AI-generated transcript of City Council 06-10-25

[Unidentified]: Microphone check one, check mic one, two.

[Zac Bears]: 11th regular meeting. Medford City Council is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Collins. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng.

[Zac Bears]: President Bears. Present. Seven present, none absent. Please rise to the flag. Announcements, accolades, remembrances, reports, and records. The records of the meeting of May 27th, 2025 were passed to Councilor Tseng. Councilor Tseng, how did you find those records?

[Justin Tseng]: I found them in order, I moved to approve.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve by Councilor Tseng, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Isn't that nice? A voice vote. Let's keep trying to do that. Reports of committees, 25-039, Committee of the Whole, May 27th, 2025, report to follow. This was Committee of the Whole, chaired by myself. This was our final budget meeting. Is there a motion? On the motion to approve by Councilor Collins, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. 24-033, offered by Vice President Collins, Planning and Permitting Committee, May 28th, 2025. Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. This was yet another public meeting on zoning that we had with our zoning consultant at this meeting on May 28th. We reviewed a draft framework for the other corridors proposals, and we will be reviewing this again at the Planning and Permitting Committee meeting that is tomorrow. Motion to approve.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Vice President Collins to approve seconded by seconded by Council Lizardo all those in favor. Opposed motion passes 2403 for offered by Councilor Callahan public works and facilities committee June 3 2025 report to follow Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. This was a meeting with we invited our facilities manager Paul Riggi to come out and talk about our facilities. We have requested that he present us both with a spreadsheet of all of the buildings and some information about those within the next. and then within the next month, he's also gonna, or a couple of months, he will also get us an estimate for how much it will cost to get a true long-term planning document about our facilities to understand the state and the cost to repair each of them. And I move to approve.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Callahan to approve, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. 24-073, 24-354, and 25-041 offered by Councilor Leming. Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee, June 4th, report to follow Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: We drafted our monthly newsletter and released it. Thank you to Councilor Lazzaro for putting the work into doing that. We discussed the results and feedback from some of the recent senior center listening sessions, which Councilor Lazzaro and Councilor Tseng attended. and we heard Councilor Tseng's presentation on the budget survey as well as the report that he prepared and voted to release that as well. Motion to approve.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Council, I'm going to approve, seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Refer to committee for further discussion. 2425094, I'm going to call the vote.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Actually, I would love to give Councilor Tseng an opportunity to speak first.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I had the pleasure to join Councilor Lazzaro at one of the City Council's listening sessions at the Senior Centre a few weeks ago. And at the Senior Centre, we heard a lot from constituents about different issues that they were facing. There seemed to be one common unifier that There were, you know, people in City Hall that they had wanted to reach, but they didn't know their phone numbers and their emails and they didn't have the resources to get that information. So they didn't have computers or internet easy access to those things. So this resolution is really to have our resident services committee spend a session really brainstorming ways that we can make access even easier, even more efficient for residents who don't have access to modern, you know, those uses of technology and to really, as I put it, bring City Hall to the people.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng? President Bears?.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Councilor Tseng put it very well, but it also speaks to our role in the Resident Services Committee, which is, there's a portion of that committee that does constituent services, which I did for a bit in the State House, and constituent services often involves that we're doing is. Referring people to, uh, other staff members who work in City Hall and letting them know who can help them with a problem that they're facing at the our residents that we may be speaking with more directly with the people that can actually help them. On City Council, there are only a few things that we're able to do, but one of the things we do know how to do is make connections. So that's what we're hoping to do here. Thanks.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Lazzaro. Is there a motion on the motion to refer to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee by Councilor Collins? Seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Hearings, 25036, petition to amend special permit 282, Mystic Ave. Notice of a public hearing, City of Medford City Clerk's Office. The City of Medford City Council will conduct a public hearing on April 8th, 2025 at 7 p.m. in the Howard F. Alderman Memorial Auditorium on the second floor of Medford City Hall at 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford, Massachusetts, relative to an amendment requested by Clear Channel Outdoor On behalf of the property located at 282 Mystic Ave, Medford, Massachusetts, 02155, the petitioner is seeking an amendment to a previously granted special permit. petitioner is seeking the amendment to upgrade and replace two digital screens on the sign board located at the property and to ask for review and potential adjustment slash reduction in the permit fee. A copy of the full text of the requested amendment can be reviewed in the office of the city clerk, room 103, Medford City Hall. Please call the Medford City Clerk's office at 781-393-2425 for any aids and accommodations by order of the Medford City Council, signed Adam Herdevis, City Clerk. So we've been continuing this one for a while. Do we have a representative from the petitioner on Zoom or in person? Not seeing a hand raised. All right, I'll open the public hearing then we can move that. I'm going to open the public hearing. reopen the continued public hearing on the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to continue the public hearing to our next regular meeting seconded by seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor. Opposed motion passes the public hearing is continued. 25 044 public hearing proposed amendments to the Medford zoning ordinance Chapter 94 residential districts. This is also been continued from our last meeting. We still do not have a recommendation from the Community Development Board, which is having their continued public hearing. I believe next week to the date on that on June 18th. So I will reopen the public hearing. We do not have a proposal to consider, so we need to continue the public hearing to a date certain. Public hearing is reopened. Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Motion to continue to our next regular meeting on June 24th.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to continue the public hearing to the June 24th regular meeting by Councilor Collins, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Let's continue to June 24th. If we don't have a recommendation from the CD board, I will be sure to note that again in the agenda. Petitions, presentations, and similar papers. 25082, petition for a grant of location, National Grid, 197 and 203 Fulton Street. Petition for a grant of location, National Grid, North Andover, Massachusetts, proposed joint-owned pole, 197 Fulton Street. There's a petition by Massachusetts Electrical Company and DBA National Grid for permission to remove and replace a joint-owned pole including necessary sustaining and protecting fixtures located between 197 and 203 Fulton Street and labeled 132 as depicted in the sketch. The engineering division recommends the city grant that this grant of location be approved with the following conditions. Grant of location is limited to the removal and replacement of one joint-owned utility pole within the sidewalk between 197 and 203 Fulton Street. and labeled 132 as depicted on the sketch. Before starting work, the contractor shall notify Dig Safe and obtain all applicable permits from the engineering division. No other utility structures, conduits, duct banks, pipes, or any other appurtenances are adversely impacted. National Grid shall ensure that all sewer, water, and drain lines are marked prior to any excavation. Placement of the joint-owned utility pole must provide at least 36-inch clearance to the accessible travel path around the structure in accordance with ADA regulations. Cement concrete sidewalk restoration shall be done at the time of pole removal and in consultation with the engineering division per the requirements of an approved PRO permit. Any concrete sidewalk damage during this work must be replaced in kind and cleanly cut at the control joints. The entire concrete panel will be required to be rebuilt. Temporary asphalt pavement can be used during interim conditions. However, the timing should not extend more than 30 days. Project site must be swept after installation or daily and shall be kept free of debris. The Fulton Street is a narrow, heavily-traveled roadway and requires a mandatory police detail. Engineering Division recommends the applicant consult with Metro Police Department traffic sergeants prior to scheduling this work, since work hours may be restricted outside of normal operations. At least 72 hours prior to the start of the project, National Grid must coordinate about our communications with the Director of Communications and submit any required information that may be requested to effectively inform the public. Approved, City Engineer. Do we have representative from National Grid on this for the light pole. You just provide your name and address and give us any more information on this project.

[Cam Hansel]: Cam Hansel, National Grid. This is just to replace the pole and put it in a better location so it won't be leaning like the current one is now.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Does the city engineer have anything to add? All right. I'm going to open the public hearing to anyone in favor, opposed, or otherwise would like to comment on this grant of location. I'm assuming you are in favor. Yeah, great. We will note that. Is there anyone else who would like to speak on this grant of location for the light pole replacement? Councilor Callahan, do you have a question for the petitioner?

[Anna Callahan]: Yes, do you know if it will affect any trees? The placement of the pole and the placement of the wires?

[Cam Hansel]: No, no, there's no trees around it. Thanks.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Anyone else who would like to speak in favor, in opposition, or otherwise has a comment? Seeing none in the chamber and no hands on Zoom, declaring the public hearing closed. Is there a motion? Motion to approve with the conditions of the Engineering Division by Councilor Collins, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Vice President Collins? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Bears?

[Zac Bears]: Yes. I have an affirmative, none on the negative. The motion passes. 25083, petition for a grant of location, National Bridge, North Andover, Massachusetts, proposed joint one pool, 574 Fulton Street, You are hereby notified by order of the Bedford City Council that the City Council hold a public hearing in the Council Chambers at Bedford City Hall and via Zoom on Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 at 7 p.m. on a petition by Massachusetts electrical company DBA National Grid for permission to install a joint own pole including necessary sustaining and protecting fixtures located at 574 Fulton Street. The City Engineer, Engineering Division recommends the spirit of location be approved with the following conditions. They are functionally the exact same conditions that I just read for the previous poll, so I'm just not going to do it again for everyone's sake. The only change is that temporary patch using bituminous concrete pavement will not be permitted, but the concrete sidewalk will be replaced. So that's the only difference as far as I can tell. I'm looking at Owen, and I'm getting a thumbs up, so I read it right. Do you have anything to add on, or just if you could let us know a little bit more about this?

[Cam Hansel]: This is to add additional transformer. The transformers in the area are getting overloaded. Great.

[Zac Bears]: Do you have any questions for the petitioner, for members of the council? Seeing none, I'm gonna open the public hearing to anyone in favor, opposed, or who otherwise has a comment on this grant application. Public hearing is open. Are you in favor? Yes. Great. Is there anyone else, either in person or on Zoom, who would like to speak in this public hearing? I do see a hand raised on Zoom. I'm going to recognize Joe DiCostantopoulo. Give me one second. So I'm going to ask you to unmute and you'll have three minutes. Please provide your name and address for the record.

[SPEAKER_15]: Oh, hi. Thanks, everybody. My name is Joe DeCristoforo. I live across the street at 577. And I just, I had some questions on it. I think, I believe it's to replace the light pole across the street that's leaning. Is it also replacing the transistors up on, not the transistors, the transformers up on Wall Street? And I guess what the impact to that part of the road, any impact for that would be, we live across from it. But yeah, first time participating. So thank you guys very much.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_15]: That's all we wonder.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Thank you. Could you answer the question about the transformer and the impact on the road?

[Cam Hansel]: The transformer is on top of the pole, so there wouldn't be any impact to the road.

[SPEAKER_15]: I'm sorry, I guess my question was, I think the transformers are up on Walsh Street, not on Fulton, if I'm correct. And the pole that's being replaced is the one on the corner of Fulton and Walsh. That's like the leaning tower of Pisa, like leaning into Fulton Street. Is that the one that's being replaced and put at 574? The one that's on Fulton currently that's leaning?

[Cam Hansel]: That one is also being replaced, but it wasn't brought up because the pole is already existing and has the permission to be there. So it's just, this is just a new pole.

[SPEAKER_15]: Okay. And the new pole on Fulton street will have additional, um, transformers there, I guess, work with the ones on wall street too. Yes. okay great so there'll be new there'll be like i think there's four right now it would be like eight just to whatever number there'll be additional ones yes okay hey thank you guys so much that uh that clarifies a lot we uh a couple of the neighbors were asking questions about it and um it's good to know thank you guys thank you definitely uh i don't change my opinion but yeah thank you

[Zac Bears]: Great, thank you for coming and thank you for registering your opinion as part of the public hearing. And thank you to our representative from National Food for answering some questions.

[SPEAKER_15]: I appreciate it guys, have a great night.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, have a good night. Are there any further comments on this grant of location as part of the public hearing? Seeing none, is there a motion? Oh, sorry. I'm closing the public hearing. Is there a motion? Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Motion to approve with the conditions of the engineering division.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve with the conditions of the engineering division by Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan, Vice President Collins, Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Leming, Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Tseng, present affairs.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. 25084, petition for a grant of location, National Grid, North Andover, Massachusetts, proposed joint on pole 287 Main Street and Frederick Ave. You are hereby notified by order of the Medford City Council that the Medford City Council will hold a public hearing in the council chambers at Medford City Hall on Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 at 7 p.m. On a petition by Massachusetts electrical company DBA national grid for permission to install a joint on full including necessary sustaining and protecting fixtures located at 574 Fulton Street. It'd be where oh. that's a misprint. 287 Main Street sorry about that. Wherefore, it prays that after due notice and hearing as provided by law, be granted a location and permission to install two joint-loan pole and two five-inch conduits together with such sustaining and protecting fixtures as it may find necessary for the transmission of electricity at 287 Main Street and Frederick Avenue, Medford, Massachusetts. The Engineering Division received a joint-loan pole petition from National Grid that includes two additional joint-loan poles near 287 Main Street at Frederick Avenue, dated March 12, 2024. The Engineering Division recommends this grant of location be approved with the following conditions. The grant of location is limited to the one additional joint-owned utility pole located within the cement concrete sidewalk near 287 Main Street at Frederick Avenue and labeled P2698-1 and one additional joint-owned utility pole located within the cement concrete sidewalk near 271 Main Street labeled P2698-50 as depicted on the sketch. The contractor shall notify DigSafe and obtain all applicable permits. No other structure shall be impacted. Placement must provide at least 36 inch clearance of the accessible travel path and the placement must not be located in the wheelchair ramp. The concrete restoration shall be done at the time of installation in consultation with the engineering division regarding the requirements of an approved PRO permit. Concrete sidewalk damage during this work must be replaced in kind and cleanly cut at the control joints. Temporary patching using concrete pavement will not be permitted. And the project site must be swept after the installation or daily and kept free of debris. There's going to be a police detail and there's going to be 72 hour notice so that the Director of Communications can coordinate with National Grid on a better communications. The engineering division also recommends the grain of location for the five inch conduits. It's limited to two additional conduits within the cement concrete sidewalk. Digsafe notification, no impact on other structures. Placement is within an accessible ramp in accordance with ADA regulations. The reconstruction of the wheelchair ramp and the reciprocal ramps located across Main Street and Frederick Avenue, three total, must also be completed. The city can provide engineering design plans for this reconstruction work. Cement concrete sidewalk restoration will be done at the time of installation, and concrete sidewalk damage will be replaced in kind and cleanly cut at control joints. Temporary concrete patching will not be permitted. Site will be swept daily or after installation. Police detail will be required and there'll be a 72-hour notice. Approved, City Engineer. Is there anything you'd like to add, Mr. City Engineer? Seeing none, I do have a letter. Well, I'll let the petitioner speak to it and then I'll open the public hearing.

[Cam Hansel]: These polls are just to add additional disconnect switches to the distribution feeder. Great.

[Zac Bears]: Do we have any questions for the petitioner or members of the council? Seeing none, I'm going to open the public hearing. Are you in favor? Yes. Great. We also received a letter. Dear Mr. her to be made to an end 2025 I'm writing in regard to the petition for a grant of location to five zero eight four, please let it be known to the city council and other responsible parties that this exact location at the corner of Frederick Avenue and Main Street. was dedicated as Rapallo Corner by Mayor McGlynn in 2010. The Rapallo Corner sign is currently displayed at that location. Ceremony was covered by the Boston Globe on November 10, 2011, and also local papers wish to ensure that the Rapallo Corner sign is not removed, or if it be necessary, prominently displayed on the same corner. The Rapallo family was brought up at 12 Frederick Avenue, the closest one to the corner. They and their descendants lived there for most of the last century. Sal and Anna had seven sons and two daughters. Four of the sons fought in different branches of the military during World War II. My mother, Elizabeth Rapallo, Camerata, now 103 years old, along with her parents, saw each of their brothers off from this corner many years ago. We would be grateful if you pass this information along to the city councilors, National Grid, and other associated entities in the project for their review. We would hope that this honor will be preserved for years to come. We would ask that this item be included on the agenda. Please contact me if you need additional information. Please send the sketch referenced in the notice to this email. Respectfully, Stephen Camerata, graduate, Medford High School, 1967. And I won't read the contact information. Is this going to, it's not, the city engineer's indicating this isn't going to affect the sign at the street sign? Great, so that will be all set. Do we have any other comments from members of the public on this public hearing regarding the polls at 587 Main Street? Seeing none in the chambers and no hands on Zoom, I'm declaring the public hearing closed. Do we have a motion? Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Motion to approve with conditions of the Engineering Division.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve the two grants of location with the conditions from the Engineering Division, seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Vice President Collins? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Bears?

