn't think of that gets done by subcommittee. And then they can present it to the whole, because there are, you know, there's other rules like what happens when a, uh, a ward, uh, rep moves to ward from ward eight to ward two. what happens to that position. And if you read through that big book of rules, there are guidelines. You can either lose your seat, and the mayor appoints it, you can lose your seat, and there's all kinds of rules. So I think what I would like to see tonight is whether folks agree that a hybrid works, and then work our way towards those details that Danielle's talking about, I'm sure we're going to hear more as we're going, but I'll hold off on that motion until we hear from everybody.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Ron, because that is our next step that we're moving towards is forming subcommittees. So if we find out tonight that there's enough support on the committee for a potential hybrid system, then maybe we can move towards a subcommittee. Thank you. Paulette and then Maury. I think Maury was first actually. Oh, okay.
[Maury Carroll]: Sorry, Maury, go ahead. I'm leaning extremely heavy to the maybe eight wards and three at large or whatever the case may be for that. I'm leaning towards like a term limits and all of this. But more so than that, I think we just we want to be able to that all districts, areas, whatever you want to call it, it's about the city, have the representation that they need and that allow people that, like I said earlier, to be able to compete in their area and work for their area and not go against citywide. Citywide is extremely expensive to run. Paula can tell you, she's done it for years in comparison of just running on your own little ward and district. I'm all in favor of that. I agree with everything Ron is saying, and let's go ahead and do it.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Great. Paula. I just wanted to bring up two other factors, which, you know, just to throw them out. What happens if no one wants to run from a certain ward? How do we plan or think about that? The other question is we do pay our city Councilors fairly handsomely. And so any increase in city Councilors is going to has a financial impact. So I just want to mention.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Yeah, that's true. And I also have learned in these interviews that city Councilors who serve for 10 years get a pension, which I didn't know either. And I think they get insurance, too. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Okay, thank you, Paulette.
[Maury Carroll]: Nobody can also put into, contrary to what, you know, of the off terms, we heard from the city clerk how expensive it is to run elections all the time on a scattered election type of vehicle.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, the staggered terms. Yeah, he thought it was a great idea, but really difficult to implement, possibly, yeah. Okay, Anthony, you want to speak and then we'll go Eunice and then Jean and then Danielle. Go ahead, Anthony.
[Andreottola]: Yeah, I just, you know, I'm in favor of ward representation in general, but I also am a little nervous and fearful of, you know, when we talk about neighborhoods and people's communities, you know, you know, it's not just, you know, geographic, you know, when we're talking about people's community could be, you know, an ethnic community or, or somebody that, you know, comes from a different group. And like, we really have to make sure that we're not disadvantaged, putting a community at this, you know, more of a disadvantage. I think we really have to do that research first, because, you know, community, you know, a neighborhood, you know, is, is a place, but people belong to different communities. And if our goal is to get inclusion and to get everyone to be equally represented in the city, we really have to make sure that this is going to work. Or maybe we have to not just look at everybody automatically, like 11, 3, and 8. It's good, but maybe it isn't. Maybe it has to be nine. Maybe it has to be something different. How do we get communities that have not been represented on school committee or city council, how do we get them on an even kind of playing field? Because we all know that it's not even right now. it's very difficult for someone of color or from, you know, from someone with a disability or, you know, people from, you know, immigrant population to be able to be elected to the city council. So I just want us to focus on that a little bit, just to be sure that we're not further disadvantaging any particular groups.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks, Anthony. I think if we decide that we are committed enough or that we are supportive enough of the system to dig in and form a subcommittee, I would say that could be one of the tasks of the subcommittee, is to research that kind of what you're talking about. I don't know whose hand was up first, so. I think I was next.
[Eunice Browne]: OK, Eunice, go ahead. I have a couple of different points. You know, staggered terms, I think are a good idea. I do understand what City Clerk was saying about, you know, the complexity and the cost of, you know, running off elections, as well as, you know, if it's a presidential election year, you know, you get a lot more people coming out and so forth. But what I'm thinking about is losing institutional knowledge on the council. And if you look at this election coming up, you have Rick running for mayor, so he's stepping off. You have Adam, who has chosen not to run again, and Nicole Morell, who has chosen not to run again. Rick and Adam have pretty long tenures, you know, on the council. So they've got some good institutional knowledge. You've got George Scapelli who's got four terms under his belt right now. Let's think for a minute and think maybe he won't get reelected. So therefore, but if you have a kid who will have one term under her belt, Kit Collins, Justin Zhang, who will have one term under his belt, and Zach, who has two terms under his belt. If the three of them get reelected, they'll be on their second and third terms. And if George doesn't get reelected, then you've got four newbies. So you've lost a whole lot of institutional knowledge right there.
[Ron Giovino]: point of information, if I could, with all due respect, I think we have to build this charter with no names on it. If the voters want all brand new people, that's what the voters vote. I mean, I understand what you're saying, but people like Rick Caraviello are not gonna leave the city if he's not the mayor. So I would just caution that we stick to the titles and not the actual personalities in those seats right now, because then you can, You know, I understand your point, I definitely do, but I think, you know, we're talking about a document that has no names.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. But if you, but the issue that you brought up, which is the institutional knowledge piece, is there a way that you see that connected to the, you know, potential changing of a, to award a hybrid system or is it?
[Eunice Browne]: I think it's, it's more along the lines of the staggered terms, I think. where that would come into play, because I think losing some of that knowledge would be a shame. The other thing that I wanted to bring up, reading through the commentary about representation that Councilor Behr has put out there, what is ward authority that he brought up and proportional representation? Those are a couple of interesting points, definition. I tried Googling and didn't see anything.
[Jean Zotter]: Jean, you were at that interview. Do you want to try to? That was, those are some of the things I was going to say a little bit about Councilor Bears. He had two ideas. One was, one of his concerns, and I thought it would might be nice if we could get more information on some of the downsides of or some of the pros and cons of ward representation, because he seemed to think that ward representation that the councilors who come from wards are really hard to displace. And so that they tend to stay elected for longer than at large. And so you have less turnover at the ward level. And he was suggesting, and another concern he had was in some city councils, he said that there's a rule that ward councilors can tank anything that happens has to do with their wards. So if there's development in their ward and they're against it, they can vote it down. And then it makes very hard for the city sometimes to accomplish say it's affordable housing agenda. If every ward Councilor is fighting development in their ward, it makes it hard to move forward on some of those that it was just an example he gave. So he was asking us to consider what the authority would be or the scope of ward representatives, what would they have? So that's something the committee, I think, could research and flesh out more. His other idea was having not ward representation, but maybe multi ward. Districts where maybe you combine two or three wards and that. I, it doesn't seem like any other city has done that, that I could see.
