AI-generated transcript of Medford Happenings w/ Nick Giurleo

[John Petrella]: Hello, everyone, and welcome to your show, Medford Happenings, a show far and about the city of Medford. I am John Petrella. The purpose of this program is to give Medford citizens facts and information to help you make informed choices. And today, we want to welcome our guest, attorney Nick Jaleo, to Medford Happenings. Welcome, Nick. Glad to have you on the show. Hi, John. Thanks for having me here. So first and foremost, I want to thank Nick on his announcement that he is a candidate for our Method City Council. And I have no doubt that he will do an outstanding job for our city. So we'll get right into the questions. Okay, Nick, we're going to start off. By giving us, can you give us some background information? Who is Nick Jaleo? Sure.

[Nick Giurleo]: So, John, I was, I've lived my whole life in Medford. I grew up here from a hardworking family, Italian-American family. I went through the Medford public schools. I attended the Brooks for elementary, then the McGlynn for middle, and then I went to Medford High. At Medford High, I really focused on academics, so I studied hard. And I was fortunate enough to graduate number one in my class. After that, I decided I would go on to college, so I attended Tufts University. When I was at Tufts, I studied history and I studied international relations. I also did a minor in Italian. Graduated from Tufts, magna cum laude. and then went on to attend law school at Boston College Law. And there I had really excellent professors and a really great course of study. A lot of it was focused on municipal law and zoning and land use. I also had some clinical experience, too. I worked for a while as a prosecutor with the Malden District Court. And after that, I graduated from law school, and I took the bar exam. I passed on the first go, and I became a lawyer. And that's essentially what I do today. I've worked in criminal law a little bit. I worked for a law office in Medford Square for a while. And today I'm with a law firm in downtown Boston on State Street. It does primarily medical malpractice in court all the time defending rather prosecuting cases for people who are injured by doctors.

[John Petrella]: Very nice. Great background. Highly qualified, I would say, so that's that's always a good thing. Great, great background. You know, so I guess a lot of people would wonder why is Nick running for Medford City Council and, you know, what reasons are making you want to run for the job?

[Nick Giurleo]: It's a good question. I feel like the people who are considering voting for me, they should get an explanation for that because I think it's important to understand why somebody is running for elected office. So it's hard to summarize it in a few words, but to say it in a few words, or at least attempt to, I would say it's because I really do care about Medford. I love Medford. I've lived here my whole life. And I want to do, I think, what's best for Medford. I'm really just passionate about this community, and I feel like it has so much potential. I feel like a lot of it is untapped potential, so potential we could actualize. So that's a big part of it. And also, I've just been unhappy, I would say, with the way things have been going with city leadership. And I feel like we could be doing better. And I feel like I might have the qualifications to improve what's been going on in our city. qualifications primarily I'd say for my education just the fact that I've done a lot of school and I'm a lawyer and I think being a member of any sort of elected body you need to have kind of skills like that that a lawyer might have so I'd say all of that overall has kind of motivated me to run and for me it's very important you know it's easy to complain and say I don't like the way things are going but then we complain we don't take action. There you go. So for me, I said to myself, it's time to stop complaining and time to do something about that. So that's why I'm throwing my hat in.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, that happens a lot, a lot of complaining. But you got to offer solutions too. Okay, so, you know, Myself personally, I think there's a lot of issues right now, major issues concerning Method. What would you consider major issues right now regarding the city of Medford? What are things that you see?

[Nick Giurleo]: I like what you said at the beginning, that there are a lot of issues. We could sit here all day and talk, but obviously we can't do that, so let's just talk about, I think, what are the major issues, just like you asked. For me, I would say that the number one issue is probably affordability at the moment. We're seeing on the national level just an issue of cost of living. It's just becoming very expensive to live anywhere. But especially in suburban communities near big successful cities like Medford, it's just becoming really expensive to live in Medford. And I think there are various reasons why that's the case. So for me, I want to do something about the situation with affordability in our city. I feel like people are very worried and concerned, you know, how am I going to afford to stay in the home that I've lived in, you know, or my family's lived in, you know, for all our lives. So what can we do about that? How can we make this city an affordable place to live? I would say the next issue in terms of importance would probably be, and I think it's related to affordability, but economic growth. We're seeing a Medford, I think, that's stagnating a bit when it comes to economic development. So for me, this is something I want to address. What can we do to make our city more prosperous? What can we do to make our city wealthier and a wealth that everybody can have a part in? So what can we do to bring businesses to Medford, for example? What can we do to promote growth? So hopefully that's something I would be able to address if I were elected. And I would say, just maybe as a third one, just to kind of wrap up, what are the major issues here? I'd probably say it's transparency. I think we're seeing a significant problem with that currently. I think people feel left out. People feel like they don't understand what's happening at City Hall. People feel worried about this, concerned, maybe angry, upset. And I feel like information has been hard to get in a lot of circumstances. So I think transparency needs to be addressed. I think we need a Councilor who is going to address that.