[Zac Bears]: Yes. That would be affirmative. None the negative. The motion passes. Thank you very much. I apologize that you will never be able to figure out exactly when you're going to need to be here or be able to leave. We got you out early tonight, but you were here, I don't know what, till 11 last time? You were keeping track. Thank you. All right. Motions, orders, and resolutions. 25-088 offered by Council is RO, whereas Immigration and Customs Enforcement has engaged in operations in Medford, and whereas ICE notifies the Medford Police Department when they will be engaged in operations in Medford, and whereas the Medford Police Department is obligated to the residents of Medford to protect their rights and to enforce laws, and whereas it may be a risk to Medford police officers to disclose ICE operations before they happen, be it resolved by the city council that the chief of police deliver a report of ICE operations in Medford after the fact on a monthly basis. Councilor Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. We have heard from a few members of the Medford Police Department leadership that that they are notified of federal operations before they happen, but vague information, and that there would be safety concerns on the MPD's side of things if we as a city council or other members of leadership in Medford were notified prior to operations taking place. So this resolution, it bears that in mind, hopes to hear about the police department's knowledge of operations after the fact so that we can remove some of the sort of collective misinformation or fear that may be generated by not knowing what's happening. There is a little bit of a, I think, a little bit of the goal of the operations that Immigrations Immigration and Customs Enforcement is engaging in. A little bit of that goal is to make people feel worried, uncertain, and nervous about going about their business. And I think one of our jobs as city councilors and in city leadership generally is to make our residents feel more safe. So I think sharing truthful information and being honest about what we know is going to help our residents feel safer and more secure being armed with facts and true information. So that's the goal here. The intention of this resolution is for it to be delivered in person. And, um, Chief Buckley is not available right now. He's on leave for a period of time. We have a provisional chief who is Captain Paul Covino. I'm not sure if we refer to him as Chief Covino in the meantime, but, um, I did send him a message seeing if he could make it tonight, and I haven't heard back, but he was here to discuss the Police Department budget, and he spoke about this issue actually already and was very forthright. I have no doubt that our Medford Police Department only has the interest of Medford residents in mind. I'm hopeful that this would just be a matter of transparency and bringing everybody to the table and hoping that we can just share factual information with each other. Just today, there were ICE operations happening in Medford that I was made aware of, not by the police department or any official methods, but because I got text messages from a variety of people, including, like, a friend of mine that I know through my kids going to school. And when we share information that way, we don't know We don't know why. We don't know if people are being picked up because of what happened in Milford, and a kid got taken into custody for six days on his way to volleyball practice, and he was brought here as a child. And he hadn't broken any laws besides being brought to this country as a child. We don't know if somebody might be a green card holder or actually just a US citizen who appears to be the wrong ethnicity. It's there are a lot of examples from across the country of things that are happening that are not valid reasons to, uh, to pick somebody up off the street. And I just want to do what we can as city leaders to, um, help our residents feel safe. And I think this is one of the least that we can do. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Um, I have spent a lot of this week talking to residents who are scared and confused about what we can do in the city regarding ice and it's difficult because requires us to be really creative and I'm very grateful for the residents who've been pushing us as councillors to be even more on top of this, to be even more creative about this, who are helping us come up with more solutions as well. I recognize that there's much more to do than what we are doing right now, but we are doing a lot. Um, there's a lot of advocacy that needs to be done across departments across City Hall. Um, and this is, um, this is one of those things that I, you know, I do. I completely agree with Councilors are we need to be transparent with what we're doing when we have information. I think It behooves us to know that information, especially as we are the conduits to the people, you know, we represent the people of the city. And the people of the city are scared. This morning's reports about ice in our community. certainly, I think, caused a lot of fear with residents. I heard a lot of it about it this morning. And even, you know, my parents who are, you know, green card holders here, right, hearing about ICE's presence in Medford. unsettles things because we've all seen the evidence online that they're not always just going after who they have a warrant for. A lot of the times there is profiling. They're trying to stop anyone and trick them into opening their car doors or opening their house home doors. And so it's important for us to know what kinds of things are happening in the city so we know how to best respond and best protect our residents' rights. Um, so I'm, you know, grateful for Councilors are for for sponsoring this resolution. I would even be open to an even more frequent report from the police department. I think that, you know, a lot, even after we pass this resolution, a lot of work has to be done. And if there isn't enough compliance will I would be open to revisiting parts of the welcoming city ordinance to strengthen what's there and to explore paths there. And I think while we're on this note, I also ask from our leaders in administration for greater clarity on these issues too. There's a lot of city staff who don't completely know what the policy is when, for example, agents come in to a public building or even a non-public building, like, for example, a library or a food bank. If agents come in without a warrant and are trying to look for someone, what can we do to protect our residents there? And there's just not a lot of clarity at the moment. on those issues, on those scenarios. There's not a lot of clarity on what the police department's policy is when it comes to peaceful protests and what gets interpreted as a threat to justice or obstruction of justice. How do we as a city create the policies to define what falls under that bucket and what falls under another bucket? So that's all to say, I think this is a very helpful step. My hope is that at the future meetings where we do have the chief of police president will be able to talk through a lot of these questions. I would love in the future going forward and even more open channels of dialogue with administration about maybe educating city staff about what we can do. Thanks.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I want to thank Councilor Lazzaro for bringing this forward to me. This proposed policy is about getting correct information into the community from a central source instead of continuing to rely on informal networks, hearsay, social media, and rumors, which is what is currently happening in the community, and I don't think that's in anybody's best interests. This would be a show of transparency from Medford Police Department which we know is a stated goal of theirs and something that they are working to enhance every week every month every year through various policies and I think that this would fit very neatly into that overall goal of transparency from Medford Police Department. Right now, as I said, community members are the ones doing the work of trying to disabuse rumors about ICE in the community and verify correct ones when there are reports shared in text message groups or on social media about sightings of what people think to be ICE but aren't sure and sometimes are and sometimes are not. Verifying correct information and sharing it, even after the fact, I think, is for, you know, everybody's well being, and I think it's important that everybody have a better sense and accurate sense that they can rely on about when ISIS in the community and what in fact they are. doing here and I don't think that should fall on these informal networks and community members entirely. I think it's actually really inappropriate for the city to be essentially outsourcing that to volunteers and informal networks and to social media posting. At the same time, I think that this kind of after action report is the very least that our public safety officials could be doing for the community. Our goal as a city should not just be to make community members feel more safe, but to make them actually more safe. That is why I have advocated and hoped and urged our administration to do things like have the Medford Police Department not just be a force that is verifying and reporting on ICE activity in our community, but I would like for them in the future, and I can't say at the moment I have a lot of optimism that this would come to pass, but I think it would be very appropriate for our public safety officials to make best efforts to be on scene when ICE tells them that they will be in Medford and be doing the work of verifying identification of the people that they say they are there to talk to or detain or arrest and verify that warrants are proper and they have been signed for a judge. And this is because that we know from communities as close as Somerville and as far away as the other part of the country, that ICE lies, and ICE arrests people that are not the people they say they're there for, and ICE arrests people without proper warrants. So I believe this is the least that we can do, because what would be most appropriate for our police department to be doing is making sure that public safety also extends to people with whom ICE has an interest. but this is a good place to start. I would make a friendly amendment to the councilor if you're open to it, that we should institutionalize making this more frequent. I would say a weekly report from MPD submitted to the city council with biweekly presentations at the city council regular meetings. And that is again, just to the goal of getting regular information from trusted sources and bringing some transparency to this very upsetting issue. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So, as I think many of my fellow City Councilors, I also feel that we are relatively powerless in this situation, which I'm not happy about. I really appreciate the work of Councilor Lazzaro in talking to our police chief and getting an understanding from our police what they feel capable of doing, what they feel that they can do, what they are willing to do, and I'm very appreciative of that behind-the-scenes work. I do think that this will be really important for people, and my hope is that we you know, the reports are that there is not a lot of ice activity and that people then feel more comfortable. But of course, if there is, I think that is also very important for the public to know about. My only request was going to be, which I believe Councilor Collins also just put into her request, that it's specified that it is done at a City Council meeting so that it can be to be part of the public record because I think that's that's a to me almost the most important part of what this request is about is about getting this information to the public. Um so thank you so much for this work that you're doing.

[Zac Bears]: Councilor Callihan, do you have any further comments from members of the council? Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Um first of all, the the situation with Marcelo Gomez Silver, I think that for me personally, it it it hits me It reminds me of all of my boys that I've coached in Somerville and a lot of those young men and young ladies that were part of the DACA process and were in process to be legalized really disappeared. And I think that's what hit me, the fact that it's something that has to stop when it comes to members of our community that don't deserve it. And that's what I think is important. And I appreciate Councilor Zaho bringing this forward, but I know I talked to the Chief when he was here, and I know that the leadership team was here the other day, and I did have a brief conversation with Captain Covino, or Acting Chief Covino, and he expressed how difficult that is, and having, I mean, I think it's It's all meant for the right reasons, but I think it's very difficult, as he put it, that a lot of times they're not mandated to report to the city of Mentored either. So to get a complete report to the city council, especially weekly, it's gonna be, I mean, if it's just for what they know, I can understand that, but I don't think we're gonna get a true understanding of what's really happening with ICE involvement in the community, just for the fact that they don't know a lot of times. And to Councilor Collins' point that, you know, being more involved in it, I think in the conversation we had, they really can't in the sense that they're mandated as law offices to support any agency that comes in the city. And, you know, and I think that's not realistic and unfortunate, but I think that finding some sort of avenue that would be more realistic. I know that today I've had many phone calls from a few former players that worked in the neighborhood that ICE was in today and they didn't, they were calling me for guidance. And the idea that they're legal now, they're documented, but still afraid. And the fact that when I did some homework, it wasn't actually an ICE movement in that area today, it was state police. And that brings up another point. It's not just ICE that doesn't talk to our or work with our or mandated to tell our police department anything, it's also the state police. So it's a slippery slope. And to ask them to have them report to something they can't do, I think it's very difficult. So that's my reservation, whether I can support this or not. I support the measure in its spirit, 1,000%, but I think that right now we're in flux with understanding what the process is legally. with our police department, what they can and can't do. So just wanted to share that with my fellow Councilors and the conversations I've had. Thank you.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Councilor Tseng. Thank you. I just wanted to, you know, add to the conversation in case it addresses some of the worries. But at the meeting, at the budget meeting where the police team was present, what they had said was that reporting it, you know, on the day of was what they would consider not wise. So essentially the difference is this is an after report. And that one, when we asked that question, that question was about once you hear it, can you call the mayor of Medford and the city council president? So those are two different scenarios. So when Chief Buckley was addressing that, he was addressing the on the spot scenario and not the after report scenario. And then when it comes to the level of cooperation with federal authorities, federal agencies, it is actually within our powers not to cooperate with ICE. There are 10th Amendment cases about this. And there's established court precedent about not doing that precedent. And that's why we have the Welcoming City Ordinance, and that's why it's legally sound. The line is, you know, actively obstructing certain work. That is where the line is. But this report doesn't cross that line. And I don't think it's anywhere near that line.

[Zac Bears]: Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. And Justin, I really appreciate this discussion. I know that all Councilors are feeling very grave about the situation that our community and other communities all across the nation are facing and that we all share. a really profound sense of sadness and grief and anxiety over knowing what our constituents and community members and neighbors are going through. But just in terms of framing what we have to expect from ourselves and other leaders in the community, I think that we should be holding our public safety officials to the same standard to which community members, just normal residents, are also entitled to say, hey, who are you? Are you ICE? What's your badge number? Why are you here? What's going on? These are things that it is legally protected for. any resident on the street to ask of law enforcement. I think it would be, well, I know it would be constitutional, and I think it would be really fair and appropriate for MPD to have the community's backs in asking those questions too. Apparently, that is outside the bounds of what is possible for city leadership right now, and I find that really regrettable, and I hope that that window shifts over time. But in the meantime, I think it's really not enough to just share our solidarity and our sorrow. We need to be trying to move that window on what we can be doing to at least infuse some daylight into this really grave time in our community. So I just wanted to put that into the discussion. I wanna, again, thank Councilor Lazzaro for bringing this forward and I would move the question.

[Zac Bears]: I'm gonna go to Councilor Leming and Councilor, oh, I think it's actually Councilor Scarpelli, then Councilor Leming, Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Sorry, is it me, Councilman? Yeah, thanks. And again, I understand what my fellow councilors are saying, but again, as much as I respect my fellow councilors and their ability with the perception of the law with this, the discussion I had with our leadership team in the police department is very, it was very black and white and what they can and can't do. And I, even with the question with the welcoming city, why I couldn't support the welcoming city ordinance because the input of the chief at the time wasn't involved by crafting that because when I spoke with him, he made it, he made it clear that it really, it's really divided line when it comes to what we can ask him to do as an ordinance and what their position and their responsibilities and oaths are as police officers. So believe me, I don't, I should, you know, I just want to make sure that people clear because I had discussions today with a few of my friends that are going through this process and understanding the limitations. So we also have to be true and that the community has to understand that our police department is limited. So I would err to their judgment and understand follow their lead with this process, whether I believe in it or not, they are our professionals in this field, and I've been educated by their situations and what they're mandated to do with this process. So it's not easy, it's very difficult, but I just wanted to share that process, so thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: One, when the police are presenting the budget, I specifically asked them if they're capable of executing this ordinance, providing periodic reports. They said they're working towards that, but it was doable. Okay. Two, saying that the input of the police chief is, well, using that as an excuse that you kind of go back to for not supporting these things, it's just something that We've heard time and time again. I mean, last time I heard a lack of support for this, for a surveillance report, because supposedly it wasn't, didn't get the approval of the police chief when it had actually been written by the police chief. So I don't think that that's a reason to not do this. Third, we've had the thoughts and prayers, like language coming out of local politicians for the longest time and I just don't think it's satisfactory. Okay, this is a very basic minimal response, but it is something, and people don't want to keep hearing. Oh, I'm very concerned I'm knitting my eyebrows for people in this community who are being abducted by ice and shipped off to El Salvador. but they have my thoughts and prayers, but I can't support the minimal legislation possible to actually do something about that or even make them feel more safe. So I just, it's an excuse. I mean, the welcoming city ordinance is something that's been passed by multiple other cities in the Commonwealth. It's been passed by many other states. It is the least that we can do. And this is, Another, like an after action report showing where ICE was in the community is also the least that we can do. People are feeling unsafe right now and they wanna know that the police department has their back, is there for them. And this ordinance or this resolution gives them a framework to let them know that they can do that. That's all I have to say.

