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[Leming]: Okay, so this is the, I guess we can go ahead and start. So this is the first meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee of the Medford City Council. I can't quite remember from the last time if it's procedure to say the Pledge of Allegiance for a committee meeting
[Hurtubise]: Mr. Chair, you want to, you want me to interrupt? Customarily, there is no pledge of allegiance at a committee meeting. Customarily, but not by requirement. There was a roll call, but again, that's not required.
[Leming]: Yeah, no, no. I was just wondering for my own. Anyway, clerk, can you call the roll?
[Hurtubise]: Absolutely. Councilor Scarpelli, who I know is here. I called him first because he's the vice chair, but I felt sorry. I'm here. I'm here. I'm sorry, Adam. Sorry. Councilor Callahan?
[Callahan]: Present.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro?
[Callahan]: Present.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Tseng? Present. Chair Leming? Present. Good to go. You're meeting.
[Leming]: Yep. Okay. So the first thing, the first discussion item is 24-006, a resolution that each council committee review the 2024 to 2025 council governing agenda as amended at the January 24th, 2024 committee of the full meeting. So let's see, but I know that right now we have You have a bit of limited. time and I'm not seeing not seeing a Councilor bears here at the moment to discuss that. So I would propose and again, if this isn't procedurally right, just feel free to correct me. So I just propose that we go to go straight to 24-015 the resolution to discuss modernizing council communications and outreach strategy. Um, which yeah, Councilor Tseng.
[Tseng]: If I can, I think the intention of that resolution was just for us to discuss it within our own committee without the Council President or Council Vice President needing to be present. So just to generally talk through timeline and just the kind of specific items in there if there was anything we wanted to prioritize.
[Leming]: Okay, yep, then we'll just go to 24-006, Councilor Callahan, see you have your hand raised.
[Callahan]: Thanks, I was just saying if you prefer to do these other two first, we can, because we know the better, then we can have more general discussion after, but then we can just move to move 006 to after those, if you prefer that. But I also am fine if we do the sort of general discussion first.
[Tseng]: I think they're quite similar, too, given how much my presentation will overlap with the items in 24-006.
[Callahan]: Perhaps we move it to move 006 to the end and we get your stuff, do all of your stuff, and then 006, if there's anything left over in 006, we can cover it at the end.
[Leming]: Is that a, so is that a motion to? Okay, so motion to suspend the regular rules and move 2406 to the end and go straight to the 24-015. Thanks. Do I hear a second? Second. Second from? Scarpelli. Yep, Scarpelli. Okay, all those in favor? Aye.
[Tseng]: I think you have to call.
[Hurtubise]: It needs to be a roll call vote. So I'm going to call alphabetically and then by Robert's rules. So Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Chair Leming?
[Hurtubise]: Approved on a committee meeting, you don't necessarily have to have to make motions to suspend. You can committee meetings are less formal. You can just jump around the items that you want you want to do in a council meeting. You would have to take votes on all these things. But if you're in a committee agenda, you can just jump around and go go back and forth.
[Leming]: Okay.
[Hurtubise]: Okay. That's going to save you some time.
[Leming]: All right, 24 dash, well, thank you clerk. And again, learning experience for all of us. 24-015 resolution to discuss modernizing council communications and outreach strategy. We have any discussion items on that? Councilor Tseng.
[Tseng]: Thank you. If the committee will indulge me in a short presentation of a lot of the ideas that I had for modernizing our city council communications outreach, I have a short presentation for everyone with some questions for the committee to think about as we talk about these different proposals. Most of them are also already in the governing agenda. That's why I said there was an overlap with 24-06. My intention for this meeting is to move forward things that we think we might be ready for as a committee, and to just start discussions on things that we think might need more time, which is probably most of these ideas. With that being said, let me go to the slides. Can folks see them? Great. And so, okay, so these are just some proposals for our committee to consider. Following what I had in the governing agenda, I put in press releases, short-form videos, social media content, city website updates, input surveys and forums, and meetings with underrepresented groups. This isn't meant to be a deep dive into... I know there are some of these that I've talked with individual Councilors about that, especially the meetings with other representative groups. This isn't to start that process necessarily, but just to talk about and get feedback from this committee about where things are, where we think things are at. And so for us to move in future meetings on it. Going to our first slide, I think the big thing that I was thinking for our committee was that we could create press releases in order to update residents about our work generally, to keep residents informed about opportunities where they can provide feedback on resolutions, ordinances, our work, ahead of big meetings, and in response to our work as well. To keep residents up to date about news in Medford, we know that oftentimes there is a gap between what we know as Councilors and what is released out to the public. In terms of public information, most of that's not intentional. This is to bridge that gap. And so in terms of execution, I think it'd be realistic for our committee to approve monthly updates, essentially monthly summaries of what we've done as a city council in the last month. And so basically the idea is that we would rotate this responsibility among members. Every month, a different one of us would create that summary and bring it to our committee meeting. We would review it quickly together and vote it out to be published. The idea behind rotating responsibilities among members is that We know that a lot of us, Councilor Bears, Councilor Collins, Councilor Leming, me, we've tried at different times to do these regular updates. It can be a lot for a singular councilor to do it repeatedly, regularly