total time: 36.42 minutes
total words: 3288
[Milva McDonald]: All right, welcome everyone to the method-started study committee meeting June 6, 2024. First order of business is to accept the minutes from May 16th. Did everyone have a chance to look at them? They're good.
[Eunice Browne]: Move approval. Second.
[Milva McDonald]: I make a motion to approve. I agree. All in favor? Aye. Excellent. Okay, now we can go right into the composition of the school committee, which we had already decided, but we had the issue of combining wards, and I believe, Ron, you had some things to say about that.
[Ron Giovino]: I do. I think that the members of the subcommittee are mostly on this call, and I know they've looked at the email that had all the details. So I'll just go as quickly as I can. I think that the consensus with the group was that rearranging, combining wards was a task that not necessarily was under our purview, but we took on the challenge and I think we did a pretty reasonably good job. I'll answer any questions. I'm just going to give you the When we initially started working with the numbers, the ward numbers were just out of whack. It was not balanced. But when we received the new ward numbers from Milva, the numbers came in line pretty well. There's the map. And so the task was to realize that all this has to do really with is balancing population of voters amongst each district. It doesn't have anything to do with demographics or makeup in that. That's a totally different thing that we have no authority of doing anyway. It's not that anybody would want to handle that. But I have, Milva, do you have the... Let me post. Can you give me sharing ability? Because I want to put up the numbers that we were using.
[Adam Hurtubise]: See if this works.
[Milva McDonald]: So just, so what I, when I contacted the elections department about the numbers that they provided, what I found out was that they gave us numbers from the most recent census, but the wards are drawn every 10 years and they use the federal census. So those are the numbers that we would be looking at. And they will, and the wards will, they will redo that process in 2031. It was just done in 2020. Right, it's every 10 years. So as of now, any awards we combine, no matter which ones we combine, the numbers will work out okay because they were even when they were made. Does that make sense?
[Ron Giovino]: And yeah, it's something that would constantly be adjusted. But we took these numbers, which made it a lot easier to come up with. We came up with two options just so we had some variety. If you look at the numbers, again, they're pretty well balanced. The delta between, you know, you're never going to get equal because there are some awards that are just larger. And, you know, the number one goal was to be geographically connected. because it doesn't make sense if we have one ward in North Medford and one ward in South Medford kind of defeats the whole purpose of ward representation. So we wanted to make sure that they were together. And my thought was that not only together, but option one is sequential. So one and two is district one, three and four is district two, five and six is district three, and seven and eight is district four. It's just, it's, it saves a lot of confusion. And remember that in terms of ward representation, we're already giving the voter a new option to have local neighborhood representation by just doing this alone. So to me, it makes sense. I mean, everybody, I'm just opening it up because we really didn't take a vote on this, but to me, it makes sense one and two, three and four, five and six, seven and eight. But if you look at, The option two, which is a little bit more balanced that Paulette had worked on, you see that there's a difference of 200 voters, if you look in the Delta column. So it's a difference of 200 voters, which is negligible in terms of, you know, who it is. So instead of having to identify, you know, six and eight, two and three, or I think I'm one and seven, it just made sense to me to do option one. And I'll just listen to your comments of what you guys would like to do.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Ron, can I ask you a question?
[Ron Giovino]: Sure.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Can you put the map back up? I like the visuals.
[Ron Giovino]: I'm going to stop sharing because Milva has them.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay, I'll put the map back. I wonder if it would be actually more helpful, and I think it's in our school committee's subcommittee folder, the map with the schools pinpointed? It is.
[Milva McDonald]: I could try to dig that up. But actually, my comment was going to be that I was going to vote for or sort of back option two, because when I looked at that map that you're referring to, Eunice, option two creates a situation where there's at least one school in each district. So I thought that that was a plus. The other reason that I liked option two was because when we discussed this before, there were comments about the demographic issues that we have a majority minority ward, which is ward, I believe it's ward seven. Let's see, I have that here. And combining Ward 7 with Ward 1, which I think Option 2 does? No. Right?
[Ron Giovino]: 1 and 7, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe I'm wrong.
[Ron Giovino]: I think 6 is the ward.
[Milva McDonald]: You're right. No, that doesn't make sense. I don't think it was 6.
[Ron Giovino]: I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, no, it's seven. See, because, so, and seven and one, combining seven with one, one is the other ward that has the most, the largest population of minority population next to ward seven. So by combining those, we keep, you know, we give that, We dilute that power less. That was my thought anyway. Okay, Anthony.
[Andreottola]: When we look at the numbers for wards and districts, do we look at population? We don't look at voters, number of registered voters. Is that correct? It's just general population?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, because they use the census, so.
[Andreottola]: Okay, so how many voters doesn't really matter?
[Milva McDonald]: not for drawing the wards, is my understanding.
[Andreottola]: Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: Population.
[Andreottola]: Right.
[Ron Giovino]: At the state level as well.
[Andreottola]: Right. And just when, you know, I understand, you know, the desire, and I have it as well, to have, you know, diversity and representation, but can we, like, Can we create a majority-minority district? Is that okay, legally? I know it's what people want, but is that something that can be done or does it have to be more like a natural process or is that something that you know was caught you know usually caught mandated i just don't know enough about it um do you want me to answer that Yes, please.
[Milva McDonald]: We have no authority to draw any wards. That is done in conjunction with the state and the city council every 10 years.
[Andreottola]: Well, I guess they create districts, I'm saying.
[Milva McDonald]: But of the wards that they created in 2021, when we look at the demographics of those wards, we do have one majority-minority ward.
[Andreottola]: that already exists um so that's that's all so what i'm saying is like i just want to say it's just like you know when we talk about you know majority minority like you know there could be you know different minority groups within that minority and uh we could you know we could be marginalizing one community and i think it's like To even take that into consideration is way beyond my bandwidth, because I don't know how to do it correctly, is what I'm saying. I could see just picking numbers and say, I'm going to put these two together for geographic reasons, but to kind of say, we're creating a majority-minority ward, Minority and we kind of know disenfranchising a different minority, you know, you know what I'm saying? It's very complicated. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree with you. The only reason I brought it up is because it has been a concern. And I know that we have discussed as a whole committee and the subcommittee also talked about two communities, Lowell and Worcester, where lawsuits were brought against those cities for violations of the Voting Rights Act. And so they then implemented ward representation because of that. We are not dealing with that right now. But we did look at the demographics of each ward. We do have that information. So it's something that we can see. And so when we're combining wards, I feel that it's legitimate to consider it.
[Andreottola]: Oh, I think it's legitimate to consider. I just don't know if we have the knowledge to do it correctly without kind of, you know,
[Phyllis Morrison]: Maybe yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, any other thoughts on these past these particular other thing I just wanted to say is, um, we can choose not to combine the wards and leave that up to the city council. It would be the city council that would do it if we don't do it. So
[Andreottola]: Can we give them that option?
[Milva McDonald]: Can we give them like, this is plan one and plan two? Let Ron speak. He's going crazy. Oh, Eunice, I'm sorry.
[Eunice Browne]: Your hand is up. I'm sorry. I guess I'll just, you know, a few things. I think regardless of how we end up here, the city is going to have to put out a pretty, you know, robust education campaign because this is like a complete wholesale change to how, you know, we've done business for the last nine million years. So, you know, for people to realize now that their school committee is not at large, Um, you know, that that's that's a big deal. So I think, you know, that's going to require a good deal of education and, you know, might take a couple of election cycles for it to catch on. I think I don't really have a. Um, I don't have a preference yet, whether it's option one or option to, um, my observations, um, Option one, if you look at, you know, the map and you see. Um, you know, like the. You know, furthest away point of. is miles away from the most northern point of Ward 2. Basically, the furthest points on either end of each ward are, I mean, city's only so big, but it's pretty wide gap. Option 1, to me at least, seems like, You get a little bit more diversity. In terms of racial and socioeconomic diversity. Option 2, as I think it was Milva brought up a little while ago. Pretty much gives us an elementary school in each district, or at least most and. those wards, those districts are a little bit more socioeconomically similar. Um, so, and then my third, my next point, my last point on this is if we went with option one, where it's sequential one, one with two, three with four, et cetera, et cetera, given my first point about this being a wholesale change for people, would it be, Yeah, and like I said, I'm not married to either option at the moment. Would it be easier for the public out there to understand if we have the districts sequentially? I don't know. All things worth discussing. Thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Aubrey and Anthony, do you still have your hand up?
