Climate Equity Council: Every Other Week Trash Transition - 2026-02-11

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3-flash-preview from the transcript below, which is the record. It may be incomplete or wrong; it does not report votes. Every item links to the moment it began.

The council discussed Medford's shift toward every-other-week trash collection and the expansion of the city's composting program. Members reviewed strategies for community education on waste reduction and scheduled upcoming outreach events.

0:02 Approval of Minutes and Next Meeting Date — The council approved the minutes from the previous meeting and scheduled the next meeting for February 18.
0:56 Waste Management and Composting Policy Update — Director of Planning, Development, and Sustainability Alicia Hunt explained the history of Medford's trash contracts and the plan to transition to every-other-week trash pickup by 2027 to incentivize composting. The discussion addressed the 'pay-as-you-throw' state grant and the need for improved public messaging regarding waste disposal limits.
19:00 Waste Reduction Strategies and Demographic Outreach — Council members discussed addressing waste management pain points for large families, seniors, and non-English speaking communities. The group explored specific waste reduction tactics, including cloth diapering support networks and the use of latching bins for dog waste to manage odors and pests.
42:01 Communication Methods for Renters and Residents — The committee discussed the difficulties of reaching renters with physical mailers and proposed using digital channels, student-led video projects, and welcome packets for new residents. Plans were made to coordinate with Medford Community Media to broadcast educational segments on electricity and waste.
1:07:20 Review of Upcoming Community Events — The council reviewed upcoming dates for Black History Month celebrations, Lunar New Year, Haitian Flag Day, and several National Grid and ABCD utility bill checkup events. Members discussed integrating interactive environmental games into multicultural night activities to engage children in recycling education.
1:28:36 Sustainability and Open Space Updates — Staff provided updates on the Electrify Medford program, the launch of pollinator gardens under the 'Adopt-a-Site' program, and upcoming free tree distributions for specific neighborhoods. The group also briefly discussed environmental concerns regarding PFAS chemicals in artificial turf and the maintenance challenges of natural grass fields.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: All in favor? Aye. So we accept the minutes from the last meeting. And let's plan for the next one.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so I had thought that there was going to be that patient advocacy event on the 18th, but it sounds like that's going to be the 11th instead. So we can keep this meeting on the 18th, for anybody still.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, we have you up next anyway, so you can jump right into it. Great.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I'm Alicia Hunt. I think I kind of know most of you. Is there anybody besides Will on the Zoom? No. OK. Hi, Will. You're behind us on the screen. It's like I have to look like this to look at you. So I'm Felicia Hunt. I'm the Director of Planning, Development, and Sustainability. And Will is an intern working with me. Knowing that he's the only one on the Zoom, I'm not going to keep looking to address the Zoom too.

Actually, you guys, I don't like most of you, but like, can you tell me your names and what what role it is we play? I know we've been on a lot of zoomies together too, but it kind of can like, I get lost in it.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: So I think it would just be really helpful to place it. Yeah. You want to just go around?

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. So I'm sure about I, uh, I work as the Financial Security Connector in the outreach office, and I'm also the co-chair for the Equity Council.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: I'm June, the Senior and Disability Connector. Stacey Moore, Community Liaison.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Natasha Barr, Community Liaison for the Haitian Community, and I work alongside Darlene Rainer.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Yes, I've known Darlene for many years. One before this program started.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Yes, yes. I'm Samia, the Family and Youth Connector. And my name is Hella. I'm the new food systems director. I started a month ago.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Oh, great. Good to know that. And for those of you who might not know, Alicia is the director of the planning of health and sustainability. We definitely have not met. I think I have met everybody else here. But it's also, I sometimes forget who has which liaison role. And so it's helpful for me to be reminded of that. And for Will, who is working with me on this, you can hear. Do you want to introduce yourself at all? Do you want to say hi? Can he unmute himself?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, I don't know if you can hear me too well, but fantastic. Yeah, my name is Will, interning with Alicia here to work specifically on waste management to see if we can make a sustainable and equitable waste policy for Medford.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Right. So Will's been a resident of Medford. He joined the Energy Committee several years ago. He became the chair of the Energy Committee a couple of years ago. And then actually this past fall, he started at Tufts in the planning school. And that's actually where a lot of our graduate programs, where a lot of the interns in my office come from. Um, and when we realized that he was interested in interning in my office in general, but specifically to help on the waste work, um, and he already knew what was going on and was kind of plugged into the community. We realized that this was going to be a good fit. So you won't see me taking a lot of notes on what you guys say, because I've asked Will to do that. I would be hired intern among many other things. So, um, so. My office, Planning, Development and Sustainability, obviously Brenda works in my office as a climate planner. Before she did that, before I did this role, I was the Director of Energy and Environment for the city. And the way it used to work back pre-2020 was that with trash and recycling, if there was something that we wanted new in the city or a change, then I usually spearheaded that. So when you saw the green toters show up in Medford Square at the businesses. That was like a project that I did with interns, but DPW manages the operations of the waste program. And at some point after, so in 2020, Mayor Brianna asked me if I would merge sustainability with all of our planning work and economic development and housing and sort of incorporate it all together and bring on more staff. So that's how I sort of ended up in this role. And then at some point we actually promoted Tim, he was our city engineer, to McGivern to be DPW commissioner. And Tim is actually very innovative and very thoughtful. And he actually has been really gung-ho and able to take on a lot of innovation and change throughout DPW, and waste was one of those areas. And so I kind of backed off a little, but then we realized that we needed to, that the trash contracts for the City of Medford were coming to an end. And at that point, just because I think the background is helpful, in 2020 when Mayor Brianna took over once the COVID settled, Maybe it was 2021. She said, can we do something about composting? So at first, we put out to bid, basically, a composting program where residents would pay for it themselves, but they'd get a discounted rate because we would have one vendor that we recommended, and we would help promote it. And then they would charge our residents less than they would charge, say, Somerville's residents, because we were, as a city, supporting and working with them on this program. And so I had done that, brought in Garbage to Garden, and I worked with the health department on that. they like approve the bins. So we have the green bins with little locking lids. And you might see some communities have smaller like painters buckets with locking lids for compost. And actually our health department said, no, we don't want those because people can't close those right. And rats get into those. And those are always the rat chewed ones that they've been seeing in other communities. So our health department said, no, those aren't allowed in Medford, only these larger containers. that people can, that are easier to work. So we kind of did that. And then the waste contract was coming up. And so Tim asked me to partner with him on it. And so we worked on this project together with the idea that he, his job is operations, but he cares passionately about sustainability and the environment.

