AI-generated transcript of Medford Charter Study Commmittee 02-15-24

[Milva McDonald]: Hi, everyone. This is a February 15th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. Our first order of business is to review the minutes from the February 1st meeting. Has everyone had a chance to look at them?

[David Zabner]: Yep. I move to accept the minutes from the February 1st meeting.

[Milva McDonald]: Okay.

[David Zabner]: Second.

[Ron Giovino]: Second.

[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, excellent. Okay. Next, our survey is closed. Oh good, Aubrey's here. Let me just let Aubrey in. And David, do you have a presentation on our survey results?

[David Zabner]: Yeah, I'm gonna just run through them really quick. Okay. I spent a fair amount of time messing around with them, trying to see if there was anything hidden in there, anything deep. Uh, and, uh, eventually I decided to basically just run us through, um, what Google shows. So I'll, uh, share my screen and talk through it really quick.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay. Yeah, good.

[David Zabner]: Yep. So I guess let's, let's start with the caveats, right? So to begin with the caveats, um, In terms of demographics, I'd say that this survey is a little underrepresentative in a few different groups, at least from the data we got. Across all the demographic questions, we got a pretty high percentage of people saying they preferred not to answer. So even that, I can't really precisely say how far off we are. underrepresented compared to what the census says in terms of Hispanic-Latino representation in the census in our survey, Asians, Black and African-Americans, American Indians, all these groups, I wouldn't say massively underrepresented. So using Black or African-American as an example, we see 2.6 and the census says 8%. So that's under-representation. It's a little hard to say how under-representative, again, especially when we have 12.3% saying they prefer not to answer. Our female representation is right in line with what you'd expect. In male, we see massive under-representation. Maybe all 51 people who said they prefer not to answer are males. Hard to say. So those are the caveats. Um, the other caveat is there are two questions that I really struggled to analyze. And if we care deeply about it, I can take another crack at them, but, um, it just got a little annoying. So the first one is this question of how long have you lived in Medford? Um, it's most people say a number of years, a few people say a number of months, a few people say. Uh, things like decades. Um, I didn't know how interested I was in analyzing this. I don't know if we want to like reanalyze these responses, looking at what people who have lived here longer believe. Um, so I gave that a couple minutes in Excel and then I just said, you know what, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna tell myself about it. Um, the other one is I made a little word cloud, um, based on thoughts you have about the charter. I read through it. I think maybe many of us have read through some of these answers, very varied opinions. And then the last question that I just about totally gave up analyzing in any way is this one. So please select your order of importance for 12 different things. I spent a good amount of time, like, so, I won't go too into depth about why analyzing this question is hard, but number one, 12 options is a lot of options. Number two, I don't quite even know myself what order of importance means in this case. Do you mean which one is most important to change? Do you mean which one should have the most power in city government? I don't know. So, yeah. I'm running through the actual questions. All of these answers, especially if you break it down into just two options, we find what are statistically significant results, right? Which is to say, large enough differences across answers that we can conclude that people really do prefer one over the other. So for example, what form of government would be best for Medford? overwhelming result is people prefer mayor over city manager. Mayor's term overwhelmingly four years over all of these other options. Even I did the work to combine all of these different three years answers, still overwhelmingly four years. Again, overwhelmingly people want a combination of warden at large representation, Um overwhelmingly they want a combination of warden at large representation for the school committee as well. Um a little closer in stay as is if you compare combination of warden at large with stay as is plus change to all ward they end up being quite equivalent and that's not a statistically significant difference. I don't Quite know enough to go beyond that in analysis. But that's what that says. Overwhelmingly, people are happy with 2 years term length for city Councilors. Similarly, with school committee members, it seems like.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, could you just go a little bit slower?

[David Zabner]: Yes, absolutely. Sorry. Okay. Because you're flipping fast.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I can't even. I'm trying to listen to you and look at the thing at the same time.

[David Zabner]: I'm so used to running through things in lab meetings. Just anyway. Yeah, so. For both city council and school committee. The answer is that people give us no, the term length should not be longer than 2 years. Right people are happy with the 2 year length. Um, in terms of should the mayor be the chairperson of the school committee again? We have an overwhelming. No. Um, I was a little surprised by the number of not sure and no opinions on these that's higher than for a lot of the other questions. Um, but, uh, still overwhelmingly the answer there is no. Should the mayor be a member of the school committee? Um. This is 1 of the closer ones, but still, if I remember correctly, the, like, the P value on these being different was still. Like, 0.01, which is very, very well, right? Did again, it's. Statistically, an overwhelmingly overwhelming vote for no. On this, whether the member, the mayor should be on the school committee at all. On both questions about term limits, people are overwhelmingly in favor of term limits. Sorry, on all 3 questions about term limits, school committee, city councilor and mayor. People seem to like term limits. And yeah, so those are the those are the questions I was able to analyze in an interesting way. There weren't any where it was. too close. And like I said, I, um, I did a little bit of work to like break out and try to see if men are answering differently from women. I maybe spent 15 minutes on that. Didn't see any obvious differences. So I moved on. Um, things like that. Uh, yeah. Any questions about this data?

[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, David. Did you do any analysis of the responses broken down by age?

[David Zabner]: I did not. That's definitely a thing I could do.

[Milva McDonald]: It's not an issue. I was just wondering because there has been some comment about under-representation of certain age groups.

[David Zabner]: Yes. That's one of the things I didn't cover is And when you look at age group, the census, from what I can tell, doesn't keep super close track, at least on this kind of main page. It just keeps track of 5, 18, and 65 and over.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.

[David Zabner]: So I couldn't compare strongly. But certainly, we're seeing a lot fewer of the 25 and below. less than I would guess we should expect, especially given that we have an undergraduate campus within City of Winox.

[Phyllis Morrison]: David, am I reading this right? I can't see the colors that much because it's my eyesight. It's not yours. But the, thank you, the green, the 29.2%, is that the 35 to 44-year-age or prefer not to answer? That's 35 to 44. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that is, you know, our largest chunk. Yeah.

[Phyllis Morrison]: I think that's a good sign. Fifty-five, seventy percent.

[Milva McDonald]: Anybody else have any other questions?

[Eunice Browne]: A couple of the areas, David, where you said it was difficult to analyze, why was that? Why was that, I guess?

[David Zabner]: Yeah, so this one, just because it's text and not a number, and some people put months, and some people put decades, and some people put things like over 50 years.

[Eunice Browne]: Did we give them a, like, a. You know, a parameter, or was that like, just a text box. Yeah, it's just a line. Yeah.

