total time: 34.3 minutes
total words: 3026
total time: 9.99 minutes
total words: 857
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the August 1st, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. We're welcoming the Collins Center tonight. We have Anthony, Frank, and Marilyn, which is great because we have a lot of material to go through. First, I just want to deal with the minutes from June 20th. Did anyone have a chance to look at them? Any issues? Melva?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yes? It says my video won't start because you've stopped it.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Hang on. Let me check on that. OK, here we go. OK, you should be able to start it now. OK, yeah. And thanks for actually just reminding me that I need to record the meeting. Recording in progress. Anybody from the public? Not yet.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Frances had her hand raised. Frances. Yes. Did you want to say something? It was to remind you to record. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Okay, great. So the minutes, did everyone have a chance to look at them? Do we have any changes? Are we good with them? Yep, they're good.
[Maury Carroll]: I'll make a motion to accept.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay, so our first item is Eunice is going to give a report from the Financial Reporting Ethics Subcommittee. Eunice, it's all you.
[Eunice Browne]: Okie dokie, so in a meeting back in June, I think it was our 3rd meeting in June. We were going through the charter. We talked about. An ethics component to the charter, and that was kind of brought up. Because I discovered that Framingham has an ethics component in their charter. So after we did a whole lot of discussion back then, we decided that we would form a subcommittee and we were charged with investigating whether or not we should add a section in Article 9 regarding ethics and specifically to require statements of financial interest or statements of financial disclosure from members of our municipal government. We did some research, which included finding other communities that dealt with ethics in some form. And after looking at a few dozen charters and ordinances, we found the following. Framingham is the only community that we could find that includes ethics in the charter via an ordinance. Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Springfield have ordinances that involve ethics with their municipal government. And Somerville and Springfield have ethics commissions that they establish by ordinance. I reached out to representatives from Framingham, Cambridge, and Springfield. I was only able to connect with somebody from Framingham. But in lieu of conversations, yikes, with representatives from other communities, we had a set of questions and I tried to summarize them, which I will do very shortly. But everything that I came across, any conversation, any documentation, you'll find it all in the ethics subcommittee on our drive. So, as we know, per mass general law, statements of financial disclosure are not required at the municipal level. They are required at the state level. And there is a form at the state level that electives and employees have to complete. It's 42 pages long. It's very thorough, very intrusive, not only on the individual, but it goes into family business as well. I had a long conversation with a gentleman by the name of George King. He's the city Councilor at large in Framingham who was involved in writing their charter. In 2016, they converted from a town to a city, and their first charter went into effect on January 1st, 2018, and it's now undergoing its first review at the five-year mark. Mr. King from Framingham told me that he believed that having an ethics requirement in the charter is the right approach. a charter requirement compels the city council to establish an ordinance rather than a recommendation, which he saw as very weak. They, Framingham Charter Commission, I guess, didn't have much faith in their city council that they would do anything on their own without a mandate. being in the charter. What he did say, however, they use the state form, the 42-pager, and he found that to be an impediment. Too long, too intrusive, not Framingham-centric. He suggested that a shorter form, more targeted to the community, would be more effective and better able to highlight any possible conflicts or issues at the local level. We had a series of things that we wanted to know. So from my research from all of the different communities that I was able to delve into either via the charter or via ordinance, we found out the following. The question we asked was, Who is required to complete the statements of financial interest? And every community that we looked at, except Somerville, requires candidates and electeds. Somerville only requires their electeds. All the communities required their department heads. uh, regarding boards and commissions kind of varied. Um, some did not require any at all. Others, anybody who was on a board or commission that received any sort of compensation and then yet others who were on boards or commissions that had some sort of permitting or regulatory power, zoning, licensing, something like that. Um, We asked Mr. King if it discouraged candidates for office or to sit on boards or applicants for city jobs, and he didn't think it did at all. As I said, Framingham uses the state form. Cambridge has their own form. It's six pages long, and it only targets dealings with Cambridge. In the various communities, either the city clerk or the elections commission was responsible for the oversight of the forums, distributing them, collecting them, auditing them for compliance. And if a citizen wanted to investigate them, all they needed to do was go into the office and ask to see whichever one they wanted to see. Um, we did find out that both Somerville and Springfield have ordinances that require the establishment of an ethics commission. Um, and, uh, those commissions are, uh, responsible for administering and overseeing, um, the statement of financial disclosure requirement. Um, the, the, those ethics commissions modeled themselves after the state level ethics commission that exists. Maury was charged with speaking with some of our current and past elected officials. And he did that, and they responded that they felt that the required campaign finance reports are sufficient. They felt that anything else would discourage potential candidates. Campaign finance reports itemize every donation and expense for candidates for local office, but they are not as comprehensive as an annual financial statement. The campaign finance reports for the last several elections here in Medford can be found on the elections tab on the Medford website if anybody's interested in taking a look. Let's see, we did note that the communities that have some sort of an ethics component to the charter or via ordinance are currently bigger than Medford. Medford's population, as we know, is about 60,000, but we're growing. There's several housing developments in stages of the pipeline that are going to be 300 units, 400 units coming online in a few years. There's a whole development coming down in the Wellington area possibly. We're growing too. Let's see. We talked about including in the charter, a mandate to the city council to create an ordinance requiring the statement of financial disclosure. and or establishing an ethics commission. There's a number of questions that we would need to take a look at if we wanted to go that route and whether or not we determine the parameters such as who would need to file them and how often or anything like that versus the city council would be charged with figuring all that out. Um, we talked about establishing an ethics commission. And, uh, ethics, you know, we talked about as being a pretty big word and it's, you know, more than finance. So, an ethics, what an ethics commission does, its purpose would have to be, uh, defined. And, uh, that could be modeled after the Springfield and some of the ones. And whoever was doing the defining either us, or the city council could follow their lead or just. What's the word I want just confine it to dealing with the statements of financial disclosure. So kind of wrapping it all up, our end result of the two meetings that we had and all of our discussion and research, we arrived at the following recommendations. We do one of the following. We either put a provision in the charter for an ordinance to require elected officials, candidates for elected office, and some city officials to file annual financial statements. And then if we were to do that, we could require an ordinance instituting the creation of an ethics commission. If we decide that we didn't want to do that, we could recommend in our final report that the city council pass an ordinance requiring the annual financial statements be implemented by the ethics commission or recommend that the city council pass an ordinance to form an ethics commission. Keep in mind, recommendations are just that. The city council can ignore any recommendation we make in the charter versus if the charter were to pass, then the current council and any future councils would be compelled to require those statements of financial disclosure or require an ethics commission. That is where we got and what we would need to be voting on.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Eunice. That was a great summary. I'm going to give this a bit of discussion, but it's going to be very short because we have a lot of material to get through before we just take the first vote. Does anybody have any questions? Ron?
[Ron Giovino]: Has the Collins Center reviewed this information?
[Milva McDonald]: It would be great to hear from the Collins Center on this.
[Ron Giovino]: The reason I'm asking is because I'd love to know if none of this, we took action on none of this, how do the Massachusetts general laws enforce ethics at this level?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Um, so, uh, well, I'll make one point. So, um, Marilyn, who's on the call actually, uh, worked on, uh, Framingham when they first created their charter. And then we were both on a team during the second round as they're doing their charter review. So Marilyn, if you want to, if you want to add any comments on that, uh, section arriving into the charter.
[Contreas]: Uh, I, well, I think a lot of it related to changing to a city form and having candidates for, um, for council and mayor, which they had never had before. And it was thought to be a reasonable safeguard for them starting out.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. And what about Ron's question about mass general laws?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: So I think that we wrote, I'm sorry, I think that we've written this in our opinion to you, to the committee in the past, but there are certain things like sort of the disclosure of, well, let me back up. There's not always in state law a requirement that you sort of do a written disclosure on every type of relationship, but there are ethics requirements that you can't vote on. If we're talking about elected officials, that you can't vote on something that you or a family member may have a pecuniary interest in. And there are certain, I don't have them all sort of listed off in front of me, but there are disclosure requirements for candidates and existing elected officials that go in different ways. They sort of arrive in different levels. So I think our perspective as articulate is that a lot of this is covered in state law, but some communities have chosen to incorporate, I guess you would say, an extra layer of protection. We recommend. We recommend that it doesn't necessarily have to be in your charter, and one of the reasons for that, and I think this, someone kind of alluded to this in the conversation with Framingham, is that it's easier to, there was a question from, I think it was Framingham, about that they're using the state ethics forms and that that's not Framingham specific. I think that was what I heard.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, that's correct, Anthony. Mr. King said a more targeted form would be better.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Yeah, and so to change that, because it's in their chart and that would require a charter change, and I don't think I'm talking about school. When we were helping their charter commission this last time, they didn't really talk about their, we didn't spend a lot of time on their ethics, on the ethics provision. Now it's not, hasn't fully passed their council yet, so they may amend it in the future, but. I'm saying it's a larger process to change something that's in the charter versus making something that will work for the community in an ordinance. So our only point is that we don't, our current position is that it may not rise to the level of being in the charter, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, any other questions? Then I want to take it to a vote, but first, I'm going to ask if there's any members of the public that would like to speak on this. Okay. We're going to start by just voting on whether this is something that we would want to include in the chart. So the vote is, do we put a provision in the charter that would require the city council to pass an ordinance that would require financial statements, annual financial statements from elected officials, candidates, and some city officials?
