[Roberta Cameron]: All right, I'm going to call to meeting the order of the Medford Community Preservation Committee. It is Tuesday, December 10th, 6.30 p.m., and we are meeting hybridly. Some of us are in room 201 at Medford City Hall, and some of us are on Zoom right now. And so the first order on the agenda tonight is an application presentation for the city council chamber window restoration. You all recall that last month we learned that the city was going to be swapping out the bathrooms restoration for city council chamber windows. And so we have with us this evening, Paul Rieke, and I would like to invite you to tell us more about the city council chamber windows.
[Paul Righi]: Sure. It was brought to my attention by my outside window vendor when I asked them to come in to do a few window pane replacements for cracked glass that the council chamber's windows were starting to fail. They took some pictures for me, which showed that the wood framing around the windows had started deteriorating in spots. And that if that was not addressed, we could run into serious issues with the windows failing. And when I mean failing, meaning basically falling out of their frames. I know I sent some pictures over. I'm sure Teresa shared them with the committee. That is just a sample of what the window framing looks like around all the windows in the council chambers. Further delving into the issue, it was found that the best course of action would be to do an entire replacement of the windows to bring them back to the condition that they were when they were first installed in the council chambers. So we did a request for proposals. With that request for proposals, it was made very clear to vendors that we would not allow anything else in the Council Chambers but historically accurate windows of the time period of when the Council Chambers and City Hall was built. We arrived at one vendor who was able to meet that need, a general contractor who is working with Old Bostonian Window, who is a vendor who specializes in restoration of Um, historic windows, they do work at Faneuil Hall, restoring those windows to accurate conditions, and they best fit the need for what we need to do at council chambers. City Hall serves a very historic nature for the city of Medford, and we need to keep those windows in the period of when the building was built. And by doing this, we will give life back to those windows, and we know that they will last years and years once this is done.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Teresa just shared with us the photos, and they do look alarming. So I really appreciate that you are on top of getting this work done and working with a contractor who specializes in historic preservation. So really applaud that work. Are there questions from committee members?
[Doug Carr]: Not so much a question. First of all, I agree with everything Roberta just said. You did the right thing. You got the right contractor. purchased some restored windows from Old Bostonia. They'll take anything that can be fixed and make it a functioning window. You're in good hands there, Mr. Riggs. I appreciate that. I think the only thing I'm looking for, and we don't need it to approve this tonight, is I'm really looking for before and after photos of all the windows so that there's proper documentation so that we actually have a clean record of not just a detail. This detail is important to understand, but I think just a photograph, of maybe a few of each window before they're removed and then when they come back so people can understand what they pay for. It's a lot of money per window. It has to be that way given the scale of these windows. That'd be my primary concern. The only other question I actually had was about storm windows, interior or exterior. Is there any thought to that? This is a single pane window, right?
[Paul Righi]: There are already storm windows on them, and I think our plan is to try to restore them, leaving the current storm windows that are there make them more functional. Someone down the line did add storm windows to. those windows so we would try to keep it as weather-tight as possible also while we did this. I believe, Doug, to answer your question, I think part of the cataloging they are doing will be photographic evidence of the windows, but I can make sure that they do that. As part of the process as they're replacing these windows, because I agree it is very important that if someone does ask why was this money expensed that we can show them the photographic evidence of the need and how the need was met. I agree and.
[Doug Carr]: I guess when you take them out, you're going to leave the storms in, but are you putting temporary plywood or something inside?
[Paul Righi]: What's going to happen is it's going to be done in two phases. So if you see four windows, five windows, phase one, phase two, they also will be doing them on opposite sides. So at no time will all the windows say on the left side of the council chambers be removed so we have light. Their plan is to make sure that plywood and necessary any kind of weatherproofing is put into the openings so that while they're doing the work, weather cannot go into the council chambers and cause any damage inside the council chambers.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. That's perfect. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you very much. And I see a question from Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: Yeah, so these are questions. I think this makes a lot of sense. The first is, obviously, you can't know exactly, but how long do you expect this to take? Are we talking like a three-month process, six-month, two-year? What's our kind of general ballpark?
[Paul Righi]: I got the impression that I think it may be six months or longer. I never really delved into the time frame because I'm under the mindset is they need to take as long as it takes to do this properly. So I kind of did not give them, I need it done by June. I'm relying on them. to tell me once they really get these windows back to their shop how long it's going to take, you know, because you can't really tell until they actually start delving into each window how long that window is going to take to restore. So I didn't want to pigeonhole them into, you know, give me, you know, give me a firm deadline. I, my gut is probably at least six months, but it may take longer. Um, I hope it would be faster, but I want them done properly. So I want them to take their time and, you know, be very diligent as they renovate and rehab and bring these windows back.
[Ari Fishman]: Absolutely. And it was, uh, I just, uh, I think the public, in case anyone asks, I think it's helpful to have a sense of scale for the project. My second question may be for you or maybe for Teresa or Roberta, is City Hall officially designated as a historic building? And if not, should we require that be added?
[Theresa Dupont]: It has been deemed historically significant by our local historical commission. Part of What we're trying to do whenever we fund specifically historic preservation projects on city owned properties is we're pursuing placing them either in a local historic district. A preservation restriction would be nice, but right now we do have a letter of historically significance, historical significance from the historical commission and a condition of this funding would be to pursue putting this building on a local historic district. Does that answer your question? Sure does. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_12]: Doug?
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, just a follow-up comment on the scheduling, Mr. Riggi. My experience with contractors is if you If you don't give them a deadline, you'll never get anything, because they'll always be too busy. So I think they owe you something. To me, this feels like between three and five months, reasonably. I mean, that's actually like two weeks per window, roughly. I mean, obviously, everyone's busy. There's a backlog. But they owe you something. It can't be this open-ended.
[Paul Righi]: I meant by not pigeonholing them saying I need them by this date. Of course, if they tell me two years, you'd probably see me jumping on my head, going crazy, not accepting that. But I don't want to put some pressure on them. You know, you know, I've never taken on something this massive, you know, and so I want to make sure, you know, once we do award this contract, of course, I'll have further discussions with them. So we can. get more to a meet of a schedule because I'm going to have to work with city council to make sure that the schedule, that they're aware that this is happening, that they know what to expect. when they come into a council room and how long that's going. I don't want to surprise the city council. So yeah, there's going to be a deadline, a schedule. But what I was referring to is I don't want to dictate that. I want to work with them. And that's why I was saying six months. I think six months is a fair enough schedule to do this. gives them ample opportunity. And my feeling is, is as they do four, when they're ready to install, the other five are coming out and they're doing the other five. They're not going to bop off to another project or another town. They're going to commit to doing hours. So, you know, we're not, you know, like some contractors like to do, they like to do part of the work, leave, and then you're wondering where they are and they suddenly come back. No, when they start this project, my thing is nine windows are completed once at the end, not four. They need to do nine.
[Roberta Cameron]: I wonder if it could be helpful if we were to put a condition in a recommendation to say that It kind of a soft requirement that you can use to put leverage on the timeline for the project to say that the project has to be completed within a year, or we'll ask you to come back and talk to us, give us an update about the project and the intention would just be to. enable you to use leverage to make sure that the contractor is meeting the timeline.