[David Zabner]: If if if we want, I, you know, I have a bunch of AI techniques I could use to analyze this question. Please share any other thoughts you have. It didn't feel like that was necessarily worth a bunch of time either. I think we should just read these. And then, like, I said, this question, please select your order of importance. For executive branch, city council. School committee term, etc, etc. I. I don't know who wrote this question, but I don't understand what it meant.

[Milva McDonald]: Well, the idea was to try to get an understanding of what people's top issues are, what they cared about the most. But I think there were also some limitations trying to structure that within this particular format.

[Eunice Browne]: I saw a lot of comments online about people like, I don't know how to answer this.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I think it's fine that you didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure that out. I also really encourage people to read the comments because there were quite a few comments. I mean that what you see there on the screen is a small fraction of the comments that people left.

[David Zabner]: Yeah, so we have 167 different comments in this form. And a few of them are just complaints about the question directly above it. But a lot of them certainly have interesting ideas about how the government should be structured.

[Milva McDonald]: Yes. I have one more question. There's been some thoughts about the level of response we got. Do you have any, using your knowledge, do you have any thoughts on whether this is a good response? It looks like we got 666.

[David Zabner]: Yeah, which is a funny number. I'd say definitely 650 responses is a really, really strong number in terms of just like pure numbers. In terms of validity, we'd say that that's a really, really like, honestly, anything over 150, if we're looking at a town of 60,000 is like a really solid response. Um, to kind of. Uh, we would assume that these should match pretty well into the population at large. Um, assuming that we've kind of gotten a random sample of the population. And so I I'd say the bigger issue probably is like, I don't know how random. this response is, right? Like we didn't send people to knock on a randomly chosen door to get these. But in terms of raw numbers, I think 600 is a really solid number. And we didn't also get a lot of crank responses, which when you look at something like, please indicate which gender you identify with, right? We can see that there are a couple of people who said things like moose. But that's a relatively small number, especially I give surveys to undergraduates all the time. So you can imagine we get a fair number of correct responses, especially to these types of open feedback questions. So.

[Maria D'Orsi]: In my experience.

[Eunice Browne]: Go ahead, Aubrey.

[Maria D'Orsi]: In my experience with public response numbers, this is pretty good.

[Eunice Browne]: I'm interested in the residency part and, you know, people with, how people with, you know, newer residency, and I don't know quite how you'd define newer, you know, really new versus sort of new versus not new at all, how different categories of people would have responded.

[David Zabner]: But I don't know, I'm, I'm happy to to meet 1 on 1 or do that breakdown and share it with you. It's, it's. Again, I'd have to spend a little bit more time kind of analyzing this. How long have you lived in Medford question, but it's not super hard. Oh, the other thing I didn't talk about residential status, but. Way over represented for homeowners. According to the census, we are. Let's see, where does it say owner occupied housing rate is about 53%. So, seeing 81% is very, very high. But.

[Eunice Browne]: I wonder who the renters are that we. Didn't capture if they're perhaps some of the, you know. College students are very young professionals. you know, may not have a huge vested interest in the community.

[David Zabner]: Awesome.

[Milva McDonald]: It's hard to know. I did reach out to the Tufts Young Republicans and the Tufts Young whatever they're, you know, the counter the Democrats group on campus and sent a link to both of those groups. But we maybe could have done more outreach to Tufts. It's, um, I just figured, you know, those groups might have people that would actually fill out the survey. Yeah.

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. Just my comment is, you know, I think it's a valuable data. I think there's nothing that shocks me in these numbers. I mean, nothing looks out of whack. Nothing surprises me in terms of the results. I just think, you know, We may want to tweak it and sharpen it in 40 years when we put the survey out again. But, you know, I think it was a good exercise. I think it is what it is. And I think the results are what, you know, at least I expected.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Right. I think they gave us a clear message about where people are standing and what their thoughts are on things. And that's exactly what we wanted. Yeah. And I think the response rate is very good. The only surprise I have from this, and it's a pleasant surprise, is how many people between the ages of 35 and 44 responded. I think that's just fabulous.

[Milva McDonald]: We've also, you know, had other forms of public comment, the listening sessions are, you know, public information sessions. So we've had, you know, we've had other public comment too. And it all seems to pretty much agree with, I think, the survey in the most part. Danielle?

[Danielle Balocca]: I just wanted to say that I think the response rate is reflective of how much effort people put into getting that survey filled out. I think that's not something to forget. Everybody on this committee worked really hard to get this out to people and make sure that they're filling it out.

[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Danielle. Thanks for pointing that out. Eunice.

[Eunice Browne]: I think one of the things that struck me Um, you know, and, uh, David can correct me if I'm wrong, since he's got this stuff, the results there, but it seems like, um, our, uh, community has told us that they do want term limits and we have voted against that. So, so far, some of the things that, um, you know, that we have taken votes on seem to be, you know, somewhat aligned with, you know, what the community seems to want.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Sorry, I gotta mute myself.

[Eunice Browne]: Oh, okay. But the community has told us that they don't want term limits, or they do want term limits, and we voted no.

[Ron Giovino]: Well, just point of correction, we voted not to vote on it, I believe. Wasn't that our vote?

[David Zabner]: No, we voted not. We voted yes on term limits for the mayor, and no on term limits for City Council.

[Milva McDonald]: For City Council.

[David Zabner]: Right.

[Milva McDonald]: No, it did.

[Phyllis Morrison]: I have a rather strange question. Eunice, is there any way you can fix your screen so that I can't see you? I can only see the top of your head. I know that's a strange question.

[Eunice Browne]: I'm sorry. Is that better? I can't see me at all, which I told Melvin and some of the early folks. I can't see me at all, so I don't know what you're seeing. But if that's better, OK. It's great.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Paulette. How can we see this after the meeting? I'd like to look it over closer.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. We can share the link. Danielle, the link that you... I think it's in the... Drive, right? Is it in the drive? I think so. Okay, I'll find the link and I will share it with the committee. I'll share it in an email. I think it is in the drive too. Thank you.

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I'd like to dig into it a little bit more too.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I think it would be great if everybody could read all the public comments.

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, and I think we should be, you know, looking to see how many of those comments we're going to be able to address in the work that we do.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and the public comments get a little more specifically into some of the issues. Like, for instance, you know, if I'm recalling correctly, and I think I am, there's one person who said they're in favor of term limits, but they think they should be long. So things like that, they're a little more granular. Aubrey?

[Maria D'Orsi]: Are we responsible for any kind of public facing report on these results or bringing the results to anybody outside of this committee?

[Milva McDonald]: When we do our final report, we will create that to present to the city council, but I think it will also become public and we will definitely include these.

