[Milva McDonald]: Welcome to the final report subcommittee of the Medford Charter Study Committee for July 15, 2024. I've been heard from Daveed. I think Gene might show up, I hope, but we do have a quorum, so we're going to go ahead. last time we just we we talked about the drafting and um gene is still drafting some parts and i drafted a bunch and i know phyllis made some comments and it looks like gene made a bunch of comments one thing that we didn't really i love the comments the comments are great We didn't talk about like how we're gonna, I guess, I don't know. I guess I'll just accept whatever I want to accept. I don't know. I'll accept some and then we can review them again. How's that? Good. Okay. That's great. So I will review comments and I guess one thing I was wondering for people who did look at it, the other thing I wanted people to do, and Jean may have done it, I haven't looked that much at her comments, but is to say if there's something that we should, I mean, obviously, everything is in our draft charter, right? But we're highlighting things in that sort of recommendations in the report part, sort of we want to highlight the, sort of big decisions, the changes, and the rationale. So if there's something that maybe wasn't included that should be in there, that would be good to know. And then the other thing that we need to do is the appendix. So I made a folder in our subcommittee folder. In addition to all those drafts of the different art, you know, the report itself, there's a folder that says appendix materials. So if, you know, I mean, the other thing we were talking about is how much do we put in the appendix? It's going to be long. I mean, the charter is long. And then, but, you know, we seem to think last time that it was important to include some of the materials we use. So right now what's in there is three memos from the Collins Center. The generic charter that we used as a framework, the comparison of mayor and manager forms of government that we used to help us decide to keep mayor, and the memo they gave us on the authority of Medford's mayor, which was one of the things we had asked for because of the impression that Medford's mayor has more power than other mayors in the state. And we found out that that's not the case.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I think those have to be in the appendix, those things.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then we're going to make footnotes of studies we looked at. We also are going to have to put the, I mean, I was hoping David would be here. I might ask him to, We need to put the survey in the report in a digestible way, right? You know, the results of the survey.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Right, some results, but not all of them. I mean, the survey has to go, the entire survey has to go in the appendix also.
[Milva McDonald]: The entire, right. So, but you know, right. So, but I don't know, like, it has to be exported from Google surveys and put into some kind of form. That's what I mean.
[Phyllis Morrison]: And David is a graduate student. He should be able to do all of this, right? He probably has what's called EndNote on his computer. He probably has the latest software where he can just do this kind of thing. I know when I was doing my doctoral studies, I know I had a program like that, and it was fabulous. OK. So he must have that.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to ask him to just sort of put the survey into some formatting that works. Yeah. Jean already created a report for the listening session. So we want to put that in there too. And she's also writing a little, a little, you know, we're going to put all, we're going to put the survey, the listening sessions report in the, in the actual appendix, but she's also writing a little section for the report about all the community engagement we did.
[Phyllis Morrison]: So the data that was collected from the survey, who analyzed that data? David. So then David should be, listen, he can do this, there's no question. David has a survey, he has the results, he has that. That can be his contribution toward the end here. And he's got it. So it's not going to be a big jump for him. That's right. So he will do that.
[Milva McDonald]: The other pieces we had, and then we had all the listening sessions, which Gene made a great report about. But we also had the three sessions at City Hall. We had Wright's Pond. We had the farmer's market. We had Circle the Square. And we also had a form on our website. So we also have this sort of also this collection of community feedback that doesn't easily fall into the listening sessions. So I'll work on trying to put that together, but somehow we have to figure out the best way to present it in the report.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, but we also need to, I'm not sure what category falls in when we sat down with the mayor's assistant. The interviews.
[Milva McDonald]: So let's talk about that. What were you going to say about the community feedback, Phyllis?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Well, what I was going to say is, can we not just reference? So let's say we had the sessions that we had at City Hall. They're recorded. can we not just say you can refer to, I mean, that's a public document. Yes, we can do that. We can do that, you're right.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a public document for those.
[Maury Carroll]: That's a good point, Phyllis, too. It'll save a lot of space. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
[Milva McDonald]: Good point. So the other thing is then those comments that came in through the form. And the other question, and I'm writing interviews down because I want to talk about that next. Yeah. In the survey, we had the survey questions and then we have the results of that, but then there were comments, pages of comments. I don't, you know, so so we have like a lot of public comment that so maybe what we need to do is take those public comments and the things we got from our, you know, email and maybe put them into categories.
