AI-generated transcript of City Council Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee 05-04-25

[Matt Leming]: Hey, everybody. Okie dokie, looks like everyone is here right now. So we have a quorum anyway, not everybody, everybody on the committee. So yeah, we can go ahead and get started. Clark, I always forget, when we're on Zoom, we have to call the roll or not, or can we just go?

[Adam Hurtubise]: Because the meeting is on Zoom, you do have to call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: All right. We will have a meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Just a second, please. I gotta let Councilor Callahan in. Hang on just a quick second. Okay, here comes the roll call. Councilor Callahan?

[Anna Callahan]: Present.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Lazzaro? Present. Councilor Scarpelli? I don't see Councilor Scarpella. Councilor Tseng? Present. Chair Leming?

[Matt Leming]: Present. For present, one absent. Meeting is called to order. The first thing we're going to do is try to knock out this newsletter, which was so graciously drafted by Councilor Lazzaro. Thank you very much for pulling up all of those links. I'm just going to go.

[Emily Lazzaro]: There's so many links.

[Matt Leming]: Well, yeah, especially during budget season.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I mean, it was really fun, creative linking there, especially with it felt like it wasn't necessary to have a new bullet point for every single board and commission. So I just linked where it says every link, board link, and link commission link for each of the boards and commissions. So I tried to make it a little bit less painful to read, just a little bit more readable that way. So I mean, yeah, see, there it is. All of Medford's boards and commissions. That's a fun, that was fun. but it was painstaking. Anyway, yeah, take a look, let me know.

[Matt Leming]: Yep. So basically the only edits that I made to this draft, and this is the formatted version where I added the Memorial Day resolution and yeah, tracking those suspended resolutions is always a little.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh, thank you. I missed those. Yes, they weren't. On the website.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, yeah, no, that's I've done that multiple times before the resolutions under suspension are hard to keep track of. I added what we're doing today. So, assuming that we do get done with these two things might as well just throw that on retroactively. Um, I added yesterday's meeting, uh, saying we hosted facilities manager Paul right here to offer an update to the city council regarding the estimated costs of repairing and maintaining all city on facilities in the future. Um, and let's see, what else did I just a quick point of information chair looming.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Um, his name is pronounced Paul Ricky.

[Matt Leming]: Shoot. Well, There aren't that many people in this meeting to catch my.

[Emily Lazzaro]: For the future.

[Matt Leming]: So, but I'm sure that my pronunciation will be correct over text in this newsletter. And I also added just an extra link to the planning and permitting committee because this other corridors business was discussed on both May 14th and May 28th. Councilor Tseng. Oh, um, you can go through your stuff first. Oh, um, well, I think I'm just trying, I'm just trying to look and remember, but I think I want to say that that was about it. Just those couple of those extra meetings. Yeah. Just a few details that were missed, but overall, yeah, this was a pretty, you know, it was, it was good job. So yeah, feel free to bring up what you'd, uh, whatever was on your mind.

[Justin Tseng]: Yeah. Um, for the HRC ordinance, um, I would probably just mention that it like empower, empowers the HRC to do more somehow. Like, I think it's kind of an effective, like to make it more effective, but, um, maybe, I mean, if you can, can I, can you, okay, there, there we go. It's line 204, right? Um, Prove for first reading the governance ordinance for HRC. Maybe instead of which will make it run, to empower it to run more effectively and respond to new challenges, I don't know, something like that.

[Matt Leming]: On May 13th, after much review and committee, we approve for first reading the governing ordinance from Edwards Human Rights Commission to empower it to run more effectively and respond to new challenges.

[Justin Tseng]: Um, yeah, that's my note for that one. And then generally, there's another, um, there was the common Vic one. Oh, yeah, right above it for 203. It reads like, we voted for it to stay open on that one particular day on May 10th.

[Matt Leming]: That's the right to stay open on May 10th of every year.

[Anna Callahan]: I like it. Good catch.

[Justin Tseng]: And then just generally, I don't know if Veterans is capitalized.

[Anna Callahan]: Not until 1 AM forever though, like on every day.

[Justin Tseng]: Oh, yeah. Do we know which?

