[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay, I think we'll get started. I'm going to start recording. Recording in progress.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome, everyone, to the meeting of the Method Carter Study Committee. Our first item on the agenda is the November minutes. Has everyone had a chance to look at the November minutes?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Any issues? Move approval. Great. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, all in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. Great. Minutes approved. Okay, so I'm just going to let, oops, they've been let in. Anthony and Frank, do you know if this phone number is Marilyn?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: The 70198? Yeah. I think that's her.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay. Interesting.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so our first item on the agenda is a report by the preamble committee subcommittee and the preamble subcommittee has created a preamble for us to look at. Does anyone from the subcommittee want to speak on it? I have it and I can share it, but is there anybody on the subcommittee who wants to talk about the preamble that we're not gonna look at.
[Maury Carroll]: I think Danielle, you were part of that, right? I think we spent some time on it. We tossed it back and forth, and I'm pretty comfortable with what we have. I'm just interested in what the rest of the committee has to say on it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Danielle, do you want to share anything?
[Danielle Balocca]: I'm just going to say that I wrote a draft, but I wasn't at the actual meeting, so I didn't hear any deliberation about it.
[Maury Carroll]: Your draft, Danielle, was terrific. It was the whole base of everything. You did a great job. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Then let me share it so we can look at it. This is the proposed preamble. Danielle, do you want to read it?
[Danielle Balocca]: Sure. Does my sound okay this time? Yeah, yeah. Okay, we the people of the city of Medford, under the Constitution and laws of the state of Massachusetts, desiring to manage their own affairs and conduct their local government so that it is accountable, transparent, innovative, stable, ethical, representative, and responsible, and wishing to participate fully in exercising the rights and responsibilities of local government, do adhere to and adopt this charter. game for a government based upon this charter that will promote equity, inclusivity, civic engagement, and a vibrant, diverse community in which all people have a voice. We recognize the fact that we need a government that is responsive and serves residents' needs and demand that our leaders are ethical and professional. Our city's rich history from even before the creation of the Ford by the Meadow from which Medford draws its name is complex and important and we hope to continue to build a city that learns from the past to meet the promises and challenges of the future.
[Adam Hurtubise]: How are you?
[Milva McDonald]: Do you remember me? Okay. Any thoughts? I'm sorry, I'm going to try to figure out where that noise might be coming from.
[Danielle Balocca]: I think it was Maureen, he muted.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Then I can go back to the screen. Okay, so let's open discussion on the preamble, on the proposed preamble.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I think it sounds great. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. Um, go ahead. I think that, um, it's very succinct. Um, one of the things that we heard at the listening session at the, um, and it, let me just see, does it mention business? It doesn't, I suppose that's, that was a big thing, but otherwise it, it talks about being, um, you know, aspirational. aspirational in what we strive for, while it also acknowledges the past. The beginning, I think, is appropriate. I like the, so it's accountable, transparent, innovative, stable, ethical, representative, and responsible. I think it's the only thing I remember that from the Chamber of Commerce was some some desire for business to be included and that the idea was that Medford would be a great place to live, work and play. I remember that specifically. So I have to look at it a little bit to see whether there's any place that makes sense to add anything, but. Okay. Fabulous beginning.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Any other comments?
[Ron Giovino]: I just have a quick comment. I mean, I think it's great. I did look at some of the preambles from around the state to look at some of the stuff. The only thing that I would say is that the word ethical is extremely important. I don't know if it needs to be there twice. Kind of puts an emphasis on ethics, which I don't necessarily You know, if we want that, but this is just a suggestion. I think it looks great. I mean, okay, I agree with Paulette in the and the point of, you know, businesses, local businesses, you know, just some of the points that are in here, you know, like vibrant neighborhoods, quality schools, safe and secure homes, value our elders, celebrate diversity, support local businesses, and promote community participation. And obviously the goal is to make us a welcoming and inclusive city. So, you know, I think it's just, I think it's fine the way it is, but those are just some of the thoughts I had.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so I see ethical is in there twice. Does any that's.
[Maury Carroll]: Can I step in here?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Maury Carroll]: Go ahead. All right. Ethical words or all that, that's fine. We can have it in there twice, once, or not at all. The main thing is here to fall back on what Paulette was saying, because we both sat in on that listening session with the chamber, that my thing is the businesses can have input into it and so forth, but this is still about people that live here. And a lot of the businesses, the owners don't live here. And so, but everything that was brought up in that meeting, it was well taken. And I'm not so sure that you have to include the business community right in your preamble that just have to understand when you get into the nuts and bolts of the charter that you have to look at that you do have a business community as well as a residential community.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Does anybody from the call-in center have any thoughts? Because you guys have seen way more preambles than we have.
[Wright]: Well, I, my, my, this is Frank. I, my first thought is, um, it looks good. Um, I think maybe Steve or Marilyn could take a look at it. They've looked at more than I have and perhaps Anthony, but, uh, the only word I would change, I think is, uh, change. And it's a, just a technical legal thing is, uh, state to Commonwealth.
[Milva McDonald]: So, okay. So let's see. Um,
[Wright]: the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
[Milva McDonald]: Would you capitalize that? Probably, right?
[Wright]: I would say yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Any other thoughts? I think it looks good. Okay.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I think it's coming.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to vote? I'm sorry, Aubrey, go ahead.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I think it's a great, I think it's a great draft. And my only question is similar to the two ethics. The order of the words that we have in this first paragraph, starting with accountable, makes sense in going down into the demand that our leaders are ethic and professional. That's where we're putting most of our emphasis in this. And so just thinking about if that is where we want the emphasis in our agreement.
[Milva McDonald]: So do you want to make a suggestion about how we can change that? Or how we might?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Sure. In order to vote, I would have to provide a line edit.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yeah, that might be hard right now. I mean, I was hoping we could maybe vote on this tonight, but... I'm okay to vote. Okay. If there's no more comments from the committee, I want to just see if there's any comments on this from members of the public. So, does anyone from the public have any comments on this aspect, on this agenda item?
[Ron Giovino]: I think Francis just wrote in with an interesting suggestion. I don't know if you saw that in the notes.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay. Let's see.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Moral principles or moral standards can be used to replace one of the ethics. Let's take a look at that. Oh, Phyllis, I'm sorry. You should be able to, can you not unmute? Let's see, I don't know why Phyllis can't unmute herself. Try it now. I think that, are you there?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yes. Yep. I can't get my video to start either.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. We can hear you. Great, thank you. Okay, so let's take a look back. Well, do we want to change one of the ethicals to just principled? Does that word work for people?
[Jean Zotter]: It could change in the first sentence, ethical to moral.
[Milva McDonald]: How do people feel about that?
[Moreshi]: I actually, I, I would, I liked principled.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Moreshi]: There's a certain alliteration with our principled and professional.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That's what I was thinking of changing it to down here.
[Moreshi]: We can do both.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So this would, well, then we lose ethical, uh, completely, but, um, does this work for people? Or do we want moral in here? I mean, personally, I like ethical better than moral, but.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I like ethical better than moral, too. I think it's got a little bit more punch to it.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I mean, fine with me.
[Jean Zotter]: Who is, I'm sorry, can you repeat that? Oh, it's fine. I like ethical in the beginning. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, so I feel like the people are pretty happy with this as it is right now. Do we agree?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I agree. Um, Melva, the only question I have is, um, I guess I sort of see as this is something you know, we can vote on it tonight, but I almost, I almost, we just received it tonight. Um, and so, um, I mean, in some ways it's, we just feel somewhat rushed to, to go ahead. I see this as a first reading, if you would.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So this, um, we did make a couple of changes. Um, I will share the, new version with everyone, and we'll vote on it next meeting.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I wouldn't mind sleeping on it too.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All right. That's great. We can vote on it at the next meeting. Thank you. Sure. Okay. Jean was going to do a brief report on the listening sessions.
