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[Marie Izzo]: I don't see George, so.
[Zac Bears]: 23rd regular meeting, Medford City Council, December 16th, 2025 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Collins. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Present. Six present, one absent. The meeting is called to order. Councilor Scarpelli is not able to be here with us tonight. He's not feeling well. Please rise to salute the flag. Announcements, accolades, remembrances, reports, and records. We have a resolution under suspension from Councilor Leming. I recognize Councilor Leming to move to take it.
[Matt Leming]: Motion to take the resolution under suspension.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Leming to take the resolution under suspension, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Resolution to commend the crew of Ladder 2 for their heroic actions on November 7th, 2025, offered by Councilor Leming. Whereas, Lieutenant Daniel J. Marino, Firefighter Sean M. McFeely, and Firefighter Tyrell T. Patton rescued two persons at a structure fire on November 7th, 2025, as detailed in Chief Todd Evans' letter, and closed. Whereas their actions reflect great credit on themselves, Ladder 2, the Medford Fire Department, and the City of Medford, be it therefore resolved that the Medford City Council commend the crew of Ladder 2 for their bravery, professionalism, commitment to their position and their oath, and dedication to saving lives. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President Bears. I'm going to go ahead and read the commendation which was written by Chief Todd Evans. I'd like to thank the crew of Ladder 2 for taking time off to be here today. Thank you so much. We're grateful to have you here. I'd like to recognize and commend the crew of Ladder 2, Lieutenant Daniel J. Marino, Firefighter Sean M. McFeely, and Firefighter Tyrell T. Patton, who worked together to rescue two individuals at a structure fire on November 7, 2025. The following is an excerpt from Deputy Gilbert's report. Quote, Ladder 2, Lieutenant Marino and Firefighter Patton made entry through the front entrance and encountered a heavy smoke condition. First floor hallway. Working fire ordered. Ladder 2 located the fire apartment, Unit 3, and made entry ahead of the attack line to conduct a primary search and locate the fire. Zero visibility inside the fire apartment. Ladder 2 located an adult male passed out in the living room. Occupant was removed and evaluated by Armstrong. Simultaneously, one occupant was showing from a third-floor fire balcony. Ladder 2's driver, Firefighter McFeely, removed the occupant over a 28-foot ground ladder. Again, I commend this crew for their bravery, composure, and commitment to saving lives. Congratulations on the job well done. Now I... privilege of chatting with Lieutenant Marino before this. And he said that he didn't want to, didn't feel the need to come up here and talk publicly tonight about this. And I respect that. He did tell me that anybody from ladder two that was in his position would have done the exact same thing. And I have no doubt that that's true. Jobs like these are the type where you wait around for a long time until something goes wrong. And then when things do go wrong, you put everything on the line and you make them better and you end up saving lives. And we are so grateful to have all of you here on the job tonight to do that, to protect our city. I'm proud that you're part of the Medford Fire Department. I'm proud that you're there 24-7 protecting our city. Once again, just very thankful to have all of you here. After my colleagues speak, I would be honored if y'all could come up for a small photo op so that we can have some to remember the evening by. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you.
[Justin Tseng]: Councilor Tseng. Thank you. Thank you to all the brave men on Ladder 2. who are here with us tonight for joining us and everyone at Ladder 2 and the Medford Fire Department writ large for your bravery and heroism in this city. And as Councilor Leming alluded to, not everyone would or could do this job. It takes immense sacrifice and bravery knowing that you're walking into a dangerous situation and saving lives. And our city and all of our residents are eternally grateful for you helping and saving valued members of our community. When you read the conditions in Chief Evans' reports, they really just illustrate how scary and dangerous the situation is or was. And for, you know, people to charge into that environment and be so brave and valiant in doing so truly means a lot. And it's a really, really speaks highly to the character that we have in our fire department. So thank you so much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. What a pleasure to be here with you. We know that this is not the only story that the firefighters could tell. This is their job. This is their everyday lives. And I just want to recognize that every single firefighter has their own, they have their own life, they have their own family, they have their own home. things going on, and for each of those people to make this choice day to day, to be the kind of person that doesn't hesitate and that is willing to leap towards the flames instead of away. What an honor for us to have those kind of people in our community as individuals, to have that kind of team in our community doing the job that you do. I so appreciate it, and I'm happy that we can take this moment to recognize you, not only for what we're reading here, but for the jobs, the many stories that we're not telling today that you do every day in your job. Thank you so much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you all so much for being here. I know I don't want to be repetitive, but I think it's really valuable to take a minute to express gratitude for The ongoing work that our public servants do in the city that we expect to continue always and don't always take the time to say, by the way, this is going on all the time without us paying attention. And we really, really, really rely on you all showing up every day and doing things far beyond what most people risk, and we're very grateful. This is a well-deserved commendation, and grateful to have all of you here and to celebrate your accomplishments. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Council Lizara. Vice President Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. I want to echo the words of my colleagues and extend my most heartfelt gratitude, especially to Lieutenant Marino, Firefighter McFeely, and Patton, and to the entire crew. We are so lucky that we can rest easy with the knowledge that if this had happened when any other team happened to be on shift, you would have reacted with the same professionalism and commitment and bravery. We are so grateful. for the life that you saved that night, and thank you for your incredibly committed, brave stewardship of our city every single day. We are very, very lucky to have you, and thank you for being here with us to recognize just this one instance of heroism in a career that I'm sure is full of them for all of you. Thank you very much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Collins. And yeah, on behalf of the council and as the president, I want to thank all of you for serving our city, keeping us safe and saving lives, not just in this incident, but all the time. We do have a citation here to present. I see we have a couple of family members here tonight. If you'd like to come up, we can, you know, Councilor Leming can present this to you. We can take a photo. Colleagues are welcome. But on behalf of all of us, we really just thank you so much for this and for everything you do for our community. On the motion of Councilor Leming, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you again. 25-187. Resolution to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the West Medford Community Center. Be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we celebrate the West Medford Community Center on its 90th anniversary and its role as a cornerstone of resilience, service, and community building for our city. The WMCC is at the heart of Medford's past, present, and future, and we honor and celebrate every person who has built this incredible legacy and history. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. The West Medford Community Center is a home for so many of our residents here in Medford. It is a place for West Medford residents and our historically black neighborhood in West Medford to get together, make friends, have a good time. It's a place for them to get involved civically for folks like us to be able to meet people where they're at. And the West Medford Community Center is, in my experience as a Councilor and as a candidate in Medford, one of the happiest places in the city. From the music events, the poetry readings, the markets of, you know, small business people and artists and artisans in the city, it's just a very radiant spot in our community that we should celebrate every single day. And the 90th anniversary is an amazing day to celebrate. One last note on this is just how important the West Medford Community Center has been in helping us preserve our history as a city and helping us connect to our roots and connecting us to our history of Black Medfordians who for so long have gone forgotten. And their narratives, their stories haven't been told by the city, by people researching the city. And so it really serves as a repository of history as well for our community and a resource for all of us to learn more about and tap into.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you for bringing this forward, Councilor Tseng. I appreciate it. My children, Evan and Sally, are in third and fifth grade. Reverse that. Evan's in fifth, Sally's in third. They just started this year at the West Medford Community Center for afterschool. The West Medford Community Center didn't used to offer an afterschool program for third graders, but they opened it up because they heard this year in the community that there was a big gap. where there weren't enough programs for third graders. This community center being intrinsically part of the Medford community and understanding when there's a service that is needed in the city, they offered that service. So there are a ton of kids who had aged out of one program, aged out of another program, and suddenly they needed something, and this program appeared for them because that's what the West Bedford Community Center is for. They show up as a beacon when they're needed. I think they've always been that way. I cannot believe they've been open for 90 years. That's crazy. And I'm delighted. I also wanted to tell one other story, which is that I attended the ribbon cutting or the groundbreaking ceremony for when they finally were able to start construction of a path from the backyard of the West Medford Community Center into Duggar Park, where the basketball courts are and the river. It took 10 years of lobbying and rabble-rousing at the state level because that road And that park is controlled by the Department of Conservation and Recreation. And if anybody has ever tried to get a parks department that is in control of all these parks all over the whole state to do something that's relatively small for one town, one community center, it's very challenging. It doesn't seem like that big a deal. DCR has had their commissioners turn over every year for a long time. It's kind of like a, defense against the dark arts teacher situation. I don't really understand it, but it's really hard to make things happen there. But the commitment of this group of people has been unmatched anywhere else that I've seen. The people of the West Bedford Community Center are devoted to the city and devoted to their morals and doing right by the people they serve, and I'm inspired by the work that's been accomplished there, and I'm grateful to be part of a community that this community center is intrinsically sort of the backbone of. So thank you for putting this forward. I'm very excited to celebrate it, very excited to pick my kids up there from after school all the time and watch them, you know, playing and doing crafts and, you know, having a great time. Thank you very much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. The West Bedford Community Centre really does community right. They are dedicated to serving, in part, the historic black community here in Medford, but they are also not exclusive, and so they also serve the wider West Medford community. They serve both of those communities incredibly well, providing art and music and, you know, activities and so many different events. They have a seniors group and they have so many different groups. They really listen to what people want and what people need. They provide lunches for like $2 or something for folks. They just do so many wonderful services. I really have thought a lot about how can we create more of these in Medford that do similar things that serve multiple different communities at the same time so well. So I'm incredibly grateful for all of the folks who work together and put together their programming and really, really proud to live in a city where they do such great work.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: I've been to a couple of those $2 lunches that my colleague just mentioned. They're really wonderful events to go to. It's one of the best ways that I could think of to meet your neighbors, which I've done on a couple of Thursdays, Thursday around 12 o'clock over the last couple of months. Something about building community that often isn't emphasized is that it takes a lot of effort to do that. It takes a group of people constantly working to sustain the community, to bring new life into it, to resolve conflicts. And the West Medford Community Center works so well because there are always people there who are working so hard to make that happen, to put on events, to organize those lunches, to fundraise when funding is constantly being cut. And they executed so impressively I mean, they're one of the only handful of organizations around the city that I've literally never heard anybody say anything bad about them. Like the feedback on my own experiences with the West Medford Community Center have always been completely 100% positive. And not only that, but they make, not only do they build community, but they put a lot of effort into educating the community about Medford's history, about national history, about the history of civil rights. And they put a lot of effort into keeping that memory going. So if you haven't been to one of their events, I would highly recommend going. And if you haven't been to one of their afternoon lunches, I would also suggest that as well. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you to my colleagues. Thank you, Councilor Tseng for joining me on this resolution. You know, the West Bedford Community Center, I went to after school there in elementary school and have been going back since. And it really serves kids, adults, elders in all aspects. It's a really wonderful, wonderful part of our community. They had a gala over the weekend to celebrate their 90th anniversary. And that's part of why we're We're putting this on the agenda. I wanna thank Lisa Crossman, Terry Carter. And if I go through any more names, the list will be too long. So both of them for their work for the West Bedford Community Center, representing so many others who are working on their projects every day, and also who have worked on them for 90 years. Got a new building, they got a new path. Mississippi River Road's improved, and I think it really goes to show its central place, not just in events and community, but also it's a physical representation of all of the work that so many people have put into it, both the building and now the path to Duggar Park and their own tennis courts. So next step is more improvements to Duggar Park, I think. But West Benford Community Center is just really wonderful and I'm going to get this citation over to Lisa and Terry and everyone else over there in due course. Is there a motion on the motion to approve by Councilor Tseng seconded by Councilors are all those in favor. Opposed. Motion passes. 25-188 offered by President Bears and Councilor Tseng, resolution to commend Vice President Collins for her outstanding service. Be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we commend Vice President Collins for her outstanding service on the Medford City Council from 2022 to 2026. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: This certainly will not be said with the eloquence it deserves, but Vice President Collins has been one of my best friends that I've ever made. She's definitely a bestie here on the city council for me. And in so many different ways, I look up to her. In her position as a Councilor, I was just stunned by Councilor Collins' work ethic and how much time she dedicates to our city, getting really nitty gritty into really technical details of many ordinances. And the mark that those ordinances will leave on the city will create benefits for all of our residents for a really long time to come. Her steadfast work on zoning, shepherding that through, despite its many challenges and difficulties, is no easy feat. It's no feat that any regular councilor in any city in Massachusetts has done. And it really is a testament to that work ethic that I was talking about. I admire so much how Councilor Collins really Is just so principled in the work that she does for our city and her approach to thinking about really complex problems and in fighting every day and certainly at every meeting here for the everyday resident who for far too long didn't have their voices heard. who didn't feel represented on the city council. And that voice has made such an impact. And residents see it, they hear it. And it really, something I think about is just. when folks found out, when we found out that you weren't running again, just the outpouring of love that residents showed to you. I was reading through all the comments, and I was like, wow, I really couldn't have said it better. Kit deserves all the praise that she's getting. But more importantly, on a personal level, Vice President Collins is just someone I've been able to turn to in really difficult moments, when this job gets really tough. She's always a calm presence to talk to, to bounce ideas off of, to get me back in a place to pick up the pieces and move forward, and to think about, to help me strategize about how to do that and how to move forward. On top of that, she does it with a smile. She does it with humor, a really funny, dry humor that we'll lose here on the city council, that we will surely come to miss. And it's just, you know, I think it It means a lot to me, especially since we got elected together. We came onto the city council together. We've been through the trenches together, both on the campaign and as councillors. And I was going through my phone and looking at old photos, and it was just really emotional for me. So I'll leave it there so I don't hog up too much time. But you certainly deserve all the love that I suspect other Councilors will join me in sharing tonight.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Why do you have to go? I could repeat a lot of what Councilor Tseng just said. We could talk about how Council Vice President Collins led us through an extremely difficult zoning process. We could talk about the grace with which she did that. We could talk about her work ethic and how she has put so much into it behind the scenes, how she put so much into her campaigns, how much effort she put into connecting with residents, how much she worked to elevate the status of renters and lower income people around Medford and give them a voice on council. We could talk about that, but we don't have to talk about that. The thing about Council Vice President Collins that I, the quality that I think about the most is the grace and respect that she always manages to give during meetings and interpersonally. And it's a quality that I've tried and often failed to emulate, but I do try. And it's gotten to the point where initially I admired it. And now after I see how difficult this job is and how she's still managed after four years to consistently have this attitude and speak eloquently during council meetings, it's gotten to the point where it confuses me how an individual is able to do that after all this time. And I'm going to try, but like I do try to learn from that example. But yeah, I don't think I'll reach those heights. All I can say is that we'll miss you. You put so much work into serving this city. You did such a good job. We'll be losing a lot when you step down. But thank you very much from myself, from my colleagues, and from everybody in Medford for the work that you've put in.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: I will try to be brief. I will sorely miss Council Vice President Collins. We lived a block apart and we were there if we needed each other to start each other's cars and do things like that. And I am, And of course I agree with all the things that my fellow councilor said. I took a number of photos of Councilor Collins from this perspective right here last time we were in the chambers. And the purpose is that I'm going to print them physically and I'm going to keep them in my drawer and then I will pull them out during each council meeting hopefully to remind me to do what Councilor Collins is so good at doing which before speaking her mind, to thank everyone, to thank the people who put forward the resolution, to thank the people who have shown up to speak, to thank the staff members who helped in writing the ordinance, to thank everyone who was involved. And it makes such a difference. And it's something that, again, like Councilor Leming, I'm going to make it my best effort to do that, and I will probably not reach those heights. But that is one of the many things that I will remember about Councilor Collins and she will be sorely missed.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I had to write down what I'm going to say because I'm going to try not to cry. Vice President Collins is an incredible city councilor but also an incredible friend and her support has been so enduring and permeated so many of my days over this term that I have a hard time putting it into words. Her steady assurance has kept me from losing my mind so many times. How does one say thank you for that? for one's own sanity or even for the further clarification of one's own self. I think you just say, thank you. Strong bonds are forged in emotional, stressful environments, places where we're forced to reckon with our deepest fears and stand up for our most strongly held beliefs. When this term challenged us, I think we helped each other keep our feet firmly on the ground to go back to our values and let them guide us. And when I was ever tempted to lose my way, Vice President Collins was able to bring me back, which was incredibly valuable, and I hope I was sometimes able to do the same. You give wonderful advice. You are driven by a firm moral center, and you have an incomparable ability to see the forest for the trees in every scenario. I'm so happy to have gotten to know you this well. I feel so lucky. It is a gift and a privilege to know you. And just one more thing that I didn't write down, which is that Kit is so empathetic that I used to, if I ever got mean emails or comments, and I would tell her about them, she would tell me, oh, that person is probably going through something. And I would be like, yeah, that's a really good point. And then I started doing that. When other people would tell me similar stories, I would be like, yeah, that person's really got a lot of personal stuff going on. And then I was like, oh, no, I've started Kit got to me. Her empathy became part of my way of going about seeing the world. She's so loving and empathetic, and the way that she views the world influences the people around her. So I think that's a wonderful way to govern. I think that's a great way to run a city, and you've made all of us better. So thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Lazzaro. I think it goes without saying from what everyone else just said, we're in big trouble. It seems that our balance and our calm may be leaving us. So we're all gonna have to work really hard to ask ourselves what would Kit Collins do. And I really echo the comments of my fellow colleagues. I think kids' principled, detail-oriented, determined, tough leadership has gotten this council through some hard meetings. It's gotten good policy passed, good ordinances passed. It's gotten all of us, made all of us better. hard discussions that have made our city better, that has made real progress for our community. Investing in our schools, passing surveillance privacy protections for our community, updating so many ordinances that I couldn't possibly list them. I think there's two more on the agenda tonight. to about quality of life, keeping our communities, our different neighborhoods cleaner and safer. And that product of work is so deeply impressive. This council, this term has done a lot. Kit has been at the head of that, at the helm of so much of that. We worked on a very big, difficult project with our zoning updates project where Kit essentially was a volunteer Web editor, communications director, meeting coordinator, and you know, I think one of the lessons we learn from that is. We shouldn't, even though Kit did it, it's probably not something we should ask any one person to do because there's probably no one else who could have done it. And that lesson is gonna inform our work for the next two years, where we're gonna finish out this really, really, really important project that Kit made so much headway and progress on and where we're already seeing really major improvements in the parts of our city where we were able to update our zoning. You know, that's the policy side of things. Everyone else talked about their personal items, and here I am just listing ordinances. Which I think doesn't even begin to go into the fact that if I do start talking about the personal thing, I won't be able to keep chairing the meeting for a little while. So Kit has just been an amazing, amazing, amazing colleague and friend, and done amazing service to our city here in Medford. And it won't be the same to be behind this rail without Kit. for the next term. So thank you, Vice President Collins, and good luck to the rest of us in trying to live up to what Kit has brought to this council and to our city. Would you like to say anything, Vice President Collins?
