[Bears]: Eighth regular meeting, Medford City Council, April 16th, 2024. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Calderon. Present. Vice Mayor St. Paul.
[SPEAKER_02]: Present. Councilor Lazzaro. Present. Councilor Fleming.
[SPEAKER_15]: Yes. Councilor Scapelli. Present. Councilor Tseng.
[SPEAKER_02]: Present. Can you call Councilor LEMMING? Councilor LEMMING.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor LEMMING, are you present?
[Bears]: Thank you. 7 present none absent. The meeting is called to order. Please rise to salute the flag. Announcements, accolades, remembrances, reports and records. Records, the records of the meeting of April 2nd, 2024 were passed to Councilor Tseng. Councilor Tseng, how did you find the records?
[Tseng]: I find them in order and move to approve.
[Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Tseng to approve the records, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Callaghan. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callaghan. Present.
[Scarpelli]: Is that a yes?
[SPEAKER_15]: Present. Oh, sorry, yes. Okay. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Laming.
[Scarpelli]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scapelli.
[Scarpelli]: If I can, Madam Clerk, there was a question, was it last week's meeting, there was a question on a resolution that Councilor Cownie put forth about the registry. I'm not sure it was last week's.
[SPEAKER_03]: The last record.
[Scarpelli]: I'm going to say no, because I want to check that, and then I can get back to you on that. We got an email about that. There was some wording changing for what was originally put into the resolution, and then what was written in the resolution.
[Tseng]: I don't think there's wording changing on it. I think it was summarized with different words.
[Bears]: We're in the middle of a roll call, so that's a no. That's a no, thank you.
[SPEAKER_15]: Okay. Councilor Tseng? Yes.
[Bears]: Yes, it's the affirmative, one in the negative, motion passes. Reports of committees. 24-074, Public Health and Community Safety Committee, April 9th, 2024. Councilor Lazzaro is the chair of that committee. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: We held a public health and community safety committee meeting on Tuesday last week. The chief of police presented a report on the pilot program of the police department on body worn cameras. And there was a public comment and we received the report and placed it on file. Thank you.
[Bears]: On the motion of council's order approve the committee report seconded by. Seconded by Vice-President Collins. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor CALLAHAN. Yes. Vice-President Collins. Yes. Councilor LAZARO. Yes. Councilor LAMING.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor STAVELLI.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor SANDS.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: President.
[Bears]: Yes 70 affirmative. None. The negative motion passes in the report is approved 24-033 planning and permitting committee April 10 2024 committee report offered by Vice President Collins. Vice President Collins, please present the report.
[Collins]: We at this meeting we reviewed a draft work plan of the city council's that was prepared by the city's zoning consultant, Innes Associates. The draft work plan will continue to be updated to reflect the input of city staff and Councilors, the ZBA, the CBB, and it will evolve to track progress on different zoning policy goals as this project continues over the next year and a half. Motion to approve.
[Bears]: On the motion of Vice President Collins to approve, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor CALLAHAN. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor LAZARO. Yes. Councilor LAMING.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor SCARPELLI.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor SANG.
[Bears]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: President VARES.
[Bears]: Yes. I have affirmative, non-negative. The motion passes. 24-075, offered by Councilor SCARPELLI. Councilor COLLINS. motion to suspend the rules to take 24-082 out of order present bears on the motion to suspend the rules to take paper 24-082 by Councilor Khan, seconded by Councilor Tseng, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Vice President Collins? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scapelli?
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor SAINCH. Councilor SAINCH. President BEERS.
[Bears]: Yes. I have any further item than the negative? Motion passes. Councilor COLLINS, if you would take the chair for this item.
[Collins]: 24-082 resolution to acknowledge April 30, 2024 as National Animal Therapy Day in the city of Medford. Whereas there are thousands of pet partners therapy animal teams serving communities across the United States. And whereas pet partners has designated April 30 as National Therapy Animal Day. And whereas scientific research shows that interacting with therapy animals can reduce stress, relieve depression, slow the heart rate, lower blood pressure and strengthen the immune system. And whereas therapy animal teams in the city of Medford play an essential role in improving human health and well-being through the human animal bond. And whereas therapy animal teams interact with a variety of people in our community, including veterans, seniors, patients, students, and those approaching end of life. And whereas these exceptional therapy animals who partner with their human companions bring comfort and healing to those in need. And whereas we encourage more pet owners to consider becoming pet partners, volunteers, to help our community by creating greater access to meaningful therapy animal visits. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we acknowledge April 30th, 2024 as National Animal Therapy Day and encourage our citizens to celebrate our therapy animals and their human handlers. Be it further resolved that we publicly salute the service of therapy animal teams in our community and in communities across the nation. be it further resolved that we request that Mayor Lungo-Koehn issue a formal proclamation of National Animal Therapy Day in the city of Medford. President Bears.
[Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. I wanted to thank a resident, Paul McCaffrey, for bringing this to my attention. And I know we have a lot of folks in our community and around the state and the country who have benefited from animal therapy in many ways. I have seen these animals and actions in school settings, college settings after traumatic incidents, helping families deal with grief and loss, and also just everyday help that these animals can provide to people. And they also happen to be lovely. We have Lily here in attendance, and we got a little card of Lily with a few statistics. I particularly like that one of Lily's favorite activities is couch surfing. I think that's just great. So I just wanted to thank Paul for bringing this up. And I know I think the mayor is going to issue a proclamation as well, but it's something good that we can all celebrate. Thank you.
[Collins]: Any further comment from councilors? Any public comment on this topic? Hearing none, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[Scarpelli]: Paul, do you want to talk?
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to thank the council and my fellow residents.
[Collins]: Paul, could you come up to the microphone? Just give your name and address for the record, please. Watch it, Lily. Just your name and address for the record, please, Paul.
[SPEAKER_28]: Paul McCaffrey 59 Prescott Street, Medford, Massachusetts. I want to thank the Council and the residents of Medford for allowing us to go and visit folks every day in different, different situations. You know, the, the one thing to take away from the with having therapy dogs is that It's kind of a force multiplier. Police departments and schools are using them to be kind of the first line of defense of bringing down tensions in school. So one of the things is that you want to do before there's a tragic incident is to have dogs come in on a regular basis and make people comfortable. Lilly tries every day to do that. And I appreciate the council's attention to the matter. And I hope that I can encourage more people to be therapy handlers in Medford.
[Collins]: Thank you so much, Paul. It's a pleasure to see Lily getting so comfortable in our chambers today. Thank you. Madam Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Vice President Barnes. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Leming.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scopelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: President Bears. Yes.
[Collins]: 7 in favor, none opposed, the motion passes.
[Bears]: 24-075 offered by Councilor Scarpelli. Resolution to discuss concerns dealing with the Bedford Water Department. to be resolved by the benefit City Council discuss concerns with the Medford Water Department. We did receive two communications from the administration and I'll go over to Councilor Scarpelli.
[Scarpelli]: Thank you. I appreciate bringing this forward to Council. Let him indulge me with this resolution. I know that I spoke to Mr. Stone King, supervisor who has now moved on to new community. And he passed along a letter that he asked if I, you know, could read he shared it with everybody here. But for this is reading for Mr. Stone King says, dear Mayor Brianna Longo Cone, I'm writing to formally resign from the position as superintendent
[SPEAKER_03]: Thought it was a lot easier than that, didn't use that. One second. I appreciate you for indulging me. This new thing called the cell phone, it's trying to get used to it. So I apologize. It's something to do with these delicate fingers I have. I promise, I'm almost there.
[Scarpelli]: Yeah, can we have the therapy dog back in? Round two? Can we have round two of the therapy dog, please?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where are you, Lily? Okay, well.
[Scarpelli]: There we go. All right, so I apologize. He writes, I'm writing to formally resign from my position as Superintendent of Water and Sewer for the City of Medford effective April 5th, 2024. It is with heavy heart that I submit resignation as I've greatly appreciated the opportunities and experience I've gained in my time serving the City of Medford during my tenure. I have had the privilege of working under the leadership of DPW Commissioner Tim McGiven. I must commend Commissioner McGiven for his professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to the betterment of Medford. His leadership has been a source of inspiration and guidance to me, and I am truly grateful for the support and mentorship he has provided. I will strive to emulate his exemption leadership as I move forward. Despite the admirable qualities Commissioner McGiven have found myself increasingly frustrated with the administration's lack of action addressing critical issues within the department. The recent handling supervisor of water and sewer job posting, coupled with the And something offers 0% costs of living increase for FY 24 has underscored and concerning absence of values you place in my position as well as the lack of priority place in the central matters, such as water main replacements, aging utility infrastructure staffing shortages and overall neglect. of the needs of the DPW. I have worked tirelessly to address compliances issues, modernize departmental operations to highlight the pressing concerns surrounding the water distribution system. Regrettably, my pleas for assistance recognition of regulatory concerns and urgent calls for action seemingly fallen on deaf ears. It is disheartening to feel ignored and undervalued in the position where the welfare of the community is at stake. I believe that my efforts have made this positive impact, but there is still so much work to be done. I have reached a point where I feel I have exhausted all avenues and effected meaningless change within the covered environment. It is essential that the City refocuses its attention on critical infrastructure projects, staffing needs, and operational improvements to ensure the continued well-being of Medford and its residents. I'm deeply concerned the residents are unaware of the alarming conditions of the water system and its critical need for substantial improvement. Immediate focus and drastic change are essential to ensure the integrity of Medford water infrastructure as time is running out. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have served the city of Medford and valuable lessons I've learned along the way. I extend my deepest appreciation to all those who have supported and collaborated with me during my time here as those contributions have been instrumental in shaping my professional growth. I wish the city of residence the best in the future and hope necessary steps will be taken to address the challenging challenges facing DPW. Thank you once again the opportunity to have been part of this community Sincerely, Dan Stone King. So thank you, Mr. Stone King. I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Stone King and I had a great conversation with Tim McGibbon. What I find appalling and what's frightening is that whenever lately, I don't know if we've followed along with my resolutions, we've always had something come back from the administration. Do you guys notice that? Every day after I bring something up, like even tonight, we have something about the water department. Why does it take? Why does it take a negative resolution to make city administration move on something this important? Mr. Stone King actually told me, we're not there yet. But he says he wants us to think in Medford as Flint, Michigan. Now we know how bad Flint, Michigan is right? Now I said, Is it that bad? When I talked to Tim, he says we're getting there. He was very excited when ARPA came out. And the first phase of ARPA was meant for what? Infrastructure needs. So they had a plan in place to really start moving things along. What he told me is that we're moving at a pace of about, what is it, a quarter or half a mile? We need three miles a year to catch up in Medford for what the aging infrastructure that we have in our water department. What I found amazing to me is, I don't know if people realize this, his position holds a license that you have to have to run the water department in Medford. If you don't have the certain license, you're at serious risk of serious danger when it comes to your water quality. So he's there having that license, which aren't many people that have that. As a matter of fact, As we speak right now, I believe Medford has hired Weston and Sampson, an outside agency, another outside company, paying them $200 an hour, an hour to sit in that office just to make sure that we have someone in place to qualify that our water is safe. Now, all this had to be done is a conversation and fair negotiation process to say, hey, what do we need to keep you? But I talked more about that. It wasn't about the money system. It was about the value. He was in the position for two years, two years of vital, vital position. So do you know how many times he spoke to the mayor twice? Twice. So we could say whatever we want and what's going on. And like I said, I'm gonna say it again, because there's a bunch of issues that I'll bring up. I want everybody to follow this along. Because as I bring things up, all of a sudden we have resolutions from the mayor. It's funny. But these are all too late. Not for Weston and Sampson, they're making a killing. $1,600 for today, right? Eight hour days, $200 a day, $1,600 a day. Now, I'm gonna be honest with you. I've reached out to neighboring communities, asked them about this person with this license. I've reached out to representatives MWRA that I know, from Medford, that hold that license. Quote unquote, A, I would never come to Medford because the administration's a mess. And B, why would they leave? They're making way more money where they are. So this is the problem that we're having. And if you're watching, every week, it keeps piling on. It's the same thing. It's a lack of leadership. So Mr. Stonekin wanted to send that along. I know I had a great discussion with Tim McGibbon. Tim did send over a letter. Everybody received the letter. And I shared that with Mr. Stoneking. And I said, well, he said, in typical fashion, nothing against Tim McGibbon and the DPW, because he works for the mayor. But all this does is just delay everything. What do they say? They're starting the process now to start looking into it. And they've been working on it for a couple of weeks. His words were, quote unquote, it's just talk. That's what he's felt for two years. It's just talk. And I appreciate Tim. Listen, I know it's not Tim McGibbon. I talked to Tim. His hands are tied. We had a great discussion. And I understand his frustration. But we are where we are. So I thought I'd share another happy Medford story with everybody. And I know that council bears. I know that he sent you have some administration, they sent some some messages to the city council. Do you have that? Do you want me to read it? I can read it. All right. Thank you.
[Bears]: And I also have the message here. And I do want to note that. We did have some of this discussion last budget season. We voted down the retained earnings to make sure that that funding was going to address infrastructure needs. That was the 1st time in a long time that that had happened. But we do have this response from. Commissioner McGivern. It's dated April 11th. As you know, Dan Stone King, our former water superintendent, decided to leave the city of Medford for what he felt was a better opportunity. Dan was a valuable member of the DPW leadership team and contributed significant improvements to the water and sewer division. Dan's presentation of the state of the city's water system did not provide you with information on what steps and plans that the DPW with the support of the mayor have already taken to address our aging water system. His letter unfortunately only focused on issues he felt were not getting enough attention. It is worth balancing the minimal information he provided with a summary of actions that have taken place since I've been appointed leader of the DPW and before as city engineer. It is important to highlight that the City of Medford purchases water from the MWRA and was responsible for distributing it to the ratepayers through a system of pipes, valves and meters. As part of this distribution, we regularly provide water quality testing to demonstrate the safety of our distribution system. The latest published information on Medford's water quality can be found at the MWRA website linked below. This site is updated regularly with our testing information and ratepayers also receive a consumer confidence report from the MWRA in June that provides greater detail. The web address is www.mwra.com, annual, water report, 2022 results, pdf, medford.pdf. The city of Medford experienced a huge surge of roadway building and building development in the early part of the 20th century, so many of our water distribution pipes installed at that time were nearing the expected lifetime age of 75 to 100 years, with some lasting 120 years. Knowing this fact, we completed an evaluation of our utility assets in 2020 when I was city engineer. This study included, among other things, identifying the age, material, and quantity of our water distribution pipes based on the city's records. This allowed the DPW to understand the needs of our water system, and helped us identify steps to prepare for an increase in water main replacements throughout the city. When I became commissioner, we had recently suffered the loss of our longtime water superintendent, Dave Proctor, and I was tasked with finding a new person who could help us improve our water operations, assess our capital needs, and lead new initiatives to prepare for increasing our capacity to replace our aging water mains. Mr. Stone King helped the DPW prepare a strategy that started in the 2024 budget. The goal of the strategy is to increase in-house and contracted water main relay capacity and align the development of the DPW capital improvement project to the needs of the system. We met with Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn in April of 2023 to discuss the strategy and steps we believe needed to be addressed in the FY24 budget. This resulted in the mayor beginning to formulate a communication plan, which is under development, as well as additions to the water and sewer operating budget. These additions included a water supervisor position with an additional water quality coordinator and a deputy commissioner to oversee the operations of DPW. The water supervisor proposition is in front of you tonight to increase the compensation scale as it has been a significant challenge to attract a qualified candidate at the current scale. We also included a plan to engage a consultant to help us develop a long-term rate study and indirect cost study. We are currently working on these studies with Weston and Sampson. These studies are critical to inform important decisions the City of Medford will need to make in the coming years. The rate study will assess the needs of the system, contribute to the development of our capital project list, and identify rate and funding scenarios for a 10-year period. This information is critical to the long-term health and performance of our water distribution system. Both the utility asset evaluation as well as the long-term rate study are actions that the city had not done before, which presents its own unique challenge. We've also pursued initiatives that support these efforts, such as a hydraulic modeling of our entire system and developing a unidirectional regular flushing program. The hydraulic modeling will help identify the cause of pressure or flow issues within the system, so those issues can be incorporated into capital projects. There are also new initiatives related to our service lines, which are in response to new regulations that will go into effect later this year. One of these initiatives is a lead service ordinance, which you'll be hearing more about shortly. It's worth noting that this letter only summarizes the work taking place for us to prepare us for replacing our aging water infrastructure. We also have aging pavement infrastructure, which must be coordinated with the water infrastructure work. As you know, these infrastructure assets are not the only ones that need more attention in Medford. since proper asset management is costly over many years, it is critically important that we work together to evaluate, prepare, and execute projects as we march towards having systems and funding in place for long-term infrastructure performance. In closing, we certainly have a lot of work to do with our water system, but we are taking the proper steps to plan for increasing the length of water main we replace each year and increasing the water quality. This will take time, and effective partnerships between the mayor, city council, and DPW will be critical. That is Mr. McGivern's letter, and I will note that Mr. McGivern did answer many questions on this in the last budget, including the scope of the problem being $500 million to $1 billion long-term problem. So that was discussed a year ago in the budget season. I also met with Mr. Stone King and Mr. McGivern around the proposed lead service ordinance last year, and we had discussions along the lines, basically, of what Mr. McGivern just put out in this report. And I was also asking many of the same questions that Mr. McGivern was asking here, that Mr. Stoneking was asking in his letter of the mayor, which is, when are we going to know the scope and scale of this? And they said, basically, we need the long term rate study in place now that we have looked at the, we know what our assets are. There wasn't even an asset inventory in 2020. That exists now. we now we need the long term rate study to go back and say, this is what it's going to cost in the long term to rate payers to fix the system, which I think both in the last budget season and in that meeting that I had, they referred to as one of the three oldest systems in the state. So that is where we are at. And that is the letter from Mr. McGiven. If I can, Mr. President. Councilor Scarpelli, and then Councilor Callahan, and then Vice President Collins.
