[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the Charter Study Committee Article 8 Subcommittee. Article 8 is Citizen Participation Mechanisms. So the first item on the agenda is to review and accept the minutes from the last meeting. Has anyone had a chance to look at them? I think it was March 13, was that right? Yes. Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: Second.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Great. So the minutes are accepted. Awesome. Now, um, I think what I'll do is I'm just going to share the screen so we can just dive right into article eight. So, um, I, okay, hang on. I did, here, let me make it bigger because I know some people like it bigger. Yeah, you were correct in, I put, I was supposed to find examples for free petition and then I put initiative petitions under free petitions, so I moved those down, but I did find a few other examples, Lawrence, Fall River, and Framingham. I feel that they were relatively similar to what we have. The difference that I noticed was that they, a couple of them put in a distinction between individual petitions and group petitions.
[Eunice Browne]: I don't know that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And I didn't feel a great need to do that, but I don't know how you guys feel. I don't either. What's the purpose? Right, exactly. It's basically, yeah, exactly. That's how I feel about it. I guess what it's saying is that if there's a petition that's signed by one or more voters, then it's up to their discretion whether they respond to them. But I feel like, why do you need to say that in the charter? you know, the important part is to say what they do need to respond to, right?
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I thought the interesting part was that it seemed with the free petition, you know, the singular, that they could sort of dispose of it as they wish. And I guess thinking about it a little bit now too, You can at city council, you can get up and. You know, during citizen participation. Speak about anything that's on your mind. Yeah, and and they will address it in some fashion or another. They may do something or they may. If it's a more involved topic because of open meeting law, sometimes they will. Defer and say, and 1 of them will put this on the agenda for the next regular meeting and then. Get into it more, so I don't see free petition being particularly helpful there. On school committee, though, now that I think a little bit about it. There. And this is a big concern of mine with public participation in general, is that they seem to follow a whole different set of rules in regards to how they interpret open meeting law. And I don't quite understand that. And so you have to go through a whole lot of hoops. And if they don't feel that something is, you know, worthy of their time or whatever, they disregard it. So I'm wondering, but then again, I'm wondering if free petition might be helpful in that regard. On the other hand, it seemed to me like with the group petition, the bodies are forced to act in a way that other than just receive and place on file. And that's what I think we're trying to avoid.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, and we've already, I think we've already agreed that we think recommending a free petition is a good idea. It's just a question of the language. And we wanted to look at how it is in a few other charters, which is why I came up with these other examples.
[Ron Giovino]: The only question I have is, is this school committee piece something that should be covered under the school committee subcommittee?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so.
[Ron Giovino]: Only in terms of what Eunice is referring to in terms of protocol and changing the way they do business.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know how much leverage the charter will even have to dictate the roles of the school committee. I think that that's probably not really part of the charter's purview, but this is more about This is about what citizen partition mechanisms would be available to the citizenry in all branches of government, right?
[Ron Giovino]: So, or- That's why I'm only making the distinction because I don't want it to be a debate over, yes, free partition is good for city council, but not for school committee if we haven't made that decision.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Right now we have them both mentioned. But Gene, did you want to speak?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, I guess I didn't see the individual versus group. I guess individual is just you don't need all those signatures. Right, just one person. So I. I don't know. I mean that the 50 voters isn't like a big. Barrier or is it? I mean, it does require you have to get signatures, but.
[Ron Giovino]: But remember too, Jean, is that the best way to do this is to go to a city councilor to get it put on ticket for discussion. So this is the exception when somebody denies you from that point. So I think if one person has, I think you do need a set of signatures only because your first line of defense is going to the seven councilors to see which one would, And if they all deny you, then you probably have something that's a little controversial.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, I agree that maybe it's just a group petition that we don't need the individual.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that's how I feel because I feel like people could already do this. They could write to a city council or the city council and the school committee. pick 10 neighbors and have 10 neighbors sign it. And then the city council, it's just the way it is now. The city council, it's up to their discretion what they do about it, right? So why would we need to put that in the charter? I feel like the important part is to say, these are the circumstances under which the citizenry can petition the bodies of government and be guaranteed a response.
[Eunice Browne]: It seems to me under the individual petition, it says in the last line there, take such action in regard to such petitions as they deem to be necessary or advisable. Right. Exactly. Thank you, Ms. Brown. We see it in place on file. Which is the way it is now.
[Ron Giovino]: Right, this is the first layer of a citizen presentation. Then we have further initiatives that they can go through. But this is absolutely right, Eunice. This is all in the purview of the city council to say thank you and not talk or talk. It's just the fact of law.
[Milva McDonald]: So the question is, are we, I mean, we wanted to look at the petition. They can't they have to take it up. Yes.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. So, yeah, with the group petition with the group petition, it seems like they have to actually listen and they actually have to do something. Right as opposed to even place on file.
[Milva McDonald]: So we wanted to look at examples from other charters. And I think I haven't heard a big argument for trying to include this distinction between, or to include the discretionary action. But looking under the group petitions, 150, Lawrence gives a threshold of 150, Newton gives, what does noon give, 50, and Fall River gives 100. And we had settled on 50. So, you know, do we still feel okay?
[Eunice Browne]: In my research, and I went through, I used the, for all of my research, I used the Medford Comparables spreadsheet. And for this Free Petition 8-1, I looked at all, I think there's 58 or 59, so let's call it 60, all 60 communities that were there. About a third of them had the free petition and this threshold ranged anywhere from 25 to 150. Okay. Fifty is right in there. Jean, did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: That's right.
[Jean Zotter]: OK, Jean. Thanks, sorry, since I'm not on camera, I'm just going to raise my hand. Yeah, yeah. I'm fine with 50. I do really want to keep in the one subject matter once a year, just because I feel like It could be abused and people could just keep putting, if they don't get the result they want, they could just keep submitting it and make city council put it on the agenda. I don't know if city council can then say, well, we already addressed this. We're not going to hear it. I don't know. But it just seems like if we don't have that, this could be a way to make city government less efficient. Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: I agree with what Jean just said. It shouldn't be a stalling tactic that we keep throwing it every other month up there. I agree. There should be some kind of. I don't know how you enforce it, though. I agree with you, Jean. I don't think I think there should be a I don't want to see this again for a year. But if we're talking about. You know, we're talking about a complaint about crosswalks. And then in two months, I'm talking about a complaint about streetlights. Is it the same subject? You know, I don't want to, you know, but I agree with you. And again, I fall back on the fact that I think, in my experience, that getting something on the agenda is not as difficult as we think.
[Jean Zotter]: Right, I agree with you.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think so too. I'm looking at it in sort of a different way. First of all, I'll say, I believe that there's a rule. I don't know if it's part of the council rules or an ordinance or what, where the same topic can't come up more than once in 90 days. That's something that we should take a look at. But I'm looking at this from a different way. At first, I was in line with what you guys were saying, but I thought about it a little bit differently. Let's use Ron's example of a crosswalk. you get 50 of your neighbors together to put in a crosswalk and you petition to be heard at a council meeting and so forth. Or maybe you're talking about the safety of the intersection of Georgia and Maine or something, and they do something but they don't Maybe they don't put in the crosswalk at all, or maybe they put that in, but they don't do much else. And then three months later, you have a bad accident. Why couldn't you bring it back to the council for more relief. I was thinking specifically of some of the issues that have befallen the schools in the past year or so. And when there was a terrible assault of a young woman, you know, a year and a half ago, had they, you know, they had been petitioned to do something and they didn't do much of anything. Then a couple of months later, there was a stabbing. If you don't get satisfactory relief and the situation grows worse, whatever that is, then why couldn't you bring it back?
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. I think that that we're going beyond the simplicity of what this is, is to get it on the agenda. We're not gonna be able to regulate how they act or how they judge or what they predict. To your point, Eunice, there is, again, there's initiatives and referendums that go a lot deeper than, you know, just crosswalk. But this is really, all this really the free petition does is it says, agenda item 93-7, Okay, who wants to speak on it done any Councilors want to speak done? Okay done. So I mean It's not really i'm looking at it from a Get it on the agenda. Not necessarily what the results are and uh how we react and no question in three months something else could be up there, but um I I have faith that the the council would be able to, we're not tying up the council, we're just tying up this petitioner to do this every three months.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay, Jean? I guess the way I was thinking of it is, this is your one chance you're petitioning school committee, city council on your issue, they don't act on it, then you have other levers like going to the media or then you have your citizens petition if it's something pretty substantive that you want to bring to the voters then. So this is like the first step in you trying to get this addressed, but you have other mechanisms if it doesn't work. I don't know if that makes sense.
[Milva McDonald]: It does, I think, and that does make sense. I guess one thing I'm just thinking is let's approach, so what we want to do with this last sentence of this section is we want to make sure that this provision is not used by somebody to just clog things up and you know we don't want it to be used frivolously. So maybe if we just think about and I think we all agree on that so how do we how do we do that without you know, maybe creating a situation where people can't be heard on things they want to be heard on. One thing I was just looking at, you know, this is where you have to be really careful with language, right? Right now it says no hearing shall be required on any one subject. So just taking the crosswalks again, maybe crosswalks is discussed and then a crosswalk in another neighborhood happens six weeks later and it's considered to be the same subject so they don't have to address it. I'm not saying I think this would happen, but I'm thinking maybe we should make it a little more specific than any one subject. Do you see what I'm saying?