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. To say that I am touched and moved by the words of my colleagues truly does not even begin to encompass how I feel about it. If I don't seem... I'm not going to say that I'm gutted at the moment of my last meeting on this city council. It's only because I've been emotionally processing not working with you all and serving as your representative for several months now. It has been emotional for me to anticipate not having the kind of relationship with my colleagues that I've enjoyed for two years for some of you and four years for some of you and to continue. feeling so invested and in love with this community but to have that relationship change as well. It's been very emotional for me because this has been an extremely meaningful, important, lucky time of my life. I want to thank all of you and I'll include George in this even though he's sick today which is really sad because I was hoping to give him one last hug as well. I want to thank you for being such incredible colleagues. It is a really rare privilege to get to collaborate in such a meaningful way with people with whom I am so aligned in every way that matters. I think most people don't get the chance to experience that, and I have, and that is probably one of the best things that will happen to me in my entire life, is the chance to collaborate with you and other people in the community who share our goal of making Medford better for all of us and to be able to make real headway towards those goals in many ways, and to be able to collaborate with the public servants who have dedicated so much of their lives towards those goals, and sacrificed so much towards those goals, and to see what we have been able to do together. I think this is a really rare and precious thing that we've gotten to do together, and I feel incredibly grateful that I have gotten to do it at all, and that I've gotten to do it with all of you. There is a lot that I would like to say about each of you individually as well. But we have a lot of other items on the agenda. So we're going to keep in touch and you'll keep hearing it from me anyway. I would feel. much more bereft to be leaving my post if I didn't feel so incredibly heartened and confident by the incoming city council and school committee for that matter. I know that the city of Medford is in incredibly good hands with the school committee and the city council that was elected in November. I am so excited to see where you will take the things that we have worked on together. especially zoning. I feel that Medford is in incredibly good hands and for as long as you are working behind this rail and as long as we collectively are working for the betterment of this community, I'll be on your team, I'll be in your corner and I will be eager to Be your cheerleader and support the things that we care about in Medford in any way that we can so Thank you to the community so much for entrusting me with this role. It's been an honor of a lifetime And thank you to thank you so much to all of my colleagues who I can call My friends and some of my my very favorite people Thank you
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Collins. We do have some folks who'd like to speak, offering you further praise. So we'll go, if anyone in the chamber would like to speak, you can approach the podium. And we also have a couple of folks on Zoom. Looks like we'll start on Zoom. Or maybe we'll start with Barry at the podium. That's what we'll do. We'll start with Barry. Name and address for the record, Barry, and you'll have three minutes.
[Barry Ingber]: Barry Ingber, 9 Draper Street. And I have not thought through what I want to say. I just want to say that all the praise that has come from your side of the rail exists on this side of the rail as well. I feel it. I hear it from other people that I work with in the community all the time. People are always, in particular, referring to how incredible Kit is as a city councilor. your moral clarity, your steadfast unflappability, and your very deep kindness towards everybody, and your honesty. I mean, not only in my political life, but in my life generally, I've rarely come across people who I feel as much trust with as I feel with you. And I thank you for your four years and wish you luck as you move on. Thank you, Kit.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll go to Andrew Casanetti on Zoom. Andy, I'm going to unmute you. Name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: to your attention, Councilor Bears. Briefly, I would like, I would be amiss or remiss not to wish City Councilor Kit Collins happy trails to wherever you're going and shalom.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Mr. Castagnetti. We'll go to Mounir Jermaine. Oh, we'll go to the podium. Okay. We'll go to Munir. Name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[Munir Jirmanus]: Munir Germanis, 3 Summit Road. I had the pleasure of starting to meeting, well, maybe not personally at first, Kit, when she worked with a group of us, Palestinian Americans, to make the proper words and pass the ceasefire resolution a few years ago. as the only Jewish councillor on the city council. This was amazing. We will forever be grateful for her support and for the wonderful other ordinances that she has championed and passed and spoke about her integrity as I as everybody has said is incredible. So in passing I'd like to say may the road rise to meet you May the wind be always at your back, and until the day we meet again, may you rest in the palm of God's hand. So we look forward to having you back again. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: I think we should have a little more music in these meetings. Thank you, Munir. We'll go to the podium. Jennifer, name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[Jennifer Yanko]: Jennifer Yanko, 16 Monument Street. I just want to say, Kit, that it's been really illuminating for me to work with you and to see how you have led the city council as vice president. You have this amazing way of demonstrating what true integrity in public office is. Integrity with grace and that's very rare and it's been a wonderful gift to the city and we'll miss you a lot. And on another note, if I may just add this, since it's the last meeting of the year, you may have noticed that I've been knitting during the meetings. I managed to knit seven hats, one for each Councilor, and I know that maybe that you have, in a way of thanking all of you for your work in this session, and Kit, since you're leaving, you can choose the first hat, but into these hats is knit All kinds of things. You can, you know, give them to your dog or your favorite uncle or maybe wear them, whatever. But know that whatever you do with them, crocheted or knit into each one, is discussions of the welcoming city ordinance, the values aligned local investments ordinance, the gender affirming care and reproductive health ordinance, an ordinance establishing a new human rights commission, which we may hear about later. The new charter that's now, that was on the ballot and passed. And all of this interspersed with discussions of zoning and so many other things. So, these were all, almost all done during meetings. And here they are. Thank you all. Thank you especially Kit, and I wish you all the best. And thanks to each of you. We're really, really very lucky. And I'm so proud to be a resident of Medford, a city that has such an incredible council. We're really unusual and lucky. Thank you all.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Jennifer. Anna, would you grab the hats? All right. Next, we're going to go to Steve Schnapp. Steve, name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[Steve Schnapp]: Thank you, Steve Schnapp, 36 Hillside Ave, Medford Square. I just want to add to all the accolades for Kit is my great appreciation for her recognition that social change happens when people are involved. That it's not just our representative democracy that gets rules changed and policies implemented. It's people. Kit has always recognized that participatory democracy is important for our future. I greatly appreciate that, and I wish you the best, Kit. Thank you so much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Steve. We will go back to the podium. Micah, name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes. Sure.
[Micah Kesselman]: 499 Main Street, Micah Kesselman. So a lot of great things have been said, Kit, and I echo all of them, certainly. I want to thank you for being a critical ally and champion of so many things that have been so deeply important to this community over the years. And on a more personal side of it, I want to thank you for being bringing what I think is a Yiddish circle to the city council chambers. I think that you, as the only Jewish city council member, and I think in Medford history, right? So I think you have your chutzpah, your commitment to improving the community and working with the community, your adherence to your moral compass and ethical values are a represent and implement the shared culture and heritage that is so dear to both of us, I think. And I can't help but feeling a bit of nahas for how you have held yourself and performed on this city council and in these chambers. So thank you for your service and all your work, Councilor Collins. And I hope that whatever you are going on to do is wonderful and great and full of learning and adventure. And I very sincerely hope that we will have the benefit of having you back in our city sometime in the future to continue helping us make Medford the wonderful community it should be.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And we'll go to Eileen Lerner on Zoom. Eileen, name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[Ilene Lerner]: Well, I'd like to echo. It didn't go off. What happened?
[Zac Bears]: We can hear you. OK.
[Ilene Lerner]: So I'd like to echo everything that everybody has said about Kit Collins. I'm very, very sad to see her go. I love her very much and I think the most outstanding thing about Kit is how she is so principled and even in the face of you know people criticizing her and yelling and screaming and she maintains her position and that's been so important. And I'm so proud of her and I'm proud of all of you and the ways in which the city has changed since I've moved here. And I know we all hope that Kit comes back in a couple of years. So please know Kit, you have a place at our table always. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right, anyone else would like to speak on this paper? Seeing none, the next step is we will take a vote, and then anyone who would like to take a photo with us in the well, you're welcome to come up and take a photo with us and with Kit, and we'll go from there. On the motion of Councilor Tseng to approve the paper, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Callahan. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. All right. We have quite a bit more business before us, so let's get the move on. Kit absolutely cannot go home, because the records of the meeting of December 2nd, 2025 were passed to Vice President Collins. Vice President Collins, how'd you find the records?
[Kit Collins]: I found them in order, and I move for approval.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve by Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Reports of committees, 25186 offered by President Bears, Committee of the Whole, December 9th, 2025 report. This was on the McGlynn Solar Project and Contract, and we are talking about that a little bit more later tonight. Is there a motion? On the motion to approve by Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. 24-073 and 24-354 offered by Councilor Leming, Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee, December 10th, 2025 report to follow. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: We wrote a newsletter, motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve by Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. 24-036 and 24-461 offered by Councilor Lazzaro, Public Health and Community Safety Committee, December 10th, 2025. Report to follow, Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: In this meeting we talked about the rodent control ordinance and the overgrowth ordinance which will be discussed later tonight. Motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve by Councilor Lazzaro, seconded by Councilor Tseng, all those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Yes. Could we do these two first? Thank you. Motions, orders, and resolutions. 25189 offered by Council President Bears. Amendment to Chapter 2, Article 5, Division 2, Medford Standard Compensation Ordinance. Councilor Collins, could you chair? Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: I didn't see it in the packet. Okay, great. On the paper 25-189, I'll recognize President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Collins. So this is an ordinance amendment proposal called the Medford Standard Compensation Ordinance. As it says in the draft, the purpose of this chapter is to assure that employees of the City of Medford building service contractors and subcontractors earn an hourly wage that is needed to support a family of four and to promote labor peace in building service work contracted by the City of Medford. This ordinance The reasoning for it comes from identified gaps in our current city ordinances and procurement ordinances that other communities have fixed. We recently had a procurement process for custodial services in the Medford Public Schools where a union contractor was essentially replaced with a non-union contractor and through research it was determined mainly because the procurement process is inadequate. There was a union contractor who had submitted a competitive bid but was not selected because the process is just out of date and the ordinance is old. So this ordinance would update our procurement laws here in the city to make sure that when we're doing contracted or subcontracted services that the folks who are doing those jobs get and that in the bidding process, that compensation, there's no advantage to go non-union because there's a floor where every person who is being contracted by the city has to meet a basic wage floor. This is something that has been adopted in several communities. This language largely comes from that. Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and other communities have adopted these ordinances to make sure that our procurement process is not negatively affecting workers. We have some workers here tonight who were affected by the custodial contract. We also have some of their representatives here from 32JSNU, their union. And that, I'd love to hear from them after I hear from my fellow colleagues, but they can share more of their personal stories of what it's been like to be impacted by this procurement issue here in our city. that the decision makers in the Medford Public Schools were only able to make the decision with the information they had and that was based on a process that's out of date. So, you know, going forward whether it's city side, school side, getting this process up to date and making sure there's a fair wage floor for every worker. It means that an issue like this will not happen again, at very least will not happen again the way that it happened here. So I am really glad to be putting this forward. I'd like to move forward on it if at all possible and really would appreciate hearing from my colleagues and then hearing from our friends from who were until relatively recently working in a contract position for the city as well as their union. Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. I'll go first to Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you, President Bears, for introducing this. Our council was frustrated when we learned that what you described had happened and about the switch from union staff to non-union staff. Unions are such an important part of our economy, of our city. They are our neighbors. Union members have created this country. They've created the city. And particularly in a time, and of course, when it comes to economic justice, unions are always important. But particularly at a time of rising affordability concerns, challenging economic environments, it's more important now than ever to fix these problems and to identify the gaps in our laws that allow for things to go wrong and to make them right so that the next time this rolls around, we're doing things the fair, just, and correct way. So I just wanted to put that out there. And I'm looking forward to hearing from the union reps and from the staff who were affected by this change. This doesn't fix everything, but it is certainly a big step forward in making things right for the people who come next. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan. Thanks so much. I did hear about this when I was knocking on doors and I know that. The people who voted for me, the people who voted, you know, people in Medford who voted for many of the people who currently sit in school committee and on the city council, trust us to be supportive of unions and of workers. And I really want to commend President Bears for taking quick action on this and working to to find legislation that other cities have used here in Massachusetts to ensure that this is going to to work for our city as well. And you know just really identifying something that was was did not end the way that I think The people who worked there wanted it to end and did not end the way that I think the majority of our voters also want. So I really appreciate his immediate action and attention and the thoroughness of this ordinance. And I really do look forward to hearing from the folks from 32BJ. And thank you all for being here.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. If there are no other councillors who would like to speak right now, I think we'd all love to hear from the representatives from the union. Thank you so much, and as you approach the mic, please feel free to just state your name and your address. It can be a business address for the record, and thank you for being here.