[Phyllis Morrison]: So that's- Can I stop you for a second because I was on mute and I was trying to ask a question.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I'm sorry.
[Phyllis Morrison]: No, it's my fault.
[Milva McDonald]: I was on mute. Okay.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Go ahead. So Eunice, you said that in talking to someone, they said that this is not, and I probably have this a little backward, but I got the gist that you were saying that the person you were speaking to said, well, you shouldn't do this because it'd be too much work. People don't want to do this job. Is that what you said? Am I correct about that?
[Eunice Browne]: Um, what I got from the only person that I was able to actually speak to, um, despite trying other communities was, um, uh, George King in Framingham. And, uh, he didn't, he hadn't heard anyone say that it was any sort of an impediment in any way. Um, and I did ask him directly, um, Maury did talk to, um, some of our, um, past electeds, and maybe he can certainly say it better than I, but they felt that the campaign finance reports that they are required to do throughout the time of an election was sufficient. In my view, I feel like they're two different things. Why is that? The campaign finance reports, and I invite anybody to go onto the city website at their leisure and take a look at them. But if you gave $100 to your favorite candidate last election, your name would be listed on that, or anybody else that gave $50 or more to their favorite candidate. And it also lists any expenses or anything as well that the candidate incurred. There are campaign finance laws that, you know, you can only give so much, I think it's corporations and businesses and so forth, to a candidate. But to me, what I think a statement of financial disclosure would would be if anybody had their, you know, had any sort of stock in a local development coming or a business or anything that, you know, might have, you know, Business with the city, you know, and kind of looking at it from the elected official aspect, somebody that might be pushing for approval of a development, because maybe they have some. financial interest in it, or, you know, a liquor license or, or, or something, you know, so I feel like, I feel like they do two different things.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Okay, so would the impediment be that people would not want to engage because they may have to disclose too much information? Or is it too much work? That's what I'm trying to. And it's mine. I don't have the clarity on this, Eunice. So that's why I'm asking.
[Eunice Browne]: I think we sort of explored both angles of that. And as I said, unfortunately, we're not able to.
[David Zabner]: You know, talk to too many people, or at least, you know, talk to 2 city Councilors about this and both said that they wouldn't consider either the privacy issue or the work of creating a statement to be an impediment.
[Contreas]: For them, they wouldn't they wouldn't correct.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I would like to just throw out a question to the Collins Center. The issues that were just being described about, say, an elected official pushing something because they had an interest in a development company or a liquor store or whatever, those are already prohibited by state law. Is that correct?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: That is correct.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I just want that to be clear.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Paper play, like quid pro quo, that's correct. Okay.
[David Zabner]: So that being said, they're prohibited by state law, but I think something like this, what it would add was it would make it easy to tell if they were doing it, right? Because at the moment, in spite of the fact that it's prohibited, there's no way for the public or a prosecutor even to necessarily easily find out, oh, they do actually have a financial stake in this. And so that would.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, David. I just wanted to clarify that.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Well, wait a minute, I'm confused again. If it's state law, how do we not know?
[Milva McDonald]: Because they don't, they're prohibited by law from doing that, but they're not required, local officials are not required to submit annual financial reports, so maybe they could try to get away with it, I guess is the... And I'm going to have to apologize because I cut into Paulette's time.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I'm sorry, Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. Paulette, go ahead.
[Phyllis Morrison]: You're on mute.
[Milva McDonald]: You're on mute, Paulette.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I wondered whether this would include if I was running for school committee, theoretically, would I then have to disclose my spouse's holdings? Like, you know, how does that work? And then the question is, whose business is it whether we have $50,000 worth of stock in, you know, AT&T?
[Eunice Browne]: I think it would depend upon the form. I mean, the state form, like we discussed back in June and David said it rather eloquently, you're showing the color of your underwear. You're divulging everything. The state form is 42 pages long and it leaves nothing to the imagination. Including spouses. Including your spouse and your adult children. The Cambridge form that I looked at is much more targeted. I don't recall if it involved spouse or not, but I suspect that if your spouse had an interest in a liquor store that was coming before the Liquor Commission or a development that was being built on Main Street, then yeah. But if you own $50,000 worth of stock in widgets incorporated, it doesn't matter. I think it's more how it directs. how it relates directly to Medford is the key. So basically, it would depend on however the form looks.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Right. So creating that form really would be extremely important in terms of figuring out what lines to draw.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. And I suspect that that would be up to the city council. Because it's not our job to create a form like that.
[Milva McDonald]: We would be putting a requirement that they pass an ordinance which could say that the state form is used. I believe that's what Framingham said. But it doesn't seem like we want to do that based on this discussion. Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: I'm glad Paul had so much said, because if you recall in our committee meetings, she almost echoed everything that I had said. Number one, we're talking about the municipal level here. It's going to involve spouses, adult children, and so forth. Under full disclosure, I'm going to use a Unisys example that if someone's going for a liquor store and I have a 20% ownership, number one, I have to be included on the ABCC and any monies that were contributed to this corporation to establish this, you're already on there. I just think... Like we said before, that I think something to the city council would be suffice if we want to go that far. I just think we're going way too deep on this thing on a municipal level.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. All right, I want to move, I think we have David.
[Andreottola]: I'd like to make a motion to bring this to a vote and just see where it goes, and if not, we can debate this all night long. And we don't have these forms, and they're not created. I'd just like to bring it to a vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we're going to vote right now. Is there anybody in the public that wants to speak? I'll ask again. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak? Okay. J.M.N. made a comment, liquor store is a bad example. Thank you. Okay. So the vote is that should we put a provision in the charter that would require the city council to create an ordinance to require elected officials, candidates for elected offices, and some city officials to file annual financial statements? Oh, sorry, it looks like Jim wants to make a comment. Yeah, I think she may want to speak. And then we will know. Can you unmute now? Gene, can you unmute yourself? I'm not sure why she can't.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: She wrote.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not sure why. I'm clicking ask to unmute, but I can't. I'm sorry. You should be able to unmute yourself. Are you not able to?
[Danielle Balocca]: You have to be a co host on mute.
[Milva McDonald]: No, the security settings. I'm clicking and it won't let me. I'm not sure. All right. I will try one more thing.
[Eunice Browne]: I think she had it a second ago.
[Milva McDonald]: I will try one more thing. Can you do it now?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Tell her to look in the left hand corner of your computer and see if the microphone has an arrow through it or a line through it and click on that. In the bottom left underneath the screens here, jam in.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I guess we can't get it done. If you're able to unmute, let us know, but the comments are currently this is self-regulated, and I assume that means that the electeds are self-regulating themselves in terms of complying with the state law, the conflict of interest law. Okay.
[Danielle Balocca]: Paula, it's raising her hand.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, so, so currently every elected official, you know, has to do the ethics and you have to go, you have to sit through the ethics training, you have to do it, I think, is it every year or every other year you have to do it, and you have to sign a form at the end and whatever. So by putting something in where we're asking people to go to one level higher, when you say a 42 page, I'm totally against that, because I definitely think that would be restrictive and obstructive and too much. We do already have to do the campaign finance reports, which are a pain in the neck. I think, though, I'm not totally against the idea of doing something, but I think it has to be very reasonable. What we're trying to prevent is anybody, you know, who may not even realize that there's a conflict in some ways. So, you know, the wording to send it to the city council and say develop an ordinance without, you know, that, you know, we want it to be easy enough to comply with, but at the same time, clarify to an elected official exactly what all that conflict of interest training is about.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I want to go ahead with the vote. I just, Jean, JMN was unable to unmute, but she's making a point that this would create more transparency and that currently elected officials are in charge of, it's sort of an honor system. Okay, and this vote is simply whether we want to put a provision in the charter. We will not write the ordinance. The city council will write the ordinance. We can direct it to a certain extent, but we can't micromanage it. So this is to put a provision in the charter for the city council to pass an ordinance to require financial statements annually from candidates, elected officials, and some city officials. So if you vote yes, you're in favor of that. All right, Danielle. Yes. Maury?