[Eunice Browne]: I would imagine all of our work will become public eventually.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think so.

[Eunice Browne]: Or at least subject to a FOIA if anybody wants it.

[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Any other questions or comments about the survey results?

[Phyllis Morrison]: Analytics, David. Thanks.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Thank you so much, Davida. That was really valuable. And we're really lucky that we have you and your abilities to help us with that. So thank you. Yeah. Okay. So, our next item agenda is compensation, which has recently, well, I mean, compensation, in terms of the charter, the charter doesn't decide how much compensation should be for elected officials, but it does, it can lay out the mechanism for how compensation is decided. That's something that we were looking at anyway, and it's recently become more of an issue in the city. So did anyone have a chance to look at the materials I sent? We also had some feedback from the Collins Center, who threw out the idea of the committee, a compensation committee, or a compensation advisory board, which would get a little, which we would only lay out the existence of it in the charter, not the details of it. Anthony, is that you raising your hand? Okay, wait a minute. Maybe Anthony can't unmute. Sorry, I thought, no, you should be able to unmute yourself. I don't know why you can't. Are you able to unmute yourself, Anthony? Hmm. Um, all right, David, why don't you speak while we're trying to figure out what's going on with Anthony?

[David Zabner]: Sure. I, I didn't see it in what you shared out. Um, but I think we talked quite a bit. Oh yeah. So I guess, uh, I just wanted to point out, uh, there's a second called language proposed by the articles two and three subcommittee. Um, we spent some time talking about this and. The, the thing that we decided to recommend to the committee at large. Um, is 2 fold so 1 is just that the city council gets to establish by ordinance with the compensation is for the mayor. And 2nd of all, requiring the council. To each council term, spend a little bit of time and produce a report. Comparing the mayor's salary to the salaries of of mayors and city managers. Uh, in the area, right? Um, so that's not a requirement to. Change it every time or anything else like that. Just basically to, um. The council has to spend a little bit of time. Uh, and oh, no, we also said they have to pass an ordinance affirming or changing the mayor's salary. So, basically, just asking them to double check on that regularly.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and yeah, so that's in there and also the there's language about the city council too and I just want to point out that. It's pretty standard. I mean, as you can, you know, the mass general law that's quoted, it's standard for city councils to decide these salaries by ordinance. Anthony, are you able to unmute yourself? I know you have your hand raised. I don't know why he can't unmute himself.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Can you hit the button? You can, on your screen, ask him to unmute. He might be able to see you.

[Milva McDonald]: I've done that.

[Phyllis Morrison]: OK. All right.

[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to figure out how. I'm going to let you chat, Anthony. So maybe if you're having a problem, you can let us know in the chat. In the chat, yeah. OK. So I guess. So we do have the language that the subcommittee proposed. And we also, so first, can we just look at this idea of creating a, or recommending the creation of a Municipal Compensation Advisory Board? Can we sort of take the pulse of what people feel about it?

[Adam Hurtubise]: I thought it was interesting.

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I kind of, yeah, never heard of it before and thought it was an interesting approach. I do think it should be, as the Collins Center noted, there was a difference between Somerville and Northampton where Somerville included non-union employees and Northampton was just electeds. I think it should be just electeds. Hello. Yeah, most definitely. Anthony.

[Milva McDonald]: Hi.

[Adam Hurtubise]: I'm sorry.

[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. Do you want to do you want to ask your comment as your question or make your comment?

[Andreottola]: Are you talking to me?

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.

[Andreottola]: No, I forgot what I was going to say. But I'm sorry for the interruption. Go ahead, keep going.

[Milva McDonald]: That's OK. Yeah, so there were the examples that the Collins Center gave us had a fundamental difference. And Eunice has just expressed that she prefers the model that only would address elected officials. Ron?

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, can I ask a question? I know on the agenda, we're talking a little bit about more subcommittees, and I'm just wondering why this particular subject is not in a subcommittee to pull it apart and pull the pros and cons like we've done with everything else in terms of, I don't know if they should be in the budget area. I don't know where it would be, but I'm just, it seems like it's a much needed, it's a very timely discussion. I'm not saying that, I'm just saying, I don't know if it's, I'm just suggesting it should go to subcommittee and be pulled apart there.

[Milva McDonald]: Well, we did talk about it in the Articles 2 and 3 subcommittee because generally this comes in Articles 2, 3, and 4. Articles 2 addresses the city council compensation, Article 3 addresses the mayor, and Article 4 addresses the school committee. And this particular committee that we're talking about potentially recommending, I'm pretty sure would probably go in the administrative functions. I'm not positive, but I think. Because all the charter would do is recommend the formation of this committee and say that it should be formed by ordinance. So, Daveed?

[David Zabner]: Yeah. I see absolutely no problem with this idea. Uh, I guess the thing I think is that, um, the charter should probably stick to, um, requiring and or permitting things. And this seems like something that the mayor and or city council could decide to do without the charter. I can completely see if somebody like, I don't feel super strongly about it. If somebody said, I think the charter should require the creation of this committee and should require reports to come out every so often. I would, you know, I think that that's a very reasonable thing for a charter to do. I think a charter saying, hey, you could have this committee if you wanted. Without even really specifying what the committee has to do, what its powers, if any, are, that kind of thing. I don't see as much of a use for it.

[Milva McDonald]: And just to be clear, it would be an advisory committee. This committee would not have the force of law. It could not decide salaries. It would be an advisory committee, just like ours. Eunice?

[Eunice Browne]: Two things. If it's going into subcommittee, Would compensation be handled more or less similarly for the three branches of government so that the folks that were, if it were to go to subcommittee and people working on it in subcommittee would be basically working on one, for lack of a word, set of rules or whatever that would be, you know, maybe with a tweak here or there, but more or less across the board.

[Milva McDonald]: So I don't know, I'm not sure that it needs to go to subcommittee, to be honest, because this is a pretty boilerplate issue. It's outlined in mass general laws. The way that compensation for elected officials is decided is pretty standard across the board. So I don't know that we could do anything that much different. This idea of recommending and putting in the charter that such a, you know, that a municipal compensation advisory board would be formed is different, but the actual mechanism of deciding the salaries would be the same, which is that the city council decides them by ordinance. So I just don't think we can get around, you know, that there's really a different way to go. Does anybody have any,

[Phyllis Morrison]: knowledge or thoughts? I would prefer that we don't form a subcommittee. I really don't think that that's ours. I think the ordinance is there and they follow that. I mean, I think this might be out of our purview. I mean, if they want to recommend that they have an advisory board of some sort, that's different. But I think that this is not something that As long as in the Charter it states if it needs to be the requirement by mass law of how this takes place, like 18 months before this and this and that and everything, that's fine. But I don't think this is part of the responsibility of the Charter to do that, Charter committee.