[Scarpelli]: I appreciate Director McGiven. But to my fellow councillors, is this not a theme that we see? City Hall needs to be done, we're gonna set up a committee, we're gonna look at development, we're gonna set a consultant, we're gonna look into things. Everything is, just like Ms. Stoneking said to me, it's all talk. This is a director of DPW speaking for his boss, who's over and over again shown that nothing's getting done, zero. We're not getting anything done. We talk about multi-million dollar issues, that we had it right in our hand. We had millions of dollars. When ARPA came out, that we could still use for infrastructure needs, that we did nothing, zero. But again, Mr. Stonekirk writes this letter, I put it on as a resolution, what happens? The position that hasn't gotten any movement for months comes to us tonight for a change in CAF so we can raise it, so we can get better, we can entice people to come out now, right? So this is exactly what we're seeing. What's that saying? It's a dog wagging its tail. What's that state? The tail wagging its dog. Tail wagging its dog, exactly. And this is what I feel. Honestly, sometimes it's like watching a dog chase its tail with this administration. So we've known since the mayor's been in 2020 that we've had a huge issue here and that it was compiling. But now all of a sudden, in her 50 years, we're gonna now go into this, right? I wish you put together a pilot program or a committee like she did with the finance, with the water department that April as well, and maybe we can get something going, but we still have seen nothing. We're still seeing nothing. This still doesn't do us any, it doesn't do anybody any good. So again, I appreciate The answer, but it just only leads to the same old lack of leadership and the same old destructing, destroyed Medford that has nothing moving forward. So thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you. We also had this from the director of communications. Steve Smurdy. Hello, Councilors. I want to provide some additional information regarding the city's ARPA allocations for water and sewer projects. Since the fall of 2021, the city has invested over 4 million in 13 projects that address critical water infrastructure needs. Among those projects are sewer system lining, sealing and testing, DPW water meter system replacement project, lead service line replacement rebate program, infiltration and inflow infiltration and inflow control plan, rights upon dam maintenance, Winthrop Street water main replacement. In addition to strengthening our water sewer system, the mayor has been working with City Engineer Wartella and DPW Commissioner McGibbon to address the over 100 million backlog in street repairs due to neglect over the past few decades by identifying projects that were close to beginning construction. The administration was able to deploy ARPA funding across multiple road infrastructure projects including patchwork on 34 streets identified in the pavement assessment, intersection improvements at Spring Street and Central Avenue, Pinker Street Roadway and utility construction. The mayor is also hoping to allocate $1 million in ARPA funding to continue the repair work of the city's sidewalks, as well as additional tree stump removals in 2024. You can read more about the work already done on sidewalks and stumps on the city website, and you can view a full list of projects, as well as a dive deeper into project descriptions by visiting the city website medfordma.org. slash department slash finance slash ARPA. Councilor Kelly.
[Callahan]: Thank you. So to me, these letters were a quite frightening reminder that our water pipes are 100 years old, almost older than any other city, and that instead of over the decades spending the money that came in through our water system on the water system and replacing these pipes for decades, that that money went into the general fund. and was spent on other things. And so we have, for decades, not improved our water system. We have, for decades, not improved our roads, which is why that 49% of our roads as of 2021, hard to know whether that's improved or gotten worse. probably has gotten worse. 49% of our roads are in the worst two classes of roads out of five. That's the most expensive kinds to replace, to repair. Our schools, which are 20 years old, have not been properly maintained for the last 20 years. Salaries, and we talk about the salary of this particular position in the water department, but salaries across the city are not commensurate with other cities. So we can't find people to fill a lot of positions. It's not just that position. There are a lot of positions we cannot find people to fill. Previous administrations have been like 30, 40 years ago were given a city in pretty good shape and did not do the repairs that were needed. And that has left us in a position that I'm really, they've kicked the can down the road. And I'm trying to understand what kind of management style it would make up for. I mean, if $500 million is the amount to repair our water system, and we know that it's $100 million probably or more to repair the roads, get the roads back into shape, there isn't a style of management that can magically make that money up here. My thing about the management is not that I'm making any kind of statement, but my statement is about the funding that we have to do the absolute basics necessary for a city to function. You cannot have water pipes that function. You do not have a city, functional city. You don't have roads. These are the basics. And this isn't purely the fault of this mayor. This is something that we have kicked the can down the road for many decades until we find ourselves by doing things that were financially irresponsible, but were made taxpayers happy. And now we're in a position where we have had that situation going on for so long that we're going straight off a cliff. I talked to some of the engineering folks about the water systems, and they said, oh, you know, there is money coming into the water system that we can use to repair it. But of course, that money used to go to other things. That money has always come in, and it used to go to the general fund. So now that money isn't going to be going to the things that it used to go to. So those things will go down. There is not enough funding to take care of the financial irresponsibility of former administrations and former city councils. really administrations because the state councils do not have do not have hardly any effect on the budget because it's really up in the hands of the mayor.
[Bears]: I just want to clarify one thing. The common practice, as far as I was aware, was that funds that were called retained earnings, which were surplus funds gathered by rate payers in the enterprise fund that funds water and sewer, that those funds were returned to rate payers to keep rates low. So it wasn't that they were in the general fund. It's that the council, the mayor requested, the mayor, excuse me, thank you. Thank you, please. I don't want to get into this again tonight. Thank you very much. The council, many mayors and many councils, mayors recommended, water and sewer commissions recommended, and councils voted to return retained earnings to taxpayers on the orders of hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars every year. And those are funds that could have gone to maintenance of the system. Vice President, that's just the facts, thank you. Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Thank you, President Bears and Councilor Scarpelli. I think it's a good idea for us to have this discussion, you know, to use the word from your resolution. We know we're coming up on budget.
[Bears]: Please don't shout from the crowd. Thank you. Please don't shout from the crowd. Thank you. Please don't shout from the crowd. Thank you. Please don't shout from the crowd. Thank you.
[Collins]: Thank you. I frequently need a reminder to talk louder. I appreciate it.
[Bears]: No, you shouldn't be shouting from the crowd. Thank you.
[Collins]: but I know I'm not loud enough to talk over people. Councilor Scarpelli, I appreciate the resolution to discuss the water and sewer department, especially as we're coming right up on budget season. This is a conversation that we're going to have anyway, and as other councilors have noted, this is a conversation that we've had every year in the past two budget cycles that I have been a part of. you know, this is a, this has been raised as a multi-million dollar issue. We know that it will take multi-millions of dollars to make good on this investment, to bring ourselves out of the rear of all cities and towns in Massachusetts when it comes to our water infrastructure. I believe that Commissioner McGibbon told us during our budget hearing last year that we're one of the The three cities with the oldest water infrastructure in the state. That's that's not a end of the ladder that any of us want to be on. And we know that this is multi-millions of dollars in the fixing. This is many decades in the making. One thing that I do find heartening from the letters from the administration, from letters from current and former members of DPW leadership that I think is heartening, is that there's a clear mutual respect from Commissioner McGivern and former Superintendent Stoneking. That mutual respect within the DPW leadership you know, and knowing that this is a shared priority between the DPW, between the City Council, between the administration, we know that we need to look for We need to look for assets wherever we can find them with this big of an infrastructural project ahead of us. As was stated earlier, we were the first council to vote to keep retained earnings within the Water and Sewer Department so that it could go towards funding infrastructure repairs and improvements. Obviously that is a small first step. we have a ways to go. I am glad for any steps in the right direction that were taken by ARPA, that were taken by Superintendent Stone King during his tenure, and that I know that Commissioner McGivern is working hard on every day. And I think it is one of the things that rang most loudly for me from Commissioner McGivern's letter to the city council was that all of these major infrastructural efforts between bringing our water infrastructure up to par and our roads infrastructure up to par. You know, we got at least 500 million on the water side. I believe it's maybe even at least 200 million if we really wanna get every road where we know residents want them. These things have to be done in concert, be done efficiently to make sure that we're making the best use of every dollar because we have to use so many of them. Last point I wanna make for now, I did, Commissioner given noted the most recent report from the M. W. R. A. On the state of Medford sweater, which is from 2021 in his letter to the City Council. I did follow that read through it. I think that it's worth noting that when it comes to when it comes to our water infrastructure. We know, because everybody has cited, that some of our pipes are 120 years old. We also know that the most recent report from the MWRA is that our drinking water is safe. And we also know that we have a lot of work ahead of us to make sure that it stays that way without interruption for all future generations. Thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you. Any further comment by members of the Council? Councilor Tseng?
[Tseng]: very briefly because I think a lot of what I would say has been covered by the three councillors who've spoken. I think, you know, When past administrations were looking at the water infrastructure in the city, it was easy, since everything was built around the same time, to say that we didn't need to make these investments. But we always do need a longer-term outlook about how we're going to fund projects, even decades in the future. It was disappointing, and it is disappointing to us that that wasn't done decades prior. But it is, I think, a good step for us to start with that study about the rates going forward, because that. Such a large scale of infrastructure improvement will need a lot of communication with our residents. And if you know, and I think it's becoming clear through this discussion through discussions in the past during the budget seasons that. Money is a huge factor here. And so if money is a big question here, we need to something like that rate study is important. Now, another thing can also be true that I think Councilor Scarpelli raised. we need better follow through on these reports, on these committees that are created from the administration. For example, the classification study is something that we still haven't seen over years. We were promised this years ago. And that's something that affects the items on our agenda, like the CAF amendment. to the superintendent of water role. We need to follow up on these things. Now as a city council, I think we've done better. I think we've worked together, especially Councilor Scarpelli and us, we've worked together to push the administration to keep them accountable on those issues. We need to keep doing that. We need to keep making the historic investments that we haven't been making as a city council that we made for the first time last year in the water system. And I think that's very, very clear. I know there's lots to be said. There's this is a very complex issue. I think. a commission to begin Burns letter does actually point to a lot of substantive steps being taken in terms of, um, physical improvements to the system. Um, not just the monetary side of things, but there's lots of follow through to, uh, to for us to hold to account.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng any further comments from members of the council. Seeing none of their emotion on the floor. Vice President Collins, Councilor Scarpelli. Motion to receive and place on file by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Vice President Collins. Is there any public participation on the matter? I see one hand on Zoom and one person in the chamber. We'll go to the chamber first. Name and address for the record, please.
[Jones]: Yes, sir. Robert Jones, 5 St. Mary Street. I'm a little confused at this point. The water sewer account is an enterprise fund. You touched upon it, President Beas. Yes. Which means that for anybody that doesn't know, the receipts of the water and sewer bills go into an enterprise fund. It's a separate fund, and it has to be used for that purpose. traditionally, we've had a surplus. I don't recall at all that we talked about sending the excess back to the ratepayers, but it's an account that traditionally runs at a surplus. So I'm not sure why we haven't been reinvesting that into the system where it should be. And Councilor Scarpelli touched on something else. We do studies, we do scope of work, we hire consultants, we do everything but actually fix the problem. I've heard about all these plans and other studies that, but not actually replacing the pipe. Sounds like we had a good guy that just got frustrated and left. We need to actually do the work. The city is famous for it. When you have something, you need to update it and maintain it, or it's going to break down. We should have been doing that throughout the years. Now we can do it a little bit at a time. Take the surplus every year, replace the pipe. I don't think we need another consultant study. Thank you. Thank you.
[Bears]: Go to Maureen on Zoom. Name and address for the record, please. Maureen.
[Maureen Dunham]: Maureen Donovan, 55 Ellsworth Street, Medford, Mass. This is an issue that's close to my heart because I've been in health care my whole entire life, and this is a serious health care issue. And there's been lots of discussion about how for many years, I actually heard the word decades now, the city of Medford administration and city council has been aware that there's a major infrastructure problem regarding water and sewer. I've never received any money back on my taxes on my water and sewer bill. but they go up every year. So could someone address where that money is going? And second of all, is there a committee or a formal arrangement between the mayor and other committees to look at sources such as state funding or as federal funding because I feel that we're on the edge of the slippery slope here. I've heard four or five times tonight the MWRA has tested our water and said that it's safe. What if the next time they test it, it is not safe? I'd like some answers please. Thank you very much.
[Bears]: Thank you, Maureen.
[Scarpelli]: Name and address for the record, please.
[X875ms8gt_4_SPEAKER_13]: Donna Silva, 1536 Mystic Valley Parkway. I have a photo which I'd like to show. I don't know how to, can we show this? Zach, can you put this up on?
[Bears]: If you email it to me, I can probably put it up.
[X875ms8gt_4_SPEAKER_13]: Okay, well, I'm gonna turn it here, and I don't know if you can see it. So can the council see it? These are my filters on my water system. I have a house system, a home water system, and two filters. They're supposed to last six months. This is what your kids are drinking. This is what they're drinking. This is what you're drinking, okay? They're black. Well, I shouldn't say that. They're not black, they're dark brown. And that's only three months. And the one on the other side is only one month. So when they say the water is safe, I don't understand that. Do you? Anybody? Yes, I don't. The water is not safe. Can you see this?
