AI-generated transcript of City Council Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee 02-10-26

[Liz Mullane]: Okay. Good evening. Welcome to the Residential Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting on February 10th, 2026. Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, can you please call the roll?

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

[Unidentified]: Present.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Tseng? Present. And Chair Milling?

[SPEAKER_01]: Present.

[Liz Mullane]: All right. Welcome, everyone. So the first discussion item offered today is to review the City Council newsletter. So I will share my screen here. It's not showing my... Can everyone see that? All right. Any comments, any questions, anything that I can make edits on in here as we're looking at it? It was just so wonderfully written and put together.

[Justin Tseng]: I thought I was reading Shakespeare.

[Liz Mullane]: You know, I tried. I really tried. So basically just try to put together everything that happened from January from the past two city council meetings as well as adding in information around some of the committees that we had from the committee of the whole, outlining all of the grants that were given out, the special committee, the special meeting that was with the city council and the community development board and the planning and permitting committee. It took a long time because there's already a lot of work that was accomplished in the month of January, so kudos to everyone. If there are no edits or suggestions, is there a motion? Oh, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Now, I would just like to thank Chair Mullane for drafting this very nice newsletter. I'd have to go back through, but just to, and I, this comes with a caveat that I did look at it earlier today and I already offered my corrections then, but was, does this contain the events that happened since the previous newsletter or just since January? So do they contain any late December meetings? And again, I. Interesting.

[Liz Mullane]: So, it's only for the month of January.

[Matt Leming]: I need to go back further than that. Okay. And once again, I already looked through this draft beforehand, but I'm just going to very

[Justin Tseng]: Councilor Malayne, if I could, while Matt is looking through.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, no, just.

[Liz Mullane]: Yes, go ahead, Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: I just was just thinking, so for ICE, just to capitalize all of ICE, ICE, and then with the reaffirmation part, I think part of the resolution was to work with MPD and city administration to develop policies to protect the constitutional rights of residents. So maybe working that in a little bit would be helpful to understand what that part means.

[Liz Mullane]: Sure. Sorry, councilor Singh, can you say that one more time? Which part of it for some reason?

[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, it's just on this page that you're on right now. So at the January 20th meeting, the first bullet point.

[SPEAKER_01]: This one?

[Unidentified]: The one below it.

[Justin Tseng]: It's that one. this one okay yeah just to capitalize ice and then um i would probably change reaffirm to just something that explains what the resolution is a bit more maybe something like work with city administration and the medford police department to develop policies to protect the constitutional rights of residents just like putting that in there somehow.

[Liz Mullane]: Okay, I can wordsmith that a little bit.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. And then on the vacant building thing at the very end.

[Liz Mullane]: The end of the entire newsletter?

[Justin Tseng]: Yes. Yeah. Sure. I would just add in um, um, Somewhere, just add in some, like I would just add in somewhere that we're just soliciting more feedback to continue to make adjustments to the ordinance.

[Liz Mullane]: Okay, thank you.

[Justin Tseng]: And then one more note, I know this is the January newsletter, so I'm not entirely sure if we put stuff from the February 3rd meeting into it. Matt, you can kind of correct me on this point, but for the Cataldo contracts, I know, or the Cataldo ambulance stuff, I know that we also, Councilor Scarpelli and President Bears also had their resolutions. Because we haven't received the responses. So just to, I think that could be a place to note it.

[Liz Mullane]: Okay. I can do that.

[Justin Tseng]: But if we're doing February 3rd, then there, we have Anna's resolution on face masking or the identifying of as well. And there's just more, more stuff to throw into. And there's, I don't know if we want to save that for the next newsletter or,

[Liz Mullane]: in this one. Any thoughts? Do we want to keep that put that in this one or wait for the next one?

[Matt Leming]: So right now I'm draft I'm just drafting up some paragraphs to cover the two meetings from December 16th and We could make the decision to just delay the February meetings until, to delay coverage of the February meetings until the next session. I think that would make sense, but I'm about to email just, I'm just preparing some paragraphs to email coverage of the December 16th meeting, because I kind of do want that light gap from at least before this time period. in their cupboard. And so, yeah, that's just things like we passed a resolution commemorating the outgoing Vice President Collins and a couple of other things that were covered on December 16th.

