AI-generated transcript of Medford State Of The City Address 02-05-25

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Before I start, I just want to let everybody know there are listening devices right in our little TV room. So if anybody's hard of hearing and needs a listening device, please feel free. I want to thank all the elected officials that are here today. We have Councilor Kit Collins, School Committee Member Aaron Opade, School Committee Member Paul Rousseau, Council President Zach Bares, School Committee Woman Nicole Branley, Vice Chair of the School Committee, Jenny Graham, School Committee Member John Intoppa, Representative Sean Garbally, Representative Paul Donato. We have Kelsey from Congresswoman Clark's office. Councilor Matt Leming. Councilor Emily Lazzaro. And Ed Markey just gave me a phone call, so I wanna thank him for his support. We'd like to start the program with our Poet Laureate. who has served for over a year and a half now, believe it or not, time flies. So with an original poem that was written very recently, I'd like to invite up Vijaya Sundaram.

[Sundaram]: Good evening, and thank you for having me here today. I hope you can hear me in the back. This is my very first State of the City poem, so bear with me when I read my poem and forgive any mistakes I might make. This is a sort of preemptive thing. What is the state of a city in a world where disunion abounds and the sounds of argument and anger and dissonance crowd around? What should we celebrate before it is too late? Our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our friends, grandparents, and folks of different colors Our schools and parks, our woods and playgrounds, our industry, art, commerce, our protectors, our firefighters, police folk and officials, all part of a tapestry that makes us Medford, the middle ground where we can walk across and greet each other in welcome. What do we celebrate in this fair city where people from around the world live, love, learn, and toil together in good and bad weather, hoping to lead an unspoiled life, unsoiled by greed and rage. We remember these words. Into plowshares beat their swords. Nations shall have war no more. Hope and charity are our calling, and love, the greatest of all. With peace comes bearing a flag of many colors, fairness, justice, equality, hope, acceptance, and love. Let's celebrate community and unity. Rejoice in our difference. Reject indifference. Open our hearts to beauty and joy. Let hope into the broken hearts of those left behind or cast aside. Build strength and resilience as a city. Grow in brilliance. Let us be open to goodness and hope, to invite all into a world of greater scope, full of wonder and richness. Our emerald parks, our shining ponds, our tranquil fells, a panacea which alleviates the daily storms of traffic and bad news and strife in lives filled with stress and deafening dissonance. This is our city and together we shall make it beautiful. We will raise a shout of cheer, lift the cup of unity and drink deep. The outer world, rife with chaos, awaits. But we, circles expanding outward, we will send out our ripples. We will disrupt hatred, disrupt distrust, through community and unity grow an immunity against hatred and invite in the songs of joy. This is how we celebrate the state of our city. Create a communion of fellowship, sisterhood and brotherhood, personhood and human good, and sing our song of peace. Thank you.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: That was beautiful, Vijaya. Thank you so much. I'd now like to invite vice chair of the Medford School Committee to the podium to say a few words and give us a few updates on all the work that her and the entire committee and school department have been doing. Member Jenny Graham.