[Maury Carroll]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Maury Carroll]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean? No. Paulette? You're on mute, Paulette. You say yes, okay. Eunice?
[Eunice Browne]: Yes.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Phyllis? I have to abstain. I'm still not certain about this.
[Ron Giovino]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: David? David, you're on mute. Oh, you can't unmute? You're yes? No, I'm unmuted. And you're yes? Okay, thank you. And I'm the last one, right? I'm just, I'm going to vote no, because I, I just think, I think it's a lot to put into the charter, but it passes. So, uh, cause we had five yes or no and one abstain. So, um, the next step we are going to, we're going to have to figure out the cats and we're going to ask the call center to help us with that. Um, The other question that we had is whether to create an ethics commission, whether the ordinance should create an ethics commission that would implement this. Anthony Wilson, you had a comment.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: It's more of a clarification on the previous vote. Was the vote to include, I just want to try to understand, it was to include a provision, I'm assuming in the transition provisions, that at some point in time the city council create this ordinance or is this a recommendation that'll be in the report?
[Milva McDonald]: No, it was just voted to put it into the charter.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Okay, just make sure I understood. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I guess the details of it are gonna have to be decided. I think maybe what we'll, we're going to have to do is have a subcommittee meeting again and then bring back specific language recommendation. Okay.
[Andreottola]: Is that, is that, I think we already voted on this once in June and now we voted again on it now. And we're going to go to another subcommittee meeting. I think this is like late in the game. to really get into developing a whole other layer in this charter. Where is this gonna end?
[Milva McDonald]: The vote in June was to form the subcommittee.
[Andreottola]: No, we voted it down, but then I believe then they wanted to form the subcommittee. No, it was tied. And since it was tied, I decided that- Tied means it doesn't pass.
[Milva McDonald]: I know, but I as the chair, I decided to go ahead with it because I felt like there was enough interest in it. So, so that's what we're going to do. The subcommittee is going to come up with some text and we'll bring it back to the committee. It will not be a big piece of text to add to our draft charter, which we currently have. Okay. All right, so the next item on the agenda is, before we get into the meat of the text of the draft charter, there was a question about the Compensation Advisory Board and the Collins. Everybody read the draft charter and the memo from the Collins Center?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Okay. So I think we can just go ahead to a vote, which is do we, the drafted section 918, which was put in the memo, not in our draft charter, do we want to include that in our charter or do we want to, the question is, do we want to include that in our charter or do we just want to make a recommendation in the final report that the city council pass an ordinance to create a compensation advisory board? Does everybody understand what we're voting on?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so a yes vote. Go ahead.
[Danielle Balocca]: Did we already vote to vote on that idea of creating an advisory board?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, we did, but when the Collins Center put together a draft charter, they are pulling that out and making a recommendation that we consider not including it in the charter and rather recommending that the city council write an ordinance to do it.
[Eunice Browne]: Um, I'm of the mind always. Uh, you know, and I understand. The purpose of the charter and so forth, but I, I'm of the mind that. When things like this that are this important come up, um, that we mandate as much as we possibly can. Um, and it simply mandates that there is a board that will, um. Review the compensation and, you know, it's a. Citizen led board, rather than leaving it to the elected officials. I'm of the mind that we. you know, we compel as much as possible.
[Milva McDonald]: Just to be clear, the citizen-led board can't determine salaries, they can just make recommendations. The elected officials will make the decisions.
[Eunice Browne]: Right, I understand that, but I think coming from the community rather than, you know, as I keep going back to say, fox guarding the hen house. Okay. Take as much power away from the electeds as we can. Okay, thank you. Ra.
[Ron Giovino]: Yeah, I know you don't want to have a long discussion. I'm voting against this. I just don't see where there's no power, there's no influence, there's no commitment. It's just a data gathering group. And as we see, sometimes they take the data, sometimes they don't. To me, it's just very superfluous. This one, to me, it's a lot of work. to have no results, no power, so I'm voting against it. This advisory board is not necessarily a value, unless the mayor wanted to convene to find out what's going on, but other than that, no power, no advisory board, that's my opinion.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Okay, so should we have any members of the public that want to speak on this before we vote? Okay. Go ahead, Paula.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I think that one of the things is, while I favored it, is because as an elected official, it is really tough to decide that you're going to vote for an increase. And because of that reason, the school committee stayed at the same level for Years and years, because none of us wanted to be the one who was going to say we should get paid more. And the discrepancy between the school committee and the city council became even higher for many, many, many years. And the reason for that is that you're so afraid when budgets are always tight, You are definitely afraid that if you're the one who puts out, hey, the school committee really should get an increase in our stipend, I can guarantee you that everybody's going to jump on you and say, you know, you can't, we can't fund the public schools, but you want an increase. So I like this idea because I thought it gave an outside voice of looking at it saying, hey, this is reasonable. This isn't. And it certainly isn't a, you know, like you said, there's no power. But I think to have an outside community saying, hey, we've really looked at this and look at the discrepancy or we've looked at this and look, they've had they haven't had an increase in 10 years. You know, so that's why I liked it.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. So we're going to vote. If you vote yes, it means you would like to include this in the charter. If you vote no, it means you don't want it in the charter. And we will recommend that the city council create an ordinance. Because we did discuss this in the past, and people did want to do this. So I think the issue And maybe the Collins Center can speak to this, but the Collins Center felt that it just didn't, it's not a standard charter item and it didn't rise to the level of the charter. Is that correct?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: That is correct, yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so on that, with that, let's vote, Danielle. Yes means you want to put it, you want to put the requirement that this board has created in the charter. No means we want it, but we're going to recommend that the city council pass an ordinance decree.
[Ron Giovino]: Milva, I saw a hand go up quickly from the public. You may want to just ask again. I don't know if it's still there. I think it's down, but you may want to ask.
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody want to speak from the public? I don't see it. Okay. So do we understand what the yes and the no? Okay. Danielle?
[Phyllis Morrison]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Maury?
[Phyllis Morrison]: You're on mute, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Phyllis. No. Okay. Anthony?
[Andreottola]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Gene? No. Paulette? Yes. Unis.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis.
[Phyllis Morrison]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: David. Yes. I feel like I missed somebody.
[Ron Giovino]: Ron says no.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, thank you. Ron says no. What does Milda say? I'm going to say no and we'll recommend the ordinance. Yeah. Okay. That will be put into the final report. Great. OK. Now we're going to move on to the draft charter. And I ask that you all read it and come with amendments. Jean?
[Jean Zotter]: When we say put, since we're on the final report committee, where in the report do we want to put that? Is that going to go in the budget?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. OK. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. All right. Okay, so does anybody, I have a few things, but I'll ask people first. Do you have any amendments that you want to make in this draft charter, Paulette?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So just some of the things are things I caught. So, you know, and we'll talk about it. So on page... Can we go article by article, maybe?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yes. Thank you, Eunice. Yes. Let's do it article by article. That's what I meant to do. So thank you.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Section 1-3, division of powers. Yep. The school committee is not mentioned at all. Yeah. So you talk about the mayor and you talk about the city council, but our Medford system of government has three legs. And so I think it would be, we should add the Medford public school schools will be overseen by an elected school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that would be the language that would be added. Can the call-in center weigh in on, because you didn't suggest that in the draft, so can you speak to that?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I don't know if anyone else on my team have any thoughts. I don't think we have any major thoughts or concerns about it. The language there is basically the standard language across all charters, so.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Sure, and my concern is that traditionally the school committee is left out. So that's why I raise it up and say, wait a second, we talk about the school committee in this, why isn't there any mention of it in the Division of Powers?
[Phyllis Morrison]: I agree, Paula, that was my comment there too.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Frank or Marilyn, is there any thoughts about it or anything that there's no reason not to include it or is there a reason that it's generally not included?
[Wright]: My thought is that it's not generally included because The charter relates to the government of the city overall. And the school committee is effectively running one department, a huge department, half the city budget, but it is a department. And a lot of what the school committee does is governed by state law. But that's just my personal opinion.
[Phyllis Morrison]: But they're also elected members of the community also.
[Wright]: They are, but in some communities you elect people for planning and zoning, and those towns elect a lot of the various committees and all that, but it's basically the Board of Selectmen. But again, just a thought, I don't see any downside necessarily to including it, but I'm just looking at it from the position of You've got a mayor, and then you've got a legislative body, and they oversee the city itself generally, as opposed to the school committee, which has a much narrower focus.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Okay, so are the raised hands about this particular issue? No, OK. So, Paulette, can you just read the language that you want to add so I can get it down?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I just wrote, Medford's public schools will be overseen by the elected school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Or you could say, an elected school committee will oversee Medford's public schools, if you like that better.