[Eunice Browne]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: I think Ron is in front of me. Aubrey and then Anthony. Ron, do you still have your?
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I do.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, sorry. I can't. Oh, OK. So who's next then?
[Ron Giovino]: Go ahead, Aubrey. You have to talk to it.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: Well, I was going to throw a little. I know this is last minute, but in the subcommittee, we were not, I was not fully, I was an out large voter and then changed my mind and see the merits of combined awards. If it is difficult to propose combined warrants, I would not be sad to pull back to at-large voting.
[Ron Giovino]: I think Ron was next. Just a couple of thoughts. Number one is, the makeup of the awards are not changing at all. Number two is, we don't have authority to do any kind of diversity balancing. It's just not in our purview, so it's not something that is in front of this committee to discuss. Next is the point that you make about who can make the funds. The reality is we recommend city council and the mayor. They can change the wards anytime they want. If they want to change the wards, that's their prerogative. They have the right to change anything we submit. I just, you know, I think that what we need to do is put a selection of wards in there. And, you know, if for some reason the city council doesn't like that, they have the prerogative to change it. We don't have any recourse once they change something. The other thing is what we've already done in terms of ward representation is a huge change for the city in terms of bringing the vote back to the neighborhood. So we all should be proud of that. To everybody else's point, I get it. The new election commissioner, I think Paula had a conversation with her, and it's as simple as creating ballots in each district. So it won't be confusing. Everybody will see only the candidates that are allowed to be seen in their district. And yeah, everything is a learning curve for sure, but, you know, the voters will need to educate themselves and the candidates will take that upon themselves to educate. So I think that whether we go to option one or option two or something, you know, some other option is kind of a moot point. I think we can just, you know, I know we have a large agenda and I don't think this is as, earth-shattering because it can always be changed. I also want to make the point too that the subcommittee believes that this is not our role to do, but obviously it is. But we also recommend that there should be established a review board that would consist something similar to the election commission that mandates by ordinance that a member of each of the major political parties are involved in that too because you know, when we start building new wards and new districts and new, you know, there's always a political reason for doing those things. So that, that's, I just think a lot of this is out of our purview as for authority. And I'd like to see us just move it, move it along and say, yes, we're going with ward representation by district here, city council, we're going with ward representation, and then just pass it off because it's, you know, we could sit, we could spend two years trying to figure out the perfect, perfect choice and it would get changed. So that's my opinion.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Anthony and then Phyllis.
[Andreottola]: I just have one quick question. I kind of agree with what Ron just said, but just in the sense that when we're doing district for a school committee and ward for city councilor, do other cities do that or do they just have all You know, all districts.
[Milva McDonald]: So combined wards are not common. But Lowell does have combined wards for school committee and just straight ward representation for city council. So, so it is there is a precedent for it.
[Andreottola]: And that's the new that's just happened. Is that right?
[Milva McDonald]: Like a year or two ago? Yeah, right. And Lowell, as we know, did that in response to the lawsuit. Okay. Oh, go ahead.
[Andreottola]: No, I just, I kind of, like I said, I kind of agree with Ron to kind of move along. I don't think we're going to get like a good, clear resolution on this. And I think maybe this is something we just pass along and tell the city council and the mayor, you know, this is what we recommend. You guys figure it out because it's. I think it is quite complicated, and there needs to be more kind of thought that goes into the creation of the district. So just to make sure that we're not kind of doing it, you know, hurting any particular group, which I don't even know, you know, what group, you know, we don't even know. We say majority, minority. We don't even know what, you know, what that means, so that's it. I have nothing else to add.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Okay, Phyllis. Okay, I have three points. First, I'm going to reiterate what Ron has already said. We do not believe this is in our purview, but having been charged with this, the second point I want to make is I want to thank Ron and Paulette because they did a lot of work on this. And third, I don't know that this is proper protocol, but I'm going to make a motion. If we must do this, I make a motion to propose option two, because in option two, each of the combined districts would have a school in it. So that my motion is to vote on option two. Second. The combination.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we have a motion to
[Ron Giovino]: Just one point, Melva, you have the verbiage that Phyllis wrote up for this motion. So it's just a matter of changing the words and what she wrote. But she wrote up what it should look like. I think you should have that.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean for the text?
[Ron Giovino]: The motion that we're about to vote on, she wrote the words for that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah and okay so but right now we're just I'm just going to say a motion to accept option two which I just want to write down so that's boards one seven two three uh four five and six eight am I right about that yeah thank you um a motion to accept that uh uh for the uh as districts for um for the school committee. I second the presentation. OK. OK, we're going to do roll call. Phyllis?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Ron?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Anthony?
[Andreottola]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm also a yes. Great. All right. Congratulations.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I have one more thing to say. I've now almost four times lost my internet because it keeps saying weak connection. And I see that we have one more matter to vote on. So I'm hoping we can get to that vote because I think I must be here for the vote. The other thing is, if I'm not here, we're okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we may end up voting on some other article items later. But the other one that we have on the agenda is that we started talking about last meeting, the composition of the body for regular charter review. So we decided last time to recommend charter review every first five years from the time that the new charter is ratified, and then after that, every 10 years. So but what we didn't have a chance to thoroughly discuss or agree on is the composition of that body. So have people had a chance to think about it?
[Andreottola]: Didn't we talk about it a little bit? And it would be a larger amount than sharing the responsibility of selection between the mayor, the city council, and the school committee kind of as evenly as possible?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the example charter we looked at had it as nine, I believe, nine members. Four appointed by the mayor, four by the city council, and one by the school committee chair. Well, four by the city council president. So I'll just put that text up.
[Andreottola]: So there was some discussion about how that's- I thought we had talked about bringing it into 11 and giving the school committee those other two, those other votes, those other selections.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we talked about some things, but we didn't come to any decisions and we were going to continue the discussion tonight. So Eunice and then Aubrey.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, thanks. I have a proposal here. First of all, I'll say that I think all committee members should be voters in the city. None should be politicians. None should be electeds. Um, so that's off the top my suggestion is. A committee of 12 and the reason I say that is because that's kind of what we've had all along and hopefully the next. Group, you know, won't have as much work to do as we did starting a. You know, making a charter from scratch, but. You know, we were spread pretty thin sometimes, you know, we could have done more had we had more people in probably a lot of different respects. And even tonight, just a little bit of a stretch to try and get a quorum. So my suggestion is, and actually, I think it's Framingham that had a committee of 12, nine appointees, nine voting appointees, and three non-voting alternates. and the alternates may participate in the discussion, do any research, participate every other way except for casting a vote unless one of the original nine drops off, resigns. Not just doesn't show up for one meeting, but completely resigns. All the appointees will be voters residing in Medford. My way of kind of divvying them up would be four from the mayor, four from the city council president, and four from the school committee vice chair. And what I would like is, at minimum, each three of the For an example, and this would go for the three appointers, each appointer would appoint one Democrat, one Republican, and one unenrolled of the voting body. Actually, no, it would be each one of them Yeah, so that would give you nine, and then one of whichever for their alternate choice. It could be Democrat, Republican, or unenrolled. But at least you'd have one from each party, from each of the three appointers. As I said, no member will be a current elected official or employee by the city. We'll reach those people in another fashion, just like we did this time. And I also strongly recommend the following, that committee members have a working knowledge of the current charter as it stands five years from now. And some experience interacting with city government, either having watched an ample enough number of city council and school committee meetings, It's my belief that we need to understand where we are and where we were to determine where we're going. So to have experience interacting with our local government and watching meetings to understand what works and doesn't work, I think is really important. And to a lesser extent, it would be helpful if the committee members had some sort of familiarity as well with the multi-member bodies. watching some meetings, attending some, interacting with them. So that's my two cents.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks. So hold that proposal, and I just want to let other people speak, and then we'll come back to it. Aubrey.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: I've been going to propose. Sorry, I was muted. I'm going to propose keep nine, three each. I don't mind, Eunice's idea of alternates, but I don't want to include restrictions. I think that that can be part of the appointing body.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. Phyllis and then Ron.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I don't know why we have to get into Democrat, Republican, Independent. I don't know what anyone on this screen is. I think we might limit choices there. And I don't know. I agree with Eunice on certain things that they should have a little familiarity with what's going on in the city. I don't know if we miss a good person, because I haven't had that, that they might bring something else with them to the point. I agree there should be a resident of the city. have some interest also in moving the city forward. But I'm not sure we need to have one Democrat, one Republican, one Independent. It's a non-starter for me.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I agree with what Phyllis said and what Eunice said. I think that having substitutes or whatever the bench members doesn't make sense to me. If you're going to work on the committee, you should have a vote is my opinion. Secondly, I think that giving, you know, if we're looking for who has to find the Republican, is it the mayor, the city council, the school committee? So you'd really be chasing and probably eliminating a lot of people. I'm more in favor of just having Medford residents makes a lot of sense, of course. But in terms of what your philosophies are, what your, honestly, to be what your base of knowledge is should be up to the, Nominating board. I mean the people who pick the candidates will be responsible for those they pick and I don't know if we've ever uh, you know this kind of dictate qualities that we need is not necessarily you know, I would like them to have the freedom to to give it to who they think of the best people in there and who and and again again, we are under a where this board, this review board only recommends to the people who are gonna make this decision. So I just, the more rules and qualifications we put on there, the less likely they are, in my opinion, to get in. So I think there should be method residents. I think there should be anybody who's on the review board should have a vote, whatever that number is. I think nine sounds good to me, but that's all.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So we have a couple, we have a little bit of discussion and a couple of potential proposals. I got my hand up again. Oh, Phyllis, go ahead.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I'm going to make a motion. Okay. I'm going to make a motion that the committee consists of nine people. and that they be chosen for what they could bring to the table. And by that, I mean, I think Eunice brings a good point that people, certain people should appoint them. I think that's important. I think like we did this time, but I'm proposing that we have a nine member board, there'd be a nomination and an acceptance process. And that's my proposal for the review committee going forward.