[Milva McDonald]: Speak again. I think, say that again. I'm sorry, Gina.
[Jean Zotter]: And you were there, Melva. So maybe I misunderstood, but I thought he was suggesting that instead of having a ward Councilor, that there would, you would have these multi ward districts. So maybe two wards or three wards in one voting area. So you'd represent more than one ward and that would. State reps worker.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's what I understood him to say that you could we instead of having eight boards, we would have four areas of right words each and then you would have two Councilors or three Councilors from each of those areas.
[Jean Zotter]: Right. So, but it does, I haven't seen any other city that has done that in what you presented so far.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I think I asked the call and center last time we have them, and I don't I think they didn't know of anyone but I feel like framing him was doing something that was out of the box and I can't remember what it was, but we should look up framing.
[Jean Zotter]: All of that comes from his more concerns about. Ward representation sometimes being a barrier to accomplishing the goals of the city. And it would just be nice to have some concrete examples. I feel like I'm operating on what people think might happen. And it would be nice to know what are some of the challenges of having ward representation and does it sometimes hinder abilities for the city to move forward on certain agenda items. So.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. And now we also, Maury and then Danielle.
[Maury Carroll]: First of all, let me go back to the first topic. If the charter isn't working, we can't wait 38 years for a review. We need to put something in there, stipulations in there. This chart is going to be reviewed every four or five years, whatever the case may be. If we're doing that, that's going to allow whatever tweaks has to be made to the existing charter. to be done then and not to be so far out of the box as it is right now to go that long. The second thing, to pick up on kind of what Eunice was saying, I have to disagree with you fully, Eunice. I just think that One representation at this stage of the game, to me, is the way to go. You can say, put two wards together, two, three wards together. You can poll every one of these existing Councilors and every one of the existing school committee members, and they're all going to tell you that's not the way to go. Because you know what, I've done it with them all already. And they're going to fight it, and they're going to do it because nobody wants to see it. They're comfortable with what they are. They know they have their fan base. And they're pretty much a shoe-in every year. So to bring up saying how somebody can't go up against them, they don't have a chance of going up against them. They don't have the name recognition as everybody knows. name recognition in a small city like Medford of 58, 60,000 people of how many voters go out in municipal election? 17, 20,000, if you're lucky, usually it's a lot less than that. So if you have name recognition and you have that base, it's an automatic check off for you. So we need to reduce the awards, give everybody a chance to play in the same circle. And that's where I stand on it. I'm not budging on it. That's how I feel.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Maury. OK, Danielle. Oh, and then Paulette.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I was going to say, I think Paula asked that question about what happens if nobody runs from one ward. And I think we asked the Collins Center that. And there was some kind of process, but they said they can't remember ever seeing that happen. And I do think I was going to say exactly what Maury was saying about we're deciding what we want to try for this charter based on the input that we're getting from everyone and the importance of reviewing it regularly. So if we find that ward representation If it turns out it actually isn't helping elect new people every two years or isn't diversifying the council, that's something that they can review in the charter. There's one other point. Oh, yeah. And when we were talking about the staggered terms, I think people were maybe thinking about it as off-year elections. But I think if we did two years and four years, which, again, Ron, thanks for slowing me down. This isn't what we're talking about, that we wouldn't be adding extra elections. We'd just be adding more people to the ballot every four years.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Thank you, Danielle. Colette and then Ron.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So Maury, I kind of disagree with one of your your comments about everybody has their own little base and they know they're going to get reelected. I do agree that name recognition is extraordinarily helpful. But, you know, and we're only talking about city council here in a much more You know, I can see, I can listen and hear the discussion for award representation in a positive way. I just don't know how to accomplish that. And I am very concerned about things that, like Zach referenced before about saying, well, if there's a project and somebody doesn't want it in their ward, but it's good for the better city, how do we deal with that kind of parochialism? So I'm not sure. You know, I I feel very uncertain about about this topic so far of saying how is it going to work? And I guess specifically, do people have in mind that we're going to keep the same eight wards or are people thinking we're going to redistrict?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we don't get to do that. That's done by the state. And they I believe it it's every 10 years, right, that they. That they did, I believe, based on the census. Yeah.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I think they just determined how many words Medford has. Right. So certainly I don't I do remember changing voting places.
[Jean Zotter]: I think that's changing your polling location, but you're not changing the ward.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Did we have to think about we probably change the number of boards. Um, because, you know, as I was looking at the, the map that we, that we received, um, you know, some wards are in a much more condensed footprint. Um, you know, so that was another thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Did they determine it by population? I think so.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: It was a population that was pretty close.
[Eunice Browne]: I think the words have to be plus or minus 4,000. Yeah. That sounds right.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And the list that we received was very useful in seeing the proximity of, you know, they are all roughly, but automatically that means we're talking about eight plus Councilors.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: One from each, unless we were to think about combining, as someone said. Okay. I'm kind of thinking aloud.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Jean. And then Ron, and then, um, I want to, cause we still have some other agenda agenda items. So I want to think Ron was first run you want to go ahead, thank you gene.
[Ron Giovino]: Just just quickly gene was talking about there is a discussion about award representative having some kind of power, if that was the case, there would never be any. you know, drug rehab locations in your ward or, you know, so I think we have, this is why I say the subcommittee has to design powers and responsibilities and role and what that means. To the point of what happens if nobody, a rep is not in your ward, well, it's potential that only five people would pull out papers to be a candidate for city council. I'm sure there's rules that the Secretary of State's office for that final point is group grouping wards together to me defeats the whole purpose of having ward representation. So if we take two or three words put them together, maybe in 10 years, we'll find out that only one of those words has all the candidates coming from it. So I'm against that. And I'm for ward representation. And I'll wait to move the question.