[Milva McDonald]: So one thing that I do think is different is the idea that the Articles 2 and 3 subcommittee had, which would be requiring the city council to review the salary of the mayor. And, Daveed, do you want to talk a little bit about the thinking behind that?

[David Zabner]: I honestly, I remember thinking it was a really good idea, and I don't remember what conversation we had that led me to believe that. I still think it's a good idea.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Currently, who does review her salary?

[David Zabner]: Currently, her salary is not reviewed. All three salaries or all three sets of salaries, city council, mayor, and school committee are all set by ordinance by the city council. But there's currently no requirements to review or amend those salaries at all.

[Milva McDonald]: And I will just say that I believe that Medford has set the mayor's salary through a special act, which is very strange. Because in our charter, it doesn't say, it doesn't have the boilerplate language about being set by ordinance, which pretty much is from mass general law. I mean, that's in mass general law. So by putting it in the charter, it will eliminate that confusion or that and my recollection is that the reason that one of the reasons we talked about the salary review would just be because it's standard for people to get raises to have their salaries reviewed. And without that happening, it just, you know, it's just a costly living.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Is it just the standard cost of living? Is it tied to anything? We see that. No, right.

[Milva McDonald]: No, I mean, I don't know the last time the mayor had a raise. I don't know. I haven't, you know, and I 35. And we know just from recent discussions that the city council has had more raises than school committee. So, yeah. Eunice.

[Eunice Browne]: Given the uproar that we just watched over the last couple of months, which seemed to center on a few different things, certainly the percentage increase that was initially proposed at 145, 148%, whatever it was, that it Was, you know, requested by somebody on the city council. You know, and that the school committee members weren't even well. You know, only 2 of the school committee members seem to be aware of what was happening. Um, what. And that the raise seems to be taking effect in the middle of a term as well, because they're going to get what they did decide on, which was going from 12 to 17, or thereabouts, will take effect as of July 1. So it's midterm.

[Milva McDonald]: I don't know about that. I thought that the Mass General Law said that that couldn't happen. But I could be wrong.

[David Zabner]: What they voted also just point out, you know, really quick that. The article 2 and 3 subcommittee we discussed the way that compensation is set for the city council and the mayor. We did not discuss that at all for the school committee. Although I would personally think that the same type of regular review for the school committee could be a really good idea.

[Eunice Browne]: So, I guess my, my question, it would be. You know, what could we. put in the charter, what's under our purview? Is there anything under our purview that, had it been in effect, that what happened six weeks ago either wouldn't have happened or wouldn't have caused the uproar that it did?

[Danielle Balocca]: I wonder like, sorry to go out of turn. It sounds like what this is, I might be wrong, but it sounds like what this is proposing is like a regular review of salaries, right? Which hopefully if we did that would avoid a situation where it's not saying like how that committee will decide to get like what metrics they're going to use to decide to give raises or how much the raises will be or if they'll even happen, but they're being reviewed regularly, right?

[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have suggested that for the mayor. We didn't actually put that language into the city council section. Right, David?

[David Zabner]: Yeah, I figured the city council doesn't need to write a report about their own salary. So if I were on the school committee, I would or if I were on the school committee, whichever article that is, if I was on a subcommittee for that, I would recommend a similar review of the school committee.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so it could go in because each articles 2, 3, and 4 each has a little section about compensation for those positions. So it could go in school committee. Ron.

[Ron Giovino]: Do we know the history of why a special act is required to raise compensation for the mayor?

[Milva McDonald]: I don't think it is. I just think that that's why.

[Ron Giovino]: It was just in that documentation that we had. That's where it says we don't do it by ordinance.

[Milva McDonald]: Well, it has been done by special act, which even the Collins Center was sort of perplexed by, I think. I don't want to misrepresent them.

[Ron Giovino]: Well, do we know how it's done now?

[Milva McDonald]: The last time the mayor... I don't know if it's always been done by special act, if it's ever been done by ordinance, but I believe that ordinance is the way that it's generally done. in most municipalities. I mean, a special act is just, you know, a special act has to go through a home rule petition, it has to go through the state house, et cetera.

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I mean, I'm just curious if we do it by special act now still, or we're doing it by, I don't remember. You know, a vote of the city council that the mayor gets his gets his race or race.

[David Zabner]: Yeah, I think the reason that we do it by special act at the moment. Is because the current charter specifies the mayor's salary.

[Unidentified]: You could be right.

[David Zabner]: I'm going to share my screen again really quick. And I'll blow it up. So you can see this is the text we have that we looked at when working on this stuff. So the current text of the charter sets the salary of the mayor, and you can see that it has been amended by acts of 86, 90, 92, 95, 97, and 99.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, you're probably right. That is why, probably why it's been done by special act because of that specific language in the charter.

[David Zabner]: And so it can't be set by ordinance because you can't change the charter by ordinance.

[Milva McDonald]: That makes sense. Olette, were you going to ask a question?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: No, I was just going to mention that the mayor also receives the, or had in the past received the stipe, well, it's the salary for school committee as well. And I didn't see that added anywhere in the paperwork, but that's been the practice in the past.

[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that's true. And I don't know if that is something that the committee wants to talk about. Eunice.

[Eunice Browne]: So I guess I'm still unclear what we can put in the charter that sets any sort of or dictates anything regarding salary for any of the three branches versus then what trickles down to the ordinance part, which is, you know, the city council establishes the ordinance. So what, what components do we put in as a charter and then the ordinance works off of the charter. Charter comes first. Then the ordinance respects the charter, and then the ordinance goes on to dictate even more.

[Milva McDonald]: Well, we say that the salaries are set by ordinance. In general, most communities don't give any specific guidance on that. I did include an example from Worcester, And to quickly, it said that the city council... I'm sorry, I have to find it. I just don't want to misquote it. Members of the school committee other than the mayor shall receive as other than the mayor, so they say other than the mayor, shall receive as compensation for their services a salary equal to 50% of the salary established for members of the city council. You know, that is possible. And, you know, Paulette, you're right. The mayor does receive the amount, you know, the salary for being on the school committee. So the charter could say that the mayor doesn't. So we can do things like that. And if we put in the regular salary reviews, then hopefully you avoid a situation where, what, how many years went by without the school committee getting a raise? It was something like 20?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Right. So because the problem is this. So you're getting to budget time, and all of a sudden you have a budget crisis. And there's always a budget crisis. That's kind of the bottom line. And then you're and you may be cutting positions. It's, you know, no elected official in their right mind at that point should wants to be asking for an increase for themselves. So having an independent, you know, having it outlined as an independent, you know, commission to look at it periodically actually makes a lot of sense to me.

