[Bears]: Medford City Council, Committee of the Whole, January 24th, 2024. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_04]: Present. Present. Present. Present. Present.
[Bears]: Present. Present. Seven present. Zero absent, the meeting is called to order. 24-006, offered by myself, President Bears, is a resolution to propose a 2024-2025 council governing agenda framework and request the councilors submit proposals by January 18th, 2024. Be it resolved by the city council that councillors submit items to be included in a 2024-2025 Manfred City Council governing agenda document, draft template attached in packet that will guide the work of this council and its committees during this term. Be it further resolved that councillors submit items to the clerk by Thursday, January 18th, 2024 for further discussion in committee of the whole. So thank you to everyone for your submissions to this agenda. I was able to get those submissions from the clerk and compile them into this larger framework, which has gone from, I think, about 18 pages to 30 something pages. So lots of good stuff was submitted. And I think that's great. You know, we're not going to. necessarily get through and decide on every little nitty gritty detail of every item tonight. But my intent is to quickly summarize this document. Again, as I did at the meeting, it was introduced, our first meeting. Then we can go through the items that are in each committee and we can flag A, if there's a major disagreement, if there are folks, individual Councilor or multiple Councilors who say, I don't think this is an item we should be having on this agenda. We can discuss that if necessary, we can vote to remove it or not. We can also take a look at there are a number of items in here that have been, you know, not quite necessarily introduced yet in terms of they haven't been formally introduced as official council papers. So we should just note that and, you know, folks should be ready to introduce items. And then there were some items that either didn't necessarily have a lead Councilor, Or didn't have quite a didn't have a timeline or didn't have a full description or a goal. So we can at least note those and either in committee or individual, you know, they can be discussed in committees when referred to committees, or they could be. You know, individual Councilors could introduce the further fleshed out more formal item. They may have taken a very short summary and submitted it, but they may have I don't know. You guys might have more information on different things and ideas that you want to do. And also, if there's, you know. I think this is in the wrong committee. It should go somewhere else. I think that's a flag as well. And then the last thing I want to do before we get out of here tonight is just make sure that we kind of refer this document to each of the committees so that they can have a chance to review them. I think that's a good start for the 1st meetings of those committees. You can only committee chairs if they also want to. formally discuss other items in addition to reviewing this. Of course, that's the discretion of the chairs. And also, Vice President Collins and I have talked about looking at a schedule for how often we would review this collectively and how often leadership would try to make updates to the document. So that's pretty much what I'm thinking for tonight. Does anyone have anything else they want to touch on this document that I didn't just kind of mention? any other types of review we want to do of this tonight. Councilor Collins, Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I think that plan sounds great. Of course, with such a long document, of course, this is sketching out everything that we aspire to do over the next two years. I think that probably the best use of our time is to, as we're going through this, if there's things that Councilors, kind of reiterating what you just said, if there's things that Councilors have questions on, like, I don't understand what this project is that we're proposing to be referred to committee or if something seems incomplete. Essentially, if there are any critical substance-related flags, I think that this is a good time to quickly go over those. But in general, a lot of these projects we have touched on before, either previous term, in this term, we were talking about creating this document. So I think this is a great time to kind of We've all had several days to look at this after a couple weeks to submit our own proposals. And then, of course, the deep dives will occur in committee for any of the projects that get referred there, assuming that most, if not all, of these will end up getting referred. Thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you. Any other comments before we get going? Cool. So just to summarize again, the intent of this document is a framework, a living document of the work that this council is doing actively or over the next essentially two years of this elected term. It's kind of a document that can serve as a guidepost for us to see. I mean, I think it's an ambitious agenda. I think there's a ton of great stuff in here. And we can see how much of it we've gotten done. Are we keeping to timelines? Are things that are taking longer than expected? Are there new items that have come up that maybe need to take priority over some of the items that we have in here today? You know, for example, I had a lot of ideas in January 2020 that were very different by April 2020, given the circumstances of the pandemic. So that's really the intent here. This is split up by committee. So there was committee of the whole. There were a few ordinances that were in committee of the whole that we were looking at. So those are still, we still need to work through those and hopefully work through those. They are mostly done, I would say, or at least there have been many meetings on the way to completion. And that's the tree ordinances, tree preservation protection or replacement ordinances, leaf blower ordinance and food truck ordinance. So those are kind of existing projects that are carrying over. Some of these other items are existing projects too, but those were, really pretty fully baked and we're already in committee of the whole food truck. And then just for the rest of this, I just want to quickly, you know, for I'm sure councillors have read the committee assignments and whatnot, but if there is anybody, you know, for folks on zoom, anybody watching on streaming or on TV, the other seven committees are an administration and finance committee, which I am chairing. There's an education and culture committee chaired by Councilor Scarpelli, a governance committee chaired by Councilor Tseng. Planning and Permitting Committee, chaired by Vice President Collins. Public Health and Community Safety Committee, chaired by Councilor Lazzaro. Public Works and Facilities Committee, chaired by Councilor Callahan. Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee, chaired by Councilor Leming. Um, so we'll go through each of those committees, the way the committee structure works. We are all members of all the committees in terms of we can all attend and speak up. But in terms of voting members, 5 Councilors are voting members of each committee. Um, so that's what it will be used in terms of quorum and in terms of the votes of items out of committee. If you are interested in even more detail, you can see on the city website, what are the former subcommittees that are now kind of making up these new committees? What are some of the policy areas, city departments and city ordinances that each committee is responsible for reviewing and for, you know, kind of just overseeing? So that's a general summary. I want to get into the meat of this so we can go through each committee and flag any issues. We started with Committee of the Whole. We have the three projects in Committee of the Whole. We have the Tree Preservation Protection Replacement Ordinance, the Leaf Blower Ordinance, and the Food Truck Ordinance. And the goal here is to really finish those up in the next three to six months at most, so get those done early in the term. Does anyone have any questions, objections? Go to Councilor Callaghan.
[Callahan]: I'm just curious about procedure, and I know that the committees were different in the last cycle. These tree preservation leaf blower, which seem like they might be under environment, are they in Committee of the Whole because of the change of structure of the committees? Or is there a reason why things might go to Committee of the Whole rather than be in a specific other committee?
[Bears]: Yeah, so these were already these had been in subcommittee and had been referred out to committee of the whole, so they kind of had moved through part of the process already. I think something we're going to want to figure out this term. Since technically every committee is a committee of the whole do we want traditionally the step had been well, I don't want to say traditionally. A way that ordinances had been moved through a process was for it to be introduced on the council agenda. For a draft to be created either by what we have in-house counsel, the city solicitor, the assistant solicitor, generally in the last term, it was more often the draft was created by a council member, maybe working with a member of departmental staff, occasionally in concert with the KP law. legal counsel, the outside legal counsel for the city. Whatever either is an idea or a formal draft would be proposed at regular meeting, that would then be referred to a subcommittee and discussed, and then that would have been referred to committee of the whole so that everyone could get a swing at it, and then it would go to regular meeting. Maybe we don't need to take that extra step now, but given that it's a new committee structure, I think. We can decide, you know, and committees themselves can decide. All right, the 5 of us have taken a look, but we really want to take an extra step. Maybe. The charter example, if we ended up with a draft charter coming out of governance committee, maybe that should then go to committee of the whole for another meeting or 2, something like that. But. You know, I think that's something new in the process, but essentially those three items are a committee of the whole because they were had already moved through to that stage of the previous term. Any questions, concerns, thoughts around the three ordinances that are in committee of the whole. And obviously, we can get to the details when we meet on that. Kit and I were trying to figure out exactly who we were waiting on, what feedback to continue on each one.
