AI-generated transcript of City Council Committee of the Whole 01-20-25

[Unidentified]: I think you might have to turn it. You got it? No.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Mr. Chair, please call the roll.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Present.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming. Present. Councilor Moline. Councilor Scarpelli? Present. Councilor Tseng? Present.

[Zac Bears]: President Bears? Present. Seven present, none absent. The meeting is called to order. Action and discussion items 26-014, presented by Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. Community Preservation Committee fiscal 26 appropriation requests. We have before us the presentation of the CPC's fiscal year 2026 community projects. We have an executive summary before us and I won't take too much of Teresa's thunder. So I'll just say that we are appropriating approximately Well, you know what, Teresa, I'm just going to let you do it, because these charts, I'm not sure exactly. So if you explain to us the overall amount, and then we'll go through the projects, and then we'll go from there. Great. Here you go.

[Theresa Dupont]: Good evening, everybody. Teresa DuPont. I'm the Community Preservation Act Manager for the City of Medford. Tonight, we're requesting the appropriation in an amount of about $2.4 million. This is spread over 11 awards that we'll be reviewing tonight for the council.

[Zac Bears]: Fantastic. Thank you. I saw this 2.6 and then I wasn't sure if that was, and it's 2.4.

[Theresa Dupont]: It is 2.4. And just to explain that really quick, we do like to keep a reserve of $225,000 from our budget just for any off-cycle or small grant applications that come through. We never like to be zero just in case. And just so everybody understands, that reserve money, even if we do not spend it, it gets rolled over to next year. We can spend it next year. So it's just a rainy day fund to have.

[Zac Bears]: And just if anyone watching isn't sure, our Community Preservation Committee reviews applications and makes recommendations to the City Council to approve appropriations in the areas of open space and recreation, historic preservation and affordable housing. And I think, and Roberta, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is this our 10th year of, or 11th maybe? Nine. All right.

[Theresa Dupont]: Next year will be the big year.

[Zac Bears]: Great. So these funds have gone a long way for our community. There's a surcharge on the property tax bill and we also receive a portion of the funds as state matching funds to help support these projects. So with that I will let Teresa present along with our many wonderful applicants these projects. Thank you.

[Theresa Dupont]: Excellent. I'm actually going to take one out of order, if I may, as for the executive summary, only because we are joined by the Medford Athletics team here, the baseball team. So we will first review.

[Zac Bears]: Jim, can you take a video? Can you show them on video?

[Theresa Dupont]: Oh.

[Zac Bears]: Come on up.

[Theresa Dupont]: If you want to stand behind me while I talk about the project, that's up to you. When he gets there. Completely up to you.

[Zac Bears]: There we go.

[Theresa Dupont]: I like the enthusiasm. Thank you very much.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks for being here, guys. It's appreciated.

[Theresa Dupont]: All right, so this project, ooh, excellent, excellent job there. This project would see a digital baseball scoreboard to be installed at Mombo Cat Field, which is located at Playstead Park. I want to commend Coach Oz for being so diligent in bringing this project forward. A few years, this is the year we can actually make it happen. We're very excited for that. They have requested and the CPC has recommended the funds of $100,000, again, to install a digital baseball scoreboard. I don't know if coach wouldn't like to add anything additional if this council has any questions about the project.

[Zac Bears]: We'd love to hear from you coach.

[Rmp1s_8uCxM_SPEAKER_00]: How you doing? My name's Orazio Azzarello. I'm the head baseball coach. I've been at Medford High School since 2021, and been an assistant here since 2012, and a graduate of Medford High School in 1995. Showing my age here. So I want to thank you for the opportunity here. And I'm here to answer any questions. We also have the company here that is willing to answer any questions as well.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, if you could just tell us 30 seconds what this would mean for your team, we'd love to hear it. And I'm sure the residents would too.