[Eunice Browne]: If you were to bring up the subject, a crosswalk on US Street, Melva, and you go before them for that, then you couldn't discuss a crosswalk in Medford Square six months later.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm not saying that would happen, but I'm saying that subject is general. So I'm looking at the same petition, but that doesn't really work either because then you just make a new petition. Do you see what this, is this point coming through?
[Ron Giovino]: Oh, Gene. What you're saying is that if somebody on High Street complains about a crosswalk, in three months somebody on Main Street complains about a crosswalk, I think the point is that this is more of a, not a. I don't know what they call it in the agenda, Eunice, you know, where council has put things on, I need a tree cut down on Elm Street. I need the, you know, there's all kinds of, because of that stuff. These are petitions that, this is why you need 50 people signing it, because if I had a tree that needed to be cut in front, it wouldn't fall under this free petition, because I'd have a very hard time to find 50 people. the sign about my tree in my front yard or the crosswalk on my one street. But I maybe want to go to Main Street, Elm Street, Mystic Ave, and then I gather my 50, and we're all talking about the same subject matter.
[Eunice Browne]: Is it not so much no hearings on the same subject, but no single petitioner can?
[Ron Giovino]: No, I would definitely not.
[Jean Zotter]: I don't think it's a single petitioner. Jean, did you have a comment? What if he said, no hearing shall be required on the same subject of the petition? Because you're, to address Eunice's concern, you could say six months or something instead of one year. I guess subjects just is what feels very,
[Ron Giovino]: But what if we determine that, I mean, there has to be somebody who declares it right or wrong. So isn't that the city clerk based on the decision of the city clerk? Can we just say that? It gives us some kind of, somebody has to say, somebody has to step up and say, well, we just did this six months ago. Who is that person?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but I'm just trying to be more specific with the language. What about content of any particular petition?
[Jean Zotter]: sure and you don't want to be too specific because then it's um this is like a constitution not an ordinance right exactly but subject seems seems broad to me yeah the content is fine can we just can we not just say as determined by the city clerk's office um i think that isn't it the president um that decides the agenda well i don't know
[Eunice Browne]: I think the city clerk has some control over. And I think you'll see that sort of common thread go through the other two, you know, citizen, the initiative and the referendum, where, you know, they have to sort of determine if it's, you know, within the purview of the council.
[Ron Giovino]: But also to that point, Jean, is that this is going to be used when the city council refuses to put it on. So having the president decide what is right or wrong is probably, that's why I don't want
[Milva McDonald]: It's already gone through process one. It might also be used when somebody wants to show that their issue isn't just with them, that it's weighty enough that 50 people signed this to get it on the agenda. So it could be used for that too.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. You're right, Ron, that the clerk is mentioned in the other pieces of the process. I'm fine with that.
[Ron Giovino]: I'm just thinking of a neutral source.
[Milva McDonald]: Is this okay? No hearing shall be required on the same specific content more than one time a year? That's fine. Or maybe I just... We can't drop that down to once every six months? Or the same content. But that's... Eunice, hang on a minute. I'm just thinking. I think that's better than the same subject because content is more specific to, you know, material that was in the petition.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So we don't maybe don't have to say specific. What do you think?
[Ron Giovino]: Same content is fine.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. All right. Now that we fixed that word that was bothering me, and Eunice, you said you would prefer to drop it down to more than twice a year? No. Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. I think twice a year, and you could actually, if you brought up Or twice in a calendar year, or twice every, or no more than once every six months, maybe. Twice in a calendar year, you could do it in February and June.
[Milva McDonald]: I personally, I agree with the points that Ron and Jean made earlier that, you know, one year is good enough because it's not like there are, it's not, there are other avenues that a person can pursue. So if they don't like the way they, the response they got, they can go to the next level. So I, I don't think we need to do that. But if it's something that we want to put in blue and run it by the whole committee, we can do that.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. I'd like to get a little bit more feedback on that. Because I'm thinking even if we do it, Once, you can't do once every six months. You could feasibly, you know, if this were next year, 2025, you could, well, no, actually, well.
[Ron Giovino]: You're saying 12 months, not a calendar year.
[Eunice Browne]: I'm just thinking of when the council turns over, you might get a different response with a different, if there were some turnover on the council.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this doesn't say that you can't put another petition in. It just says that they're not required to have a hearing on the petition more than one time, right? Let's see what the whole group does.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay, we can put yeah, I mean we can discuss it. I just think it's a it's a This is a very small This is the first entry into a citizen doing this on their own. So, I mean if you had an issue that uh, you got 50 signatures for and it did not Hit the the council seriously enough that at least they put it into a subcommittee Then i'm thinking that it probably could wait a year the other point. I I want to just come back to the point of I think that there has to be some kind of judge who decides what is relevant in these issues. And I just... You mean you're saying... Who decides the content is not eligible to be done again in the same year?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. Let's keep that in our minds as we go down. So I feel like we can get rid of this stuff because it served its purpose. But there were, I did want to just make sure we look at those questions in the margin. Yeah. Can you make it a little bit bigger again? I apologize. I can't. It's okay. Is there, are there, Do we want to, those questions in the margins, is there anything we need to review?
[Eunice Browne]: I'm just trying to remember what I wrote, because I wrote the lion's share of them.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to tighten this up? I don't remember what this was. We said that the action shall be taken not later than six weeks after the petition was filed.
[Eunice Browne]: Uh, yeah. Um, I think my, uh, let's see, uh, hearing should be held by the city councils or by committee and the action by the council should be taken not later than six weeks after the petition was filed. Um, I think my thought process there was by the next regular meeting of the body or within the regular meetings of the body.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, by the next regular meeting could be like two days later, right? Theoretically. I mean, the way I look at it is they meet as a body at the entire, well, the school committee meets every week, right? But the city council is every other week. But it can also be a subcommittee. It can also be a subcommittee. So I feel like six weeks is reasonable because they probably have,
[Jean Zotter]: other agenda you know it's it's something that they're going to have to add on to their agendas right jean go ahead um well i worked on an ordinance recently um i the process was it had to be put on the full city council agenda then they vote to refer it to committee then the committee worked on it then it went to committee the whole i'm just thinking through the process and whether that impacts us at all usually that's how The ordinances get crafted, so. This wouldn't necessarily have to result in an ordinance, though. That's true, but right. That's often what people want. Right. So. So I think it has to be introduced at the, I don't know that they can just put it in a committee without the whole city. It's just a procedural question based on their rules. I don't know if they can put it into a committee without the full city council approving it going to the committee.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. They, both the city council and the school committee, their rules state that the entire body has to, it has to then The, the issue, the paper, the whatever has to be referred from the. Entire body to the relevant. You know, subcommittee, but you mean by a majority vote. Yeah, by a majority.
[Milva McDonald]: So Jean, you said that the other example said nine weeks or three months. So six weeks is on the short end of other charters.
[Jean Zotter]: Right. So in the summer, I was just, Eunice brought up the summer city council meets once. So, yeah, do you want to give me a little more time? To write this summer, the summer city.
[Eunice Browne]: The city council, their last meeting is. Toward the end of June, and now that they've gone to biweekly over the last year or so, it could be the third Tuesday in June as opposed to the fourth Tuesday, and then they'll have a meeting the middle of July somewhere, usually roughly around the 20th or so of July, and then they meet again roughly around the 20th of August. And then the September meeting gets a little bit mucked up because there's always There's generally an election in September. If it's primary for the local stuff, it could be state office or even presidential. So they don't usually meet again until the third week of September. So you're looking at one meeting in July, one meeting in August, one meeting in September. And the school committee does not meet all in the summer. They go out in June and you don't see them again until September.
[Jean Zotter]: What about nine weeks? Is that like?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, given the summer, this charter would mean that the school committee, if they got a petition at the end of June, would have to regroup in August.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, that's not right.
[Milva McDonald]: So three months? So, well, yeah, I think we'd have to do nine weeks.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, nine weeks is still, is that a whole summer?
[Eunice Browne]: No. No, you're right. You're right.
[Ron Giovino]: It's more like 12 weeks. And we'd ask them to come back, and that would be the first thing in September they would do instead.
[Milva McDonald]: Do they take three months off or two months?
[Eunice Browne]: They usually... I'm sorry, you just said this, but...
[Ron Giovino]: July and August. They don't take August off.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, they do. They don't meet in August? They don't meet until after Labor Day.
[Ron Giovino]: After the budget, they're out. But they don't come back until Labor Day?
[Eunice Browne]: Right.
[Ron Giovino]: So that would be, let's say that's nine weeks. But what that's saying is, when you come back in September, during the start of the school year, you must take up this petition.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, all they have to do is have a hearing on it. You know, I mean, it's... Move it.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, move it. They can move it to some place.
[Milva McDonald]: What do we think about 10? That seems good to me.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that's not tightening it up, Eunice, the way you were talking about.
[Eunice Browne]: No, it's not. But I mean, I considered the factors. My view was that You know, they, I don't know, maybe I'm, you know, more of a, can I say hard ass on Zoom? But if, you know, if it's important enough, they should be, you know, coming back and listening to their constituents, you know? You know, I'm a firm believer they work for us.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, so are you saying you think it should be less than 10 weeks?