across different months. And so the idea is that by dispersing the responsibility, it would be less pressure for us, less of a workload for us. yet still give all of us a chance to write something, all of us a chance to communicate with the public. And I think having us bring it to this committee meeting would essentially essentially be like a work responsibility for us to keep us to make sure we're doing this. Now, there are some, I think, questions I had for the committee around the execution of this. So essentially, I think the first big question is, do we do this as a resident services public engagement committee as a complete committee? Um, where each of us are rotating responsibilities, or do we form a special committee, a subcommittee for this that meets at a separate time very quickly, maybe a 30 minute meeting 15 minute 30 minute meeting. I think another question is, I know there are. um, Councilors who aren't standing members of this committee who have been working on updates as well. Should we invite them to join our rotating group of Councilors? And I think in the same vein of questions, I know that certain Councilors are busy at different times of the year. Should we create a system where Councilors can pass off their responsibilities to the next Councilor or to another Councilor? Um, and then the final questions are around distribution. I know the clerk has an email list for the city council. Maybe you could use that with the clerk could chime in as well. I know we. Carol Leming invited Steve Schmierdi, our communications director, to this meeting as well. I think there's a question about whether we can use the city email list for some of this, for some of these regular press releases, maybe including it as a shorter section in the mayor's regular updates. In order, we also know that the formats in which we reach people have to be accessible as well. For example, for younger folks, social media might be a better way to do that. So there's a whole section later in this presentation about social media, creating social media. And I know that a lot of seniors might not be subscribed to the email list as well. So wondering if we could get a print version to be a shortened print version to be put in the senior center newsletter. But with that being said, open to remarks, feedbacks, ideas.
[Leming]: Saw a hand from Councilor Callahan earlier, but she put it down.
[Callahan]: Yep, I was just curious if, like, if we have a subcommittee, are only people who are on this committee allowed to be on the subcommittee? I think that's a question for Adam.
[Hurtubise]: I believe that's the case, yes, Councilor.
[Callahan]: I'm curious, yep.
[Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli?
[Scarpelli]: Uh, thank you. I'm still a little, I'm still a little confused. Justin, if a council saying, as we're looking at this, we're looking to. To an essence, sending out a press release that the city has a whole department that does this. Um, you know, for one Councilor, I'm not afraid to work, but I have two kids in college. I'm working three jobs. Um, you know, to, uh, it just, to me, it's, it's, uh, you know, and adding another meeting and I, you know, I, I completely, you know, understand what you're looking at, but I still, I'm still a little confused of what, what, you know, the goals of the city council that, um, we're sending out separately now do we have all the the other question I would have is the accessibility issue that who is it getting to is it getting just to the people that you know that that have access to to what we have or you know the mayor does Her monthly video, we have a city communications department that we fund. My question is, Are we doing, is this too redundant? Because I think that, um, I don't want to water down messages that it's coming from where, I mean, it's, you know, that's, I have, I have a few concerns with this because I think that, you know, sometimes, sometimes more isn't better. Um, the city sometimes doesn't do a great job. or really a good job or actually even a decent job getting out information. But this is something where local communities work hand in hand with their communications department. You know, you don't, you know, we get We get communications from the city council on a weekly basis through the communications director and the mayor's liaison in Somerville, and that goes out to everybody. So I don't want to be redundant, and we don't want to put... Listen, if we put too much out there, sometimes we kind of... we kind of bury things that we need, messages we need to send out, and it makes it more difficult for the common citizen, not the person that's there at our meeting every day, not the person that's watching our meetings and chiming in or emailing us all the time, but I think this is something that, you know, If I'm having a difficult time understanding it, I can't imagine our residents. So that's my concern. Thank you.
[Tseng]: Thanks, Councilor. Chair, let me, if I can respond. Yeah, respond and then Councilor Lazzaro. um, so I I did think through a lot of those concerns beforehand, um, The intent behind these releases would be to be a compliment basically to the mayors now the way that our comms department is set up in medford Is that it's a really it's really a one-person department falling under the mayor's office. And so oftentimes the publications are more relevant to what the mayor is doing specifically like with Mayor Lungo-Koehn specifically is doing and to do items that are originating from her office. Now going forward, we have zoning, we have budgeting, a lot of these bigger processes going forward that are much more council specific rather than mayor specific, and it's currently not in the responsibilities of the comms director. uh, to put out releases that speak to any of that. And as we've seen in the last few years, there hasn't been any of it. And so this is the idea is that this isn't to, um, bought heads with any city messaging, but this is basically to let residents know when things are coming up and what, when we are working on things, um, separate from what the mayor's office in the city departments are working on. Um, And we can talk about which lists this goes out to. Maybe we just keep it on the clerk's email list. But I think the essence of this is keep it simple. Basically, just summarize what we've done and what's coming ahead in terms of meetings that we have. Just things like posting the meeting schedule that we have. And we can coordinate with the president and the vice president of the council to see when these releases go out.
[Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro, you were next, and then Councilor Scarpelli after, and then Councilor Callahan.
[Lazzaro]: Thank you. I really like the idea of communicating with people. I think we can do it in conjunction with the mayor's office method of communication, not at the same time, but since we are not Um, we don't, we don't do the same thing as the mayor, just like what Councilor Tseng was saying, you know, we're, we're, we're working in tandem, but not doing the same things. So it seems beneficial to me to be able to communicate in sort of a broad, um, generalized. Manner sort of big picture stuff that we're working on what we have going on next, um, seems like based on what. It seems to me like what we're trying to address here isn't, sorry about my cat, what we're trying to address here isn't that we are trying to make up for people, you know, trying to over-communicate. It's that we don't have a newspaper in town. It's that we're trying to make sure people have a high-level understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. There seems to be maybe a lot of confusion on social media about what we do and how people can access information from us. And we can probably communicate high-level, information to them in a way that's sort of similar to maybe the newsletter that the planning department puts out. They put out information about events related to planning and environment. They put out information that's relevant to the public. And it's high level and it's visually interesting. And I think that's testament to how their office is able to thoughtfully communicate with their constituents in a way that makes sense. I think we can do like that level. I really like the idea of both communicating on social media and also via the senior center newsletter, maybe just a link in the newsletter that people are already getting or something like that. And rotating who is in charge of it, I also like that idea. Something low key that's not, it doesn't have to go into detail and it doesn't have to editorialize, I think is a really, I think that we can make this happen in a way that says like, you know, this vote was taken, this is what will happen next. Simplicity and high level communication.
[Leming]: Thank you.
[Scarpelli]: Thank you. And this, this is why these meetings are great, I think, because we can. We can vet some some issues and concerns of my 2 with those comments. I too share those, those concerns, but I think that we have to look at a, trying to find out what that mechanism is going to be. Um, this council is very limited in what we, what, what we control when it, when it comes to, uh, what outlets we can use through the city, unless we have buy-in with the city. Um, because I, um, Even our page, it's not really understood to most constituents, I think, and where to find information. So I think that poses one problem that I think we have to vet out. And then I think the other piece is, again, we can use what Councilor Lazzaro mentioned with the newsletter that she mentioned. it's who gets those newsletters. When we have engaged constituents that are involved in the planning and development, or there's an issue in their neighborhood, they're involved. But like you said, there isn't a main newspaper or or identified uh link that we can use that's going to get out to every resident that's what i'm that's what i'm trying to say when i said that it's is it who who can we reach um you know the the engaged resident they're they're going to see that but what we're seeing is that people that that unfortunately aren't engaged, but when they need to be and they can't, they're not tied in with any group or any, um, um, site that, that we're seeing. So I think we need to find, you know, work with the city and maybe work with the clerk and our president to see what can we do to start or have that type of messaging that's going to go out throughout the community, not, not specific, um, already engaged constituents. So I think, you know, as we're vetting it, this is great, but I think that these are two concerns that I'm hearing from people that don't know anything until it's already passed because they're not tied into a specific group or newsletter. So just sharing.
[Leming]: Thank you. Councilor Calhoun.
[Callahan]: Thanks. So I definitely think it's, I love the idea of having something that is, you know, unbiased, sort of lets people know about what has been passed recently, and especially opportunities for people to get engaged before things are passed. That's the part I'm most excited about. I am, Curious if we have talked to the communications department and seen whether we can sort of fold this into what they're doing, like we come up with sort of the brief description. I mean, I don't think it has to be long either. I think we're talking, it's simple. And then, I don't know, can you quick answer that before I make a couple more comments?
[Tseng]: Is that directed to me?
[Callahan]: Thank you.
[Tseng]: Yes. Yeah. So to Yeah, it doesn't have to be long. We did. I did ask chair Leming and I know chair Leming did reach out to Steve Spirity to come to this meeting. We've mentioned some of the some of the ideas that we at least I have mentioned some of the ideas that I'm presenting today to him before and think he seems pretty receptive to a lot of it. I I think to both Councilor Scarpelli's point and to your point, I do think that this is a continuous process where we should try all the avenues that we can think of. And right now we have some avenues that are more obvious. And so I think we can try with those first. And then, you know, as we continue to meet in these meetings, we can come up with motions to add or subtract this to certain sources or take away from certain sources.