[Jean Zotter]: Sure. So I want to thank the volunteers. Ron, Aubrey, Milva, Maury, Paulette have all helped with the listening session, so I want to thank them. We've had four successful listening sessions. The Medford Public Library, Ten Pone Senior Housing, Willis Family Development, Medford Chamber of Commerce, We had three listening sessions where no one attended. Firefighters Association, the Senior Center, which it seems like there was a big mix up and they didn't even have us reserved. So we were rescheduling that. And then we had one yesterday at the West Medford Community Center and didn't have anyone attend. So we're rethinking how to get people to come to that if we wanna try to have them come. So we've had seven so far. We have two more in December. We have one with Grace Church and the Islamic Cultural Center of Medford next Wednesday. And then we have a virtual one that Francis is organizing that has ASL interpretation, and that is this Saturday. And then I am working on, I feel like, This has been something that just keeps growing. But I'm promising Milva that I will stop in January. But once you start asking people, it takes people a long time to get back to you. Then they want to get involved. But now we're pushing it back a little bit. So there's either four or five more in January. The senior center is one of them. The Medford Public Schools, I did meet with Peter Cushing, the new principal of the high school and some of their staff, and we're going to do a virtual listening session with parents and staff. I'm also working with a couple of the teachers at the high school. and they're gonna have us come to the Advanced Placement AP Government and Politics class and the Civics class, which I think is at the VOC. So we're trying to reach some of the students and get their input. And then potentially there's one with Medford Family Network in the Department of Recreation to try to reach some parents. And then I promise you that is it for listening sessions and we will move on. Can I suggest another one? Are you sure you can suggest? I need your help, Eunice.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, fair enough. First responders?
[Jean Zotter]: Okay, like police and fire?
[Eunice Browne]: Fire, you know, the local ambulance company. Okay. just, you know, trying to hit some, some of the special interest groups. And when you mentioned, you know, MPS, um, you know, kind of our other biggest affinity group in the city, you know, that has a big impact is our first responders. Would you be willing to help set that up? Okay. Unless, unless somebody else has a better contact than I. Okay.
[Jean Zotter]: Um, And then we promise, Milva, that's it. Oh, Maury has his hand up.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Go ahead, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: As you all know, Jeanne, whatever you want to do, I'll help you. And yeah, it's a great idea, Eunice. And we have a lot of contacts that we can help out. And certainly, whatever you want to do, Jeanne, I'm right there with you.
[Jean Zotter]: All right. Thanks, Maury. So go ahead, Milva.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I was just going to remind that we're These, we're gonna wrap these up by the end of January.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Jean Zotter]: Anthony has his hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony. Wait a minute, wait a minute.
[Adam Hurtubise]: You're muted, Anthony. Can you unmute, Anthony?
[Jean Zotter]: I'll come back to you while you try to figure out the muting, okay? This Saturday, I don't know if it's about the Saturday, the virtual listening session, I have you down, Anthony, as facilitating, and then We need, well, Milva volunteered to be the note taker, but she has a conflict. She can do it if she needs to, but it'd be great if somebody else could join that session and do note taking. Oh, and I see Anthony, you can talk now if you want.
[Andreottola]: Hi, I just want to remind folks that one of our goals was to try to get a session in each of the wards. I was wondering how we get done with that kind of thing. Also, just like with a lot of the first responders, I don't know how many of them actually are Method residents. And when our goal is to try to focus on voters in the wards, I just don't want us to lose focus on what target audience is.
[Jean Zotter]: I was tracking what ward everything is in. The next time I report back, I can tell people what wards we've been in and which ones we haven't been. I was trying to get in every ward. I do think that these sessions go better when we partner with an agency that's willing to do the recruitment and outreach for us. When we just hold a session like at the firefighters association. We don't get the best turnout so i've been trying to find people who will do recruitment. get their membership involved and help us get a turnout. So that's just one of the lessons I've learned from doing this is it doesn't work so well if we just hold it somewhere. We don't get anyone coming. So that happened at the Firefighters Association for Ron and Aubrey. But I'll look at where we are and see if there's a ward we missed and we could try to troubleshoot it.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you, Eunice.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, what are we doing in terms of publicity for these? I mean, I know obviously we don't have a newspaper, so there's that, but something in patch, have the mayor, I know they're on the calendar, but have the mayor do a robocall, I, you know, it's just, it's, this whole process is so difficult to get people to engage.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: You know, just trying to think of ways that we can get the word out, you know, about the listening sessions and everything else we do.
[Jean Zotter]: Well, Milva's been great about getting it to the city. It doesn't always get in the calls we get, but they do put it on Twitter, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: There, I mean, there have been so that we were doing a lot of these. So, you know, I don't, I don't, it's, I don't know how feasible would be for the city to robocall everyone. But, but, you know, there, so I am notifying the city, we're putting it out on social media. I mean, I can do something on patch. Once we have them all scheduled, I can try to do one patch post with all of them.
[Jean Zotter]: I see Ron has his hand up. Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, just to your point, Jane, I think the success comes when you have an organization sponsoring the event that brings people together. I mean, I think the Senior Center, if there was better communication, that would have been a really good event. And robocopying, robocalling is kind of, you know, we're trying to get 10 to 15 people. It's kind of crazy to call, you know, so many, but I think, I think if we stuck to the organizations in the city, that'd be the part of their meeting or before their meetings or like the chamber was a great listening center session. And I also think too, I think that, um, You know, it's out there. It's in social media. I mean, it's just, this is a tough season. It's not a season where people say, what am I doing today? Because the holidays catch up and the weather catches up. And, you know, the more that we're in a central location that people are always at and gathering, the better off we are. And cookies. We need cookies, Jane.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. We decided we want food. Although we did have pizza at the last one, but nobody came.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So, um, and we did outreach for, for last night. Um, and still nobody came.
[Jean Zotter]: We did, but only a week by the time we got all the sponsors involved, they had a week to do outreach.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Um, The only, the only thing which I think was unfortunate is when we officially initially win, I thought we were going to target one of the seniors groups that happened to be there anyway. And then. They really weren't comfortable with that. Just thinking it put a bias towards one age group, which I understood their thinking. But in some ways, you know, having a captive audience is would have been nice. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: But anyway, well, we may try again. Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: I emailed Lisa and she said she might have some ideas who she's at the community center. So maybe Maybe in January, we can do one. So I have requests. We need, as I was saying, we need a note taker for the Saturday. It's one to three. It's a virtual listening session. Milva had offered to do it, but now she was wondering if she could go to something else that she is interested in. So I didn't know if anyone could do the Saturday, one to three, and be on Zoom, so you wouldn't have to leave your house. You could just join on Zoom and take notes. Yeah, I can do that, Jean. All right, that was Eunice. That was me. And Anthony, you can do the facilitation of that one, right?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Jean Zotter]: And then the senior center, Ron and I were going to do on the 16th of January, but I'm feeling kind of swamped with all the sessions I'm organizing. So I was wondering if anyone would want to join Ron on January 16th, that is, it's like, you know what, I think it's a Wednesday, right, Ron? It's a Wednesday and it's during the day? It's during the day, so it's, sorry, it's a Tuesday, January 16th, Tuesday at 1 p.m. I can do it if nobody else can, but if anyone's free, Maury, you can do it? Okay, so Maury and Ron will do that one. Okay, for the Medford Public Schools, this is going to be a virtual one. It's Thursday night on, let me look at my calendar, the 18th of January. It starts at 7 p.m. I was thinking it might be nice to have four people attend because if we get a big turnout, I'm thinking hopeful, we might need to They have breakout rooms and do two breakout rooms. All right, Phyllis. Anyone else? Maury? Aubrey? And then anyone else for that one? Okay. I can do it. Is that for Medford Public Schools staff? Parents and staff.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I mean, a lot of staff doesn't live in Medford. Some does, some do.
[Jean Zotter]: Should I phrase it differently? Or separated it out? I sent them the flyer. I don't know that it went out yet. So if you think I should just do parents, but I thought staff might have opinions about school committee at least.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think in a case like that, I think where what goes in the charter has a direct effect on how they do their job. Yeah, I think it's fine. Yeah, same with first responders to some extent.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Again, we would be blessed to have a large turnout. Right.
[Jean Zotter]: And then, so we have two sessions with the youth in the high school. Anyone interested in doing that? That would be during the day. I think the classes are between 10 to 1, so they're different times. And I haven't set a date yet, so I could work around your schedule. I thought we could use Danielle's game just to kind of make it fun for kids and then go into some of the questions and get youth input. These would be high school students.