[Emily Lazzaro]: I actually think we approved them to stay open until, well, this is actually something that is going to come up a lot more for us. We are, all of our businesses, we're aligning them with their common victualers license and their liquor licenses are often misaligned. So we're bringing them into alignment. And sometimes their liquor licenses say they can stay open later than their convicts do. So I think what we did for the establishment was we told them that they can stay open till 1 a.m. They don't always do it. This is what kind of happens with many restaurants is they have the capacity to stay open later. And they- I think it was on weekends. I didn't know it was during the week. I don't remember, but usually- That's possible. I think the way that the licenses work I can't remember. I can't remember. I had a meeting about this with a couple of people from City Hall about how a lot of people's approvals say that they actually can stay open until one, and then they have this other approval that says they can't. And it's actually whatever's latest is the thing that it applies to. It's something we're working on. getting aligned. All of that being said, I don't remember specifically what it was, except that they were asking to stay open till one, we approved it. I don't remember the details.

[Anna Callahan]: It's like- I only mentioned it because this is the kind of thing like restaurants staying open until one is a kind of thing that occasionally some residents are not happy about. So I know they're kind of a part, they're not in a residential area, so it's probably fine, but- They are in the first floor of a building where people live, so.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I mean, it is to some degree residential over there. They are? I didn't realize that was mixed use there. It is, yeah, I think so. Let me pull up the agenda and look at what the paperwork says actually.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor is saying, oh, you put your hand down.

[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, I think I covered everything I wanted to say. The other thing was just, I think we're choosing to capitalize veterans generally. I don't know if that's common use, but yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's not that important.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Well, we should be, we should have it be correct based on it. Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: My impression of this was that if we're like referring to the veteran's office, it's I mean, yeah, yeah, we, we can. That's we'd like, that's fine. Um, sure.

[Emily Lazzaro]: OK, I have the piece from the packet. It's every day. Opening hours, yeah, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We would like to extend our license to 1 AM. We have events that go into a later hour and don't want to have to end them, sports games that go late, that kind of thing. Yeah, that one was for every day. And again, it's the sort of thing that like, Restaurants don't always use it, but, and this was the same for Mrs. Murphy's. We ended up approving it as like a blanket thing because they already had, I mean, we approved it sort of at the discretion of the restaurant, but since they already have the license on one hand with the approval, it doesn't, we don't really have, I mean, it's a little tricky to say now, Um, now that we, I mean, in my personal opinion, I don't think it makes sense to say to restrict it because often you're like telling people they should leave in the middle of an event or like, um, like a sports game, you're like halfway through the game. And then you're like, where you have to close. So.

[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, and I do know that there are, sorry, if I can butt in, I do know that there are residents who are concerned about it, but I, you know, I think there are even more residents who want it open. From my past experience, last term, we came up across a few of these books, and a lot of them generated big discourse, and I think it was quite in one direction rather than the other. I just wanted it to accurately say what days that I'm not whether it should be open or not open.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in favor, but I just want to reflect what we had actually decided.

[Justin Tseng]: So, I would just propose. for that point, just to say to permit this, to permit the establishment to stay open until 1 a.m. That way it's not, because as Councilor Lazzaro said, it's not like that, it's not that we're, that they're going to be open until 1 a.m. every night, it's like they can. So yeah, that's probably better, clearer wording.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, we approved your request to amend the commons furthest that permitted The establishment to stay up until 1 am permits present probably. quit correcting my grammar law school boy. No, sorry. Yeah, and while that discussion was happening, I also noticed that there was one item under general business that probably should have been under public health and community safety, the CCOPS.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh yeah, that I wasn't sure. But yeah, we can move that.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Because we did it in a regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I wasn't sure where to put it. Yeah. That's always kind of troublesome, because like it.

[Emily Lazzaro]: They do eventually move to those, right?

[Matt Leming]: That wasn't public health.

[Emily Lazzaro]: The thing about it is that the police report started in public health and community safety, but the other portions of it, like the parking department's report, was never in public health and community safety. That was straight into a committee of the whole. And there are some other parts of it that are all the surveillance reporting that was never in public health community safety.

[Matt Leming]: I just feel like general business is too big and I like to write just for visuals.

[Emily Lazzaro]: It's just the newsletter. Who cares? No, our beautiful newsletter, which I love.

[Matt Leming]: Yes. Okay. It's okay. So it's still obviously after like extract YouTube links, but other than that, is anybody, um, okay with what's with what's written here so far?

