[Todd Evans]: test one two.
[Unidentified]: this machine. Sigh.
[Marie Izzo]: Good evening, everyone. Normally, the city clerk would preside to begin the council's first meeting of the year until a president is elected for 2026. However, given the vacancy in the office of the city clerk, the council agreed that the duty should fall to Councilor Scarpelli as the longest serving councilor. Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. The gavel is yours.
[George Scarpelli]: Oh, Zach, I'm not going to let it go. Thank you, Mr. Clark. Um, if we can, can you take the role, please?
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilors are Oh, Councilor Living. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng Councilor Moline. President Bears, Councilor Bears. Present. Seven present, none absent. Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
[George Scarpelli]: If we can all please rise, salute the flag.
[SPEAKER_15]: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you. Now we'll move to our motions. We have a motion to 6-001 election of council president for 2026. The floor is open for any nominations for council president.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Uh, I nominate Isaac B. Zach bears for president.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, nomination Isaacs, Zach Beers. Second for... Nomination from Councilor Lazzaro, seconded by Councilor Callahan for Councilor Zach Beers. We have any other nominations? Nominations are closed. Mr. Clerk, can you call the roll?
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Lazzaro? Councilor Leming? Councilor Scarpelli? Yes.
[George Scarpelli]: Councilor Zach Beers? Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Tseng? Yes. Councilor Milley? Yes. Councilor Bears? Yes. Six yes, one present.
[George Scarpelli]: Congratulations, Council President 2026 Zach Bares.
[Zac Bears]: Meanwhile, I'm trying to give it away. I'll be brief, and I just want to thank everyone for your trust in me to serve as president for another year. It is not easy work, and we have even more difficult work ahead to hire a city clerk and work with our new city clerk and our clerk staff to get that office where it needs to be and even better than it ever has been. So that's going to be an important project. I look forward to working with whoever is nominated for Vice President on that work. And something that I talked about on Sunday at the inauguration is just how important it is that we work hard to restore some faith that even when we disagree, we are hearing each other, we're respecting each other, and we can work together to get things done. We're never going to all agree on everything that happens in this chamber or what happens in the city. We're going to have some loud disagreements sometimes, but I think the important part is that people feel like they can say their piece, and then when a decision is made, people feel like they were at least able to be heard out by those who disagree with them. That's something that I've been thinking about a lot over the last six months and what I want to bring to the next two years here on the City Council. So I'm really excited to do that alongside all six of you and work with our assistant clerk here, Rich Alicio, to do that as well. And hopefully as well honor our friend Larry Lepore and get a city messenger back over in a seat over there or maybe in a new role doing some different things, but moving that role forward. That's on our agenda tonight as well and I hope someone here can help lead the charge, because we need that position filled. So just want to say thank you again, and let's get to work. And George was supposed to say that I was supposed to be sworn in, so I better do that first.
[Marie Izzo]: Please raise your right hand. Repeat after me.
[Zac Bears]: I, Isaac B. Zach Bares, do solemnly affirm that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as President of the Medford City Council.
[Marie Izzo]: According to the best of my ability, understanding, agreeable, to the rules and regulations.
[Zac Bears]: Agreeable to the rules and regulations. Of the constitution. Of the constitution. The laws of this commonwealth. The laws of this commonwealth.
[Marie Izzo]: And the ordinances of the city of Manfred.
[Zac Bears]: And the ordinances of the city of Manfred. Congratulations, sir. Thank you. Thanks. All right, on to the fun stuff. 26002, election of a city council vice president for 2026. Do we have nominations for Vice President of the City Council, Councilor Callahan?
[Anna Callahan]: I nominate Councilor Emily Lazzaro.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Callahan nominates Councilor Lazzaro. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Tseng. Are there any other nominations for Vice President of the Medford City Council? Seeing none, nominations are closed. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, call the roll and you will say the person's name.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan? Councilor Lazzaro? Present. Councilor Leming? Uh, Councilor Emily Lazzaro. Councilor Scarpelli? Councilor Tseng? Councilor Emily Lazzaro.
[Liz Mullane]: Councilor Mullane? Councilor Emily Lazzaro.
[Marie Izzo]: President Bears? Councilor Lazzaro. Six in favor, one present.
[Zac Bears]: with six for Councilor Lazzaro and one present. Councilor Lazzaro is elected vice president for 2026. Congratulations. And if you could come up here and the clerk will administer the oath.
[Marie Izzo]: Please raise your right hand. Repeat after me. I, Emily Lazzaro,
[Emily Lazzaro]: I, Emily Lazzaro, do solemnly affirm, do solemnly affirm, that I will faithfully, that I will faithfully, and impartially, and impartially, discharge and perform, discharge and perform, all the duties incumbent upon me, all the duties incumbent upon me, as Vice President of the Medford City Council, as Vice President of the Medford City Council, according to the best of my ability, according to the best of my ability, agreeable, agreeable, to the rules and regulations of the Constitution, to the rules and regulations of the Constitution, the laws of the Commonwealth, the laws of the Commonwealth and the ordinances of the city of Medford and the ordinances of the city of Medford.
[Marie Izzo]: Congratulations.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Thank you all. I'm very happy to perform this role. I'm really looking forward to it. They're very big shoes to fill. Councilor Kit Collins performed this role for the last term and did so with wonderful, quiet dignity. A lot of this work is administrative and you know scheduling related. But I really look forward to taking on that role and improving our processes here and working in partnership with President Bears. And I'm I'm eager to take on this responsibility for the city. Thank you all.
[Zac Bears]: All right, that's out of the way. 26-003, appointment of a City Messenger for 2026 and 2027. As folks know, the role of City Messenger has been vacant since the passing of Larry Lepore, who served in the role for decades and was just a wonderful person who we miss every meeting and every day. Something that was in discussion before the leave and following separation, leaving the city, resignation, stepping down of Clerk Hurtubise was to kind of bring that role into the future and that looking like someone to essentially assist with our work on the city council in a different way than had been done in the past. was helping often with the agendas on Fridays, bringing them in paper copies to our homes, something that my mom, when I was living there, really enjoyed. And just having a wonderful conversation with Larry every day. But I think over the past year or so, we've gotten pretty used to digital delivery. And maybe that isn't the role that that will take anymore. But there are so many other things that this council needs help and support with in terms of liaising within the building and in terms of you know, helping us with correspondence and all of the things, as folks know, the City Council has only two appointments in this whole city, and we only supervise two employees, and that's our City Clerk and our City Messenger. And right now, both of those positions are vacant, so you can imagine what that looks like for each of us, and to be frank, especially for me and for Assistant Clerk Alicio here, soon to be, I believe, pending a vote, formerly our acting clerk. Adam left, well, and maybe even been the acting clerk since January 1st, according to the law. So we're affirming that. But being down those positions has definitely been tough. And I think what would be really, obviously we don't have someone to appoint right now, and we still need to get to the bottom of exactly what that position will look like. So with Vice President Lazzaro and maybe with someone else here, I think it would be really great to also start getting finalized on being able to bring on a new city messenger for our new term. So I would really appreciate that. And I think something we maybe could do right now for a few minutes if folks wanted to is just share some thoughts or volunteer to assist the vice president. Thoughts on what the position might look like or who might be helping our vice president with that. So I'll turn the floor over and then we'll have to table this for the time being. But I'll go to Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: I know in a lot of other cities they have more dedicated staff. Sometimes every city councilor has a dedicated staff. And so many people reach out to us by email and phone. And many of those questions are simply questions about where to go in the administration to get the help that they need. And I would love it if the city messenger or whatever we call that role would be able to do constituent services and really immediately answering those questions for people when they are not specific to a city councilor, but when they really are just how to navigate the city administration to get the help that they are looking for.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Do we have any other thoughts on that at this time? Seeing none, is there a motion? Councilor Tseng? On the motion to table by Councilor Tseng, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. All those in favor? Opposed? The motion passes. 24004, resolution to adopt the standing committee rules from the prior year. Be it resolved that the standing committee rules be adopted as the standing rules of the city council insofar as they're applicable. This just means that the rules we had on December 31st are the rules we have now. Any further discussion? Councilor Tseng?
[Justin Tseng]: No further discussion, this is pretty procedural. I motion to approve. Great.
[Zac Bears]: And did you want to say? Okay, great. I motion to approve by Councilor Tseng, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. 26-005, resolution to transfer all papers and committee from 2025 to 2026. Be it resolved that the city council transfer all papers and committee or on the table, this should say from the 2025 council to the 2026 council. Is there a motion to amend? Councilor Tseng?
[Justin Tseng]: Motion to amend and approve.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to amend and approve by Councilor Tseng, seconded by? Seconded by Council Vice President Lazzaro. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The motion passes. Announcements, accolades, remembrances, reports and records. Records. The records of the meeting of December 16th, 2025 were passed to Vice President Lazzaro. Vice President Lazzaro, how did you find those records?
[Emily Lazzaro]: I found them in order and motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Vice President Lazzaro to approve, seconded by? Seconded. Seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The motion passes. Reports of committees, 22231, offered by Matt Leming, City Councilor, Planning and Permitting Committee, December 16th, 2025 report. Councilor Leming is the, well, was the Vice Chair of the Planning and Permitting Committee last term. Its Chair, Councilor Collins, is no longer on the Council, so I'll recognize Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President Bears. At the Planning and Permanent Committee meeting on December 16th, we went over a draft of a condominium conversion ordinance that Chair Collins drafted. She summarized some of the key points in the condo conversion ordinance. Essentially, it's a process for converting multi-units to condominiums, the establishment of a board to oversee that process, and so on. Most of the discussion was just about what the ordinance is, some of the details in it, and folks are free to look at that for a very fine overview of that. This is something we'll be working on in the future. Motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to approve by Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The motion passes. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Can we take paper 260 1-1 under suspension.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to suspend the rules to take paper 26-011 by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor?
[SPEAKER_15]: Aye.
[Zac Bears]: Opposed? The motion passes. 26-011, resolution to conduct comprehensive review of ambulance EMS contract negotiation and transition. Whereas the city of Bedford has entered into a new ambulance service contract representing a significant change in public safety service delivery. And whereas questions have been raised regarding the negotiation process, financial management, in terms of service levels and cost implications of this transition. And whereas the City Council has a fiduciary responsibility to ensure taxpayer funds are used efficiently and public safety standards are maintained. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Medford City Council hold a committee of the whole meeting to conduct a comprehensive review of the ambulance service contract negotiation process and transition. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. First, I'd like to thank everybody that's here tonight. This is something that When we received an email from the mayor back on December 10th to inform the council that we would be moving to negotiate our contract, the ambulance contract and open it up for negotiations, we applaud that. That's the mayor's prerogative. That's her role that the mayor oversees. The mayor oversees the contractual process in these types of positions. I will tell you on a personal level, as soon as I read that, I stopped, I froze. And there's a reason why I took such personal attention to this matter. My parents were both ambulatory and they were in a neighboring community that were at the time under another ambulance company. It's very difficult for a son to watch their mother and father pass and every little thing becomes magnified. And mom would, I would leave Medford to race over next door to wake her up at 4 o'clock in the morning. I'd help her get changed. I'd feed her her breakfast and we'd get ready to wait for our ambulance, our ride to Somerville for her dialysis treatment. And it was difficult because everything was serious, whether the ambulance was 10 minutes late, whether the straps were on too tight, whether they acknowledged her properly, whether she was warm, whether she felt comfortable with those people. And I can honestly say my mother didn't feel that way. I did everything I could to make sure that I did my due diligence as her son to make sure that I find a company that would service her so she felt comfortable. We switched for Armstrong, and Armstrong started picking her up. And instantly, they knew my mom's name. They were there early. My mom didn't have to wait. They gently would pick my mom off her seat. They would place her in the gurney. They would put her in the ambulance. And I would follow her. I would follow the ambulance to Somerville because that's what a good son does. And I would see my mom, go into dialysis, and I would watch the care that these professionals had for my mom. And then I would pick her up. I would leave work. I would take my lunch every day at 11.30. And I would wait for the ambulance, and they would pick mom up. And at the time, after a long, grueling dialysis session, they would take mom, who was just a puddle then, and take her home. They would carry her in. They would place her on her couch, on her seat. They'd make sure she was warm. And maybe once in a while, a little kiss on the forehead. So when I saw this, I said, what is going on here? what is happening to a service that this community has had for over 25 years, that we've had no issues, no concerns, no problems. They've always been there for us, no matter what. So I reached out to the mayor and I said, Madam Mayor, on a personal level, this is something very close to me. What are we doing? I think this is dangerous. Armstrong is the company that everyone should aspire to. The mayor said, I'll set up a meeting with the chiefs. They can explain. So I didn't know what was going on in the business side of the process. So I met with both Chief Evans and Chief Buckley via phone. And they shared a lot of information, a lot that shocked me. And I said, jeez, that's telling. And I understood that changing over an ambulance service, no matter what, is going to leave us in some jeopardy just because of that changeover. So public safety to me was paramount. Both Chief Buckley and Chief Evans explained the situations. I explained if they were part of the process. They both explained where they were on the process. I then reached out to Armstrong because I had that relationship. Because back when Mom was in Stoneham, I knew the process. I knew who to talk to. I'm an educated person who makes sure he does right by his parents. So I met with Armstrong, and I talked to Rich Raymond, I talked to Sean Mangan, and I asked them what's going on. And they explained the process. And I found something very alarming. I found that everything that my chiefs were saying, Armstrong was saying, yes, we'll do that. So I said, geez, there's a disconnect there. And then I started doing some homework. And I reached out to neighboring communities. I reached out to chiefs that had both services. And I found it alarming. And I talked to our chiefs. And I said, please reach out to these chiefs, police chiefs, fire chiefs, deputy chiefs. Ask them, get their input before we make this change. I talked to the mayor. I met with the mayor again. We had a conversation. I said, Madam Mayor, thank you for setting up the meeting. I appreciate that, but there's definitely a disconnect. I've talked to neighboring communities. Have you spoken with them? And quote, unquote, the mayor said, geez, George, you're giving me more work, but I'll definitely look into it. And I know that our chiefs did their due diligence because I talked to the chiefs from neighboring communities, reached back out and said, yeah, they talked to our chiefs. And I said, great, so let's move this forward. And as the process went on, I then reached back out to the mayor in a text, and I said, I think the chiefs were on that, and I said, as we sat through the process, and I'm not part of the process, but I think there's a huge problem here that at the 13th hour, it seems to be that I'm the only one talking to all the parties. I'm the only one that's listening to everybody. So I said, please, can you sit one more time with everybody so we don't make any mistakes? Now, the other company, come in and be great. It's not about the other company. This is about the company we have today, the company we've had for over 25 years. And I was told that the five members on the committee all feel strong enough that they all supported this change. We needed it. And there's a lot of things that that have to come out. And that's why I've asked to send this to a committee of the whole next week and possibly ask the chair to possibly look at executive session so we can talk about more in depth information. I know people in this room are very angry with me because this is happening because the fear of or the understanding of that calling Armstrong out and putting them on the spot tonight is something that's going to be detrimental to our community. To the contrary, because what Rich Raymond did, Rich Raymond stood up and said, George, listen, I'm willing to come and do anything that needs to be done so everybody understands the process. That's how important Method is to them. To the point where even Rich said, if anything happens, no matter if it's with the other company here or with the other company, if something goes bad, we're going to be here anyway from Medford. Because that's the type of people they are. So I felt strong enough, no matter how people that I respect immensely felt by me bringing this forward was a mistake, I needed to make sure that I brought this forward because it is important. I gave you my perspective as a son. But now I'm talking to you as a city councilor that's looking at our community's public safety. So there are a lot of things that we'll move forward. The social media's gone out, and they've chimed in, and they've gotten word something about contracts and money and this and that. If that's the case, that's why we want to go to executive session and committee the whole meeting relatively quick. But tonight, I wanted to bring this forward to understand that this is important. And if you talk to neighboring communities, and you talk to them, and they share just the fear of turning over ambulance companies, the fear of something bad possibly happening, percentage has increased dramatically. I don't want anybody in our community to be that percentage. It's not worth it. And like I said, if when I talked to our administration, our team, and they said A, B, and C, and then I spoke with the leadership from Armstrong, and they said exactly what was being said, I would say, well, you made your bed. We need to move on. But it was the opposite. It was the opposite. When they talked about the behavior bus, We'll use that for an example. That being one of the key points why Medford went with this new company, that we can work with mental health and drug abuse in a more swifter, more controlled fashion to get people help faster. I had a great conversation with Rich in understanding that this process was started three years ago first to do this here in Medford. And then it was brought up in negotiations And then it stopped. So there are things that were presented to the public that I think for city council, for the people I represent, we need to clear the air so we can move on. Whether there's a way we could stop this and stay with Armstrong or whether you move on. So I'm not here to entertain any of the other options of why we did this, why we did that. My perspective is very simple. I spoke to all the parties. I went through what Armstrong did for my loved ones. I see a deep issue here with the lack of communication with people that are sitting down at the table. So that being said, Council President, There's a reason why that we need a more robust conversation. I think sending this to Committee of the Whole so we could talk about, more importantly, what a response time looks like so residents can understand how amazing Armstrong is. We can talk about the different pieces that were important in that contract that Armstrong has already given us and continue to give to us. Having that meeting in an open forum where we can talk openly, I think it's important. So I would ask that we motion to take this to Committee of the Whole with possibilities, if using private information, that we go to executive session. And again, I apologize for my emotion, but it means something to me. But the way I looked at it is this. there's another Lily Scarpelli that's going through dialysis today. And I don't know if she has a son or a daughter that can do what my sister and myself did. So that's why I'm going to fight for this. So, Mr. President, I make that motion. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. On the motion, and we'll get to discussion in a second, but on the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to refer to Committee of the Whole, seconded by Councilor Tseng. We will first hear from the rest of members of the council if they'd like to speak on this. I'll say something quickly, and then we will hear from members of the public. And just a reminder to members of the public, you can speak either here in person or on Zoom, and you'll have three minutes. But first, we're gonna go to members of the council. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: I want to thank you and applaud you for your leadership on this issue, Councilor Scarpelli. Don't apologize for your emotion, I think. It really brings to light the significance of why this is important for our city and important for the council to get involved and be talking about making sure that we are all communicating with each other on such a profound change like this. And I think your story is was profoundly touching. I think it's a story that a lot of our residents know, see every single day, have lived, and, you know, through the last few decades as well, through the, I think, really top-notch and faithful service that Armstrong has given to this city. I think moving to executive, to committee of the whole and then possibly to executive session if that's allowed will be really important for us to speak in more depth and in more, more freely about this, about the issue. I've certainly in talking to you, in talking to residents, have questions about the change. I mean, the first one you brought up, what does this transition look like? Are we ready for it? Are our first responders ready for this change? What does that look like and what should residents expect? I think that's a baseline question we need to answer with any large shift like this. I think in addition to that, I mean, I would ask why we made the change and what the process was behind it. I think there are a lot of residents, as you kind of alluded to, that have brought up important critiques, concerns, questions. And at the very least, the role of city government, if we've taken any lesson from the last few months, is to explain large changes like this better to a resident so that everyone has as full of a picture as, you know, as we all deserve. You know, I think residents have brought up things like, you know, have we compared response times? If there was a problem with the service before, what did we do wrong? What did, was it fixed? where there are offers for those problems to be fixed. Residents have brought up union issues as well, and I think it's important for this council to stand by working folks and union leadership. We've talked about, I think, the rates of mutual aid between companies, what the behavior bus actually looks like, whether that benefit is something that can be done with Armstrong, as you talked to. And I think there are larger structural questions, too, outside of just the ambulance issue that we've seen over the last few months. where I think the state law and the charter are really clear about who is the person, who is the individual in the city, who is responsible for entering and negotiating contracts. But I think there are structural questions that perhaps have to come in a few years when we review the charter, when we look at the council's ability, the balance of power between different offices in the city about that ability to enter and negotiate contracts and exit contracts as well. But I think we'll have time in the committee as a whole to talk more about these issues, to talk more deeply about these issues as well. But just for today, I'm very happy to support this motion.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Any other members of the council want to speak to this paper at this time? Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: I would just like to thank my colleague for thoroughly doing his research on this and sharing his own story of why this matters so much. Just to voice my own opinions on this, this is a resolution that I support. I think at the very least, residents would like clarity on the back and forth, what exactly happened and what the real world impacts of this will be. I think Committee of the Whole with a possible executive session is the perfect forum to do that. I look forward to hearing folks speak about this issue, to hear from the many folks who, from the many EMS workers that we have in the room tonight who would be interested, who would offer their perspectives on this. I hope that this body can be useful in at least clarifying the reasons behind this change, because a lot of residents have been reaching out to us and are clearly very dissatisfied with it. So thank you once again for bringing this forward.