[Justin Tseng]: I think that makes a lot of sense. We shouldn't over clutter this and it would be cleaner too.

[Liz Mullane]: Okay, thank you. And thank you, Councilor Leming. Any other thoughts, suggestions? Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I totally agree with putting the February ones in a later one. Let's just catch up on December. We'll finish all of January and then we'll have a clear marker.

[SPEAKER_01]: Great. Thank you.

[Liz Mullane]: All right, so it looks like I have a few edits. Thank you, everyone, for taking a look at it. Councilor Leming's gonna send me some thoughts around December, and then we should be able to hopefully finish this up and get this out shortly.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you, Councilor Mulane, for working so hard on this. It's really, really helpful to have this for our residents, and you did a great job on it. I'd like to motion to approve this for publication and circulation, pending further edits.

[Liz Mullane]: Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Callahan. All in favor? Or do I have to do a roll call? Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll?

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. Chair Maloney.

[Liz Mullane]: Yes. All right, so we can move on. So the next item on the agenda is the resolution to establish City Council listening sessions. Does anyone want to report out on any listening sessions that they've been on over the past month or so? Sure.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just want to say that I'm very excited that we are bringing this particular motion into our new term, that we're going to continue to do listening sessions. I believe that they are going to be, we're going to have more. We've learned a lot from our first two years. You know, I'm just going to reiterate what it says in here, which is very, it's a very small percentage of residents of this city that ever communicate with their city councilors. whether it's by phone, by email, by coming to the city council meetings, is a very small percentage. So I believe it is incumbent upon us to go into the community and make sure that we hear from people who might never purposefully come to us. So that's what these are for. I'm really excited to continue doing them. I'm looking forward to kind of a list of who we can reach out to. And of course, it kind of ties in with the one after this, which is doing them in wards, but we should separately from the wards ones, we should also just think about listening sessions. in the way we were thinking about them last term and where can we have them. We've had some really successful ones at the senior center. We did work through our community liaisons to have some for those communities. I think we should continue to really brainstorm and think about what other organizations we can reach out to and how we can have more of those sessions.

[Liz Mullane]: Anyone else, any other comments or anything they want to update on listening sessions? Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I did just want to say that the listening sessions and the other paper in this committee, the proposed ward meetings are likely going to be very redundant efforts. So yeah, even if I'm not going to say too much about the listening sessions, the ward meetings are kind of the exact same subject.

[Liz Mullane]: All right. Councilor Calhoun.

[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. And I would just say absolutely. I definitely think of the ward meetings as listening sessions as well. So, you know, I think having those ward meetings is going to be fantastic. We'll have them in each part of the city. So, you know, if our focus wants to be on that to make sure that those get up and running, and meanwhile we can also kind of in the back of our minds think about any other kinds of listening sessions that we can do, I'm very happy with that. They're all listening sessions.

[Liz Mullane]: Great, thank you. Any other comments on the listening sessions?

[SPEAKER_01]: Seeing none, do we have a motion? Oh, sure.

[Patrick Clerkin]: should know that by now. Patrick Clerken, 14 Bennett Place, and I'm excited about these. My comments are basically, first, I think one of the things with a lot of city communications in the past has just been there's some great stuff out there, but just because it gets put out there doesn't mean that people know about it. So I think aside from hosting the listening sessions, the other big thing is how do we Be aware of the listening sessions in the first place and how do we kind of funnel people to them to some extent. And I think that's partly I'm sure you already have a degree of inventory of some existing city channels for that, but that might also involve creating some new ones. I don't know if there's much physical infrastructure left, so one of the things that I've noticed is there's a generational divide, and it can be pretty stark at times. Digital content, it's really great, but that can have its own problem, where just because it's out there, it might be stashed away in a part of the city website that no one ever really looks at. But then there's also the physical side of it, which is a lot of people don't use the digital stuff, so how can you create notifications about these meetings that aren't digital? The other thing I wanted to mention was I think that what I noticed was that Medford gets more attention in the north-south dimension than it does in the east-west dimension. And that's partly because it's just like, me personally, I think that it's, there's more problems in south Medford because it's more urban. There's more money and votes in north Medford. And then there's kind of, I guess on the east-west axis, it's just not as extreme in either dimension. And plus, over near Wellington, it's just harder to find places to meet with people. So that's stuff that I've noticed. But I am excited about this. And if there's ways that the public can help you to bring people in, let us know. Thank you.

