[Frances Nwajei]: welcome to the May 2024 meeting for the Commission of Persons with Disabilities. I'm Frances Magé, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for this. Yeah, we can do brief introductions. My name is Gabby. I've been on the commission for, I think, I don't know, a few years now. And yeah, I will pass it off to Linda.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Linda Braden. I've been on the commission for about three years, I think now. I've been a resident in Medford for almost 10 years, I want to say. And my specialty is digital accessibility. And I will popcorn it over to Cam.
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: Cam, five months into my commissionhood, and I'm going to pass it to Joe.
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: Hi, Joe Casey, lifelong resident of MedFed and happy to be here. I'm sorry, who's next?
[Tom Hamel]: I'm next. That's Tom, and I've been on the commission for the fourth year, almost five years, and president of Medford for 17 years. That's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks. So I guess the first order of business is to review the April minutes. And I did notice that I put the wrong year in the heading. It says 2023. But if everybody either had a chance to take a look at those or wants to take a minute to take a look.
[Frances Nwajei]: I can make that edit for you now, Gabby, and send it out to everyone so that we can get it stamped tonight. Perfect. Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Would anybody like to make a motion to approve?
[SPEAKER_04]: I've read them, and I'll make a motion to approve the minutes with the correction of the year.
[SPEAKER_02]: With the correction of the year. And Joe, does it look like you're second? Second.
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: Yep, you got it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And any abstentions? Anybody? The next thing would be the secretary position. I assume that I think it's the same members that were here last time. So I think we're probably in the same spot unless anybody is itching to volunteer. I'm taking notes right now and I'm happy to do it for this month. We can just keep it on the calendar. Maybe for that, we can start to popcorn it starting the next meeting. I think it makes sense. Great, so I think the next thing is the Disability Fair logistics. Kim, I saw that you sent an email out about the date. So we're just shooting for the fall at the McGlynn, and that's kind of where we're at right now.
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: So, I previously emailed Robert Robert can help us book the gym and said, Kevin could help us with anything outside of the. School Kevin responded and is saying. we should book McGlynn Playground through the school department. So maybe it's back on Robert. And then we got some helpful guidance from Kevin on the other meeting, the other events that are happening in September. I put them in the chat. Kevin advises that we avoid the weekend of the 21st, 27th, 28th. So, you know, I think we should maybe still be a little bit open and flexible, but I'll continue to work on getting this booked with Bobby.
[Frances Nwajei]: I just want to throw in that there are other dates as well that you have to be aware of in October. Medford Health Matters has a youth event planned and it's already booked at the McGlynn that long weekend in October. And there is something else that I believe is happening the weekend of September 14th through veteran services. it would be helpful to have an actual date of when you're thinking of having the event. Remember, after next month, the commission goes on hiatus and does not resume again until September. So any assistance or support that is needed to make sure like that date is required, I can work through it on my end. But we really need to know like when the date will be.
[SPEAKER_02]: Perfect. Cam, did you want to maybe give like three or four dates, like a few dates that would work that don't conflict with anything that's on the city calendar or the dates that they already mentioned and see if any one of those are available just that we kind of have something a little bit more concrete?
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: Let me find the city calendar and send that to Bobby and pick three dates.
[SPEAKER_02]: Perfect, yeah. And I think just also to remember in the meeting minutes, there's some religious holidays in the fall that we wanna make sure that they don't conflict with. I can send those again if you need them.
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: Let's see. Not seeing any of the events that we just talked about in September on the city calendar.
[Frances Nwajei]: Okay, not all the events the city calendar. There are organizations that book space directly. So I'm sharing what I've heard.