[Zac Bears]: Seeing no further councilors want to speak to this at this time, I'll just be brief about my viewpoint on this. I think when we talk about our ambulance contract, we're talking about residents wanting to trust that if they get sick or if they get hurt, there will be an EMT and an ambulance at their door or at the scene of a collision or at the scene of an incident quickly so that they can get the help that they need. It's one of the things that is one of the most essential functions of government, right? Making sure that if something goes wrong, there's someone there to keep folks safe. And I think when it comes to this contract, When you've been working with a group, a company for over 20 years, when there's been relationships built between those EMS folks and your police and your fire department, I would ask, and I would wanna know, and those are the questions that I'm asking, why change and why and how will residents be safer if we change? And that isn't clear to me. You know, I also have had a chance to speak with the mayor and our fire chief and our police chief, with Councilor Scarpelli, with some folks from Armstrong. And, you know, it's not clear to me. I've heard a couple of stories of things that happened that I don't like. I raised those with Armstrong. They said we didn't like that either. We made a mistake. And I just ask, you know, I think the answers that I'm hoping to find are, Why does the change make our city safer? And if we can get answers to that question and, you know, the experts believe that a change is going to make people safer and the mayor's, and that's the mayor's decision, well then that's the mayor's decision. But I just think that this council and the residents deserve clear answers to that question and I don't have them yet. So I want to hear from everybody. I want to understand. how and why this change is going to make our city safer. And I think if there were things outside of that scope, outside of the scope of making us safer that were a factor here, I want to understand why we couldn't get to yes on those questions that were outside of that core public safety role in this contract. So that's just where I'm coming from on this. I appreciate Councilor Scarpelli, my colleagues and their thoughts on this. And I will, pending an approval of this motion, work to schedule a committee of the whole with our chiefs, with the mayor's office, see if we can, if an executive session exemption around contracts would apply here considering that a contract signed. And my goal is to have that meeting next Tuesday before the changeover in a couple of weeks. So, Councilor Scarpell, yes.
[George Scarpelli]: Can we make sure that everybody that was part of the negotiation process is present? Yes. I think that's important.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, sure. Thank you. We'll happily invite, you know, our current provider and the new provider if they'd like to attend as well, if that's great. So with that, if there's no other comments from members of the council, we'll open it up to members of the public either in person or on Zoom. You can line up behind the podium or raise your hand on Zoom and you'll have three minutes. Is there anyone who'd like to speak on this at this time? Great. Give me one second. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Sorry, it's just taking a minute here.
[Zac Bears]: All right. For some reason, I can't set the timer the way I usually do. So I will keep time on my phone.
[SPEAKER_12]: I'm just going to read something really quick. I don't think it's going to be three minutes.
[Zac Bears]: Right. Floor is yours and you have three minutes. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_12]: Okay. My name's Nancy Campbell. I'm a business agent with Teamsters Local 25. I've been here before, so I recognize some of you. Our president at Local 25, Thomas Mowry, couldn't be here this evening, but he did put out He wanted a statement. I have a hard copy for all of you when I leave, but I wanted to read it into the record, okay? So this is from President Tom Mare. Medford City Council, Mayor Lungo, and concerned members of the Medford community, on behalf of more than 275 emergency medical services professionals represented by Teamsters Local 25, who have proudly served the City of Medford through Armstrong Ambulance for more than 30 years, we write to express our strong support for Armstrong Ambulance and to urge and to urge immediate reconsideration for the recent termination and reassignment of the city's EMS contract. For decades, Armstrong Ambulance has provided MedFed with reliable, high quality emergency medical services distinguished by strong clinical performance, operational consistency, and deep institutional knowledge of the community's need. Their record is well established and their workforce is experienced, professional and committed to public safety. At no point has the city identified any failure to any failure in clinical care, response, performance or operational capability that would justify removal of Armstrong as Medford EMS provider. Rather, the sequence of events strongly suggest that Armstrong's removal followed its discussion to raise legitimate concerns regarding contract payments and to insist appropriately that all actions comply with lawful and transparent process to protect both the city and the provider. In May, Armstrong engaged in good faith discussions with the city outside council, KP Law, regarding these payment concerns. After Armstrong's attorneys presented the issues, KP Law acknowledged and understood the concerns raised. Throughout negotiations from April through December, Armstrong consistently demonstrated flexibility and cooperation, agreeing in principle to the city's request terms for a new contract and repeatedly emphasized a willingness to say yes in order to preserve continuity of service. In late October, the city solicitor outside counsel, KP Law, the police chief and the fire chief met to discuss updated contract terms and legal safeguards. During that meeting, the city solicitor directly asked whether the police and fire chief supported Armstrong continuing as MedFed's EMS provider. Both chiefs unequivocally affirmed their support for maintaining the longstanding relationship. Armstrong left that meeting with a reasonable understanding that continuation of service was the expected outcome, reinforcing that understanding the city solicitor indicated his intention to recommend a five-year contract to the mayor and city council rather than a three-term contract. Instead, within weeks, the city solicitor was dismissed and the EMS contract was reassigned to a different provider. The timing and circumstances surrounding these actions raised serious concerns that the decision was motivated not by performance or public safety considerations, but by retaliation against Armstrong for insisting on proper legal and financial safeguards or for maintaining a unionized workforce. These concerns are further amplified by the Mayor's well-documented history of strained and noncollective relations with Teamsters Local 25 and other organized labor partners. The decision to replace a longstanding unionized EMS provider with a non-union company raises legitimate questions about whether labor considerations rather than service quality, workforce stability, or public safety played an improper role in the city's decision-making process. Such an approach risk undermines workforce morality, labor stability, and continuity of the experienced emergency care for Medford residents. This course of action is deeply troubling. It jeopardizes public safety, threatens the livelihoods and collective bargaining protections of dedicated EMS professionals, and undermines the public confidence in fairness and integrity for municipality decisionmaking. Most importantly, it disrupts the continuity of proven, competent emergency medical care for the residents of Medford. Accordingly, the Teamsters Local 25 respectfully call upon the Mayor and City Council to immediately pause the implementation of the new awarded EMS contract, reinstate Armstrong Ambulance as MedFed's EMS provider while a transparent and lawful review is conducted, ensure that all contract decisions are based on documented clinical, operational, and public safety criteria, not retaliation for seeking legal compliance or labor representation, and engage in good faith negotiations with Armstrong Ambulance and Teamsters Local 25 to preserve jobs, protect public safety, and restore the community's trust. Teamsters Local 25 and Armstrong Ambulance stand ready to work collaboratively with the city leadership to ensure that MedFed EMS services remain safe, reliable, and professionally managed. removing a highly qualified and longstanding provider for reasons unrelated to performance, places a community at unreasonable risk, and erodes confidence in public governance. Sincerely, Thomas G. Maury.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Could we have a copy of the letter just for the record, please? Oh, you left one? Great. Thank you so much. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak on this issue? Great. Seeing no hands on Zoom, we'll stay at the podium. That was a bit longer than three minutes. If we can try to stick to it, I'd appreciate it. Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good evening, Rich Raymond, CEO with Armstrong Ambulance. Thank you all for seeing us tonight. I will not go into three minutes. I think what Nancy said was spot on. I just want to agree with what she read was really the way we feel. And it's a great relationship between Armstrong and the Teamsters. They've been very much part of this whole program. I want to thank that relationship with them. And I also just want to thank the city. We're not here to put any stress on anyone. We just want to clarify some of the misunderstandings that we've seen on the social media and the presses and all that. This has been a pretty open meeting that we've had since April when this started. Countless Zooms and meetings. to get to where we thought we were gonna get to a new contract. And that time back in October with the city solicitor, Kevin Foley at the time, he agreed. He wanted to present a five year, and I guess you all have to sign off to go from a three year to a five year. He was gonna make that motion that he agreed that Armstrong. So when we got into the first week of November, I thought we had the contract. And then I sent an email out on December 12th asking, you know, how do we meet up? When do we sign this? I'd like to get this completed before the new year. That's when I got an email back saying that the city was going to go in a different direction. And that was about it. I sent a couple other follow-up emails without any response. And I just don't understand with the impeccable record with the women and men here they've been doing great work for the city for years and years and years. Honestly I started in Medford as an EMT back in 1992 and I worked my way up to be the CEO of the company. But we know the city better than anyone. We know the intricacies we know the response patterns we know where the The time of day when we're going to see clusters of calls, we move assets or ambulances in to cover all of those. And this is institutional knowledge that we develop over 30 years of time. And I speak ill of no other company, I just know that. we do it better, and we have the men and women here to do it better. They are wonderful, they are committed, and we would offer our services to come and sit with you to discuss anything that we've done in the past, all the meetings we've been to, all the discussions we've had, all of the, what I would say, Great meetings. We thought we were working through everything and then at the 13th hour all of a sudden something shifted and we were no longer the provider. We have a four and a half minute response pattern. We can have you know 30 ambulances in the city at any given time and we've done that day over day. And I think that's what makes Armstrong unique. Our footprint is Medford. We cover the surrounding communities. We don't go beyond that. Other companies have contracts all over the state. We are really right here. All of our ambulances are in Medford. So to move 40 ambulances into Medford during a mass casualty incident or just a busy call volume, we do that. We don't use mutual aid. I think we captured 99.9% of all the calls. And we have a four and a half minute response time. Are there mistakes every now and again? Sure. But four and a half minute response time. The national average is 8.59. and American Heart Association will always tell you, every minute that you don't have paramedics at your bedside. when you're in an active cardiac event, you lose 10% chance of life. So if we're gonna go from a four and a half minute response and maybe the new company creeps up because they don't have all the surrounding ambulances like we do, there's gonna be concerns there. But I just, from our perspective, there's no other company that can really cover MedFed the way it needs to be wrapped, and we provide that. And if there's going to be meetings we're happy to come and talk. And I just I feel I feel that the folks here with us they work so hard for the city and I want to thank them for being here tonight. I didn't think anybody was going to come. So thank you. But we really would love to be part of the city again. It would be no problem for us if you said it's a go. We're happy to do it. No harm no foul. We're here for you. We're not leaving the city. We're keeping the ambulance bay. If anything happens we'll always be here for you guys so really appreciate your time.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Madam Chief of Staff sure.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears. I want to start off by thanking Armstrong Ambulance because I think it's important to acknowledge the work and service that they provided the city for over 20 years. The staff that did all that work to provide the city the services and the safety and support to our residents. It's not a short period of time and it doesn't go unnoticed. So I want to start off by saying that. to all the first responders here, the ALS providers and the BLS providers, thank you very much for what you do. I honestly couldn't do it myself. It's not a role I could play, so I can appreciate the complexity and the challenges of the work that they do because, you know, Some of us are not built that way, and I'm one of those people. That said, I want to mention that we have our fire chief here today, our chief of police here today, our emergency services, our dispatch director, Mike Salve, here today. And, you know, that group negotiated a contract between two parties, between Armstrong Ambulance working in good faith negotiations with Armstrong Ambulance and in good faith negotiations with Cataldo. I will certainly defer to any of the directors and chiefs that we have here today on the matter, but we were working on response time, staffing, investment support and contractual obligations and contractual things that were to be provided or could be provided in those negotiations all throughout in good faith with both parties. So, you know, I do want to try to avoid going down a rabbit hole of issues that the city has experienced because I think By and large, there's been an incredible support and I think it's important to kind of leave it there. So I'm hoping we can do that as a group. But I think that's up to the council really. So I defer to any of the personnel and directors and department heads we have here today. And Chief, I know he has a couple of comments. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. And just before we hear from the Chief, I think for me, the fundamental question is, at least from my perspective, Why does this new contract make the city safer than the contract we had before. Like that's the question that I want to understand better. And to your point Madam Chief of Staff something that you know I know the mayor has written an email you just said was you know we don't want to go down the rabbit hole we don't want to bring up the issues. I think, you know, I spoke with Rich Raymond and he said, whatever the issues are, let's put them on the table. And I think like that honesty, let's just put it out there. I want to understand why we're making the decision we're making. And if that means putting out things that feel difficult to say, I think that's okay. That honesty I think is really important. That helps to me, that honesty will help me understand the answer to that question of why this decision makes the city safer. So that's just my perspective. I'll turn it over to Chief Evans and, you know, we can talk about the honest truth as everyone sees it and also just want to note we have a chance next week and this is a pitch for our committee structure that we've been working on for two years. You know, these meetings have 5, 10, 15 things on them. Next week we can have a meeting just about this, go into the details. So if, you know, we'll have everybody back, we can answer some of the more detailed questions but the floor is yours, Chief Evans.