[Liz Mullane]: Great, thank you. And just to say yes, would definitely love input, thoughts, suggestions, any other ways that we can reach people. I hear you about some people are on different parts of social media, some people are looking at things that are more physical too, so open to any and all suggestions to try to encourage as many people to attend as possible, so thank you. All right. Any other public comments either in the chambers or on Zoom?

[SPEAKER_01]: Seeing none, is there a motion?

[Matt Leming]: Motion to keep the paper in committee.

[SPEAKER_01]: Great. Mr. Clerk, can you call the roll?

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. And Chair Maloney.

[Liz Mullane]: Yes. Five in favor, zero against. We will keep it in committee. All right. And then moving to our next item is. The resolution to schedule neighborhood ward meetings hosted by the city council. I'm really excited about this. I think this would be a great way for us to be able to get into each of the different wards, to be able to meet with residents, to hear things that are happening for them specifically in Medford, then also within the ward that we might be able to address. But looking forward to kind of talking this through, hearing more suggestions and thoughts. from other Councilors as well as any other type of public participation. Any comments so far? All right, Councilor.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm really excited to get started on the process of planning the ward meetings. I think it would be productive for this committee to set a schedule for which wards we want to do, as well as locations in those wards, and then sort of brainstorm a bit of a format for how those ward meetings will Some of my initial thoughts on it were try to make the ward meetings consist of some kind of an initial social hour, kind of try to make an event out of them. I'm not sure what the budget is for these or if there will ever be one. Try to but just make it so that a thing where people can end up, you know talking at them and then We will Probably need some kind of a process for setting the agenda at these ward meetings just figuring out what issues are going to be discussed so if there's anything so I know that for Ward 8, for instance, probably Medford Square. Upcoming zoning changes could be one topic of discussion at the ward meetings. Trying to addressing residents' concerns about ICE, since that's another hot button issue, but just really trying to find things that both residents are concerned about and issues that are very local to that particular neighborhood I think would be would be productive. I think it's also important to maybe have, try to commit to having one ward meeting and the one or two ward meetings in the very near future designates certain Councilors to put on and run them and then figure out what works, what didn't. And from there, sort of use that to adjust meetings in the future, because I imagine we could be trying a number of things which may or may not work for these meetings. And we'll have to come back and sort of say that. One thing that could be tricky, of course, is advertisement and finding a model for doing that. Normally when the city advertises something it's blasted out to to the entire city And the council normally doesn't isn't able to use the resources that the city administration it relies on to Advertise for these for these particular events So we will likely need some assistance from the clerk and just putting these on the calendar making it trying to get it out to as many people as we can within those particular neighborhoods. And yeah, so that was just a long list of things to consider when organizing these. But I think we should probably come out of this meeting tonight with a tentative period of time that we want to put on the first ward meeting and determine which ward it should take place in or one or two that we should have in the near future.

[Liz Mullane]: Great. Thank you, Councilor Leming. No, I agree. It would be helpful to have a schedule or a plan of where we want to start, obviously sooner rather than later, and knowing that the summer months we won't have many people, so we'll have to count that out as opportunities. I just wanted to clarify one of your comments, saying that the first part of it would be kind of a social and event. Were you imagining this would only be in person? Would each of these different locations have a component, an AV component to be able to include people that aren't able to be there in person as well?

