total time: 26.32 minutes
total words: 992
[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and change maker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right, thanks so much for being with me tonight. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and who you are.
[Matt Leming]: Sure. My name is Matt Leming. I'm a city councilor here in Medford. Pronouns are he, him. And day job, I'm a health AI data scientist. So yeah, pleased to be here.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks, Matt. Thanks for returning and I've been on a few times. It's been really helpful to check in with you periodically about what's going on in city council and hopefully we can talk a little bit more about that today. Before we do that, if you could just answer the question that we ask everyone, which is your favorite place to eat in Medford, what you like to eat there, may have changed. I know it's a hard question, but yeah.
[Matt Leming]: Well, my default is always Oasis Cafe. That has been my default. But I recently moved from South Medford to the Salem Street area where I live. Right next, I have a beautiful view of the 93 Rotary. So I still love drinking my cup of coffee at Oasis Cafe, but I've also been frequenting Tom Yum Kung Thai restaurant where I eat a lot of their tofu pad Thai, especially just for like a takeout option or just before council meetings.
[Danielle Balocca]: Hmm. Yeah. Right next to City Hall, it sounds like. Great. Well, thank you. So I know you're running again for city council. And so I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about maybe how you decided to run again and what you've been sort of proud of, what's kind of in the works from your last term.
[Matt Leming]: Sure, so I was first elected in 2023, took office in 2024, so I'm on my first term so far. This past city council has been incredibly productive and it's been a real privilege to be a part of that. I'm just going to try to touch on a couple of things that where I feel like There are some things that I feel like I was the one of the main driving forces behind and others where it was really more of a team effort so the some of the most significant uh developments were the prop 2.5 override effort which where we did end up passing medford's first ever override which put uh that put uh seven million dollars into the medford public school system and five hundred thousand dollars in the department of public works which uh, did end up saving about 40 teacher jobs and end up putting some very much needed investments into our school systems. And it will allow us to fix up the, the $500,000 to the DPW will allow us to fix up the potholes in our roads at a faster rate than we were before. So I try to be honest with people. Like it's not like that was a $500,000 a year. It's a magical, uh, fix all for Medford's 60M plus backlog of road repairs, but when the DPW does hire those 3 extra road repair crew members, it will be pretty significant. The other major project, and yeah, I'm sorry to be clear, I was pretty involved in the override effort just in the background in terms of just volunteer coordination. But that was a pretty big effort to get that passed back in November. So I'm very proud of all the all the parents and other electeds who were involved in that effort. The biggest project that we've been involved in is just a complete citywide rezoning as well, which has been going on this entire time. I would say that the Chair of the Planning and Permitting Committee, Kit Collins, as well as the Council President, Zach Bears, are the ones who definitely have their head on the whole in that project of anybody in City Council. I've been pretty involved as well as the Vice Chair of the Planning and Permitting Committee, just in terms of certain developments like ADUs, the upcoming transportation demand management program, and some of the aspects to do with affordable housing. But essentially, Medford hasn't updated its zoning in several decades. And as a result, we have a very piecemeal zoning with a lot of non-conforming structures within the city. It's very confusing anytime a developer wants to come in and build anything new. And the rezoning will allow one for it to be a lot easier for developers to build new things. It'll make it easier for businesses to come in. allow for denser housing next to some of the newer T-stops that have developed in Medford in recent years, and will allow for higher and denser buildings in some of our commercial districts. So trying to really bring in some more commercial revenue, particularly into the city, as well as incentives for affordable housing, which is a matter that's near and dear to my heart. Um, on that matter, we've like another project has also been to, like, try to develop some sort of infrastructure for affordable housing within the city and, and particularly funding it. And that's 1 that I'm like, more of a, more of the main 1 of the main driving forces behind so. In before I was elected, the city voted to pass an affordable housing trust. And this was something that other municipalities had done in like the 90s. Medford had only done it, only did it like two years ago. And so we elected, we appointed, I believe it's seven very great, wonderful people