[Callahan]: Thank you. Just to finish up, I'm someone who thinks very deeply and has for seven or eight years thought very deeply about how to engage people who are not currently engaged in city politics. I'm not worried that if we send it to some people, there are people who aren't getting it. I think that's the way all newsletters are. You start with with the people who you know you can access. And I think this kind of update is just trying to get a certain piece of information out. The question of how do you engage more people, I think, is something that we reach differently. That's not what we discuss now. That's what we discussed specifically when we were discussing, hey, how do we reach those people and bring them into any of these discussions? To me, that's what the meetings with underrepresented groups is really dedicated to as well as the community liaisons and other things. So I'm not, I'm not really concerned about, you know, having a newsletter that does not go to every single person in the city. I think you start, you know, that's how newsletters are, right? You start with what you can. I just, I would love it if we can also talk to the communications department and see if that's one of the avenues that, you know, we can sort of fold this into if it's something nice and simple. Thanks.
[Leming]: Councilor Scarbell, I wasn't sure if you had another comment to raise your hand.
[Scarpelli]: I'm sorry. I think when we're thinking of being accessible, I think, sure, you start at, we need a starting point. I agree with you. But again, don't we want the mechanisms in place that we are going to reach everyone, everyone that we can and making sure that we're getting it to the families and the residents that don't have access. So I, I don't, when we try, we want to do this because it's something that's very important, it's needed. We know that. But I think that we need a partner in the city that's going to sit with us and hold our hands and walk us through the processes so we can make sure that we're making sure we're reaching everybody. I think it'll be a disservice, truthfully, because of what we're hearing and how divided our community is right now, and the haves and the have-nots that they say the city council has now a newsletter. And who is it reaching? Well, it's reaching to the haves. Well, why isn't it reaching the have-nots? Because we haven't vetted out properly how to get it to those avenues. Now, it could be a simple, it could be a simple resolution, but everybody in this meeting doesn't have, we don't have control of that. This is what I'm saying. I think that, you know, I appreciate a chairperson reaching out to Mr. Smerdy, but, and I understand that the mayor has their own message, but We're the city council for the city in Medford. That is the department that has to work for us to make sure that our message gets out. I'm not saying put our message in with the mayor's, but having the avenues in place that it's reaching everybody that we can conceivably reach so there aren't concerns or questions or people that are divided against saying, here we go again. How many times have we heard this? People in West Medford know about it. How come the people at Middlesex Ave don't know about it? We hear this every day. Well, at least I have for the last 16 years. So I just don't want to add another layer until we vet the process out. Sounds great, and I appreciate it just for the fact that I can't tell you, I'm sure we all have heard, the lack of a local newspaper has absolutely crippled our community for getting information and really sharing and celebrating some really big news in our community. But again, I think that, you know, as we move forward with these meetings, I think it's imperative that we meet with the city representatives that are going to sit with us and say, hey, We might not hit every group, but we did everything we possibly could to reach these the the underprivileged groups. And the message is getting out to everybody, at least with an effort that was that was put forth by this council. Not at least that's how I feel. So again, thank you.
[Leming]: And thank you. I would, I see two more hands. I would like to let Councilor Tseng finish his presentation because this, I think there, I believe there are a few more slides and leave enough time because we have, we have another, just another half an hour before we have a very strict cutoff to this meeting prior to that. And also get enough time.
[Tseng]: Councilor Leming. Yes, I'm, I'm happy to, if we don't get to the other things on this PowerPoint, I'm happy to send this around to other members via the clerk. And I'm, I would also, I can make a motion right now. Um, I'd like to motion to get feedback from the communications director on the ideas in this, um, in this PowerPoint, uh, before our next meeting, our next standing meeting. I would send that. All right.
[Leming]: And a second from Councilor Scarapelli. All those in favor? Aye. Uh, we have to do a roll call. Oh, roll call.
[Scarpelli]: I'll make a default on you tonight, Matt.
[Leming]: Like I said, this is a learning experience. Some of these votes are roll call, some of these- Listen, I've been doing this, I've been doing this 16 years, I still butcher it. So I have- I'm ready whenever you are. Ready.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Chair Leming?
[Leming]: Yes. Motion passes and let's go to Councilor Lazzaro and then let Councilor Tseng finish his presentation. And yeah, Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: I just wanted to say, after what Councilor Scarpelli mentioned, that it seemed like a good moment to mention that it sort of felt like a good bridge to the discussion of the diversity, equity, and inclusion conversation we were going to maybe get to at some point during this meeting, maybe today. But because if what we wanted With the understanding that not letting perfect be the enemy of good, that if we want to make sure that we're reaching everybody, even when there was a newspaper, that would have been maybe a barrier, that it would only be people that were subscribing to a newspaper that were able to access that information. So there would never be a situation where literally everybody would have access to information at the same level. But that being said, I think we would be able to address Um, the possibility that, uh, you know, maybe Francis would be able to tell us, like, how are people getting information? How are people best accessing? you know, public information about how they can, you know, find out what's happening in City Hall and how can we best access the people that need to hear about it. And, you know, that's, there are resources that we have access to in the city that we can utilize for those purposes. And maybe that can be a step one before we get into the newsletter.