[Matt Leming]: I guess in my head I always imagined award meeting as being an in-person thing, but now that you said it that way, it probably should have a Zoom component to it. So if it's logistically possible, then sure, it should be hybrid, but that is a little bit difficult to set up. I mean, a ward meeting could be something that takes place in... City Hall, like a formal meeting. It could also be sitting at a restaurant with a couple of neighbors at a table. So the format for these things could be something we might have to experiment with and figure out what works well and what doesn't.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Yeah, I'm going to say that it might be good I might suggest we do them separately. Like hybrid meetings are very difficult to make work. Very, very difficult. But we could have an in-person and a hybrid for each ward. Or sorry, in-person and a Zoom virtual for each ward. And that gives people the opportunity to come in person if they're more of an in-person person. If they'd rather do it on Zoom or they're not available or whatever, then they can do the Zoom meeting. I don't think they have to be just one. I mean, some people won't be able to make it whatever time we choose anyway. So having a couple might be nice. One of the things I'm wondering... By the way, if it is in person, I think it's a great idea to see if we can get even the tiniest budget for like... you know, some snacks, something to make it, you know, fun and social. And I'm also thinking that while I want to try to ensure that we reach people in the wards that have, that tend to have low voter turnout, like wards seven and one and the ones that tend not to be as engaged, I want to make sure that we do those but if we do them first and those are kind of the ones we're experimenting on. So maybe it's better if we don't do them first but we do them after we've had a couple of successful ones in words where there are more people just trying to think of like, in terms of which ones we do for second and third. I mean, of course, anything, maybe we should just roll dice, because any way we decide, people are gonna feel like, oh, you chose them first. And maybe some sort of random way of selecting would actually be better. And then I do think we should have at least one in-person. So we should, for each ward, we should figure out a place, and if that's a restaurant or a coffee shop. That would be great. I think, you know, there's the West Medford Community Center, there are churches, there are places, I think, that, you know, could be open to this kind of event. And that's something we could decide beforehand, I think, making sure that it's somewhere that everyone feels welcome and has access to. So.

[Liz Mullane]: Great. Thank you. Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: It's been helpful hearing from everyone. I think it helps frame the thoughts and the discussion. I think it does make sense in terms of ordering to also just, as Councilor Leming alluded to, look at the zoning timeline as well. I know we have Wellington on there as a separate thing. And so it makes, it will probably make sense to do like Ward 7 a little bit, not during it, but right before that, for example, So maybe that can guide our thoughts a little bit too. With regards to like wards one and seven where we see lower voter turnout, I think that it does make a lot of sense to try to gin that up a little bit by treating those places like a priority for us to get into because very often we're kind of Um. Hearing a little bit less from those neighborhoods and the goal of these is to make sure that everyone is getting an equal voice in government as well. Um. But, um, I would. I would lean towards saying that maybe we do it like third or fourth, for example. I rather the first because I think we want to. I think import the best lessons that we've learned so far, and then I'm sure I'm not opposed to hybrid meetings. I just, given, you know, for example, what happened to the Roberts, just how difficult technically it was running that meeting last year, I wonder if it would make sense to just have To check if the locations that we're going to do these meetings are actually well suited for hybrid. And if not, maybe it would make actually more sense to do an in person and in and on a zoom version of it. I don't really see the harm in having more meetings and. They are distinct skills as well to run those two different types of meetings. They, you know, require us to do different things. And so I think that makes a lot, that would make a lot of sense to just explore the list of venues. Councilor Loeb, I'm not completely sure if you have the list ready or if there were specific places you had in mind, more feedback for us to get, but but I think we should look at that list too. With regards to just like a lot of the lower turnout wards, a lot of them have big apartment blocks in them and I think it would make sense for us to try to set up a meeting in an apartment block too. You know the river's edges, the Medford Housing Authority buildings, to try to work with people, the apartment associations or anyone running the building, because I think those folks are people who often do get neglected and feel left behind in city government. And so it'd be, I think, helpful for us to get some face time with them as well. Those are just some preliminary thoughts that I have right now.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Great. Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: In terms of the order that the wards should go in, I have a list of pairs that I think should list the general order. So I think that wards eight and four should probably be first on the list, mainly because we have rezoning for Medford Square and then shortly after the Tufts Institutional zoning and Boston Avenue coming up, so those should be very early candidates on the list. And after that, it's a little bit more flexible, maybe five or six after that, and then one in seven, once we have sort of, by the time we get to one in seven, we have a lot of practice doing those, and then two and three last. So that's my, I think those are the general chunks that we could do them in, but the only thing that I'm married to in that is just the idea that eight and four should probably be the first two that we do.