[Milva McDonald]: So, okay, so the motion is that this body that we're talking about, the Charter Review Committee, be composed of nine people. Do you wanna be more specific about what you said with the nomination and a review process?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Well, the only thing I said is they should be nominated and then accepted. I don't know who's gonna set the nomination process.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the motion right now on the table is basically just addressing the number of people on the committee. So we could start with that. Yeah, I mean that makes sense to break these things down. Okay, but we don't have a second yet but we also have a couple of comments so Eunice and then Aubrey.
[Eunice Browne]: Um, well I think as far as the number goes. Nine or 12, yeah, I'm kind of okay with either. I think, you know, I went with the 12 largely based on the fact of our experience here for the last almost two years, where, you know, like I said, you know, at the outset, there were times where we sure could have used a few more bodies. Um, you know, if we had had a few more bodies, what else could we have done? You know, now granted the next crop isn't going to be hopefully inventing an entirely new charter, but still to do some of the outreach and, um, you know, to the community, uh, interviews, surveys, events, et cetera, as well as, um, just, you know, the amount of research and things that, you know, so many of us have done to be able to, you know, divvy that up. I see Frances is, you know, you know, I was just, I went with either nine or 12 because that would give the three appointers, you know, equal value, unless, you know, maybe we gave the mayor, you know, two more, because the mayor is as well the mayor. I think my biggest thing, you know, and it would be in this board and any other board or commission, is how do you get a diversity of opinions, especially if one particular political group seems to be, you know, the dominant power in Medford, and they may appoint people that you know, put forth, you know, their thought processes and their agendas. How do we, how do we get differing voices? And that's, you know, and whether it's the charter commission or the community garden or the zoning board or whatever, I think it's important to have a diversity of opinions. And if you've got, you know, maybe the mayor, the president, the CC president and the school committee vice chair, all from one particular dominant political group, they're going to be looking for the people that align with them. You look confused, Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis, you're muted.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah, I'm trying to unmute myself. I'm having a hard time hearing a lot, too. I'm confused, Eunice, because I guess my point is that we don't know how the nomination process is going to go. But if the mayor is going to appoint, like she appointed everyone, or he appointed everyone on this committee, I would say that we are a good diverse group. I really think we are. I mean, several things have to go into, you know, like when I was asked to maybe consider joining this, I had to write why I wanted to do it, but I didn't have to put any political affiliation. I was asked, what could I bring? What do I expect? And all those things. So that's why Milva said we should do it one piece at a time. So maybe we should get to the number first and then the nomination process. But I looked confused, Milva, because I was trying to recall how we were all appointed, which was by the mayor after our application. And then we apply, that's right.
[Eunice Browne]: Of the bunch that applied.
[Phyllis Morrison]: That's right. And I think we're really well diverse group in lots of ways. We bring lots of different things with us.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So before we look at the motion for a body of nine.
[Andreottola]: I'd like to say something.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, go ahead, Anthony.
[Andreottola]: I just wanted to say that, you know, something that was brought to our attention Early in the process is that where our committee has no diversity of of color, or, you know, we're all in, you know. We don't really represent. uh the community and that that future charter commissions uh committees uh should have some kind of mechanism that you know we have more representation not of political uh views but of uh of people you know of age you know uh young old black white you know uh um you know uh non-english speakers i mean it If we're really going to be a diverse, welcoming community, we should really strive to be inclusive of other things than political party. Our system in Medford is supposed to run as nonpartisan. Our elections are nonpartisan. We elect people as individuals. There might be a slate in town and that might be dominating the political landscape now, but by the time this goes into effect, who knows? There could be other groups, there could be other people. uh, politics shifts and changes. I don't think that, you know, the charter commission should be based on that. I think it should be based on kind of people, you know, get different people, uh, involved in government. And that's my two cents. And I don't know how to do that other than to just kind of, uh, have some type of, uh, statement that the mayor or city council should do what they can to select people from different communities so that we really get a true sense of what the people of Method want.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Aubrey.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: Ten years from now, I don't know that we'll know what this is going to look like, and I am optimistic. and I'm trusting our voted bodies to be able to make those decisions. And so I would like to propose that we have a nine-member special committee with three from the mayor, three from city council, and three from school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So that is basically adding on to Phyllis's motion. Before we go ahead with that, Veron, did you have one more thing to say?
[Ron Giovino]: No, I agree 100% with what Aubrey just said. I think our theme has been recently, we're not legislating how this process gets done. We're establishing a process and trusting that the leaders will do what they need to do. getting the voters to remember that they are the ones who have the ultimate power. So I think the next round of review is going to be a lot easier, a lot less discovery needs to be done, and hopefully it becomes a patent that everybody follows. But, you know, I think we always forget that the voter is the final power in this play. So I agree with Aubrey's, and yeah, I just want to make sure that the Medford residence is the requirement. Thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So before we go ahead with that, Anthony, did you have one more comment? He just didn't put his hand down. Okay.
[Andreottola]: I just, I'm sorry. I didn't put my hand down.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay.
[Andreottola]: But I would like, I would like to amend and see if anybody's willing to let me amend that to make it 11, 11 members. So, uh, we can, you know, have, you know, extra people in case the committee, uh, can't, uh, can't keep, you know, the nine members. If nine members turn into six or five, uh, you know, with, uh, where people dropping off, I think the process, I don't wanna shortchange the process. I think we need more people involved and I think 11 work better than nine.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we have, so if we just start with the number, we have one proposal on the table for nine and one for 11.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: May I ask a question?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: If we say nine and then there aren't nine, Does that mean that they have to then replace it to get to nine? Like, I'm wondering if we have 11 and dropped, then we have to keep 11. If we have nine, then we have to keep nine. Is that how that works?
[Milva McDonald]: If it's in the charter, it's going to be that way unless it gets changed. So it's pretty set in stone, I think. I think we should wait. So I don't know what the best way to go about this is, because we have nine or 11.
[Ron Giovino]: Let's have a quick vote on nine.