My job is sustainability and environment, but I care about the operations. Like I've always said to him, I can't, I don't want a system that's going to break. And so we agreed that if we partnered on this, he would center operations, and I would center sustainability, and we would balance each other, and we would work together on it. So occasionally, we'll have a debate back in one of our offices, but then we'll work things out and come out, but that's because we work real well together. So it's even hard to come up with the whole thing, but we basically worked with the mayor to have a trash work, workforce, work group. I can't, I'm not, I'm blanking on the word, right? Like, so a committee basically that would work with us, task force. And so we asked, we put out a call and we asked people to sign up for that and to work with us on it and to talk about it. We did community meetings, we did outreach, we did surveys, and these were people from all different points of view and parts of the community to talk about what do we want to see in a trash program. What was that? I'm going to say 2022, but I could be off a little bit. I could search my emails or the web page and find it, but give or take. And so then we put out an RFP and we said, you know, we need people, we need somebody to pick up the trash, pick up the recycling, do the yard waste. We would also like a proposal for compost. We'd like a separate proposal for compost with the idea that it would complement our trash and Recycling with the idea that the city would like to see if we can afford to just pay for composting for everybody. We actually asked for a separate another thing. We asked we put out in our as the 3rd item was hard to recycle things. We were looking for a vendor who would do mattresses and bulky items and. you know, paint and all those things that are really hard to recycle. Interesting thing is nobody bid on that part of it. Nobody gave us a proposal. So we got three proposals on the composting. And interestingly enough, only waste management bid on the trash and recycling portion of it.

And they have been our, they've literally been the people who've been servicing that for, for As long as we've had an outside contractor picking up trash. They had a different name back in the originally. So, if you're like, oh, but it was a different company. They're the only company we've ever had, but they've changed names at some point. 1 of the things that we understand from sort of talking to people and talking to some people at who is basically their big competitor is that. Waste management knows what it takes to do the job, so they could give us a very tight bid. They could give us a cost that they knew was a real cost, and it was the lowest they could go, but they would make profit on it because they already knew what it costs to run the program because they were already doing it. and that Casella would have to inflate the numbers some because they'd be guessing and they didn't have the experience of waste management to be able to give us really accurate numbers so they couldn't undercut themselves and then lose money over time. So I thought that was really interesting. But anyhow, so we decided to work with waste management and one of the proposals that came through was this idea that if we were actually rolling out composting and everybody was using it, Then we could move to every other week trash because all your stinky smelly stuff would be in the compost. And we kind of said, well, we know. that there are people who will compost. We knew there were already 1,000 people in Medford paying for compost pickup. And we're like, well, so there's easy. And we know there's a group of people who if you tell them it's free, they'll do it. And then there are some people who could be talked into it. And then there's another group of people who would have to be heavily persuaded. And we know there's a group of people Our guess was like 10%, like another 1,000 at the other end. So there are about 20,000 households serviced by this program. We knew there was about 1,000 people probably, statistically speaking, who would never compost no matter what we did. And that was just not happening. But we get that. And so we said, well, let's start with rolling out a program where Hey, this is amazing. Cool. We're offering you this free new program. Sign up to pick it up, pick up the early adopters. And then we would start to use some like other people in the community that help outreach it and a little bit of peer pressure. And you're starting to see them. Your neighbors are having them and actually garbage to garden. One of the reasons we chose them because the prices were really tight between them and Black Earth was that they were prepared to send out street teens in Medford. and people who would go door to door and talk to people and knock on their doors and say, hey, you have this program, here's how it works, would you like your free bin? It's a city thing. And they were prepared to do that, and they were prepared to do all the marketing and outreach with us. And so we knew that would, and we said, but then this later pace, at some point, you need a stick, right? You have your carrots, and at some point, you're gonna have to have a stick. And the stick is when we say to people, we're gonna go to every other week trash, You don't want stinky trash at your house. Put it in the compost bin and you won't have the stinky trash. And that would be that push. So from our perspective, Tim and I, we have been working this program all along. And when we have been not talking about every other week trash, it's because we were pushing the compost. We were doing the happy side first and then we figured we'd do the hard side. And our big mistake is that we didn't have a really good marketing team looking at how did we present the Every Other Week trash? We didn't have somebody, so we had marketing people working on the composting, but we did not involve them in how do we present the Every Other Week trash. And that was presented very badly, and we realized it was presented very badly, and we kind of looked at each other going, why are people surprised? We had public meetings in 2022 and 23 talking about this, and we realized that, Residents have, while we live and breathe it, residents don't, and they don't pay attention. And the people who heard us talk about it back then put it out of their heads and forgot about it, didn't think about it. Many of them didn't even remember we'd ever talked about it. I've had people go back and watch the meetings and go, oh, well, you did talk about it. And we're like, yeah, but yes, and we've been working towards these milestones. And so we also had percentages that we felt that we needed Um, a certain number of people subscribe to the composting program in order to feel that we were hitting our numbers. And the goal was that we would have 12,000 people signed up, um, before we would.