[Bears]: I mean, I can't speak to the filters. The MWRA tests the water. They determine that it's safe.
[X875ms8gt_4_SPEAKER_13]: They test the water. So maybe 1536 Mystic Valley Parkway, maybe we have bad pipes on my street. When I called the city, what they told me to do, that they were going to do, is they were going to open one of the fire hydrants. And by doing that, it would push the water through. But then I was told that we were at the end, so it was a dead zone, which then they said, no, it wasn't. and that the water would flood through. It hasn't changed. I've had this system for years. It's gross, isn't it? I know I saw your face. Gross. Gross. That's what we drink. That's what we drink. So if the MWRA wants to say our water is fine, And we wanna believe it? Okay, I don't. So I spent a few thousand dollars to put the system in. Well, not really, it wasn't that much money, but with the filters buying them all the time, I'm probably up to that by now. And I have a reverse osmosis system for my drinking water. And I advise that if you can afford it, to do it. Thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you. Any further comment? Mr. Castagnetti, name and address for the record, please.
[Castagnetti]: Yes, Andrew Castagnetti, Cushin Street, Medford, Mass. I just heard that Asian water pipes are over 100 years old, I believe.
[Bears]: Between 75 and 120 are many of the water pipes.
[Castagnetti]: I believe Boston is even older. I don't think they've replaced all their pipes. And someone spoke and said it would cost like a half a billion dollars to replace all the new water pipes with new water pipes. I mean, how many overrides or dead exclusions would that take? It would be more than a half a billion. As a matter of fact, I think as we go now, if it ain't bust, don't fix it. And we just repair when there's a leak. I don't know of anyone that's not having access to fresh water, whether it's polluted or not, I have no clue. But it seems like, I never heard a complaint from anyone, and I talked to a lot of people. They seem to, everybody seems to have water. And I would like to see the potholes filled from the Crystal Campbell fountain, which ain't working, the day after Patriots Day, after many years. going from right there on Riverside Ave going towards Route 93, I have to negotiate five or six bad potholes. I think we should just concentrate, first of all, on the potholes, or as Councilor Dello Russo called them, potholers.
[Bears]: Thank you, Mr. Castagnetti. Any further discussion? On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Vice President Collins, to receive and place on file. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor CUMMING.
[Lazzaro]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Leming.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Bears?
[Bears]: Yes, I'm in affirmative, none in the negative, motion passes. President Bears? 24-076 offered by Councilor Sperpelli. President Bears? Yes, Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: I apologize for interrupting. I would like to motion to take public participation out of order. I understand we have a member of the audience who can't stay very late, but would like to speak during public participation.
[Bears]: Sure, public participation on the motion of Vice President Collins to take public participation, seconded by? Councilor Saing, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callaghan? Yes. Vice President Collins? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Fleming?
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scapelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng President Bears.
[Bears]: Yes 74. Another negative motion passes public participation. We received two public comment emails and I'm also vice president Collins. If you have someone who'd like to speak in public participation.
[Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I was informed that there's a former member of the council who would like to speak. Sure.
[Cavanaugh]: Mr. President, members of the council.
[Bears]: Welcome.
[Cavanaugh]: I'm a little bit jealous, a lot jealous, because at one time I sat in one of those seats for eight years, but now no one even knows my name, not even me. But anyway, I'm here tonight because I had the opportunity when I was in politics To serve with Jack McGlynn in the legislature and to serve with Jack McGlynn, we both had simultaneous elections to serve up here in the city council. Both were distinct honors for me, and I'm very proud of my service to the city of Medford. I apologize for my dress today, but I haven't been well, and I sort of had to come out of the bed to get here. But Jack McGlynn, was a member of the Ghost Army, the so-called Ghost Army. They would be over here and they would be making noises from over there to try to make the Germans know that they were around. Jacques Moulin never mentioned that to me. He never mentioned it at all. I knew him for 30, 40 years, but he never said I was in the service and I was in the Ghost Army. It was a ghost service to me. So I'm here to let you know that all heroes don't come from afar, from distance. Some of our heroes live right amongst us. I haven't spoken in this council chamber for over 40 years, close to 40 years anyway. And I'm so proud that I had the opportunity to serve with an honorable man. I sometimes didn't disagree with Jack McClain. I wouldn't agree with all of you. I wouldn't agree with myself again if I had the opportunity to go back. But he kept his nose clean. He was an honorable man. He played it close to the vest, and I was more outspoken, I guess. But don't look too far to see who your heroes are. They live on Lapham Street on Costello. Jack McGlynn was a true American hero. He served in the war. I think I'm getting choked up here. That ghost army was really something to think about. What heroes they were making noise over here to get the Germans to come and look when they were really over here. I am not going to take much of your time just to let you know that I think that We are very honored to have such a decent man in our midst. And his wife was terrific. Helen, I used to call her the first lady of Medford all the time. She was terrific. Jack McGlynn was an honorable man, even though I didn't sometimes agree with him. Maybe I wasn't so honorable, I don't know. But you ought to be so proud to be sitting in those seats. I look back at my days in the legislature and my days sitting over there with great pride. When the people of the city vote for you and say, take care of our business, that really means something. It means they trust you. It means they want you to do the right thing by them. And I'm sure you will. It was an honor to sit here, it's an honor to speak here tonight. I'm not gonna take any more of your time, except to let you know that I feel that sometimes honorable people don't get mentioned enough. Jack Wicklin was an honorable man, whether I agreed with him or not. Agreeing with me didn't make you honorable or dishonorable. It meant that we just agreed or we didn't agree. But in those days, seats were different. The council has changed. They had pews over here, rows. And I wish they were back, to be very frank. I wish they were back. I don't know what else to say, but I hate to give this microphone up after all these years. I'm not going to give it up. I want to take it with me. Well. When you get elected, that's an honor. It really is. Think about it. Think about the thousands of people who put their necks beside your name because they wanted you to be here speaking for them and not listening to Kavanaugh. But I enjoyed my days here, and I enjoyed my days in the legislature, and I enjoyed being a representative of the people. And I'm sure that you all do also. So with that, I'm out of here. See you in 40 years again.
[Bears]: Thank you very much. If I can, Mr. President.
[Scarpelli]: Yeah, if I can, Judge Kavanaugh, if you can, if you honor me just for a moment, it takes a great man to know a great man. So I think that it's important that Medford knows that. You know, talk about a legend. He's uh Judge Kavanaugh is is uh someone we should all be proud of. So, sometimes what he just said, sometimes I get offended now. Some of my behavior sometimes when you have honorable people like that approach the bench and um I remember as a young man, to speak on behalf of another great man. We're losing our heroes, and the gentleman who's leaving the chamber right now is one of those people, so we should give him what he deserves. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_19]: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
[Lazzaro]: the first person I canvassed this summer. I went to his house, and he was the first person I spoke to. And he gave me really, really good advice. He said to make sure that you earn votes. You don't just ask for them, you have to earn them. So I appreciated that. We had a nice chat.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: I appreciate you being here.
[Bears]: And just for folks watching and to note once again what Judge Kavanaugh was saying, we did dedicate and commemorate our last meeting in honor of Jack McGlynn and his service in the Ghost Army, which as folks can look up online, was made up of a few thousand folks who looked like 50,000 and made the German Nazi armies. think that there were mass mobilizations in one place or the other, but they had tanks, blow up tanks, and there was a signal core sending false radio transmissions. It's impressive. And I'll just reiterate my favorite anecdote from that was when Mayor Mike McGlynn, Jack McGlynn's son, got a call from a newspaper after some documents had been declassified in the 1990s. And he called his dad and he said, dad, what's this ghost army that they called about? The newspaper's calling, he said, who called you about that? He wanted to call the Pentagon and make sure that there hadn't been a leak of classified information. He hadn't told his own son 50 years later. And I think that speaks to the humility of that role. And they were honored with the, excuse me, they were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, that entire unit, all the units. Public participation, is there anyone else who would like to participate for public participation in the chambers? Just in general, there is, of course, participation on the additional items on the agenda. Seeing none of the chambers, we do have one on Zoom. I see a hand, Bill Giglio. Name and address for the record, please.
[Giglio]: Hi, Bill Giglio, Winterspeed. I just have three very quick things. I didn't get my hand raised quick enough on the first resolution about the pet therapy. That's really, really, really good thing. It's worked for me in the past. And I've known it to work for a lot of people. And that's a really great thing. So I appreciate you putting that through. Second, Winter Street was freshly repaved about, I don't know, a year or so ago, and parts of it, especially where I live down by the high school, are already being dug up, and it's being patched, and now it obviously already looks horrible. Does anybody happen to know what's going on? I know you might not know what's going on, but does anybody happen to know why it's being dug up already?
[Bears]: I don't know why, but I do know that under the city's rules, any reopenings within five years of a repaving require curb-to-curb repaving. So if you want to email me, let me know where that's being temporarily patched. I can let you know when their plans are to do a full curb-to-curb repaving, because that is the city rule on that.
[Giglio]: Okay, that's great. Thank you very much. And also getting back I know on the first thing on the on the body cams from earlier. It was a very good meeting. I just want to say, Chief Buckley put on a great presentation very thorough. Unfortunately, at the end he got he got bombarded. with a bunch of nonsense. And I just, I honestly think it was unnecessary. And I would honestly love to see that subcommittee. I mean, he was visibly upset. He was called a lot of unnecessary things. And I think maybe like an apology, maybe a written apology or some sort of formal apology to Chief Buckley would really be in line, in my personal opinion. Thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you. I appreciate that. And I know that members of the committee did speak to the chief after, you know, one of the public participation rules, the most recent Supreme Judicial Court ruling is that we cannot prevent anyone from, we cannot regulate the content of any public participation. So people are able to say whatever they think, other than they can't be swearing or, you know, being vulgar. But other than that, We can't regulate the content of what anyone's saying, so while I understand the frustration when public comments may not be what folks want to hear, and I understand the Chief's frustration at public comments that he did not want to hear, the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that people can say what they want to say, and the only rules that we can set are around how long folks have to speak and when they can speak.
[Giglio]: Well, if they did speak to him after that, I'd like to say I appreciate that, because it was a little, you know, my opinion, a lot of it was uncalled for, and if they spoke to him after, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you very much.
[Bears]: Any further public participation before we resume the agenda? We did have two public comment emails. Is there a motion on the public comment emails to enter them into the record?
[Collins]: So moved.
[Bears]: on the motion of Councilor Collins to enter public comment emails into the record, seconded by Councilor Callaghan. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callaghan. Yes. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Leming.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scapelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng yes. President beers.
[Bears]: Yes, I mean from another negative. Those emails will be included as part of the official record of the meeting. 24-076 be resolved by the city council that we requested the city administration provide a full report involving the use of taxpayer dollars being used to fund lawsuit settlements and investigations with city of Medford, active and past employees. Be it further resolved that the city council moved to executive session if needed to discuss sensitive funding information. Councilor Scarpelli. Thank you, Mr. President.