[John Petrella]: I agree with you. I mean, really, good answer. The transparency, especially, I just feel like a lot of people feel like they're being left out. And I know you. I've seen you go to City Hall. I've seen a lot of people go up there and speak. And it just seems like no one's paying attention. No one's listening. So I think transparency is something that's really key. And I want to thank you for that answer. So here's another good one for you. We just had the ballot questions. You know, how did you feel about that? I mean, what was your position on the overrides? I mean, plain and simple. What did you feel? How did you feel about it?

[Nick Giurleo]: Sure. So for anyone who's following my speeches at city council or maybe read my op-ed in the Tufts Daily, it's no secret that I was very opposed to all three ballot questions that we were presented with in November. So I really kind of made it a point to be outspoken about that because I was deeply concerned about what I was seeing. So for anyone maybe not familiar, I'll just briefly recap them. There were three. The first one was $3.5 million for schools and DPW. This would be an override proposition, two and a half override. This is a state law that allows taxes to be raised over a certain cap. in a given fiscal year. Question 7 was a $4 million one for schools, and then question 8 was slightly different. It was called a debt exclusion, essentially a bond, $30 million for a new fire station. So these were the three questions Medford voters had to decide upon for the next election. So the reason why I was opposed, I had various reasons. The most important, I think, was just the burden this would have on residents. This would essentially be a massive tax hike that would really hurt people who are already struggling. I talked about affordability at the beginning. This was, I think, a major contributor to the affordability problems we're seeing today. This idea of any time we have a problem in the city, let's just raise taxes. That more money thrown at a problem fixes it. which I think there's misperceptions about that. So the tax impact was a big part of my opposition. And I also think there was a lot of kind of fear mongering that came behind putting these questions forward, what I call maybe scare tactics, that I don't think was supported by data at all. I can give you a specific example of that. I mean, there was talk of, you know, teacher salaries, for example. You know, oh, you know, our teacher salaries won't be competitive, but according to the Department of Education data, Medford salaries for teachers are competitive compared to elsewhere in the state. And this is data anyone can look up. There was also just a vagueness, too, you know, in terms of what is this money going to be used for specifically. We got general categories, like schools, DPW. Right. Fire station, but specifically, you know, where was this money going to go? You know, for me, I think for voters, you know, they should be entitled to know line item, in a line item manner, where money is going to go, specifically. So the fact that it was vague, you know, was another reason I felt like I couldn't support. And then another thing that just cannot be passed aside is just the free cash. that we have. Yes. Quite a bit. Quite a bit. It's gone up since the election. Yes. Funny how that happened. At the time, we had about $25 million, according to the Department of Revenue. But like I said, that's since gone up. And anyone who doesn't know what free cash is, obviously, it's not free. It does come from taxpayers. But it's essentially over-budgeted money in a given fiscal year that goes into a reserve fund that we're able to use for a broader range of purposes once it's certified. So we heard a lot of talk during the override campaign, oh, we can't use free cash to meet, for example, school expenses. But what did I see at a recent city council meeting? The mayor requested $5 million to repair deficient HVAC and the roofs at the middle schools. So $5 million that could have been used and is going to be used to net fund that. Right. Right. And then there was that same day there was another request for $200,000 for security upgrades across the school. So it really was misleading for people to say that free cash was just off the table completely. Right. I hear you. Yep. And then just kind of to wrap this up, I would say growth, right, was another alternative to raising taxes, right? If we're increasing the commercial tax base, for example, we're getting more revenue, right? And we can use that to meet funding shortages. So we ignored new growth as well as an alternative. to the overrides. You have to think also just of the diversity of our city, economic diversity of our city. What happens when taxes go up? Well, it drives out lower income people. It essentially gentrifies the city. So if you're concerned about gentrification, supporting tax hikes doesn't solve that problem. So we have to think of that. We have to think of how lower-income, middle-income people are going to be affected by tax hikes. Especially people on fixed incomes, too. You've got to think of seniors who are really struggling and barely getting by in a lot of circumstances. People with disabilities, as well.