[Liz Mullane]: Great. Thank you, Councilor Leming. That does make sense to be able to line it up, especially with bigger things that we're going to be discussing with the City Council that correlate with each of these different wards. So just so that I'm hearing this correctly, we're going to do in-person. a Zoom one separate, at least at the start, to see how that goes. So I'm assuming if we start with awards eight and four, or however we do that, we'll still do the in-person and the hybrid within that same month, so we can make sure that it's not as confusing if we're separating meetings like this for when people are able to join us. Does that sound reasonable? And that we can start generating a list of where we see the ability to host in each one of these different wards to be able to get people to come join us in person. And each of the Councilors will be in charge of kind of handling or running it, or is that within the committee members themselves to be able to do? We welcome any suggestions on that as well. Councilor Lohmmann.

[Matt Leming]: I would personally like the two-for-two model, so we have a pair of Councilors that's in charge of the ward meetings for eight and four, just because I want to, if I'm gonna run a ward meeting, then I wanna make sure it's more than just me at that meeting, so I just spread the responsibility out a little bit, have a buddy to bounce ideas off of and just help you run the meeting. the listening sessions that we've done. The ones that I've liked the most have been the ones where I have somebody there with me also helping to field questions or facilitate. It's my personal preference. I also... I am a little hesitant about the idea of committing at this point to doing one in-person, one Zoom meeting for each ward, just because that, I mean, I know it sounds simple saying it here, but saying that we're going to plan 16 meetings for over the next two years is quite a lot, and that's in addition to everything else that we already do. Yeah, hopefully when in 2027 when there are 11 Councilors that will be a little bit more work spread out to do the ward meetings.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you, Councilwoman. No, I agree with you. I think that would be quite a bit of meetings considering all of the other meetings as well that are on the calendar and I don't want it to be confusing. So we can kind of and I do agree having at least two or having just two Councilors at each of those different meetings. You have someone to bounce stuff off of and to be able to help answer any kind of questions or I think it's a great way to kind of spread that out so we can start looking at how to disseminate that between each of the different wards and what that looks like. I did want to get back to your other point, though, about agenda items. It does make sense to maybe have some initial standing agenda items that we'd want to make consistent through each of the wards, but then also offering it up for each of the wards to have time to be able to either send something in that's specific or be able to bring something up obviously when we're in the meeting themselves. Does that sound like something that makes the most sense to be able to kind of at least keep some of it consistent but also allow for any kind of flexibility that may be a little bit more ward specific?

[Matt Leming]: I do like the idea of fielding feedback with a few weeks before the meetings from residents so that their concerns can help dictate the agenda instead of it sort of coming top down. I think that's an effective way of doing things. It's just we will have to advertise as widely as possible that these are happening.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you.

[Anna Callahan]: I also want to emphasize that, you know, in some of the listening sessions that I've done, it can happen that, you know, a couple of people who already are the ones who come to City Council all the time, and we have heard from them many times, They can dominate the entire meeting. So I think what's really important in these meetings is facilitating. I once did a meeting where almost the entire meeting was dominated by two people who come to City Council all the time, and when that meeting was over, I got a ride. Someone asked if, you know, they were like, please, can I give you a ride? Oh, I gave someone a ride. That's what it was. I gave someone a ride in my car and they said, that meeting was so hostile. I didn't feel like I could even open my mouth. And then they started talking to me about the things they wanted to talk about. So I think it's really important that when we facilitate these, we make sure that we hear from everyone, right? That people who are maybe not talking at least have an opportunity and that we, like what I find can be really helpful is, at the beginning to say, hey, we're here to talk about housing, to talk about zoning, to talk about school funding. We come up with a list that is fairly comprehensive for people. the conversation is being dominated by a few people, at some point you've got to say, hey, great, I really appreciate you bringing these issues to us. We just want to make sure that everyone here has an opportunity to ask questions and to speak their minds. let's go ahead and have a step up, step back policy, right? I don't know if you guys have heard of that, but that's something that sometimes people do is they just at the very beginning, they say, hey, we're going to, you know, it's our goal to hear from everyone here. We're going to have a step up, step back policy so that if you've been stepping up and asking some questions, then, you know, we may ask for some of those folks who have not. We're going to may ask them to step up and for you to step back just to kind of be, there should be some active facilitation, I think, in these conversations.