[Rahma]: Perfect. Just, I think, our member, Dina, will read her remarks in Spanish, and I'll translate if that's okay. Great.
[Kit Collins]: And just both of your names.
[Rahma]: Thank you. Dina, do you want to say her? Well, she'll say her name and I'll say my name. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Buenas noches. Y agradezco a los consejeros por considerar mi comentario. Mi nombre es Dina Landaverde. Soy uno de los 14, de los 14 limpiadores que perdimos nuestro trabajo. El 30 de julio, cuando las escuelas cambiaron contra por una compañía sin unión, Partner Facility Solution. La pérdida del trabajo era un golpe enorme de los cuales estamos todavía sufriendo las repercusiones. Muchos de nosotros no hemos podido encontrar trabajo nuevo. In mi hogar, nuestra vida es más difícil ahora que no estoy aumentando el ingreso de mi marido. Además de eso, siento mucho la pérdida de un trabajo, trabajo que me gustaba hacer. limpiar bien y mantener seguro muchas de las áreas públicas del high school Medford. Quiero mencionar también que gracias a este trabajo sindical yo tenía un beneficio que permitió tomar clases de ciudadanía y me hice ciudadana este año. Yo supongo que esa perdida tiene que ver con los salarios más bajos que normalmente ofrece esta compañía sin unión. Y por esa razón les agradezco mucho al concejal por considerar esta propuesta a garantizar el salario estándar para todos los limpiadores que trabajamos por la ciudad de Medford. Otra vez, mis agradecimientos a ustedes por su preocupación por lo que nos ha sucedido. Thank you.
[Rahma]: I'll read it in English. So thank you, everyone. My name is Rahm Avarnasi. I'm the political coordinator for 32BJ. I'll read in English now. Good evening and thank you to the council members for considering my comments. My name is Dino Landa Verde. I'm one of the 14 custodians who lost our jobs on July 30th when the school switched contractors to a non-union company Partners Facility Solution, the current contractor. The job loss was a huge blow, and we are all still suffering the repercussions. Many of us have not been able to find new jobs. In my own household, in Dina's household, life is much harder now because she's not able to contribute to her family's income. On top of that, she deeply misses the job that she enjoyed doing, cleaning and keeping safe many of the public areas of Medford High School. She wants to mention that thanks to this union job, she had benefits that allowed her to take citizenship classes, and she became a citizen this year. She assumes this job has to do with the lower wages that these non-union companies typically offer. And for that reason, she's very grateful to this council, as am I, for considering this proposal to guarantee a standard wage for all custodians who work in this great city of Medford. Again, thank you for your concern for all that has passed since this contract flipped at the end of June, of July. Thank you. Yeah.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you.
[Rahma]: So yeah, thank you all so much for considering this. And we really believe that this can make a big difference in the lives of our members, but all sorts of property service workers in the city. You guys do so much great stuff. And I think this could be another area to really push the city of Bedford forward. So we really appreciate it. Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you very much. Do any other members want to speak?
[Rahma]: You don't think so. The shy group, this is great. But we really appreciate it. Great.
[Kit Collins]: Well, thank you. Gracias. Thank you for your comments.
[Rahma]: I think we're good. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: We'll go back to President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah and I just wanted to again say thank you to all of you for sharing your stories. I know you've shared it here in the city council chamber and also with the school committee and I know it's especially been hard for some members who have been looking for work at the holidays trying to get a second job to become a first job and, you know, the fact that such real and difficult impacts on the lives of people who were working, you know, as contractors for the city of Medford. is just awful and something that we have to correct the law, make sure that there's really a truly fair shot every time and that the floor for everyone who works for the city is a fair prevailing living wage. And the fact that that wasn't the law and it resulted in this impact is just an awful thing. And we're gonna fix the law and then hopefully we can come around and make sure that everyone who's working in the contracted roles for our city is treated fairly. So thank you all for coming and sharing your story.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I appreciate you bringing this forward, President Bears, and I appreciate you all coming out here and speaking on this issue. Medford frequently has situations where we attempt to fill budget gaps in whichever creative way we try to find, but I don't think this is a good way to try to do that. We should be making sure that our employees are, you know, being paid in a way that's sustainable. It's not safe to have employees in the schools that are not being paid a living wage. I appreciate what you mentioned about the sense of pride and keeping our schools clean and safe. I think that's really a wonderful way to look at it. And I also appreciate the framing around it being closing the gaps, updating our ordinances, and keeping our codes up to the standards of our surrounding communities. I really like that way of thinking about it. Would there be any opportunity for us to dig a little bit more into this ordinance or is there a drive to have this be kind of quickly moving forward? Is this standard language? I'm wondering if there's any kind of, just because we haven't really, done a lot of discussion on this ordinance prior to today. I'm just wondering if that's something that we feel is there's an urgency behind it, or if there's more discussion that we would want to do in committee. I don't need it to go to committee. I'm just curious about, just because we haven't really seen it, we haven't talked about it in depth yet. I would just offer that to, through the chair.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. I'll go to President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm open to taking a deeper look at it. The main reason I didn't propose that route on this where we did propose that on condo conversion at planning and permitting is it's basically just taking what's working somewhere else and putting it into our ordinance. And I think one of the things that we've somewhat struggled with as a council is like not having a role in contracts. So I don't know what's up for bid, if there are services up for bid. Probably there's not a bidding process that's going to happen in the next two months. My inclination was to approve it for first reading. We could have another meeting on it, but if we wanted to send it to committee of the whole, that would be fine with me as well. You know, we can go either way. My only, well, I'm just, you know, we have a very hard time getting council to respond in a timely way in this community right now, at least to city council requests. And that inclines me to. kind of put the ball back in their court to send responses and replies if there are questions. So that's just my thinking. Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: Go ahead, Councilor Latero.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yeah, I actually think that that's a great point, that the necessity of the three readings leaves time for the administration, any council responses, that's built in. So maybe it's not necessary for us to drag out anything else. My thought is there may be some elements of this that I I wouldn't I certainly wouldn't know what it would apply to in other areas. But if this is standard language that's happening in our surrounding communities that's just been lifted. I mean that's we we we practice. I mean, it's not plagiarism. It's common practice to lift ordinance language from other communities, especially when it's been carefully reviewed and it's been implemented successfully. We've done that with a number of our other ordinances. So I think that makes me feel comfortable if this is very close to the language that's being used in Boston and Cambridge and being successfully implemented, then I wouldn't have I wouldn't have a problem with allowing the three reading structure to necessitate any responses from the administration and council. So then we could just move forward and let that work that way. If this is the mechanism that we as a city council have to impact the negotiation of contracts because I don't feel comfortable with contracts like necessarily being negotiated in a way that's going to cut things in order to cover our budget shortfalls on the backs of our lowest paid employees and making them the even lower paid employees who are then not taken care of and leaving people high and dry who previously were taken care of or could be better taken care of.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Great, thank you. I'll go back to President Bears and then to Councilor Calion.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, yeah. I think Councilor Tseng might call this good law. There's good law and bad law. Good law is generally law that's working elsewhere. In parlance that I'm sure Councilor Tseng is more familiar with. But essentially what this does is it, I think the worst part of this is I don't even know that we saved money. Right? Yeah. It's just that the process is really, like, not working well. And there's not really a... Yeah. It's just not clear that the decision makers are getting all of the information on all of the bids in a way where they could... necessarily make a fair comparison. I'm not going to go through the specifics of the step to step to step to step to step. I can certainly connect you with Rama and the 32BJ team who did a lot of work asking why did this happen and, you know, who made what decisions that led to the information that the Medford Public Schools got to then pick a contract. Because I think it just really reflects that the procurement process itself, not having these protections that other communities have, is really what the issue was. It wasn't even like anyone made an intentional choice to try to save money or anything. It was just like the two bids that got to the decision maker. didn't have a full, there wasn't a full picture provided, and because of this didn't exist, there wasn't like a floor for wages that every person, every bidder had to meet. So in here, in section... 2937, it talks about prescribed rates of pay pursuant to Director of Department of Labor Standards for janitorial security service employees. So that's similar to some things that we already have in our ordinance around. construction and contracting projects which essentially ties things to the prevailing wage standards set out by the Commonwealth. So that's the mechanism that's being used here. We have I think what's titled in our ordinances like a responsible wage ordinance. I can't remember the exact title, but it's actually the chapter that would be, that is right before what this would be in our ordinances. So essentially we have something very similar to this for contracted construction, but not for contracted service work. Yeah.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. I'll go to Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I really appreciate your question, and I do think that it's a good process for our community to have an ordinance like this go, to have the kinds of discussions that I personally know happened before it came here, to have some of those in public, and I am going to move that we request legal opinion from whatever city council we have at the moment. And that we also send this to a committee of the whole, where we can let the public know a little bit more about the process and the circumstances, as well as review the legal advice from council. Great. I'm sorry, if I may. Sure. I apologize. I forgot to say I am fully in favor of this, and I do hope that it moves through quickly. I don't want to delay it, but I just think from a process of passing an ordinance that actually has a little bit of meat to it, I would love for our community to know more about the situation and what's in it. Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: Great, thank you. So that's a motion by Councilor Callahan to request a legal opinion from KP Law, unfortunately. And also to schedule a committee of the whole to further discuss this ordinance before taking future action on it. Seconded by President Bears. Is there any further commentary or questions from councilors?
[Ilene Lerner]: No?
[Kit Collins]: On the motion by Councilor Callahan. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Okay, one opposed. Five in favor, one opposed. The motion passes. Five? Yes, five of us. That was five in favor, one opposed. The motion passes. Great. Yes?
[Zac Bears]: We don't need to have disputed voice votes. It doesn't count.
[SPEAKER_25]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: It's still like the yeses. Yeah, just you would say not unanimously. We just very rarely have non-unanimous voice votes.
[Kit Collins]: Kind of cool. A treat for the audience. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you again to the union representatives for being here for the start of this really important ordinance. And I think we're all hoping that it will see a favorable resolution very, very quickly after just a little bit more discussion in public. But thank you again for turning what you have gone through into a positive step forward for our community. Thank you very much. Moving forward, paper 25-190 offered by President Bears. Acceptance of Mass General Law, Chapter 40, Section 71, Chapter 399 of Act of 2024, School Bus Safety Enforcement. Be it ordered that the city of Medford hereby accepts Mass. General Law, Chapter 40, Section 71, Chapter 399 of the Acts of 2024, enabling the city to install, operate, and maintain school bus violation detection monitoring systems on school buses to enforce violations pursuant to Sections 14 and 14C of Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 90. Any system put in place shall be limited to monitoring and detecting violations of motor vehicle operators who fail to stop for a school bus. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And we also have a letter here from the school committee. And I did have some meetings with member Graham, vice chair Graham on this as well. But this was a resolution presented on the agenda from September 8th, 2025 of the School Committee, along with the meeting minutes approved September 22nd. So we have Medford School Committee resolution requesting City Council adoption of Chapter 399, school bus stop arm camera enforcement, whereas the Commonwealth of Massachusetts enacted Chapter 399 of the Acts of 2024, titled an act concerning the safety of school children embarking and disembarking school buses, which authorizes municipalities to install and operate school bus violation detection and monitoring systems. And whereas pilot programs in PVD and SEM have demonstrated the effectiveness of those systems with thousands of violations recorded in a single school year. Whereas the law includes strict privacy protections requiring that non-violation recordings be destroyed within 30 days and violation recordings within one year of final disposition. And whereas the safety of Medford's children is a top priority and the implementation of stop arm cameras has been shown to deter illegal passing and improve compliance with school safety laws. Now therefore be it resolved that the school committee respectfully request that the city council formally accept the provisions of chapter 399 of the acts of 2024, thereby enabling the city of Medford to install and operate school bus violation detection monitoring systems. Be it further resolved that the school committee recommends the establishment of a joint committee, including a representative from the school committee, a representative of the city council, the chief of police, the superintendent of schools, and the mayor or designee to evaluate and recommend policies regarding the use of revenue generated from citations. And be it further resolved that the school committee respect the request that the mayor agree to earmark citation revenue for exclusive use as directed by the recommendations of this committee. With a priority given to student safety initiatives, transportation, infrastructure improvements, and public awareness campaigns. A motion to approve by member Intoppa, seconded by member Branley. And this was unanimously approved September 8th, 2025 by the school committee. So our role here is to accept the provision of state law, Chapter 40, Section 71, also known as the Chapter 399 of the Acts of 2024. The school committee did recommend establishing a joint committee, including those members and my understanding from their resolution. and talking to Vice Chair Jenny Graham, is that the citation revenue will be used for safety improvements for transportation infrastructure, focusing on student safety first and foremost. So I think this is a one-two punch, if you ask me. We deter people buzzing by school buses when they have their stop arms out and we bring in some revenue that can go right back into safety improvements. So that is the resolution. Remember Graham and I also were able to meet with Mike Gorman from Bus Patrol which is one of the, they're the folks who do this the best. They've been doing this in multiple communities around Massachusetts. I won't speak more on that other than that we had some great conversations both about the program and the law, but also about privacy. And we were able to incorporate a few amendments to draft contracts to further address some privacy concerns that we I had heard from some residents from our ACLU Medford People Power chapter, and they were very amenable, very clear that their intent is not about collecting data, but stopping people from putting kids in danger by zipping by school buses. So I felt really good about that and I'm thankful for the conversations that we had. And I would move approval pending discussion by members of the council and I know that Mike is here to talk about, answer any questions, kind of talk a little bit more about their program as well. And you guys presented to the school committee as well?
