AI-generated transcript of City Council 08-05-25

[Unidentified]: Test. One, two.

[Zac Bears]: 14th regular meeting, Medford City Council, August 5th, 2025 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan.

[Zac Bears]: Councilor Callahan is absent tonight.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan is absent. Vice-President Collins. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli.

[Zac Bears]: Councilor Tseng.

[Unidentified]: Present.

[Zac Bears]: President Bears. Present. Six present, one absent. Please rise to salute the flag. Announcements, accolades, remembrances, reports, and records, records. The records of the meeting of July 15th were passed to Councilor Leming. Councilor Leming, how did you find those records?

[Matt Leming]: Find the records in order and move to approve.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Leming to approve, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I apologize. The clerk just emailed us that there were two reports that were missing from the,

[Zac Bears]: One report. That's next on the agenda. Oh, that's the second. Yeah.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I'm sorry. My apologies.

[Zac Bears]: That's okay. On the motion of Council Leming to approve the record, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes, 6 in the affirmative, 1 absent. The motion passes. Reports of committees, 19-070 offered by President Bears. Committee with a whole report to follow. This was the report that we just received. It's on the tree committee ordinance meeting that we had on July 15. Is there a motion? On the motion to approve by Councilor Lazzaro, seconded by Vice President Collins. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. Affirmative. One absent. The motion passes. 24-033 offered by Vice President Collins. Planning and Permitting Committee. July 16, 2025 report. Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I believe this was our 25th zoning meeting in the Planning and Permitting Committee. At this meeting, we discussed, we had a very preliminary discussion of a framework for the Tufts Institutional Zone, and we kept that topic in committee for further discussion. Motion to approve.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve by Vice President Collins, seconded by, seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes. President Bears. Yes. Five in the affirmative, one in the negative, one absent. The motion passes. Petitions, presentations, and similar papers. 25121, petition for a common evictiator's license, CB Scoops. next gen scoops, LLC, DBA, CB scoops for 53 high street, Medford, Steven catchola. Uh, present, uh, has presented a petition for a common victor's license for CB scoops. Councilor Scarpelli as subcommittee on licensing permitting and science chair, the floor is yours.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you. Council president is the petitioner here this evening. Are they on, on zoom?

[Henry Miller]: What's the name?

[Zac Bears]: I'm not seeing any hands on Zoom.

[George Scarpelli]: Can we table until later in the meeting if they show up, Council President?

[Zac Bears]: A motion to table by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Calderon is absent. Vice President Collins. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. President Bears. Yes. 16 affirmative, 1 absent. The motion is tabled. Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Motion to suspend the rules to take 25-127, 25-128, 25-125, and 25-126. On the motion of Vice President Collins to suspend the rules to take papers 25-127, 25-128, 25-125, and 25-126. Seconded by.

[Zac Bears]: Seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes. It's the affirmative. One absent. The motion passes. Communications from city officers and employees. 25127 offered by Election Commission. Medford call for election September 2025. Be it ordered that the Elections Commission be and is hereby authorized and directed to notify and warn such inhabitants of the city of Benford as were qualified by law to vote for candidates at our municipal preliminary on Tuesday, September 16th, 2025, to assemble at the polling places and their respective wards and precincts, and then to give their votes for city council and the polls of said municipal preliminary shall be open at 7 a.m. and remain open until 8 p.m. Be it further ordered that the following name polling places and they, are hereby designated for use at the Municipal Preliminary on September 16, 2025. We'll recognize the Elections Commission and Elections Manager.

[James Blatchford]: Good evening. We're here to present the call to election. Sorry, James Blatchford, Election Manager, City of Medford. So we're here to present the call to election and asking for a vote on the warrant for the municipal election for September 16th.

[Zac Bears]: Is there anything you'd like to add about early voting, mail voting?

[James Blatchford]: Yeah, so along with election day, we have a week of early voting prior to starting on September 6th, going to Friday, September 12th, here in the chamber. Weekends are from 8.30 to 2.30. Weekdays are all hours for the opening of City Hall.

[Zac Bears]: Great. And for mail voting?

[James Blatchford]: Vote by mail. You can request a ballot up until the Tuesday prior to the election. You can either do it online with the Secretary of State's office or you can come in person or you can request about through our office which we can mail out, not a ballot but a request for a ballot, then we mailed about ballots will probably be mailed out by the end of August. Once we get them in. And then, if anyone has any questions they can obviously call our office, and when our ballots do ballots are due by election day at 8pm, that's the latest they can come in, they can't be received afterwards. The suggestion would be if you're going to mail your ballot make sure it's mailed a week prior to the election. If you have not got it into the mail, make sure to drop it off at either the drop box outside or the one in person by the city clerk's office or in our office in the election division. Great.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And if people want to know their election day polling place, what's the best way to find that information?

[Henry Miller]: We have every polling place in Medford covered. the one that we had issued. We have every polling place in Medford carpet, the same that are listed here. The only one we had issued was the walking court. We will bless it's still operational.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Do we have any questions for... Do we have any questions for the elections manager or the members of the Elections Commission? Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: I know I've spoken with the director and, and I know that they're typical metric rumors that, what is it we only have like 12 people registered to vote, and that was dispelled. So, I think that the office did a very good job for people that didn't complete their census. Something came postcard came in the mail, and that would remind everybody to please send that in so they can be added to the role again so I think it's very simple. It's nothing that's groundbreaking but I know that we talked I want to make sure that if people did get that postcard. that they fill that in and send that in as soon as possible. So to avoid any issues so thank you.

[James Blatchford]: Yeah, so just as a bit of a civic education for anyone listening. Every year, this is a yearly thing this isn't every 10 years, every single year, city of Medford is supposed to send out a census. residents are supposed to fill it out and get it back. If you do not do that, you're inactivated, which means you're still a registered voter, which means you still can go to the polls. You would just need to usually show an ID, sign an affidavit. But we give you one more chance prior to elections most of the time, that postcard we send out around the end of June, beginning of July, if you sign that, send it back to us, you're activated, and then you don't have to worry about bringing an ID to the polls or anything like that.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Do we have any further questions for the elections manager?

[James Blatchford]: If I may.

[Zac Bears]: Go ahead, Jim.

[James Blatchford]: To answer your previous question, the list of where you can find your polling location is on the website. Additionally, you can go to the Secretary of State's website and you can type in your address and it'll give you a polling location as well. Great.

[Henry Miller]: Thank you. It will also be posted outside here. It will also be posted at the library. Because by law, we have to do that.

[Zac Bears]: Great. All right. Any further questions by members of the council? Seeing none, is there a motion? On the motion to approve by Vice President Collins, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes, the affirmative, one absent, the motion passes. 25128, the call, sorry, the warrant. This is, let me read it. Warrant for the Medford September 2025 municipal preliminary election to the residents of the city of Medford. Greetings in the name of the Commonwealth, You are hereby required to notify and warn the inhabitants of said city or town who are qualified to vote in elections to vote at the various wards and precincts on Tuesday, the 16th day of September, 2025, from 7am to 8pm for the following purpose to cast their votes in the municipal preliminary election for the candidates for the following offices, offices, council, As there on at the time and place of said voting given under our hands this day, fifth day of August 2025, the Medford City Council posted at each polling location the library and City Hall, no later than September 5 2025. Anything more to add on that.

[Henry Miller]: It's exactly the same thing.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, we just have to do two votes on two documents. Great. Is there a motion on the motion to approve by by Council is our second by second by Council let me Mr. please follow up.

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes. It's the affirmative. One absent. The motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. And good luck. Everybody vote on the 16th or early or by mail. 25125, offered by President Bears, MBTA bus stop improvements presentation. We have a presentation from the MBTA on a bus stop improvement. Do we have MBTA folks here on the call? The clerk will make you a co-host.

[Bin Zhu]: Yeah, MBTA team's here.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Could you make Katie and the co-host?

[Katie Moulton]: I'm unmuted. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We can hear you and you should be able to start video and if you want to share your presentation.

[Katie Moulton]: Okay, perfect. Let me start a video. And I apologize. Give me a second to figure out how to share my screen. Does everyone see my screen? I will make it larger.

[Clare Sheridan]: I want the presentation.

[Katie Moulton]: Oh, it switched screens on me.

[Zac Bears]: We can't see your screen. It's not in slideshow.

[Katie Moulton]: I know it decided to switch screens on me. One second. I apologize. It popped up on my opposite screen.

[Unidentified]: It's this one.

[Zac Bears]: We can see your screen.

[Katie Moulton]: Excellent. Okay. Sorry about that. Good evening, everyone. My name is Katie Moulton. I work for WSP. I'm a consultant working with the MBTA on the plan for accessible transit infrastructure. This is a program that the MBTA is running to make all bus stops within their system accessible for all riders. The majority of the work includes making fully accessible bus stops, as well as accessible curb ramps and safe crossings between all the paired stops. Tonight, we're here to talk about a single stop in Medford. The goal of these projects, as I said, is to slow down vehicles and to make sure that people feel safe accessing these bus stops, they feel safe standing on the sidewalk, and looking to give them the best access to the MBTA system. So currently the existing stop that we're looking at is on Boston Ave right at the Tufts Garage. I know the city has some work ongoing here right now and they've relocated that stop so that the work for the garage is ongoing. This current, as you can see on the screen, Neither of the existing curb ramps are ADA accessible. They don't have detectable warning panels. And it's just not an ideal location as this crossing is not in the closest proximity to the entrance to the MBTA station. And I apologize, I have an old one up. It is not the green line station. It is the orange line station. I apologize for that. But what the goal would be is that we would be proposing to relocate this existing stop up closer to the Boston Ave and College Ave intersection. The city has already worked on improving the crossings at this entire intersection, improving signals, and all of this sidewalk and the curb ramps at Boston Ave have already been improved. So what we would like to do is relocate the Tufts Garage bus stop closer to the intersection, which would give people better access to the entrance to the Orange Line station. However, the paired stop going northbound on Boston Ave is still not ideal and it's still not accessible. So the work we're proposing would just be for this side of the street over here. So as you can see, this is where we are. This is the intersection on Page left over here, this would be the existing bus stop. It would not impact the accessible parking that is here, and it would be pulled off onto the shoulder. There are two portions of the bus stop that are critical for all passengers. The first one is the landing area, which is where the bus ramp deploys for mobility-impaired riders to be able to board and deboard the buses. And so the goal is to have an eight-foot by 10-foot landing area. And then the clear zone is in the back, which is the rear door to the bus. So as you can see in the northbound direction, this stop is fully compliant. However, in the southbound direction, it is not exactly what we need. There is a existing fence line that runs parallel to it, which we would not be impacting. We do not have any plans to impede on the Tufts College property, all of the work we're proposing would be within the city. We would be repaving a section of the sidewalk, putting in some grass behind it just to make sure it goes back to its original conditions. We would have a 10 foot by six foot landing area, and then a five foot by 10 foot clear zone. We tried to shift this bus stop far enough back so it was not to impact the right turn lane that is currently used by drivers. And additionally, technically, there is no parking. Based on the signage on the street, there is no parking here. So there additionally would not be any impacts to parking with the proposed work that we are recommending. We would, if I go back, once this work has been completed, the MBTA service planning would come back and deactivate This location, they would put up all the signs. They would make sure that all riders are aware of the relocated bus stop and make sure that there are signs out and that the riders are notified in advance of this change. And then we would be removing the existing signage, removing the existing pavement markings, putting in new pavement markings, and then potentially opening up this area for increased parking. Ben is the project manager for the MBTA on this project. He's with us here tonight. So this design has been reviewed by the Medford Transportation Division, and they are in approval of this work. The intent right now is to build that this summer. This location is a high priority for the MBTA. It's critical. And the MBTA has asked us to expedite the work at this location so that this work can be completed by our on-call contractor in Newport Construction. And that would likely be done sometime late summer or early fall of this year. Work would take approximately two to three weeks as it's relatively minor work. There'd be limited impacts to the riders. And I'm gonna turn it over to Ben to see if he has any additional comments or if there's any questions from anyone on the council.

[Bin Zhu]: Thanks Katie and thanks the president and all council members for tonight to give us the opportunity to introduce this critical stop. We receive a lot of requests from the city and our partners and riders, including the MBTA internal stakeholders to ask us to accelerate this one bus stop due to the high ridership, you know, bus stop and use connection to the Green Line Station, Medford and Tufts Station. So that's why tonight we would like to submit this 100% design to the city council member to review and give us approval. And then in case we can use this summertime to accelerate the construction. So we want to make sure before the October, we can finish all the construction. So make this stop with full access and for use to all the riders and community members. So that's all tonight and then we would like to ask any questions for us and then we would like to answer.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Katie. Appreciate this work. This is an important priority to improve bus connectivity and accessibility near the new Medford Tufts Greenline station. So I know a lot of residents have been talking about this and asking for it and our traffic direct and transportation director and our traffic team are consider this a priority and I'm glad that we can consider it tonight. I'm going to go to members of the council for questions. We go to Councilor Lazzaro, then Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I appreciate your presentation on this. I think it's really wonderful to have ADA compliance be prioritized. I'm so grateful that this work is being done. One question I have is if there are announcements or lighting changes that will be made to the stop. We had just a little bit of confusion with communication when we had an ADA compliance update done on a train stop recently. Is there like a contact that we will have after the completion of the work or in the process just to follow up for the neighbors. We had a slight issue that I think is now resolved, but just want to be able to verify that as the ADA compliance work is done so that people who have hearing or sight issues are able to access the stop better, that the neighbors are still able to balance their needs. But I really appreciate that this is being done. I know it's very important.

[Katie Moulton]: Yep, so in construction, the Newport construction, his name is Tom. He will put out flyers and he will post flyers around. So normally that goes to abutters. The majority of the abutters are Tufts and the train system. So in this location, most likely we could post flyers. There will probably be sandwich boards out in the weeks upcoming to while Tom's working to let people know that the stop is gonna be relocated. So during construction, all questions, Tom usually provides his cell phone number so that if there's any questions, he's accessible. He would also be pulling permits with the city, so you would have his contact information as well through that process. We've included Ben's contact number on here. He's the MBTA project manager. And then as always, your service planning representative would always be available for any questions and concerns as well after the process.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Yeah, just to clarify, are there going to be any changes made to lighting or will there be sound installations that don't currently exist?

[Katie Moulton]: No, no, that is not normally. The majority of our work is just kind of sidewalks and curb ramps. We try to keep it simple and straightforward, the majority of the work.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'll go to Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you Mr. President again I appreciate the presentation but I'm just a little confused we're not are we moving to this for this project to move move forward tonight or or is this just the presentation I think it's important that I'm hearing that the construction team will be sending out notices but one thing we've heard you know pretty resoundingly throughout the community is anytime we're doing something our community is really not understanding and knowing the issues and concerns so when it comes time to it it's too late because they haven't been involved so I would if that's the case, I'd like to slow things down again. We're talking about, um, 1st of August meeting in the summer. Not too many people are paying attention. And then, uh, and then we don't meet again until September. So I think that it's important that that we look at any initiative that we're putting forth that we slow things down and present it to the residents, especially in that neighborhood, that they're informed properly so they can ask the proper questions that usually arise after construction work is being done and residents are then left in limbo without any recourse. So I would make that as a motion, Mr. President.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to table by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by. Hearing no second, are there any other motions or questions? Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I want to extend my thanks to the MBTA for their presentation tonight. You know, there are many people in Medford who rely on bus service to commute to get where they need to go. There are many, many bus stops in Medford where we know that maintenance and improvements are. urgently needed, especially when it comes to ADA upgrades. I appreciate the clarity around this and the updates on the timeline for the rollout. And I am eager to see the shot clock on these updates begin as soon as possible so that riders can begin to see a better experience at their bus stops. I would motion to approve.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve by Vice President Collins, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes. I have the affirmative, one of the negative, one absent. The motion passes. Communications from the Mayor 25126 submitted by Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. Sorry about that. One second. Dear President Bears and members of the City Council, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body, in accordance with Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 138, Sections 4 and 5, approve the appointment of Mark Lally, 3 Smith Lane, Medford, Massachusetts, 02155, to the Garden Commission for a term of three years to expire November 18th, 2028. Mark will be present via Zoom. Copies of their resume and appointment letters are attached. Thank you for your kind attention to this matter. Sincerely, Breanna Lungo-Koehn, Mayor. Do we have Mark on Zoom? Mark, could you raise your hand? Great. Mark, I'm going to let you turn on your video, and then we'll request you to unmute. You should be able to turn on your video now if you'd like to do that.

[Mark Lalli]: I unfortunately do not have a webcam, so I can't turn on video, but I am here and present.

[Zac Bears]: That's okay. Thanks for being here. We've received your request for appointment by the mayor. Is there anything else you'd like to share about why you'd like to be on the garden commission or anything else you'd like the council to know?

[Mark Lalli]: I would just like to say that I have a passion for gardening. I'm happy to report that this past year I was able to ferment my first wine from Medford grown grape vines. And I'm just very excited to help more people in the city garden.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Thanks, Mark. Do we have any questions for members of the Council? Hearing and seeing none, is there a motion? On the motion to approve by Councilor Leming, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: President Bears?

[Zac Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, none in the negative, one absent. Motion passes. Mark, invite me over for some of Medford's own sometime. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Reverting back to the regular order of business, motions, orders, and resolutions. 25103 offered by Vice President Collins proposed amendments to the Medford zoning ordinance other quarters districts for referrals to the Community Development Board Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. While I am not in favor of slowing down this council's work on overhaul of our zoning ordinance, I do understand that the CBB is between CORA right now, between quorums right now. So I would recommend that we hold this referral until they are procedurally able to open their hearing on it. That would be a motion to table until our September 9th regular meeting.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to table paper 250103 to the September 9th regular meeting by Vice President Collins seconded by seconded by Councilor Leming, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes, it's the affirmative, one absent, the motion passes and the measure is tabled. I'm going to turn the chair over to Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Sorry, we have different setups. Paper 25-015, offered by President Bears, Values Aligned Local Investments Ordinance. Is there a motion to waive reading of the ordinance for a summary by the proponent? Great, on the motion to waive reading of the ordinance in favor of a summary by the proponent, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Two way breeding. Councilor Callahan is absent. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng.

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: President Bears. Yes. Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Yes. Five in favor, one opposed, one absent. Motion passes. Go ahead, President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Collins, and thank you for chairing the meeting. This is our second meeting where we have this formally on the agenda. It was tabled, well, it was delayed by a councilor delay on June 24th, and then further tabled on July 15th to have more time for discussions with city staff and incorporate some changes that I believe address some ability to implement and also make clear the intent of this ordinance. I spoke at length on June 24th about why I proposed this ordinance. We've heard from many residents about this ordinance and how they feel about it and their opinions on it. But at the end of the day, the purpose intent is written into the ordinance itself. It says the city of Manfred will strive to invest its funds in ways that promote the wellbeing of our communities and our environment, favoring investment of its funds and entities that support the needs of peacetime and daily life and meet the city's goals of conducting local government in a quote, accountable, transparent, innovative, stable, ethical, representative, and responsible way. And that's what this ordinance does, Madam Chair. We are in a unique moment in this world where we are seeing ecocide at incredible levels. Our planet is being destroyed by corporations who care more about next quarter's profit than the continued existence of our ecosystems and the ability of humans to stay alive on this planet. We are seeing a federal administration that is partnering with for profit private prisons and detention centers to lock people up, in many cases, extra legally, and then trade that on the open market for profit. We are seeing weapons manufacturers and right-wing extremists across the world fomenting violence and killing and destruction in countries on nearly every continent, again, for profit and for next quarter's earnings rather than the injuries and death that we're seeing to so many people, especially so many children. And we are seeing a federal administration and a global right-wing movement that is committing massive human rights violations across the world, in countries across the world. They are abetting each other, they are supporting each other. Homes destroyed, families completely wiped out, and it is essential that all of us, whether that's us as individuals, us as communities, us as organizations, or working together through local government, that we say that if we have funds, if we have these public funds, we are not going to invest them in this global effort that disregards and dehumanizes people in so many different ways, whether that's for political gain, or for private profit, or in many cases, both in the never ending cycle of destruction and violence. It's not a fun picture to paint, but it's the world that we're living in right now. And this ordinance says that in Medford, we're not going to put our public funds into that system. I have been grateful to meet with several residents, residents who have concerns, concerns about what the ordinance's intent is. I think there are some edits in here that better define what that is. I really appreciate meeting with the city administration, the treasurer collector, the chair of the commissioners of trust funds, especially also meeting with the retirement fund, even though retirement funds are excluded from this ordinance, they were able to do an analysis and provide a framework for how to look at funds and how they would apply under these conditions. And you can see that in the updated section 2698B. There's a very clear framework called the MSCI ESG, that's Environmental Social Governance, Controversies and Global Norms Methodology. That comes from the financial industry itself, which I know I and others have issues with, but it provides a clear framework for the implementation of this ordinance. They use data and create this methodology and framework to determine what companies are, for example, complicit in human rights violations. They take a number of global international law, international conventions and treaties to make those determinations. And they are a group that many folks who are thinking about how to invest their money look towards to make determinations about who is violating the basic norms and foundations of international law for profit. So I want to thank the folks from the Retirement Fund for pointing out this methodology. They did an analysis of their funds and most of these funds are for the Retirement Fund are not invested in any of these areas, not all. And I also just want to thank folks from the Retirement Fund as well for our meeting where they pointed out that while this ordinance wouldn't apply to them, there are a number of restrictions already in place in state law, particularly as relates to weapons manufacturers, where our retirement funds are not invested in that right now. And while this is what we can do here for the funds that law allows us to work with. I also am hopeful that the state will take some more action in the future to try to incorporate some of what we're doing here into the laws that apply to the retirement funds and other funds that are under control of the state. With that, I'm interested to hear from my fellow Councilors and I would move to approve for first reading.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. First, I'll recognize our fellow councilors. Then we will go to public comment. After discussion amongst councilors is done, we'll hear public comment from both folks inside the room and on Zoom. I'll recognize Councilor Scarpelli first.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Vice President. Again, it's To set the presentation of my share of this, my input at least, I had a great phone call with a good friend of mine before I came into the building and he wanted to express as a Palestinian resident of Medford, we had a great discussion and we realized sometimes it's easier to have one side against another side, because that makes it the battle, right? It makes it a fight. And the idea of why George Scarpelli feels the way he is, many different levels. Councilman Villes brought up some great points that we see eye to eye on, whether you want to believe it or not. We also look at different questions that he brings upon to this evening that I don't disagree with him at all. But I think what's important for this council is to remember when you take your oath, you have to make your decisions for what's best in this community and above and beyond what your personal feelings are. And I think that from the beginning I've talked about the reason why Councilor Scarpelli has been against this ordinance is because of the vagueness, the questions of its legalities, or what the impact will play for our community. And if I can, I'm going to read what the hard work that the city, the city administration has been putting together. And this is a letter that was sent out to the council. And it says dear President Bears and city council, I reviewed the divestment ordinance in the current red line version, which was made available on Friday, August 1st. While there has not been sufficient time to conduct a full review, we would like to share with you the following initial comments, which are in addition to our below email of the July 15th. In summary, in the ordinance current form, there are significant legal and policy issues with compliance with state law, treasury's fiduciary responsibilities and significant implications that warrant further and diligent vetting with respect to impacts the city's municipal finances and a closed consultation with financial advisors of bond council and our legal counsel in dor so these are the the professionals in our field of of what we do uh fiduciary here in this community and it's very important that we understand there are some points that need to be cleared before we can move forward with any sort of ordinance at this level and they make some key points one prudent investment act is to our knowledge there is no concrete information to whether the city has adopted the prudent investment act and legal recommends that this be confirmed given the language in the proposed ordinance and it would be premature to consider an ordinance prior to confirming Two significant concerns with the city's financial advisor. We request initial feedback from the city's financial advisor, Hilltop Securities. On the original version, the ordinance that was presented to the council and they have advised us to the following. KPLR is in agreement with the initial legal issues raised by Hilltop Securities. Further reviews is necessary given the financial advisor's initial feedback. On two, I won't bore you with the ordinances and how they must comply with different laws and the concerns that the city has. But three, the bond rating call. The call has just confirmed a mandatory bond rating call this month, which standard and pours for the school HVAC project. The bond rating agencies always ask if there has been any change to the city's ordinance policies, et cetera, as it relates to financial matters. As such, This is a poor time to have such a dramatic change in policy being considered for adoption relative to municipal finance in light of comments raised by Hilltop. defined financial instruments. The use of the word financial instruments as it presented is vague. It will need to be defined in consultation with the treasurer, financial director, legal counsel, bond counsel to ensure that this does not conflict with the city's legal and financial documents. Furthermore, I question whether the term financial instruments will be used to restrict the contracts that the city enters into with vendors. there would be a significant implication there as well. That should be the case. All the more reasons that the term should be defined after further diligent review by all necessary stakeholders. Five, timeline on this ordinance and adoption. It is my understanding that the city bond adopted divestment ordinance, not as broad as this one, as method is proposed to be broadest of the few that are out there. And they did so in 2021 with a 2025 implementation date. They allowed it four years to be able to be implemented this process. The current proposal ordinance in Medford seeks this adoption implementation less than five months. It is my understanding that the other communities had reasoned and well-vetted processes to adopt the narrower ordinances that is currently proposed given the significant legal and financial consideration and adoptions continues to feel rushed in Medford. Six, the full legal review. Given the significant changes currently proposed, legal, we need to conduct a full review for legalities and compliance with state law, including, but not limited to, general laws, section 44, 55B, as also raised the city's financial advisor, given the statutory requirements of the treasury relative the investments pursuant to statutory requirements. Finally, based on meetings held on Friday between Commissioner of the Trust Fund Chairwoman Judy Beatrice, Council President Bears, and Treasurer-Collector Judy Johnson that our Chief of Staff listened in on, Chair Beatrice requested the following language be added, and I'm sure she'll share that later, so I won't repeat it now, and that is signed sincerely our Chief of Staff. So again, We've had a very difficult time in Medford in the last year, where a lot of process and policies have been implemented without true vetting, without the true input of our community. And this is just another factor. We have to remember, as elected officials, when we were sworn in, it's our fiduciary responsibilities to make sure that we are upholding what's best for the city of Medford. and looking at these documents, looking at the response from our city administration and having questions legally from the legal team, our financial team and our bond council, I think it's enough that we should really slow things down. and really try to vet this properly, because I know it's in theory. I don't disagree with you, Council President. I understand where you're going with this, but I also think, again, we're seeing what's happening with zoning. We're seeing what's happening with our charter review. We witnessed what happened with the override process. It seems like everything is rushed. And I think this is enough information that this council takes a second and realize that this is our responsibility not to rush into these with these factors that we know. So thank you, Mr. President, Madam Vice President.