[Eunice Browne]: I'm saying, yeah, because for most of the year, it works well. From September to the end of June, it works fine. It's the July and August piece that particularly with the school committee is the challenge. The city council could, if they got something in June, they could address it in July. They got something in July, they can address it in August. It's the school committee that's the problem, but they should be listening to the constituents. And if it means them coming back and holding a meeting, so be it.
[Ron Giovino]: You want them to come out of their school vacation to come to listen to a petition?
[Jean Zotter]: Yep.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay. All right. I don't know that I don't know because there's no level. I mean, this is this. I think that's way too much to ask. There's just no level. We don't know what the petition's for. I mean, it's not like it could be for anything. I mean, we could say I don't know. What do they call it when they're on vacation? Do they call the school committees in session from September to June?
[Eunice Browne]: I don't think they call it anything. They just they their last meeting is somewhere in the middle of June and I've seen them come back very sporadically. Certainly during the height of COVID, they met all that summer. But as a rule, you don't see them until after Labor Day.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we're going to put this in blue as well because we have to move on to the other sections. But we'll, maybe we can just see what the rest of the committee thinks about this too. Does that sound okay? So, and what, and are we good with the rest of the content of this particular section? There were some questions. I mean, are we, do we feel satisfied or do we want to address any other questions on this section?
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I think, you know, what I was saying in the, in my top comment up there is, you know, who decides whether or not it's relevant. And I think, you know, we were talking about that and then, um, you know, what, what is the, you know, what, What kind of action do they take? This just says they have a hearing.
[Ron Giovino]: You can't determine the action that they need to take. It's only actions of just letting it, putting on a file, maybe go to subcommittee, but we can't, I don't know how we would dictate each individual petition where it should go.
[Milva McDonald]: This just says the action that has to be taken is they have a hearing.
[Eunice Browne]: Right, and whatever comes out of that hearing comes out of the hearing, but yeah, so hold the public hearing and act on every petition so that it could hold the public hearing and. The action could be a non action.
[Unidentified]: Yes, well, yeah, it can.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. Yeah, you can't force them to do what you want with 50 voters on your sick. I mean, that's why we have the citizens petition if you don't get. But they have to review it.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay. So then basically, if you don't get a satisfactory result, if their action with a petition signed by 50 voters is basically a non-action, which is entirely possible, then you escalate.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe we need to just take out and act, because it's vague. We don't know what it means. We just want to say they're just going to hold a public hearing, right?
[Ron Giovino]: Well, you could define the action as not doing anything as their action, but I would take it out.
[Milva McDonald]: What do you think, Gene? Do you think it adds anything?
[Jean Zotter]: I don't think so. I think it should hold a public hearing. Yeah, it's fine. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Awesome. All right. Now we come to the next level, which is the citizen initiative measures.
[Eunice Browne]: Can we just go back one second? And I think I said there is who should receive petitions directed to the school committee. So the petition was filed with the city clerk or the school committee. Do we need to define who gets it on the school committee or just saying school committee is sufficient?
[Ron Giovino]: Well, I think the chairman is the person who determines the agenda. So I'd imagine that's the person.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it does say that this is the petition filed with the city clerk or the school committee. I'm okay with that being general because it means that, you know, depending on the school committee, maybe it would be the secretary. You know, maybe that's who would receive it on behalf of the school committee. But I don't feel a need to specify it, but I don't know. Do others?
[Ron Giovino]: No, I agree. I mean, to be honest, I think we need to we know that this is going to be edited a thousand times down the road, even to our next committee of the whole. So I think we need to make our decisions and just, you know, let's get, let's get through it because it's, it's gotta go, it's going to go to the council and it's going to go, the school committee is going to have their input. So to worry about who's going to get it, like you say, it's their decision to who gets it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All right. So next level citizen initiative measures, um, So this one is much more meaty. And I don't know, I'm just going down because there's all these other examples. Did anybody have time to compare how our current text looks compared to these others?
[Jean Zotter]: I thought Eunice did a nice job of listing them all in the comments. OK, let's look at that. Sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm moving my little boxes. Yes. So we started by saying the things that we had to decide were the thresholds, right? And the initiative petitions are for the passage of a particular measure. So this is actually asking a policy or a measure, like an ordinance to be passed, right? So we put 250 and not less than 25 from each ward. And let's see. That's exactly the same as Everett. Wait, Malden is not just three. Malden is three? No.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I don't think so.
[Milva McDonald]: I believe it was. Well, I can tell you that. I have Malden down here. Let's see what it says. That's hard to believe. Yeah, you're right. It is three.
[Eunice Browne]: Wow. Yeah, I thought so as well, Sam. OK.
[Ron Giovino]: I can tell you that Malden is going through the same thing we're going through. Their charter has not been reviewed in 20 years. So.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. So Malden and Waltham are out. And Peabody are, well, there are a few that have three.
[Ron Giovino]: It's very strange that you would allow that to start the process. It's very strange to me. I don't understand what.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it doesn't seem like enough, right? I mean. No, it just seems like everybody. I mean, Everett, Fall River, Taunton, and Weymouth are exactly where we are talking. Framingham is more with 500. Newton is less with 50. And then we have the percentages, which I believe is even more. I'm comfortable with where we're at. I feel like it's not that hard to get 250 signatures, I don't think.
[Ron Giovino]: It's not that easy either.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but it does represent some work, right?
[Ron Giovino]: Yes, right. That's what it should be. Three signatures is ridiculous.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. Okay. I was a bit stunned. Are you okay with the numbers units or do we want to? I think 250 is fine. Okay.
[Eunice Browne]: Then we have to consider, because we're proposing what representation, we have to consider that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and we have the not less than 25 from each board. Right. Yeah. Okay. I'm just looking at the comments about Oh, that was for the public. Okay. So the next question we had was, wait, is this, I can take this. Was this in the highlighted? Oh, no, that's just from the comment. Okay. The next threshold is the time. And right now we are, you know what, they're all 15, right?
[Eunice Browne]: But not applicable, but the others were.
[Milva McDonald]: What does that mean? Not applicable? Does that mean they don't have an initiative petition process in their charter?
[Eunice Browne]: No, that meant that they didn't have a particular time frame of when the number of days for the solicitor to approve it. It was just.
[Milva McDonald]: What I'm guessing is because this initiative petition is in mass general law. So I think if we're in line with other charters, we're probably okay. But probably checking it against the, because we don't want to put anything that conflicts. And I wouldn't be surprised if the 15 business spaces, in the Mass General Law, which I should just find it right now. And I had it. Let's see. I don't want to go poking around all over my desktop while I'm on the share screen, but we could call it up and just look. But did the others say 15 business days or 15 days years? Do you remember?
[Eunice Browne]: I don't remember. But here's what I think about the the day piece because days comes up an awful lot within the entire charter. I wonder if when we do Article 1 definitions that we should define day as business day and that just gets it out of the way. Anywhere the word day is mentioned in the charter is business day.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, I'm going to leave this in blue because it's possible that it's extraneous and we don't need it.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay. Can I just say go back to the Malden thing? I'm reading the actual charter. I think there might be, it's very confusing the way they write it. It says The papers that are filed at the city clerk and shall include the names and addresses of three persons designated as having filed the same with each signature on the petition. Oh, I think that I think it means that. I'm not sure what it means, you know, we say that in our, we say that in our charter somewhere.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, no. It says here within five days after the filing of a petition, the registrars of voters shall determine by what number of voters the petition has been signed and the percentage that number is of the total number of voters. Yeah, I don't think it's three. I agree with you.
[Ron Giovino]: I think it's just those are the captains that will get the paper signed. Just to clarify.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that this language is actually from math general law.
[Ron Giovino]: Yes, it is. Yeah. I think most of their stuff is.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Eunice Browne]: It was pretty apparent when we did a lot of the charters, which ones were fairly updated and which ones hadn't seen the light of day in quite some time.
[Ron Giovino]: Yes. No question.
[Milva McDonald]: See, here's where we go. It's 20 percent of the total number of voters.
[Ron Giovino]: Correct.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what it is. It's not three.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. I just, Claire, it just looks so, it looks like three people to get that started is just impossible to believe. But the wording is strange.
[Milva McDonald]: I think if this is from mass general law, what this says is that if you get an initiative petition signed by at least 20% of the total number of voters, they pass the measure without alteration within 20 days or call a special election to put it on the ballot.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. So, that's really... So, our task is to figure out numbers, time, and then just follow the mass law, but we're not going to be able to change that. I don't think we'll be able to change that law.
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't know that we should repeat it either.
[Ron Giovino]: Right.
[Eunice Browne]: The way I looked at section 8-2 and I think section 8-3 as well, I was looking for four data points. Section A was how many signatures are required to file with the clerk, and then section B, the number of days for the solicitor to approve, and then section C, the total number of signatures of registered voters. And that's where your percentages generally came in. And then also I think section C, how long do they have to do the signature collection? So there were kind of four data points that I was looking at.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, and those are the things, that's the analysis that we needed to decide the answer to our question is what should we decide from it?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Jean, did you want to say something?
[Jean Zotter]: Sure, I thought that there wasn't a state law that allowed for local. Citizen petition, but there's a state law that allows for state. Wide citizen petition. I thought if you wanted a local citizen petition, it had to be in your charter, and if it wasn't in your charter. Then. Let me just try to find it.
[Ron Giovino]: I think you're right.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let's just take a let's let's take a look. You couldn't be right. And we're gonna look right here at the but I thought it was in our charter. We're gonna look right. It's not in our charter.
