total time: 25.44 minutes
total words: 1978
[John Petrella]: Hello everyone and welcome to Method Happenings, a show for and about the city of Medford, and I am John Petrella. And the purpose of this program is to give Method citizens facts and information to help you make informed choices. But before I introduce today's special guest, I want to take a moment to extend an invitation to any member of the Medford City Council and also any member of the Medford School Committee who is a candidate for re-election to appear on Medford Happenings to share their positions on current issues facing the city. And you can do this by reaching us at methodhappenings02155 at gmail.com. And now, I wanna give a warm welcome to our special guest, Milva McDonald, who is a candidate for our Method City Council, and I wanna thank you, Milva, for running.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, and thanks for inviting me. I'm excited to be here.
[John Petrella]: Thank you, Milva. We're gonna get right into this, so we'll get started. If you can give the audience some background information about yourself, Who's Milva McDonald? Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'm Milva McDonald, and I've lived in Medford for about 32 years. I've been in my current home in West Medford for about 25 years. I had several, three decades, I worked in journalism at the Boston Globe in the calendar section, if anybody remembers that.
[John Petrella]: Oh, I remember the calendar section.
[Milva McDonald]: That was a great section. LS. It was. It was great. I also worked in the Globe West and Northwest and then eventually Boston.com. Now I work for a publicist, a very niche publicist. We promote exclusively jazz musicians. I also do some teaching and tutoring. I have some students. I homeschooled all four of my kids. So, and during that time, I co-founded a secular nonprofit called Advocates for Home Education in Massachusetts, which is still thriving. And I'm also a writer. I've written a couple of books about homeschooling. I've written short stories that I've had published in various journals. I also love music. I sing in three choruses, one called the Holla Lisa Singers. And the director of that chorus lives right here in Medford also. And I just sang in the Harvard Summer Chorus. That was great fun. And another chorus called Mutamonia. I also am a potter. I took up pottery a couple of years ago, and I absolutely love it. So you can see me at craft fairs around Medford this fall.
[John Petrella]: Nice, very nice.
[Milva McDonald]: And I also have a few things at the gift shop at Arts Collaborative Medford. Oh, okay, that's wonderful. That's a great background. A lot of experience. Yeah, and I said I have four kids. I also have three grandkids.
[John Petrella]: Wow, wow. So you are a busy person. Quite accomplished too, I'll add that to your resume there. That's pretty impressive. Nice background. Can you give us a few reasons why you're running for a seat on the Medford City Council?
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. Well, giving back to the community has always been important to me and I've always been a hard worker. I kind of got my work ethic from my mom. She was an Italian immigrant who came to the United States in the 1950s. at the age of 27. It was quite the culture shock for her. She had really never been 10 miles out of her village until that point and now she's in this country experiencing running water, electricity, heat for the very first time. So my Italian heritage and my experience as the daughter of a working class immigrant sort of contribute to who I am. And my views on the importance of listening, tolerance, empathy, things like that. So that's sort of a background. But I also really like to get things done. And a few years ago, I decided that I'd been hearing about charter review in the city for a very long time, and I thought, I really would like to see this get done. So in 2021, I kind of just rallied people and said, hey, I'm going to invite everybody over, talk about charter review. And some people that had been involved in the past, like Jim Silva and a couple of other people, we got together, we sort of brought, we created a group called the Medford Charter Review Coalition. And we were pursuing different ways to get charter review done. We said we're just going to try everything and we were collecting signatures. But we also learned that one of the ways and which is actually the most common way for charter review to get done in Massachusetts is for a city committee to be appointed. And then that committee would do the work of the review and then it would go through the city government and then to the state house and back to the voters. So we approached the mayor and said, would you please form a committee? And she did. And to my honor, I was appointed chair. Initially, I was co-chair with Laurel Siegel, but then she left to work in the city's planning department. And we spent, we started in about, I think it was like November or December of 2022. We finished up in late 2024, and I chaired the 11-member committee, and we dove into all things charter. We talked about Charters from around the state, we prioritize public engagement. So my experience chairing that committee, learning about local government and listening and talking to residents just really inspired me to stay involved with the city council run. I'd like to bring that same level of research and depth and listening to the city council.