[Milva McDonald]: OK, good.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Sorry, go ahead, Ron.

[Ron Giovino]: The documentation we got shows, as David mentioned, the special acts. They only go up to $19.99, and the mayor doesn't make $93,000. Also, it says no other compensation from the city goes, and we're saying that she gets the stipend from the school committee. Are we missing some real data here? Things might have changed that we're just not aware of. I just don't think we have all the information.

[Danielle Balocca]: Someone should review this charter.

[Eunice Browne]: I think that's exactly the point, though. I don't know who would be crazy enough to do that, Danielle.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I think that's exactly the point, because I think that some of these, you know, initially the salaries for school committee were stipends. Um, and for certainly the first 10, 20, 15 years, I know I received $1,200, a hundred bucks a month. And the, um, it was a stipend and did not pay taxes on it. And at some point, um, the government said, no, no, we can't have stipends because we want you to be paying taxes on it. And so that's when it changed to salaries. But there was always this, you know, conflict, because how do you ask for a salary for yourself when you're in the position when you're, you know, possibly cutting programs and making other tough financial decisions?

[Phyllis Morrison]: What is that Zoom user doing? What is that photo on the Zoom user there? Do we know who that is?

[Milva McDonald]: That's Anthony, I believe.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Is that Anthony?

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, Paulette, you're right. And as the Mass General Law starts out by saying that school committee members won't be compensated, you know, unless the city council votes to compensate them. And I think that traditionally, there's it's a school committees were uncompensated. And then I think, you know, the job just got bigger, and people started realizing that they need to be compensated. So, So Eunice, you have a comment?

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, going back to what Ron said about this going to subcommittee, not that we really need another subcommittee. And I know you were going to talk about a couple of others down the road. But I'm kind of inclined to go with that idea because this is such a hot button contentious issue that really Caused a good deal of angst and I think whatever we can do. To alleviate that and put something in the charter. So, I think it might take a little bit more work. A little bit more analysis.

[Milva McDonald]: We can't put any, we're not going to put anything in the charter that's going to give, that's going to outline any numbers. I mean, you know, that's not going to happen. So, um, I don't know. What did Ron have in mind? Um, Ron, did you want to speak?

[Ron Giovino]: Yes. I have a new idea.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.

[Ron Giovino]: I'd like to make a motion. to establish a mayoral city council and school committee salary review board consisting of three appointees from the mayor, two appointees from the city council, and two appointees from the school committee. It'll be their job every two years to review the salary and make recommendations to the city council, who ultimately makes the decision by auditors.

[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so you are, you are. Suggesting that we put this municipal advisory board. I mean, if we do put it in, I'm just gonna try to find what the call-in center said, because we can't write the ordinance.

[Ron Giovino]: Correct. It would be an advisory board based on those numbers.

[Phyllis Morrison]: I mean, from what I'm hearing, something has to go in the charter, because this has certainly gone unchecked. I mean, I attended to Ronson was the last time 1999 we had something. I mean, this is not okay.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so we could only briefly describe the committee's purpose and structure in the charter, and we could have specific details on membership and responsibilities. No, that would be outlined in subsequent ordinances.

[Ron Giovino]: So I'm not sure that we could detail the- All I'm suggesting is an advisory committee is forced to be established to review compensation of those three branches Every 2 years to make recommendations to the empowered city council who does the ordinance. It just forces what it does is it forces a conversation every 2 years. It forces a conversation and it pulls. the politics out, but it gives everybody a chance to pick their people in that board, and they would do the review, they would compare us to other cities and towns, and then make recommendations for the city council. I think it's our way of saying, we know this is an issue, we know we want to address it, and we know the limitations of what we can and can't do as a charter.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah, I think it's a great idea for the review.

[Milva McDonald]: David, you had something to say.

[David Zabner]: I have a maybe a small amendment to that and a 2nd to that. The small amendment is whatever we can do with that language to require them to produce. A report of some kind a product. So that it's not simply a committee that. Never meets and only exists on paper. I'd be a big fan of that and I'd like to 2nd Ron's motion.

[Milva McDonald]: Okay, can I like to. Okay, and I want to hear from Anthony and then Danielle and then we'll go back to the motion Anthony.

[Andreottola]: I, I just like to add to the conversation that, you know, I kind of agree with what Ron is proposing, but I'm, I'm, I'm a little worried of, you know, how complicated or how much, you know, specifics that we put in into the charter, because, you know, this has to go to the city council. And from, you know, from what I heard, you know, last night, uh, They're not very interested in, you know, what, you know, the specifics of our charter is going to be. They're going to do their own. So, I think that we should, you know, do something that's, you know, really that opens the door for some type of review. But to get real specific, yes, is I think we're doing work that's just going to be kind of dismissed. But that's just my thought.

[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks, Anthony.

[Danielle Balocca]: Danielle. I just want to clarify what you said around when you, when you were referencing like three people, are you saying there would be appointed by a school committee appointed by city council members of those bodies?

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I know. I'm talking citizen review board.

[Danielle Balocca]: Okay.

[Ron Giovino]: So not like, cause I was worried if you were saying like, no, I'm talking citizens review board, that would be appointed three by the mayor, two by the city council and two by school. That's my idea.

[Milva McDonald]: Um, so. Ron just I just I'm going to have to record this motion accurately so and I just want to go back first to What I understand is what we can do in the charter is describe the committee's purpose and structure, but details on the membership and the responsibilities get outlined in the ordinance. So I'm wondering if it would be helpful to look at the Northampton language as, well, that's an ordinance. I don't even know if we can say in the charter how often it meets.

[Ron Giovino]: Let me just point out that if we're allowed to say there's nine members of a city council and eight members of a school committee, I don't know why we wouldn't be able to say there's seven. I think to Anthony's point too, my idea is not to be overpowering. My idea is to establish a system that forces the city to review and talk about compensation so we don't get caught in this trap of 16 years without a raise. So, I think, I mean we should ask the Collins Center to challenge it but to me, the establishing of a citizens advisory compensation board. with those caveats of they must meet, and it's to David's amendment, must prepare a presentation, I think is very fair. Again, Anthony's right. This goes down the tube. Maybe the people at the end who catch this stuff won't like it, but I think we should throw it anyways.