[Jean Zotter]: Thank you, Jane. I didn't actually say where I was landing so I just wanted to say I am in leaning towards being in favor of award representation. I think it lowers the cost of participation, even if we don't know if it would diversify it would at least maybe diversify economically, who's in city council. I think the theme that we've heard from. from our public comment pieces. People are very frustrated with city council sometimes not feeling like they get responses. And if you had ward representation, they would have their ward representative who they could turn to for local issues, such as I live in West Medford or I live in North Medford and Roosevelt Circle is something everybody talks about. Everybody's frustrated with that. So you could talk to someone about it and maybe get more of a response. So thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury, and then I'm going to move and open it up for public comment. Go ahead, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: I'm just going to say this, and to what I've been hearing that, like, if there's a representative from, say, Ward 6 doesn't want this in, but the rest of the other wards say, this is good for this area. There's only one vote against it, and the rest are all in favor of it. And that's the beauty of it. Instead of like what you have here at Lodge, that they could just combine their votes and get against it, you know. So, you know, one may not like it for whatever reason, but if the rest of the constituents say, that's kind of where we want to do this or we want to have this or whatever the case may be, that's to me the beauty of the ward aldermen that, you know, they don't care what one person wants to do. They think it's in the best interest of the city to move forward in a certain area or a certain ward. It works better that way.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So I know we might have a motion on the table, but I want to open it up to see if any members of the public want to speak on this topic. Okay, so it looks like, I think, Ron, did you mention that you wanted to make a motion?
[Ron Giovino]: I'd like to make the motion that we establish a subcommittee to develop rules, regulations, and other factual data in favor of a ward representation hybrid.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I guess I just, so we're gonna, you're moving to establish a subcommittee to research aspects of ward representation, but you said something else in there that something about in favor of right.
[Ron Giovino]: or, yeah, no, I definitely want the subcommittee to not debate whether ward representation versus, you know, at large, I want to in this motion, create the subcommittee that says we will be doing the work on a hybrid. And whatever that number is, eight, eight, and three, if it's, you know, 20, and seven, whatever the number is, that committee will determine the rules and regulations and present it to the group for vote. But I just don't want to continue this debate off the floor here to go to subcommittee to decide, well, we're going to use at large or we're not going to use at large. I'm ready to say I want to work on the at large piece and on the board piece and get rid of the discussion about all at large.
[Milva McDonald]: That's my mind.
[Andreottola]: Can I say something, please?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, go ahead.
[Andreottola]: I kind of lean the same way as you, Ron, but I don't think we're there yet. I think we really have to find out if ward representation is in the best interest of the citizens of Medford. And we need them. We need more voices. We need to talk to more people before I think we can make that decision. I'm in favor of it. But I'm not ready to make that call until more information.
[Ron Giovino]: just point of information. All I'm asking is for a subcommittee to be established. I'm not asking that we permanently decide that the subcommittee has every right to say, you know, this doesn't work. I'm just saying we need to focus and we talk about moving the train forward. This does that. The subcommittee comes back with a formidable presentation to the whole group. By then we'll have feedback from the public as we start to talk. But all I'm asking for right now is a, uh, Would representation subcommittee be created? That's really all I ask.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And I think based on this conversation and based on the public feedback we've gotten so far and based on our interviews, there is a strong interest in ward representation. So having a subcommittee, we would not be committing to it by creating the subcommittee. We would be committing to the fact that we have a strong interest in it and we want to know more. Is that right, Ron?
[Ron Giovino]: Exactly. Okay, I'm going to remember to that even whatever we decide it still goes in front of the public, they can tell us what you know they're they're going to have the final vote, but this is just create this all this does. Anthony is create a subcommittee that will make a presentation on the impact of going to war just help us make a better solid decision.
[Andreottola]: I would respond to that, that we should then also have a subcommittee to explore just expanding, you know, to nine at large city Councilors. You know, you know what I mean? We really.
[Ron Giovino]: just, just if I could just quickly jump in, I think you're to group to subcommittees working against each other. There's no reason why that subcommittee can't come up with that conclusion, Anthony, that the that the word representation doesn't work. And I'm not asking you to give up that, but I think we understand what at-large means. I mean, I don't think at-large is what we have now, so we all live in that world. The ward piece is what we really need. For me, it's where I need the information to make a change. Otherwise, we stay as is, which we all know what that is. So I think two subcommittees kind of battle each other.
[Andreottola]: No, we can expand the number of at large, city councilors, we can go to an 11 member city council, all at large, if that's what we choose. I'm just saying there's a lot of different options. I can hold ourselves into just saying we're going to go to this hybrid model. and not even like look at other possibilities of what might make the city council more diverse. You know, if you run an 11 people, maybe people who don't have the finances can make it onto an 11 member city council, right? And it doesn't have to be ward representative. You know, if somebody is a person of color can run and win. You know what I mean? That's what I'm saying. There's a lot of different ways.
[Ron Giovino]: I want to hold to the time.
[Andreottola]: We don't look at all of them. We're doing the citizens a disservice.
[Ron Giovino]: So my motion stays. If you want to have a motion after we vote on this motion to do another one, that's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to restate the motion in a minute. But we have Eunice, Maury, and Paulette who want to say something. And then I'm going to restate the motion. Eunice?
[Eunice Browne]: I think what we need to do is, take a look at the pros and cons of ward representation. I mean, we've all talked about things that it will bring us that we don't have now, but there have got to be cons out there. And I think we need to delve into those first. And I think that that needs to be a part of what this, the job of this subcommittee to find out that maybe ward representation after all isn't right. And I think we also need to caution against, many of us have stated where we land on the wood representation hybrid at large discussion. And I'll put it out there that I'm undecided at the moment, but I think what we each feel is not really relevant. We need to hear from, You know, many, many, many, many other people. And the survey is not out there yet. You know, we've only done one meeting, which, you know, other people may feel that attendance was good. I don't feel that it was all that great at all. You know, we had a dozen people in the audience and maybe another 10 on Zoom. I mean, I would have wanted to see the chambers Packed to the gills. We've got an ice cream thing coming up in a week or so. We've got a fall listening session. We've got dozens of other things. Maury said we're going to take the show on the road this fall, winter. We've just begun to scratch the surface of what our neighbors want. What the nine or 11 of us want doesn't matter. Go to the polls and things we are citizens. We are citizens, absolutely. And, and it does matter in a way but we shouldn't be dictating, where we go, we need to get the surveys and all of the other pieces of public input. We need to get knowledgeable on the topic.