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: An elected school committee will oversee Medford's public schools.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, that's fine. It's very vague to me, but you know, because it doesn't mean anything. You just want them to be included.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Right. Because later on in Article 4, we talk about the school committee. That's right. That's sort of beginning general. We don't say anything about it. And there's just been this tradition of even when we were meeting twice as much as the city council, the school committee was always the lesser than. So I just think it makes sense to include it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So let's note now, the vote is to include language, to include an elected school committee will oversee Medford's public schools or similar language, because maybe the call-in center will help us tweak it a little bit, to section 1.3. So if you vote yes, then you want to add it. If not, If you vote no, you don't. Okay. David?
[Phyllis Morrison]: You're on mute, David. David?
[David Zabner]: No, I'm not. I vote yes.
[Jean Zotter]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle?
[David Zabner]: Every time I get called on to vote, I unmute. I say yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Danielle is yes. Morris? No. Anthony.
[Andreottola]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. Yes. Eunice. Yes. Phyllis. Yes. One more person, Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. No, just because I don't think it's necessary, but it's going to be editing. So that's great. That's one. Does anybody have any other amendments for Article 1?
[Phyllis Morrison]: No.
[Jean Zotter]: Jean? It's not an amendment. It's a question for the Collins Center about multi-member bodies. And this is just to clarify for me, because my understanding is this doesn't cover multi bodies created by statute. But is it assumed everybody understands multi member bodies are just the ones created by city government? Does that need to be clarified? I guess is my question.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I'm going to kind of call on Marilyn. You did most of the definitions. Do you have anything to add there?
[Contreas]: I don't remember a conversation that it didn't include all boards.
[Jean Zotter]: Because some of the boards are created by state statute and right, and they are included in that they are included in that definition. but then later they're not all appointed in the same way?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Well, the definition is not exclusive. I'm reading the right one. It just says, but not including the school, the city council school committee and advisory committees appointed by the mayor. Because then the definition is used later on to talking about certain requirements that the multi-member boards should follow. But it's supposed to be, I believe it's supposed to be an inclusive definition.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay, that's fine. But then do we exclude them later? I feel like they weren't sorry if I'm making this complicated, but I was trying to go back and talk about the city council, the school committee.
[Contreas]: No, I'm.
[Jean Zotter]: I'm talking about like boards like there's a is there the I don't know a good example, but boards that are city boards created by the planning board or the.
[Contreas]: If you have a board created by ordinance, they're included in this definition.
[Jean Zotter]: But if they're created by state statute. And they're included in this definition. That's fine, but then later we have a section about multi member boards appointments. I'm trying to find it.
[Contreas]: Yeah, it's in the general provision section.
[Jean Zotter]: Is that under? Sorry, Marilyn, do you know which section it is? It's usually around 8586.
[Milva McDonald]: Are you thinking, Jean, about the confirmation?
[Jean Zotter]: Yeah, section 3.3, appointments by the mayor. OK.
[Eunice Browne]: And then I think there's another whole section about multi-member boards in Article 9. Right, but your question is about the confirmation power.
[Jean Zotter]: Right, and it only expends I'm trying to please jump in. You remember this better, but this appointment power is not covering multi-member boards that are set up by statute, because they have different provisions. So on section 3.3, do we need to exclude those multi-member boards from that section? I understand this is rather technical.
[Contreas]: I'm having trouble. What boards does the mayor not appoint by statute?
[Jean Zotter]: I don't know. That was just presented as this section. Section 3.3 would not apply to multi-member boards that are developed based on state statute was my understanding. Is anyone else following? No.
[Andreottola]: So you're talking about the boards where, you know, the state appoint someone to the housing, the governor appoints.
[Jean Zotter]: And then he gave an example, like what did you say, the planning board or the.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: The Board of Appeals, something something of that nature.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I mean, it's not there. The mayor appoints. most of all of the boards, there are a few cases where I think the state appoints somebody.
[Jean Zotter]: Or the state statute sets up the process for how the appointments happen, I thought. Remember we had that whole time we were looking at the website, which boards fall in, which boards don't fall into this? Right.
[Andreottola]: There is one where the state appoints a member. It's something to do with housing. And someone is appointed by the governor's office. I forget which one it is, but I know there is one.
[Contreas]: It's a community development board. It's true if you have a housing authority or a redevelopment authority.
[Milva McDonald]: But the charter only addresses mayoral appointments, right? So would it cover whatever appointments are made by the mayor?
[Jean Zotter]: OK, that was my question. This is just any appointments made by the mayor. OK. All right, sorry to get confused. That's okay. But I did double check that we were.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, awesome. Okay, so any other amendments to section one? Okay, how about section two? Phyllis?
[Phyllis Morrison]: You're muted. I have in section 2.1, article two, legislative 2.1. I don't know, my computer didn't paginate these for me. But it says right above, the paragraph above section 2.2, Council President, Vice President, it says a ward councilor who removes from the ward, is that removes or relocates? The wording there is just a little odd to me. That might be more legal terminology to me.
[David Zabner]: It's a technical word and it means moved out of the ward.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I know what it means, but I was just wondering if that was the proper word for that. Thank you. The second question I have is in section 2.2. It talks about vacancies. And it talks about vacancies, and unless I've missed it, about council vice president and president, but doesn't talk about vacancies for regular council members. And I haven't found that anywhere else.
[Milva McDonald]: It's section 210.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I read the whole thing, so let me skip over to 210 to see what I missed here.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, while you're doing that, Jean?
[Jean Zotter]: This is another question. Do we need to define vacancy and temporary absence or is we don't distinguish between what they are.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anthony or Frank or Marilyn, do charters generally define the difference between a vacancy and a temporary absence?
[Contreas]: They do for the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Contreas]: But usually not for the council.
[Milva McDonald]: I believe we did for the mayor.
[Jean Zotter]: We did in the mayor section, yeah. Okay, so then one other question I had is we don't have any process for removing the clerk that I can tell. So is there a process for removing the clerk and does that go in the charter? We just say how the clerk is- We don't hire the clerk. The city council does.
[Milva McDonald]: The city council does.
[Jean Zotter]: But we have process for removal of department heads. Is it just assumed it's just a decision? Because their vote, the city clerk is elected or voted in. By the council. By the council. So if they wanted to remove the clerk, does that need to be defined, how that happens?
[Eunice Browne]: That come under like personnel or something because they can't really nearly remove him. It would have to be for cause.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, or do you do you have any thoughts on this? Anthony Wilson.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Yeah, I was just going to say, um, um, Jean, you raise a valid point. I think the assumption is, and this is a, you know, um, I don't think this provision exists about the removal of the clerk for clerks that are appointed by the council. They exist in most, they don't exist in most charters. Um, but I think the assumption is that you would remove them though. You would remove any other department head, even though they have a different, um, even though they're appointed by the council.
[Jean Zotter]: So in the removal of department heads, that's by the mayor in the section that we have. So can the mayor remove a city clerk that's been elected or appointed by city council?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I believe that's the assumption. If you wanted to add language about whether, yeah, I would say that's the assumption. You could add language about how it would be done. I think there'd be sort of two routes. Either you'd say that this position is removed in the same way as department heads, which I forget the section, or you could choose some other process like a vote of the council. It's a provision that doesn't exist in other charges that have the similar appointment authority for the clerk.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay. I mean, I guess I then suggest that we add language that the clerk could be removed the same process as they are selected by city council vote.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Makes sense.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay. It seems weird to give that power to the mayor when the mayor didn't hire the clerk. But then there's no provision for, not that there's, I'm trying to address a current problem, but just we don't.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Theoretically.
[Milva McDonald]: So we're looking at section 27, and you want to add language? that the clerk may be removed by a vote of the city council.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[David Zabner]: Can I add any other city council staff? I'm sorry, did we? Should we add to that the same process for any city council staff under that section or? I don't remember off the top of my head what we called.
[Milva McDonald]: There's not any other, I mean, right now all we say about staff is that city council may hire staff subject to appropriation.
[Eunice Browne]: So then it would make sense to have the same process for any other staff they hire.
[David Zabner]: Yeah, right. I would say they should probably be removed.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the thing is, we don't say how they're going to hire staff, but we don't say that they hire staff by a vote of the city council. Right. We just say they so. I don't know, I see I see a little bit of a difference, but I do too.
[David Zabner]: That's very fair. I agree.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, Jean. What were you going to say?
[Jean Zotter]: I just don't know if there does become an issue, can it not be resolved? Because we never said how this should happen.
[Milva McDonald]: You know what I'm saying? Well, I mean, they're hiring the staff, so we're not saying how they... Oh, you mean the clerk? Just the clerk.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay. And Frank, I don't know if Frank had a comment on the city clerk piece.