[Todd Evans]: I've worked with Armstrong staff for the last 24 years, so I'm not here to say anything disparaging about Armstrong. I've worked closely with them, and I still maintain their relationship with Armstrong, and I appreciate everything that they've done for the city. But, you know, saying that the city is less safe at this point, I mean, the fire department responds immediately to every medical also. We're the first ones rolling out the door, and we're getting right to these responses. just saying that the city is less safe right off the bat. I mean, we're responding to these calls also.
[Zac Bears]: I want to be clear. I wasn't saying the city is less safe. I, you know, I want to understand how we're even safer with the new choice. That's all I'm saying.
[Todd Evans]: So you're getting, I mean, you're still getting paramedic vehicles. You're getting BLS vehicles in this contract also. You're getting paramedic fly car. So you're still set up the same way. as Armstrong was set up here. So you're not setting up in a less way as far as vehicles coming here, all right? So you're getting the same response. As far as I've been told by Cataldo, I have no reason to see them lying to me. They're adamant that they are able to take care of Medford's needs and respond quickly and get to these calls just like anybody else, so we have reassurances from Cataldo, President Dennis, and management there, and we've discussed this with them also, and so, I mean, I can't, I gotta take their word for it also, so there's another side to the story also, and again, I'm not gonna disparage Armstrong at all and get into anything like that, because as far as I can tell, I mean, Armstrong says that they're staying here in their base here, so they're going to be nearby also. And I wouldn't want to see anybody burning any bridges as far as the relationship goes. So I expect a smooth transition. Everybody's being professional about this. And we're going to make the change on the 19th as it's anticipated. Again, we're working closely with Armstrong with that also during the transition. And we'll continue to maintain contact with Armstrong as far as professional relationship with them and maintain that close relationship with them. I mean, we're going to keep on communicating with them also. And I don't see Armstrong saying no to, you know, passing along information that we need from them as far as our previous contact with, you know, the, like they said, that they know Medford. They stated that. And I've never seen them refuse to assist in some way like that. I mean, they would provide me information on particular cases and things like that. So I'm sure I can continue to reach out for them if I have any questions going forward with the, with the new service if need be. And obviously we're going to keep a close eye on the new service provider going forward and look at the data and everything else. And in the contract, I mean there's clauses in there also to void the contract if need be if they were not able to live up to any service needs.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Chief. Madam Chief of Staff, and then I'm going to go to Councilor Scarpelli.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you very much. I think it's also really important to say that these kinds of things do happen in communities. It's not uncommon for communities to look at alternative solutions for delivery. It's also not uncommon for communities to consider, you know, multiple vendors for something. As we all know, there's a process for that. I honestly think that while there are some questions and hopefully we can get some of those questions answered, I think carrying this conversation on to a degree is only potentially going to create concern and fear when the fact of the matter is the team that I mentioned a moment ago has been working hard to ensure smooth transition. Our chiefs and our dispatch supervisor have been working very diligently on that. And so we need to invest time and energy into doing that. That's what's the most important in all of this, in my opinion, and continue to invest that time and energy. So I would hope that we can answer the questions today and move on from the conversation and not continue this and continue to create concern in people's minds because there is a solid contract. that is coming into place, just like there is a solid contract in at least six other major communities. As far as I know, Lynn, Malden, Everett, Chelsea, Revere, and Somerville all are served by Cataldo. So I think it's important for us to understand and realize as a part of this conversation that We are all working diligently to ensure a smooth transition, and you have some of the most well-respected chiefs and dispatch supervisor in the area and the region. I can't speak to outside the state, but I can certainly say that our department heads are very capable and very competent, and they have done nothing but try to provide the best service and best solutions for the city as a part of this process. Hopefully we can get the questions answered today and move on because I think that this contract, this conversation doesn't need to be protracted. And it's, it's not gonna probably help the community if it is protracted.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'm gonna go to Councilor Scarpelli to meet him and I'm Chief of Staff, but I just still don't understand why. And I don't think anyone's questioning the competence of Chief Buckley or Chief Evans to implement this transition. I think, I'll speak for myself, I just wanna understand why we're doing a transition. You know, why, why is this contract, better than the contract we had. Why is this provider better than the provider we had before. And you know that's the piece I don't understand. I don't think we have time to answer every question tonight because we have a lot of other stuff we have to do tonight. I think a decision of this magnitude deserves. dedicated focus and time at another meeting. I understand that that creates a burden of time where people have to come back and be in this chamber and work through it. And I do have just, I think, something, kind of a question here. My understanding, and, you know, there's kind of been back and forth about this in the various discussions. on the process itself, right? You know, you talked about the process to do a contract. In this case, this was not a 30B procurement, right? Like we didn't solicit bids because the city doesn't pay the service provider, right? If you could just go quickly into that part of the process, I think that might be helpful for people to understand too because my understanding is it's not the traditional, it's not because there's no payment by the city, the city's not paying anybody. It's not the 30B bid process. It's just the mayor's decision of what she believes to be in the best interest of the city. So if you could just clarify that, because I've seen a bunch of people saying, this wasn't done right. And at least we can maybe get that out of the way tonight, and then we can talk about the why.
[Nina Nazarian]: Sure. I'm happy to answer that, President Bears. Succinctly, Chapter 30B exempts ambulance service providers. So there's no requirement to go through any procurement process. But as one can imagine, it's almost a fiduciary responsibility and the responsibility of the organization to analyze the service that's being provided and what options exist out there. So while something may be exempted, it's not always something that you wouldn't necessarily just direct contract. You would, I mean, a good practice is to establish whether, review whether the existing contract you have, and this isn't about ambulance, this is about anything that might be exempt, evaluate the contract that exists and determine whether that's providing the services and support that the city is trying to secure. If it isn't, then potentially look at alternatives. In this case, we didn't abandon having conversations with Armstrong and go directly to one other vendor and have direct negotiations with that vendor or other vendors alone. We continued the negotiations with Armstrong. At a very high level, the city was experiencing some issues with the contract. Armstrong wasn't necessarily, prepared to provide some of the terms of the contract. Again, we can get into that. I'm not sure that that's, well, the door's been opened. I don't know that there's closing that at this point, but my colleagues would know some of the more intricate details. I could go into a high level, but that's one tier.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you and I appreciate that. And the word analyze you know that's I think for me what I just want to see the analysis you know what was the analysis of and how did the city team analyze the options and determine this to be the best option. I agree with you. It's an open it opens a door. It seems to me that all parties are certainly you know I heard from the mayor in communication you know. We don't want to put Armstrong out. We don't want that, you know, we don't, you know, we don't want to air anything that might hurt them. I heard from Armstrong. Let's just put it out there. So I think that piece of it, you know, just putting those facts out there is fine. I do think we don't have time for all of it tonight to understand the analysis over six months of a complicated decision. So I appreciate that. I understand, you know, having another meeting does add some additional work to the process. Personally, I believe that's worth the time. That's my two cents. I'll probably try to not say anything for the rest of this resolution. Councilor Scarpelli, I know you had your, you had a request to speak, so Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. To the Chief of Staff, I understand how it's uncomfortable, but the bottom line is I think people are more frightened if we don't come to some resolution and understand how this process went on. Because again, the communication isn't going out correctly. The communication is scaring a lot of people. But I want to revert back to what Chief Evans said. Chief Evans, you said, and this is where I'm a little perplexed, Armstrong's great. Armstrong's here. Armstrong's been A, B, and C. Then why did you change him? These are the things we're gonna get into. The other pieces that we talked about. I trust our leadership team like no other. But I did my homework and our chiefs did their homework. And I'm sure that this is why going down that rabbit hole tonight is a mistake. And these are things we'll talk about next week because possibly chiefs from other neighbor communities that spoke with me openly can share the fear that they had for their communities and what can happen here in Medford, because people that you said to yourself, Chief, people you respect, shared their opinions on what was promised and what was followed through. And again, you already said it. They're already doing it. Councilor Bears has said it. These are the issues that we need to know why. Why did we do this? Because I heard each of you separately. I listened to everybody. I listened to chiefs in neighboring communities. I listened to their processes. I shared those with you. I came back to you. I listened to Armstrong. I heard what they said. And we can go down that rabbit hole because the behavior bust from what I hear is based out of Lynn. Conversation we had in Medford was that we were trying to do one here, but it fell through. We can go on and on and understand the process of making sure, are they prepared on the other side? I'll give you one example that I think we all know and fear, because this is one situation that really stuck with me. I spoke to a neighboring community chief, and he expressed a situation that was very public about a young person that was struck by a car in a neighboring community. In the response time, within minutes, two ambulance and leadership team from Armstrong were at the scene. Two capable paramedics, which, by the way, are PAL certified. That is Pediatric Advanced Life Support certified. They worked to save this young man's life. That chief told me that a firefighter jumped right in that seat, and they drove that ambulance while both paramedics, both EMTs, worked on that young person. And unfortunately, we couldn't save them. But the questions I have, do our partners that are coming in, are they PAL certified? Do they all have the certifications that I have in front of me that our friends behind you have? Like I said, I didn't want to go down this rabbit hole. But when you come up here and you say why, and then let's get things through this, this is the fundamental problem we're having here. We need to sit down at the table, and that's all I ask for, to sit down at the table one last time, talk to each other, go through the process with apples to apples, and understand the process. Because I have shared information. I have information that shows that these processes were in place. We talked about response time, right? We talked about, I keep forgetting the EDT, I keep making a mistake with the response time when 911 gets the call. And we shift that over to Armstrong. And Armstrong gets on and they work with that person, providing life-saving action. and understanding, because that was one of the things we brought up. And I sat with Armstrong. They explained that to me. And then I talked to our former chief, and then I talked to chiefs in neighbor communities, and they explained the process. And I said, where is the disconnect here? And then understand the process is important. That's why I don't want to keep going down this because I have a list of processes that I want to show and I need some answers for. I think the community deserves that. And then with that, we have possibly people that do work in neighboring communities that are willing to come and speak. because they feel that important about these issues. So, Mr. President, I would still move forward with a Committee of the Whole meeting, and we would love to have our professionals here to really put people at ease, because right now, people aren't at ease. Chief, understand something. There isn't a bigger, stronger advocate for our Medford firefighters and police department than me. You know that, and that's public. That's not at all what I've said. But you know, as well as I do, when our firefighters get to a scene where there's a horrific incident, you talk to them, because they've told me themselves, as well as the PD. That when they see Armstrong roll up, there's a sense of secureness that they feel, that there's a blanket of safeness around them. So that's, if it was put up in a way that was, maybe I might have said it saying that we don't have, we should be fearful of this, not at all. We know that our team is capable, but we also know that they're not prepared for some situations like the people that are trained are. I apologize if anybody feels uncomfortable. That's not what it's made for. I didn't do this for that reason. I did it for exactly what I said. This is personal to me.
[Todd Evans]: Everything you're describing, Councilor, again, you're talking about responses out the door, fire department's responding right out the door. You're talking about EMD, that's a dispatching thing. And again, our dispatchers immediately answer the call from citizens here, and they're dispatching it right to us. So we're going out the door right away, all right? So the speed is still going out the door. We're still responding right away. So I don't want you to give the impression that somehow the fire department is not responding people less safe because of this.
[George Scarpelli]: If that's what the message of people feeling out there, that's not what I'm trying to say. I feel safe with our fire and police. We are not in any fear in that situation. But I think it's incumbent of us to understand that the next level, which is our ambulance provider, is that level. So I hope that's clear. I don't want anybody to think that we're in jeopardy or we should be in fear of our safety right now because there's a misconception that I might have said out there that the police and our first responders aren't capable. They're more than capable, believe me. So if that came out, Chief, I apologize. That's not the intention.
[Zac Bears]: Chief Buckley. Medford Police, Chief Buckley.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you, Mr. President. I think it's sort of important that we could continue to sit here and say that, ask the question is the city safe, safer is what you're asking, not is the city safe, you're asking is the city safer as if there's some standard that we have to reach and then overcome.
[Zac Bears]: Or that it's the same level of safety. Maintain and improve, maintain or improve.
[Jack Buckley]: And then to sort of, I'm gonna use the word backtrack, but I think you could, read this into it a little further, that you're not questioning public safety or the decisions of this public safety team. I have over 30 years of public safety. I make decisions every single day for the safety of this city, right? I don't mind being questioned or have a conversation about that, but I had those conversations with city councilors. And it's still turning into a bit of a circus, right? There are issues with the The ambulance company, Armstrong Ambulance Company's ability or reasons that they wanted to up or did not want to uphold the prior contract. They also put terms before both chiefs of terms that they wanted to change. Terms that were going to cost this city money. It is responsible government for chiefs and for mayors and everybody else to review the process on ambulance companies. I think that process happened. I think some of what was said tonight is a misunderstanding or information was given to Armstrong Ambulance that is not accurate. I don't know where they got their source of some of the information, but I will tell you that over the last several years, in my eighth year now as chief, but definitely the last several, three to four years, we have had conversations with Armstrong Ambulance about their performance. I think every chief and every fire chief could say that they will have conversations about the performance of their ambulance companies and their AMS providers. We've worked through those. The problem is, is they continue, I'll leave it at that, they continue. Some of them are, Very problematic. Response times that are going into the 40 minute range. And there's a level of maybe not being upfront about that. I would rather work with a company that will, I'd rather explore other options with companies that will promise us that they will do better. And that's a little bit about what happened. I don't know that this has to be dragged out through the public to satisfy everybody's curiosity. I think at some point and level, you have to trust your public safety personnel or your leaders in public safety that they're making decisions on behalf of this city that are responsible and safe. This city is safe. End of story. Like if we transfer to Cataldo, we are safe. We are prepared for a transition. We are ready to go forward. We are getting more out of this. contract more ambulances, more committed ambulances, more training, a little bit of specialty services and behavioral support than we had prior to this. These are things that are smart decision making for leaders of this community to make. And we made them. We could go and drag everybody through the mud if we want to about poor decisions and poor, performances. But as this decision was made and as this gets dragged through the mud on social media or publicly, I'm hearing more and more about Armstrong Ambulance that is troubling to me that I didn't even know. I'm not bringing that up because the decision was made prior to a lot of this. But I don't want to bad mouth anybody here. This is just leadership, making decisions on behalf of a community. And at some point in time, you have to trust the people you put in charge to make decisions. Again, I'm willing to talk about those issues. I can do it in a public safety subcommittee or whoever you want to do. But nobody's doing anything because we somehow got mad at the employees of Armstrong, or that we don't want to like Armstrong, or somebody promised us something. We're doing things responsibly on behalf of this city. I really appreciate Councilor Scarpelli's response to these talks to surrounding cities. And their chiefs, I have also. This chief also has. I haven't heard a bad thing about Cataldo. And this is my problem with holding, like again, you could call me a liar. I'm not a liar. I've got a long career and a reputation that says otherwise, that I am a liar.
[Zac Bears]: I didn't call you a liar, sir.
[Jack Buckley]: I know, but this is the problem you have when you hold forums. I get called a liar because I make a statement that somebody doesn't agree with.
[Zac Bears]: It's not a lie. I understand that. I think you've been in this room several times when people have called me a liar, or people have called George a liar, or people have called the chief of staff, or Chief Evans, or the mayor. Comes with the territory, and it sucks. I'm not going to say it. It doesn't feel good.
[Jack Buckley]: I don't mind. I get thick skin. It doesn't bother me.
[Zac Bears]: No, I know. But I'm just, I know.
[Jack Buckley]: I'm talking about the process. I understand. When you openly question decisions. Yeah, this is why we have one. Is that me or you? We're making responsible decisions on behalf of this community. You could drag it through however you want, we'll be here to answer these questions. You could bring in whoever you want to sort of answer these questions also, right, or to call me a liar or tell us that this didn't happen. I'm not going to drag other chiefs into a community meeting to talk about their experiences because I've already talked to them. So you can take my word for it. But there are performance issues with the upstrong ambulance, and there are contractual issues with the upstrong ambulance. If there weren't, there would not be a Cataldo ambulance brought into this process. The city is safe and will remain safe. That's the end of the story. Thank you for allowing me to go beyond three minutes.