[Maury Carroll]: You know, in a folder as a reference folder or someone, you know, make note of it in the in the document for people to go in and to review comments from fellow citizens and so forth like that. Keep it short and sweet.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I agree, Murray. Those should not all be in the document. If people want to see those, we could say, okay, this is the file. You can access that information here.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. We can put it all into Google and make a link that's publicly available. That's right.
[Maury Carroll]: Make a link to City Hall or the Charter Study Committee that is on the city's webpage.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I'll work on putting those together. Some of them, you know, some of the people who submitted forms and even their names are there, but I'm going to redact all that. Right. Okay. Now, the interview.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I think one way you could do that, Milba is, You could do public responses, and then you could do a private response, whatever we're calling it, official or city employee forms. You could do a public and a private kind of category. And then I think we don't want to get too caught up in making too many pockets for people to go to, because then they'll say, oh, they're making it difficult for us to get to it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Phyllis Morrison]: So I think the listening sessions, the Rights Pond things, the documents, those can all go in one folder.
[Maury Carroll]: Right. And we can title them. Anybody wants to pick up a specific, oh, this happened. And even the interviews, there's no reason to listen. Put it all together on one group, all different titles. Okay. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're going to talk about the interviews in one second. Hi, Gene. Hi, Gene. I just want to catch up, Gene. So basically, we're going to ask Daveed to just kind of put a survey result into whatever program he has that works, that we can actually put into the report. But we were talking about what to do with We have that Google sheet, that issues sheet that you created, so that has a good amount of public feedback. But then we also have a lot of comments that people made when they took the survey. Yeah. And we also have some emails that we got.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Right. But Melba, the survey information should all stay in one spot. The comments should not necessarily be separated out from the data that's analyzed from the survey. That should all be one thing. I mean, when I did my survey comments, I had to keep them with the survey analytics.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So go ahead, Jean.
[Jean Zotter]: I haven't written this yet, so take all your comments under advisement. It's happening this week, but we could put in some comments just to, as examples, you know, like I might look- In the body of the report. In the community engagement section, like we put a little pullout boxes just for examples, but I agree, it could all just go in one place for the- Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, Jean, what I'm thinking about is, I mean, because otherwise we will have the survey data and then we'll just have a long list of comments, right? And then we'll have a long list of comments from other places, but the Google sheets, the issue sheets you created, It would be labor intensive maybe to put all the comments in there, but that had categories where it said where the comments came from, right? So we had said this feedback was from the city hall session. This feedback was from, and then we could say these were comments from the survey. So we could also do that, right? Does that make sense?
[Jean Zotter]: I see. So we decided not to put the listening sessions in that big feed I created.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, you have a report that you created for the listening chat sessions. And we'll put that right into the final report. Right. I'm just thinking of the actual comments that were written down by people. Sure. We could do that.
[Jean Zotter]: We could do that. Maybe it's a link to the Google Doc. Maybe you uploaded it in the report.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. people wanna go and look at it, they can see. And that looks very thorough because I think some of the, what we're hearing is people are concerned that we didn't get a lot of community engagement. That way.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I'll look at putting it to the goal. Well, I think it's really important. The point you just bring up, Jean, I think somewhere in the document that we're presenting, it has to say, this is the community engagement we received. This is what we experienced from the community, then if they want the breakdown, they can go to that link.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, gene is writing that right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I referenced it in the introductory letter, but just quickly. I saw that. Yeah. So, so, yeah, we're going to have that. The other, so all right, so I'll work on that with the issue sheets, and I'll at the very least put together all the comments that we've received, because some of them came in by email, and I had shared them when they came in, but the interviews. I feel like, so we had an interview form, but not everybody we interviewed filled out, right? We may have three or four of those that were actually filled out by the person we interviewed, And then we have the interview reports, which were sort of like notes from the interview. But I don't know, I guess I'm, I don't know about including those or making them public.
[Jean Zotter]: No, we didn't tell, like I did two or three interviews. We did not say we were gonna make them public. Yeah, exactly. We did that purposely so that they could be free to tell us. Like Donato. Exactly. I don't know if they want to be on the record.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And we made those notes so that we could, you know, just the committee could use them. So, uh, so my feeling is that we should just say that we interviewed these people maybe, but not, what do you think Jean?
[Phyllis Morrison]: We don't have to include the transcripts of those. Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: Do you agree? I think we should, we could say something like we interviewed these people, um, we're not including them, the transcripts of those interviews because we, I'm just trying to think of, and maybe you guys can wordsmith this better, that we wanted to encourage free and open conversation about the charter and did not say that we would make these public. Like, we just want something like that, like some, you know.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, you're close, Jean. I know what you're saying, but maybe our, you know, elected, not elected officials, but members of the political side of government or something like that. And, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Can we make it go really without naming names?