At least so in order to switch to every other week trash, uh, we needed to give waste management notice at least one year in advance that we were doing that because they needed a year to change their hiring and their trucks and who was working for them. They needed a year's notice. So actually, the original plan was that in the summer of 2026, we would switch to every other week trash. And last summer, Tim and I looked at the numbers, and we said, we don't have enough people composting. We have good momentum, and more and more people are composting every week, but we don't have enough, so we can't do it in 2026, we'll do it in 2027. We told the mayor that, and she's like, okay, and we're like, should we talk about it? And there was this whole election. And the idea that we would start talking about that, even once the mayor knew she didn't have an opponent, then it would feel like we were putting our thumbs on the scales of the city council election. So we're like, well, we don't want to start making a lot of noise about this. People are going to be screaming that we're trying to fix the election. We're trying to put that pressure. So we're like, well, we'll wait. And then we found out that we were getting this grant, and the state was calling it a pay-as-you-throw grant. And they were going to put out a press release. We were like, oh, Can you imagine the Medford reaction, the Medford people, if the state puts out a press release that Medford's getting a pay-as-you-throw grant for $200,000? They'll lose their minds. We have to get out ahead of this, and we have to explain what pay-as-you-throw is, and that it's to help with the composting, and it's to help us move to every other week trash. And that's what we were thinking about, and we didn't know when they were gonna put that press release out, but we honest, it was gonna be a statewide press release about all the different communities getting grants, So we thought they put it out like a couple weeks, a week or two before the election in order to help incumbents getting like, oh, they could say, you know, a week before the election, they got a grant because it wasn't just Medford. It was like other communities, too. And so we're like, oh, so we started working on our press release. And our mistake again is that we did not include any marketing people. We didn't talk to members of the public. We just, Tim and I worked with our communications director and we worked on a press release and the mayor worked on the press release. And so then they didn't announce the grant until the day after the election. So we said, okay, well, we'll put out a press release now. People lost their minds. And we were like, oh. Oh, you're right, because everybody's like, the announcement here is every other week trash. And we were like, no, no, the announcement's about the grant.

And the explanation is every other week trash. And we're like, oh, we were too wrapped up in our own work to realize the mistakes we were making, and that other people didn't see it the same way as we saw. And so that's sort of how it all came out. And because our whole feeling here is that this is an environmental effort. the environmental effort. We have to reduce the trash that Medford sends to the wheel abrater and the landfills because it's getting more expensive, but it's also really bad. I don't know if you guys know about, so we send our trash to this thing called the wheel abrater. It's in Saugus. It puts out, it is not good for the environment. It burns the trash and it turns it into electricity, which sounds good, but the stuff that it puts into the air is bad for people and it's in an environmental justice neighborhood. And it is not fair to the people of Saugus. It is there. But we don't have another option. I'm not clear if there are any. There are very few open landfills left in Massachusetts. And so options involve trucking our garbage out of Massachusetts until we come up with something else. So we were thinking, how do we reduce? How do we reduce this? How do we put some incentives to Medford residents to do less with trash?

And what we realized is we did not do enough education up front before we put this announcement out. We felt like we were giving people as much notice as we could, right? Like 18, more than 18 months notice. And we have time to work through the details to hear how should we change things and all. So that's sort of how we ended up where we are now. And I feel like I've sort of said a lot, so you can kind of feel like where we're going from and why What we really are trying to figure out now is what are people truly concerned about? What are the real impacts here? I'd love to still imagine. How can we make this work? And part of what I've asked will to do is to start to do educational programming throughout the city. That is not.

Because we're going to every other week trash, you should do this. But it's like, hey, this is what goes in the recycle bin. Have you thought about composting? How can we make composting work for you? How can we reduce, how can we reuse things? Will's already really plugged into some of the maker groups at the library where they do repair clinics and stuff. And so that's part of like, what can we start to educate people on so they can be better environmental citizens? How can we make it work? And where are the true pain points? And I have to tell you, the thing that pisses me off the most is when I go to a meeting and somebody says, well, this will be fine for me, but I bet that there are big families out there who this will be hard for. Or I think that it'll be really hard on poor people. And I'm like, and they'll say, and I don't think people who speak English, they won't understand what's happening and they won't know what to do. And I'm like, can you please talk for yourself and let the people in those kinds of categories speak for themselves. And one of my goals of talking to you all and to all, I'd like to talk to all the community liaisons, but starting here with you guys, is that part of what you all are hired to do is to speak for some of those people. I've heard people say, but seniors will have this problem. Will all seniors? Will some seniors? Are there things we can do to help some seniors? I have had families, I had one mother in particular, she said to me, Alicia, I had five kids and I don't need to put out my trash every week. I don't know what those other families are doing. But then, like, but I want to hear from the family that has five children, where, what's going on? What are the pain points? How can we help with it? What are the things that people need to help reduce their trash, and preferably to make this program work? The reality is, it's, it's a contract and contracts can be changed. and we have dates by which we have to say we're going to do things. Right now, by the way, we have 8,300 people composting on our program and that number goes up every week because we have people every week going out knocking doors and handing out compost bins. So I have said a ton of things and now I'm here listening. And I also want to tell you that I don't expect you to have every thought right now here in this room, and that you can send me email. And I would love to have you send me and Will email, me, Will, and Tim email, and let us digest this information rather than sending it to all the city councilors and the mayor. Let us work with it and figure out what we can do to help people.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I just had a question. What exactly is the pay-as-you-throw initiative?

