total time: 31.4 minutes
total words: 1194
[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right, thanks so much for being with us today. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and who you are.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Sure. Breanna Lungo-Koehn, Mayor of Medford, and my pronouns are she and her.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great. Well, thanks for being back with us. You've been on a few times. We really appreciate it. And you have answered this question in the past, but we'll see if there's any updates to your answer. Favorite place to eat in Medford, and what do you like to eat there?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Jeez, I love a good meal from Fiore, Italy. That's one of my favorites. Nice.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I'm a big fan of like grilled octopus. They do like a really good, like really good. Great. So thank you. So we wanted to hear your thoughts, maybe some explanation and some of your thoughts as the mayor on the three questions that we're going to be voting on in November. So that have to do with overrides and debt exclusions. So maybe we could start with those, the second two questions. So seven and eight that propose different types of overrides to the city budget.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Sure, yeah, thank you for having me, both of you. I think I've been pretty quiet because we've had a busy summer, but it's time. We're only weeks away from the November election where the city has three important questions on the ballot. And yes, that's a good idea to start with seven and eight, which are the financial questions as it relates to two different overrides. And an override is different than a debt exclusion. An override will be in perpetuity And I think they're very important, and I encourage everybody to really understand what they are before they make their decision, because they will only benefit for the good our students and our faculty at the schools, as well as city staff on the DPW end. So with question seven, it's 3.5 million. 500,000 of that is for the city to hire a crew that will be responsible just for streets and sidewalks. Our DPW department works extremely hard, but as you notice, the number one complaint you see either on social media or that I get on email is potholes and deterioration of our streets and sidewalks. So when I came into office in 2021, we did a street and sidewalk assessment which showed well over $200 million needed to repair all the streets and sidewalks that need to be repaired. And we are trying our best to keep up. We are trying our best to get ahead of where we were, but due to the decades of neglect, we could really, really use another crew out there to fill in potholes. We have equipment that will do patchwork, which means like if there's a section of a street that's really bad, they can go out and square it off. And you see that happening some, but we obviously need more of it. You see us out, fixing sidewalks, but we do have, we can do that in-house and we would like to do more of it. I'm not saying that that crew might not get pulled for an emergency if there's a water main break and we need them, but we want a crew of about three, maybe about three people, maybe four, to focus mainly and entirely on our streets and sidewalks, which desperately need it. And that's something that we've been hearing from all sides in this city about, and I think it's extremely important. And I know that we have know, one of the strongest engineering and DPW teams we've ever had, especially with regards to the leadership. You know, Owen Wartell, who's our engineer, and Tim McGivern, who's our DPW director, as well as Todd Blake, who's our traffic and traffic transportation director. They know what's needed. They're working very, very hard to get it done. It doesn't help that we have climate change issues so during our winters are warmer and we are freezing at night and then defrosting during the day and any crack that is in our street is filling with water it's expanding it's melting and back and forth like during the winter especially we're not getting caught up to like may or may or so now with potholes and it's it's It's a lot to handle, so we could really use another crew. So I really hope the taxpayers see that piece of the question as important for the city. The second piece is the $3 million. And what I think is most important to understand is that $3 million is not to hire more staff necessarily or do anything extravagant. $2 million of that $3 million is the current staff we have working in our school district today. What we did in the last budget, knowing we were prepping for the override questions, is the school department obviously had to make a whole lot of cuts. And after they made millions in cuts, we had another two, two and a half million that still needed to be cut. So the financial task force and I, which has been, we've been extremely transparent, as you know, there's about three, at least three press releases on the work we've done. We work together and we upfronted or gave an advance to get through the fiscal year 25 budget. And so we didn't have to lay off even more people. So that was almost $2 million in current staff that this question covers. That's one of the largest pieces of the $3 million. And they are staff from teachers, paras, secretaries, behavioral supports, mental health supports, guidance Councilors, nurses, their staff that we, our children, our school district needs. And we, I mean, we really, really need this question to pass and I really hope it does. And other two pieces of that that are important are our