[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right, so a little bit of a different setup for our episode today. Today, myself, Danielle, and my guest are going to be talking about the upcoming ballot question about the Charter. We will start with our same questions, but since we were both on the committee to review the Charter, I think we're both sort of equal guests today. So do you mind just saying your name and pronouns and who you are?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, thank you so much, Danielle. It's really great to be back on the podcast. I'm Milva McDonald, and my pronouns are she, her. And the restaurant question, I've been thinking about that, but you haven't asked it yet.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, no, no, it's OK. Yeah, so yeah. We both were on the committee. You are definitely the one with all the knowledge. But so I think hopefully today we'll talk a little bit more about that process and what people can expect from the ballot question. But I'm wondering if I know you've answered this question a lot of times on this podcast, but if we could try one more time to say what your favorite place to eat is in Medford, what you like to eat there.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, well, it's hard to pick one favorite, and I've said different things last time. I said the farmer's market, which is still a great choice. I do like the Thai restaurant in Medford Square, Tom Young Kun. And I like, I mean, I like the Pad Thai. I like curry. I like the massaman curry.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great. I'll answer this one too, since we're almost, I guess, last night we got some sushi from Shanghai moon, which is like I've never really been inside there, but it's a pretty seems like a pretty cool spot to spend some time sometime But they have a nice like variety of different types of food. So All right, so we want to talk about the Charter I'm I wonder like I think we've talked on this podcast definitely before about I think the first time you were on we talked about just the efforts to get a committee to review the Charter. And then I think we talked about that committee and then it's, you know, I think it's made a lot of progress in the last few years. And can you just give a little bit of an update about where we are right now in terms of reviewing the Charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Um, so where we are right now is we are at the final step, which is the voters. Um, and the, the charter was the mayor appointed a committee, which you and I were both on. We spent almost two years doing public engagement or review, reviewing the charter, going through an article by article, the mayor and the city council then, um, had a negotiation, they worked through it, they made some changes, they came to an agreement, and then it was sent to the State House as a home rule petition, which is basically a bill. So it has to go through the process of any bill. And so it went through the House, it went through the Senate. The Senate had a few very minor changes, nothing substantive, just details, but that meant it had to go back to the House. And then it went back to the Senate, and then the governor signed it in mid-September, and that means the next stop is the voters, the ballot. And the state reviews it just to ensure that it complies with state law, You know, it's in alignment with what should be in a charter in Massachusetts, et cetera. And now the voters get to decide. And the sample ballot is available on the website for the Charter's ballot question committee, which I know we're going to be talking about. And it's also on the city website. So people can actually see what their ballot looks like before they go vote, and they can read the question and the summary.
[Danielle Balocca]: Okay, so people that have been following the work on the charter, this is a big deal. For folks who like know nothing about it, what do you recommend that they look at or what do you recommend that they get to know before they vote?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's a great question. So the city will be putting out some information on their webpage about the question, but we have a ballot question committee and there's a website and it's www.medfordcharternow.com. It has a link to the current charter, links to the proposed charter, Link to the ballot so you can see it and it and it has summaries of. You know, kind of what is a charter and what some of the proposed changes in the new charter are so, you know, I mean. Reading the chart, the propose the current our current charter is very short. It's about 2 pages. Um, but the proposed charter is much longer. Um. And it's comprehensive, whereas our current charter isn't so are the proposed charter is. 40 something pages. So there are summaries for people if they don't want to read the whole thing.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I think, too, the language in the charter can be a little hard to recall sometimes. And so, yeah, the summaries sound like they would be helpful. And I think if you, so to understand why we needed this charter, if you look at the current charter, is that there's very little information in there. And so it's, from my understanding, is that we just had to defer to state law for lots of things. And that maybe in line with kind of Maybe a stereotype, but I like a reputation of Medford is like that that made it easy to do kind of the things that we wanted to do without a lot of checks and balances. So, it sounds like there's a lot more detail in there. Can you give just a summary of what the big changes are, or what the priorities are for change?