[Maury Carroll]: You can put the council school committee, state representative may as assistant clerk or something like that without superintendent.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we could yeah. I'll put together just a list of the people that we interviewed. Jean, how about that? And I'll send it to you. Sure.
[Jean Zotter]: We could do a list. We could do key themes, too. We could also say these key themes came from the interviews. That's true. We can aggregate the data. But then just say the individual transcripts, we offered them confidentiality to encourage free discussion.
[Milva McDonald]: How about if we just said we conducted off-the-record interviews with X number of city councilors? The minute you use a word like off-the-record, people's heads shoot up.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah, okay. I know what you're getting at. No, no, I know. No, you're hiding. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. And I would just simply put, we interviewed and sought input and feedback from the following.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's, I think that's right. I don't think we need to explain a lot.
[Maury Carroll]: We had surveys, city officials, you know, whatever. Maybe group it all into one without saying anything.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Jean, just so you have the data of exactly like how many people we interviewed and who they were, I'll send you a list of the people. And also in there, there are some interview reports if you want to look at them to pull out general themes. But the only thing about pulling out general, I don't know, would it, would it be, does that take like a data analyst? I don't know. You know, like what if, Oh, three people said this, so we can call it a general theme. You know what I mean? Like, how do we determine what a general theme is?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, it'd be nice if it was a couple of... I mean, when I've done this in the past, I would do something like we did with the model charter. Like we do an Excel spreadsheet and we could put the themes and then we could put who said it. And then if you had a majority of people, it would be your, but it is a little bit of work.
[Milva McDonald]: And the other thing that I feel like a lot of people that we interviewed, like, you know, maybe they would say, well, I'm in favor of such and such, maybe under these circumstances or you know what I mean?
[Phyllis Morrison]: I think you should say that we interviewed these people and we discussed the following topics or whatever.
[Milva McDonald]: Or even just say why we interviewed them. Right. Because it was really almost for our own, so that we could understand more about their jobs and how certain things might affect their jobs or what their experience.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah, we were seeking clarification from them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, we also got history history.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so those kinds of things. Okay, so that's good. The other thing we were discussing on gene before you got here was the appendix. So, a lot of the stuff that we've just been talking about. I'll make a link like for that public feedback, but we're definitely putting so far in the folder I created in our subcommittee folder, folder within a folder. There's three memos from the Collins Center. I also, I haven't put it in yet, but I have it. Your listening sessions report is going to go in there. Okay. And I guess what else do we need to attach? We're going to put that public feedback we just discussed in a link. And then we're also going to have some footnotes to studies. Those won't be in the appendix per se. They'll just be footnoted. Yeah. What else do you think we need in the appendix? Well, the survey, the actual survey will go on the appendix. Survey questions.
[Jean Zotter]: The interview questions for the, like not the answers, but just the template we used.
[Phyllis Morrison]: The template that we used.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. The template we used for the listening sessions. Yeah. You know, the questions that we had, but not the answers. Not the answers, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Will you put that in the appendix, Jane?
[Jean Zotter]: Sure.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Okay. Is there anything else from the Collins Center that we have to put in the appendices?
[Jean Zotter]: You referenced quite a few.
[Milva McDonald]: I have three in there.
[Jean Zotter]: Three, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, it's funny because some of the things we got from the Collins Center were kind of like official memos that were on Collins and stationary, but some of them were some of it was just sort of in more informal like, you know, so. So I put the memos in there that were, I felt like were relevant to our final report that were official. You know what I mean?
[Jean Zotter]: What about the slides that we did at the, I guess maybe just, I don't know, the ward representation slide where the... What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Should we put that in the appendix? Slide presentation.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I think I would leave that on the link.
[Jean Zotter]: Just leave it in the general public access link.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Yeah, we're going to link to those. This final report is going to all be electronic, right? So maybe, Jean, when you make the, no, they'd have to be separate. I was going to say you could hyperlink. Let me think about how I've got to come up with, I've got to find the links to the, they were all on CCTV and we recorded the Zoom, we recorded the Zoom. That's the other thing is how do we, maybe we should just link to the TV recording because it's easier to watch than the Zoom recording, right? I was just thinking the slides. No, what we were saying was that the three City Hall events we did, we would just link to those recordings so people could watch them and then they would see the slides, right? So now that's another question, should we also pull out the slide presentation and include it in the appendix? But I was sort of going off on what links are we going to use for that?