[SPEAKER_02]: Got it. Okay. Thank you. So yeah, then in that case, I would go with what we know. If we have certain dates that Frances has shared are booked, not those ones, obviously. And then if they have to tell us that the dates that are proposed are booked, we can just keep the back and forth going until we find something that's available. But I think it does make sense to have a date secured sooner rather than later for the reasons Frances stated. So yeah. Okay, thank you, Cam. And if there's any question about, like, if they propose a date and you're not sure if it's going to work, feel free to shoot an email to me or to Frances. And we can figure it out from there. Let's see. I think the next thing on the agenda was the Medford Housing Authority resident engagement process. In our April meeting, we kind of talked about. how, Kim, you had received a complaint from a community member about inaccessible housing, and we were kind of trying to get an idea of what resources we're able to share with the person, or if there's some sort of more kind of structured process that we should go through when we receive specific complaints about locations. I don't know if you had any insight on that, Frances.
[Frances Nwajei]: Typically, if members have something to do with Medford Housing Authority, because it's federal, I reach back out to them directly and ask if they can assist the member in a different way. I don't bring that. That's not under our jurisdiction. Sometimes it's something a lot of times it's more misunderstanding or lack of clarity. Or that they, the member might want something in that moment in time that the housing authority is not able to do. But also advising the member of what their rights are. Again, remember when things are under federal, you can go through the HUD complaint process. Those numbers are listed. They can reach out to DCHG. But there's no overarching 1 way of doing things. Some of the issues are, unfortunately, sometimes people have to move and yeah, the lift has to go down because it has to be fixed. Sometimes there is no resolution because it's not what is appealing to the person at that point in time. But I suggest that if members of the commission are receiving complaints directly from residents, which I had attempted to discuss, then you reach out to the housing authority so that you can form a relationship and understand what their guidelines are. A lot of people that live in housing are already in situations where it's very, very difficult. Sometimes information does not translate accordingly so that that way we're really helping and we're creating more of a sustainable approach. But helping to form that relationship back with the housing authority is key. And then it helps with our own understanding of what the housing authority is charged to do and cannot do as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, I think that was kind of that was our understanding from the last meeting and then it kind of came back up. We just. I think, Cam, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you kind of brought it back up from a place of, you know, am I doing everything that I can do for this person?
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: And it sounds like I think directing them back to the housing authority is going to be the... I heard Frances say reach out and try to form a relationship with the housing authority and see if I could understand their processes better. And I'm happy to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so is the next thing that sorry, I have so many tabs open. Where is it? Okay, so I think would be the email sent regarding the MOD trainings and the disability scoop magazine, which I need to pull those up.
[Frances Nwajei]: Now, I just wanted to talk about some of the things that I'm sending out. You know, I'm hoping that other folks are paying attention because they're a major thing on the horizon. Tom, I thought about you the other day with the C meetings when I sent this to the school. Right now, the Supreme Court is hearing a case on whether or not IEPs should be recorded, and this is a Massachusetts case. In addition to that, there is being some changes into how much money people who are. I got to think because there's a couple of changes people who are earning Social Security can make. or something to the effect that on the surface seems really, really positive, but as disability advocates and people with disabilities are starting to chime in, it actually ends up not being favorable to them. So I share these materials with you as members of the Disability Commission to keep you informed on things that could not just directly, let's say, impact your body of work, if that is your body of work, but family members, if you have friends, anybody that identifies as having a disability. Because if we don't attend or pay attention to like the public meetings and things of that nature now, right, by the time we start paying attention, it's already too late because laws have been changed and things have been in the works. And a very late thing, tomorrow it will become official, but all I can share at this time is West Medford Commuter Rail Station is on the list for an upgrade. But I'm not permitted to share any more through the MBTA because they want to make sure that presentation is done accordingly with the award first. So I will share that for now. Thank you. Yeah, so that was all I was saying about the magazines, the trainings that are that, you know, that are going out, like, the information comes to me or more than welcome to to sign up for them yourselves. But I share anything that comes through that pertains to this commission or other commissions or other people's lines of bodies of work. but the IEP one is very interesting. I'm just curious as to how the ruling will go, right? We talk about, you know, disabilities, ADHD, right? Think about IEP meetings and how long, you know, sometimes those meetings, the person that is there or the parent that might. I like to follow this stuff. Let's just say, I mean, gotta be aware of all different aspects of civil rights laws, so. Yeah, so that was my spiel on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Frances. I think it's especially important throughout the summer when we're not meeting regularly, when it kind of feels like momentum starts to drop a little bit. So keeping an eye on those trainings and sometimes the webinars that come through. I don't even know what I'm, I think it's the, Boston Center for Independent Living, I think, is one of the newsletters that I'm subscribed to. And they send a lot of really helpful information. So there's a lot out there, but it's a matter of reading it and engaging with what's sent. Oh, thank you for sending that in the chat, Frances. Great. OK. So for the next item is term expirations. I think if you haven't contacted Frances already and your term expires in June to let her know, I think the deadline, ideally we were supposed to let you know before today, but if you haven't heard from anyone or if you know that your term is expiring, please let Frances know. Um, other than that, does anybody have any correspondence or announcements updates?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, actually, we had discussed like having the commissioners will continue the conversation about the website, but I don't see that on the agenda. Were we holding off on that? Or did we want to? Table that to another time.