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, absolutely. But to your point that you just made, I mean, you remember when the Collins Center for Public Management that we worked with on the committee, we were fortunate to have them advising us. They sort of, we have a memo from them about the complexity of Medford's Charter, which sounds strange because Medford's Charter is only two pages long, right? But the reason it's difficult is because there's almost nothing in it. So any questions that arise, you have to sort of find your way through state law, as you just said, and it can make things confusing. Yeah, exactly. So, as far as the major as the changes in the charter, the charter sets out sort of establishes Medford as a city, and it lays out our form of government. The form of government, which is mayor council will remain, but the changes to the mayor's office are a 4 year term. Which is trending in Massachusetts and it makes sense for reasons, including, you know, executive tasks are more long term. And so. Giving the mayor 4 years means less time campaigning more time spent working on what the city needs. The other thing to them with the mayor is a term limit of four terms, so no mayor will be able to serve longer than 16 years. And as far as the city council. Ward representation, which is something that people have talked about. I mean, I've lived in the city for 32 years, and for most of that time, people have been talking about why don't we have ward representation? We're one of the only cities left in the state that does not have it. So that's a pretty big change, and it means our current council of seven at-large members would change to a hybrid Council of 8 ward representatives 1 from each ward and 3 at large Councilors, which is also the standard size for. Cities like ours, our council is the smallest. um and that number because we wanted to have you don't have to be able to break a tie but also not just a single at large exactly right we did you remember because we did say well we could do nine but that would mean one at large and the point of hybrid is that you sort of have a mix of both so yeah yeah that's why um you know, like Malden has eight wards and they have eight ward Councilors, three at large. Somerville, I believe only has seven wards, but they still, they have 11, they have four at large. So they're still doing 11, but if we had had six wards, you know, then maybe we would have gone with nine, but it makes sense to do the 11 because of the hybrid. The school committee, will have localized representation, not ward, because that would have made the school committee much bigger. And, you know, we didn't really see a need to increase the size of the school committee. So, um, they'll still be 7 members. 4 of them will be from districts, so two wards will be combined to make a district, and then two at large and the mayor will remain on the school committee, but the school committee will elect its own chair, whereas currently our charter says the mayor is the chair. Under the new charter, the school committee will elect its own chair.
[Danielle Balocca]: And this was sort of a compromise because there was some interest in removing the mayor as the head of the school committee, but this gives a little bit more power back to the school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that was, that came up during the negotiations between the mayor and the city council. Um, the, um, yeah, it's, there's almost, I think there's maybe one, maybe two communities that don't have the mayor on the school committee. Um, but the mayor being chair is, you know, it's, it's not as common. It's, it's about half and half. Um, so, um, so that is, you know, that's one of the reasons that, um, It didn't, I mean, for many reasons, mayors are on school committees in Massachusetts because of the way schools are run in Massachusetts. And the budget is a huge part of, the school budget is a huge part of the city budget. So having the mayor present and part of that, that's kind of the idea. It also gives the school committee members the mayor's ear every week. It gives the public a chance to interact. But in other states, maybe where they have county systems, whatever, the mayor's not necessarily as involved just because of the way their systems work.
[Danielle Balocca]: Sure, so the mayor sets the budget, so there's an importance to having the mayor, whoever the mayor is.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's the main reason, yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: And are there changes to how we do budgeting that are proposed in the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, well, you know, the budget processes are, are outlined in state law. So there's certain things that, you know, we have to do because of state law says so, but one thing that is new and we, and we've also had some improvements to our budget process with the recent budget ordinance passed by the city council. So, um, so there's that also, but in the charter, there's a requirement that there's an annual budget meeting with the mayor and the school committee and the city council sort of very early in the process. I think, I think the date was no later than February 15th. So that, that the intention of that is for these sort of three bodies to just communicate, um, and talk about the financial state of the city and the needs of the city and, and sort of get some, some of that think tanking, um, before the budget process begins.