[Zac Bears]: Councilor Lazzaro, then Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. We are working very hard with us to abide by all of the laws that we are aware of, everything from local ordinances up to the U.S. Constitution. And it feels to me that the federal administration is only abiding by the laws that it finds to be aligned with their goals. So I think what we have to ask ourselves is what are our intrinsic values and what is guiding us morally? And what is the thing that we want to do to best take care of our residents? And how can we carry forward our goals while following all the laws to the best of our knowledge? And I think this more than covers that. It's a very simple resolution. I think that our police department is more than capable of doing it. I think they're willing and able, well able to do it. It's a small lift and I'm sure we can make it happen. Thanks.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I just wanted to note that Captain Camino is chairing a traffic commission meeting tonight. Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Councilor Villes. I know that some of my colleagues get really offended and angry when people don't align with their beliefs. And even though there might be other sides, it's shocking to see their behavior and how angry they can get because there's other viewpoints. And that's sad. So it's really disappointing. But again, I stand with both the video surveillance ordinance and with the welcoming ordinance that I had discussions with the police and the police were involved in crafting both the original welcoming city process and then also being involved with the surveillance process because a lot had to do with the body cameras. But as they move forward to make changes, the police weren't involved in those discussions. That's why I didn't support it. Whether it's, it angers some Councilors, I could care less. But to understand the process, I think it's transparent and open. So it's, to say words like, you know, to just say things, like they're empty. Obviously, some Councilors don't know their fellow Councilors. Because I can assure, I can tell you this, I'm sure no one in this room right now stood in a young man's home with eyes staring down at their four family members. So I understand exactly what it is, but I also understand what the limitations were for their local police department. Now, that's not to say that I'm not gonna support this, but it's also an understanding that it's difficult. And I want people to understand that the discussions I had with the police department, it's very difficult to ask them what you're asking them tonight because they're mandated for other mandates through the state or by what they're sworn in for. So just to share that side of it and being angry about it is so immature and disrespectful. This is the rhetoric that people are alarmed with in this community right now. This is where the divide is, because this council didn't stand. I'm not standing for any sympathy. I'm understand. I'm sharing this from personal experience, but it's also another side that has to be mentioned, because I did talk to the police department. I did talk to Captain of Acting Chief Covino. I did talk to Chief Buckley at the time with these concerns and issues. So you know, if I hurt your feelings, too bad. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks. Do we have anything else from members of the council? I'm just going to give my very short two cents, which is I think that in these extraordinary times, we sometimes have to call on people to do more than the minimum and You know, when we have people obviously and flagrantly violating the constitution and the laws of our country, we have to ask what our response looks like. That goes beyond just what we've done in the past. I'm gonna go to public participation. We have two hands on Zoom. It looks like we have some people lining up at the podium. And then I also have a comment to read in, which I'll do after everyone has spoken. We'll start at the podium. You'll have three minutes. Name and address for the record, please.

[Sharon Deyeso]: Is this on the mic? Thanks.

[Zac Bears]: You're on.

[Sharon Deyeso]: President Pierce. Good evening, everyone. I actually came here for residential comments because it's been brewing for about three years and many of us have questions. But on the subject of ice, I actually called my aunt yesterday because she's elderly and she lives in a lovely area of L.A. very, very, very, very big place, as you know. Most of the trouble is down by Georgia Stadium, and unfortunately, because of the attacks on ICE and on the police, the judges had to move the whole location of the ball game yesterday. If you're not into baseball, you probably don't care, but that's something very big to be thinking about. First of all, in the community, everybody should know the true definition of ICE. Who is an ICE agent? What is an ICE agent? What level of government do they operate on? Also, when you were talking about having the police and the ICE maybe working on certain acts that were to come or after the fact, what method did you propose that the public could be advised? And I'm going to give you an example. About four or five years ago, I noticed that Councilor Schapelle probably contested this. We had robocalls, even if there was a burglary in your area, especially if there were two or three within a month, they just stopped. So about two summers ago, coming home, there was a state police car at the end of Governor's Avenue, just about where I live. and two Medford police cars for a day and a half. Ambulances all taped off, dogs, the whole works. I called the police station. They said, we cannot give you any information. That's state land. We found through the grave found that week that a body had been found on the walking trail. The same thing had happened about two years before, same response state and city couldn't give any information. People who are near dead bodies should be acknowledged. So this to me should be a workout, not tonight. I don't think you're gonna come up with an answer tonight. We also have to be very, very careful of our language. Someone used the word, a nice agent abducted someone. They don't go out and kidnap people. So I just wanted to make it known that there's many people in the communities who are very aware of who ICE is, what's going on. We'd like to have a little bit better security updates. We don't even have a newspaper anymore that people could access during the week for their own safety, even before this. So I think you have a little work going on before you can really come to a plan for this.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you for your intent. Thank you, Sharon. One second, Andy. Andy Castagnetti. Your hand's raised on Zoom, but you're here. I'll take you in person. Okay, thanks. Then I'm going to go to Steve Schnapp on Zoom. Steve, name and address for the record, please. I'm going to let you start your video and you'll have three minutes.

[Steve Schnapp]: My name is Steve Schnapp. I live at 36 Hillside Avenue. I want to read something. We place the highest value on the life and safety of all people. We value individual rights and the human dignity of all. We act with fairness, restraint, and impartiality in carrying out our duties. We are a proactive, problem-solving agency that strives to serve all with compassion and empathy. We are committed to providing the highest quality of professional law enforcement services with the goal of enhancing the quality of life for all within our community. We have compassion for victims of crime. As members of the community, we have respect for and promote the diversity of our community. We advocate for social and other support services for victims, youth, and others involved in the criminal justice system. That's in the mission statement of the Medford Police Department. It seems to me that what the council is asking is completely consistent with the mission statement of the Medford Police Department. Thank you very much.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'm going to go back to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[SPEAKER_22]: Hi, my name is Julia Hendricks, I live at 86 2nd Street. The last time I looked the Medford police work for the town city of Medford and the residents of Medford not the federal government, and so that they should be willing to release information especially after the fact about issues that concern the safety of the citizens of Medford and specifically related to ice. I'm particularly offended by the fact that Medford police work with open faces with badge numbers and with name tags and I can walk up to any Medford police officer anywhere and know who they are. And ice agents are coming into our community with mask. They are wearing out wearing shirts that say police on the back, which they are not and they were refusing to give any kind of identification. So we have a police department that is holding itself to a higher standard than the federal government ice agents are. and will not give us information about when ICE is in our community. I would also like to say that I would very much like these reports to happen in city council meetings every other week so that they are part of the public record. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Stay at the podium. Name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes.

[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So I just want to point out something that I noticed in looking at this resolution in comparison to the Sanctuary City Ordinance that we recently passed. So I don't think the resolution is actually consistent with the ordinance. So going to in the ordinance section 5105, there is a reporting requirement in there already. I'm going to just read a little bit from it. It says beginning on the date of passage of this ordinance and every six months thereafter, Medford chief of police shall submit a report with the information detailed below in a de identified manner relating to the preceding six months to, and then it goes on to say, the Public Health and Community Safety Committee of the Medford City Council. In accordance with the provisions of the open meeting law and then it goes on the list specifically what is to be included in this report total number of ice detainers administrative warrants. Account of each instance in which information was given to a federal immigration agency with the names of individuals redacted and so forth, so to me, it seems like. In order to make the reporting requirement more frequent, what would need to be done is amend the ordinance. So I don't think this resolution would be enforceable because, again, I think it's inconsistent with the ordinance. So I think at a minimum, what you should do is at least talk to legal counsel about this to see if there's a conflict and if the ordinance does need to be amended. But otherwise, I think more practically, I don't think this resolution is entirely necessary because there's already a reporting requirement. So I don't think it's necessary to pass. So those are my thoughts. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Just on that point, you know, we can, this is a request for additional reporting beyond what's required by the ordinance. So if someone wants to propose an ordinance amendment to go further, and just as one Councilor who voted for the welcoming city ordinance, we did vote on that before this administration began its assault on our communities. And so I don't think a lot of people had the hindsight or had the foresight, I should say, to realize how bad this would be, but maybe we didn't. And in hindsight, we're asking for more. At the podium, name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[SPEAKER_18]: Hi, my name is Beth Fasciatelli. I live at 39 Carolina Street, and I'm in support of the resolution that Councilor Lazzaro has proposed, and thank you for proposing it. We are living in unprecedented times, and I think in response, we need to be bold in setting precedent. Otherwise precedent is going to be set for us, which is happening right now. We were talking about the legality of this the feasibility of this this is all unchartered territory. and we need to start somewhere. We cannot wait until we fine tune a plan to begin tracking ISIS activity in our community. We need to start. It will be difficult, there will be imperfections, and those can be discussed with the police department about the challenges that they're facing in giving us numbers, but the fact is that we need transparency. Otherwise, the fear will rise, and that is not safe for our community either. There was a phrase earlier used, members of our community who don't deserve it. No one deserves what is happening right now with the ICE abductions, and I am going to call them abductions because they are. They're illegal. The people who are being taken and separated from their families are green card holders. They have student visas. They have temporary protective status, TPS, which was a very legal way of being in this country up until the president's recent executive order. They may be people who entered this country undocumented, but then since have followed the legal routes to establishing a residency here. These are people who are following the rules and are trying to make a good life for them and their families. We owe this to them. Let's be bold. Let's be courageous in this time of fear and challenge. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'm going to go to Zoom. I'm going to go to Kathleen Mills-Curran. Kathleen, I'm going to request that you unmute and allow you to start your video, and then you'll be able to speak. And please provide your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hello. Thank you. Can you hear me?

[Zac Bears]: Yes. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Great. Thank you. And thank you for providing Zoom access for this. That's very helpful. I want to speak in favor of the resolution. Many reports from local communities have talked to the families of people taken by ICE and established that it can be simply very difficult to find when a person has been arrested. Since ICE agents are often working without identifying themselves by name or badge number and are sometimes working without clear warrants, it can be very difficult for families of people arrested by ICE to simply confirm what has happened. I think when the Medford police arrest something, it is a matter of public record. Families can find out full details to understand what has happened. And our daily police logs show even simple things like noise complaints or parking issues as part of the record of the police activities. So I think that this resolution is entirely in keeping with the police department's mandate to report on the legal activities of the community. even if they are not the ones taking care of those activities. And thank you so much.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll go back to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Micah Kesselman]: Micah Kesselman. I'm at 499 Main Street. First, I want to say I am fully in support of this resolution. Those of you who've seen me talk before and heard me kvetch like you're not surprised, but I do really quickly want to correct some clear misunderstandings of what's going on. So what this resolution, there's nothing about it that would conflict with the or the welcoming city ordinance, like I don't see how that would even make logical sense, unless the welcoming city ordinance said no other reporting shall be allowed from the chief of from the MPD. with except for this, which would be insane. So maybe that's in there. That is, that's insane. Regardless, this is at minimum, a very bare bones transparency and reporting ask of the Medford police. I honestly, It should be something that happens for all federal and state incursions, in my opinion. We should know when law enforcement from outside of our city, outside of our town, our community, are coming into our community and performing enforcement operations. Like, that's just common sense. And I'm a big supporter of strong towns and strong cities and self-sufficient, strong communities. And that's a big part of that. I'll also just be clear for some of our Councilors who seem to be under some other thought about it. Director, come to the chair, please. Yeah, so answer our chair is clear on this. MPD said they could do this. at the budget hearing. They said they could do this. They didn't say that it's gonna be perfectly accurate, whatever, we'll get what we can get, but they said they can do this. So this was not put forward without consultation with the MPD. That's just counterfactual to say otherwise. Moreover, I also wanna echo my neighbor's statement that No resident deserves unlawful abridgment of their basic constitutional rights. No one on American soil deserves having their right of hobbyist corpus suspended. That's just not how that works. And that is what ICE is doing. It's a fundamental right, a right from unlawful arrest. No matter who you are, where you're from, no one deserves that. So yes, the MPD should be protecting every single person, even the worst criminals. Maybe, I don't know, maybe like Hitler's clone came back somehow. They still have to be charged by a court of law. Like you don't get to just arrest someone. I don't get to say, I don't like blah, blah, blah. And the cops come to pick them up. That's not how our country runs. And in fact, we had a really long bloody war. So it wouldn't be run that way. So let's be clear about that. And also, ICE is conducting prima facie illegal unlawful arrests. Like this is problematic. This is a huge issue. The MPD is within their rights to stop illegal activities from happening. Just because someone claims to be a federal officer does not mean they can go around committing illegal assaults on people. Micah, you're over time. I am over time. I will hold my comments for a repeat at two minutes. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Andy, sorry, just a minute. I need to take a minute and take everyone in order. You can have your second go at it once we've heard from everybody the first time. Andy, I'm going to unmute you. I know I see you, I see you in the hall, but I'm going to unmute you. Name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: Am I unmuted, sir?

[Zac Bears]: Yes, we can hear you. I'm going to need you to shut that off if you want to talk at the podium.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: For one second.

[Zac Bears]: We're going to get feedback if you do that. We can hear you. It worked. It worked, so I'm going to take you at the podium now.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: And for once, I could hear this thing. Because usually, you people talk like you're on Wi-Fi. And I'm telling the facts. Even one of the ladies here said to me, well, I don't want to hold you up. Listen, Andrew Castagnetti, Ace Medford, it's common sense. I agree with you all. All. We are a nation of laws, and we must enforce the laws, or else we don't have a nation no more. Not a nation, not a country worth a damn, especially for our children. If you have them, we're gonna get them. Thanks be to God and the Democratic Republic. Please save it, thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right. If there are people who'd like to make a second comment for a minute, they can raise their hand on Zoom or come to the podium. Sharon, you're going to have a minute.

[Sharon Deyeso]: Thank you, Sharon Gesso, 130 Circuit Road in Mass Avenue, long, long, long time resident. I also want to just interject a comment someone brought up because I study a lot of these things. I have a memory also with my family that has worked as chief of anti-terrorism for this country. And he has to be in the big picture all the time. It can't be assuming that someone lawfully is doing a job that needs to be interrupted because of a social view. I just want to mention that. Many of the people who are masked now in ice were asked to do that because their families in the last month had been threatened. So they are assuming masks, you may like that you may not like that. I also say in about a month or so, maybe 10,000 to 12,000 of the people who had been deported, sent back, were given a free ticket. Some were smiling and waving. You can look it up and fact check it. The president gave each person on that particular flight $1,000 in a box of food. And about three to four people who had erroneously been arrested. That month is not such a bad percentage out of 10,000. So, I just wanted to share information. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: You're next one more minute.

[Micah Kesselman]: erroneously arrested and just recently were announced that they're coming back after months of being exported illegally to a prison overseas. So gulags probably a fair word. So to be clear, all these arrests that are done without due process are erroneous. There's no such thing as a valid arrest that is not done with the even bare minimum of due process. And as far as people who only criminals are getting deported, one, that's not true. Mahmoud Khalil isn't back home yet. So there is a guy who's not a criminal, hasn't been charged with anything other than pissing off Marco Rubio. So whatever. So that's clearly not the case. Moreover, Again, like this doesn't matter. So I also want to catch this real quickly in terms of just public safety here in Vancouver. I was on a run this morning. On my run, I spotted a bunch of squad cars at a house down a street, one of the side streets. Didn't know who they were. Some of them were cops, but a bunch of them were in plain clothes. And some of the cars were cop cars, but some of the cars were unmarked vehicles. I was like, okay. uh, thought about popping over and being like, uh, what the hell's going on? Because I sure as hell don't want to see anyone getting illegally abducted, which is what it is. Um, yeah, in my neighborhood, you're over again with that though. With that said, I called loose, checked it out and it turned out to be a narcotics. Great. I'm glad that the cops are doing their job and, you know, doing their job lawfully. However, this is a fear that is consistent. And you don't want someone like me, and I'm sure many of you would agree, even those who don't agree with my views, going up to cops doing narcotics enforcement and saying, what the hell are you doing on my side street?