[Director Alicia Hunt]: So pay-as-you-throw is a state program in state language. And it means that your city allows people to throw out for no charge 35 gallons of trash a week or less. And I think it's actually 32. It's weird because I've heard about 35-gallon containers, but it's half of 64. And so the program was that people were picking up smaller. So if you look at Malden, they have a small container. Are they all blue bags? Everything's in blue bags? So Malden, they have to pay for every bag.

Some communities, they get small containers, the 32 gallons. You throw that out for free. If you want more than that, you pay for overflow bags. The state agreed that picking up one 64-gallon container, which is what we currently have, every other week qualified as pay-as-you-throw, because that's a reasonable amount that people could keep themselves to. And then you would pay for overflow bags. That's why it's pay-as-you-throw. It's also pay-as-you-throw if the community charges you for everything.

[Brenda Pike]: That was the main reason then that we're not doing 32-gallon bins every week is because we already have these 64-gallon bins. We don't want to replace all of them.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Right. So there are several. We do have an estimate from waste management that to switch to the smaller containers would cost a million dollars to be a one-time charge. We know that to pick up half the city, which is what we do every week, we pick up half this. Hold on. The difference between every week trash and every other week is a million dollars because of the cost of the driver. So we pay two different costs. We pay the per pickup cost and we pay a per pound cost. So we pay for trash by the weight. And we pay a flat amount to have every house picked up every week. And so there would be a million dollars a year at the start for the difference between picking up every house and every other week. So we knew we would also save money by having the vehicles stop at the houses less frequently. And there's some other benefits around just, you know, fewer vehicles going around and, you know, wearing tear and stuff like that that you can imagine.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: You know, like, listen to concerns, you know, from the residents and everything and listen to you now. The whole time in my head was like, if you guys had to come up, can come up with a video with everything that we just said, you know, like, of course, shorter, simpler, you know, like, I think that would be the key for communication and for people to understand, you know what I mean? Anything that you do, if you go just to the point, people don't know what is involved, you know, and that's what is missing, you know, the educational part, you know, like that we always talk about. So that would be my first suggestion. Maybe that would be for somebody else.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Can I add a video that talks about the whole process, the whole all-the-way-along process?

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Yeah, and maybe add some questions like we're asking right now, questions that you already got from the residents and answer those questions while you're explaining the whole thing. Because you just convinced me just by telling me the whole thing. And I'm not mad for the residents. and listen to everybody's concern, you know, like, I could understand them, why they're so upset and frustrated, because there was so little information, they had it, for some reason, you know, maybe by choice, because they're not very involved with the city, or maybe because didn't get to them, you know, but like, listen to you, you know, I totally understand. I totally agree. You know, and I think you can convince a lot of people if you just be clear, you know, and honest, you know, and I think that what is that piece of how I see that is missing right now.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Because it did seem like it came out of nowhere. Obviously it wasn't.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: I have a question. Is recycling every week? I don't live in Medford. Is it every week? Recycling is every other week.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: One of the questions that we get is can't we move it to every week? There's been a lot of studies about communities who have switched between weekly and every other week recycling. What they have found is that the amount of recycling that occurs increases a very little bit right when they don't they just have what they have you have what you have and people crush it up and they just don't make it the effort to make it fit as much in the bins if you do it every week um we have typically found that people who are truly overflowing their recycle bin It's either because they're making choices and they're getting tons and tons of deliveries and stuff, and or they're not crushing their boxes, like flattening them out and taking the minutes to break them down or their bottles, or they're putting stuff in there that actually isn't recyclable. Thin film, so plastic bags, but also all those plastic, thin plastic wrappers. doesn't go in the recycle bin, goes to the grocery store. The black plastic can't be recycled. So there's stuff that people are putting in there, and that's one of the things we want to get people better educated on. And we do have one compost compact there for recycling at DPW. And one of the requests, can we get, and it gets emptied three times a week. And one of the requests is, could we get more recycling compactors? And an interesting thing is, somehow, some people who've been working on this think that we need to put recycling compactors in other locations around the city to make them more convenient. And I'm not sure if that's necessary versus just the one we have actually does fill up. And it fills up, like people complain, like, oh, it's always full. So we say, well, you need to know that it gets empty Wednesday mornings. So go on Wednesday. Don't go Friday. Don't go Monday, because it fills up all weekend. But I know they pick it up. They must pick it up Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So Sundays is a bad time. It tends to be full.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: As I found, I live in Woburn. We used to have these big open bins for recycling. And I used to find hardly anyone on my block recycled. And it always drove me crazy. the big, you know, the really big, people started recycling. So it's almost like if you have it, they'll use it. So hopefully that will happen when we're all closer. Right.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: And some of the idea of switching from We used to, so I was here in 2010, 2011, when Mayor McGlynn rolled out the toters. I call them the toters, the green bins. Before that, you could put your trash out and whatever you had, and you would put your recycle bin out. And the toters limited people to 64 gallons a week. And if you had more than that, you could buy these overflow bags. They're $2 a bag. And people yelled and screamed, and they were so unhappy. Yeah, they just switched over, too.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I would say within six months, nobody complained. People get used to it. There were a few people who were very concerned that it was too big. It was very funny. Mayor McGlynn actually had his mother come out and demonstrate her pulling it around and stopping it, that you could do it. But there were a few places where residents were on steep stairs, and maybe they were seniors, I think, for the most part. or whatever, and he approved them to get a smaller bin because they didn't want to manage such a big bin. So there are a handful of the 32-gallon toters around that he personally approved. People were really upset, and within six months, they stopped complaining.