[Matt Leming]: I 100% agree with my colleague that at the listening sessions that we've been to, some of them, yes, have been dominated by people that we already have heard their concerns many times at City Council meetings. That is definitely a dynamic that can occur. echo what she said after the meetings people have come up to me and ask their actual questions and people who I know and I also know that people who like I casually know in a social context who might have happened to come to those meetings who've never been to City Council meeting before were shocked. at that, that was what we had to, that was the nature of these meetings. I will say that my natural personality is much less charming than Councilor Callahan, so I have trouble facilitating these meetings sometimes without taking residents off. One of my strategies for doing, for handling that is just changing the format of the meetings, and this is something that I'm giving, you know, that I've thought about and have some half-baked solutions to, which I will share at this meeting being recorded on YouTube. One of them is that if it's, if it is an audience meeting, like a chair audience panel, which has been the format of some of the listening sessions before, then it sort of sets itself up to be adversarial, especially for people who are used to the adversarial nature that city council meetings can sometimes take. having it be at like a large restaurant or the Great American Beer Hall or something like that where residents know that they are perfectly free to talk could be an alternate, could be an alternative to having this sort of panel style board meeting that we typically do. So I'm sort of leaning towards having a, like trying to host the board meeting at just a table on a Sunday in the Great American Beer Hall, and if somebody comes there super angry or wanting to dominate a conversation, they're just not able to do that quite as much at like a very social setting like that. So that is, that's one thing I'm thinking about, and there are other, So I think there are multiple ways to sort of address this issue, but it very much will be a dynamic moving forward with some of these sessions.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. And I agree with you. I definitely want it to be a place where people feel open and able to discuss any different type of issue. And, you know, when I mentioned just having standing agenda items, I don't mean to ever stop people from adding other ideas to it. I just thought that maybe it would give a little bit more structure to what people would be expecting, that these are some of the topics, and that we always are open to hearing any other kind of thoughts. So, you know, I appreciate that, and I appreciate kind of the setup and how we can approach it to make people feel as comfortable as possible to be able to come and speak with us as well. Council Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. The other thing that I have brought up before, and I understand there's some mix of opinions on this, but I think it's important. To me, the idea of a listening session is that we are listening to the people who arrive. We are listening to the residents. And I think, unfortunately, in these more contentious ones, the way that it ends up being is a resident will, like, demand answers from us. So they ask the questions and we answer. And it's just all about what our opinions are. And then it's they like it or they don't like it. So to me, what a listening session is, is we're asking questions. How many people live on a road that's not paved well? Who here has had trees that have been a stump for a long period of time? What is your experience of your kids in the schools? Do they need to take a bus? Us asking and finding out, how many people here are renters? You know, has your rent gone up like crazy like, you know, finding out from them what their lives are like and what they struggle with. Oh, I see there's a lot of senior citizens here like how many of you, you know, are having trouble getting around the city. Do you miss the transportation option that we had during coven. with the van that was going around, like us asking them questions, and I think there could be a balance of the two. So, you know, you can even be like, the first half of this will be us asking you questions, and then the second half, so please hold your questions, because the second half, we would love to hear your questions for us. So, I think that can help people feel like, oh, their questions will be answered, You know, we're not avoiding their questions, but we simply want to make sure that we also are able to, like, find out from residents, like, hey, how is this affecting you? Have you seen any changes because of the three, like, road and control ordinances that we passed? Those sorts of things.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. I think those are great points, Councilor Callahan, too, because I do want to make sure that people, that they're not being talked at, that we're feeling more of a conversation and that people feel more comfortable sharing their feelings on it. Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, my microphone was accidentally already on from the previous time, but Councilor Scarpelli has his.