to the trust. And they're just concerned with trying to find ways to fundraise for it. So I've been involved in just, uh, developing Medford's, uh, trying to revamp Medford's linkage fee system, which is fees that we charge developers so that there's a continuing stream of revenue into the Affordable Housing Trust, as well as just point advocates to places where they could really help to bring that funding, uh, that funding in. And then there's just, uh, there's a number of, uh, smaller projects that are finishing ongoing. I'm pretty proud of the work that I've done with veterans and the veteran services director so in particular passing a first of its kind incentive program to house veteran renters where the city will give landlords cash bonuses if they rent out to eligible veterans. I'm working with some parents who have uh, kids and teenagers with disabilities to try to implement after-school programming for, uh, their kids. And that's been something a few other Councilors have been involved in as well. And just, uh, otherwise I'm chair of the resident services and public engagement committee. So just a lot of outreach, a lot more outreach efforts happening and smaller things like we implemented YouTube live streaming, which was a much needed development, which made it so that people could, rewatch the meetings a lot faster. We implemented a city council newsletter which sort of gives these monthly descriptions of all the meetings that have happened within the past month. In my personal capacity on the campaign side, I release blog posts every two weeks and I try to be consistent about that just to sort of give my own very biased view of what's happening within this Lastly, also implementing a vacant building ordinance, which is something that is still an ongoing effort of collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce on that one, but that's something where we're likely going to get to discussing it more sometime in the summer. So, I know that was a mouthful. A lot of stuff that's been happening, a lot of work that I'm very proud of, and I'm very proud of the effort that all my colleagues have put into it as well. So yeah, things are really looking up for the city. We're on a very nice upward slope, and I'm just very proud of what we've been doing.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks, Matt. Yeah, and it sounds so you mentioned a couple things like that have been maybe in the works or not updated or are very old in Medford. So things that haven't been addressed in decades. Right. So you talked about zoning. You talked about an override. One thing that also that I know is happening is like charter review. And so, like, I feel like, you know, nationally, there's so much happening in Medford is like really trying, I think, to to catch up to that and to sort of address some of the national issues that are happening locally. And I know you were part of the I always call it a sanctuary city, but can you remind me of the term that you used?
[Matt Leming]: Well, it's called it's called a welcoming city ordinance, which is something that it was in effect. It's the same thing as a sanctuary city, although the We looked on the DHS's website and they didn't list us as a sanctuary city, but we passed a welcoming city ordinance, and that is the same thing. Essentially, it means that the local police force can only cooperate with federal authorities on criminal Investigations and not for arbitrary detainers for for migrants and so that was something that had been introduced before I was elected. And it has been the policy of the Medford Police Department for a few years now, but it wasn't enshrined in an ordinance. And so after November, after this last November, I sort of took a lot of that those ordinance drafts that had just sort of been sitting there and not a whole lot had been done on them, and worked with the Medford People Power, which is a local citizens advocacy group, as well as some field lawyers from the ACLU and the city's representation as well, and just really tried to get that through council as fast as we could. And so that ended up being passed through the resident services and public engagement committee and by the council. Um, and it was passed for third reading January 14th. So that was, and at the time I feel like that was about what we could do at the local level to protect ourselves from what we anticipated would be happening. And we were pretty much spot on, uh, with what, ended up happening. There has been constant reports of ICE just arbitrarily detaining migrants with, in many cases, without a warrant. I think the most high-profile instance of that was, of course, Ramesa Ozturk, the Tufts PhD student, who was detained by federal authorities and shipped off to Louisiana for penning an op-ed in a student newspaper, although she was fortunately released. But yeah, I mean, the story of this has really been local officials trying to do whatever we can to protect residents from what's happening at the federal level. And besides the Sanctuary City, well, the Welcoming City Ordinance, which, again, is effectively Sanctuary City legislation, there have been a couple of other things that we've been doing. So the city has been using its community liaisons to hold