[Petrella]: Hello everyone, and welcome to Medford Happenings, a show for and about the city of Medford. I'm John Petrella, host of the show. The purpose of this program is to give Medford citizens facts and information to help you make informed decisions. Today, we have a special guest, Ron Jovino, a member of the City Charter Committee. Ron will be speaking on things you need to know about the revised city charter. Welcome, Ron. Thanks for coming on the show.
[Giovino]: Thanks, John. I appreciate having me.
[Petrella]: Before I get into questions for Ron, I just want to make a note that Zach Beers and Justin Singh were also invited to join us on the show today, but unfortunately they were unavailable due to work obligations. So, Let's get going with the show, an all-important show for the citizens of Medford. Ron, my first question is why did you want to become a member of this committee and what exactly was the process?
[Giovino]: Sure, John. You know, simply put, it's maybe a silly answer, but it's because I care about the city of Medford. The mayor sent out a request for people may be interested in helping the process of reviewing the existing charter and I just submitted my name.
[Petrella]: And that was the whole process. Okay, so now I guess you got appointed. How did that happen? What was that all about?
[Giovino]: So we got a letter letting us know we were appointed. We were given a charge from the mayor, official charge from the mayor of what our role would be. And this was in October of 2022. So it's been a long road.
[Petrella]: Wow. It certainly has been. Okay, so the next question is what was the committee charged to do? What was it all about? We all know how important a charter is, so I mean what What were you charged to do exactly?
[Giovino]: So the official charge from the mayor's office was for us to thoroughly review the current charter, to identify potential ways to amend the charter in order to modernize Medford's governance, ensure it's representative, effective, transparent, responsive, and accountable, to ensure that the city is responsive to current and future challenges. Our charge was to gather residents, current, past elected officials, city staff, and other stakeholders. We were also asked to educate and engage the community in robust discussions through meetings, surveys, and more. We were also charged with working with the Collins Center and then making recommendations to the mayor and to the city council.
[Petrella]: Okay. Thank you for that answer. Now, I guess, which is probably the most important thing and, you know, for our audience, what is a charter? What exactly is it? Exactly what does a charter do?
[Giovino]: Yeah, it's a good question. Again, in simplest terms, the charter is equivalent to the city's constitution. It's the guideline, the blueprint for how we run our government. There are two ways that this could have been done. The first way was a home rule petition, which required a lot of signatures, legislative approval, and actually creating a full elected body. This has been tried over the last ten years, two or three times, and it never succeeded. So the only path left was to form a an advisory committee through a special act that gave us the ability to make recommendations that went to the mayor and from the mayor to the city council and then to the statehouse.
[Petrella]: Okay. Thank you for that answer. So, obviously, there had to be, you know, over a two-year period That's a long time. It's a lot of work. You know, can you let us know, like, what type of activities, what exactly, or how did you go about when you guys got together, guys and girls got together? What was the activities? How did you reach out?
[Giovino]: Yeah. You know, the committee, when we started meeting in November of 2022, 11 members, I think I was familiar with maybe two of them. So it was quite a widespread of the city, which was great, different views. But we came together on this. Over the two-year period of time, we had more than 50 public meetings, recorded, open to the public. We distributed a survey, which has lately been getting a lot of publicity. It was distributed in many different languages through the help of Francis Nowajay, and we gathered all those results. Much has been said about the results, but honestly, in a city where 6,000 or 7,000 voters make up who gets elected in the city, 600-700 votes is 10% of that amount, so it was significant, but certainly not the only thing we used to make our decisions. We did dozens of listening sessions around the city. We had three public meetings at City Hall. We conducted more than two dozen interviews with current and former elected officials and other city department heads. We had conversations with officials from other cities. We had a conversation with the Mass. Secretary of State. We organized community events around the city, from the farmer's market, popsicles at Wright's Pond, Circle in the Square. We worked with groups like the Chamber of Commerce, Metro Family Network, and the Mass Housing Network to reach residents. We created a charter review Jeopardy game to connect some of our younger voters. It was a long, involved, very detailed process, and everybody on the committee really worked hard, because we all believed in the process.