[Rmp1s_8uCxM_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it means a lot to a lot of people in this community. I'd have to say the Mombo-Kett Field is something that's been on for a long time there. And I thought that a school board to just represent that family, represent the alumni, also just bringing Medford together, it was something that Mombo-Kett Field hasn't had. And I think this is a great opportunity to show what Medford's all about, about coming together. And when I say coming together, a lot of people had their hands in this pot here, and there's a lot of people to thank. I know I was leading the charge. but we did have a lot of parts and pieces that try to put this together and I'm proud to say that we're here today because of those members, those committees, parents and alumni. It's just a great opportunity for us to come together and hopefully this school board will stand out and maybe someday we'll have a new baseball field as well, so we'll see what happens.

[Zac Bears]: Great, thank you coach. Any questions for Teresa or our coach or maybe even the team on this project? Seeing none, thank you for the presentation and thanks for coming down.

[Rmp1s_8uCxM_SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[Theresa Dupont]: All right, shifting back. Now, this will be taken largely in order on the executive summary for those following along. Next up, we have Tufts Park field lighting improvements. This was brought to the CPC by the recreation director, Kevin Bailey. Unfortunately, he has a conflict. He's down the hall at the Parks Commission meeting, but he has asked for me to speak on behalf of the project. Excuse me. He had first brought a full lighting project for the entire park to the CPC. However, that just ended up being cost prohibitive. It was close to a million dollars to do a full lighting rehab of this park. So he went back to the drawing board and decided, through reviewing permitting and usage, field number two. At Tufts Park. So we're going to be putting in lighting just for field to as well as along. What is that Marston. No it's not Marston. I apologize. I have it in front of me and I should have just used my presentation. So this would be Moscow lighting that is able to be. I'm sorry I just saw George Scarpelli Councilor Scarpelli.

[Zac Bears]: Do you want to you want to go Georgia. You want to finish it out Teresa and then we'll go.

[George Scarpelli]: Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I think it was more now, I believe. Yeah, so a lot more now. Okay, thanks. Sorry about that.

[Theresa Dupont]: Of course. So Musco lighting is able to be controlled by an app, which is leaps and bounds over most of the older lighting that we have in our parks right now, which is a manual process to turn the lights on or schedule them. So this would allow for staff to have some flexibility with turning lights on and off without actually having to physically go down to the park. I will say that Carr Park, as well as Gillis Field, so there are newer fields that have had improvements lately, have also had Musco lighting. So this is a move to try and get all of our park lighting under a consistent use umbrella. At Tufts Park, field number two is the one that's closest to the parking lot. That one is the larger of the fields. It's used by JV as well as a lot of our adult leagues. It's a heavily used field at Tufts Park. And again this was a request for four hundred and thirty two thousand dollars. This would also allow for lighting of the entire park which is ultimately the goal just for cost reasons. We couldn't afford to do that this year. This would allow for future phases to add similar lighting into that system. So it's all you know one cohesive system.

[George Scarpelli]: there's any questions from the council great uh councilor star pelly thank you uh president bears and thank you very much stew point i think um this is something that's a must here in medford i think that uh neighboring communities and i will tell you in my profession in somerville all of our fields of musco lighting um And the savings they bring to the community, you'll see in the long run. The nights that the lights are left open and residents are upset that the lights are down, the lights are up and we can't get anybody to turn them on or to turn them off. So it's a phone call and it's a satellite just to shut them down. And it really plays a huge impact. And the quality of both the people that are participating and the neighbors. So it really supports a quality of life and I'm glad we're moving to that that process because I know there is other cost factors that. you know, someone has to turn those lights off if they're left on at 10 o'clock at night, if they have to be done manually, and that's a cost. So once we have all of our parks with the Musco system and having that capability would be a huge benefit. So thank you for bringing this forward and I appreciate it.

[Theresa Dupont]: If I may, I'd also like, uh, Councilor Scarpelli just jogged my memory on something, too, that I wanted to point out. This lighting would also have a benefit to the immediate abutters of the park. There has been a common complaint of light pollution washing out into yards, through windows, because, again, this is an older-style light fixture. The new lighting allows you to manipulate the iris in a very cool way so we can eliminate that light spillage that's happening in some of the immediate abutters that are close to field two.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Do we have any further questions on this project? Seeing none, let's go to the next.