[Wright]: Thank you. My thought is that generally city clerks are hired, if not by charter, by state law. It's a function of the legislative body, which would be the city council. So I'm not sure if that statute sets forth any provision for removal. I know a city clerk gets a term of years, So the only thing I'd be cautious of is it may be worth looking at that statute. It may also be worth putting in some language if you're going to include something in the charter that any removal be uh for cause for you know for sure reasonable cause um because uh you wouldn't want somebody you wouldn't want somebody taking that position thinking they're always at the serving strictly at the will of satisfying you know six members of the city council sure okay
[Andreottola]: And if we do add that, could it be a three-quarter vote, like not just, you know, simple majority that, you know, some could just be a little unpopular and be subject to termination. So I just want to make it, you know, they have to really kind of piss off the city council to kind of lose their position.
[Milva McDonald]: Should we say two-thirds, because that's pretty much the standard? Or you want to say three-quarters?
[Andreottola]: I think three quarters, yeah. Well, I don't know what the numbers, what 11, which three quarters of 11, I think it's six half dozen or another.
[Ron Giovino]: What is a strong majority now in the vote? Is that two-thirds?
[Milva McDonald]: Two-thirds. Two-thirds is the standard.
[Ron Giovino]: I would think that we should be consistent across all strong majority votes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, um, so on the table is ab language. Um, the clerk may be removed for cause by a two thirds vote of the city council and then potentially adding something about provide, you know, that, that this provision will not conflict with state law.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's the vote. If you want to add that, yes.
[Ron Giovino]: Just a question, Noah. Don't we cover the state law being the final judge of all our laws in the beginning of ours?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's true.
[Ron Giovino]: I was thinking that might be redundant.
[Milva McDonald]: You're right, but we should still look at it because if it does conflict, we might want to reconsider adding it. Okay, so yes means yes at it. Eunice? Yes. Paulette? Yes. Phyllis? Yes. Anthony? Yes. Gene? Yes. Danielle? Yes. Ron?
[Maury Carroll]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury?
[Maury Carroll]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: David?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. I'll be the lone no vote, just because it's not in any charter. So OK, I will be added. Great. Any other? OK. Our hands up for section two.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Paulette.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So on the section 2-5, number three adds with a, has made by law, end, and it doesn't say anything else.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that was mine, Paulette, too. Oh, that's a typo, and that's gonna be Dink Harrop.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay. I thought in section 2-8, Under emergency ordinances, I just need a clarification. No ordinance shall be passed finally on the date it is introduced, except in case of an emergency involving the health or safety of the people of their property, which is fine. Or in the case of the unanimous vote of the city council. So at the first clause, it says no ordinance shall be passed. But if it's unanimous, it's okay, it can be passed. Is that what I'm reading correctly? So- It says. Is it specifically no emergency ordinance shall be passed, but if everybody votes to pass it, it's okay? An emergency ordinance?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I believe, so the rest of that clause still applies about sort of articulating the emergency and so forth. I think, or I know that that clause that you're referring to is to not limit the prior enumeration. There could be ordinances, there could be emergencies not covered by the language described above that, you know, for whatever, it's basically it's a way to make sure that something that may not be consider an emergency under the language that may be considered an emergency by the council at the time, it's still possible to pass that ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: Does that answer your question, Paulette?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, so what we're saying is, hey, you can't pass an ordinance on the first time you're introducing it. But if everybody agrees, you can.
[Ron Giovino]: I just just point of information I'm trying to I hear you're saying it's true. When an ordinance is passed.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, you got muted, okay.
[Ron Giovino]: When it's passed 5-2 or 7-0, it goes through a process, I believe, where it has to be vetted and legal and then it hits. I think what they're trying to say is in the event of COVID and we need to do something tomorrow, that's where the emergency is. I think the two are separate issues. Any ordinance has a delay period.
[Eunice Browne]: It has to go through three readings.
[Ron Giovino]: Well, either three readings or it just has to be, I don't know what the vetting is, but I think what this is saying is if everybody agrees that we need to open up a COVID center tomorrow, that will allow us to do it because- Okay, so it's absolutely if it's an emergency. That's how I'm reading.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, if so, then it makes sense, but otherwise it's like, wait, whatever. So that's fine, go ahead, that's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, but Paulette, your question is, it says no ordinance shall be passed finally, blah, blah, blah, except in the case of an emergency or in the case of the unanimous vote of the city council. So your question is, is the unanimous vote of the city council include ordinances that aren't emergency ordinances? Right. To me, it reads yes, that it does. But I don't know, maybe I'm reading it.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I mean, I guess I would just continue to read the rest of the section because the next sentence says no order should be considered an emergency ordinance unless you define the emergency. And that's regardless of the clauses before it. So even if it's passed by a unanimous vote, the council would still have to do the following things. This section is talking specifically about emergency ordinances. As I'm reading it, that's how I would read it.
[Milva McDonald]: So that was your question, Paulette, so you're good with that?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: It just seems confusing to me. OK. But if other people can figure out, that's fine. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Anything else? No, not do I have it? No, not on Article 2.
[Eunice Browne]: OK, Eunice. Uh, yeah, a couple here, um, in section 2, 1 regarding composition. Um, since, uh. Uh, there was text that was deleted regarding adding of wards. Is there a provision somewhere in the charter or does this come under state law or something where we would need to amend the charter to increase the number of members so that we always have at least two at-large members? Am I making sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Your question is if the wards increase, then will the at-large Councilors decrease?
[Eunice Browne]: No, with the at large, we always want at least 2 at large members, correct? So. If if we have to increase the number of words because of the census. Then, um. How do we go? We're at- How do you increase the size of the council? Right. Exactly. So that we always have a proper number of at-large members.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, Frank, or Marilyn?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Yeah, so I'll start, I know Frank has some, but you, so you can't change the number of the size of the city council, except by amending the charter. That's number one. And then number two, with regard to the future population in Medford, which I think is where the question really stems from. You would not change the number of wards, you would be changing the size of the wards and the boundaries to make sure that they, and this wouldn't be, when I say you, I mean the city, a future city council, using the census information would be modifying, really it's at the precinct level, but we would be modifying the precincts so that each ward has the same number of voters or approximately the same number of voters for your ward Councilors. So the geographic boundaries of the wards will change to reflect the numbers. Frank, please jump in. And if I said anything out of bounds, please correct me.
[Wright]: Thank you, Anthony. No, I think Anthony hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what would happen is every 10 years.
[Contreas]: And the number of people, it's the number of people, not the number of voters. Yes. Right. Precincts count people, not voters.
[Eunice Browne]: OK, great. Does that answer your question, Eunice? It does. My next thing is in section 2.2 regarding the council president and vice president. And this is sort of more a matter of maybe clarification and me. Well, I didn't serve on this committee, but I know we talked about it probably in full committee. Did we somewhere along the line talk about the roles of president and vice president rotating or being shared or something somehow? Because I know that when we did the school committee stuff, we talked about they couldn't serve for more than in that particular role for more than one consecutive term, I think. My school committee subcommittee friends can.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, that's correct.
[Eunice Browne]: OK. Did we do that for?
[Milva McDonald]: Is that part of the city council or was it just- No, that wasn't part of the city council discussion.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay. Is it worth having any consistency?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if you want to propose that we've changed the language, you can. So let me see what we-
[Eunice Browne]: Oh, what did we do for school committee? Do you have it right now?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: That's one of the areas that, um, it says nobody can, um, uh, serve in the position for more than one year, but we need to add the word consecutive, which I was going to do when we get to section four. Um, I, I don't necessarily think they have to be the same. Um, you know, we certainly have had history where the city council president, I don't know, has remained the same.
[Eunice Browne]: It's kind of taken root. I'm trying to find it.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Which, the school committee piece? Yeah. The school committee piece is in section four.
[Milva McDonald]: It's on page 13, which... It also, the school committee also has an extra role besides, it has vice president and secretary, I believe.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: And I, you know, I think that the roles are different to me, but if you want to make it, if you want to make it, if you want to propose an amendment that we change that language in city, in the city council. Yeah. I'm just trying to find. Okay. While you look for that, is anybody else have a chance to have anything for article two? Okay, I have one. I would like to on Article Section 2.1 in Article 2, under eligibility, because we're requiring a residency requirement for ward school Councilors, I would like to add a ward candidate for city council shall at the time of election be a Medford voter and shall have resided in the ward for which they're seeking office for one year prior to inauguration. I said that. OK. OK. So let's vote on that. OK.
[Ron Giovino]: You just repeat that again. OK. So.
[Milva McDonald]: I add the language to section to one eligibility for City Council. A ward candidate for City Council shall at the time of election be a method voter and shall have resided in the ward for which they're seeking office for one year prior to inauguration. So that would be an addition. Um, okay, David. I'm not. No. Okay. Um, Maury. I don't know, he might be away, I'll get back to him. Gene? No.