[Justin Tseng]: Yeah. motion to approve this and publish and circulate it.

[Anna Callahan]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Wait, Emily, did you second that? Councilor Lazzaro? Great. On the motion of Councilor Tseng to approve, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: And this is to approve as edited and then publish?

[Matt Leming]: Yes, yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Chair Leming?

[Matt Leming]: Yes. For approved, one absent, we will publish the May newsletter. Moving on, we have, let me just get back to my digital copy of the agenda. Resolution for a public engagement plan for the FY 26 budget. This is basically, if you recall at the last meeting, we permitted Councilor Tseng to keep the budget survey open for a little bit longer, and I just asked him to come up with like a description of the overall trends, asks, so on, that we've seen in the FY26 budget survey so far. So whenever you're ready, just kind of tell us what people are saying about, saying in the survey, Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, I didn't have time this time to make a fancy PowerPoint but I did put things in a Word doc so I figured I'll just share the screen with you guys I will end up reading from it a little bit, but we can move it faster that way. Cool. Um, so we got 110 responses which is decent. And these responses, I wanted to start with the demographic data just to frame like our sense of what kinds of people are engaging with it. Of course, we always see that with anything with city government, anything with political participation really, it most reflects the people who are best able to engage with city, you know, with politics. And so I think it's important to look at the demographic data first. So this survey, it's Hughes female. We did get a decent representation from across the city, maybe a little bit less from East Medford. But compared to my last version of the survey, this is a bigger, more diverse spread in terms of neighborhood representation in responding to the survey. We also see that the survey is disproportionately high income. So that's something to keep in mind when we review the results of this survey as well. And it very much heavily skews towards homeowners. According to the census estimates, the current spread of homeowner versus renter in the city is 53% homeowner, 47% renter. So this is a very, very big skew. And the median age in the city, I believe, is around 35 years old. So this very much skews older as well. And so that's another thing to keep in mind. And I couldn't find any clear numbers of parents, like percentages of parents in the city, according to the census. This is just for our, for us to know. So it ended up being around 54% saying that they didn't have kids under the age of 18, 42% saying that they did. Again, very expectedly, excuse white as well, although we did do better with getting Asian American responses than the last time. And I actually will say, compared to my last survey, there are more people in their 20s answering as well, but it's still, you know, a lot less than the actual proportion in the city. And it's very English speaking. That's the other thing. I forget what the census estimates are, but it very much skews towards English speakers. So, with the kind of caveat that we shouldn't treat this as a poll, There are kind of common themes that came up in a lot of the responses. So, depending on how you cut it, schools and education was the most mentioned kind of topic when it came to the short term needs question. But if you combine the different kind of infrastructure questions into a bigger infrastructure thing.

[Matt Leming]: Can you repeat how many responses total we got? Thank you.