[Theresa Dupont]: Next up I will I am going to skip Oak Grove just for a hot second and then take Barry Park's community garden. I am joined by Liz White from the Community Garden Commission. They are seeking fifty seven thousand five hundred to build a new community garden at Barry Park. I want to give Liz the opportunity to share some words, but this is a project that has been long in the making. I think this started in 2018, so it's time. They are working through a very long wait list for community gardeners, so the demand is there to expand our community gardens. So Liz, I don't want to...

[lq25S5HOVFA_SPEAKER_10]: steal your thunder, but if you have anything for anything like that. Thank you. As Teresa mentioned, we have a wait list of over 200 people right now, and we only have about 70 plots in the city. So this is something we're really excited about. And as she mentioned before, it was proposed back in 2018 and it was not approved. So we're so thankful to the CPC and the Parks and Recreation commission for approving this.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I don't think you're going to hear any opposition to community gardens here, but do we have any questions? I'll go to Council Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Can anybody give me who was on the council last time it was proposed? Can you give me some background on why it was not approved last time?

[lq25S5HOVFA_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah. It never quite made it this far. My understanding is that it was not approved by the Parks and Recreation Commission. And there was some opposition from neighbors who were concerned about the, I think, the visual aesthetics of it and also the possibility of rats, which we have measures in place at all of our community gardens and they are not currently a problem, and there are things, you know, if they do, if they are present, there are things that we can do to eliminate them.

[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, I'm happy to hear that.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I would also just mention, if anybody has any thoughts or concerns about that, that we've recently passed a ribbon control ordinance and an overgrowth ordinance that may contribute to helping with any concerns around that around rats in relation to gardens.

[lq25S5HOVFA_SPEAKER_10]: But I don't think that's usually the thing that would... No, we actually have pretty strict guidelines in terms of what can be grown and when things should be cut back. And we monitor it before we close the gardens down for the winter. We always make sure everything is cleaned up to prevent any type of infestation.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Yeah, and I don't think there have been any problems in the other community gardens. Have there that you're aware of? No. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think that's great.

[lq25S5HOVFA_SPEAKER_10]: sorry.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh, that's that's that's fine. Please, please. Yeah, I'd love to hear your thing.

[lq25S5HOVFA_SPEAKER_10]: We have no evidence of nesting rats. I mean, that's like I'm a member of the Winthrop Street Community Garden. And yes, there are critters that come and eat our vegetables, but I've seen bunnies, I've seen chipmunks, but we have no evidence of nesting rats in the gardens.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Awesome. Okay, great. Thank you so much.

[lq25S5HOVFA_SPEAKER_10]: Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'm loathe to bring up trash in this community right now. But I will say that the main thing we've learned in all of our years is that it's not gardens. It is open trash and dumpsters that brings rats to our community. So if you see an open dumpster or a trash can without a lid, that is something you might want to talk to your neighbor about. It's probably not the garden. Thanks. Anything else on the garden? Great. Seeing none, thank you so much.

[Theresa Dupont]: All right. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Is Brooks Estate archaeological?

[Theresa Dupont]: We're actually gonna skip back, so I'm trying to get us back in order, to the Oak Grove Cemetery Historic Section. So if you're looking at Berry Park, flip it over, it's right there. So I am joined in the council chambers by chairperson of the cemetery trustees, Stacey Clayton, as well as member Dee Morris. This project would, actually it's kind of an augmentation to a previous CPA award. There is a section of Oak Grove Cemetery, the World War I memorial, that is right on the corner of Placedead and Winthrop. It's very, the stairs that are there, it's a great photo op area. However, to get to that area right now, you have to traverse those stairs. So it's not ADA compliant. So last year, CPA funded a design study for inputting a historic, it's in the historic section again, access road that would bring people right to the backside of the memorial. This would add ADA parking to that design. So it's just kind of an augmentation to a previous award that was done. So again, right now that area is accessed by, you know, pedestrian traffic. So there's no way for somebody who is bound to a vehicle who has mobility challenges to get up to this area. So this would, for $35,000, would add to the existing design to add ADA parking. Happy to address any questions from the council.

[Zac Bears]: Great. And thank you Stacey and Dee for being here and for your service on our cemetery trustees. Do we have any questions on this project? Seeing none, it's a beautiful statue of victory if I'm right up there. And I think it'd be great for more people to be able to see it.