[Ron Giovino]: All I'm trying to do is not bring this debate into a subcommittee. If we're going to debate. But the subcommittee provides valued information on the piece that we don't know, which is ward representation. My motion is to establish a subcommittee on ward representation.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Maury and then Paulette, and then I'm going to restate the motion as I heard it.
[Maury Carroll]: Okay, my opinion of this as much as I'm in favor of ward representation is we're kind of showing a bias on this, that everybody basically here wants to see ward representation. Everyone has a right to say something and you're 100% correct when you say this has to be more of a more than a subcommittee conversation to a public conversation. We need the impact from the public and we're not getting it under this. You're gonna get a subcommittee and they're gonna come back with, to me, a very biased point of view. And I'm not sure that's healthy for this committee or what this committee was formed for. This committee was to open it up, try to study, Council at large is probably like 60 years old or 70 years old in the city. Long before plan A came in, it was plan E, and plan E was all councils at large also. So, I mean, what you're talking about here is not something that just started, you know, 10, 12, 15 years ago. This very much enriched in this community of our former government, how we elect officials. So, no matter how we bring this in the conversation wise, and we want to look in a different direction. I think you need more than how many, how many of the people and I'm not discouraging what you're saying Ron, because you know you know I'm a big supporter of what you say you know what you're doing, but we need to open this up community wise.
[Milva McDonald]: And we are, we are going to open it up it is in the survey and we are going to work and we're having those focus groups and I really want to get to that on the agenda. So, that's a good point. Paulette and then Phyllis, and then we're going to go to the motion.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So I certainly don't know where I would fall on this question yet. But I understand where Ron is going. Because one of the things is, if someone says to me, well, what would the hybrid look like? What do we mean? I really have no idea. It would be extraordinarily helpful to have a small, dedicated group of people looking at this question of, well, If it were to be this, we're not saying it is going to be this we're not going to say we're not saying the committee is endorsing this. We're just having some people focus on it so that we could understand what the potential would be. And so for that reason I would highly support runs. And I'm not at all discounting. I haven't made up my mind yet. I have no idea. I think that everything else that we've talked about, the need to get more feedback, all of that, it's not one or the other. It's both. We can go along with both. We can support Ron. And if there are people, hopefully, who are dedicated to this specific question, they can do us an incredible favor in drawing out a real possibility, trying to explain it. And the other ones of us can focus on other things.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Phyllis.
[Phyllis Morrison]: A lot of what Paulette said is what I'm saying. I think it's really important that we have this subcommittee. I mean, part of, I mean, and I know I've said twice tonight, I'm new to the committee, but what I don't, I don't understand fully what the benefits of the ward be the at large are and how my water at large would benefit. I think it's important that if we're going to have people at these committee meetings that they know that we know we studied what we're talking about or what we're presenting to them, giving them information, just as like we're all here confused and I think Anthony said something you know, about having a different subcommittee. I think we should have both subcommittees, we gather the facts and then bring them back to this committee, and then we can talk about it. And when people ask us questions, we can say, look, we did some research, we did some work on this, and these are the things we find. We're presenting you the options. But then we have to be sure that we get that input back from the people, because I don't know if it's more than that. We don't want to seem biased. I'm so confused. I couldn't be biased at this point. I don't know where I stand on this, but I do believe that it's important to form these subcommittees.
[Milva McDonald]: I do want to thank you. I'm going to restate the motion but before that I just want to say, we have gathered some good information on this, the information from Eunice was really valuable to see that we actually have had some words that have actually had zero representation in the last 20 years. We also have collected, we had our event and we've had interviews with people and we have had some people email the committee and fill out our feedback form. And based on the people that have taken the time to contact us, this isn't an issue that people are really concerned about. So I do think that I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. and possibly, or increasing the size of the council, topics to include authority of ward Councilors, demographics of wards, innovative approaches to ward representation, interaction of ward representation with term links, process if no one runs, potential downsides and upsides. And that doesn't limit the committee to the topics, but I just listed those because that's what I heard in our discussion.
[Ron Giovino]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman.
[Milva McDonald]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman. Okay, let's say October or November.
[Ron Giovino]: You can say at a date to be determined just to just it can be in there. I mean, if you have a date, if you as we know, committees extend the date. So if we find that we're not ready in November, we'll ask for an extension. Okay, they'll ask for this.
[Milva McDonald]: So I make an amendment to that.
[Maury Carroll]: Go ahead, Maureen. All of that being inclusive of everything that Ron's saying about that, that we include another subcommittee involving maybe people that are working at large.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, that's not, that's not an amendment to my motion. That was a separate motion. We can have it. We absolutely can have it, but I think it's a separate motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, would you say that your motion includes a possibility of keeping it at large council?
[Ron Giovino]: I'm all I'm saying is it does not conclude which way we go, but I don't, to me, a subcommittee means focus, get it done. So if they want, if after this motion, we want to vote on a subcommittee for, uh, At all at large, that's fine. I just want to provide as we've all talked, you know, what is it going to look like? So we know, I think a subcommittee get this enough work on the subcommittee just to handle the hybrid as opposed to some.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Does someone want to second the motion?
[Phyllis Morrison]: I'll second the motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. All in favor. Do we need a roll call?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, Ron.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Hmm.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. Yes.
[Jean Zotter]: Gene. I have a question. Sorry. You're not presenting one option. You're going to present multiple options.
[Milva McDonald]: Depending on how the research goes, yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: Depending on how the research, okay. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Phyllis. Yes. Maury.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Andreottola]: I have a question too. All the options, including just an expansion of at-large Councilors, are you specifically focused on hybrid?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, it's looking at hybrid, but it's also including sort of the pros and cons. So part of that would be the committee could say, yes, if we go to a larger council and kept at large. I mean, it will inevitably be part of the process. Wouldn't you agree, Ron?
[Ron Giovino]: I think the goal is to let the world know what a hybrid would representation slash at large will look like if we decide to do it. That's the that's the goal of the project. So yes, we will cover at large and we'll cover the rules. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: So, so Anthony.