[Zac Bears]: Well, that, I just want to be clear about the three minutes. That applies to members of the public. Councilor Scarpelli. One second, Councilor Scarpelli. I'm going to turn on your microphone. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: There's undertones of people calling people liars. We spoke. No, I get it, but we spoke, I'm saying. We spoke. And I trust you with everything you said. Right? I talked to the other side because I want to do my due diligence. Armstrong. And when Armstrong said everything that you told me that were concerning, and they had a response to it, even this 45-minute time, and had documentation and showed me the emails that they've had for the situation. Chief, that's why I asked for another meeting for everybody to sit at the table, because it seemed there was a disconnect. So this isn't a forum to play the gacha game. This is a forum to really enlighten people to what's really happening so we can correct it. It could be you're right in everything that we've gone through that what was stated was we know this, this and that. And that's why I wanted to go to executive session. That's why I want to go into meetings that we could speak more openly about this, where we could share information. Because I personally, I've seen information from both sides. This is what was shared with other people. So it's something that is alarming to me and alarming to the community. So no one here, at least I haven't called you a liar. You openly talk to me any time I make a call. And I appreciate that. You both do. But I told you why I'm invested in this. And I reached out to the connections that I have there to get an understanding what was going on, because I felt that strong about them. And I hope you could appreciate that from a city councilor and someone that grew up in the city and understands the processes. So when I heard all the parties and all the issues, I said, jeez, there's definitely a disconnect here. There's a communication gap somewhere here. And we asked for that meeting, and I said, And what did I say? I said, I need to go public with this, because I think it's important. Because leaving Armstrong has left a lot of questions for a lot of residents, whether we're doing this or not. Take it for what it's worth. I think it's important that we have that meeting. I think that we understand because, hey, my phone just blew up 15 times. What 45 minute call? Armstrong dropped the ball 45 minutes. Now I can explain what I got for documentation that showed what happened, and I could show you how Armstrong self-reported that within minutes. I could show what they showed me, but that's going down that rabbit hole that I don't want to. So that's why I call for that meeting committee to the whole that we could sit and discuss this, look at the options if we have to go in a private session to get to more, to get understanding and then move forward. That's all. Thank you, Mr. President.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Um, and chief, just, uh, you know, I appreciate what you said. right here, right now, because it was the honest, your perspective of the truth, right? What you said was, this is what I experienced in this negotiation, and it was straight up. It was, I think we've had issues with Armstrong. I think we're getting more from Cataldo. My 30-plus years of experience as a public safety official, I think this is a better deal for the city. And that's your position on this, and you're sticking to it. And I think that's very different from, well, we don't want to air the dirty laundry, right? I think what you said is a clear, concise viewpoint, and you're saying, trust me, I'm the chief of police, I've been doing this a long time, and this is what's happened as I've been the chief of police. And I just think that that engenders a lot more trust in the public than we think this is the right call, we don't want to talk about the details because we don't want anybody to get hurt. And that's just where I'm coming from here, right? Something that's really frustrated me as I've done research over the last couple weeks is that the state does not put out clear data around some of these things, around response times, around some of the incidents. You know, to me these have been raised as a couple of troubling, but two troubling stories of these long response times. And I would wanna ask, do these two troubling stories constitute a consistent and persistent pattern, or are they aberrations? You know, what is the average response time here in Medford? You know, what does the new contract say about what Cataldo says they'll do as a response time? Is that higher or lower than what Armstrong said, right? And it's not about not trusting your, you. To me, it's just, I wanna see the numbers. I wanna see the numbers about that prove your case, that are backing your argument. That's where I'm coming from on this. So I appreciate that you've been really clear about what you said, you know, your position on it, but I haven't seen the numbers, right? That's the piece of it that's missing for me. And this is a really important, It's a really important thing. You acknowledge it. Everyone here acknowledges it. The last thing we want to do is make people worried that they're less safe. And you did the analysis. The Chief of Staff mentioned that there was an analysis. And I just want to talk about that analysis openly and honestly and let it land where it may. You know, Armstrong has said, we want it all out on the table. And I just think, and you said, let's just be honest, let's be clear. And I think residents just want to hear the honest truth. And I just personally, the thing that's been frustrating for me throughout this conversation on my end has been, you know, well, we just don't want to, we don't want to put the stuff out there. We don't want anybody to get hurt. It's like, well, yeah, nobody wants anybody to get hurt. Nobody wants EMS to be an issue. Let's just put all the information out there. If you guys believe you, you guys are the chiefs of fire and police, the mayor negotiates the contracts, But a lot of people have contacted us and said, why is this happening? And we just want those answers. So I hope that we can kind of have the conversation on those terms as we move ahead. Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: I appreciate you saying that. I just have one point. It's not just the numbers that you're looking for. I mean, remember, this started with, you know, a statement from Armstrong Ambulance that they were not going to honor the current contract that they were working under and that they were going to change certain practices or policies that they had under. So that is the beginning of it all. And then we have issues with performance. So it's not just counting the numbers and saying, hey, we have an issue with, I don't know why they made the business decision they made, but they did. which forces us as leaders to make decisions on our end.
[Zac Bears]: Great. And I mean, I appreciate, like.
[Jack Buckley]: I'm just saying it's not just numbers. There's other aspects of it.
[Zac Bears]: And I think putting that all out on the table too, right, maybe that's some of the things we don't want to talk about because people might get hurt thing. Let's just say it. Let's just say what's happening. That's all I'm saying here. We don't have to say it right now. I would like to have another meeting about this because we have a lot of other things to do tonight and we have a lot of people who want to speak. But you know to me it's I just think let's say what's happened. How we got here. How did this start. What was the issue. And and we'll just have that out there. That's the piece that I didn't. I've had frustration with was that let's not talk about it because people might get hurt.
[Jack Buckley]: Understood President. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: We have people that speak. I'm fine, Mr. President, right now. All right.
[Zac Bears]: We'll continue with public participation. We're going to go back to public participation. We'll stay at the podium. I'm not seeing any hands raised on Zoom. If you could give us your name and address for the record, and you'll have three minutes.
[SPEAKER_09]: Good evening, Council. My name is Dan Miller. My address is 5 Summers Ave. in Allentown, New Hampshire. I'm not a resident of Medford. I have never lived in Medford, but I have worked in Medford for the last 10 years. Tomorrow morning at 4 a.m., I'm gonna wake up. We're gonna have an hour and a half to get on the ambulance in Medford for my 24-hour shift, just like I have for the last six years for 48 hours a week. All my coworkers over here, if you guys wouldn't mind, can you guys, anyone raise a hand if you had a training shift with me in Medford? We love working in Medford. Armstrong and Medford have a great relationship from the boots on the ground up. It's incredibly concerning to us, the people that love working here, the way that this contract negotiation is hanging. We only have an outsider. I cannot speak to the negotiations, what Cataldo has promised, what Armstrong has promised, anything that went on in that room. But, President Vares, your question of how does bringing a new provider into the city make you safer? The real answer that no one is talking about is it doesn't. Me and a lot of my co-workers, we're not gonna move to Cataldo in order to continue working in Bedford. As much as we love this place, as much as we are passionate about serving this city, because of the company culture over there, because of a lot of different factors, because of all sorts of things. It's kind of known that the cities at Cataldo services experience longer response times. There's been a lot made of response times tonight, and I'm sure there's a lot of numbers out there. But I can only share my own personal experience. In the summer of 2023, I was a supervisor for Armstrong's responding into the city of Everett, a city we do not service, with another one of our ambulances from Saugus, where firefighters had been on scene working a cardiac arrest in the first responders level, which is not the full scope of practice for a cardiac arrest, for 25 minutes. on a young man who unfortunately did not make it. And I cannot say whether it was a contributing factor, but just like Rich said, every minute of a cardiac arrest, that you are not getting high quality CPR in the way you're supposed to, decreases your survival chance by about 10%. I hear stories time and time and time again of people who have had bad experience with Consolidate because of long response times, because they are stretched thin, they are short-staffed. Private EMS is a very small world. We've heard from a lot of our co-workers that are at Consolidate that people are not giving up their shifts to come to Medford, that Consolidate is counting on an influx of employees from Armstrong to staff those ambulances that they promised you in that contract. That's not happening. Like I said, I love working here. I know the people of the city incredibly well. I've worked here for a long, long time. Knowing your patient population, knowing the patient, the city that you're serving. is important. That does not happen overnight. That does not happen with a contract transfer. That happens with people being in the city for a long period of time and caring for a long period of time. And I certainly hope that I think sunlight is the best disinfectant. If there are issues with Armstrong, I think they should be aired. I think the chief should talk about it. I think the chief of staff should be open and honest about it because I think the people of Medford deserve to know what those issues are. I'm not saying that Armstrong is perfect. I understand the situation that they're talking about with the longer response times. But I also understand that Armstrong is willing to work with Medford in order to fix those issues. And I don't think those issues are better served with it, although I think they're actually exacerbated. So I don't know what the process is from here, but I certainly hope that there is some way that that can be examined.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks. And I appreciate your service to the Senate. Thank you. I appreciate it. Guys, going forward from here, I'm just going to chime in at about three minutes and give you a chance to wrap up. I just want to let everybody know. Thank you. Floor is yours. If you could give us your name and address for the record, and you'll have three minutes.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you. My name is James Friederborn. I live at 60 Elm Street in Medford. I'm a Medford resident and a constituent of yours. I'm also a paramedic. I've worked as an EMT and paramedic in the Commonwealth for 12 years. I do not work for Armstrong. I've never worked for Armstrong, but I've worked for a various number of cities throughout the state and the country. I've heard a lot of people here today say, you know, Talbot this, Armstrong that. At the end of the day, they're both private companies. They both work for pay. They're both going to have their issues. But what upsets me so much is that this is a company that has been here for 25 years. Some of their medics and EMTs have served this community for so long. And to see a decision made without public transparency, you know, I keep hearing, you know, 45 minute, you know, 45 minute this, you know, poor performance this, poor performance that. I would like to see some transparency. Clearly, the public is upset. And I hear your frustrations, Chief, both of you. I mean, you're both very well-respected, obviously. I don't think that you don't know how to do your jobs. But at the end of the day, it's about public transparency. Clearly, there are people in Medford who are upset about this. There needs to be more transparency on why this change occurred. And honestly, at the end of the day, I think it's about standing up for our EMTs and paramedics who have served this community for 25 years. I mean, I've heard, you know, we heard the chief of staff come up here and say, I could never do that job. Do you know how many times I hear a day, I couldn't be a paramedic, I couldn't be an EMT, and you guys don't make enough money, you don't know, you know, you guys don't, you guys don't get respected? Except here we are throwing out an ambulance service after 25 years of service. We wouldn't throw the fire department out. We wouldn't say, oh, we're going to go get mauled in fire because they made a mistake or a long response time. We would work with them to improve the systems that we have because they're dedicated to our citizens. And it just, it rips my heart out to see our EMTs and paramedics treated like this. They're put in the middle of this. They all clearly are here. They're all wanna serve Medford, and they're being put in the middle of politics. They're being put in the middle of you guys and the mayor and the chief, and there's just no transparency whatsoever about what's going on. I'm more confused coming to this meeting than I was before about why, why, not why the contract changed, but just why in general, why these decisions were made, why questions that are being asked aren't answered, why we're hearing all of these facts, but nobody's backing them up with data. We haven't, you know, nobody is presenting anything that is, you know, factual, hard-based data that says, you know, yep, we could tell those, you know, Response time is this, and Armstrong's response time is this. And to me, that tells me that either A, you're not telling us because there's something else, or because there's an issue. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right. Still no hands on Zoom, so we'll stay at the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.
[WaNbAOKeDiY_SPEAKER_18]: OK. Simon Elsindor, 44 Tainter Street, and? The reason why I came up here is because my issue with this is not necessarily the overall fact that we're changing providers, but I think the issue that many people have pointed out is that there is a history of sketchy behavior when it comes to things like this from the mayor, of not only announcing things rather late and in a way that catches everyone off guard, go back to the trashing, whatever, but also in a way that fundamentally changes the ways that we do things in Medford to a way that people clearly do not, that people clearly have issues with and want answers about. There is no reason why we cannot get answers as to at least what the process was, even if we can't necessarily get things to change back. What the public is requesting is just to know what this is about. And it's very clear that there is some sort of story here that both sides are not currently going to tell for obvious reasons at this meeting. But that is what this resolution is for. This resolution is not saying we're changing this back or anything like that. The resolution is stating that we are going to have hearing about this, we are going to have a review about what actually led to us getting into this situation in the first place. I simply just do not see the reason why the city needs to be so defensive when it is clear that they did have a process. If that process was indeed correct, then that should be something that we are able to talk about and actually have a normal conversation about at a separate meeting. That is what puts me off about this most. It's the fact that we as city officials getting disoffensive over the fact that, over the mere suggestion that there might have been something wrong. That is personally just what concerns me the most, because personally, I wouldn't have thought anything of that before, but seeing how, seeing the responses of our city officials has only made me think that there may be something amiss. There probably isn't, but I would like to know one way or the other. Yeah, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Still no hands on Zoom, we'll stay at the podium. Name and address for the record.
[Gaston Fiore]: You have three minutes and have your guest on. I just want to make a general comment. I think it's rather obvious that we have a problem with procurement contracts in this city. I mean, this is a manifestation of it. There's also manifestation on the municipal solid waste. There's a lot of talking about what has happened. I didn't know, for example, that this particular contract was exempt from Chapter 30B. My understanding is that legal services are also exempt from Chapter 30B. I believe now we lost our city solicitor again. But even for municipal solid waste, which should be done according or was done according to Chapter 30B, I think we need to sort of revisit how procurement contracts are done. And this is a body whose task is to legislate. We it seems that we need to legislate in particular those things that are not subject to chapter 30 B So the city follows a competitive transparent open to the public bidding process Where we're not following sort of a reactive approach that you know, there's something happens to contract everyone finds out after the fact huge turmoil And then we waste a bunch of time trying to fix it. But rather we are proactive, right? So the public, everyone, all the stakeholders, everyone that's involved is sort of like participants in the process before we actually make a decision. So I just wanted to say that I think it's time to basically legislate this. Again, in particular things that are exempt from Chapter 30B. I think the city council should, you know, write something. And so the mayor actually has to follow a competitive, transparent, open to the public bidding process where all the stakeholders, taxpayers, et cetera, we can be sort of part of the process as it happens in a proactive fashion rather than reactive after the fact when it's also very possibly limited what we can actually do. Thank you so much.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Still no hands on Zoom, so we will let NBC 10 take their microphone, and then we will stay at the podium. Sorry, Nick.
[Nick Giurleo]: I'll live with it.
[Zac Bears]: Name and address for the record. You have three minutes.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. I wasn't actually planning on speaking about this, believe it or not, but there was something that the mayor's chief of staff said that really stood out to me, really struck me. She mentioned that carrying on this conversation would create, quote, concern and fear, unquote. Carrying on the conversation. In other words, simply talking about this will make residents worried. Simply talking about this isn't in the public interest. To me, that's just really, really, shameful, a really kind of terrible thing to say. This, what our city government does, you know, behind the scenes, behind closed doors, is something the public should know about. We should know what's going on with these negotiations, with any negotiations. I have tried to look for contracts that our city has entered into on the city website, and you would think, you know, you could just go onto the city website and it'd be an easy PDF download. They're just not there. And sometimes you reach out to department heads, you ask for contracts, and some of them are very cooperative and will give you the contract. Others will dig their heels in, and you try to make a public records request, and there's heel digging in with that. So many citizens, and just speaking on behalf of one who's not behind the podium here, just don't know what's going on in Medford. You know, they just don't understand what our city leadership is doing. And, yes, to some extent, we vote for our leaders, we entrust them to make decisions for us to exercise leadership. This is what the chief of police alluded to. Yes, I understand and respect that. But at the same time, the public does have a right to know what their elected leaders are doing so they can hold them accountable for the decisions they made. If we don't know what our leaders are doing, we can't hold them accountable and make intelligent decisions come next election. So this is very much in the public interest, and we really do need to flesh it out. So I'm in full support of this resolution. I think we need to keep this conversation going. Armstrong has been with us for 25 years. It's a long time. By most accounts, they've been doing a good job at what they've been doing. I know there's some dispute to the facts of that. Let's investigate that, and let's get some more information on why there's belief in the administration that they're not doing a good job. But I've only heard good things, and I don't understand why the mayor made this decision, and I'd like some answers. And I think so many other people would. And I hope our leaders will get those answers for the public. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll stay at the podium. Name and address for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.