[Milva McDonald]: So let's, I just want to get the motion recorded accurately. I have a motion to create, a motion to recommend or to create language, charter language, form a municipal compensation advisory board. What other detail, can you just please reiterate these details?

[Ron Giovino]: annual salaries of the mayor, city council, and school committee. The board will consist of seven members, seven non, I don't know how you call them, non-elected officials, three appointed by the mayor, two appointed by the city council, and two appointed by the school committee.

[Milva McDonald]: to gather every two years to review compensation of the mayor, city council and school committee.

[Ron Giovino]: they would be charged to complete a, I don't know what David's words would be, but to present their findings to the city council within a given timeframe.

[Milva McDonald]: Can we say review compensation and create recommendation reports every two years? sure and and they're making these reports to the city council you don't have to report because the city council is the one who is the only one that can do it right the only one with the power so yes you would make their presentation of the city council to see okay i'm going to read this motion um which was made um okay wait let me read david's message

[David Zabner]: I'm just saying that's the language that we used in our recommendation. And I imagine something along those lines could work, right? Yeah. And I think if we're not allowed to require. This sub this committee. To produce this report, we could probably require either the mayor or the city council to do it. To read the committee, right? Like, you must charge the committee produce this report within. Next days, right?

[Milva McDonald]: So what I have right now is the motion is a motion to create charter language to form a municipal compensation advisory board to review annual salaries of mayor, city council, and school committee. Said committee will consist of seven members, three appointed by the mayor, two by the city council, and two by the school committee to review compensation and create recommendation reports to the city council. It's just a motion. It's not the actual language. You know, it's just the motion.

[Ron Giovino]: Does it say in there that they're non-government officials?

[Milva McDonald]: No, it doesn't.

[Ron Giovino]: Because you don't want to have a city councilor on that board, I don't think. Yeah, you're right. I think they are.

[Eunice Browne]: Regular citizens.

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, well, yeah, however you say that, however you say regular. Do we want to say non-municipal employees?

[Milva McDonald]: That's very broad, but it's also- Can we just start? Okay, so seven members, none of whom are- None of whom should be. None of whom are, what did we just say? Municipal employees? Mm-hmm.

[David Zabner]: That's what I was saying.

[Milva McDonald]: What about family?

[David Zabner]: We might have to say something like received salary from the city or something like that. But I'm sure the language can be corrected. Yeah.

[Milva McDonald]: The language will have to be drafted. But right now, we're just voting on whether we want to do that. Okay. So we have the motion and it's been seconded. I'm going to do a roll call. Yutz. Yes. David.

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Milva McDonald]: Danielle. Yes. Paula. Yes. Aubrey. Yes. Ron.

[Ron Giovino]: Yes.

[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. Yes. Anthony.

[Andreottola]: Okay.

[Milva McDonald]: And I'll vote yes too.

[Eunice Browne]: I think taking some of the, you know, wording from the Somerville board and the North Hampton board, I think you know, we can, you know, however, the, you know, to clean up the motion a little bit, you know, or maybe go further and put in some of the duties and things like that, or there's... Well, we have to remember that I don't, I'm not sure we can do that.

[Milva McDonald]: Those are ordinances, but we'll look into it. David?

[David Zabner]: Yeah, I'd like to motion to remove the salary review section of the mayor's compensation from. Article 3, as we wrote it, since it'll be superseded by this.

[Ron Giovino]: You know, the common center put some language together that kind of looks like it describes this. Do you want me to read it to you?

[Milva McDonald]: Where did you see that? Oh, I know where you saw it.

[Ron Giovino]: It says there shall be a municipal compensation review committee consisting of blank members, of which members shall be appointed by the mayor, appointed by the president of the city council, which committee shall review all non-union compensation and make, so they kind of broaden it to like we do everybody's compensation.

[Danielle Balocca]: yeah but we we didn't agree to do that no no no i'm just saying it's i think our language is doable based on yeah i think so too but the difference between what you just read though and what we decided was that like We were deciding that each body would elect like a certain number rather than like the... Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, no, I'm just looking at what they wrote. Yeah, I think it should be pointed by them.

[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, David, your motion, basically... So, that actually sort of goes along with what's going to be next on our agenda, but do we need to vote on removing... I mean, the language... Did you see all these messages in the chat?

[Maria D'Orsi]: That's just the college center language. Okay.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Um, the, you know, the intent behind putting the salary review for the mayor in the, um, section two or section three of the charter is, doesn't exist anymore. I mean, because now that we've decided to do this, so, um, do we need to vote on it or everybody, can everybody agree that we're going to take that out? Okay. So, um, Before we dive into the Articles 2 and 3, I just want to say, I feel like now that we've voted on this and made this motion, we need to just, I don't know, we need to create language on it. But maybe we can just do that later down the road. We've got the decision, so we're good on that. So Articles 2 and 3. So basically, did everyone have a chance to look at it? So you see what the color code means. And right now, we just talked about deleting. Oh, that's for the city council. So we talked about deleting. No, that's not it. Taking out this, right? Boom.

[Eunice Browne]: Can you make that a bit bigger for the blind among us? Yours in the blind?

[Milva McDonald]: OK, let's see. I can probably, well. In the top left, there's 100%. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I have to move my, um, I don't know. I'm sorry. I'll do it like this for the moment. There. So no, that's not the right spot. Where did it go?

[David Zabner]: I jumped ahead of you and deleted it.

[Milva McDonald]: But the whole compensation section we need. We still need the compensation section in there, don't we? Because we have to say that it's set by ordinance, right?

[David Zabner]: Yeah, absolutely right.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this is the... Because we're not... The committee that we're suggesting be formed can't decide the compensation.

[Adam Hurtubise]: City Council still has to... Right, absolutely.

[Milva McDonald]: Yep. Okay, so this would be the section now for compensation. And it's basically just pretty much language that's in the law. It says the city council sets it by ordinance and that no increase can be effective two-thirds vote and it can't be effective until the next, right? So are we getting rid of that or are we keeping it? No, we are keeping, well, we would have to keep, we still have to keep this. I'm looking at D. Does that mean the mayor wouldn't get the school committee salary?

[David Zabner]: My understanding was that when we wrote this, I think we wrote it under the assumption that the mayor would no longer be a member of the school committee.

[Milva McDonald]: That wasn't my understanding, but. Because I didn't think we had decided that but.

[David Zabner]: This certainly precludes the mayor from being a member of the school committee as it currently stands.

[Phyllis Morrison]: And I don't think we have decided who we stand on.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: We have not.

[Phyllis Morrison]: No, we have not.

