AI-generated transcript of ARPA Community Meeting

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: We are a little past six o'clock, so we're going to get started. We are recording, so I just want to let everybody know that we're recording this meeting. It'll be up on Medford Community Media, the website, probably in a couple days, and it's being recorded live. So I just want to introduce myself, Mayor Brianna Lungu-Kern, and I'm here with city staff. We have Nina Nazarian, who is our Chief of Staff. Steve Smearty, who is the director of communications and Lorena Escalero, who is our ARPA federal funds manager. And I'm going to be turning it over to Lorena in about a minute. I just wanted to let you know, we have a slideshow presentation that Lorena is going to take us through a little bit of what we've spent ARPA funding on to date and where we are with the community data and survey input. So thank you very much in advance for taking the time. We had a great response on the community survey, and we left that open for several months to make sure that people were able to give input on where you want to see these funds directed, the remaining funds. Initially, the funds that we have spent have been at the request of different department heads within the city, mainly to help with planning, development and sustainability, as well as the Board of Health, of course. So we've done a lot like order COVID tests, make sure we have our vaccine clinics up to date, working with putting on staff like a mental health professional and our Board of Health, as well as staff in our planning office, because we want to make sure businesses needs anything that affect anybody that was affected by the pandemic. We wanted to make sure we were doing all we could at this point. So I'm gonna, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Lorena and here you go, take it away.