[Kit Collins]: We'll go next to Councilor Lazzaro and then back to President Bears.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I appreciate that this is a major request of the city administration, and I got that email also that was just read, and it would be a big project to take on. And I think that that communication that we received expresses how challenging it may be but I don't think that something being challenging necessarily means that it's not the right thing to do. In the case of this, one of the things we can do as a city government is control the way at least a little bit that we invest our taxpayers' money. This ordinance sprang from our community. We were asked to, President Bears was asked to bring this forward by people in our community. And that's where it came from. Our community requested this. And it is really bold. It would be the first time that a city in Massachusetts did it. And the way that our city government operates is not that every time there's an idea, we all vote on it as an entire city, like a town meeting. We don't have that sort of organization. What happens is our city representatives work together with the community, but we carry out what our community requests. And in this case, to ignore the requests of our community and our own morality, I think is, to me, it's not an acceptable path. I think this is a perfect moment for us to be bold. And it can be a little bit scary sometimes, but I think that it is doable. I think based on the people I've spoken with, that it is doable and it's necessary. And also that, you know, people have been trying for a long time to get the attention of world leaders about things like climate change and things like for-profit prisons and weapons manufacturers and countries that are acting with impunity all over the world, and people in those countries are actively resisting and protesting, and we don't always know about it. I have a friend that lives in one of these countries, and she told me about the constant protesting that we do not see. And every time we talk about a people, entire group of people in another nation feels this way, we can think about maybe a large number of them are protesting in the streets every day against what their government is doing too. I didn't even know about that until Sunday. So I think it's incumbent upon us to carry out the things that our community asks for when we believe them to be right and good and true and financially prudent. And I think this is an example of that. So I really appreciate President Bears bring this forward. I appreciate the work that he's done with community members. And I think we've had a lot of opportunities for public participation. I think we'll have more tonight and that it doesn't have to end there. And it'll be a robust discussion. And I think it's critical that we continue to have it. I appreciate our community's willingness and capacity for engagement on this topic. And I feel grateful to be part of it. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor Rosario. We'll go back to President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Chair Collins. I just want to address a few things. Councilor Rosario is right that this comes from community. One of the first things that I looked into and asked for with Councilor Morell five and a half years ago was what it would look like for our community. to divest from fossil fuels. And as we have seen efforts across the state, some more successful than others, certainly efforts nationally and internationally, I've heard from more residents about some of the egregious harms and industries that so many people are putting pressure on to change their behavior and to say that we're not going to be investing our public funds in. So I've talked to a lot of residents over a lot of years, heard from a lot of residents over many years about this. And when we saw the results of the last election, especially started to see within days, the stoking of hate, stoking of fear, stoking of violence, now being done in our name by our federal government, it became incredibly clear that we needed to fight back. And so that's why I've worked for the last eight months on this ordinance. I have had many discussions with Chief of Staff Nazarian, including last week, including this afternoon. Some things that are concerns in the email today were not concerns in the conversation on Friday. That's fine. But I share my colleague Councilor Scarpelli's frustration And, you know, I think something I've been trying to do lately is think about my approach. And, you know, I don't agree with everything Councilor Scarpelli says, but a lot of the things that were read in the email that he just read are questions that we had four months ago. They are issues that I have worked diligently in multiple meetings with multiple entities in the city to get to a clear definition to help them understand, you know, and quite frankly, many of the things in the email are maybe yes, maybe no, we don't know. And I understand that. I mean, they cite a mass general law that right in section 2699 says right here, subject to the provisions of general law, chapter 44, section 54 and 55 and the prudent investor act, right? That's because legal already reviewed it once and I incorporated their changes. We have an entire methodology in here that I discussed with the retirement system. I spoke with city staff for an hour. I spoke with folks for another hour last week. I've brought up on the phone, I've shared to make it very clear how to implement this. And to be honest, and I hope that people can feel some sort of clarity from this, from the analysis so far, it doesn't seem like much of our city funds are invested in any of these things. I think that's a good thing. And I think the reality that they should never be invested in the future is an important piece of this too. When we talk about how does it get implemented, and these are concerns, when I hear the same concerns for four months over four calls, over four months, over many calls, over multiple meetings, and they've remained maybe, maybe not concerns, and the answers aren't anywhere, and we never receive a document that actually says, here's the research we've done and here are the changes we want you to make. I think it's really hard to consider those concerns in any sort of real and substantive way. The way I left it with the chief of staff this afternoon was, this is a first reading, it'll be advertised, it'll come back for a third reading, send us a memo, With your legal suggestions, send us a memo with your policy suggestions, make sure they're two different memos because too often we get legal suggestions that are actually policy suggestions and we'll consider them. And I said this a month ago in the end of June. Part of moving forward is to set the clock running. If these are real concerns, and we need to do the review, then we need to do it in a timely way. And when the goalpost keeps getting moved. And the same concerns keep getting brought up, or we make some corrections and then they're not quite the right corrections and we need another one set of corrections. I think it's imperative that we advance the process forward so that the people who are raising those concerns give us them in a clear and coherent way that we can consider and then look at the ordinance language specifically. From my conversations, we addressed a lot of stuff here. The email can say what it wants. We're not talking about vendor contracts. We're talking about the investments of city funds in stocks and securities. That's what we're talking about. There's an entire methodology in here that makes it very plain and clear how to look at potential investments to address this. And for me, I think that the due diligence and the work done to this point is sufficient. So that's why I made my motion to approve for first reading. And I invite the administration to concretely frame its concerns with specific suggestions for ways that we could change language, if necessary, and consider this council could consider an advance of third reading. So I appreciate it. And yeah, I understand my fellow councillors concerns. It can be very difficult. The relationship between this council and the city administration has been difficult at many turns. I would say that I feel we've made a very coherent and honest effort to try to have a collaborative relationship. And it hasn't been easy. And it will continue, I expect to not be easy, but we'll continue to try. Thank you.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you, President Bears.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I'm sure we'll hear from more Councilors and also members of the public tonight that some people in the audience will feel the desire to respond to one way or the other. I suspect that we'll want to hear from a lot of people. So I ask folks to please keep your responses short so that we can make sure we hear from everybody in a timely manner. I like applauding as next is as much as the, what was that? Oh, Justin. I knew something was missing.

[Justin Tseng]: Are you calling on me?

[Kit Collins]: All that to say, please keep your applause short or I'll ask people to stop applauding. I'll be recognizing Councilor Tseng. Go ahead.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you, President, Vice President Collins. I just wanted to state where I am at quickly, because I think our constituents deserve to hear where my brain's at. I'm here to listen to the community discussion tonight. I know we've had two very rich meetings of two meetings of very rich discussions, and people who feel, you know, very strongly on either side about this. But that's all to say that I do believe that our investments are an expression of our values. And our city and our residents should be comfortable with the investments that we make. And we should be able to say no when we are concerned about the investments that we make. I think about this like, Like if we were a family, and we are a family, we're a Medford family. As a family, you wouldn't shop at a business that you don't want to support. And you wouldn't invest in a team or a project that you're morally opposed to. As a business, you wouldn't do that either. I understand a lot of the community concerns that have been raised. And I'm really grateful that President Bears has done the hard work of taking those concerns on board. It's true, anti-Semitism is a real problem, but as many residents, Jewish and non-Jewish, have raised in previous meetings, we shouldn't conflate the issues, and conflating the issues actually can risk inflaming tensions even more. In these heated moments, I think we should tune out the hullabaloo, tune out the fuss, and look at the actual question that lies at the heart of the ordinance itself. And in reading the text of this ordinance, the question that ultimately remains is whether or not we choose to invest in companies that are endangering our future and our children's future, and those who seriously violate human rights and international humanitarian law. As someone whose family grew up in a dictatorship, as someone whose family members were disappeared, as someone who has close family and friends living in countries that are being threatened or who are actively under attack from countries that are severe violators of human rights, As someone whose job right now it is to work on human rights cases in many of these countries, to protect dissidents and ethnic minorities, and as someone whose future is at risk because of our ever-warming planet, I think I know how I would answer that question. That being said, I will respect all the points that are raised by this community tonight, and I look forward to the discussion.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Are there any other councillors who would like to discuss the matter further at this time before public comment? Seeing none, I know there are a lot of people in the audience who would like to speak on this matter. We will accept public comment both here at the podium and on Zoom. If you'd like to speak in person, please line up in a queue behind the podium. I will alternate between in-person and on Zoom. I will ask everybody to give their name and their address for the record. Sorry, let me turn myself up here. I will ask everybody to give their name and address for the record, and everybody will have exactly three minutes. We have a lot of people who want to talk tonight, so I will be holding us to that strict limit to make sure that we hear from everybody. We will begin at the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Dave Sherman]: And bears honorable Vice President Collins, honorable Councilors and Mr. Clerk, I'm Dave Sherman from Rosemary Way. I've been a volunteer in the Middle East on multiple missions, including packaging medical supplies to be sent into Gaza. I've also just started a major fundraising campaign to build bomb shelters in majority Arab cities in Israel. I hope you'll look at the so-called values aligned local investment ordinance or value ordinance with a truly open mind. it would forbid the city from investing in entities that contribute to, among other evils, severe human rights violations. In the current political environment of libelous accusations like those flung mindlessly against Israel, it would be easy to interpret the proposal as forbidding investment in that democratic state, even though it's craftily not mentioned by name. Currently in a war of self-defense that she never wanted was imposed upon her by Iran controlled terrorists. Self-declared pro-Palestinians, usually more accurately described as pro-terrorist, are likely to testify in favor of the proposal, a playbook including old tired claims of Jewish or Holocaust survivor. ancestry that they pull out of their tush pockets for the purpose, and falsely and even slanderously connect the proposal to Israel, creating a legislative history that would make the law seem aimed at the only country in the Middle East that actually has equal rights for women and for the LGBTQIA plus population. Further evidence that Valley is unjustly intended against the usual scapegoat, Israel, is that Valley requires the use of the corporation MSCI's ESG methodology as a source. In fact, the MSCI's guidelines are suspected best. They not only use source materials from groups like Amnesty International, which broadened the definition of genocide just so it could include Israel. excuse me, but under the, I'm sorry, but under the prevailing press bias, you probably heard that here first. They not only use that false material, they also use as a source the Palestine Chronicle, among whose journalists was an actual Hamas terrorist captor who was holding three Israeli hostages until Israel rescued them in a heroic raid last summer. So in approving this resolution, in approving this ordinance, you would be literally putting the city's investment policy into the hands of terrorists. If Pass Valley would directly threaten the city in time of need, I'm also a disaster planner and responder. And we know now from New York Times report yesterday that FEMA is withholding disaster relief funds from jurisdictions engaged in anti-Israel boycotts. You and others may argue about the justice of such a policy, but it's there. Pass this resolution, pass this ordinance, and it's quite possible that in future disasters, the amount of Stafford Act funds that Medford will get will be zero, right when it's most needed. In fact, there are values in the proposal that the city may want to endorse and vote with its dollars, such as limiting fossil fuels and targeting real human rights violators, such as China, with over a billion people under its thumb. That's a by far larger offender of human rights than Israel. But it's immune from international criticism because it's not governed by Jews.

[Kit Collins]: At the same time. Thank you. Am I out of time? You're out of time. Thank you for your comments. We will go next to Zoom. I'm going to ask Anne to unmute. Please state your name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Anne Castner-Williams]: Hi, my name is Maren Kastner. I don't know if you can see me, but my name is Ann Kastner-Williams and I live at 79 Caven Street. Thank you to the City Council for hearing this. I support the ordinance and urge you all to pass it. I am speaking as a social worker and a therapist for children and adults. My training and direct experience as a social worker have taught me that each person's well-being is directly shaped by their environment and the systems within it. And we currently live in a system in which investing in destructive, anti-human companies is viewed as business as usual, and we need to change that. I want so badly to be able to look into the eyes of my bright and curious child clients who are working so hard to manage their very big feelings and know that my tax dollars are not supporting the fossil fuel companies threatening their futures. A 2023 meta-analysis showed that abnormal heat events are associated with an increase in suicides and mental health hospitalizations. And I want to work alongside my courageous clients struggling with suicidality and know that my tax dollars aren't supporting the businesses responsible for global emissions that have caused these relentless heat waves that we've all been experiencing. I want to help my clients with brown skin process and heal from their traumas and know that my tax dollars are not funding the private detention centers facilitating ISIS illegal and racist kidnappings that cause them daily fear. Because how can you improve anxiety? when you face the threat each day of being stolen from your family in broad daylight by ICE? How are you supposed to heal from PTSD as you watch a genocide and children with missing limbs and parents burying their children and starvation of a massive group of people live-streamed on your phone each day? And how can I carry on the facade of helping people heal when we live in a profoundly sick society? that prioritizes profit over the dignity, safety and humanity of our residents. This divestment ordinance is a chance for Medford to lead the state in aligning our economic investments with our stated values and to show that we actually don't need to accept business as usual. I thank the council for considering passing the divestment ordinance. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. We'll go next to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Clare Sheridan]: Thank you for letting me speak. I hope you can hear me. My name is Claire Sheridan. I live at 190 High Street in Medford, and I fully support the proposed ordinance to end the city's investments in fossil fuels, weapons manufacturers, private prisons, and corporations that contribute to human rights violations and crimes against humanity. The city's investment portfolio will not suffer. There are hundreds of alternative strategies to choose from. If my personal financial portfolio can be modified to reflect these choices, then our treasurer's investment strategies can do the same. We know that many Medford residents have been picked up by ICE and sent to privately owned detention centers. We see the effects of rampant use of fossil fuels as our towns are flooded, our air quality is compromised, and rising temperatures affect our well-being and my electricity bill. And we see on our screens every day the effect of greedy weapons manufacturers who earned billions bombing and destroying innocent civilian populations in Gaza and elsewhere. And the West Bank is next. As an Irish American, I was raised on the effects of famine on my ancestors. a famine that was not alleviated because the British wanted to clear the land and force immigration to the Americans. Do you see any similarities? At 83 years of age, I am sick and tired of my tax money going to these immoral companies and manufacturers who aid and abet not only the killing of innocent citizens in faraway lands, but who compromise the lives of the Medford citizens. For any councilor sitting on the fence, do the right thing. Stand up for humanity here and abroad. And I vote in every election.

[Kit Collins]: We'll return to Zoom. We'll return to Zoom. Renee, I'm going to ask you to unmute. Please give your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes.

[Renee Korgood]: Hello. Thank you, Council, for considering this ordinance. My name is Renee Corgood, and I live at 25 Brooks Park in apartment 15. I am fully in support of this ordinance. And I appreciate the Council for listening to the community for the support of this incredibly important measure. I work as a librarian in a local community, and I've been a resident of Bedford for three years now, a town I've come to love quite a lot. And I love that when I come to Medford, I get to enjoy our beautiful green space. I love that when I work with the children I see at the library, that they have spaces to go. And I am dismayed when I think about the hundreds of millions of tax dollars that go to companies like Lockheed Martin and that go to companies that are destroying the beautiful green space that we have and the communities my kids are part of. I think about my kids' parents who are being snatched off the street by ICE, who are being left to fend for themselves with family members, and that my tax dollars are supporting those private prisons being used to have these people face just incredible amounts of harm. I believe in the fiduciary responsibility to building a community that lasts, to building a community that is strong and that matches the values that we have supported in the past, that match the action plan our city has on climate change, and that match the resolution we passed in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. And for that reason, the Divestment ordinance supports not only my values, but the values that I know our city has based on the actions that we've taken in the past. The city should invest our tax dollars sustainably, and I believe that my tax dollars should not go to companies who knowingly contribute to human rights violations and private prisons. Thank you for considering this ordinance, and I would again like to state my strong support of passing it. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Renee. We will go back to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Ilana]: Hi, my name's Ilana. I live in 60 Ashland Street. I'm here today to voice strong opposition to the so-called values-aligned local investments ordinance. On the surface, this ordinance may sound noble, Who wouldn't want ethical investments? But dig deeper and you'll see it's a vague politicized attempt to weaponize city finances to push a narrow ideological agenda. By banning investments in companies tied to fossil fuels or undefined non-peacetime industries, the ordinance severely limits Medford's financial flexibility. It puts politics ahead of fiscal responsibility. Our treasury should be guided by sound returns and security for taxpayers, not activist checklists. Moreover, this type of ordinance is often used to target companies doing business with Israel under the guise of values. MSCI uses Who Profits, UN Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, amongst others as sources. All hold extreme biases against Israel. Similar language has been adopted elsewhere to support discriminatory boycotts that isolate the only democracy in the Middle East, also known as BDS. Medford should not follow that path. This ordinance also has the potential to divide our community. By setting specific values as a benchmark for investment, we may alienate certain groups who feel their views are not represented. It's crucial that our policies encourage inclusivity and dialogue rather than division. This is a slippery slope. Once we politicize city investments, what's next? Banning pension investments in tech companies, banks, defense contractors? We'll never agree on every political issue. But we should all agree that taxpayer dollars deserve neutrality and prudence, not performative politics. I urge you to reject this ordinance. Keep Medford's finances free from ideological manipulation and focus on what truly matters, fiscal stability and services to our community.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you for your comments.

[sVx7vl5ZjhU_SPEAKER_05]: All right.

[Kit Collins]: 1-1-2-1. And that's the only outburst from the audience that I will tolerate tonight. Thank you, Claire. We will go back to Zoom. Dennis, I'm going to ask you to unmute. Please state your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes.

[Denis Dettling Kalthofer]: Hi. Dennis Dettling Kalthofer, 120 North Street, Medford, Massachusetts. So I've read this ordinance a couple of times, a few times, and it seems very clear to me I strongly support it, given the climate changes we're already experiencing. And I know we have the Canadian wildfires that have made it almost impossible to sleep at night sometimes because of the smell of smoke. I know people who live in Asheville, North Carolina, who are affected by storms. And also given the war industries how they're used, not just the weapons are being used to further the political objectives of our current government. But I don't want to get into the specifics of that, because they're also being used for diverting funds, where we really need the funds for domestic issues. So I have no problems with divesting from war industry in general. The other thing is that I think given the current state of the country, we're not rushing things. I think an ordinance like this, the sooner it takes place, the better, even if it means setting a precedent. And given things really spinning out of control in this country. The other thing I want to mention, because I know this topic of Israel and Gaza comes up so much in this discussion, and I don't believe that this ordinance targets this specifically. Now, first of all, I'm Jewish, and but I do not support what Israel is doing. So, I mean, that has to be separated. This is conflated, this whole business of conflating anti-Semitism with people who oppose Israel's policies. This is not what the ordinance is about. This is something, if that is part, if there are investments in Israel or in industries that involve Israel, that's up to international bodies to decide. That's not about whether we favor Israel or don't favor Israel. What my question is, is why does the city have to invest funds at all?

[Kit Collins]: Dennis, that's time. Thank you for your comments. We'll return to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clark in 50 Princeton Street. And I'm going to focus on the fossil fuel aspect of this. And I wanted to say that if the topic is trying to reduce pollution, reduce waste, reduce litter, reduce regime change operations in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, I tend to support that if it's a substantive effort. I do not see this as a substantive effort. I see this more as signaling. And I wanted to focus on, so the fossil fuel industry is actually three industries. There's fossil fuels, there's chemicals and plastics derived from fossil fuels. And so a lot of people think if you take on the fossil fuel companies, you're just taking on things like hummers and smokestacks and the plastic we see on the side of the road. I think that's noble, but I just wanted to bring to the attention of the council and the people in the chamber other things that are made from fossil fuels and its byproducts. Audio and video equipment, including microphones, cameras, and digital displays for podcasts, e-learning, and remote access. The grip tape and seat on your bicycle handlebars. The paint that forms bike lanes. The asphalt that forms the lanes themselves, or the equipment to mine the gravel. Dyes and ink for flags and hair. Paints for artists. Stickers and marketing materials for causes. Clothing, glasses, frames, and lenses. the toys your kids and dogs play with, your cat's house, the safety equipment for work crews, the circuit board components and casings within your electronics, the insulation on the wiring that charges your electric vehicle and keeps your data and social media on a server-based cloud, medical equipment including the masks, testing kits, and ventilator components during the pandemic, Hygienic cleaning chemicals and deployment systems, laboratory test equipment for scientific research, sex toys, contraceptives, and lubricants, sealants and insulation to make homes and buildings more energy efficient, refrigerants, desiccants, preservatives, and packages for food transportation, paneling, gasketing, and control panels for cars and public transport, components, chemicals, and fuels for wind turbines and solar panels, along with their transportation, assembly, and maintenance, fireproof battery housings, and chemicals. we're pretty intertwined with fossil fuels, and in some cases, pretty intimately, like with the sex toys, and it would be a pretty messy breakup, I would say, with fossil fuels. So considering all of that, I would say we need to be more mature about what we're divesting from, and to realize that we live in a very complex world with a lot of trade-offs, and we shouldn't just make simple yes-no decisions, this is good, this is evil. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. We will return to Zoom. David Harris, I will ask you to unmute. You have three minutes.

[Adam Hurtubise]: There you go, David.

[David Harris]: Thank you. Thank you. We can hear you. Okay. Thank you very much. My name is David Harris. I've resided at 151 Sharon Street in West Medford for 30 years. I'm here tonight to support the values aligned local investments ordinance. I'm grateful to the council for crafting and considering this critical piece of legislation. Given the state of the nation and the world, I find it difficult to narrow my thoughts these days. I will say, as someone who spent a career fighting the forces of mass incarceration, that I applaud the ordinance for requiring divestment from the vast and sadly growing prison industrial complex being fed by current policies of this government. In keeping with the wording of the ordinance, I would encourage us, however, to think globally and act locally. I turned to the insights of Dr. Luke Kent of the Center for the Study of Essential Risk at the University of Cambridge, who studied the collapse of more than 40 societies over 5,000 years, and he found that people are fundamentally egalitarian. They are led to collapse by enriched status-obsessed elites. He notes that past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary people. These previous collapses were regional, however, and he is pessimistic about the impending global collapse. According to Kent, today, People find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon, that we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We're naturally social, altruistic, democratic species, and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. That's what we're built for, he says. He goes on, collapse isn't just caused by structures, but also people. If you want to save the world, then the first step is to stop destroying it. Don't accept relationships based on domination, and share power whenever you can. Kent acknowledges the way forward is difficult and daunting, but he offers sage advice. Even if you don't have hope, this is about defiance. It's about doing the right thing, fighting for democracy and for people not to be exploited. And even if we fail, at the very least, we didn't contribute to the problem. I say we can make a mark by demanding that our tax dollars do not contribute directly to the impending collapse. We can and must do better with our money. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

[Munir Jirmanus]: Thank you, David.

[Kit Collins]: Thanks, David. We'll return to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, Forty Robinson Road. I'll begin tonight with the positives. First, I was happy to see that the ordinance was substantively revised, especially subsection D on the divesting from human rights abusers. I think striking that word entity from the subsection, for example, was a very good edit as I think that word was a contributor to it being overbroad. And I was also pleased to see that my concern as to how the treasurer would make the determination of which entities fall into this category of human rights abusers. I was glad to see that that was addressed as well by adding a subsection to section 2-698. That, as I understand, establishes a criteria in which the treasurer is to make determinations on which entities are abusing human rights, although I did hear tonight for the first time concerns about the partiality of that criteria. I think that's something I will personally look into as well as something all of you perhaps should look into as well. So overall, I'll say, I do think between the drafts ordinance was improved, but that doesn't mean I think that it's perfect or I think ready for a vote. I think now we have to really focus our attention on subsections A through C. I know in the past meetings, speakers discussed that at length. We really didn't see any edits there, that I noticed. So my concern, again, with this is, once again, overbreath. I think those sanction categories are far too over-encompassing. And I do think they could potentially lead to unintended consequences. So for example, a company that might derive more than 15% of its revenue from the combustion distribution or extraction of fossil fuels, that might not be as nefarious as you might assume. A reality with fossil fuels is they do power the world, whether you like that or not. We don't want to be unintentionally harming workers who are employed in these industries, when they're working under contexts that aren't unethical. And the same reason I think would apply for the defense industry or companies that might assist with the logistics of running jails and prisons I mean for example with a company that just simply surprise the jail or prison food, I mean with the divestment ordinance apply to that. You know, many of these businesses I think are ethical, even if you might kind of have utopian ideas about the world we want to live in, without maybe prisons or war, or anything else kind of bad. So overall I guess my suggestion here is I think we do need to refine further I don't think this ordinance is ready for a vote tonight. So I would hope that the Councilor who moved to approve for the first reading withdraw that motion. We can continue this and continue to refine, continue to work on this ordinance. I do think it's feasible, and I think it's ideal to have some sort of ordinance like this, but let's try to put emotions aside and do this the right way. Let's do this prudently, rationally, and prevent the city from getting sued because of some problem with the ordinance. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. We will go back to Zoom. Zachary, I'm going to ask you to unmute. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Zachary Chertok]: Zachary Chertok, 5 Allmont Street. So I'm not here to concentrate on intent, but structure. But first, given the PR storm and where it was initiated ahead of the meeting tonight, leading to the sizeable and noticeably partisan group in the chambers, it really isn't defensible anymore to say that what is now Section D doesn't involve Israel in some way and will not further the isolation of the Jewish community in Medford while serving for such precedent elsewhere. Now, that aside, I really do want to emphasize the issues of legal jurisprudence and fiduciary responsibility. The council is playing very fast and loose with these words without demonstrating an understanding or comprehension of what they mean or the risks that they open up to us if the policy engineering is not done right. It is evidence that you're willing to take risks with Medford's taxpayer dollars to serve overseas causes within ESG concerns that are not endemic to Medford. I don't doubt their validity, but it calls into question fiduciary responsibility. Those risks jeopardize our ability to even service the ESG goals here and now and into the future. If this is about ESG, the framework needs to be reviewed more thoroughly. And for reference, public participation opportunities on this have been weak and far between. To Council President Bears's memoranda were sent with legal considerations and an alternative draft framework to the mayor and to the council from my desk. For a memoranda submitted to the city council and the mayor's office, in-depth review of the ordinance with expert colleagues across the industry and academic practice and finance, CSG, international affairs, U.S. constitutional law, U.S. law, international finance, and more, has shown that the current draft version of the ordinance is too vague to be enforceable and opens the city up to broad inclusion of contracts as financial instruments that would otherwise hinder the city to procure the necessary materials for the low bid process for its ongoing operations. The language used is the problem, even if the intent notes otherwise. The wording does matter. In addition, legal review showed significant issues with regard to framework jurisprudence noted in the submitted memoranda, leading to the consulted parties to co-draft an alternative ordinance framework that was submitted to the mayor ahead of tonight's council meeting on August 3rd, 2025. Regardless of the intent, an ESG can be a noble field and ultimately good for investment diversification. The ordinance still contains severe risks and issues, that expose the city that I have to imagine are either unknown or are unexamined by this council. I highly encourage the council to take the professional review summary seriously, in addition to the community concerns surrounding the continued use of or recommended use of policy frameworks as official that the US government doesn't authorize, especially under the SEC. Said frameworks have further been shown to cause severe community divisions, going into the controversy surrounding their partisan influence. The ordinance needs to be redrafted to fully reflect fiduciary jurisprudence and ethical accountability and regulatory requirements towards its ESG intent. Within its current state, it does not. Regardless of the intent of the ordinance, there is still significant work to be done on and around it. Thank you. Thanks, Zachary. That's time.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you.