[Andreottola]: Are you a yes? Just a follow up question to that. You will look at the expansion of the city council to a larger number as well, like a nine or 11 person to see if that might also be. There's no question. That has to be part of it. Then my vote is yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Okay, great. And I'm a yes too. So that's unanimous. Okay. So we really, I really want to move on to our next item, but we need to form the sub committee. Are there, is there anybody who's dying to be on the sub committee?
[Jean Zotter]: Cause I'm already trying to get the demographic data. So, so Jean Maury. I'll do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Since I have some of the data too. And I would be happy to do it. And we can only have, well, no, because I think subcommittees within themselves create a forum, right? So we're okay if we, cause we'll, we'll have to post all our meetings and, but you know, have to follow open meeting law, just like our regular meetings. So, so it can be Jean, Maury, Eunice and Milva. Anybody else?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Ron. Of course.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Of those people. Does anybody want to be the organizer or chair of the subcommittee?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I think it should be Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, maybe that could be the first agenda item when the subcommittee meets.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Can we just decide who's going to schedule it and contact the members.
[Ron Giovino]: I'll schedule it, I'll send out an email. I think I have everybody's, maybe I don't have the new members emails, but.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I will send you the information you need to schedule the first meeting.
[Ron Giovino]: I will schedule the first meeting as a participant.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Oh, you gotta do the, I'll go with through you because they're gonna make it a formal televised edition, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we'll just have to post the agenda, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Yeah, Jean focus groups report. So I'm a little worried we don't have a lot of time.
[Jean Zotter]: I know.
[Milva McDonald]: First, how many can people stay an extra 15 minutes. Okay, go ahead, June.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay, so I wanted to just do a quick presentation on what are focus groups, why would we wanna do them, what's the best way to use them. I created a slide presentation, so I'm gonna share my screen, because that helped me put my thoughts together.
[Milva McDonald]: You should be able to, I think I just gave you the ability to. Okay.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, so you should be able to. Let's see, allow Zoom to share your screen. I just got a new computer, I have to allow this.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.
[Jean Zotter]: Can everyone see this? Yes. Okay. All right. Let me just move this forward. Okay, so why would you do a focus group? It's a facilitated discussion of small groups of people, often with some type of shared identity or identity. So it could be people who ran and didn't get elected or older adults or youth or immigrants. It's conducted by trained facilitators, It's structured, so we would create a list of questions that we would direct to the focus group. The reason you do focus groups as opposed to surveys is that you're going to get more open-ended, broad, and qualitative answers, meaning answers you can't count, but that give you kind of nuanced information, more complex responses. It's a good way to gather in-depth information about a community's thoughts or opinions on a topic. It's best to do questions that you can't answer, like on the survey. So it's good to think through what aren't we answering or what's a little more nuanced that we're not asking on our survey. What makes a good focus group is the leaders of the focus group really need to make an effort that all participants feel like it's a safe space to share their opinions without fear of feeling rejected, retaliated, or that there'll be some kind of negative consequences. So you're really creating this safe space where anyone can kind of share their ideas or opinions. It's the role of the facilitator to not counter that. We just want people to be able to share what they're thinking and tell us their answers without feeling like we're judging anything they say. So there's no right answer as long as it's a safe space. So I usually have one or two facilitators and then a recorder who attends and take detailed notes on the discussion that we would use for analysis. We want the recorders to provide a similar level of detail across focus groups so that we can compare responses by the type of group that we engage. The ideal number for a focus group is five to eight people. So you don't have, these aren't robust. It's not like a town hall meeting. So it's really important to think through what are the groups we're not hearing from, and then try to get a representative. I think Anthony mentioned this before, like representative sample. In this focus group, you do wanna have, let's say we're non-English speakers, and we wanna have five to eight people who are non-English speakers. So just to remind us, we are getting a lot of data and we have both qualitative data, data that's not easily counted and quantitative data, data that we can count. So we're interviewing elected leaders and city officials. We're doing town hall meetings that are open to the public. We're adding these focus groups and then we're also engaging, want the public to engage in our monthly meetings and have their input there. Then we have quantitative data where we can count. So what Eunice presented is like an example of like looking back at who got elected, we're going to have our survey data, and then the demographics of ward and district. So just looking at this, we're going to have a lot of data to make decisions. I just want to remind us of that. Before I dive in and start working with Penny on the focus groups, I thought it'd be good for us to have a couple discussions about what are our goals with the focus groups, what kind of questions do we want to ask, and what type of populations do we want to engage. So, for example, are there things that we're not learning through our current data collection methods that we really want to use the focus groups for? Are there certain populations we're not hearing from? Are there parts of the charter that are really complicated or nuanced or that we're not getting any input into that we want to draw attention to? So I'm going to go through all my slides and then maybe ask these questions and let you see each other as you talk. And I don't know if we'll have time to get through all of this, but think through what would our goals be for the focus group? What kind of questions do we want to ask? Here are the three questions that we're asking elected and city officials. Do we want to use these same questions? We had talked about maybe honing in on an area of the charter. So as the ward, I don't know what we want to call the subcommittee, but as that ward subcommittee is working, they could create three or four questions that they want to put to a focus group that is, you know, kind of nuanced questions where we want complex discussions. And then, you know, what populations do we need to hear from? The conversation we had today, it was like, well, should we be doing a focus group of people who ran and didn't get elected and hearing from them what their barriers were that they had in running? Maybe that would help inform the ward for subcommittee. And then we need to prioritize, because I think we want to do a lot, but maybe if we think, okay, if we were to pick five focus groups, how would we prioritize which focus groups we would want to do? Sometimes for focus groups you offer incentives. So do we want to offer any incentives? Can we offer incentives? I know this might be a question I'll have to work with Penny on. And then I know Eunice offered to put together, but I could do this Eunice if you're busy with other stuff, of the organizations that could help us do outreach or where we could start. I could put together a Google Doc and people could go in and put down you know, West Medford Community Center, people that could help us do outreach for the focus groups. So for the new people who haven't heard about the focus groups, in August, I'm going to start working on a focus group guide, planning a training. So our hope was that members of this committee would be the facilitators and recorders of the focus group. The Board of Health, Penny, has offered to help with the training for the committee members to be leaders of the focus group. So we were hoping sometime, maybe end of September, we would do a training for people that are willing to do this. And then October through December, I'm putting a goal of conducting at least five focus groups. So With that, should I stop sharing and we can kind of talk more about some of the questions I proposed to the group, or do you want me to go back to anything?