[Justin Tseng]: So almost half of the responses mentioned schools and education, and almost half mentioned some form of infrastructure DPW street sidewalk as well. These numbers aren't, so this is 40, this is saying 46 responses mentioned schools and education. It's not saying that, like, oh, like, it's not, you know, if you add up the number of responses, it's not, it's going to add up to more than one to 10, because some responses mentioned more than one category. Um, and yeah, the DPW question really depends on how you cut it. So, um, I should I actually I should update this, um, this should read, this should read 46. So we basically got even number of responses talking about schools and education, and an even number of responses talking about streets and sidewalks. And these were the two that really dominated the short term needs section. When it came to schools. The focus was on Medford public schools and just getting adequate staffing adequate funding for the schools, but there were a number of residents who brought up after school care as well. When it came to streets and sidewalks think the heavy emphasis was on improving road conditions, you know, cracked streets and sidewalks, potholes, stuff like that. But there was actually a lot of talk, you know, comments about crosswalk safety, safer pedestrian infrastructure, cycling infrastructure as well. And then there are five responses. That's why I changed it from 41 to 46. There are five responses that talked about DPW funding more generally. I think it's fair to infer that it's about streets and sidewalks, but they talked about just getting more funding for staffing in the office and better responsiveness there. Um, we saw we had 25 responses mentioned, um, non street infrastructure projects that these are projects that are kind of like public buildings, the high school city hall. We got 21 responses talking about affordable housing and development, particularly asking for more help for renters and kind of more just spending more money on housing as well. And then this is a very new jump is there 16 responses that explicitly mentioned more support for vulnerable low income immigrant residents, particularly putting it in the frame of what the federal government is doing. When I did the survey, two years ago, that was only mentioned by three or four people with a bigger, bigger sample size. And so this is a really, really big change from two years ago. And then some other frequently mentioned priorities, transit, transportation, 14 responses. That was kind of more focused on public transit. So safer cycling routes, better bus service, better MBTA access. Blue bike expansion, public safety 13 responses but this one public safety is kind of a big bucket to put this in it's not just about police, and honestly there were responses that cut both ways some asking for more police funding and a pretty much equal amount asking for cuts to police funding. But there were also calls. I think a lot of it didn't talk explicitly in the frame of police. A lot of it was about fire, EMS, and just helping vulnerable populations in the city. We got 13 responses mentioning funding for the library, asking for full funding. Four responses about trees, floods, like climate issues. And then there were five responses about losing federal funding and concerns about patching those holes. Before I move on to the things that are statistically significant, I see Councilor Lazzaro has her hand and I don't know if you want to.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro, feel free to ask your question.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I just thought, I just wanted to highlight how interesting it is that our two override issues are the two things that people, I mean, the things that passed in the overrides are the two things that people were most commonly mentioning, the schools and the streets. And, you know, even though they passed, there's still like, And we have more funding for them. There's still something that people think about a lot as something that we are still in need of more attention for. I just wanted to highlight it.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, and that's an excellent point. It is what the majority of Medford we know for sure cares about. Councilor is saying it said 46 responses for both of them, like for each of those. And do you have any, I don't know if you noticed off the top of your head, but like, do you have an idea of like how many mentioned either one? Like, was it like 60 or 80? that mention either schools or roads or both?