[Zac Bears]: Mike, I got to cut you off there, but thank you. Steve Schnapp, you're going to have one more minute. you should be able to start your video.

[Steve Schnapp]: Thank you. I just want to announce that the Medford Historical Society will be installing a new exhibit unveiling on June 29th It's about Medford's migrant history. And I would suggest that everybody who can go and get an education about Medford and its history of migration. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Steve. I'm planning to be there on opening day. Do we have any further comment from members of the public on the resolution? Seeing none of the chambers are on zoom.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Council is our Oh, I would make a motion to amend the art just to officially amend the resolution to include what a number of Councilors have recommended that the, um Report be delivered. Uh, with each City Council meeting. Um weekly report delivered at each regular City Council meeting.

[Zac Bears]: I have it as amended to request a weekly written report and a presentation of that report at Council regular meetings.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Perfect.

[Zac Bears]: Great.

[Emily Lazzaro]: And I would motion to approve.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Council Lazzaro to approve as amended by Council Lazzaro, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming?

[Matt Leming]: No, I was just going to say what I mean, meetings are every two weeks.

[Zac Bears]: So that's, that's why I have a weekly written report presented at council regular meetings. Yes. They were friendly amendments by Councilor Collins, but I'm taking them as formally presented by Councilor Lazzaro. All right, on the motion to approve as amended by Councilor Lazzaro, seconded by Councilor Callahan. All those in favour? Opposed? Motion passes. Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: I motion to suspend the rules and take resolutions under suspension.

[Zac Bears]: I need to read something, and I apologize. There was one written comment on the previous resolution. I'm reading it into the record. I'm in full support of Council Lizarra's resolution requiring monthly police reports on ICE activities in Menford. Weekly would be even better, given the increasing frequency of ICE detentions. We need to know what is going on in our community. We keep us safe. Thank you. Ellen Epstein, 15 Grove Street. Sorry, Ellen, that I didn't read that before. My apologies. All right, we have a motion from Councilor Collins, seconded by Councilor Tseng to suspend the rules to take the paper under suspension.

[Kit Collins]: It may be only distributed by email.

[Zac Bears]: It's been distributed by email. All those in favor?

[Kit Collins]: Aye.

[Zac Bears]: Opposed? Motion passes. 25098 offered under suspension by Vice President Collins, whereas the Trump administration has deployed Marines and National Guard troops in the city of Los Angeles to quell protest, and whereas this blatant overreach and misuse of federal resources are already being legally challenged by the state of California as illegal, And whereas this dangerous escalation has been justified by disinformation, including incorrectly referring to residents, exerting their right to protest the government as quote insurrectionists. And whereas the Trump administration has stated the intention to levy even more brutal force upon other cities who protest ICE raids and detentions. and whereas this illegal overreach and the precedent that sets threatens every municipality, be it resolved that the Medford City Council condemns the deployment of the federal military into the City of Los Angeles and in the strongest terms possible, and be it further resolved that the Medford City Council stands in solidarity with the City of Los Angeles and its residents. Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I want to thank members of the community who have been speaking out about this and urging city leaders to also speak out in vocal condemnation of the bizarre and jarring federal overreach that we see going on in the city of Los Angeles over the past several days. It is for me, despite writing a resolution about it, really hard to put into words how chilling it is to be living through a moment like this when, in my view as one Councilor and one person, we see our federal administration not only seizing but manufacturing opportunities to perform a overreach and abuse of federal power, to seek to cow activists into submission, to punish people who are using their constitutionally protected right to protest. I think it is paramount and critical that in this moment, all communities, even though Medford may be very, very far away from Los Angeles, but existentially, we are all in the same boat right now. I think that these kind of conditions breed and multiply and exacerbate when we miss opportunities to say loudly and clearly that this is a crime. This is a moral injury against the values upon which this nation was founded. This isn't a slippery slope. We're on the slippery slope. We're careening down it. And I think if any community or person was to think that as these assaults not only on individual people, communities, protesters, community organizations, vulnerable people, activists, et cetera, but also as the assaults on the very foundations of our democracy continue to get more and more blatant. It is obvious to me as one person that to fail to see that for what it is and call it for what it is will not protect us. Those are the conditions under which These malevolent forces will only get more powerful. I'm sure that we join with other communities in speaking out against this. It is every person's lawful right to protest their government, including their federal government and their state government and the local government. And the Trump administration has been chillingly clear that they have an intent to punish communities that protest illegal ICE raids and abductions. And I don't think that ignoring that is going to make us any safer. Ignoring that paves the way for that to continue and get worse. So this is just a very, very small note of solidarity with the residents of this oppressed community, and I hope that we can stand together in this small show of solidarity with the residents of Los Angeles and the values that they are seeking to defend and amplify with their protests and one small vote of condemnation of this truly historic and crushing example of abuse of power by the current federal administration. Thank you for your consideration.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for the resolution, Vice President Collins. One small point I'd like to make, and I'm not going to generally go into how horrifying this development is, but one thing I would like to point out about this situation is that the Marines that were sent in, 700 Marines, are not trained for crowd control. And that's an important thing for people to understand. The police department, when you have a local police force, they're trained to protect a group of people within a town or a city. Marines are trained to go into a hostile territory and they are trained to kill. That is what they are taught to do. They are not taught to do any sort of crowd control, quell protests, they are taught to kill. That is what they're used for. They are a military force that you send into a war zone. And when I read that 700 Marines were being sent into Los Angeles, that was That was particularly chilling. And that's not even saying anything about the national guardsmen that are there right now, standing there without orders, without a place to sleep, without a place to eat. That's not to mention the $134 million that this whole operation has costed. It's sad. It's not. The military should not be used against protesters. That's all I have to say.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you for bringing this forward, Councilor Collins, Vice President Collins. And I appreciate Councilor Leming's perspective as well as an active duty member of the military. I don't know that much about it. I did know my grandfather was a Marine, but I didn't know that that was their training. Not active duty, sorry, reserve. It's different. Thank you. Again, I don't know that much about it. I think that this has illuminated for me that it seemed for a while, like many people were sort of waiting, not trying to go too far or speak up too much or threaten or seem like they were stepping on any toes and now we've gone past that. And I think it's become very clear that it doesn't matter if you do what the administration asks you to do or if you don't. So I think it's a good reminder to continue on your path in the direction of morality and keeping your head on straight and doing what you know to be right. Because either way, this administration is going to do whatever it wants to do. And as long as we stay focused on taking care of our city and our people, we're just going to hope that we can come out of it on the other side. I think that it's important to express solidarity when we can, and I appreciate Vice President Collins bringing this forward. Thanks.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. It is my understanding that the last time the National Guard was brought into a state to assist was with the permission of the governor. It was in 1992, during the Rodney King riots. There were many millions of dollars of property damage, and I believe there were quite a few deaths. And it was requested by the governor to aid and assist. Far, far worse had happened, certainly than anything we're seeing in Los Angeles right now. There is no permission from the governor of California right now. And the last time that the National Guard was sent in to any state without the permission of the governor was, I believe, after the Civil Rights Act.

[Zac Bears]: It was Alabama in 1965 to enforce the Civil Rights Act.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you very much. Exactly. In Alabama, 1965, to enforce the Civil Rights Act, it is truly bizarre and disturbing that this is happening now. And again, I really have to echo some of my fellow Councilors in saying that I don't think that it helps us to sit by and try to not be noticed. I think at this point, despite our not having power at the national level or at the state level, I think that it is important that we speak up. Thank you for putting this together.

[Justin Tseng]: Councilor Tseng. Thank you. I appreciate and agree with everything that my fellow councilors have said about this issue. The freedom to protest, freedom of speech is a sacred right, in my opinion, of humankind, but it lies at the very core of our country's history and our identity. as a nation. When the revolution started here in the Boston area, all those years ago, I think that those protesters would be deeply disappointed and deeply, deeply troubled about where our country is headed right now with our treatment of protesters. And the deployment of Marines and of You know, this number of National Guards into the, you know, the protest area in LA is substantial and it's not something that we should look lightly over. I think we need to really understand that a lot of these protests, you know, there are pictures of certain scenes, but I know many of these friends who are participating in these protests in LA. And you can look from their live streams, their posts, everything, their reports, their articles that they're writing about it, that the vast majority of these protests are peaceful protests. the federal government is trying to provoke a reaction to manufacture the conditions for which they can suspend liberties, create conditions where they can march in and just tell people to bow down. And that's certainly not going to happen, certainly not something that we're going to stand for in Medford, certainly not something that us as your elected officials will stand for. And I think It's really, really, really scary looking at how this moment compares to other moments in history. And, you know, I genuinely don't know. I mean, I studied a lot of history in college, and a big focus of that history was, you know, the world leading to World War II and coming out of World War II. this moment genuinely reeks of fascism. And it reeks of the lead up, the build up, the manufactured incidents and attacks that led to the suspension of democracy in Germany in 1933. And so I think we need to be very careful to make sure that that doesn't happen here in this country. And it takes every single one of us to do that. I think in addition to that, I think this issue highlights that, again, that these issues can be municipal issues too, they can be local issues because these protests were, you know, were protests at the city level, you know, at the Los Angeles level. They were protesting a national issue, but that's a right, right? LAPD has done some questionable actions, but they've also made the point that they ask the feds not to come in. They ask the feds not to risk provoking the situation. And I don't want to see the day where in Medford, the feds think that they can come in against anyone's requests here in Medford. So I'll leave it at that. And I thank Vice President Collins for sponsoring this motion.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. The only other thing I don't really get here, and Councilor Leming can correct me, is I don't understand how they're getting around posse comitatus. You're not supposed to deploy the military to do police actions in the United States. But this administration is declaring things, emergencies that are obviously not emergencies. Apparently we've been under invasion for 10 years. I had no idea. Are there members of the public who'd like to speak on this? Okay, we'll go to the podium, name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes. Someone speaking? Okay. Name and address for the record, you have three minutes. Please try to stick to three minutes.

[Micah Kesselman]: Sure, yeah. Mike Acosta, 1499 Main Street. Thank you, Councilor Collins, for bringing this to the table tonight. This is not just important, this is local. Absolutely, it's local. We are all, all of our cities live in the United States. This is a total overturning of how federal power is supposed to be invoked in our country against our own citizens. When one of our fellow cities on almost the opposite side of the country is being attacked by militant, militarized authoritarianism. As far as I'm concerned, every city in the US is. Every person in the US is. It is insane that the federal government has deployed not just the National Guard, But yeah, 700 Marines, actual military units into what is at best a local policing issue. In reality it isn't because, and you might not know this if all you're doing is watching Fox coverage or even CNN to be honest. It has been an overall very peaceful protest. It had been until it was directly antagonized and escalated repeatedly by federal agents and agents provocateur. So this is an entirely manufactured thing. There was no risk of safety to any of these agents in the field. And the only actual risk that ended up arising came because of their actions directly as a result of their actions. and their actions were to actually attack the lawful protesters first. I mean, keep in mind too that one news anchor was arrested or detained from CNN, which is wild. And another one from, I think it was Australian, some Australian news channel, was on video, you can see aimed at and shot at. So with non-lethal, or less lethal, shot at. She's alive, thankfully. That's buck wild and should concern and piss every single person off. And I'll leave it at that so I don't get anyone here in trouble or myself on a list. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right, we'll stay at the podium. Seeing no hands on Zoom, name and address for the record. You have three minutes.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: Thank you, Councilor Bears. Just when I thought I was out, I was down the stairs, someone brought up Los Angeles. So the First Amendment is extremely important, in my opinion. Besides, I'm a Woodstock graduate. Also, I was one of the first of 100,000 protesters on the Boston Common against the Vietnam War. You see, we kids had problems. A lousy effing Vietnam War and a damn draft. These kids don't know what those problems are. Thank you for agreeing. That was in 1969, both events. Peaceful protest is good. question everything, but mostly peaceful nugget.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Is there more public comment on this resolution? Yeah, go ahead. Name and address for the record. You have three minutes.

[SPEAKER_18]: Hi, Beth Basciatelli, 39 Carolina Street. I support the resolution. I do think it's important for municipalities across the country to put on record that they disagree with what the administration is doing and that it is illegal. I also think we need to introspect about, rather than just talk about the politics of this in a removed fashion, but talk about the impact on our personal lives. For me, I think this brings home two things. One is, I've been to several protests in Boston over the last year with my children. I probably won't bring them anymore. I'm concerned for their safety. I will continue to go. But I think my husband and I, we are at a place where we're not quite sure if it's okay to bring our kids to witness or to practice their First Amendment rights and to witness us practicing ours. And I find that to be very, very sad. I also think because Boston is another city that The administration has said that they would like to make an example of, given that Boston has been a sanctuary city. I fear that we will be seeing some of similar actions, maybe not to the extent that they're happening in LA but I don't think that we're that far from it. So yeah, I personally have a lot of fear and I think the only way to combat fear is to raise our voices together and to say when something is wrong and illegal. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Anyone who hasn't talked yet want to talk on this item?