[SPEAKER_31]: To Councilor Graham, school committee member Graham.
[Zac Bears]: To member Graham, yeah, okay, great. That's all I have, thank you Chair Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Are there any initial comments or questions from Councilors before we turn it over to the presenters? Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. This is one of the state laws that is in the direction of automating traffic enforcement that relieves some of the inherent biases of some of the, you know, the complications with police enforcement, with traffic violations, like the, so the bus, the bus thing is one of them. There is another thing that I went to the State House to speak in favor of that was red lights and speeding, but all of these, laws are great because it sort of, if you can build in the privacy, which the laws try to, but there's some questions about it, so it's a little bit tricky, but it sort of allows people to understand that implementation of the law is happening inherently. So you can't break the law, because you will automatically get a ticket. So people, it's like a psychological experiment. People will then follow the law. And if people are following the law, they drive more safely, and then There are less traffic accidents and something I've spent a lot of this term talking about is trying to make our roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists and this is a great example of an obvious. Yes, for me, but I think it should be for everybody that we don't want anybody, but especially young children who are getting off the school buses and having to cross the street, being hit by cars. There are many, many near misses in Medford. associated with kids walking to school, getting off of buses. Mystic Ave has a big issue with people. This happens with city buses, but crosswalks, there's a spot on Fellsway at a crosswalk that kids take to school. There's a lot that we still have to do. This is one step in that direction. This is a clear yes, I believe. I'm very excited about this one step closer to using technology for something that's actually good and not just writing screenplays. So that's something nice. But I look forward to hearing more about what you have to say about this. And I'm excited about future ways to implement this type of thing as well. Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Please go ahead, just name and address for the record, please. Thank you for being here.
[SPEAKER_31]: Michael Gorman. I live in Middleton, Massachusetts. I have with me Ezra Orkin from Medford, resident the last few years, and we both are employed by Bus Patrol. And our company's core purpose is to enhance child safety. We're in 27 states across America where covering New England as quickly as we can, specifically Connecticut and Rhode Island. Now that this is a state law in Massachusetts as of January, we've been crisscrossing the Commonwealth to make sure that we are speaking to the communities like Medford as best we can, as quickly as we can, to take our program to the streets of these communities, which in essence, when these programs are enacted in these communities, it's true, tested that drivers become more. rational around buses, around school buses. Their aptitude to understand the ramifications of receiving a ticket is real. The propensity to be a repeat offender diminishes down to 10%. And what happens with this education, because that's what we're really built on, You know, Councilor, you mentioned the ticketing, which is in effect here, but we are an educational company. Our core mission to enhance child safety is through the repetition of educating drivers and residents that this law is important, important to the safety of your community, to the children that are depending on these buses for safe transportation, and for everyone that are on the roads in cities like Medford. It's a program we're quite proud of because it works, the technology is sound and effective, and we're thrilled and grateful We're grateful that you're considering us tonight. And I'll let Ezra say a couple of words because this is his town.
[SPEAKER_19]: Hi, everyone. I'm Ezra Okon. I'm the Chief Operating Officer of Bus Patrol. I'm here not as the Chief Operating Officer of Bus Patrol, but an advocate for student safety that's lived in Medford with my daughter for the last four years. I'm extremely passionate about this topic. I've watched hundreds of millions of school bus stops. over my time at bus patrol, and I can unequivocally say that this program changes behavior. The law changes behavior. And it only changes when we can evaluate and watch and monitor every single stop in the community. Our program is unique in that we serve every single bus in the community. We do not discriminate based on location, based on bus type, based on area in the community. Every bus has the opportunity to get this technology. which means every child getting on or off the bus has an opportunity to be protected by the technology. And so we're very excited and honored to be here. Me personally, having been working on this mission for four or five years to be presenting in my own community is extremely exciting and moving. And so thank you for the time and the consideration.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. Thank you for being here. Questions from my fellow Councilors? Go ahead, Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: I don't have questions, but I just wanted to say on the record that I think this is a no brainer. Protecting our kids is the chief priority, one of the chief priorities of any local government. And there, you know, we, we have, we've heard from kids themselves at city council meetings about how dangerous it can be on the roads for them. And school bus stops are no different than that. The law that we would accept is also really straightforward when you look at it. It's a win-win for everyone. It's a win for city government. It's a win for you guys, of course, and it's a win for residents. This isn't something that is extremely costly. This is something that's basic and that is, you know, just common sense. So I'm happy to support this.
[SPEAKER_31]: Thank you very much for saying that.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you Councilor Tseng. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Just wanted to thank you guys again for your work and for being a resident. I know it can feel really great to have something you've been working on at a large scale come home and Having kids in the community, I'm sure that that makes this issue even closer to your heart. So I really appreciate that. You know, we worked out some of the questions around privacy and I really appreciate that. Got a couple more that I think we can engage in some dialogue on after the meeting. Just to make sure that, you know, that the provisions of the contract are really keeping Keeping the data safe and I know that that's something you've really talked about. The focus is on keeping kids safe keeping our community safe. That's what you guys do. So feeling good about that myself and I'll make sure to share any additional questions or language suggestions with you guys. And I appreciate it just really the willingness and openness to just put that in. in the agreement and make it clear, like, we're just putting these cameras on to keep the kids safe. And beyond that, privacy is really important to you guys, too. So that's really meaningful. It's another value we share as a council. We've spent quite a bit of time on data privacy. And honestly, you know, I think You know, having relationships with folks that we trust around that is really important because, sadly, we are regulating this at the local level, you know, when privacy, I think, really is a right that we all think should be much more clearly enshrined and addressed at the state and federal level. So I appreciate us having to work that out since the people who should be working it out haven't done it.
[SPEAKER_31]: We look forward to working alongside the police, the school department, and you, the council board, to pursue this endeavor. Great. Thank you so much.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this item? Name and address for the record, please.
[Micah Kesselman]: Mike Kesselman, 499 Main Street. So I'm not opposed to bus cams and all of this, and I'd love to talk to you guys some more later about some issues, some concerns, but as far as this enacting ordinance goes that enacts the mass gen law, I do want to bring it to your attention and ask if it's possible that some sort of amendment be put in to the enacting ordinance I say that not totally knowing how this works at this level, that further limits the data derived from recordings to only be used and preserved in aggregated statistical form and only after a plan of such usage has been approved by the current sitting city council. The issue is because, is that, In my day job, I am an IP and advanced software attorney. I have worked with ML enabled, machine learning enabled technologies for over a decade. I'm very good at what I do. And using the derivative data is more valuable often than the raw data. would be very much to the city's benefit and to our privacy rights and whole bunch of other derived issues for there to be black letter law in our city code that gives us insight and control over all data aspects related to these types of monitoring and automation services. So that's all I'm really asking for. Thanks.
[Kit Collins]: Great. Thank you. Next. Name and address for the record.
[Barry Ingber]: Barry Ingber, 9 Draper Street. I have, I just want to echo the concerns about privacy and just make sure that whatever we end up with is consistent with our CCOPS ordinance. and while totally being supportive of the idea of enforcing school bus stops. I have a couple of questions for the bus patrol people. I wonder if I may have permission to ask them directly or do I need to go through?
[Unidentified]: Through me, thank you.
[Barry Ingber]: Okay. Vice President Collins, one question I would have for the bus patrol people is, I'm assuming I drive past a stopped school bus, my car is photographed, I get a ticket, I deserve it. My neighbor Ezra, who's a better citizen than I, stops for the school bus, does his car get photographed? That's one question. And a second question is, some of the materials that we've seen refer to a beyond enforcement program, and we have no idea what that is or if that even pertains to Medford, but I think it would be important for us to know that. Thank you very much.
[Kit Collins]: Great. Thank you, Barry. If you'd like to speak to those questions now, you're certainly welcome to. Or President Bears, go ahead.
[Zac Bears]: I will ask those questions of you. And I think it would be helpful to talk a little bit about what gets collected, basically what an interaction looks like when someone drives by, what's collected, how long does it stick around for, that's helpful. And yeah, if you could talk about beyond enforcement as well a little bit. And I think that the last thing I'll say to what Micah and Barry were talking about is this, what we're doing tonight is adopting the state law, which allows us to enter into a procurement process. And so then there would be an agreement signed. And then we also have a city ordinance called Community Control over Public Surveillance. This would probably qualify as a surveillance technology. So the city likely in this case Medford Public Schools through the bus contractor would just have a policy in place saying this is essentially how we use this. I'm guessing a lot of it would be pulled from the agreement itself but just to clarify some procedural elements as well. But yeah I think talking about what does an interaction look like and just a little bit about beyond enforcement would be helpful.
[SPEAKER_31]: Sure. Well, if using the example one of your residents just raised, if a car did go through wrongly and was videoed and photographed, that information would be utilized for that moment for the police to determine whether or not that was a valid a digression from the way a car should be stopping. And what happens is the police then accept the violation, the alleged violation. It gets sent out. But once that citation is paid, that data, that information is no longer saved over a period of time. It's kept until that moment runs its course. And what happens is the car, the other example of the car that was photographed possibly when the alleged other vehicle was taken, that car's no longer required to save data because that car is not going to be receiving a citation. So that's no longer information that's relevant to that moment. So that information gets destroyed rather quickly.
[Zac Bears]: The Beyond Enforcement Program, we're not doing that here, right? Or could you explain what that is a little bit more?
[SPEAKER_19]: So the Beyond Enforcement Program is an optional add-on that we offer generally at no additional cost for school districts that is not related to the enforcement program at all. The enforcement cameras are outward facing. They don't record the inside of the bus. They don't record any goings on with the driver. They're strictly for enforcement. Beyond enforcement is an option that we offer for additional cameras separate from the enforcement cameras that allow the school districts to take advantage of other security they might want to put in place inside the school bus and around the school bus. So it would be interior cameras along with the ability to pull the interior cameras in the event of an incident with a child, a child missing, bullying, altercations, those types of items, but they are completely optional and not a required part of the program.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. My understanding from our conversations is that the city is not going to be participating in that program.
[SPEAKER_19]: It's completely at their option. Yeah.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. Yeah. That was my understanding from the conversations with member Graham and the school committee resolution. This is just about the safety outside the bus. All right. Thank you, at least for me. Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate you speaking to those questions and fleshing out the picture of how this could work in our community a little bit more. Thank you for being here. We have a motion to approve from President Bears. Do we have a second? Second from Councilor Tseng.
[Zac Bears]: There's one amendment, if you don't mind. Sure. Should say be it ordered. Yeah. Thanks. So that would be a motion to approve, motion to accept and approve as amended. Great. And we should roll call.
[Kit Collins]: Yeah. Motion to approve and accept as amended. Mr. Clerk, if you'll please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Collins.
[Ilene Lerner]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scapelli? Councilor Scapelli is absent. Councilor Tseng? President Pierce? Yes.
[Kit Collins]: Great. Six in favor, none opposed. The resolution, the motion passes. Thank you very much again.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I'd like, oh, sorry. There you go. No worries. I'd like to motion to take 20, let me get the number right, 24-069 off the table. It's the human rights ordinance for third reading.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion by Councilor Tseng to take paper 24 0 6 9 from the table and to take it from the table. Yes. Seconded by seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor. Aye. Opposed. Motion passes. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you to the council for allowing me to take this out of order. I know we have residents on Zoom and in the audience tonight who wish to speak, I believe, on this. Essentially, this is the Human Rights Commission ordinance, which would refresh, revitalize, and re-envision what the HRC is allowed to do in our city to expand their scope and empower them to do even more in these trying times. I think we've all seen on a personal level how important human rights is to all of our residents here, especially in this past year. We've seen the threats, especially from the federal administration, with regards to this issue. And we've also heard through the process, through our committee meetings and through our meetings in regular session about this from residents about why it's so important that we reconstitute the Human Rights Commission. With that being said, after chats with legal counsel and city staff, members of our community, there's some small edits that I'd like to make a motion to adopt the amendments of. So I'll quickly share the screen so residents can see this and comment on this as well. I've sent this to the Councilors before time, ahead of this meeting as well. Just give me one second to find it. Sorry, my screen share is not really working. Councilor Leming, are you on the Zoom as well?
[Zac Bears]: Do you need to be a co-host?
[Justin Tseng]: Oh, maybe. It might also just be my Zoom app.
[Zac Bears]: You are a co-host.