[Theresa Dupont]: Yes.

[Zac Bears]: Fantastic. Thanks you guys for coming down to City Hall on this cold night. Okay.

[Theresa Dupont]: Next up, we're cruising right along, the Brooks Estate Archaeological Survey. This actually came to us as a small grant in partnership with the Medford Historical Commission and the Medford Brooks Estate Land Trust, which is known as MBELT. I am joined on Zoom by Ryan Hayward, who is the Vice Chair of the Historical Commission. So I just want to recognize him if he wants to chime in with any additional comments here. But this would, the Brooks Estate is, some folks may not know it, but it is a lovely parcel of land that's all under conservation restriction that's off of Grove Street. It's right on the Winchester and Medford line, but this is the ancestral home of the Brooks family who helped establish Medford here. This archaeological survey is a desktop survey that would do some historical research into the area. It's not actually somebody going out there and digging. This is step one before the digging, which of course will be very fun to ascertain what type of historical significance there might be in that area. We're working on, for instance, Thomas Brooks Park right now, which we know was the original homestead for the Brooks family before they built the manor. And we just went through an archaeological study there and found all kinds of interesting things, including pottery and glass and just ways of, you know, things that were just normal everyday lives of folks in the 18th century. So this would just be a small grant to undergo a study to help kind of identify and preserve those cultural artifacts that may be in the soil. So this is step one before the actual archaeological.

[Zac Bears]: And sorry if you mentioned it, but there's matching funds here as well.

[Theresa Dupont]: There are matching funds. I will publicly say Ryan Hayward is great at hustling to find grant money. He found some grant money from Freedom's Way, which is a local heritage program that funds historical projects. It's a very finite area, but the path I'm drawing a blank on right now, but Medford is one of the eligible communities for the Freedom's Way grant. So there is some match money here. as well as a little bit, I believe, from their operating budget to get to the $15,000 for that project. We're funding 10,000 of it.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Do we have any questions for Teresa or Ryan about this project? Seeing none, we can move to the next one.

[Theresa Dupont]: We're sticking at the Brooks Estate. Again, Brooks Estate is home to the Shepard's Brooks Manor. It's a wonderful property that the Brooks Estate Land Trust has been diligently working on for years to bring it up to standard so that it can be used for actual event space and community gathering. So this project is the Brooks Estate ADA parking and pathways. Currently right now, if you have visited the Brooks Estate, you can walk up an unpaved path to get up to the Brooks Estate. It's a lovely walk, but then right immediately in front of the manor, There is no parking there. So this would formalize a parking lot area. CPA dollars are eligible to fund the ADA aspects of this. So it would pay for the implementation of parking spots as well as pathways that lead up to the manor space. Again, with the future intention of creating an event space, a public event space up there. So it is a hefty price tag because construction of parking lots is It's a great business to be in if anybody's looking for a new career. It's $602,000 to fund this portion of the project. And the Brooks Estate is always looking for fundraising. If there's anybody out there that would like to continue to donate to their projects, they are still seeking additional funds for all the various. There's not a shortage of projects up at the Brooks Estate.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I can just chime in a little bit. I'm on the M-Belt board. I'm the city council representative to M-Belt and have been for the past six years. And, you know, I really think M-Belt is one of our hidden gems and also has been underinvested in for a very long time. And the CPA and the CPC's support for M-Belt has really been transformative. You know, it's a 50-acre, beautiful land trust for conservation and historical preservation of some really beautiful structures. really changes the ability of people to access especially the manor and hopefully eventually in the future the carriage house whether that's for events or meetings or just going up there to explore the trails and it's a really huge investment. There are other funds from the state and from some lovely private donors, small-dollar donors, I will say, and our M-BELT members that are also going into this project. That is a really important foundation for the long-term plans for the Brooks Estate to be a place where people can really go and access and celebrate this open space and conservation land that we are very lucky was not many decades ago turned into a golf course. So that is a beautiful thing, and it's right behind Oak Grove Cemetery, if you weren't aware. So I think the improvements for the Brooks Estate as well as for our cemetery are hand-in-hand there as well. Any questions for Teresa on this project? All right, seeing none, we'll go to the next.