[Callahan]: I appreciate that the current status is in there, so we can, we don't even need to ask, like, we can see immediately, like, what is it waiting on, so thank you for that.
[Bears]: Yes, yeah, and so that's the, you know, for these ones we have, we have that, and I think that would be good, you know, for chairs, committee chairs to maybe add that into the items in their committees once we're there. All right, the next one is administration finance committee. So we have a lot of stuff here. The topic based committees or policy area based committees are split up into three sections, major projects, ordinances, and then oversight and engagement. So for administration and finance, we have major projects, the annual budget process, revenue generation, proposition two and a half, and the classification and compensation study implementation. Then we have ordinances, we have budget ordinance, commercial vacancy tax, which has yet to be introduced, good landlord tax credit local option, community benefits agreement ordinance which has to be introduced percent for our ordinance paid family and medical leave extended illness leave bank and then in oversight and engagement we have financial review and long-term budget planning and forecasting and we have another item and this appears in every committee review relevant city ordinances and regulations so the idea there is if we have nothing else going There's probably an ordinance or regulation that should to be looked at for updating because there's quite a bit of anachronistic and archaic ordinance and regulatory language in the city's legal body.
[Leming]: And I will go to just just a question for reduced for introducing these ordinances. So, the commercial vacancy tax could potentially. be worked on in both planning and permitting committee, as noted in here, as well as admin and finance. So what would the process for something being developed simultaneously in two different committees look like?
[Bears]: Yeah, I think it should be sequential. I think the question was, if there's something that maybe could fit into two committees, how would that work? I mean, conceivably, the committees could have a joint meeting. I don't know what that would look like or if it necessarily would make sense. But I think if you're thinking it could be in both, maybe send it to the one you think where it's more relevant to start. And then if at the end of that process, it feels like it needs input from another committee, the committee could refer it to the other committee. But I think also, you know, just given the composition of the bodies, you know, we can get that in. Yeah, I'll go to Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: Yeah, it occurs to me that a lot of the projects I've been thinking of in the public health and community safety are going to overlap a lot with resident services. But I think it's probably just a matter of picking one that makes the most sense. If somebody is interested, they're not on that committee, but they're interested in that particular issue, they come to that meeting, they can speak on it. It may eventually, maybe it goes to committee of the whole after, would that be an option?
[Bears]: Yeah.
[Bears]: And I think those, it's really not like a, super strict and there's no checklist of steps that it has to go through. And I think it's really whichever committee is considering it, whatever they feel comfortable with the disposition when they feel like they've done their work is probably fine. Um, and you know, just cause it's an administration and finance doesn't mean you can't invite the planning staff if that's for your example. So are there any anything in there that folks are really against that they don't want to have on the table for this governing agenda or think should be in a different committee or otherwise have questions and thoughts about? Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: I was so excited to see the percent for art ordinance.
[Bears]: Yeah. Councilor Collins, Vice Mayor Collins.
[Collins]: Well, thank you for bringing that up because I was internally debating whether to say I noticed the percent for our ordinance was, as we can see from the paper number introduced in year 2020. I think it's a good one to bring forward and see if we can get to it this term. Despite my day job, I don't need to be the lead Councilor on it. So I just throw that out to Councilor Callahan and all my fellow Councilors if anybody sees this and wants to take point on it. I would gladly relinquish my sponsorship or share leadership with somebody else.
[Bears]: Great. Yeah, you know, again, I think those can discussions can happen in committee unless if people are desperately formally wanting to move that they be the lead Councilor percent for our ordinance, we can happily consider it. But we have some time on those questions as well. And then I think just going through, I just want to make sure just to flag anything else here. It did look like. So we had two ordinance, two items in here that did need to be introduced formally. So that would be the commercial vacancy tax and the community benefits agreement ordinance. So just flagging that we do have lead Councilors. We have councilor Leming on the commercial vacancy, community benefits agreement. We had councilors Collins and saying, so at some point somebody needs to introduce those items and refer them to the administration and finance committee. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: just this is just a procedural question but when uh if november 2024 so if the community benefits agreement ordinance the goal of is to start that november 2024 is the idea that you would present it to in a regular meeting around that time or or anytime
[Bears]: think any time before.
[Lazzaro]: And then the idea being that that project can start. Yeah, for 2024. Okay. Yeah.
[Bears]: And I think again, it's a guidepost, right? It's like, okay, you know, and I think these chart one of the things I really appreciate the chart move, which Councilor Collins had kind of started because it's like, oh, I can visualize how much work is happening and when in the committees and the printed version doesn't quite because it's not color version doesn't quite get the, uh, There's some color coding that the red things are major projects, the yellow things are ordinances, and the green things are oversight engagement. May not always be true that that's like how much work is going into each of those, but I kind of just, you know, I figured it was a good first pass. Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Will there be an updated digital copy of this regularly as things change?
[Bears]: Yes, and that's something, yeah, and so I think, Councilor Collins, you had talked about a monthly, we could take a look at it monthly and try to go monthly on it. If that timeline becomes burdensome for us, just in terms of, maybe we'll scale back to quarterly or something, but that was our, yeah, Councilor Collins, Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Yeah, my aspiration is to check in with all committee chairs monthly to say, where are we at on what and update this document. If that cadence doesn't quite work out, I think certainly keeping it updated on at least quarterly basis so we can track where we are and perhaps update further start dates accordingly. So that's the plan. Yeah, thank you for that.
[Bears]: Great. So I'm just trying to set my screen up here and make sure I can see. Councilor Scarpelli. Yeah, so it looks like everything else in this committee had a lead and a timeline and a general description and goal. Maybe the commercial vacancy tax could get more specific when introduced. But other than that, that all looked good. And certainly there's plenty of ordinances and regulations to look at too. So any other thoughts around administration and finance committee?
[Tseng]: just that I'm excited about these ideas. Cool. Thank you, Councilor Tsengeed.
[Bears]: Sorry.
[Lazzaro]: I just have one. I also admire how many real already established ordinances are in that committee. And I have a goal for the rest of the committees to look that way after this meeting, maybe, and maybe in a little while. But that one seems really nicely like a benchmark for us, like a nice template for us to build on.