[Petrella]: Okay. Now, I just got to put this in there, 6,000 voters, it's a pretty, I mean, that bothers me. Yeah. In this city, that we only have 6,000 people show up to vote.
[Giovino]: On average.
[Petrella]: Yeah. That's what it takes to get elected. And that's pretty bad. That's sad when you think about All the people that should be involved that aren't. It just doesn't make any sense to me. So you did all this work, and I followed some of it because I became interested. If people really look at this and understand what it's all about, I think they'd understand how important your task really was, like what you people did and how important it was. And actually, you guys did a great job, all of you. So it wasn't an easy thing, that's all. It was very difficult.
[Giovino]: It wasn't, it was a lot of man hours. It wasn't easy. I don't think anybody on the committee could ever say that they got their way every time. There was debates. There was information gathering. There was presentations under the leadership of Milva McDonald, who did an incredible job leading us. The process was to prioritize some of the issues. build subcommittees, which there were several different subcommittees, finance, ward representation, school committee, and all those subcommittees were working in conjunction with the main committee and would bring presentations to the main group and we'd work on the final resolution.
[Petrella]: So congratulations are in order for everyone. I think we posted a graphic of the members, but congratulations to all of them because they all did a great job. Okay. So now you collected all this data over a two-year period. And now you have it all. Now what do you do with it?
[Giovino]: So, once the subcommittees had finalized their vote, we put those votes on pause, knowing that we could always come back to them. And then, with the help of the Collins Center, we started to build our version of the charter. Painstakingly, word for word, listening to suggestions, voting on suggestions, all of that process took a very long time. Then it had to be all put together in a professional package because the charter is voted on as one unit. Then it was delivered to the mayor. For her, she had the first swing at it to approve it and move it to the city council. So it was delivered in a small ceremony in her office, but it gave her a chance to review what we had done. And by the way, I must say too, over the two and a half years, Everything was public. There should be nobody who had an interest in this who was surprised by anything we presented because it was already predetermined.
[Petrella]: True, true. Yeah. You mentioned the Collins Center.
[Giovino]: Yeah.
[Petrella]: They advised you? I mean, did they play a role in this then?
[Giovino]: Yeah, the Collins Center has years and years of experience. You know, they are the go-to. They're the ones, that's their business. They write charters all through the state. extremely helpful in guiding us not only in what the law says but on the best way to get this to the statehouse and get it on the ballot in November. So we use their advice all the time and they were When they were with us, they gave us, you know, an instant correction or guidance, yes or no. Of course, the call-in center was not the eyes and ears that we were. We met the people. They were just looking at our raw data and making sure it was refined. So, very, very important. We couldn't do it without them. But they did not impact opinion. They were there to produce a legal document.
[Petrella]: Okay, great answer. I just want to, I think people need to know, you know, what the Collins Center, what their role was in the whole process. Sure. All right, so as you mentioned, it's all a nice neat package now, all that work.
[Giovino]: Yeah.
[Petrella]: Give it to the mayor.
[Giovino]: Yeah.
[Petrella]: What does the mayor do? What's next?
[Giovino]: The Mayor, with her staff, and I believe with some guidance from the Collins Center as well, I'm sure she had questions, was her responsibility to make any adjustments and present that, her amended version of our version, to the City Council. And there were some changes made. I would say, if I had to guess, 90% of what the Charter Committee wrote was passed on to the City Council by the Mayor. She trusted the group enough that she believed that we were representing the people and moved it on to the City Council.
[Petrella]: Okay, so she moves it on to the council. So you put this whole document together, and let's be honest, there's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little blah blah blah, but then comes the key issues, I mean the really important stuff. You have examples of some of the key issues that you guys brought out, brought forward.