[Justin Tseng]: Oh, I don't have that number right now. I could probably get it, but yeah. OK. If you look through it, it is quite a few. It's not insignificant. The overlap is not insignificant. Yeah. OK. But yeah. Yeah, no, it's certainly really interesting. I mean, I think speaks to why the overrides were at least seen by a majority of residents in the city is really important. Yeah. And I think if I can add my own commentary to this, in reading through the responses, I got a sense that a lot of residents saw the override as just like one step in the solution rather than the complete answer to the solution. I didn't really get the impression that people thought that the overrides would solve everything about school funding or street repair funding, rather that they kind of just saw it as like, okay, this is what we need right now before we kind of either develop a more long-term plan or come back to the voters in the future. And there are a lot of like, This came up especially with the schools. A lot of responses were kind of about, we know that we have good funding this year for the schools, but we need to make sure that we maintain this going forward. And so that was kind of, that was a decent like chunk of responses focusing on that. I also thought it was really interesting to see what was statistically significant. I, this isn't completely unsurprising but young like younger respondents, particularly in the, in their 30s were more likely to highlight housing library, public safety issues, middle aged, like 4040 to 59 year olds were kind of more. more emphasizing roads and sidewalks and big capital projects like buildings. And then older adults, 60 to 69, that category, more consistently mentioned street repairs and public infrastructure as well. So the kind of focus on infrastructure seems to be correlated with older age and the focus on housing and library and some education issues. seem to be a little bit more correlated with youth. And I think that's important to keep in mind because we know that this survey skews towards older older voters as well. Parents, unsurprisingly, much more, you know, frequently mentioned afterschool programs, schools, et cetera. And then another kind of important thing to titrate with is income, because we know that this survey is huge towards much, much, towards much, much higher incomes than, you know, our median here in Medford. So higher income respondents were more likely to emphasize non-street infrastructure and library services. And then mid to lower income respondents were much more likely to bring up affordable housing and support for vulnerable communities as the short-term priority in the city. When we go to long term needs, schools and education remains at the top, a little bit fewer responses but still, you know, up there. Um, we see the kind of framing change from just getting funding to kind of more long term like big picture. goals for the schools, so stronger leadership, staffing, curriculum equity, afterschool care. Housing jumps up when you ask about long-term priorities as well. It jumps up to 31 responses, becomes the second most frequently mentioned topic. And there was a lot of calls for proactive zoning reform. So more aggressive zoning reform, funding for the affordable housing trust, and tenant protections. Non-street infrastructure. So this is, again, like buildings. 30 responses, which is also quite significant. And there is the water and sewer system as well. And then there was also like people linked this to climate. So they're asking for, like when it came to the sewer system, there were a few responses that linked it to flooding. When it came to buildings, a lot of people linked it to emissions as well. Economic development becomes a lot more mentioned as well. there were kind of a few different ways of going about it, but I think residents were really focused on business development, supporting small businesses, supporting kind of the aesthetics of the or improving the aesthetics of the square or of Medford Square and our like smaller squares as well. And then also bringing up the idea of placemaking and community building through like economic development and redesigning our squares. Climate also becomes much more mentioned. So again, a lot of this is about trees and heat islands, but generally climate becomes a lot more mentioned. And then roads and sidewalks, still very frequently mentioned, drops a lot in dimensions, but the difference with the old responses is that these responses focus more on long-term strategy and proactive maintenance rather than just potholes. And then there are more mentions here that kind of talked about complete streets. And then statistically significant demographic patterns, younger residents were more likely to mention housing, climate, economic development, older residents were more likely to mention infrastructure and infrastructure in general. And we actually didn't see that many statistically significant differences with this question when it came to income like we like in the other, like the short-term priorities question. And then this is just so you guys can see things that were raised a lot more under this kind of framing, economic development, climate, housing, that was these three in particular. I think people see these as long-term priorities. And then when it came to the question about what new programs and services Medford should fund, there are quite a lot of responses about youth or teen programs. So some of it was in the frame of afterschool care. Some of it was in the frame of teen centers, job programs, volunteer enrichment opportunities, and mental health. the framing of mental health. We also got a lot of mentions of city services, some of them went into more detail, some of the comments went into more detail than others. When they went into details I think things that came up were code enforcement, housing inspection, customer service, communication, and focusing on kind of like permitting reforms, internal reforms that we can make due to make City Hall more efficient. Public transportation and mobility also is frequently mentioned under this as well. So public transit, cycling infrastructure, multimodal planning, and then shuttles. I know there's a transportation task force out there right now working on the shuttle idea as well, because the federal funding is going to change for it. Economic development, people kind of, there's some appetite for us to look into new programs when it comes to incentivizing economic development and SOAR fronts, tackling vacancies, and then also increasing mixed use in our city. Housing support as well, housing navigation, stabilization programs, eviction support, homelessness prevention and outreach. These were things that residents wanted us to do more and to create more programs about. And then new programs related to climate, five people mentioned that. very similar to what I mentioned before already. Infrastructure roads as well, also very similar to what I mentioned before, the only kind of new things coming in here. Curb ramps came up, private way improvements, which we know is a really tricky issue, but a lot of, you know, given that I think 36% of our roads are private ways, I know it is a really important issue in the city. And then recreation and like