[Bears]: Yeah, I think it's, there's a lot in there for sure. And yeah, I'm hoping, it'll be interesting to see something that I'm interested in. Like right now we have it kind of set up. Oh, you know, every planning and permitting, I think it's the only one that's even more fleshed out than that administration and finance. And so that's why at least in the first passes, like that's one that should be meeting twice a month. I think it'll be interesting to see based on, and I think this document gives us an indication maybe there's some committees that don't need to meet every month, and maybe there's some committees that need to meet more than once a month. And we'll start to kind of feel out what that frequency looks like, I think, as we move through the first meetings. And I think it's important for chairs to kind of be aware, you know, I think the resident services and public engagement had a lot of stuff to, not that there's not a lot of meat in quite a few of these, but it'll be interesting to see what needs to be more frequent and less frequent in terms of the committees. So the next one is Education and Culture Committee. This is one where there's not a ton of stuff right now, but I do know that there's a lot of conversation and engagement around it. So I am hoping this will get filled in a little bit more as we move through. Right now, it just has reviewing the relevant city ordinances and regulations. But again, I know there's a lot of energy around these issues. This would include arts, city events, education, history, recreation, youth affairs. There's departments, Medford Public Schools, Medford Public Library, Recreation, Parks Commission, Medford Arts Council, relevant city ordinances and regulations, Chapter 2, Article 3, Boards and Commissions, Chapter 2, Article 4, Officers and Employees. Chapter 26, Education, Chapter 62, Parks and Recreation, you know, those are, there's a whole show about parks and recreation, so I figure we can fill out a committee about it. So, you know, I'm interested to see what we can fill in here, because I know there's a lot of great ideas, tons of ideas floating around for different cultural events that the city may want to host, and different, you know, Certainly the library is such an amazing, vibrant community center with the new building, even more so than it was prior so hoping, hoping that more will fill in here and I'll go to Councilor say, I'm just going to take advantage of this opportunity and plug the Lunar New Year celebration on February 10, we'll have line, the lion dance will have
[Tseng]: free boba and free pastries. We have readings for children and crafts for children as well. It's going to be a hoot. So I'd love to see you all down there at the library on February 10th. I believe festivities start around noon. So I wanted since President Bears mentioned cultural events, I wanted to plug that. I think another note that I have for this committee is that there are certain projects that are starting out and other committees, because I essentially the youth commission is the 1 I'm thinking of where I think. For now, it makes more sense over there because it has to do directly with resident engagement. Once that's flushed out and passed, maybe the activities that the city council engages in with the youth commission fit in here more. I think that becomes topic dependent, but there are certainly ideas in other committees that might start out there that eventually might find their way over here as well.
[Callahan]: I want to bring up two ideas that came up as I was knocking on doors. I hope to, you know, encourage these to happen. One is to encourage our schools to offer more opportunities for our children to spend in the fells. and in nature. And the other one that I got from a 10-year-old at the doors is called Lemonade Stand Days, where we send out a text message to everyone in the city saying, if you're a kid, get your lemonade stand ready. If you're a grown-up, put cash in your pocket. The night before any day, it's going to be over 90 degrees.
[Bears]: I love that. Yeah, and I think those are great. great ways that this whole thing is about bringing people together and also kids. So I think that's a great couple of great ideas. I'll throw them down if you want to. I'll put them in my notes and they'll be in the committee report of course. If they want to be formalized in any way feel free to submit any sort of agenda item and refer it over. And I actually think that you know we do have our director of community affairs in the mayor's office who tends to organize city events. And I think this would be a great place to maybe interact with her and maybe also with Caché. Ken Kraus puts out through Caché, and I know others participate. I shouldn't just say Ken. Ken and others put out a great monthly calendar of arts and culture events in the city. So maybe there's some sort of synergy there bringing all of those different voices together and bringing new ideas and making sure that they're broadcast out, at least through our council, through the council's voice. Council Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Thank you. Appreciate that. And it strikes me, going off of what Councilor Ziaro noted about some committees being, going into this process more flush with ordinances and projects than others, I think that I assume that we'll see some of the work of some of these committees will be more straightforwardly legislative related to, you know, our official functions, promulgating policies. Others, like perhaps the Education and Culture Committee is a good example of this, their role will be more broadcasting, engaging, synergistic. You know, just in line with the, the topic of those committees and I think that would be a great way to organize kind of the various functions that this council serves between broadcasting events, helping to be a liaison between community partners city hall partners. And I think that that will be a good way for us to budget our capacity because probably realistically if we were working on a full slate of ordinances and every committee. There's only so many Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the year. So I think this will be a great way for us to get a lot done and do the best that we can to complete all the projects that we set out to complete.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Collins. Any further thoughts on Education and Culture Committee? Seeing none, I want to make sure I lose George and Matt a little bit here with this new setup. I'm excited for the when we have new microphones, to be able to press a button and I'll be able to see you in a stack and call on you in the order in which you pressed your button. So I won't have to guess on... Which is the old system. Which is the old system, yes. Yes. We will be at least restoring the functionality of 2019 to this chamber. The next item is governance committee. This is generally looking at ordinances, rules, charter and elections. Departments include the clerk's department, law department, election commission, boards and commissions. There's relevant city ordinances and regulations. I think the one to note here is that this would be a committee looking at the rules of the council, special acts of the state legislature that are relevant to Medford, as well as legislative acts accepted by the city. So provisions of state law that the city has accepted Um... So the major projects here are updates to the city charter, estimated length and timing of project is 12 to 18 months. And really this is to create a proposal for an updated city charter, two with the approval of the mayor, submit to the state house and senate for approval, reviewing the charter study committee's research and draft language, as well as proposals from prior councils. We had some discussion last night of items that may be included, city staff boards and commissions, And to begin some preliminary meetings, looks like, you know, about May, June of this year, invite the charter study committee and call center to submit what they have, if that's an advance of their final recommendations, but want to give this council a good time to dig in and kind of set out its own process and procedure. I don't think we need to go the Somerville route and take four years to put this together, especially with the Charter City Committee having done some good foundational work for us. But that's really, I think, the big project of this committee. Another piece we did discuss last night was the election department oversight report and recommendations. We did receive the after action report. I think there was general consensus that it was not a sufficient report and that some of the recommendations need to be stronger. and clearer to the public. So we'll take that motion that went out last night, Councilor Callahan's motion around democracy, pro-democracy reforms that could be done by charter ordinance or home rule petition. And then also reviewing city ordinances and regulations, you know, something that could come up in this committee, maybe, you know, was kind of thrown out on around, in recent weeks. We have a lot of boards and commissions and no rhyme or reason I can find as to who gets paid what and why. And I think that may be a topic to discuss too. We had members of the Parks Commission in the building last night for their meeting, and they came in and they said, we're the only commission that's existed since we became a city in 1892, and we don't get a dollar. And the Hormel Commission, which regulates just Hormel Stadium, gets a stipend, but the Parks Commission, which regulates 27 parks and fields or something, maybe even more than that, I can't remember the number, does not get a stipend. So there's an example of, a little bit of confusion there, and maybe we could, so that's something that could come into here too, but those are basically the only things right now that are in this committee. Any questions or discussions about the committee and the work that's in it? Councilor Tseng?