tech. Technology is expensive and our students deserve new technology every three to five, six, seven years. And that means 500,000 a year. We used one-time funding to purchase that, but that is something that should be in the budget and is needed year after year after year. So IT is a big piece of that question. And one that is extremely important to me, and it's something that I'm working, even though managing the city, I am, we are, my city staff and myself are helping the school district with maintenance. Not only preventative maintenance, but maintenance of our security equipment, maintenance of our door locks, safety, you know, maintenance that has to do with safety of our students as well. And there alone is the $3 million. Now, we also have transportation needs. We have this two mile walking distance that we'd like to be able to close that gap. So this money could go an extremely long way. And I would never have supported this if I didn't think we, if I thought we weren't doing a good job on the city and school side to get rid of and hold you know, our department's accountable with their spending. It's taken four and a half years, and right now, I'm very in tuned and working to make sure we're not wasting on overtime and making sure we don't have personnel that there's not enough work for. We've right-sized it. You have a good school committee, good leadership in the schools, and we've done the hard work, as you saw. We made a plethora of cuts, unfortunately, but some of those cuts I think show you that we know where the money's needed and where we need to put additional funding. So that 3.5 million is one of the most important things that we're gonna experience in November, because to have to cut current more personnel will be devastating for the fiscal year 26 budget, and mostly devastating for our children.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, no, I think that like a lot of what I've been hearing is this question about like how we analyze what we're doing with what we have and how can we kind of make more out of less. And it sounds like that's something that you've been doing for many years and it's sort of run out of options. And we did have somebody write into us that was sort of, he was sort of looking at the current, you know, the budget over the last few years for the school department and noticing that there had been increases of about $7 million marked for things like busing and paras. And so his question was like, how do we know we can use additional funds to solve this problem if we haven't been able to do it with the past budget increases? And I think you've answered that, but if you want to address it at all anymore, I think we could hear that.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I think people know that the school committee, the city council, and myself have really prioritized our schools and our school district and funding in our school system. And each year, including one year where I think schools got a 9% plus increase, every year on the city side, I'm really tasking our department heads to produce a budget that is within our means because of the high costs that are associated with, that are going up everywhere, but especially in our school system. And that we're at a breaking point. where I can't ask city departments to cut any more because we need to give 10% more to the schools or 12% or 13%. And that goes along with what you said, it's costs are rising in special ed, they're rising in transportation, they're rising in utilities faster than our 2% that we're able to tax residential and commercial is allowing us to fund. So I think The 3.5 million will go a very long way, just helping us stabilize, not face any more cuts. And then also on the maintenance side, get facilities maintenance contracts in place for hopefully January 1, when hopefully the money comes in, to make sure our schools aren't deteriorating any more than they are. Alone, it cost us a million and a half dollars to hire an OPM to review the HVAC systems in our schools. And it's upwards of 15 plus million just to do the fixes we need on the air conditioning at the Andrews and the McGlynn alone. So people say, why don't you use free cash to fund the budget? Why don't you use free cash for the cuts? We did this year, and we had, because of the lost revenues in COVID, but that's not sustainable. The cuts are gonna come sooner than later if we continue to plug the budget with any one-time funding. We cannot continue to do that. We have so many needs for that one-time funding from fire trucks to lighting that's going down, just requests in the last few weeks, lighting that needs to be replaced on Freedom Way. overage for construction costs to keep our streets safe. There's a project on Spring and Central that needed another $250,000 to get done. We need to provide some funding for some fixes that are needed at the Brooks Estate and the cemetery buildings. The list is never ending. And even though we built up our free cash supply more than we ever have, I think And that has to do, I think, with some of the ARPA funding and the way revenue loss fell back into free cash. We're never going to be able to sustain a budget and budget increases with free cash. We just won't. We put some money into stabilization accounts. There's a couple million dollars sitting for fire trucks that are being built now. There is $3 million from that free cash that is being put aside for an OPM and the design and architecture work for hopefully the work we'll do with the new high school and the list goes on. There's just not enough money to sustain personnel and recurring costs with what we have now, which is one time funding.