[John Petrella]: Most affected. I think those are the people that are most affected by that. You know, zoning, zoning, zoning, zoning, zoning. There's so much going on with the zoning. And, you know, we could probably, I know you could discuss that subject for hours, but we don't have hours. So I want to sort of be more specific on it. We're all hearing about Medford Square now. You know, we're hearing Salem Street, South Medford, West Medford. We know there's a lot going on. Another situation, I don't think people are being heard. But what's your opinion? I mean, how do you feel about Medford Square? You know, what are the plans? What do you see happening with that? What do you think about it? What's your opinion?

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so another great question. I'll go back to what I said again earlier, this idea of untapped potential. Medford is a city that could be much better in a lot of ways. It's great now in a lot of respects, but there's so much more we could be doing. So for anyone not familiar, recently it was announced that there will be a very big development project coming to Medford Square, essentially three city-owned lots that are going to be transformed, a combination of mixed-use retail and residential, and nobody's denying this is going to fundamentally transform the square in terms of the way it looks, in terms of the way it's structured, who's living there, who's doing business there. So, I'd say it's quite early, this proposal was only announced very recently, so I think I would need more information to form a definite opinion yet on where I stand on the proposal itself. Right. But before I talk about maybe the questions I have regarding that proposal, I'll first say I think it's super important that we all dial in on the need to revitalize Medford Square. As a guy who's studied a lot of history, Medford Square in the past used to be a very different place. And I'm not talking like 100 years ago, and it was. No, you're not. But in decades past, it was a very different place. It was much more livelier and more of a kind of gathering spot for the people of our city. But now it's in very rough shape in a lot of respects. And there have been improvements, but not enough. And you have to look also, I always say this to people, you have to look at our neighboring squares and compare them to Medford Square. Think of Davis Square, for example. Central Square in Cambridge. Harvard Square in Cambridge. Kendall. I could go on and on. Yes, you can. Do all of these. resemble Medford Square? No. These squares, you have a lot of traffic, a lot of activity. They're booming in a lot of respects. But then you look at Medford Square, where I know people who live the next town over, you know, who move here from other places, and don't even know there's such a thing as Medford Square, you know, because there's so few reasons in a lot of respects to go, because it's difficult to park. The traffic is horrendous sometimes. So what can we do to support our local businesses there? They're awesome, they're great, I love spending my money there. I'd much rather spend my money there than at the big brand name shops. I agree. What can we do to improve them, right? Bring traffic to them, business to them. For me, like I said, it's the parking and the traffic. I think a lack of access by public transit's also an issue too. Yes, yep. Right, I think there's just bus routes at the moment, right? Yep. What are the other ways we can get people to the square? But then I guess just turning to the proposal itself, Like I said, I think it's still early to form a conclusive opinion on it, but there are questions that I have, and I'm just going to go through a few of them that I have. For example, referring to the business here, how will this proposal affect the businesses that are already there? That's something to think about. Parking, of course. We always have to be thinking about parking with any project. We can't ignore parking, period. And then another important thing is, you know, if you look at the map, where is this going to be? This is going to be right next to the senior center in Medford Square, right? So how is this going to impact the senior center? Is it going to pose any safety concerns, for example? Accessibility concerns to the senior center? So seniors who regularly frequent the senior center, they're major stakeholders in this. We have to talk to them. We have to make sure their opinions are heard on this project. And then also, we just have to think, you know, how will it look? I mean, the aesthetic impact, right? You got to think about how old these buildings are in Medford Square, you know, with this big, new, modern, towering structure, you know, fit with the buildings that are already there. Obviously, when it comes to looks, we tend to put that lower in our list of priorities, but it's still something to think about. We want our community to be beautiful, too. So those are the questions I have. Overall, my suggestion to the people who are involved with this would be not to rush this process. I think we need to slow down and we need to get adequate community input. One of the things we need to do is not just take community input, but actually actively change our plans based on what people have to say.