[Jennifer Yanko]: I was just going to say, I agree with the video and or. when you have community meetings that you give the explanation, because I just don't think that people really think of, what people see, they put their trash out, it goes away. It just goes away. Where it goes, who knows how it's processed, who knows, who cares? And when you get a sense of the wheeler breeder, whatever that contraction is, I see. And then you start to think about, just like you said, the people that have to live with the fumes and whatever else it's thrown out into the environment. And for me, I'm always thinking of this is the world that we're leaving behind for. And I think that is a big piece of it kind of starts to sink in when, you know, landfills are filled. I mean, I didn't know that. I mean, so So the trash is being burned, I have no idea. And you know, it just starts to make more sense because there's folks who are just like, well, I put the trash out, every week it goes away. I want that to continue to happen. And not thinking about why, you know, it's always about dollars and cents. Oh, well, you know, somebody's making money or somebody, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. you get to the real and from my perspective, I think the real is are the the ones who are being left. What we're doing right now is just creating a catastrophe for those who are following us. So our children, your children, your grandchildren, the great greats. Yeah, I really think that's that's really kind of how you start hitting people because It makes them just kind of think, like, I mean, look at what we're dealing with now. And people don't know you can't recycle the black plastic. It's been hard to get the word out about these. And all of that.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Yeah. But I think there's a lot of push when you're trying to implement something. And after, kind of like, oh, you know, we already did a bunch of, I feel like in my city, it was such a big fight. Nobody wanted the recycling bins. And I went to the meetings. I try to, you know, voice myself and tell people like, you know, you're not listening to what they're saying, you know, it can be recycling, things like that. And by my kids, so they can be involved and understand what was going on. But it's still those people, I don't want to listen, you know, I don't want to hear what he's saying, you know, and everybody has a recycling bin now, you know, if they're doing right or wrong, I don't know. But, you know, like, I think that is a big promotion, you know, like a big thing, you know, to promoting this thing. And then after, we kind of like relax. And then I think we need to kind of keep up at least once a year, you know, remind people, hey, did you know those things can go here, those things. But going back to the video, and what Stacy was saying, we talk a lot about how we think it's important to bring the message to the children, because the children always bring the message home. So if you could have a friendly video, like have a trip, do you know what, you know, grab your trash and follow the truck all the way to the place, how it happens, and what is that all about, be educational, you know, and fun, so they can see, you know, the reality, you know. I think that would be very beneficial too, you know, and visual and see the reality because that's reality that like you said, we don't see it, we don't know, you know. I want to take you back on that.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Sorry, I just had a hard flash. It's more about education and information. Okay, so a lot of people, especially like I represent the Haitian community. Recycling is not a good thing for us in Haiti. OK, we just throw trash everywhere. So we have to educate the community on how important recycling is. And society now is more about convenience. OK, so it's how to train them or educate them because some I know, like in my block, I've only seen two of those green beds, and one of them is mine, my household, because I introduced my aunt, who's a homeowner, and then I educated them about it, because they were like, what is this? Another bed for us to roll over out in the street. I'm like, well, this is the reason why. Okay, because then it'll help eliminate the problem that we all have those little critters that we hate, right? Okay, so how we could reduce that, hopefully.

And yeah, it might be an extra push, like you have the recycling, you have the trash, and then now you have a little green bin that you got to throw up. But this is the reason why. So if they know that, then maybe Like you said, we could probably start with our children, educating them so that they could educate their parents, okay, for those communities that don't go to PTOs, don't go into the website and know about these programs, have a language barrier, don't understand anything, and maybe they could get educated and we all could be in the same place.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Something I think would be really helpful for us as we're doing this is that the reason we have a Haitian liaison and a Portuguese-speaking Brazilian is because we know we have large populations of people from those countries here, as well as Arabic. And I think that it would be super helpful for us, particularly like me and Will particularly, to understand if there are cultural barriers. And are there things that, would it be helpful to do a Particular video that is aimed at things that are particular for that cult those cultures or other cultures that you all are aware of that are here in the community to help Explain things that somebody who grew up in Medford or grew up in New York Doesn't need to have explained to them because it's natural and if there are things like that that you think like you just said people don't recycle in Haiti We don't want to be insulting But if you said to, you and Darlene worked with Will, and said, actually, here are some things that we specifically need to educate members of the Haitian community on, we would love to do that. I don't want to make that assumption, because I'm making an assumption about somebody else. And so I actually want to be careful about respecting that, too. So I will ask you, if you guys are interested or willing to follow up with us, or any of the liaisons on particular things that you think specific communities need to hear,

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: But I'd love to do it. To finish off, mine's in my neighborhood, too. Some of them are not from other countries. So I'm like, why are they not having those green beds like I am? So I'm like, when I go out there, I'm like, hey, you're in America. What's going on? I'm sure you've got these tags in your door. But that's what I'm saying.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Yes, we should assume that people don't know at all. It doesn't matter where you came from or what language you speak. And I think that's what is lacking in so many communications and things that happen. We always assume that people know. I think we need to go the other way. We need to assume people don't know. Always. Because a lot of information is never too much. And I think that's the point. And I see your point saying, oh, we need to see now. I always assume people don't know. No matter what language you speak. You said something, laziness too.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: You know why? Because I do catch that in front of somebody in my household. They'll just throw everything that's supposed to be in the recycling bin in the trash. And I would go back. I'm like, hey, because the trash is like full. I'm like, I just took one trash bag. Why is it so full? And then when I look through it, it's bottles and stuff like that. It's like education, just take your time. This is the plastic, this is the trash, and this is the compost.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: And people do need to know why, I think. Because so I've been doing environmental outreach from before I even worked for the city. I wrote a Green Living blog. And one of the things that I used to talk about is that everybody can't do everything. And you have to pick the things that you can do and do that. Because trying to do everything will make you crazy. I watched my husband try to do everything. To the extent, and he was losing his mind and then he couldn't do anything. And I'm like, no, we got to pick when and what we can do. And I've always sort of preach that. And I think what's actually happening now is that we're coming back as a city and saying, actually it turns out this trash thing is really important. And while we used to say, you know, you guys pick, you know, you're doing the energy efficiency, you're doing the solar panels, you're doing, you know, you're doing trash things, you're doing cloth diapering, everybody's doing their own thing, you compost. Now we're coming back and saying, this one's really important. And it turns out we'd like everybody to start to pay attention to this one. And how to say that in a way that Like, I just said it now is polite as opposed to preachy, which is how I'm afraid that it sometimes comes across, especially if any of you watch sounds like you watch the meeting we did the other week. And we have this formal presentation and stuff. And that's what happens when you have 12 people trying to figure out what the slides should say and trying to, how do we do this? It comes across as really preachy, as opposed to a person having a conversation with people. I think it just really comes across differently.