[Leming]: Just a thought. Councilor Tseng, how fast can you I'll stop.
[Tseng]: I'll stop. I don't think it's realistic to get through all of them today, but we can we can do some pretty quickly. And President Bears has reminded me that this meeting can run long and the next meeting can start late as well. But I think we can have a cutoff point. I think generally hearing back from this, well, I'll either chair Leming or I, we can coordinate on getting feedback from Steve and it sounds like we, it might not be favorable to do a special subcommittee for this, because it adds meetings. We can also just have a sign up list of Councilors who are interested in doing it, because every Councilor is, you know, we have different family situations, different job situations as well. And so perhaps it makes more sense to have a list of Councilors who want to take on this responsibility. I'm moving on to the next slide. Um, so short form videos, this is basically just a summary of those of the monthly updates. My idea for it is basically just keep it very simple. Don't editorialize, just tell people what we did. And then to post these wherever we can, basically, I think we need to determine what that looks like. I think I wanted to make sure that we got to this slide when while Kevin was still in the room, because I was wondering what the possibility of partnering with Medford Community Media would be like on this.
[Harrington]: Uh, would you like me to speak to that really?
[Tseng]: That'd be great. That'd be great.
[Harrington]: Sure. Um, so just at least for like, from like a nuts and bolts perspective, um, you know, Medford community media is, you know, membership is open to Medford residents, right? And so provided that, you know, any, any and all Councilors are Medford residents, you are just as welcome as anyone else to, uh, to apply for membership. Um, you know, the only requirements are filling out some paperwork, uh, submitting for a Corey is the, is the big one. Um, But yeah, so you would be able to and any of you would be able to create a membership. And then, you know, within available hours, you know, get trained up on equipment, use the studio space, take out cameras, microphones, that kind of thing. You also some people, you know, kind of produce their own stuff with their own equipment on their own time, and then just give it to us. So often, as an example, you know, the mayor's office will record a short video and they'll just be like, here's the video file, um, you know, to be put, to be put on the channels. Um, so yeah, like, I mean, it would be pretty, pretty wide open, um, for that to, to sort of also add some clarity, you know, in terms of our role in it, you know, we, uh, the MCM staff is essentially in a, We are essentially providing the services, we're providing the availability of equipment, assisting and troubleshooting, right? We're not really meant to be a production company per se. However, there are plenty of things we do around the city in terms of city events. But if you folks want to do some kind of a weekly, monthly video thing, our role would be training you up on the equipment, helping you out if you run into any snags, scheduling time if you want to do studio time, that kind of a thing. So yeah, so I want to keep that brief but that's essentially, you know, what it would look like from just a kind of practical standpoint.
[Tseng]: Thank you so much. That's very helpful.
[Leming]: Is there any answer saying is there any, any other presentation you'd like to make on this.
[Tseng]: Um, not really. Um, I think the other question I had in terms of short form videos was, I know there, um, some Councilors who want to get publicity back, uh, like, or just basically publicize some of the projects that they want to work on and get feedback ahead of introducing it to the council or working on it in committee. It sounds like, um, we can separate that from the idea of just doing general monthly summaries. So maybe that's something that individual Councilors can take up on their own time.
[Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli.
[Scarpelli]: That brings a good point. I know that community channels, it's a little bit different, but I believe we can, to this point where we have a big issue or a big meeting coming up or needing to send a message, that we can add it to the loop. You know, if we wrote something up and sent it to communications, could that be added to the loop on the public access that because in the past we used to do that.
[Harrington]: Councilor Tseng if I may.
[Tseng]: It's Councilor Leming, you should.
[Harrington]: Oh, sorry. Apologies. Apologies. I'm also new to the procedures. Yes, so to answer you, Councilor Scarpelli, yeah, you know, I can even, I can send an email to all of y'all with the specifications, but pretty much any image file. Um, and then, you know, that you want to have on that digital bulletin board. And if you have a timeframe of when you want it to be, you know, date wise, send those along. And, you know, it's worth mentioning, even though it won't come up as long as it meets like the, the, the kind of acceptability standards for, for broadcasting. Right. As long as you don't have anything lewd or lascivious on the notice, it's going to go up. Right. Um, so that's definitely available. So if there was. If you had a one to two or even three like slide kind of presentation that was just like very punchy and telling you, telling folks what's coming up and you want to send me a series of three images, I can put those three in line, uh, on our digital bulletin board and you're good to go.
[Scarpelli]: Oh, that, that's, that's great. So that might help. I mean, we, we can chip away at this, uh, council chair, uh, lemon. Let me see what we can do.