[Liz Mullane]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you. I appreciate everybody sharing their input with this and I like the fact that we're looking at going into the neighborhoods because I think that We saw when Council Falco at the time moved the community policing meetings to the neighborhoods, we really had a better turnout and really got to listen to people, but I don't want to be the, you know, like I said, I'm really trying to be positive, but as the meeting's going on, I'm getting texts from people that are watching on, that are just questioned. If it's a true listening session, I can understand going into that neighborhood and give some options of what they want to talk about, but then letting our residents talk, I think that's what is a little confusing of having the listening session. I also understand that we don't want people to dominate meetings and that's up to the council that's running that meeting to really control that dialogue, but at the same time, Is it a true listening meeting if we're going to control the dialogue? So I just, like I said, I think that this is a great idea. I think this is a process where we're bringing our body to the people and I think I've been you know, I've been negatively going at that with, especially with the zoning, but, um, I don't know. I just wanted us to consider that just a little bit more that, you know, having those meetings and, you know, wherever they may be, it could be at, at a, at a restaurant and just sitting with five or 10 neighbors and just listening. Cause we all know a lot of times when we hear. we have concerns in neighborhoods, we don't know until we get the phone call, right? So, and then we realize how that one concern doesn't just resonate in that one neighborhood, but throughout the community, and then we're now putting on our leadership hats to make some real substantive changes. So, you know, I just caution us not to really, I think just the innocence of it, of having, a listening session and going into the neighborhoods. Just think trying that alone. And when we get there, maybe share some topics that can get the topics that conversation started. But I think that if we're going to put limitations and talk about some of the things I've heard tonight from some of us that we're just going to turn people away, guys. They're just not going to really not going to resonate to what the intent was, I thought. So again, I appreciate the input. I just wanted to share my thoughts and what someone shared with me. So thank you.

[Liz Mullane]: No, thank you, Councilor Scarpelli, appreciate that. Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, I think Councilor Scarpelli's points are well taken. In my experience at the neighborhood meetings or at the listening sessions, really like, I think people are really, feel really free to tell us whatever they want, even if it's really critical. And we certainly I've certainly heard that at meetings and I am sure other Councilors who've done the. The meetings have heard that as well. It really is, I think, in practice a very open time for folks to just bring whatever is on their minds to us. And then they might have questions for us, and we can give our answers, at least speaking as individual Councilors and not as on behalf of others. But in practice, it seems it's always been, to me, a very free-flowing place. And to the extent that there might be impressions of controlling discourse or anything, which has not been true to my experience. I think a lot of it is just making sure that residents have an equal chance to participate, to speak, and that they feel like they're free to speak as well. And like you noted, it's down to the facilitator to do that.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Councilor Lemon.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, my colleagues' points are very well taken and I would like to clarify that the intent of these conversations is not to say that if residents come and they want to talk, we're going to try to silence them. That's not what's going on. The concern I had with the listening session, which I think was reflected in my colleagues and Councilor Callahan's remarks earlier was not that we were concerned, not so much that we were concerned that somebody was bringing their concerns to us because we can hear concerns all day, every day. The issue is when other residents that attended that same session come up later and say they feel like they didn't have the chance to speak. It was their first time going to that. It might have been their first time coming to an event with one of their city Councilors. And they feel like they came there with their own set of concerns. and they didn't get to express it in that time period. And that is the situation that I personally would like to avoid. And I fully agree that just changing the format could be a solution where instead of having it be some overly moderated event, it could be a more informal setting in a restaurant as was suggested. It could feel like a much more friendly atmosphere that people come to something where it's set up to be listening and discussion rather than an event where people feel like the intent is to have too much moderation there. So that's the point that I wanted to make. Thank you very much.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I know we're pushing up on time. I was just hoping that we could look at wards 8 and 4 since those are the ones we're thinking of doing first and just brainstorm a few possible locations that we could reach out to and see if those might work. I think obviously in 8 is Colleen's which would not be a bad place. They've had plenty of, you know, city councilors up there. Their space I think that might be a good one also the Great American Beer Hall. So those be a couple for that space in for what we got in for this Goldilocks. I don't know them. I'm just trying to think of what are some... Oh, there's Tamper, right, is in four. Isn't Tamper in four? There's Danish Pastry in four. Danish Pastry, I think, is also... Because it's right there next to Tamper, so Danish Pastry and Tamper are both in four. I'm just trying to think of some options that we can reach out to.