[Paul Righi]: That isn't a problem. I'm dealing with many different pots of money that have different deadlines of when I have to expense them. I usually give vendors a deadline that's before when that money has to be expensed, just in case something's running late.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thanks and I see a question from Joe.
[Joan Cyr]: Yeah, I was just wondering what's their timeline in terms of their work schedule right now? Are they busy? Would they say we can start right away or would they start 3 months or they keep reaching out to me wondering what's going on.
[Paul Righi]: So that's a good. They haven't forgotten about me and I told them that this meeting was coming up. So I'm sure I'll hear from them very shortly. So they, we've been keeping in touch with each other. I've met with them on site. So I know they're ready to go. I'll get a better sense if we do sign a contract of what their time frame is to start and that, of course, as this project progresses, I'll always keep Teresa informed so she can keep the committee informed of what the schedule is and what the time frame is. Because if anybody wants to come and see what's happening, they're more than welcome to come see what's happening also.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thanks. Um, the timeline for this grant being final would be sometime in January, because we're waiting for a city council to approve that. Yeah.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, that's not a problem.
[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you. Any other questions from committee members?
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, well, thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Riggi, for coming and presenting this to us this evening. This is just, I want to acknowledge that this is a very clear cut and dry project that has been much easier for all of us to wrap our heads around. So I appreciate that and look forward to being able to work with you.
[Paul Righi]: Yeah, I'm glad the mayor suggested this. This seems like a much better fit. And we're much further along in this process. And I think it's something that dovetails perfectly with the committee and the funding. So I think it's a win for everybody.
[Ada Gunning]: Agreed.
[Paul Righi]: Thank you, everybody. I appreciate it.
[Ada Gunning]: Thank you. Thank you.
[Paul Righi]: Have a great night. Bye. You too. Bye.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay. All right. Well, yes, let's introduce we have a new committee member with us this evening. Excited to are we do we have a full committee now?
[Theresa Dupont]: We still need a com com representative. I've almost worn somebody down.
[Roberta Cameron]: But my Asia, welcome. And do you want to introduce yourself to the committee and we can all actually introduce ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, thank you. Can you hear me? Okay, I have my headphones on. Okay, awesome. As you can see, I'm unfortunately still at the office. I was texting Teresa about that before. Hopefully, I really want to make an in-person meeting next month, so fingers crossed. But yeah, my name is Mayesha. I am currently working at a Solar Developer in the financing space. So I raise tax equity and debt for solar projects. A lot of them are in Massachusetts, that's really cool, but around the New England area in general. I've lived in Medford for a little over seven years now, so love living here, want to give back in some way, just get more involved. So thank you for letting me be a part of this, and I'm glad I finally got sworn in on Friday, it was very exciting. And City Hall looks really nice right now, so if you haven't been there with all the Christmas decorations, I highly recommend.
[Theresa Dupont]: You should just leave them up while you're around.
[Roberta Cameron]: And we've met before, Roberta, and I'll talk with you again at a later time. But let's go around the rest of the committee members. Joan.
[Joan Cyr]: Hi, I'm Aisha Jones-Sear, been on the committee since the committee got formed. I'm in North Medford, so up near Malden and the Fells. By day, I work at Northeastern University as a Director of Research Operations and Systems. Welcome to the committee and I too wanted to sort of give back and have a voice really in what was going on around me. So welcome, looking forward to working with you. I'm going to call on... Doug, you're next in line on my view.
[Doug Carr]: And by night, Joan obviously travels to northern Canada with the northern lights behind her. Isn't it beautiful?
[Unidentified]: It's amazing.
[Doug Carr]: It is amazing. I didn't know we saw that. Doug Carr, I'm wearing the Medford Historic Commission hat, although I wear many hats in Medford because I'm deeply involved in a bunch of stuff, mostly the Brooks Estate that I've worked on for about 25 or so years as a nonprofit, as we do with the city, which recently this committee has been very generous to over the years. In fact, this is the first round. We haven't actually asked for any money as a group. And I recuse myself when we talk about the Brooks Estate's voting, obviously. But yeah, this is a really strong committee. This committee has really been very active and it's one of my favorite jobs in Medford is to give away two plus million dollars every year to worthy projects and make sure that they're done well. We're establishing a pretty good track record and this group has been really thoughtful and deliberate and transparent about everything we do. Welcome to the committee.
[SPEAKER_12]: Thank you. Kayleigh?
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: Hi, my name is Kayleen. I am the housing authority representative on this board. I've been on it for a little over a year. I live over in West Medford, right across from the Brooks Estate. And by day I am the director of the Lexington Housing Authority. So yeah, that's about it.
[SPEAKER_12]: All right.
[Ari Fishman]: Great, thank you. Welcome to the committee. I'm Ari Fishman. They, them pronouns, please. I'm the representative from the Community Development Board, which is one of our two zoning boards, and I got a very exciting letter of we're being sued by a very mad applicant who we turned down. He threatened to do it. He's the first one who threatened in my two years there that followed through, so that's very exciting. I live near Medford Square. And by day, I am a research librarian at a semiconductor engineering company. And before that, I was the librarian for the urban planning department at Tufts.
[Ada Gunning]: And we have in the room with us. Hi, I'm the other mayoral appointee, and I just started maybe like three or four months ago, something like that. So I'm also pretty brand new. And I'm also here because I love being involved and knowing what's up in my town. I've also been here for about seven years, eight years, going on eight years. And that's pretty much it. By day, I'm a therapist. By night, just involved in activism and stuff.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. So just a little procedural comment. As you are probably aware, tonight is sort of the culmination of our year's work. And we have a slate of projects that we are about to vote on whether to recommend funding. And we've actually even had a lot of discussion about these projects at our previous meetings. So I don't know if you've had the opportunity to review recordings of previous meetings or not. So you're fully sworn in. You have a vote, but if you feel more comfortable abstaining when we vote, that's understood. It's really up to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sounds great. Teresa is really helpful with the good summary this morning, but I was able to get through some of the videos and materials while I was at work. So it's really a lot of really awesome applications, so it's great to see it's getting put to good use. Thank you.
[Theresa Dupont]: And did you have another comment, Jen?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, I don't know, somehow I thought I saw it out of the corner of my eye.
[Joan Cyr]: You probably heard my mind thinking back at, you know, our first time voting when we had the Andre, you know, vote of approval for all.
[Roberta Cameron]: So yeah, that Jonah's referring to, we had a member of our very first iteration of the committee who had a principle that we should spend as little time discussing things as necessary and that we should just have a vote at the beginning saying, do I recommend all of these projects? Yes. And then we're not going to be quite that different than your style. We never quite managed to meet that scale of efficiency, but we will. Yeah, we do our best to be efficient yet to also give everything the time that it needs to make a good decision. So I'm going to go through each of the projects in the order that they appear on the spreadsheet that Teresa shared in the meeting packet this evening. Go ahead. And the first on the list is the Riverside Plaza Shade Structure Improvement. Which we've already voted on last time. We voted on the last time. Yes. OK. So we awarded 144 to 5-0. That's all right. Theresa knows that I like pencils, and so she puts them next to me. She is so, so. And I put a spare, just in case 1.5.