[Milva McDonald]: Sure. I would do it. It just depends on what day. Okay. Time. Wednesday is the most free day I have. All right. But Monday and Tuesday or Thursday are possibilities depending on the time.
[Andreottola]: Okay. Or a Monday, or a Monday I'd be available.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay. Maybe. Paulette, are you volunteering?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I don't know. I just, I just, it all depends on when it would be.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay. So I'll put you down as maybe.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, well.
[Jean Zotter]: Or, okay. Optional. If we need you. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. All right. I can be backup for that too. All right, so that's where we are. Thanks, everybody.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you so much, Jean. Okay, so we're now going to move on to the Collins Center. They're going to give us a short presentation on multi-member bodies before we get into a discussion of what the Article 2 and 3 subcommittee has come up with. So, Collin Center, I'll hand it over to you.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Thank you, Milva.
[SPEAKER_19]: I will... Was that you talking?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Was that my computer?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know what that was, but I can hear you fine now, so.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: So everyone should have I believe everyone should have a copy of this memo that we drafted on the question of the multi member boards in the sort of various structures. So for the purposes of this committee kind of try to create categories. So that you can sort of just think in terms of sort of where you want different ports upon the boxes and so I'm not going to go to things that are very high level quickly as you get here. to the subcommittee, but essentially the boards that you're probably looking at are the locally created boards, the ones that are created by ordinance, and your charter can create some, you can create some flexibility, I would say, in terms of who does the appointments and how. So in some circumstances you can allow some appointments by the City Council and or the Mayor, but usually you'll have all your appointments in the Mayor's, you know, usually in most charges the Mayor is the appointing authority and in some cases the City Council has the ability to confirm or reject appointments depending on which boards or committees you are appointing individuals to. As we noted, When this council does have some appointment authority, usually it's the charter or the ordinance will have determined that it will be appointed by the president of the council, who will make those appointments so it's not the sort of the whole body sort of voting on an individual to go forward. And then we at the sort of at the bottom, we give you some examples of how some other communities have handled multiple member boards. So one is the pending charter change in Somerville, explaining how the mayor will refer candidates to the city council for their review and confirmation. Another section from Fall River that's part of their active charter is about, you know, a concern in some communities is about the community knowing about vacancies on boards and the impulse to have the executive fill those or whoever the appointing authorities fill those positions. So in Fall River, the mayor annually provides to the city council a list of all vacancies or bodies becoming vacant so that they can move and gives them a timeframe on which to make the appointments versus the city council coming in and attempting some type of filling. Before I turn it back to you, I'll just turn it over to Frank or to Marilyn to add any comments.
[Contreas]: Well, could you talk a little bit about the statutory boards? I mean, especially those statutes that there are a lot of statutes that that designate the mayor as the appointing authority. And and so that would be something to be aware of that. There are some boards that you couldn't do this with.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Yeah, so no was referring to the what we've categorized as your type one and type two boards and just a little bit more meat on that. Is that we've categorized as type winners, there are, there are boards that think of your board of assessors or probably a better example is your board of zoning appeals. They're mandated. The city has to have them by statute. And the state statute determines how those types of boards and committees are appointed. So the city, the charter, would have no control over those. There are other what are called authorized or optional statutes that the city or that the city can opt into. Those are also boards that are determined by by the state statute. But the city doesn't necessarily have to have those boards. I don't know if there's anything you want to add there, Marilyn.
[Contreas]: No. That was the only point I wanted to make sure to make.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Frank, did you want to add anything?
[Wright]: Anthony, thank you. I believe you pretty much covered it. As the memo points out, boards and commissions are governed by State law as respects to employees, so they're subject to the ethics rules, conflict of interest, public records, open meeting, usually obligated to keep minutes, usually according to Robert's rules, that type of thing. So, but your memo, you know, covered a lot of those points.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: So that's that's not the high level we're still here we're to answer questions I know that some I was looking at the minutes or at some of the subcommittees I know that there's been some conversation about boards and committees about the appointing authority. So you know be curious to hear what the what the committee. Thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: And just sorry go ahead.
[Wright]: I did have a question from Anthony's e-mail of earlier today seem to be a question about uh, whether or not the city council, the city council is looking to have the authority or the subcommittee, uh, indicates that the city council is looking to have the authority to remove numbers from boards and commissions. And, um, is that mean like outright, like a unilateral removal or to have the ability to approve the removal when the mayor. seeks removal, similar to the confirmation, almost a reverse of the confirmation process.
[Milva McDonald]: So we, I think we'll get into that when, because when John, who's on our committee, is going to do a little presentation, and I think that will be, that will come up then. But yeah, we would love to hear what you have to say about that. Before we do that, does anyone on the committee have any questions for the call-in center about anything that came up in this memo?
[Jean Zotter]: I had a question. If the state law doesn't say the mayor has to appoint it, then can that fall under the charter, whatever's in the charter?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I would say, and Milva or Frank, feel free to jump in, I would say that I can't think of any statute that, well, in most cases, the statute will define who the appointing authority is for the Board of Commission. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any statutes that defer that authority to the municipality. That doesn't mean that, That could be a possibility because with the optional statutes, I guess there could be a situation in which they authorize the community to set up a board or committee within a defined area and allow the community to define how the board is appointed. But off the top of my head, I cannot think of any statutes, any of the optional or enabling statutes that allow that. Great.
[Milva McDonald]: So in general, for the charter, we're talking about type three, right?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Correct.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Okay. If no one else has any questions, then I think we can move to John. And we're also going to be very interested, Anthony, Frank, and Marilyn, in having your thoughts on this as well. So it's all you, John.
[Moreshi]: Oh, thanks. I'll queue up my PowerPoint, but I promise you it's short. And Frank, it would be definitely very interesting to hear your thoughts, because we touched on that space in a way that I can't remember if it's totally unique, but I don't know. Sorry, I'm running into a system settings issue.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, if I had a copy of it, I would say I would share it. Well, I might have a copy of it. Let me see.
[Moreshi]: Sorry about this.
[Adam Hurtubise]: It's okay.
[Moreshi]: Oh, here we go. I think I
[Milva McDonald]: I have it if you can't pull it up.
[Moreshi]: I'm trying now. No, I'm sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I will pull it up for you.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay, here it comes. Interesting.
[Milva McDonald]: The screen didn't become small, did you have to share screen? No, for some reason it won't share this one. And now my computer won't let me close it. Sorry. It's going to take me a second.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Do you want to email it to me, someone? And then I can try to work with it on my end.
[Moreshi]: Sure, I can show it to you right now. It's basically just bullet points. I can just run through it, I think, if that's helpful.
[Milva McDonald]: You can. Yeah.
[Moreshi]: I didn't have any interesting graphics.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to pull. I'm going to do it right here. In the middle of my email, but that's okay. There you go. Okay, go ahead.
[Moreshi]: Oh, great. So appointment of multi member boards and commissions. Uh, this is, I think we talked about this over 2 meetings in the subcommittee. So what is a multi-member body? Generally, any board, commission, or committee of the city, as the call center discussed, created by the city or town. Almost all the language I looked at, maybe all of it, excepted the city council and school committee. They have their own provisions. And when thinking about the appointment piece, there was two considerations. One was how members of these boards and commissions are appointed. The other is how those members would be removed. And one thing I didn't put in here that I would flag is we didn't talk about the appointment or removal of town officials in their individual capacity. In this part, we dealt with that separately. So this would just be people who are on multi-member boards. And then I noted C, memo from the Collins Center. So that's what we're talking about. And then what do we do now? We have a strong mayor. The mayor appoints members of these boards without confirmation by the city council and the mayor removes them without city council approval. Our charter, the general laws do lay out a process, which is notice to that person that's also filed with the clerk. The person can respond in writing, also goes to the clerk, but it doesn't change anything unless the mayor finds a compelling and reverses circle. And then both those provisions accept the school committee officials appointed by the governor and assessors if elected by the people. So, as I mentioned, we spent a good amount of time on this. And I think where we landed was where a lot of modern charters landed in relation to the appointment process. I think Melrose, Framingham, Weymouth all sort of did the same thing. which is the mayor still appoints and it doesn't require council approval. Appointments go to the council, they take effect in 30 days. They can take effect sooner if the council votes to make them take effect, but the council can reject the appointment by a two-thirds vote. So that would be a change from what we do now. But the way we thought about it and the way I think it's usually written in the Charter of the Society is it's not a required approval. It's a supermajority disapproval in order to stop one of these appointments. And then we mirrored that in the removal procedure. So the mayor can remove without council approval, but the council can override that removal by a two-thirds vote. And also, this is something that I didn't see anywhere. I think we generated this, is the council can remove an official themselves by a unanimous vote of the council. When we talked about that, I think we thought that would be very unlikely, but it was a good fail safe.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Can I ask for a clarification?