[Scarpelli]: And again, I think that there's a dialogue that's being that's that's created now. And I hope everybody's really watching and listening because we're hearing a lot lately about lack of funding, lack of management, saying it's not mismanagement. But what we're seeing in what the dialogue that I'm trying to show everyone is that We have rules in this council that any awards over $5,000 have to be approved by this council. We know of many, multiple, multiple hundreds of thousands of settlements that have been put out there that I've talked to different representatives that we know nothing about. So anytime we have these issues and we have these issues that come up and questions that come up, It seems like they're hidden agendas. We've been asking, for instance, what we paid KP Law since they've been here. Now we voted on what? $5,000 for a retainer so they can be on staff for the mayor. Well, now that's blown up. Now we don't know what it is. I know that if it goes by the trend of December, which is close to $80,000 for the month of December, that's pretty frightening. And that's not including other things we know nothing about. So I bring this up to ask the mayor, especially before the budget season and before my colleagues asked him that what we're seeing a trend of possibly asking for taxpayers to be penalized for the lack of mismanagement and what we're seeing. When I say lack of mismanagement, we see a mayor speaking for years at debates talking about new growth and development. At the debate with Councilor Caraviello, she spoke and saying that we have three projects ready to go that raise millions of dollars. Those projects are gone. That's why I asked, I asked for the Office of Community Development to come out because we had 40B jobs. Remember we talked about the mismanagement of the 40B jobs and losing over 600 housing units for affordable housing. Right? We lost millions and millions and millions of dollars for fees, fines and new taxes. It's called new growth. We haven't had that. We had the mayor talk about Method Square, starting Method Square, shovels in the ground, bringing millions of dollars of revenue, nothing. We've seen nothing. So when I say mismanagement, it's mismanagement of understanding of where we're going in the direction we're going in the city of Medford. We can say we didn't fund anything. We can say that we're putting money into the general account. And the reason why we have to put in general account is because our management isn't following through with the promises that they've made of transparency and follow through for new growth. We haven't seen any of it. This is why we're going to general fund. This is why the money that was earmarked for one thing has to go to another thing, because we're losing that money because we're not the mismanagement of our finances in the city hall. I'm gonna give you some examples that I want. I'm asking the mayor for a report, meeting executive sessions, not to know anybody's names, but to understand that, where is this going? We're looking for mismanagement of finance for City of Method. So I would like to see the dismissals of city staff, and then the lawsuits filed by that city staff. The cost of investigating these city staff members, the cost for hiring private investigators, this I'm even hearing, and this is what the problem is when you have lack of transparency and lack of openness, central administration, that I believe the firefighters were told to be careful because people are watching them now. And this is this is what happens. This is what happens because it's been done before. There's a city, there's a DPW employee that was followed for months, months by a private investigator. He was let go. He's right now in active, it's in an active process right now, but they've already told him, the courts have already ruled, there was nothing wrong. We wasted thousands and thousands of dollars on investigators. We're looking at the cost of legal representation for all these cases. Forget about the 40 B cases that you know, they could have won. It's an automatic, you can't fight a 40 B and lose. All you can do is string it along a long enough time so the developers can back out because they're losing so much in funding. Well, that's what happened. One project we had, A development company went bankrupt after four years, they're gone. The 40B projects, they waited. We know the world's the gold gym site. The owner spent over $12 million to keep that going. Well, the investors in that job had done what now? They've said, you know what, enough is enough, we're moving forward. The project on Boston Ave that I believe they're talking about possibly putting in a mosque now, five acres putting to a mosque, lack of taxpayer money, lack of new growth. Think about that. Understand the mismanagement and what's happening. That's where where's the money? Why is there money there? Why are we looking now to look at a pretty pretty outrageous and intense movements to try to bring new money in through the tax payers? We can't do that until we see where the mismanagement is coming at City Hall. We see the city, the staffing that has to be paid. I would ask for the record that the mayor please inform us the cost of any consultants or per diem staff that she has in place right now, she has in the last few years. And I say, let's say four years since you've been in office, and what we're paying out the staff that she hasn't filled. And it's not because it's not because people are leaving because they want to. They're being pushed out. You're talking about good people. We haven't even heard the case haven't heard about about Aleesha Nunley, the best finance director in the Commonwealth, I would say. Mike Durham, the best veterans affairs director that method has ever seen the state has ever seen gone. You're talking about settlements that I know that we know. Did you did you know the custodians settled on their their legal issues that they were they were given back $500,000 that the city reimbursed them. They were rewarded that did we vote on that? No. So the cost of settlements, the cities in the schools, I want to know what that what those numbers are not the people, but what the numbers are. And the cost of the law firms because I know it's just not KP law, you can see that when we say KP law, everybody picks on them, because they're in front of us every day. Right. We have multiple, multiple law offices that are working for the city of Medford, multiple. And it hurts me because I see new Councilors giving reports that they met with KP Law. It's funny because some of our Councilors, Justin and I laughed the other day when Matt talked about, Councilor Leming talked about he met with KP Law. I was never given, no one's ever told me we could talk to KP Law. But I would love to know what that costs, because an in-house city solicitor is part of their salary. It makes it so easy. So when we look at this resolution, this is really to get a report before the budget comes out, before we look at some drastic changes, because I don't know if people heard, but I believe the school department has $7.5 million to get leveled. Is that what we're hearing? 7.5 million. Now, now I'm going to guarantee you everybody, the rainy day account. Why does somebody want to bring the rainy day account in? She's got to put the money from somewhere. So she wants to take it from free cash. I'm going to let everybody know this is what it is because I've been here a long time. She's going to go to free cash, call it a rainy day account and pull out. Is it truly $7.5 million? No. Everybody nervous about that? Absolutely. You should be. That's a scary number. It's still going to be a scary number. But the mismanagement of this city, the mismanagement of the school department, the mismanagement of the finances and that office in this city has been devastating to this community. Not only lack of new growth, but also in fraudulent and misleading and legal fees. And again, we don't know what they are, we can only speculate. This is why I asked the mayor to bring us a report in the executive session so my fellow councils can look at this when it comes down to understanding some of the comments that my fellow councils have made in the past about looking at different funding mechanisms. going back to the taxpayers and saying, hey, we need we need X amount of money $250 million for new high school. And I believe it was I've talked to new school committee. I know we have some people in the audience right now that worked on this new school projects before I've talked to people in Somerville just did a new school people in Arlington to think in this climate of $7.5 million in the hole. that the school committee is going to come to us and ask us for $2.5 million so they can start the project. And we don't even know. I think it starts at 30% reimbursement of a new high school. We don't even know what it's going to be. the feasibility study $2.5 million when we don't even know if we're going to come close to this. And from what I'm gathering from my friends that I have in the state, it's not very positive. So the reason why I bring this up in this, this is, this is hopefully we can go to do I think it's going to happen? Probably not. We're never going to see this. But the hope is to go on executive session with the administration with her legal team, with the HR director, with the chief of staff with the mayor with us sit there and say, Okay, this is what we spent the last four years. These are lawsuits that are pending, because I know there are lawsuits out there right now that they're trying to settle out of court. I know that. So there's hundreds of 1000s of millions of dollars out there that still have to be spent. And in the meantime, we have nothing new going. Oh, I take it back. We have a music venue going on in Mystic Ave. You know, Mystic Ave, we're supposed to change the zoning, the gateway community is gonna come in. What's the talk now? We have one building being talked about, one building and nothing else. So I ask again, my fellow councilors, as we go through this process of looking to where the needs are in our city, we all know We're fiscally strapped. We all know we're in crisis financially. And possibly, if it came down and we could sit together with the administration and they can show us, they can show me that, you know what, George, this is the data. You know, you're right. We didn't lose millions of dollars in new tax. We didn't lose millions of dollars in new fees and fees in permitting. We didn't. We didn't lose millions of dollars on on settlements. We didn't lose millions of dollars on on legal services. If they can show me that I will be the first one to vote yes on anything that you ask for an increase in taxes. But until they can show us that they're not mismanaging our funds, because this is what we do. The city council, we're in charge with a fiscal stewards of our our city's finances, with the last line of defense. So unless we can prove that they can prove that all we'll be doing moving forward, and any sort of tax, any sort of override any sort of debt exclusion, it's putting more money into a hole that'll disappear. Period. I think we're all smart enough to understand that. So this is why I bring this resolution up, Mr. President. I ask the mayor to please bring this forward, that she meets with us in executive session to give us a breakdown, to prove me wrong. I hope she can. Come prove me wrong. Tell me we're not spending millions and millions of dollars. And then we could see a way that we can find a way to fund the city the way it needs to be funded. But until then, these are huge questions that they need to answer. This is mismanagement. This isn't hundreds of years of neglect. This is mismanagement from someone that's been in office now for years. She's done nothing. When neighborhood communities were in the same spot we were, talk to the mayor in Malden, talk to the mayor in Somerville, talk to the mayor in Everett. They had the same issues we had. They used those funds to make sure they did what was right for their community first, before she started covering general accounts because she mismanaged the business of the city. She's done a terrible job in the city bringing finances in the system. Remember, the last meeting we had was new growth was what? our new growth that we talked about. I know Councilor Bears says that the city assessor is going to give us a great report. I can't wait to see it. But here we are, year five now. Year five, she's the mayor. The most we've seen that was presented to us was a million dollars, new growth from fees and fines from traffic and parking. That was amazing to me. That was amazing to me. So I asked for this report, because I don't know, I'm sure you're all smart enough that you see what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to show my colleagues that listen, I understand what you're saying. And you we need we need the finances. But understanding taxation isn't always the best resolution. First, let's find out what's causing this. Why aren't we bringing in new money? Why are we spending so much money on things we shouldn't be? And then if we shows that that's not true at all, Councilor Scarpelli, then I walk away in peace voting for whatever the city needs. But right now, this right now shows poor, poor mismanagement of the finances of this community and the leadership of this community. Thank you, Mr. President.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. I'm going to go to Vice President Collins, but first I just want to say a couple things. Last year the budget fiscal 24 budget new growth was 2.5 million. And we did receive in the budget, we have meetings on the three departments tomorrow in committee of the whole, we did receive a quarter one quarter two budget to actuals document. from the administration. The law department spending as of December 31st was $172,000 out of a budget of $552,000. So only families spent 31% of their budget, 50% of the way through the year. Vice President Collins. Thank you, President Bears. I appreciate that.
[Collins]: Councilor Scarpelli, we've known each other for a term. You know, there's a lot I agree with you about. There's some I disagree with you about. That's not news to anybody. What I do think that we all share is that we're looking for the holistic picture. and I do think that as a city council under our current charter, we're kind of always at a disadvantage because we do have the final vote on the budget. We don't craft it. We can't add to it. We can only make line item subtractions. We are in a difficult and disadvantaged position to have that 30,000 foot view on the budget when we receive all of our information through intermediaries, through departments, through the administration, essentially second hand. And I think all of us have found that challenging. I know that I have found it challenging. There's a lot that I think is really critical as we move forward. We already had a conversation tonight on two major pieces of infrastructure that we know will take years to bring up to the level of condition that residents deserve. And we barely even touched on the new high school, and that's another one. Residents deserve a new, better high school. And I think it is both true that we need to make sure we have a clear picture of why our budget is the way it is, in fairness to everybody, and we have to hold that it's equally crucial that we do what needs to happen so that residents have the environment and the resources and the public sector and the public staff and the city infrastructure that they deserve. And I know for me, we cannot afford to wait on any avenues that can get us closer to that. I also do want to note, you know, we speak about what our jurisdiction is and what our jurisdiction isn't for, you know, what city resources look like and what our budget looks like. I also want to add, since we mentioned Mystic Avenue, it's a constant source of frustration for me that we don't have a more direct hand in the spending of city resources so that we, you know, when that. City staff and residents come to us bringing up particular projects and departments that we can't more directly intervene. But I am really proud that this council has, you know, for several terms now made it a shared goal to do what we can on the zoning ordinances side so that we can lay the foundation for rapidly improving new growth commercial it's not direct because developments come from developers, but we have a direct hand in laying the foundation where our commercial tax base, where new growth can flourish in the city. And so I'm proud that that's one piece that we do have jurisdiction over. This council is making a priority for several terms now, and we are already starting to see developers take advantage and start to take that's going to benefit. Um everything that we talk about in these chambers that deserve more investment than what we're currently getting. Thank you.
[Bears]: Vice President Collins Council. Go ahead.
[Callahan]: Thank you. Um I definitely do believe that, uh, our city's underfunded. I think it is a pretty simple math problem that when you don't fix your water price for 100 years, you don't fix your roads for decades. You don't fix your schools for 20 years. You don't for years so that those salaries are below commensurate for other cities. I think that that math problem is pretty simple one, but that doesn't mean that I believe that all of our money is being spent properly and I really appreciate this resolution. I think it's incredibly important that we understand and that the community also understands how money is being spent. and that we are really responsible and that that money is not being wasted. So I really appreciate this resolution and any other resolutions that come to us having transparency and understanding the way that the city is being run and to make sure that our funds are being used well.
[Bears]: Thank you. Any further discussion? Any comments from members of the public? Seeing none, is there a motion? Oh, sure. Name and address for the record, please.
[Fiore]: Gaston Fiore, 61 Stigny Road. I actually have a comment about public participation. I was confused on how it was carried out because I read the agenda and I thought the emails were going to be read aloud and that did not happen. So regarding this resolution, of course, I support it. And I have to say that in my view, this is the most productive city council meeting that I've been to. I've been to the two past ones, and this is the kind of discussions that directly affect residents and that I hope that I can see more in the future.
[Bears]: I will just note that we've had many of these discussions the last two before the last two meetings.
[Fiore]: Okay, that's good. Yeah, sorry. I only have been to the past two. So I read the two emails and I've also been, as I've mentioned, to the past two meetings, and I know what has been going on here in the city council chamber. So I just wanted to give my view on how I see things. So I believe it's clear, most unfortunately, that the Metro community is divided. The City Council should strive to avoid creating further divisions among Metro neighbors. We should all work to build upon our similarities, rather than drift apart based on our differences. Generalizations are unfair and damaging because they indiscriminately put everyone in the same bag. If there was a problem with the behavior of one or a few individuals, then the problem should be discussed with those individuals separately. Referring to a group of people as an angry mob and accusing them of being ignorant stigmatizes those that are, in fact, a group of fellow Medford neighbors. We should try to understand why some residents are feeling frustrated that the city's government today is a clear example of why some of us are very, very frustrated at what we're seeing. I myself feel frustrated, in addition to what I've been seeing today, that the solutions proposed by this city council to address some of Medford's problems almost always rely on more government control and higher and or new taxes. Relying on more government control and higher taxes often leads to inefficient solutions and can stifle economic vitality. To address Medford problems, we should instead consider approaches that leverage market mechanisms. For instance, 1. Encourage private investment through deregulation where excessive rules may deter business growth and innovation. Implement a user fee structure for specific services which aligns costs directly with those who benefit, rather than a blanket tax increase. Foster competition in service provision like waste management or consulting services, I've been in email communication with several of you regarding this, which can increase quality and reduce costs. A focus on enhancing economic freedom and reducing unnecessary governmental overhead can lead to more sustainable and effective solutions. I'd like to summarize by stating that I prefer a city council chamber that is full of passionate, and yes, sometimes noisy, neighbors rather than a chamber that is empty and completely silent. It's healthy for our local democracy to have so many residents interested in the work of the city council. Let's find unity in our passion for local politics. Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[Bears]: Any further discussion on the topic of the lawsuit settlements and investigations?
[o9F0qYH9Geo_SPEAKER_05]: the executive session meeting with the City Council to discuss these issues and concerns.
[Bears]: So motion to refer the paper to the mayor, requesting answers to the questions and an executive session, please.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Callahan. We'll go to public participation. Mr. Orlando, name and address for the record, please.
[Orlando]: Richard Orlando of Winford Way, Medford, Massachusetts. Just a very brief statement, something that came to mind. And I'd just like you to think about this. The city's lack of financial responsibility should not be borne by taxes to the public. Unless you can demonstrate financial responsibility, being run correctly, the dropkick shouldn't be to increase tax to the people until you get the answer to those questions. That's all, thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you. We have a question from our hand raised on Zoom. Maureen, name and address for the record, please.
[Maureen Dunham]: I'm Donovan, 55 Ellsworth Street, Medford, Mass. I want to tell Councilman Scarpelli how grateful I am that he keeps bringing up the issue of transparency, because there is nothing coming from the mayor's office in City Hall. That's my opinion, first of all. And apparently that opinion is shared by others, such as another Medford resident who spoke before I did. Quite eloquently, I want to mention that it seems to me like the mayor is kicking the can down the road in terms of filling vital positions within the city of Medford. We do not have a city councilor. We do not have a assistance, not city councilor. We do not have a city solicitor. We do not have an assistant city solicitor. She wants to outsource the chief of the fire services and she wants to outsource the water key positions within the Medford water and sewer offices. Finally, I just want to make one comment that is very dismaying to me to watch a city Councilor in the session right now who has been on his computer and his cell phone for the past half an hour while I sit here patiently waiting and concentrating and listening to everything, every word that all of you have to say. That person should be spoken to about the inappropriateness of his behavior. Thank you.
[Scarpelli]: through the chair. Are you referring to the chair?
[Maureen Dunham]: No, I'm not referring to the chair, sir. I'm referring to one of the members sitting in the round table around the chair.
[Bears]: Thank you. I will just note that, you know, for example, we may be managing Zoom. I often take notes and bring up reference documents. Councilor Scarpelli brings up things on his phone, researches things on his phone. They're often tools to enhance our participation in the meeting.
[Maureen Dunham]: I respect that and admire that because you're multitasking in a difficult environment. But one individual has been scrolling on his computer and typing into his cell phone the entire time. And it's really an abuse of power and time in this setting.
[Bears]: Thank you very much. It's certainly not. Any further comment on this paper. Seeing none on the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to refer the paper to the mayor requesting answers to the questions and an executive session seconded by Councilor Callahan. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. No. Councilor Leming.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Beard.
[Bears]: Yes, 60 affirmative, more than negative. The motion passes. 24-077 offered by Councilor Scarpelli. Resolution to discuss. Yes, Councilor Scarpelli. On the motion to join papers 24-077 and 24-081 by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor CASSIDY. Councilor CASSIDY.
[Bears]: Yes, seven in the affirmative. None of the negative emotion passes 24-07. Can I read them both? Sure, sure. Thank you. 24-077 by Councilor Scarpelli be resolved that the City Council discussed the possible harmful materials being stored on the MBTA commuter railway that abuts residential homes, most notably the creosote railroad ties and 24-081. Council President provided verbal update on efforts by Council leadership, the mayor, city staff, representative Garmelie and local residents to remove creosote Soak Railroad ties that are an environmental and health hazard along the MBTA lower line, be it further resolved that the council request immediate action by the MBTA to remove these ties from residential areas and forward a copy of this resolution by email to our state delegation. Councilor Scarpelli.