[Theresa Dupont]: All right, next one. We are at the Cross Street Cemetery Monument restoration phase two. So phase one involved a pilot of cleaning some monuments or headstones, the industry term is monument, but headstones that are up at the new Cross Street Cemetery, which is located within Oak Grove Cemetery. This was the relocated cemetery from Medford Square that was relocated in the late 50s. They had placed the monuments over there, relocated folks, but it has been, a victim of some deferred maintenance over there. We are led by the Medford Historical Commission. We are looking to do some treatment of the remaining headstones to get them up to snuff and to just really pay attention to this fairly important piece of Medford history. A lot of the folks who built Medford were located in Cross Street Cemetery. It's a good project to do. It is in the amount of $126,500. Again, this would be a treatment for the 400 plus monuments that are up there. Again, this is a project by the Historical Commission, so I will invite Ryan Hayward to share anything additional that he may like to share. If there's any questions from the council, I'd be happy to address them.

[Zac Bears]: Ryan, if you want to raise your hand, if you want to say anything. Are there any questions from the council? Liz has one. Councilor Mullane.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you for putting this together. So trees, in phase 2, I know phase 1 was 10. So how many remaining ones do you have left to do? How much will this cover and will there be more remaining? How does that look?

[Theresa Dupont]: Yep, I want to, don't quote me on the numbers, that's why if Ryan can hear me and correct me, I believe it's around 370 monuments that are remaining up there to be cleaned.

[Zac Bears]: I've unmuted Ryan if you want.

[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. Ryan, feel free to chime in here if you'd like.

[Adam Hurtubise]: The project is for 85 additional monuments. There's 471 monuments in total in the cemetery. 85 remain, some level of restoration, and the remaining ones just need to be all cleaned, which can be done by volunteers.

[Theresa Dupont]: Yes, which I've been trying to plug that as often as I can, that they would be looking for volunteers to help with the remaining treatment. So if anybody wants to hang out in a cemetery and have a very interesting story to tell at your next dinner party. I'm sure they'll be looking for volunteers in a few months here. Of course.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Any more questions on this project? Seeing none, we can move on to our housing families.

[Theresa Dupont]: And I do see Jana Stafford from Housing Families is online. But next we are shifting gears and looking at our housing programs. So this is the Housing Families, it's, it's I believe the acronym is Legal Aid and Well-Being Stability Laws Program, but this is our Homelessness Prevention Program. It's an ongoing program that was introduced in 2020 and is still going very strong. We have a good partnership with housing families. What they do is they provide eviction mitigation services, legal services, as well as helping with back-due rent, or what's called rental arrears. They are located locally in Malden. They do support multiple municipalities, but we've never felt like Medford is second to anybody else. Jana's always been great and there for any questions. We have great communication, no complaints about the program on our end. I do want to invite Jaina to share some words if she feels... Sorry, I'm just seeing... It never fails.

[Jayna Stafford]: Yeah. He wants to be a star. Thank you all so much for having me here. Jaina Stafford, he's been sitting quietly this whole time. I'm the director of the last program. We renamed it from Homelessness Prevention and Legal Services to make it a little shorter and easier to say. So now Legal Aid for Wellbeing and Stability. As Teresa said, we work along the whole homelessness prevention continuum. So going very far up to when someone has a question about their landlord preparing to sell the property, all the way through the constables at my door with an execution, what do I do? And we blend our legal services with our homelessness prevention and also supply rental assistance when it makes sense in that situation. So this program will be, this would be our fourth round, application for a fourth round of funds for Medford residents.

[Zac Bears]: Great. I will go to Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I just want to say thank you to housing families. Thank you for including this. Is this the same dollar amount as we've applied for the past two years or that housing families has applied for?

[Jayna Stafford]: I think it's slightly more. I think our last grant was 69,000 and this is 75,000. Teresa, please tell me if I have that mixed up.

[Theresa Dupont]: You're absolutely correct. I believe year three was 60, then 69,000 last year, now 75.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Have we been seeing an increase in need, or is it inflation, or is there another reason for the increase?