[Danielle Balocca]: What are some other major changes or major just like additions that outline things more clearly in the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we see the council school committee. Um, there are citizen participation mechanisms that we don't have in our charter now. So. It there's, um. A group petition, it was sometimes called a free petition where, and in the current proposed charter, it would be 100 signatures that. To put a measure to get the city council to put something on their agenda and talk about it. you just need to get 100 signatures. Obviously, then people can do that now, they can contact city councilors, and then the city councilors will often bring those issues to the floor. This provision is meant to, if a resident doesn't get that response, then they have this option to get 100 people to sign a petition and get the city council to talk about their concern. It doesn't require that they do anything specific, but it means it has to be taken to the floor. There's also provisions to put a measure on the ballot. So if there's something that we want to pass in the city or that some resident or group of residents wants to pass and they do the work of collecting the number of signatures required, it can get put on the ballot. Also, If the city council passes an ordinance and people say, you know, we don't agree with this and they get the required number of signatures, which is, you know, a lot, then they can put that on the ballot to, um, to say no to this referent to, to this, uh, measure. Uh, there's also a provision to recall the mayor. So again, pretty big lift to recall the mayor. It can't be done frivolously, but if for some reason there's some, you know, big corruption happening or something that motivated a large enough group of residents to collect the signatures and vote the mayor out, that that is possible. Whereas it wasn't, it's not possible in our current charter.
[Danielle Balocca]: Oh, yeah, I was actually just looking at the charter for the city of Quincy because their mayor just recently like very publicly said some really upsetting things about basically denying that there was sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. So but like they don't they don't have term limits. They don't have anything like that. So it is like this sounds like giving more power to the residents and like just options that we can exercise if we don't, you know, if we don't feel satisfied with what's going on. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. I mean, that was definitely the hope.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, one other thing we talked about was. Because the shift toward representation kind of shrinks the pool for each for each of those seats that what would happen? What would happen if we didn't get somebody running in a certain award? So can you remind me what we decided?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so that was something that people brought up as a question. And when we talked to the call center about it, they basically said, you know, that doesn't generally happen, but there are provisions in state law if it doesn't. I mean, there's the option of writing it. People can write in a candidate. But and then, you know, if that doesn't, yeah, usually that fixes it. But I mean, when we asked them about it, they I believe they said they didn't even know of a single case where that happened.
[Danielle Balocca]: I remember like this coming up a lot and falling back on that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, because the other thing about ward representation is that it makes running for office a lot more accessible. Running in a ward of 7,000 to 8,000 people is hugely different from running in a city of 60,000. Mailings are going to be a lot less. You're going to need a lot less literature. Your ability to actually hit a significant number of voters' doors. So it's just more manageable. And even when we did the listening sessions around the city with groups of people, there was a couple of times where people said, oh, yeah, maybe I would consider running if there were ward representation. Yeah, so, um, so I think that the, the lowering the barriers to running for office, um. You know, could hopefully, um. Eliminate the problem of potential problem of not having candidates.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, so there were some other real beneficial things that we looked at in deciding this too. One is that we got a lot of support in the survey for this, but also the idea that all areas of Medford, so every ward would have some representation. And also, I think one piece of feedback or a worry from people was like, does this mean that there's only one person that we can go to we need something and so of course the answer is no that like all all city councillors are still representing the city but that you'd have at least your ward councillor and then the three at-large people if you felt like maybe there was you couldn't reach out to the other wards. The other thing that I kept hearing and that I've learned a little bit more about since is how in Malden they are very like people have a lot of like pride around their their ward and they do things like uh, like, like 4th of July parties in each ward and things like that, which sounds like, you know, I think Medford is already a. Pretty like vibrant community, but to have that even smaller, like piece of the city that to sort of come together, it sounds like it would be really nice.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. And we, you know, we heard some of that when we did the listening sessions too. Um, you know, I, I mean, I, there I've talked to people who will say, You know, they've moved here from other cities and they're like, wait, Medford doesn't have order. There's no ward representative. That's weird. And it is weird, actually, in the context of a state.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and so another piece of feedback that I think people have, I've seen out there is that the amount of money that this would cost to increase the size of the council, things like their salary, staff, like also the space where they have their meetings in the city council chambers. So I don't know what you think about that.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, as you know, I'm sure you remember that this did come up. People on the committee were like, oh, well, will people worry about the cost? And one of the things that we kept coming back to on the committee was that our job was to determine what the best form of government for Medford would be. So, you know, better government is priceless maybe, I would say. And the other thing is, yeah, there would be four more salaries, but the charter doesn't say what any salaries are. The salaries get decided on by the council for the next mayor, the next school committee and the next city council. So the idea of a council giving itself a raise is not they give the next council a raise or not. Salaries can be changed in any direction, so it's not set in stone the amount of money that it will cost. That's something that will get worked out and fitting for more people up there will also have to get worked out. The city hall chambers, the entire building has to be maintained regardless of whether we have ward representation. So it's not as though there's a zero cost to doing nothing. So, you know, those are some of my thoughts about that.