[Scarpelli]: First, this was reached out by a few neighbors and they didn't realize, and I explained to them that Council President and a few of other my colleagues have been working tirelessly on this issue. When I went out to visit and talk with them, you can blatantly smell the creosote that is, I can't see how it's not harmful. And I know that you've done your due diligence, Council President, I really appreciate that. I know how hard you work with the MBTA, our state delegation to make sure something moves on this. So I'm just gonna step away and just give you the kudos you deserve because you've worked tirelessly on this. And again, we're seeing the true ignorance of our MBTA work its magic. So thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli I appreciate that I can just give a brief update. There's been an issue ongoing for over two months now, especially behind Tyler app but along the lower line commuter rail where railroad ties soaked increase so which is a pretty toxic flammable material have been being placed within 50 feet of homes, you know, right in a residential neighborhood, some of them nearby to a daycare in February. And this is part of a program to replace the rail lines. You know, they have to do it for safety purposes, but. In February, there was the first time these were placed there and I was just able to successfully work with Director Blake and some other folks to get the MBTA to move the ties up the line into Winchester, where they're in near the forest, you know in the DCR forest area rather than right abutting residential homes. And then a couple weeks ago, maybe five times as many ties came and replaced right on Tyler Avenue along the MBTA railroad line. The mayor has made direct requests director Blake from traffic and transportation has made requests. We've been working with director with representative Garber Lee. Residents have been reaching out, residents have engaged the Mass Department of Environmental Protection, and there's probably a couple hundred, 200 email chain at this point, going back and forth between dozens of people trying to get the MBTA to do this. And the MBTA has basically said, no, we have to replace the ties, prove that this is toxic. So it has been a frustrating. Again, just last week, we were out trying to get them to do something, been talking to Representative Garbally, and he's been basically getting a stonewall as well. So we are continuing to try. The MBTA has invoked a couple of things. They basically said, if you want to prove it's toxic, call the EPA. And then they've also said, we'll bring in the Federal Railroad Administration if we have to bring in the federal, because it's federal rails, we have to replace the rails. So they are not responding in the way that you would hope of a partner in government on this issue, but we have had a lot of people working on this, and I'll continue to keep working on it as best as I can. Thank you.
[Tseng]: Councilor Tseng. I wanted to thank both you, President Bears, and Councilor Scarpelli for putting this on the agenda. I was going through my inbox, and the first time we heard about this issue as a council actually was in June last year, where we did actually get a resolution on it, a temporary resolution. Back then, similar to what you were describing now, there was a lot of back and forth from residents, city staff. I made calls, I know you made calls, a number of councillors made calls at the time, and we got a temporary solution. But then this issue came back. And it seems like the number of ties there is higher than ever. One resident did actually, I think, bring out a pretty decent idea in asking. I had to make sure I had the language for it. It's somewhere deep in the email chain. But to ask for the actual material safety data sheet for the creosote. that was applied to the ties. I was wondering if either of you would be amenable to adding that into the resolution as well to ask for that material safety data sheet. This is a serious issue. I know you in particular have worked really tirelessly on this. Our state rep, Sean Garvely, has worked very hard on this as well. I think this is a pattern that we see from the MBTA of non-response. We give them so much money, we contribute, we benefit from them, and yet we want to be partners, and yet there is this non-response. When we were looking at the accessibility improvements for the bus stops, that took a year. When we were thinking about the Orange Line shutdown years back, our city was proactive in reaching out and saying, what can we do to facilitate traffic, and we got posted. and so we really need to keep working on this. We have had times in the past where we were unified as a council and reached out and worked with the city staff as well and actually did get concessions from the MBTA. So I hope this is the case this time.
[Bears]: Yeah, I'm certainly amenable to the amendment and did request that from the MBTA and they did not provide the document. So that's an amendment from Councilor Tseng to request the materials Could you, the safety data sheet? Yeah, that's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Material, yeah, okay.
[Bears]: Great, on the motion of Councilor Scarpelli, as amended by, and myself as amended by Councilor Tseng, as seconded by Councilor Lazzaro, any further discussion by members of the council? Seeing none, any discussion by members of the public in person or on Zoom? Seeing none in person, we'll go to Bill Giglio on Zoom. Name and address for the record, please.
[Giglio]: Hi, Bill Giglio, Winthrop Street. I'm very confused about like the, the actual, where is the disconnect? I mean, we have one side and by the way, thank you for doing this, but we have one side that is very adamant that it's very toxic and hazardous. And then you have the MBTA who's saying it's not, there's no type, or is there any type of an emergency, anybody that can come down and test that? Because if it was like any type of, you know, anything else, wouldn't it be like an emergency instead of us just requesting something and waiting on that? Is there something that can be done quicker or sooner?
[Bears]: Yeah, as far as I'm aware, the Board of Health has been engaged as well in Medford, and they have sent a number of comments along. They've requested action by the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection, and the MBTA's response has essentially been that, according to them, they don't have any proof that it's not safe and that this is a project required by the Federal Railroad Administration. And that's essentially been their response. I mean, they have... To give them some credit, they have responded to the emails. Beyond that, the responses have not really been sufficient.
[Giglio]: Right. I mean, responses are nice, but that doesn't protect the health and no pun intended. So as far as the city tracks are covered, as far as us trying to fix this. So nothing ever comes back from the city.
[Bears]: We don't have any authority to order them to stop work.
[Giglio]: Right, but you did, I mean, it's obviously brought to their attention anyways.
[Bears]: Right, yeah.
[Giglio]: All right, that's great, then thank you guys for doing this.
[Bears]: Thank you, much appreciated. Name and address for the record, please.
[SPEAKER_07]: Gerald Burns, 44 South Border Road, Medford. While you were all talking, I just looked up the EPA as far as creosote. Anyway, within this, there's some basic information and things. But in disposing of items treated with creosote safely, one of these items says, do not burn creosote or other preservative treated wood in a residential setting to avoid possible inhalation of toxic chemicals in the smoke and ash.
[Bears]: Yeah. You already read it, right? Yeah. A resident sent around some EPA regulations around creosote. And then they said, well, these are creosote soap ties. So it's a different, you know, I mean, it's just kind of a run around. Yeah, they haven't burned. So if you go down to the neighborhood, I'm not going down there. It's it's a brutal smell. I mean, it's persistent and pervasive. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: All right. Thank you.
[Bears]: Yeah. Oh, Any further discussion by members of the public on this item? One more. Name and address for the record, please.
[SPEAKER_19]: Don McEwen, 143 Playstead Road. We just looked up on the internet about creosol and the health effects. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has determined that coal For coal tar, creosol is a problem and a human carcinogen. Yep.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we sent. Yeah.
[Scarpelli]: A few piles. I mean, it's hundreds. I know I live across the street.
[SPEAKER_19]: You see it, right. So I see that I smell it.
[Scarpelli]: Yeah. So we're trying. I just want everybody to know the reach out to myself. Yeah. I mean, the council bears in this in and of itself. I believe. Yeah. Staying right. That's scary.
[Bears]: It's baffling. We sent all the same information over and they said we have to get the project done. Name and address for the record, please.
[Castagnetti]: You know, I just want to make a quick question. Is it possible to they could store these these this credit site ties inside of some sort of a trailer? And when the workers go in, they can put on their masks and pull out as needed.
[Bears]: Just thinking out loud. We've we've asked for a number that was Andrew Castagnetti, by the way. We've asked for a number of solutions, moving them, storing them differently. They're pretty solid. They're locked into their position. Any further discussion? On the motion by Councilor Scarpelli and myself, as amended by Councilor Tseng, as seconded by Councilor Lazzaro, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor CALLAHAN. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Thang? Yes. President Bears?
[Bears]: Yes. Having the affirmative, none of the negative, the motion passes. 24-078 offered by Councilor Scarpelli. Be it resolved that the City Council discuss the Mayor's request in hiring an outside consultant to review Medford Fire Department policies and procedures with additional cost to the taxpayers of Medford. Councilor Scarpelli?
[Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. I know that there are a few representatives from the fire department here. I'm again when we're talking about mismanagement of city funds. The reason why I brought this up is during the school committee meeting when they were talking about the you know what the devastating news in that financial front was. And then I believe there was some conversation about possible layoffs and we talked about, you know, we're talking about, you know, police, fire teachers, most important people in our community. And Then the mayor sent this email saying that they were bringing in, I believe it's municipal solutions that were coming in, and they were going to, at a startup cost to start, almost $10,000 to bring this organization in to do a study of procedures and policies that were 60 years old. I emailed the mayor, I expressed my displeasure again of wasting taxpayers' money because In the normal situation, and I've talked to police officers, I've talked to directors and assistant superintendents, I've talked to other department leaders in our community, in our city structure. And when they're making fundamental policy changes and procedures, it starts with the people we already pay, the professionals that are there. They work on those policies, and then they review it together with the administration, making sure it falls in all the criteria that's needed, and they make those necessary changes. So again, I bring up 60 years. So the mayor responded, said, if you have any questions, contact Chief Evans. Chief Evans picked up the phone right away. I really appreciate that. We had a great conversation, and I respect Chief Evans. I know the difficulties in, and we had a, We had an agreed to disagree moment because he said, George, I'm trying to do a lot here. And we do have some policies that are 60 years old. And I can't do everything at once. And I said, Chief, first of all, in the normal situation, would you have done this with your team? He said he's inundated because he started this position. So simple question is this chief, If it's 60 years old, if there truly is policies and procedures that are 60 years old there, you can't wait another six months? to save the city taxpayers money, especially when you're talking about possibly laying off firefighters. But I did hear some great news that I'll also ask. I'll ask our our friends from the fire department that I hopefully they give us some good news tonight because I heard some things about this possible grant that would absolutely save our community and I'm actually giddy about it. So, but that's it. That'll be that'll be something that I'm going to add on. But right now, I know that today, today, municipal solutions were on site meeting with I believe the deputy chiefs and starting the process already. We don't know what the final number is. It could be 50,000. It could be the cost of another firefighter. We don't know because what we did get we got a start of almost 10,000 the beginning of a study again, another year, I'm going to say it because we don't normally do this in our community and other departments. When it's in the police, with the police department, they start the process with the police department and their leadership team. When it's in the school department, they start with their direct as a curriculum, they work it out. And then if they need more clarity and more backing, then they go out to an organization and bring someone to tie that in together for maybe a minimum amount of money. What we're seeing right now, shockingly, the fire department, the firefighters aren't even being looked at to do that. People that we've trusted, all of a sudden now, everything is under a microscope. So now the mayor is bringing in municipal solutions to meet with the fire department to look at how to make these six-year-old changes and change the policies and procedures in their association, which I don't disagree with. but to spend, again, mismanagement financial funding in this community is just waving its ugly face again at wasting money again. So I know that you're on the forefront, Mr. Jones, and you guys have been, so if you have anything to add, I know that I wanna know how that was going, if you can, what's the practice usually with the fire department, with past chiefs? What is it? Oh, no, that's good. That hasn't passed yet, right?
[Bears]: Well, I don't know if anyone's noticed, but given that we are having a relatively short night. I haven't been putting the timer on. God, you haven't put up the buzzer. I haven't put up the timer. That's pretty good. It's because it's supposed to manage when we need to manage time, and we've been good tonight about managing our time. I do want to note one thing, which is when we received that email, I did request, ask the question of the mayor about whether there'll be a public report, and specifically with regards to how the council can be a collaborative part of strategic planning. And she said, yes, there'll be a public report, and we'll be provided with the report and recommendations. Before we go to members of the Fire Union, I do want to see if there's any further comment by members of the Council. Seeing none, name and address for the record, please.
[Marcellino]: Danielle Marcelino, 11 Spencer Road, and I'm the Union Secretary. So we have the same questions as far as like why they hired a third party and that. Um, why they picked who they picked. I spoke with the chief today regarding this whole thing, and he said that so far the gentleman that is doing the survey is coming up with a lot of the same things that we had to say about the department that were critically understaffed that things need to be improved on all fronts. Um and I would hope that anybody who's worth their weight in the We, as the fire union, we have actually put together our own, we've solicited the company to do our own study too, just in case we need to bring up our own information. One of the things that we looked into was who this person was, who the company was and who they've serviced. And we were told that they may have contacted or done a study in Woburn, but that isn't true. Woburn had no idea about this company. In a brief, survey of the gentleman that heads up their fire service area. He comes from a very different universe than from what we work here in Medford. We are a Metro Boston department, so we run around 12,500 runs last year. There's 106 of us right now. Obviously, there's 65,000 plus residents in the city of Medford. He was a career, he had a career in Woodbury, Connecticut, that did 310 calls per year last year. They were all an entire volunteer staff. And then he was also the chief in a New Hampshire department that had a census of about 5,000 residents. They did 1,111 runs last year. and they have two full-time members on their department staffing and everybody else is volunteer. So it's just a very different format from what we run here in Medford. So it's kind of confusing if they come up with something outside of, or recommendations that are different from what we do, it's kind of hard to compare because he's coming from a different universe. Like I wouldn't go to California and tell the YLN firefighters how to do their job. We have, like I said, we have our grant, our company that's going to be doing a similar study on safety and staffing. And I mean, as far as we knew from the union was just that we got an email saying that they hoped that we would cooperate to identify issues impacting services to review policies and assistant planning. But we are a career fire department with 106 members that have centuries, hundreds of years of time in service collectively. So I feel like we are a professional service that would be able to get together and update these policies to be able to do the right thing for our city that we are all very well versed in.
[Scarpelli]: Now the six if I can, Mr. President, yes, the 60 year old policies that they're talking about is it's I know we have six year old policies here. Like, for instance, we don't I'm milking cows can't roam free. Is that the type of stuff that we're seeing in these policies that they're just useless policies that they're old, but they're still there that we just need to take out what some of the Okay.
[Marcellino]: Some of them have been slightly updated over the years to be able to accommodate things like we don't utilize the Lawrence Memorial anymore, obviously, if somebody got injured, that kind of thing. So things have been slightly tweaked over the years, but as a whole, the policies and procedures, they do need to be revamped, but they could very well be done by us, by our senior staff and whatnot.
[Scarpelli]: Financial mismanagement, everyone. or retaliation. I don't know. It's one or the other. It seems like every week the firefighters are here and we're bringing up something that the mayor is keeps piling on. So I'm a little disappointed with that, but thank you. And I'm sorry to interrupt.
[Marcellino]: Um, no, it's the only other, um, you know, the only other thing that we know, I do know that she was looking at the mayor was looking at was a big bone of contention with the former chief, which he freed men. I don't know if she had that conversation with the current chief. Would try to let him settle in. But, um, I don't know if she had that conversation with the current chief. I don't know if she had that conversation with the current chief. Would try to let him settle in. But, um. Things like safety, Chief Friedman was not really willing to compromise on, and obviously we aren't as well. So to have another company come in and be paid by the mayor to assess our safety, our services, kind of makes me uncomfortable because if he's drawing a paycheck from her, then it might end up being that it could skew their opinion of what's necessary and what isn't.
[Bears]: Thank you. Any questions for members of the council? I have two, if no one else has any. Number one, you mentioned a grant councilor Scarpelli, do you guys want to talk about that at all? That's good news, can I?
[Clerk]: Please.
[Scarpelli]: Because I know that it's time of the year right now that the firefighters can apply for a grant that they would, I don't know what the agency is, FEMA, that FEMA would allow the city to incorporate a grant for as many members to get you to even to where your staff needs to be, and they would pick up the total cost, correct me if I'm wrong, for three years. for three years. This will make our firefighters whole. And we don't have to wait, we don't have to use a penny of this, this community's funding to make that happen. When I heard I heard that I was so excited. And I just I, you know, it's something it's good that we're hearing some good news. Can you give us an update with that?
[Marcellino]: So we submitted the grant, it was due on Friday, the 12th. We did submit to FEMA, like Councilor Scabali said, it awards, it can award up to however many you ask for. The point of the grant is to bring you up to compliance with certain National Fire Protection Agency regulations. They pick them, and then we find the need based on what they pick for that year. So based on staffing levels right now that we're at 106, we are budgeted for 122. Technically, we should have around 132 based on the National Fire Protection Agency standards. So initially, we had written the grant to try to acquire 20 extra personnel, which would bring us up to standard for the response to a house fire, which is how they count it, and also the staffing on each individual piece of apparatus.
[Scarpelli]: And that would mean with overtime, what would that do to be fully staffed?