[SPEAKER_13]: Good evening. My name is Joe Musi. I live on Bowen Ave in Medford. I'm a Medford resident. I work full time in consulting. I own and manage several properties in the city of Medford, and I work 16 hours a week, roughly, for Armstrong. So thank you for having us all, and I appreciate everyone that spoke before me. So I made a decision to work for Armstrong how maybe several of my colleagues have. I did a ride along with two companies and I chose Armstrong over the second company that I did a ride along with and they do serve neighboring communities. So I found out about the news during Christmas break and I was interested to learn more as a resident of the city. I'll speak from that lens not so much as an employee of Armstrong. I work out of the Woburn base, so I'm not impacted by the decision necessarily, but I'm more concerned from the city standpoint, switching providers with this tight timeline of January 19th, how Cataldo plans to staff a base, provide 24-7 care to a city of Medford size. I emailed the mayor several points requesting that information, and I did not receive a response, which was concerning. And then I sent my resume to Cataldo, and two days before Christmas, they called me, and they are actively hiring full and part-time EMTs for the city. Their first orientation class does not occur until the end of January, which is well after the deadline of the transition. And the long-time employee has been there for over 20 years, said they have no plan. for bases and they don't really know what they're doing yet for the rollout. So naturally that is really alarming and I think everyone deserves to know that that is what was communicated from the staff to me at that point. But again I just would like the city to have a plan. and direct oversight. I think there were some comments made earlier by some of our chiefs that said that we have to take their word, but we all know a private company can't govern itself. There has to be oversight, and they have to be managed and held accountable, and simply just saying, oh, they told us this, we will trust them, is not going to work. So I would like to see a plan of that transition. It should be laid out very clearly, and it should state exactly what's being provided, how it's going to be staffed, and I think we need something written down and shown to us where we can see and approve it, perhaps the timeline needs to be pushed slightly. I think that's very reasonable. There's no shame in that. But I am concerned based on what I heard from Cataldo and what I didn't hear from the mayor is concerning. Thank you. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Name and address for the record. You have three minutes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my name is Michael Asario. I live in Jero, Mass., but I work as an EMT in many of the communities around here, Lawrence, everywhere, right? So you say there's no statistics on EMS. Fox 25 News had a whole video, a ride-along with CEO Michael Wonka of Action Ambulance. that showed you the facts. Throughout the whole state, there's a major problem with EMS. There's a lot of calls. There's a lot more mental health issues and a lot more medical issues that allow staff to, you know, it's like a cracker jack box. You don't know what you're going to get at any given time. So I think everyone needs to get their big boy shoes on and girl shoes on and figure it out. Because they've worked very hard for 25 years You're not going to get any better, especially from Catawba, OK? Catawba is stretched out. So I think that you just need to look at that video, go on Google, and it will show you. We're short. It's very, at any given time, you just don't know what you're going to get. We've been up to like 11 ambulances one time. So to say someone's going to do it better, well, I mean, it's all in what you have for staff and the dedication. I believe that Armstrong for 25 years, if they've been doing it, they got a good dedication. So I think you should consider that. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you very much. All right. Not seeing hands on Zoom. I think that concludes public comment for the night. We have a motion to refer this paper to committee the whole meeting next Tuesday and I will recognize Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: I just want to thank all our residents and our workers for coming up to speak tonight for telling your stories, your experience, your professionalism, your expertise about the issue. We on the council can't claim to know the issues in and out as you guys do. So it's really important for us to hear from you all so we have the right questions to ask going into Tuesday's meetings. I have two overarching thoughts. One is that I have so much trust and I hold in such high esteem our chiefs and our city workers. But as those of us who are elected know too, that trust comes with transparency and it comes with accountability as well. It comes with being able to answer questions in public as difficult as that may be. And I think that's really important. I think the second note that I have is, we've heard hints about fiduciary duty and money, and maybe that will come out more in Tuesday's meeting, but I do think that, and I've said this in meetings, especially in the last few months, but I've said this for a very long time, there are a few basic things that any city government has to get right. Public safety is chief among them, and while I have trust, you know, that Medford is a safe place, that it will keep being a safe place. I also want to make sure that we are not balancing that on a dime, that we are you know, we're not risking anything just because it saves us a few dollars. So I'll leave it at that and leave it to the vote.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I actually did, was reminded that we did receive one email and they requested They wanted to be here in person and requested that we read it into the record, so I will read it now. Dear Councilor, I'm writing as a resident of Medford to express, for what it's worth, my displeasure in the bidding process that resulted in the selection of Cataldo Ambulance as the provider for Medford's 911 Emergency Medical Services, EMS. While I understand that state procurement law factors in the selection of provider, the fact remains that Armstrong Ambulance has dutifully served this community for over 25 years, providing excellent care and regularly meeting and exceeding national response time metrics. I myself am a paramedic and firefighter who began my career with Armstrong Ambulance 10 years ago. I served as both an EMT and paramedic in Medford for five of those years. And after working in this great city, I decided to make it my home, first by renting an apartment and subsequently purchasing my first home. I know many former co-workers from Armstrong feel similarly about this community and have decided to make it their own as I have. In that time, I've worked as a first responder. I have worked for both Armstrong and Cataldo. In the short time I worked for Cataldo, my impression of their service was one that did not prioritize meeting response requirements. In contrast, Armstrong has always firmly held to the requirements to backfill utilized trucks in Medford, limiting the time the city goes without a unit significantly. Indeed, the fact that Armstrong Ambulance is the largest and, to my knowledge, only union ambulance service in the State of Massachusetts helps to guarantee this. Contractually mandated minimum staffing levels guarantee that ambulances will be available when they are needed in a timely and efficient manner. In contrast, with no such provisions from Cataldo, it is not only feasible but likely that the closest available ambulance may be coming from many towns away, wasting crucial time. While I unfortunately will not be able to attend tonight's city council meeting due to a prior engagement, I wish to voice my displeasure in the strongest terms of the handling of this contract. I understand that procurement law plays a large part in the handling of municipal contracts, but the utter lack of transparency from a mayor who already has a clear record of retaliation, both against unions and first responders, is enough to cement the appearance of foul play in negotiations. From the perspective of a citizen, it appears that the mayor is playing games with essential services which save the lives of the people of Medford. In summation, whereas before January 19th, I never had the concern that an ambulance would be available to save the life of my loved ones and neighbors when, God forbid, they needed it most, I will no longer have that certainty moving forward. I hope that I am wrong, but I fear that the end result will be an entirely preventable loss of lives that will rest squarely on the shoulders of the mayor. Sincerely, James Mello, Wauson Street. On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli. to refer to a committee of the whole next Tuesday where we will invite all of the parties, the mayor's team, our police and fire chiefs, our 9-1-1 dispatch head, Armstrong Ambulance and Cataldo are all welcome to attend, seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor? Opposed? The motion passes. All right. Regular order business, petitions, presentations and similar papers. 26006, petition for a common victor's license, Wunder HDR Holdings. This is to certify that a common victor's license is hereby granted to Wunder HDR Holdings, LLC, Massachusetts, DBA Wunder, location 55 Station Landing, Medford, Massachusetts. Hours of operation, Monday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Well, it looks like Wednesday is 10.30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Do we have a representative either in person or on Zoom from Wonder HDR Holdings? And we do. I'm going to turn it over to Councilor Scarpelli. He's the chair of our Subcommittee on Licensing, Permitting, and Signs, and then we'll turn it over to you. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: I'm sorry. I appreciate it. I know that everything looks like it's in order, but can you give us a description of what we do and what we're looking for?
[Dan Brennan]: Sure. My name's Dan Brennan. I handle permits and licenses for Wunder. We're here for a convictual license with no alcohol. Wonder is a new quick service restaurant concept that's expanding rapidly. We have over 90 operating locations in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. We're working to open about 20 additional locations in the greater Boston area this year. Wonder has solved many arguments on what's for dinner, what are we doing for takeout. At Wonder, they've partnered with renowned chefs and restaurants to recreate their recipes under one platform. At Wonder you can get a Bobby Flay steak dinner, a Samuel Markeson fried chicken dinner. You can get Italian food, Chinese, Thai, with about 15 to 20 different menus in a variety of cuisines. The choices seem endless. At this location, it's just over 4,000 square feet. It's mostly kitchen, but we do have 13 interior seats. As you mentioned, hours of operation, 9, I'm sorry, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days. Hoping to open early February. And this space is specifically located in the Wellington Station area in that building where the space where Walgreens used to be, it was subdivided. So that's where our space will be.
[Zac Bears]: Great. One second. Just your microphone. And I'm only I'm only going to mess with you a little bit here. You said Samuel Marcus and it's Marcus Samuelson and he's one of my favorite. Oh yeah. Sorry. I'm excited. Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Don't mess with that fool. But like I said I appreciate the business. I think that everything seems in order to move approval after my colleagues have any questions.
[Zac Bears]: Do you have any questions for members of the council about this kind of exercise. Seeing none, on the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to approve, seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in favor?
[SPEAKER_15]: Aye.
[Zac Bears]: Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck. Sometimes in this room you wait two hours for five minutes. Yeah, sorry about that.
[Dan Brennan]: No problem. Thanks for all the work you guys have done.
[Zac Bears]: I see the faces of others who are waiting even longer. All right. Petition for common victor's license, Colwyn Management, DBA Medford Hyatt Place. This is to certify common victor's license as hereby granted to Colwyn Management, Inc., DBA Medford Hyatt Place, 116 Riverside Ave. Hours of operation, 6 a.m. to 1 a.m., 7 days a week. And everything looks to be in order. We do have a representative, Councilor Scarpelli. Do you want me to recognize them first? I see Kevin Butler. Kevin, I'm gonna unmute you. If you could just provide us with your name and address and let us know a bit about this license.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, good evening, Mr. President, members of the council. My name is Kevin Butler from McDermott, Quilty, Miller & Hanley out at 28 State Street in Boston. Here tonight on behalf of Coleman Management Inc. doing business as Medford Hyatt Place in their application for a new CV license to be exercised at the existing hotel at 116 Riverside. This application comes as a result as a change of ownership. There will be no operational changes from the previous CV license. The food service will remain 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. seven days a week. Food is served in the lobby area and there is no room service. Additionally, the applicant has transferred the inholder alcoholic beverages license at the property, which was approved by the License Commission and is now pending ABCC review. Just some background on the applicant. They operate numerous hotels in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, including Town Place Suites and the EC Hotel here in Medford. Thank you guys for hearing this and I'm happy to answer any questions.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you. Councilor Scarpelli. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Velikance, I know that, um, a question that is, does that mean, I know it's, it's, it seems pretty straightforward, but one of the questions is, does this mean they're putting in like a nightclub in the Hyatt? And is that a nice, um, and I, I, I'm dispel those rumors. Everything stays the same and everything just shifts over to the new management. Correct?
[Marie Izzo]: Correct.
[George Scarpelli]: So, like I said, Mr. President, I see everything in place to move approval.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to approve, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Tseng. Any further questions by members of the council? Councilor Millane, you're looking at me. No question from Councilor Millane yet?
[George Scarpelli]: Come on, you have a question.
[Zac Bears]: We're waiting with bated breath for your first question. All right. On the motion, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The motion passes. Motions, orders, and resolutions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. 2-6-0-0-8, whereas City Clerk Adam Alherdeby officially stepped down from his office on December 31st, 2025. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we confirm that Assistant City Clerk Richard Alicio, Jr. is serving as the acting City Clerk pursuant to state law, city charter, and city ordinances until such time that the City Council votes to appoint a permanent City Clerk. Pretty self-explanatory, Adam had been on leave and his His last day was December 31st. In the past few months, Rich has been serving in the duties of the city clerk but now that office is vacant and for, as you may have noticed on the previous paper, Adam's name was still on the convictioner's license. Now we need someone's name to go on everything and the seal. The city clerk is an important role under state law and now that it is officially vacant, Rich is the acting clerk and we need to confirm that. So that is where we are at and I see Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: I would, I'm going to ask to approve this resolution, but I'd like to add something if I can. I think if Rich is accepted into that role as we move forward, I think he should be compensated out of great pay for the job that he is doing. I think until we solidify our new clerk that Rich is compensated with the same rate of pay as the clerk. I hope my colleagues can, vote in favor of that with me, so that would be an addition to the motion.
[Zac Bears]: So we have an amendment to add that the acting clerk will be paid the same amount as the ordinances say that the city clerk should be paid? Correct, please.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: And that amendment is seconded by Councilor Callahan. Do we have any further discussion on that amendment? Seeing none, on the motion to approve by Councilor Scarpelli as amended by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by? By seconded by Councilor Callahan. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming? Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. Councilor Millan. Yes. And President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Everything affirmative. None in the negative. The motion passes. And you sent me some changes on this one didn't you Matt. Yeah, I see it. I'll read it from the email, but we have 26-009 resolution to support SMFA professors at Tufts pursuing a fair contract sponsored by Councilor Leming and President Bears. Whereas the city of Medford recognizes the vital role that artists and educators play in enriching civic life and affirms the right of all workers to collectively bargain and be treated with dignity and respect. And whereas the professors of the practice at Tufts University School of Museum of Fine Arts are dedicated full-time professors in practicing artists whose instruction, mentorship and creative work are the backbone of the SMFA's academic excellence, whereas SFMA professors of the practice are currently engaged in contract negotiations seeking a fair agreement that addresses issues including salaries that keep pace with the cost of living, equitable promotion, and review practices, manageable workloads, and basic institutional support, and whereas faculty have been reporting that bargaining has not been going well and Tufts has attempted to silence local union members while failing to meaningfully address their concerns. And whereas student enrollment at SMFA has tripled in recent years, the number of full-time professors of the practice has dropped from 40 to 27, with the university refusing to fill vacancies overburdening current faculty. Whereas current compensation is unsustainable for faculty who have to cover added costs such as studio space essential for them to perform their job, forcing 11 faculty members to live out of state, professors of the practice are requesting a 3% cost of living increase for three years and 3.25% for two years after that. But Tufts has offered only 2.75%, alongside salary minimums that fall well below those of peer institutions. And whereas BIPOC and international faculty face additional barriers, including inequitable treatment compared to colleagues on the main campus, and delayed or inconsistent visa support that has left international faculty in precarious legal and employment situations. And whereas at a time when institutions of higher education, international students and faculty in the arts are under threat nationwide, Tufts University's failure to adequately support its SFMA faculty jeopardizes not only their livelihoods but also the long-term health and reputation of the university and its contributions to the city of Medford. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Medford City Council stands in solidarity with the SFMA, SMFA, professors of the practice at Tufts University in the pursuit of a fair contract, supports the rights of all workers to organize without fear and retribution, Fear of retribution and urges Tufts to bargain in good faith by addressing faculty concerns regarding salary, equity, and institutional support and be it further resolved that the council recognizes SMFA faculty as essential contributors to the cultural and educational vitality of the city of Medford and calls on Tufts University to uphold its stated values of equity, inclusion, and academic excellence by investing in its faculty accordingly. And Councilor Leming, I hope that I just gave your speech for you. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Well, thank you. So this is essentially the same resolution that the Boston City Council passed in August to support Tufts professors of the practice at the university's School Museum and Fine Arts. Unfortunately, negotiations still haven't really gotten anywhere between this particular resolution. union and the university. So I figured Tufts is in the city of Medford and we could also lend our support to their efforts as well. Being an academic and being in that role for a long time is difficult. It's You, this is, and this is a role, these professors of the practice, this is not a tenure track position, which is sort of the only point in your career that you get any sort of safety within academia. When you're in these systems, you're usually striving, you're usually working very long hours at very low pay with very little institutional support. it's some of the finest minds in the country do this. So it's difficult to keep doing that. And once again, we have an institution that is in our city that is failing to support many of the people that contribute to the livelihood of this city, that contribute to Tufts University itself, that are teaching the next generation of artists, of curators, and so on. The change that I asked Council President Bears to make were there were two changes in the original document. I was informed by the union shortly before this meeting, which is that the professors of practice in the original document on the agenda said they were demanding a 4 percent cost of living increase. They're now just demanding 3.25 percent for a 3% cost of living increase for the first three years and 3.25% after that. Inflation usually averages out to 3.1%, so cost of living increases that are less than 3% are basically just shrinking your salary over time. The number of full-time faculty, the number of full-time professors of the practice has dropped from 30 to 27 since the Boston City Council passed its resolution. So people are leaving because of the continuous strain on their positions and the, let's say, not ideal working conditions that they're facing. Everybody in this economy, increasingly, is under some sort of financial strain. And the pattern that we keep seeing is institutions, top-down, trying to strain the people who are working lower down in the food chain to make ends meet, because those people have less power. And this is just one small group of people that are trying to fight to keep their... to keep doing the work that they do, that they're good at that contributes to society while still putting bread on the table. So thank you all for listening. Supporting any sort of academic unions is something that's close to me because of my own time in academia when I realized how hard it was. And I hope that I can count on the support of this council. Thank you for listening.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. On the motion of Councilor Leming, seconded by, seconded by Councilor Callahan. You want to speak on this? Great. Name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes.