[Jennifer Yanko]: I think, too, also, to just kind of, have people be a bit more mindful of being so throwaway. I mean, I mean, I can speak personally for family members who just, you know, they buy and, you know, perfectly great stuff, it ends up in the trash. But, you know, the Amazon, so if you're using Amazon, then, you know, select the option where there are less trips and less boxes. And don't, you know, or get it sent in whatever package it comes in, as opposed to, because it just creates more and more, and like you were saying, folks don't break down the boxes, you know, I go out in the morning, I fold them, I step on them, I fold them again, I step on them some more. I mean, you know, it's just kind of the same, and I just think sometimes, especially, No, no, no, just no disrespect to anyone, Brian King and that sort of thing. But sometimes people just don't, you know, they just don't think about it. And I think sometimes when you're a homeowner, you kind of got to look at a larger picture because you're liable or you're responsible. And others, they just, just don't think about it. And it's just like, well, you know,

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: do renters get all the mail? If a renter, someone's in a two or three family house, do they get all the literature? Because I know in Woburn, they only send it, the recycling brochure to the homeowner. So my tenant is putting plastic bags in the recycling, I've noticed.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: It's a conundrum that we've talked about is that, so we as a city, have everybody we have the address of every unit in the building in the city but we don't have the names of the people who live who are renters we have the name and address of homeowners so for example we can go to the assessor's database and we can pull every property owner and their name and address and we can mail it out but a lot of those people don't live in medford you know a decent number so that i forget the numbers maybe 50% of renters, it's either 60 or 40, and I can't remember which way are renters in Medford.

And we could pull and we could write occupant ads. So what we did with our crash flyers this year and last year was that, I think we did it this year, we did what's called an EDDM, ED, two Ds, M, every door delivery mailer for every door yeah delivery mailer and it's a post office thing and what happens is we give them the bins and we say this is paid for every door and it doesn't put anybody's address on it and the delivery men take the vlogs of them and they're supposed to drop put one with every door they deliver to and what we find is it works in some neighborhoods and some neighborhoods don't get them This year, I think, was better than the year before, where we got a lot of complaints that they did never get delivered. And it's a lot less reliable than that. And then there are the expenses with it. Like sure, we will spend money on mailers this year. We talked about putting it in the tax bill. We talked about putting it in the water bill. Both of those go only to property owners, and they don't go to renters. But it's a lot cheaper. because I can put, I can put a flyer in every water bill and our office gets charged for that printing and stuff, but it's, it's a lot less than doing a whole mailer. So that's, I mean, that's one of the conundrums is literally how do you get this to every door? And then people move in and we've started to talk about their like moving bags that I think the mayor's office does through like a welcome committee. And those kind of go out periodically during the year.

The other one actually is the new moms. I will say, I'll put a side plug diapers. I would love to identify, find out if there are people in Medford who are currently cloth diapering and would be interested in talking to others about it. And I say that because when my, my youngest was little, I caught diapered a number of my friends caught diapered here in Medford. We sort of supported each other. There were posts about it on Facebook sometimes. And I actually, when I finished had a pile of diapers that I then would lend out as like a lending library to help other parents who were thinking about it, learn about it. I think that it would fall very poorly if I went out there and started saying, I think people should cloth diaper. On the other hand, I believe that there must be women, because that was only 12 years ago. My oldest is 13. My youngest is 16. And when he was little, this is when I was doing that, there were a whole ton of us. So I'd love to support some people who are currently cloth diapering and helping to educate other parents about it and educate new parents. We actually have in Somerville a cloth diaper store that people can go to. Turns out Target sells cloth diapers now. And there are two services that will actually pick up and deliver diapers to you every week, cloth diapers to your house in Medford. And we could, so we do new mom bags through the clerks in the outreach and prevention. So we could put information about this into them, but I'd really love to have some sort of support network People who can talk about it.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: So if you in your wanderings discover there are people called diaper I Talk to Marie about it a little bit and because I thought would be brilliant is if she was to have a group for new moms were cloth diapering like a support group, but she basically said that they were a