[Justin Tseng]: Oh, OK. So it might be my computer. Matt, did you receive the email? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, if you could screen share for me. Thank you. Just to get ahead of schedule, most of the edits you'll see in the very first section, the establishment and purpose section are just to tighten up the language a little bit. There's suggested edits from Kevin Foley, our city solicitor. It does look like a big block of edits, but most of it is actually what we passed. It's just adding in a few sentences and restructuring the paragraphs to separate out the fourth point. The edits in the second section are to make sure that we are not insinuating or referring to any quotas for appointments. So it's removing the language that was there that kind of pointed to that to make sure that this is in compliance with constitutional law. And to address one of the concerns about self-appointment as well, to place that appointment authority in the council. for the members that are meant to be on different boards in the city. Part of the goal with this revision is to make sure that we have essentially an umbrella group that is looking at issues intersectionally from the different commissions that we already have in the city whose work already is human rights related. And so essentially the newer system would say that the HRC would craft a list of candidates for the city council to appoint to the HRC out of those groups. The second amendment in this section is what I talked about first. Moving down, the next Changes are more typographical. We've already discussed them in committee, or in the council section, removing the words city council liaison. I believe that that was accidentally left out of the motion to amend at first reading, so we've made that change this time. We've already discussed it as a council. There are kind of two last changes. The first one is about ensuring that we're complying with privacy laws at the state and federal level to make sure that we refer to those as superseding this and to allow flexibility for city departments to anonymize sensitive information and redact really sensitive information that could potentially identify individuals who are engaged in human rights complaints or filing these complaints. And then the very last or the last real change to this that you'll see removes the words exert moral authority just because that is tougher to measure. I heard from community members that that was potentially an item of concern there. So this amendment removes that language. It doesn't necessarily change what the HRC is. allowed to do, but it just removes language that is vague and potentially confusing. So those are the amendments I'm proposing tonight.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Do we have questions or discussion by members of the council? Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I don't have any questions, I just wanted to say thank you to Councilor Tseng for his hard work on this ordinance. It's been a lot of back and forth and a lot of effort and I appreciate him doing that work and that we can move forward with something that is meaningful and I'm looking forward to it, so thank you very much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you Councilor Lazzaro. Any further questions or discussion by members of the council? Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you President Bears. I first want to thank Councilor Tseng for working so hard for so long on this ordinance and thank you as well to the community members that have put forth such an incredible effort to make sure that our Human Rights Commission in the City of Medford is what it needs to be. I think it's so important that this reform effort happened this term and I'm really grateful to see it. To see it be moved, to see it be moved along, to see it resolved before the end of the year. I think that we are in a moment where it is more important than ever that the Human Rights Commission in our community is empowered and has discretion. And is unfettered by, is empowered not unfettered by our code of ordinances so that the community members who wish to be on it. are able to really use their power and discretion and latitude to make sure that human rights are proactively safeguarded and protected within our community. This is one of those very bureaucratic, I think, things within city government that The, the, the volume of text and the wordsmithing that go into them kind of obscure how consequential it really is and how much it speaks to our values. So, thank you Councilor for your diligent work on this. I know that this was a product of negotiation with the administration. And this required a, a really delicate hand in making sure that this commission could be something that our community really needs it to be. and that the administration is also willing to support and willing to enforce. And that is really important. And I think it does bear saying that it shouldn't be so difficult to get our administration to the table when it comes to empowering a community group that wants to safeguard human rights within the city of Medford. So thank you for being that person to try to bring all of the parties together so that this can be what it needs to be in our community. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Collins. Any further discussion? Seeing none, is there anyone who'd like to speak on this ordinance? I have one hand on Zoom. Anyone in person? Sure. If you're in person, please come to the podium. We'll alternate between in-person and Zoom, and everyone will have three minutes. Name and address for the record, please.
[Jennifer Yanko]: Jennifer Yanko, 16 Monument Street. I want to thank all of you for moving this forward. It's been a long process. And it's so important, as Vice President Collins has just noted, in this moment to have an active and vibrant Human Rights Commission. And I particularly want to thank Councilor Tseng for shepherding this through a very, perhaps, mountainous territory for the sheep. I wanted to offer a friendly amendment, if it's not too late. I wanted to bring, and this is something that I probably should have thought of a few years ago, but I wanted to bring to our attention the fact that at present there is no reference in the ordinance to the universal declaration of human rights. This instrument, adopted by the United Nations December 10, 1948, and voted affirmatively in by the United States, outlines the various rights and freedoms which adhere to each of us by virtue of our being members of the human race. that we are all obliged to respect. I just note that upon my graduation from public health school, along with our diplomas, we were each presented with a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which normally is on my wall, but I brought it this evening in case anyone wants to refer to it. I think having no reference to it in the ordinance would seem to be a rather major oversight, and one that I suggest be corrected by adding at the end of the first sentence in Section 5061, which is entitled Establishment and Purpose, number three, if we add the following words to complete the sentence, and as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yes, which says in accordance with local, state, federal. I don't have it right in front of me. So it's the very first section, establishment and purpose. You see that? The very top.
[Justin Tseng]: Seems to be, I think we might have moved that language around, but I think I, I think it would fit within subsection 4, which I think is what that section used to, sentence used to be. Okay. I think it would make sense to add it after the references to state and federal law, Mass General Law, Chapter 151B, and then we can add.
[Jennifer Yanko]: Exactly. And as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That's what I'm suggesting. So that was my friendly amendment.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Oh, lovely. Usually that's a beep.
[Jennifer Yanko]: Unroll this roll.
[Zac Bears]: For some reason, that's the default. I can't explain why. I will go to Munir Jermanis on Zoom. Munir, name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.
[Munir Jirmanus]: Munir Jermanis, Three Summit Road. I'm a previous member of the Human Rights Commission and part of the group that initiated this effort. And especially after seeing how The Human Rights Commission has been dormant for the past several months. We wanted to establish a vibrant and independent Human Rights Commission, so that was the intent of this effort. And personally, I would like to thank Councilor Tseng for his tireless efforts in negotiating with the administration and to reach a version that is acceptable to all parties and that ensures that the Human Rights Commission will be independent of everything else around it, including the administration. So thank you very much, and I urge and hope that each and every one of you will vote to accept this ordinance. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And seeing no – well, we'll go back to the podium. Name and address for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes.
[Micah Kesselman]: My testimony for nine and Main Street I echo the previous speakers and residents in supporting the passage of this ordinance. I. I want to make a comment just to emphasize, though, and this is as much for the administration as it is for all of you sitting in the council seats tonight, of how important and imperative it is that we do, in fact, have an independent and effective and fully enabled and functional human rights our body dedicated to protecting basic human rights and maybe not so basic human rights, just human rights in general of all the residents in our city right now. We live in a time when the federal government literally won't say that it won't shoot American citizens and execute them with the military. We live in a time where large swaths of our immigrant residents here in Medford itself are directly under attack. And in mere months, many more of them are going to be in very perilous territory because of some issues with the administration. We live in a time when there are people literally prowling streets, unidentified, wearing masks, hiding behind sunglasses, and Costco military fatigues, and abducting people off the street in absolute, bold violation of their basic fundamental rights to be free from arrest and detention without cause, and are being lost in a system that is inhumane and is killing people on a weekly, at least, but probably more basis. We live in a very dangerous time. So I just want to emphasize to this council, but more importantly to the executive and administration that will have to be putting this into effect and implementing it, that it is one of the most critical things that you can actually do in the coming calendar year for the safety of our city. So take it seriously and continue to do your job, I guess. Thanks, guys. I appreciate you all.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no hands on Zoom, we'll stay at the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.
[Barry Ingber]: Barry Ingber, 9 Draper Street. And keep it really brief. Thank you, Councilor Tang. That's it.
[Zac Bears]: Lesson for Councilors there. As Owen looks at me longingly wishing to go home. Thank you, Barry. on the motion of Councilor Tseng to adopt for third read to ordain. Approved for third reading and ordain as amended by Councilor Tseng, seconded by.
[Justin Tseng]: With the reference to the universal declaration.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, including that amendment. Seconded by Vice President Collins. Councilor Tseng, can you give us a non-red line version, too rich for the records.
[Unidentified]: Great.
[Zac Bears]: Exactly what it should say. Okay. No more, no less. On the motion, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Lemme. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent. Motion passes and the ordinance is ordained. Vice President Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Motion to suspend the rules to take communications from the mayor.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to suspend the rules to take communications from the mayor by Vice President Collins, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor?
[SPEAKER_14]: Aye.
[Zac Bears]: Opposed? Motion passes. Communications from the Mayor, 25186, submitted by Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. Authorization of contract period in excess of three years, McGlynn School Solar Panels, 20-year contract with Solect Energy. Dear President Bears and City Councilors, I respect the request and recommend that the City Council approves the following contract with Solect, 20-year term for the contract with Solect Energy. As the Council is aware, Mass General Law Chapter 30B, Section 12 requires City Council to approve authorization of a contract term that exceeds three years. And so this would be authorizing the city to enter into a 20 year lease agreement. And we did have a discussion and committee of the whole last week with Brenda Pike from our Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability. I know we had a few questions and Brenda did. get some answers to those questions. We should be able to give you sharing power, Brenda, or one of us could maybe share the slides, whatever's easier for you. Great. Matt, could you share the slides? Give me one second, actually.
[SPEAKER_25]: I might be the only one who has them. One second. Yes. Okay. I will do that.
[Zac Bears]: This will load for me. One second there. All right. Can folks see that? I can zoom in a little bit. All right. Go ahead, Brenda.
[Brenda Pike]: Great. So I am back with slightly different numbers than last week because the updated proposal has a different brand of solar panel than our original proposal did. We're now looking at 641 panels totaling roughly 375 kilowatts with slightly more annual production than before. And that change was due to supply chain issues. There's a lot of demand for these projects at the end of this year because of the tax credit deadlines. Last week there were questions about liability and our roof warranty. And I just wanted to confirm select will be repairing any damage caused by the project if that happens. And any work that they perform will comply with our roof warranty. And in fact, they prefer to hire our roofing vendor to do the actual penetration work in order to preserve that warranty. Can we go to the next slide? Okay. And last week there were also questions about the return on investment. And as you can see here, there is more financial benefit over the 20-year term of the contract if we were to purchase the panels. But we would need to pay the upfront cost 1.1 million, and we would not see any payback on that for five and a half years. Whereas with the power purchase agreement, we would be seeing a significantly lower rate, electricity rate than we are paying right now, and we'd be seeing $59,000 in savings in year one. And I wanted to clarify something that I don't think I was very clear about last week, which is the tax credit is available for contracts signed through June of 2026. But there are some changes to what can be done if we sign the contract in January rather than by the end of this year. There, starting in January, in order to be eligible for the tax credit, you need to use a foreign entity of concern compliant panels, which basically means no Chinese panels, and that is leading to supply chain issues for those fiat compliant panels, which leads to increased costs, uncertain timelines, and uncertain costs, and then also, any contract signed between January and the end of June will need to be interconnected to the grid by the end of 2027, which normally should not be a problem, but with any situation where we're waiting on something from National Grid, that can be a little uncertain. We waited a year and a half for an electric vehicle charging station to be connected to the grid. just to sort of reduce the city's risk and uncertainty around these contracts. I think it's a good idea for us to be signing this by the end of this year.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Do we have any questions for Planner Pike? Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Great. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for the really thorough presentation last week as well. I don't have any follow-up questions. I appreciate you. We had a really robust discussion and committee of the whole. I think it was just last week. It feels like longer ago for some reason, holiday season. So thank you for all of that great information and for coming back and providing some additional slides to some of the questions that were raised last week as well. I think this is really great. I'm glad we're doing it. Thank you so much for working so diligently and with the school committee as well to get this project teed up. I'm really glad that we're getting in before this important deadline and I'd happily motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Well, I was gonna second the motion, but Matt got there before I did. I wanna thank you for coming back to us with the answers to the questions that we had last week. It was a tight turnaround, so I'm grateful that you were able to get so detailed into the analysis. Of course, the real kind of trade-off between up-front costs and savings is real, given that we have At least $85 million in school repairs that we need to do over the next few years. I mean, I think the upfront cost element is really important here. I was at the McGlynn when we put in the wind turbine and when the Andrews got their solar panels. And I remember it being such a coup, something truly exciting for the community. And I'm hoping this will do the same for our community as well, to rally around environmental efforts and better energy efficiency in our city. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Brenda, I had one question. It looks like no more questions from the council. So as I'm reading this, the power purchase agreement, which is what we're doing, the PPA over the 20-year term saves a total of about 1.6 million. And then if we were to buy them, we would have an upfront cost of that $1.2 million. And then does the term savings, like do I need to subtract the $1 million from the term savings?
[Brenda Pike]: No, that's factored into the term savings. Okay. What's not factored into the term savings is any cost of money if the city were to bond for the project.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, so like interest costs over the 20-year bond at even the municipal rate. I mean, I won't try to do back of the napkin math, but yeah, essentially, The question here is if that bonding cost is more than $800,000, then it's a wash or actually less for us to, we would save less if we bought them, essentially. Is that the math?
[Brenda Pike]: That would be the question. Okay, great.
[Zac Bears]: All right, well, that was my only question. Anyone else have any questions on this? Seeing none and, Seeing no comments by members of the public on the motion of Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Leming to approve the authorization of the city to enter into a contract term greater than three years for this project. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Kelly. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative. One absent. The motion passes.
[Brenda Pike]: Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Brenda. There was a numbering error. This next paper is actually 25185. So we have 25185. Proposed wage adjustment for 9-1-1 Dispatchers Union. I respectfully request and recommend that the City Council approve the following amendments to the revised ordinances, chapter 66, article 2. 9-1-1 Dispatchers, effective July 1, 22, increased base salary 2.5%, July 1, 2023, 2.75%, July 1, 2024, 3%, July 1, 2025, 2.5%, July 1, 2026, 2.5%, July 1, 2027, 2.5%. HR Director Lisa Crowley. It will be available to answer any questions. I will recognize Director Crowley. And if there's anything you'd like to present on this paper.
[Lisa Crowley]: Thank you, Mr. President, through you to the council. I just wanted to thank the negotiating team for all the hard work that they had both on the union and the city side, and just hope that it passes and potentially waives the three reads. But thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Director Crowley. Any further questions by members of the council? Vice President Collins.
[Kit Collins]: I would motion to approve and to waive the second and third readings.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Vice President Collins to waive the three readings and approve to be ordained, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clark, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming? Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Spitzley is absent. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. 25-193 submitted by Mayor Brandolino, current Community Preservation Committee, appropriation request, Riverside Plaza Contingency. Dear President Bears and City Councilors, on behalf of the Community Preservation Committee, I respectfully request and recommend your honorable body approve the following recommendation of the Community Preservation Committee. requesting the appropriation of $40,000 from the CPA Open Space Reserve to the City of Medford's Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability to fund additional contingency needs for the Riverside Plaza Shade Improvements Project. This project will be tracked in the Community Preservation Fund. CPC recommendation letter is attached and incorporated. CPA Manager Teresa Dupont will be in attendance to address the council. Thank you for your consideration. Respectfully submitted, Brianna Lindow-Kern, Mayor. We have here essentially the same thing, conditions of approval. The project shall have public engagement opportunities on final design choices and the project is to result in no net reduction to tree canopy and ensure all displaced trees are replanted in an appropriate location or replaced in kind. So I'll recognize Manager DuPont and we also have Amanda Centralla here from Planning Development and Sustainability. Didn't see you there, but we'll let you talk too, but I'll go to Teresa first.