[Maury Carroll]: Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't know I was on mute.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. You're yes, Maury?
[Maury Carroll]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? No.
[Ron Giovino]: Braun?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Phyllis?
[David Zabner]: You're muted. I'm just really scared that folks are going to move to Medford to run for city council.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I know I'm muted, but I'm thinking, can you get back to me in a second? OK. Paulette?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[David Zabner]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes.
[David Zabner]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: And Phyllis?
[David Zabner]: I guess I don't know why you'd go away from buying now that you've done it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, but whoever's talking, it's really. I think David, he's muted now. Phyllis? Yes. Yes. OK. And I'm yes. So we will add that language. Okay, great. Anything, Eunice, did you find what you wanted to propose? Yeah, I did.
[Eunice Browne]: The way it's. In a school committee, and I'm just going to read this and we can talk about it for a minute. The mayor shall service the chair of the school committee immediately prior to the 1st, regular meeting, or as soon as practical after the school committee members. They shall choose from amongst their membership, a vice chair and a secretary. Who will each serve for one year, the position should rotate among members with no member serving more than one year in the role for which they have been elected for by the committee. So I would be proposing something similar for the president and vice president duties. So. The city council shall choose from among their members, and I'm sure that a lot of this is already there, a president and a vice president who will serve for one year. The position shall rotate amongst members with no member serving more than one year. Paulette, were we going to add consecutively?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: For one consecutive year. is the way it should be, one consecutive year.
[Eunice Browne]: For which they have been selected for by the committee.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah. So Paulette can serve as the vice chair in year two, she can't, but she could go be the secretary. In year three, she could again. It just ensures that you're not giving one person over and over again the same power, but you're in fact giving other people the opportunity to have those positions. At the same time, you're not saying they can never do it more than once. Yes, they certainly can. It just can't be consecutive years.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That's what's on the table.
[Andreottola]: Is that per term? I'll just say, after two years, there's a new election, the whole process starts again?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: No. Per year. Yeah. I think that it's much better to do it for every year. You're giving other people the opportunity to take that leadership role or to do the other roles. For instance, on the school committee, the secretary, not everybody wants to be the secretary for two years. A lot of people don't like it. By giving it once, you're allowing other people to try it.
[Andreottola]: No, I understand that, but after, the term is two years, right? So someone serves for one year, they skip the next year, new election, they're reelected to the school committee, can they be the chair again? Sure, it's just not two consecutive years. Okay, that's all I wanted to know, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, are we ready to vote on this for the city council?
[Ron Giovino]: Just my comment is I don't want to confuse the school committee issue with the city council issue. I think we're mixing them up. I totally agree with Paulette's opinion on the school committee. To call these two equal groups is just not right because there's a chairperson always in place in the school committee. The mayor is always the chairperson. I just don't think we should be looking at jumbling, and seven people elected by the people should be able to pick who their people are. So I'm having a problem with calling city council and school committee same structures, because they're not, because the mayor is always the chairperson.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: That's a good point, Ron.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, it is. I hadn't thought of that. So at least there's some consistency there.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, and I actually agree with Ron. I feel, because there's also even outlined in the charter certain powers of the president of the city council, I just think it is a different role. But we will vote on adding language to the section 2-2 that the city council president and vice president will serve for one year and be rotating positions. It would be more elegant than that, but that's the gist of it. Okay. Eunice. Yes. Paulette.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Andrea.
[Phyllis Morrison]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis.
[Phyllis Morrison]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron.
[Phyllis Morrison]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle. Yes. Gene. No. Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: David, no, and I'm also not. Okay. So we won't make that change.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay. And I have just one last real quick thing. Um, in section two 10 in the filling of vacancies, um, it, I don't believe it says, um, in, uh, Does the ward seat have to be filled by a resident of the ward was my question. and I don't think it said that.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean the vacancy?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Because the original seat does.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. If there's a vacancy, if Joe steps down for some reason, then whoever fills the seat, does that person have to also be a member of that ward? I don't think that it specifies that in here.
[Danielle Balocca]: I think it does. It says descending order. of votes received by the candidate of the office of the ward Councilor in the ward in which the vacancy occurs.
[Jean Zotter]: Know what that means? When they ran, they were in the ward because they qualified.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But you're talking about in the case of the city council needing to fill the vacancy, meaning that none of the people that ran are eligible to serve. Exactly. I don't see that it does specify that, but it is a temporary appointment.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, but I mean, it could be temporary for a month or 15 months.
[Milva McDonald]: You want to add that to section? I think it's section 10 under C. Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: Vacancy shall occur in the office of Councilor at large or in that of ward Councilor and there's no available candidate to fill the vacancy in the manner provided in subsection A or B. The remaining members of the city council shall elect a person to fill the vacancy.
[Milva McDonald]: So, you just want to add language that any person appointed to fill a ward Councilor's vacancy of a ward Councilor must reside in the ward. Right. Collin Center, does that make sense or is there any reason not to do that that we're not aware of?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I don't see any issues with that language as proposed. I don't know if my colleagues have any other thoughts.
[Wright]: I don't have an issue with it.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Andreottola]: I'd like to just say, if in the event that something like that happens, with the requirement that they live in the ward for a year before, you don't want someone just moving to a ward to be able to take a seat. Do you know what I mean?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I don't. I'm sorry, could you say that again?
[Andreottola]: If there's a vacancy in Ward 3 for whatever reason, the city council is looking for someone, right? Did someone move to Ward 3 so they can get that seat?
[Danielle Balocca]: It takes a little while to move. I don't know. It also says that they have to be eligible and willing. And would they have to live in the ward to be eligible? Is it redundant to add that language?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. Let's see. Eligible and willing is under B. That's for the people who ran, I think. We're talking about adding it under C. This is only for when the city council has to appoint someone. So the amendment on the table is that we add language to section 210C that any vacancy that has to be filled by an appointment of the city council, any vacancy in a ward Councilor that has to be filled by an appointment of the city council must be a person who resides in that ward.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I have a question. Phyllis.
[Phyllis Morrison]: What do we do if there's no one in that ward that wants to take that? That's a good question. I have to be honest with you.
[David Zabner]: I wasn't going to jump in on this, but that's the reason I wrote it the way I wrote it, was under the assumption that it would likely be politically expedient for a council to sue somebody from the ward. It would probably not be popular for them to do otherwise. I assumed that they would, but I wanted to give them the flexibility if they can't find somebody to appoint You know, there has to be a final fall through so that somebody fills the seat. And I kind of doubted we would ever get to that final fall through anyway. And that's why I wrote that.
[Milva McDonald]: That makes sense to me. Thank you for clarifying that.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I just think that we could say if at all possible, but I think if we don't have anyone to appoint or anyone who wants it, I think putting that in that they have to be from the ward. How do we fill that?
[Andreottola]: So, um, okay, so stay vacant until the next election. Yeah, because we have 11 talking, you're gonna have a council of 11. So, you know, if you're down a member, it's not, you know, the end of the world.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. Maury, did you have a comment about this?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, I was going to say, why wouldn't we put a clause in that, you know, we call for a special election in that ward and the kind of an interim vacancy that someone is removed or moves out or resigns or whatever, that Within 90 days, you have just for that ward an election for that ward to replace that seat. If no one comes forward, then it's appointed by the council.
[Ron Giovino]: Point of information, if we get to the point there's no candidates, anybody who wanted to be a candidate would get the job. So a vote would be not necessary. We don't have candidates who wouldn't have.
[Maury Carroll]: A vote would have candidates from that council would tell you if there was somebody there or not. Then if you didn't have. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So can I just, Maury, I think what Maury is saying is we should say that there's a special election if there's a vacancy. Is that what you're saying?
[Unidentified]: Exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: So I want to first vote on the language that Eunice proposed about saying that we add language to section 210C that the appointed person reside in the ward. And then we'll get to the special election. Okay, so sound good.
[Jean Zotter]: Okay, connected more Melvin. It's hard to vote.