[Milva McDonald]: On the nine?
[Ron Giovino]: The motion that we do nine members.
[Milva McDonald]: Second? Second. Okay. Aubrey? Yes. Phyllis? Yes. Eunice? Go back to me. Anthony.
[Andreottola]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: I already got you Ron, right? Did I get you? No. Okay. Ron is a yes?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm a yes. Phil, Eunice? No. Okay. So we landed at nine. So now the next question is the composition of that or the, the appointments. So Aubrey had proposed three, three, three, three from the mayor, three from the city council president and three from the school committee vice chair.
[Ron Giovino]: I'm sorry, can I just amend that so we just call it city council and school committee and let them determine how they pick? Because the mayor is the chair of the school committee, so she would be able to pick six technically with that rule. So I'd like to see the city council and the school committee develop their own plan on how they're going to pick it.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that's why we said vice chair, right? So if we do it that way, we could, but then those bodies would have to spend time figuring that out. Whereas, you know, it's a quicker appointment process if it's one person, that's all. Anthony.
[Andreottola]: I'm sorry, I can't get my hands out.
[Milva McDonald]: I just wanted to say, I understand the, inclination to make it even between the three bodies of government. But the school committee is so specialized and the school committee, in terms of what's in the charter on the school committee, it's pretty narrow because the school committee is really governed by state law, pretty much the composition of the school committee. is in the charter, and maybe some very general timelines about budget. Nothing really even that specific about budget. So, I don't know. I'm just, I wonder if we should make it equal due to that. Just throwing that out there.
[Eunice Browne]: I think we lost Phyllis. Oh, no, we didn't. She's there.
[Ron Giovino]: I think that's a great point, Belva. I think that's a great point. Should be more like 432.
[Adam Hurtubise]: The example charter we looked at had 4-4-1.
[Milva McDonald]: So 4-3-2 is, I mean, 4-4-1 gives the mayor and the city council equal number of appointments and says to the school committee, we want you to have a representative basically. I mean, 432 says, well, the mayor gets more, I don't know. It's just, yeah.
[Phyllis Morrison]: What do we think? I hate to keep saying this, but I'm going to lose. I'm going to lose you soon. OK. I don't know. We're down to nine.
[Milva McDonald]: We got we got. So it's not stressful. Hi, Danielle. We're discussing the composition of the Charter Review Committee, which is going to be nine people. So we're discussing how they are appointed. And three from the mayor, three from the city council president, three from the school committee vice chair was proposed. And then I pointed out that the school committee's role, you know, the school committee is governed by state law. So the charter really only addresses the school committee composition. So my question is, should they have as much input in the pits?
[Ron Giovino]: I'd like to make a motion that we establish a review board of nine members, four appointed by the mayor, four appointed by the city council, and one appointed by the school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: I second that motion. Okay. All right. Let's vote then. Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Ron says yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: Aubrey says yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. Ellis says yes.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay. Eunice. Eunice says yes, since we're all talking in the third person. Try getting on your phone.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Andreottola]: I'm going to abstain.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And I'm voting yes. Did I miss anybody? I don't think I did. Okay, so the only thing that we didn't talk about was, I mean, we touched on some of the issues that Eunice brought up in terms of, you know, requiring that they all be residents, requiring, you know, other things. So there was some discussion of that. Eunice, do you want to?
[Eunice Browne]: My first question is, and maybe this goes back to, circles back to whatever we said about multi-member boards a long time ago, is it residents or is it voters? two different things. So what did we say about multi-member boards or did we? Maybe we didn't, but it should be consistent across the board.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it could, yeah, it could be consistent or we could decide to make it different. I don't know, but I'd have to look back at what we said about multi-member boards. Does anybody remember?
[Danielle Balocca]: Is there an age requirement to be on a board or commission? Not that I know of. So you could be not eligible to vote, but you could be on?
[Milva McDonald]: It depends on whether we say voters. Just to pull up the example text that we looked at says voters. So if we said voters, that would put an age requirement on it.
[Andreottola]: or we could say residents or, I mean, Anthony, I'm sorry to keep asking you, but you're... Well, since my hand was already up by accident, I kind of have the same questions Danielle is bringing up is that, you know, age, residents, you know, You know, just because you don't vote doesn't mean you're not a resident and you're not a taxpayer and that the government doesn't affect your life and that you shouldn't have a say in what happens in a community. I mean, we have people here that live here in Medford who can't, say, vote for the mayor or the school committee, but, you know, should be able to participate in the government because, you know, they live here. pay taxes, and they're part of our community. So any way we could include them, you know, even though they may not be able to vote, you know, I think we should, you know, Medford should, you know, strive to be an inclusive place where, you know, you know, the new members of the community actually have some kind of voice in City Hall.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that would be an argument for saying residents instead of voters.
[Danielle Balocca]: Okay, I agree with that.
[Eunice Browne]: I think it should be consistent. You know, I mean, this is this is a multi member board too. So that's true. You know. It's either 1 way or the other for everything. I think unless there's some specific reason. Maybe well, no, we don't have the elections commission wouldn't come under this. That might be different. You might have to actually be a voter, but. I think for anything else, it's either 1 way or the other.
[Ron Giovino]: So, I guess the election commission does require you to be a member of a political party. I believe.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, yeah, they have, I think, two of each, two Democrats, two Republicans.
[Milva McDonald]: Does anybody remember what the language of multi-member boards? I'm looking it up here. I remember we, well, we did have a discussion about using that language of voters, but that might've been for running for office.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I think running for office, I mean, that's not a local decision, I think. Yeah. From the Secretary of State, you have to be a voter, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. We don't say anything about it in the current language we have. We just say that the mayor refers the names to the city council, and then the city council can confirm. or that they go in unless the city council rejects them.
[Eunice Browne]: There's a whole section in section nine that we'll get to eventually that I think talks about multi-member bodies. That might be where- Yeah. We haven't discussed it yet. Something like that. I just couldn't remember if we touched on it when we did other stuff about the bodies.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. No. I think the answer is we haven't discussed it yet. But we are discussing it now in relation to the charter review body. So, I mean, I guess we could just combine them and say we're going to decide whether we want it to be residents or voters for any multi-member body, which includes this body. Does that make sense?
[Andreottola]: Unless it's unless it's required by state law, like the election commission, you know, something that's something that you need to be a voter for. I mean, you need to be a voter, but to be on the, you know, the bicycle commission, if you're. you know, unable, you know, you're a resident alien and you're a bicycle rider, you should be, you know, have, you know, say on the bicycle commission, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Well, anything in the charter regarding, you know, if there are certain bodies that are governed by state law that would apply. So the charter is really only talking about the bodies that aren't governed by law. So what do we do we think that's a good approach to make this decision for all multi member bodies? Voter or resident?
[Eunice Browne]: I think so. whatever I think we decide on has to be consistent.
[Ron Giovino]: It just also has to say we're allowed by state law, because there are some commissions that have to have some kind of balance. So this verbiage should say something about within general laws of the state of Massachusetts.
[Milva McDonald]: I think Collin Center will like, you know, catch that stuff for us.
[Ron Giovino]: So are we amending this? Are we going to Article 9 and doing that now?
[Milva McDonald]: No, we have the charter, we have the charter body, the charter review body, but I guess we're kind of morphing, moving into the overall Articles 5 and 9 issues that people might have questions about. So, which units, you said there's a section in there for... I think there
[Eunice Browne]: Is or if not, I put it there. I can't remember because I was doing a whole lot of research on Article 9 over the last day or so.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if we decide we want the charter to say, you know, something about eligibility for serving on these bodies, we can just tell that to the Collins Center and they'll put it in the appropriate spot. Anthony, do you have your hand up? Sorry, I keep asking you. Okay, so. Do does somebody want to make a motion on this or. I mean, as it is right now, if we say nothing about it. I would imagine it's up to the appointing authority, you know, the appointing body. I think what about.
[Eunice Browne]: putting something in like we've done in some other places before where, you know, this body is, what's the word I want? You know, and refer them over to section nine. Any rules regarding this, Unless spelled out here, any rules regarding the Charter Commission are the same rules as governed by multi-member bodies in Article 9-4 or whatever.