[Vincent Timmons]: All right, we'll go back to the podium name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes. Hi, my name is Vincent Timmons and I'm a resident of Medford at 43 Winter Street, and I grew up here. I'm a Mustang Hall of Fame athlete and attended my induction with Scarpelli, Councilman Scarpelli, and Medford is a really tight community. I even went to high school with Council President Zach Bears. But I'm concerned with what's best for Medford as Councilman Scarpelli put it, but Councilman Scarpelli public funds increased as a direct result of mass death is not what's best for Medford. The city's bond rating is not more important than human life on earth. Please direct your comments through the chair. Thank you. I will and I hope all of us will always support any action that values human life over capital. I believe that Medford has shown itself to be a community that values human life by considering this ordinance, but must prove itself by passing this ordinance. All of our struggles are linked and human life doesn't become less precious if it's outside of the city limits. human lives including those systematically and brutally destroyed by Israel and with the full support and facilitation of the U.S. government, human lives include those being shut away in for-profit concentration camps, human lives include those who are being killed and displaced by climate chaos. I am horrified to watch the result of our government's explicit endorsement and facilitation of a genocide against the Palestinian people and we have a chance to pass an ordinance which gives at least our local government some integrity and even a chance to be leaders in a country that is sadly just now waking up to the mass murder of the last two years and the destruction of Palestinian life and land that has been taking place for nearly the last century. We are responsible as people who live at the heart of this empire, which has produced so much ecological destruction already through its misuse of public funds, to say no. I implore the council to approve the ordinance offered by Council President Zach Bares.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your comments. We will return to Zoom. Munir, I'm going to ask you to unmute. You'll have three minutes.

[Munir Jirmanus]: Thank you. My name is Munir Germanis, and I live at 3 Summit Road. I'm here today to urge the council to vote in support of ethical investment. After listening to many of the testimonies at the last city council meeting, I could not help but think, welcome to our world where opinions matter more than facts. My father, who had a 20-year successful law practice in Palestine, lost his practice, his house, and his land when the state of Israel was created because he was of the wrong ethnicity. In this city, where I have been a resident and homeowner for over 40 years, my family has repeatedly faced anti-Palestinian discrimination. My graduate physics advisor, who was a Zionist, left the country to go to Israel for the summer without organizing a defense committee, forcing me to scramble to find another advisor so I could graduate that year. My daughter's physics teacher at Bedford High refused to recommend my daughter's science project after she questions his extra credit question on their physics exam. The question he chose for extra credit in physics was, who is the prime minister of Israel? Rather than continuing in the AP senior year physics course, she opted to audit a physics course at Dufts and was the valedictorian in her class that year. The next year, while she was a freshman at Harvard, one of my daughter's dormitory classmates was openly boasting that her cousin shoots Palestinians in Israel. Relatives and friends of Medford residents are being killed daily by the Israeli army, by the thousands, with two-ton bombs, tanks, drones, or forced starvation, and daily incursions by right-wing colonial settlers in the West Bank. But to talk about this or criticize these horrendous actions, some of our fellow residents falsely equate this with attack on Jews. As many of my Jewish and Christian and even Israeli friends have repeatedly pointed out, some in this forum, such baseless accusations are false and are intentionally used by organized groups to silence any criticism of the Israeli government. Students who dare voice their legitimate support for the oppressed Palestinians are either kicked out of their colleges or arrested and imprisoned by ICE with the intention of deporting them or silencing them. I could go on and on. This logic sets a dangerous precedent for fascism where political dissidents who oppose the political objectives of the Trump administration are to be fired, imprisoned, and or deported. Instead of pitting marginalized groups against each other, we could imagine a better future. We could join together and stand up against discrimination and hate while defending our rights to criticize without exception. I applaud this time. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: We'll return to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Dina Alami]: Hi, my name is Dina Alami. I'm at 3780 Mystic Valley Parkway, and I want to thank President Bears and the City Council for giving us the opportunity to speak on this. I'm here tonight to urge you to support an ordinance that can save the rest of my 75 family members in Gaza. As we know, Medford currently has 12 million invested in accounts that include Lockheed Martin, the world's largest weapons manufacturer. And again, as we know, Lockheed Martin supplies Israel with fighter jets that have been extensively used to bomb Gaza. Last time I was here in support of this, I shared a glimpse of how these weapons have torn through my own family's life. Every minute that is wasted not ending our complicity in the genocide is another minute of my family's life at stake. I can sit here all day and share gut-wrenching stories from my family in Gaza, from my pregnant cousin and her entire family who were killed in a direct Israeli airstrike on their home, to my cousin's seven-year-old daughter who was shot and bled to death while peeking out of her window, shot by an Israeli sniper. To my cousin's father himself a doctor who was forced to amputate his own daughter's leg on their kitchen table after their home was struck by an airstrike to my elderly aunt suffering from Alzheimer's forced to live in a tent, which by the way is considered a luxury. Confused and sick to my uncle suffering from multiple strokes and forced to take a fourth of the medication that he needs to my cousin's pregnant wife, who was forced to walk from the north of Gaza to the south in search of an operational maternity hospital. Every single hospital in Gaza has been struck by F-16 airstrikes and are not operating to full capacity. The indiscriminate attacks on healthcare facilities should horrify everyone. This is violation after violation after violation. And yet still my family stories are not unique. Everyone in Gaza is experiencing this daily horror. The continued human rights violations of my family in Gaza can be stopped. You can stop this. We have to stop pretending that we are powerless in that you as an elected member should not weigh in on this. You've heard from multiple individuals at this meeting and the last meeting who feel harmed by this ordinance. But I asked the city council to consider that Palestinians are not just experiencing feelings of harm. They're enduring actual ongoing physical harm. You as a representative have a duty to make sure that human life is being protected and supporting this ordinance will do exactly that. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Excuse me, excuse me. We're not going to do outbursts from the audience. We're not going to do that. We'll return to Zoom. And for folks who are waiting to speak on Zoom, please prepare by having your full name in your Zoom username. I cannot call on people who don't have both the first and last name. This is a precaution against Zoom bombers. We will go to Please keep conversations. Please go outside if you're going to have side conversations. Andy, please take it outside if you're going to talk. Let's keep it quiet. We'll go to Miranda on Zoom. Miranda, name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Miranda Briseno]: Hi, I'm Miranda Briceño. I'm at 2 Taylor Street. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I am in favor of this ordinance, and I will tell you why. Investing in businesses that are helping destroy communities through violence, incarceration, or the climate crisis is a bad financial decision in the long run. Reinvesting in businesses that build and grow our economies is our financial responsibility. I'm eager to see my tax dollars responsibly invested in companies, projects, and banks that prioritize people over profit. How we spend our money is a statement of our values. As we exist in a capitalist system, how we spend our money is one of the few ways we as a city can... As we can, sorry, as we exist in a capital system, how we spend our money is one of the few ways we as a city can assert our ability to refuse participation in industries that are actively harming people, our environment, and prioritizing profit over people. I support that this ordinance recognizes the slow process that is divestment. We won't be able to move our money and accounts overnight from companies that are actively causing harm across the world. So deciding to actively choose contracts and do businesses with companies that are aligned with our values as a city as a result of this ordinance is just one crucial step in putting Medford on the right side of history. The idea that this issue doesn't affect Medford is naive at best and actively ignorant at worst. We live in a globalized world whether we want to or not. This is not about politics, this is about prioritizing humanity as we watch our climate degrade, we watch multiple genocides across the world, and our neighbors unjustly incarcerated so that private prisons and war industry companies can continue to profit. At a time when the federal government clearly does not care about anyone but billionaires, companies, and arming their allies, Medford must take a stand where we can. The federal government is already targeting Massachusetts and its communities, illegally so, and clearly the federal government does not care about legality, morality, or people at all. The same federal government that is spending our tax dollars to fund an armed Gestapo with no oversight, building prison camps on US soil, and further contributing to human rights violations, it is incumbent on Medford to take a stand and do what we can as a city to support people worldwide. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Miranda. We'll return to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Micah Kesselman]: Sure. My name is Michal Sholem Kesselman. I live at 499 Main Street in Medford, as I have for the last decade or so. I would have liked to spend the little time I have allotted for public comment tonight talking about the interesting technicalities of this ordinance that has gone through countless drafts and revisions, been discussed and dissected countless times by a diverse cohort from all across our city, as well as numerous experts outside of and within our administration and government, and emerged as what I believe to be one of the most tightly drafted ordinances to come before this council in years. However, as a Jewish resident of Medford, I have watched as certain interests have used fear-mongering and vapid equivocation to reframe this broad ordinance as a discussion about Jewish worries over antisemitism, rather than the expression of solidarity and action in the face of injustice and immorality that it actually is. For the Jews who are planning to make comments towards the topic of antisemitism, I beg you to just listen for a moment in genuine reflection and seriously consider the public comments you plan to enter. I have watched cynical partisan actors, neither Jewish nor particularly engaged in the Jewish community in our city, of which some of whom are not even residents, capitalize on these fears in a disgusting attempt to gain traction with a demographic that would likely otherwise be uninterested, if not antagonistic, of their politics and philosophy. Consider for a moment that many of the people extending their heartfelt solidarity to Jewish residents seeing anti-Semitism in chants, signs, and garb of protesters and others didn't say a single damn thing when many other neighbors shared stories of having family and loved ones murdered by a military using weapons our tax dollars pay for. They did not express a single lick of concerns to the other Jewish residents like myself who have very real concerns of having our livelihoods interfered with our physical safety put at risk from really speaking out on this issue as is materialized all across this country. I have said before, and I will continue to say, that even were this ordinance to directly, specifically, and only invoke Israel, it would still not be anti-Semitic. Israel is not Judaism, a religion, culture, and people that have existed for far longer in diaspora than in some silly blend of ethno-state and global ghetto. Nor is Judaism Israel. Moreover, to reframe any topic, even obliquely referencing Israel is referencing Jews as a global cohort is wildly dangerous in these times of rising authoritarianism. And when our government is giving serious consideration to the idea of stripping effectively anyone of citizenship and deporting them. Think about what it means to foster a narrative that Jews in the US who overwhelmingly vote and politically organized left are effectively Israeli first and foremost, and Americans only second. But more than this, consider what it means to the legacy of bloody tears and suffering under oppression experienced by all of our forebears when you attempt to provide an inarguably oppressive nation state the cover of weaponized allegations of anti-Semitism. What does it mean to the fundamental imperatives of not just our shared religion, but our shared cultural axioms? This is a larger discussion than I can have time for clearly. But I really do ask you to seriously reflect on this. And if you would like to discuss this further and in good faith, I'm always willing to lend an ear and shoulder. Just pull me aside and say shalom aleichem.

[Kit Collins]: We'll return to Zoom. Owen, I'm going to ask you to unmute. Name and address for the record, please. You will have three minutes.

[Owen Berson]: Hello, one moment. Thank you President Bears for bringing this to the agenda and members of the city council for giving us this opportunity to speak. My name is Owen Berson and I live in South Medford. I support the values aligned local investments ordinance and I urge the council to vote in favor. Medford should divest our tax dollars from corporations that are causing grave harm to human rights and the environment all across the world. This resolution's impact would go far beyond the genocide in Palestine to divesting from incarceration, environmental destruction, and war worldwide. However, I am speaking tonight as a Jewish resident of Medford who is devastated by the genocide that Israel has been perpetrating in Gaza. My Jewish values tell me that every life is precious and that we must act against any genocide of any people. Never again means never again for anyone. I'm angry and heartbroken that my Medford tax dollars are supporting weapons companies enabling and profiting from this genocide. Last year, Medford City Council passed an important resolution in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza. We must back that ceasefire resolution with concrete action to divest from the weapons companies profiting from this ongoing genocide. I have a friend who lives in Massachusetts who grew up in Gaza and still has the majority of his family members living there. His parents, three brothers and four sisters all live in Gaza. Many of his friends and neighbors from Gaza have been killed by Israeli attacks in the past two years. The houses of all of his aunts and uncles in Gaza on his mother's side have been destroyed by bombing. He estimates that 95 percent of his family members in Gaza have had their homes destroyed by Israeli bombing. And his parents' home in Gaza was destroyed in 2009. while it's rebuilt by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, that home now houses all of his displaced relatives who have lost their homes since October of 2023. My friend spoke of his unrelenting anxiety, fear, and displacement, and that of his loved ones in Gaza. This destruction and violence is funded by our Medford tax dollars, which are being invested in companies like Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin is one of the world's is the world's largest weapons manufacturer and supplies Israel with fighter jets, which Israel has been using to bomb Gaza, as well as military transport planes and missiles. Medford should immediately divest from fossil fuels, detention and prison companies, weapons companies, and companies perpetrating human rights abuses. Fossil fuel companies are responsible for pollution and climate change negatively affecting us all. Prison and detention corporations are profiting off of caging our neighbors. And weapons companies are profiting from killing children and families and destroying homes and neighborhoods. Medford is a community that values human and environmental wellbeing, and we must ensure that our investments align with these values. I urge the council to vote in favor of the values aligned local investments ordinance. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Owen.

[Kit Collins]: We'll return to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Souhad Zendah]: So had in the five or six streets in Medford, I've been resident proud resident of Medford for the past 20 years. Our moral imperative is more than putting forth a climate change action plan and raising slogans of equality, equity and justice. It's a deeply ingrained sense of duty, even when it's very hard to do so, to act in accordance with our moral principles. It compels us to protect our future generations, our children, all children, all ethnicities everywhere. It is no secret that we have fallen short in doing so, and the time to act was yesterday, but it's never too late. The ordinance before us has a lot of great things in it that I support and I urge you to support and push forward, including the divestment from Chevron, the fossil fuel company, which has been reporting losses for the past six months, both in the U.S. and internationally, by the way. as well as divestments from the prison industry, a vestige of the illegalized slavery in our time. But the most pressing issue is the current lifestream genocide in Palestine. Moving Medford public tax dollars out of companies like Lockheed Martin, which shamelessly boasts about their tried weapons to showcase its effectiveness in murdering people is not only the right thing to do, it is the least we can do. especially as we continue to witness the ongoing slaughter of innocent people and lives in Gaza. These weapons were tried on my family members for sure. Last time I was here, I reminded you of this. In addition to more than 100 of my family members who were killed by airstrikes recently, my niece Naya, five-year-old right there, was recently killed along 72 more family members. Our entire bloodline is being wiped out. All were murdered in their homes during two Israeli raids using F-16 jets produced by Lockheed Martin and funded by us, Medford residents. The only way to stop a genocide is to stop investing in it now. And for those who think that this is an act against an anti-Semitic act, it's not. It's against any power, any entity that is capable of carrying these unimaginable atrocities everywhere in the world. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. We'll return to Zoom. Jennifer, I'm going to ask you to unmute. You'll have three minutes.

[Jennifer Yanko]: Thank you. Jennifer Yanko, 16 Monument Street. I want to thank the Council and particularly President Bears for bringing this forward and for the due diligence that's gone into crafting this ordinance, which I believe is prudent and rational. And I do think it's ready. I'll be very brief. I just want to register my very strong support of this ordinance. I think There's lots and lots to invest in. There's lots of life to invest in. We needn't be investing in weapons manufacturers. We needn't be investing in corporations that are contributing to the destruction of the environment and to life as we know it. I want to see us invest in life. And there's lots of things we can be investing in. Disinvesting in weapons manufacture and fossil fuels and prisons is not going to do us in as a city. I really would like us to think more long-term, the long-term benefits for our planet, for our world, for our children, for our grandchildren. we can be both fiscally responsible and responsible to the future generations. So I've just, again, want to underline my very strong support for this ordinance, and thank you again for considering it.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Jennifer. We'll return to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Adrianne Appel]: Hello, my name is Adriana Pell and I live in South Medford. I wanted to say thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to speak. I'm going to keep it very brief. I'm here and we're all here because we love our community. It's people and it's beautiful natural spaces, like the fells and the beautiful mystic lakes and river. It makes sense to shift our investments away from fossil fuels and pollution, away from genocide, and away from child labor. Through Bedford's Climate and Adaptation Plan, we have promised not to support harmful and outdated and unnecessary practices. like fossil fuels and like investing in weapons manufacturers. Let's not invest in fossil fuel companies, which are also huge polluters. And I wanna bring this home. Fossil fuels are also huge pollutants and big global companies like ExxonMobil have polluted our beautiful Mystic River in Everett at the ExxonMobil tank farm. Its spills for years, for decades, have dumped oil into our beautiful Mystic River. Environmental lawyers in our community have spent years and millions of dollars just trying to get Exxon to fortify its tanks to stop future spills. Finally, just last year, after decades and decades, Exxon finally announced it was giving up and it would sell to a developer in a special state deal in which we, the taxpayers, are ending up funding some of the estimated $100 million to begin to clean that site up. That is not fair, and we should not be investing in ExxonMobil. Speaking of pollution and other things, I still think of General Electric as a homegrown company, despite its horrible, horrible record in our state and elsewhere. In Lynn, most of the men in my family worked there. I spent many, many years in Lynn, many hours. But while it employed so many of us, it also massively polluted, dumping petroleum contaminants into the Saugus River and into the water supply, making shellfish at Lynn Beach ridiculously dangerous to eat.

[Kit Collins]: That's time, Adrienne.

[Adrianne Appel]: Cancer rates are sky high. Please pass the divestment ordinance. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. We will return to Zoom. Mike, I'm going to ask you to unmute. You'll have three minutes.

[Mike Cohen]: Hold on, good evening. I want to make sure you can hear me. Yep, we can hear you. Go ahead. Good. Mike Cohen, 200 Brook Street. I want to thank people for speaking tonight. I know there's been a diverse variety of opinions. And I think this, Bill, the intentions are good in a lot of ways. I think most of us can say, for-profit prisons, obviously, who wants that? We want a better environment. That's awesome. We don't like ice. I think we can all agree on that. What we're seeing tonight, though, is a concern. And I mean, as a Jewish resident, but I think just as a good human being, there is too much going against Israel, who is literally fighting for her survival. I think that, you know, we're talking about tonight what Israel's doing is wrong, but then no one's stopping to say, well, This wouldn't have happened if Hamas hadn't attacked Israel. And then we're seeing on the news, we're seeing what happens with Avatar David, who is being starved and who's being forced to dig his own grave. And that all is Hamas's fault. These are filthy, scummy animals who have no right to live. And not the Palestinian people, but that's, it is Hamas. And you know what? We need to take that into account before we pass something like this. And so it shows we're not ready to do that yet. So thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Return to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Nayla Savage Romanos]: Naila Savage Romanos. I live on 13 Summit Ave. I'm testifying in support of the Ethical Investment Ordinance. I have lived in Medford for more than 40 years. My children went to Medford public schools and graduated from Medford High. I'm an immigrant from Lebanon. The village I grew up in was completely destroyed in 1983. As the Israeli military marched into our village, my family was displaced and dispossessed. We all scattered into different parts of the world, trying to collect our shattered lives. I listened to the city council meeting on July 15, and I heard the testimonies of the members of our Jewish community in Medford, I want to say that I heard you, and I want to acknowledge your fears. But I also want you to acknowledge mine, and to recognize and address the fears and the pain and suffering of my sisters and brothers from Gaza and the West Bank. Since 1945, the end of the Holocaust, which we should all condemn, more than 55 million civilians have perished in more than 89 major genocides around the world, to name a few, the Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and most recently, Sudan, perpetrated by the United Arab Emirates. These continued wars only benefit the weapons manufacturers and billionaire CEOs like our current president, Our city funds are currently invested in Lockheed Martin, which sends F-35 jets that drop bunker buster bombs on families sheltering in tents in Gaza. We should not be forced to fund war crimes against our will for nearly two years. We called Senators Markey and Warren and Rep. Clark with little impact, which is why we find ourselves here in our local city council. This ordinance is an opportunity to take back our tax dollars from a government which has run far astray of the will of the public. Only 32% of Americans currently support Israel's genocide in Gaza. Where is our democracy? It's right here in this council chambers. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. We'll return to Zoom. Takeo, I'm going to ask you to unmute. You'll have three minutes.

[Takeo Rivera]: Hi, I'm Takeo Rivera, 75 4th Street. I'd like to once again thank President Barreras for this excellent ordinance, and I speak out in support of it again, as I did in the previous city council meeting on June 24th. In that meeting, I spoke on how Hartford is a wonderful place to raise a family, that this ordinance is one that allows the city to live its values to support children, children victims of bombings and intentional famine abroad, children's futures in the face of ecological collapse. Children criminalized for the color of their skin or the country of origin. Rather than rehash my remarks from June, today I would like to rebut some of the arguments against this ordinance. The first misleading argument is number one, that this is divisive or makes people feel unsafe. So, we're already divided. With the status quo of investment in these companies, our city has already taken a side. The people who feel most unsafe are the ones who are in direct danger of bombings, bullets, and barbaric starvation campaigns that are actually happening, not hypothetical ones. We heard testimony in June and today from people who lost countless family members to this unspeakable systematic violence. The great Massachusetts-based philosopher John Rawls taught us that, and if we fail our community members whose families are being directly slaughtered by companies we're invested in, then we should be judged quite harshly and deeply. Laws argument number two, Medford should concern itself only with local affairs. It won't do anything. So besides the fact that, as I just stated, residents of Medford have families directly impacted by the ongoing genocide, and all of us are affected by climate change, Divestment campaigns work and usually occur at the local level. Local divestment campaigns were vital for the ending of South African apartheid, for example. And as President Bears argued convincingly in June, this is important for the morale of the city. False argument number three, that this ordinance is somehow anti-Semitic. So besides the fact that there is no specific language about Israel per se, let me point out something larger. I'd like to argue that to conflate Israel with Judaism is in fact a form of anti-Semitism. I say this as a Japanese-American whose great-grandfather was incarcerated by the US government after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. During World War II, the U.S. government equated all Japanese-Americans with Imperial Japan, and doing so led to Executive Order 906S and our mass incarceration. We as a community were desperate to dissociate ourselves from the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan.

[Kit Collins]: Takeo, you're breaking up.

[Takeo Rivera]: that the US government committed one of the greatest abridgments of our civil rights in Japan as a puppet pan or Israel, we must be in staunch opposition to the horrors we see unfolding for our eyes, especially when there is something we can do now to send a message to companies directly.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. We'll return to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Josh Eckert-Lee, 347 Main Street. I'm giving this comment in favor of this ordinance, not just for myself, but also a trio of Medford families who were in chambers earlier but had to take their children to bed. Those families are Kai Suleiman and his wife, Julia. Their children, Sham and Juliat, live at 25 Valley Road. Sahar and Ahmad and their children, Asad and Mohammed, who are four and one and a half, respectively, who live on Bowdoin Street, just down the road from me. and Ayyad and Nemeh. and their eight-month-old, Taya, who live on Leichhardt Drive in Medford, who are all staunchly in support of the ordinance. We urge you to support this ordinance and invest our public funds in ways that let us thrive and don't support destructive industries. Currently, today, our tax dollars are invested in portfolios that include global harmful industries like Chevron, like Lockheed Martin, and we already have this money invested in global geopolitics. This is not us wading into those concerns. I personally volunteer my time for the city as a member of the city's Energy and Environment Committee, which helps the city meet its goals set forth by the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, which has been quoted a couple of times this evening. That plan notes that climate change is rooted in a system of economic growth that extracts value without accounting for the real environmental and social costs. We currently have $12 million in funds that are invested in a portfolio that includes Chevron, the world's largest fossil fuel polluter. They've contributed over 40 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere and will continue to do so as long as it is funded by institutional portfolios like Medford's. Fossil fuel divestment is a common and essential tool that institutions regularly use to align their investments with their values like they've done in the city of Boston. It's been a long running effort as well amongst local climate activists here in Medford and I wanted to express my gratitude to those activists for the years and years of work and leadership that have gone into the ordinance that we have today. The ordinance is recognition of the interrelationship between multiple harmful entities beyond fossil fuels, like Lockheed Martin, which is currently invested in city funds and profiting off of the genocide in Palestine, and the prison industry, which is profiting off of the kidnapping of Metro residents by ICE. The breadth of industries is not designed to add complexity or hide the sort of human rights elements of this, but it recognizes the importance of these industries being part of one unified system of destruction upon harm. Mechanically, I also think this ordinance has been thoughtfully designed to make implementation easy and actionable. The addition of a guiding ESG standard in MSCI provides clear and straightforwardly followed models that are already designed to not invest in the industries listed in this ordinance. It's an industry standard and it's managed by Morgan Stanley, which is not known for being a group of radical progressives. The Prudent Investment Act, MGL Chapter 203C, Section 3, Subsection C8, provides clear allowance for considering an asset's special relationship or special value to the trust or its beneficiaries. As Council Members noted, this ordinance has a clear relationship to our Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, our Charter, and our well-being as Metro residents, and therefore resident for consideration under the Prudent Investor Act. So I urge you to consider this and move it forward. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: We'll go back to Zoom. Ken, I'm going to ask you to unmute. You'll have three minutes.

[Ken Gareau]: All right. Thank you so much. Ken Garrow, 52 Lambert Street. I'm here to broadly support this resolution. I actually previously had not spoken on this because I was a little curious about how this was going to evolve and adapt. I'm quite happy to see Section D had a more standardized framework put into place to define things. I think that vagueness was not helping anyone. I know many people are talking about the obvious elephant in the room, no pun intended, of things, but I think it is fairly evident across Medford, no matter where you stand, We value human life, whether that's trying to not support weapons, to support green initiatives, to help our planet. I believe these are all things we can stand by. People who feel that we are going to not meet our fiduciary responsibilities of these things, I think downplay how many options of investment opportunities there are in several of these things can spur additional help. Speaking of institutional investments, obviously if we shift things away from fossil fuels they will have less money, but we can shift these towards green research, green alternatives to all of these things which were previously mentioned in the meeting. that engage our current existence. All of our technology can be modified and is in the process of being modified to be greener and healthier for us and our futures. So by and large, very much appreciative of this, fully support it, and great work, all of you.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you for your comments.