[Milva McDonald]: I know they are. I know they are. But, um, Okay. I mean, the special election would be a whole addition. We don't have anything. We don't say that there's going to be special elections for city council right now. Right. So we would be changing quite a bit. But we'd still have section B, right, where the next vote getter would- So what the proposal, I think, would be is to get rid of C entirely and not have the city council appoint in the case where one of the people who ran can't take the seat. Okay, so is that, and maybe the Collins Center has some thoughts about special elections for vacant city council seats.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Yeah, just very briefly, if the committee goes forward with the special election route, I think one of the reasons, or one of the reasons communities don't sort of do special, or not that they don't do special elections, but that they make provisions for filling vacancies without using them is, they're expensive and taxing of the community's resources, we'd recommend that if you go the route of a special election, that you make sure that you add some time, that you have the fallbacks that you have currently in your charter language, and that the special election happen at a certain time, a certain distance away from the next regular election, so that you don't have a special election bumping up against your next regular election having them merge into one. So if you go that route, we sort of recommend around six, if the vacancy happens prior to six to eight months, I mean you can decide the time, but we usually recommend around six to eight months before the next regular election that you'll do the special election and then you know, whatever method you choose, I mean, if you kept the existing language, that language would then be used in the remaining six to eight month time period. So there are a few more steps that we'd recommend to sort of cover the operational impact of a special election. So I just wanted to add that to the discussion.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I think from what I understood what you just said that we do still have to vote on the language about because there could be a situation where there would be an appointment, even if we decided on a special election, because the special election would only happen during a particular timeframe.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Yeah, I mean, we would recommend that you put a time permit in for it. You don't have to, but we recommend it.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. No, it makes sense. We did for mayor. So let's vote first on the language about the appointed person residing in the ward, and then we'll look at whether we want to add special election, okay? All right, so section 210C, add language that award vacancy appointed by the city council, the person must reside in the ward. Uh, Eunice? Yes. Uh, Anthony Andrea?
[Andreottola]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, Paulette? No. Uh, Phyllis?
[Phyllis Morrison]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle?
[Phyllis Morrison]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean? No. Uh, Ron?
[Ron Giovino]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, Lori?
[Ron Giovino]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, David?
[David Zabner]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm going to vote no for the reasons that Daveed outlined. Okay, so we're not adding that. Now, in terms of the special election, we would have to come up with the language for it. Eunice, did you want to make the comment? Is your hand up for... Oh, no, sorry. We do have language for under the mayor section, but let's just vote on whether we want to add a special election into this. And then if the vote is no, then we don't have to worry about figuring out timelines. So we'll vote on, do we want to fill vacancies in the city council if there's nobody from the election who can take the seat? do we want to put a provision in the charter for a special election for city council?
[Ron Giovino]: Just for clarification, are we saying that or are we saying if the city council cannot find a candidate?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I don't think so.
[Ron Giovino]: We're eliminating the city council choosing it.
[Milva McDonald]: We're eliminating the city council potentially leaving that in depending on what timeline we would decide for the special election. Does that make sense?
[Maury Carroll]: shouldn't we focus on instead of calling it for city council like that the ward representative or the ward all the person for well it could be for a specific ward it could be for an at-large seat though too but an at-large seat would be the whole city right okay
[Milva McDonald]: So are you suggesting that only award Councilor get replaced with a special election?
[Maury Carroll]: I thought that's what we're focusing on.
[Milva McDonald]: But that's what we were talking about in the last vote. So do you mean only award Councilor? No, I'm open to either or. Or both. OK. Phyllis.
[Phyllis Morrison]: So I'm a little confused, which is general state. So the suit is vacant. We can't find anyone to fill it. we either have a special election or the seat goes unfilled.
[Milva McDonald]: Right now, the seat is vacant. The person who got the next highest votes takes it down the line. If that fails, the city council appoints. The proposal on the table is that if that fails, if nobody who ran can take the seat, we have a special election.
[Phyllis Morrison]: And if we don't have a special election, that seat remains vacant until the next general, I'm saying general election, the next planned election.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, right now there's no special election written in, and right now the city council makes the appointment. Right, but my final question is- But you're saying if there's a special election and nobody runs, then what do we do?
[Phyllis Morrison]: Is that what you're saying? There's that, but if the seat isn't filled, Can we wait, can, is the other option is that we're going to wait until the next planned election for that seat to be filled?
[Milva McDonald]: That would be decided in, if we decide on a special election, we would then decide what timelines we would put in. So we would say in the charter, if it's X number of days or months before a regular city election, then we don't have a special.
[Phyllis Morrison]: I guess my concern is that, you know, how many times could this possibly happen, too, you know? It's a lot of thinking about that. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no.
[Maury Carroll]: Like I said, Phyllis brings up a good point. You know, maybe that if there's no one looking from that ward to be an alderman at large, then the seat remains vacant until the next election.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I would agree with that because, I mean, there's no point in trying to pigeonhole somebody that doesn't really want it.
[Maury Carroll]: I really wouldn't want a city councilor from, let's say, Ward 1 appointing someone for Ward 1 for Ward 5. You know what I'm saying? You're not representing the people in that ward properly. So, I mean, if no one has a desire to care about their individual ward, leave the seat vacant.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're still putting your proposal for a special election out there, Maury? Yes. Okay. Ron and Gene, did you have comments?
[Ron Giovino]: I just have a quick comment. I think it's important that, to David's point, this is the end-all be-all to have to do a special election. I think one of the pieces we're missing here is, there's legal ramifications of an election, how long it takes to notify, to nominate, to all that stuff. So I would suggest the language would be, that in that case, the final case, we would establish a special election with the results to be available prior to June 30th of an election year. That's the thing. They can figure out how to do it themselves.
[Milva McDonald]: I would like to just vote on whether we want to put in special elections for city council in the case of someone who ran not being able to take the seat before. Then if we say yes, we can decide the details. Is that okay? Does that sound okay?
[Eunice Browne]: So then the alternative then is that if we don't do a special election, the seat just simply remains vacant.
[Milva McDonald]: No. Right now we have the city council appointing. Yeah. Okay. So special elections for city council under the circumstances we discussed. If you're in favor, yes. If not, no. Anthony, Andrea.
[Andreottola]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. Who? Paulette. No. Eunice. No. Phyllis.
[Phyllis Morrison]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle.
[Ron Giovino]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean. No. Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury. Yes. David.
[David Zabner]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to also be no, just for the reasons that have been laid out. Okay, so that's that. Anybody have anything else for section two?
[Jean Zotter]: Okay, Jean, did you have your hand up? For the special election, I had a question about special elections, but we can hold it to the citizen petition, but we do have all the citizen initiative petition work is by special election. And I'm just raising that as something we need. You just said that it's very costly to do for the city. And I was wondering why we didn't just put it on the next ballot. So I don't know. I'm looking ahead. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're going to, I mean, we only have 15 minutes. We're probably not going to get to Section 8, so keep that for the next meeting. OK. Section 3, Article 3, I mean. Anybody have any changes they want or amendments that they want to propose for Article 3? Daveed?
[David Zabner]: Yeah, so in the original version of Article 3-10, the Collins Center removed from the list of possible appointed mayors temporarily, they removed the department heads. And we had discussed in the committee the reasoning behind that being that department heads are in city hall every day. They're the most likely to know, to easily slide into the role of mayor in terms of just the executive functioning day-to-day, keeping things running. And so I completely understand the Colin Spencer argument that you shouldn't take unelected people and put them into what would otherwise be elected positions. But on the other hand, for just like easiness of the city hall running, I think it's possible the department heads would be a really good choice. So I'm suggesting that we put the department heads back in there.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so your proposal is to add that back in. I guess my question for the Collins Center is, when you made the recommendation, was there any legal reason for making that recommendation?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: There was no... Oh, Marilyn, is that... Were you going ahead?
[Contreas]: No, go ahead.
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: Yeah, there was no legal reason. There was no legal prohibition. And Daveed correctly sort of articulated our arguments against it. So there was no legal prohibition.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so the proposal on the table is to add back in department heads as possible replace, as possibilities for filling mayoral vacancies. Right? Does that sound right, David?
[David Zabner]: Yeah, that's correct.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. So, yes means that you want to add that back in. No means you don't. Ron?
[Andreottola]: Can I ask just a question before we vote? I see the potential for, you know, a palace cool power struggle type of thing in a situation like that, I think there's good reason not to include, you know, department heads in the replacing of a mayor under, you know, whatever type of conditions, you know. I don't know. I think there's, you know, you can really, if you dig deep into it, there might be, there may be more to it, you know. That's all I wanted to say.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay. So I'm going to go just the way my Zoom boxes are.
[David Zabner]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead.
[David Zabner]: So I think those people would be appointed as acting mayor, which has a lot fewer powers, right? I agree that, like, if you were appointing them to fill out the role of mayor for a two-year term or something, I would agree that that's problematic. But, like, in terms of acting mayor, I think that's somebody who just kind of keeps the lights on. I don't think they could give their best friend a gigantic raise or something like that within their powers.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So the vote is to add back in department heads as possibilities for filling a mayoral vacancy as acting mayor. Uh, Maury.
[Maury Carroll]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, Ron.