[Jenny Graham]: Thank you, Mayor Lungo-Koehn for asking me to speak tonight. I'm honored to be the vice chair of the school committee and even more honored that the citizens of Medford have imparted their faith on me for nearly six years now in this office. When I think about the year in review in so many ways, it's like every other year since I've joined the school committee. Every year I hear from somebody that there's never been a more uncertain time in education. It started in 2020, which was my first year. And every year we as a nation outdo ourselves and make the current year the most uncertain time in public education. So a little bit of levity, but the road ahead of us is more uncertain than it ever has been before. And if you think about education as the foundation of our democracy and the great equalizer that we have to chart a better course and future for all of our children, it's so important. So many of our accomplishments in the last year within Medford Public Schools and on the school committee have helped create a more stable foundation for Medford's children. and a stable foundation has never been more crucial as it is today. We will have to work harder than ever to retain local control of our schools and to protect the rights of every child to an education. First, let's talk about a few noteworthy accomplishments. We welcomed a new leader to Medford Public Schools. Dr. Suzanne Galusi has spent her career here as an educator in Medford, and she'll be our interim superintendent. Dr. Galusi is no stranger to the work that we've been doing across MPS, and we are already seeing her leave her mark on the district. Everybody's anxiously awaiting your call at 5 a.m. tomorrow about the snow day. We also have increased our funding to Medford public schools by $7 million. Thanks to the yes votes of our residents on questions seven and eight. We are hard at work negotiating with our union partners to put this money to work as promised to expand the school day and to fix the high school schedule that hasn't worked since our high school and our vocational school were merged nearly seven years ago. Students, parents and teachers alike know that the schedule doesn't work and that's what led to this historic vote by this community as a way to say yes to wanting more for our kids. 85% of a school's budget is invested in staff. So I'm going to take just a minute to give you some details on our work to remain competitive and ensure that our labor contracts work for students. We've committed to changing the tenor of negotiations with our partners and are working hard to shed past practices that work for nobody. I've always been committed to paying our staff fairly compared to the similar work in surrounding districts, and we've made considerable strides in so many places in this endeavor. In the last year and a half, we've settled contracts with our custodians, our kids' corner staff, our cafeteria workers, our administrators, our administrative assistants, and our paraprofessionals. Just a few highlights from those settled contracts include a 26% pay increase for our kindergarten aides to acknowledge that their work is on par with the rest of our paraprofessionals, and a 4% increase across the board for all paras. Modernizing our job responsibilities and formalizing the evaluation instruments that we use to hold our staff accountable for Kids' Corner, custodians, administrative assistants, cafeteria staff, administrators, and paraprofessionals. we've been able to increase the number of staff in this area. A 20% pay increase to ensure market competitiveness for our cafeteria team, which has effectively resolved the staffing shortage that we were experiencing in this area. Additional custodial support staff for weekend support of our portfolio of programs across the district. Um and dedicated professional development time and days for our This override money is also being put to good work and is being managed by newly created policies to govern the school committee's budgeting and capital planning processes. These processes make way for more timely budget discussions, thoughtful capital planning, and improved maintenance. A few highlights from our capital planning processes include now completed the amazing new and inclusive McGlynn Elementary School Playground. If you haven't been there, you should go. Some things that are in progress, an HVAC replacement at the McGlynn and the Andrews, a hot water replacement at the Brooks Elementary School, replacing the freight elevator motor at Medford High, replacing HVAC units in our network closets, fixing the drainage at the Brooks field that has been a problem since my not so young children were at the Brooks, fixing the failed flashing where we see rain inside a kindergarten classroom at the McGlynn when it rained sideways, and a mini assessment of our HVAC situation across the Roberts, the Brooks, and the Missittuck. In addition to being sorely needed, these are examples of what proactive maintenance should look like in a district and what we plan to do moving forward. As we look to 2025 and beyond, we see that there is still so much to do. We need to work together as a community to protect our students, including those particularly vulnerable to attempts by the federal government to infringe upon their rights. We don't know yet what this work will look like, but we are bracing for a whole variety of scenarios, training our staff, and keeping our leaders apprised of the ever-changing landscape. Our district team is working tirelessly to plan for the impacts of the changes to the schedule and school day that we've been talking about, to address overcrowding in some of our elementary schools, to increase access to afterschool programming, and to create a new chapter of the story of Medford High School. I am happy to be the chair of the School Building Committee for Reimagine Medford High School. Thanks to the hard work of the School Building Committee, we exceeded the MSBA's expectations with a quick and thorough submission of all of our planning documents. We've since then signed an agreement with the MSBA to prepare for the next phase that will allow us to build a school to accommodate a 