[Andreottola]: I just have one question. Yes? Will the groups be in person?
[Jean Zotter]: Yes. I mean, you can do focus groups virtually. We could do some virtual focus groups. I've done that also. I think in person is better.
[Ron Giovino]: Another question, Jean, I know you were talking about using the translation services of the city. Are they still committed to do that?
[Jean Zotter]: Yes, I haven't been able to touch base with Penny again, but yes, they did offer to do that and they have community health workers who could translate for us.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I think it's extremely important.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you so much for that gene. Go ahead.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Can I ask a question. What about people that are hard of hearing a deaf Do we have a signer.
[Jean Zotter]: I don't know an answer, I can ask this, the Board of Health if they have someone do but I think that's important to for that group.
[Frances Nwajei]: ASL interpreters across the nation are very difficult to come by. I do have somebody on contract. There would be a time limit because typically for an hour, you're supposed to have two people, but I'm only able to have one. Mass Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing cannot support things like this. So we would need to connect, Jean, and work in advance to make sure our ASL interpreter is available. And the other thing is that those materials that will be used need to get to the interpreter at least two weeks in advance.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I also know an ASL interpreter that if you wanted me, I don't know. I mean, Frances, if you know someone that's fine, but I could put her name in the hat or I could contact her and ask her. if she has thoughts.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah if you could put her in contact with me that would be great because I am trying to build a list specifically for the city of Medford. I know that when we do online things you have the auto captioning but it's not the same. It's the assumption that folks who don't speak can read well. and ASL is the language in it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, she's a wonderful person and she's been an interpreter for many, many years. So I will have her contact you.
[Frances Nwajei]: That would be great.
[Jean Zotter]: So it sounds like for populations, we're saying one is people who are deaf or hard of hearing. I know Anthony, you mentioned people with disabilities at one point.
[Andreottola]: I think one group, not to lump in everybody with different disabilities or with different levels, different things, but I don't think we could break down a group for the deaf or blind. I think we just have to have something that's very open to people with disabilities in general, maybe having someone who would sign, somebody that can help people with physical disabilities get to and from what we can do with one group. I think it's probably the best we can do. I don't think we can break it down into categories.
[Frances Nwajei]: You would not want to separate the groups, right? Because now what you're doing is you're segregating. So on the posting, the notification, we would say reasonable accommodations will be provided. If you need an ASL interpreter, please notify the ADA coordinator. There has to be a specific date. it has to be a two week leeway. So we would need to get our focus group information out at least a month ahead of time, right? So that we will know when we're gonna bring the interpreters in. Okay, that's helpful.
[Ron Giovino]: Just to your point, Frances, that one wouldn't allow us to know who's coming to what focus group. Is that right? So if we were having a focus group, we would need to know the needs of that focus group.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yes. So you would have to announce the focus group at least a month ahead of time, right? Because you have to give the interpreters two weeks.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Frances Nwajei]: You know, so that's why if I could build a pool for the city, then it's great. We have a variety, right? We know X number of people are coming to this group, but maybe we could just have somebody on standby just in case someone shows up.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay. I'll work with you, Francis, to make sure we're doing it in a way that is reasonable. Are there other populations or groups we want to reach?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury, I want to hear people's answer to that question, but Maury, do you have a comment?
[Maury Carroll]: Francis, you just say we need to have our questions out in front like two weeks before whatever it's going to be put in front of the focus group.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yes, so whatever goes to the focus group interpreters need materials at least two weeks in front.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So any other thoughts about groups that we want to reach.
[Andreottola]: Seniors, non-English speakers.
[Eunice Browne]: I think the responses to the surveys will tell us who we're missing, if we're going to have that demographic data at the end.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Sorry, Anthony. These would be done at different locations, potentially, the focus groups?
[Jean Zotter]: That's what I was thinking. Like you could do one in public housing and engage public housing residents. You could do one at West Medford Community Center and engage that people who attend the community center. I'm just throwing out ideas. We could have a couple virtual for if people are more comfortable. So we could do some that are focused, like placed in a location where we want to engage people from a certain location, or if we want to do one in senior housing, but then we could also have broad open ones where, you know, at the library or something. Go ahead, Mari.
[Maury Carroll]: Just thinking out loud, we had talked about bringing this out to all the different neighborhoods in the city. The focus groups would be in addition to a community type involvement, whether we went to like the South Method Firehouse or the Westminster Community Center or the Temple or senior citizen somewhere in Wellington in that area, because we had talked about how we wanted to bring this on the road. So are you talking in addition to Yes.
[Jean Zotter]: In addition to, because it's a smaller group discussion, it's not like an open town hall meeting. It's your five to eight people and you're having more of a facilitated discussion with them. Yep.
[Andreottola]: I just want to try to make sure that we engage with the people that are not typically engaged, you know, especially with Zoom. You have so many people who are not tech tech people, and I'd love to be able to hear from people who are disconnected from city government, because I think there's a large number of them. And their voices are not heard. They're not the people who show up on Zoom, on meetings, because everything has gone to Zoom. And I mentioned seniors, just because seniors are less likely to, not to stereotype seniors, but a lot of older seniors, You know, I'm not going to know even know about the Charter Study Commission. You don't have a newspaper. You know, where would they get this information? Now, how do we, you know, connect with people who are not connected? That's my worry.
[Jean Zotter]: And are there particular questions that you would want to ask that we want more? Oh, Danielle, I see you have your hand up.
[Danielle Balocca]: Oh, sorry, this isn't going to answer what you're just about to ask, but I like kind of going off what we're talking about right now that I think one thing that has come up for me, at least, and I think what we heard in the in the public meeting at City Hall was like. People aren't hearing, there's no way that people are all hearing about this. Even posting about the ice cream social, I think I got a lot of feedback about different stuff about how we're like, you know, getting information out there. So I don't have an answer for how to do it better, but I think it's something to keep in mind. Like if we're wanting, like Anthony, you're saying, if we're wanting to target these people that aren't, that we aren't hearing from, I think that part of the problem is like, we don't know why we're not hearing from all the time, or we don't know how to reach them. And so I think that's maybe something, I don't want to propose another subcommittee, but perhaps something to think about, like how, how to like maybe get this, get the word out in an effective way.