[Jayna Stafford]: There has been so much need. As we know, housing has been a problem and a need for such a long time. But during the pandemic, it has really increased quite a lot. Prior to the pandemic, we were administering about $20,000 a year in rental assistance funds, so a very small amount. And since in these last five years, our team has administered $875,000. So we've just seen the need continue to expand from year to year. I've been doing this since 2006, and I've seen the rents just explode all over our area. So if somebody would get behind before, we might be able to cobble some funds together. But now they get behind, it's $2,500 a month, it's $30,000 a year. It just adds up so quickly with the high cost of rentals.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I understand. Thank you so much for including this in the presentation and for the work that you do. I appreciate it a lot.

[Jayna Stafford]: Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: No, I had literally the exact same question as Council Vice President Lazzaro.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Any more questions for Jayna or Theresa on this project? Seeing none. Affordable Housing Trust. Thank you, Jayna.

[Jayna Stafford]: Thank you all.

[Theresa Dupont]: All right, next up we have the Medford Affordable Housing Trust, and I am joined in the chambers by Chairperson Lisa Davidson of the Affordable Housing Trust, as well as our staff member, housing planner, Catherine Buckingham, who is staff support to the trust. We are here tonight asking for your, recommending the amount of 550,000 of the CPA budget to fund the tranche. It's an annual tranche to fund the trust on their ongoing efforts in affordable housing. I will allow them to speak to anything that they may want to add here, but this is, it's a best practice in a lot of other municipalities to assign a large amount of your CPA funds to your local housing trust if you have one. We are lucky enough to have one here in Medford. So we are just trying to provide sustainable, consistent, reliable funding because right now they are still fact-finding on various ways to fund the trust. There are ways through linkage, developer fees, and, you know, just other type of grants that are out there, but largely the CPA is providing that consistent funding for them so that they can bank on that year over year. So as of right now, the CPC has elected to, off the top, fund 25% of our annual budget to the Affordable Housing Trust. I also note that this gives us status as a, the word escapes me at this moment, but it does give us housing choice. Thank you very much, appreciate you. It gives us a housing choice designation from the EOHLC, which just allows Medford, it gives us, puts us in a special bucket of municipalities that commit to affordable housing through the metric of can you if you devote 25 at least 25 percent of your CPA budget to housing that makes us a housing choice designated community and opens us up for additional grant opportunities that are exclusive to those housing choice communities. So looking at that looking at best practices looking at the needs of the trust the CPC has elected to fund 25 percent of the budget annually going forward towards the trust.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to say I like this line item. I'm glad that the CPA is doing this. Back when I served on the CPA, we ran into the problem of any significant affordable housing project only coming along once every few years. And just for the public's awareness, CPA funding has to be spent in full every year. when we were trying to find out how to fund the, put forward our share of the funding for Walkling Court. That would have taken about three years of CPA funding to put forth just about 2% of that. So one of the benefits of the Affordable Housing Trust is that you don't have to spend all of it every year. You can sort of build it up over time. So putting a significant amount of, funding from the CPA every year into the Affordable Housing Trust is generally seen as best practice. So I'm just wanted to offer my support saying I'm glad we're doing this.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. Any further questions from the Council on this appropriation? Seeing none, we'll move to our next project. I think we're skipping Placehead Park. We have The Shiloh Baptist Church window restoration phase two. Let me unmute you, Teresa. Go ahead.

[Theresa Dupont]: All right, I am joined on Zoom by, I'd like to recognize Mr. Bill McIntyre as well as Mr. Cliff Singleton who have been the project managers at Shiloh Baptist Church's restoration. They have come to the CPC seeking $150,000 to continue their window restoration project. They kind of put a pause on that one whenever they were blessed with finding a tenant and they pivoted their restoration of the building to building out ADA access and their basement space to accommodate this tenant. Now that that is well underway and nearing the finish line, we can almost see it, we are now pivoting back to focusing on the windows. These are historic stained glass windows that are very unique to the building. If you look at the outside of the building, almost every single window is stained glass. It provides a wonderful historic aesthetic to the neighborhood. These windows are in dire need of repair. Some of them are missing complete panels and wind is coming through and there's a lot of weather inundation. So this $150,000 would be used towards prioritizing some of their windows. They do need more than $150,000. So again, another organization that is always looking for hearty donations if anybody feels so inclined, but this would kickstart the window restoration efforts. And I don't want to, again, steal thunder from Bill or Cliff, but I want to recognize them if they have anything else that they would like to add. And if there's any questions from the council.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I will, if you want to raise your hands, Bill or Cliff, and I can recognize you if you want to add to what Teresa said. You got it, Bill. Bill, you may have to click a button to unmute yourself.