[Tseng]: I think just to underscore what you said, much of this committee's work is stuff that will come through the process of doing one item, and so I with this committee, even though it's short in this document, I'm expecting an avalanche of things, of fixes that need to come up. I also think that we shouldn't underrate the work that it'll take to update the city charter and to give our feedback, given how long the city charter is and how many recommendations are coming out of the committee, of the charter review committee as well. I am particularly interested, this is the nerdy side of me, but going through Mass General Law, seeing what we've accepted, what we haven't accepted yet, seeing where the potential for action is there. So thank you.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Any further discussion on the Governance Committee? All right, planning and permitting, we got a lot going here. And again, I guess I maybe should have said this earlier, but if chairs want to say anything, so far it's just been myself on administration, finance, councilor Scarpelli, education, culture, councilor second, governance. If chairs wanna speak to the agenda here and how they feel about it, feel free to chime in. Planning and permitting chair, vice president Collins, we have a lot here, climate code enforcement, economic development, housing, licensing, parking, planning, permitting, science, sustainability, transportation, zoning, kind of the holistic planning and permitting work of a city. And major projects are zoning reform, which we had an interesting, good starting conversation, the vice president and I on. Ordinances are condo conversion ordinance. housing home roll petitions, reviewing the fee schedule. We have cycling safety ordinance, transportation demand management, energy disclosure, benchmarking ordinance, rental licensing ordinance, pesticide regulations, blasting and earth removal regulations, green score, and then oversight and engagement. We have reviewing the relevance of the ordinances and regulations. This committee will also be reviewing licenses, permit and sign applications as needed, which is a function that has occurred in the past. There is a specific subcommittee for that, the Subcommittee on Licensing, Permitting and Signs, chaired by Councilor Scarpelli with members Councilor Callahan and Leming. And then efficiency retrofits for existing city buildings are sorry existing buildings in the city and transit signal priority so quite a long list. I will defer to Vice President Collins if you want to talk more on this committee.
[Collins]: Certainly, I think that. The way I've been conceptualizing this governing agenda overall has been to try to, you know, and of course, as we've been saying, it's a, it's a living, evolvable document, but I think that this is a tool through which we can try to project magic to ourselves, because in this committee alone, there's certainly two years worth of work. So thinking through how to prioritize and how to structure and schedule these projects so that we can get to everything that we want to get to for the community. I think that this is a topic that we can revisit as a committee in our first couple of meetings. I think that Zoning reform is certainly going to be the characteristic project of this committee and indeed of this council this term, one of our major projects. And that will live in this committee and I think that so many of the major projects and ordinances that have been proposed for planning and permitting do dovetail with our zoning reform. Some very closely some are related. So, I think it might make sense for us to begin a conversation in committee about organizing our year, you know, the work in this committee around zoning reform and structuring ordinance projects around that based on what we're talking about and when and how to make sure that our work is aligned and how to, you know, if we're touching on a topic, let's touch on it at the same time and hopefully get through our work efficiently. And that's just because there are so many projects lined up for this committee, and they're all good ones, and we should try to get to all of them.
[Bears]: Thank you, Council Vice President Collins, Councilor Tseng.
[Tseng]: Thank you. Um, I, you know, this is, I, this, this reminds me of what you always repeat, which is that a former Councilor told you that the three responsibilities of the City Council are really Um, zoning ordinances and budget, and this, I think, reflects the fact that, um, zoning takes up a third. If not, uh, if that, um, you know, of the work that we do, and we have ordinances on top of that, that fit into this. Um, I think vice president Collins. This point is really important to understand. I think, while I'm not on this committee, there are a lot of ideas in here I think that pair really well with zoning reform. For example, I think the benchmarking, the licensing, the TDM stuff, we could talk about maybe moving it ahead in the schedule if it's feasible in the committee. I know there are projects that I've recommended that even with with me not being on this committee, I'd be happy to show up and help pass as well. There are some projects that other councillors have submitted that I think either I've submitted different versions of it or pretty much aligned versions of it because I reached out to them. the Councilors while they were still candidates to see what we could work together on. In particular, I'm very excited about the Transportation Demand Management Ordinance idea that Councilor Leming has also suggested and put forward. I think it could be a really important addition to making our traffic more efficient and to incentivize the type of transit-friendly developments that we want to see in our city as well. But the list really is countless, and these are all really great ideas, and I'm very excited for the work that can be done in this committee.
[Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Anything else that we want to talk about on the planning and permitting? Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: I just want to highlight that the energy disclosure and benchmarking ordinances, I'm happy to take, to kind of review that and look, because certain things have to happen before other things, and Anyway, if you want to put my name there, you can, on the Energy Disclosure, just because I want to work together with Patel in terms of looking at those
[Tseng]: make sure. And one point I forgot to make. I think if you if folks at home take a second to peruse through this section, I've made sure to include as much as possible relevant points from the plans that we've already passed, such as a climate action plan, open space plans. that we have. Um comprehensive plans. Um I've included the points that people can go to in those documents to see how these ideas align with our city's already stated goals towards climate housing, development, urban planning, etcetera.
[Bears]: Thank I believe the cycling safety, transportation demand management, energy disclosure, benchmarking, rental licensing, pesticide, and green score as items that need to be submitted. We may even need to submit zoning reform formally as a new paper. The last thing we had on there was just the RFP. And then also the efficiency retrofits for existing buildings and the transit signal priority. All right, next we have public health and community safety. And we have in here, we have major projects, warming and cooling center. Alternative emergency response such as civilian oversight, one-stop center for public services. For ordinances, we have plant medicine decriminalization ordinance, overgrowth ordinance, wildlife feeding ordinance, regulating retail sales of animals raised in commercial breeding facilities. AKA the Puppy Mills Ordinance, Gender Affirming Care and Reproductive Health Care Protection Ordinance. Then for Oversight Engagement, we have Surveillance Ordinance Reporting, Housing Stability Notification Ordinance, Implementation and Enforcement, Emergency and Response Equipment Replacement, and Reviewing Relevant City Ordinances and Regulations. And I will go to Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: I'm so eager to get started on working on these items. The warming and cooling center in particular is something that's really important to me at a personal level, but I can say that the timeline in my mind would be to start talking to relevant parties after this winter is over and talk about implementing a process for next winter. I have a question for the rest of the council about with a new major project that hasn't happened in the city yet. How, as far as proposing something like this, does it start with talking to appropriate department heads and, you know, landowners and stuff like that before you're making a motion on the floor? Or is it like, we're going to do this thing and then everything comes after that? You know, like what's the order of operations?