[John Petrella]: You know, that was going to be part of my next question. And you mentioned it earlier. You just mentioned it again. You know, I can't tell you how many people I know. And I do know a lot of people. I've been here most of my life. You know, they have concerns. And they just feel like they're not, they're just not being addressed. That's how they feel. That's the perception out there. I mean, what can you do or is there anything, is there a way or how do you feel about that? I mean, addressing people's concerns like they don't feel like they're being heard.

[Nick Giurleo]: any solutions any anything you can offer for that absolutely and like i said at the beginning this is a major aspect of my campaign here is i want to prove transparency in our city okay and i'd say i've included among these people who do feel left out in a lot of ways i think it's something many of us share So for me, I think we're seeing a lot of ways to try to reduce the ability of the public to participate, right, for the purposes of, I guess you could call it expediency, trying to rush things through and promote an agenda. But we have to look at the ways, number one, in which public participation was being reduced. So I can give you some very specific examples of that. We saw a resolution uh... last year to reduce the amount of time by several minutes in which people can participate in public comment at city council meetings uh... this is terrible right because it we're now in a position where people go up and they have to rush and say everything they have to say i think it's currently three minutes very very fast they often forget things and Sometimes there's pressure from the president of the council to immediately wrap up once that three minutes is reached. It's not like he says, oh, you can have a little more time. Most of the time, that's what's happening. We're seeing also just the meetings, how late that they're going. Many of them are going far past midnight. And you think of people who have to work the next day. Maybe they have to go to school or take care of children. There's all these different reasons. why, you know, a meeting running really late is not a good thing. So I think we have to look at ways we can try to make it so we don't have that problem. But we're also seeing some kind of procedural sneakiness, too, with, for example, sticking controversial things at the very end of the agenda so that we don't get to them until midnight. I mean, there was a resolution against anti-Semitism before the council recently. We didn't get to that until very, very late in the evening. But that's such a huge community issue, you know, it's something, why are we not considering that? In any event, it was tabled, so no one had a chance to say anything about it. I remember that, yeah. I can remember also a recent meeting in which we were talking about the charter and the charter was on the agenda along with other things that merited time but weren't as pressing as getting the charter to Beacon Hill. So what ended up happening was one of the Councilors moved to take it out of order and didn't even receive a second to do that. That's just horrendous. I mean, if anyone doesn't know what that means, like a second, you're not saying you approve. You're just saying, you know, I'm willing to have the discussion on this now. And they wouldn't even do that. This is just horrendous, in my opinion. And then immediately after that, someone else proposed a motion to take something else out of order. Sorry, a motion. And that was approved without question. So it's really just insane, a lot of the things that have been happening. So for me, I want to do things. like change the rules to allow the public more opportunities to participate and do something about these like midnight, 1 a.m. meetings. Everyone should have a chance to come to these meetings and say what they think. They shouldn't have to wait hours and hours and hours to talk for three minutes. It's just not right.

[John Petrella]: That's all truth and it all makes sense. I'm going to be a little redundant here. know, your knowledge, your experience, and I think your approach, you know, what you could bring to the city council, it's very valuable. But anyhow, How do you bring this to the city council, and how do you deliver better outcomes? You know, you definitely have everything it takes. How do you deliver it, you know?

[Nick Giurleo]: That is the question, I would say. It's so easy to make promises, the hardest part is delivering on them. This is something I'm thinking about now. You know, if I'm fortunate enough to get elected, it's something I should be thinking about from day one. How am I going to make these things I want to change happen? So for me, I think the most important facet of it is listening. Listening to residents. What are residents thinking and feeling? And not just pushing them to the side. You know, we have our opinions and beliefs, and we should definitely stick to our principles. But at the same time, As an elected leader, we're not, there's some who say, you know, you're elected to make decisions, and that's not false. But as an elected representative, you are an agent of the people who vote you in. You know, I think of as being a lawyer, I mean, what's my job is to represent a client. My judgment's entrusted to make decisions for the client, especially legal decisions where there's a knowledge gap. But at the same time, I'm working for the client. The client isn't working for me. And the same thing is true with, I think, being elected representative is you have to do what the people want. So listening is a big part of making things happen. And then, of course, just common things like hard work, for example. It requires hard work and not laziness. Prudence, you know, being smart and listening and learning, teaching, and it's always good to admit when you don't know something. Right. And do the homework and research, right? We have a lot of, I think, elected leaders, not just in Medford, but everywhere, who say, you know, I know what to do, right? You know, they kind of jump to conclusions about things, and they don't take a step back and say, well, maybe I should reevaluate my own perspective. Maybe it's wrong in certain respects. What can I do to make it better?