[Moreshi]: Sure.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, when you say council can remove an official, and who's an official?
[Moreshi]: You know what, that was probably poor drafting on my part. So a member of the multi-member body.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay.
[Moreshi]: Sorry about that.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: But not the school committee or the city council or the mayor? No. Okay, so just the multi, okay.
[Moreshi]: Yeah, no, that's a great clarification. Let me, because I was doing this last night and I was very tired. So we thought about the appointment removal process in two pieces, I think. One was members of multi-member bodies. The second was individual officials, so department heads, that kind of thing. That can also sometimes go to the council. We just dealt with multi-member bodies in this presentation and recommendation. So it would just be members of those bodies. And then school committee is going to be its own beast. City council would be its own beast. They wouldn't be affected by this stuff at all. They have their own provisions. Yeah, and so this is our last slide. So what was our thinking in these two recommendations? One, it increases transparency. So now the council is actually involved. The actions have to go to the council. The council has an opportunity to act. And it also sets timeline for appointment. So we said 30 days. I think we originally started with 21 days in our first meeting, and then came back and said 30. I think 30 was fairly common. I think the Somerville proposed language we just looked at was 45, which is a lot. And one thing to Frank's question, I think, is Somerville, if I read it correctly, requires council approval for appointments. And we didn't go that far. And that gets to the second point, was the hope that it would maintain efficiency. One concern I think we all shared in the subcommittee was if you give the council an approval power, there's a potential for a bottleneck, whether intentional or just because there's so much stuff on their plate. And this would keep things moving while establishing a set timeline opportunity for candidates to be vetted publicly. And yeah, as I said, the council can still stop an appointment if they feel it's a poor one, but you'd have to muster a super majority. Um, the appointment power based on many of the, um, appointment provisions we reviewed, uh, I think are broadly all on the same page. Uh, the removal power is broadly more empowering to the city council, I think. Usually, if I remember correctly, it's a removals removal. Uh, maybe notice the city council or the clerk. Um, but we beefed up the council a little bit. So if something egregious happens on a multi-member board, um, you know, they can stop the mayor from approving someone, excuse me, removing someone inappropriately, or, you know, if someone's outrageous enough to muster a city council unanimous vote, they can remove them even if the mayor doesn't want to. So I'm sure the subcommittee members are happy to answer questions, I'm happy to too.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, see Anthony Wilson has his hand raised, so.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I just had a clarifying question in terms of overriding the mayor's removal. Was there a timeline on that? Was there a timeline on that? You know, we didn't talk about that.
[Moreshi]: That would actually, that's a good idea. We talked about it broadly, but yeah, I don't want to speak for any of the other subcommittee members, but I do think a timeline would be really important. You know, maybe it's notification of removal and then X days. My immediate thought would be less than 30 days, certainly.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, it looks like we have some committee members that have comments, but I just wanted to check back with Frank first, because you had brought up the question of the council's ability to remove members of multi-member boards, and now that you've seen what the idea is, I wondered if you have any thoughts on it.
[Wright]: Yes, thank you, Milva. Yeah, I haven't seen that before. My thought is, initially, Do you want to have the board have that authority, or do you want to give the individual being removed the ability to petition to be heard with regards to the removal? And keep them on a very short timeframe, obviously. Because you could tie up, if the mayor's looking to remove and fill a slot, then you don't want because of lack of communication or whatever, there'd be an effort to have that person remain on the board by, say, one individual city council. How does it stay before the city council? I guess that's something you have to consider as well, which is, is it by motion of one city councilor to the full city council? And how does this play out? Because you've got potentially a time issue. You also have issues that relate to Obviously, any statutory boards, so you'd have to look to what state law allows as to removal of members of whether it be zoning, housing, those types of boards and commissions that are created by state law. I'm just not familiar with this scenario where you have the city council stepping in and trying to over, not override necessarily, but step over, I guess, the mayor and say, we're not happy with this individual. We want this person removed once they've allowed the person to sit. you know, again, I defer to the city solicitor or anyone else's legality of it as relates to each individual Board of Commission.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Okay, so I'm just going to go in the order that I see the hands because I don't know who's hand was first, but Eunice is the first one I see, so go ahead.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, thanks. A few different things, I'll start with sort of the easy one first. We want to be as specific as possible where it says how many days they have to make or veto and so forth. We want to make sure that that's either calendar days or business days so that there's no question later on. So we want to put in some clarity there. I did go on the city website and under the boards and commissions section, it does indicate city commissions established by ordinance and there's probably a dozen or more. I know that in the past, the mayor has sent resolutions to the city council asking for people to be Confirmed I think the liquor commission is 1 of them board of assessors might be another. The election commission that we've recently established over the last year or so that was another 1 and there was definitely some. Contention in who got, um. Approved for that, um, the city council did. Uh, deny at least 1 or 2 of the mayor's initial appointments. Um, and so she had to go back with, uh, come back with a couple of other choices before they finally, um. You know, last 1 or 2. Um, so there's that, um. My other. question would be regarding removals. Well, both appointments and removals, will there be any sort of, or can there be, or should there be any sort of criteria in the charter of what, you know, for appointments for the boards, what qualifications are required to serve on any particular board. I would imagine that the qualifications, there'll be minimal qualifications as in certainly be a resident. There was an incident that came up over the last year where somebody served on a particular board and she moved out of the city and didn't step down. And when questioned, I questioned the mayor actually. And she said there's nothing in the charter that states that a non-resident can't serve on a board. So unless it was for cause, she couldn't remove the person unless the person chose to step down or whatever. So I think, you know, minimal qualification ought to be a resident in the city, unless there's some glaring reason why a non-resident, maybe because they're a business owner or something. Um, and then other. What other qualifications for particular boards. And I would imagine that each board would have different qualifications, depending upon the purpose of the board. And then finally, regarding. removal, shouldn't there be criteria for why somebody should be removed, could be removed, so that there's nothing ambiguous and nothing sort of willy-nilly? These are the, you know, X, Y, Z, A, B, C reasons why somebody could be removed. I mean, you talked about, you know, doing something egregious or outrageous. Well, defined egregious or outrageous, I suppose. So, you know, that's my, my first set of thoughts.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks, Eunice. I would love to hear thoughts on that from the Collins Center, but maybe we'll go through the, there's a few more committee members and then we'll see if there are any thoughts from the Collins Center on those issues. Jean.
[Jean Zotter]: So I have three questions or comments. One is about committees that are started by the school committee. This is just about just clarifying that this is about city council and is this school committee subcommittee going to address whether this is the rules around committees for the school committee. I'm using committee a lot, so I don't know if that makes sense, but I know the school committee often has like that a rules committee, I think, and they had a discipline committee and people apply to be on them. They did one around COVID. So is that going to be in the charter, and is that a separate thing? So that was one question I had. I was wondering if the committee could say why you picked two-thirds and not just a simple majority. Was there thinking around why you didn't go with 51% of the city council and went with two-thirds? And then I had a question about the Collins Center memo, because there's a sentence in there that says, Advisory committees boards and commissions of the mayor as relates to strictly executive matters are not subject to city council confirmation. And I was wondering what those were because we are mayor created board. I think city council would like to have had a say over who got appointed. So I wasn't sure what type of, what that sentence meant. And is that more just around staffing issues or things like, so those were my three questions.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Now I'm going to change course and let the call, cause I feel like there's a lot of questions coming. So let's let the call and center address the questions we've had, and then we'll go to the next, the other committee members. So, Yeah, Anthony do you want to chime in.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Sure. So, on the question of that line in the memo. So, the mayor has the authority to. You know, I'm gonna say this as simply as possible to assemble a group like a committee of citizens or even a committee of staff to help him make the executive decisions that are out of sight of the realm of the legislative. Those are not covered by the open meeting law. I'm sorry, not the citizens ones, but the sort of internal executive ones. Those are not covered by the open meeting law. And those are purely, those are for decisions that the mayor themselves could make. They're purely providing advice to the mayor on executive decisions so for those reasons and sort of the flip side of that but they have different rules especially around opening the meeting law the city council and the school committee can form subcommittees and other types of committees for its functions and the mayor wouldn't be making appointments to that unless you know one of these two authorities said we would like the appointments from the other body. So they have that inherent authority. So the mayor has the authority to assemble a group to advise itself, not the same way, but similar to the council's authority to create subcommittees. Frank, feel free to chime in there.