[Jean Zotter]: So in the community engagement section, I would just link to those.
[Milva McDonald]: I was thinking we could hyperlink them. Yeah, but then you'd have to have three. Yeah, you could. I don't know. You can think about that. We'll think about the best way to include those links.
[Jean Zotter]: I can put the date if you click on the date.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly. Yeah. And like I said, we have Zoom recordings of them, but it might be better to find them on the CCTV, because those are easier to look. Right?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Right. And also, they would have, if it wouldn't be just the slide, it would be the conversation that took place regarding the slides.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: I mean, two of those were kind of slow turnout.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, actually, maybe we should use the Zoom for that reason.
[Jean Zotter]: But the Ward one, we had more engagement.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Did we have three or four at City Hall? We might have had, I said three in my letter, but now I'm thinking maybe we had four. Because we had one sort of general information section, then we have Ward 1, the one that we focused on ward representation, and then was there one or two after that?
[Jean Zotter]: I have to look that up. I looked through my calendar. Yeah, I'll have to look that up.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let me write that down. OK, so thanks for your comments, Jean. I'll look through them all and incorporate whatever. And same with Phyllis. And then just, I guess, be thinking about if we need to put other things in the appendix. And any other thoughts on this?
[Jean Zotter]: There was a couple I thought, do we want to talk about? Yeah, OK.
[Milva McDonald]: That's good, because I haven't looked at them. I haven't looked a lot at them, so that's good if you bring them up.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, I'm trying to, I closed everything out.
[Milva McDonald]: For the letter you said, should we say something about how we voted to adopt a full new charter instead of working on a few sections? And then I think I did that at, yeah, in the general recommendations, but do you think we should also mention it in the introductory letter?
[Jean Zotter]: Well, I'm just thinking like strategically, if we can get a full charter, past, even if they take out pieces. But if we have it all in one place and then there's a regular review, I feel like that's a win. Because it's just all over the place. Nobody can find the charter. So it's a win. And so that's why I just thought maybe putting that in the letter and saying, one big decision we made was it's so hard to know what our charter is, that this is really important to have it in one place and putting that in the letter. That's just my thoughts.
[Milva McDonald]: So to emphasize it. No, that's good. I'll work on that. What was the other? That looks more or less like a writing thing, which I can look at. And let's see, Article 2, what did you do? A lot of this is writing, punctuation, links. Oh, OK. Did you have anything do you have anything you remember in there because I'm trying to find your email where the Well, I have you want me to pull it up I have it on the screen well Is it too much of a reveal before we're While it's still in draft form I mean we one time remember we We talked about the survey when we were partway through the survey, and we put it all up. And then there was all this discussion on social media about the results of our survey before it was even done. So I guess I'm a little. Yeah. I'm just trying to get into Google Drive. So under the general recommendations, you just had a writing suggestion. The other thing I guess I could ask is, under general recommendations, These were two overall. Are there any other overall big recommendations? Right now, it's draft a new and modernized charter and keep mayor council form of government. I'm thinking maybe- What about the wards? Well, that's under Article 2. Okay. Because that's city council. These were more sort of overall kind of, I mean, we could put under article three recommendation, we could put the keep mayor council form of government. I mean, maybe we don't need a general recommendations page.
[Jean Zotter]: I like, I like having a general. That's how Somerville did it, right? I liked when they had, but I wonder if we bullet it more, like maybe we don't, because then don't we talk about it later?
[Milva McDonald]: Which, the new, which one?
[Jean Zotter]: Well, I like having like an executive summary at the beginning of the major decisions.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, okay. So in that case, we should put more in it. Yeah. So keep draft a new, and then maybe I would call it major recommendations. Yeah, major. Instead of general, what do you think? Yeah. Yeah. So add to major recommendations. Ward representation is a major recommendation. Let me just look at article two. So does that mean we would move the ward representation?
[Jean Zotter]: So I was thinking like maybe just the more detailed, but you just have little short, you know, like it could even just be a bullet, like keep under major, major recommendation. Yeah. Just like bullet points. Yeah. Bullet points. I think the only thing that's not covered is the drafted new and modernized charter. I think you're right. Any of the sections. And that's why maybe that goes in the introduction.
[Milva McDonald]: So I will play around with that, but what else do we consider our major recommendations?
[Maury Carroll]: Terms.