meetings with immigration lawyers for some of the migrant communities through the city. Obviously, those aren't being advertised openly on Facebook because they're not just going to tell. people openly, like where a group of 20 migrants are gonna be meeting. So, but that has been happening. And I've been working with the Democratic City Committee to purchase a number of red cards, which are these sort of know your rights cards that you can hand out to people, even people who don't speak English. So they basically it just basically just list your 4th and 5th amendment rights and if you're approached by an officer, then you can just hand that to them and they know that you're not going to respond to questions on your 5th amendment, right? So that was something that I was. Pretty involved with, um, as well, a lot of my colleagues have been involved in canvassing the city as well. Just trying to really promote some of the. Loose ice watches, um, so that we so that residents can. Uh, list where they went and where they find ice just. throughout the city. Um, and just let people know where that's happening. There's been city council meetings where we've met with the Medford police department and press them for things like, you know, uh, let us know, like give us monthly reports, uh, for where you see ice, um, which is something that is currently sort of in talks right now. But, uh, but yeah, yeah. So, uh, I think we are doing What we can at the local level right now, given the many constraints that we have to make residents feel feel safer.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, well, and I think 1 of the things that you mentioned the tough student right in her op ed and 1 of the other things that you all did was to sort of. talk about a resistance to the war in Gaza. It sounds like there's some national level things that you're doing that affect us locally as well. I'm curious, to get back to when we were talking about zoning, that seems like something that even when I started this podcast, two election cycles ago that that was something that people were talking about. What is the timeline there? What needs to be done? What needs to be decided? What do you hope to do in the next term?
[Matt Leming]: Sure. So in terms of zoning, the timeline for that, if anybody would like to look up anything about the current zoning effort, the current rezoning effort happening in Medford, it is available on the website medfordma.org slash zoning. And that has a lot of very detailed graphics, images, text about what is happening right now. We are trying to get through all relevant topics by the end of June. And what we've been doing is sort of rezoning individual parts of the city. So Mystic Avenue was rezoned first and then the Salem Street Corridor. Right now, Medford Square and West Medford are also going through the process and we're still in planning and permitting this committee discussing Boston Avenue and Main Street and some of the other some of the other streets within the city. The major one right now that's coming up is the neighborhood and Sorry, the blah, blah, blah, just making sure I'm not. Yes, the neighborhood and urban residential zoning proposal, which is the sort of. Proposal that affects the. Largest swath of area throughout the city, it affects, like, pretty much any housing and it is. Rezoning parts of the city that have since had. that have since had like T-stops built right next to them to allow for more density in certain places. So the timeline for that, it should be done by September. That's sort of the deadline that we have with the consultants. And something to understand about zoning is that when you pass it, it doesn't actually change anything immediately. It just dictates sort of what can be changed in the future. Um, so it says, like, okay, this thing, like, this building at this number of stories can now be built here in the future. So trying to encourage developers to take up the zoning and use the incentives that we build in for, like, affordable housing or the green score that we implemented to encourage environmentally friendly buildings, trees and whatnot. is going to be another one project that we're interested in doing for the, that city council's interested in doing for the next term. That'll be a major one, just making sure that growth within the city happens as a result of the zoning that we've all put so much effort into.
[Danielle Balocca]: Let's see. Well, I hear like that, like so one of the things that I heard from some, like, you know, the mayor I think other people like when they were talking about the override was like the, you know, we can get money from taxes that's like one option and then another is from or from like property taxes, but another is like from the revenue from businesses. And so it sounds like zoning is a way to grow business and to grow that tax revenue from businesses. I do hear, though, some of the same people that were against the override also being against this rezoning. And like, so I don't know. I don't know what you sort of like how you make sense of that or like people this sort of fear that. parts of Medford are going to become like, you know, assembly row or those those places that are that have become like really built up.