[Giovino]: Well, first I want to say that there was no issue that we did not take seriously. The preamble was a very important piece to our presentation, but certainly, clearly, the key issues for our committee was what the form of government would be. Would it be a strong mayor or a weak mayor? Would we have a city manager back, the old government? That was the number one issue by far. Number two issue was the composition of the city council and the school committee and thus the issue of the ward representation. By far the most discussed and debated issue, the subcommittee was the busiest most controversial as it turns out, but that was definitely right up there as a popular one. The third issue for me was making the mayor stepped down from the school committee chairman role. And that was done, I was also served on the school committee subcommittee, and that was done under the leadership of that subcommittee by Paul Advandiclu. I don't know if you can choose a better person to represent what goes on in the school system. But it met with a lot of resistance, and, you know, but we chose to to keep her as the chairperson. And that was one of the issues that the school committee, the city council came back to say that they didn't want her, they wanted her to step down as the chairperson. And then there were other issues of, a lot of issues around requirements, signature requirements on certain initiative petitions, things like that, you know, ethics laws, things that, You know, we were always guided, whatever your charter is, you're always guided by the Massachusetts General Laws. So that's what the Collins Center always brought to us. But those are the top issues that we dealt with. But there certainly were a lot of other issues of how to get a budget done, how to do many different things. But those, I would say, are the four top ones.
[Petrella]: OK. That makes sense. Yeah. some pretty big issues there too. So let me ask you this, you know, the committee, how did you come to a conclusion? How do you, you know, you got a major issue. You just gave us a few. I mean, those are major. How did you get to where you, how do you get to a conclusion on those major issues. Where do you go?
[Giovino]: I would say we were always guided by Milva to get the personalities out of the process. We dealt with a mayor, a city council, a school committee, not Breanna Lungo-Koehn, Zach Beers, that was, we took personalities out of this because we were building a document, a living document that would be a changeable and go into the future. That was the one thing that always guided me. It was difficult because sometimes you went in with preconceived notions and you'd listen to the people, particularly the school committee subcommittee was very well received by the citizens and they gave a lot of input. And that's why we didn't, we recommended ward representation for the city council, but not for the school committee based on the input we got. We met with Roy Belson. former superintendent, we met with the current superintendent, we met with school committee members, we met with a lot of people who gave us varying opinions of whether they thought there needed to be changes. The commitment that everybody had, Milva insisted we have, it's the process that we must respect. It's the process that we must follow. And whether you win or lose an argument, you support the process. So if we lose a vote by, you know, six to five, then you lost the vote. But I support the process. So that was a lesson we all had to learn and grow up and figure that out. But we got there. We got there enough that we're all pretty proud of the document we sent.
[Petrella]: Okay. So it sounds to me like, you know, the political stuff is out, which I think is great.
[Giovino]: Yeah.
[Petrella]: I mean, that is, that's important. And I think you guys went above and beyond to make sure that, you know, that was kept out. I, myself, my opinion was that was, that was well done to keep all that stuff out of there. Yeah. So I was kind of, you know, looking at this and, you know, I watched the city council meetings and, you know, I heard you speak and I heard, you know, back and forth and basically, and this is my opinion, correct me if I'm wrong, if you don't agree with my opinion, but this document was basically from the citizens of Medford. That's what this document was about. When you boil it all down, it came from us, from the people.
[Giovino]: Well, I'm very proud of the work that the committee did, because it is a work from the people. And we didn't, I mean, we all bring our prejudices to these arguments. We all bring, of course, we all brought a piece of an open mind as well. And so I am very confident from, you know, passing out popsicles at Wrights Pond to It was a two-way conversation, a real conversation with people. You know, ward representation, what is ward representation? These are your options. And people would come back and give us those opinions. So, I think, you know, as again, our chairperson, Milva, did an incredible job mixing so many different personalities from so many political of views that we all should be very proud of this document and how it represents. What happened after that was out of our control, but I know the document we presented met all the charges from the mayor.