[Director Alicia Hunt]: so up to their ears in programming right now that she couldn't take on a new thing. So I said to her, if you become aware of parents for foster, please let me know. Because I also think it's, in the end, it's less expensive. Yeah, I think it'd be a lot cheaper. Right. And if you have a washer, dryer.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: But it is an investment. So I ran through mom's group when I was in another town. And I did approach that before and one of the things was the first investment. It was too much for them, you know, and you, when you create those groups, most of the time you're, you're dealing with the low income families, you know, so at the time didn't have any incentive or anything to have that first step. So I think it has everything to do with that. You know, like if it does any incentive. To initiate that, you know, when people get, you know, that 1st step, I think will be brilliant, you know, but those are the barriers that I kind of found when I tried to pass the message and. And didn't have that many options, you know, and I just knew about some of you too.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: So, you know, so yeah, because I do think that if we had a group and we could get some like, and mixed income groups, right, then you have people who are going to hand stuff down to people as your child grows, you use different sizes, and you pass them down to people. And, you know, it's nice when all the higher income people pass their diapers down to each other, but wouldn't it be nice if there was like a broader group that they can pass them down to people who couldn't afford to invest in them as much? So you said there is already a group in Medford? There is not. And I'd love to help start one.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: yeah because like maybe what we need to put into the new baby bags are notes saying that but that's not the thing too people are not coming that many many people are coming because they're doing online that birth certificate you know like so all the convenience part you know like when We try to have interaction with people, you know, so people are trying to find the easy way, you know, to get things. So I'm in that point now that I'm going to the schools and, hey, do you know any new families, you know, that have baby, you know, to try to have those bags, you know, for them to have access to those bags, because maybe I get rewards at the top of three months, you know. So where before was like, at least two families a week that was coming. Because everybody can get them online now. Everything's online. But MFM, they do the swap. So if we had a group that could present that to the families that are coming to the swap, I think that would be brilliant too. It might be interesting.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I feel that I need some people to be founders, basically, who are already cloth diapering. Because it seems weird for me to say, well, I did it 14 years ago. Which I did, and a bunch of my friends did. And we all said, we don't know anybody with little children. Someone could ask on Facebook, on the city Facebook. I need to get one of my friends to ask. Because as soon as it's me, I'm going to get slapped. Or even any of the moms with the family network.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Right. And that's actually so my mom's group came together because the MFN started a thing of babysitting exchange. And so who was people who wanted to support each other do. basically taking care of each other's kids because we didn't have family in the area. And the moms who were in my mom's group from that are still some of my best friends today in Medford.

[Jennifer Yanko]: Yeah, so maybe even like a meetup groups or something, you know, mom meetup groups or whatever. I mean, I don't know. But regarding the birth certificates online, Couldn't couldn't we put a blurb on, you know, wherever you go to sign up for website. So, if you come into City Hall, you'll get a welcome packet. That's a great as opposed to doing it online. Just let them know that this is the possibility if you come in.

[Jennifer Yanko]: Maybe even if you put a couple of cloth diapers, you know, in the bag. I don't know how they work now. Do they have that? Maybe someone would donate.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: They do, they make, they come with Velcro, and there are ones where you have like clips that you can attach to it. I still have some of those clips because I found they work really well on Ace bandages. There's a diaper lab in the Boston area. That's in Somerville. I used to partner with them, and if you looked on their page about classes, because I thought about asking them if they would do a class here in Medford, and I went to their classes page, There's a baby in a blue diaper, that's my son.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Maybe get new moms. New moms need some, maybe be able to pay them a stipend that they can start a group.

[Jennifer Yanko]: What's the group that came in Somerville? Would they have the baby showers or the baby parties?

[Jennifer Yanko]: They might be some place to tap for if, you know, talking about people who have resources.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, because one of the concerns with the trash is that diapers take up a lot of space. And the thing is, it takes up a lot of space, the smell, whenever they're getting burned and we have greater like, you know, it's. It would be, it's so much, like I'm all about how do we reduce waste and how do we educate people? And I'll say, not everybody can cloth diaper. I get that too. And so we've talked about, are there things that like, when you have a new baby, you get, you know, a certain number of overflow bags for free or you get for one year. So we figured out that we can, people will be allowed to buy an extra trash bin, basically you rent it for a year. And it's, I believe it may, I have stuck in my head the prices that they will be in 2027. You can do it now, I cannot tell you off the top of my head today's prices, but it'll be $12 a month for an extra trash bin. And it'll be $6 a month for an extra recycle bin. So if you have an overflowing family, so one of the questions was, would we want to give people who have a new baby an extra trash bin per year, or if somebody is very low income. But at the same time, I'd also love to give them information about ways that they could reduce their trash. It doesn't have to be that you have more. Breastfeeding reduces your trash because you have fewer things than bottles. You know, at least we don't have as many disposable bottles as we used to and all, but it also reduces your costs and stuff. I also, by the way, I had twins first, so I understand that this stuff is not easy, but I'm not living it right now. My twins are 21. And then the other topic that people bring up a lot to me, besides large families, is dog waste. And I've talked to a lot of people who actually use a separate bin for dog waste. So one of the top things that we've talked about is do we want to provide people with a separate bin for dog waste, not that it would get picked. So what you do is you put a separate bag in your dog waste bin, a latching bin so that rodents can't get in there. Because by the way, our big trash cans, rodents get right into those. A latching bin like the compost one, you put a bag in there, you throw all your dog waste in there, and then when it kind of fills up or you feel like it, you tie it up and you put that into your trash.

And so now your trash can doesn't smell like dog poop all the time. I think a lot of people would benefit from this idea right now. Um, but, uh, so I have a step person who has two dogs and she tells me that she's the one who brought me this idea. And she said she probably takes that in her bag, that bag out of there every two to three weeks. She definitely does not put it in her trash every week. Um, and it turns out that I've now met two more people who do this as well.

[Jennifer Yanko]: And they say, you know, maybe the 20 pound bag of dog food, use that to line an aluminum barrel in the backyard. And when cleaning up the poop in the bucket, it goes, you know, maybe once a month, you know, right.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: So you also don't feel the need to put that in your regular trash every single week?