[Matt Leming]: I mean, there are people who are going to be against like X, Y or Z, no matter what you do. So the story of Medford is We have been a, I would say, a stagnant community for several generations now. And that is the result. I mean, there's a lot of reasons behind that. But essentially, I'll say, Local politicians just couldn't agree on a particular direction to go in and usually listen to voices that said like you should not do this, or you should not go in this particular direction and the current city Councilors the current school committee members are. We're now in a state of mind where we're like listen, we've been listening to those voices for decades now we need to actually do something and implement some sort of change because that has been what the vast majority of people have been asking for for a long time so I've been. One of my strengths as a campaigner is that I tend to canvas a good amount. I tend to, like, I like to knock on doors a lot and talk to people. And so, you know, I'm aware that there was like a small, there was like a pretty vocal minority who, for instance, was against the Salem Street proposals. I've, in the past week, I've knocked on probably about 200 doors just literally around Salem Street, which is my new neighborhood. You know, I have run into people that I recognize from the meetings like once or like I would say two times that have expressed negative opinions about the zoning. The everybody else is excited about it. Everybody else like wants to is excited for the change that they see happening or, you know, they're it's. Pretty typical and they're just concerned about, you know, they just want the roads to be better and they don't really care about that. So a person in my position, it's important to not listen to. I wanna say chronic naysayers and try to focus on the voices that you hear that represent the vast majority of the electorate. And it's very easy to fall into that trap of only listening to the small, very vocal groups who make it their job to approach elected officials and make their voices heard. I mean, realistically, it's like the same, group of like 20 people that we've been hearing a lot who have been sort of very vocally and consistently opposed to this.
[Danielle Balocca]: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I can imagine like, you know, for the sort of the people who elected you, there's, there's like confidence that you're going to represent what we need and that there's, you know, those very loud, maybe less, you know, fewer people that feel like they need to show up to lots of things and make a lot of noise. But no, that makes a lot of sense in sort of kind of moderating, you know, what's best for the city and who's the most interested in those things.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think, I think like the door knocking is a very, I mean, it's just a very important step. Cause like, I've been in that position plenty of times where like, I see this, you know, a group of people coming to city council meetings and they're all like, in some cases they're like very opposed to whatever we're doing. In other cases, it's like maybe half and half. And so just trying to like find ways to reach out to like folks as a whole, which can be, very difficult for a person my position to find access to, because most people are pretty normal. They don't show up to every single city council meeting. They have other things to worry about. So it's really my job to try to make those connections and figure out what the average person is thinking, what the average person wants.
[Danielle Balocca]: I would imagine that the average person isn't attending a lot of city council meetings. That question I hear all the time. How do we get information to people in the most accessible way? It feels like a real moving target. People are always saying, we don't have a newspaper. To me, when we had a newspaper, I didn't subscribe to it. Throughout the different ages and demographics, there's going to be different ways to reach people. I feel like your blog and your email is really helpful. But yeah, I'm curious, like. In the two in the last, you know, two, three years, like what you've noticed has been like an effective way of reaching people.
[Matt Leming]: I mean, anything, any, any answer to that pretty much boils down to more effort on my part. Like it really is the situation where if you kind of become lazy in this position and you just let people, whoever decides to approach you, talk at you, you're going to run into a very narrow portion of the electorate who will it is rare to hear them come up with ways forward. Mostly people are just saying why they're opposed to X, Y, or Z without coming up with any alternative solutions. And for me, that's typically a real red flag. There are some situations where literally everybody says you shouldn't do that, and it's a lot more voices. But for something like zoning, again, I just hear from the same seven or eight people. In terms of ways to reach out to a large number of people, nothing is perfect. And I've tried a lot. So city council has done listening sessions throughout this term. And that does take a lot of effort to organize. But the point of it is that we're working with community liaisons or just people we know to like Organize a listening session with some folks within the Portuguese community or organize a listening session within folks within like the Haitian Creole community like people who. Don't normally make it their business to come to every, every city council meeting recently. We realized that a lot of our outreach and this was a problem, especially during the override campaign. Like, a lot of our outreach was digital and a lot of people don't get their outreach that way. So we've really focused on having listening sessions at the. at the senior center, because they tend to be a group that pays a lot of attention to what's happening at City Hall, but don't necessarily go to email or have a digital newsletter or listen to podcasts. So we're literally