[Ron Giovino]: In the Massachusetts general laws does not address only statewide.
[Milva McDonald]: And this is the this I mean, this says the papers constituting a petition shall be filed in the office of the city clerk. And the city clerk shall transmit to the city council or school committee. Sometimes you look at these laws. I mean, I've read laws before, and then I've been told, oh, no, that doesn't apply. So I don't know. But this does sound like it's...
[Ron Giovino]: It's interesting.
[Milva McDonald]: It's describing... I'm confused.
[Ron Giovino]: Why would they send this to the school committee? What would the school committee do with it?
[Milva McDonald]: A policy, a school policy, maybe.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know, but... Yeah, I don't know because... The school committee is like a legislative body, technically, right? They make policy.
[Ron Giovino]: they do, but they have to go through the city council to make it a ordinance or actual legislation. The city, the school committee can, the school committee can determine, uh, they can make their own policy, but this isn't policy. This is a, this is a different, I thought school committee doesn't make ordinances. No, I know. That's why I'm curious why it says city council or school committee. I don't understand the process that they would go through if it went to the school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: I think, Jean, did you want to speak?
[Jean Zotter]: Sorry, I left my hand up. I'm looking at the law that you know.
[Eunice Browne]: What we're doing here, this citizen initiative measure, does this or does this not apply to the school committee as well?
[Milva McDonald]: We have it as applying to the school committee, yes. Yeah, it said. Yeah. So we're okay with our 15 days because we see that that's pretty standard. In the next session, we're going to 60 or 90 days, and then we have the percentage of voters. So 60 or 90, I don't know why, why do 60 or 90 was because we didn't decide which one we wanted. Right. That's why we have both there.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. Some of them have some of them have 30 days. Yeah. 60 and then fall river had 120 and Newton had 180.
[Milva McDonald]: Basically, this is the amount of days that the petition shall be returned and filed with the city clerk. This is how much time you have to get your whatever percentage we put in to the city clerk. We thought 30 seemed pretty quick. Right. Although plenty of communities have 30.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: I think a lot of it, I think we need to couple these two things together. How many signatures are we asking them to get? Then what is a achievable timeframe in which they can do it?
[Milva McDonald]: So... Well, if you look at, let's say, Everett is 10% and they give people 30 days. Newton is 10% and they give people 180 days. Newton, I don't know if it's bigger than Everett or not, population-wise. Waltham, well... Yeah, Newton is way bigger than Everett.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, so... What do we say the registered voters are in Massachusetts? 40?
[Milva McDonald]: about 40,000.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I think I personally, I think 10%. And I also think 90 days because I don't want to exclude somebody who missed something on the 63rd day. But it also says to these folks, anybody who's trying to do this, you'd think they'd get it done in 30 days. I just think the 90 day thing is giving them a cushion. 10% is about 4000. Yeah, I think that's a lot of us.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a lot. That's why we thought 5%.
[Eunice Browne]: But... Lawrence says 5%, and Lawrence is a way bigger community than we are.
[Milva McDonald]: And they're the only ones that say 5%. Yeah, but their 5% is 8,000 people. Yeah, I'm looking. I'm trying to remember. I think Weymouth is about the same size as we are. Taunton is probably comparable. And they are 10%. And Fall River might be bigger, actually.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, they're kind of in the order. I can tell you Everett has just under 50,000 people. And Fall River, they're kind of in population order. And we're somewhere between Weymouth and Malden.
[Ron Giovino]: Can I ask you a question, Eunice? What was the recent school committee in Tapa? What was his total votes? Do you know? Off the top of your head.
[Eunice Browne]: If you don't, that's fine. 5,600, I think, because I think Nicole had maybe 58.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. Okay. I'm just, I didn't, I mean, so 4,000 is not crazy to think about.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'm just thinking about just, you know, the one time, you know.
[Ron Giovino]: Oh, you did it.
[Milva McDonald]: You have to have a lot of people getting signatures. It's not that easy.
[Ron Giovino]: You did this, Melva, so you would know. How many did you get when you were doing the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: We didn't really even get it going that we used the signatures that had been collected and people were doing that for years and they never got over 3,000. Okay. Yeah, several efforts. But, you know, I mean, if most charters say 10%, I mean, 10%.
[Eunice Browne]: Somebody brought this up to me. Somebody brought up to me yesterday in a conversation and it was more having to do with recalls, which the individual felt very strongly needed to be a part of the charter. But rather than and maybe we can't do this with state law. I don't know. But rather than. Getting 10% of the registered voters from the last election or whatever, what about 10% of the people who voted, who actually came out and voted?
[Unidentified]: No, that won't be legal.
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't even know how you could figure that out. That would be really hard.
[Unidentified]: You could just total up.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, the elections office knows how many people voted. I know, but, oh, you're saying the number, not the individuals. Okay.
[Eunice Browne]: So if, let me see.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, did you want to say something?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, I'm with Ron, because it seems like a lot of the cities do 10%, but I would, air on the side of giving people more time, like 90 days.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we're going to do 10% because it seems 5% is too much of an outlier.
[Ron Giovino]: The other thing, too, you would know this, Melva, too, is when they're vetting the signatures, there's that percentage too that gets tossed out because somebody didn't sign properly or somebody, there's that part too. That's what makes 4,000. 4,000 is a big number.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, and if you knew you needed 4,000, I mean, I think it's actually a little more than 40,000 now and the population's increased, so maybe it's going to be up to 45, but well, let's say you thought you needed 4,500, you would collect at least 5,000 just because you would, you know.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, here we go. The presidential primary, which was held just three weeks ago, according to the city of Medford official results, the number of registered voters in Medford is 42,439. The number of people who actually came out and voted was 10,740. Somebody do the math?
[Ron Giovino]: That's a quarter, 25% ish.
[Eunice Browne]: So if we're going with the 10% of the last, so if we were doing this now and somebody were putting this petition together three months from now, they would need to get 10% of 42,439. Yes. Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, again, this is like, this should, initiative petitions like this should not be normal. They should be exceptions based on some very, you know, it should not be a normal thing. So, you got to find the, you got to find the, to make it doable but not make it impossible.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, not make it, yeah, okay. So, I think we're good.
[Ron Giovino]: Let's do 7.78%.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, no, seriously though, it's just, it either is five, 10, 15, 20, I mean, I don't know.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, so Lawrence has 5%. Lawrence has their 2020 population, which, you know, well, that's their population. We don't know how many of them vote, what their voting is, so. What's their population? Just under 90,000.
[Milva McDonald]: So it's bigger than us, yeah. I'm just saying it's curious, nobody does 8%, for instance.
[Ron Giovino]: I was serious when I said 7%. I think that's a reasonable number.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. Well, I mean, we can make it whatever we want to make it, can't we?
[Milva McDonald]: It just seems like people like the round numbers.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, we're Medford, we're not normal.
[Jean Zotter]: Jean, what do you think? I think they like round numbers because it's easy for organizers to figure out how many signatures. Yeah. It could be disappointed more. I don't know. But if people really want to do eight, that's OK with me.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess the way I would do it is I would go, okay, 1% is 420 and then multiply it by 8. That's how I would figure it out.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, 3,200 people you'd need. At 8%, you need 3,200. Now in 10 years, you're going to need 6,000 or 7,000 as we continue to grow. Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: I'm just curious, I'm looking up Lawrence to see what their election results from three weeks ago was. Let me see if it.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we're just going to put this in blue and when we present this to the whole committee, we'll just tell them that we settled on 10 because, We didn't find any communities except for one that were less than 10, but we also talked about how many signatures that is and just see what people think. Does that sound good?
[Milva McDonald]: Good for me. We don't have any numbers in this section that are in
[Eunice Browne]: We must be okay with these numbers. I think some of the numbers that are in there seem to be like action on petitions, not more than 30 days following the date of the petitions. I think some of those are probably pretty standard fare. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so, and I don't see any questions in the margins here, which is kind of awesome. And then this, so we don't need this anymore. We don't need all this. There's a lot of it here. Okay, so what's after this section?
[Eunice Browne]: Then we get into the referendum.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay, now we're in the referendum. I had a question. Go ahead. Can we just review? So can you go back up? Because you get your 10%, 90 days, you submit it to the clerk, right? I just want to review the process. Then city council votes on it, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Action on petitions not more than 30 days, the city council shall act by passing, so this is what is pretty much from mass general law that we saw, right? Passing without change, passing a measure stated to be in lieu of the initiative measure or rejecting it. Now, this is actually different than what we saw in the law. The passage of a measure in lieu shall be a rejection of the initiative measure.
[Jean Zotter]: So then say they reject it. So then what's the process? I just wanted to be reminded.
[Milva McDonald]: And then a supplemental initiative petition may be filed. And then you have to get more signatures.
[Ron Giovino]: Different signatures.
[Milva McDonald]: Now we're down to 5%. Additional. That's the other thing. It seems like we have to, whatever we put, I should put this in Bluetooth because this has to be less than, like, let's say people said, yeah, let's make it 8%. We would make this 4%.
[Jean Zotter]: Yes, really, because this is you have you got 10% and now you're getting five additional percent for a total of 15% registered voters to get on the ballot right I just want to review them.
[Milva McDonald]: But let's, because there's another number down here. The signatures on the initial petition filed and the signatures on the supplemental shall contain the signatures of not, yeah. So this number has to equal, this number has to equal, so this right now has to equal 15, because we have five.