[Molly Kivi]: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today during this update on the COVID-19 response efforts. My name is Lorena Escalero and I'm the federal funds manager. I've worked for the city for three years, and two out of those three years, I've worked for the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability, where I was very much involved with the programmatic support for the COVID-19 rental assistance program. and COVID-19 Small Business Grant Relief Program. So fast forward to this present day, I'm thrilled to continue on this great work and help the city of Medford reach a full and equitable recovery from the pandemic. Before I begin with the content of this presentation, I'd like to share my contact information. If folks would like to reach out to me individually, I can be reached by phone at 781-475-5634 or by email at l.escalero at medford-ma.gov. Tonight's presentations agenda will include me sharing out the ARPA Community Survey results, then I'll be giving a high level overview of the ARPA allocations and approved projects so far, which will then lead to a discussion about next steps on future spending and how the community input that was garnered throughout our outreach with the survey will be incorporated in our ARPA strategy. So the community survey results were released during the summer and the survey formally closed on October 5th, 2022. In total, we received 416 responses. 95% of respondents live in Medford and 71% of participants work full time. For the full community survey results and a copy of this presentation, it'll be uploaded this week on the medfordma.org-ARPA webpage. The following survey responses that we'll review will highlight the community values, the top areas identified within the community to invest ARPA funding towards. The top chosen areas out of a list of key different areas where ARPA funding should be invested towards were number one, water, sewer, street improvements. Number two, improvements to outdoor green and park spaces. And number three, a range of social services, including but not limited to housing services, food assistance, mental health services, and childcare assistance. The top human service needs identified were number one, mental and behavioral services, number two, childcare and youth services, and number three, homelessness prevention. This slide represents the top five nonprofits that residents and others who participated in the survey chose to continue to partner with Medford and fund additionally with ARPA, which are the Medford Family Network. nonprofit, Friends of the Fells, the Medford Youth Center at the Mystic Valley YMCA, the ABCD Mystic Valley Housing Services, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I'd just like to point out here that these service providers align and provide the services that were identified in the previous slides with a range of youth programming, housing support programs, and mental and behavioral services. I'd also like to share with you all some individual responses that we received from participants during the survey section where we asked respondents to answer the following question. How were you impacted during the pandemic? And these were a few of the many responses we received. Income, anxiety, childcare needs. Children suffered mentally. Loss of work greatly impacted mental health. Isolation and solitude. Our small business was very hard hit. So the city, and many departments have tackled these challenges and needs. Even prior to the ARPA. And prior to the ARPA inception. For example, the Board of Health has launched community outreach programs, such as the multilingual resource line to help those in need get connected to our local resources and following up with those residents through that process. The Board of Health also launched the RUOK program to help address isolation and solitude among elders. With ARPA funding, we have funded several COVID-19 related staff positions, including a community social worker, a health equity and outreach coordinator, five multilingual community liaisons to help the Board of Health with additional community outreach efforts and additional health equity challenges. the mayor and several other, and the planning department. Their goals and priorities was to establish an economic development sector even before the pandemic. And the pandemic really accelerated the progress on this. About two years ago, I believe, we hired an economic development director. And currently with ARPA funding, we are funding two economic development staff positions, which are an economic development planner, staff planner, and an economic development intern to aid the director in supporting small business programs and other economic initiatives. At this point, I'd like to thank everyone who completed the survey. These responses will be instrumental and will help inform our future spending plans. And I'm very eager now to share out the list of creative projects that we've implemented that have addressed many of the areas that were selected by the public in the community survey. While some cities allocated specific funding amounts to various sectors, Medford took a needs based approach driven by department head requests for projects and initiatives that were emerging. We have allocated and expended funding across six ARPA eligible expense categories. And this bar graph shows five out of those six expense categories, which are public health in blue, negative economic impact in green, public sector workforce in orange, infrastructure in purple, and the ARPA administrative expense category in navy blue. As you can see, the top largest expenditure categories that we've allocated funding so far have been towards the negative economic impact category and infrastructure category. And I'll review in the next slides in more detail the projects that we have approved under each category. So our largest expenditure category, which is negative economic impacts, here is a list of several approved and projects that we've implemented, which are the renovation of Tufts pool deck, which includes a demolition of the current deck and renovation of the new deck and also installing a water mushroom to the pool. free one month trial memberships of blue bikes to low income residents. This was a joint partnership with the city of Malden under our bike share lift contract. The McGlynn playground redesigned for a universally accessible playground. Support for community memorial gardens at the Medford High School. This was a very special project that helped address the social and emotional distress for students and the school community as a whole, that they lost teachers and mentors due to COVID and cancer. So this was a way to bring healing and solace and commemorate those lives lost. Other projects under negative economic impacts were parking meter upgrades in Medford Square, car park phase two, which includes some accessibility improvements, as well as a four-season play, adding a water play and a covered basketball court. the Gillis Park Accessibility Renovation, and one of our most recent projects, the Transportation Vanshare Program for our elders and youth, which was a joint department head collaboration between the Recreation Department and the Council on Aging to expand transportation services for elders to be able to access medical needs and for youth to access of more recreational activities while also reducing social isolation. Under infrastructure, I also think it's worth noting here that all infrastructure projects, including street and road repairs must be related to water and sewer per the guidance of the treasury. And so far we have started sewer lining upgrades as part of the city's wastewater collection rehabilitation project. The centralized wastewater treatment projects on Main Street and Mystic Avenue. DPW water meter replacement for clean water improvements. a flood mitigation assessment, the lead rebate program, which was originally funded with a different source, but that source has depleted and this program has been well received and is very popular in Medford, so we've used ARPA funding to replenish the funds to be able to continue the lead rebates in Medford. Other projects include the water sewer street upgrades on Pinker Street and the Medford fire safety alerting system for the fire department. Third category for projects is the public sector workforce. I'll just reiterate again that these are positions for COVID-19 staff and we've also used this pool of funding for translation services and communications regarding and related to COVID-19. And the fourth expenditure category is the public health emergency category. It appears to be our lowest allocated category so far, but I just want to remind everyone that the prior COVID-19 response funding called CARES, much of this funding was directed to the Board of Health for administrative support. and also to procure emergency equipment and supplies to operate vaccine clinics. But so far under ARPA, we have funded infection control stations, rapid COVID-19 tests, a multi-language kiosk payment system at the parking department, which is a great upgrade. And now residents can pay their parking tickets digitally, either by credit card or debit card, and also expands accessibility for our immigrant populations and multilingual populations. We've also completed water filling stations at the Medford Public Schools, a public health voting program, voting booth upgrades and voting poll pads for our elections, the emergency response and recovery planning and training, and the food inspections government mandate. And none of these projects would have been possible without the help of our department heads. So I want to give a thank you to all of our diligent department heads. So in summary, of all of our approved projects and allocations that we've made so far, we've allocated more than half of our total grant received. Our unallocated grant funding amount is roughly around 19.7 million. And I just wanna note here that this does not include the revenue replacement budget for fiscal year 24 and fiscal year 25. I'll go over what revenue replacement is in the coming slides. So this is an outline of our projected spending forecast for the $19.7 million remaining. We hope to set aside three to 4 million to be allocated for nonprofit support, ranging from housing emergency support programs, and also affordable housing, and other needs as well that were addressed in the community survey, such as youth programming and mental and behavioral services, among others. We also plan to reserve $2 million for a new department head project request that we received recently and recurring ARPA expenses associated with ARPA-funded salaries through December 31, 2024. And the remaining $11 to $13 million which is the light blue chunk of this pie, will be set aside to go to future water and sewer infrastructure projects and revenue replacement. So revenue replacement is the sixth eligible use category. And this category gives the city a broad latitude to use funds for government services in the amount equal to the revenue lost due to the pandemic. This category, so funds can be used for a range of emergency expenses and projects to alleviate the administrative burden.