[Theresa Dupont]: Good evening, President Bears and esteemed members of this council. I'm here before you tonight, as you just mentioned, to ask for your support and approval of a recommendation of the Community Preservation Committee to appropriate $40,000 of CPA funds. This is additional contingency funding for a project that this body has supported in the past. In the fiscal 25 CPA funding round, it received $146,000 of funding. Just as a refresher for everybody, this project would see permanent shade structures on the plaza surface, a bottle filler as well as an ADA accessible gathering platform. I'll let planner Cinchella, I want to give her the opportunity to speak to any additional specifics, but essentially when this first went out to bid. The bids received exceeded our initial project estimates. Planner Central did an excellent job working with our landscape architect consultants to reconfigure the design while still meeting the needs of the plaza. Rather than three shade sales, now it is one large one behind the performance area. To address the additional shade needs of the plaza, we're looking at permanent metal umbrellas structures. So the big large sales, one single sale would be behind the performance areas, which would be great for our musicians, you know. Performing on that Plaza in the height of the summer is a great thing, but, you know, the shade is a little bit of a tricky situation. So, overall, this brought us to an achievable budget, you know, the design revisions, while still meeting the needs of the Plaza. I know it's been a long meeting, but just really quick, I would just like to share that this recommendation is coming ahead of the remainder of our fiscal 26 applications, which will be discussed at our January 20th committee of the whole meeting. Encourage the public to attend and learn a little bit more about what the CPC is doing. But for this specific project, we've asked for an expedited determination as there's another grant program that funding this project, the state park grant. that requires this project to be completed by the end of fiscal 26, which is June 30th. So in order to secure a vendor and a contract to deliver on that deadline, the CPA funding award needs to become available a little bit quicker to the projects so that we can meet that other grant programs deadlines. I know I just shared a lot there, but Planner Centrella and I are here to answer any questions from the council and we ask for your support.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'll recognize Planner Centrella. And then we'll go to questions from the council. Thanks, Teresa.
[Amanda Centrella]: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for the time tonight. And I'll be quick. Teresa did an amazing job summing up the project. But I'll just add, you know, this what this project does is take a great public space community amenity that is used frequently and makes it more climate resilient and safer to use during the summer. So creating shade in areas where people are already gathering. and creating accessible pathways to shade. So as opposed to folks having to physically drag seating under existing tree canopy, creating an accessible route to use that space. In addition, we'll be adding a water bottle filling station, which is something that we're trying to do in more of our public spaces, access to water, and creating cooling hubs in the summer. So a lot of good things that I think this project will accomplish and make possible. And if you have any questions about why this timeline or anything like that, I'm happy to answer them.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Amanda. Do we have any questions from members of the council? Seeing none, is there a motion? On the motion of Vice President Collins to approve, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Any further discussion? Seeing none, by members of the council or members of the public, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Vice President Collins? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming? Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng, President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent, the motion passes. Thank you, Teresa and Amanda.
[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. 25194 submitted by Mayor Brianne Lohan, Capital Stabilization Fund Appropriation Request in this contract extension. Dear President Bears, members of the city council, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body approves the following appropriation from the Capital Stabilization Fund and its contract extension in the amount of $85,330 and zero cents. Capital Stabilization Fund has a balance of $10,653,899. Thank you for your kind attention in this matter. Submitted Brianna Lugo Kern, Mayor. And I have an email here from the Chief of Staff. Dear President Bears, I'm writing on the capital stabilization fund appropriation request for the NS contract extension. As I'm sure the council knows, this extension is a result of negotiations and discussions between the mayor and the council. I believe this appropriation is straightforward. However, if any questions arise that require the resolution this evening, please feel free to contact me. I'll do my best to join the meeting via Zoom, though I don't have childcare coverage this evening. Thank you, Nina. So that is the message from the administration. Is there any discussion by members of the council? Vice President Collins.
[Kit Collins]: I will very happily motion to approve. I'll further indulge myself by saying that I worked very closely with the consultants and associates for the last two years and I was I'm really, really glad that the city gets the chance to work with them again for the extension of the zoning proposals that will be covered over the next, in the start of the next term. I was consistently impressed by their depth of knowledge, detail orientation, project management, and their commitment to helping us craft zoning that would improve our city. I'd also just like to extend my gratitude again to the other members of this body who, with great patience and diligence, negotiated the future of the zoning project with the mayor. I was disappointed that it took such incredible striving and effort on the part of councilors to let our community do what it's been trying to do for five years, which is plan. But I'm really glad that we got there, even though we had to drag the mayor kicking and screaming. And I'm really, really glad that we're going to get to work together with Innes Associates again at the start of the next term. Thank you, and again, that's a motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. On the motion to approve by Vice President Collins, seconded by, seconded by Councilor Leming. Is there a comment from members of the public? I see no hands on Zoom, but we have someone in person. Name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening. Nick Joliot, Forty Robinson Road. I will speak tonight in opposition to this appropriation request. The mayor told us in July that to date the city has spent over $200,000 on Innes Associates. That's a lot of money. What do we have to show for it? A citywide residential rezoning proposal widely recognized to be significantly flawed and not an adequate representation of public opinion. I'm all for second chances, but when it comes to services like this, we have to put our foot down at some point. If a contractor made a $200,000 mistake in the construction of your house, would you hire them again to do the same job? Makes little sense to me, and I would hope we can get some transparency on why the city is reelecting, is electing to rehire Innis. And I direct you to many of the criticisms that others have raised on whether this firm is actually competent to handle a project of this scale. So my understanding is that an RFP was released on resuming rezoning. But my question is, who responded? And was any serious consideration taken into perhaps other respondents to that? You know, or is this just us executing the quid pro quo that was negotiated behind closed doors that the public is largely unaware about? I encourage you all to take a step back and reconsider. This is a big commitment. We're looking at $85,000 more on top of the $200,000 that was already spent. Is this worth it? Residential rezoning came to a screeching halt because of the work INIS did. on the project, so it's just a really wise idea going back to them.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Thank you for the comment, and just I know you're talking about the RFP, happy to answer that. This is an extension on the existing contract for a defined number of topics, Medford Square, and then an RFP will go out. for residential and that longer list of topics. So this is just going through next spring to address a couple of outstanding things. It's Bedford Square, some ordinance cleanup and alignment, and then the RFP will go out for all of the other districts and residential. So there's no bids yet. This is an extension of the existing contract that was signed in 2024 and then there will be RFP bidding process and a bidder will be selected for the rest of the project next spring.
[Nick Giurleo]: So no RFP has gone out to date.
[Zac Bears]: Not on this contract extension.
[Nick Giurleo]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: There'll be an RFP. There's basically the contracts getting extended for Medford Square. I think the Tufts Institutional Zone and the ordinance cleanup. And then an RFP will be drafted. We'll review it as a council. We'll approve it. And then bids will be solicited in the springtime for the rest of the project through 2028. Okay.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thanks for that clarification.
[Zac Bears]: You're welcome. All right. On the motion. This is an appropriation, so Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Vice President Collins? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Peters?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. 25195, submitted by Mayor Marianna Lungo-Koehn, MOU, Memorandum of Understanding with Mystic Valley Development Corporation. Dear President Bears and Medford City Council, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body authorize a Memorandum of Understanding with the Mystic Valley Development Corporation, sorry, Mystic Valley Development Commission, MVDC, under Mass General Law Chapter 40, Section 4A, for payments to the City of Malden covering fiscal years 26 through 30, ranging from $31,683 in fiscal 26 to $47,848 in fiscal 30 in connection with the Rivers Edge project. As the council knows, this agreement is the product of months of discussion and successful negotiations with the MVDC related to the properties at 100 and 200 Rivers Edge Drive. which are no longer exempt from taxation by the City of Medford under Mass General Law Chapter 59 for fiscal 26 and subsequent years. Accordingly, those properties were rolled off the pilot agreement and are being taxed as part of the negotiations in the interest of avoiding litigation between the parties. Medford agreed to mitigate the financial impact on Malden through these payments. Chief Assessor Jared Edgian will be present to provide the council with an overview and answer questions. Thank you for your kind attention in this matter. Respectfully submitted, Briana Lungo-Koehn, Mayor. And we have our assessor here. Anything you'd like to add in addition to the memo?
[Jared Yagjian]: Summed up pretty well there. Dovetails into that conversation we had on the 28th with the appropriation for the upgrade to the accounting software. So this was the product of getting that additional monies that is going to go towards that accounting software.
[Zac Bears]: Got it. And basically, this is, Malden was getting some pilot payments for Rivers Edge.
[Jared Yagjian]: That's correct. So it flows through or comes down from, we take out expenses. So Malden, you can think of the MBC as its own small city, if you will, with essentially two cities right now in it. And Medford has the majority of the property. So when they come off the pilot payment after 15 years, there was some, Vaguely written legislation in the original documentation. Malden did not agree with us that it rolled back or rolled off to Medford. They thought it would stay in in perpetuity. They had threatened litigation, and we went through months of discussion. So they never prepared to have less money flow to them, basically. So through this discussion, we had agreed to a five-year term where it would reduce the impact to their And going forward, which sets a great precedent, there will be no misinterpretation of the properties coming back to Medford, which we have five currently and two more being built that will be the same exempt to taxable new growth when they exceed their 15 years in the MVDC.
[Zac Bears]: Got it. Any questions by members of the council on this one? Seeing none, is there a motion? On the motion to approve by Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Vice President Collins? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. Thank you. 25-196 submitted by Mayor Branley-McCurran, Amendment to Personnel Ordinance Assistant City Engineer and Project Manager. Dear President, mayors and city councilors, I respectfully request and recommend that the city council approve the following amendment to the revised ordinances chapter 66 entitled personnel, article two entitled reserve the city's classification and compensation plan amendment by adopting the following change. Amendment A classification of NPW 21 shall be amended to remove the following position and a new classification of NPW 21.5 be created to include the following position. As per the below table, Assistant City Engineer, Step 1, $2,036.09. Step 2, $2,124.80. Step 3, $2,254. Step 4, $2,278.61. Amendment B, a new classification of NPW-16 be created to include the following position. As per the below table, Project Manager, Step 1, $1,364.12. Step two, $1,416.54. Step three, $1,471.49. Step four, $1,528.81. DPW Commissioner Tim McGivern and City Engineer Owen Wirtella will be available to speak to this request. Respectfully submitted, Breanna Lungo-Koehn, Mayor. And I believe those are weekly salary numbers. That's correct. That I read out. Wonderful. All right, we got Tim and Owen. Let us know what's up. Yeah, go ahead.
[Tim McGivern]: I'll give it to you for details. We have had these positions or variations of these positions open for quite some time. We're having trouble hiring assistant city engineer level engineers, and we are having trouble hiring project manager level engineers, managers really. So this is an attempt to see if we can attract assistant city engineers and see if we can attract some candidates that have less qualifications for the project manager position. So we reduced the project manager position and created a new class for it, the 16.5 class, and we took the both assistant city engineer positions and we moved them into a half-calf, so another half-calf, to bump them up a bit in pay to be more competitive in the marketplace. And as you know, Owen is here with any details about these positions and what they do. So thank you for considering.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah this is something that I previously have had a couple of conversations with Todd about just trying to get an idea of the capacity of the city. And it's something that I've been really thinking about going into this next budget season. Can you just. Give us an idea of some of the numbers. How long have these positions been vacant? Are these numbers competitive with surrounding communities so that you think that they will attract? And how long do we sort of have to wait to see if these numbers actually will attract somebody who will stay here? I mean, this was a bit of an issue with the city solicitor. We had to bump it by 20,000 just to attract somebody.
[Owen Wartella]: So we are this adjustment should keep us in line with the surrounding municipalities so that these positions will align with the pay rate and other cities. These have been vacant since April and we're just not having the resumes come in. So we want to continue the work that we're doing at the level that we're doing and way to do that is to have the staff on board so that we can continue this.
[Matt Leming]: And they've been vacant since April but have have they sort of have you had historically had problems with retention in these positions even before April.
[Owen Wartella]: No the last one was here for like three years three and a half years. So yeah. And the one before that 19 years. Yeah. OK.
[Tim McGivern]: So, and I just want to add on that these particular positions, the assistant city engineer positions as well as the project manager positions, spend the capital money that we use. So without these positions, we're not, you know, spending that money. So the way that this office works really is what the projects from last year are sort of, you know, coming to an end. And we're trying to ramp up projects for next year. Without city engineers in the office to do that, basically Owen and some helpers right now, it makes it very difficult to queue up those projects and spend the money that we need to be spending.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, and I understand that if a position goes unfilled, the money doesn't go to waste. But I really would like to see the positions filled. Does this encompass the traffic engineers that have been? No. OK so how beside besides these how many others are there within engineering.
[Owen Wartella]: We have that are vacant for open positions right now for open positions.
[Matt Leming]: And how long have those positions been open to have been since April.
[Owen Wartella]: And one will be a new position. So within the past six months.
[Matt Leming]: OK. And those that that includes a traffic engineer position that traffic engineer is separate.
[Owen Wartella]: That doesn't involve any of this that we're discussing tonight.
[Matt Leming]: OK. Yeah. I understand we're just discussing these two. I'm just trying to get a more sort of holistic view of some of the vacancy issues within.
[Owen Wartella]: Right. We have been unable to fill that position for quite some time. We're still looking for like the right fit. And we just had a few interviews this week or last week. But you know we're still looking for people. Yeah.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah, what I'm getting at is, are there more positions that probably need wage adjustments in order to attract qualified candidates other than the ones that we're just looking at now? Because I am glad to see that we're adjusting wages on our current positions, but I just want to know, is this like a systemic issue with an engineer?
[Owen Wartella]: I wouldn't say that. I can't I can't speak for the other positions at this time. I'm really more prepared for the ones that were one of these two positions the assistant city engineer which is to open positions and then the project manager position position. My idea is that or my hope is that we can maintain the level of workload that we're doing this year with moving into next year. And so I'm trying to queue up April 1st that we can hit the ground running.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah, this is something, yeah, I understand if you don't have all the details in front of you right now. This is something that I'm very interested in going into budget season. So if you, in the next couple months, just be able to, I guess, think about that.
[Tim McGivern]: I will assure you that we're constantly looking at this, and the reason why we're here tonight is because these particular positions have just shown very little movement in the market. So in other words, we're seeing resumes, but no one is qualified for the Assistant City Engineer positions. So we're not getting qualified candidates. It's been that way since April. Some come in, but then we interview them and it doesn't work out, you know, for one reason or another. So we need to be attracting better candidates for that particular role. And then it's a different problem with the project manager positions. We're trying something different here by reducing the pay and reducing the qualifications to see if we can get folks in the door and train them to where we need to be. So, you know, so now we'll effectively have a junior project manager and a senior project manager in the engineering division. There are other positions that have been open for quite some time in engineering, and you're talking about one of them, but we are seeing candidates, so it's a little bit different. We're just trying to find the right fit. I know it's taking a long time for sure. Yeah, yeah. There are other issues, it's not just compensation. There are other things, but compensation is one thing to be competitive in the marketplace. So that one is on sort of my list, thinking about the DPW as a whole, as positions that need to be looked at.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah. The goal with the DPW is really to have to attract good people, and not only that, but attract good people who will stay there for a long period of time, and not just see this as a stepping stone to something else, or it just doesn't work out. So anything that you can think of, either whether it's related to compensation, which I think is always a huge component of it, or if there's something else, we'd be interested in hearing about that, and that's all I got, so thank you.