[Ron Giovino]: That's when it's rejected, correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Yeah. But I think the point of this section is to say that it can't be the same people who signed, right?
[Ron Giovino]: That's exactly right.
[Milva McDonald]: But again, which is like a bear to keep track. If you have to go and do it again, then you have to trust people to remember whether they signed it or the major process.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, you're right.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a bear.
[Ron Giovino]: And they have to be by wards.
[Milva McDonald]: And then it's no, that was just for the beginning.
[Ron Giovino]: I think we wouldn't do that.
[Jean Zotter]: Go ahead. Go ahead. So, then then then there's a special election. Like, do we want a special election or can it just be put on the next? election cycle, because special elections, we already get low voter turnout, and then you hold a special election, it's gonna be super low turnout, depending on the issue. So can it just-?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. I feel like I saw the special election thing in the Mass General Lobb, but yeah, see, that's where it talks about it.
[Jean Zotter]: Do we, so that's what we, cause we can't just say like we do for the state ballot initiative. It's just in the next general election.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. But does that mean you would have to wait a year to get it on the ballot? In some cases you would. I think that's why that's there.
[Jean Zotter]: But if we keep in that provision that you need a certain amount of turnout, it might be really hard to. I guess I would prefer that it just go on the next ballot when there's more people turning out at a special election. It just seems like you're not going to get a lot of people turning out for that.
[Ron Giovino]: You're right, Jean. If I'm looking at a calendar, and let's say it's the elections in November, and you are just starting getting signatures, and you've got your signatures finished in December, And then you went through this process. You're actually talking two years before that would be voted on in a ballot.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. That's true. It depends on how... Wait a minute. This does say, provided that if another city election is to be held not more than 120 days after the petition is certified, then the city council doesn't have to call a special election. So maybe what we want to do is look at 120 days. Do we want to make that... 180. Longer, right? Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: If we made it 180, that would be reasonable.
[Jean Zotter]: 180 is, is that six months, more or less?
[Ron Giovino]: Yes.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: But to your point, Jean, that would mean that if there was an election coming in the next six months, then it would be on the public, on the election ballot. Otherwise, we'd have to look at a special election.
[Milva McDonald]: And it has to be a city election. Right. Right. Okay. I think so. Are you okay with 180 days, Eunice? Yeah. Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: The other thing- Can you put that in blue? Can you put that in blue too? Because I think that's something we want to tell everybody that that's what we thought of. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm just also just looking again at this So if you are gonna try to redo it, then you have to get your other 5% and it has to equal, because we have 10 and five and this number has to equal those two, that's why it's 15 now. And we're giving people 60 days to get that. We gave them 90 days to get the 10%, right? Now they have 60 days to get 5% more.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. I'm just thinking that if they got the 10%, they know what they're doing and they probably don't need 90 days.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. To me, the biggest problem if you're going to go this far is trying to figure out how to get 5% of people that didn't already sign. That's going to be hard.
[Ron Giovino]: This is another thing that you would hope we never have to do.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. I would be curious, next time the Collins Center joins us, to ask them how often these measures get used.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm guessing that it's not very often. I mean, we'll see what they say. It would be interesting. But my guess is it would not be very often.
[Eunice Browne]: First of all, I don't think, I mean, we're eating and breathing this thing now for months. But I would think even once we're done and this becomes the city Bible, most people are not going to know that this is even an option. to utilize these tools to affect some change. Then I think that anybody who does actually take the time to research the charter and discover that these are tools that they can use, I don't know that it's only going to be the most passionate and diehard that will actually go and do this.
[Milva McDonald]: And they would have to be to get this level of, to do this kind of campaign, I would say.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. I mean, I just, I wonder how often these, these things are used and under what circumstances.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. I think, I think the goal is to make it not the norm.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. So this is a news publication that we talked about. You know, the difficulty is that we don't have a news publication, technically. I mean, a patch would count now, I would think. Right?
[Eunice Browne]: But... Well, I mean, every, you know, any time that the city council Works on an ordinance and, um, for example, um. The leaf blower ordinance, I think is, I think I explained a couple of our last meeting. They've completed that and, um. They had what's called their 1st reading of it in the last city election or the last. City council meeting a couple of weeks ago from there, it goes to what's called a 2nd reading and the clerk is required to put it in a newspaper. I think so. What is he doing?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, the Medford, that Somerville paper that's theoretically part of the Somerville journal.
[Eunice Browne]: Somerville journal, Medford something or other. And then it goes to its third reading, which comes back to the council and they pass it. So I will assume that any of this that has to go in a newspaper will go in the same place. Yeah, that's that's that's I think a state issue because the only community that does know. Absolutely. I think they have to address this at state level.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know how they do that because they can't force newspapers to go into business, but. Okay, we don't have the paper anymore. Yeah, they might have to, yeah, I don't know. I mean, they might have to take it out, make the requirement different or something. Okay, so citizen referendum procedures. Now, this, just to get clear on what this is, how it's different from the initiative, this is to basically kind of try to overturn an ordinance, right? Right. Is that? Yes. That's what we thought. So, if not more than 21 days, and Eunice, you, these are the numbers that you saw, and they're all 20 to 30 days. Hey, there's some 21 days, yeah, three weeks, but. Yes, we're right where we need to be. But it gets away from the round number, but okay. So, 21 is in the ballpark. Is that calendar days? Well, that's what we're talking about, that we're going to try to address the days issue in the definitions. Or it's possible that days means something in a document like this already without us having to specify it.
[Ron Giovino]: I was just wondering how they're listed in those other cities and towns.
[Eunice Browne]: To tell you the truth, I didn't pay attention to that, so I don't know. I'm guessing it just says days. That's what I think.
[Ron Giovino]: I'm thinking that the 20 folks are saying business days, and the 21s are saying calendar days.
[Eunice Browne]: I don't know. Well, it may well be defined in their definition sections as well. So if it just said 20 days, it could be.
[Milva McDonald]: The days thing is a good question for the Collins Center. Okay, so we have this number here as, you know, highlighted because we were not sure. And it looks like 12 is pretty common. So what we're saying is the threshold for overturning an ordinance is gonna be higher than trying to pass one, right? Because we said for that one, 10%, and now we're saying 12. I mean, and maybe that's how we want it. Or we can just stick with 10. I don't know. I mean, the only ones that have 10 are Methuen and Framingham. And Framingham, I think, is bigger. It makes sense to me that it would be a little higher for this.
[Ron Giovino]: I think that's why it's a 12, is because it's more difficult than a 10.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and you know, if you want to sort of overturn something that your elected officials have passed, I think it should have a higher threshold. You agree, Gene? I mean, the question is, do we want to go to 15 or keep it at 12? 12 seems pretty... Okay, so we're going to keep it at 12. Do we also want to put that in blue just because we're going to put everything? Yes.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, I think so.
[Milva McDonald]: We're going to just put the... put the thresholds just to draw attention, committee's attention to the thresholds issue. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, and. I think that was it for this. So this actually says you can, you're protesting the measure or any part of it. Oh, does not necessarily the whole thing. And then it can either be rescinded or submitted to the voters.
[Ron Giovino]: Can I ask a question? Is this, and I apologize for missing this, is this a city, this Commonwealth of Massachusetts law goes through this to see if it's legal or not? They would scrub a referendum against school committee policy if it was general laws.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I'm pretty sure, I know the initiative The petition made reference to the city solicitor and it's probably in here too, right?
[Jean Zotter]: Well, this refers you back to the citizen petition and you follow that process.
[Ron Giovino]: And does that go to the state first?
[Jean Zotter]: It goes to the city solicitor.
[Ron Giovino]: Got it. The city solicitor, not the state.
[Jean Zotter]: Right, the city solicitor. Right.
[Ron Giovino]: Is that different than saying that it has to, do we trust that the city solicitor has to go to the state and get it approved?
[Jean Zotter]: No. No, I think the city solicitor just looks at it and the job is to decide, is this legal? Is this in violation of city or state law?
[Ron Giovino]: The city solicitor is the responsible person for that. I'm just thinking the way we look at how this charter goes through, it does get washed at the state level for legality.
[Milva McDonald]: That's because it's a home rule petition, a special act. I mean, it could be that you could do all this work and then the city solicitor will say this has to be a special act, right? It can't be an initiative.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm guessing. That's why you'd want to really do your homework on that one before you went to get all the signatures.
[Ron Giovino]: A hundred percent.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So this certain initiative position provisions is basically just a section that says it refers back to 8-2 and all those steps, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, ineligible measures, well, I forgot to take out Melrose, but this, I think that we determined this was pretty standard language, right?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, weren't we working with Pittsfields, which seemed to delineate it pretty well?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And now we come to recall.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So, as I recall, last meeting, there was agreement that a recall provision would be, you know, something that we would seriously consider including, but we were talking about some of the details, right? So, any thoughts or questions on the issue of recall since we've just met?
[Jean Zotter]: Well, around the grounds for, oh, nevermind. I think most cities don't seem to require a grounds for recall. Yes. But this, what we have written here isn't requiring grounds. It's just when you do the recall, you make a statement for the reason. Is that what that means?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, personally, I would take that out.