[Ron Giovino]: Still in subcommittee.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I'm not sure. This prohibitions language is this sort of like boilerplate language?

[David Zabner]: It is boilerplate, yes.

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, it kind of is. I did see in some places where it did make exceptions for particularly the mayor to be on Intergovernmental boards and things like that where their presence on a regional or intergovernmental board may have value for the city of Medford. I did see that somewhere, that it was written like that.

[Ron Giovino]: I think you can safely say, until we make a final decision, that with the exception of school committee compensation, the mayor shall hold no other city off, blah, blah, blah.

[Milva McDonald]: Well, I just want to understand the ramifications of that section. So what I want to do is leave it in blue until we can talk to the call and center about it. Are we good putting compensation? I mean, well, I guess what I want to say is, right now, the only parts that are in green, this is technically not something we voted on, so I'll take it out of green, are parts that we voted on. So right now, I want to just say, Everybody has had a chance to look on it, look at it. And I would like to be able to accept it unless there's questions, concerns, and we can put those in blue. So does anybody have any parts that we want that jumped out at you that you had questions about, concerns, et cetera?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Wait, are you saying we're ready to vote on the whole thing with the votes?

[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm saying are there parts that eventually that's what we'll do, but are there parts of it that people want to flag right now that we need to talk about more? Aubrey?

[Maria D'Orsi]: The part you're on right now, I'm wondering where is the language Rob just proposed supposed to be?

[Milva McDonald]: That would not, I don't think that would be in, I think that would be in a whole different section of the charter. I think that that would be in maybe administrative or it would be later, it wouldn't be in, this article two is city council, city council, article three is mayor, article four is school committee. So each of those sections will have a section about the city council, the compensation being passed by ordinance, but then later in the, and maybe, I'm guessing administrative organization, but I'm not sure, we'll have to ask the council.

[Ron Giovino]: I think it's in this document we're looking at. If you go all the way down, I think it said something about the city council's voting on ordinances of salaries.

[Milva McDonald]: In Articles 2 and 3?

[Ron Giovino]: No, keep going.

[Milva McDonald]: Ordinances and others?

[Ron Giovino]: No, it was clearly talked about how to vote for salaries. It was right here. I saw it while you were scrolling. If you scroll up a little bit more. Scroll down a little bit more.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Scroll down a little bit more.

[Ron Giovino]: Scroll down?

[Milva McDonald]: Is that it? I don't know. This is mayors.

[Ron Giovino]: Yes, so the city council shall establish the compensation for the mayor, no ordinance increasing. Yeah, okay, so it's just talking about the compensation for the mayor.

[David Zabner]: I imagine it would go in Article 9, because that's where we have periodic review of ordinances and periodic review of charter, and this feels like maybe a periodic review. Is is what Ron was talking about the. This group of people who would produce a report. About salaries. Yeah, but, yeah, unlikely in article 3.

[Milva McDonald]: It will definitely come later and we'll find out from the Collins Center which article it should go in. But for these two, was there anything that we want to flag in blue other than this part that we just looked at? Anybody have any things that jumped out at them?

[Ron Giovino]: So for article... So for clarification, these are the notes from the Article 2 and 3 committee? Yeah, this is basically... This is the recommendation of the Article 2 and 3 subcommittee.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, this is a draft of Articles 2 and 3.

[Ron Giovino]: So any of the committee members have any issues that may have been a struggle to create or something that we should take a look at, or are they all comfortable with what's there?

[Milva McDonald]: The only things that we left that we had questions about were in blue. So there's that one section in blue. There may have been, I think there was one other section in blue, right, Daveed?

[Maria D'Orsi]: I've just been handed since section 3.5.

[Milva McDonald]: The only thing that I see that doesn't have to do with the transition is... The special meetings of the city council, that was... Do you remember why that was in blue, Daveed?

[David Zabner]: Um, I think it's because I just thought it was unnecessary. And, uh, we had a discussion in the subcommittee and and couldn't decide. Uh, strongly 1 way or the other what we felt. Uh, yeah. To add some context. The, um, the city council president can already call special meetings. I think 3 or 4 members of the city council acting together can call a special meeting. And so I didn't quite understand why we would also give this power to the mayor. I also don't think that it's a big deal 1 way or the other. 1 could imagine a mayor being annoying and calling a special meeting every 6 hours, but I don't think that's very likely.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: What you could imagine a city council perhaps who was at odds with the mayor not calling a special meeting when there was, you know, so I kind of like it. I like having the mayor be able to call a special meeting as well.

[Maria D'Orsi]: I can imagine an instance where there might be a large public health situation where this could be common.

[Eunice Browne]: You think? That would never happen.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.

[Milva McDonald]: So does anybody, I mean, so we've, I mean, we could vote on whether we want to take it out of blue or we can just leave it there. And when it's time to vote on everything, we can just say, including the blue. Those are the only things that the committee flag, the subcommittee. But if full committee members have any other questions or, I mean, have you all had time to look at it?

[Phyllis Morrison]: I did have one chance to look over, but I didn't give an in-depth. I have to be perfectly honest. And I've been on the phone since 2 o'clock today, and I wanted to review these before the meeting. And the last Zoom I was on went way longer than I hoped.

[Adam Hurtubise]: That's OK.

[Eunice Browne]: So I didn't give it a second read.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I'd like a little bit more time as well. Let's say we're going to I mean, is March, our March meeting is in just a couple of weeks. Would we, do we want to push it until, and we're only having one meeting in March. Shall we say we're going to vote on this at the April, the first April meeting?

[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.

[David Zabner]: I'd rather just vote on it in March personally, devote a little bit of time. I, I don't imagine we're going to have, again, so like, I think provisionally accepting something like this is fine. We can always come back to it. And I think, uh, I think we should, I'm in favor of us making as much progress as we can with the full knowledge that we can always come back and we won't be the last people to look at this document.

[Adam Hurtubise]: That's true.

[David Zabner]: You know, I'm not trying to railroad everything through, but I'm also trying to railroad everything through a little bit. So we're making progress.

[Phyllis Morrison]: The other thing is, David, too, is that I don't like to make any comments unless I'm fully aware of what I'm doing, as I'm sure you know and respect. But I would be able to do that by March if I wanted to. I could definitely I've already read through it all once. I just wanted to refresh myself. And I didn't have that opportunity today.

[Milva McDonald]: OK, that's awesome.

[Eunice Browne]: I just have one sort of procedural question. With all of this, not only just our conversation tonight, but all the other text and things that we're going through and so forth. And we've got another couple of subcommittees we're going to form tonight, and they'll be doing their work. Are we going to have an opportunity to get the entire document and Go through it again and make sure that we're not missing anything or thinking. Oh, why did we decide that?