[Owen Wartella]: Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Any further questions for these guys? Sorry, I have one. We created a civil project manager position. Is this, this is different from that? This is?
[Owen Wartella]: Correct. This is a little bit, it's similar, but it's more of like a junior role versus it has a little less of the criteria that would be associated with the civil version.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. And is that position filled?
[Owen Wartella]: Correct.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Okay. All right. Yeah, that's a long time to be going without two assistant city engineers. So, yeah.
[Owen Wartella]: Well, Tim and I both really want to keep the, you know, projects going. There's a lot of infrastructure work that we want to do, and I'll be back in front of you guys here in a month or so talking about our next year, what we plan to do.
[Zac Bears]: Plans for next year? Great. If you want to reach out to me, we can. find a time maybe we can get you a dedicated meeting where we don't have 15 things on the agenda.
[SPEAKER_14]: You let me know. That's what I'm saying, ask questions. You know, we've been here for a bit. More? More questions?
[Zac Bears]: They're here now. We can't send them home without having answered some good questions. No, but I mean, I think all of this makes sense. But I do share, personally, I just share, I want you guys to have the staffing you need to get the work done. It's really hard when four open positions in an office of, what, 12? No? Eight? Eight? Maybe I'm counting Todd's people. That's including Todd. Todd's in the engineering division, for sure. Oh, great. Yeah, so you're at half staff.
[Owen Wartella]: Yes, right now. And it's very apparent.
[Zac Bears]: So we need to make a half-calf.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, and that's what I was talking about. These are the folks who actually write the contracts that go out to bid that are worth millions of dollars and spend that money. So we're going to see a little bit of a lull, but we're trying to prevent a bigger lull. So we want to get the next construction season on schedule. OK, great.
[Zac Bears]: That's helpful to understand the timing on it too. So close. Yeah. Well we can get it done tonight. I think I'll have part.
[Tim McGivern]: There's other pieces that this is this done tonight. Then we get some more steps.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Well I feel good about it. Any further questions from members of the council. Seeing none. Seeing no comment by members of the public on the motion. Sorry. Is it Council Vice President Collins? Motion approved by Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. And we should approve, waive the three readings and approve to be ordained. Yeah. Yeah. Great. By Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Collins. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Lemi. Yes. Councilor Scapelli. Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Six affirmative, one absent. The motion passes.
[Marie Izzo]: Thank you. That's ordained.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you.
[Marie Izzo]: You're good to go.
[Zac Bears]: Just got to get the mayor to sign it.
[SPEAKER_14]: Yes. That's the one.
[Zac Bears]: You could have come up for the picture with Kit. Wow. Wow. You know? All right, you're coming on a regular meeting night. That's what we're doing for your plan. I want 20 resolutions on that agenda. Thanks, you guys. All right, we have four more things to do. That's communications from the mayor, so we're back to the regular order of business. We have 25-191 offered by Councilor Leming, whereas the mayor and city council agreed as written in press release unanimously endorsed at the December 2nd city council meeting. that we would use the version of the zoning amendment neighborhood residential and urban residential districts as referred to the community development board on March 25th, 2025 as a starting point in future residential rezoning. Be it resolved that the city council withdraw this zoning amendment proposal. Be it further resolved that we notify the community development board that they do not need to consider it further until the city council submits a draft in the future. Be it further resolved that the residential rezoning draft approved by the city council on March 27th be referred back to the planning and permitting committee. Be it further resolved that the council also withdraw paper 2 5 0 8 6 accessory dwelling units from the community development board for concurrent development within the city council's planning and permitting committee. Councilor Leming. We know it's different. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yep. So this is basically just keeping with the very public quid pro quo that we went over at the meeting two weeks ago. If you want to go to the press release, that was released jointly by the mayor and city council, you can. Basically, we agreed to withdraw the Version of the residential zoning proposal from the community development board, which they're scheduled to meet on tomorrow So I think it's best to do this now in order to avoid any confusion and just sort of make the messaging very About what we're doing as simple as possible to residents this would that we still have the version of the residential rezoning proposal that we approved in March as a starting point when we get to that in the rezoning process. And we can continue to work on it as one proposal in the planning and permitting committee. I think it's, I talked about this with the mayor prior to forming the press release. I think it is good to have at least a starting point so that residents can have something to look at. when they're getting an idea of what's in the pipeline for the residential rezoning proposal. And I think the paper that was originally approved by this body on March 25th is good for that. And I said that if we just killed the entire thing and just started from scratch, It could potentially be more confusing than anything. It's essential when continuing the residential rezoning process that we hold neighborhood meetings, that we make rezoning as clear as possible to the residents. It is also important to clarify that when we do get back to work on this in the future, that this is a working document. It's a draft. And yeah, I look forward to continuing to work on this. And I think that the communications consultant that Council will be working with, Council and PDS will be working with when we continue this will also really help out in the process. So that's what this is, thank you. Motion to approve and follow all of the motions outlined in the resolution.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. Councilor Callahan.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Sorry.
[Zac Bears]: Oh, great. Yeah, just to clarify, Councilor Leming, just to make it crystal clear, we are withdrawing the residential proposal that's currently with the Community Development Board. The version that the council will consider as a starting point once the New RFP is out and we're working on, you know, once we have a new contract for zoning consultant would be the council's original proposal, not the community development board, the mayor's appointee's proposal which was from May, which was much, much, which significantly increased from the proposal that this council voted on. All right. Oh, yes, councilman.
[Matt Leming]: Yes, doing this effectively zeroes out the work that the Community Development Board did between March and May. And it means that we would get to work on this and develop it more in the Planning and Permitting Committee in the future. And then once we got to a stopping point where we could vote on it again, then we would restart the process and refer it again to the Community Development Board anew. in the future, but this would be per our agreement after the RFP. Great.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
[Matt Leming]: And planning also requested that the accessory dwelling unit paper was paired with that. So I included that too.
[Zac Bears]: Great. All right. Yeah. And again, I just wanted to clarify, it's no longer going to be in the Community Development Board. It's going to be in the next phase of the zoning project. Won't even start discussions until at least next spring. And the starting point for those conversations will be the council's original proposal, not the planning, the Community Development Board's proposal, which was significantly more dense and increased than what the council had proposed. So just want to be clear about that because there's a bunch of kind of complicated stuff going on here. On the motion of Councilor Leming to approve, seconded by Councilor Collins. All those in favor.
[Matt Leming]: Aye.
[Zac Bears]: Opposed. Motion passes. 25-192 resolution to withdraw Medford Square, West Medford Square zoning amendment. and resubmitted separate amendments to Community Development Board for future consideration. Whereas the Community Development Board expressed interest at a recent meeting to sever the joint Medford Square, West Medford Square papers that are currently under consideration by their bodies but only the council is legally allowed to do so. Whereas the recent agreement between the council and the mayor called for Medford Square to be considered by the Community Development Board in January and West Medford Square to be only updated pending the ongoing study, be it therefore resolved that the city council withdraw its joint West Medford Square and Medford Square proposal. Be it further resolved that the proposal be received and placed on file. Be it further resolved that the proposal be replaced by two separate zoning proposals for Medford Square and West Medford Square. Be it further resolved that the attached proposal for Medford Square be referred to the Community Development Board for a joint public hearing in January. Be it further resolved that the attached proposal for West Medford Square be referred to the City Council Planning and Permitting Committee for further development. And be it further resolved that we further clarify. that these are simply the same draft proposals previously under consideration with the only change being that they are legally severed from each other. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yep. So this is a pretty explanatory if you go to the text again if you go to our. very public deal that we hammered out with the mayor at the last meeting and then released in a joint proposal. We agreed to consider Medford Square in a joint hearing with the Community Development Board in January which has been tentatively scheduled for January 21st. so that we could get going on the transom real estate deal, which is one of the, which is something coming down the line that does need Medford Square to be rezoned. The issue which the Community Development Board discussed at their meeting about this, I think it was in, June or July or something, but I could have the month wrong there, was that when they were last considering the combined West Medford Square, Medford Square proposal, they did say that they wanted it to be severed, but legally the Community Development Board cannot sever it. So the mechanism by which I'm handling that here is to legally withdraw it from the community, withdraw the joint West Medford Square proposal from the Community Development Board and just receive and place on file. So just get rid of it and then replace it with the two attached proposals, which is literally separate documents. So they're the same thing as the joint proposal, except they're literally written in two separate documents. And we would then in this meeting, approve that and refer it, the Medford Square version, to the community development board so that we can consider it alone in January. And again, that is exactly the same thing that this council already approved. And then take the West Medford Square proposal, which we severed from that, and refer it to planning and permitting, which per our agreement with the mayor, we said we would sit on until the SWOT study, the SWOT analysis was finished. So there's a lot of paper moving going on here, but this is all essentially procedural motions to have the proper planning meetings that we need and agreed to have in the future.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. Any questions by members of the council or discussion? Seeing none, is there a motion?
[Matt Leming]: Motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve by Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Uh-oh. Is it Councilor Callahan? Vice President Collins wants one last second.
[Matt Leming]: Can we have a third from the Senate?
[Zac Bears]: Okay. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. 24-036 offered by Vice President Collins, amendment to Chapter 38, Article 2, Overgrowth Ordinance. Vice President Collins, if you could summarize, please.
[Kit Collins]: I'd be happy to. I know we were all hoping to talk more about rats tonight. Don't worry. Sorry, it's getting late. For most of the term, I've been going back and forth with department heads about an overgrowth ordinance. This is a new ordinance. It would be in addition to our code of ordinances. As most people are aware, throughout the term, starting last term in fact, we've been going through the process of adding to our code. Sorry, the hats are really. No, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. I'll power through. I'm glad there's a wide shot so people can see what I'm laughing at. Coming back to it. We've been working on a coordinated set of updates to our code of ordinances that are aimed at both targeting kind of sundry violations that impact quality of life for residents in Medford and also enhance our board of health and code inspectors ability to do their routine work of preventing public health hazards in Medford. Broadly, we're talking about rodents, but it doesn't just pertain to rodent activity. So the overgrowth ordinance, we have met, I think, probably four times in committee on this over the past year. It's been developed in really close coordination with Director O'Connor and also input from the building department, Commissioner McGivern. So I'm not going to really go into any detail about it right now, unless people have specific questions, I'm happy to speak to it. This initially came up because there wasn't a mechanism in our code of ordinances for if overgrowth on private property was growing so tall and so long that it was actually affecting other people and creating these public health hazards. We needed a way for the city to intervene in those cases. It has already provided the issue of what if it's, preventing people from crossing the sidewalk, it's making being a pedestrian hard for people in wheelchairs, people with strollers, that's already provided for under jurisdiction of the Department of Public Works. But this whole issue of what if somebody's overgrowth on their private property is creating conditions where rodents can thrive or it's creating standing water that's really great breeding ground for mosquitoes, these public health hazards that really extend beyond the bounds of just somebody's private property and start causing hazards for other residents in Medford. We needed a way to empower the Board of Health to intervene in those cases. And the point of this ordinance is not to police how long people's grass is. It is not to be punitive. It is just so that if an actual problem is occurring, that the city then has a mechanism legally to go to the property owner and work with them to fix it. That is the overgrowth ordinance and I would motion to approve for first reading unless there are any questions or comments from my fellow Councilors. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you Councilor Collins for I just wanted to bring attention to the fact that Councilor Collins has done a ton of work with the Board of Health on both the Overgrowth Ordinance and the Roadmap Control Ordinance and both of them work very cohesively together to put, I can't wear the hat, to put mechanisms in place to empower our city levers of power to do some different things to control for rodents in the city and also that Councilor Collins mentioned this but it's not it's not a problem until it's a problem so things don't get enforced until it's clear that something is in violation. So it's really not a matter of, it's not like an HOA where somebody is being policed unnecessarily. So I would second the motion on the overgrowth ordinance. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Do you want first reading or go through the whole thing, your call? Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: And can we, yeah, waive the three readings and approve.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to waive the three readings and approve to be ordained by Councilor Lazzaro, seconded by Vice President Collins. Any further discussion? Seeing none, if there's anyone who would like to talk about it, we'll go to.
[Emily Lazzaro]: This is the overgrowth ordinance. We are going to talk about rodent control next, which may be what you want to speak about.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, great. All right, any comments on the overgrowth? Seeing none, on the motion to approve, waive the three readings and approve to be ordained. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Vice President Collins?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Lazzaro?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Levin? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Councilor Scarpelli is absent. Councilor Tseng? Yes. President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes and overgrowth ordinance is ordained. 24-461 offered by Vice President Collins, Amendment to Chapter 6, Article 4, Rodent Control Ordinance. Vice President Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Bears. Once again, rats get the last word. this time for a whole term. We've been working on, so this is an amendment to an existing ordinance. The Road and Control Ordinance currently is on the books in our municipal code. Earlier in the term, I started working with Director O'Connor, Director of the Board of Health, who came to me and said there are some serious gaps in the Road and Control Ordinance that have to deal with, similar to the Overgrowth Ordinance, the jurisdiction that the city has to intervene and help make remedies in cases where conditions on people's private property is creating rodent harborage conditions that are, again, not just a problem for that individual resident that is maybe being neglectful when it comes to keeping their environment tidy and sanitary, but is, in fact, worsening a rodent situation for the entire neighborhood, because as we all know, and as I certainly observe in South Medford, rats do not respect property dividing lines.
[Unidentified]: You're telling me. I'm back.
[Kit Collins]: So we've been working together over the course of, again, I think it's been probably four or five meetings in committee. Welcome anybody to go back and look at those recordings in the Public Health and Community Safety Committee to make sure that we kind of fill in those gaps in enforcement so that we're identifying potential problem areas of conditions that might exist on private property and giving the Board of Health and their designees and code enforcement officers the ability to intervene in those cases. Once again, the intent of this is not to be punitive. It's not to go around looking for problems and finding people. But as we all know, and as we all talk about very often, and especially with, I know this has really been on minds, on people's minds over the past several weeks, we have an existing rodent problem in Medford. It's not specific to Medford, it's region wide. It's not getting better, it needs to start getting better. and giving the city the ability to liaise directly with private property owners in those cases where there are issues on private property that are making road and proliferation much worse for the entire community or entire neighborhoods is a really important piece of the puzzle. I have actually just one small adjustment, a typo that I need to fix in the draft that's before councilors tonight. One of the things we were going back and forth with with department heads and legal counsel was investigating whether all fees and fines collected pursuant to violations of the ordinance could be deposited into the road and control revolving account. And we corrected the language of that in section 6-125, but I failed to update the language in the immediately preceding sentence, which is subsection B of section 6-124. So section 6-125 reads, all eligible fees and receipts collected pursuant to this ordinance or for violations thereof shall go into the designated rodent control account. And section 6-124B should also read, wait. It was wrong on my copy, but it's right in this copy. So maybe we don't need to fix it at all.