[John Petrella]: Very, very good. That immigrant story, by the way, that goes, that relates to a lot of people in Medford and our audience. It really does, that's a great story. Okay, so we know you chaired the Medford Charter Study Committee, and we all thank you for your service to the city. I have to say, you and your committee, you did an excellent job. No, you did. I mean, I know the work that went in, you know, we watched the process. It was something. So, I mean, can you share your personal experience with our audience? I mean, that was a huge undertaking.
[Milva McDonald]: It was, you know, before the committee was formed, you know, I was focused on we got to get this charter review done and then it was really a big shift. It was like, oh, okay, we got the review because there was just so, it was so long in Medford just to get the review to happen before anybody could really start talking about, okay, now what, you know, what about the actual charter? So it was a shift, but we did have help. We had the Collins Center for Public Management, which is a nonprofit out of UMass Boston that helps a lot of municipalities with this kind of thing. So that was very important to have that help. And, you know, with their guidance we started looking at charters from around the state. We had a template, a modern charter template that the Collins Center provided for us so we could sort of see, you know, what are the elements that are in a modern charter, which of course our current charter very much lacks. And it was very important to us to do a lot of public engagement. So we held three public information sessions at City Hall. We created a survey that we distributed in five languages. And we held over a dozen listening sessions around the city, which were great. We worked with different organizations like Housing Medford, the Chamber of Commerce, Medford Family Network. We went to the West Medford Community Center. We just tried to cover as much ground as we could. And we sort of collected all this feedback. And that was one of my favorite parts of the process was, you know, the listening sessions and talking to people and sort of listening to their thoughts and what they wanted to see. And once we had this gathered, we sort of dug in. And then we went through the charter article by article. It's a lot of work. Yeah. We did create subcommittees. So that was pretty helpful. So the subcommittee would like go in depth on a particular article and then bring it back to the whole committee. The Collins Center helped a lot with the drafting, but I think our committee was actually pretty ambitious and we did draft several of the sections on our own. And one of the important goals was getting it on the ballot this fall. So in order to make that, timeline we were working really hard at the end.
[John Petrella]: There was a lot going on.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then once we finished our final report, yeah, once we sort of hashed everything out, incorporated the feedback, we looked at studies and things like that. Then we put it all together in a final report, submitted it to the mayor, and then she reviewed it and sent it to the council, and then it did get to the statehouse. And it is projected to be on the ballot, which I'm very excited about.
[John Petrella]: So it is going to be on the ballot.
[Milva McDonald]: That was going to be my... Everything I hear is that it is going to be. It just had its... third reading with the House. It's gone through the, it's almost through the Senate, so it should be at the Governor's desk very, very soon. That's what I hear.
[John Petrella]: Good news for Method. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And I just want to, again, thank every member of the Charter Committee, because it was a lot of work, and people really donated their time, and we had a lot of fun, too.