[Leming]: Thank you. Is there any further discussions or motions on the topic? Okay, well, I suppose since we have about, technically about, well, 19 minutes left, I'd like to open this up for, is there any public comment? Okay, I don't see anybody. They're hand raised, so let's move on to 24-022 offered by Councilor Lazzaro resolution on biannual training on diversity, equity and inclusion. Is there any discussion on this topic?
[Lazzaro]: I'd love to just open this up for the committee to discuss possibilities. I spoke with our diversity, equity and inclusion. My God, my I'm so sorry. Our diversity, equity and inclusion director a few times and. she and I are both really excited about the prospect of talking about it as a council. One thing I have thoughts and concerns about is how to do it with the knowledge that we are subject to open meeting law. I believe there's possibility that we could do it either in smaller groups or Online or with. Council president, I know we don't have a city solicitor, but maybe we could do it with. somebody from KP Law or just like an advisor. I wouldn't want to do it if it would cost us additional funds to like, you know, contract out. But I do think that it would be really beneficial for us to utilize Director Nwaje because she is such a wonderful resource for us in the city. And because so much of our work has to do with the way that we relate to the people of Medford and the way that we interact with the public. Um, so, uh, I'd love to hear thoughts and feedback from the other, um, Councilors and, um. Yeah, that's that's that's where I'm at.
[Scarpelli]: Um. Thank you. I think this is something that I found when I first started having our first meeting with the school committee, the Massachusetts School Committee Association, and giving us like a tutorial. I thought it was great. I know that when you know, when, uh, when Mark Rumley was our city solicitor, he would often bring us in individually and give us a, uh, you know, checks and balances the way of the world and legal and, um, and, uh, common, common practices of city Councilors, little course, but I don't know, maybe the clerk can help me with this. So we can ask, um, legal about this. If we had a, um, What's the word I'm looking for that we had, um, you know, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm drawing a blank, but it's, we would get together and have a, um, like a meeting together, like a learning, um, seminar where it really didn't affect the open meeting law because we called it, um, a certain gathering. I'm having a brain freeze, Adam.
[Hurtubise]: I think a training session might be... Might be exempt you just you would still not be able to deliberate you would still not you know, I mean there would be um But and you wouldn't be able to discuss any pending council business or anything like that, but I think training sessions you can do so if we did that if we brought in our our staff from the city that can come in the diversity staff that comes in and present us with a presentation as a group
[Scarpelli]: And then we can share, you know, we can, um, you know, separate the two groups with them and then even share some issues, but then not discuss them until, you know, maybe, uh, a committee of the whole meeting to describe, um, diversity inclusion subcommittee or committee of the whole. I mean, there's gotta be a way that we can do this, that, that. that I know when we were in the school committee, we used to have training together and it wouldn't affect us. So, because I think this is a good idea. I think that anything will help and make sure that we stay on track of what we're trying to deliver here in Medford, so.
[Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: Right, so my understanding of open meeting laws is if you're not discussing what's on an agenda, then you're not subject to open meeting laws. So I guess the only thing would be if somebody can monitor it and kind of keep you off the agenda, then you'd be OK, right? That's probably, if you do a very specific training, then it doesn't have to touch anything that's pertinent to an agenda for that term.
[Leming]: I have a question, actually.
[Lazzaro]: You get to talk any time, I think, because you're the chair.
[Leming]: Oh, great. So, I mean, do you think that these trainings would involve people talking at the Councilors or would involve more in-depth discussions? Because, I mean, my understanding is that it's essentially an informational session. What would the format look like in that sense? Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: Sorry, my internet connection is unstable. Did you say, are the training sessions people talking at the council, or is it interaction?
[Leming]: Yeah, I just wanted to kind of get a sense of how much interaction, just like inner discussion among the councillors there would be, or if it's more of an information sort of thing.
[Lazzaro]: I think that they would all, I think that probably what it would be would be different depending on what the topic is and what Director Nwaje would be bringing to the table. Based on my conversation with her, we were talking about different topics that would be pertinent to the time period that we would be having it. So it could be You know, every year there's something that kind of comes up, maybe something that's an issue that's prominent in in Medford, particularly during that time, maybe something that might have happened in town. So I think it would be. really variable. But I think we could speak with her, or if she would be hiring somebody that would be coming in as like a like a special kind of training, it might be there's so many different ways to look at diversity, it could be disability, it could be, you know, mental illness, it could be like, uh income diversity and it could be racial so there's there's or or sexuality or gender there's like a lot of different stuff that you would be doing and it could be like informational or it could be sort of like uh going through like um uh role playing so i i'm not sure i think there are a lot of different ways that it could be done okay thank you is there any public comment
[Leming]: Oh, sorry, I didn't see the cameras. No worries. Oh, I'm so sorry. The little leaves in the corner were camouflaging your hand.