[Micah Kesselman]: Seeing none in person or on Zoom, Michael, you have one more minute. I wanted to make sure to add one more thing, just sort of following up on what the previous speaker just said. No one should delude themselves into thinking that Massachusetts isn't on the top list after probably New York. The US attorney not even a month ago, I think, was whining and crying on Twitter, on X, Twitter, whatever, dumb nonsense, about how Massachusetters were being too mean to federal agents, and they were being so mean. And that's on top of Tom Homan directing his legally indistinguishable from domestic terrorist force to target Boston. So yeah, Massachusetts is absolutely on the list of like the first handful of cities that are gonna follow after LA if this isn't stopped and nipped in the bud.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no further public participation, is there a motion on the floor? On the motion to approve by Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Be it resolved that City Council discuss issues on Quincy Street, in particular regarding a large... On a motion to table the resolution by Councilor Tseng, seconded by... Seconded by Councilor Callahan. All those in favor? motion passes. 2, 5, 0, 9, 5, offered by Councilor Tseng, Councilor Kahns, Councilor Callahan. Be it resolved that the City Council explore solutions to reduce incidents of heavy trucking on neighborhood streets lacking the capacity, including heavy commercial vehicle exclusions and home-roll petitions. Who wants it? Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. This is a resolution to discuss an issue that residents have been raising up, particularly in South Medford and Hillside. But I know it's an issue in different parts of the city, especially in East Medford as well, that these large trucks are going down neighborhood streets that they're too big for. And not only are they causing traffic, oftentimes they're getting stuck. making turns in the streets as well. And that's, you know, that creates even more knock on effects. Not to mention, it's bad for pollution and bad for bad for safety of kids, you know, who are trying to cross the street and playing in the street. There's not, you know, the laws are a little complex about this, because we can't just outright say, you can't drive on these streets. But what we can do as a city is start the process of applying for exemptions from heavy trucking. It does require us to collect some data. It requires us to do some work on our front. So we'll need to work with city staff on this. But what I was thinking is we can meet in public works, the public works committee to provide a forum for residents to come to us to tell us about their streets if they're seeing this happen, and for us to work with city staff to identify a few priority streets for us to apply for that exemption with.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. My only was a friendly amendment, which is just what you said, which is to send it to the Public Works and Facilities Committee. We have good discussions there, which include residents, as well as talking to staff.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you for this resolution. I know I had some questions because I received the email and the question that I'm glad that it's going to the subcommittee so we can get some answers. I know that Councilor Caraviello used to work so hard with the 18 whalers that were left overnight with the engine still running and affecting our air quality in different areas of the community, especially I believe on commercial streets. So that might be something if we could add to that. But I think that with this process, I think that one of the questions brought up that a resident asked that, what would this entail that they have a business on a secondary street and usually a heavy truck does traverse that area. So it'll be interesting to see how that could be explained to those residents or those businesses. So I appreciate that and I would appreciate that and move with my colleagues. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you prison bears and I want to thank Councilor Callahan accounts were saying for co sponsoring this resolution with me I'm looking forward to workshopping this in collaboration with community members and city staff and committee. I think that for a lot of people the need to seek some sort of solution here is really obvious. I frankly find it a little ridiculous that such big, huge commercial trucks are just a part of our residential neighborhood status quo. They are so clearly out of scope and scale for residential areas. And it's just something that a lot of people have had to become inured to. But it is pretty bizarre that a street that people live on and walk on and walk their dogs on and ride a bike on. In many areas of the city are also very, very frequently visited by gigantic commercial trucks. It's not safe. It is detrimental to our local infrastructure. It is detrimental to residents' very normal enjoyment of their neighborhood experience. And for a lot of our residential streets we know that even just normal passenger car traffic is too much traffic and detrimental to our roads, not to mention the traffic. So it just makes all the sense in the world to me that it's time to look at a holistic approach to. you know, not saying we have to ban commercial trucks in Medford. Of course, that's not realistic. They're carrying goods to places that need them for people that need them. But we need a system to make sure that these are going on the roads that it makes sense that can support them and not residential streets where it makes no sense for them to be in where it's not safe. Thank you. Motion to approve.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve the referral, or the motion to refer to the Public Works and Facilities Committee by Councilor Collins, seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Communications from the Mayor. 25-039, submitted by Mayor Brian Oliver O'Kern, fiscal year 2026, budget submission revised. I'll read the revisions. Facilities, or sorry, I'll start from the top. Elections is revised to 394,929. PDS, 923,163. Facilities, 2,102,129. Police, 15,083,897. Parking, 1,062,740. Recreation, 639,351. DPW Highway 14,029,809. Cemetery 1,072,842. Parks 954,765. Forestry, $618,365. Council on Aging, $206,057. Insurance, $31,220,000. And then total revised figure for the total City General Fund budget is $205,852,504. For the enterprise fund, water and sewer has been revised to $26,941,022. The total revised total for the water and sewer enterprise fund is $29,277,779. And with that, we'll go to the chief of staff and the finance director. We also have the superintendent of schools and our school finance chief and finance team here. So we'll start with the Chief of Staff and then we'll come to you guys with any questions and updates. But Madam Chief of Staff, if you could just speak to the revisions a little bit and not necessarily what they entail in detail, but if there's anything significant in any of those that you want to discuss. Oh, sorry, I gotta turn on your microphone. There you go.

[Nina Nazarian]: It was green, so I assumed it was go. Now it's red. Good.

[Zac Bears]: Red is good.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears and members of the Council. First off, I want to thank the Council for its engagement in the budget process. Year after year, the Council asks good questions at the budget hearings and greatly appreciate that. From our office, I don't want to speak for for our finance director, but, you know, we appreciate all the questions that every Councilor asks. Also, you know, as far as these amendments, one thing just for purposes of housekeeping is that there was a scrivener's error in terms of the language that follows the city total, the initial city total for $205 million. The words there are a little bit incorrect because they don't actually reduce the amounts that follow. So the words that are there should really actually identify $205,304,412.76. Again, just a scrivener's error, but I'd like to highlight that for you all.

[Zac Bears]: And that's for the tax levy that is highlighted. Correct.

[Nina Nazarian]: So for purposes of the hopeful vote, that would be the correct language for this evening.

[Zac Bears]: Could you just read that number again so we get it? Certainly.

[Nina Nazarian]: $205,304,412.76. Great. As far as highlighting items, I mean, I just will do my best to go through at a top level and I'm happy to answer any questions on the elections budget based on the timing in which we hired our elections manager and then when the budget was submitted, the actual amount that we are paying our budget manager and the amount that we'd originally projected are different. Also, there was a minor error there where we missed the increase for the contractual increase for an employee who is going to be going from a I forget the title but I believe it's a senior planner to a senior clerk to a principal clerk or vice versa. I apologize. I get that mixed up a bit. DPW Cemetery, there was just a stipend that was there. And admittedly, I do not have a full colored version in front of me. So I don't have the red lettering that I had inserted for some of the other budget items. So if you want to potentially tell me what those are, I can tell you.

[Zac Bears]: It was elections, it was PBS. I could read them off if you want to.

[Nina Nazarian]: I'm happy to go one by one if that's efficient. For PDS, I believe that was simply a addition for the Affordable Housing Trust commissioners, for which I believe we have an ordinance that has a stipend for those commissioners with exception of the mayor.

[Zac Bears]: Got it. Facilities.

[Nina Nazarian]: Facilities, I believe that was the adjustment moving the staff from the, effectively consolidating the staff from the other departments in the city to the facilities department. So all the facilities staff were in one budget. So namely the library maintenance person and custodian, same with the council on aging, but also now folded in the Chevalier budget into the facilities budget, which was a standalone budget previously, but it was only, as you all know, a salary budget.

[Zac Bears]: Great. And since you're going off memory, I can also read, I'll tell you if it's personal or ordinary. Police personnel.

[Nina Nazarian]: Police personnel, there was some adjustments that we made, if I'm not mistaken, downward because there were some numbers that we were carrying over inadvertently. But I don't have that at the top of my mind on what exactly those are. I can find that information.

[Zac Bears]: We had parking enforcement ordinary expenses.

[Nina Nazarian]: We did get some... In the parking department, we were effectively trying to split off the payment of specific devices from the police department. These handheld devices that parking personnel use to enforce were effectively paid from the police department and they were split off and put into the parking department.

[Zac Bears]: I'm just pulling up the original submission. I might be able to give you the difference in the amount as well.

[Bob Dickinson]: Sure.

[Zac Bears]: We had recreation. That's personnel. It's down about $2000.

[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, I know that when we were when our recreation director Kevin Bailey was here before the council, there was discussion about Training, and I remember hearing Director Bailey indicate that he had hoped that there would be some money in the budget for training. I took that back and our interim budget manager and I analyzed that and we looked and we in fact were able to confirm that was there. I'm not immediately remembering what that $2,000 is, but I can look into that as well if there are questions. I know that we were able to effectively get everything that really Kevin was looking for in terms of that training amount.

[Zac Bears]: Got it. DPW Highway increased 20,000 in personnel and 60,000 in ordinary.

[Nina Nazarian]: Um, I don't have that one off the top of my mind.

[Zac Bears]: And there were other some other GPW ones that I... Yeah, it looks like there were personnel adjustments, some slightly higher, some slightly lower. 2,000 lower in cemetery, 10,000 lower in parks, 6,000 lower in forestry.

[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, a number of those would have ultimately been proposed increases in the overtime budgets, but the timing, the nature of the timing of the original budget submission and the original, the first revision to the budget submission was such that it was difficult to get those numbers in it was just a Thursday and a Friday just the way it worked. So, there's, they're really slightly modified numbers in general.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, there's a $4,000 reduction in personnel on the Council on Aging budget, similar.

[Nina Nazarian]: That is, I can't confirm that off the top of my head. I'm wondering if it's the retirement of the administrative staff person, Suzanne Lentine, who's done an incredible job for, I honestly don't know how many years, but I've enjoyed working with her. And that may be just the retirement there.

[Zac Bears]: Got it. We love Suzanne. best wishes to Suzanne in connection with Venture. Insurance, we had $31,105 million go up to $31,220 million.

[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, we increased that to a degree as far as the additional FTEs that we were anticipating in the school department. As the council may know, we effectively ended up bridging the gap with the school department, partly by that we are going to be taking some capital items that they had planned for inside their budget and placing that outside their budget. Some of those capital items are on the Council's agenda for this evening. And so we certainly hope that those will also pass for the purpose of the school department. And then we added some funding to the insurance budget to account for the additional FTEs.

[Zac Bears]: And just to confirm, this should read, and to meet the appropriations, the sum of $205,304,412.76 be raised and appropriated from the fiscal year 26 tax levy and other general revenues of the city, and then the transfers should stay the same, and that hits that 205-852-504 number? That's correct. Thank you. Great. Do you have questions for the administration on the revisions to the fiscal 25 budget? I see Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you. And thank you for presentation. Just a few questions in the school department budget. Is this with the, hopefully with the built-in increase for the paraprofessionals? I know that they're in negotiations right now. So is it, do we have enough in there to sustain what they deserve?

[Nina Nazarian]: So I can't speak to the specifics, and I would certainly defer to the school department, but it's my understanding that paraprofessional increases are contained partially here, but also partially in some mechanics that we need to complete over the course of the next Um, before June 30th, really, uh, as the council knows, question eight was a $4 million override that was passed by residents of the city. Um, the school department has expects to be able to use just shy of $2 million of that in this fiscal year. But given the timing of contract negotiations, they are looking to carry some of that money to ensure that they can actually implement.

[George Scarpelli]: And that's what the director and the superintendent mentioned.

[Nina Nazarian]: And so we hope, we anticipate, not hope, we plan for a paper to be forthcoming for 6-24.

[George Scarpelli]: That's great news. Unfortunately, I don't see an increase in the fire line. I know that we cut two firefighters right now, but there's no movement there still.

[Nina Nazarian]: That's correct. We had to make a number of adjustments to the budget. We made some adjustments to the police department budget. We made adjustments to the fire department budget. As the council may recall, we had cut about 10 fire police personnel last year. Um, we were looking to bring that number of uniformed officers to 112 to get closer to what the fire department numbers are, um, in terms of uniformed personnel. but we're only able to really make a minor adjustment there. And so the two departments don't have similar staffing, but we can continue to try to make that happen.

[George Scarpelli]: And I know that, do we get a figure yet on fixing the fire truck that we purchased from Lynn that's out of service? Is that something that's in this budget or?

[Nina Nazarian]: I don't have that immediately, but I can certainly follow up with the fire chief on that to see what the status of that is since the last discussion.

[George Scarpelli]: OK, thank you. And I'd be remiss to keep asking, but is there anywhere in here that would, for transparency purposes, give us a note that we can't have the figures of all of the settlements with suits or anything, lawsuits? that the city had to pay out, but is there, where would there be a line item for that? Is that separate accounts? Is it a private account that we don't see that we just talk in executive session?

[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, so part of it is subject to executive session. Some of it is paid out. I think the council may recall it. It's April 29th. I just happened to be doing some administrative work on this matter recently, but at the April 29th meeting, the council did approve I think five settlements. I don't remember the aggregate amount of them, maybe in the vicinity of, honestly, I don't want to quote it because I don't even remember the aggregate amount, but I know I recall there was five settlements, but it was out of free cash. Other times, it's really, it comes down to where the availability of funds are. So other times it has been out of the law department budget. So, but I don't have that immediately in front of me.

[George Scarpelli]: All right. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Two other questions for the Chief of Staff and the Finance Director on the revised budget proposal. Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you both for being here again and thank you for all of the presentations that have accompanied the budget submission so far this season. Really appreciate, as always, the thoroughness of the presentation and really happy to see the attendant free cash papers on the agenda tonight as I said a couple of weeks ago, those were For me, a critical condition for casting a vote on the budget was just making sure that the community got to see us making those free cash appropriations in tandem with the final vote on the budget. And I understand that we are expecting some additional appropriations into stabilization funds in, I think, probably in the next couple of weeks. Could you just quickly speak to what we can expect to see at the next regular meeting in relation to stabilization fund appropriations from free cash?

[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, thank you. So we've kind of already touched on the school one, the discussion that we're having and that we're just checking with legal counsel on is potentially establishing a school stabilization fund to address the carryover from the question eight override that is effectively just implementing the uh, question eight as presented to the voters. Um, we also, as is presented on, um, at tonight's on the city council agenda are proposing to replenish the existing stabilization funds we have Most notably, I think, is just the capital stabilization account where we've spent approximately $1.5 million and are looking to replenish that back to $5 million. We spent a nominal amount of money out of the Water and Sewer Capital Stabilization Fund, small $100,000, which we're also proposing to replenish back to $2 million. There's ongoing discussion as to further planning and I'm happy to distribute a draft document that exists at this point in terms of the city's free cash outlook and how that all kind of rolls into where we are today. And if that would be okay, I will distribute this and then I will speak to it.

[Zac Bears]: Great, yeah. Can somebody grab that? Thanks. Thanks, Ted.

[Unidentified]: Thank you. Thanks.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you again. BP Collins. Um so what's presented before the council is the original free cash And I think we might have a date here. Yeah, that date. See, this is why this is more draft.

[Zac Bears]: Bob got that in early. Wow.

[Nina Nazarian]: Bob is the time travel.

[Zac Bears]: I mean, we always talk about time travel.

[Nina Nazarian]: So as the council knows, we had 28 million, 28.3 million certified and free cash as of 6-30-2024. Of that amount we have used, we've allocated, we haven't actually spent it necessarily. We've allocated $6.18 million, which would leave $22.12 million remaining. and as seen in this graphic that's before the council, but for description purposes for the public, we estimate we have about $550 million in existing needs. The largest chunks of those are obviously what we know to be some of the reports we've conducted and the assessments that the city has conducted. $200 million for street and sidewalk backlog, $250 million in water and sewer infrastructure work. Obviously, there's also retained earnings that can support that. that we're going to be able to replace. Um. Then there's, you know, 70 million in lead line replacements, and then we get into some of our I'll say smaller numbers, but not particularly smaller because the estimate for freedom way is $15 million. Um Then we have. Things that you know, going down in number $3 We've got the City Hall HVAC, which is an unknown cost at this point in time, which we're looking into. City Hall bathrooms, it's wild what things cost these days, $1.5 million. Oak Grove design and construction, $4 million. have to address but hopefully not. Our finance director is is an ex-officio member of the Retirement Board, and both he and others, we work very closely together and we try to collaborate the best possible. So hopefully we'll be okay in that area. I know dive equipment was one of the items that this council had presented in its write-up for items that it would like to see for FY26. It's just one that we need to kind of look a little bit more closely at in terms of overtime potential impact. and then Hagner Center. I'm sorry, I tried to go in a descending order, but then I wasn't. So in any event, that's a considerable amount of cost and limited amount of funding in the end.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks. I'm going to Councilor Lazzaro and then Councilor Callahan.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Just a quick thing about the overtime regarding the dive team. When I spoke to Chief Evans when he was here presenting on the budget, he said that the way that it would be structured would be that there would be 12 individuals on the dive team, three people in each segment that is always on staff. So it wouldn't have an overtime requirement. Is there a timeline plan for like when each of these things will be considered as part of the, do you have a timeline in mind?

[Nina Nazarian]: As I think the mayor stated at the budget presentation, we're looking to review, this is basically one of our major summer projects, dive deeply into this, no pun intended whatsoever, because I do take that matter very seriously, and look at all of these areas and actually go at a much more granular level than that's right here, including looking at the timeline in which we could potentially implement. We have to obviously look at multiple ways. As noted here, the city has to consider considering the amount of demand that there is on such a small pool of funding. the city has to consider strategies to potentially use borrowing to accomplish a number of these things. And this is mainly for illustrative and informational purposes, but there's a lot more work to be done behind the scenes of this.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I appreciate this all being written out like this. I think it's really helpful. And I think it would be really useful for us to have this for the public to see how how these things are all being thought of and balanced and how many demands there are on the city's funds. My hesitation is just that the money is not, not spending it isn't making anything work better. So I just think we know what the demands are. Let's meet some of the demands and then meet the other demands later with borrowing, like the things need doing is my perspective. I find it, I sometimes start to get frustrated when we know what needs to be done, we have a list of things, just because we can't do everything all at once doesn't mean we do nothing. That's all. Thank you.