[WaNbAOKeDiY_SPEAKER_18]: Okay. Simon Alcindor, 44 Tainter Street. I just wanted to give something really brief. Coming from as a, I'm currently a student at Suffolk University where we are having much of a similar issue with universities being unwilling to fairly compensate their professors. In fact, reading through this, a lot of this is very much the same stuff that we struggle with. Universities refusing to replace faculty and not actually adjusting anything to match cost of living. And I just wanted to mention that because that just shows why this resolution is so important in showing that we are, indeed, supporting our faculty and making sure that our universities that are faculty are able to continue doing things because this is what leads to having more stable universities as a whole. That's something that we've been struggling with at Suffolk is that professors keep on leaving because, well, pay is too low and they cannot afford to continue working there while the university refuses to to replace those positions. So it's really critical that we are able to support our professors, our faculty through things like this. Yeah, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you so much, Simon. All right. On the motion of Councilman Leming, seconded by. Councilor Callahan, sorry. I have some sort of blindness around this. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. 26-010, resolution to hold the public forum and draft ordinance regarding city services on private ways, whereas the city administration is offered by Councilor Scarpelli, whereas the city administration has implemented a policy of service denial to residents of Medford that reside on private ways. Whereas the city administration's policy forces the financial responsibilities of infrastructure repair upon residents in private ways, creating an additional financial burden on residents. And whereas the city administration has denied these residents basic repairs and maintenance to neighborhood streets, sidewalks, trees, creating safety, quality of life, and equity issues. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the city council address the disparity in services provided to residents in private ways in a public forum with the necessary department heads and policy makers. And be it further resolved that the city council draft an equity of services ordinances that prohibits The refusal of basic city services to residents in private ways. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. So I think that this is important because I do want to correct one thing. I know that this has to be corrected a little bit. I know that I believe this is a law. It isn't something that our team is implementing. They're just following through what's stated now in our rules. And I'm very fortunate because I think that anytime we do have an issue, Director McGibbon is always responsible to the residents. He's always returning calls, always reaching out, making sure they're educated. But what we're seeing right now is really the lack of understanding the total picture. And I think that we really have to draft some sort of communication with all the residents and really inform all of our residents on private ways, what the responsibilities of our city holds, and then what their responsibilities are. We've had concerns at so many different avenues that people have been reaching out, and it's getting to the point where this is why I put this resolution through, is try to have a forum where people can understand the intricacies. I mean, one resident said, well, George, our neighborhood understands it. And our neighborhood all kicked in, and we paved our street. And then the city did some roadwork, and they diverted all the heavy trucking that was being done with roadwork onto our new street, which has now damaged our street. So these are the questions that people are asking. Again, whether it's true or not, this is the questions people are asking, that where does it fall into? Whose responsibility? If something, if it is fixed, and then something that brings, comes to the city's process, that then leads to any destruction, who fixes that? The other concerns are the neighbors that are calling that, you know, sidewalks, sidewalks that are dangerous. And we have elderly neighbors and unfortunately being told that they can't trim trees or they can't replace those sidewalks because it's a private way. And then understanding what the responsibility of this council is when there is a lawsuit when someone falls. Because that doesn't, these situations still fall back on us. So, and I think that there's so much that has to be really shared with the community so everybody understands. I know that, you know, dispelling a lot of issues where residents are calling me and saying that in private ways that, is it true the city's not going to plow my private way anymore? And I personally haven't seen that. So I don't know where that's coming from. I know that we all were part of an email with a resident that was confused about plowing a private driveway. And I think Mr. McGibbon was very good in explaining it and understanding it and the situation. But these are just part of the concerns that residents have reached out and asked. And again, different different administrations looked at this differently. If you look at Mayor McGlynn, he treated it, even though it was a private way, he treated it as a public way. He did everything no different than private, and that hurts. You know, we also talked about possibly looking in, how do we make our private ways public? And it sounds easy, but we also know that's not very easy to do. It's very expensive, because you have to tie in so many different pieces of infrastructure that has to be done by this administration. So there's a lot of variables, but I think right now, when I wrote this resolution, it was a little different. But I think that as we're moving forward, I think the key part to this resolution is really finding a way to have a community meeting or finding some documentation or a checklist that people that live on private ways can understand truly what can be done and what can't be done. Because I think that's what the biggest response, the most contact I've had with residents saying, wait a second, George, they're not fixing my sidewalk. They're not taking down a tree that was on the list back in 2021. I mean, these are every single day now we're getting private way questions. And, you know, we have neighbors. We have, you know, that we reached out and we had a neighbor that was concerned about his neighbor that has Alzheimer's that traverses the sidewalk, but unfortunately it's a dangerous sidewalk. What can we do? The neighbor doesn't have the means to fix that financially. And obviously the burden on the city, legally, can we do it? So I think that understanding that people can understand what the legalities are to the private ways and then spell out what the processes are and what they're supposed to do and what they can do. And then down the line, you know, are there, you know, ask, I can ask Tim now that understands it. Are we not plowing private roads right now? Because I think that, um, That was a concern going into like a first snowstorm. It's like, oh, if we don't do it, what happens? Can a fire engine get down my street if somebody gets sick? These are the questions that have been asked of me to bring forward. And I just ask my council colleagues to support, at least right now, the process of getting our communication and holding a public forum that we can educate our residents and give them that opportunity that they can ask questions and then get the truer results. Unfortunately, without a city solicitor, this is the problem when you write something like this. You write it and then not understand it until you talk to someone that has a legal background. So KP Law, they don't respond to us. So not having Mr. Foley here, I can't call and say, hey, let me run this by you. What is A, B, and C? And the city, the attorney that I did talk with that is a city solicitor mentioned to me, George, And to all due respect to your leadership team here in Medford, you really need a person with a legal background to help answer some of these questions, because it is a very difficult and very confusing process. And it's not as easy as I just put it. Let's put together a bullet point that we can do that. But we have to do something. So I ask my colleagues to. share their thoughts and maybe there's a different avenue through this motion, this resolution, that we can do something to help our residents in private ways traverse upcoming issues and concerns that they know they're going to have. And again, there's also the angry ones that call and saying, my taxes are high and I'm not getting the same services. This is wrong. Shame on the city. You know, it's all Zach Baez's fault. I said, no, But if we can, I ask you to at least say, you know, to even just amend this motion at the point right now that we at least have, you know, bring this back down and just ask for some sort of communication with the residents of Private Ways and then work with them to try to see if there's an option for ordinance change or anything to that matter. So thank you for indulging me.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, and I really enjoy watching the caption service try to say my name. It never gets it right. Yeah. Fair enough. I just want to note one thing before I go to, uh-oh. Oh, no. I thought there was a Liz in there for a second, but still no Liz. We have Councilors Callahan, Leming, and then Lazzaro, and then Callahan. But I just wanted to note as well. that we have a parking on private ways resource on the city website. And then Councilor Leming, which I'm guessing he might talk about, did kind of an overview last year. We had some great meetings in 2022 and 2023 around private ways. And I think it might behoove us to coordinate with the communications team around just a basic FAQ type thing, like Councilor Scarpelli is talking about, FAQ checklist. The information's out there, some of it's in meeting videos, some of it's on the parking department, and I think it's just, you know, what's the go-to information around private ways so that when residents have questions, they understand the law, as you noted, so.
[George Scarpelli]: That's perfect, but I really think that what was repeated back to me is really giving them an audience where they can actually talk to the people that have made these decisions or are having to enforce these decisions. So, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Absolutely, yeah. And I just wanted to, maybe we could develop that resource and then have the forum on it. So, just my two cents because I, you know, Private Ways are back again and they never go away because we have a lot of Private Ways here in Medford. And that causes us some trouble. So I'll go to Councilor Leming, then Councilor Vice President Lazzaro, then Councilor Callahan.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you for bringing this resolution forward. I did write a little piece on my personal website about private ways where I did a little bit of research into this. And the conclusion that I came to is that private ways are my least favorite topic to talk about with residents whenever they bring it up. It's, no, it is very frustrating because it seems to be a lose-lose situation and it's very confusing. Because one, private ways, I believe, are largely governed by the state. Like, whereas it's, we have the ability to write ordinances about most things in the city, but my impression in the research that I did was that what governs private ways is largely state law. And I would like to make a motion to request, get a memo from legal KP law requesting clarification on what cities can and cannot do with private ways in terms of what ordinances that we can write, just so that we have some sort of official memo to point to. And if they say it's state law, then we can point to that. If they say there are some things we can do with private ways, then We could potentially work on that, but I would like to make a motion just to have that memo. The reason that Medford has so many private ways is because essentially developers built a lot of houses in the cities in places that didn't have roads, so they made their own roads. But those roads were very low quality. They didn't put a lot of money into actually making them because that would have increased building costs. And there was a law passed in like the mid 1800s in Massachusetts which said that you can't just give a road to a city. Like that's not something you can do because if the road isn't up to snuff, then suddenly it's the city's responsibility to maintain it. And it wouldn't be fiscally responsible of us to have to maintain a very low quality road that we had nothing to do with building. So officially the way that residents can put a private way to the city's responsibility is to put up a ton of money themselves, repair it, to bring it up to snuff, and then get at least half the people who own the private way to sign, then I believe there's a process where the DPW reviews it, then the city council would have to prove it. I don't know if anybody's actually gone through that process. It's a very tedious legal process, or, which it sounds like my colleague talked about previously, and I would love to hear Tim McGivern talk about. I would love to hear Tim McGivern talk about this process for making private ways public, since it does seem like he did want to chime in.
[Zac Bears]: I didn't wanna do like a Tim chant. Tim, Tim. If you say Tim three times, he appears in the mirror talking about private ways.
[Matt Leming]: I'm afraid I don't... Did I give any wrong information there? I just like... Probably a little bit. I always do. Yeah, sure.
[Tim McGivern]: Go ahead, Tim. Thank you. I just wanted to chime in. It's actually maybe tedious. I think that's correct. But all the public ways that we have in the city went through that process. So it's a pretty common process. It's especially a long time ago. And the poll and levy example that you came up with, you know, half the people vote in favor of it. That was something that was common more in like the 80s when the city was trying to get private ways to become public ways. So there is a way to do it, it just requires time and money. So I just wanted to step in and just say that it is actually a common process. It's done all over the state quite a lot. The last time we did a taking was for for portions of High Street. The last subdivision that got approved here is the Mary Kenny Way subdivision.
[Matt Leming]: So you're coming up here and you're saying I'm wrong.
[Tim McGivern]: Well, I'm not wrong. I just want to make sure that folks understand that Mary Kinney Way is going to be the next taking that we do where the city engineer looks at the road. We say, yep, it was built to city standards. And then they petition the city council, or actually the community development board first, to recommend the taking to the city council. And then the formal taking happens. We did it also with Freedomway, but that was a little bit easier, and Steve Miller Drive. Those were easier because we took it from the school department, which is a simpler process. Anyway, thank you. Yes, we do plow private ways. Sorry.
[Matt Leming]: No, no, no, I just wanted to. Well, I just wanted to formalize the motion, maybe get a second on it.
[George Scarpelli]: I know, Tim, you responded and you reached out to me and I apologize I didn't get back to you because you always get back to me. I truly wanted to speak to legalities before and then come here and make some changes. Unfortunately, like I said, normally you talk to your city solicitor and he sets you straight. Unfortunately, we don't have that. So I apologize that I didn't follow up with you, but I appreciate your call.
[Tim McGivern]: I think it's a very salient point, the legal aspect, because I can only interpret it so far and receive advice and counsel myself. And that's happened, obviously, over the years. a couple decades I've been doing this. But you are correct, there's a lot of gray area and a lot of situations that courts haven't seen when it comes to private ways.
[Zac Bears]: So. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, thanks Tim. All right, gonna go to everybody, great. Vice President Lazzaro first.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I appreciate Councilor Scarpelli bringing this forward because we do get a lot of people reaching out with questions about this stuff still. I know we've talked about it a lot. I know it would be incredibly expensive because it was one of the first things I wanted to try to address when I started performing this role a couple of years ago. And I remember talking to President Bears about the concept of addressing how many, it seemed like there was an inordinate number of private ways in the city of Medford, but The cost was really astronomical to make them public. I live on a private way. It is plowed. I don't know if me saying that is gonna make it not be plowed now.
[Zac Bears]: I think Tim just confirmed that you're fine.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh boy. You're fine. Oh no. Oh heaven.
[Zac Bears]: It will be plowed, but it may disappear entirely.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Maybe you just dig the whole thing up. I don't know.
[Zac Bears]: Private ways are plowed. Great. End of story. Great.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Love that. Right. So I know it can be very confusing for residents. I do think it would be really great if we had a really comprehensive area of the website where people could figure out the answers to their questions, or if we just knew how to answer people and we didn't have to flood Mr. McGivern's emails all the time. So, yes, because it can be really confusing. So, I really support this measure, and I appreciate the effort a lot. So, thank you. Okay, what did I say wrong?
[Tim McGivern]: I just wanted to share resources.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh, yay.
[Tim McGivern]: Great. Love that. I've shared them before, but I think it's worth sharing them again. So, the state website has an excellent resource on private ways. It's really the go-to resources, and I think they do a pretty good job of keeping up to date. Medford doesn't have a specific, you know, what can and can't happen in private ways, but Boston has a really good one and it's all the same set of laws. So those are relevant. And then Medford does have a very specific one on parking because we've spent probably more time on parking and what the rights are of the private way owners in regards to parking and what the city can and can't do. So that should be pretty good. And then just in general, if folks have questions about, hey, can I make my private way a public way? The answer's usually yes. And someone like me or Owen in the engineering department can kind of go through that process. So that's always, we're always welcome to receive those calls. I enjoy talking about private ways. So anyway.
[Zac Bears]: Oh. All right, everybody. Email Tim, not me. Email Tim, not me. All right. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I also really appreciate this coming up. I think this is a particularly great place or topic to have a public forum on. I do think the technical term is that it is bonkers that we in Massachusetts allow there to be private ways that don't get city services. You know it's one kind or another. It seems crazy. But it is what it is. And I was going to offer a friendly amendment if that has not, I believe it has not been done yet. So I was gonna offer a friendly amendment that in place of the final sentence paragraph there, that it would instead say, be it further resolved the city council draft an informational document for residents of Private Ways to inform them of what services they can expect from the city.
[Zac Bears]: Could we friendly amend the friendly amendment to say that we will work with the city staff and communications department to draft? Great.
[Anna Callahan]: Brilliant.
[Zac Bears]: And if you could email that and counsel.
[Anna Callahan]: I apologize, I don't. Could I just read it quick? Can somebody, who types quick and has their computer?
[Zac Bears]: Well, Rich will write it down maybe, or?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. You can actually just cross out half of it. It'll save you some. I can give you this.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Ah, perfect. You will write it down and give it to Rich.
[Anna Callahan]: I wrote it down, but I don't know if you can read my handwriting.
[Zac Bears]: And Matt, your amendment, could you do that same thing or email it?
[Anna Callahan]: You can just take a little photo of it.
[Zac Bears]: What if we did four different ways and we are not sure if we end up getting it? All right. Thanks, Anna. So we have a friendly amendment from Councilor Leming, we have a friendly amendment from Councilor Callahan, and we're going to go to Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: I think clarity is good with this issue. I think it'd be helpful for us to build up something. I'm just on the Boston website right now. It's super clear. So something like this I think would be really great to build out on the Medford website. And then in preparing for this meeting, I think I was looking Mass General Law, Chapter 40, Section 6N, which has some more information about what cities can do, what they can adopt, and a list of factors that we have to consider when it comes to private ways. So when we talk about it more, I think that's just something to flag that we should, I think it would behoove all of us to take a look at that subsection and think about how that applies to our work.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Any further discussion by members of the council on Councilor Scarpelli?