[Matt Leming]: For eight, honestly, I would go with the Great American Beer Hall, just because that has pretty big tables in it. Colleen's is also, is Colleen's in four? I'd have to look, because some of these cutoffs, okay, or sorry, eight, I think it is, yeah. But yeah, I think they do have a lot of great options. My concerns with 4 is that there tend to be a lot of cafes along Boston Avenue, but some of them can be kind of small, so it depends on how many folks we want to get in there. I was also thinking about maybe Tufts has some space, but I'm not sure who to reach out to for that.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. No, I think these are, I think it's a good suggestion to get started with boards eight and four and putting together some ideas and suggestions. And to anyone watching or listening, if they also have some thoughts and suggestions of some good places, you know, please feel free to email me and let me know. We can start putting that together. I know we are cutting close on time, but I do want to open up to any public comment in the room or on Zoom. Right now I have someone in the room.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clark in 14 Bennett Place. So three things that are really more logistical. I think it's a really good idea to start with a pilot program in four and eight. I think that's savvy. I think standardization is a good concept, but also keeping in mind it's like when you dig a hole in the ground and it's like, okay, there's rocks, there's soft clay, there's a pipe, there's a skeleton. when you look at Medford in these random, not random, but you look at the political boundaries of the different wards, you're going to get different pockets of different things in that cross section. So you're going to get pockets of frustration, you're going to get pockets of basically that are information deserts where people have no idea what's going on, you're going to get pockets of people who are already very tuned in and enthusiastic. So within those random cross sections, you're going to get A random cross section of that random cross section that actually shows up at the meeting and so I think keeping in mind that. From my experience, what I've seen is there's 3 general types of people that show up interest wise. There's people looking for a support group. There's people looking for a think tank and there's people looking for an action network. and the support group people are more inclined towards really wanting to build reconciliation and open a dialogue, and the think tank people are like policy wonk, like, okay, how do we do this? What can we think about and what can we implement? And then the action network people are thinking to themselves, like, I don't wanna be too woo-woo here, I don't wanna be too brainy here, I just wanna start moving and getting stuff done. So I think once you start interacting with people, getting a sense of how those people talk, and you don't just necessarily fall into one of those categories, you could be multiple, but I think talking to different people in the way that they seem to be inclined to want to engage will help reduce some of these animosities that emerge. The other thing is I think it will really help through that process, I think you can uncover some potential super volunteers in each of these wards that can really help extend your reach because to Councilor Leming's point earlier, there's seven of you. Maybe in 2027 when there's 11, it will be more spread out. I think you need leverage within the wards and then the final thing is. Echoing my point from earlier, I think actually getting the word out about this stuff, some events that are already on the calendar, cleanup day is going to be May 2nd, and that's already open on the mayor's tab on the city website. If people host cleanup spots in the city in the different wards, that could be a good mechanism for actually meeting some of these people and getting word out to them, and maybe they could be some of those volunteers. Also, block parties in May, I don't know, if there's any rhythm to how people typically set up block parties, but there's kind of a month period between winter and summer where people are out and about, and maybe that can be leveraged too. So, thank you.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you very much. Any other public comments on Zoom? Okay, seeing none, it sounds like we Great. Thank you. It sounds like we've kind of started putting together a little bit of a plan and of a start working within wards eight and four. And you know also to Councilor Scarpelli's points as well you know we do we really want to make sure everyone feels Welcome, and voices are heard, so any thoughts, suggestions, again, please feel free to reach out to me, and I'm happy to collect them and add them in as we start kind of putting together more of a plan. So I think maybe we continue putting this together. identifying for wards eight and four and just confirming that we have the right spots for it. A little bit of a strategy in terms of the advertising plan for it and leaving it open enough for enough time for anyone to reach out. Love the idea of any super volunteers. So certainly in each of these different wards, if you would be willing to help, you know, please again reach out to me and we can start kind of putting that in there as well. So is there any motion on the floor at this point in order to try to keep this moving? Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: I move to keep the paper and committee adjourned.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a second? Second. Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll?

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Kelly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli.

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Tseng.

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Chair Maloney.

[Liz Mullane]: Yes. Five in favour, zero against. Meeting is adjourned.