[Nina Nazarian]: If I may, President Bears, thank you, Councilor Lazzaro. I empathize with the sentiment because I think that sometimes government moves at a snail's pace, and I have felt that way my entire career, and I continue to feel that way. And I can tell you, we are definitively doing everything we can with the resources that we have and with the limited timing. This month has been particularly busy in terms of budget, but also in terms of litigation. What we don't want to do is effectively distribute funding without fully thinking it through, potentially distributing funding in such a way that we're not considering the entire organization. I don't think we want to make quick and rash decisions on some of these things when there's such a demand and such a need from our departments to only be fair to departments to look at things comprehensively is kind of how we're trying to approach things the best we possibly can. You know, I can tell you that The vehicles themselves need its own kind of like capital requests for vehicles from departments from police, fire and DPW themselves need an analysis to make sure that we're getting the best we can for the city in terms of should we consider alternatives to buying a new vehicle? You know, and then, of course, the conversation as far as energy efficient or, you know, technologies that have that are better for the city and better towards our zero waste and zero emissions goals. All of these things come into play and require more in depth analysis just as an example. But it's There's just there's a lot and Admittedly, when sometimes we push and I think our department heads are doing so, so much good work. Sometimes when we push, we get different information back that really, just like this body, that informs a better process, rather than just accepting things as they come in and And moving forward, we really need to analyze and be careful with our resources if we want to make sure that we don't use all of them before maybe another important thing that hasn't been fully baked yet comes to light. For instance, City Hall, HVAC. It's not fully baked yet at this point. And candidly, we've had issues in terms of heating in in the heating season, and we've actually had to close City Hall. We can't continue to do that, so we need to plan for that, but that one isn't something that has a full number to it yet. We need to have that information and be able to implement, and all of that requires a comprehensive review, in my opinion.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Lazzaro. Thank you, Madam Chief of Staff.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um so I have been asking about this sort of behind the scenes. I'm gonna just be more public now. Um. I understand that it's important for the city to have certain savings accounts. The stabilization funds. I understand that we need to maintain certain amounts of money in those accounts. Um and if there's a certain amount that we should I believe that we should not be seeing more than $20 million in excess of those accounts just lying around not being used. And what I hope to see from the administration is, so this basically says, well, there's $550 million in existing needs. Like, wow, it's so much more. I don't wanna see the $550 million in needs that we have. I want to understand how much of free cash needs to be maintained because it is a smart move to maintain it, because that is what we need in order to keep our bond rating good and all of that. And I want to have an idea of how we're going to spend the rest of the money. I mean, we had $28 million a year ago. We can't continue to put more money into, you know, I completely get it. We need to have a certain percentage of your budget that you have to have as free cash at the end of every year, and I completely approve of conservative budgeting so that we do every year have some free cash like coming back into that free cash. We can't just not spend it because The way that certain things work, like our roads and other maintenance projects, the longer you allow them to become more and more dilapidated, then it costs 50 times as much to repair. We can't just let this money sit there. And so that, I think, is what Councilor Lazzaro was trying to say, that the money isn't doing anything. And there are things more important that it could be doing and it should be doing. So what I would like to see is, I get it if some of this free cash should remain as uh you know in stabilization funds or even in the free cash account if there are reasons why that those should remain there i understand but i think we we shouldn't be taking i mean since i've gotten on the council it's a year and a half we don't have a plan for the tens of millions of dollars in free cash that we have, we need to have a plan so that money can be used in a way that is smart and means that in the future we have to spend less money, right? Those are things, like roads in particular, I just find it hard to believe that letting plus million dollars in free cash sit around is better for the city than spending that money. For example, on roads, and I also understand that if we're going to be spending on roads, we're going to increase our spending on roads, then we have to hire more engineers like these things can't happen immediately. I get that. But to see this, a year later, that there isn't a plan. that to me seems overdue. And I would love to, I would actually love to hear from you. And I thought this was what Councilor Lazzaro was asking for when she said timeline. What I would like is not just a timeline for like when we're spending the money, I'd like a timeline for when can we see the thing I just described? When can we see that the administration has a plan for how much of this $22.12 million remaining is going to be reserved because I understand that, and there may be unknown expenses, there may be other things. I get that. That's what we have the stabilization funds for. But I want to know timeline. By the end of the summer, will we have an understanding of how this $22 million is going to be spent? What is the timeline for us seeing a plan for free cash, including one for reserving some of it as savings?

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President. I think that's I think that's a fair timeline end of the summer. Um, you know, I. I can tell you based on what our plans are, as the mayor has stated, just kind of repeating a little bit, but, um We're gonna be doing a comprehensive review over the capital plan over the summer. Um, we have you know, the backlog is so significant that it's next to impossible to catch up on. But we are trying to deploy multiple different strategies to solve that. ARPA was a strategy that was used to solve that. There was a lot of funding that was allocated to infrastructure through ARPA in general. There's also inherent challenges and You've, you've touched on them, but there's staffing challenges that their procurement challenges in order to actually complete certain projects. I have seen, and I'm not saying that this is the case for Medford, because I haven't seen it here so much, but I have seen communities that allocate funding, but the funding sits and work doesn't get done because the resources don't exist. So that's part of the calculus when we look at where is funding going to go? It has to be able to be implemented. Otherwise, it's really not a very thoughtful or comprehensive approach to capital planning. There was one other item I wanted to touch on, Um. It's not immediately coming to me in terms of. Of my answer, but it's it's. It's um, I understand where the councils or whether where the members of the council have spoken on this by now have are coming from, and I would like to see us get to that. Meet that

[Anna Callahan]: yes, staffing is absolutely, I completely understand that those are issues, but you can't start staffing if you don't have a plan. So, the having of a plan, I think, is the thing that I'm looking for the timeline on. So, I appreciate that you think that, you know, at the end of the summer is when we'll be able to see that. Thank you.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. That's her saying. Thank you. And to add to what you just said, I think it's hard to review a plan or hard to, you know, talk to voters when we don't know exactly what that plan is. And I think that's part of, I think you articulated the frustration decently well, but I think we're in a very unique position now where we've been fighting so long when it comes to recurring funds and making sure those are stable. And I think we all have ideas about things that we wanna see more recurring staff for, right? But I think we can basically agree that the recurring side of the equation, thanks to the voters, pretty stable. But I think now we're talking about the one-time expenses that we want to see in the city, these projects that I think all of our residents realize that have been building up. And so I'm looking forward to the end of the summer when we can sit down together and review that plan. I think all we're asking for, right, is for us to follow the state's guidance on how much free cash we should be having, and to make a noticeable dent into this $550 million number, and to see that plan. And once we have that plan, we'll be better able and better positioned to ask, I think, some pretty important questions. I think you make a really interesting point with the staffing, and I think that's important. But it's hard for us to contribute ideas or to rethink the staffing question when we don't completely know what those concerns are. And I think it just helps us have an open conversation when we have that plan. So very much, I would look forward to that. And I had questions, but I think maybe at this point, these are just more considerations as for things that I think the city council would like to see in that plan. But I think we would be curious as to what types of projects, if you hold off, would cost so much more in the future and what we see costs increasing the most in what types of categories we see that in. So that would help us guide you know, us understanding why this order of projects and explaining that to voters. I think we would be curious as to what things might help us in the future actually increase efficiency at City Hall as well. I mean, I think Many of us think the accounting software might be an example of that, but you know, equipment like I think that this question ties in the last one, like maybe it makes sense to invest in certain vehicles, because that improves the efficient efficiency of certain, you know, forces that we have out in the city. So I think those are things factors that I would be looking for in that plan that will hopefully get them some.

[Zac Bears]: Vice President Collins, then Councilor Kelly.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I appreciate this discussion and I think that I'm getting the sense not to speak for my fellow councilors, members of city staff, but I think that we're all feeling, you know, a similar tension with all of us, you know, being heavily invested in wanting the city to do what we know that it needs to do and feeling that energy and feeling that urgency and impatience rather. And I think that this conversation is going in a really productive conversation, in a really productive direction rather, sorry. As we're talking about, you know, when can we expect to see a plan and how do we do the work of prioritizing and doing kind of a, like, how fast can we onboard assessment of these various needs that we know that we have? For myself, I think that a couple of my fellow Councilors were kind of already getting to this, but just to put it a different way, I think for myself, One thing that makes me feel particularly I won't say frustrated, maybe like impatient is knowing that some of these in this very, very large like $550 million bucket of things that we know that we need and at least have for most of them like rough estimates for that there are some things that are comparatively, still a lot of money, but a really small piece of that pie compared to other needs compared to the amount of free cash that we currently have. And some of them would be relatively faster to onboard than others. As we go forward, I would really love to see both the plan for what to appropriate, but also kind of the plan for How to plan like the plan for what to onboard in in what level of priority kind of take those factors into account, like I was just out of interest as we were talking about this. Looking at even I know this is what's on this chart is a really small sample of a lot of the needs that have been articulated that are in the milieu and under consideration, you know, we have things like the dive equipment which are. 0.56% of our overall remaining free cash balance. And if we're going off of our amount of free cash to spend before we get to that best practice number of $10 million in reserve, then it's 1% of what we have to spend to get there. And then we have other things that are like the whole pie, that we could spend that $12.12 million and still have many millions more to go before we fulfill them. I think for myself, as we're putting the plan together, really committed to seeing the fuller plan by the end of the summer. I think that's realistic, certainly will be impatient to see it. I would especially like to see prioritized the items that are a relatively smaller percentage of the overall number that we have to spend before getting to that $10 million number for amount that we really should keep in reserve, especially filtered through what is a relatively smaller number and what is their Um, a more fleshed out plan for like the dive team. We've heard about that from the Medford Fire Department. Um, I know that that's something that has been, uh, on the mind, something that that department has been talking about wanting to onboard. Um, and then there are other projects that, um, I think obviously should be intuitive to everybody that are a much longer planning process, things that have been planned for forever, things that will continue to have to be planned on a longer time scale, like some of our major infrastructural overhauls. All that to say, I would like to see a plan really as quick as it is possible to see one. And as we're doing that, I think it would make a lot of difference to the community to see certain kind of quicker to ship, so to speak, projects fast tracked. in the implementation plan, because there are things that we know that we need that we know that we can afford that we know we have a draft plan on that. It's frustrating to see us not doing such as the dive team. Because that's just a really visceral thing that I think a lot of us would like to see us be funding so the overall plan makes sense to me but just to put in a plug that I would love to see kind of a separate fast track for those projects that we've already identified that we know will be cheaper and a little bit faster to implement than some of the longer term systemic projects that really have to go on on that really, really steady and slow pace. Thank you.

[Nina Nazarian]: I know, so there's been a lot of discussion on the dive team and I, you know, I think it's really very well could be as as Councilor Lazzaro has stated a pretty simple and Councilor Collins has stated a pretty simple thing, but there are some nuances and some details that may be worth explaining to the Council at a high level. to say I don't necessarily know all the answers to these questions and this isn't something that we're holding off just to hold off. We're truly just trying to be prudent because when we take action, we want to make sure it's the right action. We want to go in the right direction. We want to see as much as we can possibly foresee. I understand the three-person scenarios, but one of the questions that I need to ask the fire chief is what happens if one of those members is not available? Does that mean that another member in that group of 12 would now need to be called in on overtime to fill that? Can the dive team function with two people, or is that additional person coming in on overtime to fill that third person slot on that shift? Also, there are some reoccurring costs. I think they're smaller, but I do want to analyze them at a deeper level to understand what the impacts are. As the Council knows, for FY 27, we're projecting major increases to the fiscal budget. The Council has heard this before, but for the purposes of the public, We obviously have our pension liability. We're very close to a fully paid off pension, which pension liability, not a pension, because that's, that's probably never going to happen. It's not realistic, but long story short for the public, you put an extra amount of money into an account that accrues interest that actually helps support the cost of the pension into the long term. It's a state mandate. We're required to do it by 2040. We are projecting to be able to do it by 2033, thanks to the Medford Retirement Board. And in the latter years of that pension liability, the number goes up much more fast, much faster than it does in other years. And it is a significant increase year by year. I know the pension board has a meeting, a retirement meeting at the end of this month that finance director Dickinson has briefed us on and can speak to more in depth if the council would like. We also have the waste contract, which is increasing. We also have insurances which are increasing year after year at an untenable rate that we're seeing across the Commonwealth. We have the HVAC school bond that we anticipate will come on in FY27 with a roaring roughly $1.4 million, which through this council support, we have been able to tamp down to that number because otherwise it was projected to be in the $1.8 million range, if my memory's correct. So depending upon interest, thank you, because we don't have a crystal ball, but we try to do our best. So there's a lot that goes into all of this. And I think the more important part is we need to have some in-depth conversations with our department heads who are proposing capital improvements and really chase out any threads that need to be chased out. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: I forgot to ask a couple of questions. So more than half of this $550 million is the water and sewer infrastructure work plus the lead line replacement. And I just wanted to ask how much of that, like we have the water and sewer enterprise fund. How much do you think we will be using other savings accounts to work on one or both of those two items?

[Nina Nazarian]: I think it's particularly hard to say, especially with the new... I think the lead line replacement is a relatively new piece of information to the city, all things considered. We also, not too long ago, didn't really have the... backlog work number either for water sewer. So some of this is is rapidly developing. I know that through work of our DPW and partnership with city departments and hiring of a consultant, we're still in the process of evaluating the entire study because I believe rates are the last piece. I don't believe we've seen that component as of yet. And so I think it's early to be able to answer that question. I wish I could answer it, but I think that rate study will inform this process because that rate study is considering that liability. And then there is the question of whether, you know, the rates are the place to place that and how, what legal avenues the city would have. And now I'm just stating laws and nothing to do with things that have been discussed as of yet. But should any of it be offset by general funds? Because that discussion has not come up yet, because it's a little early in that process. And perhaps it probably never will come up, to be honest, because the idea behind an enterprise is the enterprise is self-sustaining. The unique thing about Medford is, I don't know that it's all that unique, but by and large, most homeowners who have most property owners also have water and sewer. There are legal avenues that can be considered, but I anticipate it's somewhat of a tomato-to-model thing, and it probably just needs to be burdened by the enterprise. Again, that's really premature commentary for me, and it's not to suggest anything other than it's early.

[Anna Callahan]: So if I may, it's entirely possible that we might dip into free cash for, you know, or some other sort of savings account for that, but it's also quite likely that we may not because the rates might be put. And that includes both the lead lines as well as the water and sewer infrastructure.

[Nina Nazarian]: President Bears, through you, speaking for myself as to, you know, the way I would look at it from my lens based on my experience and training, yes, I think that that's an accurate description, but I can't speak for the city at this point when I say that because it's too early.

[Zac Bears]: I just wanted to add one thing, which is that there was also a historical practice of using Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund retained earnings to keep the rates down and not to invest in the capital needs of the system. And that is one of the things that has driven us. I don't know how much is related to that versus how much is related to the fact that the water and sewer infrastructure is 100, 220 years old, probably a lot more on the latter, but There was a lot of use of retained earnings to keep rates low. And so we're seeing I'm guessing the rate studies going to say there's going to need to be a significant increase in rates to address the fact that all the water mains are collapsed. Well, in serious condition. Yeah, one of those facts that the rates have kind of been artificially capped lower because because of that.