[George Scarpelli]: If Tim, if you can, the 50% rule, if the resident, is it to pave the street or is it to petition to see if it could be turned into public?
[Tim McGivern]: So one of the ways that all of the, not all, a majority of the owners of the private way have to buy into the fact that it's going to become public because of the de facto owners. Usually by another law that's called the derelict fee law. They own to the center of the road basically, it's derelict. Everybody has rights that live on the private way, that have frontage on the private way. So you need some process to say the majority of those folks want the city to accept that as a public way. I'm not sure if it's exactly 50-50 or what the law prescribes, but there is a strict process for that.
[George Scarpelli]: So the confusion wasn't just to just The 50% just to pave, it's 50%. We can do that if residents really feel like their streets are paved and they did everything right and then the engineer can go and approve it or not approve it. It's still an option.
[Tim McGivern]: It's both because the other portion is the levy. So it's basically giving permission for the city to give a tax to the frontage holders of the private way that will pay for the rebuilding of the street to city standards. So you can't do that. You can't, well, I think it's easier to do that There's a vote by the people who actually own the private way. Ultimately, the city can take a road in the interest of public interest. That's the other way to do it. For example, if the city felt there's a public interest to take a private way without getting that permission through eminent domain, that would be another option to move forward. Yet another option would be for the residents to all get together and start a company or an HOA, gather funds, make the improvements to the road, and then petition the city for acceptance.
[Zac Bears]: Would, under an eminent domain situation, would the city have to compensate the property owners?
[Tim McGivern]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: To take the way, and we'd be taking it in a non We'd then also have to pay to fix, to improve it.
[Tim McGivern]: Correct. We'd have to use city funds to improve the road to city standards. Those would be, those wouldn't be, well actually I shouldn't say, I think there's a couple of different ways you can do that. And this is where kind of the legal process comes into play. Great. Thank you. You're welcome.
[Zac Bears]: Looks like we have two members of the public, maybe three, who'd like to speak on this issue. So we'll go first to the podium and then we'll go to Zoom. Name and address for the record please, and you have three minutes.
[WaNbAOKeDiY_SPEAKER_18]: Simon Alcindor, 44 Tainter Street. I just wanted to, again, thank Councilor Scarpelli for bringing this up. Even as a resident who lives on a public way, that has been something that has been just very confusing to figure out what that means. And I do think that having resources like this is going to be really helpful. And I think especially like the clarity around like how these things are designated would be very helpful because like there are definitely a lot of places where that has been unclear for a long time. And I think that's these are the types of things that the city needs to be taking advantage of to be able to educate residents on how these things work especially these things that have been in place for a long time such as. private ways, and also the other thing I want to point out is I think that this could be also a really good jumping off point to perhaps doing a little bit of haranguing of the state legislature to make some change on private ways. I think this is something that isn't brought up very much, but this is something that can really be an issue, especially when it comes to private ways not being maintained in ways that are conducive to public use, especially when you have private ways, for example, in the Lawrence Estates where there's a lot of private ways and a lot of people traverse those private ways en route to put in supplemental public ways and they're simply not built in a way that is safe for our residents. So I think that this could be a really good jumping off point to further resolutions and whatnot. encouraging our state delegation to look into further reform of private ways on the state level. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Simon. We have Jen Sullivan on Zoom, then we'll come back to the chamber. Jen, name and address for the record, please. You have three minutes.
[Jen Sullivan]: Hello, Jen Sullivan 35 Washington Street, I just wanted to thank you so much for bringing this up. I am a new condo homeowner on a private way. It's part of a part of two condo buildings. As a glutton for punishment, I'm also now a trustee. It's been very hard trying to educate myself on this. Our building is a combination of old timers and a lot of newcomers, and we had a sudden massive pothole in front of an elderly woman's front door. And just trying to find out how to address that quickly has been a challenge. So again, I just really appreciate this. It's helpful to have the information because I haven't even met all my neighbors yet. So I would like to meet them and have information. So just thanks again.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Jen. I appreciate it. Oh, sorry. I asked you to unmute, but don't do that. Go to the podium, name and address for the record, please, and you have three minutes.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Giulio, Forty Robinson Road. So I know we're watering down the resolution just a little bit, given concerns about, you know, can we actually legally draft an ordinance, you know, addressing this subject. But I would just caution you not to close the door on that. right away. I do personally think that the city does have legal power to draft such an ordinance. I liked Councilor Leming's idea of getting a legal opinion on what the city can do. I think that's something that probably would be a good starting point in terms of can we actually draft an ordinance here about private ways. Another thing I was doing before this meeting was just researching, you know, in our code of ordinances, you know, do we actually have anything currently on private ways, and I did actually find something. I just had spoken, not in front of the podium with Commissioner McGivern about it, but there's a section, it's Chapter 70, Section 91, it's called Temporary Repairs of Private Ways. I'd encourage you all to take a look at that. It says that a city may make temporary repairs on private ways provided that a private way has been open for public use for a term of five years or more. Fifty-one percent of the abutters who live along such way shall petition the mayor for temporary repairs of such way. And it goes on. And it says that the city may perform such temporary repairs on private ways as determined by the mayor based on recommendations from the director of public works and the city engineer. So it looks like we do have a little something. I mean, that was really all I could find. But it looks like we do have a little something on private ways currently on the books. So for me, that suggests that, you know, there could be potential here in drafting a more comprehensive ordinance on private ways. I've dealt personally with the law of what is a public versus private way in my professional life. And I'll tell you, it is confusing. It is archaic. I do believe the municipalities have power to address this subject just given how fundamental it is to cities and towns and what they do. And just another thing, I think if we eventually do get to a point of drafting a comprehensive I just encourage some sort of like prioritization of safety concerns on private ways. I talked to one resident who was very worried about an old tree, a branch on this old tree on the street falling where a school bus picks up kids, you know. And he was saying, you know, I've been asking for this branch to be cut down for so long and just, you know, it doesn't seem like it's being prioritized. And in his own words, he said, you know, this is an accident waiting to happen. So, you know, I think in terms of liability, too, you know, it's something we want to take a look at because it is concerning. You know, I think there's potential for a lawsuit if, you know, somebody gets injured on a private way due to perhaps DPW work not getting there in time. So I think there are really tons and tons of benefits here of some sort of ordinance on private ways. So hopefully we can kind of keep that discussion going. But of course, the forum ideas is a good starting point as well.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Thank you, Nick. Test on. Great.
[Gaston Fiore]: Name and address for record, you have three minutes. So I live in a private way. So last time I looked at this, around 40% of our roads are private ways. I don't know lengthwise what the percentage is, but that's just by the number of roads. And a couple of years ago, I actually had to go through this myself. There's a section of our private way that is in kind of not that good of a condition. I called, I think it was EPW originally, to try to pave it. And they told me, well, you're in a private way. We can just patch it. So I think that's the main problem here is that people have no idea about this. And then I talked to engineering. Engineering was super helpful. And they gave advice and talked to your neighbors, et cetera. And then they would sort of come take a look and advice on how to proceed. So I think if the city can provide that kind of support, It would be great. And I just think it's not feasible to convert this into public roads. My understanding is that, for example, in the one that I have, there's not enough space for two sidewalks on both sides, et cetera. So I think it's more of a matter of helping residents, first of all, understand that they're in a private way, they have no idea, and second, once, for example, the resident I mentioned, there's a huge pothole in front of a resident, so they don't feel helpless, and someone from the city tells them, like, you should contact this company, you have to pay for it, but then they'll come and fix it. Lastly, I think we need to pay a lot of attention when we discuss zoning again on private ways, because parking is a huge issue. Parking enforcement on private ways is very tricky. You can't just call a towing company to tow a car that is parked in front of your driveway, for example, on a private way. So as we discussed, for example, parking minimums and things like that, we need to be very, very careful that we don't get a lot of overflow on private ways, that emergency vehicles can still access private ways and things like that. Ines Associates said that that was one of the main reasons why they decided to not push the density on certain areas of the city. So I just think that as long as we are aware that about 40% of our roads are private ways, that we help residents when they deal with problems about how to navigate that complexity, I think we'll be fine. And I mean, I probably don't want my private way converted into public way. So also, I don't want the government to come and take my private way. people need help, but other than that, then I think, you know, things should work fine. And thank you to engineering, they were super helpful, so when you reach them out, so thanks a lot.
[Zac Bears]: Awesome, thank you. You and me, Tim, you and me. Yeah, I really want to talk about private ways all the time. All right. On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli as amended by Councilor Leming and Councilor Callaghan seconded by Councilor Mullane. Wow. There we go. Finally got a chance to say it. All those in favor. Opposed. Motion passes. All right, communications from the mayor. 26-012. Proposed, submitted by Mayor Brianne O'Kern. Proposed wage adjustment for DPW superintendents, building department inspectors, recreation union. Dear President Bears and City Councilors, respectfully request and recommend City Council approve the following amendments for revised ordinances, Chapter 66, Article 2, be it ordained by the City Council of the City of Medford. In Article 2 entitled reserve the city's classification compensation plan, formally included as Article 2, Section 66-31 to 66-40, amend the figures as they presently appear next to the following title by adjusting each to reflect the following percentage wage increase. This is effective July 1, 22. Base salary increased 2.5 percent. July 1, 2023, base salary increased 2.5 percent. July 1, 2024, base salary increased 3 percent. July 1, 2025, base salary increased 2.5 percent. July 1, 2026, base salary increased 2.5 percent. July 1, 2027, base salary increased 2.5 percent. HR Director Lisa Crowley will be able to answer any questions. And I'm pretty sure this probably just says on the back, thank you for your kind attention to this matter. Respectfully submitted, Brianne Lungo-Koehn, Mayor. We have, so this is for our union contract for our DPW superintendents, building department inspectors, and recreation union. And I'll recognize Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. Baez. This is something that's been longing for. I think that it's about time. I appreciate all the work to get this done. I would also make the motion to waive the three readings. I think that city employees have gone through this process long enough to wait for the three readings will be a bigger hardship that they've already had to go through. So I would move approval and ask that we motion to waive three readings to move this along quicker.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion by Councilor Scarpelli to waive the three readings and approve to be ordained, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Any further discussion by members of the council? Seeing none, any discussion by members of the public either in person or on Zoom? Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callaghan. Yes. Vice President Lazzaro. Councilor Lemy. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Malay. Yes. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative down the negative, the motion passes. 26013 submitted by Mayor Brannon-McCurran, capital stabilization fund and water and sewer capital stabilization appropriation requests, DPW vehicle and water main replacements. Dear President Bears and members of the city council, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body approve appropriations from the capital stabilization fund in the amount of $37,223.00 for a hybrid SUV DPW admin vehicle. The balance of the Capital Stabilization Fund before this vote is $10,568,569. Two, Water and Sewer Capital Stabilization Fund in the amount of $325,000.00 to supplement design and or construction funding for water remain placement projects including, but not limited to, Capon Street, Grove Street, Bustle Road, Century Street, Extension, Playstead Road, Woods Road, Roberts Road, Kilgore Avenue, Monument Street, and Sharon Street. The balance of the water and sewer capital stabilization fund before this vote is $1,765,000. DPW Commissioner Tim McGivern and City Engineer Owen Wartella will be available to answer questions. Respectfully submitted, Brianna Leocurin, Mayor. Tim and Owen, tell us what it's about.
[Tim McGivern]: Thank you, President Bears. And I should say, welcome, Councilwoman Mullane. I'm sorry I didn't say that before. Welcome. So anyway, I'll go first, then Owen can talk to you about the water project. Pretty straightforward. We need a new administration vehicle. Right now, the deputy commissioner is borrowing a vehicle from engineering. Engineering really wants it back. And this is actually an identified expense from our 2025 CIP. So it's actually the last purchase of our CIP. This vehicle would go to Commissioner and then my vehicle and then my vehicle would go to Deputy Commissioner. So hopefully that explains it. Happy to answer questions.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Any questions about the DPW vehicle? Are you happy with this, Owen? Owen, you good with this? I'm happy with it. Great. Fantastic. I really need that truck back. Just making sure. You want to talk about the design and or construction water main project?
[Owen Wartella]: Sure. This is basically an ongoing We have a 15-year plan of replacing 70 miles worth of water mains in the city. We have a five-year plan. This is the design for the end of year one and year two. It's not construction cost. It's only for design only. For those roadways, the water mains going from a 6 inch to an 8 inch, mostly. In some cases, it's going to a 12 inch. We're focusing on low pressure, high flows, and high lead line areas. And in these areas, we predict that there's about 275 lead lines. I'm hoping for a question. No. I don't get the first question.
[Zac Bears]: I was hoping. Nope. Not from Liz today. You get Anna though. All right.
[Anna Callahan]: While I don't have a question, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled that we are, you know, taking care of the lead lines in the city. I think that's.
[Owen Wartella]: Well, I'll be back soon to, once the capitalization funds get finalized, I'll be back to ask for construction money.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Owen Wartella]: Great.
[Zac Bears]: It's funny because for some reason Shane put Councilor Maloney into the system as Liz with two Z's. So I just see, I just see, I see number four Liz has come up to ask a question. So Councilor Malauulu.
[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Just a real quick, just a real quick question. In terms of the project plan, like how long is this going to take or how long do you think this portion of it will be?
[Owen Wartella]: This is just years finishing up. So we're technically in year one or starting year one. We got a little bit of a head start last year with one of the projects Arlington Street. It is 90 percent complete. We still have. We ran out of time. It was temperature wise. Sure. So they will come in the spring for another three or four weeks and then there's two more projects on year one. But we're. trying to queue up year two, which will be the following year, for the design, so that once this time of year, next year, we can hit the ground running and keep going. But we have a five-year plan, and, you know, it's evolving. It does change from, you know, time to time. But, yeah. Roughly it's more than two it's about seven million dollars worth of water main work. At least that's the idea pending on funding. So but we're getting really good at getting the water rates up. So we should have the funds for this.
[Liz Mullane]: Great.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. There is a road in that neighborhood. That is in terrible terrible disrepair and I can't remember which one it is. Century Street extension maybe is the beginning of it and then how it curves along the edge of the private way. Yes. So Bustle maybe is it. It is a private way I know it is because I drive on it a lot when I try to avoid driving on High Street because the train goes there and blocks you. Yeah. But when you drive on it, it's just lousy with potholes. So I'm wondering if you're going to do the water main on that street or did you already say that last night?
[Owen Wartella]: So this is just for the water main replacement. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Emily Lazzaro]: So but when you do that. Is it the connecting part, so it's just the entrance to the house, or is it the underneath everything? Big pipes. We're doing big pipes or we're doing little pipes? Big pipes. Yeah, so I'm thinking if you have to get under there, maybe you fix those roads. So...
[Owen Wartella]: That road is so bad. The plan is that we as we're moving forward we are going to be going through and repairing the roads the following year. Even the private ways. The intent is to come through like I know for as I can speak on what's queued up this year. Willis and Arlington Street we have chapter 90 funding for that. And our intent is to pave those roads redo the sidewalks and curbing so that they are city standard for the runs. That's the plan for it. So I can't those residents are going to have to deal with those. I can't speak for something for two or three years out. Oh yeah yeah sure. But I mean the intent is at the time to pave the road to a temporary pavement and then the following year come through and redo the roads.
[Tim McGivern]: Chapter 90 money can't be spent on private ways. So that's one of the reasons why we don't, well, it all has to do with that state law network of laws that define what we can spend money on. So we have an obligation in private ways to put the street back to the way it was or better. Oh, but better, or better.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I was going to say, just put the potholes back in.
[Zac Bears]: Exactly. We have an obligation to match the pothole, divot for divot.
[Tim McGivern]: We're going to do a 3D scan of the road beforehand. Everybody's seen it all over town, these swaths of pavements that are about 8 to 12 feet wide that go down the length of the street. OK.
[Emily Lazzaro]: That's what it'll be. OK. Got it. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: On that note, would it make any sense at all to reach out to the residents of Private Ways as you're doing this kind of work and ask if, would it be a time when it would be cheaper for them to have the other half of the road paved? Would there be any possibility? Or is that too complicated?
[Owen Wartella]: It's not too complicated. A lot of private ways do that already. So it's encouraged. And if it's if I know when the gas company comes through and they're only responsible for repairing their trench a few private ways this past year got them to do the whole roadway because they pitched in extra money.