15% increase in enrollment for over our current school population. That's a very big deal. We're planning for the future. And we're hopeful that the board of the MSBA will invite us to the next phase of the process in the coming weeks. The building committee will be back at work again this month to, again, complete our deliverables quickly, as quickly as possible, so we can get to the real juicy bits of this process. This spring, I anticipate that we will hire an owner's project manager and a designer to help us through the feasibility study to answer the questions that everyone has, like, where should the new high school be? Will it be more cost effective to renovate the building, build something new, or pursue a hybrid option? And as importantly, how will we do all of this and protect the learning experience of our current students? By this time next year, we'll be answering all of these questions and more, and I can't wait to see what the future of this project holds. Finally, I want to say thank you to the Charter Commission for getting the ball rolling on modernizing our government structure and to the City Council for taking their role in reviewing this document so seriously. I'll be submitting my comments regarding the role of the School Committee in time for the Council's meeting on February 19th. And I will be paying particular attention to making sure that our form of government allows us to work most productively for students and families. That's why our community elects school committee. There's never been a more important time to make sure that the school committee is empowered to do its best work on behalf of students. I hope that the next time I have an opportunity to talk to you, we can talk about how we've conquered that uncertainty that abounds and we've charted a bright and meaningful course for all our students. until that day, we will keep working. Thank you. I am pleased to introduce the president of the city council, Zach Bares, who will say a few words. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Hello, everyone. First, I want to acknowledge Councilor Tseng, Representative Barber. Have I missed anybody else who got here a little late? Thank you for being here. Thank you, Mayor Lungo-Koehn, Vice Chair Graham, my colleagues on the City Council, members of the School Committee, state legislators, city employees, and most importantly, the residents of Medford for being here today to hear updates about the state of the city. It's an incredible honor to serve the people of Medford as your City Councilor and for the past year as City Council President. I'm proud to say that this term has been the most productive City Council term in living memory. From my conversations with residents and review of City Council records, we've shown an incredible work ethic and focus on the business of our city and delivering results for the people. When I spoke last January, during my first words as Council President, I talked about three key principles that would guide my work. Collaboration, planning, and trust. In its first weeks, this council approved the first ever two-year plan, our city council governing agenda, to tell residents what we would be working on and hold the council accountable to clear goals and deadlines. We established a new committee structure so we could get more real, substantive work done and implemented new approaches to public engagement to reach more residents than ever. I'm glad to stand here before you today to say that we have succeeded. We held 99 meetings in 2024 and have over 60 that have already occurred this year or are scheduled before June of 2025. We've made major progress on our governing agenda, moving forward on items that have been delayed or ignored for as many as 40 years. We are now broadcasting every meeting on YouTube, publishing a monthly city council newsletter, using a modern agenda and meeting minutes portal, and holding multiple listening sessions out in the community in addition to our official meetings. I want to thank my colleagues and the city clerk's office team for their incredible efforts to make this happen. I'm lucky to work alongside such dedicated public servants. I could go on forever about the work we've accomplished so far and what lies ahead, but I'll try to keep the rest of my comments brief. There are three major responsibilities of the City Council. One, reviewing the budget. Two, updating the city's zoning ordinances. And three, legislation through the passage of ordinances. This term, we're also working on a fourth major responsibility, updating the city charter. I wanna thank Vice President Collins for leading our zoning updates project alongside our city planning staff. This group has held over 20 public meetings and done incredible outreach to finish our work modernizing the city zoning and implementing the city's 2023 comprehensive plan. This work is already bearing fruit and I'm excited for the end product we will see later this year. Thank you, Vice President Collins. I want to thank Councilor Tseng for leading the City Charter Review Project, which is years in the making, and the first time we've seen an updated charter considered since the 1980s, and taking on the work of our Charter Study Committee so we can consider those recommendations with the significance and the detail that they deserve. I can't wait to vote yes on a new charter this November. I also want to thank the rest of my council colleagues, Councilors Callahan, Lazzaro, Leming, and Scarpelli for their work, especially for leadership on committees and the urgency in passing ordinances. Just since January 2024, we've passed nine ordinances, including the city's first ever budget ordinance last spring and a welcoming city ordinance last month. We've had over a dozen adoptions of state law, loan orders to fund essential projects, and the establishment of revolving funds and the city's first ever stabilization funds in partnership with the mayor. And I know there is much more to come in 2025. Finally, I want to thank the mayor and members of the school committee for working collaboratively with the city council to pass the city's first ever override votes last November. We worked diligently to