[Frances Nwajei]: No, not holding off on it. I mean, you can continue the conversation. I think that it's helpful. It's just when I have to put it all together at the very last minute, it can become difficult. So it just fell off the agenda, but you can continue the conversation.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me. I can put the link. The link was in the notes, the minutes from last meeting, but I'll also stick it in the chat, the link to the document. Are there any other resources folks have thought of since last meeting or been able to find like web pages where the PDFs we want to link to? are like where we might be able to link to an actual web page instead of a PDF. I think that's where we left off was we were going to see if there's anything, any links that we could add to it or any web pages where the PDFs are located. So rather than linking to a PDF, we'd be linking to a web page.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't see any updated versions. The only other thing that I could think to do, particularly for the open space and rec plan ones, is to reach out and ask if they have any other format for it. But I think these are mostly Google Drive based, it looks like. And I don't know if that's just where they store their information, or if they have any other available ways to access it, but I'm not sure. Yeah, it says owner hidden for all of them. So it's not very helpful.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was parks. Yeah, that's the link. Open space, parks, climate action plan. Green, let's go the client. The first one on the Medford climate action and adoption plan looks like it's from go green Medford we have. Go green Medford. You have a. URL for that. This is called climate action and adoption plan. Let's see if I can. Find it on there.
[Unidentified]: Oops.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'm happy to do a little bit more digging.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm looking at it now too, and it looks like a lot of the links just takes you back to just the web page for the planning, development, and sustainability. But I don't know if there's any specific web link.
[SPEAKER_04]: Planning, development, for sustainability. Is that on there, the Go Green Medford?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's on the medfordma.org. I can send it in the chat.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's for the Medford Climate Action and Adoption Plan? Yes. OK.
[SPEAKER_02]: Frances, go ahead.
[Frances Nwajei]: Thank you, I just thought about something. Do we know when, is there another big event in October that the Chamber of Commerce runs? Sorry to be taking us back, but don't want Cameron to go get a date and then we find out that half of Medford has road closures. Does anybody from Medford know?
[SPEAKER_02]: I just pulled up the Chamber of Commerce, like their individual website with their calendar. So let's see if it's on there. I don't know off the top of my head. It's not on their calendar, but it doesn't look like they update their calendar because it ends in June. OK.
[Frances Nwajei]: Maybe I'll reach out to Laura tomorrow just to be sure. Okay. When did they do Clippershire? And Oktoberfest? I think the chamber does Oktoberfest.
[SPEAKER_02]: That sounds right. It looks like Clippership Day has been in July. Okay. 2021 and 2022.
[Frances Nwajei]: I don't see it for 2023. Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks like the year before that they did it in May. Seems to be a spring summer. but that doesn't mean that they didn't do it in October before. OK.
[Frances Nwajei]: And then they did Oktoberfest last year, I think. Yeah, let me see. I'll reach out to them, Cameron, so that I can get you that date, so that way you'll know to avoid it. Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oktoberfest last year was on September 30th.
[Frances Nwajei]: Okay, maybe they can make it in September. All right, I'll find out from Laura. Thank you. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, going back to the links, I have another question about the climate. I see the link. We've got a link here that goes to the Go Green Confronting Climate Change, which is great. Thanks for whoever found that. So we have a link to the Go Green, like Go Green Medford in general. Does the Confronting Climate Change, the action plan and adoption, is that another specific type of resource for folks with disabilities?