[John Petrella]: That's what it's all about. Fun and hard work. That's what I always. All right, so I've got to ask you this question. After two years of what we know was an intense effort, the Charter Study Committee proposed ward representation to the city council. So the council initially rejected the proposal in favor of at-large representation. I guess the question is, what did you think when you heard the council's response? You gave them a recommendation. How did you feel when you got their response to your committee's recommendations, basically?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, they proposed an alternate scheme of district representation which would have resulted in a majority at large council. I knew that they would look at it and there was an expectation that there would be changes made. That particular change, I was a bit surprised at because we didn't really have indication from many of the council members that that would be their view. Um, and the other thing that I was mostly concerned because if there was one thing that we heard over and over again in our public engagement piece, um, it was ward representation. please give the city ward representation. So it was very clear that that was what people wanted. And, you know, knowing through the process, we learned about charter reviews in other cities and, you know, charter review isn't always guaranteed to succeed. And often charter review will hinge on kind of like one major issue for the city. For instance, in Medford, there actually was a charter commission in 1978. that created a charter that got voted down. And the big issue then was mayor versus city manager. And that particular charter commission didn't recommend that and the voters said no thank you. And then in 1986 the voters did get the switch to the plan A mayor and replacing the city manager. So to my mind the big issue that I heard from most people in the city, was word representation and it didn't surprise me because before the committee even, it was something that I had been hearing about. So, you know, I felt like, Just look, I tried to speak to the council about our findings. Statistically, we are one of the only cities in Massachusetts to not have ward representation. Our council is the smallest in the state for a city of our size. It's 9 or 11 is the standard size. And with the new charter we would have 11, 8 ward and 3 at large. And I was also, in my mind was also the ultimate goal of success at the ballot box. And I felt like that was an important piece for that to happen. I think it resulted in a good public discussion where the merits and the challenges of ward representation were discussed. It was good to see people coming out to share their views communicate with the council and the mayor and I was just very glad that in the end that the council reached a compromise with the mayor that kept ward representation for council and I just want to reiterate that what you were actually doing was This is what the people want
[John Petrella]: That's what your hard work was really all about. This is what the people want. Yeah. I mean, that's.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, and there was sort of, some people countered that with, well, we don't know what the people want. There's 60,000 people in Medford. And that is true, but we have to base it on what we were hearing from people.
[John Petrella]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: And that's what we did.
[John Petrella]: And you got a good sampling, in my opinion.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[John Petrella]: And I know, I went to just about all the meetings up at City Hall, sat there and listened. And boy, it generated a lot of, you know, what you want, conversation. And I got to tell you, you got so many more people interested in the charter and learning about what was really, going on in Method. And you got to take, I give you a lot of credit for that. It's a difficult thing to do. But yet they came to City Hall, large numbers.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it was great. I mean, there were some, like some people say, well, you didn't listen to the people on everything. For instance, the mayor being on school committee, which became, I mean, that in the end, that was part of the compromise made between the mayor and the council. And, you know, what we did as a committee was we did take that public engagement very seriously. But we also talked to, I mean, we talked to almost every sitting elected. We talked to prior electeds. We talked to prior mayors. We talked to city staff. And we looked at a lot of things. And the school committee subcommittee, which was chaired by Paulette Van der Kloot, looked very carefully chair, mayor being the chair, and you know, there were various reasons that the committee decided to recommend that. It was changed, that's fine. You know, term limits was another one, because term limits are very popular, but when we dug into the data, It just, it didn't make sense for various reasons to recommend it for council and school committee. We did recommend it for mayor. But I never heard the council complain about the fact that we didn't, well, there was one time actually, once they complained. But, you know, I mean, we did our best. We took the public engagement seriously, but we also had other information that we incorporated.
[John Petrella]: Like I said, it was a tremendous effort, and you ought to be congratulated. You win the committee for what you did. You did a great job. That's the bottom line, really.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I hope everyone votes yes.
[John Petrella]: Yeah. Oh, they better. Yeah. I mean, without a doubt, I don't think there's any... Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And I just want to say one of the really important things in the new charter, if everybody votes yes and it gets voted through, is that we will have regular charter review. So we will not go for decades with our charter languishing again.
[John Petrella]: That's part of it, right? That you are going to have the reviews. And I think that's important because you made a few changes. Let's try them out, see what happens. And that's a key element. And if it's not working the way we want, we can still change things. Absolutely. Like I said, you guys covered every base. Really, you hit a home run and covered everything. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: We did our best.
[John Petrella]: Yeah. And I could talk about zoning for another two hours, but unfortunately, we have to get off that. You know, and the next subject I really want to address, Milva, I don't have to tell you a lot of talk about zoning in Medford. Yeah. I mean, it's everywhere. It's back and forth. It's on and on. So, I mean, I guess the question is what is, you know, what's your position on the zoning?