[Bears]: Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: There's probably a lot to be said on this, so I'm happy to take, you know, one swing at the question. I think that there's many answers to the question. I think it, in general, depends on the project. I think that, for me, I've always found it valuable to involve potential partners and stakeholders and experts and staff that are related to the project early. Of course, it depends on what you are trying to do. Like we've talked about, some of our projects are serving as liaison to bring together people who could work on implementing a program that's outside of our legal jurisdiction, but it's something that we have the platform to do. There are other cases where it is an ordinance that is something that we have the power to promulgate. If we're thinking about how to tailor this in a way that enforcement is going to go most successfully because we can do the legislation we don't do the enforcement. I found it valuable to involve those city staff and other partners who'd be involved in enforcement and implementation early in the process so that what we are creating can be that balance between in line with our values and our aspiration, and achievable and actionable and doable. So I think the short answer is, there's no right answer. But I found it valuable if, since most of our projects are deeply collaborative, it's I think it's completely fine to involve collaborators. Before the paper is formally introduced, as soon as it's formally introduced at the first meeting at the second meeting, depending on your goals.
[Lazzaro]: President, yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to alienate or steamroll any of our partners. So that's a concern that I have when I'm trying to think through how best to manage estimating timelines for projects that, in a perfect world, we would be able to do as soon as humanly possible because there's needs right now. I hesitate to talk to everybody that I could possibly talk to before doing anything real, but at the same time, you know, it's a balance. So, but anyway, all of this to say, I'm very excited to get moving on all of these projects and get to work.
[Bears]: Yeah, I think just my two cents, then I'll go to Councilor Lehman and Councilor Callahan. You know, there's been a variety of approaches. I think it's good to kind of take a two track approach, like maybe put it on the agenda and say, hey, it's something we're looking at. This is a priority, right? Stake the claim, put it out there, and then see what the options are. Go to the city departments, go to private stakeholders, go to the community, go to potential outside funders. We've had a lot of examples. The library, there were some informal conversations that Councilor Caraviello had early on with, I think, and then Director Kerr with the state board of library commissioners, and that evolved. then into a council agenda item to request that the mayor at the time consider an application for the, and now we have a new library, right? So that's an example. Councilor Marks working with a variety of people from the arts community around the arts center, you know, and it was first, it was someone looking out their window and saying, oh, this Hegner, the Hegner Center, it's a city owned building. It's empty. It's kind of run down. Could this be the Arts Center? And then many years later, Councilor Caraviello's involvement, you have the public-private partnership with Theory Wellness and Arts Collaborative Medford, where we have the Arts Center now on Mystic Ave, and there's ribbon-cutting next week, and there was a little opening ceremony over the weekend. So, you know, I could see, you know, for this, and then One Stop Service Center is really a priority of mine. not that the warming and cooling center isn't, maybe that's a path to go down. But I do think, especially in this city, honestly, for the worst, I would say, it is often looking at the outside private partnership to get new stuff like this done rather than, at least in the short run of the city, being able to have the resources to purchase a property and then rehabilitate a property and, you know, manage a, and I know, I think the Malden Warming Center is a non-profit, private, yeah, so.
[Lazzaro]: Well, there's a model that's built a little bit around the way the Malden Warming Center operates, but is implemented in Revere and Somerville this year. Both cities have contracted with Housing Families, which is a nonprofit, but they've basically laid the foundation. They're doing it in their public buildings. So Revere is hosting it in the basement of their city hall, Somerville is using the armory. they have contracted with housing families, so they pay them. So I just need to, I, you know, like the fact that they've already sort of established some things with that, I think there's a lot of conversations that can be had, but it's probably, I think you're right, two pathways can put it on the agenda and also have the conversation, maybe invite folks since it's going to be on the agenda. And then maybe so because it's not fully fleshed out, it goes to committee after that. And then we go from there.
[Bears]: And this is a public meeting, right? So it's for the parts where you want to engage the public. The committee serves a great role. You know, formal agenda, we have the room, we have the space, etc. I'm going to Councilor Leming, Councilor Kelly, and Councilor Tseng. Councilor Leming.
[Leming]: This is just specifically regarding the plant medicine decriminalization ordinance, just to state. The goals of that may have already been addressed by the resolution that was submitted for the next regular meeting. I think that There is some work that needs to be done at the state level before that could be implemented as an ordinance locally. So I don't necessarily want a motion to strike it now before I do a little bit more research, but it may be an update to the governing agenda in the future.
[Bears]: Great. Thank you, Chancellor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thanks. I'm going to bring up another idea that I heard while I was knocking on doors. This is not at the point of writing an ordinance yet, but simply at the point of having discussions with the public. Someone asked if we could pass something allowing folks to have chickens in their backyard. And I know that the way other cities do it, it's a certain number per lake. or nine blocks or whatever that is. So it's not like anyone can have as many chickens as they want. So, but again, not ordinance stage, simply curiosity because someone mentioned it when I was knocking on their door to see if this is something that the people in Medford are interested in.
[Tseng]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. I have things for everyone. For Councilor Callahan, I actually have also heard this from a number of residents who are interested in the idea. I think, you know, as with all ordinances, it's about adapting it to our city and making sure that we have something that works for us. But it's an idea that I do find interesting and I do find possible, as long as we work hand in hand with city staff on it. For Councilor Lazzaro's point about the warming and cooling centre, I would recommend that you find the time to talk to Director Hunt about the why and the space at St. Rayfield's. Is it St. Rayfield's? I'm quoting the wrong church.
[Tseng]: Francis. Where the city is trying to get St. Francis to Yeah, right, right. It could just be a school. Yeah. The city is trying to get the church to sell it to the Y for a longer term contract. And there's been talk about putting housing families in there. Now, there's a little hesitancy on the church's end, but maybe we can coordinate efforts and get an idea about what the city's plans with that space are.
[Lazzaro]: I would love to have a conversation with them, too. We can talk about this offline, but if you have contact info.
[Tseng]: Yeah, for sure. And then for Councilor Leming's point, I think, as with a lot of resolutions, I think oftentimes it's honestly healthy just to spark the debate to introduce the resolution in a general meeting, send it to committee. And then in committee, discuss the idea, even if we don't reach a point, you know, reach an end point that reflects what we intended when we started, I think it's still wise to send it to committee. It's always healthy to have these conversations about topics, but we can also, you know, talk to the chair about these ideas and make sure that we schedule the meetings for when the sponsor is most comfortable to initiate the conversation.