[Danielle Balocca]: And I do wonder if there is an assumption by people that we don't have word representation because we don't want it. And I think that's not right. It sounds like there's been no, because there's been no change to the charter for so long. There's no way to know if people wanted it. Um, and that's, and that's left us like behind a lot of other cities and in a lot of these ways.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, interestingly, there was a charter review in 1978. That was our last full review. Um, and. I have the report, and they actually did recommend district representation or more localized representation, but that charter didn't pass. The big issue that people cared about at that time was city manager versus mayor. Medford had a city manager, and that charter review commission did not recommend changing to mayor from city manager. We can't know for sure why that charter got voted down, but I think that's 1 of the reasons because that was the main issue. And then in 1986, it wasn't a full charter review, but the city switched to mayor. So. Yeah, so that's, um, so, yeah, that's the last time, but, you know, as I said, anecdotally, I know people talk about it a lot word representation and have been for a while. And, you know, it clearly from the survey and from talking to people when we did the committee, it was on people's minds.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and I think that's another piece of feedback that I've seen flying around there that doesn't seem well informed, but that we didn't get a lot of community input or we didn't listen to that community, but then also the ways that our committee was formed like we were appointed by the mayor. There's been some criticism of that. I do. Well, I remember. entering all that survey stuff into the into the form that we used and we got like I think we got over was like around like 600 or almost 700 responses it was almost 700 which is like a lot I think for like that's way more people than I would have imagined cared about learning about the church.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And we did have a person on our committee who's in grad school and who's an expert in statistics. And, you know, he assured us that it was statistically significant, that it was a really good response.
[Danielle Balocca]: For sure. And I think too about the, like, I was I'll say like a little intimidated by the makeup of the committee when we first started, because I could acknowledge that there were people on there that I just don't agree with on much. But I think the process that we went through, I think it's proof that this is not like a political issue, that this is something that we all cared about doing what was best for our city. And the Collins Center really helped to advise us on what those things would look like. Um, I think sometimes we struggled with like, um, or some of us struggled with like seeing these changes as impacting our governance rather than like any specific people in those positions. Um, but I really think that like, it was a really good mix of people and different ideas and people were pretty respectful generally about hearing all those ideas. And so, I mean, I think for that feedback that we were chosen by the mayor, like sure. And I actually think it was a pretty good group to do this work. And lots of people that dedicated a lot of time, way more than I did. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, no, you did plenty, Danielle. You were a great, great member of the team. I'm glad you brought this up because, you know, I agree with you. I mean, one of the things about the sort of The thing that we sort of tried to keep focused on, which was that this is not about sort of the current situation now or who's in office now. And so we had to think about it that way and remind ourselves of that sometimes, but it was. It was inherently I feel that the process was inherently a political while we were doing it and I think that was really valuable and and especially in the current environment, you know, having a group of people be able to come together who don't. always see eye to eye on everything, but come together to work on something that's this important to the city in a positive way. Yeah, I felt really good about that. And so I'm glad that it worked out that way. And I think the balance was important overall. you know, for the city too.
[Danielle Balocca]: So yeah. And so just to summarize, you're saying our, our charter hasn't been changed. It hasn't been reviewed since the seventies. There was an update in 1986 about changing to mayor, but we haven't had like a successful, like change or like, you know, whatever, like rewriting of the charter. in a long, long time. And our group worked for about two years, right?