[Ron Giovino]: Um, Milda, you have a couple of people with their hands up.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if you want to acknowledge them or... Um, do you want to say something? Do you want to say something? I want to finish the vote. Is this about the vote? Yeah. Okay. We'll hold the vote.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Uh, Phyllis. So my question becomes then, if department has become eligible to be put into this, you know, temporary position, then what happens to the department? I mean, we already have one vacancy, we have that void there. And then we go down another level, and we take someone who's ahead of a department out of there and put it in there. So is there any, was there any conversation about that type of scenario playing, you know, and I know it's temporary and I know David made that good point, but still to me, as having been a department chair on a small, small scale, I'm sure, but what happens to that department then? Do we have to go find a replacement for that? The kind of the domino effect kind of thing.
[David Zabner]: Okay. So I imagine they could either continue acting as acting mayor as well. They can do both jobs. assuming they're willing to, right? Or I imagine they could, you know, have a deputy, just like they might if they go on vacation for two months, have, you know, a deputy take over for that period of time, or two weeks, two months on vacation.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I have a question. Go ahead, Paula. So some department chairs live in Medford, and other department chairs don't live in Medford. And so you're setting up an inequality right there. I mean, to me, it would make more sense that the head of the city council would step in. The idea of putting a department chair in Is puzzling to me that they're not elected.
[David Zabner]: To be clear, to be clear, this is just giving the city council the ability. So, they already the current language gives them the ability to choose among the city council. Right and acting there, right? So, they couldn't choose the president of the city council, or if the president wants to say president, they can choose somebody else more appropriate. Um. What this would add was, in addition to being able to choose a city councilor, they could instead choose a department head.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Who lives in Medford.
[David Zabner]: It would not require them to be the department head.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Well, would they live in Medford?
[David Zabner]: I mean, so I assume, you know, I don't know if we put that as a requirement for acting mayor. I don't like the thing I was thinking through when we discussed this was simply, I think the acting mayor is somebody who keeps the lights on. And so you want somebody You may want somebody who's in the building every day and who's attending meetings with mayor all the time. And so they know what those things look like. In the same way that like, if you want to replace the CEO of a company, you probably choose another executive. You don't choose a member of the board because the members of the board are just not in there every day. Or you might choose a member of the board because you trust them and they're already folks who are, you know, whatever. It's just giving them more options. That's it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Are we clear on what we're voting on now? Okay, Maury, did you have a question about this?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, I do. My comment was we already have a protocol in place that I believe the president of the city council takes the takes on the role of the. acting mayor or interim mayor until either, you know, our special election or however we choose to handle it. But, I mean, to stop bringing in department heads and so forth like that, to me, it's a little risqué.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So let's do the vote. We know what we're voting on. I'm going to restart the vote. Maury?
[Maury Carroll]: No.
[Danielle Balocca]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean. No. Danielle.
[Danielle Balocca]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. No. Eunice. No. Paulette. No. Anthony. Andrea.
[Andreottola]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. I'll also vote no. Okay. So we will not add that back. Anybody have anything else on article three?
[Eunice Browne]: I had one quick thing on the term of office. Just looking for some clarity, I think. We said that the term of office for the mayor shall be four years, so they're term limited. Given when this charter could go into effect a few years down the road, did we make a provision or should there be, if the mayor, our current mayor, Brianna, she's on her third term already, if depending upon when this charter goes into effect, what happens with the sitting mayor? Are they already term limited out? Or does the clock reset? And I know that, I think that this got talked about at some point, and I don't remember if there was any resolution made.
[Milva McDonald]: Holland Center, is that in transitional provisions?
[Contreas]: The clock resets because the charter wasn't in effect when she was elected. She was elected under the old charter. So if she's running as a candidate under the new charter, it's a new clock.
[Eunice Browne]: So by the time this charter would go into effect, if it went into effect as is, and she continues to seek reelection, she could be on her, you know, possibly sixth term by that point. So she could serve four more? Yes. Okay. Okay. That was just the clarity I was looking for. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Anybody else have anything for article three? One more question.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Um, in on, uh, 37 approval of the city mayor veto. Uh, if the city council shall again pass the order ordinance resolution by vote of two thirds vote of the full council, it shall then take effect, notwithstanding the objections of the mayor. Um, does the, uh, if there's a financial impact, uh, something needs to be paid for, does, is there any obligation on the city council to explain how they're going to pay for it?
[Milva McDonald]: do you have an answer to that?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: There's no requirement, under the language currently, there's no requirement that they sort of write some document explaining why they overrode the veto. Presumably it happens at an open meeting, so whatever the discussion was that happened during the veto would be part of their minutes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I understand that part of this, I think, was because we want to limit the power of the mayor.
[Andreottola]: Wait a minute.
[Milva McDonald]: I think the veto was already in place.
[Andreottola]: Can you read that again, please? Because I'm getting very confused on what we're talking about.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Well, again, it may be in place. I'm not sure. But when I'm reading this, I'm saying, well, that's interesting. So it says, if the city council shall again pass the ordinance, the order, ordinance or resolution or vote by two-thirds vote of the full council, it shall take effect notwithstanding the objections of the mayor. Does that happen now?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think so.
[Andreottola]: But it's not subject to appropriations is still not, you know, it's separate. Okay.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I mean, is this standard in other in other? Yes. Okay. That's okay. Thanks. Sorry.
[Eunice Browne]: Okay. So how would that affect then a resolution for, say, an override. If the council wants an override and the mayor declines, can the city council then push it through with a vote?
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's governed by state law.
[Wright]: And anything governed by state law, you'd have to look to the statute. And oftentimes they require both the city council and the mayor to approve things. Similar to special acts. You can't force a matter through oftentimes when the mayor is unwilling to go along with it. Similar to approval of this charter. If the city council were to say, yeah, it's great, and the mayor were to say no, they can't then override the mayor's veto of the new charter, so to speak, and go ahead and send it into the legislature.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yeah. This provision is related to ordinances, correct? It says order ordinance resolution. Yeah. Okay. So I think we got through articles one through three, which is awesome, but we have many more articles to go. Let's come to the next meeting, really think through your amendments and come with them and try to be succinct and we'll get through the rest hopefully at the next meeting. Because I'm not going to call another meeting between now and September, and hopefully we won't have to call two meetings in September. So let's look to get through the rest of it at the next meeting. We also wanted to give a brief report on the final report subcommittee. The final report is in pretty good shape and we are going to share it with you all so you can read it. It's in Pieces right now, it's in many Google Docs, but we'll share that with you so you can read it. And then if anybody has any comments about that, we can look at the next meeting. We would have huge numbers. Eventually, eventually, eventually it will. It doesn't yet, but it will eventually.
[Eunice Browne]: I've seen others that don't and it drives me nutty.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, I think it will eventually. Maury, did you have a question?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, our next meeting is, what, September 5th?
[Milva McDonald]: Is that what, the first Thursday in September?
[Maury Carroll]: I mean, that's the week of Labor Day and back to school. Should we put, does that affect anybody or is that, they all go with that?
[Milva McDonald]: How do people feel about September 5th? I'm good. It's the Thursday after Labor Day. September 12th would be better.
[Maury Carroll]: But I think.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, we we sort of have a set schedule and we tell everyone, you know, where. I mean, we could change it if a lot of people who cannot come on September 5th.
[David Zabner]: My worry would be that if we pushed it to September 12th and then had to schedule a second meeting for the month, that would be really close. Yeah, you're right.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we're going to keep it on September 5th.
[Maury Carroll]: That's fine. I just wanted to bring it up in case people had any questions.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Yeah, no. Thank you, Maury. OK, and the Ethics Subcommittee will meet, and we'll get language together. And then we'll have the Collins Center look at the language, and then we can vote on the addition of that language next time too. All right, does anybody have anything else before we close?
[Phyllis Morrison]: No, I would really just like to say thank you to everybody on this group. It's a lot of work, your people are doing it. I mean that sincerely, thank you, everybody.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, thank you, everyone. I think we're all doing well. I'm hoping that we can, you know, celebrate the fruits of our labor when we're done.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And thanks. Thanks to the call center. And it'd be great if you also could come back next time so that we can get through the rest of the, uh, get through the rest of the charter, which I think we're going to be able to do at the next meeting. Yeah. I'm confident. She says, love your confidence.
[Ron Giovino]: The call center. Okay. Have you been retained by the city council to work with them on their charter?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: At this point we're only working with this committee on the charter. Thank you.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Have you been approached by them though?
[Anthony Ivan Wilson]: I don't believe so.
[Phyllis Morrison]: Okay, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, motion to adjourn. Second. Did some, okay, all in favor?
[Unidentified]: Great.
[Milva McDonald]: See you all soon. Thank you.
|
total time: 34.3 minutes total words: 3026 |
total time: 9.99 minutes total words: 857 |
||