[Bears]: Great, thank you Councilor Saint. Anybody else? Public Health and Community Safety. All right, our next one is Public Works and Facilities for major, actually give me one second. I want to be consistent here. looking at streets, facilities, infrastructure, utilities, departments, our DPW on the kind of the street side with our highway fleet electrical and engineering, a little bit more on the facility side with our facilities manager for street parks, cemetery department, the solid waste contract, Councilor Collins being the foremost expert on this council on that. And Also, water and sewer, which we know is a huge issue in this community. We have one of the poorest condition water and sewer systems that's going to require the most updating in Massachusetts, and also our information technology department. The major projects we're looking at here are street and sidewalk repair and accessibility. the street and sidewalk pavement management reports and really understanding what is our implementation schedule. Are we meeting the recommended funding goals in those reports for not just maintaining the middling level of condition of our streets and sidewalks, but actually trying to really chunk off some significant change there. City facilities and equipment in general, I know Councilor Tseng and Collins and I have been really, and the entire city council as well, but we've had these conversations in our ordinances and rules subcommittee last term around what is the state of all of our capital assets, and what is the cost to restore all of our capital assets to a state of good repair, and we have heard pretty consistently that we can't give you, we don't know. We do not know the answers to that question and we do not have the resources to put together a process to answer that question. So we have our capital improvement plans, which spend X amount of money over the next five or six fiscal years, but there's no really goal or benchmark target to measure that other than what we have right now for street and sidewalks with the pavement management plan, which is now four fiscal years old. So, That's a big one. Really need answers there. Public restrooms and parks and squares. I move that into a major project. I think that's a major project. I think that's a significant undertaking for this committee and for the city. And then for ordinances, we had lead ordinance. We had a home rule petition to increase excise taxes for large trucks. And then for oversight and engagement, we have public utility accountability. I know our engineer, city engineer, and DPW are constantly working to try to hold public utilities accountable. The Governor's Municipal Empowerment Act, which was introduced late last week and started at the MMA conference over the weekend, Would give some some interesting teeth around double poles and some other things that utilities are just flagrantly ignoring. Our city engineers also working really diligently on. Utilities funding the projects that they've paid for in terms of mitigation for grants of location or the opening of streets. But there's still more work to do there, given that we know that National Grid is sending, I think, $1 billion a year in profits just from Massachusetts to its Dutch parent company. So that's the price of privatization that we are all paying. There's another one, the Tree Planting Volunteer Network. and also reviewing relevant city ordinances and regulations. So I will go to Councilor Callahan if there's more that you want to talk about here about the public works and facilities committee.
[Callahan]: Thank you so much. Again, I'm excited to dig into these and to work with the committee to prioritize these items. I do want to say I'm happy to put the public utility accountability if you want to put my name as the lead councilor. Sure. That's fine. I'm also really grateful for seeing the lead ordinance on there. That was on all of my original material that I knocked on doors with in May and June. So I'm very happy to see that there. Yeah, that's it for me.
[Bears]: Yes, and just on a letter of insight, I know that DPW is very interested in doing something there, so that should be exciting. Anything else on public works and facilities, Councilor Sasse?
[Tseng]: Um, I, so I originally submitted the public restrooms in parks and squares here. Um, and I, I think it does make sense here. Um, but I could also see an argument for being put in public health as well. And so I'm open to that shifting back and forth. Um, I'd be happy to talk to the two chairs and see which one it fits better in.
[Bears]: I do want to say just for my two cents that it, um, It seems to me that the big questions, there's certainly many kind of red herring arguments about we shouldn't have public restrooms because it's not safe. But it seems to me that when we are walking into the situation, At least when I've talked to people who are interested in building them, the bigger concerns, at least in the city side, have been infrastructure and logistics. So that's why I think maybe throwing it in public works makes sense, because it's like, how do we build and maintain these facilities versus. At least to me, that seems to have been the bigger concern of the major stakeholders, while the kind of not true statements about safety and health have been more reasons to just not build them and use them.
[Tseng]: Yeah, I mean, I think with public health, I'm just thinking of, you know, it is a health issue not to be able to use a restroom. Sure. That's more where I was coming from, but I also, you know, the logistics are very public works based. I know there are community members with proposals floating around for how we can do it in parks. I also think it'd be really interesting to explore what Somerville and Cambridge have been doing in their squares with their public restrooms as well.
[Bears]: Yes. Any other comments on public restrooms? And then there is a comment online, but I'll go to Councilor Lazzaro first. All right, I saw a hand come up during this, so I'll go to Zoom and Matthew Page-Lieberman. Name and address for the record, please.
[Lieberman]: This is Matthew Page-Lieberman, 15 Pinal Street. I really appreciate this talk about the electrical companies, the utilities. Councilor Bears, you mentioned something about the cost of everything being utilized. And I think, you know, perhaps one day we could consider having municipal energy. There are various cities within Massachusetts that do that. And we can decide to only purchase renewable energy for the whole city. That would be a nice thing for us to aim to. Thank you.
[Bears]: Yeah, appreciate the comment. I'll go to Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: I just wanna make sure that people, that we understood you correctly. You're talking about municipal energy. It says you broke up a little bit right then. Renewable energy. Renewable energy or municipal energy. I think he was talking about municipal energy. Yeah, which I think is very exciting.
[Bears]: I'm just gonna unmute you again if you wanna clarify, Matthew.
[Lieberman]: Yes, yeah, there are. So the energy sector is pretty complicated. You have energy producers, and then we have these energy sellers. And we could decide on our end to just be the sellers that distribute it to people's homes. It would be municipally owned. Exactly, you're on the right page, Anna. Sorry, Councilor Callahan. And from that point, we would have some leverage, and we could decide to only distribute to the homes around here renewable energy. that it's a big project, perhaps, but perhaps it's something that we can aim for.
[Bears]: Great, thank you. I appreciate that. I will go next to Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: I had a question about the water and sewer infrastructure in the city. I know that it's bad. I guess I'm curious about if This might be just a conversation, not for right now. But there aren't, we don't really have anything on here about like, you know, looking into it carefully and like assess, I know, I happen to know two people in town who routinely have their basements flood, like atrociously flooded basements, like ruined everything over and over again, every time it rains in Medford and different parts of the city. And it's because of the infrastructure on those streets. It's just like not up to date. So, um, I'm curious about where sort of the city is, it seems like they're aware that it's a problem, if there's anything that we can do to nudge that along, or if there's something that I can suggest now that I'm seeing it laid out in front of me, it kind of occurs to me that that would be, this would be a place to mention it.
[Bears]: Yeah, and if fellow councilors want to chime in as well, my understanding, there's kind of three things here. One, the system is bad because it's old. It's one of the older systems because a lot of development in the city happened in the early 1900s, and that's when a lot of the systems were laid. And a lot of the mid-century development happened with subdivisions and private ways. So the city is not responsible for water and sewer infrastructure on private ways. and a lot of the water and sewer infrastructure on private ways was not built up to the code then, never mind the code today. So that's one piece of the puzzle. The second piece of it is that my understanding is that the Water and Sewer Commission and the DPW and Superintendent Stoneking are working on a similar assessment to the pavement management assessments for streets and sidewalks for water and sewer. The third thing is that for a long time, what is called free cash on the city side, the free cash reserve on the city side of the general fund budget is known as retained earnings for this enterprise fund. The water and sewers lives in an enterprise fund separately from most of the other city spending in the general fund. And most of the time for many, many years, the Water and Sewer Commission recommended and the council approved that retained earnings be used to reduce the rates for water and sewer instead of be used for capital projects and expenditures. And my understanding is the first time that that didn't happen in a very long time was last year when this council decided we weren't going to do that anymore. My understanding was also the DPW and the mayor were eventually, probably this year, going to start recommending that we not do that anymore. But we kind of jumped out a little bit ahead on that last year, somewhat due to procedural reasons, but also due to some discussions in this chamber with the councillors to try to use the retained earnings and keep them for capital improvements. We've had a bunch of stuff. I think we approved a loan order in our first meeting for third reading that was a bond order for MWRA loans for the water and sewer department. We did a big meter replacement. A bunch of ARPA money went to this as well because of it was allowed to by the ARPA laws, which also allows us to use it to do the water main replacement and then also do the street upgrade. But that's the only way you could use the ARPA money for street upgrades. In any case, that's a long winded answer of it seems like it's being taken very seriously and a new approach is being taken, but we don't know exactly what the requests are going to be of us yet. And I don't, I haven't seen any sort of reporting. I don't know if other Councilors have had other conversations with DPW or yeah.