[Unidentified]: It was almost two, yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Before that, you all, like the citizens-led committee, were working for like a decade to 15 years or along to try to get this going, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So that's, and I'm glad you brought this up because this is actually one of the really most important things in the new charter. One of the most important things in the new charter is provisions for regular charter review. what the process that you just talked about, it's been on and off for about 15 years. There's a way that cities can do a charter review that involves collecting signatures from 15% of registered voters, which in Medford at this point would, well, you have to have a cushion too, just because some of the signatures will be rejected for various reasons. So you need about six to 7,000. There were residents, Michael Ruggiero, who used to live here, was a big proponent. Jim Silva, Neil Osborne, these people were working really hard just to get a charter review. And then we had a couple of home rule petitions to try to get the city council to agree to To review the charter and for various reasons that didn't work out. So, yeah, it was. It was years of trying to just get a look at the charter to review it. And then finally. We figured out that that we could just have an appointed committee and that's actually how most cities do it. And then once it's in the charter, then we will never have to worry about this again, because it will be reviewed every 10 years. The 1st review in our charter would would be required to happen within 5 years, which makes sense because it's been so long and we want to just make sure that sort of it's a check up on how things are working. Are these changes working? Etcetera. But then it will be reviewed every 10 years. So. As the city changes, as the needs of the city change, we can make sure that the city government reflects that.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and I think that's a good point as well, because of course we have a lot of confidence in the work that we did, and we can't predict how it'll all go, so we'll have the opportunity to look at it again in five years, and then everything after that, so I felt that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and the Charter defines what the next Charter Review Committee, how it will be chosen, and the way it's The way it's laid out in our charter is that the mayor will appoint it's 9 members. The mayor appoints 3, the council appoints 3 and the school committee appoints 3. So, um, so it will be appointees from those 3 bodies and. they will review the charter and, you know, it will be important to look at it and hopefully it won't be as big of a process as ours. Although maybe, I don't know. I mean, we were sort of like, okay. I remember when the Collins Center gave us that model charter and they gave us a document at the beginning of the process with a model charter that's a modern charter. And then they sort of put a little,
[Danielle Balocca]: know about this is what Medford's charter says about all these sections and for at least half maybe more there was there wasn't even anything it's like Medford doesn't have this Medford doesn't have this so yeah yeah I think it'll be like I think if you know hopefully this passes and I think it'll be a nice change and I and I do think because we're saying like this is not a political issue it does give a little bit more oversight to how things are done so that and a little bit more clarity and transparency right so like we know how things should work now. It'll be written more clearly.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and there's, you know, there's a regular review of ordinance required in the charter, which I think is also really important to the city. Just also procedures that don't exist in our current charter, like vacancies. We had a situation where a school committee member resigned a couple of years ago, and I think behind the scenes, it was a little complicated, and what do we do now? And they had to sort of try to figure it out. If that happened with the mayor, it would be probably a crisis for the city without knowing what do we do? The mayor can't serve. And there's literally nothing in our charter that says what would happen or what we should do. So passing this charter, you know, has, has that in it as well.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great. Was there anything else that we haven't talked about that we should mention before we wrap up?
[Milva McDonald]: You know, just this, the city council also will get a little more, more power to confirm appointments to multi-member boards. So the mayor makes the appointments, but the city council can has 30 days to reject an appointment. So that gives them more, it's a more collaborative process than we have now. And You know, the other thing when you brought up the City Council, the, you know, the salaries or whatnot, the City Council will be able to hire staff, but subject to appropriation. And I think that's the piece that people, and also necessary expenses can be reimbursed, but it's all subject to appropriation. And those were provisions that, you know, are pretty common in other charters, but some people around town, I think, have been concerned about how much money that would cost. It's subject to appropriation, which means it has to go through the budget process. The City Council can't just say we're going to hire this person or I want expenses for this, that, and the other thing.