[Tseng]: I couldn't log on to my Zoom account. And this is the only background that's on this Zoom account. And so I'm like, it's awful. I try to use a different background most days. I guess my comment was I was wondering if we could invite Frances to one of our meetings to talk about what she thinks would be best for a training like this and what this might look like if, again, like I talked about during the regular meeting, she mentioned to me possibly bringing some commissions in to do this training with us as well. And so I think it would be helpful if we were to meet with her to talk about this a bit more. And if you wouldn't mind Councilor Lazzaro, I'd like to make that in a form of a motion to invite Director Nwaje to come to our next meeting to talk about this.
[Leming]: Is there a second? Second. Okay. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Who's the second? Emily. Councilor. Thank you. Thank you. Hang on a second.
[Leming]: Second the motion.
[Hurtubise]: I'm seconding the motion. I got it. I got it. I just, I just, I'm just still typing.
[Leming]: I was, I was pointing out the pun.
[Hurtubise]: Here comes the roll call. Councilor Callaghan.
[Callahan]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Leming]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Chair Leming.
[Leming]: Yes. Motion passes. Once again, okay. Is there any public comment? Okay, seeing none, motion to, oh, I freeze this. reinstate the rules of order and go back to 24-006. You don't need to vote on that because it's a committee meeting.
[Hurtubise]: You can just jump back and forth. Okay, got it.
[Lazzaro]: Also, I don't think you can make motions, Councilor.
[Leming]: Do I? Okay, well, it's my first meeting, everybody. You're doing great. I'm asking for your flexibility here as I try to wrap everything up in about, about eight more minutes. Okay, so is there, okay, 24-006 resolution that each council committee review the 2024 to 2025 council governing agenda as amended at the January 24th, 2024 committee of the full meeting. Is there any discussion on this? Councilor Tseng.
[Tseng]: Thanks. I think this is pretty straightforward. I think what the other committees have just been doing is basically going through the items that have been assigned to them and basically seeing, I guess, like maybe seeing if there will be lead Councilors that want to take up certain projects or whether we want to adjust the timelines that we see in the doc. If that's a good place to start, I'm open. I know there's some projects that are also already in this, that are already referred to this committee. So I'm happy to talk about timelines for those existing projects as well.
[Leming]: Councilor Callahan and Clerk, I know this is a, is it possible to get the relevant part of the governing agenda up on the screen, have it handy in a digital form?
[Tseng]: just yet. Chair Leming, I have it handy if you want me to share.
[Leming]: Yeah, go ahead. And Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thanks. I was just hoping because I know we're short on time, but it would be great if the ordinance those that are listed here would major partisan ordinances if someone could simply give like a very basic sort of status of those that would be very helpful.
[Tseng]: Great. I chair let me if I can I know I have a bunch of these ordinances, I can give an update as to most of them actually absolutely work. Um, so for the gender equity commission the Youth Commission on there under the same paper number. I'm currently meeting, so the in our last committee meeting subcommittee meeting. The committee voted for me to meet with relevant department heads to work out certain questions that they had for us. The department heads were largely very, very enthusiastic about these ideas. We have some logistical questions to work through, and so the hope is for me to meet with them sometime in the next few weeks and get a uh updated drafts for this committee um in the next few for for either the next meeting or the meeting after that um we've just had some scheduling difficulties for the welcoming city ordinance um that is something that um has that i think on the timeline we've put in the spring um it has The paper is created, it passed through regular committee, so it's sent to our committee. We just have not met on it yet. And so we will probably do an introductory meeting. probably when we're done with the commission ordinances, but perhaps slightly overlapping. The data equity idea, that also has a paper number already attached to it. I think that will take time, to be honest. I think we'll need to work a lot with the chief of staff and with the mayor's office to see what that actually looks like. I don't want it to be punitive for the city government or overly bureaucratic, and so I think that will take time. I know the state has passed something last year that will help us comply with the possible ordinance much more easier, but But I think that's an idea that I requested be placed later on in the timeline. I think open data is a similar situation, although there has not been... Sorry to interrupt.
[Leming]: Okay, so you mentioned the cheapest apps, the point person for the data equity and open data laws. I mean, is it... I mean, do you think it would be appropriate to go, like, you know, do another request for sort of information about this? I'm not even sure how that would be phrased.