[Lazzaro]: Does the continued existence of the private ways continue to cause a problem with that? Because, I mean, I know we have a huge percentage of private ways in town. And are they less regulated still?
[Bears]: Oh, yeah.
[Lazzaro]: Yeah.
[Bears]: They're definitely less regulated still. I would say that the basement flooding problem, I don't know where these houses are. There's a lot of water table management issues. Diverted flow of stormwater, you know issues, especially on private ways because some of them don't have
[Lazzaro]: I can tell you for sure one is probably a private way. It's in the Heights and the other is, I don't think so. I don't think it's a private way, but it's it's down in West Medford by the river.
[Bears]: So yeah, there's there's some public ways that don't have storm like we had a whole bunch of meetings last term around the high street issues with the new intersection of high and Woburn changing the water flow patterns. And if you come down high from the safe routes and you loop under, there's no storm water system on that part of the street. There's issues. But yeah, the private way thing, and we've had a bunch of meetings, and I would definitely, I'm constantly answering questions about private ways and referring people to the video recordings of these meetings. the owners of the private ways would have to pay to bring the private ways up to code, and then the city could accept them as public ways and maintain them. But until that's done, it can't be. Essentially, the abutters to the private way own the private way, and they are responsible for the infrastructure on the private way. And they would be responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of infrastructure upgrades.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's incredibly burdensome for the homeowners.
[Bears]: Yeah. And that's something I think that really, you know, Realtors selling property on those ways need to be clear that it's like you're not getting.
[Lazzaro]: I live on a private way.
[Bears]: So, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'm going to go to Councilor Collins, Councilor Calhoun, Councilor, Vice President Collins.
[Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I appreciate the, the question around this just, and I think that's. You know, the best encapsulation in terms of. You know, for the newer Councilors in the room in terms of. the ways that this frequently comes to us. Certainly, we all have some level of understanding of the problem in its totality and why we're here and for how long it's been going on and the big pieces of why the problem is so widespread, which is our incredibly high percentage of private ways and very old infrastructure and a lot of rehabilitation and renovation that needs to be done and is incredibly expensive that we can't currently right now pay for, capital improvements. In my experience, how this comes up to the council on a week-by-week, month-by-month basis is residents continue to raise the issue, as is their right, and it's important for us to be a forum for them to come to with questions, whether it's, this keeps happening, who can I talk to? Or this keeps happening and I live on a private way, and we very frequently have to be the bearer of bad news because it is incredibly financially burdensome to people who live on private ways to do ideal renovations in many of those cases and it is also financially infeasible for the city at this point to just assume all of those private ways because they have to be brought to code first and that's millions and millions of dollars. So in my experience, when constituents come to this body and they say, hey, me and my neighbors have been having this problem, it's an opportunity to have a conversation. And we've had that conversation at least many times in the one term that I've served so far. And it's a way to convey that information. And I think it's a way to continue to resurface the kind of the bottom line issues that partners in City Hall and the PPW engineering are already working on that is, you know, unfortunately, but necessarily long term projects and deeply involved with the capital future of the city.
[Callahan]: Thank you. And I so appreciate this being brought up. Given our discussion right now, and discussions that I had many times at people's doors over the summer and fall, I would love to organize one meeting of this Public Works and Facilities Committee that is devoted to discussing private ways with the public. Hopefully we can have a lot of lead time. We can also come up with some written understanding of the history of private ways, how they became what they are. I would love to do something like that, so I don't think we'll do it right away. It's something that will require a lot of preparation for, but I do think that that would be beneficial for our community, for people to be able to come and discuss the issue as a whole with each other.
[Bears]: Great, yeah, and I know, thank you, Councilor Collins, for taking some notes on our shared document. If you could submit that and refer it to the subcommittee, I'll just reference. We've had a few meetings about it over the last two years, so those recordings may be valuable. There's some information coming from there's some information on the public works website, some information on the police department website, because around the parking and traffic enforcement on private ways, and then certainly commissioner given director Blake are. are knowledgeable resources who could maybe, with a ton of lead, maybe we could take everything that's out there and kind of say, this is private ways in Medford. I would love to get to the kind of, I think, where you're going down the line of, what would it cost to fix this whole thing? And, you know, the commission were given a citizen, the hundreds of millions, probably mid hundreds of millions or more. So, and then the one option that we never talk about, because I don't think we would ever do it, but, you know, there's basically 3 things the city could pay to fix it. And then you're talking about kind of. In my view, a gross misallocation of general public funds for specific private benefit. No offense to the private way residents. the private way owners could do it themselves and then take it out of their hands. Apparently, also, the city could essentially eminent domain it and charge the abutters. So I, again, don't think that that's going to happen. Although when I thought about that, I did have the one question, which was, if you did that at scale, would it be significantly cheaper if the city were to versus it's like the people on the private way are doing it one by one versus you could hire a contractor to do dozens of them every year, would that actually affect the overall cost of the project in a significant way? But I don't know, and I'd probably not enough to do it, right? So, Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: I would lean toward a debt exclusion. A debt exclusion. Like a real big public campaign for a debt exclusion. Everybody knows exactly what it's for and the public gets to decide whether or not to do that for the people who live in the city and yet do not get a lot of the services that everybody else gets. Really could be a question of equity. And then the voters are deciding and we're not doing anything that is not, we're not making the decision. Voters are making the decision.
[Bears]: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think those are the big, big questions on the big things. But I think that's like $500 million question number four on our list.
[Callahan]: Is that the $64 million question?
[Bears]: Yeah, right. We're really exceeding 70s game show amounts these days. Great. Anything else on public works and facilities? Cool. Fun discussion. Last, we'll go to resident services and public engagement. And we have in this committee, Give me one second. It's a long document. Looking at areas of racial justice, disability, elder affairs, veterans affairs, communications, public engagement, elections, departments, diversity, equity, inclusion, council on aging, veteran services, city clerk, veteran community media, communications department, and looking at relevant city ordinances, Chapter 2, Article 3, Boards and Commissions. Chapter 2, Article 4, Officers and Employees. We have our major projects of a Multilingual Public Participation Resident Guide, Ordinances, Gender Equity Commission, Youth Commission, Welcoming City Ordinance, Data Equity, Open Data, Immigrants Commission, Language Access Policy or Ordinance, and Human Rights Commission Reform. And we have Oversight and Engagement, Review Relevant City Ordinances and Regulations. modernizing the city council communication strategy, which I believe was just on the agenda. This yesterday, meetings with underrepresented groups, increased public input via open surveys and forms, twice annual training with the DEI office. So I will at this point turn it over to Councilor Leming. Um, thank you.