[Wright]: I think you've hit the nail on the head, Anthony. One example I can give you is, or appointments to the police and fire, a mayor may put together a committee to review the applicants. And because in addition to the civil service test, the candidates subject to being interviewed, et cetera, which is a mayoral function, but the mayor may want to get the opinions of others prior to the mayor making the ultimate decision. um for purposes of you know this charter commission um you know the mayor has requested a group of residents of the city of Medford um get together and formally, and it is not a committee that's established by ordinance or state law. And the function here is to perform a task which the mayor could do herself, but which she's seeking the input of residents. So it doesn't require, it would not require even in another city that does have confirmation for the city council, would not require that confirmation necessarily.
[Jean Zotter]: So you're saying that our committee would not fall within what was laid out around having city council approval?
[Wright]: Correct. Yeah, unless there was an ordinance that said otherwise.
[Contreas]: So, the committee, the committee is advisory to the mayor.
[Wright]: Yes.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay. Can you give me a definition of a multi member board then what committees do fall under this?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: fall under, would fall under, so it will depend, so right now we're talking about, you know, a potential amendment to the charter that the committee's discussing. So you would, it would, I think if you look at the examples that we have in the memo, it would be charters created by, it would be, I'm sorry, committees created by the ordinance, created by ordinance, the city council creates a committee.
[Jean Zotter]: Created by city council ordinance, okay. Okay.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: 1, other thing, and we have, I think we have other things that, you know. Things to discuss about the proposal from the subcommittee, but there was the question about the criteria around the removal and I would just sort of. Bring to the committee's attention that. You, you've got the, you've got the city council's removal authority, and then you could potentially be creating additional. You know, rights or processes for the person being removed that they might not otherwise. Have under law, which could complicate. You know, removals and 2, even if they're just. For the city council, a person who. Right now you've got sort of two provisions. You've got the unanimous removal by the city council, and you've got the removal by the mayor with the two-thirds confirmation. And even if you only applied those considerations to the city council's unanimous removal, a person may be able to raise a say. Even the mayor cannot remove me because I've got these protections under the other side of the charter. So I'm just, you know, just raising that to the committee just to be aware of that. And it does, it can be constricting in terms of making these decisions. There could be urgent reasons for the removal of an individual. Marilyn or Frank.
[Contreas]: Yeah, I think there is some case law that speaks to that. And that we should look at that before we weigh in.
[Wright]: I would agree. I've seen situations where people have been removed And while the, the reason for removal may not be defined, or the basis for removal may not be defined in the charter or the ordinances, oftentimes it's a reasonableness theory that comes into play and or, whether or not the action to remove was arbitrary and capricious. None of that is necessarily spelled out, it has to be spelled out, but to Marilyn's point, may be established in case law. So you wouldn't necessarily see all this you know, definition, work to define bases for removal or appointments set forth because, as to Anthony's point, it becomes very restrictive when you set limits like that, so.
[Milva McDonald]: And just to be clear, you're talking about the I think you're saying that potentially giving the city council more power over removals can create those restrictions, but are you also, because there was also the question of defining the criteria for removal in the charter. Are you also speaking to that?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: The state of Arizona was purely about the question about defining the criteria for removal. Okay. Now, there are other comments about that, but we can wait until everyone's had a chance to speak.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And yeah, if you could point us to the case law or tell, you know, give an idea where we should look for it, that would be great. But we don't have to do that right now. Okay, Ron, you wanted to speak?
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. Thanks, Joan and the committee for putting this together. I do have some questions and concerns. First of all, I think that we have to have an understanding of what kind of tier each group is in. So there's by statute, the mayor has control, but where are we at? And I think part of that is, we heard in some of the interviews and surveys that we conducted, there was a concern that on some of these volunteer committees, people are wondering whether they should go on, if they have a 30 to 45 day vetting process, I don't know if you're going to see that spirit of volunteerism continue as eagerly as it does right now. That's just my feedback. Also, balance of power is a tough thing. We can get some power moved, but to eliminate the mayor's power and to be able to add or delete a member to me, I just can't vote for. I think that a two-thirds vote puts the mayor, who is the chief executive officer, out of the process. And for whatever reason, we'd get to that point. I just don't see that as a balance of power when you're pulling the power away from the mayor completely. And I think we just have to go back and look at an alternative for that. I also remember in some of the interviews, there was a comment, which I thought was pretty interesting, when ordinance are created to create these kind of boards, that the City Council would have an appointee for them to put on these boards. I thought that was an interesting comment. I thought it gave them a little bit of power in there. And so, so I couldn't support the pulling of the mayor's power completely I just don't think that that's, and we've talked a little bit about you know the executive branch and and privacy issues and reasons why some of it would be removed. I just don't, I think that we want to create a more welcoming view, but I certainly think that we need to create a description of, not necessarily qualities, but more of what is the group that has these kinds of criteria. Obviously, statute is one way. Then, you know, are we, you know, folks who get together and just, you know, create a, Bicycle lanes in the city, are they under the same scrutiny as those who are on the assessor's board? That kind of thought. I haven't thought this through, but. We actually have a group that does that. No, I understand, but I'm just saying when we're talking about removing and adding board members, who does that? I mean, if I was on this board knowing, if this was one of those ordinance boards and I knew that if I said something, I have a chance that I could be thrown off this board, I'd be less likely to volunteer. That's my only point. So the things I'm concerned about is understanding better what these boards How are they defined by statute and not? And the ability to, by two-thirds vote of the city council, to eliminate or add members just does not seem to be a balance when the mayor is completely eliminated from that process. That's all.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Ron. Anthony, Andrea Attila. Wait a minute, you're on mute, Anthony.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Anthony, can you unmute? You're still muted. All right.
[Milva McDonald]: Let's see. Hopefully, you'll be able to unmute and then we can hear from you. Ron, when you were speaking, were you speaking specifically about the, okay, here's Anthony, go ahead, and then I'll ask you, Ron.
[Andreottola]: Sorry about that. That's okay. I kind of wanted to just kind of carry on what Ron was saying that, you know, the boards we're talking about that are created by ordinance have very little, if any, power in the city and are mostly comprised of community members, residents who have, you know, have a desire to serve the community, to have them, you know, have the possibility of standing before the city council to be voted on or judged without any kind of due process, I think is kind of not in the best interest of the community. I think we need more people on boards and the easier it is for them to get on board said that I don't know give to our community I I think putting putting up an obstacle where you know if you say something or but you have a different opinion or if you're on the bicycle committee and you want to put in 5 bicycle lanes and you're making a big think about it that you could be brought up in front of the City Council and be dismissed is probably not what we want in our community, at least I don't. And I think if you asked a lot of our residents, they probably wouldn't do that. That's all I can say.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we've been talking a lot about the proposed removal powers and one was for the city council to be able to remove a member of a multi-member board with a unanimous vote and the other was related, John, make sure I'm getting this right. It was related to the city's council ability to overturn a mayor's removal with a two-thirds vote. Is that right?
[Moreshi]: Yes, so I think there was sort of a flip of the appointment power. So the mayor still appoints, but a two thirds can say no. And the reverse would also be true.
[Milva McDonald]: But I was thinking specifically, wasn't there something in there about the, if the mayor removed?