[Danielle Balocca]: And part of that, I think it was related to them hiring their own like legal counsel.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but the charter doesn't say that. It just says that they can hire staff subject to appropriation. So if there's a need and they can appropriate it in the budget and the money is there, then they can hire people. It's not uncommon for cities, city councils to have a staff person other. I mean, our city council has a city clerk. They traditionally had another position called the city messenger. So that is actually retained in the charter as an assistant. So they do have those positions, but. You know, as a body, it's not uncommon for a city council to need help with things. And so that option will be there if the money is there and if it's appropriated.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I always find the conversations about the city council's salary to be a really tough one. I hear this argument sometimes that they shouldn't be paid anything, that it's a public service, and I don't think that's fair, obviously, but I think the demand on them is also so high that it's hard to hear, they don't deserve more money, and they're not doing enough, and like all these things. And so, you know, I think that's a tough conversation. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it is a time-consuming job. It is a public service, but there's plenty of public service jobs where people are compensated.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So, but, you know, the other you know, hopefully ward Councilors, a bigger council will also spread the work around and, and, and, you know, even if it costs the city more money, what we would get back. will make up for that and hopefully more than make up for it. Because the other constituent services can be improved with ward representation. You talked about the closer relationship that constituents can have with their ward Councilors. All those subcommittee work that has to get done, the work will be able to be spread around a little more.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. I also think that when that conversation about Compensation for the school committee or for the city council committee is like it doesn't I think if we're looking at it from like an equity perspective like one of the reasons for word representation was making it easier for people to run and. hopefully getting a more diverse city council and diversity in, I would love that all types of ways, right? Not just like ethnic or racial diversity, but socioeconomic. And if you're getting paid $20,000 a year, like you can't live on that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. City councilors do have other jobs and need to. But and we, we can't know for sure who will run or how it will affect who is on our council, but we did, but it is well established in studies that word representation improves descriptive representation, meaning. you know, who is on the council. So more diversity, ethnically, racially, economically, what you mentioned. Because it just, it opens the door for more people to be able to do it.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, so much to think about there. So you mentioned the ballot question committee, is that what it's called?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: What do you want people to know about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it's just, You know, it's in Massachusetts to advocate for a ballot question or, you know, we wanted to get the word out with literature, with signs. And that is a, since it's on the ballot, you have to form a committee. It's not like a political action committee. It's just exclusively formed to advocate for this one question. And then that allowed us to raise money so that we could put out. So we have signs. If anybody wants to put up a Medford Charter Now lawn sign, you can just go to the website medfordcharternow.com or email info at medfordcharternow.com. We also have literature and we have a palm card with information about the charter because we just want to make sure that people know that this is going to be on the ballot and have information about it. So, uh, if if anybody wants to volunteer to do some lit dropping in their neighborhood, you can do that too. Just give us an email. Send us an email and, um, yeah, it's just. You know, I mean, a lot of people are busy. They're very busy. They don't always know what's going on before they, you know, get to the ballot box. So we're just, we want us to spread awareness and let people know that this is happening and that it's a big deal for the city. I mean, it's really huge. You know, it can be sort of not that exciting, I guess, to talk about the charter and it's a little wonky, you know. But it's a very big deal for the city and yeah, passing it means that we will have a modern charter, we will have provisions that are necessary that we don't have now, and it means that we'll be able to review it regularly and we won't have to go through this battle ever again of, come on, let's review the charter, which sometimes elected officials might resist because some of the changes are maybe a little concerning if you're an elected official, if they're going to change your term or put a term limit on or things like that. But we will have a review every 10 years and the first one in five if we pass this.
[Danielle Balocca]: I'm wondering, you've been working on this for a really long time. If, you know, we hope that this ballot measure passes, how are you going to celebrate?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. I'm actually, the day after election day, I'm supposed to go and do childcare for my granddaughter in Montreal. So I'll be celebrating maybe with her. But maybe, I mean, how I will celebrate actually really is rest. You know, because it has been a lot, it's been a lot for the last few years. It's a lot of work. I want to see the work through and get it all the way to the finish line. This is a huge accomplishment for the city. Charter change is not easy. So getting, getting this through is, it's a huge step forward really. For the city, so, um, so, yeah, I'll celebrate by sort of relaxing.
[Danielle Balocca]: I love to get it. All right. So I'll put all that information in the show notes and hopefully folks that don't have time to really dig into it themselves can at least listen to this podcast and hear a little bit of a summary. But.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and thank you, Daniel. And I just want to thank you for being on the committee and all the other committee members and every single person who responded to the survey or came to a listening session, or it takes the time to even to learn about this and vote on it. And all the city officials that we interviewed, it really was a It involved a lot of people around the city. And now I'm excited that the voters get a chance. So thank you to everybody for whatever your role was.
[Danielle Balocca]: For sure, yeah. And thank you to you, Melva. I feel like you really led the charge. And I'm sure you had a lot of late nights and early mornings because of this. So hopefully we get through the finish line.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks, Melva.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Kasheman. Music is made by Hendrik Giedonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Medford Bites. Medford Bites. Good job.
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