[Danielle Balocca]: And it also seemed like the way it's been described to me, it seems like that, like if it's not like financially wise to use free cash like that, either it's, it sounds as like, it's kind of like planning your household budget based on your savings account.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Um, and I like, I like the analogy with, you know, my sister, my daughter just got her, her permit. If she came to me and said, Hey mom, I just made $500 from my birthday. Can I lease a car? That's the best analogy I've heard and that I tell people, because I would say to her, absolutely not. You have one payment for your car lease. What are you going to do for the rest? You'll be able to drive it for a month, and then they will take it back. And yeah, and that's just, it's not, it's against best practice. It would make our bond rating go down. We need a good bond rating because we want to build a new fire headquarters. We want to build a new high school and the list, you know, again, the list goes on.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Do you want to talk at all about question eight?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Sure, sure. I'll be brief about question eight at full transparency. My sister is a teacher at the McGlynn, so I am somewhat staying out of this question, but I think it's important for people to know that this question, it's $4 million to be able to work on some of the problems, which is, we all know the high school scheduling is a problem that needs to be changed. Time in the classroom is something that a bunch of us have been talking about for a long time. And this question would allow us the ability to even have a seat at the table and negotiate changes with scheduling and class time that's going to cost funding that's going to have to be negotiated. We fully understand that but it's something we want to do and we believe it's benefit our students, especially at the vocational school in the high school where you have students, both students who may want to take Spanish or art And either they don't have the ability to do it because their schedule doesn't allow, because you need that extra 15 plus minutes in the day, or they're taking classes on Zoom after hours. You know, there's so much that needs to be fixed, and we really want to provide our students with this opportunity. So I think it was good that we split these two questions, because it's one is, you know, basically current needs that need to continue and maybe be enhanced some, and then the four million is, We are building a new high school. We care about our students. We care about our faculty. We want to have the ability to sit at the table and negotiate and make sure that these schedules work for the Vogue and the high school. And we want to make sure that our elementary and middle school students, too, have more opportunities.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Yeah, yeah. So, we did kind of reach out to folks in the city to see if they had like questions or feedback in support or against these, these three questions. We pretty much only got messages of support and we did have one person, express a question related to question six which is the dead. um and they were one they had heard which we've heard as well and watched some of the videos about um that some of the firefighters and folks in the firefighter union are against this debt exclusion against the money to build a new fire headquarters so i don't know if you want to share any of your thoughts on that or kind of what your experience has been there um thank you yeah i mean
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: From the beginning, when I got elected, we put a committee together, a task force to go over all the needs of all of our stations, including headquarters. And out of that meeting, which was, I think their report was done by early 2021, but I stand to be corrected. We had millions of dollars in needs amongst our six fire stations and we've done a ton of work to from windows to roofs to kitchens and beyond. It's been a group effort. My chief of staff Nina Nazarian has taken the lead on those projects. And the fire headquarters was also something that came out of it that obviously we need a new fire headquarters. I think I was on the council when we were building a new when the plans came out for the new police station. And I said, please, please. take a time out and do a combined station. It will cost us less in the long run, and our fire department deserves a new headquarters. It's the same building as the deteriorating police station. That didn't happen, and here we are. We've spent two years plus with, we have an architect, we have an OPM, and we are well on our way. We've invested over a million dollars in that work. that is pretty much getting finalized at this point. And I believe that our fire department deserves a new headquarters. And this is the way to do it. We decided, the task force and I decided a debt exclusion is the way to do it. Because if you put it on the budget, if you put the bond payments and principal and interest on the budget, it would be more that you're taking away from what I say would be the schools, more you're having to balance. This debt exclusion is a question. It's different than an override. Taxpayers will pay for it for the life of the bond. I think it was something like $10 or less per month to do this debt exclusion. It's, we limited it to a 20 million plus facility. 30 million will be after full construction costs. 30 million is kind of where we set the limit. But I agree, I'm pretty, I am frustrated with, it's, you know what, it's probably just one, two, maybe three union representatives that are coming out against this question. And I did watch one of the videos and it was then yesterday after watching the video I did some just looking back at old emails and I what was said is even it's even more concerning. We, and I'll send you all these documents and I'm going to make them public because I want the community to understand, you know, what is actually, what the facts are. I have emails dating back to 2023 and the subject line from the prior chief was new headquarters committee. And on that committee, on that new committee, so obviously there was one beforehand, you had deputy Che, you had deputy Gilberti, you had Lieutenant Casella, you had Lieutenant Mon, you had firefighter Buckley, you had firefighter Spinelli. And this email was, to let them know we're beginning the process of working on the beginning stages of the headquarter design. Each team member should go over the materials in the program book and make recommendations and notes and mark these up for space inside the headquarters. So from that email, I'm just, you know, I was perplexed at what I happened to be listening to the day before. You know, he says, I look forward to working with our team, getting your technical assistance and feedback on the current and future needs of the headquarters.