funding for like more culture and recreation programming through the library. There were six responses about that. And then there were responses that mentioned mental health programs and equity and access programs. This question had a lot fewer responses. These were optional questions, but younger residents were a lot more statistically likely to propose new programming. And then there's some miscellaneous ideas that came up that didn't really fit neatly into any of the categories, participatory budgeting, third spaces, and leveraging our relationships with nonprofits. This is a typo. This isn't there. I also integrated that. When it came to kind of the last page of the The survey participation updates these were the options we we offered and honestly, there was a lot of kind of a lot of responses for all of them besides robo calls and attending listening sessions. The most popular responses were the council newsletter and social media posts, but this also skews towards those responses because those were the channels where we were most aggressive about distributing the survey. Those were the channels that were most open to us. So we should kind of keep that in mind when it comes to this. But I think this kind of suggests that we should find a holistic approach. to reach our residents. And then this was the second question about more specifically about participating in the budget process. I think people, again, the newsletters, they're very high. I think there's an explanation for that. But I think there's some, you know, people want to be able to email us. That was very very common as a response. And then there is interest in a special budget-related Zoom meeting, listening sessions, and town halls. And then when it came to the open-ended question about questions and comments about the budget process, I kind of looked at them and then broadly categorized them, although I think it's worth just going through it on our own and reading through what people responded because there aren't that many responses. I think there are probably around 30 responses to that question, 30 to 50, somewhere there, maybe 30, 40. But broadly, I think there's six buckets. People want to know how the budget process is structured and decided. They want to know where the money is going and how we track it and how we explain that. They want to know how they can, residents want to know how they can participate meaningfully. They want to know who is being included in the process and who is being left out. They wanna know why aren't, why does it feel like poor services aren't more functional than they are? And I think a lot of this is actually perception. That's something we can talk about after too. And then people wanna know if we are addressing urgent and long-term needs and how we keep track of stuff like that. And this is the last page, the last part of it. I think these questions go to talking about like communicating better about things that we already are doing as a city, and especially as a city council. A lot of what residents raised are covered in the zoning reform, the zoning reform process. A lot of it is in the Medford square revitalization plan of the RFP that that is being proposed. But I think more work has to be done to let residents know about that a lot of their ideas are in there. I think I think a good kind of encapsulation of that point I just made are the comments about permitting and about City Hall being slow. I think a perception is there, but as we heard in our budget meetings, as I'm sure a lot of you guys have talked to our business and planning staff about this, and building department staff about this, on the city council side actually, or on the Medford side, the city of Medford side, a lot of that actually happens very quickly. We can get permitting done within a day or two, but a lot of it is at the state level as well. The state has its whole litany of regulations and permitting processes as well, and that oftentimes can take up to two years. And so there's a, you know, I think we might need to educate the public more about what is city controlled and what is state controlled, but also do more advocacy on behalf of the city to get the permitting done quicker on the state level. So there's my summary.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you. That was a very thorough summary. Much appreciated. And I'm also glad that it got written down in a document that can be distributed after the meeting. Do we have any questions from councillors? Yep. Councilor Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I don't have any questions. I just really appreciate you going through and distilling the data this way. I mean, qualitative data like this is really hard to, sometimes hard to put into cohesive, like a cohesive narrative this way. So I appreciate you doing that. Something I think is really interesting was that you figured out that people would be interested in a Zoom meeting that functions as like a listening session around the budget. I do think that, that could be a useful thing, maybe for a lot of people. We could potentially do in-person even, but yeah, I mean, I think budgeting is really abstract to people sometimes, and it can be very easy to say, to be as an average resident, to be like a naysayer, to be like, what are they even spending all this money on? It's such a huge amount of money, and then, You know, it was so useful, I thought, in one of our meetings when Councilor Callahan pulled up the pie chart, and it's like, this much is going to insurance no matter what, no matter what. This much is going to paying off the bonds and the interest on our loans. And we have nothing to do with that, and we can't change it. So always know that these numbers are immovable. And this much is what we pay for the schools, and it's huge. there's that, there's fire, there's police. These are huge amounts of money and we can't, we don't, we wouldn't want to make those lower because then we really are putting our city at risk. So like these things are, but I think these, like those conversations, I think most people, when they heard them, they would be like, oh yeah, absolutely, super reasonable. And the more you have those conversations openly and transparently, the better people understand things on like, this is how you have, a transparent government and people being interested in that is really good, I think. So it's nice to have that all laid out for us. So really useful data. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for putting it forward for us.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any comments from members of the public, if anybody would like to? ask any questions on Zoom, feel free to raise your hand. I see two members of the public there. This is one of the more informal committees, so. All right, well, seeing none, just like to, once again, express my appreciation for all the work that you clearly put into this, Councilor Tseng. I'm also generally, you know, generally happy that the, Demographics seems to have gotten like a slightly less biased in terms of its demographics from last year. So I think that's good that progress is being made on that end of things. Cool. So do we need a motion to keep the paper in committee or a motion to release the survey report? Something like that.