[Ron Giovino]: And we just moved to make a decision whether we want residents or voters to be the qualifier. And then, as you said, no, the call and send is going to catch it when it comes up again. And we're all going to have to vote on it again when we talk about the general commissions and boards. So if we could get this, you know, an idea of are we for residents or for voters, registered voters, at least that gets us beyond this because it's going to come up again.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that sounds good. I just want to make one point, which is that I don't think that we are required to put anything about eligibility for these in the charter. We have the appointing authority for multi-member bodies, and if nothing is said, then the appointing authority makes a decision about who to appoint and doesn't have an eligibility requirement to deal with. And I think maybe in the example charter we looked at for the Charter Commission one, they've decided that they wanted that body to be voters, so they put that in that particular section. So I'm just throwing it out there that we can choose not to include it and leave it at the discretion of the appointing authority.
[Ron Giovino]: Can I ask a question? When the building committee meets and the building commissioner is on that committee, is he a non-voting member?
[Milva McDonald]: That I don't know.
[Ron Giovino]: Because he wouldn't have to be a Medford resident to be on that.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, exactly.
[Ron Giovino]: So there's a lot of scenarios that we're not... To paint this all in one scenario is not easy because there are a lot of folks who work with these departments and commissions that are not residents because their expertise is not in the city.
[Eunice Browne]: Is Frances still with us?
[Milva McDonald]: Frances, I think, is on her phone.
[Eunice Browne]: Um, I know she oversees a bunch of boards, including, I think, the human rights commission. And I think chief Buckley has voting rights. On that commission, and I don't believe he's a Medford resident. So, so to Ron's point, I think, you know, maybe it does differ with.
[Ron Giovino]: I move that we vote that the members of the Charter Review Commission must be residents of the city of Manfred.
[Milva McDonald]: Must be residents, not voters?
[Ron Giovino]: I second that motion. We can yay or nay that one, and then that would leave us with the other, which is just to be voters, so just to be.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: Okay, so Aubrey, were you going to say something? Or the third option, which was Milva's suggestion, which is to not have any This is a 9, 4, 4, 1.
[Danielle Balocca]: Right. Would somebody be able to make up like, when they go to choose the commission, would they be able to make it more narrow eligibility requirement? Or like, is it better that we define it more broadly here?
[Ron Giovino]: I think the Medford requirement is extremely important and I would like to see it on the charter.
[Eunice Browne]: Other than that, no.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, I think being a resident is just a no brainer.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah. They can make it more narrow.
[Ron Giovino]: Welcome to Medford.
[Andreottola]: Have you made that as a motion, Ron?
[Ron Giovino]: Because I'd second it if you had. The motion is that all charter review members must be residents of the City of Medford.
[Andreottola]: I second that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, Ron?
[Andreottola]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Andreottola]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Aubrey?
[Andreottola]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Did we lose Phyllis? Ah, maybe.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm actually going to vote no, because I actually think for this particular thing, they should be voters. But that's OK. So we'll save residents for this.
[Eunice Browne]: Can I move reconsideration and vote no as well, along with you? Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: And that still passes. Okay. Great. So I think we're done with the unit. I mean, Aubrey, did you want to say something?
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: There's a section in 9.4 that says all members of the committee shall be voters, but this is for the review of ordinances in the city. So I think we just be consistent.
[Danielle Balocca]: Um, actually, with the consistency issue, because we're saying that there are like already boards and commissions that have their own criteria. So I don't, I feel like it's okay to have different opinions for different boards and commissions.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with that too. But this particular, just to be clear, what we're looking at is just an example text. This isn't our draft necessarily. So what I wanted to do with this, because we didn't have subcommittees that were actually drafting these sections, is make pertinent decisions and then the Collins Center will draft it for us. And actually, I think that periodic review of ordinances was one that I wanted to look at. Because a lot of it is standard language, but this one we probably should decide about. So first of all, are we done with periodic review of charter? I think we are. I mean, there is a timeline here in this particular, I believe this is Melrose's. You know, that's probably standard language. It might be good to keep the timeline in there, but we can let the call-in center put that in for us. Are people okay with that? Yeah, it seems pretty reasonable. Okay, now what about periodic review of ordinances? Do we think every five years is good for that, or is that too often?
[Ron Giovino]: Do we know what is the protocol now? Is there an ordinance now?
[Milva McDonald]: I believe there are. It's not in the charter, I don't think, but does somebody know?
[Eunice Browne]: I don't think it's in the charter. I think actually, as when the city council this year put out their governing agenda back in January and divided themselves up into about seven or eight standing committees. I think each standing committee has purview over certain areas and topics. And I think one of the things that each of the standing committees has vowed to do over the course of their two year term is take whatever sub areas that they're responsible for and go through ordinances in that, you know, in that, in their purview and, um, you know, update them, sunset them if need be, or basically give them an overhaul. We've added ordinances over the years. I don't think there's been any actual real good effort at overhauling the ordinances in heaven knows how long. I think having this in there, at intervals. I think whatever they're doing now, like what we've done with the charter, five years from now and 15 years from now, whoever is doing it isn't going to be doing what we did. When the council does their ordinances over this two-year term, then five years later, they should only be making tweaks and not reinventing it. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: So whatever the first review of ordinances, if this gets into the charter, will be probably more extensive then. I do notice that the language of this one says some or all of the ordinances of the city, which is interesting. And maybe that makes sense because I don't know, what do people think?
[Andreottola]: Do we even know how many ordinances are in? Do we have like, is it a little ordinance book or is it like, you know, a filing cabinet?
[Milva McDonald]: It's on its code on the city website. And I think it's pretty extensive.
[Ron Giovino]: And I think that's why it says some.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, that makes sense. An ordinance that was created a year ago isn't going to need to be revamped in all likelihood, but an ordinance.
[Ron Giovino]: And a new ordinance can be, I mean, they can change, the city council can change it without this review board. I mean, ordinances can be changed.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Of course.
[Ron Giovino]: I mean, it's not nobody has to wait. But I mean, that's why I think it's some because there's always it's a it's an ongoing process.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, OK, so do people think that it's a given what Ron just pointed out? Is it necessary to have a periodic review of ordinances in the charter? Oh, yeah, well.
[Andreottola]: Well, the thing is, like the city council, you know, that's what they were elected to do was to, you know, did a legislature they isn't it up to the elected city council to kind of decide whether they're going to go through ordinances or they have other things to do or you know do we have to kind of put a you know a sword over their head you know is it you know that they have to do it because it's in the charter I'm just wondering why Melrose has that in their charter.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that it's not unusual for it to be in the charter and this wouldn't necessarily be, this is not the city council that's reviewing the ordinances, it's a special committee.
[Ron Giovino]: But I think a part of this process is making sure the legality of the ordinance is still in effect because it also says we need, it's under the supervision of the city solicitor. So I think it's a validation that, you know, is this legal? And, you know, continuing to check up to, you know, if the state changes the law, are we up to date on it? I think that that's really what it's about.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Eunice, do you have something you want to say?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I mean, I think we probably have some, you know, some things in there that are pretty well outdated, too. I mean, the city council's job is zoning, passing the budget, and creating ordinances. That's their three main jobs. I think to have a committee that is going to look at our ordinances at some specific interval, I think is a good thing. I think it ensures that we're, like Ron says, things remain legal, things remain contemporary. Um, you know, I mean, you don't want to be looking at an ordinance that says, you know, you can't park your horse and carriage on 4th street in front of the post office, you know, or something like that. I mean, but I think we have some pretty outdated stuff in there. So, um, uh, I, I, I would, I'm a proponent of keeping this there. Okay. Aubrey.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: I was going to say something similar. I like the idea of keeping the option and it can be as big or as little review as happens to be needed.
[Milva McDonald]: So do we like, I mean, does somebody want to propose, do we like five-year intervals? That's pretty, does that seem like pretty often or?
[Unidentified]: It does seem often.