[Singleton]: we go. We certainly appreciated the effort of CPA to make sure that we have great access to for the community and our own services in this access program that's coming to a good end I believe and that we're ready to make sure that the building itself is conserved. These windows that we have been looking at for years and years have been examined or evaluated by architect and independent parties. But we want to probably take a look at the Palladium window that's on one Holton and the other Palladium on Bower Street and conserve those because those are more sensitive to weather and also conserving energy. So we are looking at that as a strong evaluation. We've had some small donors who the last time we did this round, they put the money on our escrow fund so we have not much dollars, but we have dollars from people who are in the community who wanted to see this happen. So we certainly appreciate your effort there to fund this program and to make sure that it looks great for the community and it improves the property values there.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Bill. Cliff, anything you want to add, Cliff? Or I'll go back to Teresa first.

[Theresa Dupont]: Sorry, I just also want to add that I was remiss and I didn't mention this. We have also partnered, I've partnered Shiloh Baptist with our economic development and our climate planner to see if there are any mass save programs that are out there. Mass save does provide some financial benefit to commercial entities that make energy improvements and this may qualify as such. So just want to point out that we're trying to find all funding opportunities for this project. And just plugging that program for anybody else who's listening right now who may benefit from the program as well.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Any questions on this project? Seeing none, thank you both. And we'll move to our next item on the list.

[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you very much. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Cliff. This will actually be our final project to review this evening. This is the World War II fountain at Oak Grove Cemetery. A lot of good stuff happening up at Oak Grove. We're doing a lot of things up there, which is excellent. As you enter Oak Grove at the main entrance off of Playstead, you may have noticed that there has been this lovely viewing and gazing fountain at the World War II memorial, but you've probably never seen the fountain actually in operation, and that's because it hasn't been in operation for well over We actually don't know, but at least 40 years. So this project in the amount of $167,800 would restore the fountain as well as, you know, do some underground utility work to actually get it functional. I do want to recognize Veronica Shaw, the Director of Veterans Affairs is online and recognize her if she wants to add anything here, but yeah, I think it's a good project.

[Zac Bears]: All right, thanks Teresa Veronica. I'll unmute you if you want to add anything.

[Veronica Shaw]: Hi, good evening everybody. I just want to thank the board for approving us so far, and I'm so excited that the angel will actually be working. It would be awesome if we could have her fully functional by Memorial Day. I know that's sort of the really, really ambitious timeline that we have talked about, but I'm so excited to have her up and functioning for all of Medford's veterans.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Director Shaw.

[Theresa Dupont]: I'd also like just to point out, just because so much research has been done into the various sculptures, that World War I, the memorial over on the stairs that CPA did fund to restore, and look out for a rededication ceremony. We're really excited to share that work there. It was the same sculptor who did the World War I memorial as did the statue here. That's Emilius Ciampa. There's so much of his artwork that is still around today, so it really should be celebrated. I just wanted to plug that. D. Morris has been doing an excellent job of of doing the research on our various aesthetic elements around the city just to make sure that we're aware of their historical value.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Any questions on this project? Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: No question, just wanted to say thank you so much Veronica and Teresa for all your work on this. And I look forward to the rededication ceremony and seeing the fountain operational.

[Veronica Shaw]: Thank you, Councilwoman. Absolutely.

[Zac Bears]: Fantastic. All right. I think that's all of our projects.

[Theresa Dupont]: Vice President Lazzaro has her hand up.