[Kit Collins]: We'll go back to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Benjamin Streim]: Thank you, Benjamin Streim, 76 Marion Street. I'm speaking in strong support of the ordinance in the amended form. And I just wanted to start with responding to some comments today, but especially at the last hearing or session, and say that I'm sorry to hear that some people say that this ordinance will make them feel unsafe in Medford. And I can assure everyone that this is not truly not the intent of this ordinance whatsoever. And I don't think that effect in any material sense. Sharing something personally, I do hate the idea that this would make anyone feel unsafe who feels Jewish. I'm from Germany. I'm the grandchild and grand grandchild of people who fought in World War II for Nazi Germany. And at least on one side of the family, people were part of organizations affiliated with the Nazi Party early on. I don't know how much they knew about the concentration camps, the deportations, the mass killings of Jews, and I don't know how much they supported it. It was never talked about in my family, as it was very common in post-war Germany. But I would like to know, what did they know? Why didn't they do anything? What did they do? Most likely, why didn't they do anything to stop this? It does make me sad that advocating for something like this, that seems so straightforward, following moral consciousness, would make people feel unsafe. But also, because of this history and because of moral consciousness, I think it's impossible to do nothing in the face of the genocide that's happening right now in Gaza, perpetrated by the Israeli state, with full support of the US, and also my home country, Germany, for that matter, again, supporting a genocide in the name of Jewish people. More than 60,000 people died or killed, more than 100,000 injured, 2 million being starved, repeatedly displaced, living on ruins, hospitals destroyed, universities, churches, anything that people need to live a life being taken away from them. Right now, doing nothing, especially here in this country, supports this genocide. It doesn't make you feel safe. It actually kills people, dozens of people every single day. Medford invests some of its money in Lockheed Martin and gets some interest payments from those investments. It's not much, but doing nothing right now means supporting the production of weapons that kill people. Doing nothing is not neutral. Doing nothing kills people. Doing also slowing things down kills people and the opposite, we need to speed up. Imagine a child in Gaza today, if it would hear us talking about whether we should slow things down and wait and talk longer, whether we should invest in Martin or not, while the bombs are dropping. This ordinance is a very small thing that we can do now, and we absolutely must do. Hopefully, it will encourage other cities and states to do the same. Divestment was a powerful tool in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, and it will be the same in this fight against apartheid and genocide in Palestine. I want to thank you, councillors, for having the courage to vote on this ordinance today. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: We will go back to Zoom. Rachel, I'm going to ask to unmute you. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Rachel Sensenig]: Thank you, my name is Rachel Sonsnag and I live at 86 Golden Ave. As a Medford constituent and homeowner, I urge you to support efforts to divest our tax dollars from fossil fuel companies, weapons manufacturers, prisons, and human rights violators. The city should invest our tax dollars sustainably and in companies that align with our values. I'm hearing concerns about passing ordinances like these too fast. My concern is that we haven't passed an ordinance like this already to ensure that the city is investing in a sustainable, just, and regenerative economy. Human-caused climate change was first discussed in the 1950s. We have now known for literal decades with building evidence that human-caused climate change is real, and if allowed to go unchecked, will cause devastation for humanity and this planet. The Black Lives Matters movement drew attention to incarceration as a tool of our racial oppression, and research has increasingly shown prisons are a cruel default method to handle social issues, including homelessness, unemployment, and mental illness. We have had literal genocide happening in Gaza, live-streamed for almost two years. If we don't move now towards a city that invests in a safe and healthy future for our communities, when? I want the city to invest responsibly, and that means investing in funds and businesses that are aligned with the city's values and mission to improve the well-being of our community and environment. Thank you for your time.

[Dina Alami]: Thank you for your comments.

[Tracy Noble]: Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes. Hi, I'm Tracy Noble. I live on Sharon Street in Medford. I support the values aligned local investments ordinance. This is my first time speaking up at a city council meeting and I appreciate the opportunity that you give all residents to speak. I've been watching the news about the horrific effects of climate change all around the world, in particular, right now, in wildfires in Canada that are polluting the air outside at this very moment. I've also, of course, been watching the same news of wars that you all have been talking about, live streamed from Gaza and around the world, in which civilians, including children, are injured and killed by weapons of war and starved of food and water. I have felt powerless to do anything about these events because of the tremendous power of fossil fuel companies, their political allies. and the governments and businesses involved in wars and human rights abuses. And then I learned of this ordinance and that there was something I can do. I can stand in support of our courageous city councilors and the activists who have worked with them on this ordinance. I can encourage Medford city government to withdraw financial support from the businesses that are responsible for fossil fuel production and for supplying the weapons that are used to kill civilians around the world. I believe that if the city of Medford stands up for what we believe in, this will give other cities the courage to do the same. And that financial pressure, as others have mentioned, can make a difference to the businesses that it targets. In this case, those businesses that profit from the abuse of the environment and the abuse of human rights. I support the values aligned local investments ordinance and I encourage the city council to pass it. Thank you very much.

[Kit Collins]: We'll return to Zoom. Anna, I'm going to ask to unmute you. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Jenny Graham]: Hi, my name is Anna Meyer. I live at 6 Douglas Road. I am so grateful to the Medford residents who helped write this ordinance and especially to President Bears for his work over the last eight months in making sure that this ordinance is as clear as possible is aligned with Massachusetts state law and is in the best interests of Medford. I've spoken in favor of this ordinance before, and so I'm going to try to keep my comments brief. But fundamentally, the world that I want to be a part of and one that I try to work towards every day is one that values the lives of children everywhere. and is trying to create a safer and healthier world from everyone. I believe this is a powerful moment to reimagine the kind of community that we want to create and be a part of. I think this ordinance speaks to aligning our values, because the way that we spend our money is political. If there are companies that meet the standard of this ordinance, meaning that they make their profit from fossil fuels and the city can't invest in them anymore, I think that's the point. The way that we invest our money can put pressure on companies to stop profiting from fossil fuels and other harmful measures. I'm especially proud of the way that this ordinance will ensure that Medford is not and will not be invested in detention centers. I work in immigration advocacy, and I know that in talking to so many community members in Medford, how shocked they were to watch Masks, agent of the state, kidnap Tufts graduate student Ramesa Ozturk earlier this spring. I know so many of my neighbors have felt overwhelmed and helpless. and helpless in the face of this cruelty. And I think that this is such a powerful moment to get to say and take a stand that Medford does not stand for this violence, and also will not benefit from the will not profit or in any way benefit from these detention centers. On Sunday, I rallied with Jewish community members, including some from Medford outside of the ICE office in Burlington, because they object to the weaponization of anti-Semitism that justify these kidnappings. I'm also a high school history teacher. I am alarmed to see that ICE is also detaining high school students, including Marcelo Gomez da Silva, who was taken to that ICE facility in Burlington, where we know that people are sleeping on concrete floors, eating crackers for dinner. We know where Mesa Ozturk was taken to a facility where she was not given adequate food and medical treatment. And I'm so proud that this ordinance will affirm that Medford tax dollars will not be invested in those systems. I'm also proud of the way this ordinance speaks to the way in which these systems are interconnected. I've heard some speakers say tonight they want to divest from fossil fuel, but they're hesitant to divest from Israel. The strength of this ordinance is that it shows us how these values are interconnected. IDF bombing has destroyed fresh drinking water on farmland in Gaza and contributed significantly to carbon pollution. to protect the environment, needs to stop the ruthless bombing and starvation in Gaza, and divesting from companies that profit from fossil fuel and weapons will do both of those things. I'm so moved by all my community members who have spoken tonight in favor of creating this world together. My thanks to you all, and I urge city councilors to vote in favor of this ordinance. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Back to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Ellen Epstein]: My name. My name is Ellen Epstein. I'm a Jewish resident of Medford, and I'm speaking up tonight in support of the values aligned investment ordinance. And once again I'm proud of our city Councilors for bringing this forward. The idea of values-aligned investing is not new, it's not radical, it dates back several centuries to the Quakers who refused to invest in the slave trade and weapons manufacturing activities they found morally harmful. It has been a sound, profitable, and well-recognized part of the financial services industry since the mid-1980s. We here today are hypocritical if, as a city, we do not align our investments with our values. If we endorse recycling and composting and tree planting, but continue to invest in fossil fuel companies. If we celebrate Pride Month, but hold stock in companies that discriminate against the LGBTQ community, or call for a ceasefire, but invest in companies that provide weapons of war around the world. Today, it is common for investment firms of all stripes to follow the MSCISG guidelines, the same ones that our municipal fiduciaries will have to follow. Fiduciaries are legally obligated to act in their clients' best interests. And I appreciate that the ordinance holds our treasurer to this high standard of safe and sustainable investing. Each time we spend or invest money, we are voting for the world we want. Dearborn, Michigan, and Portland, Maine have already adopted ordinances similar to ours, and the city of Boston has divested from fossil fuels. Let's do them one better and be the first city in Massachusetts to divest from weapons, prisons, fossil fuels, and crimes against humanity. With this ordinance Medford can set an example for other mass cities and at the same time inspire residents who are invested in the stock market to take a look at their portfolios and see what they're voting for with their dollars. Thank you, President Bears, for helping us do all we can at the local level to promote a just and sustainable world. One quick question before I finish. In section A of the ordinance, fossil fuels, and section B, jails, prisons, and detention centers, the wording states that we shall divest from any company which derives more than 15% of its revenue from these objectionable sources. Why are we allowing even 15%? And as another question, I think a lot of us are wondering who's filming us tonight. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. Councilors will have the opportunity to respond after a public comment. We will return to Zoom. Robert, I'm going to ask you to unmute, name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Robert Paine]: Thank you very much. My name is Robert Payne, 15 West Street. I'm also a member of the Energy and Environment Committee and I have heard other members be in support of this proposed measure and I am also in support of it. However, I do have some concerns about the aftermath of enactment in that so far, I think Bedford has been under the, glide path of being noticed by our President Donald John Trump. But he has unleashed all sorts of nasty lawsuits in other cases where he doesn't like what cities and states have done, executive orders, et cetera. And so could that happen to Medford? So is the city ready for this with personnel and budget? In terms of legal pushback, possible sanctions, I don't know if there's any federal funds that they can withdraw, withheld, whatever, but I just wanna make sure that we're ready for what might happen if we pass this, although it's a very noble measure. I'm just concerned that we have to be ready. And that concludes my remarks.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Bob. We'll return to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Rony Simcha-Miller]: My name is Rony Simcha-Miller. I live at 59 Winchester Street here in Bedford. I want to thank President Bears in particular and the councillors here today for hearing this ordinance tonight and offering the opportunity. for me and many other of my fellow Medford residents to speak. And I'm here to speak very especially in support of this value aligned investment ordinance. I am a young disabled person so I apologize if I'm scratchy my disability is the same reason is. the very air quality index warnings that we get for more vulnerable members of our communities. I am one of them, and I'm dealing with the very immediate impacts of climate change today. I am a Jew. I am a trans person. I am a young person. I'm a person of conscience. I'm a neighbor to many people here. I don't have anything new to say. I think that every single day it feels Like we fall deeper and deeper into despair, like there's nothing to do. I want to push back against the idea that this is all talk, that it's empty, that it's virtue signaling. Divestment is very actionable, it's practical, it has a tangible material effect. and we're able to do it here locally. How many things right now can we actually affect on this global scale and on this massive but local scale? Do we feel like we could actually have some drop in the bucket in a city council meeting? We see, I don't want to focus on any one section, A through D, because they're all interconnected. You can't divest from fossil fuels without also divesting from weapons. You can't divest from prisons without divesting from war crimes. They're all interconnected, these horrific abuses against humanity. And I don't see why we have to think about everything as an attack against specific members of our community speaking on this as a Jew, because we're not, we're just divesting. We're just saying we would rather our dollars go here. Why do our dollars have to go and further these abuses against people around the world? Why do our dollars have to go into harming our planet? Why do our dollars have to go to putting people in prisons when we're seeing our neighbors be kidnapped off the street in broad daylight? I just don't understand. And I thank you for your time.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. We will return to Zoom. Evan, I'm going to ask to unmute you. Please state your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes.

[Evan Fontana]: Evan Fontana, Somerville, Pennsylvania Avenue. Thank you, Council, for letting me speak this evening. I'm going to be direct about this. I keep hearing for the past hour and a half that this isn't targeting Israel, but everyone seems to be very focused on only Israel. So it's reasonable to assume this is about Israel. And under the ordinance, My understanding is for human rights violations, we don't want to invest in these types of places. We need to be very mindful of our world and being part of the human race. So does this mean places like Bangladesh, which has excessive human rights violations, toxic waste from commercial dyes, Just last year, we had $8 billion worth of clothes come to the United States, just like the customized shirts for activists and other clothes for municipal employees. So does that mean Bangladesh is off? What about China, where the Uyghur Muslims for years have been locked up in actual concentration camps and re-education camps, forced to eat pork? child labor, or the products that you all own. Does this also include Google, Apple? What about our phones? What about Amazon? Will they also be divested from? Will the activists who have been coming up here and telling us moral judgment, moral clarity, will they also stop using these companies and stop purchasing from them? Israel is a global leader in agriculture technology. Will they stop using that? Will they stop purchasing cherry tomatoes? Portland was mentioned. Portland's mayor actually regrets passing a similar ordinance and said, made a serious mistake in judgment. My Jewish religion, my Jewish background tells me education is important. Definitions are important. I'm sorry, but Sudan is a genocide. Gaza is not. Gaza is a brutal and tragic war afflicting many. So I'm sorry for all those who have lost family on both sides, but let's call it what it is. This is just a farce and concentrated attack on Israel. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: We will return to the podium. Hello, my name's Maddie. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Go for it. You know the drill.

[Matt Avon]: Go ahead. Name and address for the record, please. Hello, my name's Matt Avon. I live at 59 Thomas Street. I'm a new resident to Medford. I just moved here a couple of weeks ago. I appreciate everybody bringing this up. I am in support of divestment. I am just going to go to an anecdotal story here because I am going to scratch what I just had. All right, so this is the story of Ahmed. Ahmed of Douma is 14 years old. His favorite sport is soccer, and his favorite team is Real Madrid. He loves going to school, and his favorite class is history. In many ways, Ahmed is just like any other young teen. His body language is stiff and a bit self-conscious. His vocal cadence is rushed and anticipatory. And best yet, the mustache sprouting up on his lip tells of a child who has not yet been taught to use a razor. I've been there too. But instead of a teen who is afforded the chance to come of age in pursuit of his own goals, Ahmed has been sentenced to a life of uncertainty, and this uncertainty is something he must navigate alone as he is an orphan. Ahmed was made an orphan at the age of four when his parents and infant brother were murdered by Israeli settlers in their sleep. Ten years ago, in 2015, and this is in the West Bank, the village of Douma was raided by settlers. They came by night, setting multiple homes ablaze while families slept inside. One of these families was Ahmed's. As the only survivor, he was saved by his neighbors, although he suffered multiple third-degree burns. I wrote this passage when I visited Ahmed in the West Bank. Here is a photo of him. You can see the third-degree burns that are to his face. All right. I have 600 other photos that I am happy to share with anyone up on this council to see what happens when you invest in companies that are complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. And this is directly connected to fossil fuel companies because the Jordan Valley has been decimated by industrial agriculture that is both displacing the Palestinian population and suffocating the land. I have been in the Coast Guard. I spent five years in the Coast Guard. I worked search and rescue for three. I'm currently a paramedic. My entire life has been handling people on their worst days, and it has been nothing but a privilege. But the only things that seem to keep me up at night are these photos of children who are tethered in pieces. It's the kids like Ahmed. It's the school I visited in the village of Jalut. 200 kids were there, 5 to 18, stuffed in a building less than the size of this, and perched on the hilltop was a settler with a gun that was American-manufactured. That comes from our tax dollars. So even if this is just a symbolic move, it is a move in the right direction. And if you don't have the courage to stand up at even the most symbolic drop in the bucket gesture, then what are you doing in public office? I would rather wash my hands than pocket any blood money. I'm done.

[Ilene Lerner]: name and address for the record, please. Go ahead. My name is Eileen Lerner. I live at 3920 Mystic Valley Parkway. And I want to thank the Council and particularly President Bears for bringing this values-based ordinance to the attention of the people of Medford I am a representative of people power and I would like to let you all know that people power is solidly behind this ordinance. It reflects the values and the moral positions that we as an organization have taken. And I've also want to speak for myself. So I am the great granddaughter of people who were killed in Auschwitz. My whole family was killed in Auschwitz. Just my grandmother and my grandfather from his family escaped to come here and set up a new family. And yet I have sat here and been called, in effect, a terrorist. So the Jewish community here is not just the people who go to the synagogue, the Jewish community consists of many people who are secular Jews. And when we speak of the only Jews as Jews are the Jews that are organized and go to the synagogue, it is a grave error. I think that there are probably more Jewish people in Medford who are not going to the synagogue and are going to the synagogue, but we are not lesser Jews. We are the people who really understand what losing family means. We understand what inherited trauma is. I mean, I'm feeling it now just talking about my relatives and seeing what's happening in Gaza. is intolerable, intolerable, intolerable. We can't stand for it. We must do something. How can we let all these people starve? How can we let people be torn apart? How can we destroy universities and hospitals and homes and steal land from people? I have a cousin who no longer talks to me. He told me good riddance because of my stand. Well, I say to him now, if you still support what's going on in Gaza, you are a Jewish Nazi. And that is my real opinion. Stop this. Stop this mad dash toward destruction. In every economic destruction, climate destruction, humanity destruction, we can no longer afford to back and to support and give our money to things that are killing people. Thank you.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Barry Ingber]: Good evening. My name is Barry Ingber, and I live at 9 Draper Street. And I'm speaking in total unequivocal support of this ordinance, which encompasses most of the concerns I have devoted my life to since the Vietnam War. In our present moment and thinking locally, I would prefer to speak about for-profit prisons and ICE detention centers. But because of the way this issue is playing out, I feel unable to address what I would prefer. And instead, I feel I need to address the weaponization of anti-Semitism in order to support a racist and genocidal nation state. This ordinance does not target Israel. It does not mention Israel. It could just as easily have been written in 1990 with not a word changed and be thought of as addressing South Africa. But the conversation about it, frankly, from both supporters and opponents, has been about Israel and about Jews. So, okay, let's talk about Israel and Jews. I am a Jew. I'm a somewhat observant Jew. I'm even a congregational Jew who goes to synagogue sometimes, active in a synagogue. I observe the holidays in as many mitzvot as I can. The yarmulke I am wearing now gets regular use. I'm also anti-Zionist. I take tremendous affront when people defend Israel under the pretext of defending me. These people do not speak for me, no matter how many times they claim to represent Jews or the Jewish community. Their arguments do not make me safe. They make me unsafe. Unsafe because they echo and reinforce the old anti-Semitic dual loyalty trope. Unsafe because they link me to, and therefore implicitly make me responsible for, the most horrific war crimes of the past 25 years. The defense of Israel giving a nation state primacy over the values and Talmudic teachings I hold dear is also idolatrous. Changing gears here, I like the revisions made to the ordinance. Thank you, President Bears. But I want to call attention to one small edit that I find highly problematic. Any diversified investment portfolio will try to balance domestic with international investments and equity with debt investments. So we're going to be invested in foreign bonds, and a portion of those will be government bonds. By deleting the words or entity in paragraph D, we are permitting investments in sovereign bonds of nations that engage in serious human rights abuses, such as those issued by Morocco, China, Russia, El Salvador, and yes, Israel. those two words need to be restored. Thank you.

[Paulette Buckheim]: Hi, my name is Paulette Buckheim and I'm actually, I live in Malden, but I've exchanged some emails with President Bears about this particular wording of the ordinance. You're close, but close isn't really good enough because unlike individuals or companies, cities and states have a specific fiduciary obligation. They're just not investing money for themselves. They're investing money for the whole community. So when you do things, you need to make sure you're following all the laws, that you're not going to put your city, your state, the people who were trusting you with their money at risk. There's some questions about this ordinance. One, constitutionally, can cities, you know, they don't have the purview to actually make foreign policy. Could this be considered foreign policy? We're living in the Trump era. And we don't know what can happen, like the other day, the Trump administration has said that any city or state that does BDS which is basically is by everybody who's been talking. No more FEMA, which is also other things besides in case of a tornado or flood or something, but it's also readiness for an administration. So, What else could be happening? Will the Trump DOJ come down on these things? There's some real risks to what the city is doing. And it's important that you take a look at this legally. The mayor probably will not sign this. So you're passing an ordinance that the mayor will not actually sign or go with? So are you just spinning wheels or how can you do this so it's better? So that you're really helping people as well as fitting in with your own guidance. And if you turn around and all the people that have said, and for the people who have said, oh my God, this is not about Israel. This is not about antisemitism. I mean, we're getting it on all sides. We're getting people questioning how, you know, are, what kind of Jew you are? I mean, that's a million dollar question. You know, so this is not bringing the community together with values. It's dividing people. It's making people feel uncomfortable. It's making me question, should I shop in Medford? Should I, you know, because just like you have the opportunity to invest, I can shop wherever I want to. I tend to shop in Medford. Maybe I won't because of the people, you know, the community and the values that I see. So these things are important as well. Thank you. That's time. Thank you for your time.

[Kit Collins]: Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Bryce York]: My name is Bryce York and I live on 70 Lakeside Drive in Groton, Massachusetts. And while I may not be a resident of Medford, I'm speaking today because I believe that this ordinance being successful could encourage more cities and towns across the state like my own to either divest or to discourage them from investing in these companies in the future. Additionally, the issues raised by this ordinance are not only issues that affect Medford, they are issues that affect the planet that every one of us lives on. I recognize that rapid change can be scary, but the companies you would be divesting from are not waiting for you. The last 10 summers have been the 10 hottest summers on record. The people of Hawaii and Los Angeles, among many other places, have been victim to wildfires and did not have time on their side. And disasters like those wildfires will only continue as fossil fuels companies worsen climate change more and more. There are island nations that may cease to exist within my lifetime due to the rising sea level as the ice caps melt further. Furthermore, hearing people imply that international organizations such as the UN are biased against Israel while Israel has routinely shown that they are a nation with no respect for ceasefires, violating one on numerous occasions and having no respect for international law even firing upon a U.N. peacekeeping site is disgusting. People may think that the Israel-Palestine conflict does not affect them, but they would be wrong. A U.N. report in March 2024 had found that 60,000 tons of sewage were being discharged into the Mediterranean Sea per day with no reason to believe that it would have been higher that month in particular. As a child living in Massachusetts, I was proud to find out that Massachusetts was the first state to abolish slavery. So give the future children of Medford something to be proud of their city.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Can you address for the record, please?

[Rahaf Suleiman]: Hey, my name is Rahaf Suleiman. I'm a resident of Medford, and I'm here in support of the divestment on the behalf of my family, my 85-year-old grandmother, who was here earlier, who's a neck brace survivor. And on the behalf of my niece and nephews, who were here earlier making a mass, who kids in their age and guns are being bombed into pieces. Some of them are lost under the rubble. And we're here to say that we exist and we will always exist. We will always exist to fight for this. And to speak for this gentleman who said we're terrorists, I would like to tell him that we're the only terrorists in this story is Israel committing genocide against the people, making us feel uncomfortable about it. I urge you to divest and invest the money and our tax money into this country rather than foreign countries who are committing war crimes according to International Court of Justice. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: I'm gonna address for the record, please.

[Fern Remedi Brown]: You have three minutes. Yes. My name is Fern Rometty Brown, and I live at 21 Ivy Road in Malden. Thank you for allowing me to speak. As a resident of Malden, who just last year went through a divisive ceasefire resolution decision, and having witnessed rising and normalized antisemitism, I speak against this resolution for several reasons. People here are saying that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. They are deeply linked because I have experienced heckling, being called horrific names, being threatened because I am a pro-Israel Jew. People have said, I thought you cared about social justice. As a lifelong progressive, the child of a Holocaust survivor who has lost all of his entire family, a lesbian, and a mother, I have only fought for social justice my entire life. It is disingenuous to lump together fossil fuels, private prisons, and divesting from Israel, citing Gaza without even mentioning Israel. Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people. Zionism is the intention of Jews to self-govern in its indigenous homeland. As distinct from popular belief, it is impossible to separate anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism in this proposal. Genocide is the intended destruction of a people. Israel is focused on getting its hostages back, not intended destruction, relying on tick tock to educate oneself does not mean that you understand facts numbers or history. In fact, I would argue that it focuses on sensationalism to the point of obscuring reality. Everyone who mentions Gaza here says nothing about Hamas, which is the reason that terrorism has been enacted, not only on Israel, but on Gaza citizens as well. If you are actually focused on preventing genocide and human rights violations, why not do some actual research and focus on Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Afghanistan? If we're talking about boycotting a country that we deal with regularly, why not focus on China, where human rights violations are well known? My point is that it is illogical to include boycotting a country when you have no idea what you will be denying to your community. Will you also boycott Waze GPS, vaccines, and modern medicine and technology that improve and save our lives? Those are all those all originate from Israel. I strongly suggest that the fossil fuels and private prisons be separated from the highly politicized topic of Israel and Gaza. The way to do that, it's time? It's time. Can I just finish? Finish your thought. Okay. The way to do that is to delete paragraph D and mention paragraph D and any mention of paragraph D in paragraph E. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Name and address for the record, please. Thanks.

[Benjamin Stein]: My name is Benjamin Stein. I live at 38 Sturgis Street. I want to thank President Bears for bringing this ordinance. As a Jewish member of this community, I want to speak in full support of this ordinance. The city should invest our tax dollars sustainably. I don't want my money to support investment in fossil fuel companies, weapons manufacturers, prisons, and companies knowingly contributing to human rights violations. It is morally reprehensible. We have a responsibility to our community, to our future, to invest our tax dollars responsibly and in ways that align with our values. I am really disheartened to hear the ways in which Jewish identity has been weaponized in what I see as an anti-Semitic way. And I've been very heartened to hear a lot of the great comments from other folks tonight. So thank you, President Bears. I fully support this ordinance.