[Unidentified]: Oh, I have a question.

[Molly Kivi]: We'll be taking questions at the end of this presentation.

[Unidentified]: We'll be... Oh, fuck. Lorena, if you just want to unmute yourself, sorry.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Oh, sorry. No, it's okay. I just think we might have been bombed. Yeah, but that's all right.

[Molly Kivi]: Did you all hear the part where I defined what revenue replacement was?

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: No, Lorena, sorry.

[Molly Kivi]: OK, OK. So I'll just backtrack a little bit. So revenue replacement is an eligible use category that gives the city broad latitude to use funds for government services in the amount equal to the revenue lost due to the pandemic. So funding under revenue replacement can be used for a range of emergency expenses and projects to alleviate the administrative burden such as staffing and other general government administration needs. Medford in particularly has used revenue replacement to replenish the fiscal year 2022 and fiscal year 2023 school and city budgets to retain teacher salaries and city staff salaries. We've also used revenue replacement for Medford High School facility assessment, IT support and cybersecurity, special projects and recruitment purposes. And this graph shown here shows a trend line, we expect revenues to rise, so we also expect us to use less and less of revenue replacement for the following two fiscal years. And also, this will increase the pool of funding remaining to go directly towards those other categories that we reviewed earlier, that will help address the impacts of individuals, households, businesses, and impacted industries. So I also wanted to give you all more perspective on how other communities are spending ARPA and a few projects that we've gained inspiration and will pursue ourselves in the future. These ARPA programs are from Malden and Somerville, which include a chamber of commerce for yearly memberships to small businesses program, a range of youth programming, our rental assistance and utility assistance program, a language access plan to help with our translating documents and our press releases, ride share programs, and a broad range of facility upgrades.

[Unidentified]: And for our

[Molly Kivi]: How will the city choose future projects? So the community survey results are a testament to the community values and our needs and impacts of the pandemic in Medford. Other factors going through include project readiness and priorities identified in earlier processes. And this concludes my presentation and update to you all. It's been a pleasure sharing with you the many ways in which Medford has made large strides to a recovering fully and equitably from the pandemic. And I'll pass it on over to Nina Nazarian, who will help me moderate for the open public hearing session of this meeting.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you Lorena I just want to take the time I know I opened up the meeting but I want to thank you for your hard work I know you and Steve Nina and I've worked on this for the last month or two and you did a great job. I also to want to just highlight the work of our department heads and the staff at City Hall you know it's not just myself and the city council school committee that hear from residents, you know, we're all hearing from residents and on the need in this community. And over the past year, we've been able to allocate our spending to do the best we can for anything from it, which we're taking charge, not only in city hall, but in the fire department, there's going to be about a half million going to it needs. Then we have, you know, our engineer and DPW department heads working on the water and sewer and street infrastructure, all the way to planning, development, sustainability, all the great programs that you mentioned with the Board of Health. So thank you to our staff who've worked very hard. You think it's easy to spend money, it takes a lot of time and effort and a lot of thought. and a lot of community input, and that's what we're doing. The past two years, we've listened to the need out there, and through the survey, we're listening to where we see people want the money spent. So thank you, and I'm gonna turn it over to Nina for a couple words on how we'll proceed for the next half hour. Thank you.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, Mayor and Lorena. As hopefully everyone received that was an overview of the community survey and all the work that's been done by the city to further the plan development for these ARPA funds. This evening, I'll be assisting by helping triage questions during the Zoom call, both through individuals who've raised their hand to speak and I will also integrate any questions that are typed into the chat by reading them to Lorena so that she may answer them. If you'd like to speak, please use the virtual raised hand in the Zoom call by clicking on the reactions button I will do my best to take all questions in the order they are received, prioritizing questions from persons who are asking their first question. There will be a three-minute limit for each question, and if needed, I will provide a 30-second warning. As Lorena has on the slide, we will continue this, or had on the slide, we will continue this evening's community meeting, conclude this evening's community meeting at 7 p.m. Thank you very much. I see Louise's iPhone as the first question.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay?

[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, thank you.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Great. So, on the survey that I took electronically under other category. One of the things I checked off was that perhaps first responders, meaning the police and fire, who were basically our frontline workers during COVID. was, is there discussion about whether or not they were going to receive a bonus or get some compensation? And I bring this up because I myself was on the front lines of COVID. In addition to taking care of very critically ill patients, I also volunteered and gave over 250 vaccines in the city of Medford to the first responders. And I think it's justified. Has that issue been raised? Has any discussion taken place? I noticed that through your presentation that department heads were the people who were highlighting issues and has that come forward?