[Theresa Dupont]: For the rest of the committee, would it be helpful if I shared the financial spreadsheet that had that high level? I got a hearty thumbs up.
[Roberta Cameron]: And it will also be helpful for you to pull up the recommendation letters for each one that we talk about as well. So I don't want to.
[Theresa Dupont]: Well, I'll just share this, and then I can toggle between them. OK. You know, we've done this. What, a year and a half now, I'm still figuring out how to share multiple screens for people virtually as well as in the room. So bear with me. It feels like it never works the same way twice.
[Ada Gunning]: Well, the good thing is we have physical copies though.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah.
[Ada Gunning]: You don't need to see it on the screen.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, that's true. Are folks seeing the spreadsheet with the different colors? Excellent. Okay. Great. Cool. All right.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. So we've already awarded the funding for the first one. So the second one is the car park renovation phase two tranche, which is a request for $146,000. And all of these, but one we identified at our last meeting that we felt strongly they merited the high priority for funding. Uh, 1 of them, we felt maybe needed a little bit further discussion. We were questioning, but we'll come to that later. All right. So we're looking at the screen right now is the recommendation letter for the car park phase 2 project. And we have no conditions attached to this. Given that this is the third time that we're providing funding for the car park, we've probably already covered all of the conditions that are needed for the car park project. Yeah. So does anyone want to make a motion to recommend funding for the car park phase two? Motion to recommend funding.
[Joan Cyr]: I'll go right ahead.
[Ada Gunning]: I'll second. Motion to recommend funding.
[Roberta Cameron]: And second from Joan. And I will call the roll. And I'm sorry, I didn't say it exactly correctly when I defined that motion that you all made and seconded. It was to fund car park phase two to be awarded $146,000. So I want to make sure that that doesn't fall through the cracks. So I am going to call the roll. Doug?
[Doug Carr]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan? Yes. Ada?
[Ada Gunning]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Ari? Yes. Kaylene? Yes. And Myesha? Yes. And Roberta? And myself, yes. Thank you. And so that one passes unanimously. Moving on to the second one, which is the Condon Shell Lighting Improvements. And I appreciate that they submitted a memorandum addressing the concerns that I raised about the The use of the expanding the use of the park into later hours. So, I am. I'm satisfied with that. I don't feel that we need to make any conditions related to that. I don't want to call it out any more than it is, but I feel like we've just address that. That concern, so we're going to pull up the. Conditions of approval, no conditions are suggested for this. So does anyone feel that there ought to be any conditions? Okay. So would someone like to make a motion to award 98,285 for the electrical improvements at Condon Shelfield?
[Unidentified]: Go ahead. Come on, Doug.
[Doug Carr]: I will make a motion. So moved.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. Second. All right. And I will call the roll. Doug?
[Doug Carr]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_12]: Joan? Yes. Ada? Yeah. Ari? Yes. Haylene? Yes. Maisha? Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: And myself, yes. All right. The next project is Playstead Park Tennis Courts reconstruction. And the amount requested is $526,000. And this was one that we had not quite reached a consensus about. an option if we were ready to just recommend the funding as requested, or if we'd like to hold off on this one until after we look at all of the other projects. Any of you have a suggestion for how we'd like to handle this?
[Doug Carr]: Joe, remind me of the hesitation last time. I don't remember the details.
[Roberta Cameron]: I think that the hesitation last time was just because of the size, the amount of the budget, the size of the area that they're going to be replacing the field for. And maybe a question about how often do they have to replace tennis courts for a sum of $500,000?
[Ada Gunning]: My, my sense from our last discussion was that we didn't like how much it costs, but we basically were like, yes, this needs to happen. Um, or at least that was my takeaway. And it's not like replacing another, it's not like another project is not going to happen because of this one. So if it were me, I would say we could, we should go ahead and vote, but that's just me.
[Joan Cyr]: Yeah, I think there's three tennis courts over there, right? And they are also striped for pickleball. Is that correct?
[Theresa Dupont]: They will be, yes. I think they currently are, and they will continue to be.
[Joan Cyr]: Yeah, I think, I don't know, I got the sense that, I believe, Ari, didn't you say that these courts were used a lot for some tournaments or
[Ari Fishman]: That was not me.
[Theresa Dupont]: And I think Reg shared that the U.S. Penis Association rents them out every Saturday. And we were hoping that there was a fee associated with that permit and that we're charging them accordingly to recoup some revenue was the discussion.
[Doug Carr]: I hope the fee went up.
[Theresa Dupont]: I wish Reg was here. Red was under the weather today, but he staffs the parks commission. He's actually the chairperson. So they can help dictate that pricing structure, but just sharing that those were the concerns.
[Joan Cyr]: I think that I had was that I had heard from some constituents that, you know, it was almost like a territorial thing with the tennis players over there and that the pickleball players felt sort of pushed aside. So I don't know if there's anything that we can, I mean, clearly we're going to say in the conditions that it gets stripped, striped for pickleball, but I don't know if the rec department has any plans similar to what I think they have in the plan for the car park pickleball courts for some sort of sign up or registration to use so that there's no issues around use of the courts.
[Theresa Dupont]: Do we want to make that a condition that they would seek partnership? The DPW is the applicant here, but recreation would be the one that executes and plans the usage of the programming that's on it. I'm sorry, I see that you have your hand raised, Ari. But we could make that a condition somehow, like DPW to partner with recreation on.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's a good question. I'm going to chew on that in my brain while I hear Ari's question or comment.
[Ari Fishman]: So I was jumping in. I think the way I remembered our last conversation is that we were startled at the cost, but that it was explained adequately by DPW and that this is the main tennis section for the city that it's used constantly. I am open to the idea of adding in a condition to work with the recreation to create a system, they kind of have to do that anyway. From what I know about pickleball and tennis is right now they're very confrontational towards each other. And I don't know that I want to get involved, but someone should manage that and that person should not be me.
[Joan Cyr]: I think the other issue we brought up was that when we looked at the pictures they showed us, it didn't look like it was in that bad of shape. I mean, we've seen courts that were really worse. So that was the other issue.
[Ada Gunning]: I think to Ari's point about setting the condition, maybe it would be helpful to just talk to the departments that are involved before we create our own condition, just because they're the ones that are dealing with that, I get their guidance on what would be an appropriate thing to put in here. I agree with that.
[Roberta Cameron]: I feel as though I don't want to be overly prescriptive. I mean, it's fun to use the leverage of money to tell people what to do, but I think we have to be used that judiciously. Using it to leverage one department to talk to another department, I think, feels like an overreach. I really appreciated how the recreation department addressed our concerns with the memorandum. And it was very helpful that we used the application process to ask for that to be addressed. And here we are about to make a recommendation. So we don't have that leverage anymore. And it is unfortunate that we don't have Reggie here this evening who could be the messenger for this, but maybe it's just some feedback that we can give off the record that we'd really like to. So I do agree perhaps with Joan's suggestion for a condition to striped. We recommend that it be striped for pickleball. I'm not sure that it currently is.