going there in person once a month and just kind of addressing the concerns of folks that we see. I personally think that like, you know, my website has been something that I've taken to just publishing regular thoughts. I just try to keep myself on a once every two weeks schedule. And I think that's useful for people who are either subscribed to my mailing list or just find whatever I've written about on a particular subject on Google. I think that's useful just because they know that, you know, their local city Councilors and being lazy their local city Councilors trying to be, you know, open about his thoughts on whichever issues. But yeah, it is an uphill battle. I think personally that the city should hire professional pollsters to look into certain issues that would cost funding. Yeah, that would cost a good amount of money to do consistently, but there always will be biases in this process. And I think it's important to recognize that, but also to not stop trying.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, so the podcast started in around 2021. And I think lazy is an interesting way of describing it, because I think what the composition really changed in the city council around that time, or began changing. And it seemed like the reputation was like, if you get a license to city council, you're never going to be unseated, because there's just the power of being an incumbent in Medford. And that allowed people, I think, to just get really comfortable in their seats. And I think you're right, not really do the outreach that is needed, I think, to just hear from the residents of Medford. And I think one of the things that we asked around that time was how to engage the community. And a lot of the a lot of the comments I felt like, oh, well, people will tell us like if they if there's something they need, they'll come to us. And, you know, I think what you're saying is like is not taking for granted that that's not an easy thing for like many people in Medford to do. Right. It takes a lot of like time and resources and child care, all these things to be able to even attend a city council meeting, let alone like regularly follow what's going on. And so I do appreciate that sort of that like kind of proactive outreach. And I think it, I think it is like definitely part of the solution to engaging folks and making sure that like people are getting that information.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, the city council composition part is, is, is a very interesting point because I think you're right like there are benefits and downsides of the all-at-large system. But in order for an incumbent to be unseated in the current system, you would have to have seven Candidates, including inevitably one new person all get more votes than a current incumbent, which has happened once or twice within the school committee for various reasons. But since they started recording, since like the current records that I see of city council, which only go back to 2005, I don't think it's Um, I don't think it's ever happened. Um, but the city, I mean, the city council is also pretty significantly changed over over the years. And that does have to do a lot to do with that point that you said, which is that the. previous iterations of the city council was like and this is like reflects more of the this is like also reflective of just like the political scene within greater boston as well um it used to kind of like serve like a very narrow part of the population like i remember i spoke with a guy who's lived here most of his life but he moved here as a tufts graduate student and he tried to get involved in local politics and he said that back then people wouldn't even give him the time of day unless you had like, you know, like a big family in town, or maybe if you came with a big business, but otherwise, like, like politicians, like city councilors wouldn't even answer, answer your phone calls. And so the current, like, since then, like a lot of younger progressives from much, I would say, like much more diverse backgrounds. So like, You know, renters some of the renters homeowners some of them. Some of them are lifelong residents others were not. just really made it a point to try to reach out to as many of these voters as possible who felt like they had not been listened to and who felt like they really wanted to be a part of that local political scene. And I think that that, more than anything, that inclusion of just as many people as possible is what really led to the success of progressives at the local level, which we've seen in the past couple of elections.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, it's really interesting. And yeah, I hope it continues. Well, Matt, we've talked about a lot so far, so I'm wondering if there's anything that we haven't talked about that you want to make sure we know.
[Matt Leming]: Don't forget to vote on November 4th, depending on how City Council races go. We might also have a preliminary sometime in September, but that that's only if we get more than 14 candidates and so go there. I'm having a kickoff June 14th, 24 North Street, 4 to 6 p.m. So anybody is welcome to come there. And yeah, you know. please donate to local elected officials. We're very poor people and we, we like donations. We need that to keep getting elected. So, uh, yeah, just, uh, had to do a couple of those plugs, but thank you very much, Danielle, for, uh, for having me on again. And it's a pleasure to chat with you as usual.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Thank you, Matt. Yeah. And good luck. Um, and despite what some people might say, I think you're very underpaid as a city Councilor. Yeah. So yeah. Donations I'm sure help. Um, but thank you so much.
[Matt Leming]: Yep. Thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrik Irenys. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites!
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total time: 26.32 minutes total words: 992 |
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