[Molly Kivi]: So there has not. I'd like to thank you first for your service, being on the front line and and your work, premium pay has not been a discussion that I've been, I've been here since September 19, 2022, so just about two months. And no, I, premium pay has not been part of the spending plans.

[Nina Nazarian]: Also, if I could also add, At this point, the city has offered, excuse me, the city has offered COVID pay for any frontline or otherwise employee of the city should they contract COVID during their work for any reason and ensure that they were being paid during that time and has obviously been contemplating all the aspects of this are eligible categories. But we as a lawyer said have not at this point in time got in depth in the conversations on the peace pertaining to premium pay that it's a complex matter to be honest with you there's a number of different provisions and I'm still learning about them. But I will indicate that we had previous conversations prior to Lorena being federal funds manager at least at my level. I had conversations with the prior federal funds manager.

[Unidentified]: Thank you. Thank you. The next hand I remember seeing is any buckling.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello can you hear me. Hi, my name is Eddie Buckley. I'm actually the president of the local 1032 Medford firefighters. And I want to thank Louise for always supporting us and asking about the funding for first responders. I sent a letter to the mayor inquiring why it wasn't included in the survey. as many surrounding communities have already given money to the first responders, acknowledging all the work and sacrifice that they put in. And I was just wondering why we weren't even included in the survey.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. I'll take that question, Lorraine, and please follow up with any specific comments that you might have as well. So we didn't specifically name departments to my recollection, but correct me if I'm wrong. We also did obviously offer COVID pay if a family member got COVID and they were a close contact. We've, as was stated in the presentation by Lorena, have a project for fire buildings. We're working on a number of other fire-related projects through other revenue sources, I think, President Buckley, you are familiar with that work that we're doing and appreciate your support on those things as well. Thank you.

[Molly Kivi]: I'd like to just add and expand a little bit more detail on a few other projects that we're funding with Medford Fire. So the first one was the Medford Fire alerting system upgrade. And a second project we'll be directing money, ARPA money towards is a fiber optic broadband project for one of the fire municipal buildings.

[Unidentified]: The next hand I recall seeing raised is Marsha Kirsten. Hi.

[Marcia Kirssen]: Yes. Thank you. I was wondering if these funds might include a provision that improved projects such as the streets and buildings include accessibility for people who are disabled. That's one question. And another question is that if it might be possible to fund a mental health professional 24-7 in the police department, because people are awake at night, especially in the evenings. Maybe most people sleep, I don't know. as kind of an automatic part of the projects that are being done.

[Molly Kivi]: Hi, Marsha. It's nice to meet you in person. I believe I spoke on the phone before. So the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has submitted a ARPA project request form for project management and additional program support for including hiring a diversity economic inclusion intern who will be scoping out and working with the commission on accessibility needs and other needs that fall under that department. So we've received that request and we'll be working, me and the mayor, on reviewing the project requests, and I don't think that there will be a problem with, it should be approved and eligible for funding.

[Marcia Kirssen]: Well, that's a different idea than the one I was asking, which is, it would be something, things like putting curb cuts into, when you renovate a street, If you're doing anything with a sidewalk, let the curb cut go there, because that's something that many people need, including some people who are not disabled, who have a carriage with a baby or some other limitation.

[Molly Kivi]: From previous conversations with the director of diversity, equity, inclusion, who's you work very closely with. Yes. She's been working on improvements to buildings for accessibility requirements. And I'm not sure this was not included in the ARPA project request, but I'm sure if we can work with her to be able to request something like that. I don't, this would also fall under the requests that she submitted under the operations and additional admin support. Okay, thank you.

[Nina Nazarian]: And I'll also add, Marsha, you mentioned road projects. The ARPA funds, if I'm not mistaken, Lorena, again, correct me as always, you're knowledgeable on these, the final rule that the federal government set out for the use of these funds, but it's my understanding that we cannot use those funds to complete road work unless it's in conjunction with a water or sewer project, which we are working on many of those with our engineering and DPW departments.

[Molly Kivi]: Correct, and unless the street or road repair is within a census tract and below the poverty line or addressing a safety and community need, it would be eligible. But yeah, unless it's one of those.

[Unidentified]: I think safety would describe it.

[Molly Kivi]: Yeah, so we could look more into it, Marsha.

[Nina Nazarian]: Okay, thank you. Thank you, and I'll just also note, I don't see any other hands, so while we wait for hands or questions in the chat, which we welcome, the only other point is that we do have a project, I think, Gillis Park, Lorena, might be an accessibility project as well?