[Tom Hamel]: So all I did was I just Googled it to get that link. I don't know if there's more than that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I guess as I'm looking at this, since it's all related to that same website, I guess I'm not sure I understand if that's a separate resource that we want to point to and highlight out. Or if we want to keep it to just the Go Green Medford website in general?
[Tom Hamel]: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how much people will see it that it's related specifically to disabilities.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, Linda, this is for the climate action and adaptation plan, that one?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Yeah, we found a link. And, and since it's part of the go green website and I was just wondering if this has a specific. Like we wanted to call attention specifically to the the confronting climate change as a separate resource for folks with disabilities.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, just from very briefly looking at it right now, it looks like it gives some interesting health information about environmental impacts on health and things like that, that I guess is maybe not an information source. I don't think it necessarily trying to be really intentional about what we include here, which I think is also OK. I don't think there's a right or wrong. I think it would also be okay to exclude. I don't know how dated this is. This was from January 2019, the last climate vulnerability assessment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean,
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how helpful it will be, but I don't think that it hurts to have it there.
[SPEAKER_04]: My line of thinking with this is if we include them, we want to include every other resource on what else would be helpful on the Go Green Medford website. Is it just in climate change, or are there other things on this that we want to highlight? I think it's kind of a scope. question of like what's really helpful for folks and if highlighting this is really helpful then are there other things that we want to highlight you know kind of unbury you know pull out and say these are the helpful things on the go green medford site and likewise on anything else like these are the really helpful things on like like mass health, like I see you putting in there, like how to enroll and things like that. Yeah, if there's like specific things within each of these resources that we want to highlight, then I think we just want to be intentional about that as well and think about like, oh, why are we including this but not these other things? So that if someone's like looking at the site, it kind of makes sense as to which things were highlighting on here, and that we're not like opening ourselves up to, to like questions of like, well, why isn't this other thing included?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think could have at the bottom of the page kind of something like, you know, this is not meant to be a completely comprehensive list. These are just like some suggestions of helpful links something that effect and then we can put like, you know, we'll update this as. as more resources come to our attention, something along those lines, so that it's kind of like, this isn't everything, but this is a good starting point. But I do like the idea of pointing out, for example, some of the mass.gov resource pages are such a rabbit hole, where you end up clicking on 50 links just to get to what you really wanted. So I do like the idea of kind of saying, specifically, check out this link or this page. So I think that where we can and where we think that it makes sense, I think that would be really helpful. As far as the Go Green Medford website, I'm kind of looking at their sub pages now. And maybe there isn't anything that would be super helpful from an accessibility standpoint. potentially could be is the safe routes to school program that's supposed to increase walking, biking, and rolling to school. I assume that all of those routes would have been assessed for curb cuts if they're encouraging kids to bike to school. But I could be wrong. So I don't know. But I think as far as an access standpoint, I think that would probably be helpful here. I can send the link that I'm referring to.
[SPEAKER_04]: I found it. I was looking for it as soon as you said it. OK, so that makes sense. Do you think that the confronting climate change link still makes sense to include?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I didn't read it closely. I think anything that talks about air quality and health in that way, I think could be relevant, but I don't know if it's super necessary.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you think it's relevant, then I say go for it. It was just more of a I am not experienced in that area, so I was just asking if that was the case.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think that access to clean air and housing that's in places that have been vetted for different environmental health risks can contribute to people with disabilities' quality of life and their health overall. So I think it could be helpful for some people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Perfect, great. Okay, so then, oh, and then we've got path and park developments. Yes, okay, perfect. Whoever put that in there, thank you. I'm gonna add that to the go green. That was called park and path, park and path developments. Okay, great. So we've got kind of like, under go green Medford, we've got like three resources there, informational, and then scrolling back up to the to the top here, we've got mass health, and I'm just gonna make this like a bulleted list. We've got how to enroll. Massachusetts Department of Disability Services, Metro, North Area Office. How do enroll? Do we think a link just in general to Massachusetts Department of Disability Services would be valuable?
