[Caraviello]: Good evening. Fourth regular meeting of the Medford City Council, January 26, 2001, 2021. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Bears? Present. Councilor Falco?
[Morell]: Present.
[Hurtubise]: Present. Present.
[Caraviello]: Present.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Scartelli.
[Caraviello]: Present.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Caraviello.
[Caraviello]: Present. Assembly members present, please rise and salute the flag.
[Falco]: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
[Caraviello]: Mr. President, I got to read the speech first.
[Marks]: Yes, please read your speech.
[Caraviello]: Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, Chapter 38, Section 18, and the Governor's March 15, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place, this meeting of the Medford City Council will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. Specific information and general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with the right and or requirements to attend this meeting can be found on the city of Medford website at www.medford.org. For this meeting, the members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we're able to do so, despite best efforts, We will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. Okay. Councilor Markswell. Motion to suspend the rules? Motion by Council Marks to suspend the rules to take the paper from the community preservation committee that we did not finish. Seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Bears.
[SPEAKER_16]: Yes.
[Hurtubise]: Councilor Falco. Yes. Vice President Knight. Yes. Councilor Marks. Yes. Councilor Morell. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. President Caraviello.
[Caraviello]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, motion passes. Public participation will be for a synopsis of the myth of the Community Preservation Committee discussion on the Thomas Brooks Master Implementation Plan Phase One. In 2019, the Method Historical Commission was awarded a $25,000 grant to develop a master plan for the Thomas Brooks Park. The master plan is now complete and the Method Historical Commission is applying for phase one of the implementation. Based on the recommendations from the landscape architect, the Method Historical Committee is proposing phase one to include, one, slave wall restoration, two, ecological dig, three, rebuild of the field stone wall on Grove Street, and edging cleanup and removal of invasive species along the field stone wall. We have Jennifer Keenan in attendance to give us a synopsis of this plan. Jennifer, are you here?
[Roberta Cameron]: Mr. President, actually, Jennifer Keenan was not able to continue into the regular council session. She had a hard stop at seven o'clock. However, we have Doug Carr, also from the Historical Commission, who can continue to answer questions about this project. He is at the phone number 781-526-7405 that's on this call, so he would need to be unmuted.
[Caraviello]: Okay, the clerk will unmute him. Mr. Carr, are you on the call? I am on the call. Name and address of the record, please.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, Doug Carr, 124 Boston Avenue, Medford. I am a member of the Medford Historical Commission.
[Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. Carr. If you could give us a brief synopsis of the Thomas Brooks Master Plan Implementation Phase Two. Sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure, Jen was the driving force behind this, but the entire historic commission was behind it as well. As you alluded to earlier, we had a $25,000 grant due to a master plan to look at the entire fossil land. And from that, we took the three most important and prominent items, and that is the restoration of the slave wall. and the Grove Street Stonewall and the archeological dig for what was the Thomas Brooks house that was previously there before the... before the premier arena was built many, many years ago. So those are the three items, adding up to $300,000. Obviously, this will be publicly bid, as all projects like this would be. And we got those numbers from our landscape architect, and we had stonewall numbers from the end belt stonewall project that this council approved a couple of years ago. So those are pretty accurate numbers in terms of the bidding.
[Knight]: Mr. President? Any questions? Would the gentleman be so kind, Mr. President, to explain to us how much of that $300,000 is for the architectural dig services?
[SPEAKER_04]: The breakdown of the 300,000 is 50,000 for the restoration of the grave wall, 50,000 for the archeological dig, and 200,000 for the stone wall, which is quite long. I don't have the exact length, but it's very long. It's at least 1,000 feet. And we have a unit pricing that's fresh from that that we've used on the other parts of the state right down the road to justify those numbers.
[Knight]: Mr. President, the other question I do have is, is there any documentation that the council can review concerning the parcel that was on that property? It's my understanding that there was a home that might've been located there and that there was a consultant that was hired that did some type of review or study and reported that there of the opinion there may be artifacts there, and I'm wondering if the council can get a report, take a look at the report at some point in time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely. Yeah, we have historic drawings of that house that was there until it was torn down before the Thomas Cook Park land was donated to the city of Medford as a public park in the early part of the 20th century, so we could provide that information to the council. Absolutely, Councilman Wright.
[Knight]: And Mr. President, through you to the gentleman, when they talk about artifacts, what type of artifacts would come out of a location like this? I believe it was the Brooks setup, that was like vacation homes for the Brooks family, if I'm not mistaken. What type of artifacts would you expect to find or consider finding if you did such type work?