[Milva McDonald]: So my position is that the city does need a zoning overhaul. There's not really a question and I don't think there's disagreement about that. I think that there's been a lot of work done and we have these sort of visionary documents that have been guiding the process like the comprehensive plan and the housing production plan. And we've had 18 months with an outside consultant. So a lot has been done. But based on my conversation with residents and watching the community development board meetings, I think that slowing things down, especially with the residential zoning, was the right call. The good news is that people are learning about it. They know about it now. For whatever reason that didn't happen, I prefer to look forward and look at the sort of the upside of that, which is that now we actually are hearing from people. And they will have a chance to share specifics about their neighborhoods. And I think that's important because, you know, the consultants have done their best, but they don't know every neighborhood in Medford. So, now that we have residents aware and on board, they can share specifics about their neighborhood with the community development board and the council, and that can help guide the process to a good final outcome. I think that... That kind of detailed attention is important. We also have to give that detailed attention to the squares and corridors. I know the Community Development Board is working really hard on everything that's been sent over to them, which is a lot.
[John Petrella]: It's a lot.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it's a tremendous amount. And I think it's probably prudent to take the time that it needs and look at details. Like right now, I know one of the things they talked about at their last meeting was the boundaries of the squares, for instance. I mean, that was a question that I asked a month or two ago, because I noticed that in my neighborhood, the boundaries of the squares had been stretched so that some really beautiful old residential houses were potentially going to be zoned to mixed use. And so they're looking at those kinds of properties and those kinds of things and those details. And I think that that's important. So I'm glad that that's happening. One of the things that residents that I've talked to have been concerned about, several, is Teardowns in their neighborhood. Yes, and we have already seen yes, you know a house in South Medford That's slated to be torn down That's a beautiful perfectly wonderful house. So and and people are worried about things like that so those those are some of the concerns I've heard and and What I don't see disagreement on is I don't see disagreement on the need for new zoning and the need for new housing. We particularly need commercial zoning. So I think that the good news is that I think most everybody in the city agrees that this is important.
[John Petrella]: Very.
[Milva McDonald]: And that it needs to happen. I don't think that anybody's trying to stop rezoning. I think it's just let's make sure that we're listening to people and figuring out what's really the best for Medford. What is the right zoning for Medford?
[John Petrella]: And you're always talking about people. I like that. And no, it's nice. I mean, I feel that way when, you know, more and more people are getting involved. I mean, it's affecting their neighborhoods. And I mean, it's a good answer to the zoning issue. It really is. Because I don't think anyone is trying to stop it. So much as we do need zoning Everybody wants what's best for Medford? I you know the commercial the squares. Yeah, they they need to be they need some work. Yeah, they need some definitely and I'm glad It makes me happy when people get information and become involved and And that's part of why we have you here and we have all the other candidates. It's to get information out. I feel like we're doing a good thing for the city too. Yeah, I do. I like getting people involved. I think that's a big part of it. So that's your position on zoning. So now we gotta move on to uh... how would you approach uh... you know getting economic growth started and uh... i guess growing you know methods tax base What do we do?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, that's a that's an excellent question. And it's a very important question. It's also a tough question because we have limited options, right? Yes. I think what we were just talking about zoning, particularly in the commercial sectors, is is very important. I mean, that's maybe one of the biggest things we can do is to make Medford business friendly. with the zoning process, looking at permitting processes, incentives, things like that, so that we can grow our commercial tax base. We have a lot of potential for that, and it just needs to be realized. State aid and grants, identifying opportunities, I think the planning department works hard at that. But that's something that, you know, the council could conceivably work with them on, is identifying those kinds of opportunities and making them happen. We should be doing regular reviews of our fee schedules. Like, we just, parking fees were just looked at, and I know some people might not like that, but our parking fees are very low. You know, I personally will, you know, look and say, okay, well, will I get the same number of permits this year? You know, I don't know if I will. But I might. But, I mean, everybody will have to weigh that decision, but things like, you know, Permitting fees just every and also looking at our contracts like I mean even the shovel year, which is amazing It's also Been a great business opportunity and it's proven to be highly successful. So maybe renegotiating some of these contracts where we have now a proven track record and And also, I know that this is something that's being looked at, but linkage fees, developer fees, so basically looking at fees, looking at opportunities for state grants, beefing up our commercial sectors, and renegotiating the pilot program with Tufts, looking at, you know, where we can, so those are some of the ways I think. They're all good ones.