[Milva McDonald]: Terms. Just for mayor. Mayor's term. Term for mayor. Mayoral term. And which includes a term limit. With limit. Yeah. Right. Because we didn't change the terms for the others. Nope. So that's... Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead.
[Jean Zotter]: What were you going to say? School committee, the board.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Maybe what we do in the major recommendations when we put the board representation, we include that it's for both. Because we're going to keep in the Article 4 recommendations, we'll go into more detail, but we'll say in the major recommendations that we're recommending hybrid board representation for city council and school committee. Right.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, I think what you had here was general recommendations that weren't covered by the articles, right? Pretty much that's what I was going for. But now we're changing that. And then I was just thinking having like a bulleted executive summary before you get into the details, which is separate than what you have done.
[Milva McDonald]: We'll do that. And then we'll move the detail on the new and modernized charter to the introductory letter. I'll keep it in here. I just won't go into as much detail. Right. OK.
[Jean Zotter]: There's the whole section on citizen petition, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So we're going to add word representation for CC and SC, term or mayor with term limit. Is there anything else about school committee? I don't think there's anything else major that we decided. We talked a lot about should the mayor be the chair, should this and that, but we did not change that. I mean, we could say keep mayor as chair of school committee, or we could just save that for the school committee section.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Well, it is our recommendation.
[Milva McDonald]: I know, but is it big enough to go under major recommendations? I think so. Maybe because a lot of people don't want the mayor to be the chair.
[Jean Zotter]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And let's see, I'm just going through that in my head. Six was, do we want to put, I'm just thinking of them in order of what they are in the charter. Was there anything about the, I mean, an annual budget meeting was probably the biggest change we put under the budget, right?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, and I mean, you could say annual budget meeting and a recommendation future charter review, a compensation, there's the compensation committee and the charter review looking at.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's in nine. So I'm just going in my head, six, we're on six now. Was there anything else about the budget? We recommended that they mean you're you're writing up you're writing that recommendation section right now this is just for the bullet bulleted.
[Jean Zotter]: Well, just, we did not do what the city council wanted, which was the authority to increase budget lines. But we should put in that sentence that I proposed and cannot remember.
[Milva McDonald]: It's got to be written down somewhere. But that would go in. When you write up the Article 6 recommendations, that would go in there, right?
[Jean Zotter]: Right. So I just don't know if under the executive summary, you want to say added the annual budget meeting and recommend future reviews go more in-depth on the budget issue. I don't know. Does that make sense or am I not making sense?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I hear what you're saying. I'm just wondering if we should reserve that part for the more detailed. More detailed area, okay. Because we're really thinking bullets.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah. I don't know. The detail part is what we said how many months before and all that kind of stuff. That's in there, if I recall.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think we made any other big changes in there. And then in elections, the biggest change we made in elections was ballot position. Right. I mean, is that significant enough to put under major recommendations?
[Jean Zotter]: I don't think so. Oh, you do, Phyllis?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, I do. I don't really think so. One way or the other, it really doesn't matter. It's going to come up either way. That's a big change. To me, that's a big change.
[Milva McDonald]: I consider it one of the important things we decided. I think that's a big change. All right, so. So ballot position, okay, now we're on eight. Now there's a lot of stuff in eight, so do we want to bullet point them separately or just say?
[Jean Zotter]: I just created a citizen's petition section that includes ballot questions, recall, referendums, or something.
[Milva McDonald]: Including initiative petitions, referendum, and recall. Yeah. Was there something else besides? There was some other, right?
[Jean Zotter]: There's like getting it on the city council agenda.
[Milva McDonald]: I thought that was the initiative petition. Then there was the Yeah, they were like there was another, but I can't remember what it was called. I'll look. I'll look. And then in nine, the regular charter review. But I was thinking for the bullet point, I might just put that in with the draft new and modernized charter. Well, maybe we should have regular and I was going to include it in that. But maybe regular charter review is yeah, I think it should go a couple times.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I think that's a I think that's a major recommendation.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I know. I didn't know if I should put it with the With that or give it its own regular charter review. Okay, and The other thing in Article 9, there's still the outstanding question of the ethics reporting.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I was just reading that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. We'll see about that. That's not going to go on the list yet. The compensation committee, we are going to have to discuss that. I don't know if you guys have gotten that far in the Collins Center materials yet. So we'll talk about that. I'll put it in, highlight it in creation of compensate, whatever we called it. I'll just put a compensation committee in my notes, but I won't put that. I'm trying to think if there was something else in that. There were a few that we talked a lot about a lot of stuff in Article 9.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Well, I have it up. It's the Periodic Charter Review, the Periodic Ordinance Review.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, there we go. Yeah.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Ordinance. So maybe we should put the Ordinance Review in there, too. Yeah. Periodic Ordinance Review. Then the public comment, which we talked about.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Oh, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to put that under major recommendations?