[Marcellino]: It would decimate over it would eliminate over time.
[Scarpelli]: Think about that.
[Marcellino]: So currently, we stand we have, like I said, we're budgeted for 122. There's this weird fine line of staffing full you know staffing up to a certain point and then being over that it's like it's better to have pay over pay the overtime than it is to staff the members it's and i'm not sure what that line is but um it's hard to get over that hump into the area where now you're fully staffed and you don't need to pay the overtime it's again i don't know what number that is but this grant is beautiful because if you staff appropriately It pays for the people for three whole years, and then you have to worry about it three years from now. Unfortunately, the way that FEMA awards is they want to see you go from non-compliant, which we're non-compliant right now, to fully compliant, based on the number of people that we work with.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we're asking for 16.
[Marcellino]: We were going to ask for 15 because we have five members that are being hired, like, you know, very shortly. But I was knocked down to 11 to hire only 11 because we couldn't figure out how they were going to be funded three years from now. The purpose for the grant is to spend that three years to be able to find out how you would be able to increase the funding.
[Bears]: So that would get us from 111 to 122.
[Marcellino]: It would have gotten us the 15, well, we have five coming on, so it would have brought us up to what, 120, I think 126 was the magic number at that moment.
[Bears]: Okay, 15 plus, so 20, 106 plus 20. Yes, because we have five being hired. So now it's 106 plus 16.
[Marcellino]: It's five being hired, yeah, and then the 11 additional, I'm sorry, yeah.
[Scarpelli]: So if I can't through the chair, I'm a little confused. So where we put in- We put in for 11.
[Marcellino]: We put in for 11 because it was going to, the mayor specifically said she couldn't fund more than 120. So we were trying to convey that at the end of the grant period was when we would have to worry about it and that there would be some attrition that would happen at the very end of the grant period that would kind of take up for the remainder, but- I don't want to interrupt, but I thought the stipulations, you have to be at that minimum. You have to maintain the current staffing level, which if the grant got awarded, we would be at 111. So doesn't it...
[Scarpelli]: So if we're not asking for the 15, we're asking for 11. So those four can avoid us from getting this grant.
[Marcellino]: No, not that they can void us. It's just that we're kind of undershooting, and it's not as favorable to FEMA. So they're going to find a city or town that's going to overshoot and show in good faith that they're trying to make big changes in the name of safety and well-being of the city. So because we undershot, we're probably, it might not make it through the first round, and it might get red in the second round. But usually what they want to do is first swipe, they take the people who are making the biggest jumps. The additional would have been a big jump for us.
[Bears]: Just so I can get the numbers straight. It sounds to me like this FEMA grant based on the National Fire Protection Standards would be, they want us at 132 firefighters.
[Marcellino]: That would be like the most ideal.
[Bears]: And that would be like the overshooting if we were shooting for 132. we're budgeted for 122, we only have 106. We're bringing on five, which gets us to 111. And she went for another 11, which just brings us to 122, which we're already budgeted for. So this would just be basically using federal money to pay for something we're already budgeting for, not trying to use it to go above the 122. And that's because the concern is that after three years, how do you pay for over 122? Yes. Okay. Yeah, sorry.
[Clerk]: It takes a little bit to get into.
[Bears]: It's not as complicated as how they funded walking court. Let me tell you that.
[Scarpelli]: My last question, if you can, Mr. President. Yeah. So that would mean that the fight, my hope would be that the fight upon will be exempt for any cuts then, because they would have to maintain that number, correct?
[Marcellino]: If we were going to say they do award us, we are not allowed to show any changes in staffing. So we submitted the grant on Friday and it said that the budgeted staffing was 122. So going into, say awards in July, which I think it's the end of July that they start awarding, they're gonna call for us to submit our roster. If our roster or budget is lower than the 122, then they can pull the funding. They can pull the award.
[Scarpelli]: That's good to know. But again, we've heard so many negative things in the last, it's good to hear something positive. I know, Danielle, you've been instrumental with being the union secretary. I know that you've been the busiest person. I know that Bobby and Eddie want to say that they are, but I appreciate all your hard work. Because, because what we're doing with this is we're actually finding alternative ways to fund our firefighters and our fire department for the safety of our community and creative ways and not coming out of the tax base. But so I applaud you guys that that was such that's great news. And
[Marcellino]: It went unsaid last year, excuse me, but union members wrote for another FEMA grant last year at this time for equipment and won it. And they won, it was like something like 70,000 to replace the compressor that fills our SCBA bottles. And then there's several other grants that are kind of, we have one that's coming in that we're waiting to hear about awards. And we have another one that was awarded through the state.
[Scarpelli]: So this is our staff doing all this. We're paying someone over $10,000 to see what's right for you. Just just throwing it out. Yes, thank you.
[Bears]: I just wanted to clarify along those lines when you say we submitted is that the union has submitted or the union work with the chief to submit or the union staff wrote it and the chief submitted I just fired apart the whole fire staff with the exception of the chief is part of the union but we had like firefighters that worked on duty during the day.
[Marcellino]: Yeah, got together did the research and submitted the grants.
[Bears]: Great, and it's on behalf of the fire department.
[Marcellino]: It's on behalf of the fire department, yes.
[Bears]: Thank you.
[Marcellino]: If anybody wants the write-up for the two grants, the two FEMA grants, I'd be happy to send them over. It took a long time, so I want people to read it.
[Bears]: I'll take it.
[Tseng]: Any further comments Councilor Tseng? I just wanted to thank you guys for being so proactive on it. I would love to read the grants. If there's ways for us to support, like if we can send an individual letters or a letter from Council to support the grant process, just let us know and I think we would be really, really happy to help.
[Bears]: We'll send you our budget ordinance too.
[Scarpelli]: See what else you can do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's see what else, what other magic they can perform. Vice President Cog, what do you look like in school building?
[Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. Thank you again for being here. And I know from my other line of work, just a glimmer of how much work writing these grant applications is. And I know this was a whole, truly a whole crew effort. So thank you for that. It is really interesting to get a glimpse into. This other side of the work of administrating the fire department and just to echo what Councilors and Councilors are probably put out there you know this council is no stranger to putting together. that we can do to bolster the application. I think, of course, I'm sure that in a perfect world, we'd all like to see, you know, overshooting, getting up to that, you know, maximum recommended number and using those three years to figure out how to stay there. But in lieu of that, you know, it's my hope that hopefully we get great news at the end of July and in that intervening three years is when we're, you know, getting to a place of better resilience with the city's budget so that we can further escalate in a reliable way. So thank you again.
[Bears]: Thank you. Any further comments?
[Marcellino]: I'd just like to say our staffing is incredibly low right now at 106. It's impossible to get through shifts basically without overtime at this point, which is exhausting for firefighters. I mean, you know, everybody, there was a lot of talk about our overtime budget and earlier in the year. And I understand that it looks and sounds great to, you know, everybody's getting overtime. But the reality of it is, is that that means that we're working 24 hour shifts, and then working additional little shifts after that, that means we don't go home for 36 hours. And we have so much overtime that with the old chief, we actually had to sit down and discuss one of our own policies to be able to bridge the gap because we couldn't get members, people weren't signing, weren't taking overtime because they either had commitments at home and everything. So that means that we have to hold members, we have to hold firefighters beyond their shifts, normal shifts.
[Bears]: Mandatory overtime.
[Marcellino]: So then we had to actually accommodate the idea of all right, well, it's more it's actually healthier to ask a firefighter if they would want to work an additional fourth shift, then force a member to come on, you know, work three shifts, excuse me. So. So we kind of we talked to the chief, we all agreed that it was better to like offer this out and let somebody work an additional shift. So that means we have 40, we have some members that have worked 48 hours straight, but you don't go home, you're in the station for 48 hours. It's a long, it's a long haul at the end of the day. So at the end of the two days, so you know, trying to get more personnel to be able to increase staffing and support daily just daily shifts is huge, let alone the safety of the members on the fire ground, you know, responding to fires and whatnot in the city.
[Bears]: After the next five coming through, is there any more pipeline updates that you've received?
[Marcellino]: I don't, we don't know about the hiring now.
[Bears]: Got it. All right. Any further discussion? We do have one person on Zoom. I'll go to Maureen on Zoom. Name and address for the record please.
[Maureen Dunham]: Are you done on 55 Ellsworth Street Medford mask. Um, I broached this subject when I spoke a while ago, and Thank you so very much to the firefighters and the union for researching this grant money. And so my question is, between the fire department, the police department, the MWRA, the MBTA, schools aside, I don't know who we could approach, is there any one individual working in the administration or a group of individuals working in the administration to look at or investigate those grants that are out there that the city of Medford would qualify? Councilman Scarpelli keeps talking about you know, transparency and, you know, we have spoken already about, you know, outsourcing jobs that could be filled within the city. And it seems to me like we're spending close to a million dollars a year, if not more, paying outside city solicitors, outside water resource people, and again, outsourcing the job to look at and evaluate the current Medford Fire Department and its needs. There's a lot of money out there. FEMA is a federal agency. And once again, I ask if there's anyone looking on the current administration at local state government and federal government grants that we could call upon or apply for to solve some of the money issues within the city of Medford. Thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you, Maureen. There are a number of people on the city staff who look at different grants. We have a CDBG, which is Community Development Block Grant, and other grants manager in the planning department. There's a federal funds manager in the finance department. And the city actually has been historically very successful at bringing in outside grant funding. And I super appreciate hearing. It's a testament what you just said. You've been successful in the past. You're hoping to be successful again. Oftentimes, departments are looking for grants in their specific fields. Chief Buckley's been up here before from the police department talking about grants that people on his team have looked at. But, you know, in general, these grants are for specific purposes and are meant for specific projects, not to supplement the city's need for operating funds. So that's one of the major issues. I think that sounds like one of the issues you ran into here is that, you know, this grant is ideally to go beyond what the city is doing on operating funds. So it's while the city has brought in a lot of grants, and if you go to the city finance department page and you look at what's called the ACFR, comprehensive financial report. You can see there's a line in there and you and in some years, the city's brought in as many as 10 million 15 million in grants, but they're generally one off like the 2 million brought in for the car park project or, you know, money brought in to hire specific staff for specific studies or specific times and not to supplement. the general fund budget. The only money that comes to us to supplement the general fund budget is from the state Chapter 90 program, the UGA, which is the worst name, Unrestricted General Government Aid, and Chapter 70 school funding, which are generally the only thing out there where we as a city get money to fund the general fund that doesn't come from local taxes and fees.
[Maureen Dunham]: Could I take the opportunity to thank you, President Bears, for focusing a lot on the creosol road MBTA ties that are out there. As someone already spoke to, it's a known carcinogen. And thank you for your effort there. It's really appreciated by the city.
[Scarpelli]: Thank you.
[Bears]: I appreciate it. Hopefully, we can actually solve this. Any further comments, questions on the paper before us? Mr. Jones.
[Jones]: Yes, sir. Bob Jones, 5 St. Mary Street. It's amazing. We have a fire station on Salem Street that's been out of service for over a year. We have a sidewalk and ramp area in front of West Medford Station that I've been writing up for five years. But all of a sudden, we get a consultant that's going to come into the fire department and revamp our fire department. completely unnecessary, as we just discussed. We're at the lowest point we've been in my 23 years on the job at 106 members. The money should be going to a firefighter. We have plenty of repairs that need to be made. There is much institutional knowledge on the fire department that can do the work of this consultant. We have policies and procedures that get updated every day. There's something that needs to be updated. It's pushed out by the chief of the administration of the training division. This is completely unnecessary. This goes along with the study route. Let's do another study. And if the study says what the union said, and everybody in the fight department said, I don't know if they're going to listen. City administration maybe will listen if they hire somebody and they say the same things that we do. But I think the report will be buried. I'd love to get a copy of it if at all possible. The other thing that I don't know if kind of glossed over it's just a Marcelino said that if we went for another four firefighters for this grant, we'd have a much better opportunity to get past the first round of funding, but the city was reluctant to do so. So that would be much more beneficial for us to go that route, the grant has been submitted. And as we spoke about. Many times, the city, in my opinion, has been saying this for 20 years, should have full-time grant writers on staff to write these grants and bring money back to the city. As you mentioned, Zach, it sounds like there are other departmental members that are doing these grants, as well as their other job, as Sister Marcelino has done. something that it's there's a learning curve to it it's something that you need to research and get good at so if we're doing one-offs it's not as beneficial it's not as as easy for somebody to do as somebody that would be doing it all the time they'll get that grant writing uh learning curve out of the way and they'll be able to do it and be more successful So again, I just, again, wasting money on this consultant for something that we could do ourselves. I appreciate your time, thanks.
[Scarpelli]: So if I can, Mr. President, if I can. Councilor Scarpelli. I apologize. And this is what I was trying to get to. So, because I want to make this as a motion, if it's true, especially coming to budget season. So our chances, if we went to those other four firefighters and we went full board with this, because this is what I was told, is that we would have a substantially better opportunity by doing that. Correct. Okay, so in a form of a motion, I'd like to ask the mayor, why wouldn't we look at four more firefighters to make us whole? If we can do that, Mr. President, because as we get into the budget season, and we lose a huge opportunity because we didn't go all the way. We went with We went with what 11 we said, and we needed 15 to make get us to that point. And we would eliminate all that money for overtime. We would we would have it paid for for three years. Okay, I thought that's what I thought. And that's why I'm a little perplexed right now.
[Marcellino]: So one of the biggest points that going like right now with this month being budget season, if our budget drops below the 122 and we should get awarded by FEMA and they see that we went below 122, we are going to lose the money. They will say that the city is not invested in the personnel and they're not going to award the bad behavior of cutting personnel. And this wasn't like submitted in the interest of, you know, trying to hold anybody's feet to the fire or anything like that. This is, we need staffing, like we desperately need staffing. We are not showing up under compliance to a two, I think we call it a two and a half story wood front. So any of the houses that are just single family homes that are two stories and an attic, we are not showing up under compliance to those fires. Our staff on the fire trucks every day is under compliance. We're supposed to have four and we only have three on every piece. So if God forbid something ever happened and they come in and they do the investigation afterwards, which they always do, the first thing they say is that our staffing was not up to compliance.
[Jones]: Senate PA 1710, they do have standards that they go by and Senate PA 1710 is what you're speaking about. It's a very complicated process. This grant will go through multiple rounds and to make it past the first round is obviously your first hurdle. Had those four more firefighters, you got a better opportunity to get past that first round. Where it stands now,
[Scarpelli]: So through the chair, as a council, if we can have our president send a message to the mayor, can we adjust those numbers? Unfortunately, it's too late.
[Marcellino]: Once FEMA closes, it's like they don't accept anything after the fact.