[Ron Giovino]: I agree. I don't think because it almost implies that someone will say, yes, that's a valid grounds.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, there are some states that do recalls for cause. And so we could consider that. What I was told at a call-in center is that in Massachusetts, the trend, communities, municipalities are trending towards including recalls, but they're not really doing them for cause. It's just you get the signatures and that's, you know, you don't have to, it's not for cause. So it doesn't mean we can't do that, but Jean.
[Jean Zotter]: Well, you had asked like overall for a recall, so I'm going to move on from that. But I agree, maybe we should take that out. I mean, I guess it's like just letting people know why you want the recall. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I imagine if you're going out and getting signatures for a recall, you're going to have to tell a person why, you know, why they should sign, right? Right.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Same with the vote too.
[Jean Zotter]: So the two main concerns I have with recall, I'll just restate them here, is that it should not be a process where fewer voters, a small minority of voters, can recall someone and kind of undo the will of the voters. That's one of the concerns I have with how we word it. I'm in favor of recall overall. And then the 2nd is we just don't want to repeat what fall river to which was. So, I had a question in there about what's the process if someone is recalled. How is that position filled? And I couldn't tell if we had anything on that or if that's in a different section.
[Ron Giovino]: So those are my- I think it's in there. I thought I read it. I think it's in there. This just gets us to a recall vote that says yes, recall, no recall. Doesn't say who is the person. When that is accomplished, then you have an election.
[Milva McDonald]: However, there are other sections of the charter, I know in articles two and three, that address a vacancy in the office of the mayor of the city council. So I would imagine that this would count as a vacancy, right?
[Ron Giovino]: Right. I don't think it's different, Nova, in the fact that it's a- It's a recall. Because it's recall, I think you have to have an election.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. Let's see if it says anything here.
[Eunice Browne]: I didn't see anything. The petition shall be found and certified by the council. I think you just go back.
[Unidentified]: I think it's up a little higher.
[Milva McDonald]: The person here, the vacancy created thereby shall be filled under Articles 2, 3, 4, and 5 of this Charter for Fulfilling Vacancies. Interesting. So it will be. So what it means is that when we review Articles 2 and 3 and when we get to 4, Five, I think would not apply for us. So I'm gonna put that in yellow because I'm pretty sure five is like for communities that elect like the city clerk and things like that. I think I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that, yeah, in which case we would just, yeah. So we might be taking out five because it, yeah. Because we're only talking about, we're only talking about, actually, I think we really can take him out, because we're only talking about city council, mayor, or school committee. Those are the only people we elect.
[Ron Giovino]: But can we not, do we not have the ability, do we not have the ability in the charter to state that if a recall is passed, an election will be held?
[Milva McDonald]: Sure, I suppose, yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: The only reason why I say that is because The only reason why I say that, if we have a process in place that, like in the school committee, the next person up gets the job, that will influence the fact whether this person gets recalled or not by judging by who the person that would automatically be replacing that person.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it would depend on what the charter, what Because this would be a new charter, right? So Article 4 might say that there's a different process to replace a school committee member. I don't know. Jeanne?
[Jean Zotter]: So what happened in Fall River, just so we don't repeat it, is that the election was at the same time as the recall.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Right.
[Jean Zotter]: And so he got, the mayor got recalled, but then was reelected because five people ran for mayor and he got the highest vote. So we just don't want to have, I don't think we should have the election at the same time as the recall, or we should have a provision that the recalled person cannot run in that election.
[Ron Giovino]: Agree 100%.
[Jean Zotter]: Just while we're here,
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to somewhere find it here. I'm just going to search for it. Two and three. Just look, let's just see what we put in. I was on this, so I should remember. That was a long time ago. I know. I do vaguely remember the discussion of vacancies, but. just to see what filling of vacancies. So right, so this is what's been proposed. I mean, the committee still has to vote on it, but if a vacancy shall occur, the vacancy shall be filled. Oh, so it's a saying in descending order of votes received. So that's keeping things in the same as we have it now, right? But it says they have to receive not less than 40% of the total votes cast for the highest vote getter. And then if, okay, then same with the ward. And then if a vacancy shall occur and there is no available candidate, the remaining members of the city council shall elect a person to fill the vacancy.
[Ron Giovino]: So- The point in this one is voluntary vacancy versus a recall.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so. I mean, we just saw, well, the text we're working on right now says that the vacancy, if a person is recalled, the vacancy is filled in this way. So this is how the vacancy would be filled.
[Ron Giovino]: I understand how it's written now. I'm just saying to me there's a distinction.
[Adam Hurtubise]: You're saying we could add something.
[Ron Giovino]: I'm just saying there's a distinction between somebody getting ill, somebody leaving the state, somebody moving out of the ward versus somebody being pulled out of their position for some reason. I think there's a distinction that says this is a big deal. We should have an election. That's my opinion.
[Milva McDonald]: That means when we talk about Articles 2 and 3, you're going to say, I think we should add a provision in the case of recall.
[Ron Giovino]: Or under the recall, say, recall officials will, number one, not be eligible for election.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it makes sense to put it under filling of vacancies. Gene.
[Jean Zotter]: It seems like it might be different for city council and school committee because they're voted every two years, but the mayor is four years. Who's the backup for the mayor?
[Milva McDonald]: For the mayor, if I remember correctly, the city council president, Let's see. Yeah, if a vacancy occurs during the first three years, the city council shall, oh yeah, because we hadn't done the election section yet, so we're going to have to look back at this, order a special election to be held within 90 days following the date the vacancy is created.
[Jean Zotter]: So, um, that seems like run, you know, if you're recalled all the process that people go through and it's every 2 years. I mean, it just seems like recalling a city Councilor is maybe wasted effort, but maybe not.
[Ron Giovino]: No, no, I hear you. This is more on the mayor side. I agree 100%.
[Jean Zotter]: OK, so with that, it's a special election.
[Ron Giovino]: But Jean, do you think the recalled candidate, the recalled mayor, should be on the ballot to be elected again in the special election?
[Jean Zotter]: I don't think so. I think there was, I saw somewhere someone had a provision like, if you're recalled, you have to wait a year. And maybe we even have that, where you have to repeat a recall. So, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: No person who has been recalled shall be appointed to any city office within two years after such recall. I mean, that's OK? So they can run again after two years?
[Eunice Browne]: OK. If you go back to that recall section, though, when you go to section C, it talks about an election.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but that's the election to decide whether to recall the person or not. Okay, so going back to, I think we decided to take out this grounds, right?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I agree with that.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, because as I said in my comment, define grounds, I mean. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, now, Everett. Wow. The threat these thresholds are low in my opinion, but. I mean, I just I don't I personally don't think it should be easier to recall to get a recall going and then to get a. ordinance, but whatever, that sort of seems how it is.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, but just to that point, Mildred, this is only to get a ballot question. Then you'll have thousands of voters. So, in essence, in the final result, you will have more than, hopefully, 7,000 voters voting on it.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I mean, 500 is the top threshold, but are we okay with it?
[Jean Zotter]: We can we want to lower it so. Comparing this as citizens petition, this is 2. Because then there's the 20% below to get it to get the recall to happen. Yes, that's true. So, what's next? What is the 500? Um, yeah, I guess. Let's see.
[Milva McDonald]: This is to initiate a recall petition. So you have to get this number of signatures to start the process.
[Ron Giovino]: So it's 20%.
[Milva McDonald]: to get the city clerk to generate the recall petition, right?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, so it's not lower than... That's a lot. You're right, it's higher. 20% is higher than the citizens.
[Ron Giovino]: Do we have an analysis of what other cities and towns do with that 20% number? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: It just went away. I'm sorry, I made it go away. Here, let me do my... I'll try it one more time so I can do this. Yeah. Okay, there it is.
[Ron Giovino]: So that's the signatures. Can you go lower? I think it has the percentages.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Well, then there's the days and then there's the percentages, which is anywhere from 5 to 25. So starting with... 50. Oh, Methuen. Oh my gosh.
[Ron Giovino]: Wow.
[Eunice Browne]: That's a lot. Maybe it was a typo. Oh, that's an error.
[Ron Giovino]: Oh my goodness. No way. It can't be 50.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to keep 500? Do we want to keep 500 for this, or do we want to lower it?
[Ron Giovino]: I like 500. I'm good with 500.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm good with 500 too. OK. What about the, oh, that's for mayor or Councilor at large, and then the school committee members and ward would be 300.
[Ron Giovino]: Can I just throw this in too, now that we're gonna go to ward representation, do you think that changes who will have say, whether the ward rep will be recalled?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it says that the signatures have to be from the ward. So if you want to recall a ward Councilor, you have to get signatures from people who are living in the ward.
[Ron Giovino]: Got it.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, good. Everett has 500 for the at-large, so that would be mayor and any at-large Councilors, and school committee, and 300 for the ward. Whereas Weymouth- That's what we have. Yeah, go ahead. Weymouth- 400 and 100.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So we have 500 and 300. Are you saying you think it should be lower, Eunice? In the ward, maybe, yeah. Well, maybe we need to put these in blue, just like we're doing all the numbers, right?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. As I've said multiple times, I think it doesn't need to be easy-peasy per se needs to be achievable, but I would want to make it slanted more towards making it quite achievable. Right. Not onerous. Both from the point of view of the affidavit and getting things started and from the total signatures required, I think it should be biased towards the community being able to do this with some reasonable amount of effort. But okay, yeah, no, that makes sense. I think it needs to be favored in terms of the community. Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: So I would just suggest that we move to it because of the committee of the whole decide the number of minutes.