[Danielle Balocca]: And one of the claims they made in that video is that no input was sought from any firefighters or people that would be using the building. Is that right?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: That's right. That's correct. They were excluded from the design. They were planned. They were excluded from the process. I wasn't aware they were excluded. We had meetings monthly and we invited the deputies, the chief of the fire department was always on those meetings. And during those meetings, they talked about the projects at each individual station and they talked about the fire headquarters. So was the union invited? I don't know other than I know three members of the union were invited to be on this new fire headquarters building team back March 7th, 2023 from the chief at the time. And then you go on to emails that were starting in 2024. And that's when Chief Evans, who's now the current chief, came on board. And there's additional emails where the chief is thanking the president of the union, I appreciate your input regarding the new fire headquarters. I would appreciate a confirmation from the union at this time, would you be okay moving forward in removing the fire tower in favor of increasing the living space? And at that time, I got a call from the chief and he said, the union is not interested in the, they would rather more living space than a training tower and I said, I don't feel comfortable taking out the training tower. This is something they've been asking for for a long time. Is it the largest training tower? No. Is it ideal? No, because it probably should be on a separate location. But we did that when I was a Councilor. We met with the state. We were trying to get a Caroline Miller, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen So then I did get an email from the president of the union, and it said, we do feel the space could be used to improve the living conditions in the building. So at that point, once I had that in writing, we took out the training tower. And from that video, I believe we fixed almost every concern they had. The chief met, this is an email from April, Friday, April 12th, 2024. And it's an email to our architect. Yesterday, a group of firefighters that had been involved with planning, discussing the headquarters with Chief Friedman early in the process, met with me to voice concerns about storage space and then another few items. So the architect writes back, OK, we'll look at that. We'll make adjustments. And what did they do? They made adjustments. Hi. They made, they revisited the, this is an email from May 3rd, we revisited the floor plan, floor, the plans and site plans, all based on our meeting with the chief a few weeks ago. We've been able to add some square footage and storage bases that he and his team walked us through at that meeting. So there's members of the union that had a meeting with the chief and the architect They walked through and then adjustments were made. We adjusted the drawings to accommodate what we believe all the needs are.
[Danielle Balocca]: So it sounds like a lot of evidence that shows that you actually did work together with them, that they kind of signed off on some of these changes that they're now saying are things that they wanted and don't have in this new design.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Right. And all of these things were, you know, cc'd. All the deputies were cc'd. President Buckley was cc'd. Lieutenant Marcellino, Friar Friar Spinelli, they were all CC'd on this. And the follow-up email was actually from Lieutenant Marcellino, who wrote on May 4th, 2024, this is marked improvement. Thank you for facilitating the meeting and working to get the changes made.