[Milva McDonald]: If we have the charter every 10 years after the first
[Ron Giovino]: My suggestion is we do the first one five years and just follow the charter. And then after that, 10 years. Because this probably hasn't been done in anybody's recollection that this has actually been done. So maybe we need one within five years and then 10 years after that, similar to the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Sounds good. Just to be my own devil's advocate, I'll say given that this has some or all doing it every five years could maybe be more productive because you could Maybe, you know, I don't know. I'm just, you could cover what you didn't cover five years earlier. I don't, I mean, just throwing that out there. But I think 10 years is sufficient too.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, given the fact that there's so many things in this city that haven't happened with any regularity, I think, having a calendar in there where things are required to happen, even if it seems, I mean, if it's every five years, then the committee can get together and maybe, you know, for argument's sake, there's 50 ordinances and maybe, you know, they only need to look at, you know, five, you know, it'll be a quick committee.
[Milva McDonald]: At that five year interval, they'll do that. And then the next five years. Yeah. Okay. Um, Aubrey.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: I don't have a strong opinion about the years, but I think that an odd number would put it at a different point in the cycle every time it happened.
[Milva McDonald]: And this particular text from this charter has this special committee established by ordinance. So It would be sort of handing over the responsibility of deciding how many people and all that to the ordinance. The only requirement I see in here is voters, backed voters.
[Eunice Browne]: So. Maybe this should be an ad hoc committee?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, as opposed to. one that is created so you don't like the ordinance language?
[Eunice Browne]: I'm thinking out loud here. It's created by ordinance, but then every time the calendar rolls around to when the review needs to be done, then somebody would be appointing the members of the committee, because if I serve at the five year interval and then it needs to be done five years later, you know, did serving in 2024 and then 2029 again, you know, somebody would need to be appointing a whole new committee once their work is done, you know, it takes them six months or a year or however long to get their work done, then they don't really have a purpose until the next interval comes up.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. They would just be a one. I think I read this as an ad hoc committee. Once they do the review, they're done until five years later, and then it's a new committee.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. And made up of completely different people. Yeah.
[Ron Giovino]: Can we get a ruling from the Collins Center? Because it seems to me that the responsibility of a lot of this is on the city solicitor side. And there may be some Massachusetts general laws that require a review of our ordinances on a regular basis that we're just not even aware of.
[Milva McDonald]: That's true. So what do we want to do about this? Do we want to... Tell the call center we would like a periodic review of ordinances section or. I think I think I heard agreement on that.
[Ron Giovino]: And it's obviously appointed by the city council because their ordinances.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but the mayor, you know, is involved because. But the yeah. two-thirds vote they can so yeah it's do we know how long it takes to review ordinances no but i but we're but we're surmising that that's one of the reasons it says some or all because um because it would may be too big of a task to actually review all of them um do we know
[Andreottola]: Who reviews ordinances? I mean, is it attorneys? Is it people? Ordinances could be pretty complicated and have a pretty big impact on life in Medford. Right, so what happens after they review them? Do they give them back to the city council? Like, do something about this?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't I don't really understand the process, you know, based on this particular text example that we're looking at. The committee is established by ordinance. They file a report with the city clerk at a date specified by the ordinance, which is basically just recommendations. But they are also under the supervision of the city solicitor. So they work with the city solicitor to make the recommendations. And then they present those recommendations just like we're doing. I mean, I don't think that they have any authority to change any ordinances because they're not legislators, but it's basically an advisory body.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I mean, I would think that, you know, especially, you know, a first review, some of them might be, you know, pretty obvious. whether they needed to be sunset or have some sort of a revision or whatever. But then some others where you get into the weeds, I'm sure that there would be somebody like we have the Collins Center who's steering us in the right direction, that there would be somebody steering them in the right direction too.
[Milva McDonald]: Which would be the city solicitor based on the way this particular Melrose's section is written anyway. Do we have any motions on this or do we want to?
[Andreottola]: Can I make a motion that we defer to the Collins Center for advice and to craft something that we can, you know, possibly vote on down the line, because I like to do a little more, kind of find out a little bit more about it, because I'm not prepared to vote on this, because I really don't know, you know, what the current process is for review of ordinances. Is this something that, you know, we're already doing by ordinance? We don't even know.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the Collins Center won't craft. They can craft this if we tell them what we want. They're not going to say you should have a periodic review. They'll just give us information, but they won't draft anything. I mean, they might give us a memo on how common is it. I mean, is that's what you're looking for? Like, how common is it for communities to have periodic reviews of ordinances? How does it usually work?
[Andreottola]: Well, I kind of like to know if we have it now before before, like, what does the city council do now with ordinances that are outdated? Is there already a process that just needs to be kind of incorporated into the charter?
[Eunice Browne]: I don't think they're doing anything. I don't think anything's been done in quite some time because I think that's part of the governing agenda of the current city council that has to go through, you know, as I said, each standing committee is going to be going through ordinances that pertain to, you know, the purview of that particular standing committee. And I think it's the first, I could be wrong and I don't recall anything in our two and a half page charter regarding ordinance review, but I don't think anything's been done in quite some time. Otherwise, I don't think that it would be one of the priorities of this current city council. Who's doing something. Yeah, they are they're they're hoping to have gone through all of the ordinances, you know, in their 2 year term.
[Andreottola]: And part of the reason they, they change from. Weekly to every other week, so they could do this kind of work and subcommittees is that. Is that right? I'm right.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, that's it and actually, you know, I've mentioned this governing agenda now a couple of times and when the city clerk put out the June schedule. For city council meetings, I believe it's on the. 18th of June at 6 o'clock, which is next Tuesday, I think. The Councilors are conducting a committee of the whole to look at the governing agenda, which includes a lot of things, not just this ordinance review. It includes a lot of the work of the overall body in the standing committees. And I think it's basically, it's been six months now. I think it's a check-in to see how this governing agenda is working. So it'll be interesting to see what they say about any ordinance review. I don't think that they've, I mean, I watch a fair amount of subcommittee meetings. I haven't seen anything come up yet. They've been doing other things, but be interesting to see what they say.
[Milva McDonald]: And that said, this, if we put this in the charter, this is an ordinance review by a body that's not the city council. So it's basically like another set of eyes on the city ordinances. Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Can we, I motioned a table, the discussion and asking her opinion from the call center and how other cities and towns and their analysis of this amendment.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anybody want to second that?
[Ron Giovino]: I'll second it.
[Ron Giovino]: Ron says yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice. Eunice says yes. Anthony.
[Andreottola]: I say yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: Aubrey? No, I'm okay moving forward.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm also a no, because I'm also okay moving forward, but the motion carries. So that means, so that's leading me into the next, so we have about a half an hour left and there are some other, I know that there's some issues that people want to discuss in Articles 5, 9, and 10. Our next scheduled meeting would be 4th of July. We will not have a meeting then. My hope, well, was that we would finalize things tonight and the Collins Center said they will take a few weeks. Then within the next few weeks, I would get a draft charter to everybody on the committee from the Collins Center. Then we would reconvene in August and September to go over that draft with the Collins Center and finalize it. Since we're not going to finish tonight, I'm going to propose that we have another meeting in June.
[Andreottola]: What do we have left to vote on?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have this. We have this that we just voted on getting more information on. And potentially whatever, I know that there are some, I was about to ask what other areas of those three articles that we haven't extensively gone through and drafted that people wanted to talk about. And I know that there are some issues. So we could look at that and possibly finish it in half an hour, but we definitely won't get the ordinance review taken care of because we just voted to ask for more information on it.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, I I've added several things in the margin for article 9 and I get and. Article 1 appears to be mostly definitions that are, you know. Pretty boilerplate yeah, but article 5, I'm not quite sure what to make of that. What you've got there, can you make it a little bit bigger, Melva, please? Really basically has sections 5-1 and 5-2. But in going through and looking at a number of other charters, they break down that section with a lot of, the various city departments and they talk about scope and responsibilities and so forth of the city clerk, the Department of Public Works, Department of Elections.
[Milva McDonald]: City clerk, I think we addressed in Article 2. I'm just talking about what I've seen.