[Joan Cyr]: I think they put up temporary nets or something, but I don't know. I don't remember. It might be a temporary thing.
[Ari Fishman]: I do remember that they use that for high school tennis and there are some regulations around that, but I don't think that precludes having multiple striping so long as the tennis striping follows whatever high school regulations. Someone's going to need to fact check me on that though.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, again,
[Joan Cyr]: Well, maybe just by putting the condition of striping of such a pickleball is going to be enough of a suggestion. It will be pickleball.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, that's true. OK. Yeah. So maybe, you know, in this case, because it's DPW who made the request, just a physical condition is sufficient. And then hopefully Reggie can also I don't know, use this information and Teresa can use this discussion to suggest further conversations offline.
[Ada Gunning]: Might be good to talk to them about the exact wording because the striping violates whatever the standards have to be met by the high school tenants, whatever. You know what I mean? Yes, I'm sure. Like if there isn't current striping, maybe there's a reason that there's temporary net but not striping.
[Ari Fishman]: My guess is that it's old, because I'm thinking of basketball courts in high school gyms are used for official games, but also have striping for everything under the sun. And I know there's different sports associations, but.
[Ada Gunning]: Yeah. I guess, yeah. It would be good to not put something in our formal approval that is going to somehow undermine our ability to fund it. Yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: What I mean, in that sentence, with as appropriate. Right, yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Right, yeah. Yeah, I think that Duggar was the first park that we had that had pickleball striping. So this park is older than Duggar. And courts is singular.
[Joan Cyr]: There are three courts.
[Unidentified]: Thanks. That's good.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay. So, with that, I would ask if there's a motion to recommend that. $526,000 be awarded for the resurfacing of Placed In Park tennis courts with the conditions that the DPW provide an annual maintenance plan to the CPC and that the DPW will ensure that the courts have sufficient paint striping for pickleball usage as appropriate.
[SPEAKER_01]: So moved. Second, this is my new kitten.
[Joan Cyr]: Yay, look at that! What's the kitten's name? Mystic. Mystic, what do you hold? There you go. Mystic holds meow.
[Theresa Dupont]: Can I make that meow here? All right, so I'm going to call the roll. Doug?
[Paul Righi]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan? Yes. Ada? Yes. Ari? Yes. Kaylene? Yes. Myesha? Yes. And myself, yes.
[Ari Fishman]: And I know this is past the point, but I do want to clarify that I probably would have been asking more questions if we didn't have enough money to fund everything this year. But since we do, it seems like a lovely chance to actually do suggested maintenance when it's supposed to be done instead of letting it get worse.
[Ada Gunning]: That's exactly how I feel about it.
[Ari Fishman]: Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Great. All right, thank you. So the next project is for the Unitarian Universalist Church, and it is for the exterior siding restoration of their property.
[Unidentified]: And we'll see the...
[Roberta Cameron]: We can come back to that one, I'm sorry. Yeah, we can come back to that one.
[Theresa Dupont]: Sorry, I didn't catch that. Obviously, I didn't do it.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, so we're going to skip to the next one, which is the City Hall Council Chambers window restoration.
[Theresa Dupont]: Pull that one up over here while I'm on the other side frantically.
[Unidentified]: It'll be out in the future.
[Theresa Dupont]: All right.
[Roberta Cameron]: Talk amongst yourselves. OK. So any discussion about the presentation that we've just heard?
[Ada Gunning]: Seems very straightforward to me.
[Ari Fishman]: I appreciate that it was actually a clear plan and presentation, unlike the previous version.
[Ada Gunning]: I also liked the hard quote versus the soft quotes.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: I think he promised to do documentation before and after. I think we should probably just put that in there and make sure that it's done.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Doug Carr]: Photographic documentation before and after for each window. He was going to write it into the scope. I don't think it's going to add any money to the project, but it's important for the historical record, especially of a building that is going to be slowly but surely renovated over the next few decades as it, as piece by piece, it just becomes functionally obsolete.
[Ada Gunning]: Who's responsible for following up and trying to get City Hall in a historical district?
[Roberta Cameron]: That's a great question. I've been offline trying to encourage a conversation about getting several historic, several, basically all of our past historic projects that aren't already either in a historic district or preservation restriction to have, to be put into historic districts. and or have preservation restrictions. The historic districts require coordination with our local historic district commission. And that has been somewhat not fully functional for several months as they've been having a lot of turnover on the board. That's not the one Doug's on. That's not the one Doug's on. Confusingly, we have two districts that have similar names, different functions. The Historic District Commission has the responsibility to oversee local historic districts. So we've been waiting for the opportunity to work with the Historic District Commission. I would love to see them create a local historic district that covers all of the city properties that we've funded so far and you know, just for good measure, the Shiloh Baptist Church, and I'm trying to think if there are any other, I think that's the only privately owned property that's not already under a preservation restriction that we've, oh, and the, well, that's one of the city buildings, the ICCM. I think they're, although I think that they're in a local historic district, so they do have some protection already. But I think Shiloh is the only one that has no protection right now that we're trying to get some permanent protection for. So and that's really a matter we have been working on both routes of local historic district and preservation restriction. And it just has taken time to get all of the legal work and planning in order to be able to make that happen. So some some conditions that are drafted for um, the City Hall chamber windows restoration are that the City of Medford must seek to designate City Hall and a local historic district we were just talking about. And, um, Teresa's already added the suggested, um, recommendation from our discussion earlier that should the project extend beyond January 1, 2026, The Facilities Department shall present at the February 2026 CPC meeting to give an update on timeline for completion. And then as Doug has just suggested, the Facilities Department shall provide before and after photographs of the window restoration work. Any tweaks to any of these?
[Doug Carr]: Just one, I think seek is too weak. They could send a letter to the historic district commission and it could not be answered in five years and they've seeked the district, but they need to actually get one done. We don't need to put a date on it, but they need to have them actually do it, not just talk about it.
[Ari Fishman]: How about apply for, because actually getting it is not.
[SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Apply for is with who, though? The district commission? Yeah. To me, that's not different. I'll get your point, though.
[Roberta Cameron]: Must make an effort to designate because it's possible. It does require a city council approval to place it in the district. it could happen that they don't get the city council approval. We're not going to make the city pay the CPC back for that.
[Doug Carr]: It's not meant to be like the funding is taken away if you don't get a local historic district, but I just don't, if we don't- That's implied by condition though, I think.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, that's why we're making it a condition, but with a soft condition, not a hard condition.
[Ari Fishman]: How about must make substantial efforts? I think that kind of does the like, we really mean it, but like, we don't actually want to write something where they fail and then we have to call our bluff and be like, yeah, you didn't do it, but we're not actually going to do anything about it.
[Joan Cyr]: I like it.
[Ari Fishman]: I realize it is up for interpretation, but it is up for less interpretation than efforts, which.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Ari Fishman]: Yeah.
[Ada Gunning]: I didn't hear you.
[Joan Cyr]: I was apologizing for my snark. You're going to be the one to make a motion.
[Roberta Cameron]: I also wanted to suggest for number three, did you want to be more detailed about that, Doug?