[Danielle Balocca]: Wow, and that's the person who made the speech that we can watch on allmedford.com, yeah. So it's out, so you're offering them, like, you're working with them and designing this new headquarters, putting in this question in the ballot to get the funding for that, and they're saying no. Like, it seems like there's more to this story. Like, is there more going on that you think is important for folks to understand?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I think there is, and I, For me, like I said before, it's one or two, maybe three union representatives that are coming out strongly against this debt exclusion, which seems crazy to me because we need this funding to be able to build a brand new facility. I don't think, and not that anybody else from the department besides the chief or maybe the deputies will come out in support of this, because people are going to lay low, they're going to listen to their union reps. But I think the majority of our firefighters are probably perplexed as well. And I think they're being led in a bad direction if they are gonna show their support against a debt exclusion. This debt exclusion isn't just for the three union leaders that might be against it. This debt exclusion is for the majority of our department who is out there doing the right thing, coming to work, working hard, keeping our city safe. And this new building is for the hundreds that are gonna work after them. The fact that there are some issues in the fire department and in some, some issues between the union and I as far as I manage 26 departments. I manage 400 employees. I lead with knowing that accountability has to be at the forefront and I am. I am holding people accountable, not just in the fire department, throughout the entire city. Please come to work. Please call out sick when you're sick. If you're not sick, come to work. If you just do the right thing and HAB-Juliette Boone, Moderator, The Cooperative Extension Office of the City of Santa Clara City Council and the City of Santa Clara City Council. I don't believe they want to be managed by somebody, especially one that holds accountability as the most important thing to make a city stronger, to make a department stronger. And I'm holding them accountable so much because we all know what happened the weekends of February 2nd through the 6th. We had almost the entire department call out sick. Most of them called out sick for their first half of their shift. Thank goodness, because then they were able to do overtime. what they did was cost us $100,000 in overtime and sick time use. And what they really did, and more important than the money, is that they risked the safety of our community. And since that time, sick time has been a real issue. You know, Chief is working hard, I'm working hard to try to bring some accountability and try to make them understand that not even the sick time, but just the culture in the department. I was told by my consultant that if I didn't fix the culture and the dysfunction within the department, that somebody would get hurt. Now I wasn't told it would be a resident or firefighter, but I'm taking it extremely seriously. And I know there's conflict and I wish I could fix that. But I asked the president of the union after that week and I said, listen, here are some of the personnel issues. And we talked about them. We talked about them quite a bit, 10, 12 personnel issues that I was really concerned about. And after that, I said, I want you to be part of the solution. I want you, myself, and a new chief to work to change the culture in the department. Work with me, not against me. He's choosing to work against me. He's choosing to work against the chief of fire, who is really working hard to build a better department. You know, when we have to give out 29 letters saying to people, you know, we are watching your sick time, we're concerned. You know, we have a few people that are calling out upwards of a third to a half of their shifts. So for me, it's not even just accountability and making sure our firefighters and our community is safe and that nobody gets hurt. It's how much money are we spending on overtime that we could be given to our schools. What are we showing the multiple people we have in the academy and the 11 that we're doing background checks on now to hire? So that's upwards of 15 new firefighters we'll have on staff in the next six to nine months. What message are we showing to those 15 and to our younger generation of firefighters that are already in the department? If we're just, you know, at odds and fighting over like accountability and we have some people that are just calling out sick all the time. It's not, it's not right. It's not fair, you know, and it's something that I'm determined to fix.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So what I asked the residents of the community is watch that video. And then take a listen to this podcast and read these emails that I'm going to release. And you make up your own mind. I think that video ended with, we don't want to come off as a bunch of angry people that don't like anything. And I'm not going to comment on my opinion, but I think our residents are smart enough to know that they can form their own opinion on that if they did 20 minutes of homework, maybe 30 minutes of listening to this podcast. Because it's those three people that may lose an opportunity for our entire department, not just current, but future, to have a brand new fire headquarters. I'm sorry there's not five bays, there's only four. I'm sorry that we didn't have enough storage space or bathroom space. in the original plans that we've now fixed and we do. I'm sorry that I put a training tower in. I thought that's what they wanted. I'm sorry it wasn't perfect enough, but I took it out when they asked me to. I don't know what else I can do. And there's no way I would ever just stop holding people accountable so that I could get them to stop fighting me. I mean, I can't even breathe right. The grievances, the injunctions, the charges, every day it's something. Every day. And every time I hold somebody accountable, it's another nasty post about me online. And it is what it is. I have thick skin. I'm doing it for a reason. And I'm going to continue to build this department to a place where I know it should and can be, especially when the majority of our firefighters, like I said, are doing the right thing. You know, and I'm sure that there's internal issues going on, and I'm assuming that they're questioning the leadership of their own union. I'm sure they are. They have to be. They have to be, and I'm understanding of that. But I will, I'll ask the president again, one more time, if he wants to be part of the solution with the chief and I, because I think he has a great amount of pull in that union. I think he could be the game changer.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. And I think this is really helpful information. And I appreciate your like, sort of offering these ways of thinking about it and help and you know, allowing people to make their own choices. I think it's, you know, all really helpful stuff to know. And does like, it does make the situation like the nuance of the situation seem a little bit more understandable. Well, under, I don't know if understandable is the right word. It's not very rational.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: But yeah, well, I think I think it's, it's, I it's almost to a point when reading these emails after watching that video, it's almost to the point where I feel bad that I have to, you know, go public with all this because not only does it ruin people's credibility, it ruins the credibility of that, you know, the group they spoke at.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, well thank you. Chelly, was there anything that you wanted to add?