[Moreshi]: Yeah. So the city council, if they had two thirds vote could deny the removal.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, So let's, I mean, I'm just, there's a lot of pieces to this. There's the appointment, there's the power to confirm the appointments, or, you know, maybe that's the wrong word, since that's not specifically the power to deny the appointments, let's say, and then there's the removals. So, and since we've been talking a lot about the removals, can we maybe, take the I'm going to hear from Phyllis and then we'll look at whether how the committee overall whether we want to keep the provision to give the city council power to remove Phyllis.
[Phyllis Morrison]: My question is and maybe this was discussed and I didn't know it does the person who's been removed have any right to appeal or is there any any sense of, does it have to be for cause or what is the process there?
[Milva McDonald]: Right now you mean or in the proposed? What we're proposing.
[Phyllis Morrison]: John? It's pretty vague to me right there, like it could be just arbitrary.
[Moreshi]: Yeah, I think that's right. I think there is, candidly, I think there is, to me, a certain openness. The mayor is making appointments, the mayor can remove them. Obviously not for an impermissible purpose, but generally the way employment works is you are at will except for prohibited reasons to remove someone. So that's generally how I thought about it. But I think criteria is an important discussion. So it's not that I'm necessarily opposed to it, but my thinking is if the mayor is just isn't working well with a member of the board, recommend removing them. I think as I understand it, that's what the mayor could do now, unless otherwise provided. And Ms. Morrison, I think you had another element too.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I'm sorry, John, I didn't hear you.
[Moreshi]: I think you mentioned criteria, which Eunice had also mentioned.
[Phyllis Morrison]: My concern or my question, not my concern, is that so the person's appointed to the board and then just all of a sudden the person could be removed from the board. Does it have to be cause? or like you were just saying, if the mayor appoints them, he or she can just remove them. And then if that's the case, then why would the council need to have a two-third vote? It's not making a lot of sense to me, but that doesn't mean it's not making a lot of sense to everybody else. And I mean that sincerely. It may not have just gotten into my head correctly yet. So we have a person who's appointed to a multi-member board. The mayor decides that the person is to be removed and then that goes to council and then the council can keep the person with two thirds vote and override the mayor?
[Moreshi]: So I think your concern was maybe what we were trying to get at, which was, you know, the mayor has appointment removal. It may be subject to conditions. I know we're talking about taking a look at case law. at least as far as language goes, it seems like the mayor has that discretion. So our idea was let's create some sort of mechanism to dissuade or stop what we think of as an impermissible, inappropriate reason for removal.
[Phyllis Morrison]: And you can call me Phyllis.
[Moreshi]: No, I can't. Mrs. Morrison was my teacher.
[Milva McDonald]: Stop calling Mrs. Morrison. Okay. Thank you. And I see Frank has his hand up and he may have, may want to address what you're asking, Phyllis.
[Wright]: Yes. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, my experience is that people who are appointed to boards and commissions are generally appointed to a term of, you know, one to three years. So they're unlike an employee at will. to that extent, and thus their removal would be prior to the expiration of their term, which thus gives them arguably some right to fulfill the remainder of their term barring some nonfeasance or malfeasance on their part. So I guess I would, would say it is distinguishable from an employee at will situation and therefore the board or commission member arguably does have a right to that position until the expiration of their term. Now generally what you see is that board and commission members will serve beyond the expiration of their term until a successor is appointed. Arguably at that point, if they're still serving, they could be removed. But again, I would say more likely you'd be looking for costs for removal because they could argue that I have a right to serve until a successor is appointed and confirmed if confirmation is part of the process. I'd be careful about taking a position that somebody can just be arbitrarily removed after appointment.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I ask a call center question? Is removal of members of multi-member boards generally covered in charters?
[Wright]: I'll jump in on that one to begin with. I don't recall seeing it in my experience. Removal is usually something that, again, is for cause and might be addressed in an ordinance or just in general law. I mean, for instance, something as simple as someone not showing up, they get appointed, they get confirmed, and then they don't appear for meeting after meeting after meeting. You'd look for a reasonable basis. If they've missed X number of meetings, is it reasonable to remove that person unless they have an excuse? What if there's an illness? What if there's something like that? So but generally I don't recall seeing removal as the boards and commissions themselves in charters. I've seen in some of them there is for municipal officials, I think it's article 23 that talks about a right of appeal to the city council if if a city official is removed, and I believe that covers boards and commission members as well as department heads and other appointees of the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: But that would be in a different section of the charter.
[Wright]: Yeah, it's appointments are covered in section 21, I believe. The right to a hearing upon removal is in section 23.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Wilson, were you going to say something?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Yes, so if the committee refers to our memo that was provided for the last meeting, there's an appendix where we've listed a number of removal provisions from a number of charters across the state. Oftentimes, it is covering both employees, I mean that will not employees department heads and certain committee members. I think the highlights of sort of I could summarize that you know there's a there's a number of there's, you know, more than 20 there. If I could summarize them I would just say that. There's a variety of removal provisions, with some that do say that the mayor has the ability to remove with the confirmation of the council. In the body of that memo, we talk about how it can be broken down, that some communities have the mayor can remove a person from a board of committee, without having to provide any additional notice. In some cases, they provide notice to the city council and the clerk, and in some cases, the city council has the ability to override the removal. In all of them, there really are provisions talking about the reasons, you know, spelling out, here's the only reason that you can remove a person. There is not that kind of specificity in those charter provisions.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Um, Eunice and then more units if you want to say something.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. 2 things in regards to what Frank just said about, um, and Anthony as well about. Removing people, um, you know, if they just. Don't show up, um, that actually we did have that situation not that long ago with 1 of the, um. Boards, um, I think it was the Logan airport noise advisory. Um, where the person appointed just simply never went to a meeting and I don't remember. little foggy how it got resolved, but it took a long time before the city council became aware that we were not being represented as we should be. Um, and so I think they, they did remove the individual or, or the individual just stepped off. I can't remember, but that has come up. Um, but, um, sounds like we're probably going to have another conversation about all of this, um, at some point. And, um, It sounds like from what you said, Melva, we're kind of looking at 3 different buckets, the appointment process, denying appointments and removals. I would also add if it's appropriate in the charter and I'll defer to the call and center folks. If it's appropriate to have in the charter talking about recruitment to boards, I noticed in the fall river. They sent us that the mayor puts out something annually, but also. brings it to some of the local civic groups and things like that. And I'm not sure if that happens here, but I know the mayor posts something on the official Medford page periodically. I think you see it maybe three or four times a year when there are vacancies, but are there any other avenues for recruitment? And then what I talked about a little bit earlier about minimum requirements and then qualifications for the various boards would be something that I wonder if that would be addressed in the charter as well. And then finally, I'll add, and this has come up at city council, some of the board members receive compensation in the form of stipends. You'll see that on the, City website, if you go into each of the various boards, you know, maybe $1,000, maybe $1,500 per person, you know, it's not an exorbitant amount of money, but it's something. And I know that there's been talk on the city council that in order to have a bit more civic engagement and with the amount of time that some of these boards, you know, take up of your time, and we could all vouch for that, that the city council wants to see compensation for all board and committee members. Would that fall within the charter as well? Some things to add.
[Milva McDonald]: Do you have an answer to the question about compensation, Anthony, or Frank, or Marilyn?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: So I don't hear anything. I have stuff going on in my background. Could you say the compensation piece one more time, though? I just wanted to make sure.
[Milva McDonald]: I believe the question is whether the charter specifies whether a member of a multi-member board would receive a stipend or a compensation.
[Contreas]: That's not usually in a charter. It's in the ordinance? I've seen it in an ordinance, yes.
[Wright]: I would agree because you want to have the ability to change it without having to amend the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. Okay, thank you. Okay, so it sounds like we need to do a little revisiting of the whole issue of removal and it's based on this discussion. It sounds to me like. There is a section of the charter outside of just the section about the multi-member boards and commissions that can address these provisions in general that could also apply to members of multi-member boards. So I think that maybe the subcommittee will revisit that, I think, because there's a lot of questions about it and concerns is what I'm hearing. But I wanted to just get, we haven't talked much about the confirmation, the appointment, the suggestion was for the mayor to keep appointment power and that the city council would have the power to reject an appointment within 30 days. So I just wanted to get a sense of what the committee thinks about that.