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: You enroll either with forms or the local area. But yeah, I could add it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, I don't even, do I have it written down wrong when I Google it? Like it doesn't, maybe I have it written wrong. I have, oh wait, no, wait, Office of Disability, is that right?
[Frances Nwajei]: I've got... Are you looking for the Mass Office on Disability? That is almost like the governing agency. They're like your right hand partner. I think that's the one that you would want. They provide everything from resources. They're different from Massachusetts Disability Services, which is also different. from Massachusetts Department of Disability. So I think you're thinking about Mass Office on Disability, MOD.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a big one. It looks like we've got Mass Department of Development Services. I'm not finding a Department of Disability Services, but I am finding Massachusetts Office on Disability.
[Frances Nwajei]: You should have that one. That should be your main one because that allows individuals to have a direct route to file reports and things of that nature. That's the big one. All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Awesome. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Office on Disability. In that case, would we want to include like DDS, like the Department of Developmental Services as well?
[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah, it looks like that's on there. Let me ask you this. Are you going to include all the other agencies that service people with various disabilities? No, because it's not going to be possible and we're going to run out of space, right? Because we don't know all the disabilities out there. So what you might want to do is include a link to like, let's say a mass, the mass.gov page where people can visit. And at least there'll be a search bar that allows them, you know, to put something else in. Because remember, you would have DDS deals with developmental and intellectual.
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: which are disabilities and Office of Aging is, age is correlated with disability and frailty. Department of Mental Health deals with disability as well. So I think we got the major departments that support folks with disability and they each have their own enrollment process and really useful services. And I feel like if we just put mass.gov We're not making it easy for our community members to understand what they're eligible for and how to enroll.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that makes sense. The only thing that I could think if we're worried about like taking up too much space on the webpage is we could have like a C, like click here for. Yes, something that kind of lists then all of the mass.gov resources separately, but it's still there. So like it would be one more click, but we would still have it available. I do, I completely understand what you're saying, but we want to have kind of, Because in health law, we see this often is that people don't know what they qualify for or what's out there and people aren't getting kind of the information that they need. So if we have it somewhere, I think it's better than not having it at all.
[Frances Nwajei]: So if you're in Medford, do you not think that it's better to have the listing go directly to the catchment area that Medford is in, right? So these agencies all have different catchment areas.
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: And we put that in there as well. So for DDS, the Medford catchment area is Metro North and we've linked it.
[Frances Nwajei]: So you've got your developmental and intellectual covered. services for autism you mentioned elder you mentioned elder services so you would need to put in like mystic valley and something and a state one if you can find it yep we have it it's in there
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: Is it helpful to share screens?
[Frances Nwajei]: Go ahead, Linda. I'm going to go stamp your meeting minutes so that you guys can have them.