address the major financial shortfalls that have left Medford's government and public school system without the staff and resources needed to provide residents the services they deserve. Medford stood up and said no more. No more cuts to our schools that hurt our students and teachers. No more doing less with less. No more to a DPW without the staff it needs to do basic road and sidewalk maintenance. We will keep working diligently on the upcoming city budget and the major capital needs of our city, and I look forward to advancing the honest truth about our financial situation and letting voters know the consequences of decades of underinvestment and deferred maintenance, as well as the material benefits we will see this year because of the voters' approval to invest more in our schools, streets, and sidewalks. Over the next 11 months, I will continue to lead the city council with openness and transparency by putting facts first, correcting misinformation and false narratives, and following the clear plan we have collectively laid out to build a better future for the city of Medford. Thank you all so much for your time tonight. I look forward to working with each and every one of you to keep delivering results for residents and achieving all we can for our beautiful city. and with that, I am happy to introduce the mayor of the city of Medford, Breanna Lungo-Koehn.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Great job, Vice Chair Graham and President Bears. Thank you for speaking tonight. Good evening. First, let me thank everyone here tonight and to those watching from home. And thank you to our Poet Laureate Vijaya Sundaram for opening the program with an original poem, as well as to President Bears and Member Graham for sharing updates on all their hard work of the school committee and the city council, of course. I know that listening to people talk for an hour isn't always the most riveting TV or live experience, so please know we really appreciate you listening in. Before we all settle in for my speech, I need to especially recognize the work of our department heads, our city staff, elected officials, interns, and volunteers who continue to put in the time and dedication to make our city a better and more welcoming place. Obviously, there's a lot of focus on the mayor, the school committee, the city council, but so much of the work moving the city forward is also done in crowded offices, in conference rooms, Zoom call after Zoom call, and out in our community. So I just wanna take the moment to thank everyone who is putting in the work day in and day out. As far as city employees, I'm so proud of the work DEI, HR, and my office has done to professionalize the hiring process in order to build the strongest city team this city has ever had. I will not mention individual employees' names tonight as I don't want to forget anybody, but please know that we are so lucky to have our employees and all the work I mentioned tonight could not be done without all of you. A few weeks ago, an old colleague of mine text me a photo with a caption five years ago. The photo was from when I was first sworn in as mayor. Five years ago seems like a lifetime ago. I don't know if I exuded confidence on that first day. I like to think I did. But now with half a decade behind me, I can be a little more open, tell you that I was nervous and a little bit scared. scared of failing, scared of not living up to the expectations that the community placed on me, and scared that I would not make the right decisions. For about 10 weeks, that feeling persisted as I was briefed on issue after issue, each complete with about 15 agency or grant acronyms that I've never heard of. Flashcards were my friends that week, those weeks. scared or not, there was a frustrating feeling so many of you had that Medford wasn't living up to its potential. It was on the cusp of something, but it never got there. That was probably the biggest sentiment I heard and even felt myself before taking office, a frustration about not being where we should be. Obviously, 10 weeks in, things changed, and we had the COVID crisis to contend with. So where my flashcards used to be handy, memorizing wasn't really that important anymore. What was most important five years ago and what continues to drive our work each and every day is a commitment to bettering our city and building the community's trust in government, in our systems and in our schools. We want to see our city reach and exceed its potential. We want to see it be the best version of itself. What makes Medford so special is that we all care so deeply about it. Whether you have lived here your whole life or only a year, all of us care deeply about Medford's future. I never envisioned moving. We want our city and our government to invest in us, just like we've invested our time, our passion and our hearts in it. So how are we gonna make this government work for us instead of the other way around? It starts with making the city's governing document, our charter, more reflective of the needs and priorities of the people, and less reliant on outdated or ineffective procedures. This was a major priority of so many of ours, and mine when taking office. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but our current two-page charter assumes the mayor is and always will be a man. Before me, there were two female mayors. So clearly the original authors of this document were proven wrong multiple times. Of course, there are also more policy specific inequities that need to be addressed in this document. And it's not just the slight towards women that is worrisome. So after years of work, an updated city charter has been crafted and delivered to the city council for review before it's sent to the state legislature for final approval of vote and implementation. I'm so proud of the work that went into creating this document, and I thank the Charter Study Committee, led by Chair Milva McDonald. Can we clap for Milva and the team? as well as the Princess YJ and the staff at the Collins Center for their service and hours upon hours of research, community meetings, and outreach to ensure that our new governing document is truly aligned with the