[Andreottola]: I'm still muted.
[Adam Hurtubise]: No, you're good.
[Andreottola]: Uh, you know, just to kind of go back where to what I was saying earlier, just, you know, the thought of somebody who's volunteering to be on a disabled person's commission or the, uh, the, you know, the trash commission, uh, having it being appointed and then rejected by the city council. I mean, uh, Will people from the community, you know, volunteer for a board where they know that they have that possibility of, you know, standing up and being rejected publicly? I don't know if that's something we really want to kind of get into.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, I just want to, you know, we have, and we've heard that concern expressed in interviews also. Just recalling the memo that we got, because this is a balance of power issue, and that's been something that's been raised quite a lot in our survey. It's been raised in all the public information sessions we've had. And when we got the memo on mayoral authority from the Collins Center, if I recall correctly, we're not You know, I mean, we're, it's not uncommon for the mayor to have sole appointment authority, but I believe it was 27%. So it is, I think the majority of communities does give the city council some appointment authority. So we know that it's done and that it works in other communities. I just wanted to sort of throw those statistics out there. Did I get that? Am I remembering that right, Anthony Wilson? I think I am.
[Andreottola]: I on these types of on these types of boards are on on the kind of boards created by ordinance and that just the board's created by ordinance these kind of community boards as well.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Well, I I'm sorry sorry to interrupt I I just clarification and maybe just my own but not be clear to not but These are boards created by the city. People can go out and form organizations and form boards and engage in civic, but this would not affect that. It's purely the ones created by the city council, due ordinance.
[Andreottola]: Would say the disability or the bicycle board or the traffic board, where would those fall?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: So I'm not specific, I don't have any specific, I don't suppose we looked at all the boards in Medford. Maybe covered by the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: I think maybe what we need to do also for the next meeting is have a list of the bodies that would be covered by the charter, this charter provision, because people seem to have questions about that.
[Jean Zotter]: I have it up. I can share it if you want. I know. Okay. Yeah, sure. So people can see what because I had to educate myself. Yeah. All right. Can you see that?
[SPEAKER_19]: Yeah. These are the
[Jean Zotter]: commissions established by ordinance, which I understand is what would be covered by your proposal. I think that's right. So water, sewer, human rights commission, housing authority, cultural council, library trustees. Um, there is Anthony, the commission for persons with disabilities is on this list.
[Milva McDonald]: I actually have one question for the Collins Center. Our charter says that the mayor makes all the appointments without city council confirmation. However, I believe at least a couple of these boards require some city council approval. Eunice, you're nodding your head. Is that your understanding as well?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. I'm pretty sure that the licensing commission, each time they've had a new member that's come before the city council, definitely used to be the registrar of voters, now it's the elections commission. I remember that distinctly because it's quite recent. That committee has Only commission has only been in existence for, I don't know, 18 months and. I know that the mayor put forth someone there's 4 members on there and the mayor put forth someone. two people actually that were both declined by the by the City Council for two different sets of reasons until they came up with she came up with a third choice that they did bless okay so I guess Frank we're so my question is how does that interact with the charter saying that the mayor makes all the appointments without City Council
[Wright]: I don't believe that list is correct. I think you'll see there are a number of boards of commissions on there that are subject to state law. You've got zoning, you've got alcoholic beverage, you've got disability. There's a state statute on the appointment of members of the disability commission. I don't believe that's a list that there may be an ordinance that relates to each one of those. That would not be unusual. But that does not mean the appointment process is established by ordinance.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Contreas]: The state law may require confirmation. Um, I, and on the housing, on the housing authority, um, that's, you know, authority is really different than just a statutory board or commission. Um, and there, there are specific requirements addressing removal of housing authority members in chapter 121A. I mean, in 121B. Okay. That anybody would have to follow if that was the question before you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. John, do you want to speak?
[Moreshi]: I'm sorry. I was actually going to say what Frank said, but I forgot to take my hand down.
[Milva McDonald]: So I'm very sorry about that. Okay. Okay. You can probably stop sharing this gene since Okay, so we still haven't really gotten into how the committee feels about, we haven't gotten about giving the city council some power in the confirmation process. We've had concerns about volunteerism, But in general, our people, as we know, balance of power is an issue, and this is one of the things that falls under that category. Gene?
[Jean Zotter]: I mean, I'd wanna, we're not voting on it today, but balance of power has come up a lot, and there isn't a lot of, options for us on balance of power. So this seems like the one area where we can give city council a little more power. So with that in mind, I am in favor of it. I'm assuming, but maybe the Collins Center can tell us that it's often routine and is not You know, like for state appointments, there usually isn't a fight over all the appointments that come up with city council. I'm assuming that usually these don't become issues, but I don't know, like, whether you see in the cities that do have city council approval or the ability to remove people, are there less people willing to volunteer to be on boards and commissions?
[Wright]: If I may, I don't believe you can generalize particularly in the light of the political culture of late. I've seen the experience, I've experienced across the board where confirmation was assumed so long as the candidate was met the qualifications for the position, whether or not people might disagree with their politics. As long as they met the qualifications or the perceived qualifications, they were approved. When I've seen the opposite, where somebody does meet the qualifications, but for whatever reason, members of the city council were not willing to vote for approval. Or sometimes even take the confirmation up just keep it in committee. So it has run the gamut in my experience over the last couple of decades. But to your point, the point as to what we've seen, I think I generally have seen in my experience, which is limited to basically a handful of municipalities, My direct experience is that confirmation is typical, but you're kept on a short timeframe, which was a point that was raised earlier, which is you have to either confirm or reject within, you know, whether it be 21 days or up to 45 days, but 30 days may be, where you're leaning, but somewhere in that neighborhood, so that things don't get stretched out and dragged out, that type of thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Aubrey, you wanted to speak?
[Maria D'Orsi]: That I wanted to maybe offer my own summary to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. So, right now, the mayor has the ability to build a point. And remove and the subcommittees proposal is to add the option for the city council to reverse either of those with a 2 3rd. So, it's an optional reversal with 2 3rd.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Maria D'Orsi]: And every appointment would need a two-thirds vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. Yeah. They wouldn't be required to vote on it in a meeting, but they would have the power to overturn an appointment if they so chose. Do you have another question, Aubrey? Or a comment?
[Maria D'Orsi]: It was just a clarification to make sure I understood correctly.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And then John and then Ron.
[Moreshi]: I just wanted to chime in. I think Aubrey sort of touched on one of the things that I wanted to touch on, which was, you know, I'm generally, I think maybe more bullish on the bullish side when it comes to executive power. So I totally understand where Ron is coming from. And I totally understand where Anthony's coming from about wanting to incentivize people to participate. So that to Aubrey's question is why we went the way we did where it's not confirmation of appointment, which I think has a real opportunity to stymie things and to create a brutal review process, at least for certain people. I would guess ultimately it would be pro forma for a lot of these. But to say the council needs two-thirds in order to adopt something. So the hope would be the mayor is in the driver's seat unless a meaningful number of people are willing to stop it. So I'm mindful of what we've heard so far as far as giving the mayor their prerogative to appoint people they want and not disincentivize people from participating. So I just wanna find those sort of informed where we landed. which is a process that, at least in the charters we were sort of looking at, was common.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Ron, you had another comment?
[Ron Giovino]: Just a clarification, John. Under this, is the city council able to initiate a removal or only approve a mayor's removal?
[Moreshi]: Yeah, so that was one thing we added was a unanimous power of the city council to I would just flag in light of that, that we had sort of two roles for the city council in removal broadly. One is which you can't stop removal if you get the two but that would still be mayor generated, mayor instigated, whatever the right word is. And then a second piece, which was unilateral, unanimous city council removal, which I think would almost never ever happen. So I would just say to you, to the extent you're really uncomfortable with the city council sort of starting the ball on something like that, you know, it's possible we could, there are two avenues, you know, if you don't, if you really don't like one, maybe like the other.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, the part I don't, I just, I can't support the city council starting the process for removal. That's the part, I mean, I understand you want approval, two-thirds approval, what the mayor says, but to have a two-thirds vote of the city council to actually remove somebody seems to just push the mayor right out of that system. So I wouldn't be able to support that piece, but I understand what you're saying.