[SPEAKER_04]: I can try to, I found a web, our web page that has like an accordion, and I was going to show what that looks like here, but I'll need permission to share my screen. Okay, maybe I'll just do it without sharing screen. So on, if you, I'll pop it into, how about this? I'll pop the link into the chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, there you go. It looks like you were made the co-host. Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, there we go. Okay, great. So if we go to our page, what our page looks like right now, they have these accordion, which what I'm imagining, we would do is we would have an accordion for each one of these headers. And we would have three accordions. That's how I would see this translating. So we would have an accordion for services, and it would pop down. And we would have an accordion titled informational resources, and it would pop down. And then newsletter signups, and it would pop down. Since that's something that's already functional within the site, we know that the person who's editing the web page can do that. And that makes it super easy for them to hopefully just, boop, like copy paste it in there, make sure the links work. With that in mind, back to, you know, back to Francis's point about keeping things, you know, not too long. If we can keep that in mind of like, when you, you know, when you pop this down, how many links do you see, you know, in like, on mobile or like on your desktop, and keep it to I think this is a lot. So what we're looking at right now. So I think if we keep it to less than what we have right now under useful links, I think that would be great. And I think right now we're sitting pretty with that. We're OK with that. The informational resources might be getting a little bit long, especially with the text. So just keeping that in mind of like what it's going to look like on the, on the web. And we're not going to have the CL, we have these labels, it's the governmental agency financial information. We're not going to have those. So those won't take up as much space. My thought is that we would literally have these links underneath. Like we would again, tell them like replace useful links with services and put those in there, add an accordion that says. informational resources and put that in there. Is that kind of in line with what folks are thinking? So I think as long as we keep them, as you're making a list, keep them to, I don't know how many links are here. I think, again, not having these headings will save us some space. Let's see how many we have. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I think if we keep it to where we start with what we have under services now, and see for a first iteration, and keep what we have under informational resources right now, and what we have under newsletter signups as the first iteration, and then see how it looks. then we can kind of do a second round of edits and just have this as a good starting point. And then again, do a second round if necessary. And I can stop sharing now. Does that sound like a decent plan?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that makes sense. I think as long as we have a deep starting point, like if you get to the MOD website, Of course, it takes clicking, and we want things to be as accessible and user-friendly as possible. But at least having some of those links there, I think, is better than not having them. And then we can kind of see how it looks, and we can click around and see what makes sense and what doesn't. When you shared your screen, you reminded me, I think, that our placard information is outdated. One second.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we could totally add that too. I also, as I was scrolling down on our links page, I totally missed our social media. It got somehow shifted onto another page. So we'll obviously add social media as another down. Not to make anyone think we forgot about the social media there. And we can also add a sentence that you were talking about, Gabby. I put that at the very bottom and said, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list, and we'll update the list as we learn of new resources. So that I captured at the bottom there. And we can decide if we want that at the top of the section And right now, we have that section that's just called additional links, which I think we should rename. But we could say like additional resources or something. And I might advocate to put the sentence up there so people see that first and foremost before looking at the resources to know that this isn't just to have that as context.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that makes sense. I don't know. And did we want to, like while we're updating, did we want to, we don't have to do it right now, but maybe go through and see the links that are currently there. I've never gone through them. And see if anything is outdated or if any links are broken, things like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that would be great because right now, right now, I don't even know if any of those links are on our, current page. I haven't cross-referenced them. I was just operating under the assumption that the ones that we have on the Google Doc are the ones that we want to use. So if there's anything that's on the current page that we want to keep, then I would suggest making sure that that's added to the Google Doc.
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, perfect.
[Tom Hamel]: I know when we first created the new website, we put a lot of effort into pulling together those resources. So I think it's a good idea to go through and make sure we identify what we want to keep.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because from first glance, they all look like they're pretty helpful.
[Tom Hamel]: Yeah, I know, I know, for instance, tested a lot of them to make sure that they were up to date too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so maybe we can put that on the agenda for the next meeting is to kind of go over what's. What's there and decide what we want to keep or remove kind of as a group.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I'm just writing it down, so I don't lose it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll look into the accessible parking placard because I'm 90% sure it's out of date, or it was out of date. Maybe we updated it since. And I have some sort of recollection that something was outdated last time I looked at it. OK. Great. Linda, did you have any other thoughts, questions, specifics on the website for now or anything that you want to put on the agenda for the next meeting?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, nothing other than just finalizing the resources that should go on there and getting it to a place where we feel comfortable sending it off to the communications folks to update on the page. Perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Gabby, I added a section on the document for the, oops, I can't seem to type, the placard and sign information for parking. So feel free to add it to the doc. It's at the bottom of the doc. And we can decide whether we want that as a separate accordion, probably.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I want to add. There's the info on the home health care parking permit also. Like if you have somebody that comes to your house regularly, they can get like a separate permit if you're on a permit street. So I want to add that too. OK. Perfect. OK. Great. I will add those links after this meeting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