priorities and wishes of the people. And thank you to the city council for thoroughly reviewing the document. I look forward to working with you to finalize and place it on the November 2025 ballot, as President Bears mentioned. Like with Charter, we also have antiquated zoning regulations for many of our commercial areas, squares and neighborhoods. By utilizing the framework from our comprehensive plan and with the help of the zoning recodification ordinance passed by the city council in 2022, we're now moving forward with the process with an informed and experienced viewpoint. But there's still areas where we can improve, especially when it comes to our pace and communication process. This is a complex issue that affects many stakeholders. So I hope we do not rush and everyone must have a chance to provide input. We will be taking this additional time to better communicate. So I'll have additional opportunities to learn the facts and we can dispel all the misinformation that is currently circulating. I wanna thank the council and our staff and planning development and sustainability for all the work you're doing on this project. And if you've listened to me closely in these addresses over the years, and why wouldn't you, since they are famously brief and in no way long winded, you've undoubtedly heard me talk about the need to unlock our potential for mixed use and commercial development. The number one location for this is Medford Square and the development of our three underutilized parking lots. This project has been in the pipeline for 15 years and for one reason or another, just never officially got off the ground. That has changed. We have issued an RFP and have two proposals that are currently being reviewed by a committee, including city staff, President Bears and Chamber of Commerce President Andrew Mather. This area is the central hub of our downtown commercial district and has the potential to truly transform our city into a leading commercial destination in the region. We can do this while making sure we have parking for our seniors and Chevalier patrons. The entire square is going through somewhat something of a renaissance, in my opinion. Of course, the RFP for the lots is a major step, but we've also seen the area become more vibrant and we can't wait for our next establishment, Mrs. Murphy's to open in just about 15 days. Can we clap for that? With more and more people and families frequenting Medford Square, it only makes sense to open up pedestrian paths along the Mystic River waterfront. The Clippership Connector opening this summer will create a path that connects over 10 miles of continuous greenway along the waterfront. I thank our partners at DCR for undertaking this important project and enhancing our square. These projects require plans, and these plans are built off studies. It only makes sense, then, that we turn our attention to another area of the city with more potential, Wellington. There are so many possibilities for this neighborhood. There's a tea stop, a major commercial shopping center, restaurants, retail, and hotels. There's waterfront space, connections to more paths and highways, schools, and more. we can build on what's already in place and make Wellington a destination for the region. To help us achieve this, we released an RFP for a transformation study that will analyze traffic considerations, economic concerns, and transportation accessibility, and make recommendations on the best uses and future for the area. While building up our commercial experience in our squares and neighborhoods will hopefully have a significant impact on our financial growth, we need to make sure that we also supply enough housing for our community members. Last year, my office worked with PDS and the city council to establish an affordable housing trust, which will use various funding streams to help facilitate more affordable units coming to market. We're also making a concerted effort to support our veterans searching for housing. Thanks to the work of our veterans office and city council, they unanimously passed a landlord incentive program that will offer landlords up to $750 per year to those who rent to qualified veterans. For our lower income residents in need of assistance, we've launched the housing rehabilitation pilot program, which helps expand the availability of decent, safe and sanitary housing within the city. We offer low interest deferred payments of up to $25,000 to low and moderate income homeowners. Our 40B developments are moving ahead as well with the 971 Fellsway and 4,000 Mystic Valley Parkway having cleared municipal hurdles and now working on securing state permits. These two projects will bring over 160 affordable units to Medford and over 600 units in total. This has been a long process, but a necessary one as it's critical that the city have a seat at the negotiating table that allowed us to bring more meaningful community benefits for our future residents and the city as a whole. This is just scratching the surface and all the development work happening in the city. Thank you to all who are playing a part to make it happen. These projects will bring foot traffic of course, but like with every residential commercial project, it will also bring increased vehicular traffic as well. We're making efforts to ease the flow of traffic and create safer streets throughout the community with our complete streets initiatives in Haines Square and in the last year of Riverside Avenue. Thank you to our traffic and transportation team for leading these efforts and for all the work bringing more blue bike locations to Medford. We're now at 18 blue bike stations. making major roadways and highway tracks to areas safer and more accessible to pedestrians and drivers is crucial, not only to our development goals, but also to our commitment to making neighborhoods safer and more desirable. To do that, we need to be making a concerted investment in repairing and restoring our streets and sidewalks. And with the help of our Department of Public Works and Engineering Department, we're doing just that. This past construction season, we've alone cracked sealed 21 streets and completed patchwork projects on many