[Kit Collins]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Sam Goldstein]: Hi, Sam Goldstein, 29 Martin Street. I want to thank President Bears and the rest of the council for having this resolution up for consideration. I fully support it, and I want to voice my enthusiastic support for it. You can't be neutral on a moving train. I think Howard Zinn famously said that, maybe, title of book. under that name. Capitalism is destroying our planet. I appreciate the small step to divest from the bleeding edge of that destruction. You know, weapons, private prisons, fossil fuels. You know, we see ourselves right now, or our community right now sees, you know, members, you know, being rounded up by ICE and detained in these private prisons. I certainly believe that we should have no financial stake in that. Yeah, I am Jewish. I, like many others, want to express my dismay at the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. In 1948, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, along with other Jewish public intellectuals, wrote an open letter to the New York Times. decried the newly founded Freedom Party, which was, quote, a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and fascist parties. They cautioned Americans against supporting it. That party was founded by Menachem Begin. Menachem Begin, some years later, went on to found Likud. That is the current party that is in charge of the state of Israel that Benjamin Netanyahu hails from. And I don't mean to suggest that there's a fair way to have an ethno-state. I don't think that's the case. But I do want to make clear that from Israel's earliest days, there were strong fascistic, anti-democratic, ethno-supremacist currents at play. They are dominant there today. And the government of Benjamin Netanyahu And they were clearly recognized back around its founding. I believe this fascist government is pushing a deeply pernicious narrative. I do not support it. I don't support the attitude that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are one and the same. I'm an anti-Zionist Jew. I'm proud of that. And I think at this late hour, it's really important that we recognize that this genocide has moved into, you know, its final solution. After the destruction of houses, hospitals, clean water, sewage, and virtually every other form of civilian public health infrastructure, You know, we're now seeing this mass starvation, this perverse, sadistic hunger gains type stuff. So just to be clear, you know, thank you for putting this forward. I'm sorry, there's a hand on Zoom.

[Kit Collins]: So we're going to pause the podium for just a sec. Michael, I'm going to ask to unmute you. Please state your name and address for the record. And you'll have three minutes.

[Michael Dewberry]: Hello, Michael Dewberry, 50 Park Street. Thank you to the council for considering this resolution. I'm in full support of it. Many residents have already spoken eloquently about the individual components of our values-based investing. I just wanted, and I'm not gonna try to improve on any of those statements. I just will make a personal, statement in favor of values-based investing. My wife and I were lucky enough to have a provider that allowed us to set that up last year. And the process was not only relatively straightforward, it was very satisfying to finally realize that our labor was going to things that were in line with our values. And I just think that's something that we should definitely have on a municipal scale to allow, you know, everyone to democratically use our values to decide, you know, what our money supports and what we profit from. So, yeah, again, yeah, thank you for considering this ordinance, full support. And thank you to everyone who spoke so eloquently in favor previous to me. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Michael. We'll turn to the podium. Name and address for the record, please.

[Karam Habiballah]: Hello, my name is Karam Habiballah. I'm a Malden resident, and I would like to thank you all for giving me and the others a chance to speak. I fully support the ordinance for the simple fact that continuing to fund the Israeli government or its companies while it engages in actions that have led to widespread civilian harm, displacement, starvation, and allegations of human rights violations, it makes us complicit in injustice. And as a city, as a citizen, and as a human being, I think we have the responsibility to ensure our public dollars do not contribute to the suffering of others, no matter what they this ordinance is not about religion or politics. It's about accountability. It's about using our collective voice to say that we will not stand by silently while war crimes, including that deliberate deprivation of food, water, medical aid are committed, we should instead invest it in causes that align with human dignity, both here and abroad. It doesn't matter where we invest it, as long as we do not invest it in killing and starving people. Thank you. And free Palestine.

[Kit Collins]: All right. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Ezekiel Silverstein]: Ezekiel Silverstein, 71 Kenmare Road in Medford. I want to speak against this ordinance. This ordinance is legally questionable and morally dubious. The mayor, the Medford Retirement Board, and outside legal counsel have all raised their concern regarding the feasibility and implementation of this ordinance. Medford's finances are already strained with the new fire station to build and salaries and city improvements to fund. Attempting to make this potentially illegal and financially irresponsible decision like this to divest from high returning funds and companies is a facially political act. To politicize our city's financial well-being for political means is a dereliction of fiduciary and representative duty to your local Medford constituents. I question why the council is investing precious time and capital on this vaguely worded and overly broad ordinance. I don't foresee Medford entirely divesting from companies that do work in China due to their atrocities, from the United Kingdom due to their colonization of Northern Ireland, or from even the United States for our questionable LGBTQ policies. To do so would be financially obtuse. For many other speakers tonight, though, it is clear to see why some members of this council are trying to force through this ordinance. We would like all to see the war to end in all war around the world, but labeling 80 plus percent of Jewish worldwide community as genocide heirs or supporters is shameful, blood libel, and Holocaust inversion in a war that Hamas started and refuses to end by returning the hostages. The hate we face is real, as seen here tonight and throughout our town. Medford recently saw horrific graffiti at the MBTA Harvard Street bus stop on July 21st. It equated Jews with Nazis and had symbology that supports terrorist organizations. This graffiti was shockingly anti-Semitic. Targeting Medford's Jewish community would never be acceptable, but that is what we see here tonight. Numerous Medford residents, as well as local chapters of the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Jewish Community Relations Council have all sent letters to this council emphasizing how divisive and harmful passage of this ordinance will be received. Regardless of any other comments tonight, I, my family, and my community feel less safe in unseen because of the graffiti statements in ordinances like these. There are some worthwhile ideas in this ordinance, especially regarding private prisons, but it is too broad, too vague, covering too many subjects. I find it difficult to see how this ordinance helps the city of Medford and its residents. It is an ideological act that would result in harms to our financial well-being at the expense of a local religious and ethnic minority community. Moral posturing like this is best left to others. Reject this divisive ordinance. Thank you. Thank you, Ezekiel.

[Kit Collins]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Gaston Fiore]: Thank you, Madam Chair. That's Sunphere 61, Stingney Road. So I spoke three times. I don't want to repeat myself. So I still want to state that I oppose this ordinance as written based on the facts that it is against our national security, the national security of the United States. And it is bad for me, for finances. So I want to commend President Bayers for having worked on the ordinance since the first time. And second time, in particular, on the first time that I spoke, I suggested an evidence based study of realistic sustainability criteria and I was happy to see that now there's a section where the treasure collector is supposed to follow the MSCI ESG controversies and global norms screen. So I had a question related to that, because unfortunately I wasn't able to spend the amount of time that I wanted on this audience, and I know that President Bayers is the expert. So when I did a quick research on that screen, and I tried to screen Lockheed Martin, Lockheed Martin passes the screen. So I'm confused as to how this ESG methodology or screener is supposed to work. Obviously, then it says we're supposed to still abide by section 2697A through D, which would prevent the city from investing in Lockheed Martin. But then what's the point? of the ESG screener. So is it just like a placeholder so we can say like, oh, we're supposed to follow an ESG screener? Or am I incorrect in, again, my quick research? So I was wondering whether President Bears could speak to this to clarify. I'm just curious as to how it works. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. And councillors will have the opportunity to respond at their discretion after public comment. Name and address for the record, please. No, three minutes.

[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. It's not going to be any surprise to any of you sitting behind the rail that I'm opposed to this. I have said it twice in the past. It's kind of funny how there was a meeting tonight, and we're once again talking about a very divisive issue. At the same time, literally from 5 to 8 p.m., there was a really nice event happening in the city that was unifying. It was the National Night Out. And a councillor can roll his eyes at me and I suppose it's a free country so we can do that. Thank you councillor Levin. Please direct your comments to the chair. Sure, enforce the rules for everyone. So that's an even handedly please. So I get my time and I can use it. You're dividing the community. Again, you had a wonderful event. It was a nice family event. I got to sit there and show my kids that, you know, police officers are people just like the rest of us. And none of them would ever want to discharge their weapon on someone unless they had to. Their job is to serve and protect. They can't do that with bubbles. I wish they could. Everyone wishes they could. There isn't a person in this room that wants to see anyone get hurt, especially the paramedic here. I think that's a fair statement. So the Councilor rolling his eyes, I wonder if he's gonna resign his commission because everything that he uses to defend this country, it's not the Department of War, it's the Department of Defense. They changed it in forties for a reason. You're gonna resign your commission, put your money where your mouth is? What about everyone else in this room? You're gonna sit there and get rid of your cell phones because they're made with plastic and oil. How about medical technology? We're just gonna sit there and go back to the stone age and we use only metal. We'll be back in the civil war era. It's a Pandora's box you've opened and there's no good answers for this. All it does is divide the community. And everyone at this point, everyone likes to eat in this country. Farming is used with fossil fuels. I wish it wasn't, but that's not the reality of today. So how many of you behind the rail are then gonna support the great reformation and 15 to 60 million people dying of starvation? Let's have it in this country today. Love it, let's do it. It's not realistic. This is virtue signaling, it's divisive, and it's not local in solving local Medford problems. Stop this. I've said it before. Other people agree, you pick this night because other people would be distracted with an event that was planned many months ago. And you could have done this on a different night in the council schedule. And you can laugh too, Councilor Bears, but it's true. That was scheduled well beforehand. So you picked this night intentionally hoping people would stay home and they have. So congratulations again on dividing the city.

[Kit Collins]: I'll just add a point of information that city council meetings are always on Tuesdays at this time. And this matter was delayed initially because a councilor invoked a piece of mass general law to delay it. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Michael Prentke]: Hi, my name is Michael Prentke. I live at 340 High Street. I think my first thing is getting to invoke a divisiveness, like who gets to define what is divisive? And I think to continue to invest in weapons manufacturing and for-profit prisons and et cetera, that is divisive. inherently. So it's very subjective as to what is divisive. I don't think you get to claim that. And as far as virtue signaling, I mean, yeah, it is virtue signaling. We're saying that we don't like that. I don't like that. I don't want to invest in that. So yes, I would like to virtue signal and say, I don't want to invest in weapons manufacturing there. One guy on the call, he said that, how come, like, are we going to start calling out other countries? Is this not just about Israel? And yeah, it's not just about Israel. It's about anyone who's investing in arms manufacturing for evil. So yeah, it's not just about Israel. For all the Jews, and by the way, I'm Jewish, for all the Jews who are saying a feeling, a lack of safety, there was so many other people who spoke about immediate family members who literally have been killed and destroyed. That's a literal, actual thing that's happening every moment. That's not just a feeling. Oh, there's like somebody did some spray paint. Their families are actually being murdered. on the daily right now. That's a real thing happening. So for the Jews, I'm with you. I know antisemitism is real, but that's a feeling. We're not being murdered in the streets like that. It's not the same. We can't make this false equivalence. Yeah, that's it. So suffice to say, I am in favor of the ordinance. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Jaydeen Gott]: My name is Jaydeen Gott. I live on Frederick Ave here in Medford, and I'd like to speak in support of this ordinance. When I sat down to listen to the various arguments today and people talking about how disjointed this felt, that seemed wrong to me. Many of these issues are tied together. Particularly, I live in a flight path. The use of avgas, leaded avgas was, it has really just been phased out in the last 15 years. I know that I cannot use the soil in my own yard to grow those cherry tomatoes that somebody spoke about on Zoom. I've had to bring in dirt from other places. When I think about how the weapons of mass destruction that we would like to divest from affect the environment, that every bomb we drop does not just emit carbon into the atmosphere, but it also kills any plants that would sequester carbon into the future. We want to protect that environment. We want to protect our children, our future, so that they have a planet to grow up for. We need to act locally if we want to make the future for those children a reality. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. Anybody who has already spoken will be given one additional minute to speak. Is there anybody in person or on Zoom who has not yet spoken? If so, please, who's first podium? We'll take you first. Name and address for the record, please.

[Barbara Rutstein]: Barbara Redstein, 16 Intervale Avenue. So, Well-meaning people sometimes make mistakes. And it takes a lot of courage to admit those mistakes. And I believe that this ordinance is a mistake. The entire ordinance. You can dress up Section D But the ordinance is not going to stop what's happening in Gaza. The Palestinian people had been victimized for decades, maybe centuries, I don't know how long. Yasser Arafat at one time had amassed a fortune of between one and $3 billion from aid that was given to the Palestinians by the United States and several other countries. Mahmoud Abbas is worth $100 million. Where did this money come from? Where did it go? It certainly didn't go to help the Palestinian people. I don't think this message is bold. I think it should never have been brought to us. It's not going to stop what's happening in Gaza. It's not going to fix the potholes in our streets. It's not going to help our climate initiative. It's not going to support our police, our fire, our teachers. It's not going to support our public works. It's not going to do any of those things, which I believe is the mandate of what a city council is supposed to do. I certainly don't need to remind everybody what a diverse community we have here. We're multilingual, multiethnic, multicultural, a microcosm of the world. And we shouldn't be pitting communities within Medford against each other. So you have heard Jewish people speak in favor of this. You have heard Jewish people speak in opposition. So right there, you have divided the community. I think unnecessarily. And the last thing we need is for any governmental body to pass any resolution. I hope everybody's still awake because it's been a long time. Any resolution that would lead to the discrimination of any community of any kind.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your time. Name and address for the record, please.

[Brenda Price]: Brenda Price, 27 Stanton Street in Malden. As a resident of Malden, I really appreciate this resolution coming forward, the chance to vote on it, the chance for us to speak on it, and for the chance for residents of Malden to see Medford as an example in passing resolution that is going to do so much for our local communities, our local environment, climate resiliency, and yes, divesting from things that we don't want to have our communities be, you know, financially connected to. I am disabled. I have a bunch of allergies, including the toxic chemical dyes that someone mentioned that are out of Bangladesh. I would love love love to be able to shop in stores and have clothes that are bright colors that don't make me sick. And so something that seems far-fetched to one person is actually going to be helping members of your community and residents that live here And we're all connected as neighbors, and we don't always all see the benefits that could come out of a resolution like this. But I hear all of these examples that could be, you know, things that are hard to do. And I think there are opportunities to do better for residents now and future residents. So thank you for this, and I hope it passes.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you.

[Paulette Vartabedian]: Name and address for the record, please. You know that I could not speak. My name is Paulette Vartabedian, 27 Central Lab Medford. While I do agree with the ideology of this proposal, I think it's great. I would love it if all weapons would stop. But the thing that concerns me moving forward from this is some of the things that George and some of the other speakers brought up, which is the possible legalities of it and also the financial burden that it may cause in the future. I think before it moves forward that we need to see what the answers are to those possible issues. Any plan, anything that happens in life, there are going to be things that come up unplanned. But it's best that if we have answers to the things that are visible that possibly could potentially have an issue that we have an answer before we jump in to the water. I'm not against the proposal. I think it's good, but I think we need to have more information. And perhaps what Zach brought up earlier, that if this is the first reading and he sends out questionnaires to get some of those answers, perhaps those will be answered in the second and third reading. But I'd like to have some of those answers prior to being fully invested in this. That's it. Thank you. Thank you for your time.

[Kit Collins]: Name and address for the record again, please.

[Dave Sherman]: Dave Sherman, Rosemary Way. So as I predicted when I spoke earlier, there were going to be a lot of people claiming Jewish ancestry and saying that it's completely Jewish to be anti-Zionist. And of course, that's nothing more than cultural misappropriation. What did surprise me was a couple of things. One was having a Nazi, excuse me, a descendant of a Nazi soldier come out in favor of this ordinance. That's a bit of a surprise. But I won't make the ad hominem argument. I don't do that. It also surprised me that there are advocates of this ordinance that say, well, Medford doesn't really have a whole lot that's invested in Israel. Other advocates say, oh, well, we've got way too much, so somebody is lying. This is not my first rodeo. I'm used to hearing lies from the other side. Please address the chair. Thank you. I'm used to hearing lies from the other side. This is not my first rodeo. Look, there are values in this proposal that the city may want to endorse and vote with its dollars, such as limiting fossil fuels and targeting real human rights violators like China, which with over a billion people and targeting real human rights violators such as China at that time, please reject this resolution.

[Kit Collins]: Please approach the podium. We'll have one additional minute as well. And your name again, please.

[Rony Simcha-Miller]: Once again, Roni Simcha-Miller, 59 Winchester Street here in Medford. Thank you for the opportunity to speak again. Wanted to speak now that I'm more clear headed, not as a Jew, but just as a person. One of the things that I missed was that I am a teacher and I wanted to talk about a thing that I deal with every day with young children, which is the idea of teaching through direct consequence and how that can be translated on the large municipal level to divestment. And that is what divestment is. It's essentially saying, if you use your toys to harm large swaths of people every single day, we don't pay for it anymore. We're not just putting money into these accounts where that money goes to things that harm people. That's it. Direct consequence. That's all. So that's all I had to add to this. And I wanted to thank everybody's patience, especially the Councilors here today that have stayed late and are allowing people to come back with additional comment as well. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. One additional minute. I'm going to hold you to it, Micah.

[Micah Kesselman]: Sure, yeah. My name is Micah Shulman-Kesselman. I live at 499 Main Street. Apparently, generations of Jewish people in my family, I'm just appropriating. I'm a fake Jew. Cool. News to me. Dope. But with that said, I really quickly want to just mention, because this has been brought up a few times, that this hasn't gone through legal rigor or hasn't gone through diligence. This ordinance has gone through months and months of drafting. It's gone before multiple different legal teams, different lawyers, it's gone through financial experts, it's modeled off of successful ordinances in other cities across the country that have not shown any undue financial harm to the cities that have implemented it. It is a successful, it will be a successful ordinance when it gets put in. into effect. If you have an actual example of where some sort of ordinance like this has failed the city that it's been put into, a discrete data point, by all means, bring it forward. And there are three, there's two more sessions, there's two more stages of this ordinance that go through amendment. So you have the chance to amend it if that is your issue.

[Kit Collins]: That's time, Micah. Thank you. All right, we'll go to you, Andy, and then we'll go back to repeat talkers on Zoom. Name and address for the record, please.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: Andrew Castagnetti, Medford resident, East Medford. War is hell. Actually, war is worse than hell. Because in hell, you expect to burn, at least most of us do. But in war, you don't know what village is gonna be hit. So, I'm always a peacenik, always, except on certain occasions. I'm a Woodstock graduate, 1969, I repeat. We protested a lousy Vietnam War and a damn military draft. We were part of the first ever of 100,000 gathering in Boston Commons in 68, or maybe it was 69. I'm not quite sure. We were hip, but we were not hippies. We youths had real problems with war. Today's youths have no clue. Number two, without armatures, Those companies supply the USA. Without that firepower, USA would have lost World War II, and you and I would be spooked in German or be never born dead. Three, yes, I'm against all pollution. It's bad enough that I smoke. but you cannot snap your thumb and get off the oral addiction. It takes time. Thanks, but no thanks.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Andy. We will return to Munir on Zoom for one additional minute and then back to the podium. Go ahead, Munir.

[Munir Jirmanus]: All right, thank you. I am Munir Germanus from Summit Road in Medford. I just wanted to finish up what I was about to say before. It is not antisemitic to call for an end to the genocide in Gaza. we will only establish a better world where we can learn not to take critiques of harms caused by governments to be evidence of discrimination. This ordinance goes a long way to imagining that world. We need to take back our public dollars and make sure they are invested in the world that we want to live in. I applaud the folks who worked on this ordinance and urge each and every councilor to pass it as it reflects our values and takes a courageous stand against any human rights violations anywhere. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Go ahead, Nate. You'll have one additional minute.

[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. So this council in the last election, because it was a financial issue, made motions and actually made a put on the ballot, the overrides. If you think that because you've tied this financially to the city and the investments of the city, put it on the ballot. You don't think it's divisive. Let the people speak. You've heard the people in the room here. You've heard other people that have come in previous weeks. Put it on the ballot. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Gina Chen]: My name is Gina Chen. I live in South Medford. Today's my birthday. A lot of people in my life were like, why are you spending your birthday going to a city council meeting? And I just want to say that there's no better way I could spend my birthday than listening to my actual neighbors speak their thoughts and to learn how many of them use simple words to communicate simply that they love life on earth, they love children, they support life on earth and they want to make the world a better place. So thank you for bringing this ordinance to the table and I'm in full support of it.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Anyone to address for the record, please?

[Fawaz Abusharkh]: You have three minutes. My name is Fawaz Abusharak, and I'm with the Boston Coalition for Palestine, Palestinian House of New England, and North Shore for Palestine. The only democracy in the Middle East, it was said way earlier, but it really bugged me. Democracies never do apartheid, racism, and discrimination, or occupy others and commit genocide and ethnic cleansing. Through you, Madam Chair, to the Honorable City Council members, and to all in this room, I have one name, Hind Rajab, six years old, who got shot with 335 bullets by the Israeli Genocide Forces. Who in this room or anywhere wants to invest in the company that made these bullets? Who builds or any other company that builds bombs and other weapons? Or worse, invest in the entity that shot them at the six-years-old child? In a perfect world, the answer is no one. I'm old enough to know that we do not live in a perfect world. So I ask the honorable Councilors to vote tonight Yes for this ordinance. That will help in building a future that is more perfect and better for generations to come all over the world. This is building the future. This is not about what happened in the past. As some might remember when we came here before in this room when I said we are not here for a political victory because it's still there isn't one to have at this point. We didn't have one a while ago. This is beyond political victories. We are here for a moral, righteous, and humanitarian victory. And with you voting yes tonight for this ordinance, we will have that moral and righteous victory. From Turtle Island, in solidarity for a free world, starting with a free Palestine.

[Kit Collins]: Is there anybody else in person or on Zoom who would like to speak for the first or second time? I see one new speaker on Zoom, and I'm going to ask you to unmute. You will have three minutes. Oh, well, I'm hearing that you already spoke, so I'll give you one.