[Anna Callahan]: No, I'm sorry. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Great. I'm going to go to Councilor Leming and then Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: So at the beginning of this year, we had about $28 million in free cash, and we're seeing here the updated version was $22.12 million. So at the beginning of the year, Medford had, as a percentage of its operating budget, 48%. That amount of free cash is 14.48% of the operating budget. Now that it's 22.12, it's like 11.3%. The average across the Commonwealth is 9.4% across all of the 351 cities. So Medford in terms of At the beginning of the year, we ranked about number 44 in terms of cities that had free cash as a percentage of operating budget. So pretty high, but not like necessarily an outlier. Right now, considering the $22.12 million that we have remaining, we could spend about $3.7 million right off the bat and be right at the average of the other cities in the Commonwealth as of this year. So yeah, $3.7 million could be spent immediately. And there are some parts of the operating budget I was noticing as well where you're sort of over budgeting for certain positions with the you know, idea that that would be with the with the idea that we should have that many positions. But for instance, the police department, they were saying that they had 90, I believe, just going off memory, it was 93. They currently have they said three, an extra three were in the pilot pipeline, we're budgeting for 107. And there were some other parts of the budget that were similar to that. So there's going to be more like, I assume that some of a lot of those unfilled positions are just going to be going into free cash. So, you know, getting us down to that average, like an extra four or $5 million a year, it's not going to, I don't think it's necessarily going to solve every one of the city's problems. What I personally like to see it spent on is areas where we know that it will lead to some sort of growth in the city. I do appreciate what I see on the next paper, which is some of those funding for some of the studies that I mentioned, which would at least allow the city to put out like starting bids on some of those. But echoing what some of my colleagues have said, Medford does have a lot of needs right now. And I do appreciate any areas that you could identify where we could sort of like fund those, and that would lead to excessive growth in the future, which is kind of the parts that I've been trying to focus on during this term in terms of things like updating our linkage fees, which would lead to a lot more money in the future. Again, I keep talking about this TDM study, which is, I would say, partially funded on this next paper. Speaking as one Councilor, I do like to see areas where we're spending free cash, which do promise pretty substantial growth in the future. So those parts are very appreciated. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

[Nina Nazarian]: I'm going to take the liberty to say President Bears through you to Councilor Leming or Councilor Collins through you. Yes, if that's okay. Thank you. Councilor Leming, if you could just clarify for my understanding for future purposes, because I really think we're, I think it's based on what I'm hearing from the council today, I do think it's entirely possible to have a conversation and put papers before this council to address some of the needs that we're talking about this summer. But just when you refer to growth, are you talking about monetary growth or are you talking about infrastructure improvements in that context as to growth?

[Matt Leming]: mainly monetary growth. Like I do like to see the budget that we have be in a healthier state. So that was what I was referring to when I said that just now. I do appreciate what my colleague, Councilor Callahan was just saying about trying to also put the money towards those areas where if we don't, If we don't fix them now it'll just end up the cost will just end up skyrocketing to fix them in the future, which, in my mind, also relates to the monetary growth issue because patching up those areas will end up saving us money. like 10, 20 years down the line when it does end up getting torn up. So that's the way I'm thinking about this is where can we apply money now so that the overall picture will be better 20 years in the future and we're not spending even more money than we normally would like fixing up a ton of roads. So I do appreciate that distinction, but to me, it's sort of like they're one in the same in a lot of ways.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Anna Callahan]: I just had a super quick follow-up to Councilor Leming's point. I just want to make sure when you're looking at that $28.3 million from last year and the $22.12 million this year and comparing it to other cities, in comparison to other cities, are you taking their total amount of savings? Because this $22.12 million does not include the stabilization funds. And if you add those stabilization funds to the $22.12 million, than I believe we're actually over the 28.3 million that we had a year ago. So this may be more than the 14% that we were a year ago, and it might be that we have more to spend to be in line with other cities.

[Zac Bears]: I was a bit of a sidebar here about what's on for schools. Do you need an answer to what you just said, or am I going to Councilor living. Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Right, so we were, I mean we, we were one of the very few. municipalities that didn't already have some sort of a stabilization fund beforehand. So the data that I was referring to, I just took from the Massachusetts State website, and it offers a breakdown of free cash from other municipalities this past year. So it didn't specify the size of the various stabilization funds in those cities. But I'm also going with the assumption that those cities already had stabilization funds that Medford, for some reason, didn't for years and years beforehand. But you are correct that that data is available somewhere on the website, I would just have to pull it up and do some Excel macro magic to to get a get a better get a better picture of those of those percentages.

[Nina Nazarian]: One other thing that I if I may add is one of the discussions that we've been having with the leadership of this council is, you know, potentially And I should have mentioned this earlier, but potentially placing some of the free cash funds before June 30th into a stabilization fund. I think this may have been what you were asking, Councilor Collins, and I didn't touch on that. I should have. Into a stabilization account before June 30th, so we're able to spend that free cash in fiscal 26 to actually be able to do the things that we've all been talking about here tonight, those things that we know that we can get through, but we just need a little bit of capital, further capital planning. So I just mentioned that to say, you know, that's all on the horizon and that's, that's, that would have to happen immediately.

[Zac Bears]: So, yeah, I was going to bring that up if, if nobody else brought it up after everyone had a chance to speak, but since it's been brought up, I just wanted to say, I think Getting our most bang for the buck is really important here. And I appreciate the diligence in that. I don't think spending 15 of the 22 million on Freedom Way would be the most responsible decision for us to do. We could probably do it, but it probably isn't the best thing to do. I also think, though, that the point is well taken about the plan and the timeline. And I think there's one thing, which is we're taking a deep dive look at the capital plan and the CIP and how that translates to free cash. We know that the order of magnitude of need is so much more significant than the available funding. But I think there's another piece of this, which is just to be really clear and say, and it goes to the point of like establishing, either using one of the existing funds or establishing this fund for capital investments, right, which is we have a stabilization fund that is like the stabilization fund that is the reserve fund. And that meets the purposes of what the state talks about when we're talking about having reserves. And I think understanding that is our targeted reserve balance fund. This is the fund we're really planning not to touch. It's our rainy day fund. It's our reserve balance fund. we have a capital stabilization fund, and that's like, if a roof falls down, right now we're using it more for the ad hoc stuff, right? But I think it really is more of the, we're keeping this reserve, we have the reserve fund, we have a capital stabilization fund, which is for things that happen during the year, for emergencies, capital needs, and then we have an investment fund, which maybe won't get there this year, but I think it should be all of the rest of the money that is available in reserves, the fund balance for the city essentially, right? And that is the money that could go to these larger capital needs. And to me I think really being clear with the public like, here's our reserve fund, this is the target and goal balance. We're at that, and we will replenish that every year if we ever use it. here's our capital stabilization fund for emergencies, and we are going to replenish that every year, and we're using it for capital emergencies. And then here is our capital investment fund, and that is, you know, for these bigger questions. And just having that delineation, instead of just having it be nebulously free cash, free cash, free cash, and then anyone can say whatever they want about free cash, even though may not be related to reality of free cash, It gets much easier to explain to people why we have these fund balances, where they are, what are our targets and goals and what are their purposes. And so that's the work that I think we've been talking about that you just raised that I really hope we can advance because we can do that and be a lot clearer about the system that we're using to hold these funds and why they are in the buckets that they're in. And hopefully we have, you know, good growth years and the free cash is just essentially replenishing, you know, replenishing those stabilization funds and then the balance can go into an investment fund or however we would want to do that. And then there's that other question of what are our needs and how do we get our most bang for the buck using that investment fund, you know, piece to fund our things. And my understanding is that regardless of what bucket it's interest accruing, so, you know, that piece gets to live too. And there'll be carryover and we're not, you know, I'm not of the mind of saying just because we have 500 million in need, we should spend all 22 million next year. But I also agree that we need to be moving faster. So those are some of the discussions we've been having just to put that context out there since you raised it. And I think that would be really informative and helpful. That first piece of just like, this is where the money is and why. And quite frankly, as little of it as possible in free cash since that gets twisted. That I think is really helpful. And then that's not to diminish my fellow colleagues longer questions about being more urgent on using the funds available for one-time projects and what is the plan as relates to capital plan. So it's just those are the kind of two pieces that I really think about it. And if you want to talk, since I just talked for a while, I'll go to Emily and Kit.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. I think that's a very helpful characterization to the discussions we've been having. I think the only thing that it reminds me of that I think is worth noting here is a little bit of historical timeline, where we've been. And I'm going to try to avoid a slippery slope here the best I can. But I just will say that as of December 31, 2024, We were, which obviously was, you know, less than six months ago at this point, we were still closing in on the planning on ARPA. Right, we had to commit every dollar under ARPA, less than six months ago. So that was our last in first out right that had to be our last in first out model, because we can't lose that money we could never turn to the city and say you know well we received $48 million in our but but we weren't able to commit that in time that was the highest priority we had. at the time. And we've successfully completed that task. We will successfully complete the task of spending all that funding by 2026, same time frame. But just a little quick look back to where we were, why we might have the dollars that we have is because we were committing the ARPA funds first. It had to be done that way. So now we're through the budget season, we're We have other major and pressing topics in front of us. We are 100% committed to do this capital planning, as the mayor has stated, and I can't say enough this summer. So I understand where the Councilors are coming from. I just wanted to kind of just take a quick look back to where we were and present that as a part of the discussion so that it's not lost on anyone where we were coming from.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks, and you know, I really appreciate that. I know that it was a real rush to the finish line on the ARPA stuff, and I know how important that was, and that quite frankly, we wouldn't have this free cash reserves funding for capital investment question if we hadn't done that, and if we didn't have ARPA, and if the federal government had never come in, because that was basically what is the reason for most of these balances. And I just want to say, I think one of these is kind of just financial question, like where's the money? Why is it there? What is the goal of each of these things? And then there's how are we spending it, which is a much bigger question where like the prioritization comes in. So that was just what I was trying to add by kind of framing those two buckets of process. Councilor Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I just wanted to because I kind of had this realization recently and I wanted to reiterate something that Councilor Callahan said and something that Councilor, or President Perez said, which is that the Capital Stabilization Fund is also a rainy day fund. And in some contexts, people will say that a city's funds that it has as rainy day funds, that it's counting when it's looking at your bond rating, includes the capital stabilization fund and free cash, but you can spend the capital stabilization fund when you need to, you can't always spend free cash. So it feels to me that it's a little bit confusing to say that free cash is being spent on replenishing the stabilization fund, it's not being spent on anything, it's going into a fund that we would then spend on something else. if it were to come up, it's not just being held. We still have it, and it's more available then. And that the percentage of our budget that is being held in Rainy Day Fund, I think is too big right now. and that we should be spending it on projects so that I think there's a fiscal irresponsibility in holding on to money and not spending it on things that need to get done just the same as it is on spending it on too many things too quickly, just like in a household budget, if you're not making improvements to your daily, you know, the way that you need to make improvements, that can be just as irresponsible as spending too much. So I all of that, you can look online at the DLS website, as Councilor Leming was saying, compare all the different cities and everybody's all over the place. But I really think that we can afford to do a lot more work to keep the city running more smoothly, and we just have to be a little bit more bold. So I'm done. I'm stopping now. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. I appreciate that. And this is sorry. This is a clarification that I wanted to make my point that was like about a half an hour ago, so I'll just make it super, super quickly. I really appreciate the clarity around the dive team. And I know that we've been bringing that up, perhaps a disproportionate, or at least for myself, a disproportionate amount, because it's something we've talked about recently, something that's on this sheet. And maybe this is distinct from the point that other Councilors were making, but for me, that is just one example and kind of a host of things at that tier that are relatively quick to ship. I would also put into that category some of the transportation and cycling network related improvements that we talked about in the committee of the whole in the past couple of months. I think those kind of fit a lot of the same metrics. So again, I don't want to, I don't want to restart our conversation on that topic. And I understand the complexity around that. I know there's complexities and questions to answer with any of these funding decisions, but more just to illustrate the point that for me, there's this, there is this category of really meaningful in a lot of cases, community safety related improvements that we could probably onboard really quickly that would make a relatively small percentage dent in the amount of money that we're trying to either put into the appropriate stabilization fund or spend in the shorter term instead of appropriating into a stabilization fund that I think would be really, really meaningful for the community to see us onboarding in the context of the grander planning appropriation work that we are going to be doing, both by the end of this fiscal year and over the next few months. So I just wanted to make that clarification. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks. Do we have any further questions? Seeing none, do we have any comments from members of the public on the proposed fiscal 26 budget? Yes. Name and address for the record, please, if three minutes.

[Micah Kesselman]: Sure. Sure. Michael Kesselman, 49 Main Street. I just had a question. So one of the things, you know, we're talking about when looking at the free cash is that you know what isn't moved to replenish the civilization fund is then like invested in some whatever index or whatever. I are there. Well, I guess I'm just saying you guys but are there local. like vehicles for that type of investment that could actually funnel development as an investment in the city of Medford rather than going into some hedge fund or whatever index fund. I guess that would be some sort of like what I'm curious about because then that makes that investment actually productive for the city while is actually accruing value at the same time. And that would effectively be a win-win. So I don't know if that's something you can even really look at or consider.

[Zac Bears]: I'm going to look at Bob the whole time because I think I'm going to watch his face as I make mistakes and what I'm about to say and maybe Bob can correct them. But my understanding what we're talking about here funds that are in the stabilization fund are free cash. Essentially the city's cash assets that are not committed to something that the treasurer It makes it that those are we basically pull that with other cities in through this through a state vehicle, and that that is how we hold those but I'm not 100% sure I'm going to go to the treasurer holds.

[Bob Dickinson]: All of the city's funds, they're cut up according to Mass General Law, so the city has trust funds, for instance, that are managed in a trust vehicle. Obviously, the treasurer needs to have available funds for cash flow for things like payroll and AP warrants. The bulk of the money, she's enjoined by law about how she can actually invest it, but a good portion of it is in an MMDT account, which is, I believe, what you were talking about. It's a state account. They're all interest-bearing.

[Zac Bears]: Mass Municipal Depositors Trust, is that right? MMDT, Mass Municipal Depositors Trust, is that the acronym?

[Bob Dickinson]: I can never remember. It's the NMDT. Obviously, the treasurer tries to make sure that she has enough cash flow to meet the city's ongoing obligations. And the rest of it is invested in the highest interest account she can get. So yes, the city makes money. I think this year we're on target to make about $1.5 million in interest. just on the general fund's cash reserves. That's been declining over the years as we've gradually spent all the ARPA money. So it's included in all our projections for revenue for the recap.

[Zac Bears]: And I think what Mike is asking is, you know, could the city invest those cash reserves in some sort of local bank that funds local businesses or something? Is that what you're asking?

[Micah Kesselman]: Yeah, yeah, basically, because it seems to me, I mean, I feel like a lot more discussion about like financial systems and whatever. But I mean, that money is it's just sitting there in some sort of like index fund or whatever interest that has nothing to do with our city. It's sort of generalized to like, like state spending, maybe probably just whatever on the market. But if there was a way to route those investments into like a purely local focused thing, I mean, then those would actually be productive, even as they were accruing value, they would also be assisting the development of the city to further accrue, you know, increase our tax base. So like, that's like, that was really my question was like, is there any way to localize that those investment vehicles so that they're actually doing two for one sort of thing? Does that make sense, vaguely at least? Go ahead, Bob.