of our highly trafficked roads. We're also holding our utility companies accountable and making them come back and repair roads and sidewalks at job sites throughout the city. Something that has never been done in the past. I'm happy to say that in 2024 National Grid repaired over 400 roadways and sidewalk locations throughout the city with restoration work continuing this spring. Thank you again to our engineering team for coordinating all this work. we've removed over 200 tree stumps in 2024 alone and reached our yearly goal of planting over 200 trees yet again. This is wonderful work from our DPW and tree warden. And yes, more stumps will remove this year. In fact, you should be seeing increased activity on all our street maintenance operations now that question seven passed this November. We're adding three additional staff in DPW that were responsible for daily street maintenance. Those positions have been posted and we hope to make offers very soon. City side services aren't the only system in Medford undergoing or transformation. Our schools are also entering into a phase, the next phase of progress with incredible news on our mass school building authority application. School committee vice chair, Jenny Graham has been instrumental throughout this entire process, chairing the high school building committee and working through all the hurdles and challenges of making this vision a reality. I also wanna personally thank our outgoing superintendent, Dr. Marice Edouard-Vincent, who served on the building committee and provided such valuable feedback and leadership throughout her time leading the Mustang community. We're so lucky that the transition to the new superintendent has been so smooth. And I think that's a testament to the deep understanding and love Dr. Galusi has for Medford as well. Having started as a teacher in the district and now working her way up to superintendent. This is an exciting time for the Medford Public Schools, not only with the MSBA projects, but also with the override questions passing. The investments we're making are going to be able to make, for our students and our faculty, will have impacts for years to come and set us on a course for continued success. But we're not waiting to make structural improvements in our schools, like member Graham mentioned. Happy to report that our major HVAC project at the McGlynn and Andrews School are moving ahead, and we've hired an owner's agent to oversee the project, and now in the process of hiring a construction manager. Thank you to our facilities director for his work at our schools and also here in the city, especially city hall, as we just completed a new lighting project, installing all new energy efficiency lighting. City hall and our other city buildings are also undergoing major IT infrastructure projects, thanks to our IT director. When completed, we'll have completely optimized our internet system to better serve the community and our staff. Our public safety investments are similarly as important to my administration as our school investments. We're continually working on hiring and swearing in new police officers as often as we can. Our officers have been doing great work throughout the community. We've heard such positive feedback from the public on how our police department is building strong, proactive relationships in the neighborhoods they serve due to their community-focused policing. We also have prioritized investments in our fire department. We just hired four new hires and are working on getting 13 additional new recruits into a training academy. We've also put a special emphasis on facilities and equipment based on the 2021 report from the task force. I'm proud to say that we have completed $4.1 million worth of renovation work and equipment upgrades, including new turnout gear, purchasing another new fire truck last month, window replacements at three stations, an apparatus bay floor, engine three, and so much more. Both departments are also working on upgrading all their policies and procedures and making sure trainings are up to date and enhanced. Protecting our people is the most important thing. not just from emergencies, but sometimes from policies. And that's incredibly important right now because there are so many people, not just adults, but kids, young people, young families who are worried about losing their homes or their jobs, their entire way of life because of these policies at the federal level. And this doesn't apply just to immigrants in our community, but all minority groups across all different socioeconomic demographics. The effort to erase progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion are literally contradictory to our values as a community. I know our Office of Prevention and Outreach team and DEI team is feeling the strain, along with me, of these initiatives, and their passion and determination to make government as open and equitable as possible is what drives us all. You may have noticed the ASL team here tonight. That's equity, that's inclusion. Why we are trying to take these things away, I don't have an answer. But I do know that in Medford at least, we're supporting each other. And we will continue with our mission of trying to make our city open and welcoming to everyone who calls Medford home. One way we will continue this into the future is by expanding and strengthening our sustainability practices, especially for our underserved population. This year, we were so excited, again, to receive a municipal vulnerability preparedness grant for $750,000 to fund our Medford Connects program. This program was designed to help connect our most vulnerable residents to essential city services, resources, and funds, for programs and events throughout the city, including our amazing multilingual and multicultural community engagement team who I see here tonight. In fact, our MVP project has been so successful that the state has been using it as a model for other communities to emulate when creating similar projects. So really just amazing work by the team in OPO and in the health department. While our MVP efforts are focused on when a disaster strikes, we're also working to prevent climate emergencies