[John Petrella]: Right. In other words, you've got to represent all the people. Exactly. You've got to do your best to represent all. You're not going to make everyone happy, but you've got to represent them all, you know. All right, so now we're going to get down to our last question. And, you know, I'm going to ask you this. If someone wants to get in touch with Nick Gileo, How would they go about, how do they do it? How do they get in touch with you, Nick? Where would they, where do you go, where do you?

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so I think there's kind of two ways to talk about it. Number one is like, literally, how do you get in touch with me, right? I live here in Medford, obviously, I like to go to events. I do have some social media pages for the campaigns. I have a Facebook, Nick Trelaya from Medford City Council. I also have an Instagram. So I've been posting regularly about what I've been doing and who I've been talking to on social media. So if you have social media, feel free to take a look. Of course, anyone who wants to just talk with me, feel free to just find me, reach out to me, give me a call, send me a text, ask to meet for coffee. I'm happy, honestly. you know, busy guy between what I do for a living and campaign activities, but I'm going to make time for everybody. Even people who don't agree with me, I encourage us to have conversations, right? Let's talk. Let's try to iron out, you know, what we don't agree upon. Because that's how it works. That's how you get things done is you cooperate. But in terms of just the other kind of aspect of your question, I'd say is, you know, where can you find me? Like, what do I like to do in Medford? I love Medford, I honestly do, and that's why I'm running. Number one place you'd probably find me is probably the library, right? I love the Medford Public Library, all the services it provides, just the space it offers for people who are interested in learning, and I'm a guy who just loves to learn, I love to read. So I like to go there a lot, hang out in the local history room, look at the yearbooks, look at the old historical documents, and just learn about Medford and how great a city it is. Also love being outdoors, enjoying the many beautiful things that Medford has to offer, like the Fells, Brooks Estate, Mystic Lakes, Mystic River. Always like being outdoors. You want to go on a hike with me? Feel free. Let's go on a hike. Talk politics and hike. Or just enjoy the beauty of nature.

[John Petrella]: That would be interesting. Yeah, I hear you.

[Nick Giurleo]: And then I can't not say also, I just love going to Medford businesses as well. I love going to the Square, having lunch there, brunch, wherever it is in Medford. Just love spending my money in my hometown.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, I agree. And there's a lot of, Medford Square especially, actually the whole city, but Medford Square, I mean, there's a lot of great restaurants. There is, I mean, there's a lot of good food. We know how to eat.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, we do. We know how to eat in this city.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, we're Italians, of course we do.

[Nick Giurleo]: Everybody in this city, regardless of ethnic background, we know how to eat in Medford.

[John Petrella]: We do, we do. I agree. Anyhow, I want to thank you, Nick. for joining us on Method Happenings. And I want to thank you for being a candidate. I think it's so important to have people like you run for council, school committee, whatever the position is. I think it's a good thing for Method. So I want to thank you. And I enjoyed the show. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you're going to come back and join us again. It was great.

[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you very much for having me here.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, no, it was our pleasure. So I want to thank everyone. I want to take a minute. Thank everyone who has been watching the show. I want to thank you for your feedback. Whether it's been positive or negative, we take it all. And if you would like to share any comments, you have any suggestions for a show, or appearing on a future show, you can contact us at johnpatrella, that's my name, 55 at gmail.com. And you're also going to be able to see replays of this show on methodtv.org. And you can also see Method Happenings on YouTube and Facebook as well. So from all of us at Method Happenings, I'm John Petrella. And remember, stay informed. Thank you.

Nick Giurleo total time: 20.54 minutes total words: 1328