[Doug Carr]: I'd say you'd want overall and details. They show details of one window or maybe two tonight. That was good to show the condition, but you need to see the whole window before and after, and maybe a few close details. It's a mix of overall and detailed photographs so that we can sense- Of each window. Of each window.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, basically, I think that's what we want to say to her so that, um, the facilities department shall provide before and after photographs of. The window of restoration work for each window. Showing overall and detail.
[Doug Carr]: I mean, uh, Teresa, isn't that just part of their final report? That's what they said is, but, you know, but we want that in there. I agree.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right.
[Ari Fishman]: Do we need to put anything in about the work shall not impede the function of city hall and city council? I know that's implied, but that seems like the sort of thing that we definitely want to be true. Unnecessarily. Okay. Oh, you were saying that she'll not unnecessarily impede.
[Doug Carr]: She didn't mean your comment.
[Ari Fishman]: It's not necessary to say. Got it. No, I don't mean your comment.
[Joan Cyr]: I mean she'll not unnecessarily impede.
[Doug Carr]: I think the city council would have something to say about that. It's their room. They're going to have a lot to say about when this happens and how it happens. I actually don't think we need to.
[Theresa Dupont]: The good thing is the work is done off-site. They're going to take the old windows out half a minute at a time and then put up Presumably, I think old Bostonian has trademarked a plywood that they painted a faux window on. So I think that the restoration work itself shouldn't really impede the two hours that city council is in there.
[Roberta Cameron]: They should paint an exterior view on the inside of the window.
[Ada Gunning]: We want to improve the funding if you don't make it pretty. Yeah, I think that it's probably
[Roberta Cameron]: I get the impression that they're working on making sure, like working around city council as it is.
[Theresa Dupont]: It's helpful that they only meet every other week. They do have subcommittee meetings that they can, we'll be able to work around it.
[Roberta Cameron]: Um, but that reminded me of something else. I can't think of it. So, um, yeah. I think we're ready to make a motion. Does somebody want to make a motion?
[Ari Fishman]: I make a motion.
[Roberta Cameron]: I second that. Okay, and the motion is to award $322,500 for the City Hall Council Chambers Window Restoration Project with the conditions of approval that the City of Medford will make substantial efforts to designate City Hall at a local historic district. Should the project extend beyond January 1, 2026, the Facilities Department shall present at the February 2026 CPC meeting to give an update on the timeline of completion. And the facilities department shall provide before and after photographs of the window restoration work for each window demonstrating overall and detailed restoration. So understood. And I will call the roll. Doug?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan?
[SPEAKER_12]: Yes. Ada? Yes. Ari? Yes. Kaylene? Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Maisha? Yes. And myself, yes. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you all. We do have the Unitarian Universalist. All right, let's go back to that.
[Theresa Dupont]: All right. So just to show the overview here.
[Roberta Cameron]: uh yes 99 000 and it was a one on the prioritization great so um Unitarian Universalist Church this is for exterior restoration siding of their building And the conditions of approval are that the arrest rehabilitation shall comply with standards for rehabilitation stated in the U.S. Secretary of Interior Standards for Treatment of Historic Properties codified in 3060FR part 68. That is very specific. Per Kaplan versus Town of Acton, no CPA funds shall be used to restore any building features with religious imagery. And a preservation restriction shall be placed on the property is this building in his local historic district.
[Theresa Dupont]: I think this one just is on the outskirts of it, because the Osgoode house is not in.
[Roberta Cameron]: A local historic district, I think, just right on the border so that's another one that should be. So, when we get around to making local historic districts with all of the projects that we funded, that would be 1 to place in it.
[Joan Cyr]: Is there already a reservation restriction on this property from when we did the door?
[Roberta Cameron]: No. So first, we haven't actually gotten preservation restrictions yet. One of the reasons it's taken so long for the Shiloh and ICCM is because it's in untested territory. We haven't done it before, so it takes a long time. Um, and we didn't ask them for it with the door project because it was such a small project. Likewise, the, the Episcopal church across the street was also such a small project, but.
[Theresa Dupont]: And the Osgoode house has a restriction on it. So for the funding that CPA put in towards that building in the past, that's already has a protection in place.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. So, um, that's why we haven't had it. up to now, but for a large grant like this, and especially when we've had multiple grants on the same building, I think we should be making that requirement. Would anyone like to make a motion to make the recommendation as we've just discussed? Motion to approve.
[Theresa Dupont]: for the project of the Unitarian Church.
[Unidentified]: All right.
[Theresa Dupont]: Second?
[Roberta Cameron]: Second. All right. And then I will call the roll. Doug?
[Doug Carr]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan? Yes. Ada? Yes. Ari? Yes. Kaylene?
[SPEAKER_12]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Myesha? Yes. And myself, yes. It's approved unanimously. And we'll move on to the next one. We have a lot of projects on our list. Randall, the Heckner Center, we're going to hold off until next week, although we should talk about that a little bit. But we'll come back and talk about the Heckner Center after we get through the projects that we're going to make recommendations for. Oak Grove Cemetery building restoration. All right, so the request is for $85,000 to complete the planning for the Oak Grove Cemetery, the building restoration project at Oak Grove Cemetery. And the conditions so far are that all work completed must comply with the Secretary of Interior standards for the treatment of historic properties and that the City of Medford should make substantial efforts to place Oak Grove in.
[Theresa Dupont]: I want to just let you finish reading before I launch editing, but yes.
[Doug Carr]: I'm going to put some money that three years from now, none of these people have a local historic district on their building.
[Theresa Dupont]: I'll take any impact on this thing.
[Doug Carr]: No deadline, no results. That's just the way it is with life.
[Roberta Cameron]: At some point, I think, you know, like I don't know.
[Theresa Dupont]: I'm hopeful with the new commission coming in. You know, it's a directive for me to help push this forward. So I really hope it's not three years stuck.
[Roberta Cameron]: Behind the scenes, Teresa is also becoming kind of the go-to resource person in City Hall to talk about in-store preservation. So Teresa probably has some influence over putting it on their agenda.
[Ada Gunning]: That's a nice way of putting it, yeah. It's just hard to put a condition when we don't have control over it.
[Theresa Dupont]: We're voting on Elk Grove right now. You don't even need it. No, we don't. Sorry. But you can watch if you wanted.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'm going to get a kid on the wall. Yeah, go ahead.
[Theresa Dupont]: Sorry, the DPW commissioners poked his head in for a second as we're talking about his project.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. All right. Um, any other tweaks that we want to make to these conditions? Um, would anyone like to make a motion to recommend funding $85,000 for Oak Grove Cemetery?
[Joan Cyr]: I'll make that motion.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. Second. I heard Anna first. And I will call the roll. Doug?
[Doug Carr]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan? Yes. Ada? Yes. Ari? Yes. Kaylene? Yes. Myesha? Yes. And myself, yes. That one passes. Then the next is Shiloh Baptist Church, ADA improvements.