[John Petrella]: I like the word linkage fees. They seem to have disappeared, but I like that you use that, really. I mean, that's one of those things that... Oh, we used to do good with, but it doesn't seem like that's, you know, going so great anymore. But thank you for that answer. Appreciate it. So, you know, people have heard you. You got, you know, I think you did a, you know, good job getting what you believe in out there. Do you have anything else, you know, that you want people to know about your platform?
[Milva McDonald]: I am a proponent of affordable housing. Um, and I, I think that it's great that this, that we have an affordable housing trust now. Um, then we need to figure out how to fund it. And we have, uh, the affordable housing trust has a board that put out recently a great comprehensive report with ideas for that, including a community land trust, which I think would also be great. That would be, um, like sort of a city owned property that would be available to, Build affordable housing on so and that would stay affordable, right? No, it'd be nice a city-owned. Yeah, I mean that's So I think that's those are important. So and and also in the affordability issue I think looking at a residential exemption for taxpayers for homeowners would be a good thing to investigate Other cities have that Malden has it.
[John Petrella]: Yes, they do and
[Milva McDonald]: And that is basically where if you live in your property, then you are eligible to apply for an exemption to your tax bill. I think that climate resiliency is important, and we have a great climate action and adaptation plan, so I think keeping an eye on that and making sure we're meeting the benchmarks is great. I think a lot of great things have already happened. Expanding the tree canopy, and these things are great for climate resiliency, but they also improve people's quality of life. So the tree canopy is going to make a nicer city. The bike share program, I think, has been great for people. And I think safe streets are important, so infrastructure improvements, things like that. And I also am a big supporter of the arts. I would like to, as a Councilor, advocate for the installation of a city arts coordinator. One of the things that I hear from people is we have so many great arts organizations, and we do.
[John Petrella]: Yes, you do, and that's it.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. Yeah, we do. But part of sort of what happens is we don't, you know, the people are picking up the slack, kind of. So a city arts coordinator could be kind of a unifying, an anchor, basically. Right, yeah. And support the arts council and sort of unify arts in the city So I and that's what I've heard from the arts community that that's something that they would like nice Um, and I also would like to advocate for an lgbtq plus commission Okay, which would be um, just a you know, one of another one of the city's volunteer commissions, right? um to sort of advocate for that community. So those are some of the things.
[John Petrella]: All good stuff. So now, you know, we got to learn about your platform. campaign events. I mean, that's a big part of it. Sometimes it's a part we don't want to do, but we have to. Any upcoming campaign events you want people to know about, put it out there.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I have a couple of really fun ones coming up. I love music, I said that, and I have musicians in my family, and so there's a couple of events coming up at Mrs. Murphy's, which is the Irish pub on Salem Street. on August 29th, which is a Friday, from 6 to 8. We will be there with Celtic music, a great fiddler named Alistair White, and guitarist Eric McDonald. Alistair is Scottish, and he used to be in the Battlefield Band, which if anybody knows Celtic music, that's a very big name. So that's going to be really fun. We'll be there from 6 to 8. Come on over. Order off the menu. Chat with us. You know, talk to me about my platform. Get to know me. I would love to see you. There's another one at Mrs. Murphy's on September 7th, which is a Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. with the Shereem Klezmer duo. And Klezmer music is Eastern European Jewish folk music, and it's really fun.