[Molly Kivi]: Yes, that's correct.

[Nina Nazarian]: Excellent.

[Unidentified]: Any other questions? We have quite a bit of time, folks.

[Nina Nazarian]: We have at least just roughly 20 minutes, so we welcome any other questions that anyone has. I didn't prepare any elevator music for this type of scenario. I expected a lot more questions. Oh, excellent. Gabriel, I see your hand, and then Louise, sounds like Louise has a follow-up question, so we'll go to Gabriel first. Thank you.

[Ciccariello]: Hey, good evening, everybody. Really, thank you so much for the presentation, Lorena. It's very informative and I appreciate how transparent this whole process has been. I don't really have questions. I'm kind of just here to advocate for a couple projects that the Medford Housing Authority is working on. I'm gonna try to make this very brief. The Medford Housing Authority Currently, we own and operate close to 850 deeply affordable public housing units, all within the city of Medford, Mass. And we are currently working on two fairly unique and large opportunities to increase the amount of deeply affordable housing within the city of Medford for elderly, disabled, and also family residents. The city met for its Community Preservation Commission has been very, very generous to date with providing one of the projects, some funding and the amount of $350,000 in that $350,000 which is for the walking court development project it's 144 units of. affordable elderly and disabled housing, and we're looking to increase density there not only with the elderly and disabled population but with family. We're also looking to include family units on that site. That $350,000 that the CPC gave us help us secure secure a $15 million grant from the Department of Housing and Community Development. So just having that local support really garners so much more funding from the state and federal resources that we have. So I kind of briefly touched on the walking court development. We're also working on the salt and salt building, which is right across the street from you guys at 121 Riverside Ave, which is a 200 unit elderly disabled high rise building. And it's 11 story high rise. And we're going to be actually increasing the unit count there from 200 to 222 units. And we are actually starting construction on that project. right at the beginning of 2023. So we've submitted applications for walk-in court, additional applications for walk-in court to the CPC, and we understand the funding for the CPC is extremely competitive. So I'm just here advocating for our residents and the future residents that need deeply affordable housing in the city of Medford to just look at the Medford Housing Authority as a resource when looking to possibly increase affordable housing in the city of Medford if there's funding resources out there we just like you like you guys to look favorably upon us and that's all I appreciate your time again thank you so much.

[Molly Kivi]: Thank you, Gabe, for your advocacy. I'd just like to reiterate that we are setting aside $2 to $4 million for nonprofits, and that includes affordable housing. We are planning to put into place a subrecipient process in the winter of 2023. And I know, Gabe, that you applied also for CPA funding with- Yes. Yeah. And I think Alicia, Alicia Hunt, the Director of Planning, Development, and Sustainability, Danielle and I will group and form a unified plan for how to go about strategizing for how to fund these projects.

[Ciccariello]: Thank you so much, Lorraine. I really, again, appreciate your time.

[Molly Kivi]: Thank you.

[Ciccariello]: Thank you.

[Nina Nazarian]: And now we have Louise, Louise's iPhone.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. I just had a quick question. Are the guidelines that were set forth by the federal government for the AFRA, are those available to us as the public? Are they on our website, on your website, or is the way that we can access those so I could read them?

[Molly Kivi]: Yes, I believe they are on our website, the treasury guidance called the final rule document, as well as the interim final rule should be posted on our medfordma.org slash ARPA webpage. I'd also like to add that we are being transparent about how our expenditure reports and every project that we have approved. we post our quarterly expenditure reports on that MedfordMA.org webpage if anyone's interested in looking more closely at the projects.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Great, thank you very much.

[Nina Nazarian]: Okay, it looks like we are through the questions, so I will slowly thank folks at this point. This concludes the meeting. Thank you, Lorena. That was an excellent presentation. I appreciate also the mayor's time, Director of Communications, Steve Smerity, who's on this call as well and has been helping with the back end. All the department heads, city staff, city council, and the community for all of their input. At this point, we'll close. Mayor, I don't know if you have any closing comments. But other than that, wishing everyone a good evening to the mayor.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, no, thank you for joining us. And the first slide that the slideshow will be up on our website. And the first slide is contact information for Lorena. So if you have any further questions or comments or concerns, or you have trouble finding the final rule from the federal government, please let us know. And we appreciate the time will be Like Nina and Lorena said, we'll be working on the process for nonprofits and affordable housing professionals to apply for funding through this next month or so. An application should come out early 2023 so we can get that moving. So we thank you very much for your time.