[Unidentified]: give you a moment to bring that on the screen. I'm just kind of bouncing between that financial spreadsheet.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, so the suggested conditions that we have drafted are that the rehabilitation shall comply with the standards for rehabilitation and Secretary of Interior standards. Per Kaplan versus the Town of Acton, no CPA funds shall be used to restore any building features with religious imagery and a preservation restriction shall be placed on the property. So this is, I think, just a repeat of the conditions that were used in previous grants that were given to Shiloh. And are there any other, this is, it's been a while since we talked about this project. We had the presentation back in, I think, September. So any discussion or suggestions for this project?
[Joan Cyr]: I don't think we had any objections to it. I think they came in off cycle, and we didn't feel it was appropriate to be off cycle. So we asked them to submit during the cycle. But I don't believe we had any objections to the project itself.
[Unidentified]: All right.
[Roberta Cameron]: Would anyone like to make a motion to recommend $400,000 for the Shiloh Baptist Church Preservation Project?
[Ari Fishman]: I so move.
[Roberta Cameron]: And second? Second. Ada seconded, then I will call the roll. Doug?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan? Yes. Ada? Yes. Ari? Yes. Kaylene? Yes. Myesha? Yes. And myself, yes.
[Doug Carr]: I'm hoping that there's future Shiloh Baptist Church grants, because that building still needs to do the work at the bottom.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, yes it does. I believe that we will be pursuing, there's a lovely, wonderful, tailor-made grant program that is the Preservation of Historic Black Churches, I believe is the grant program name. They will be applying for that this year.
[Unidentified]: That's great, thank you.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, we're trying to find other, as you know, historic preservation grant money. And did they receive that grant from the state? They received a local grant from the community fund for $10,000. So it wasn't a huge amount, but hey, it had a comma in it.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. And they should also be applying for a mass historic commission grant. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: I agree. I'm sorry, Roberta, but that grant is so competitive and you never know why you got or didn't. I'm not sure it's worth the effort. We applied to InBelt for four times, we got one, never got another again, and we never knew why.
[Theresa Dupont]: It's an option, but thank you for letting me know.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, hopefully we can find them. And I would also, I would love to see and support them maybe even doing like a community campaign, GoFundMe or something for matching funds for the windows because we can't fund the sections of their windows. Most of the windows have no religious imagery, they're just geometric shapes. But the largest window panels have a few religious images in them. And it's really tough to draw the line of how much we have to stay away from those religious panels. especially on the windows that most urgently need the work. So it would be great to help them with a community fundraiser to raise some not public funds. And they have actually set up an account that we have posters that we can put up. They've set up an account where they can receive funds directly to a fund just to preserve their windows right but we haven't done they haven't done much with it and um beef up some outreach yeah so would love to get some ideas about how to help them raise some private money not public money to help with their project too so moving on the medford affordable housing trust 250 000 um to basically cede money to begin getting the Affordable Housing Trust off the ground. The suggested conditions in our draft are that the Affordable Housing Trust will submit quarterly reporting to the CPC that outlines how CPA funding will be allocated. and that expenditures must be reviewed for compliance by the Community Preservation Act manager prior to commitment. I definitely agree with the second one. The first one, I wonder whether annual reporting would be sufficient because I don't know, especially in the beginning, how frequently the trust is going to be being able to have anything to report.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yes. Yes. Okay.
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I was thinking the same. It might feel burdensome in the beginning. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Haley, this is your area of expertise. Do you have faith in the housing trust? Do you know these folks? Do you feel positive about the people on there and the direction they're going?
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: I actually have no idea who's on the housing trust. Well, I mean, the only introduction I had was when they came and presented.
[Doug Carr]: So who's really plugged in? I have no idea. Is anybody? Teresa? Joe? Roberta?
[Roberta Cameron]: I serve on the trust.
[Doug Carr]: OK.
[Roberta Cameron]: I serve on the trust.
[Doug Carr]: All right. Well, that kind of says everything I need to know then.
[Joan Cyr]: Yeah, so we are voting down, right?
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, you're not. We're taking all that money and giving it away for anyone.
[Joan Cyr]: Well, there you go.
[Roberta Cameron]: So I think they know what they're doing. But I can't, just because we do have that precedent, so yeah. Just to follow precedent, I will, but I don't have to. Yeah, the housing trust is actually filled with some great people. I really look forward to having some money to be able to quit toward projects and use the brain trust that is on the trust.
[Joan Cyr]: So, in your in your take your CPA hat off and put your housing trust hat on is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars enough to get you guys started. You mean two point five million. No. $25 million would be a good start. No, I said $250,000, right? Yeah, I know. She was making a joke there, Joan.
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: Yes, I get it.
[Joan Cyr]: And I'm clarifying. No, $250,000. That's right.
[Doug Carr]: But that's less than one unit, right? If you would build that, that's less than one unit, right? So the seed money is to accelerate bigger projects more, like the 100-unit buildings, those kind of things.
[Ada Gunning]: I think this was part of our discussion when they came was like, we want them to be able to form a plan around how they will generate more money. Right. Cause we all agree. This is kind of like nothing. Right. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's exactly what she said. Um, it. more money, generating more money and having a plan for how to spend the money is the first thing that the trust is working on. Unfortunately, one of the things that could help us to generate more money would be to update our linkage ordinance. And that requires an expensive study. And that expensive study is not eligible for CPA funding. And we haven't identified a funding source to complete that study. So that's one of the barriers to finding more funding.
[Theresa Dupont]: But yeah, that they're going to be working on shaking out the couch cushions for change. Yeah. So
[Roberta Cameron]: It could be that if we have additional funds in the bank that the CPC could award more than $250,000 for the Affordable Housing Trust, or it might be that the CPC would prefer to keep additional extra money in the bank and have money to respond to off-cycle requests should any come in, including an off-cycle request for affordable housing. So I would leave that for discussion.
[Joan Cyr]: I think there's a whole lot of what we don't know. So maybe we start where we start and see how it goes.
[Ari Fishman]: Yeah, I think that. whatever our visions for the future, visions and dreams, I think right now it's a new unknown entity. This is the amount they asked for. We are very happy to give it as a place to start. And we are very happy to continue supporting them with kind of trust but verify. And as that relationship grows, the default funding amount may increase. But I think right now, let's go project by project.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's reasonable.
[Ada Gunning]: Motion to vote.
[Roberta Cameron]: Motion to award $250,000 to the Medford Affordable Housing Trust from Ada. Second? Second. And I will call the roll. Doug?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan? Yes. Ada? Yes. Ari? Yes. Yes. Maisha? Yes. And I will abstain. All right. Then we have one more project to discuss, ABCD's Medford move-in program for $99,989. You sure you just told them to round up?
[Theresa Dupont]: I don't know if it's going to drive me nuts from looking at you 89.
[Ada Gunning]: It's unique.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. Discussion about this. We have a draft condition, ABCD to partner with Medford House of Authority to establish regular cadence of promoting the program. The CPC recommends quarterly email communications with MHA's tenant services team. I think we've also in the past required and have wouldn't hurt to continue to require that ABCD makes quarterly reports to this. That's in our- It's in the grant. Oh, maybe I need to put it here then. Do you all feel like this is an appropriate requirement condition to put on the grant or is this overreaching?
[Ari Fishman]: To me- It's incredibly reasonable, sorry. Didn't mean to.