[Petrella]: Tuesday night, this past Tuesday night, council meeting, the charter, which I think was the most important thing on the agenda.
[Giovino]: Apparently not.
[Petrella]: Well, you know, what are you going to do? It sort of got pushed to the back of the night. you know, later on in the evening. For whatever reason, that's fine. Nothing you can do. My opinion was that should have been one of the first things. That deserved a long discussion, whatever. Okay, so, you know, without getting into too much, I was kind of surprised what I saw, what was done on Tuesday night, okay? So, I guess my question is, You know, I'm a little confused. So Tuesday night, can you explain Tuesday night what happened, maybe why it happened? And I guess my biggest question is, I'm under the impression that this is now going back to the mayor, but with changes.
[Giovino]: Yeah, well, first I want to say that The charter study committee has disbanded. So my views are not representative of anybody on that charter committee. I go to those meetings, the governance meetings, the public meetings because I care that we're doing what's right. And Tuesday night was a shocker to me because I didn't understand what was going on. I figured that it was going to be a time where they would, except with the mayor's changes, the mayor agreed. They went back to the mayor and said we want some other form of composition for the city council, a four or five, using districts as opposed to wards. Totally disagree with it, but that's what they wanted. They sent that back to the mayor along with having her step down as a chairperson. There were other issues, but those are the two primaries. There's a lot of balance of power, I admit. There's a lot of balance of power issues that are in there as well, I get that too. But those are the two main issues. What we discover is that the mayor immediately responds and says, we're going with ward representation. That's what the people want, and that's the right thing. And she agrees, as part of the negotiations, to step down as chairperson of the school committee. Now, if anybody knows anything about negotiations, it is a give and take, and that's a pretty major give when you do that. Absolutely. So that came back for Tuesday night. So, in my mind, knowing the timeframe, we have to get this to the statehouse by mid-April. So, I knew the timeline would be that, you know, they have to do something. Either they're going to vote against it and forget about it and scrap it, or they're going to accept the mayor's version, which I was hopeful for. But, you know, we know that you don't always get what you ask for. What was the most disturbing part to me was they were claiming that it was such a rush, and all these things just came out, and the mayor's changes were done on a press release and not formally, and we don't have time to look at it, and all these things. And then, out of nowhere, no, I mean, Councilor Callahan had introduced a ranked vote based theory of the best way to elect folks. But we had that going in. But out of nowhere, Councilor Collins announced that, you know, she wanted to amend to remove the mayor from the school committee. Never been discussed, never brought up. In the two and a half years, I never, ever heard of it. And there it was. And they went over to Councilor Leming, and he suggested the same thing, and here we go. All of a sudden now, we've got this, you negotiate, and now you bring in something that's never been heard of before. And that was kind of what really got me to go back to the microphone, because I was kind of tired of it. So I don't want to impart my position on this, but you have to wonder, if everybody is on board with making this go, then why are you bringing in something from out in left field into the discussion that you know, as I said to council president bears that night. If you're sitting at a table and there are two people, one's the president of one company and you're the president of the other company, you both have to agree. If I come to you and say, the only condition I'm going to accept is you're out as president, He's not going to agree to that. And logically speaking, you have to say to the mayor, how is the mayor who's fiscally responsible? I know school committee is not a department under her, but she is the budget person. She's the CEO of the city, eventually rolls up to her. Do you really want a mayor to not have to be able to attend these meetings? It was just, I didn't understand it. There was no debate about it. It was just the amendment appeared, and here we are, ready to vote on it. And then everybody starts agreeing to it, and I'm just like, I don't get it. It just seems to me to be a tactic that is unacceptable. And, you know, I use the example of Councilor