[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah, I think so. I think for sure once it all comes together and let me just say that. The Collins Center is available to help draft. The Articles 2 and 3 subcommittee just sort of, by using boilerplate language, looking at other charters, we basically drafted an entire Section 2 and 3. That is it. So let's say this, for example, school committee subcommittee can do that if you want. Or you can just say, these are the things that need to be in, you know, this is what we recommend and we vote on it. And then we tell the call-in center and they draft it for us. You can go with that too, either way. But because a lot of the language in the charter is boilerplate. So I'm just saying you don't have to draft Section 4 if you don't want to. But feel free to if you want to. But yes, in answer to your question, we will look at it all at the end.

[Eunice Browne]: So it sounds- Once over. Yeah.

[Milva McDonald]: So it sounds like, and of course, all our votes are provisional in the sense that if at any point we feel like we need to revisit something, we will. So we will vote on articles two and three in March. Awesome. We only have like 10 minutes or a little bit. So we talked about other subcommittees. The two sections of the charter that I felt maybe would warrant subcommittees were elections and citizen participation mechanisms. Elections, you know, have there's stuff like ballot position and things like that. And citizen participation mechanisms is going to include referendum procedures, recall, if we want to put recall provisions in, et cetera. So there... Budget? Well, what I want to do about budget is tackle that as a whole committee. And in fact, the Collins Center is going to come to our March meeting, and we're going to hope to start that in March. It just felt like it was something that, you know, just felt that important. I felt like that would be the way to go with that. So how do people feel about, I know Jean said she was interested in article eight. That's the public engagement.

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. I would be too. Okay.

[Milva McDonald]: Anybody else interested in being on that subcommittee? I'm interested. Okay. That's and I'll be on that. So that's four. That's fine. But if anybody else wants to join, what about elections?

[Andreottola]: I hear that's a mess, and I guess I guess I'll volunteer to be on that one, just I don't think it's going to be fun, but.

[David Zabner]: I have to say from my reading of Article seven, it seems like The examples we have are very, very similar. So I imagine actually it'll be fairly straightforward.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't think it will be that big of a deal. I think we could do it pretty quickly. But like, I mean, stuff like ballot position, things like that, we might want to... And number of signatures and how that's decided and dates and times.

[David Zabner]: It's important, but I don't imagine... How much of it is by state law too.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, well, that's true. I've seen other charters that designate ballot positions, so I think we can't do that. Okay, anybody else want to talk about elections? Okay, so I'll set up... I'll set up a meeting with Anthony and we can talk about elections and how we're going to.

[Ron Giovino]: Can I add to the public participation group?

[Milva McDonald]: Yes. And so for that one, we have Gene, Eunice, me, David, and Ron. Does somebody want to organize the meetings for that meeting for that? Or I'm happy to do it, but if somebody wants to. Okay, I will send out messages to set those up. Okay, so our next meeting is in March, and we're going to start the budget, and we're going to vote on articles two and three, and full committee, subcommittee, we talked about you presenting in March. It sounds like we're going to be pretty busy. Do you want to, what's your,

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I don't think we're ready to present in March yet. Right. So we have a meeting set up in March. March is a little bit tricky for me.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Okay. Yeah, we met last night and we're meeting again, what, March 5th, I think it is? Yeah, March 5th.

[Milva McDonald]: So we'll look forward to you reporting in April. I did just want to say, and I know that the three-year terms have came up, and I did call the Secretary of State's office to see if I could get information, and they said, all the Massachusetts Municipal Association, and I contacted them, and they said, contact the Secretary of State. The one thing that is for certain is that If three-year terms, if we recommended three-year terms, there would be elections on, there would be some elections that would coincide with state and federal elections. They would have to be separate ballots. The election staff would have to tabulate them separately, record them separately. And they would have to figure out how they were going to handle that, whether they were going to say to a voter, you've got to come back after you vote for a federal and say, I come back and get your municipal ballot, et cetera. So I just want to- So that's a no? Well, what I don't know is, you know, I mean, towns have their elections in the spring. I don't know that we are able to change to have elections in the spring. So the towns that have three-year terms have elections in the spring. So they don't run into that. That's right. But anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there.

[Eunice Browne]: Well, given the state of our elections office right now, I mean, we're not always going to be in the debacle that we're in.

[Milva McDonald]: Right.

[Eunice Browne]: But given the state that things are now, I like the idea of three-year terms. I think it makes some sense. It's like we were talking the other night. It seems to be the sweet spot. But I think we have to get our house in order first.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, there's a reason that cities don't do it because just because of the practicality.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: There are reason why cities don't vote in the spring.

[Milva McDonald]: That I don't know. And if you want to do some research on that and see if you can find something out about that.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, I just don't know if it's customary. I mean, I don't, you know, honestly, we're so used to voting in November, whatever. It is a sea change. And I understand Ron's earlier statements at the last meeting of saying, you know, trying to keep it all in perspective. I struggle with that of sort of saying, you know, are we letting Possible dictate over, you know, I mean, where's the balance between the possible and the better plan, you know.

[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah, no, it isn't what could be.

[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, no, for sure. Seems like smaller communities that do every 3 years. Yeah, I think Mel said it's mostly towns, cities. Yeah, I know my family down in Carver. My cousin actually served on some board or another that she was elected to. But I mean, Carver's, you know, they came up here for my father's funeral and they were like, oh my God, I'm in the big city.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I mean, Arlington has spring elections. Yeah, because they're a town.

[Milva McDonald]: Westfield does too, I think. Yeah, Arlington is a town.

[Andreottola]: You have to also look into things like budget. You know, when would the term start? You know, would people just be getting in? And it's budget season that starts at the same time and the holidays. And it's, I think for a city the size of Medford to go to spring would be a massive, a massive change. And I don't think it's very practical.

[Milva McDonald]: No, that's a good point when you think about the budget season. That's, yeah, it's a good point. Okay, I just wanted to just share that information. So before we adjourn, I would like to ask if there's any members of the public that want to make any comments. If you do, just raise your hand. Okay.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Bill has his hand up.

[Bill Giglio]: Yeah, no, no, no comments. I just want to, as always, thank you guys again for your hard work.

[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, so we, whatever the first Thursday in March is, it's our next meeting. I will send up minutes and do we have a motion to adjourn? Five minutes early? Are we allowed to do that? Four, four minutes.

[David Zabner]: I motion to adjourn.

[Milva McDonald]: I second it. All in favor?

[David Zabner]: Thank you, everybody.