[Phyllis Morrison]: What is the public comment?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if we, I mean, is it a major recommendation?
[Phyllis Morrison]: No, because I think we said that they all already have something in place regarding this anyhow. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. So there's a lot of bullets on the major recommendations.
[Phyllis Morrison]: So can you read them back to us?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Well, we have the creative drafting new modernized charter, a complete charter, ward representation for city council and school committee, term length and limits for mayor. I won't necessarily say it that way, but that's right. Mayor as chair of school committee, annual budget meeting, ballot position, citizen participation mechanisms, including initiative petition, referendum, and recall provisions, regular charter review, regular ordinance review. I could use periodic instead of regular for both of them. Periodic, yeah. And creation in notes mode, creation of a compensation committee, because we're going to have to talk about that after seeing the call-in centers.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Right. And Melva, I might put the regular, adopt a regular charter and charter review together.
[Milva McDonald]: I was thinking about that.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I would put those as one bullet point. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: They're separate.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah.
[Phyllis Morrison]: OK. OK. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: And then, okay. Okay. So, I mean, obviously, so I'll change that general recommendations document to be a bullet point. I'll make the changes that we talked about to the introductory letter, and I'll look at some of the edits for the other sections, too. And then, Jean, you're working on the community engagement and six and... Do you feel like you're...
[Jean Zotter]: You're good with doing all that? Yeah, and my deadline is the 22nd. OK. Or is it the 19th? 22nd or the 19th. I'll try to get it done by the 19th.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, 22nd sounds fine. I mean, people are going to read the draft charter and the memo from the Collins Center for August 1st. And we're going to talk about, when we're going to pass this off to the whole committee too. I feel like we need to finalize more before we do that. Four? No, you're not working on four. You're working on six, eight, and community engagement. So it's just going to be pretty, you know, it's going to be a good body of work, I think. Is there anything else that we need to do? I mean, we're getting a sense of the shape of it now. Maybe Davida ultimately can create our table of contents and all that. Or maybe you can, Jane. I don't know, because you seem to have some software, too, that can do that. I know how to do that in Word, yeah. Yeah. Is that the best format when in the end when we finish it where I mean are we're submitting it to the mayor and then she will pass it to the city council or I don't know you know it's up to her kind of how she can deals with it after that but.
[Jean Zotter]: I would turn it into a PDF. I have Adobe. I can edit it. Although sometimes Adobe isn't accessible. So like the state, when they put documents up, put both the Word and the PDF. Blind people have trouble reading. But anyways, you can lock your Word document so it can't be edited.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, and we can incorporate whatever visuals we might. I mean, in terms of however Daveed does the survey report, like he might have it in some other kind of program.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, you can put that in a PDF. You can merge it into your PDF. All right, so we'll be able to do all that. Yeah, OK.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I also think that we should give the mayor a printed out bound copy. Yeah, we can do that too. I really do. We don't have to give it to anyone else, but I think the mayor. Yeah, that's my respect.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sure Francis can help us print, you know, copy it at City Hall and then deliver it. And when we deliver it, we can deliver it the same day as we deliver it electronically. Yes. Okay. And ultimately, we're going to have to merge the actual charter document that we finalize into the report too. Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: Well, they'd be companion pieces, they'll be the report, and then the charter would be separate, but though.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, you know, that's good. We could do it that way. I mean, when I noticed that the final, a lot of, most of the final reports that we looked at, they just had a table of contents and at some point in the table of contents was draft charter, you know, like on page 28 or something or whatever. Then that goes for 30 pages and then after that comes the appendix. Okay. Sure. We can do that too. Okay. Is there anything else we need to do? I guess what I feel like is we're doing pretty well. We can finalize this maybe in another meeting and then we can share it with the committee. do we, what do you think?
[Jean Zotter]: Well, so they have a communications office. I don't know who heads it. I mean, it's up to the mayor whether, like, I can put it in Word. I don't do, like, I'm not a fancy layout person. Yeah, right. So if you want a fancy, like, I don't know if you want to check and see, you know, if we're doing a bound copy, do they? want to lay it out. It's like icing on the cake. It doesn't need to happen. But sometimes the communication like it, if I create like a report, that's a good idea.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Gene, I think they should maybe put that together for this.