[Eunice Browne]: Um, you know, and and they get into some some boards to some of the other. I was I did some research over the last couple of days, but I was more focusing on article 9 than anything else. And I've added a lot of things there. To look at, but. Kind of starting to glance at section article 5. I mean, we can keep it as minimalistic as this is. Or we can take a look at, you know. Some of the others that are out there that, you know. Do things a lot more broadly so. You know, I don't know where we go with that. You know, different communities do different things.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I guess I think my preference would be to keep it minimal and general and not define the bodies in the charter, because we know that changing the charter is a pretty big deal.
[Eunice Browne]: But I guess maybe that's another question for the Collins Center is, why do some communities do it one way and some communities do it the other? Pro or con to doing it one way or the other.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think the con is that you can't change it easily when it's in the charter.
[Eunice Browne]: Right, but a number of communities actually do go pretty far into depth.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. I believe the three that they gave us don't. And I think that, so I think that they, that, you know, and when they gave us the example to sort of template, they called it the generic modern charter. So my understanding is that we're looking at, is that they're, they're giving us sort of the most, the most recent kind of modern charter, which is, maybe more broad so that it defines things, but it gives the electeds leeway to change those departments if they need to be changed or whatever. That's my understanding, but... No, I see your point. Yeah. Does anybody else have any thought about this particular section, which the example that we have, it is very short and it's pretty boilerplate language. Obviously, we would change Alderman, that was from another charter, but as opposed to the other option of defining different agencies within this section, which would require a good bit of work on our part to look at, you know, and which ones would we define? That's the other question, if we did that. Aubrey?
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: I'm okay with it as is, and I appreciate the phrases in here where it says subject to express prohibitions in general law or other places in this charter.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Mm-hmm.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, any other thoughts? Any, just any, I mean, Do we want to just say the call-in center, we're good with the boilerplate language of Article 5, or do we want to explore more deeply defining different agencies in this section?
[Ron Giovino]: I move that we just give it to the call-in center now. I second that.
[Eunice Browne]: OK. with the amendment that we take out the board of aldermen and put in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So the motion, uh, tell me if we're on, if this represents your motion, um, to ask Colin century to draft article five using standard language.
[Andreottola]: Yeah. I'm sorry. Is that also article one?
[Milva McDonald]: That's right. We can add Article 1 to that, too. Yes.
[Ron Giovino]: Does that include Aubrey's statement? Is that in here on Section 5? I'm too lazy to look at it.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, it's already on there.
[Ron Giovino]: Okay. Then that's what I would do. 1 and 5, I move to accept it using the template and move it to the comments section.
[Ron Giovino]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Andreottola]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Eunice? No. Danielle? Yes. I say yes. Okay, great. So that leaves us with Article 9. We've already looked at, I mean, this is all very boilerplate language, but I guess, We looked at the charter review body. We've already taken care of that. And so what I had asked people to do was to look this over and bring up any issues. So now's your time to bring them up.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, maybe Eunice can take a moment to explain her notes on the side there. I'd like to hear.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, since I can't see that, I'm trying to.
[Milva McDonald]: Can you tell me what section? And I'll pull up the section.
[Eunice Browne]: I'm kind of all over the map and it was really hard for me to. I get the way this seems to work is that if you have more than 1 thing to say about a section, you can't kind of like. You know, you have to find a different place to put your little comment.
[Milva McDonald]: So, can I propose something? Sure. So, we're going to have to have another meeting in June. Where we're going to look at the periodic review of ordinances. My proposal is that we use our next, say, 10 minutes to. get down on paper what sections in addition to the periodic review of ordinances that we want to look at, study, and learn about so that we can decide on them at the next meeting we're going to have in a couple of weeks. Does that make sense? Okay.
[Eunice Browne]: Sure. There were some sections that are in there that I wanted For the discussion on and then after having gone through. You know, 20 or 30 other charters, there were some sections that I plucked out of other charters that don't seem to be in there yet. But I would like to consider adding. So that's kind of where I was.
[Milva McDonald]: How about you tell us which sections you want to look at so we can, so we have, we're going to, we're going to look at section nine, four. So that's ordinances.
[Eunice Browne]: I can tell you what, and I'm sorry if my back's to you, but I can see it better on desktop here. I can tell you of the sections that are there, what I would like for the discussion on, and then tell you what I would like added. Okay. So.
[Milva McDonald]: Section 9-3, which is rules and regulations.
[Eunice Browne]: So we did the ordinances part, we did the periodic review of the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Section 9-6, which is proceed multi-member bodies.
[Eunice Browne]: 98, computation of time. Some of these are just small things and other things are not so small. 99, also affirmations. That was. OK, so go ahead. And then I did find in Framingham, they had a section in Article 9 about public comment. So I'd like to take a look at that. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: So maybe we can cross one of those off the list right now if you want to. Like, for instance, computation of time is probably a quickie.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, and I'm trying to figure out what I tried to say about that. Oh, OK, I think that was something there that needs to be defined and aligned with the definition of days in Article 1.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So one of the things the Collins Center does when they review our drafts and then draft the other articles is that they'll make sure they'll look for consistency of language and things like that. So I don't think we have to worry so much about that because we're so fortunate to have the Collins Center. basically being a good editor that way. Wait, can I just ask, does that mean we can cross that off the list? Oh, yeah. Okay.
[Eunice Browne]: Go ahead. Then one other piece that I would like to have some discussion on, and I put something in I think it's our miscellaneous folder that you can go through and look at. I put a lot of what I researched in our miscellaneous folder on a lot of these different topics, but ethics and conflict of interest and so forth, some language about that.
[Milva McDonald]: So let's, I'm just trying to call that up. So it's a document in.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think it's.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: That might be covered by Mass General Logins.
[Eunice Browne]: It could be, but I found a whole lot of stuff.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: I have to take an annual training.
[Milva McDonald]: What is the name of the document? Oh, Article 1, 5, 9, 10. Okay. Oh, Phyllis is back. Hi, Phyllis. Okay, so what you've done here is you've put a bunch of examples of other charters. Right. Okay. Okay, so Right now, what I have is that we can all have access to that document. And we're going to have another meeting in June to discuss sections 9-3, 9-4, 9-6, and 9-9, and also a question of whether to add a section on public comment. And ethics.
[Eunice Browne]: Ethics and conflict of interest.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I'm guessing that's, I think I agree with Aubrey that that's in state law. I'll do a little bit more digging on that. Okay. I don't know. Eunice, do you think your questions or issues on any of those are basic enough that we could do them in 5-10 minutes? Can we cross one of them off the list?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Oh, wait, you're muted, Eunice.
[Eunice Browne]: Oh, sorry. That's okay. Under multi-member bodies, I'd like to add a residency section. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Right now, multi-member bodies is 9-6. So right now, I mean, this particular, Let me just call it up. The example that we have is Melrose. But the question for us is, what specific things do we want in that section? So this is pretty boilerplate, this section A. And so which section were you? I'm sorry, Eunice, can you repeat what you said you wanted to look at?
[Eunice Browne]: There is not a residency section at the moment. So I have over in the side there, we need to add a section on residency and then copy it and paste it from somewhere else, Fall River.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Or we just decide that if the committee decides they want to do that, then we can just tell the call center that we want to add that. So basically what you want is you want a residency requirement for multi-member bodies. Correct. Okay, so resident as opposed because we've had this discussion resident versus voter. Well, resident as in
[Eunice Browne]: To be a member of a multi-member body, you have to be a resident of Medford. It's come up in the past, and I brought this to the attention of the mayor a couple of years ago about a particular individual sitting on one of our boards that had been a Medford resident, moved out of the city, continued on in her role on the particular board, making decisions for Medford when she didn't live in Medford anymore. When I brought it up to the mayor, I was told nothing she can do, nothing in the charter, says he had to be a resident to be, you know, a member of you know, a board, so... Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, and I see a note from Frances in the chat, because she, remember, we had a question for her, and she heard her name, but she couldn't unmute, but now she maybe can unmute, and I think our question was related to this, right, for Frances?
[Ron Giovino]: I think Anthony had that question, yeah. Was it... About commissions and boards.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yes, something about could city employees vote on the commissions and boards. I don't have voting rights on the commissions and boards. I'm a liaison to the commissions and boards. But if you are on the commission or the board in the same manners that you have been appointed, then you would have voting rights.