[Anne Castner-Williams]: Yes, I've already spoken. But thank you for the opportunity to speak. First of all, I don't think our main goal here should be non-divisiveness. Progress and justice are always divisive. But I want to address the fears of retaliation from the Trump administration in response to this ordinance. President Trump is a tyrant and aspirational dictator, and tyrants always punish those they deem to be political enemies. We cannot allow fear of retaliation to dictate our actions here and to dictate our ethics. we cannot capitulate to the Trump administration in advance. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. Seeing no further hands raised, I'll go back to my fellow Councilors, President Bears and then Councilor Lazzaro.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Collins. And thank you to everyone who spoke tonight, shared their views very clearly. There are lots of folks who have lots of feelings and opinions about this. Many folks feeling very personally impacted by this. I wanted to first just try to talk to some of the questions that came up. I think I tracked them relatively well. When we talk about some of the specific language around the percentage of funds for the sections A and B versus C and D, interestingly, I think a piece of that actually relates to some comments made earlier, noting that there are companies that may well have a hand in some of these industries, but it is not the main thrust of what they do. Should it just say 0% maybe? You know, that might be my opinion. That was coming out of the Boston ordinance. When we talk about the Trump administration and its attacks on cities, towns, universities, groups, religious organizations, individuals, just the brutal, bullying and assault on the basic rule of law and integrity of a free and civil society. Medford is already in its crosshairs, whether for an action that we've taken or just for the fact that we're five miles outside of Boston. And he doesn't really care that much about collateral damage, as we've learned. Is any community prepared? Is any university, is any institution prepared for the iron fist of the President of the United States to come down on them? If I was to say yes, I don't think anyone would believe me. I think we've seen the harm that has happened and all of what he's done. But what folks said earlier is right. When a bully and a tyrant comes after you, you don't give in. Everyone who has given in has lost more and lost ground and made the next attack more likely. I think we are in a strong position. I think we're surrounded by communities who are standing up for immigrant rights, standing up for gender identity and the rights of people who have transgender people and people in the LGBTQ community and standing up for racial diversity and standing up against the erasure of history and I think we will be in a chorus of voices that stands up against targeted assaults on communities because they say we don't want to put our money in fossil fuels or we don't want to put our money in human rights violators. The last thing I want to talk about goes back to the MSCI screen. Gaston brought it up. I don't think it's a perfect tool. I think there's a reason why there's many, many sections and where one may not capture a company, the other does, right? This is interlinked and intersectional. These areas are essentially the main challenges to our basic human dignity and rights across the world, whether those are perpetrated by companies who are mainly in fossil fuels or companies remaining in private prisons or companies remaining in weapons. Something that I want to note about the MSCI methodology that's in here, and I think it kind of goes to the larger context of what we're talking about throughout this conversation, right? A lot of people feel that this text of this ordinance does something specific that they want it to do. They may well be right, but the whole point of international law and international institutions and global norms is that they apply to all of us, to all human beings. And if you look at this methodology, right, it's in here in 32B, we're talking about things as basic as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. the International Labor Organization Convention on the Abolition of Forced Labor, the Convention Against Torture, the Convention from the Protection of All Persons Against Enforced Disappearance. Every single thing that folks brought up tonight falls in here in some way. And this methodology identifies 31 vulnerable demographics. of 31 national civilians and refugees, ethnic, racial, and religious groups located in or originated from countries with ongoing international armed conflicts or military offensives. It mentions civilians and refugees in Georgia and South Ossetia. It mentions civilians, refugees in Belarus. It mentions the Uyghurs in China. It mentions people in Crimea. It mentions indigenous people in Colombia, civilians in the Congo, the Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine. It mentions folks in Haiti and Honduras and Iran and Libya and Myanmar and the Philippines and South Sudan and Syria. And it mentions Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. And it mentions Israelis, mentions all of those groups. If there is a company that is spending its money to an investing and committing human rights violations against vulnerable demographics as identified by the international laws and norms that underlie the basic foundations of an international system and liberal order that tries to value and protect all human rights. It mentions all of those groups. So for the folks who say it targets one or the other or calls one group out, it's just not true. It's just not true. It's written in here. That's what this is about. This is about universal values. And universal values don't come without context. They don't come without the understanding of what's actually happening in the world. And a lot of people spoke very deeply and passionately tonight about the context that they feel is closest to them. There are facts. There are realities. There is a genocide going on in Gaza and in Sudan. And there is forced displacement in Ukraine. And there is forced labor and religious persecution in China. Those are things that are happening in this world. And this ordinance says we don't want to be a part of it. I'm going to finish just to say that I appreciate that we've had a difficult conversation. We've done it civilly. We've heard from a lot of people. We've done that a lot in this room. And I agree with the folks who say that it is not our responsibility to define divisiveness or quote unquote, not be divisive. To take a position like this is to simply say, we believe in a world order where human rights don't get violated, where our world is not burned, where the people where the human race has the ability to see a future that is more than 10 or 20 or 30 years out. And yes, maybe it's little old Medford making the argument, but hopefully more people will join us and a loud chorus will eventually drown out the people and organizations and wealthy elites, as David Harris said, who quite frankly are driving this world towards a global collapse. So I thank everyone who spoke. and I reiterate my motion to approve for first reading. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. We'll go to Councilor Lazzaro, and then I have a statement to read from Councilor Callahan.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I don't have much to say. I'll second President Bearsar's motion. I do want to reiterate that this is an extremely concrete action we can take. which feels important because it can be a model for other cities and towns if they were to want to do something similar in the sense that not only can we exhibit our values, display our values in this way, in this concrete way that we have control over, also that as other places, if they were to follow in this behavior, become kind of a, you know, a, what's that carnival game where the, with the things that you have to hit with the mallet, whack-a-mole. I think similarly, the way the federal government tries to, you know, tries to catch all of the communities that are going against their edicts, it becomes too overwhelming. And as President Bears mentioned, they can't tell the difference between Boston and Medford. We got the ICE raids the same as everybody else in the region. It is no reason to not follow our residents, follow their values and our values. And I also spent my birthday here. So I loved what the resident said about what a nice way to spend your time. Thank you, everybody who spoke. I appreciate everybody's perspectives. I think this was a good way to articulate the kind of community that we have. So thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Callahan was not able to be here tonight, but she emailed comments on this ordinance to council leadership shortly before the meeting, and I missed it, so I apologize. I'm going to read her comments now to include them in the record. Councilor Callahan wrote, I aim as a city councilor to do what I believe most people here in Medford want, and I do my best to vote that way in general. But I also always keep in mind whether, by my vote, any harm could be done to any of our residents. In this values ordinance, there are many parts that are not controversial. I want to speak about the part that is controversial. We have been asked by some Palestinian Americans who live in Medford if our city can become neutral in the conflict between the current Israeli administration and the Palestinian people. I understand that both Palestinian Americans who live in Medford and Jewish Americans who live in Medford can feel that our vote can cause harm. I feel for both communities and I understand that both communities are feeling vulnerable and worried about the future. I believe that the majority of people in Medford would prefer that our public money become neutral. I also believe that becoming neutral is the way to cause the least amount of harm to our local community. While this conflict is far away, many people here have relatives in these countries, and currently 2 million people are in danger of starving to death. I am in favor of Medford becoming neutral in this destined but heart-wrenching conflict. I also want us to work to protect both these important communities here in our city, and I welcome all ideas for how we can do that. That was the statement from Councilor Callahan. I'll next recognize Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, this has been a tricky one for me because last year when the ceasefire resolution came up, I voted present for it. And when another resolution came up that also directly mentioned the conflict, I also voted present. even for the motion to table that one. This is a bit of a tricky. This one's a little bit trickier for me, because it doesn't actually, as President Bears just mentioned, it doesn't actually mention any one country specifically. So somebody was coming up and saying, well, why can't we divest from China, for instance, because they're detaining the Uighur Muslims? that actually is something that can be done under the framework of this ordinance. I also asked about the option of potentially severing parts of it, but that's not a thing that really can be done for ordinances. So just going by the text of the ordinance itself, I don't think that it does explicitly target any... I see this as more of a long-term thing. I don't think it explicitly targets any one company, any one country, although the rhetoric around it has been, of course, very different from that. And so that's something that I've been personally struggling with. Sometimes it's said that Perception is reality. I don't really believe in that quote. I try to vote on what is in the text right in front of me. And what's in the text right in front of me is a general framework that includes divesting from a number of different companies over a number of different reasons without mentioning any one in particular. A lot of presidents disagree on that. A lot of very often people will come into these chambers and make a judgment based on and project their own personal experiences onto the text that needs to be voted on. And I respect that. I mean, there's a few other things specifically. Like even though I'm member of the military. I mean, I remember what Eisenhower said about the US going into the military-industrial complex, and I very much think the country has gone in that direction. Defense contractors get a lot of money. I do also appreciate Council President Bears's efforts to strengthen, to make more specific 2D as well. I think the specificity does help to add a framework to this ordinance, and I do a framework to that decision making that investors have to do. And I appreciate that. When it comes to folks saying things like, well, we need to delay, we need more time. I very often hear those excuses in this chamber. People say we need to slow down all the time if they just don't really support something. This has been in the works for months. And if the mayor or chief of staff sends an email a few hours before the meeting with this whole litany of concerns, that basically just means that they want to delay the vote. If that email were sent a week ago, I would have a lot more respect for it, but we frequently get these laundry lists of concerns just before a meeting, and it's a delay tactic. I think there were one or two things in it that are worth considering, but those can be considered more appropriately in between the first and third reading. just want folks to know that those are my thoughts on it because I haven't really spoken and I have been earnestly thinking about everything that everybody said here tonight and in the past two meetings before this and I thank you all for your time.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Councilor Leming. Thank you, Councilor Leming. We have a motion on the floor by President Bears that's been seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. I want to quickly share my thoughts before we move forward to the vote. Let me speak from the chair. I want to compliment my colleague. for the diligence in producing a thorough and carefully rendered first draft of this ordinance in June, and for further revising it into the current version, which I think uses tighter and more specific language to define the terms of our goals here as they relate to the city's financial instruments and to the specific harms from which I think broadly we all agree that we want Medford to be divested from. I will be supporting this tonight. I believe there is a clear moral mandate that is supported by many Medford residents, that we do not want our shared assets to be increased through investment in nakedly harmful enterprises, the type of which we would never want to see or experience anywhere near Medford or our surrounding communities. I don't think that we should govern In fear, I think that we should govern in values. As one councilor, this ordinance is certainly in accordance with my own values. And I believe the question of whether this will be net harmful to our city is settled and that this is well worth doing. Furthermore, and I feel like I say this a lot, but I also feel like it's important to say, so I'm going to keep saying it even though it's uncomfortable. As a Jew, as the only Jewish member of this body, I grow increasingly weary with having to defend justice and security-oriented policies from accusations of anti-Semitism. As one person, this policy is foundationally aligned with my Jewish faith and with the imperative to repair the world, tikkun olam, the value with which I was raised in my Jewish family. I think that the conversation we have had in this chambers over several meetings about this ordinance and other resolutions like it are a microcosm of the community that we share, but not in a bad way. I admit, and this will not be a surprise to people who have heard me speak about this before, that I feel offended and saddened to know that there are people with whom I share a Jewish identity who see me as illegitimate or claiming a Jewish identity that is not mine, because I do not share their politics and ideology about Zionism and the state of Israel. However, and I know that there are many, many Jews of many politics and ideologies who also feel this way, Though I do not share an ideology with Zionist Jews, I would never purport to say that I do not share that identity with you and that you are not a part of my community. In the same way, in this chamber, on this issue and on many others, we have come together to vehemently disagree. and we are still a part of the same Medford community. We have heard a lot of talk, especially this term, about division and divisiveness. Coming together to disagree is not necessarily harmful. That is not a type of division that we can ever or should ever try to avoid. Being divided on an issue, disagreeing vehemently, even with people with whom you share a community and history and nevertheless coming together to debate and disagree in public. It's okay if we want to call that divisiveness, but I don't think that's bad. I think that's what we do here. And it's sad to me that these productive conversations and this exercise of continuing to come together and disagree over and over and over and over and over again is somehow being branded as wrong or harmful. This is how it's supposed to work. I want to thank everybody for their comments tonight, including those with whom I disagree, and including those who vehemently disagree with me, even insofar as to call my identity illegitimate. I hope to see you again in the chambers very soon.

[Adam Hurtubise]: On the motion.

[Kit Collins]: On the motion by President Bears, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: President Bears?

[Unidentified]: Yeah.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan is absent. Councilor Lazzaro? Yeah. Councilor Leming? Yeah. Councilor Scarpelli? No. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Yes. Five in favor, one opposed, one absent. The motion passes. Is there a motion for a five minute recess? Motion for a five minute recess by President Bears, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready. There will be a five minute recess. Thank you. We'll reconvene. All right, we're going to reconvene just as soon as I find my right page, actually. All right. Thank you all for your patience. Paper 25-123 offered by President Bears. Resolution on a shared path forward to extend rezoning project timeline and request necessary funding and resources from mayor. Whereas on July 16, 2025, the council president outlined a shared path forward for Medford's zoning updates project that outlined a clear and responsive approach to continuing this essential project to enable Medford's future growth and development. And whereas the specific zoning amendment proposals reflect hard work to make our city's vision and plans a reality over the past several years, starting with requests for funding for zoning updates prior to 2020, the initiation of the first phase of this project from 2020 to 2022 by recodifying the zoning ordinance, the planning processes between 2020 and 2024 to create the comprehensive plan, climate plan, and housing plan that incorporated input from thousands of residents and hundreds of public engagement events and approaches, and continuing over the past 18 months with the City Council and Mayor's Planning Department staff, Building Commissioner, Communications Director, and other city staff working with Innes Associates to create zoning proposals that concretely implement our city's plans, and whereas it is essential to the well-being of Medford residents and the future of our city that the Medford zoning ordinance is amended so that we can build more housing, create more vibrant commercial squares, and focus on mixed-use development that activates corridors of our city with so much potential that have been ignored for too long, And whereas after more than five years our community is in the hardest phase of this project, and we must secure the progress we all know Medford needs by seeing this work through to completion. And whereas for nearly two years, the Council Community Development Board and city staff have worked with the resources made available to us by the mayor. and have consistently and persistently advocated to the mayor to engage more deeply in the process, provide more city resources to ensure the success of this collaboration between the City Council and the mayor's administration, and work to ensure that accurate information reaches as many residents as possible to get them involved in this rezoning project. And whereas the mayor's written response on July 31 2025 contained inaccurate information and presented a narrative that does not correctly represent the mayor or her administration's core role in the zoning updates project since its beginning. And whereas the mayor's decision to limit her direct participation in this essential Major and transformative project until recently has been a barrier to accessing city communications resources under her control to ensure as many residents as possible are able to engage with this process. And whereas the proposed extended timeline was drafted with the specific intention of receiving collaborative input from the mayor. and whereas City Council leadership continues to extend its hand of open engagement and collaboration on the project as it has for newly two years and the Council President has offered times to sit with the Mayor to discuss the specifics regarding additional funding and resources for expanded public engagement to support the extended consideration of proposed zoning amendments And whereas the people of Medford have placed their trust in the elected members of the Medford City Council to update the Medford zoning ordinance and the City Council has conducted a robust and extensive process to propose zoning amendments with the resources provided and within the restrictions of the contract signed by the mayor. and whereas a potential decision by the mayor to end this zoning updates project by canceling the contract with the zoning consultant team and refusing to provide the resources and support necessary to implement the city's plans and address decades of inaction and broken zoning, which has caused harmful outcomes in all of our neighborhoods, would be a disservice to the city's residents and seriously damage the future of Medford, Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we collaboratively establish an extended timeline for the consideration of the proposed residential districts and ADU zoning proposal, as well as off-street residential parking requirements with the mayor's office and planning team, which includes proposing a new draft no sooner than November 2025, after a series of neighborhood discussions to take place this fall, and any final City Council vote no sooner than April 2026. We have further resolved that the City Council requests that the Community Development Board continue its plan to meet on August 6, 2025, to provide direction regarding drafting of new recommendations for the residential district zoning proposal that incorporate the feedback provided by residents during the CDB's public hearings and discussions over the last several months to the City Council and planning team. Be it for the result that we request that the City Council Community Development Board and planning team, planning team prioritize completing the proposed commercial framework and focus on the remaining proposed districts for Medford Square West Medford Square, the other corridors and Tufts institutional zoning through the end of 2025. Be it further resolved that we request that the mayor allocate the necessary resources from the city's reserve funds to provide the Council Community Development Board planning team and city staff with the support needed to conduct even more robust public outreach over the next year, including subject to discussion. at least $150,000 in total funds including any funds currently appropriated in the fiscal year 26 budget to extend the city's contract with the Innes Associates team through December 2026 and additional $50,000 in funds to pay for communications to residents that are reviewed and approved by the consensus of all of the branches of the city leading the project Mayor's Office, City Council and Planning Department that help inform residents about the proposals and what opportunities they will have to make their voices heard and share their concerns, sorry, share their comments with the Community Development Board and the City Council. President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: I hope that was written dryly enough to not come off as mean. This ordinance work that we've been doing on the zoning is essential to the future of our city where as written and as we've discussed extensively in this body for the six years that I've served on it, our zoning is broken. People don't like the outcomes of it. It both allows things we don't want and doesn't allow things we do want. And it significantly hampers our ability to grow and develop as a community. We spent years following the rescission of the mystic Avenue proposal in 2019, doing a planning process to develop the housing plan the climate plan and of course the city's comprehensive plan. we conducted a two year zoning recodification to create a modern ordinance structure that this council approved unanimously under the previous council. And for the last 18 months, we have been working under the contract and funding provided by the mayor to implement the city's plans through updates to the zoning ordinance as outlined in the comprehensive plans implementation table. I wrote and delivered a seven page comment letter on the draft comprehensive plan. So I can tell you that I have read through it intensely and I can tell you that there was a lot about needs for change in our zoning to address the many issues, whether that's affordable housing, nonconforming structures, zoning that doesn't allow for mixed use districts, that doesn't allow us to create vibrant corridors and commercial squares, all the things that so many folks have been talking about that hold back this community in so many ways. I think most eloquently and elegantly represented in the new bank that is opening in the outfitted, formerly outfitted restaurant in Medford Square, right? If we don't do something significant, that's going to keep happening. And this is what our comprehensive plan said, and this zoning has been working to change. The ordinance lays out very clearly what has happened over the last 18 months. I'm not going to get into the back and forth and the specifics. It's obvious that the mayor has a different narrative of what happened. I think that a lot more engagement and involvement and resources earlier on, I remember Council Vice President Collins, you send the communications last September trying to get the communication staff and team more involved in what we were doing would have helped. I do think that this, the zoning that we've proposed generally reflects both the comprehensive plan, the vision and the expert opinions of the planning team that we brought on board. And I do want to note that even in the absence of more resources and more direct engagement from the city administration, your efforts, Councilor Collins, did receive the praise and plaudits of the Mass Municipal Association, who highlighted our zoning website and communications plan this spring. But given that city government, even when we're talking about zoning, and even when we're talking about the city council, who does hold the primary responsibility for zoning, when other bodies of city government, the mayor, particularly, Um. Are calling for a different approach and a change in approach at this stage. I don't think that we can move ahead without listening to that, particularly given the mayor's letter last week, which indicated that she would not provide. Our body with consulting and resource I don't think that's particularly the best way to move forward because I don't think that ending the project at this stage was good for anyone. It leaves a lot of the broken zoning intact. Yes, there are great improvements with Green Score and the new Mystic Avenue corridor and Salem Street, like it's a start, but leaving it in this stage would be pretty awful and kind of a worst of both worlds situation. Saying all of that and having written this ordinance in response to my commitment from my address to the community earlier in July, I will say that I did meet with the mayor for nearly two hours yesterday. We, I think, disagree on how we got here, agree that if we knew now, like if a year ago we had known what we know now, we would have approached this differently. and agree that I think that there is a path ahead, basically along the framework that I outlined and also that the mayor had outlined. We kind of ended up in one of those situations, Newton and Leibniz, right? They both invented calculus at the same time. The mayor sent a letter and I made a speech about 24 hours apart that said largely the same thing, even though obviously there were significant disagreements in accountability and who's responsible for what happened. All of that being said, I think we had a good meeting yesterday. I feel confident that we can work through disagreements and differences that we may have, create an agreement and a framework to extend our contract with the INIS associates team and move ahead on this essential project. and move ahead also with the knowledge of how we want to do that collaboratively going forward. So I feel confident about that, but I also think it's essential that we transmit to the mayor a communication that outlines what has happened over the last 18 months and what needs to change in order for us to continue to be successful and complete this important project that is really the foundation of our growth and development and a better future for our city. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. We'll go to Councilor Scarpelli and then to Councilor Lazzaro.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you. So I know my fellow Councilors mentioned how I love doing this now, so I'll share another one. This was from the Mayor. Today, hello President Bears of Medford City Council. I want to provide an update on a few things zoning related. First, in my opinion, the meeting between President Baez and I yesterday went well. It was a good start to work we all want to see accomplished. We will be working through the Ennis extension over the next few weeks in hopes to have an agreement so we can continue the work sometime after Labor Day. This will allow the city staff, community, CDB board a few weeks to breathe, catch and decompress from this stressful process. Considering there is not an active contract with Ennis, and my hope is that we create a new timeline for Ennis, and considering the fact that we have no, we have two members of the CD board whose terms expired on June 30, 2025, and are not seeking reappointment, I respectfully ask that you do not refer to the corridors out this evening, which you did. If I understood correctly, President Bears would like the CD board direction on residential discussions on 8-6 as well as to have them vote to extend the hearing. I'm okay with that approach. I just respectfully ask that your next meeting on September 9th to refer the residential and ADU discussions back to the City Council Committee for further study. We discussed and I hope you all agree that we should take the corridors first one at a time after the move on to residential parking. We also discussed my request to take CD board's final recommendation on Salem Street corridor. If so, I agree not to revisit Mr. Gav now, but to wait until after this included in a poll we discussed doing in the fall. If the poll shows we should revisit it, then we will. I appreciate your consideration. If you want to discuss this anytime, let me know. If we do this thoughtfully, without rushing, and with good communication at the forefront, I truly feel we'll accomplish the rezoning process. I just wanted to share that. And then I wanted to just share something that I know Councilor Bears said that, you know, the process in this whole zoning, I revert back to one of the first meetings that I mentioned, that part of the RFP that the former council wrote was a really in-depth process that we asked for the RFP to be written for the consultants to really put together a comprehensive plan that goes into the community to help and include those residents so they feel like they're part of the process. And what we're seeing with this council is that we're rushing through the process. And you know what? We didn't listen at Salem Street. You didn't listen to other corridors of this community. You didn't listen to the residents. But what happened was you went into the area and you started talking about single family homes. And then all of a sudden Medford woke up. Medford woke up to the point that we see yellow and black signs all over the city because they're upset about this administration, this team, this leadership team, and the lack of communication. President Villes went to the public the other day without this council knowing anything about it, presented a plan blaming whatever the path was, and I'm not a very big fan, we all know that, of this administration. But this is, make it clear, this is not this administration's fault. What we're seeing right now, the other day, it was political backpedaling. All we missed there was a little Michael Jackson, you guys doing backpedal. Because what we see is, we're getting nervous now. Because all of a sudden the residents are getting in your ears. It's coming to re-election time. And we're hearing. that, geez, you know what? We didn't listen to the override, but it passed, but it's hurting people. We didn't listen. The charter review, we have councilors members sitting here right here saying, we're not gonna support it, but we're not gonna go against it. But we've moved it through, and people are upset about it. Now it comes to the zoning. It's starting to affect, this process is now affecting what the fabric of this community is all about. And now people are getting nervous behind the rail. So let it be said, this is political backpedaling at its best. To say that we're doing this because the mayor didn't give you the tools, you didn't want the tools. You didn't want the tools. For months, we've talked and heard this council chair talk over and over again how we've had many, many community meetings when you didn't. But when you did have that one community meeting, because it was forced, and 220 people showed up at the Roberts Elementary School. 200 people showed up, excuse me. And they presented a plan to share what they felt were issues. And then it went to the Community Development Board, correct? And the Community Development Board listened to them. They didn't agree to everything they wanted, but they listened. So what the residents of Salem Street did is they came to this meeting one night. And at that meeting, they expressed their concerns. They expressed what the Community Development Board listened. And then they presented the changes the Community Development Board requested. And they felt confident. They felt, finally, someone listened. And we don't like everything, but at least we were part of the problem, we were part of the solution, and we were part of zoning our method. And they walked out of this room. And then roughly around this time, one of the Councilors decided to stand up and say, I want to eliminate what was just presented and go back to the original plan. And what happened then was this council voted 6-0 in favor of that Councilor to look at the residents that finally had a voice, that finally had a voice, and you just turned around and spit in their face and threw it away. So now here we are months later, looking at the same situation. But this time, the largest voting block in this community is upset. The largest voting block is standing up and saying, you're not listening to these residents. You're not listening to us. This city council isn't listening. So now we're going to put this plan in place, ask for more money. We're going to backpedal. We're going to say we need more resources. But all this is, say what it is. Once you get elected again, you're going to go back to doing whatever you want to do because your people voted for you to make this happen. Not for the whole community, not for what's best for the 60,000, but what's best for the 7,500 that voted for you. So if I sat idly by and just let this go through, then I would be void of my job responsibility as city councilor to enlighten everybody to see exactly what this is. This is exactly political backpedaling. Because you had that opportunity to prove to the city. When Salem Street came here, and they met with the Community Development Board, and they had serious concerns, and the Community Development Board, who were the professionals here, said, you know what, let's do that. And you listen to, look, late at night again, because no one's listening now, it's only a few people. But when everybody was gone, when everybody was gone, the voice came out to revert back. People went to bed that night thinking that this city council listened and you didn't. So this process, this dog and pony show that I watched the other day, all this is, is just the delay to get reelected and then go through again because you've already proven you're not listening to the residents of this community. You're simply not listening. And it's funny, God forbid anybody speaks against you behind the reel, what do they make? Things were delayed because a Councilor made a motion to table it. That's my right. That's the right, because these residents, the residents you're not listening to, they have to call somebody. And they have to want to make it so that people are listening to them. So we don't know what November brings. I might not be here. You might not be here. But what you should learn from this is that listen to your constituents, not the constituents that just voted you, but the people that live in this community, because you're not listening. So we could say whatever we want, we can play back any tape we want, but I brought this up from the first meeting when I said, We need a more comprehensive plan. And the answer to me that day was, that was with the last council. This council, along with the community development board director, put the RFP together that gave us what we had, and that's trash. And from what I read from the mayor, you better buckle up, because she's not going to bend. Because you know what? Unless this council, and I'll make the motion right now, that I make a motion that this council reverts back and opens up the Salem Street process again. Because if you truly want to be true to your words and want the process to work correctly and why we want to move forward in the right, in this path, whatever we're calling it, then let's make the motion and support it to revisit Salem Street and bring back what they asked for and what the Community Development Board supported. Let's do that. Let's show them just a sliver that we are listening. And maybe we could salvage this. Because right now, there's no faith in this. There's no faith in our community development leader, Alicia Hunt, and there's no faith in this council. Maybe you have people who are whispering in your ear that that's all not true, but guess what? It's true. So thank you and have a good night.

[Kit Collins]: One voice, thank you. We'll go to Councilor Lazzaro, then back to President Bears.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. The mayor wrote a letter saying that we needed to reverse two of the measures that we've already voted into law, Mystic Ave and Salem Street. And then in her first letter said that we also had to throw out all of the maps for residential zoning that we have at all. Just throw them away and start over. But those maps were created over the course of a long period of time with her own planning department staff and consultation with people that came in through an RFP before I even came on the council, and it's not going particularly fast. We've had 25 planning and permitting meetings on this topic, I think you said earlier, 31. Planning and permitting meetings, those are all public meetings that are, they're advertised on the website, and please don't interrupt me, because I didn't interrupt you. That's okay. They're all public meetings. They're advertised on the website. The mayor's communications team can decide to publicize anything that they like to publicize. They put a letter in my tax bill that said, there's a scary zoning thing happening. I received it. It said a scary zoning thing is happening, basically. And I got it in my house, and I said, what scary zoning thing is happening? The thing we've been working on for years is, yes, it's been ongoing. I wasn't aware that we were sending out letters all of a sudden. This would have been nice for people to know about a long time ago. They could know about the green score. They could have weighed in on that. I, an 80 year old woman that I know from my church just sent me an email because she sent it to everybody on our church lift serve today that she got a robo call that it's really important that everybody go to the CDB meeting tomorrow. She got a robo call about it because there are big, scary zoning changes happening. This is an extremely progressive woman who is saying like, use your voice. They're going to be more cars. They're going to give handouts to developers. She got a robo call today. This is a woman I know. I like, what's going out? What's the communication scheme exactly? And when the mayor says, oh, okay, well, I'll compromise. You only have to change one of the things you've already voted into law, change it back. So my compromise for you now is to, I'll be bad cop and then I'll be like slightly less bad cop. I'm not comfortable with that. The City Council's obligation is to do zoning. When the mayor put out a policy for a comprehensive plan and a housing production plan and an environmental plan, a climate action plan, and then we take on the responsibility of the City Council to enact those plans, And then she says, whoa, whoa, whoa. Once the community finds out about it and feels upset and needs to be talked to and needs to understand more about what it is, I've had to explain what zoning is to close friends of mine this week. There's a lot of communication that needs to happen and we do not have staff on the city council. We are individual operators. I don't even have, I don't have anything. I don't have anybody. And she has a communications department, which we have not been able to utilize until the mayor decided it was time to tell everybody that there are scary zoning changes happening. And now everybody is scared. So, no, I do not think it is appropriate for us to go back and change the things we've already voted into law we've, we were voted into office to do the things that we said we were going to do. And many of us said, something that we were going to do that was important for us to do is to bring in commercial, the capacity to build business districts that are logical, that makes sense. We have proximity to Boston. We could have vibrant business districts, and that will bring in tax revenue, and that will bolster the services that we can offer to our vulnerable residents. We can build up City Hall so that we can... These are my goals. I'll speak for myself. I would like to offer more services to our vulnerable residents in Medford, and that is why I think it would be great if we had more commercial tax revenue. And I also think it would be great if the 7,500 people who are qualified for affordable housing in Medford and do not have it, I think it would be nice if they had somewhere to live. So I think we should have a little bit more dense housing close to transit hubs. Yes, I think that that is true. And I ran on that and I will continue to try to make that happen. And if that one of the things that we can do to make these things possible is zoning changes. So all of these things, yes, all of these things are still true and they were always true. So when the mayor says a bunch of stuff about how it went too fast, it all went too fast. This was all true the whole time. And it's a slow process. And we can make it slower, but we can't throw it away. So I support this. I understand the necessity of slowing it down because we should have been communicating more. We should have had more money to communicate it. Maybe we didn't have it. We can't go back in time, so we can communicate now. That will require the mayor's partnership with intentionality. and it will require the mayor to do the things she says she's gonna do. If she wants to do them, great, I hope so.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor. We'll go back to President Bears and then to Councilor Leming.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam Chair. I think it's just fundamentally true that it's hard to act in good faith and easy to act in bad faith. And it's hard to say we've learned that we should have done it better and it's easy to say, I told you so, or I trusted you too much, right? There are things that are hard and there are things that are easy. It's hard to say yes, it's easy to say no. And the city has said no a lot. City government said no to, we're not gonna update the zoning for, 30 years. No, we're not going to update the linkage fees for 30 years. No, we're not going to fix the sewer infrastructure for 30 years. No, we're not going to fix Menford Square for 30 years. No, we're not going to fix Mystic Ave for 30 years. And no, we're not going to fund the schools. And no, we're not going to maintain our buildings. And no, we're not going to build housing. And here we are, we're in the product of a city of no. It's a city in crisis, a city with decades of deferred maintenance, a city with no real plan and executed plan for growth, a city with out of date and broken institutions and structures. And, you know, if the city hadn't said no for 20, 30 years that I grew up here, I probably wouldn't have run for office. I want to live in a city that says yes. City that doesn't defer and delay and deny the essential and fundamental reality that we have to do something or else everything falls apart. As I said, it's easy to act in bad faith and it's hard to act in good faith. And fundamentally, when we wanna talk about the lie that this council didn't adopt the Salem Street recommendations, we adopted all but one. I think there were 12 recommendations and this council adopted 11. So 11 twelfths means we're not listening. It's a lie. When we talk about the RFP had the community meetings when the council voted unanimously to accept a proposal that didn't have the community meetings because we only got two proposals because there wasn't enough money. Unanimously voted for that, it's a lie. And it's a lie for political gain and I get it, it's politics, fine. It's easy to act in bad faith and it's hard to act in good faith. We'll see where it goes. If the mayor wants to end the zoning project, that's her prerogative. I think we're gonna get to a good outcome. I don't think we're gonna relitigate what doesn't need to be relitigated. And I think we're gonna move forward, hopefully now, with the resources we all see we need. The resources that weren't in the proposal that was unanimously accepted by the council, even though they were in the RFP, right? An RFP is a request for proposal. We didn't vote on the RFP, we voted on the proposal, we got back. And that proposal didn't have everything we wanted and asked for, because everything we wanted and asked for wasn't possible with $150,000 over 18 months. At the time, we accepted the contract and did our best with what we had. Pretty early on, there were different approaches. Councilor Scarpelli had one, Councilor Collins had another, I had another, Councilor Leming had another to try to fill the gaps. I thought we did a very good job of that. And up until really the end of June, when the mayor inserted herself in I think a not productive way, scaring people about what was happening and not presenting factual information and communications going out that didn't get looked at by any experts who were involved in the process. And then people coming and saying, look at all the horrible things that are happening. And none of them are actually in the zoning. That's what happened. Again, it's politics, right? It's politics. People are gonna say what they wanna say. Change is hard. It's easier to act in bad faith than it's hard to act in good faith. I think we're gonna get to an agreement. As I said, the mayor and I fundamentally disagree on the narrative of how we got here. But again, the political arguments being presented that no one was listened to and nothing ever happened and we knew this from the beginning and you did it on purpose, they are lies. they are actively lies. And the hypocrisy is so deep that when we voted unanimously to accept the proposal that didn't have the meetings that Councilor Schapiro mentions, then why did we vote to accept that proposal in the first place? Why wasn't this concern raised from day one? If we have the precognition and the forethought and the vision to have known that we would be where we were now then, I wish someone had spoken up. I didn't know. Well, you didn't, you voted for it, George. So you did.