[Milva McDonald]: Wait, so Steve Smarty is the communications guy.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So tell me again what we would be asking him to do.
[Jean Zotter]: Also, when I create reports for Department of Public Health, like I'll put the word document, but then they sometimes take it and they lay it out. Sometimes they have margins and more white space and make it look fancier. I don't know if they have the time or if that's something the mayor wants them to spend their time on, but you could ask potentially.
[Milva McDonald]: So I'm going to ask. This is once we're finished, right?
[Jean Zotter]: Yes, we give them a finished document and then they just. lay it out, which it looks like none of the other cities did. So the bar is very low. The other thing we could think about is a press release and whether the mayor would be okay with us doing a press release. I think it would be great if we could do a press release and say- Yeah, I should have some reporters at City Hall when it's being presented to her.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I think that's not a bad idea. You know, I was just thinking of something else, and I don't, I don't know that we could, I mean, it's going to be a long document, but I don't know if translating that document, you know, is something. It's going to have to be translated. I mean, and which, which really, which I'm wondering if we have a bunch of materials that we got translated, do we want to put some of the translations in the appendix?
[Jean Zotter]: Could you translate the introductory letter and the executive summary, which is not as much as a document. I can talk to Frances about that.
[Milva McDonald]: So and what I mean, we won't we we don't need to maybe put the all the translate the translated survey that the. because nobody can take it anymore anyway, but we also had just informational materials that we had translated.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, that should go in our community engagement explanation. Yeah. Can you send me the languages and the... Yes, I will do that.
[Milva McDonald]: An executive summary, so I'm going to send Jane translations. Okay, then we can figure out how to work that out. Okay. But yeah, that's, I mean, ideally the draft charter could get translated, but that would be, that would be a lot. Cause I feel, I feel like I should remember this because when we translated the survey, we talked about how, you know, how the, what the cost was and it might've gone by page. I can't quite remember.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, it might be by word or by page.
[Milva McDonald]: The other problem with translating it is that, you know, we had that whole issue where it all has to be like at fourth grade level or below in order to kind of work. Yeah. And the charter won't be. Just won't be.
[Jean Zotter]: No, I mean it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, for the ease of translation, just, you know, but we won't be able to because the charter has all that sort of almost archaic language, you know. And it can't, we can't, you know, it could be translated, it would just be, it would be a big deal. It's a lot of pages.
[Jean Zotter]: I think if you do the introductory letter. Yeah, we'll definitely look at that for sure. It's going to change and we don't at this point translate any of our ordinances, do we?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point. We don't, you're right. Yeah, but but we I'll talk to Francis about those two pieces. See what she says. I'm not sure, but we can try.
[Jean Zotter]: I'm just thinking of all the people that gave us input. How do we get back to them and say thank you for your feedback, thank you for here's how to find the final report. Thanks for making it happen.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we thanked them all after we interviewed them and we thanked them in the introductory letter, not by name, but you need to reach out to them individually and share the final report with them.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, the survey respondents and- Is there any way we can make an announcement on the city website?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah, that will all get announced. But we have an email list, because when we did the survey, we will we have it from events where people signed up for their email, and then a bunch of people signed up, we have a good, good number of people, I think a few hundred at least, that took the survey that left their email that, you know, they included their email, because we said, you know, if you'd like to know about our events or whatever, sign up, so we have a list. So we.
[Jean Zotter]: It'd be nice if we had like a little mini communications plan of like, perhaps the mayor wants to see it first before we do a press release and stuff. But assuming that it goes to her, she's okay. Then we do a press release. We send things out to people via email. We have it translated and kind of just try to get it in whatever paper or. Yeah, yeah. So we get it out before it goes to city council. So we create some funds.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. Yeah. And I was going to say, we would want to coordinate it with whenever the city council is going to, you know, when they put it on their agenda, when it goes to the city council. Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: Because you could as chair do an op-ed, you know, here's in the patch, I guess, like, here's what we did. Right. That's all that's left. Yeah, yeah.
[Maury Carroll]: But I kind of agree with you. I would give it to the mayor first and not do anything like overstepping our bonds. Show the respect that she is the mayor. And this is this is what we're looking at before you get any of the word out. And then maybe just the page with the bullet points. If if if if she's good with all of our stuff. maybe just a page with all bullet points that, you know, what the Charter Study Commission has worked on and, you know, without putting the whole thing out there, just... Right. I do it yesterday, Jean, create a little interest and buzz about it before it comes out.