[Anna Callahan]: Amazing. Thank you. Glad to hear it.
[Zac Bears]: Great. on the motion to approve. Oh, we got one question. We got a question here on Zoom. Well, any more questions from members of the council?
[SPEAKER_15]: Just a comment.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: I'm so happy to see the paving, the crew working with the new street paver. It's pretty impressive, so I think that I just want to give you kudos. I know that it took some time to get going, and I know I was the one that's always saying, you know, where is this crew? But I just wanted to make sure I give you the same respect in that context, that you could see they're loving it. You know, they're really enjoying doing it, and the neighbors are. I mean, maybe they're lying to us, but the neighbors love seeing our city workers doing that job, so.
[Tim McGivern]: I'm with you. I think it's fantastic and we're at that point where this year we got a lot of good practice in. We did some areas where we've been dumping pothole money into for a long time. And we got a pretty good idea of what things are going to look like next year. So we're looking forward to that.
[Zac Bears]: So thank you. Fantastic. Seeing no more questions from the council, we'll go to public participation either in person or on Zoom. You can come to the podium in person or raise your hand on Zoom. Seeing no one in person, I will go to Sue Edelman. Sue, name it on Zoom. Sue, name and address for the record, please. And you have three minutes.
[SPEAKER_31]: Yeah, Sue Edelman. I live on 7 Bustle Road, the notorious street that you were just talking about. Can you guys hear me?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, Sue, we can hear you.
[SPEAKER_31]: Okay, great. So I'm glad that you talked about Bustle Road. Zach, I've talked to you about this before, but I'm very interested to know when they do the water pipes, if they'll be able to improve the street, knowing that this is a street that everyone uses to cut through, and also that Keolis uses to access the commuter rail, and their trucks are a major factor in why this street gets torn up. because they're constantly driving on the edge of the road and breaking up the edges of the road, which then goes towards the middle. So I'm just weighing in that Bustle Road does need some help and whatever we can do to make it better and take advantage of what's going to happen with the water. I'm interested in hearing about it.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Sue. And I'm going to go to our engineer.
[Owen Wartella]: I would like to say one thing here, because Councilor Scarpelli mentioned it earlier. Whenever we approve a traffic management plan, it's never down a private way. It's never through another city. It's never through on a private way. So if you see trucks going down private ways that are tearing it up, call us up. We'll hunt them down and let them know that they shouldn't be doing that. OK? Yeah. I will know I get calls every day about that. And so I'm it's it's frustrating because a lot of time goes into a traffic management plan and like just follow the plan. And yeah it happens all the time. So just call us up. We'll hunt them down and we usually have a permit for them to do.
[Zac Bears]: Awesome. Any more participation on this paper. Seeing none on the motion of. Someone to approve, anyone? I so move. Vice President Lazzaro, seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Kelly? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli?
[SPEAKER_15]: Yes.
[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Tseng? Yes. Councilor Mullain? Yes. President Bierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, 70 affirmative, none negative. The motion passes. Thank you. Public participation, we have Robin Dooling, 74 Hume Ave, Medford. Would like to speak about the permit parking in the GLX zone. The fee for my family is ridiculous. Permit parking was forced on us. Plenty of people can park freely in front of their homes, not opposed to permit but opposed to paying.
[SPEAKER_25]: Hi, how are you?
[Zac Bears]: Robin, how are you? Name and address.
[SPEAKER_25]: Thanks for letting me be here tonight. Robin Dooling, I'm at 74 Hume Ave. I'm on the corner lot of Hume and Sunset. I've lived here in Medford my entire life, and I currently live on Umav, corner of Sunset, what I just stated. In July of 2024, the Green Line extension came into Medford, and as a result, those of us who live within the quarter mile radius were forced into the GLX zone. While I understand the need for the zone, the piece I can't seem to wrap my head around is the paying to park in front of my own home. I live in a street that did not have permit parking prior to the GLX zoning. And now that permit parking was forced on us, we find ourselves now having to pay to park in front of our own homes. For me, it's really about the principle. I have friends and family throughout this city that do not have to pay to park where they live. They pay the same property tax rate as my family. I understand the need for the permit, but I totally disagree that I should pay to park in front of my own home. I am happy to go through the process to obtain the permit, but feel very strongly that we should not pay for something that was forced on us because of where we live. I won't even mention the fact that the fees increased this year substantially on a percentage basis from last year. So to summarize, I think you all know where I'm going with this, I feel very strongly that we should not be financially penalized compared to other residents in the city because of where we live. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Robin.
[SPEAKER_25]: So what do I do from here?
[Zac Bears]: Well, I wish that everyone who spoke was as concise and clear with their points as you were. You know, we've had a few five minutes.
[SPEAKER_25]: This has been three years in the making, I've wanted to come up here and talk about this issue. And it's not just me, my community members, my neighbors, they're all like, we didn't have parking to begin with, we didn't have permit parking to begin with, now all of a sudden, this was thrown on us without, I woke up one morning to a a poll in my yard saying that this is going to be permit parking now. So that is my grievance. I don't feel that paying to park in front of my house is the right answer here. So.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Well, the main thing that I think this body can offer you is at least a place to air the grievance. Yeah. We don't set the parking policy.
[SPEAKER_25]: Yeah, so where does this go from here, I guess?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, so the council doesn't set the parking policy for the city.
[SPEAKER_25]: Right, that, I knew that.
[Zac Bears]: The traffic commission does. With the GLX zone parking, it's a little bit different. It used to be street by street, and so folks would petition for their street. The GLX, the parking traffic commission decided to move to this zone, which is probably why, it was definitely why you guys had that shift where you didn't have permit before, but now you do. You can file a petition with the traffic commission.
[SPEAKER_25]: My guess is that the response will be... Oh, I know what the response will be, but I felt like every year, and especially when I have to go in and pay that money, it fries me. It really fries me.
[Zac Bears]: And I can definitely understand how frustrating that is.
[SPEAKER_25]: And I know in the past, if you lived in the city, you had to have 50% participation on your street to get a permit. We didn't ask for it.
[Zac Bears]: Right. Yeah. And that was the shift with that with the zone versus the street by street. And so that was that that was the traffic commission's approach to the GLX. Now that would be the next step. I do have a question for you. Yeah. Which is you know when the train came in. or since the permit parking, have you seen like a lot more people trying to park on your street or change? No. Okay.
[SPEAKER_25]: The parking has not been any different from, and I live, I bought Tufts property, so I'm right behind Cousins Gym, and in the 28 years I've lived there, we have never had issues with students parking there. other people from around the community, it's always been able to find parking. We have four cars in our house.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_25]: So, and then to buy, I have to get passes to park there now. So, it's just, it's an added expense that we weren't ready for.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And I'm guessing it also probably doesn't, you're not using that GLX pass other places in the zone. No.
[SPEAKER_25]: And I don't think any other people in the GLX zone are doing that. I think they're walking to the train or If they're taking the train at all, you know. I haven't seen any hiccup or pickup in the amount of people parking in our neighborhood. At least on the other end where I am.
[Zac Bears]: I appreciate you coming to us. I understand your frustration.
[SPEAKER_25]: So the next thing is to traffic commission?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Again, I think they're probably going to say we've moved to this zone, and it's a zone, and that's what it's going to be. But, you know, it's always possible to at least go to them and have them hear you out, even maybe for your block of Huma if there's no parking issue. You know, I can't say whether or not they'll do anything, but you can always file a petition with them. And Councilor Scarpelli wants to say something as well. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: At that point, I think that if we can, it might be something that, you know, Plans change. So maybe once everything was put forth, it was put forth as an area. But if we see a certain street that really is not impacting the process, maybe it could be shifted. So I mean, maybe that would be the ask with the Traffic Commission. And then if not, you know, reach out to your city councilor, Zach Beers, or Emily Lazzaro, who topped the ticket, and maybe they could put a resolution through. We can put a resolution through that could ask maybe that we ask our traffic commissioner, traffic engineer, maybe to take another look at that district. And maybe it's a shift. Maybe we're seeing a street over on the other side. We're seeing that maybe this would help. So maybe after time, because it has been a little while now, so maybe that might help. So.
[SPEAKER_25]: All right.
[George Scarpelli]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_25]: All right. Great. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: One other thing I heard you mention is, you know, you've kind of felt like you have to pay, but there are other parts of the city that don't have to pay. Yeah, there are.
[SPEAKER_25]: They live on bus lines real close to their bus line. You know, they don't have to pay to park there.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I guess.
[SPEAKER_25]: I'm just making a point. It's a valid point.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, it's a completely valid point. And I, you know, it's not the way I like to think about it, but I just want to kind of think it out, think out that point. If, I think part of why this is feeling different is, you know, it's been the street by street for a long time, and that's kind of given a lot of local, very hyper local kind of control over the permit parking situation to the people on the street, right? And this is, represents kind of a shift into more of a zone model. But you see in a lot of other cities that the whole, you know, when they do that, they do the whole city. There's a zone for the whole, you know, each city, part of the city has a zone. So everybody's being, paying something. Would that, would you feel different if everybody in the city had to pay?
[SPEAKER_25]: Yeah, but I don't want to sit here and do that because now I'm going to have a... No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[Zac Bears]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_25]: I'm going to be responsible for everybody in the same thing.
[Zac Bears]: And you absolutely wouldn't be. I just wanted to kind of do the thought experiment.
[SPEAKER_25]: No, I understand because I know there are other cities around here that are like that. Yeah. I believe Somerville is one of them.
[Zac Bears]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_25]: You have to pay to park there. And that's one of the things I like about Medford is that we're not on that kind of a system. But again, we didn't ask for it. That was forced on us. Now, many of the streets in the ZLX zone, GLX zone, already had permitted parking. So, I really think this was meant to help those streets that already had the permits. We didn't have it. So, that's my soapbox.
[Zac Bears]: Well, thank you and we appreciate you coming down and waiting until 10 to have that.
[SPEAKER_25]: I tried to get on the Zoom call but I couldn't get the link.
[Zac Bears]: Oh, okay. Feel free to email me with a technical issue or about this or anything you want.
[Unidentified]: All right. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Thanks, Robin. All right, now we're just in general public participation. So anything you want for three minutes, Simon?
[WaNbAOKeDiY_SPEAKER_18]: Okay, I have like a few questions just about like stuff that I've heard since the last meeting and then just like a couple of comments. First of all, I was wondering, I remember it was mentioned something about like meetings by ward or something of that nature. I think that was mentioned during the inauguration. I was just wondering what's happening with that. And then the other thing is that one of the things I've noticed when trying to look on the city website at the current ordinances is that they're not particularly updated. So I wondered if there's like anything that's happening around that or if there's anything that the council could do to push for some more updates on that. And then also one of the things, and I promise I'm not making this a bit, but as I've traveled through the Route 60 Rotary Board, one of the things I've noticed is that the continuity of maintenance, especially with shoveling with snow, hasn't been good at all on the state's end especially, and there hasn't really been any sort of like shoveling, and this is a thing that happened when I used to go down through Webster Street as well, But I wonder if there could be some way that we could push on the state to do more around that. And especially I think there might be, it seemed like there was perhaps maybe a bit of a dead zone where, over by where the Black Dahlia Memorial is, because of how it's sort of on the edge of city and state property. And then, oh, and then also one of the things I've noticed when trying to look at what our committees and whatnot of the city are doing is that it's very difficult to access meeting materials or like things such as like the agenda, sort of like the agenda materials like the city council provides. And I wonder if there could be more done around that. And then just through the comments, A, haranguing our state delegations is always a good idea, especially like I mentioned earlier. Private ways, there's a whole lot of other things I can mention. There's much time and also I don't know if everyone has seen but there are 11 ballot questions that could possibly on the ballot. So I would recommend everyone at least take a look at that and especially how that would impact the city because a lot of them are likely to have some amount of impact where it be. the one trying to ban recreational marijuana or trying to cut the state income tax because it's really going to be a year where there's a lot of potential for impact on the city itself. Yeah, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I think I got most of them down. Neighborhood board meetings, the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee is going to start meeting on that in the next few weeks to start planning those out. I think we're looking at at least I don't want to over promise certainly at least one a year maybe two a year in each ward slash neighborhood ordinances updates. Vice President Lazzaro and acting clerk Alicio that's those are the folks for that one. We're hoping to really start getting getting that. It's been an ongoing issue. There was a backlog in the clerk's office around. ordinances and also some long wait times with KP Law on some of the ordinances getting back from them. And so Muni Code hasn't been updated in a while. I know that was something that was a goal for June and July and Rich and I had been working on that with our former clerk and then he went on leave. So sorry about that. Route 60 Rotary. I'm guessing you mean the shoveling of the sidewalks and the underpass, right?
[WaNbAOKeDiY_SPEAKER_18]: So it's not really as much of an issue under the underpass, mostly the approaches. The approaches. Because especially like, I especially, actually it's kind of all four of the approaches that you have to the rotary, but I especially notice it on the northbound, on the, sorry, east side of 93, where it's particularly not maintained. And also the part which wraps around the, which wraps around oak bluffs is also just straight up has not been maintained even before this project happened. It was actually blocked for a long time by leaves and other debris. I could also bring this up at the traffic commission.
[Zac Bears]: I mean, it's not a big deal. Yeah, I mean, I think if you could, if you have photos and maybe even Google Maps with the areas specifically circled, then we could probably work with code enforcement to see who the abutters are, and if the abutters are the city, then essentially it's like the way that it works. So it sounds to me like MassDOT is clearing the parts that it owns.
[WaNbAOKeDiY_SPEAKER_18]: No. Oh, they're not. I'm saying that MassDOT is clearing the parts that it owns. Oh, MassDOT.
[Zac Bears]: OK, so these are MassDOT properties approaching the underpass that are not getting cleared.
[WaNbAOKeDiY_SPEAKER_18]: Great. Yeah, this is just like the sidewalks along the public way, yeah.
[Zac Bears]: Maybe Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Callahan, Well, this is just the rotary. Vice President Lazar. You know, I liked Kit more as my vice president. I called her Councilor Collins all the time. She never gave me any crap for it. Oh, boy. Meeting materials for committees, the program that we use is available to every board and commission in the city. We just need to get them trained on it, and then they would all be in one place. So I would love if they were using our service. OK. Yeah, but that is a mayor administration question.
[WaNbAOKeDiY_SPEAKER_18]: Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: And Rich has one thing for you too, Simon. Go ahead.
[Marie Izzo]: Keep forgetting that. Simon, if you send me an email, I can add you to the agenda disbursement list, which I created an address book for it. So we'll just add you to that, and you'll automatically get one.
[WaNbAOKeDiY_SPEAKER_18]: OK.
[Marie Izzo]: Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Awesome. Thank you. All right. Potentially last but not least, unless anyone else on the meeting wants to raise their hand on Zoom, we have Gaston Fiori. Name and address and record.
[Gaston Fiore]: Gaston Fiori, 61 Signature Road. I just wanted to bring up that, so I heard And I think it's important for us to be able to do that. And I think it's important for us to be able to do that. And they were trying very hard to see how to deal with that. So I just wonder whether we should take a look at what's happening here in Medford. Because I think it was the fire chief or someone else of the experts that talked about this that said there's some mental health issues, we're sort of strained. So, and I think if we should bring that as part of the discussion, I mean, I'm going to do my job on it, but I think it would be interesting to see, you know, where is there certain things that are sort of like disproportionately requiring emergency services, and if so, what can we do about it, because, you know, maybe I don't know, I mean, they should have more personnel, maybe we should legislate that, it's not clear, but I think, you know, this costs money, and we need to make sure that, you know, everyone has access to emergency services, right? So I think it's worthwhile, even though I heard in NANACommittee there's a huge problem over there, I think it's worthwhile for us, now that we are sort of discussing this contract, to take a look at this. So, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right, we do have one on Zoom, so one raised hand. Mr. Castagnetti, name and address for the record, please. And you have three minutes.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Congratulations on your new city council and your first meeting of 2026. And I have no further comment except God bless. Good night.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Andy. Happy New Year.
[SPEAKER_01]: You too.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to adjourn, seconded by Vice President Collins.
[SPEAKER_05]: See, what's worse? What's worse? What's worse? Two years. Two years.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, it's... You want to be Councilor Lazzaro, Vice President Collins? I'll get Vice President Lazzaro 50% of the time. On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Vice President Lazzaro, to adjourn. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes.
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