Lazzaro, who had some amendments, not major, but a couple of amendments that she wanted to add. She picked up the phone and called the mayor's office to make sure the mayor was okay with these changes. So, she presented two sound amendments and also confirmed that the mayor was okay with this. So, of course you're going to say okay. If everybody's okay, everybody's okay. This other stuff is just, you know, for lack of a better word, I don't know what it is. I don't know where it came from. So, it's confusing. Now, next Tuesday is an emergency meeting of the city council to pass the charter, which everybody says we should have. We should. So Tuesday night, everybody should go and let them know we want the charter. We haven't had a charter in over 30 years. How can we possibly move forward as a city? And the arguments made, there's a lot of arguing about the composition of the Charter Review Committee because the mayor selected us. For some reason, it's all weighted towards the mayor, totally false. Charter committee just brought data to them. We didn't have any say. We have no problem. We still don't. Well, we will eventually. But it was presented to them to do it. So don't, you know, there was no political reasons why we did something. Certainly I had zero conversations with the mayor. I'm guessing Milva McDonald might have updated the mayor on several occasions. There was no phone calls from the mayor. There was certainly no phone calls in two and a half years from any of the city councilors except Councilor Scarpelli. I can verify. For me personally, nobody picked up the phone. Nobody appeared at a meeting. Nobody called during the public participation time. And I can tell you that when you're talking to people, and they speak for 20 minutes, and I'm limited to three minutes, it's a very, very frustrating process. One of their focal points, if I can just continue, is the survey. And the survey was a very, very important piece of our data. But it was one piece, one small piece. And when there's a survey, you can take any number out of there and make it any way you want to do it. And I'll give you an example. When Councilor Leming was talking about the survey, he talked about how many people wanted the mayor to not be on the school committee. And he quoted numbers that 56 percent of all the people said no, 43 percent said yeah, 36 percent said yes. But there's an undefined, undecided amount that they didn't want to address. Now, that was the basis for why we wanted to get rid of the mayor. That was ranked in that survey, it was ranked the number ninth issue of most importance to the people who filled out the survey. You know what the number two issue was? Ward representation at the city council. Do you know how many people voted that they wanted ward representation? 60%, 60, not 60%. But that was okay that they didn't go with that. So there's so many inconsistencies, that's the one I really, I find the most amazing. I think, you know... At earlier meetings, I brought up the conversations that each council had with our teams, telling us how important it was that ward representation be a priority. Many of the councilors told us they loved the idea and they want to support that idea. The Our Revolution website promises voters that that's what they're going to do. Many councilors wrote blogs that committed them to ward representation. For some reason, all that's gone. So I'm hoping that I don't mean to talk a lot about it, but I spent two and a half years, so it's kind of important to me. I hope that the voters call their city councilor, go to the meeting Tuesday night, get on Facebook. I know everybody loves Reddit and Facebook and all those, you know, fun places to give your opinion, and start talking about this a little bit more. I will say this, and Councilor Leming gave us our best compliment by saying the Charter Committee has become very popular. You're not sure why they do, but we accomplished our number one goal, get the city talking about the charter. And I think that that gets the city government really hyped about the future. And issues like ward representation shouldn't be looked at as an unfair process. It should be looked at an opportunity for two wards in particular to be energized and to start feeling like they're part of the process again. And who knows, in ten years it may have worked, it may have not. But, you know, we're not locked into this charter. We're creating a charter that's going to be a living document. If in two years they want to change it, we go through the same process and change it. Everybody's, you know, we've lived so long under these charter guidelines. It's time for a change. And I hope, I really hope that Tuesday night people will appreciate the effort and really come out and let people know.