[Bears]: I mean, I think, sorry, and I'll go to Councilor Kiley. I think we're almost around the horseshoe here to the point that I think I'll speak for myself and for no one else. One of the reasons I ran for office here is because this city makes penny wise pound foolish decisions all the time because there's not enough money. And that's where we come around, right? we don't wanna submit 126, because then we might have to pay for four in three years. Even though we get three years of money, we're worried about paying for four, three years from now, because we don't have the money to pay for the four, three years from now. And that's the larger question here, right? Like we can write grants, we can try to bring in more money, we can do these questions, but if we're constantly in the position of, and that's like saying, we've all talked about here tonight, that's if it doesn't go down more. We're hoping that we'll stay at 122 for three years, because at least then we won't be more penalized. And that's where my frustration really comes in, in the long run. I can understand both positions, because the city has never raised more. The city's never, since 2 and 1 half in 1980 said, when I believe when we've talked about there were 150 firefighters back then, and now we're down to 140, 130, now we're down to 122. There's nothing in the last 40 years of city government evidence that the city's gonna say, okay, we're gonna bring the money back to go back to at least 126 or 132. So the mayor says, oh, well, and I mean, it comes down to this too, right? It sounds to me like that's not gonna be the, even if we do go back and ask for more, that's not gonna be the first thing we go back and ask for. So we're not gonna put in the grant and then we're never gonna get the grant, right? I don't think he'll be saying anything to say that we've disagreed on things, you and I, Mr. Jones here. People usually do. And when we usually do, and I disagree with all of my fellow councillors sometimes and members of the public, but this is where all of this stuff comes back to the core of it. financial mismanagement you're right well well it's it's we can say it's if you want to call financial mismanagement then it's 40 years of financial mismanagement and and a set of bad practices that this administration the previous administration and the administration before it held and i'm willing to i'm willing to to go down for that one you know but it's a it's a lack of imagination and understanding and and going and saying we need more money than we're raising. If we're never going to raise it, then we're never going to invest. And then you're stuck in these positions where it's actually cheaper to put $10,000 outside than bring someone inside or do the $122,000 than the $126,000. And now I've gone on too long from the chair and probably said too much of an opinion from the chair, so I'm going to stop. Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thank you. So I'm sad that we cannot have any impact over that, and it's too late. And so all I'm saying is to you guys, but also to anyone else, don't hesitate to come to us. If we can put pressure and make the difference between that FEMA grant being in a better position to pass, then reach out. And secondly, I really wanted to talk a little bit about this question of mismanagement. because I think it is raised all the time, the question of wasting money. And I'm curious about it, and I want to learn more. I want to ensure that we know in terms of transparency and that the community knows how money is being spent. But I do also think there's another question that we haven't been talking about as much about recently, which is being able to the fire department. We have run departments where sorry, um, support being supportive of unions. We have many unions in the city that do not get contracts for years. Um my opinion of what has been happening this year with the fire department is that it really has demoralized a fan of what has been going on between the mayor and the fire department, as I said at one of the previous meetings. So I am interested in understanding, I really question how you guys can have a consulting firm where you're already looking into this, the mayor is doing separate consulting firm and the wisdom of that. And from a union perspective, that it seems like you're, many combined years of experience is not being looked to at all. You know, I have to say that I do really question the wisdom of this, and that I want to be supportive of the fire union, and I will leave it at that.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan. Any further discussion?
[Jones]: I think we all want the same things. We want to adequately protect the citizens' property and benefit. That's what we're here for, that's what we advocate for, and that's what we're trying to do here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Scarpelli]: Danielle Masolino, you should be credited for what you're doing and put on a pedestal because this is exactly what, no matter what the junk you guys have been dealing with, no matter how angry everybody's getting, you're sitting down at a desk and doing real work to make a difference. And sometimes I feel like I sit here and I yell and we get mad at each other and then you go home and you say, what did I just accomplish? We didn't do anything. But I want to make sure that I acknowledge for one, I know I feel that my Councilors feel the same thing that you're doing. they're doing what we should all be doing, and that's putting your nose down and going to work and getting it done. And I just hope that in the end, we're sitting here and we name the new Marcelino Fire Station after you, because the whole staff is going to be staffed by your grants. That's my hope. So, but thank you. She was hired on the same program.
[Clerk]: Oh, really?
[Scarpelli]: Oh, wow. That's awesome. Okay. Well, again, so thank you. The chief didn't want to put in for them. appreciate that. Thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you very much. We appreciate the time in the effort as always, and I think, you know, just to echo what Councilor Callahan said. We have so much work to do, and when we are taking our time and our energy at cross purposes rather than in the same direction, that's a disservice to getting the work done. So I think, you know, we can agree to disagree, but if we're moving in the same direction, and I appreciate that that is happening, that many of us are trying to do that, and if we could all do it better, we'd be in a much better position. So thank you for your work.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. Thank you.
[Scarpelli]: Is there a motion to send the question to the mayor, if I can, on the reasoning for that, why we didn't move forward with those four other firefighters to give us a better opportunity to achieve this FEMA grant?
[Bears]: Okay, let me just get that down. Motion to request answer from mayor on FEMA grant being submitted for 11 firefighters instead of 15 firefighters. Correct.
[SPEAKER_03]: For better outcome grant process.
[Bears]: I don't know why she wouldn't do the four unless she has a secret she's not telling us. All right, so on the motion by Councilor Scarpelli, as amended by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Madam Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callaghan. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Leming.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tang. Mr. McGiven.
[Bears]: Yes 70 from him. The negative motion passes 24-079 resolution request update on the crystal Campbell Peace Garden. Councilor Scarpelli.
[Scarpelli]: The I just wanted to We're hearing some issues with the Crystal Campbell fountain. I know that there have been some movement. I guess they tested the computer to get the fountain moving. And we're hoping to get it going for yesterday's marathon. Unfortunately, it didn't it didn't come to fruition. There is talking to Mr. McGiven talking to former Councilors, there is a concern. And I hope to be a mediation immediate for that for this process that When Mayor McGlynn did the fundraising for the Crystal Campbell Peace Garden, he made sure that no matter what his existence would be in Medford, he would leave it into a trust with an organization that would oversee the funding. because I think the fear was it would raise all this money, and then when the city needed in bad times, it will be forgotten. And there's some confusion. I've talked to Mr. McGiven that there was words that, there was word going back and forth that the reason why they couldn't do it is because they weren't releasing the funding. I talked to former Councilors that said the funding would have been released, but they wanted more of a detailed itemized breakdown for what that funding is, because that's what the trust asked for. Um, and unfortunately, that didn't happen. So I believe the city move forward to make the changes needed to fix it on their own. The other piece of that is what people are really upset about when you've been around, you saw the original garden with the fountain on the lights on, and then all of the sunflowers and crystals name. She loves sunflowers. and they planted flowers. I mean, it was an amazing area and it was so peaceful and a lot of people really took ownership of that. So there's been some, there's something going on between the people running the trust and the relationship with the mayor and trying to have trust there. So I talked to Mr. McGiven to reach out that if they want me or any of the council to be involved to try to mediate this, to try to make sure that ultimately the trust is there to fix the garden and keep the garden, the planting of the plants funded through the trust and the city also understanding that just do your due diligence, presents what they're asking for if it's three quotes, they know what they're paying for. So legally, they can lease that money. And I think that's what that's where we are. So we are close. I know that I did talk to a few dbw members that were there when they were testing the computer for the fountain. But I I think we're still a ways away before seeing what that garden deserves to be with the lights, the fountain, the colorful water that changes colors, and then the garden that goes around. I think that's important. So thank you for your time, Mr. President. I would ask for meeting with Mr. McGiven, myself in the trust, or anybody else in the council would like to join us to try to find a resolution to do what this trust was intended to do, and that's keep the garden in Crystal's honor, because we can't forget that. She was a special person. Her family was great people. My wife ran the Boston Marathon for five years in her name with her friends from UMass Boston. And that garden did mean a lot to their family. In the worst time of their lives, the city of Medford gave them something that they could always go to and feel that crystal spirit was still there. So there's gotta be something done and we have to figure it out. Let's figure that out. Thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to refer the paper to the DPW Commissioner, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Callahan, Councilor Saint.
[Callahan]: So I just had a question. It seems that no one really is in charge of making sure that this happens. No one at the trust is in charge, no one at DPW is in charge, and this sort of has just gone on because nobody's been focusing on it. Is there any way to get somebody to, it's their responsibility to focus on it, or is that, you know?
[Scarpelli]: I think that's what we're asking for. We're asking for a sit down with it, whether it's mediation, where we're setting, because I think there's a lack of trust on the trust side because of the lack of support from central administration. It's not Tim, I think Tim's doing the best he can. But I think maybe another elective fit body that comes into place says, hey, let's support this trust and make sure the funding and the processes used the way it was intended to. So I think, like I said, I think Mayor McGlynn did this for the sole purpose of the money not disappearing and being used somewhere else. And people forget that people actually donated thousands of dollars to go directly to that. So, you know, and it's important to see that last year was the 10th year anniversary. And I know that family members and friends from UMass and the running team, they really wanted to be here to do the celebration to kick off the marathon, and they couldn't do it last year. So it was super disappointing. So, and there's a lot of people put a lot of hard work to make sure that happened in a short period of time. If you remember, I mean, at the time, as soon as this happened, me and McGlynn really started moving quickly and getting funding for, you know, third parties to come in and donate a lot of money to make this happen. So thank you. Thank you. Tell her say.
[Tseng]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli, for putting this on the agenda and going beyond that and doing the research for our council. What happened on one Boston day so many years ago was such a tragedy in our community. And I really felt it very strongly. It's something that we were around for. And we created this wonderful thing to memorialize Crystal Campbell. you know, to let it go by the wayside is such a, you know, honestly, it's kind of a disgrace on our part. I, you know, I think a lot of residents and I were, you know, have been, you know, this is one of those issues where people ask once in a while, and it slips through the cracks when we don't unify our forces on it. You know, the way that we did when this was first made. I remember actually, even for the dedication, I was in the string ensemble playing for it. Um, I, you know, a lot of residents have been asking, and I've been wondering too about the trust and, you know, what was going on in that end. It's super helpful that, you know, you've given us context for that. And so, um, you know, I think this is just the thing of accountability. It's, it's, if you, you know, I think the rules are written out pretty clearly, and as long as we hold ourselves accountable to it, as long as city administration is holding that trust, we should be able to do it. It shouldn't be a problem. It shouldn't be a problem, right? and evidently we've fallen flat. And so I thank you for your efforts. I totally support this. As much as we can do as a council to build, to be the ones who are accountable, I would support that.
[Bears]: Thank you. Thank you. On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro to refer to the DPW Commissioner. Any further comment? Any comment by members of the public? Mr. Casta, any name and address for the record, please?
[Castagnetti]: Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for your time, sir. You're welcome. How much time do I have?
[Bears]: You need to buy me one of those.
[Castagnetti]: I hope everyone had a great Patriots Day yesterday. Because if it wasn't for those Patriots, we wouldn't have a democratic republic, if we can keep it. Yesterday, I walked by the fountain. I didn't see any H2O water action. I went to the festivities at the old cemetery. And it was a sad thing that happened to me on my way to this forum. First off, last November, I was here questioning the councilors, but they didn't answer because they did not have to, they said. But City Councilor Caraviello told us the city, that the city has funds in place to fix the Crystal Campbell waterfall. It's not just for her, it's for the other three dead people and the hundreds of injured and maimed people for life from all over the world. But sadly, after many years, the Marathon Memorial Fountain is still not working. It's a damn shame on who. I need names. McGlynn spent lots of hours, he gathered tens of thousands of dollars, and I guess he started a trust. Well, maybe McGlynn, Michael, can come here and tell us what he did. He should be concerned. and you can tell us how to rectify this problem. Hopefully, the developers of that font were not that stupid to have it to a point in order to replace whatever the issue is, computer, the pump, Van Halen, whatever. But hopefully, you don't have to start ripping up cement. This is typical of Method USA 0215. This is a damn shame. Can someone tell me how this is gonna get rectified, anyone.
[Scarpelli]: In my discussions with everyone, the trust is in place. There's a person in charge of the trust that is in charge of all the money, that has criteria set in place that when the funding needs to be addressed for the planting of the flowers, any upkeep of the fountain, that the city who's in charge of the site presents the trust with a breakdown, a financial breakdown, that's reasonable to what the trust rules were, so they can then cut them the check. The problem is, I think there's, I think the person you gotta talk to is go across the hall, talk to the mayor's office, and ask what their role is with this, Mr. Castagnetti. So I'm gonna give you 30 more seconds, but if you can, So I think that that's what I was told. So working with Mr. McGiven, he's been working his tail off on his own trying to find funding and city funds. There are funds though there. So I'm hoping that we can get I'm not going to stop until this is done. So I now that I've been invested in it, I'm hoping to meet with the trust and sit down with them. I know that Councilor Caraviello has worked his tail off you know, probably he has to try to make this happen, but for some reason, you know, you have money there and you have people that are willing to spend it, but it has to be spent in a certain way. There's some non-transparent people, I should say, that maybe don't want to go that route. So, but that's the issue right now. It's putting people in a room. And if it's me and Tim and the trust people and saying, okay, how do we make this work? Bring in, you know, a mediator to say, how do we make this work? Because ultimately, they don't want to release the funds because this is their funds. And this is the rules that they were entrusted with when they were given control of these funds. So and I can't blame them. This is this is what they signed on for. So I'm hoping to get it done, Mr. Kessler. I promise I want it. I want it done myself.
[Castagnetti]: So it's a damn shame. Can we get Mr. Ask Mr. McGlynn, Michael, to come down here and tell us the real score? You know, Maybe he still has the clout after being here for like two decades, you know? Can you reach out to him? Yeah. And I'm not a big computer person, but if the computer's the issue, why can't we just have the fountain run as a Boston Public Garden fountain? We don't have to computerize each little jet. Don't make it so complicated.
[Bears]: Thank you. On the motion of Councilor Sarpelli to refer, Mr. Leonard, do you want to jump in on this one?
[Orlando]: In addition to the mechanics and getting the mechanical problems resolved, that would happen if we had pride. I recall a number of years ago when that event happened. I recall being out over there, a major event, the public was all there. Lee C. Hughes, I think from Channel 4, was present. The mayor was there. Mike McGlynn spoke about it. So when I hear things about the past administrations, I look at the things that those past administrations accomplished, things that caused the city to feel proud about itself. And there was a following event when it was opened. There were hundreds, if not a thousand people out there. Lee C. Hughes was back again. People felt pride. And if you felt the pride, the mechanics of getting that money would happen like that. Thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you. On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Callaghan, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro, to refer to DPW. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callaghan. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Leming.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Bears?
[Bears]: Yes. Seventy per minute on the negative motion passes. 24-080, Personnel Ordinance Amendment, Supervisor of Water and Sewer, to Honorable President and Members of the Medford City Council. Dear Mr. President and Councilors, I respectfully request and recommend the City Council approve the following amendment. The revised ordinance is Chapter 66, entitled Personnel, Article 2, entitled Reserved. the city's classification and compensation plan, formally included as Article 2, Section 6631 to 6640, by adopting the following language. The language of PW 18 shall be amended to remove the following position, and the language of PW 19 be amended to include the following position. Supervisor of Water and Sewer, the city has had this position posted at PW 18 for months and has not received any qualified applications. This proposed classification change would not require a supplemental appropriation. Respectfully submitted. This is a proposal to move the supervisor of water and sewer position from PW 18 in the city's compensation plan to PW 19. The justification is that this position has been posted since the beginning of this position was included in the fiscal 24 budget and posted for months and there have not been qualified applicants. And as noted, this would not require supplemental appropriation. Is there any discussion on the paper? Vice President Collins to present. I'll go to Vice President Collins and Councilor Scarpelli. Thank you.