[SPEAKER_04]: And let's see. Nice job, everyone, on collecting resources and keeping this up to date.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of good stuff there. I think it's a good starting point, at the very least.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and I definitely commend everyone for wanting to take a look at it and update it every year.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. And I think especially as links change so often, especially with the mass.gov website, they're not very good at redirecting their links timely. I think it's a good thing to stay on top of. Great. OK, so we have those agenda items that we'll put on the agenda for next month. Um, does anybody else have anything that they wanted to. Add work on discuss this meeting. No, okay. So I think other than that, we just have the correspondence and announcements for upcoming city events. So May is a bunch of months. There's Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Haitian American Heritage Month, Mental Health Awareness Month. And then there's also two upcoming, what is today? Is today the 23rd? No, tomorrow. Tomorrow is a pizza and paint party at Medford High with the GSA and Chameleon Club from 2.45 to 5 p.m. Um, and then also the pride flag raising and festival will be at 4 PM to 7 30 PM at city hall on May 31st. And I think that Francis sent an email about looking for volunteers possibly. Let me see. Or did I make that up? I swear I saw something. Um, Maybe I made that up. OK. It's not coming up in my immediate inbox right now, but maybe my search feature is not moving. I didn't search the right word. I don't know. But yeah, those are the upcoming events for the rest of the month. And I think I sent, I don't know if you saw the, I sent a link. in the chat cam, it's like the Medford Arts online event calendar. They don't have much after September, but just as like another place to check if you get a date and you want to cross-check it. It looks like that has a pretty good comprehensive list of events. Something else to keep an eye on. It feels really early. I don't know if we have anything else that we need to cover, or if anybody wants to take this time to look at more links.
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: Hi, it's Joe. Can I just kick an idea out there for the disability fair?
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, please.
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: I want to first apologize, the last two meetings I couldn't make, two emergencies just came up, and again, I just want to apologize. As far as Disability Fair, I was thinking of volunteering to give out ice cream. I have a connection that somebody would donate ice cream to me and I just want to just kick it out there. If it's a good idea or a bad idea, because I think it's a good reason to get people maybe out of the house to say, hey, if I go, I get an ice cream. And I just thought I'd throw it out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that's a lovely idea. I assume that it's fine as long as the I assume that the school doesn't have I guess we would have to run it by them like, or is it okay if we serve ice cream?
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: But I think that's correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: And ideally, yep. Is that the plan for now, Kim?
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_08]: So we want to also take advantage of the inclusive playground. So if it makes it easier for us to serve ice cream, I think we could do it outside. I think the city of Medford puts on events where they have free food. So I'm hoping this is not too crazy of an ask. Joe, I love it. It's a fun idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a great idea. Yeah, I don't think that it would I guess we have to ask, but I don't see it being an issue. I think it's a great idea. That was great. We could also, I'm getting a little ahead of ourselves, once we have a date and things like that, we could always see if there's other local like there's um like a gift and craft store uh near like south medford area um like they have all types of like little events and things like that if we want to have like community members do like little demos of crafts and things like we could kind of have more like structured than just having tables like maybe have like offer a little little treats like that like having ice cream or having you know or something like that to kind of get people more
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: To get people to go.
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: I was at the last Disability Fair, and I think a lot of people know what's out there. And I just feel that it would be a good magnet to get people just to come by and give them a reason that you can't screw up a free ice cream. And that's all.
[SPEAKER_02]: I completely agree. I think that's a great idea, especially if we want to try to cater to like more kids and things like that, because I know that there weren't, it wasn't, there were some families at the last event, but it wasn't like a super family friendly event. Like we didn't do too much to try and make, to really encourage people to go. That's a great way. I love that idea. Great. I'm going to write that down so that we have it when we start planning more concrete ideas for the day of.
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: Thank you, Gabby.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. Does anybody have anything else?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think that we'll get any public participation. I think it's a little bit late usually. people will come in the beginning if they're planning to. So I think it's okay if someone wants to make a motion to adjourn.
[Tom Hamel]: I'll make a motion to adjourn.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll second.
[SPEAKER_02]: Any abstentions? All in favor? Aye.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great. Thank you so much, everyone. Linda, I'll add those links now with the extra time that we have. And yeah, and I'll send the draft meeting when it's over shortly. Great. Thanks so much, everyone. Bye.