[Petrella]: Here's something that you always hear, we represent the people, the council, we listen to the people, we represent the people, we want to do what's right for the people. In my opinion, it's not often that people get a chance to speak and be heard. I look at what your committee did. Mel, you know, everybody, all of us together. I shouldn't say your committee. I'm saying it because you're here, but, you know, it was everybody. It was. And you really went out and it was the voice of the people. That's my opinion. So we speak and, you know, I watched the council meeting Tuesday assuming that, oh, this is it. You know, great. You know, there's things, by the way, that are in there that I don't necessarily agree with, but it's what the people wanted. And it's a good chunk of the people that vote and everything else. So I guess, you know, it's a shame what's happening right now. But the other, you know, this will probably be the last question. And I want to thank you really for coming on because Thanks for having us. In my opinion, you know, everyone in Method has to know, you know, that this is so important. I mean, this is how we're going to be governed and everything else. But, you know, I still want to ask. It went back to the mayor. And they made changes. And I, you know, the mayor has made a decision and she gave it to them. And it is sort of like, I don't know, maybe it is a little bit of a fife of power, but it went back to the mayor. So the mayor, I assume, is sending them back to them on Tuesday. But I mean, it's gonna be the same document, basically, because that's what the mayor wants too. The mayor agrees with you. With the committee, she agrees with the people of Method. So now it goes back to the council.
[Giovino]: Let me just correct. The council has not made a decision of what they're sending back to the mayor.
[Petrella]: Okay.
[Giovino]: Only Tuesday night they'll choose whether to accept the mayor's proposal or accept their amendments and send it back, which is another delay. So there's another delay in there. I just want to say that. The charter committee is a microcosm of what the city should be. People of all different opinions getting together, working hard. We had a little dinner over at Maury Carroll's house. And these people are friends, I consider, acquaintances that I never knew before, my neighbors. So it's been a great process. What everybody's forgetting. The mayor has her share of this process. City Council has their share. The importance of sending a document that is a 7-0 vote and the mayor's approval to the Statehouse is only going to help us get this on the ballot. If we start continuing to delay and fight, it's just going to die, and maybe that's the strategy. But what happens in November is the ultimate survey. It's when the people vote up and down for the charter. They're the ones who still have the power, not the city council, not the mayor. The people will vote on the biggest survey of the year in November, and that's what I'm hoping people have been educated about the process.
[Petrella]: And that's the way it should be, by the way. I believe, yeah. See, you taught me something, because I was under the impression that They were going to be voting on it Tuesday night. So they're just either going to approve or not approve what the mayor wants.
[Giovino]: If they approve the mayor's version, it's done. It goes to the state house. If they approve their amendments. The Lazzaro amendments will be approved by the city council, but they already know the mayor's accepted them.
[Petrella]: So that's also part of it.
[Giovino]: But the mayor's already come out and said she's not getting off the school committee, so we know that. And she shouldn't. She shouldn't, I agree. I think the mayor has done some great leadership. In fact, I sent her an email congratulating her and telling her, I think that the preamble should be written in the front lobby of city hall, so when people come in, They see the biggest three words at the beginning of that preamble, which is we the people. We the people. And that's what this is all about. So it's going to be an interesting Tuesday. I hope people are watching.
[Petrella]: Yeah. Well, I hope we made some people aware of what the whole process was about. You guys, I know you worked hard. I followed it. And, you know, to say like right now, You know, the only words I can use is, like, I'm disappointed, you know? I still hold faith. Yeah, no, I do too, but, you know, the people spoke and, you know, it's like we have an opportunity to actually Be listened to and and that to me like you just said it's the most important thing and then come November I mean, that's the ultimate The ultimate decision so yeah, but you know, I want to thank you Ron, you know, we we're gonna be coming to a close I I really do I mean valuable stuff great information good information and I'm You know, we'll see what happens, you know.
[Giovino]: Appreciate the opportunity.
[Petrella]: Oh, no, it's my pleasure. Really, it really was. We thank you for joining us. You know, this is the end of the show. You know, I want to thank Ron again. You know, all the information he gave us, the facts, and what people really need to know about the revised city charter. You will be able to see replays of this show on Method Community Media. YouTube Method Happenings, and for more information about our future programs, you can visit either the For Method Happenings. I'm John Petrella, and stay informed.