[Zac Bears]: Not at all? Sorry, section?
[Kit Collins]: Depending on when the draft was generated and printed, it might have been fixed in OneDrive, and that's why the title isn't there anymore. Which section is it, sorry? 6-124B. That sentence should match section 6-125. 6-124B? Yeah.
[Zac Bears]: All eligible fees and receipts collected pursuant to this ordinance or for violations thereof shall go into the designated road and control account.
[Kit Collins]: Yeah. I think what happened was the draft I originally sent you, it wasn't fixed, but then I updated it on the cloud. So probably the version that you downloaded was fixed already.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Yeah. It was a link.
[Kit Collins]: Yeah. Okay. Great. No amendment needed. Alhamdulillah.
[Zac Bears]: For both of these, please send a non-redlined, no comments, exact correct text version of this to Rich and myself. Thanks. Great.
[Kit Collins]: So thank you for bearing with me. With that, I would motion to waive the three readings and ordain. And inshallah, this will be one more tool in our toolkit for getting a handle on Medford's written problem in the next year and going forward. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to waive the three readings and approve to be ordained by Vice President Collins, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro, do you want to talk about it? All right, we'll go to Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Tseng, and then we'll go to at least one or more people who want to talk about it. But we'll go to Councilor Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: No, you make a great point. I will make it quick. I'm sorry. Again, once again, I've said this before, but the real work of city council is helping our city staff execute the work that they need to do. Our board of health came to us came to Councilor Collins with a concrete ask and she executed it because this is the kind of Councilor she is. So this is an incredible culmination of her time here. And I'm so grateful to Collins for all of the work that she's done. And all of her hard work, even when it is not glamorous and it is about things like rats and possums and raccoons and their little hands that they have. And I'm really proud of the work that she's done and the way that we've all facilitated this and how we've worked together. And I'm grateful for all of it. So thank you for your work. And I'm excited to second this motion. And I'm going to stop now. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Rats are one of the issues we hear about most from residents. And I think this really just proves how serious we are as a city council to deal with it. And how we do have people in city hall who wanna work on this as well. Of course, I hope that the administration will continue to join us in its dedication to tackle rodent control as a real issue in the city. And I'll leave that there, because I know there's lots to be said on that. I'm going to, I swear I don't have that much more because Councilor Lazzaro stole it out of my mouth, but this really is, I think, the epitome of the work that Councilor Collins does for our community, the lasting impact that she'll have. her drive to get into the nitty gritty details and to talk it out with staff and to address resident concerns. This is an achievement that the vice president should be super proud of. And I am beyond elated that we're ending with this tonight.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Any further discussion by members of the council? Seeing none, members of the public who wanna talk about road and control, now is the hour. Name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes. Hey, Paula.
[Paulette Vartabedian]: So this is more on rat control, and I love the ordinances. And I'm going to talk about rodenticides, and what that is is it's a type of rat control that really is contradictory to controlling the rats. It's an anticoagulant, so what happens is anything that eats a rodenticide, it affects their clotting, and they bleed internally, and that's how they die. Normal clotting is between one and three minutes and something that eats the rodenticide, it can be greater than 24, 48 hours. So one of the biggest problems with this is the natural predators that would eat the rats and mice that would eat the rat poison are then eating the poisoned prey and they themselves are becoming secondary victims. 85% of the birds of prey are more that are dying and coming into rehab are being affected by rodenticides. So now I'll talk about this. So rats are an issue, as we all know, and soon it's going to be worse with all this new construction, and especially if we go to trash pickup every two weeks. That being said, many want to get baited traps. And this is, you folks have heard this before, but hopefully some of the public that doesn't know will be hearing this now. The poison in the beta traps is really focused on the rats and or mice. But here's why we shouldn't allow this. Rodenticides, we shouldn't allow rodenticides at all. uh... as I said it affects the coagulation and why it's important is the areas who cares about the rats they're getting poisoned and stuff but that's not the issue it's what's being infected by those that eat the rats those aren't just the poison the rats don't die right away when they eat this poison they come out of the traps they become weak they wobble around they become easy prey so that happens and so then the things that going to eat them, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, eagles, hawks, owls, they also become affected and their numbers go down. A healthy owl can eat over 1,000 rodents in one month. If it has babies, that can go up to 3,000 rats, mice, voles a month. This is a free rat killing station. We're paying money to have pest people come in and fill these traps with rodenticides, but we're actually contradicting what we want to do. So there are other ways to do it. You can use birth control. The thing with that is that the birth control and the traps have to be redone every six weeks. But that's the same as the rodenticides. So it's a balancing act there. If you remember the DDT episodes way back that almost killed all the peregrine falcons. There was only one nesting pair of peregrine falcons in Canada when that was at its peak. 324 nesting pairs in the whole United States. This is becoming DDT part two, but it's rodenticides. Newhouse Rescue in Chelmsford, which is one of the many rehab places, almost all of their mammals that come in there have rodenticide poisoning. Tufts did a, I'm sorry. Sorry, I know I went over. In 2020, Tufts did a study of 43 red-tailed hawks. 100% of them had rodenticide poisoning in their system. 90% had two kinds of rodenticides in their system. The only way to tell about rodenticides poisoning is take a tissue sample, which is very, very expensive. This tough study did take tissue samples. How we're getting these numbers about the rodenticide poisonings are basically if you take a blood sample and it's not clotting, you can assume it's rodenticides. So what we're doing is we're actually killing our natural predators that would help us with the rat, mice. So you see a coyote, you see a fox, and you're like, oh my god, even possums eat mice. So everything in our natural system is being affected by the rodenticides. So what I'm asking is if Medford can join some of the other communities. There is now, I'm sorry, got off track here. There is now a Senate bill in the Senate of Massachusetts. It's Bill H.4684. And it is on the third reading in the Senate, and it's a bill to restrict or prohibit second-generation anticoagulants, which is the rodenticide. and it's going to send a ban to the following cities which have already brought this in. Orleans, Newton, Arlington, Newbury, Brookline, Salem, Lexington, Providence Town, Lowell, Belmont, Concord, and Arlington. I believe Winchester is in that as well. What I'm asking is if Medford can really consider joining this ban and we can help We have the fells right here, lots of birds of prey, lots of things that can help us with rodent control. And it won't cost us a cent. We can help with our budget as well. This not only is for birds of prey and coyotes, foxes. If your dog goes and eats this, your dog's going to get it. Your cat's going to get it. In 2021, two dogs in Redding, by the time the owner brought it to the vet, they died in 20 minutes because they were bleeding to death. A dog on the corner of Dudley Street and Salem Street got rodenticide poisoning from the restaurants that abut that area. So it's very dangerous, not just for the wild animals, but for also our pets. And we need to be proactive, keep our wildlife here to help us control the wildlife. And several months ago, there was a gentleman here that spoke about the eagles that used to nest in fresh pond, MK and her mate, ZK. I believe it was Tufts that did the autopsy on both of those, and they did die of rodenticide poisoning. He said they didn't, but they 100% did die of rodenticide poisoning. So that just shows that these eagles that nested there year after year after year and was a huge attraction. There were photographers everywhere. We're killing them. And it's really unnecessary. The most important thing is for the public to contain their trash. No food. Rats. No food. Everyone says, oh, the coyotes. No coyotes. You have to maintain your trash. So the trash thing is huge. Paulette. And I think that's it.
[Zac Bears]: We're way over.
[Paulette Vartabedian]: Thank you. So if anyone's interested, there's a book called Hunting the Hunted. And that's all. So please consider joining those cities, and we can get this done. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Paulette.
[Paulette Vartabedian]: And I appreciate the extra time.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right, we'll stay at the podium, name and address for the record, and you'll have three minutes.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clerken, 14 Bennett Place. First of all, congratulations to all of the new Councilors, and Councilor Collins, good luck. Second is related to the topic at hand. I was just talking to a friend last week who does pest control, and he basically he deals with green crabs, he deals with hogs, he deals with deer in Nantucket and ticks and all that kind of stuff. And I was talking with him about urban pests and the best, the most responsible way to dispatch rats and how to be a responsible steward of the environment when we do it. And One of the ways that we talked about was using bucket traps, which actually, if you put them near the nesting sites, it allows you to catch large numbers of them. But you catch them live. And then you have to basically use carbon monoxide. And that's a humane way to do it. You don't have to use rodenticide. You don't have to constantly do these single bait traps everywhere that once a rat's in it, possibly dies in it. You don't really have to deal with chemicals. You don't really have to deal with anything nasty. You don't have to have people with pellet guns. You don't have to have electricity involved, anything like that. So that's just a possibility that I wanted to put out there for potential more I guess you could say bulk rodent control. And I don't know if there's a carbon monoxide source in the city that could be used, but the buckets are relatively inexpensive, the bucket traps, and it works pretty well. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Any further comments on this item? Name and address for the record, please.
[Micah Kesselman]: You have three minutes. I actually will just sort of echo my neighbor Paulette's comments about the, how terrible road genocide is. I was not aware that there was this, that cities were passing a ban on it. I absolutely am supportive of that, like road genocide is like, Poison traps in general are just scummy, so we shouldn't have them in our city. They're bad for the environment. When I first moved to this city, I had rats in my apartment. my landlord set out poison traps to kill those rats, and you've never experienced hell like five dead rats somewhere in your ceilings and walls during an extremely hot summer. So I am definitely in support of banning poison traps. I also mentioned that there are electric traps now that you can set out and are reusable, are pretty good at murdering rats. So I don't know, maybe the city could set up a program for residents to purchase them more affordably or something.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Name and address for the record, please. And you have three minutes.
[SPEAKER_18]: Simon Alcindor, 44 Tainter Street. I just had a quick question. Does the rat control or rodent control ordinance dictate what type of poison or method of rodent control should be used?
[Zac Bears]: Vice President Cohn.
[Kit Collins]: It's a good question, and no, typically in legislation we, this is, it's a good question that comes up frequently in our legislative process. We try to avoid enshrining things in ordinance that are really better left up to the discretion of department heads. So the answer to your question is no, that wouldn't live in the ordinance, and specifically when we're talking about methods of voting control. The Board of Health is a great department to talk to about those specifics, and they would be in charge of promulgating the recommendations or the rules by which people must perform rodent control on their properties.
[SPEAKER_18]: All right. Because from what I could tell that addresses at least most of the concerns that have been brought up obviously there are a lot of valid concerns with rodenticides. I share those concerns with my fellow residents. I just believe that that really does just address most of the concerns that are being brought up here tonight. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And Council Vice President Collins you can correct me. The city is not using rodenticide. at least mine understand, my memory of the last time we talked about this. I don't believe that they are. Okay. We can check in. I think we've had Yankee Pest Control and Marianne here a few times now. I don't think the city itself is. We'll double check that. But this question that Paula brought up is about ban for private use, which is a big piece. Yeah ban or restrict on private use as well which is a whole other element. I'm guessing most of the road and control traps in the city are actually not municipally owned or controlled or at least a good chunk of them. One sentence Paulette you had you had a long time.
[Paulette Vartabedian]: You missed me, so Paulette Bardivedian, Central Lab Medford. Just want to say that some of the companies that do use rodenticides, they're going to tell you this is the best way to do it because they're making money and it's not solving the problem so then they come back and they make more money. So that's just another issue. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right. Seeing no further discussion or comment on this item, on the motion to waive the three readings and approve to be ordained. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Vice President Collins. Yes. Councilor Lazzaro. Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Scapelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. 16 affirmative, one absent. The motion passes and the ordinance is ordained. Please send the final copies here. Last thing on the agenda, public participation. Oh, public participation. This is a chance for our members of the public to speak on topics that they'd like to talk about. We have two folks. We've got one in person and one on Zoom. We'll start in person. Name and address for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes.
[Micah Kesselman]: sort of on the topic of rats, something to keep in mind for next year, an unfortunate ending note as we go into the holiday season. On the other hand, Councilor Collins, you can close your ears so it's not super relevant to you as we go. But starting in the first couple months of next year, there's a really good reason to anticipate increased ICE activity in our city for a variety of reasons targeting various vulnerable immigrant groups in our city. And I'm not going to get into those specific reasons here on this floor, although I'm happy to talk to anyone personally about it one-on-one. It's a looming threat and I think it's something that as we all head into the holiday seasons, and this really applies to residents just as much as it does the city council, we really need to be thinking about creative ways to protect those members of our city who are most vulnerable and who are going to be targeted almost undoubtedly in the first few months of next year and later. This also goes without saying that the mayor has not done enough to help with that, and I wish she would. So I'll just repeat that. But yes, I just encourage you all to think about that as you go into the holidays. Not too much, also enjoy your holidays, enjoy your family, happy Hanukkah, happy New Year's, Christmas, and everything, but keep it in mind. Thanks, guys. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: We'll go to Zoom and then we'll come back in person. And that might be it, but we have Mr. Castagnetti on Zoom. Name and address for the record, Andy, and you'll have three minutes.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Thank you, Councilor Bears. I try to come in person, but your doors were locked at 10 minutes before 10 o'clock. Anyways, is this the last meeting of this year?
[Zac Bears]: This is the final meeting of the year. OK.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: I've been meaning to say this for many years, I guess I want to get it off my mind. Whereas your political correctness has turned our Christmas upside down and inside out. So I want to say Happy Holy Days and Merry Christmas if the shoe fits. God help us all. Amen. And to all a good night. E buono anno nuovo 2026. May it be a great year. Good luck to everyone. Good night.
[Zac Bears]: Good night, Andy. Thank you. And sorry about the doors. We'll make sure they're open in the future. Apologies.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: No problem. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And we'll go back to the podium. Name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[SPEAKER_18]: OK, Simon Elsador, 44 Tainter Street. On a much different and wider note, this has probably been mentioned already, but I would really like to express my gratitude for the Salem Street, the Route 60 Rotary Project, and those who worked on it, because I literally just popped back and forth. I think I've mentioned it, but I go back and forth between Medford and Suffolk University, and I just popped back, and it was there. And I cannot express how grateful I am to have that. just like how much easier it has made it for me to be able to get to and from, I live just the other side of the rotary, over to Medford Square and how much safer that has been. And I think that this is really the type of thing that we need to be doing a lot more going forward. And happy holidays, everyone. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Simon. Yes, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's involved with that, Councilor Lazzaro included. But yeah it really goes to show what physical safety improvements can do on our streets to keep everyone safer in cars on bikes walking or rolling. And I think that's really important. Nice note to end on. Thanks Simon. The motion to adjourn by Councilor Callahan seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor. Opposed. Motion passes. And the meeting. Thanks. Happy holidays, everyone. Thank you.
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