[Milva McDonald]: We're gonna have so I know but let's Yeah. I know, every time I retype one of these numbers, Eunice's notes go away. And it would be good if we had them for the.
[Eunice Browne]: . Well, I have them right in front of me here, so.
[Milva McDonald]: . Okay. So when we send this and when we talk about it with the whole committee, it might be good to show them. But I like it in the margin, though. That's actually really helpful.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, that's, everybody can see it.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sitting inside here. I can see it. It doesn't help. I know, but every time I, like we, we decide, okay, we're good with this number and I take it out of yellow, then the comment, the comment goes away. That's what I'm realizing.
[Jean Zotter]: And you, and you do the line through it, you know, like the, the edit line, keep it in there. You know what I mean?
[Ron Giovino]: I wonder why does it go away? Because you can build on Unisys. You can throw more. I don't, I don't understand that whole thing.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know how to do the track changes stuff. Well, all the rest of them have disappeared so far. You know what? Eunice, if you just send me your notes, I'll just add them in as comments before the meeting that we're going to do. That's all. Okay. I'll make sure everyone's not 50 percent. Thanks. So right now, if we are talking about the numbers, so we're talking about 20% of the voters, which is pretty much right in there, and 28 days to get those. So 20% would be at least between 4,000 and 4,500.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, it's a big issue. Again, it shouldn't be.
[Milva McDonald]: So we think 20 is okay, because we said 10 for the initiative petition.
[Jean Zotter]: It's 15 for the initiative petition.
[Milva McDonald]: It is 15. You're right.
[Jean Zotter]: That's right. We bumped it up. You're right.
[Milva McDonald]: So 20 makes. Yeah, let's do it.
[Eunice Browne]: So 20% would be 8,000 signatures? No.
[Ron Giovino]: It would be 8,000.
[Eunice Browne]: Yes, it would be. It would be. Yes. Yeah, that's ridiculous.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, but it should be exceptional. We're going to pull a mirror out of the office.
[Milva McDonald]: In my opinion, I don't think it needs to be that high. But do we want to make it less for warrants?
[Ron Giovino]: Well, it is 20% of, it's a smaller group.
[Milva McDonald]: It's a smaller group, you're right, so it makes sense. Is 28 days enough or do we want to give them more?
[Ron Giovino]: You may want to give them more.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, let's see. Methuen does 60. I would go with 60. Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: And you've got to believe that if there was ever a situation where we're recalling somebody, the entire city will be awake on this one.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly.
[Ron Giovino]: I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Now, the next numbers, I wanted to put all these in blue, though. Okay. While I put these in blue, you guys look at the next numbers.
[Ron Giovino]: What are we looking at?
[Milva McDonald]: Recall election?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, what comes after this section. So the time frame for the election date to be scheduled after the petition is certified. So it looks, it's anywhere from, you know, 45 to 90 days.
[Milva McDonald]: And the Thuin is a little bit shorter.
[Jean Zotter]: That seems about what other cities are doing.
[Milva McDonald]: I think giving the city more time to have this election is probably 64. So we're good with 64, not less than 64 and not more than 90. Why is it 64? Yeah, I don't know why it's 64. Everett is 64. Maybe it's because Everett is 60. Lawrence is 65 to 90.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Fall River is 65 plus.
[Eunice Browne]: I don't know. I would go 60 to 90. That's fine. Me. Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah. I'm putting blue, so. We're stuck on the even numbers, so.
[Milva McDonald]: So we're going 60. Okay. And then this 120, we are not. Yeah, that's if there's another election. Okay, so then this just says that they're going to continue to perform their duties until the recall election. If recalled, the office shall be deemed vacant, and then we have the vacancies, which, you know, we're going to have to look at those procedures pretty carefully. We just looked at what we have in Articles 2 and 3, and they look okay to me. And oh, does this conflict with what we had at the bottom? Should the person be a candidate in the subsequent election, that person will not be allowed to have candidate for re-election appear on the ballot at such election. And then we have no person can be appointed to any city office within two years. So I suppose this could happen to a mayor, because a mayor could get recalled, let's say, after a year and a half, and then they could run for mayor next time, but they could not say candidate for re-election.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, a city council would have to wait two years, they'd skip an election.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, but then they wouldn't be in the subsequent election, right?
[Ron Giovino]: Right, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: But it doesn't necessarily conflict because we'll have a four-year term for mayors. I think we're okay. Then there's a number in yellow. This just means someone would try to recall somebody twice?
[Ron Giovino]: Well, that's why I like the 270 days because that it's, again, this should be a super exception to the rule. If we start tossing this out as a policy, it'd be ridiculous.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, I agree. And 270 is Everett and Taunton and Lawrence is the last.
[Ron Giovino]: Is there a law that says when you're a convicted felon, if you do some felony, you're out automatically?
[Jean Zotter]: I don't know. No, but you know, there should be the. Section 9 of this or whatever we're calling these Article 9 has something about. Oh wait, we talked about this. There's something about. Do you remember Melva if you're? Found guilty of a felony while in office, right?
[Ron Giovino]: I remember talking about that.
[Jean Zotter]: I don't know if I talked about it. We looked at the model policy. While in office, yeah. Yeah. But I don't think it prevents you from running for office. No, it's just if you do a felony while in office. Right.
[Ron Giovino]: Are you automatically removed or is it the recall has to happen?
[Jean Zotter]: I don't, I mean, we haven't worked on the, let me pull up the model chart.
[Ron Giovino]: That's okay. Just curious.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then this we already looked at. Okay. Now, this was the other. Equal to the turnout of the last local election.
[Ron Giovino]: So that is voting.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, so this is a part I've been struggling about. Yeah, that's not a big no.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, because like, for instance, if a thousand people show up to vote, they can get rid of an ordinance, right? That's what we want to avoid, right?
[Jean Zotter]: Right, it's like a small group. Recalling elected officials that, you know, got 10,000 votes and 1,000 removes them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, this says at least 20%, which is actually... So that's actually 8,000, right? So is that our turnout?
[Jean Zotter]: Is that about- The last election turnout was just over 10,000, almost 11,000. I know, but this says 20% of the voters as of the most recent regular city election.
[Eunice Browne]: It doesn't say it's not related to the turnout.
[Ron Giovino]: Right, you're right.
[Milva McDonald]: So this says that if this many people don't vote on this referendum, it's just automatically failed, right?
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, well, I think 8,000 is a reasonable number. If you don't get 8,000 votes, then that person should not be recalled because nobody cares.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this isn't about recall. This is about not just recall.
[Jean Zotter]: It's about all of them, right? It's about the citizens.
[Ron Giovino]: I think 8,000 is the right number.
[Milva McDonald]: And it would actually be closer to 8,500. Yeah, I mean, how many do we get turnout in the municipal election? It's more than that.
[Ron Giovino]: Unicef. Didn't we say 25%?
[Eunice Browne]: Let's see. The 2023 municipal election results. Ah, to UNICEF. And it, oh no, it's not upside down. Um, and of course it doesn't give me a percentage.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, I mean, I thought it was like, uh, 11,000 and there were 42,000 total.
[Eunice Browne]: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So, okay. So for many, uh, uh, care of yellow local kind of goals. Well, well, maybe not everybody voted from there, but There were 13,371 votes for mayor. Out of 425, did we say? Yeah. So that's the 30%.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what's going to be interesting is if we do go to four-year terms for mayor and we still have two-year terms for council and school committee is to see what the turnout, you know, how the turnout is different.
[Ron Giovino]: That's a great point because the numbers will be different.
[Ron Giovino]: Do we want to say from the last mayoral election?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't, I feel like that gets a little, I feel like it's just cleaner if we just keep it the same, you know, the voters act of the most recent regular city election.
[Ron Giovino]: But the only reason why I say that is because that's also a presidential election year, the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, it's not.
[Ron Giovino]: If the mayor is every four years, it will still be on an off year. Does it doesn't have to be.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, then we've run into, it kind of does have to be. Because in Massachusetts, cities have elections on off years. Because by Massachusetts law, the municipal candidates and state and national candidates can't be on the same ballot.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Really?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So if you did try to have them at the same year, then you would have- Maximize the voters? Well, you would also, the elections department would have a big job of trying to, and they'd have to decide how to handle it, whether they would send people out, And they would say, here's your federal and state ballot, and you have to come back for your municipal ballot, or that's why it's not.
[Ron Giovino]: Oh, I'm sure it's complicated, for sure.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm just trying to maximize the... What do other communities do? They have municipal elections on off years. I mean, if anybody finds a community that doesn't do that, we could talk to them, but I haven't been able to find one.
[Eunice Browne]: You know, and I mean, given the fact, you know, I mean. It may not always be like this, but our elections commission is it. You know, our elections offices that less than bare bones staff right now. Talk to the city council spent 2 hours talking about. The election report last night and assuming we'll get an elections manager soon. But. I mean, given fiscal constraints here and in many communities, that's got to be quite a challenge for an elected office to manage. I think we would want to steer away from something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so the 20% would Right now, 20% is about between 8,000 and 8,500, which is less than the turnout at the last municipal election. And remember, too, the vote's going to be 5,000 to 4,000. That's 9,000 votes. So it's not unlikely that it can happen. Right. But do we want to make the threshold higher than that? What about 25%? So 25% would be about... 10,000. Thank you. So now we're getting closer to the turnout. So this could theoretically be a special election, right? And so you would expect less turnout, right?