[Zac Bears]: Oh, sorry, Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you to Teresa for this beautiful presentation, really comprehensive. And I just also thought that the presentation graphics were really nice, too. And I wanted to say great work. And I really appreciate it.

[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you. I appreciate that. Trying to make things prettier.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Zara. Yeah, and this was really easy to read and understand. And I think that's really important in the materials we're putting out. I even have a color copy here, which is magic in this building sometimes.

[Theresa Dupont]: We do what we can when we can.

[Zac Bears]: I can read the charts. I do want to talk a little bit about just the general funding of the program. It looks like we're doing a lot of open space and recreation this year, and then affordable housing, and then historic preservation. And I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what the conditions are for that and where we will be going, you know, in the future. You know, these distributions change, and I just was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.

[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, of course. You know, every year we get a whole new wave of applications. Sometimes we might see one that fell through and they just couldn't get it together for the first fiscal year. They needed some more. So we might see them over. But largely, every year it's a whole fresh slate of projects. So it's hard for us to always predict are we going to see more park projects? During the pandemic, I will say when we had ARPA funding, we saw a little bit more park projects because we did have more match funds available to make small improvements. But really, it's a luck of the draw. This year, there's quite a bit in open space and recreation because we had two very large, those are two projects largely right there between Tufts and Brooks Estate. Yeah, I can't really speak to like is this a trend that we're seeing? No, I mean there's always going to be more housing needs than we have available funding for. There will always be more historic preservation needs than we have funding for. So we are held to, just so everybody is aware, a minimum of spending 10% or budgeting or reserving 10% of our annual budget to each of those three buckets, historic preservation, affordable housing, as well as open space. So we're held to reserving or spending 10% of our annual budget in each of those buckets. That remaining 65% can get dispersed however we see. We vetted the applications. There is a very rigorous review project. This was over the course of two meetings of presentation and two meetings of deliberation, so a total of approximately 12 hours of just talking about these projects went into it. We have a prioritization process that we look at. You know, there's nine members on our committee, and those are all individual voices. So when we're talking about priorities, you know, we have all these various different viewpoints here. But we come to a consensus, and this is kind of where we landed for fiscal 26. Next year, who knows? It might be a more even split. We might see something more heavier, but I hope that addressed your question, but happy to have any follow-up.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks. I just really appreciate going through that. Do we have any more questions for Manager Dupont on the CPA recommendations? Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: I just want to thank you and thank everyone who has worked so hard to put these applications together and to review them. I didn't have many questions tonight because I think these are all very important projects for our community. I think individual Councilors have spoken to individual projects but I wanted to speak to these as a totality and to say on behalf of our community, These are things that our residents feel in their everyday lives. It changes how people experience their city. And for that, I'm grateful for the hard work that you all have put into this.

[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you. I'll make sure I bring that back to the CPC. You know, this is the culmination of a year's worth of work. So I appreciate your appreciation and your time and all public comments that we've received on these things. We really appreciate it.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no further questions, is there a motion to refer these favorably to the regular council meeting for approval? On the motion of Councilor Tseng to refer the fiscal 26 recommendations for appropriation by the Community Preservation Committee to our regular meeting on February 3rd, seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Lazzaro.

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Levine. Yes. Councilor Malauulu. Yes. Councilor Schapelle. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. President Pierce.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. I have the affirmative and the negative. The motion passes. Thank you, Teresa. Thank you to everyone who applied. We're so excited to be a part of funding these amazing projects for our city. And we will be taking a final vote on February 3rd. But if you're an applicant, you don't have to come back down for that. You came down tonight, you shared your project, you answered our questions. So thank you so much. And we will see Teresa probably on the 3rd. Great.

[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you all so much.

[Zac Bears]: Is there a motion on the floor? All right, so we have a motion to adjourn. This is our Committee of the Whole meeting. If you're watching and you're looking for our regular meeting, that will be starting in about a little more than three minutes, probably five to 10 minutes, and we'll go through the rest of our agenda. But there's a motion to adjourn by Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Tseng. All those in, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Vice President Lazzaro. Yes. Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Malate. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Tseng, President Abuse.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, having the affirmative and the negative, the motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. We will see folks for our regular meeting in a few minutes. Thank you.