[Eunice Browne]: So the question was, and I brought up the example of the Human Rights Commission. where I believe Chief Buckley is a member of that board, and I believe he has voting rights.
[Frances Nwajei]: Chief Buckley is a commissioner and does have voting rights, but also that same commission also has a very strange ordinance that says something like the chair of the board does not get to vote. then these things precede me, but Chief Buckley is considered a commissioner on that board, but I'm not considered a commissioner.
[Eunice Browne]: And my knowledge, the chief does not live in Medford.
[Ron Giovino]: And we did discuss this earlier when we talked about, you know, it's just, I agree we should have restrictions, but there are scenarios that will force us to not have a paint with such a broad brush. If the police chief has a voting right on a board, or if the building commission has a voting right in the building department, and he doesn't, there's no rule that says he has to live in the city. He could live in Melrose, but still do his job and must be on that board anyway. So I think we really have to look at that.
[Frances Nwajei]: And some people have to be on the boards because of the scope and rules of their job. I mean, let's since we're talking about Chief Buckley, if Chief Buckley was on the, I don't know, another board that really didn't have anything to let's say, do with like a policing role, that kind of stuff, then yeah, I think that you would question it. But the Building Commissioner being on the zoning board, I think that's important. That's critical. Who else is going to provide the legal guidance that's needed?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Aubrey, did you have your hand up?
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: Just to add that I think in sections where we feel we do have specific references to either resident or voter in sections where we think that it matters.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. For particular bodies, like for instance, yeah, so. So Eunice, I mean, did you want, so we've had a discussion about should we add the requirement that you're talking about in section 96, the uniform procedures governing multiple member bodies. Do you want to make a motion or?
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I think in listening to the discussion and things like that, I think there are circumstances where, you know, and maybe we can finesse it a bit, where it's perfectly appropriate and right for somebody who may offer a particular expertise or role or something, you know, and I'm just sort of, you know, thinking out loud here where they're being a member of a particular board and not a resident of the city is not only appropriate, but. essential, maybe required by ordinance or at least essential versus, you know, if I sign up for the garden committee because I like to, you know, plant roses and all of a sudden I, you know, move to Wakefield, should I still be a member of Medford's garden committee? You know, I don't think so. Me personally. You know, I think that people that are serving on these boards and commissions because they might have a particular interest in the topic should relieve themselves of a role on a board or commission when they leave the city. It's somebody like the building commissioner or the chief or somebody that offers us a particular expertise or by ordinance, then I think that's a very different story. And I think as far as being a resident versus being a voter, I would argue that everybody should be, everybody except those specific instances, like the building commissioner or whatever, should be a resident. in order to participate in anything regarding how Medford operates. Whether you're a voter or not, I think, you know, could be up for discussion, but, you know, you should at least be a resident of the community.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Aubrey, did you want to?
[Eunice Browne]: Can I say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Aubrey and then Anthony.
[MCM00000768_SPEAKER_10]: I think I said this earlier and I think it applies here to that. To be on these, I think there is some hurdle to like an application or some kind of appointment that needs to happen. So it's not just you want to and then you get to and so I'm trusting in that process to be. To make good decisions about who ends up on these boards.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Aubrey. So Anthony, and then we got to wrap this up, Anthony.
[Andreottola]: Just to kind of chime in with that, if you just look at like a commission, like the public health commission, where it may be difficult to get a doctor or a nurse practitioner, you know, who's a Methodist resident willing to serve on a board like that, if there's someone with expertise that could benefit the community, Uh, you know, I, I think that, you know, residency is not a, is, is not, you know, necessarily in the best interest of the community. It's if we have people who, who can, you know, serve. The city in a willing to, you know, these are these most of these are non paid positions, and some of them are very important. Like, you know, the director of public health, I think it's Dr platelets who happens to be a resident now, but, you know. There may be other times where, you know, a local doctor isn't available or something with, you know, the environment where you need, you know, someone with a real specific scientific background. I don't think it needs to be in the charter. I think the mayor can, you know, try to get, like Audrey said, you know, the appropriate people. But when they have an expertise, just because somebody leaves the city, you know, we shouldn't lose that experience. and expertise, you know, maybe, you know, they can be asked, you know, if there's someone else, you know, to, you know, not to renew the term, but I don't know, I think we should, you know, I don't think we're overflowing with, you know, expertise in City Hall right now. I think we should try to, you know, keep, you know, what we have.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So we've had a good discussion. Eunice, do you want to make a motion or how do we want, do we want to?
[Eunice Browne]: To just go to something that Aubrey said a minute ago about, you know, people applying for these positions. My sort of point in all of this wasn't so much that, you know, although I do see Anthony's point about the expertise part, you know, so much about people, you know, somebody from, you know, Wakefield applying to be on one of our boards, it was more of a, somebody who is a current Medford resident and then leaves the city for whatever reason and chooses to, does not step down. So they were originally a resident. I mean, clearly this hasn't gotten any traction. So it clearly seems to be the will of the group not to include this. So I'll just leave it at that then. I mean, you can make a motion. We can vote on it. It's up to you. I'm clearly outnumbered. So it clearly is something that most people aren't interested in. solve the idea. Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: Was there anything else? Just a point of information. I think we're all interested. I think we've expressed opinions. And I think that it's very different. I understand what you're trying to do. It's just it's very difficult to do. But I think that, you know, everybody is trying to do the right thing. And this just maybe may not go. I just think it's too strong to ask.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah, I think that we limit ourselves sometimes. I'm almost in full agreement with you. I would love everyone to be from the city. But realistically speaking, I think we miss good opportunities when we do limit it to that. Even though I agree with you on that part, Eunice, I would hope that everyone we needed could be from the city, but I don't think that happens.
[Milva McDonald]: And I think the intent is for these bodies to be filled with Medford residents. So in the case that it wouldn't happen, it would be rare. But yeah, so. OK.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Was there anything else? We could say, as best as possible, if this could be filled by a resident. I mean, we could make a statement that we would prefer Medford residents, if possible. We could do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to vote on that?
[Eunice Browne]: I would make a motion to include a section on residency to state that wherever possible, positions on multi-member boards and commissions be filled by Medford residents.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Second that, wherever possible.
[Milva McDonald]: Wherever possible is very vague. I don't, I mean, you know.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Is it really, Melva? I would like some information on that. And I mean that sincerely.
[Milva McDonald]: It sounds vague to me, but I don't know what it means. Like if I read that, I would be like, I don't know what that exactly means, but I mean.
[Andreottola]: How about a majority of commissions and boards will have a majority of could be comprised of a majority of Medford residents. So they may be like more than two from outside, but you know, the majority will be.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sorry, I just, I really do it. We do have to end in two minutes. So let's keep this on the list and let's put it, let's finish this discussion at our next meeting. Okay, so let's schedule that. I would like to propose that today is June 6th. I would like to propose June 20th. How are people with that? 20th. To wrap everything up? That's a Thursday evening, right? Yeah, or next week. We could do June 13th.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I will just note for next week that, you know, Tuesday night, the mayor is presenting her budget at the city council meeting Tuesday night.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, but not on Thursday, right? As far as I know, not on Thursday. Yeah, I'd go for the 13th. Okay. Do we have other people that can do the 13th? Okay.
[Ron Giovino]: You also have a citizen, too, that's here who may want to speak.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I know. I know. I'm getting to that. So I will send out an agenda. We will wrap everything up next week. And then the other thing we have to talk about is we're going to skip July. Once we wrap up next week, you should have a draft charter to read, and then we'll reconvene in August. But I do want to form a subcommittee to work on the final report. So does anybody at the top of their head want to be involved on that subcommittee?
[Phyllis Morrison]: I may be away. That's my only thing. It's a possibility. I would like to work on that committee, but I'm not quite sure yet of my this, this. this trip. So can I let you know? I am interested. Okay. I'll keep you posted.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we'll we'll talk about it again next week. Just I just wanted to see if anybody knows they want to do it.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah, I would be interested.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Awesome. Do we have any members of the public that would like to speak? No? Okay. All right. Thank you so much, and I will see you in a week, and we will wrap up these final questions. Second? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
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