[Milva McDonald]: feel free to propose another subcommittee. Because, yeah, okay.
[Danielle Balocca]: If we are going to talk about the ice cream social, I do have some things that I kind of... Yeah, we are going to.
[Milva McDonald]: So, Jean, is there anything else you need to, you feel like is important to check on?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, well, just what do people want to get out of this focus groups that you wouldn't get out from the other methods that we're doing? Are there questions that you have that you think would be, or do you think it's more getting to populations that we haven't been able to reach and ask the same questions we're asking elected officials? And you can think about it and get back to me, but I think it's, I need more information about what we would want out of this piece as opposed to the other pieces.
[Eunice Browne]: I think the questions may need to be a little bit different just because you're, what we're dealing with now is people who are, you know, who live city government. The city officials, the elected officials and so forth, they're living our city government, whereas other people may sort of pop in and out as to how it relates to them. I mean, some people might be watching the meetings regularly. Others are only when it affects them in such a way. Whether it's encroaching on their quality of life or their pocketbook or whatever. So I think the questions need to be different. And I also think that the questions need to be different for different constituencies. And particularly as it relates to city council versus school committee, the people that are involved in the school system. and have kids in school have very different concerns than people who do not. So I think you're looking at, I don't know the answer to what they are and I can think about it, but I think the questions need to be a bit different.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle, did you have your hand up?
[Danielle Balocca]: Oh, yeah, I think my understanding of a focus group versus like a survey is that you're getting more sort of like personalized information. So like the questions are different, like, maybe more like what's been your experience with trying to access local government or like something like that. So it's a more like open ended question rather than like, do you want a mayor or city manager? So I do wonder about the timing if it's like, we get some survey, we collect some survey results. And we find out like, what are maybe some things we want to follow up on? Or like somebody else said, what are the community to the community we're reaching?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's true.
[Phyllis Morrison]: There are open-ended questions so that people can talk more about it. That's what makes them richer.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, open-ended questions.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: And that is true. The survey results might sort of help you focus the focus groups.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. OK. Yeah. How long will the survey, are we going to have it open?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. We haven't really thought about that yet. I mean, I think it should be open for a while, you know, maybe at least a month, but you know.
[Andreottola]: I think we need to establish a sample size, you know, that we have to get at least so many, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Andreottola]: How many, you know, at least a target, you know, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Yeah. The survey will be out before our next meeting and then at our next meeting we can talk about we can look at what sample we have so far and we can talk about how long we want to keep it going. Okay. Jean, do you feel like you need more?
[Jean Zotter]: I think this is enough. I mean, it sounds like I'll work on the training and maybe by the next meeting, we'll have a better idea where we are and I can present more detailed ideas around populations and questions.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm happy to help too. So pull me in if you need anything. and thank you so much for doing this. It's really valuable.
[Maury Carroll]: I'll help as well, please.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Thank you, Anthony.
[Maury Carroll]: Gee, you know I'll help you out.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, guys. Yay, okay. So do any members of the public want to speak on this topic? Frances. Is your hand up, Frances?
[Frances Nwajei]: Yes, it is. I'm muted. Nova, I'm going to share a link with you. on to the Hemingway app. Any materials that you create, please copy and paste them into that app. We should not be sharing broad-based materials if they're above a sixth grade reading level because they automatically create difficulty in accessibility and understanding. Sixth grade is the recommended. So it's easy, you just copy the thing, you paste it in there, and it will tell you what level it's at, what your errors, where your errors are. And sometimes it's something as simple as, instead of having long run sentences, it becomes a mayor is this, a city manager is this. And then when you translate into different languages, it's easier.
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like when I tried to use it, I had to have like an account or I didn't, maybe it's free and I didn't figure that out, but, but maybe... Yes, it's free.
[Frances Nwajei]: You just copy, you take your document, you copy your document, you use the, you go on the edit and then you paste it onto that page that is looking at you.
[Milva McDonald]: So it's pretty easy to find, Jean. It's called the Hemingway app and it'll tell you what grade level and any materials you create are.
[Jean Zotter]: OK, a lot of our materials are aimed more for the facilitators. People who participate aren't going to get a ton of material.
[Milva McDonald]: That's fine. I don't think you need it for that then. But maybe for the questions. Yeah. OK, awesome. Thank you so much, Jean. So okay, we're just we're going to go very quickly through the events. We have an ice cream social on August 14 and it is now no pass required. So we are anticipating a large turnout. Danielle, did you want to say something about it?
[Danielle Balocca]: Uh, no, I just, I mean, maybe, like, just going forward, is that just that theme of, like, how we're advertising things and sort of how we're talking about ourselves, because I think, like, I posted it once, and they got, like, very little feedback. And then once I, like, posted that it was open to anybody, there was just, like, a lot of interesting comments. So I just think maybe, maybe something to discuss later. But for just, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, so it's, I guess my question is, is anybody planning to come to Wright's pond on August 14th? Can I see? So one, two, three, four, we can't have, um, because it's technically not, uh, it's, it's advertised to the public, but it's not a formal meeting. So we can't really have a quorum at any one time. And I'm happy not to be there the whole time. And I don't know, because it's three hours. And I assume you guys aren't all going to come for three hours. I mean, maybe Danielle and Ron, because you guys have been organizing. So we'll just play it by ear. So yeah, that's awesome. And Danielle's creating interactive materials. Thank you so much for doing that, Danielle. I'm going to be really excited to see what they are. We are going to have a survey by then. We'll have flyers, we'll have ice cream and we'll, what I think we do need is we need, I mean, I can do this, but maybe Ron, I'll talk to you and Danielle about it. We need somebody to kind of keep track of, I don't want the feedback to get lost. So when we talk to people, I wanna make sure we have a way of recording what we hear from people.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Paulette? Yeah, I guess I was sort of thinking that you would need some of us to come to scoop ice cream or... No, we're not scooping. So how are you giving out ice cream bars?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have popsicle, we have bomb pops, we have ice cream bars. It's individual servings. Yeah, just individual servings. Will you need people to give them out? Sure, if you're there, that would be awesome. Yeah. No, it'd be great to see people there and hopefully it'll be a nice night. So it's four to seven, August 14th at Wright's Pond. We also have a table at the farmer's market on August 31st. Is anybody interested in spending an hour, two, three, four at the farmer's market?