[John Petrella]: Sounds interesting. It's really fun.
[Milva McDonald]: That will be a clarinet player and an accordion player, both who live in Medford. Yeah, so I'm excited about those. Very nice, very nice.
[John Petrella]: My wife was a singer, by the way. I have to throw a plug in for my wife Daria. She sang at St. Raphael's for years, weddings. She sang at a piano bar for years. Oh, that's nice. She did very well with the singing. That's great. Ian, my daughter, has my voice. So she's like a great singer. She's all over the place singing. My daughter Margaret. So yeah, it's nice. All right. So this is a question we ask everybody. Least and most favorite things to do in Method?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's hard. Thinking of the least favorite thing is hard, because I'm like, oh, there's nothing I really don't like to do. But then I thought, oh, OK, driving. That's probably my least favorite, because the traffic, so many people use Medford as a cut through, which is something I would like to sit down and think about. Is there some way to discourage that? But anyway, so I would say that's probably my least favorite, driving. My most favorite? That's much easier, although hard to pick one. So I probably picked a few. You could pick a few, that's fine. The library is one of my favorite things, go to the library. Our second poet laureate Vijaya Sundaram runs a poetry club there and I love going to her poetry club. She also runs a poetry open mic at the Arts Collaborative Medford. So I love those things and I love the Arts Collaborative Medford. I also love the farmer's market. And the other thing I love to do in Medford is my husband and I have a tandem bike, which is like a bicycle built for two. So we like to ride that. Yeah, we ride it over to the Mystic Lakes and look for the eagles and the herons. And yeah, so that's definitely one of my favorite things.
[John Petrella]: Very nice, very nice. So, you know, I gotta ask you one more and then This will be the last question. And this is the most important one, Milva. Okay. Okay? So if people want to reach you, if they want to know more about you, if they want to look, you know, look into what you're doing or what's going on, how do they go about doing it?
[Milva McDonald]: I have a website, www.milva4medford.com. I'm also on Facebook with that handle, milva4medford, and Instagram, same handle, milva4medford. So I would invite everyone to check out the website, check out the social media, follow me. You can email me at milva4medford.com. I'd love to hear from people. Please contact me. Any questions or comments or if you just want to have coffee, I'm available.
[John Petrella]: I like that. Thank you so much. Unfortunately, it's that time again. The show, you know, it has to come to an end. So, I want to thank you, Milva. You know, first for joining us on Method Happenings. And, you know, I always thank everybody because I know what it's like to be a candidate. And it's a lot of work. It's a lot of effort. And, you know, it shows you care about the city when you, when you do what you're doing, all the candidates. So I want to thank you for running for the Medford City Council. So that's the show. I want to extend again an invitation to any member of the Medford City Council Any member of the Medford School Committee who is a candidate for reelection, you're more than welcome to appear on Medford Happenings to share your positions, current issues facing the city. Once again, you can contact us at MedfordHappenings02155 at gmail.com. I also want to thank everyone, you know, as I do every week who's been watching the show. We're really getting a tremendous amount of attention and I thank you for that. Thank you for the feedback. You know, it doesn't matter if it's a positive or negative. We'll take the feedback. So if you would like to share a comment, opening a new business, you have an existing business, you represent an organization, you have an upcoming event, you just want to appear on a future show, you can contact us, once again, Method Happenings, 02155 at gmail.com. I also want to let you know you'll be able to see replays of this show It's on Method Community Media. It's Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It's at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. And I have to mention, just a really fantastic website. We're getting so much play on this website. It's incredible in the short time we've had it up. But please visit the website. It's just very simple, MethodHappenings.com. And you can also find us on YouTube and on Facebook at Medford Happenings. For the Medford Happenings team, Paul, Marco, Bruce, Margaret, Jimmy, I'm John Petrella. Thank you, Milva, for being on the show. And Medford, stay informed. Ta-da!
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