[Leming]: Um, well, there's just a small point about this, but this particular section, so I do very much appreciate my, my colleague Councilor Tsengs, uh, capacity for, for work, but he is listed as the lead Councilor on 11 of the 12 projects. And so I don't have specific recommendations at this time for who should lead which project, but I. I am of the opinion that perhaps we should spread the work out a little bit more among the committee when designating lead councillors. I'm also not wholly clear how much we're really committing to the lead councillor for some of the unproposed or some of the ones that have yet to be proposed as well. Thank you. Are you going to Councilor Tseng?
[Tseng]: Thank you. I'm very appreciative of your sympathy for my workload. I, you know, these, I, a lot of these are ideas that I'm very excited about, some of which I've already started work on, but many of which I have not. And I'd be very, very happy to distribute the workload if there are Councilors who are interested in a lot of these ideas. I know some of them are maybe newer ideas that we haven't talked about in the municipal space here at Medford yet. A lot of these ideas are, are ideas that other cities have been doing for a very long time that are just steps towards modernization for our city, but that also means that there's guidelines and frameworks in other cities that we could look at. I believe that this committee can get together and we can distribute the workload if we don't decide tonight who's going to take what. Now, with that being said, I'd be very happy to help just as a contributor to the multilingual public participation resident guide idea, just because I can translate things in Spanish and French and Chinese. I know there are Councilors who can translate into different languages as well. I know a lot of a lot of work, I think, I think residents should understand a lot of this work is really us writing the ordinances, us writing the documents that we want to go out because city staff is so overstretched and under-resourced. And so, you know, as much work as we can share in this, I'd be very happy to share.
[Bears]: Great.
[Tseng]: I'll go to Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thank you. As I was looking through our whole governing framework, I noticed that there wasn't any obvious place to put a lot of the revitalizing our squares work. And I thought about the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee as a good place where we might be able to do some of those. I know some of our neighboring cities have, they actually have city run offices that can help local businesses. They have grants for you know, both exterior and interior design. They have trainings in, you know, how to, you know, run, you know, employment, and how to run a business, all sorts of things. And I think that's, I heard so many times from people that we really want to be revitalizing our squares. So one, it's just really a question if there is another place aside from zoning, which I know is going to be, you know, obvious, that's more obvious place. but if this seems like the right place to put some of those discussions. And then I would love to offer that I will go ahead and make some suggestions for things we might be able to do based on what some other cities have done and ideas that came up during the campaign.
[Bears]: Yeah, just from my thinking, I think you could go to public engagement. I think that's great. I think Planning and permitting is also economic development, so it could go either way. And I think it's really kind of what's the, you know, what framework is, do you want to apply to the question, and what would you rather be, what kind of frame would you rather be considering it under? The city did, through ARPA, have a facades and revitalization grant program recently, so, but I think it was one-time funding, so. looking at that. There's some beautification committee was discussed as well at one point by this council, and I don't know where that went exactly, but those are some of the things that council are saying. And then I'd like to move us to a vote to refer this out.
[Tseng]: I believe for beautification it's probably stuck in the committee and I think we probably, I know we passed some resolutions as a council last year, last term. We could find a place for it somewhere in here as well. the with regards to revitalizing the square in my opinion a lot of it is zoning related and so with the RFPs that we got with the for the zoning phase two process there are plans to engage the public to hold public meetings to I believe one of the proposals actually gives us the proper trainings to engage with the public when it comes to zoning as well, to do public input sessions with the audience. And so, as President Berry said, I think a lot of it is just how we frame this idea of revitalizing the square, revitalizing local squares, because we also have to talk about Haines Square and West Medford Square and other squares as well. In my opinion, I think a lot of that is the zoning process. But of course, I think this council would be very happy to entertain ideas in supplement to that. I think I just wanted to touch on the facades idea, but you got that.
[Bears]: Great. Cool. Well, that's the review of the items.
[Tseng]: Yes, Councilor. There's one idea I just noticed in my notes that I missed that I think would be good for the Education and Culture Committee to discuss. I would like to work with the administration to see, to identify possible internship opportunities for public school students in Medford. You know, something that, as a recent young person, I find very relatable struggle and I think a lot of my friends have gone through is this idea that we're all entering college with a lot of classmates who've had very substantive internship experience in high school, and we have the same potential for work for. for that type of intellectual growth and that practical experience with our high school students. And I would love us to find opportunities at City Hall and with the city departments to link them with opportunities as well. But I also know having talked to department heads about possible ideas that some departments don't have the capacity to do it. And so I really think this would require a big meeting with department heads and with the mayor's office to see what opportunities exist and what are the roadblocks currently for those opportunities.
[Bears]: 25 city council interns, that's what I heard. All right. Yeah, exactly. Okay. We'll have more time to talk about this, but just we're at this end of the section. Is there a motion to refer this governing agenda to each of the committees? Motion by Councilor Callahan to refer the governing agenda to each of the committees. Seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, since we're on Zoom, please call the roll when you're ready.
[SPEAKER_04]: Councilor JOHNSTON.
[SPEAKER_05]: Councilor JOHNSTON. Councilor SRI. Councilor SRI.
[Bears]: Yes, yes, I mean, affirmative another negative motion passes. Last thing we had was to talk about reviewing this very quickly, or how we want to review this. So, I see Councilor Collins's hand, so I'll go to Councilor Collins and then Councilor Galliano.
[Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. Like we talked about at the beginning of the meeting, I think it makes sense for council leadership to keep a relatively close eye on this document and be in communication with committee chairs to make sure that this document stays useful by staying up to date on a reasonable timeline. So I would motion for council leadership to review this governing agenda monthly and for the full council to review it every six months in late June and late December so that as a cohort, we are discussing and keeping updated with what's where, how things are progressing, if timelines or goals need to be adjusted, that we're making those decisions as a group twice yearly.
[Bears]: Great. Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: I simply wanted to address Councilor George, I mean, Councilor Scarpelli, and say that we miss your cheerful disposition in the chambers.
[Bears]: Come back, George. And no, George has mentioned to me he has some work stuff, so I really appreciate him being able to be here and be where he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate it, and I apologize. I wish I was present. This has been a very insightful meeting, so thank you. Thank you.
[Bears]: All right, so on the motion of, is there any further discussion after, we have Councilor Collins' motion that leadership will review this monthly and update it monthly, and then we will sit down in June, December, June and December of this term to review it in committee of the whole. Is there a second on Councilor Collins' motion? Seconded by Councilor Tseng. Is there any further discussion on the governing agenda for this evening? Why don't we make this a motion to adjourn as well? All right, on the motion that the council will review, leadership will review monthly, committee of the whole is June, December, June, December, and we will adjourn as well by Councilor Collins, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Bears]: Yes, 7 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative. The motion passes and the meeting is adjourned.
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