[Jean Zotter]: I thought I signed up for that on the- Okay, that's awesome. I said I'd do 4.30 to six.
[Milva McDonald]: That's perfect. Anybody else? have any interest in going to the farmer's market on the 31st? Can't think about it. Paulette, what's your hand up? No.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I can't do that date.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. OK. The other thing that I wanted to bring up is some people had talked about the Mystic River Celebration. Wait, before I go on, Danielle, I'll be able to use the materials you created at the farmer's market, right?
[Danielle Balocca]: Yes. And did anyone mention the sign, Ron's sign?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh yeah, Ron got a banner. Oh, and we have a suggestion box.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I was just going to ask if Frances got the suggestion box for us.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, she did came in. I'm picking it up on Monday. Awesome. And we're borrowing the tent from you on the 14th.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, somebody's going to have to swing by and get it. Yeah. I've only used it like twice, so it's probably fine. But you should probably give it a test run before anything else.
[Adam Hurtubise]: OK.
[Eunice Browne]: And I have a couple of easels, too, if you need them. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to get a table? A table at the Mystic River Celebration costs $25. It's on September 23rd. Are there people who want to go hang out at the Mystic River Celebration at a table and talk to people about the charter? Because otherwise I won't buy a table.
[Phyllis Morrison]: It's my 55th class reunion.
[Milva McDonald]: I can't. Okay, so it sounds like maybe we're not going to do that one. Okay.
[Maury Carroll]: Also, also just you know run run Medford is a two day event this year it's September 22 and 23. They're, they're expecting three to 4000 people over those two days so and I don't believe they don't not charging for tables, but if we can maybe man something along the way, there's no other tables. Yeah, they've been putting out table. Last year, what we did was we opened it up to any of the businesses or any of the nonprofits to, you know, try to set up in the square or along the route.
[Milva McDonald]: So, Maury, I'll get in touch with you and ask you about details on that.
[Maury Carroll]: So if I get some more information over the next couple of weeks and see what we can do, I can't do with it.
[Eunice Browne]: That's great. This year.
[Maury Carroll]: I'm sorry?
[Eunice Browne]: Is there Octoberfest this year, Murray?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, that's September 25th, I believe. No, September 30th. We're doing that on September 30th.
[Milva McDonald]: And are there tables there?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, but we can set that up, just so let me know what we want to do, and I'll take care of that. Yeah, September 30th.
[Milva McDonald]: So can I say that at the next meeting, you'll give us a report on the possibilities for Run Medford and Octoberfest?
[Maury Carroll]: October Fest, it's a done deal. Anybody that wants to mention it, let me know. I can already tell you what that is. That's a chamber event in the Medford Square Committee event, which I'm in charge of both.
[Milva McDonald]: The only other thing I was going to talk about is we want to do another listening session in October. Francis is looking into dates at City Hall. Frances, what about the high school? I can't remember what we said about the high school. Frances?
[Frances Nwajei]: Sorry, the dates at City Hall Tuesdays are not available because of the City Council meeting. All the Thursdays are available, but I didn't book in for anything yet. I wanted to let you know. And Dr. Cushion is actually out of the office. I think they have professional development this week. That's what his message says. So it won't be until Monday that he has a chance to view the message for me to find out if the high school is an option.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so How do people feel? Do we want to just go ahead and book City Hall for Thursday in October for our next listening session?
[Eunice Browne]: I think City Hall would be better, because then it can be televised. After the high school, it can't be.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Is there a Thursday in October that anybody is completely opposed to?
[Phyllis Morrison]: I don't have my calendar.
[Milva McDonald]: Hold on. I don't want to book yet. Will they book up in a month? Frances, what do you think?
[Frances Nwajei]: I don't know so much as booking up in a month, but I would say that remember that other departments could book in for different things.
[Milva McDonald]: So I think if we could pick a date and reserve it, it would be great. But I understand people might not be able to do that right now. How about, can we book the third Thursday in October, and then at our next meeting, if people come and say, absolutely not, then we'll look at other dates?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, that's a good date. I'm with you, Nova.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah. What is the date? That's October 12th. That's October 12th.
[Maury Carroll]: Oh, the 19th is the third. 19th. Right, October 12th is the week of the month. So the 19th. That's the third Thursday, Frances.
[Frances Nwajei]: I'm going to do that now.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you so much, Francis. And we'll double check that date at our next meetings. So everybody will check and we'll double check it and we'll see. Okay. And our next actual meeting is going to be September 7th. Right. And okay. And I will send out minutes and the call-in center is going to be rejoining us either at our next meeting or in October. So, um, okay. Does anybody have any final comments that they want to make?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, I'll make a motion to adjourn.
[Milva McDonald]: I just want to check and see if there's any members of the public that want to speak.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Can I just ask Francis a question? Yes, Francis, are you looking for a general I mean, like, I know, I know a couple of people that sign. Are you looking for them to work for the city of Medford, or just for this committee or what is the.
[Frances Nwajei]: Sorry, I'm sorry, I just, I want to make sure I click the right date, let me just check I just got a response. I'm sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. And then go ahead.
[Frances Nwajei]: It's done. So I've booked in for the 19th. I just did it from six to nine. We can always adjust the times. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Frances Nwajei]: I'm actually looking to build a list of certified interpreters, basically for the city of Medford. Okay. So that, that way, when we have things like, I think the mayor's doing address, you know, the big meetings just to help increase the accessibility. Right.
[Phyllis Morrison]: So they will contact you at city hall.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah, they could they could send me, you know, send me an email and I do have a preference towards people that are actually certified and do this for work. Yep.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Okay. I'm Maury made a motion to adjourn. Second, second. All in favor. Okay, thank you all you get minutes was great meeting and I will we will see you again in a month. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
|
total time: 35.74 minutes total words: 3357 |
total time: 6.39 minutes total words: 583 |
||