[Ada Gunning]: I was going to say to me, it feels micromanaging and it reflects that we didn't really trust the level of, uh, communication that was happening. So it feels a little icky to me, but not necessarily our fault. That's how it raised to me.
[Theresa Dupont]: They do have, there has been a fair amount of turnover on the ABCD side. So. I kind of like having this in a static document rather than, hey, Bob, Jill, you know. That's good context.
[Ari Fishman]: But yeah, it does feel a little micromanaging. It does. But also, it comes from a place of that not having been done.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Ari Fishman]: Oh, and they've gotten this grant for multiple years, and it seems like they aren't using all the money. And we know there's a huge need. So this is coming from a place of trust, but verify, OK, you didn't do it. Now we're going to tell you the thing that, like, actually, we do need you to do. And I don't think they're theoretically opposed to outreach. I think they are people who are very committed to what they do and are deeply under-resourced. So hopefully making something very clear will be mutually beneficial.
[Theresa Dupont]: And also just to add in their application, they had said that a portion of these funds would go towards marketing and outreach on that. So it kind of aligns with they're asking for more money to do this. So we're just saying, well, great, please make sure you're doing this as well. But yeah, it's a little sticky.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Hayley and Howard, sorry to catch you midway. Do you have any thoughts about this condition and its
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: No, I think it's good. I think it's reasonable. After we had that discussion, or after they presented, I was just like, my mind was spinning when she said that she had not connected with Medford Housing, and they did not, I don't know, it just seems like such a resource for them to use the money. That was another red flag. I was like, why are you having to use all your money? So we had a board meeting, and I asked one of the directors about it. without like in so many words, she just said, yeah, communication with them was very lacking and difficult. So I think it's good. I think this is a good condition of approval. Hopefully they'll set up a good, you know, line of communication and be able to use the money, you know, with the tenants. Cause I mean, they have a lot of non-payment of rent issues over there. So.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. That is really helpful input. Um, Great. And I do appreciate that since we've started partnering with ABCD, they have increased their footprint in Bafford. So it's been an incremental and slow increase, but it's really promising to see.
[Theresa Dupont]: It's moving in the right direction.
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's a great program and has such great potential. So I think this little condition will definitely jumpstart it even more.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. So is there a motion to recommend $99,989 to the, we could round it up if we wanted. We don't have to. Don't pay $89. $99,999 and 99 cents.
[Doug Carr]: Give me an extra $11.
[Joan Cyr]: Yeah, let's change that to $100,000 and be done with it.
[Roberta Cameron]: OK, so is there a motion to recommend $100,000 to the ABCD for the Medford move-in program with the condition that had been drafted? I'll make that motion. I'll second. I heard Ari first. Then, so I'll call the roll. Doug?
[Doug Carr]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan? Yes. Ada? Yes. Ari? Yep. Kaylene? Yes. Myesha? Yes. And myself, yes. All right, so that is all of the projects that are on the slate for this evening. We did it, everybody. Congratulations. And let's go back to the Hegner Center just to have the official update on Hegner Center.
[Theresa Dupont]: So I alluded to this in the email, but just to discuss it in public meeting here, The planning team that has been pulled together on this project involves our facilities director, our health department, communications, as well as our planning director. They recognize that there should be a little bit more tweaking and finalizing of this plan. So they have asked if we could pause our consideration. They are not requesting to withdraw the application. but they recognize that we're in the middle of our funding cycle and they're asking for a considerable amount of money, but they have asked for the professional courtesy if we could pause on the vote for them to meet once more internally to kind of finalize and firm up the plan as to what they're gonna tackle first at the Eggner Center. If you recall from their presentation, they were pretty transparent about there needs to be a lot of work done at this property. effectively abandoned for a better part of 10 years. So they just essentially have asked if they can get their ducks in a row internally and then come back to this committee for consideration.
[Roberta Cameron]: I appreciate that very much. I think I always think that projects go better when they have more planning. And I also was saying earlier before we started, but I'll repeat again that I've seen projects that follow the model of um, doing work incrementally without necessarily, um, having all the details worked out in from the beginning, but they, um, they tackle pieces of a project. And so, um, and ultimately end up over the course of a few years getting really significant things done. So, um, that approach works for me, but I do appreciate they're putting some more, um, effort into. the vision before requesting funding from us. Doug.
[Doug Carr]: Does this turn this into an off-cycle that's going to happen in January, or is it going to make it under the radar of the city council?
[Roberta Cameron]: I think it's going to be like some of the projects that we've done in previous years where we ended up making recommendations over successive meetings. based on when the applicants were able to give us all of the information that we needed to arrive at our decisions. So this is going to be one of those. It's just going to be held over. It's not really off cycle because they submitted the application during the regular cycle, but we're just going to have a holdover decision in January.
[Doug Carr]: And they're part of the 2.37, right? Because that's that number, right? So we still have 350 that we're not using, which is fine. I love having the ability to fund anything down the road that may come up, whether it's affordable housing, anything. So it sounds like we're in good shape on that front. Is that a correct statement?
[Ada Gunning]: I think it's good that they shore up their vision, at least from where I'm sitting. I did have one more thought about the ABCD thing. I don't know if anyone else has Hegner thoughts. I guess, since I haven't been here for a full year, I guess I'm not sure what our meetings for the rest of the year will involve. But I wonder whether we'd want ABCD to come meet with us again at some point mid-year so we can just like, I know that kind of goes against what I said about micromanaging, but like. Touchpoint. Touchpoint, like, I don't know. Is that something that you guys have done before?
[Roberta Cameron]: It is, yeah. We've asked for updates from grantees. you know, when, when we feel like we need to know what's going on with the project. So I think that that's fair. Also, just requesting periodic reporting from them is something did we add that to the ABCD? No, but we talked about how it's already in there. So we'll ask for the reporting to be something I can share it to us. So that's something so I'm in the meeting packet. was the agenda calendar for the year. So at our next meeting, I mean, this so this is an agenda calendar that shows what we've done all of this past year. But that's essentially what the year looks like every year. And so more or less, this is their times in the agenda or times during the year when we have room for looking at specific projects to see how they're going or talking about certain issues that we want to work out how to do. So we can maybe drop that into the agenda later in the year to talk about ABCD. Maybe it's an opportunity because in May or June, the Affordable Housing Trust is going to be delivering, aim to deliver their action plan. So maybe that would be a time to also talk about some other housing issues at a meeting over the summer, maybe June or July.
[Theresa Dupont]: And maybe we can cycle it throughout the year where we're not just singling out one grant applicant we can be like okay well maybe we focus on housing in the spring and then over the summer we have Amanda come back to talk about park project updates or you know you can kind of sprinkle that in throughout the year. I think that what might be a nice thing. I love that. I give very brief updates to this committee it might be nice to hear right from the horse's mouth right right Joan I cut you off.
[Joan Cyr]: Love it. I love that idea. My first person I want to see is that housing development over on the Fellsway. I like to call it that rock ledge place. Is that Manford? Yeah. Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes. It's a project that we put a lot of CPA funding into. Oh, maybe I didn't think about that. Oh, yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: Not West Medford, not West Medford.
[Ada Gunning]: I think it's on the corner of like, on the ground.