[Moreshi]: Yeah, well, and it's the person would be removed unless there's a two thirds disapproval.
[Milva McDonald]: So just to clarify, I think we're going to have to wind up this section of the meeting, and this is, I think, Maury, you want to have you have one more comment. Go ahead, Maury.
[Adam Hurtubise]: You're on mute.
[Maury Carroll]: Now, I'm gonna reiterate Ron's sentiments right now with this proposal, because I don't know how many people have been in charge or manager or boss of people that, how do you manage people that have been elected or answered to a different body? And I think it's kind of like convoluted. I understand what we're trying to do here, but to me, I would never go along with another body hiring someone, answering to someone, yet someone else has to try to be their boss. in charge. So I mean, I'm gonna go 300% with what Ron's saying, that it makes no sense. So just putting my two cents in, but I'm sorry, John, I just can't go along with what you're saying. It's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. So I think what we're gonna do is we have a lot of great feedback. The subcommittee will meet again and take that all into consideration, particularly on the removals, because it sounds like we can maybe address that in another section of the charter anyway. And we'll distribute materials to the committee before the next meeting, and maybe what we'll do is we'll break it down so that we can sort of vote on each provision. But we'll revisit this next month, and we'll hopefully I think we're going to have to vote on it in pieces because there's different parts. So. OK, great. Now we just we're going to get a short committee, a check in by the school committee subcommittee.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thanks, Melba. So the subcommittee met on November 8th and we had a productive meeting. I started out by sort of reviewing the roles of the school committee, and I think people were surprised at how many different areas the school committee had to be involved and be knowledgeable about. We then went on saying that the primary thing that we needed was we needed to get more input. And the input we were looking for came sort of from two areas. clearly part of the issue around the city councilors was how their, whether their ward or at large or whatever. So the whole issue about how that, what we should do for the school committee is huge. And, but the thing is that we're only used to doing it at large here. We really, you know, we haven't had any other experience. So, With the help of the committee, I first put together a letter and then sent it to the committee members for their input, and then I edited it to their suggestions. And we sent it out to the Mass Association of School Committees. Now, the problem is that prior to COVID, the MASC, which sends out to school committee members throughout the state, was very active. However, during COVID, when there was a lot more negative feedback and from certain factions, the mailing list, unfortunately, is not robust the way it used to be. And I'm delicately saying some of that. So the bottom line is we haven't received information back from other school committee members from across the state. So that input that I was looking for, sort of saying, how does it work in your town? we have at this point not been successful getting. The other thing which we did was we sent a letter again with the committee input. I sent it out to the current future and uh some past uh or some the committee members who are who are leaving um i've only received a couple back i had set december 5th as the date i thought received i think it's three very thoughtful replies which i will share with the committee once i figure out how to do so um but i will need to send out a reminder to everybody and you know one committee member said to me You know, we just got off the election, and now it's December. And for the new committee members, they're beginning to ramp up and learn their roles. And, you know, here we are asking for quite a bit of detail. The committee did suggest that we do a listening session in January and invite all the school committee members. you know, I need to send out, so I'm going to send out a reminder, and then I'm going to send out a, would you attend? But initial feedback I've gotten was from the new people, some level of, yes, they'd love to, but they first have to make sure, you know, they're learning their new roles. So I had set some in my head. I wanted to set up a follow-up committee meeting. Milva, I just listened to what you said about, you know, our meeting in January. And our meeting in January should be Thursday, January 4th. And I'm just curious over the holidays and that period whether that's going to give people enough time to get back to do what you just talked about of all the things that you want feedback from. Because we have to be realistic. I mean, quite honestly, between, you know, the week before Christmas and the week after Christmas, people are otherwise engaged. I'm asking that because uh, for my meeting, I was going to suggest January 11th. Um, and I don't know if, you know, any listening sessions are set up for that. I'm almost wondering whether we really want to have our meeting on January 4th, an hour meeting, the meeting of this group as a whole. Uh, other people may say January 4th is fine. Um, I could have my subcommittee meeting on the 4th and the larger meeting on the 11th. I don't know. I don't, so people should,
[Milva McDonald]: I guess I think that since we've had so much trouble with getting agreement for the whole committee on a meeting time, I think it would be good to keep our first Thursday as our whole committee meeting.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. So I would then suggest that the subcommittee on the school committee meet on the 11th. And I do think that we need, I'm beginning to second-guess the idea about having a listening session for all the school committee members. I was going to suggest the 25th on the date, but I heard the 25th. I see it for something else, but I'm not sure what it is.
[Milva McDonald]: January 25th? We had talked about having one more final citywide information session, and that would be the night of our city hall.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. So anyway, I will tell you that personally, there is something else in my own life. My husband's going to retire after 45 years of working the same place shortly, and we're waiting for the date of his retirement dinner to be set in January. So I've been kind of dancing around that, because until I have that date, You know, I am very, very reluctant to put something else on. So if committee members have wondered, that's the reason. And so I'm just waiting to try and put something in place. But I would suggest the 11th. Now, the one other thing I wanted to mention to the whole group is that there was some concern that a note had been sent to the superintendent asking for an interview and she hadn't gotten back. I'm understanding that there were some changes in the superintendent's office where which had caused some level of, you know, unresponsiveness from her office in terms of dates. I talked to her today and she's given me three times for next week, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, one on Thursday. I believe the people who wanted to go interview her were Aubrey and Don, is that right? Phyllis maybe? Yes, it was Phyllis. Oh, was it Phyllis and Ron? Is that right? Aubrey, Phyllis?
[Ron Giovino]: Not Ron.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Not Ron. So the big question is, are you available during the day?
[Phyllis Morrison]: No, I teach all day.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, so I have to go back. All of the ones that you gave me happen to be during the day, unless we change it to other people who are available.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Well, I would really love to be on that interview. I think if we can capture some of her time, and Ron and someone else is available. I think we should get an interview. I think that's the important thing.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Phyllis, I can't, let me just turn mine up a little bit and see.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so Paulette, I think Phyllis agrees that we should just accommodate the times that the superintendent is available. Uh-huh. So if you want to just send a message to the committee, I mean, I, depending on what the time and the date is, I could potentially be one of the people, but I'm also happy to, it sounds like Aubrey might be available. When is Tuesday?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, I can send it out. Just Tuesday, December 12th at 10 a.m. was one. Let's see. Hold on just one second. December 12th at 10, December 13th at 2 and December 14th at 12 and either the December 12th or the December 14th is best for me, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I think I think this is we should do this on email. So maybe tonight, you can just send that out. And maybe then Aubrey can respond. And then we can set it up. That would be great. Thank you for doing that. That's great.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So and I'm going to suggest to the committee, I'll send an email to the committee to see whether the 11th works for anybody. Okay. As long as we don't have any known
[Milva McDonald]: know, yeah, there's no listening session. So that's good.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Good.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Paulette. And as as was mentioned, January 25 is going to be our final listening session at City Hall. So we will talk more about that. But that's going to be posted on the city website. So as many as many committee members as can come, it will be on zoom the same as we've done it the last two times. Okay, now I'm going to ask if any members of the public have any comments that they'd like to make. I don't see any, so Eunice, go ahead.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I just wanted to make note that in our December meeting this month, that if my calculations are correct, we have been at this an entire year now. I think we first met in December of last year. So this is an anniversary of sorts, I suppose. And speaking for myself, I think we should all be pretty darn proud of The work that we've accomplished the camaraderie that we have formed together. Um, you know, and the impact that we are making on our. Fellow residents, so, um, you know, I just wanted to acknowledge that and, um, particularly acknowledge our fearless leader who has been the glue that's kept us all together, kept us all sane and organized. So thanks Melva.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay. Great. So. Thank you very much. it's going to be posted. I can't remember if I sent it to the city or not. I think I did, but I will be if I didn't. I'll be sending it soon. We'll get the materials out that we need before the January 4th so we can address the issues that we talked about tonight efficiently, and hopefully, some other things that we also have to address.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Happy holidays, everybody.
[Milva McDonald]: You too. Shall we adjourn?
[Eunice Browne]: Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Happy holidays, everyone. Second. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.
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