[Kit Collins]: Okay.

[Zac Bears]: So, you know, important things can't just be delayed because we don't have the resources. That's what this city has done forever. And it's led us to where we are, which is so much work that we have to do. A council that in one term is trying to do the work of 20 terms before that didn't get done. I think the residents can see what's happening. I think they're very smart. If you look at what residents are seeing and saying, even residents who are coordinating the slow down residential zoning signs, I've had meetings with some of the people coordinating that who say, actually, we mostly agree on most of this and the process wasn't good. And the communications from the city really freaked me out. And thank you for saying what you said, because it addresses some of my concerns. It's not a response to people saying, I'm not going to vote for you anymore. Don't vote for me. Take that clip, put it out, right? I hope someone does it. you know, that's great. If you don't agree with me, don't vote for me. But I think residents by and large, see that we are working in good faith to do very difficult things that the city does not done in decades. And, you know, there will always be criticism, it will never be done perfectly, we will never agree on the outcome 100% behind this rail or the public at large. But I think most people can see that it wasn't intentionally, we never did this to push through a thing that nobody wants, right? If that was true, the overrides would have failed. If that was true, this council would never been elected. If that was true, we wouldn't see the results that we're seeing, which is that by and large, the city wants to move forward. And I'm confident that we will be able to work together with the mayor on this piece of that project and move forward in a positive way. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. We'll go next to Councilor Leming and then Councilor Tseng on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, the wisdom that I've gained on my one term thus far in city council, what I've learned is that pretty much everything about this position incentivizes you to do nothing because anytime you make a make a decision, it'll anger somebody. I was just at an event right before I came here, and a city councilor in another city said a quote, which I think I'm going to start using now, and I'm going to steal it from him. He said, the only thing people hate worse than a problem is a solution. And I think that that summed it up very well. Everything about this job incentivizes us to say nice things to residents, to tell them what they want to hear. Nothing about this job incentivizes us to actually make a decision. The overrides were a decision. It was our decision to put that on the ballot. It was the decision of the rest of the city to vote on it. people that many people who voted on it were on a fixed income, and it put an extra burden on them, but it ended up saving 40 teaching jobs and invested in a road crew that will end up repairing the streets at a faster rate. It is very hard to actually do something productive. It's very hard to build something. It's very easy to throw a wrench into the clockwork and try to stop everything. And it's easy to do that if you have the resources to make robo calls and send out emails to a wide portion of the city. It's much easier to do that than it is to actually build something. So another thing I'll say is that, you know, people, people in local elected office, we tend to just doing this stuff, you tend to learn, learn a lot of technical details, like the fact that we didn't just have one q&a session we had, there were like six, and they're like, five of them are on YouTube right now. Like the fact that during the when we adopted 11 out of 12 of the proposals from the Salem Street, a huge number of residents were literally asking us to do just that, that evening. So it's little technical details that most people don't know, but we're aware of that you could just sort of ignore when you're making a narrative. And it's very easy to just not actually be honest about those little details when you're telling people. what's going on. And what's happening. And you know, I'm, I mean, I, I live on Salem Street, I'm talking to a lot of my neighbors on Salem Street, a lot of them, a lot of them like the rezoning, a lot of them didn't. And A lot of them appreciate what I said during council meetings. A lot of them thought that I could have could have phrased it differently and I appreciate all of that. I'm sending out a press release, telling a legislative body to undo. things that have already been ordained as asinine, that is not an approach of somebody who is working in good faith. I don't appreciate that game of chicken. I understand that Council President Bears's speech that he gave out to the city, it was sort of a public way to, it was sort of like a public way for council to express what our path forward was. I think the response to that, especially if you read the whole thing, was not any sort of an olive branch. It was a middle finger in response to that. And the fact that it was done two days after nomination papers closed and the mayor knew she wouldn't have to run against anybody was like an extra cherry on top of that sundae. So yeah, there's a lot that can be said about this process. I've heard the different narratives thrown around time and time again. It gets repetitive after a while, but I always appreciate talking to residents about what's happening with the rezoning, I understand that there's a lot more work that needs to be done in coming up with a vision that the highest number of people can agree on. And I look forward to engaging in that process in good faith. So thank you for everybody who's listening at 12 in the morning. And I'm gonna shut up now.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. Councilor Tseng, I saw you had a hand up earlier.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I think my family Councilors have spoken to the revisionism and the campaigning that we've been seeing. And so I'm going to refocus on the resolution that's right in front of us. I've spent the last month and a half reading everyone's emails. I know I have a lot to get back to. But I wanted to take this time to listen to residents because there's just so many different perspectives, so many different views from people who think that our city isn't doing enough to build housing, to encourage more housing, to those who are concerned that we are moving too quickly. The truth is that there are a lot of people who feel strongly on every side about this issue. But in reading these emails, And looking past the disagreements that folks might have about process, I think that there are still many goals that unite our community. I think we want to make Medford more affordable. I think we want to make sure that we hold big developers accountable. And I think we want to fight against displacement. Speaking from personal experience and from talking to countless neighbors this year and over the last few years, I know too many folks are feeling the crunch. They're tired of seeing their rents rise. They're tired of seeing the dream of homeownership slip away. I know a lot of parents are tired of seeing their kids, folks I went to school with, have to move out to Central Mass or New Hampshire just because they can't afford to live here anymore. And simply put, we just have a system that doesn't work for us. It's left us out. It's left us behind. And that's why it really shocks me that when we finally had a compromise that was put on the table. And you didn't have to take it, but it was a starting point for conversation. And that compromise would have prioritized completing proposed commercial districts. It would have extended the process for residential rezoning. It would make our public outreach much more robust. It shocked me that the mayor responded hostilely with ultimatums, with misinformation, and with complaints about not being included in the process. It shocks me that the mayor would threaten to kill the years of work that Medford has put into bringing our city into the future together, to kill the years of work to bring our city in line with our comprehensive plan, our climate action and adaptation plan, and our affordable housing plan, the very same plans that a number of politicians in the city, especially the mayor, ran on as candidates in multiple elections and won on. It shocks me that, it shocks me because these problems are serious, they're real. And what else are we supposed to do? Do nothing? Stick to a status quo system that clearly isn't working? fully and undermine the people who are trying to fix it, you don't have to agree with them. The alternative, I think, is pretty clear. The alternative is dilly-dally, delay, and wither. And by demanding that we reverse all the progress, or at least substantial progress that we've made as a community, goes a bit too far for good. When the fact is that as the mayor, the mayor could have stepped up earlier, the mayor could have studied these issues earlier. She could have dedicated the resources to do the extensive public outreach that she is asking for now. And in fact, it's the same kind of outreach that we've been asking to get the tools for. If you look at what the Resident Services Committee has been working on, if you look at the number of resolutions I passed in this council and last council about doing accurate survey research and approaching that correctly, we have a record on this. And I also want to make it clear, the mayor is welcome at our meetings. And she's welcome to reach out to her elected officials or the same elected officials who are entrusted by the voters to do the hard work and make the hard choices that we have to make as a community. The truth is, we will have to come together. We will have to work together to move our city forward on the key issues. Affordability, holding developers accountable, and fighting displacement. And we will have to compromise. In her press release, the mayor said, this process is hard and complex, but it doesn't have to be combative. I agree with that. This moment is tough, but poison pill press releases really don't help. I hope that we can come together and improve the process together. I think The approach that we see proposed in this resolution presents that first compromise that weighs that path forward. It shines some light and gives us an option to move forward with a path that's better, more inclusive, and a path that will actually, that could get us to reach the goals that we all agree on. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. We'll go back to Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Is anybody from the development board, the development team on Zoom? Everybody must be in bed, right?

[Kit Collins]: Being that it's after midnight, I'm going to let people raise their hand if they want to be recognized.

[George Scarpelli]: So my question is simple. When we look at where we are right now, it's easy to say 20 years, 30 years of, I don't disagree with you. But it's also easy to say that if we don't do anything, then we're not doing what we're supposed to. They can both be wrong. And that's where we are right now. They're both wrong. Now, the override was an example that I bring up because, again, no matter how people want to frame how Councilor Scarpelli felt about the override, I never said I was against it. I never said I was for it. What I said was, again, Let's slow the process down and do this right. Let's get the community involved. Let's make sure we bring the team involved that can help us make the decision. And yes, the community spoke. A very close, close vote. And then you move forward to the next big issue, which is the charter. Same situation. People just aren't listening. You have this council saying over and over again that the mayor didn't do this. Well, what team met with the mayor's representative that she speaks with every single day about zoning? Who is it? Who do we meet with every single day when we brought issues forward? The director, Alicia Hunt that we met every single day here. So somebody's void. There's a problem here. So if the director of the department that's supposed to inform the mayor, that's a go between this council, didn't get the information, because that's exactly what we said. That's exactly what we're saying. You're saying the mayor didn't do this, the mayor didn't do that. Well, there's a disconnect. And the disconnect is this. Even though you've identified it, there were issues. There were serious issues about this process. You've all said it, today you've all said it. But you still pushed it forward for what end? To what end? To say we did something? Well, this is where we are right now. We just paid a lot of money to a consultant that really didn't get us anywhere. No matter what you think, because now the community is really divided because there's no faith here. And I'm going to go back to the original motion that no one's responded to. Don't second it again, but let's do it publicly. I ask for a motion that this council goes back to the Salem Street Corridor. Show the good faith that this isn't a dog and pony show, this isn't a political show, that this isn't backpedaling. Let's go revisit again. Because until we have a meeting and understand that 11 out of 12, I disagree with you. I disagree. Well, that's why I was asking for someone from the development board to be here. Because that evening, that evening, one councilor asked to revert back to the original plan. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So this is where the laxity, this is the problem. It's a lack of information. It's a lack of sharing the knowledge that you think you have and you think everybody else has. But the bottom line is the community doesn't know what's going on because we're not telling them. That's why we are where we are right now. Whether it's the charter, whether it's the override, or now whether it's the zoning. So we can all be angry, but you know what? The bottom line is this. Listen to the constituents, because you know what? I might not be here next year. Zach, you might not be here next year, but someone's going to be back. And all you could do is listen to the people, not to say not to do anything. I'm not saying, there was a comment that was said that, well, we want to say things or do things so we don't get things done. That's wrong. As a matter of fact, this council's voted many times with your initiatives to move things along, even though I didn't agree with them. Not lately, because you could see the relationship we have here. It's disjointed, dysfunctional. We're putting things out. We're making announcements that this council knows nothing about. So I'll make a motion for the September meeting that we ask the Community Development Board members to come up and explain the Salem Street corridor and what happened there. Because myself included, the residents of Salem Street, Everybody's under the assumption that all the changes that the Community Development Board put forth in support of the Salem Street residents were denied and it went back to the original plan of hurting that neighborhood. So again, maybe you're right. Or maybe I'm right. Both sides doesn't win here. Because you're still not looking at the big picture. No matter what you think you've done for public meetings and this, that, and the other thing, understand something. Put a feather in your cap and say, yeah, you had 30 public meetings. OK, that was good. And you reached the demographic. But you didn't reach everybody. And that's the issue. And this council voted no on a lot of that stuff. So this council voted that I brought that forward, Zach. We brought it forward. And my relationship with the mayor wasn't very good. And all of a sudden, everybody's seeing the light now, but the bottom line is this, where she is right now, she's right. Because the residents have spoken. I don't know what the residents you're talking to, but the residents I'm talking to, a lot of them usually don't talk to George Scarpelli. But a lot of them are coming up to me and asking me, how do we make these changes? Well, you know what? When you see people that are running for office, that are running for office, it kind of wakes you up and says, well, that's a mix of a lot of different people that are going after one common denominator. They want to run for office because they want to, they're going to listen to people guys. They're going to listen to everybody. That's what they're running on. All 10 people.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor. Before I get to you, president bears, I'm going to just button here quickly. Um, Just as a point of privilege, I really resent any councilors singling out any specific member of city staff, especially by name at midnight in a public city council meeting to throw an accusation that that person, excuse me, I'm speaking, excuse me, I'm speaking, I'm speaking. So in one issue wants to take five hours, it's fine. But once on something that you don't support, it's not okay for it to take up a lot of the meeting. Nice, really fair, really democratic. Do not appreciate any Councilor using their microphone to slander any city staff member.

[sVx7vl5ZjhU_SPEAKER_05]: No, I'm speaking. You're accusing her of not doing her job. We'll take public participation later. I'm sharing. We're going to hear from Councilors and I'm speaking right now.

[Kit Collins]: I think it's a more productive use of this council's time, especially after midnight, if we refrain from giving one another political advice and stick to debating the resolution in front of us. On the motion by Councilor Scarpelli to have the Community Development Board give a presentation on the ordained Salem Street zoning district, is there a second? Go ahead.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, and this is what I'm talking about, right? I don't know, right? The idea that the information doesn't exist or it's not being communicated, and that's why everyone's being confused, is that's the falsehood, right, underlying the whole thing, right? The information does exist. People are being lied to.

[George Scarpelli]: That's not what I'm saying.

[Zac Bears]: Which changes?

[George Scarpelli]: Whatever was made.

[Zac Bears]: All right, and I'll read to you what was made right now, because there's facts in the world and they literally exist on paper, regardless of if everyone, you know, if people want to say they ignored all the changes, and that's a political argument, a false statement, a lie, right? I'll read it to you. It's in the records that we approved in this body the following meeting that the clerk wrote. President Bears has declared this portion of the hearing closed at 1049 PM. Councilor Leming moved to accept the recommendations of the Community Development Board, except for the recommendation to go to MX1 at the intersection of Salem Street and Park Street. A yes vote would keep MX2 at the intersection of Park and Salem. Councilor Tseng second. Approved on a roll call vote and six in favor, zero opposed. Councilor Leming and Councilor Scarpelli absent, sorry. Councilor Leming moved to adopt the remainder of the Community Development Board's recommendations and approve the Zoning Ordinance Amendment. Councilor Callahan, second. Approved on a roll call vote of six in favor, zero opposed, and Councilor Scarpelli, absent. That's the records. That's the facts. That's what happened. It wasn't that everything was thrown out. It's not that the Community Development Board wasn't listened to. It's that God forbid this council, which is the final deciding authority on zoning, decided to adopt all but one of the recommendations. All but one, 11 out of 12, 95%, however you wanna phrase it, we listen to no one. They only listen to one group. They don't listen to everyone. They don't respect the process. 10 of the new candidates are gonna listen to everyone, but the seven, the other seven, they're not going to. I think anyone who's watching this can read exactly what's being said. If people aren't informed, or if people are repeating and regurgitating the idea that the CD board's recommendations for Salem Street didn't happen, it's in writing, or we could play the tape. As you always say, we could do it all. We did. We did listen to the community development board. They had a long list of recommendations. Councilor Leming said, I agree with all of them, but one, we should accept all of them, but one. And then the council voted to do that. Six in favor, one absent. No, there's no huge discrepancy.

[Kit Collins]: Excuse me, we're going to go to Councilor Leming next. We're going to stick to the queue.

[Zac Bears]: But I just want to be clear. My question was on the substance. What are we reopening? Are we reopening that one change? Or is the reopening because it's assumed that we didn't do any of the recommendations, right? And the mayor now putting that forward? That's the part I'm confused by. We accepted all but one of the changes. A false statement has been spread that none of the changes were accepted. I don't see a reason to reopen something that we actually already did. We listened to the Community Development Board. We agreed with everything they said except one thing.

[Kit Collins]: We'll go to Councilor Leming and then back to Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: I don't want to drag this on for too much longer. It's late. Another thing I'd like to point out with the Community Development Board is that, yes, a lot of them do have expertise, but they're not explicitly experts. To be clear, the Community Development Board in Medford, our version of the planning board, which is usually how it's referenced in Mass General Law, they're a group of people, could be just common residents appointed solely by the mayor, don't even get we don't, this council doesn't get to approve members of the Community Development Board because of a specific state law passed years ago. In most other municipalities, the Planning Board does have council approval, but the Community Development Board is not a group, is not necessarily a group of experts who have like a lot more, who have like a whole lot more knowledge in zoning than we do. The group of experts are the staff and the consultants that we specifically hire for their expertise. The Community Development Board is another group of appointed citizens. I just want to be clear that when the Community Development Board says something, it's not an edict from a higher power. It's another group of residents appointed by the mayor. Just really want to really want to clarify that there. And the only other requirement under MGL is that they hold public hearings on any proposed changes to zoning, much like Council does. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Councilor Scarlatti.

[George Scarpelli]: For the communication, if you can, because this is what I'm saying. We need to know that the communication that's going out there, that it's presented correctly. right? So if we can ask the Community Development Board to restructure what those changes were, so those statements are false, so we can move forward. That's all. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: If the motion is that we request that the Office of Community Development state what was changed And what what recommendations of the community level board were adopted for Santa Street and which were not and put that out, I would second that it's in our records, but if they want to say it again, I mean that's fine but but my point being that this is, this is what's at issue here, like, I agree. This started to go off of the rails when communications started to go out that contained inaccurate information, particularly communications that came from the administration. Communications that didn't get reviewed by the council team leading the project, co-leading the project with the mayor's planning staff or with the zoning consultants. And that's because those decisions were political decisions. They were not decisions made in service of the project. They were decisions made in service of whatever fears or inaccurate information was driving the decision-making process. And like, this is the thing, right? Like, I think it's the reason that Kit got frustrated, Councilor Collins got frustrated, right? Up until May, we were not really aware that the mayor had issues with how the project was going, right? And I'm not gonna go inside the administration and say, who's doing a good job or not doing a good job. We were operating under the assumption that we were doing co-leading a project with the Planning Development Sustainability Office, which is part of the mayor's administration. I still to this day have not heard the mayor articulate a different vision for zoning than what has been put out or what is in the comprehensive plan. I still to this date haven't heard the mayor really take accountability and responsibility for the role in the process. It basically sounded to me like, and we heard it in what she said, she's like, my biggest weakness is I trust too much. That's basically the fundamental thing that's in the letter, right? And it's like, I trusted you guys to do the project, And so I wasn't really involved and then once I saw the results I got frustrated. And, you know, that's just not when kids saying for months we need more communications when kids literally writing the city website, which is the job of the communications team, like, and when that's what I'm saying like It was coming up in meetings very regularly that we wanna do more and we wanna be more engaged. And the person who holds the purse strings and the only person who can do an appropriation is the only person that can sign contracts. We're not getting the response from them. It's the strong mayor plan A system that we live in. And I just think it's a day late and a dollar short to be like, well, I trusted everybody and they let me down. We're doing our best with what you give us. So that's all I'm saying. If it's about getting the accurate information out, that's been my biggest issue for the last three months is that I think less than accurate to boldly and blatantly inaccurate information has gone out that has scared residents, that doesn't accurately reflect what the zoning proposals entail. So if we want to start with Salem Street and ask the Office of Community Development or Planning Development and Sustainability to issue a press release that says what was adopted and what wasn't from the Community Development Board, I'm in. So I'd be happy to include that as a B paper or an amendment, whatever.

[Kit Collins]: Great. Why don't we take all votes at the end of this?

[Zac Bears]: It's going to be a B paper.

[Kit Collins]: B paper?

[Zac Bears]: Yeah.

[Kit Collins]: Great. Great. There's a second on the B paper. Second. I think part of what is so frustrating to me about this, speaking from the chair, I think part of what is so frustrating to me about the tenor of this conversation specifically is that I think for 18 months, this council has internally agreed on what we need to make this process better. Even if we have disagreed on specific zoning proposals, I think we've all been saying in various ways, every single one of us, We could use more resources to really do this right and really do this in the way that community members are asking for. Some of us voiced specific strategies and tactics. Others were more focused on other specific strategies and tactics. Sometimes we disagreed on what we thought would be the best fit for giving the community the robust, I think we've all held the goal of making this process uniquely and unprecedentedly accessible beyond the minimum, which we've always done, of what is required of us by state law. And I just think I want to be clear, I think we really need to be clear about what we're debating here in this conversation. We are debating whether to ask the mayor, who is the only person who has the power to appropriate the resources to make this process into an even more communicative, deliberate, inclusive process that I think we have all been asking for, to make that possible, because she is the only one who can, or if we are really okay with the mayor asking the city council to make a choice between doing this very consequential process on a shoestring versus throwing out five years of work and financial investments and doing it not at all, because that is the choice that's before us. And I think I share, I think a little bit of regret that probably President Bears also does that we were not more communicative about the difficulties that we have been experiencing since January of 2024 about doing this ambitious, very good, very ambitious process under this scope. I think that we have done a really good job compared to the resources that we've been given to try to make this extremely accessible. I think our consultant has been incredibly flexible. I think our city staff has been wonderful, helpful, skeptical in all the ways that they have been. I think that Councilors have really stepped up. to try to use their individual platforms, all of us, to get information out into the community to try to make this accessible. I know for myself, for a good part of this year, I was serving as essentially a pro bono communications officer for the planning department, which nobody wants. That's not best practice. That wasn't anybody's plan A. That's what happens when you try to shoehorn making manifest the mayor's comprehensive plan into a two-year process. And I wanna be really clear that I am never going to be okay with the mayor holding the resolution of that comprehensive planning process hostage over this political situation, which is how I read that public letter. And I am never going to respect the mayor positioning the $200,000 that President Bears is asking for in this resolution as though it's some wasteful and exorbitant expenditure when to fail to give this process the resources that it needs to be done successfully isn't just declining to spend more money, it is wasting the five years of work that have gotten us to this point and the many thousands of dollars that we have already invested in this very important and very worthwhile process. So the reframe there, I think is really important. And I think that we are all aligned on what we know needs to happen in the city. We know it needs to be easier to find and keep a home here. It needs to be easier to open a business here. It needs to be more lively and fun in our commercial districts and our squares. I think we all agree on that. and it would be a huge waste if the mayor takes the good work that so many people, city staff, Councilors, community members have been collaborating on for years. And instead of saying time to pivot, what do we need right now so that we can see this through in the right way, decides to catastrophize and politicize and spread misinformation about what's really going on here. Because what we are trying to do is manifest her comprehensive plan. And I still think that's really worthwhile. And I think everybody knows how passionate about it I am. And I'm willing to compromise on the timeline if it means that we do it right. And that is all we are asking for. So especially after her 20 years on the body that actually has the purview over zoning, I would hope she'd be willing to be a little more flexible than that public letter made her out to be to appropriate the resources that would make this be the project that the community of Medford really deserves. I see planner Evans on zoom. Are there any other city Councilors who would like to weigh in before we take votes? Danielle, go ahead. Unmuted you, but we can't hear you.

[Danielle Evans]: Hi, can you hear me? Go for it. I can't have my it won't let me turn my camera on, but I'm here. I've been listening, and if anyone has any questions for me, I'm happy to answer them. I think I'm going to try to use I statements because I'm not speaking for the mayor's office, and I'm not speaking for Director Hunt, who is on a much deserved vacation, and I'm glad that she is not up at 1235 watching this meeting. So I'm trying to handle that. I think we all know that the zoning needs to be updated and that the resources, the funding that was made available at the beginning was insufficient for what this project kind of grew into. So as city staff, we kind of have to backfill and we're working as a team with the consultants But basically, I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time articulating myself at this point. But our officer, I have been saying that we need to slow it down a bit because we can't give it the time and attention and the scrutiny that it needs so that we can make sure that there aren't unintended consequences in some of the zoning. It's moving very fast. worked in city planning for over 20 years. I've sat on a zoning board before. I've written zoning as a planner. So I actually have a lot of experience, probably the most experience, not to, you know, toot my own horn or anything, but it is very fast. I don't think there's a pro and against side. I think there's a lot of very rational people in the middle, and we just need to take the time. So I'm hoping that we can get the consultants back on board because our office does not have the staff capacity to do this in-house. If we had a handful of other planners, it'd still be pretty tricky to do since I also have to do all the site plan review, and that's going to start coming. very quickly, we unfortunately burned out a lot of the CD board members. And also, I don't think it would be appropriate for the volunteer community development board members to come and give a presentation at a city council meeting. We have professional planning staff that act as agents for the board and can kind of explain those things. They are volunteers, they're not paid. Pittance of a stipend like $900 for the whole year. They have full time jobs. So if I. I'm happy to answer any questions and explain any of the process. I'm more of an incrementalist. I also the idea of. passing zoning and then going back and making changes is not a bad thing. Zoning is always iterative. You pass something and then once you start working with it, because right now where we're actually reviewing proposals for the sales recorder and there's things in there that are kind of quirky and don't make any sense because you don't realize what the zoning really says until you start applying it to real world cases. So Changing things is not bad. It's not a failure. It's learning and being able to change as we get more information or circumstances change. I think that the culture of the city has been that zoning is so permanent that you never change it. We're so fortunate to be a city that we can change it as often as we want. We're not a town where you can only do it at town meetings. It's, we can fix things when we find mistakes. Basically, that's, that's all I have to say right now. And thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thanks, Daniel. We'll go back to Councilor Scarpelli, then we'll take public comment.