[Collins]: Thank you, President Barras. you know, we had a robust discussion about the water and sewer department earlier in the evening. I think the compensation and classification study was brought up. Personally, as one Councilor, I'm very much looking forward to the season whenever that arrives, when we can take a holistic look and see the analysis that we know is being worked on with the Collins Center in consultation with the city staff. to get that overall picture of. We know that some of these roles have salaries that are no longer competitive with our neighboring communities, maybe have not been for a long time. The point of this, the ultimate point of making sure that our positions are kind of accurately and up-to-date compensation-wise salaried, is to make sure that we are as competitive as any other municipality at attracting the best talent. because of the downstream effects that that has on our residents. All that to say, it's not my preference to do these CAF changes one at a time, but we also know that this position is incredibly critical. This is a point of inflection for our water infrastructure, and I don't want us to lose any time at all. Even if it's just a couple of weeks, that could make the difference. If making this position more competitive will bring somebody on faster, I think we should do that. So I'm gonna motion to approve for first reading.
[Bears]: The motion of Councilor Collins to approve the first reading seconded by Councilor Callahan. Councilor Scarpelli.
[Scarpelli]: I was informed by the union representatives representation that I don't know if we without legal representation here to guide us. position is an arbitration. And it's being heard in arbitration because the position was a union position. And it's posted as a non union position. So I don't as much as I wanted, and I was going to follow up with, you know, also asking for an increase in the calf, if this is where we're doing it for the city solicitor, so we can get to a rate that it's going to be appealing for someone because it's obviously not working and this is the mayor controlling the dialogue everyone again so she sees the need here but as city solicitor she controls the dialogue kp law so she's not going to raise the cap we we did request that as part of the budget right no i i know that was the mayor replied to me in an email that she will get us a paper to increase that cap Right, I know, but what I'm saying is we asked for that, we still haven't seen it. This is an issue with the water department, but again, I think the biggest question right now is if we can wait till the next meeting to move this forward, get some legal representation on this, because I don't, if it's an arbitration, that's going against my beliefs as a union supporter, and I can't, if we vote on this, I couldn't support it. and then we'd have to wait. Instead, I'd ask the table for one week until we get some clarity from legal about voting on something that's in arbitration that is non-union, but was once in union position. It's haven't been negotiated out. I think it's a slippery slope for us. So I know that the vote is in place, but I would maybe think of holding it off for the next meeting and getting some clarity. That would be my recommendation. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Is that a motion or an amendment? The motion's already in. I would just, my, if... We can amend the motion. Yeah, I would motion to table it to the next meeting to get clarity for legal representation about voting on an arbitration. There's, Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: I'm happy to defer to other suggestions at this time, but what's on my mind is, I said earlier, I feel a sense of urgency around this. I would prefer not to wait two weeks to take the first vote. I feel like an advantage here is that we can ask for information and if it's relevant, we We have the third reading to take an additional vote on.
[Bears]: Sorry. So I, since there were too much on the floor, I wanted to give enough time for you to kind of just suss out if there was a compromise motion here, given that there isn't a compromise motion, there's a motion of the table on the floor that is undebatable and takes precedence. So I want to cut debate off at this point. On the motion of the table of Councilor Scarpelli, is there a second? A second by Councilor Callahan. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Councilor VP Collins? No. Councilor Lazzaro? No. Councilor Leming?
[Olapade]: No.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scapelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng?
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: President Villescaz? Aye.
[Bears]: Let me tell you something. If you say yes, I'm getting dinner by 50 people. No, but that's because we can keep talking about it. So let's keep going. The motion fails. Three affirmative, four negative. Motion fails. Councilor Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: I'd be happy to, I actually don't know if there's a way to attach a B paper to an ordinance, but I would like the information on this union issue attached to the, sorry, I don't actually know if there's a way to attach a B paper to this particular vote, like we do with resolutions. I would like the answer to Councilor Scarpellioli's question. I would prefer to vote on this tonight, but I'd be happy to put your question as a B paper to the vote, if that is an option.
[SPEAKER_02]: We could vote yes on this one. Would you vote yes on one of the three readings? I would take it. I would vote no. I would wait for my three readings. Okay. All right.
[Bears]: No, I hear you and I just wanted I just didn't motion to table is a tough instrument that this allows debate but I so I had to handle it procedurally. My, it sounds like I'm the swing on this. My personal preference would be, given the fact that there's not a representative of the administration here tonight to answer our questions, that we request a representative of the administration to appear at our next meeting with the answer to this question. So that's just my personal preference. You know, I would tend to agree with you, Councilor Collins. I don't know that there's a way to, it sounds like there's general agreement that we would advance this pending the answer to that question.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[Bears]: Is there a motion on the floor?
[Tseng]: motion to invite Council to the next meeting to answer Councilor Scarpelli's question and to table this until that next meeting.
[Bears]: Okay, motion to, maybe we can get the answer in advance. Yeah, so motion to request an answer on the question, on Councilor Scarpelli's question about voting on this while the position is in arbitration and request representative administration at the next meeting and put this on the table for April 30th.
[Announcer]: I'm sorry.
[Bears]: Yeah, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know. No, I heard you.
[Bears]: So on the motion of Councilor Tseng to, um, request a response from Council on on the question about this position being an arbitration, and if that impacts our vote. Seconded by seconded by Councilor Callahan. Madam Clerk, please
[SPEAKER_15]: Vice President Collins? No. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scapelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng?
[Bears]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: President Bears? Yes.
[Bears]: Six in the affirmative, one in the negative. The motion passes. The request is made to the administration for an answer to the question and presence at our next meeting, and the item is tabled until our April 30th meeting. Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Motion to take paper 21-057 off the table for third reading. That's the leaf floor ordinance.
[Bears]: Motion by Vice President Collins to take paper 21-057 off the table and approve for third reading. Seconded by.
[Scarpelli]: Second.
[Bears]: Leaf floor ordinance is eligible for third reading. And the motion of Councilor Collins to take it off the table and approve for third reading. Seconded by.
[Tseng]: Second. Do we want to add the ordinance?
[Bears]: It's not eligible till next month. Oh, sorry. You're good. uh, on that motion of Council Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Tseng to take from third from the table and approve for third reading. Any discussion? Any discussion in the chambers or on zoom by members of the public? I see a hand raised. I will go to Norman Kaplan. Name and address for the record, please.
[Norman]: Norman Kaplan, Edlin Way. I'm not sure exactly procedurally where we are with this draft ordinance. I was here at the last meeting. I got to speak after midnight, express some thoughts about it. And not really sure whether the reading encapsulates the exact language and wording that I was briefed on when I was here before. But I would like to emphasize a couple of points that I did make to see whether or not these can be incorporated in the final ordinance.
[Bears]: just procedure, Norman, where we are at, uh, the language as amended and approved for first reading on March 12th was advertised in the local newspaper on April 4th, and that was, uh, you know, that was, that is a legal requirement under mass general law that we, that we put the text of the ordinance as approved for first reading, um, out, uh, in the advertising. And now we would be approving for third reading. My understanding of the process is that if we were to amend that third reading, we would have to then start the process again, uh, reapprove it for first reading and re advertise it.
[Norman]: exactly which newspaper was it advertised in because I'm not aware of any newspaper that's servicing our community.
[Bears]: That was advertised in the Medford transcript and Somerville Medford and Somerville transcript and journal, or what's left of it.
[Norman]: I say, well, I think it would. I I think something as important to this probably should have received more widespread publication. But be that as it may, I appreciate the information you've given me. And will there be a further publication when you talk about a third reading? Or is there going to be a further publication?
[Bears]: So this vote would be a vote to put this in the ordinances and creating an ordinance and acting an ordinance. So this is the vote for enactment. I would then go to the mayor for her signature of veto and or neither. And if she signs it or does not veto it, then we would start the process of getting that up on the city's muni code website. at which point, at some point in the future, basically it'll go up as its own ordinance and then it will be codified in the city's code of ordinances online.
[Norman]: And what if the mayor should wish to make some revisions of her own, taking into account perhaps some commentary or suggestions from the public? What would be the consequence of that?
[Bears]: The mayor could veto the ordinance which would return it to this council for further consideration. We could override her veto. We could amend the ordinance and begin the process again to go to first reading and then an advertisement and then the third reading again.
[Norman]: So actually to get some further improvements on the current ordinance, language. We're really only talking about a delay of perhaps a few months.
[Bears]: Yeah, it would be so it would probably be back to us. mid-May and then have to go out again for another month, so probably would be mid-June or July when it would be completed?
[Norman]: Yeah. I mean, I'm probably the last person in Medford that would like to see any delay in the enactment of a leaf blower restrictive ordinance. However, I think we really only have one chance to get this right. Because once it's enacted, I'm sure we're talking years, if at all, that there would ever be any revision of it. So to have a misstep here after all this time, I mean, I've been working on this for four years. To make a misstep here that would be preventable seems to me to be somewhat tragicomic, actually. And to be quick and blunt, I'm personally not satisfied with the extent of the restrictions, as I've said in some of my dialogue already. I think I will have to have a dialogue with the mayor. I understand that the council can veto her. If she decides to veto, we can override it or decide to incorporate some further revisions in it. I think I'll just let it stand like that. I mean, I don't think I have really any other choice at this point.
[Bears]: Thank you, Mr. Kaplan. I appreciate your input and comments on the process. And certainly if the mayor were to come back to the council with suggestions, I'm sure that the council would consider them in good faith.
[Norman]: Okay, thank you and good night.
[Bears]: Thank you. On the motion. of Councilor Collins to approve her third reading as seconded by Councilor Saing. Any further comment from members of the public or members of the Council? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor CALLAHAN. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Leming.
[Olapade]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scapelli. Councilor Tseng.
[Bears]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: President Bears.
[Bears]: Yes, 60 affirmative, one of the negative. The motion passes and the ordinance is ordained. Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I'd like to put forward a motion to receive and place on file the following papers that are under reports due slash deadlines. I can read them off. It's 17-606. 20-086, 22-007, 22-009, and 22-039. That motion is to receive and place all of those on file.
[Bears]: Vice President Collins to take paper 17-606, 20-086, 22-007, 22-009, and 22-039. Second. And receive and place on file. Seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor CASSIDY.
[Scarpelli]: Councilor CASSIDY. Councilor CASSIDY.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor CASSIDY. Councilor CASSIDY.
[Scarpelli]: You do that to Sylvia?
[Bears]: Yes, six in the affirmative, one very much in the negative.
[Announcer]: The motion passes.
[Bears]: If I may, the motion passes. I did receive a communication. One of the emailers in public comment did specifically ask me to read the email out loud. I'm going to read this email out loud. It is not my words, but it was a specific request. The subject is civility and professionalism in city council meetings. Dear President Vares, Vice President Collins, Councilor Callahan, Councilor Tseng, and Councilor Leming, I'm ready to express my appreciation for your amazing work as city councilors that represent the trust our electorate has placed in you. Your professionalism in handling the mob approach that a vocal minority who are attending some of the city council meetings is very deeply appreciated. Please keep up your excellent work. I would appreciate your reading my brief email out loud in the next council meeting. Sincerely, Munir Jumanis, PhD, physicist, educator. Thank you all.
[Scarpelli]: Mr. President, if I can?
[Bears]: Yes, Councilor Scarpelli.
[Scarpelli]: I wasn't gonna say anything. And I think that I read those two letters and I can understand the behavior of some members of the community that act so inappropriate that they cross that line. And I don't stand for that myself, but I don't want to lump in the members that come to this podium that have passion for a topic. and make it seem like, I think like what was said earlier, that they get lumped in together. I think that personally, I've talked to some people and people have reached out to me and for one, I want to apologize because somebody reached out to me and said, Councilor Scarpelli, you're so abrasive and so aggressive that you actually scare me. It's my personality but I can also see that so I would apologize, but I also think that we have Councilors here tonight that need to publicly apologize the constituents, because of their behavior. And I think that, you know, what's good for one should be good for all because I think some of our fellow Councilors maybe not understanding or feeling nervous and maybe showing, you know, a giggling or disrespectful manner to people at the at the podium. And to be honest with you, it's not to those ignorant people that do come up and cross that line. A lot of times you're seeing this behavior to people that just express themselves openly and have that right there. So I said to myself, if this is going to be brought up, I'm going to apologize that if I offend anybody, because at the times that I speak, with what they put as abrasive manner. It's who I am as a person, I'm a loud person. But if you're offended, I apologize that you're offended by the way I present. But at the same time, I would hope that my fellow colleagues that were praised tonight in these letters that also behaved in a manner that isn't isn't truly what should be expressed by a city councilor. I would hope they apologize openly to the public like they've done privately, just so everybody's on the same page and everybody is expressing that type of behavior and acknowledging and saying, okay, let's move forward from here and understand that, you know, nodding your head, not paying attention. Because one thing I really tried to be totally honest with everybody, since I started as elected official, We've had some pretty colorful people at that podium. And I've seen some behaviors from some of my fellow Councilors that they would stand up and walk out. No matter how much you disrespect that person, getting up and walking out and disrespecting that person is a total disgrace for the seat. And I would never do that. Whether I believe in what you're saying or don't believe what you're saying, I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna listen to that person. Now, there has been, you know, I've seen it myself that Councilors make motions that could be represented as disrespectful. So, like the person who wrote the letters, I don't disagree with them. I think that there are people that do cross the line, but that podium's there for everybody. I know that was said the other night in subcommittee. That podium's set up for everybody to speak their mind. Now, when they cross that line, they got to be held accountable. I think that's something we need to talk about. But in the same breath, we should all take ownership of some pretty tough couple of weeks. I mean, we've had some pretty intense weeks. And there were things that we can all agree to disagree with, but still have the mature and responses and to give the respect to the people that are at the podium. So again, that's what I feel. I appreciate the letter, even though they didn't put my name in it. So I'm very hurt right now. But it's okay. I'm going to have Dean to write me a letter next week.
[Bears]: But thank you. Thank you. And I do want to thank Councilor Strudel for bringing up prior councils and behaviors and how I would note that everyone on this council has sat and listened to the public comment regardless of It's content. It doesn't mean we haven't responded in different ways. Some of the incidents referred to, I'll just say that some people were named and others were not when everyone reacted in the same way. And to be honest, I think there's a difference between a good faith misinterpretation of someone's tone and disrespect. So I just want to put that out there too. Sometimes I tell a joke and nobody laughs. Does that mean it was not a joke? No. So, and sometimes I'm not telling a joke and people laugh, and that's just because I'm very funny. But I'm going to go to the podium, Mr. Castagnetti, and then we can wrap up this shebang unless there's other councillors who want to speak.
[Castagnetti]: Amen.
[Bears]: Well, you've made Sylvia happy, Councilor Callahan. Motion to adjourn, Councilor Callahan.
[Scarpelli]: Oh, if I can, I apologize. I'd be remiss if I didn't do this. I just want to congratulate all the residents of Method that ran the Boston Marathon yesterday. Oh, yes. I think, especially my hero, my wife, after being sick for eight straight days on antibiotics, she woke up Sunday and said she's perfectly healthy. and she ran the Boston Marathon yesterday. A little disappointed. She did an hour. It was the worst time. We're going to talk about that. We're going to get her training tomorrow, get her back at it. But I just wanted to tell her how proud we were of her as a husband and as a mom. She ran her seventh Boston Marathon yesterday, and she killed it.
[Bears]: Councilor Scarpelli and I being a model for all marathon runners on the motion. to adjourn, 10-10, let's get Sylvia home, by Councilor Callaghan, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Callaghan. Yes. Vice-President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Laming.
[Bears]: Present.
[SPEAKER_15]: Councilor Scapelli.
[SPEAKER_14]: Councilor Sagan. Yes. Councilor say you're okay.
[Bears]: President is thank you Assistant City Clerk to Placido for your service this evening. I vote yes. Six in the affirmative one present motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.
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