[Milva McDonald]: I do think that the final report will be public. I mean, most of them are, right? But that will be the mayor, right? The communications director will... And the mayor will put it up.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah. And any press release, I was assuming would go through the mayor's office. Yeah, I think they were already appointed by the mayor. So I just want to clarify, I don't think we'd go wrong press release.
[Milva McDonald]: And they did press release when we were appointed. They did a press release about the survey. So there will be, I'm sure they will do something. I'm sure. I mean, I don't know 100% because I haven't talked to them, but I would predict strongly. Okay. So this is good. I guess the question now is do we... We're going to have a meeting on August 1st. So for the whole committee, our current scheduled meetings are August 1st, and then whatever the first Thursday in September is, and whatever the first Thursday in October is. So unless we schedule more meetings, that leaves us three meetings to finish everything. And we are pretty much done, but then again, you know, there could be details that might take a little time, right? So on August 1st, we're gonna address this ethics reporting issue that, but then we're also gonna just sort of, I haven't made an agenda yet, but we're gonna, We're going to look at the draft charter and spend some time sort of seeing if anybody has any issues with it. I think we don't have all eyes on it. Right. And then we would hopefully maybe finish that in September and maybe then in August, we send the committee the final report. And then we can start on the final report in September too. I'm hoping we don't have to schedule any more meetings.
[Maury Carroll]: But you know what else I'm gonna suggest? Why don't we see how the August 1st meeting goes? Yeah, we'll see how that goes. What kind of dialogue and conversation goes on and dictate whether we need another meeting before the December meeting and wrap it all up there.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what we'll do, but for us, for the final report, for us, we have not scheduled another meeting. We could.
[Jean Zotter]: Well, there's the pieces I'm writing, or do we just want to do that via Google Doc?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'm wondering if we should maybe have one more meeting and say, OK, we're good to go. let's share this with the whole committee now so that they can read it for September. So should we do that? I think so. I'm good with that. So early August, and then maybe we'll get David.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Well, we're going to have a full committee meeting on August 1st. Yeah, we are. I think we should meet before then. Okay.
[Maury Carroll]: How about the 29, two weeks from today?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Sure.
[Maury Carroll]: Monday?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm just in my head. That's two weeks from today. Yeah, two weeks. Is that OK, Gene? Can you?
[Maury Carroll]: Is that too far up?
[Jean Zotter]: I can do a time. Same time? What time works for you? I can do two. I have a doctor's appointment. OK, name a time. Morning? I do morning. Hey, I'm in.
[Milva McDonald]: What day of the week on a Thursday?
[Maury Carroll]: Monday.
[Milva McDonald]: No, that's a Monday. Monday, July.
[Maury Carroll]: 29? Yeah, Monday, July 29th.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I like the morning.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So 10 a.m.? Sure, yeah.
[Maury Carroll]: Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'm not looking at my calendar, but I'm pretty sure I can...
[Phyllis Morrison]: OK, so I'll send. We can have read through any of the changes or updates of things. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll send minutes, and that'll have written down. Hopefully, I wrote down what everybody said they're going to do. But most people, except for Jean, you're writing stuff. And I'm going to fix a few things and send you a bunch of stuff. But so the big thing is to just read over what we have. Yeah.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay, no, but when you say listening session report, like, I mean, I meant that you that you sent me your member.
[Milva McDonald]: I still have it in my email. I've been holding. I don't remember. Okay. And. Hang on, here it is. Oh, it was a slide presentation. That's what I thought. Okay, I did a slide presentation. Okay. Can that go into the report as like a document?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, we can just put it.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I'm going to put it in the appendix right now, but we can get that.
[Jean Zotter]: You can do two slides per page or something so people can see.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, and I mean, that would be in the appendix in addition to what you're writing for the community report. Sure. Okay. I mean, the community engagement section. Sounds good. I'm almost wondering if we need like a separate appendix. We'll see when we get the appendix all together if we want to put headings like, you know, make sections for the appendix. Community engagement, you know, study, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. This mostly just sort of organizing it and putting the pieces together.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yeah. I think it'll be clear once you have everything.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then we'll just figure out how to put it together. And maybe whether it's you or Daveed that's going to do all the formatting, you guys just decide how to do that. I don't know.
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Awesome.
[Phyllis Morrison]: All right.
[Milva McDonald]: I will send the minutes, and I will see you all on August 1st. No, July 29.
[Phyllis Morrison]: July 29. OK. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Bye. Thanks.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye.
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