[Tseng]: I think we can... I think the so it's not as much that she's a lead I just think she, I think the chief of staff in general, whoever's in that position would be a good person to work with before it before we either before we formally introduce this proposal to the committee, or walking like to have at our first meeting on this. Um, and so that's that's just what I mean it's nothing so I mean. I think perhaps it'd be smarter to bang out some of the draft language with the mayor's office beforehand. And I think it's similar with the open data ordinance. I think some of these other ones that I've proposed, they don't have paper numbers attached to them yet. I think we should finish some of the projects that are open first before we get to them. But I think the language access policy or slash ordinances in a similar place to the data ones, similar situation. The Immigrants Commission is something that I would love to get started. I think we have put that on this, perhaps, as a goal for next year. And Human Rights Commission reform, so essentially, members of the Human Rights Commission and former members of the Human Rights Commission have asked me as a Councilor to initiate a review of the enabling ordinance that created the commission and gives it its powers. I'm currently meeting with those members to find out what reforms exactly are being asked of us. But I think that's going to require talking to the DEI director, talking to the members of the HRC and former members of the HRC to see what changes that entails before we present it to this committee.
[Leming]: Do you think it would be good if those discussions are done one-on-one, or can we just ask Francis about that the next time?
[Tseng]: I think it would be easier if they were done one-on-one, to be frank. Then we can invite them to our committee meetings when we actually work through a draft together with the councilors. I just think it would be hard for, at least if I were to take the lead on this, it'd be hard for me to present you guys with the draft if I hadn't done those meetings yet. And I'm doing the first round of them tomorrow actually. So, but I think it's a project down the road, like in a few months.
[Leming]: Okay, that's all right. That's everything. I have a and we are right at 659. Do I have a motion to adjourn?
[Tseng]: Um, I, we actually, sorry, chair Loving. Um, we, we have some procedural motions that we need to do first. Okay. Let's, let's do those. Um, so I would like to motion to keep papers. Give me one second. Um, papers. 24-0 1 5 and 24-0 2, 2 in committee.
[Leming]: We have second. I got second. Okay, second from Councilor Callahan. Clerk, is this a roll call?
[Tseng]: Yes. All Zoom votes are roll calls.
[Leming]: Okay, yeah, okay. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Tseng]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Chair Leming.
[Tseng]: Yes. If I may, Chair, let me make another motion. I'd also motion that councilors submit feedback and ideas about modernizing city council communications before the next meeting to the clerk and the chair. I think that way we can save some time going into our next meeting.
[Leming]: Do we have a second? Yeah. Second. Okay, second from Councilor was our Oh, please. Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Tseng]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Chair Lemons.
[Tseng]: Yes. And sorry, I just have a lot of procedural things that we unfortunately have to go through. I was wondering if we felt comfortable enough with the governing agenda to receive and place on file or whether we wanna keep it open as a paper and committee. I'll defer to the other councilors on that.
[Lazzaro]: If we receive in place on file, does that mean we don't access it in committee anymore? Or can we still access it in committee?
[Tseng]: Oh, I mean, I believe the president and vice president of the council have said that every few months we'll review it. It certainly doesn't, I guess, it just means, I think the clerk has something to say. Yeah.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Tseng, I believe that if you receive in place on file, you dispose of the paper.
[Tseng]: Yeah, I don't think we would talk about the governing agenda or amending it right now until the city council creates another paper to discuss it again.
[Leming]: So do we want to discuss the governing agenda? I feel like the governing agenda is something that we might want to take. I'm sorry. Are we still allowed to look at it in future resident services and public engagement meetings?
[Hurtubise]: I'm just, I'm just, I'm just not like, are you, are you, are you asking me?
[Leming]: Yeah, sorry. I'm just, I'm just not, I'm just not, I'm still like, sorry, I'm still like not, not, not a hundred percent clear. I like what the consequences of totally, totally cool.
[Hurtubise]: My, I believe that if you receive and placed on file that you are disposing of the paper, you would have to vote. You would actually have to file a new resolution, but I, I thought the The council needs to correct me on this because it's it's not it's it's not my document But I thought that this was supposed to be a working document.
[Scarpelli]: It was supposed to be That's what I I'm under the same Understanding if we if we we dispose this paper if we do that that that's been practiced I believe adam for for a while if you receive in place on file. It's we have to re um re-enter it Then I think, yeah, sorry. We just continue it. What can we do?
[Hurtubise]: You don't have to take any vote on it. It's in the committee already. It just stays there until you move it out. Right.
[Scarpelli]: That's it. I agree. That's all we have to do is leave it alone because I think this is a working document because we could bring it up at our next meeting and that could be modified by asking for the certain guests that we want to come and help us uh, get to some sort of resolution.
[Tseng]: So, um, that, that sounds good to me. I only suggested it because I know other committees have disposed of the paper. So, um, I was, uh, that's the only reason in that case, I'll move to adjourn second. All right.
[Leming]: You can't say, no, I said, do we have a second?
[Tseng]: I thought you were second.
[Leming]: Sorry.
[Hurtubise]: Clerk, please call the roll. I'm sorry, who's the second? I didn't hear it. Councilor Scarpelli. Thank you. Councilor Calderon. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli.
[Leming]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Tseng.
[Leming]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Chair Leming.
[Leming]: Yes. Meeting is adjourned. Great job. Yeah.
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