[George Scarpelli]: First, Daniel, thank you for being up this late. And again, in this hour, I made any comment to call out or blame the director. That's not my intent. My intent was to ask these questions where only people that were directly involved. Was this going fast, in your opinion? I mean, everybody's saying it, but was this going too fast, in your opinion?

[Kit Collins]: You're welcome to respond if you wish to.

[Danielle Evans]: Ru, the chair. In complete honesty, yes. From my perspective, the pace was too fast for our limited capacity to be able to keep up with it. I think that if the changes were maybe less controversial, and were able to make it through the public hearing processes at the original timeline. It would still be ambitious, but it wouldn't have been so overwhelming. I think the problem is that they started backing up. So they started getting stacked on each other, that it was really hard to keep up with what was going on because If I, if I can, especially with the residential zoning, I had kind of advocated that that be put at the end that we focused on the squares in the quarters, our density, the biggest opportunities for change. And then once we find out what those anchors are, then we would fill in around it with the residential zoning. which will be informed by the denser areas where you kind of feather out to lower density where there isn't the transit or the infrastructure for it.

[George Scarpelli]: And if I could stop you there, Danielle, I want to apologize because you know what, I shouldn't even ask you any questions. I think that we made a motion that maybe we should all sit together and when we're all lucid, I think that We have had a long, it's almost one o'clock in the morning, so I apologize. I shouldn't have even asked you any questions and I'm gonna leave it at that. I'd like to, I know we made a motion to maybe meet with the team again and try to understand so we can get a path to move forward so that there isn't contention with the mayor's office and we do find a way to keep this going, but also looking at the issues and concerns that we brought up and the confusion that is out there that's causing the yanks. So again, I'm going to reframe for any more questions and thank you for being up this late. I apologize.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor. We'll go back to President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And yeah, thank you, Danielle. I appreciate it. And I think like what you said, elucidates the point, right? Like we started the project with the resources we had to try to implement the full comprehensive plan. And, you know, we were like, here are the nine amendments and we're going to do these and knowing what we know now, we didn't expect some of these proposals to end up at two, three, four, five more public hearings than we had outlined in the timeline. Then they start to back up against each other. We started residential when we did, and maybe Danielle was right now looking at back in hindsight, but the flip side of that discussion internally was residential is going to be really big. We should start it early so we have more time. And I think we're now really getting into the nitty gritty of understanding how we got to where we're getting. And like I appreciate Danielle like I think the team, the team that's been working on this to bring things and try to get the scheduling of the planning and permitting committee and the Community Development Board and the council and all the public hearings across the nine proposed amendment categories, like we had honest disagreements internally. And, and, but honestly, We had some honest disagreements internally, we had a lot more general agreement. And we started to realize, especially we did the framework right, then we did Mystic and Greenscore, and then we did Salem. You can hear from what Danielle said and what I'm talking about, what Kit's been talking about in the mayor's letter, when it started to become clear that if the process was gonna go this direction, and then we can talk about the million different reasons why the process went that direction, and that's a more complicated conversation, how it got stretched out. We are where we are now, which is that we see how we got here, and more time makes sense because there were assumptions made at the beginning of the process that proved themselves to be untrue. And that's very different from, again, and I don't say this to bring up the point again, right? But like we acted in good faith to do a good thing. We found out that some of the assumptions we made weren't accurate. We tried to correct for them. And then the corrections weren't enough and we're correcting them for them more specifically because of the community development board's feedback that the public hearings are too much for them. That's the main thing driving the change. I think that's the main thing driving the change here. And then the mayor's role in that, she can choose to define it however she wants, but I've said my piece on that. That's just very different from the idea that we started it from the beginning, trying not to involve people because we wanted an outcome. That's all I'm saying.

[Kit Collins]: We'll go to Councilor Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I call the question. I love you all. It's too late. We need to do public participation and get out of here. I can't do this.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. We will start at the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes. Oh, sorry.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Sorry. Sorry.

[Gaston Fiore]: Thank you. Thank you ma'am. I hope we can agree on a few things that I'm just going to describe. So the first one is like, so we're dealing with zoning today at like 1246am. There's a CDB meeting tomorrow on residential zoning. There's a PPC We're going to cancel it. We're going to cancel it. Okay, but that was on there. So we cannot keep up. I mean, no reasonable person that wants to invest their time on this can keep up. And I think this needs to be fixed. I mean, it just can't keep happening. And I think we would all agree, it's not good for anyone. It's not good for Daniel. It's not good for us. It's not good for you. It's not good for absolutely anyone. And it's part of the communication. So, that one one point two is that I think there was also a failure and sort of adapting quickly enough, as you saw that Daniel. When she started mentioning like we're getting over when we're going to run, I didn't see the city council really. listening to that too much. I mean, we had a, there was an agenda today to put the corridors into the CDB. I don't know whether that was procedural or not. It had to be there anyways. It was tabled. But that needs to be addressed as well. So and then the other thing is like, where are we going with this? Because I honestly, you know, Each of you has an incentive to get reelected. And that's going to have an influence in your decision, except for Chair Collins. So what we need to inform the public, where is this going? What are we trying to achieve if we delay this? What's going on? I don't know. And I've been super involved in residential zoning. I have no idea where we're going from here. And this shouldn't be discussed at 1247A. Thank you so much. Great.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Gaston. And I'll just reiterate maybe more clearly than I did the first time. I think all of the concerns that you put really well just now are exactly what we're trying to fix. We will go to Zoom next. Cheryl, name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. What stands out to me is there's no call for study or analysis in this resolution. So opinions will still be the entire basis for the zoning. There's no set timeline or process outlined here. Why was this not brought forward in the planning and permitting committee in coordination with the mayor's office to create a real timeline and specific processes that might happen before new zoning is written? The zoning should be called back to planning and permitting and properly written. The unstudied Salem Street and Mystic Ave zoning should not remain intact. They were subjected to the same lack of analysis and study, so deserve the same treatment as the NR district's need. Reverting Park and Salem to MX2 added two floors of height and all the uses that were taken out as too close to the neighborhoods. So we resent that you're saying it's one change was not adopted. The parking minimum should be set before any zoning is passed and should reflect actual conditions, as even President Bierce has admitted cars are the primary transportation residents use. So the OR item to remove parking minimums is in direct contradiction of the reality of car ownership in Medford. There is no urgency to rezone and no need to rezone poorly. There are existing conditions analysis that must be done. Impacts must be considered. low to our infrastructure have to be factored in. All of these measures are called for in the comprehensive plan, climate plan, and housing production plan that this body mentions frequently, but is not following. You are not following any of these plans. It is not as simple as quote, we just need density. The new zoning as written encourages luxury housing and discourages affordable housing in many ways. It does not encourage businesses or vibrant commercial areas. Oversimplifying this process will be to our detriment. A strong path forward must include analysis. If Ennis is unable to perform the work appropriately, then perhaps we now should seek a different consultant. Our zoning is too important to be written without any solid basis. Doing something poorly and causing harm is not better than doing nothing. Opinions are not enough, no matter whose opinions they are. That's it. Thanks.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Name and address for the record, please. At the podium, you'll have three minutes.

[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Mr. Alejo, 40 Robinson Road. So the first thing I'll say is just the late hour here. I mean, it's 1 AM, public comment is opening. This paper is extremely substantive. Like this chamber should be packed. And I'm sure a lot of people wanted to speak about this tonight, but couldn't because of how much time we spent on the other paper. I'll try to just be as condensed as possible with my thoughts on this matter. First of all, I'll start with the positive thing. That is, I do think it's a good thing to have these kind of press release statements on positions. So I appreciate that the council president did that in the form of a speech, and that the mayor released what could be called a press release, just basically saying where they're at. I think that's helpful for the public and following. So I would encourage putting things in writing so people can follow what's going on because really developments are happening rather fast. I don't support extending the INIS contract unless conditions are met. I think it's before we even talk about that, you know, first we have to say, obviously, you know, this is coming as a result of a pretty big public backlash against changes when residents actually started to become informed about what was going to happen if these changes were approved. So it goes to show you that we can't assume a louder vocal minority of activist residents are representative of what all residents think, right? And we have to also think about, yes, there were probably election concerns that got us to this point as well. So I think with the conditions that the mayor has put out there, I think generally they're pretty reasonable. But I think the first and most important one has to be restarting this process, given the concerns that have been expressed. And I don't think the Community Development Board, based on the feedback it has received, could in good conscience possibly recommend to you the map in its current form for a final vote, just because of all the feedback criticizing it that has been received. So I would encourage all of you to work with the mayor, try to reach an agreement here, and hopefully it's not just a repackaging of what has been extensively criticized. I think it's important that all of you proceed in good faith here. acknowledge this desire not for dramatic density increases that harms the character of our community. You know, people move to Medford because they don't want to live in a place like Somerville or Cambridge. It's not because they want a replica of it. We can address issues with housing demand without wiping out the reasons that Medford is a good place to live. It does offer this increasingly rare thing in the overpopulated world that we live in called home ownership. I think this kind of do or die alarmism that we've been seeing from people who think we need the density at all costs, I don't think it's helping anyone. And I think it's really ignoring this problem. Affordable housing is not a new one. This burden is really being placed disproportionately.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. That's time.

[Nick Giurleo]: On suburban communities like Medford. So work with the mayor. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: We'll go back to Zoom. Paige, name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes.

[Page Buldini]: Go ahead. Hi there, Page Buldini. Thank you for the late hour. 37 Winter Street and my business is 319 Boston Ave. I support zoning reform. We need this in our city, but we have to do it right. I appreciate Ms. Evans' perspective tonight and the honesty and openness from everyone here to build a stronger process. And I want to thank the mayor for acknowledging just how personal and emotional this has become for so many. Let's start when we're ready in our business district. That's how we bring in revenue, support our economy, and make sure zoning works. Let's strengthen our storefront programs, incentivize landlords, and build in protections for small businesses. Parking can't be an afterthought. It needs to be planned for every district from the start. I implore you to please speak directly with our city service providers, Medford Fire, Police, DPW and our schools and their union members and truly listen to their real life experience before moving forward. The comprehensive plan is a strong foundation but we need both the data and the real life input to guide us. And can we please if possible share a true updated timeline. I know how hard it is for everyone to keep up, even for those of us who are trying. Let's revisit Salem Street and Mystic Ave. Let's start with commercial. And when we get that right, then we move into residential. Let's take the time to get this right for Medford. And while we're at it, we've already seen what partnerships can look like. Tufts has agreed to fund a Boston Ave streetscape study. That's the kind of outside support that we should be seeking, and we can be successful. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much.

[Kit Collins]: We will go to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You will have three minutes.

[Micah Kesselman]: Michael Kesselman 99 Main Street, my name and address for a second. I want to point out a couple things. One, I mean, to be clear, there's mentioned like oh there's like this vocal minority in the city that's in favor of rezoning and densifying or. I live in South Medford, my strip of South Medford, I don't know a single person who isn't in favor of increased density. I'm a homeowner, I know a bunch of other homeowners, and we all are fine with increased density. Some of you seem to be under the impression that if your zone is up zone for increased density, Zack's gonna kick open your door and move you out and put a fucking skyscraper, I'm sorry. So like, that's not what, that just doesn't make sense. It's not what's gonna happen. You will still own your homes, your neighbors will still own their homes, but in the future, if they sell their home or if you sell your home, then you will have the option of selling to a developer that can build a more dense housing. At the end of the day, we need densification. We need to be able to give more people housing in our city. This is something that's hitting everywhere in the greater Boston metro area. I hesitate to call Medford a suburb because I'm from the Midwest originally, and suburbs here are not what we would call a suburb in the Midwest, by the way. This is a metropolitan area. This is a city. So we need to treat it like that. The other thing I want to quickly mention, which the previous commenter brought up, is that you want to do in this sort of like like sequential mode of first residential then commercial then whatever, that's not feasible, that doesn't make sense. If you are zoning, you need like commercial and residential need to be zoned together and updated together so that they can actually support each other in tandem for sustainable growth. This is just basic logic, how it has like you can't just back and forth go back and forth. If you don't have the housing, you don't have the residence to support the businesses, then that commercial zoning means squat. But if you don't have the commercial zoning to support people living in the increased residences, then you're not gonna have people who are gonna, you're not gonna have as many people wanna move in. Maybe, probably not. But point being, like, there's no reason to do this weird, like, sequential back and forth. And I'll say that, you know, from my perspective, I don't know, maybe it's from my work experience but it does not seem like this has been a fast process by any means. This has been going on for years. Not only has it been going on for years. It's been fairly transparent. If you want to know the information, it's not hard to find. It is on you at some point to find the information. You can find it. And if a Councilor won't give you that information, email a different Councilor. It's the council's job to give you that information. And they can, and they will.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you.

[Crystal Huff]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Sam Goldstein]: Hi, Sam Goldstein, 29 Martin Street. I think I have the honor of being the speaker at 1am today. If this was any other issue, I would not be here still. So, you know, I think there's been a lot of pernicious, for lack of a better word, mishegas that's been spewed around this, in particular, You know, I think there's been this narrative that, you know, this is going too fast. I think this narrative has been pushed out, you know, about every progressive thing that the city has done in the last six years. You know, we saw with the Columbus School, we saw with Prop two and a half stuff. And once again, we're hearing it now. I'm deeply disturbed by the mayor's conduct over the last couple of months. I find it unbecoming. I find it offensive that she would nuke this project after so many years. And, you know, I think Councilor Bears said that, you know, the mayor and he, you know, disagreed on how we got to this point. But, you know, as far as I can tell, the mayor's gone on the record saying that she wasn't paying attention to this. You know, we've seen tonight and over the last, you know, few weeks, you know, people on this city council and the mayor apparently herself throwing city staff under the bus in a way that I think is very inappropriate, but disturbingly part of a practice, a pattern of practice that goes back to Alicia Nunnally Benjamin, and other people who work for the city, to the drug testing staff at the city yard. There's been a consistent disrespect, disregard towards city staff, and I find it really just disturbing and grotesque. You know I was in this building last Wednesday I attended a meeting of the affordable housing trust fund, they're presenting a plan that they've been working on for the last year. There was I think going on in here installation of the poet laureate for the city. I think the mayor and some city Councilors were in attendance. And at some point, you know, Councilor bears dropped into the meeting, but who didn't drop into the meeting was Mayor Lungo-Koehn, despite the fact that she sits on that body. And I think it really goes to the approach of this incompetent person who is torpedoing or attempting to torpedo something that has been the product of years of work. And I just frankly like to quote the movie, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. I wish more people were here to hear it, but I would really implore folks to write somebody in for mayor this fall. It's disgusting that she waited until after the filing deadline to respond.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. We're just going to hold really quickly. It sounds like the video may have gone out. Just a moment to go online. It's, it's, it is still live streaming to YouTube.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay.

[Kit Collins]: Excuse me. We are. Hang on. Hang on. I am still chairing the meeting.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Oh, well, why would it ever do that? All right, all right, everybody chill.

[Kit Collins]: All right, I'm sorry, we have to go back to Zoom because we're alternating. Sorry, we're gonna go back to Zoom before we go to you. All right, I'm still sharing, everybody be quiet. Okay, everybody be quiet. All the men that are talking, stop talking. William, I'm going to ask you to unmute, name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

[William Navarre]: Hello, thank you for recognizing me. William Navarre, 108 Medford Street, apartment 1B. I want to make the point that at the same time as the state legislature passed the MBTA Communities Act, they also took affirmative steps, the legislature and Republican Governor Charlie Baker, affirmative steps to make it easier for communities to zone for more multifamily housing beyond just the famous mandates that we all hear about with the MBTA Communities Act. They were responding to the fact that communities have long been way too cautious to say yes I think our mayor is demanding a level of caution about saying yes to more housing that is unwarranted and is exactly what everybody's trying to address and has identified as the reason why we keep getting housing crisis, keep getting more people pushed further, further away from the city. We need more caution about constantly saying no. I also think if this community is trying to say fossil fuels are against our values, then so is mandating parking. Continuing a parking-first development model is going to ensure that the next generation is as car-dependent as the present generation. the city council working to make tough choices to address the housing crisis at something close to, I don't think it's quite there, but something close to the scale required to address the issue is commendable. And I encourage you guys to keep at it. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. We'll go back to the podium. We'll have three minutes.

[Nate Merritt]: Mayor 373 Riverside Ave. One of the things that I've been hearing tonight is a fear of sunk cost. It's a common argument that happens in a lot of problems, right, especially long term projects. And we can't possibly, you know, not do something because of the sunk cost that's happened, whether it's time, money, both. Personally, I've heard more about zoning than I ever want to in my life, and probably the same as most of you. the way that some of the information has been presented along the way, and I've been to CDB meetings, I've been to city council meetings, some of the way that the maps were presented in the before and after was not as well done as maybe it could have been. I guess a question for the council is, besides Innis, are there other outfits that maybe could have done a better job? And now that there's an opportunity here to do a little reflection. If you had your wish, right, you want $150,000 to keep Innis going. Would it not also be worth considering, I want $200,000 to have a different company maybe that could communicate or perform better? I don't know. I would just say, consider that and maybe use this opportunity right, if there are better alternatives or other things you can consider, right, besides just worrying about the sunk costs specifically with a particular company. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. We will go back to Zoom. Crystal, name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.

[Crystal Huff]: Hi, my name is Crystal Huff. My pronouns are they, them. My address is actually in Ward 5 of Somerville. I'm a volunteer with Mutual Aid of Medford and Somerville, MAMAS. And I just wanted to say as someone who does a lot of volunteer work in both communities that I and others in MAMAS really appreciate anything that you can do to build more housing. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you for your comments. Back to you.

[Sam Goldstein]: Sam Goldstein, 29 Martin Street. I just wanted to note another and frankly, like the maybe most concerning piece of what's been going on, which is that The outreach that the city, that the mayor has conducted around this has put to use particular methods of contact that heavily bias outreach towards single family homeowners, people who live in the city. the houses that they own, so specifically the tax bill letters, right? I'm a renter, I don't see my landlord's tax bill. And neither do the majority of residents in this city who also rent. So that's one thing, similarly with the reverse, excuse me, it's late, reverse 911 outreach. Presumably this is going out over landlines primarily, That is also biased towards older folks who have a landline. And much of this outreach has, again, been conducted over Facebook, which, like the other modes of contact, is biased towards older voters. Younger folks tend to use other social media platforms, not beyond social media. So I just want to make the very clear point here that I hope that going forward, whatever contact you know, occurs, it doesn't merely, you know, focus on like, you know, not lying and having like consistent like verbiage, but that the mode of contact is one that isn't biased towards, towards turning out a particular group, because I think that, you know, the city's kind of been, you know, going to the bathroom where it eats.

[Kit Collins]: All right, final speaker.

[Micah Kesselman]: Yeah, Michael Kesselman, 499 Main Street. I just wanted to make one last comment about, yeah, the mayor's mode of communications. Actually, what I think would be wonderful to see is if the mayor gave an articulated, an actual explanation of how this process could get to this point without her knowing anything. Because that's wildly incompetent and negligent. Like that's crazy. And it really can't be understated how unacceptable that is. And everyone who watches this council session and votes should really think about that because Yo, like this is her job. This is her job. And she didn't know what was going on until residents emailed her, even though people like, what? It's fakakta.

[Kit Collins]: You're welcome to stand at the podium.

[Paulette Vartabedian]: Paulette Vartabedian, 27 Central Lab Medford. I just want to comment on some of the earlier comments that were made. I'm from the Salem Street District. I think everyone knows. So when the methadone dispensary or clinic was first brought in, no one knew about it. Even the abutters didn't know about it. And that's what woke up the sleeping lion in our district. And since then, a lot more people citywide have been involved because things that have been, proposed have affected them. When things affect someone, that's when you open your eyes. Have I been foolish by not paying more attention before? Sure, I'll take that responsibility. But that is from everyone I know, and I know a lot of people, that that was the beginning of the distrust of this city council because it was like snuck in. And then with these latest changes that have happened after that meeting at the Roberts, we didn't want medical because we were afraid of that methadone coming in in an inappropriate area again. And what happened? The council changed it back so medical can come in. Well, that's what we think. When we were called NIMBYs, because we didn't want it in our neighborhood, but when we said, have it in West Medford, it's right on a commuter rail, you have tons of open stores. Oh, no, there's a school there. So it's okay to have it near our school, but not your school. This is part of the beginning of the distrust. Also, I was at that meeting when Councilor Leming at midnight made the amendment to change some of the zoning and community development board's recommendations. I was speechless, and that's pretty rare. So these are the reasons why the residents distrust the council. Now, we're not privy to everything. You are. We can only make our opinions from what we see and hear. So I'm just asking you, we are not against change. We want change. Salem Street has been the way it was since I was a kid. That's a long time. We need changes in zoning, but just not to the extent. We want to live in our area without being Oh, I had the word. The quality of life needs to stay pretty much the same. Now, does that mean you don't have to have three-story buildings? No, but six, seven-story buildings is going to affect the quality of life for people that are used to living in single-family, tree-lined streets. So please, take your time. Do it right the first time. Don't let this be another Ring Road fiasco. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Thanks, Paula. And just a really quick point of information. I just want to clarify that the proposed substance abuse disorder treatment clinic, not a council project. The city council is not and cannot be involved in recruitment. of specific business entities to parcels where those uses are legally allowed, which was the case for that entity on Salem Street when it was proposed. I'm just restating that to state it as a city council project is not accurate. And I think part of what we're talking about this evening is trying to get the city to invest in communication resources so that disinformation like that will not proliferate so deeply into the community. I'll go back to President Bears and then we'll take a vote.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks. One of the recommendations of the Community Development Board was not to allow medical uses in the entire Salem Street corridor. And we accepted that. There's no medical uses allowed in the Salem Street corridor. Right, but it doesn't allow that was Right, it adopted a proposal so that you can't, it changed the medical use, like we did not adopt the medical piece of things. So you can't have the same proposal that went to the CD board last year. That wasn't even allowed. That's what I'm saying. I'm just saying we didn't reverse that recommendation. So anyone who's saying that we reversed that recommendation is not telling the truth.

[Kit Collins]: Okay, one mic, we can't hear you, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Zac Bears]: I'm not talking about the proposed clinic from last year. I'm saying that when it came to the zoning, one of the community development board's recommendations was to create only a neighborhood medical use that allowed very limited medical things to address potentially impactful medical uses like what you're talking about. People have said the council threw that away and took that away. We did not do that. That recommendation was adopted. So it just goes back to this larger point, right? People are, you know, incorrect information goes out there, it suits a narrative, it gets repeated, people believe it, and then it gets continued. It's a never ending cycle. It's not really worth our time at this point.

[Kit Collins]: to wrap up the discussion. one councilor, I think that there's a way that the mayor could choose to make appropriations around the zoning project that would reveal a genuine interest in collaborating and getting good information out to the people of Medford, all of whom I think are interested in participating in this in good faith. And there's another way of doing that that reveals nothing more than a desire to throw the city council under the bus and erase the perspectives of people who have been in favor of zoning reform, no matter where you fall on that spectrum. And I certainly hope that we can move forward with the first one. We're going to take the B paper first. Mr. Clerk, do you have that language? Cause I definitely don't.

[Adam Hurtubise]: It was, um, the, the version that the, the final version, which is the one that seems to be, uh, the one that's been agreed upon, uh, to put before the council was, uh, to find out what the CD board recommended, uh, what, what CD board recommendations were accepted, uh, for Salem street and what were not.

[Kit Collins]: President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: I came in specifically to request that the Planning and Development and Sustainability Office issue a public statement about what CD board recommendations were accepted by the council, and they can refer to the March 11th council records, which I read earlier in this meeting.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. They were approved by a vote of this council. On the B paper by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by President Bears for the CDB to release a public statement referring to the March 11th records of the City Council articulating the recommendations of the CDB on the Salem Street zoning district and the ensuing Council vote on those recommendations. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

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

[Kit Collins]: Yes. Six in favor, one absent. The motion passes. I see President Bears and then Councilor Leming. Okay. Councilor Leming, do you have a comment? No. Great. On the main paper, motion to approve by President Bears, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll. It's the three-page long thing. Sorry, just to summarize, the main paper is the resolution by President Bears, which we read into the record earlier this meeting, calling for the shared path forward with the mayor on the rezoning project, which includes a request for more appropriations to expand public process and communications. Mr. Clerk, whenever you're ready.

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

[Kit Collins]: Yes. Five in favor. One absent. One opposed. The motion passes.

[Zac Bears]: 25-124 offered by Councilor Callahan and Vice President Collins, Street Committee Ordinance. We did receive a communication from Kevin Foley, the city solicitor today, that he would like some time to review the removals section of this ordinance, removals of appointees. And Councilor Callahan's on here. We have a motion to table by Councilor Leming. Table to the next regular meeting by Councilor Leming, seconded by Vice President Collins. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Callahan is absent. Vice President Collins. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng. Is he gone?

[Zac Bears]: He's absent. OK. President Bears. Yes. 5-0-2. 5 in the affirmative, 2 absent, motion passes. Vice President Collins. On the motion to take paper 25118, amendments to the personnel ordinance, civil project manager. and approved for third reading in city council july 15th approved for first reading advertised july 24th member transcript and summerville journal in city council august 5th eligible for third reading on the motion of vice president con seconded by seconded by councilor lazaro mr clerk please call the roll hang on

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

[Zac Bears]: Yes, five in the affirmative, two absent, the motion, sorry, five in the affirmative, four in the affirmative, one in the negative, two absent, the motion passes. Is there a motion on the floor? On the motion adjourned by Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Mr. Clerk, please spell the roll. Councilor Callahan is absent. Vice President Collins, Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Leming, Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Tseng is absent. President Bears. Yes. Finally heard of two absent. The motion passes. The meeting is adjourned.

Zac Bears total time: 56.41 minutes total words: 2137	Matt Leming total time: 11.51 minutes total words: 249	Emily Lazzaro total time: 13.35 minutes total words: 333	Kit Collins total time: 51.24 minutes total words: 2249
George Scarpelli total time: 28.69 minutes total words: 727	Justin Tseng total time: 8.38 minutes total words: 96	Patrick Clerkin total time: 2.96 minutes total words: 35	Nick Giurleo total time: 5.95 minutes total words: 102
Miranda Briseno total time: 2.23 minutes total words: 36	Jenny Graham total time: 3.01 minutes total words: 59	Nate Merritt total time: 4.9 minutes total words: 241	Page Buldini total time: 1.77 minutes total words: 186