[Justin Tseng]: I guess we can do a motion to distribute the survey or should we, I guess it makes sense to distribute it to Councilors and then Councilors can see what they want to do with the data. And then, so I guess motion to distribute to Councilors. We could keep the paper in committee. This is the last big thing related to it, but what we could unless we hold a Zoom meeting as a committee, but I think that's a question for Councilors, whether we should do it as maybe two Councilors do it, or we do a committee listings like Zoom listings. We also don't, yeah, yeah. I think it could make make more sense to just like Councilors do it individually. Yeah, I mean, as a committee thing.

[Matt Leming]: I do think at some point, we do kind of need to like, say, you know, the survey, this the survey at this point is done, let's distribute more of a final report. And then if we want to follow up on that, like you said, we could just do it on our own initiative doesn't necessarily have to be doesn't necessarily have to be a motion here. Okay, but I think a motion to distribute the full results of the survey to Councilors publicly distribute the report that you just presented and receive in place the paper on file would probably be an appropriate motion.

[Justin Tseng]: and adjourn. I'll move that and then I'll add and adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, we still have to review the actual listening sessions themselves. So I just want a small description from you and Councilor Lazzaro.

[Justin Tseng]: Sorry, I forgot about that. Slipped my mind. Yep. Okay, I'll move what you just said.

[Matt Leming]: Yep, great. Okay, on the motion from Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Chair Lennon?

[Matt Leming]: Yes. For affirmative, one absent, the motion passes. And the last, the very last is a update on our listening session. So I understand that councilors Lazzaro and Sang had a listening session recently at the Senior Center. So just an update on how that went, any interesting topics came up, how the vibe was, whichever of you would like to go.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Quick vibe check. It was great. We had a really productive session. We heard from a lot of a lot of Medfair residents who we tend to get I in my experience they're usually it's it's a listening session. it's also kind of constituent services. So people will have like specific concerns about, you know, things in their neighborhood or on their particular property. So, um, I've been following up with some folks and, um, there's still a couple other things I want to circle back on, but, um, yeah, it was very pleasant. I mean, I always like visiting the senior center. It's really nice to connect with people. So, We had a really nice time. Councilor Tseng, I don't think has been to one before. So I mean, he can weigh in as well.

[Justin Tseng]: No, I think he captured it pretty well. I mean, we talked about infrastructure, of course, came up quite a bit, like potholes and traffic came up, like making sure that we are enforcing our speed limits. Things like that came up. We had some general conversation about The override funds, especially when it came to infrastructure but I think Councilor was our pretty much captured it a lot of it a lot of it was constituent service based. I think I'm just very focused on, you know, like certain things that have come up with residents and and helping us helping link them to the people who can get that solve for them.

[Emily Lazzaro]: people with people in City Hall who can provide services because, you know, I mean, the thing about City Council is that we are happy to connect people with the services that they can access, but we don't provide really any services. We really just can let people know where they can access services. So that's a lot of what we do.

[Justin Tseng]: Oh, some residents did bring up that they find it hard to know how to access the like phone numbers and emails. So I think that's something for for us to think about, especially for residents that don't have computers or don't have ready access to computers.

[Emily Lazzaro]: That was on my list. Councilor Tseng had an idea to have a one pager of like frequently referred to phone numbers in city hall, people that you would want to be able to give contact info at listing sessions, you know, a person to call at DPW, a person to call at like maybe housing access, maybe Medford Housing Authority, you know, that kind of thing. just like a list of people that you would want to make a phone call to with phone numbers.

[Matt Leming]: It's a good idea, especially for, yeah, I think serving people who don't have computer access quite to the same degree that most do is a definitely a good initiative. Out of curiosity was like, I noticed when I went to the listening session that some residents were, it was a little bit like a public meeting almost, and some residents were like afraid to speak up. So there is a thing, and I think Councilor Callahan went through this as well, where a few residents would like approach us after and sort of ask questions in private. Did the same thing sort of happen or was there more of a, were people more like, uh, willing to, yeah, I see the sunlight, uh, were people more sort of like willing to just like say what was on their mind openly.

[Emily Lazzaro]: They seemed fairly comfortable at this one. Um, we have a couple of people who always, I mean, there's, there's a couple of people that always get us started, but everybody seems pretty comfortable jumping in. Um, at this, at this particular one, there's always a different energy, but everybody seemed pretty comfortable.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Emily Lazzaro]: All right, cool.

[Matt Leming]: Well, thank you all for the update. Is there any other questions from councillors or members of the public? Do we have a motion to keep the paper in committee, or Councilor Callahan? Just, I was, yeah, I was- Oh yeah, motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn.

[Anna Callahan]: That's it.

[Matt Leming]: Second. On the motion by Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you. Councilor Lazzaro.

[Anna Callahan]: Yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpelli is absent, Councilor Tseng? Yes. Chair Lennon?

[Matt Leming]: Yes. Four yeses, one absent, the meeting is adjourned. Thanks everybody.

Matt Leming total time: 12.56 minutes total words: 824	Anna Callahan total time: 0.41 minutes total words: 49	Emily Lazzaro total time: 9.65 minutes total words: 785	Justin Tseng total time: 28.1 minutes total words: 651