[Bob Dickinson]: Through you, we'd have to make sure that we were in compliance with mass general law, obviously. And I would say that I believe a good amount of it is invested in Brookline Bank, right over there. That's where I believe a lot of the day-to-day cash that the city uses is sequestered. Honestly, we'd have to talk to the legal department to figure out exactly what would need to be done to formalize that type of investment vehicle like us, is what I'd say. I'm not sure The treasurer handles the legal ramifications of it. You know, there's a bunch of things involved. For instance, we're not allowed to keep all of our money in one bank. It's supposed to be, you know, there's percentages that have to be kept aside so that if one bank has a problem, then we don't lose our, you know, we can still get all our money. So there's a bunch of different restrictions on how we actually invest the money.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks. It sounds like suffice it to say that in the short term, state law governs a bunch of this and we are keeping our cash assets in the places required by law and also the places that gain the most interest. And looking at some more locally focused places to put the city's cash assets would need to be studied more and make sure it complies with the law that the state has. All right, any further comment from members of the public on the budget? Seeing none, any last comments from members of the council on the budget? Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Pending any further comments from my fellow councilors, members of the public, I would make a motion to approve the fiscal year 2026 budget submission as amended. by the mayor.

[Zac Bears]: Great. And so we have the revised submission and then there was one amendment tonight which was just correcting the words around the, I have it here, the $205,304,412.76. Great. Is there a second on the motion? Seconded by Councilor Tseng. I just want to thank the administration and our department heads and members of the Council, members of the public. This is our second time around with the budget ordinance, and I know it was a lot of work to pass the ordinance, and I think we're seeing some of the fruits of that. We are here on June 10th. On what is I think our ninth or 10th meeting on the budget. I have no a colleague in Somerville, they're just starting department head budget presentations tonight. So, and to be honest, my first few years on the council that is where we were to we got a budget. Early June we frantically rushed and with night meetings and you know marathon. four to eight to 12 hour Saturday session, which I don't think is really best practice to get through our budget hearings and budget meetings and, you know, then come down to the wire of is the budget going to pass? Are we going to have to schedule a special meeting? And are we going to get it done by June 30th? And what does a one 12th budget look like? And those were the days. So, I just want to note that the process, I think, starting a lot earlier, being collaborative, engaging the council early in the process, working closely together with the administration, with our finance director, chief of staff, the mayor, the whole finance team, that we really are, again, as I said before, seeing the fruits of that collaborative process to create that ordinance and in a way that I think brings a lot more stability and consistency and, you know, as much certainty as you can ever have in municipal budgeting to the process. And so I just wanted to thank everyone for their involvement in that. Thank our colleagues on the school committee for the work that they do as well with their process, which is also in recent years started moving much earlier and I think it also gives a lot of opportunity for public engagement as well. So I'm really heartened that we are where we are, that our budget process is the way that it is and that it is working so well. I think it's really a testament to the collaboration between this council and the city administration. And I'm glad it's an ordinance and hopefully they'll keep following it for a long time after all of us are not here doing it. feels a lot better than sitting here on June 28th at 2 a.m. That was some fun times, y'all. So with that, we have a motion from Vice President Collins to approve, seconded by Councilor Tseng, the Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Submission Revision as amended. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Kallion. Vice President Collins. Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Leming, Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Tseng, President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, six the affirmative, one in the negative, the motion passes and the fiscal year 2026 budget is approved. All right, 25096 submitted by Mayor Brian Alango Kern, appropriation of free cash and retained earnings. Dear President Bears and city councilors, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body approves the appropriation of One, free cash in the amount of $2,136,519.19 on the following items. $1,469,519.19 to replenish the capital stabilization fund to $5 million. Current balance, $3,530,480.81. $271,000 for school network switches and wireless access points project. $216,000 for school mini split replacement project. $100,000 for nexus studies for inclusionary zoning, linkage fees, and transportation demand management, and $80,000 for supplementary tree planting funding. The balance of free cash before this vote is $22,160,443.13. Two, retained earnings from the water sewer enterprise in the amount of $462,000.00 on the following items. 100,000 to replenish the water sewer capital stabilization fund to $2 million current balance $1,900,000 150,000 to replace a water backhoe number 70. $82,000 for improvements to Doonan Street Booster Station, $80,000 for Oak Grove Cemetery water service design, and $50,000 for Rosina Street Small Sewer Extension. The balance of retained earnings in the water sewer enterprise before this vote is $10,953,475. Respectfully submitted, Breanna Legaucurne, Mayor. Madam Chief of Staff.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears and members of the Council. would be remiss if I didn't thank the council for its vote. And again, thanking the council for everything you've done, every one of you throughout this budget season. And I appreciate the budget ordinance as well, because I don't miss those days either. So thank you for everything. we have a number of questions on this paper regarding free cash and retained earnings. We've talked about a number of these already. I don't really have all that much to say. At this point, I'm happy to answer any questions. But in in the interest of the council's time, I'll just simply say that we have members of the school department here who are available to answer questions on the school items. We have a member of our city city and sewer items as well as some combination of our city engineer and myself in terms of the supplementary tree planting. Because I'm not certain that the DPW commissioner will be able to make it. He too is in a traffic commission meeting, and we were told that it was expected to be long, but I'm not sure what's where it stands as a writing. Oh, it's done. Okay Um, so you know if there's if there's a pressing need, we may be able to get our DPW commissioner as well. So that's my briefest version.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam Chief of Staff. I do want to offer you are here if there's anything you'd like to add about the items. Owen's saying no. Noelle, Jerry, I think only if we have questions.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I appreciate these expenditures. They all seem very reasonable and like a valuable use of both free cash and the Water Enterprise Fund. I will just say, and I will probably continue to be very annoying about this, that the funding for the fire department dive team is something that I will not stop talking about until I hear an adequate reason why we're not doing it. It costs $120,000. And if we have questions for the fire department, we should ask them and then get answers. And then if it's, not sustainable, I would love to hear why. Anything on this list that is a matter of somebody who died and it could prevent it happening again, I would love to know what it is, but that's one that is related to something like that. Similarly, I would love to see free cash expenditures used on our most dangerous roads that we have the capacity to fix that are city run streets. So just putting that bug in everybody's ear and just letting you know, I will continue to be annoying, but for these expenditures, I love to see it. Let's do a little bit more. Thank you so much.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: I'm basically with Councilor Lazzaro. I think I do want to point out how helpful a lot of this is. Honestly, special shout out to Councilor Leming for his work on the linkage fees, the TDM, the nexus studies, and advocating for that, organizing us to push for it as well. I think back to the first, I believe the first resolution I co-sponsored, Councilor Leming worked a lot on that resolution, and this represents progress on that resolution. And to translate it from jargon into real effects. This gives us the groundwork to study affordable housing, to build more affordable housing, to know how to strategize and how to do it in a way that best serves our community and our transit. and encourages the use of green transit. A lot of the school projects, these are a lot of projects that students and teachers and parents alike have been clamoring for a while. It goes hand in hand with a lot of the funding that we've passed. over the last few months. And 80,000 for tree planting is also very important. And while I suspect we'll need a lot more for that to really go at the trees deficit that we're seeing every year, it is forward progress. I also echo Councilor Lazzaro's sentiments and the sentiments, I think, echoed, like generally stated tonight, that we'd love to see even more being done in this. The dive team being very important, both to the fire department, to the city, and to our residents. We, you know, talked, I think, over multiple meetings, some in budget meetings, some outside, about work that we could do in our parks, work that we could do with public facilities, whatnot. That's all, you know, I can assure the public this Council will keep fighting for those going forward. And that that will be part of the conversation when we talk about free cash and how we're going to develop that that free cash spending plan. So, I do also want to take this opportunity and think school staff city staff, especially those who have waited so long here tonight. And those who've waited for long meetings in the weeks past, the budget process is an arduous process. No budget is perfect, but this one has been more painless than a lot of the other ones I remember. And I think it reflects the spirit of cooperation and goodwill that we have working in the City Hall right now. you know, I think it's a relationship built on trust and understanding that progress will come and that we'll have to make difficult decisions going forward, and that we will commit to making difficult decisions, especially about spending. But I'm grateful for the collaboration here. Thanks, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: like to echo my colleague's views on this. I am glad and I'm glad to see the funding for the Nexus studies that we've been asking for for a while. Just to clarify to anybody watching City Council meetings at 1024 in the evening, these studies are going to be used by the Planning Department to put out bids to outside firms who will determine the amount that we need to raise our linkage fees to the modern day. Now, the linkage fees are the amount of money that we charge developers as a city who might want to so that we can put funding towards our roads, our police and fire, our parks, and our water and sewer lines. And more recently, we have an ordinance going through to put linkage fees towards affordable housing. Now these amounts have not been updated since the 1990s. So they've basically been eaten by inflation this whole time, even though it was the responsibility of the city to update these every three years. It's just, we got in the habit of not doing that ever since they were first instituted. So this is a area where the city is just hemorrhaging money. And this very small investment is a way to stop doing that. the they will allow us to figure out how much we should be charging these developers because so far we've been really we really haven't been doing that. The other the other part of this is the transportation demand management study. which will allow the city to essentially integrate with the Mystic Valley TMA to create incentives for local developers to put money towards things like buses to allow more local transportation within Medford, as well as a number of other benefits that being included in those regional developer networks will bring to the city. $100,000 may not necessarily be enough to fund all of these studies, but it will allow the planning office to start putting out bids in order to get that back. And so we might have to, we might be put in a position where we'll have to approve more funding for them in the future, depending on what prices they get back from consultants. But in any case, I'd like to thank the city for putting this in front of us. And that's all I have to say.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. I got two quick questions, one for Owen, one for our schools team. Owen, and if you could come to the podium. What is the Oak Grove Cemetery water service design? What are we designing?

[Owen Wartella]: That is basically upgrading the two-inch line that's like really, really, really old to like a six-inch line. There's hydrants in there, and then upgrading the system throughout the, about 400 linear feet.

[Zac Bears]: And then the booster station at Doonan Street, is that just to get water up the hill?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: OK. And Noel and Jerry, just, it's probably a yes-no question, so I'm sorry to make you stand up for it, but both of these items, the network switches and wireless access, are these both, is the mini-split thing about the heat in the network rooms? Yes. OK. And then how much is the network switches and wireless access points, that's a little different?

[Gerry McCue]: Yes. So all across the network, there's various points that have to be refreshed to keep the network coming along. So it's a larger project. This will be partially e-rate funded as well. OK. But it's a major refresh of our network.

[Zac Bears]: Great. If you could, and I don't expect you guys to answer this, if you could get back to us just with an understanding of How will this make more spaces at the schools more available for the use for hybrid meetings? We had a hybrid meeting at the Andrews a few weeks ago, and the internet just wasn't up to snuff. We couldn't really keep the people on Zoom, and it was kind of an issue. So if you could just get back to us on that.

[Gerry McCue]: Sure. I mean, it could fix some of that. There could be a bandwidth issue that we would have to address as well. Sure.

[Zac Bears]: But that would be great if more of the spaces were available for use for hybrid meetings, because we're pretty short on that right now.

[Gerry McCue]: OK. Yes.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks, guys. Thank you. Any more questions from members of the Council on these two requests? Any comment from members of the public on this paper?

[Micah Kesselman]: Sure. Yeah, I'm Mikey Kesselman again, 499 Main Street. It's tangentially related to this, but I actually think it's important to bring up some time with studies. And as some of you may be aware, I am actually Medford's rep on the MCAC, Massport Citizens Advisory Committee. because no one has replaced me. I've been looking for someone to replace me for over a year and a half. So if you're interested in watching this, and you want to have a position where you get to hear people have really sad stories and have no power to do anything about it, and then hear a bunch of other people say, you're not selling it. If you hate airplane noise, and you want to take over for Micah, who has done a good job. Yes, that'd be great. Please, I'll help you through it. Anyway. would be remiss if I didn't strongly encourage that when you're performing cities, especially when it comes to housing and suitability for habitation in different parts of the city, to consider noise studies, too, as part of that. Because there are certain corridors in our city that whether people realize it or not, to a not insignificant, really no portion of the population is insignificant, but to a chunk of the population that live under them, have documented deleterious health effects on them. So it really does need to be taken more seriously and taken into consideration. That's also not to forget to mention that one of our schools is directly under a flight path. too, which has noise issues and also has likely negative impacts on learning outcomes for those impacted by it. It's also just insane to have airplanes aimed at your schools when they can just be moved anywhere, like 100 feet to the left or something. So I just wanted to sort of advocate for that since I had the chance to, and it's, yeah, it's about this paper, so thanks.

[Zac Bears]: On the question, we had the motion from Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Seeing no further public comment in person or on Zoom, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Collins. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng, President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in favor of the negative, the motion passes. We have two ordinances eligible for third reading, flood ordinance and parking ordinance. Motion to take papers 25067 and 25078 off the table. Second by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Vice President Collins. All those in favor? opposed motion passes to 5067 amendments to the flood ordinance chapter 46 article two in City Council April 29 2025 approved first reading advertised May 29 2025 Medford transcript and several journal in Council June 10 2025 eligible for third reading on the motion to approve for third reading by Vice President Collins seconded by Councilor Tseng this is the flood ordinance amendments.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes, 067, yes.

[Zac Bears]: Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan, Vice President Collins, Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Leming, Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Tseng, President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. 25078, amendments to the parking ordinance, chapter 78, article 3. Motion by Councilor Tseng? President Bears? to approve for third reading, seconded by Councilor Callahan.

[Unidentified]: Are we ready for third?

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan, Vice President Collins, Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Leming, Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Tseng, President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, six in the affirmative, one in the negative. The motion passes and the ordinance is ordained. Public participation to participate outside of Zoom, email ahertobeesatmenford-ma.gov. Do we have any further public participation?

[Micah Kesselman]: Mike, you have someone for nine minutes. This is one of the things I wanted to stay for. So I've been thinking a lot about this issue of policing in Medford, obviously. So I think that there's some things that need to be understood too by the council is that Cops aren't legal experts. They don't know the meets and bounds of the laws, nor the authority that is granted or denied them. They are told it, but they're not lawyers. They're not scholars. They're cops. They do their job. They try to do their job. That's what they are. there to do. So I really encourage to not have blind deference to a police officer's statement that we're not legally allowed to do something. They have no basis for that, more often than not. The other thing I really want people to hear is that a big part of this is because our municipal police force, like most municipal police forces, take a large amount of money from federal grants. Their federal funding is a big portion of how they finance themselves. And that is why there is so much deference and tiptoeing and pussyfooting about what they can and can't do when it comes to federal enforcement. But they're not like the federal government is the only one that can challenge the validity of a federal grant. So I have said this elsewhere, but I think, you know, if necessary, the threat of challenging federal grant money from the city is a valid way to get the an uncooperative agency to cooperate. It's a last resort and it sucks, but it's something to consider and think about. And I'll just leave it at that. So that's my public comment.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Any further discussion either in person or on Zoom for public participation? Seeing none in the chambers and no hands on Zoom, is there a motion on the floor? On the motion adjourned by Councilor Callahan, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.

Zac Bears total time: 48.52 minutes total words: 3330	Justin Tseng total time: 17.94 minutes total words: 503	Kit Collins total time: 18.41 minutes total words: 712	Anna Callahan total time: 9.25 minutes total words: 556
Matt Leming total time: 12.86 minutes total words: 741	Emily Lazzaro total time: 14.06 minutes total words: 814	George Scarpelli total time: 10.83 minutes total words: 413	Nick Giurleo total time: 1.68 minutes total words: 146