[Theresa Dupont]: There's a rock quarry on Winthrop Street. That's the high school. Great. Well, we can look at as we're fleshing out the agenda for next coming year. We'll just sprinkle that in.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. All right, that'd be great.
[Theresa Dupont]: So the next item on the agenda is meeting minutes, which I failed to get those done. So I look forward to providing them to you next meeting. All right.
[Roberta Cameron]: So that. That's quick. How about a debrief of the winter extravaganza tabling?
[Theresa Dupont]: It just is a really quick thing. Um, last Wednesday we had the winter extravaganza here at city hall. Um, I was outside tabling, had some really great conversations with folks. Um, one that I wanted to bring back to the affordable housing trust. Um, I had a very good conversation with a resident who has a, she's a voucher holder. issued out of Medford here, and she had a suggestion of could we look into funding a program that brings back the rent to own under the affordable housing umbrella, which I believe that there was something in the latest housing bill that kind of addressed that. I haven't quite dug into it yet, but I thought that that was an interesting concept of of getting folks, income-eligible folks, into ownership opportunities rather than trapping them in the rental. But other than that, it was a lot of families. We had a lot of requests for more park projects, updates. Barrie Park was mentioned several times, several times. So we should probably keep an eye out for Barrie Park for the next funding cycle. It's pretty crummy. It's in love. It does. But yes, so just as a quick debrief, what I kind of like is this was the first time in a long time where there was a lot of CPA name recognition. Usually I have to explain to people what it is. And a lot of people are like, oh no, I know exactly all about that. So that was kind of a nice thing. So it's working folks. So thank you for all the outreach that you're doing. Like I said, just a quick update. I just wanted to share that with the, You know, sometimes after the tabling events, you're like, oh, I just talked to a thousand people and you're tired. But this one afterwards, even though it was freezing, I was like, oh, wow, that was incredibly successful. So cold. I was handing out little hand warmers to everybody. So I think that that was really helpful. You were literally outside the building? You were outside? Yeah, the vendors and everything set up outside.
[Ada Gunning]: It makes me wonder, in addition to all the tabling opportunities, do we have CPA events where it's like, come to and like not so much like we go to your events, but like come to like, let's do a meet and greet at like the beer hall or like a town hall, or like not a town hall, but like get the room at the library and have people come like learn about what it is, like that kind of thing.
[Theresa Dupont]: We've done, I've done a couple events at the library where it's not so much a room rental, it's more tabling, but rather than being part of another event where standalone, we've done a couple of those with mixed, I wouldn't say that it's as effective just because the foot traffic is so low, but I hear what you're saying about we can advertise an event out and have like a Q&A type of a thing. Yeah, I love that idea. We threw a party last year. We did throw a party.
[Ada Gunning]: I remember hearing about that, but not like to invite others too, not just the CPA to come.
[Roberta Cameron]: We invited everybody we could possibly think of to come to our party. It was to celebrate five years. So we invited all of our grantees and city officials.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, it was a good time. Partners. Yeah. Way too much beer. I'm still drinking beer. I pulled out my Christmas decorations and I saw like two flats of Medford Brewing. I'm like, I love those. But yeah, that's all I had. I didn't want to take up too much time, but just wanted to share that, hey, people are recognizing us for going out there on a cold night. I was in between two cookie vendors. One kept giving me hot cocoa. I gave her hand warmers. It was cold, but it was fun. It was fun.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, thank you. I think that is all of our agenda. Thank you, everyone, this evening. Good meeting. Good year. That's a great year. Yeah. And we will start fresh next year thinking about what the next round is going to look like.
[Joan Cyr]: Yeah. When do you go to city council with these decision recommendations?
[Theresa Dupont]: I believe it's the 20. We'll have a committee of the whole meeting. I want to say it's the 22nd. It's a Wednesday in January. January 22nd. It's not this month. And then City Council, the actual appropriation votes would be the following Tuesday. I want to say it's the 22nd or the 28th of January.
[Joan Cyr]: Okay.
[Theresa Dupont]: I'll send that out.
[Doug Carr]: Just one overall note, when I look at the list, I think there's 11 different line items. I think nine of them are City of Medford and there's just two churches. I think that's the most unbalanced we've ever had. I don't have the metrics just from memory, but they're all good projects. I'm not objecting to anything. This round has become largely city-driven, all good projects. It's like we're not getting enough non-city, I guess, that we're not, you know, they're not competitive. And we, I guess we could use more.
[Ada Gunning]: Yeah. I was almost, I was almost wondering like some sort of like public event, like, are you a parent that has visions for a park? Are you a religious group that has like a need for your space? Like, you know, just like really targeting that exact kind of projects that we're trying to attract.
[Roberta Cameron]: And we don't have a lot of nonprofit organizations that own historic buildings in the city. And not a lot of nonprofit organizations in general who can like who are managing public spaces indoors or outdoors. So I mean, it's a limited field. Yeah, but
[Doug Carr]: It is. But I'm not sure everyone knows that anyone could, like someone like the rights, remember the Rights Pond one? That was somebody say, I want to do something in rights because I care about it, and they found a way. I think it was a hand-drawn sketch that was what the initial go around in that one. But we got it. We got them over the finish line. People need to know that a good idea will find a way. That's what I'm hoping people understand.
[Theresa Dupont]: I think you make an excellent point there that we should start working now I'm trying to see if there's any non city projects are out there because Yes, two thirds of our applications this year we're city projects, I anticipate that number be higher next year because we hit the ARPA. money cliff. So the funding that has been being put back into projects, um, that that's gone now. Um, so the city will probably be starting to get creative with funding sources and coming to the CPA here a little bit more aggressively. That's just a me with my crystal ball.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. I acknowledge that since the beginning of this program in the beginning, We had projects that were brought to us by public members of the public, where at that time we didn't have city staff. who were writing grants and managing projects. And the city has actually increased staffing in response to the availability of funding, which is a good thing. So the city actually has capacity to do what we were relying on volunteers to do in the past. So I think that's actually, you know, that's a trend in the right direction. It's professionalizing and centralizing our decision-making process rather than just squeaky wheel.
[Doug Carr]: You're absolutely right. I don't want to discount that. The city has this act together on looking at grant sources. I've seen that improvement over the last five years dramatically. I agree with you.
[Roberta Cameron]: I would love to offer everyone some pumpkin muffins. But you're all not here, so you can't have my pumpkin muffins. They're very good. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Motion to mail me a pumpkin muffin?
[Joan Cyr]: Yes, second that. Second that. I'll take a couple home for my kids.
[Ari Fishman]: Yeah, me too. Time to motion to close the meeting? Second.
[Doug Carr]: I'm going to say no, because I've been denied a pumpkin muffin.
[Ari Fishman]: You'll be outvoted.
[Doug Carr]: I will be outvoted.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. I heard a second from Ada. I will call the roll. Doug?
[Doug Carr]: Reluctantly, yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan?
[SPEAKER_12]: Yes. Ada? Yes. Ari?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_12]: Kaylene? Yes. Myesha?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes. And myself, yes. Hey, good meeting everyone. Happy holidays. Everybody everybody have a great holiday.