[Chelli Keshavan]: I may just reiterate what kind of we shared at the end of our last episode, which is for me this is a values choice. This is when you spend money, you communicate to the full community where our values lie and they should absolutely be children, education, public services, and To me, this should not be a conversation of individual politics. This is about visioning for the city, best practice and sort of growing up together. So that's in service of everybody. And it's absolutely in service of our young ones, our young people and our littles. I don't see this as a, this should not be. It feels very Medford that a loud minority is allowing this to be. to cloud, you know, it just feels like bullying and it feels like interfering with forward movement. So I agree that a small amount of applied homework should help folks to think about where they sit personally across the board.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, and people have a choice. There's three questions. You have the debt exclusion, and you have two financial questions that we split for a reason. I'm not naive to think that every single person in this community can afford this increase. There is a calculator on the bestmedford.com people can go to and calculate what their home's worth and how much they'll have to pay. And they have to make educated decisions. But for those that can afford it, and I mean, $38 a month, it's a no-brainer to me. I ask the people that they trust in the school committee, myself, the city council to manage the budgets as best we can. along with holding people accountable and just holding our departments accountable to make sure the money is spent wisely. Of course, nothing's perfect. I'm not perfect. Nobody's perfect, but we are doing our best to manage and make sure that there's no waste in our schools or our city. We've come a very long way, and that's the reason why I have you know, put my support behind this. That's why I've agreed with the task force to go to the $7.5 million plus the debt exclusion. It's time. You know, we're going to have a new high school, hopefully, in the next five years. And we need staff in those schools. We need our mental health, especially since the pandemic, within our schools. We need those supports in our schools. And I'm thankful that, you know, you invited me on this podcast. It's just the start of me speaking out. and being candid and honest and I'm sure there's things I can do to improve and with not only the relationship with the, you know, the few fire union members and I but also just as mayor and I will continue to strive to do better but please don't let, you know, a couple people determine, you know, the future and the present of what could be. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, a couple of very loud people. So I appreciate you having the time and coming on and explaining a lot of this to us. I think also the investment folks talked to us about different ways for seniors to figure out how to make this work or get sort of help with their taxes should they go up in a way that's unaffordable for them. And also, I think your point about the new high school, is like we want to keep people here to so that they get their kids get to enjoy that high school. And so I think, you know, slowly improving and, you know, focusing on improving all these programs will help to keep people in Medford so they can keep enjoying everything that Medford will continue to become. So yeah, anything else you want to make sure that you mentioned before we wrap up?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: No, thank you both for having me today. Thank you to, I know it looks like we did a long segment, but thank you for listening, and thank you for really taking your time to research these questions, and I encourage people to vote in favor of them. I encourage them to block out the noise, especially when they listen to this podcast and do some research on their own, make an educated decision, because our future's in the taxpayer and voters' hands. appreciate everybody willing to support.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Thank you so much. This was excellent.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrick Guidonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites. Never Bites. Good job.
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