[Ron Giovino]: Again, this would be a monumental election. A recall election is a monumental election.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, but we're talking initiatives and recalls. Right. Unless we want to differentiate, we could differentiate and take 20% for initiative or referendum and 25 or 30 for recall.
[Jean Zotter]: I'd be okay with that.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I'd say 25 for recall and 24. Yeah. I like that.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Let me see how to. Let me see. Yeah. And 30, did we take 30% or 25? 25 is what we said. I don't know. The voters.
[Ron Giovino]: Again, the challenge is to make it hard to do, but not impossible to do. And that's a tough number to find.
[Jean Zotter]: Right. I guess for me, it's more fairness. Can a smaller group recall someone? Yeah.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Great. I agree. I agree. It should be a hard thing to do.
[Eunice Browne]: It occurs to me, listening to some of the dialogue around Medford the last couple of months, I've heard many, many people tossing around the word recall. Can we recall this person, that person, et cetera, et cetera. And I don't think the vast majority of people have any concept of what it takes. I think they think it's easy to do.
[Milva McDonald]: You would just get it on the ballot if we had it.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I don't think they realize how much actual work it's going to take.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, are we okay with this then? I put them in blue because, you know, that's what we've been doing with 20% for initiative or referendum and 25% for recall question.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, you just got to move that where it says recall election.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I don't think so.
[Ron Giovino]: where it says at least 20%?
[Milva McDonald]: At least 20% of the voters must vote at an election that includes on the ballot submission to the voters of one or more initiative or referendum questions. Wait a minute.
[Ron Giovino]: The next one.
[Milva McDonald]: must vote at an election that includes on the ballot submission to the voters of a recall list.
[Jean Zotter]: Is that good? I think I got it. I have a question, just terminology. It's not saying 25% of the registered voters, it's saying 25% of the voters. So does that mean if you had 10,000 vote, then you only need 25% of 10,000? I don't think so.
[Ron Giovino]: I think it's- The moment of the election, how many people were eligible to vote?
[Jean Zotter]: For registered voters. So you wanna say of the registered voters? Right, because otherwise it reads,
[Ron Giovino]: of voters, yeah. Who voted?
[Jean Zotter]: Right, who showed up to vote?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I'm up here when we talked about voters as of the last, I'm trying to remember if we had registered, 20% of the voters of the city. So that's not, that doesn't meant in the last election, so it's more clear.
[Jean Zotter]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. And the next, Submission of Other Matters, that was just a standard language thing that we saw, and then Conflict Encouragement. So those are pretty standard. So it's 8.29, and I think we finished.
[Unidentified]: Yay. Pretty good.
[Milva McDonald]: So what I'm going to do is I will share this with the whole committee, Next week, we're going to do two and three and seven, but if we have time, we'll do this too. I will send it out and put it on the agenda. If we have to table it, following meeting, we'll table it.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, as I've mentioned a couple of times before, because I was working on these numbers and stuff like that, I didn't have a chance to go through the National Civic League too closely. But as I've talked about before, the idea of public engagement, to me, means making it as easy and as transparent as possible for people engage with our elected officials. And, you know, I have some ideas and concerns for things that I think need to happen. Whether they can go in the charter or not, I don't know. But I'm not feeling like, I have some grave concerns about our elected officials not being inviting towards public engagement and listening. And if there's a way that the charter can solve that, I would certainly like to look at it.
[Ron Giovino]: I think the best we can do is have the preamble say what it says.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we can put those values in the preamble, which says, but I guess the thing, Eunice, if you could like look at the different sections of the charter and see where you think something like that would fit. Because, you know, the charter is. It's more of a general document. It doesn't tend to go into that level of specificity. But maybe there's a way that it can. If you want to try to think about it and propose it, then that's OK.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, I'm sort of of a mind that as long as it doesn't you know, contradict or go against federal or state law, why not?
[Ron Giovino]: But the only issue is how to write it. What do you say? Like every month they must produce a newsletter or every, you know, I think that's the details of that. I hear what you're saying. They should do it. I just don't know how you can.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think, you know, when we've all, you know, well, some of us, I have, I think, Ron, your experience with the Columbus, you know, and having coming in front of council even just recently, I have found it very uninviting, unwelcoming.
[Ron Giovino]: I agree with you because I've experienced it, but there's nothing I can write that says, hey, you must be nice to me and this is how you must be nice to me. I think the details of that are really, really difficult.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Eunice, I would encourage you to think about what is it that you would want the charter or some other document, if not the charter, to say that might address what you're worried about.
[Eunice Browne]: I put in our drive under the Article 8, subcommittee, some suggestions, and I know it's after 8.30, and I know we all want to wrap it up. People can look at it if they're convenient. So where did you put them? It's in our drive subcommittee's article eight.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Let me just get that.
[Eunice Browne]: In the main folder? Yeah. Okay. Citizen participation suggestions.
[Ron Giovino]: Eunice, have you seen this in any other charter?
[Eunice Browne]: I've only started glancing at some of the other charters. I looked at a lot of charters over the past few days, but it's mostly looking at.
[Ron Giovino]: I'd be curious to see if somebody has done it and what they have done. I think it's a major, it's a great thing to do. Doing it is very, I think it's very difficult.
[Eunice Browne]: My opinion. You know, I spent my weekend looking at this, these, you know, petition stuff. So I want to go back and look at, you know, some other parts.
[Milva McDonald]: So just looking at this kind of thing, first of all, I think requiring an annual state of the schools address from the superintendent would probably, if it were in the charter, would go under article four. I don't think that the school committee is in charge of the superintendent. So I don't know. I mean, it's interesting to think about. I'm not sure that the charter could, I don't know, unless it said require the school committee to require any, you know what I'm saying? I don't know. It's hard to think about though. And a state of the city address by the mayor, don't we get that?
[Eunice Browne]: I think she does it sometimes and sometimes not. I don't know that it's a consistent thing.
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like there was things in Article 2 and 3 that might be similar to that. But like I said, it's been a while. I don't think we can write time and place of meetings into the charter. place could be different, right?
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, you know, as I said, I mean, they're doing things for their convenience and they should be doing things for the convenience of the public who pays them. That's my feeling.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I would really hesitate to put something like a schedule into the charter because The charter is, I mean, we've seen how it's not an easy document to change. This is like minutiae and I feel like minutiae shouldn't be in the charter, but I don't know. I could see this in an ordinance for sure.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. But the city council writes ordinances and they're going to write them for what they want.
[Ron Giovino]: But the only thing I'll say to this is, this is why we have elections. If you're not happy with the way they're communicating or not listening or doing things that you don't like, we're all there. It means, you know, on election day, that's when you say, you've got to change this by making your choices.
[Milva McDonald]: The other thing that I would suggest, I mean, the call-in center is very busy and they don't always get back that quickly, but I can give this document. to the call-in center or maybe next time I talk to the call-in center, which I don't know when that will be, I can share this document and just get their feedback on where these things might fit in the local government.
[Ron Giovino]: I would love to see another charter that, if another charter's doing it, I'd love to read what they're doing. Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: No, I'd appreciate it if you'd reach out to them, Melva. Thank you. Okay. Sure.
[Jean Zotter]: Gene? Were you looking at the National Civic Charter, Eunice? Was that the National Civic?
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I mean, the things that I came up with were my own thoughts. I was going to look at the National Civic League Charter and see if there was anything in there that might be helpful. I didn't get a chance to finish reading through the half a dozen pages that are applicable. you know, just highlighting, you know, certain parts, you know.
[Jean Zotter]: Because they do have like, I'm just looking at it, they have like, the city shall treat public engagement as an integral part of effective and trusted government. Right. They have principles like that, that I think a lot of people would be in favor of it's the you know, get into the nitty gritty, but they also have establishing structures.
[Eunice Browne]: The term public engagement is understood to include public involvement, public participation, citizen engagement, community engagement, and includes robust forms of in-person technology or online communication to provide opportunities for public input, dialogue, or deliberations, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that there's a meet people where they are, geographically holding meetings in many different locations. We evolved in chambers and that's quite central. Digitally using different tools and platforms. I think to me it's reading through it quickly is the spirit of it is wanting and inviting the public. And it's pretty clear that, to me at least, and I think to some members of the community, that the elected officials are not interested in inviting public input. And if they were required to, that might be different.
[Milva McDonald]: So I want to wrap up, but I'm going to share that document with the call-in center units and get their thoughts on it. And I think I made a note to put in the minutes that some of these concepts could conceivably be added to the preamble, like the statement that you just read, Jean, a few minutes ago, or so that's something else we can think about. So we can add some, you know, we can propose to the committee that we add something to the preamble about public engagement. Does that sound like? Yeah. Then we'll also look into some of those specifics and see what the feedback we get from the call-in center on that.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay. Perfect. All right. Awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, everybody.
[Eunice Browne]: Are we going to do 2, 3, and 7 next week?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, 2, 3, and 7, and I'm going to send 8, and I don't know that we'll get to it, but it'll be on the agenda anyway, just in case. But I'm guessing we'll maybe do that at the following meeting, although we're going to maybe do school committee at the following meeting. So we have two meetings in April and two in May. So we'll get through all of those by the end of May, one way or another.
[Unidentified]: All right.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, everybody. Thank you.
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