through a wide range of projects. Earlier this year, we secured a different $300,000 grant from the Mass and Clean Energy Center to create our Electrify Medford program, which also aims to strengthen outreach and support for underserved communities. Through this program, we're working to help residents explore clean, energy efficient options for their own homes. Our nearly $1 million grant from the federal government to transform the Hegner Center into a municipal vulnerability preparedness site as well as a facility for afterschool programming is moving as fast as we can, full steam ahead. Our team is compiling the needed materials to submit to HUD and working with Congresswoman Clark's office Senator Markey and Senator Warren's office to ensure this project is completed. Our new curbside composting program has also been a huge success with over 5,300 active participants now. If you haven't signed up, please do so. We are so proud to offer this free service to eligible residents in partnership with Garbage to Garden. And thanks to the hard work of so many at City Hall, we even won a National Recycling Award for outstanding elected leaders by the National Recycling Coalition. Moving from green ideas to green spaces and recreation projects, one of our major projects in the area right now in that area is the car park renovation. We opened phase one of the renovations back in July, and I know the new pickleball courts are definitely well used. Phase two of the project begins in a few days, Monday to be exact, and we're hoping to have a dedicated dog park open there by the summer. We're so lucky to have a wide variety of parks in our community. In addition to the car park project, we've recently opened the pop-up park along Clippership Drive that will ultimately connect via the Clippership Connector, a $1.4 million project at Gillis Park, which includes a great adult fitness area and our universally accessible playground at the McGlynn School that opened earlier this year. And just to briefly touch on some of the work happening at our recreation facilities, the Medford recreation team helped resurface our street hockey rink this past year, thanks to CPA funding, leveraged opera money to purchase a new Zamboni for La Conte rink, upgraded the home team locker room at Hormel Stadium, and so much more. Thanks to the collaborative work with our state leaders, Representative Donato, Representative Garbally, Representative Barber, and Senator Jalen, along with our partnership with the West Medford Community Center, we're on track to break ground this construction season on the Mystic River Road project that provides safer access from the West Medford Community Center to Duggar Park. Thank you to the team at DCR and Commissioner Arrigo, as well as our delegation for working with us on this important community project. Upcoming projects include resurfacing the basketball courts and updating the splash pad at Cape and Park, putting a national play area at Logan Park, creating a COVID Grove Memorial, shade improvements at Riverside Plaza, and so much more. Thank you to our team at Medford Recreation, Procurement, DPW, and PDS for working with multiple departments to coordinate all these efforts. Again, none of this work would be possible without the support of so many hardworking individuals in our city. Success can only be achieved when you have the right people in place that believe in integrity first and are unified toward a common goal. That's why accountability has been such an important part of my administration since day one. Less than five years ago, there was no HR and it has not been easy trying to make that change and change the culture in this city. But we are doing it, one day at a time, one department at a time. I believe in leading without fear and always doing what I think is best for the community, no matter what. I will not stop. The people of Medford deserve this. Each and every one of us must be accountable to the public and to each other. I'm committed to a transparent, ethical administration for the city, and I expect every staff member to share in that vision. And virtually everyone does, which is why we're able to do so much incredible work. That incredible work has led to so much to celebrate. And celebrate, we know how to do. Our fiscal year 25 budget was awarded the Distinguished Budget Award from the Government Finance Officers Association. This is the second time we've been awarded this in the last five years, and I'm so thankful to our team in finance and our communications department for the work that was done to get there. We just hosted our second annual Lunar New Year celebration this past Saturday, which was fantastic. Our inaugural city-wide yard sale and lemonade stand had over 400 signups. Haitian Flag Day and Hispanic Heritage Month are now going strong as fabulous yearly events. PorchFest is back for its third year, June 7th. Run Medford continues to be a great community event in the fall. The annual spring cleanup is right around the corner. and that's just a few things we celebrate. Our art scene is flourishing with over 2,500 cultural events in 2024 alone, more than double the output from 2019. Medford Recreation, Council on Aging, our staff at the library are constantly offering new programming, resources, and community events for all ages. Thank you to all who are making this happen, inside City Hall and beyond. I could go on and on, but I know you're hoping, please be done. Which I'm almost done. To close, over the course of five years, you have seen a lot, you have heard a lot, and thankfully we've done a lot. But I think what keeps us going, and I know what keeps me going, is that we're never finished. There is no perfect Medford. We can't perfect something that is constantly changing, but we're definitely going to try. This city means too much to all of us and our children, and it deserves the best from us all. And our best is what we will continue to give, I promise. Thank you. Thank you again to our ASL interpreters, to everybody watching from home and who is here tonight. Thank you to everybody who joined us as well. We have light refreshments in the foyer. Please, please stay and join us. Thank you.