[Jennifer Yanko]: Even in the summer, but when I open it, it's like, oh, I opened up this much, but I don't look at it.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: And I think that some of these are ideas that people just haven't had on their own. And so helping people to like, oh, this is an idea, this is a way to manage it. because there are people who have this idea that if you don't take out your dog poop every week, that's disgusting. I'm like, well, it depends how you manage it. Let's talk about smart management. I have cats and I have kitty litter. I don't take the kitty litter out. I take it out as often as I can get one of my guys to carry it out of the basement for me, and that is definitely not weekly. I'm lucky if that is monthly. But it's a closed bin in the basement, you know, that's locked, and I open it up, I scoop into it, and I close it back up. So these are some of the, and how do we educate people about things? What are concerns that we think people are gonna have? I certainly, As you think about trash, letting us know what are the pain points that people have? How can we help them? What are the things that we can offer that would make things better so that we could move to every other week trash? Because we do think it'll really, it's the last thing that we need. to get the people who really don't want to compost to compost. And it's a great way to convince people that less trash is better. But I think you're right. We have to get some of the rest of this information out there. And we do have waste management. Our main contact has actually said that she would happily come to our library and do a program on where does Medford's trash go. So we thought that would be a useful thing. And we're going to have to convince her that we need to videotape it and make it available.

[Jennifer Yanko]: Yeah, I just think the more the more, you know, how do you say it, the more you just explain it and the process, the better every opportunity that you have, you know, and hopefully, people become more educated. And then they start they just kind of did you know, you should

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: next primary is that that kind of thing and you could have the high school students that they work at the media you know like maybe they could be the ones that can have that project and come up with something talk to the vocational media program about they come up with that video and i was gonna say that that's probably the best place to

[Jennifer Yanko]: To, you know, for it to be on the access channel and just because sometimes people just kind of have it on and it's not anybody from the city.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: It's not, you know, young people that are trying to get mad on this. What's going on? And this is our world, our future.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: So there's at the vote, there's a program where they do video production and then there's our local TV access. And so the local TV access director has already said to me, Alicia, whatever you want to put on, like, send me slides and maybe information and we'll put videos on it.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Yeah, let them just to the, you know, the video. I think the city should not be involved in that. It should be the outside, you know, like, it's a project to fund it. That might be a science thing.

[Jennifer Yanko]: Yeah, that might be a thing with the, you know, get some of this.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: And we have a lot of students that are involved with climate and all those, you know, environment and, you know, they have passions, you know.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: It's very hard. Right now, there's one that is called Eco, EcoLeague, EcoLeague. Thank you. But what they are focused on right now, is getting people to not use single cars to come to school, commuting to school, biking, walking, and bus, and to encourage that. That's what they're focused on right now. And actually, Brenda and I agreed to help advise that club.

[Brenda Pike]: And they had recently said that they'd like help doing more outreach to students and parents about this commuter challenge that they're doing.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Right. I think they'd like the community to know that they're doing this commuter challenge, that that would be nice and to help get that sort of praise from it, not just because kids really feed on praise.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: And maybe some of them are going to be your next in turn.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Yes. Yes. I think talking to which talk to the God unknown meant for you for me that this, um, so website, that's a newspaper. So we sent them in for transcript. And the former editor of the Medford Transcript, Mel Coakley, started a website called Gotta Know Medford. And you can get the articles in email. And they're completely independent. Sometimes I like what they write, and sometimes I don't. Same for the mayor. Sometimes she likes it, and sometimes she doesn't.

But they are, in fact, professional news reporters who are trying to do an online newspaper about Medford.

[Brenda Pike]: I think they cover Medford community meetings better than the city does, most of the time, in terms of getting the word out about what happens there.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. They actually do. They're quite good at it. So that might actually be a good place to plug into as well, but for the students, for the commuter challenge, for the get some articles about this.

[Jennifer Yanko]: I feel like I've talked your ears off. This was really, really helpful.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: you know, great insight, right. So I do, I, there's been a part of me that's like, I don't have time to go meet with like every group in Medford. Now, on the other hand, when I sit down with a group like this, I'm like, I really need to make time to go sit down with every group. But if there are like groups that it would make sense for me to come and talk to, or if you end up talking to people about stuff, and then you questions come up, please shoot them are right. Yeah.

[Brenda Pike]: All right. And so obviously, this is going to be an ongoing process. So like, if you think of other things, other suggestions over time, let us know, we can talk about them in these meetings, or you can email us and connect directly with Will.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Would it make sense for me to try? I know the community liaisons have meetings regularly as well. Would it make sense for me to try to do that? Or if I just talk to like more than half of them?

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Like, I don't remember like, Oh, I mean, coming to one of our weekly meetings and kind of sharing this same information with us, I feel like that would be, yeah, but like,

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: I don't want to hear all this. That's why I'm asking. This is available. You know, it's recorded, right? Yeah. Send to Catherine. Send to everybody. Take the time. Listen to if you have any questions, you know, send your questions. You know, I think it keeps it and you can even talk about it the next meeting. Hey, watch this next meeting. We're going to talk about it, you know, and then kind of, you know,

[Director Alicia Hunt]: I think it would be helpful if I can say that to Kevin, but I think it would be helpful if you wanted more of you said to Kevin, actually, it would be worthwhile. Yeah, like, I'd like to come and talk and come in. hear from people, but I don't want to, but you all don't want me to give the spiel again. Yeah, no, absolutely. To watch the spiel.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: It's just like the other guests that we had the other time that Charbel suggested coming to the meeting. And I said, Well, why don't we just watch, you know, like the same thing, you know, like, yeah, that way we can be on the same page, maybe can bring to the meeting just to talk about it. Right. And I could come and answer questions.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah. So maybe the other liaisons in Connector might have different questions that we don't have. Yeah, yeah.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: It'll work. Watch the video, come back ready with questions.

[Jennifer Yanko]: Right? That could certainly work. Whether folks will do it or not, that's another question. But even if we just kind of talked about it, then people could at least would have an opportunity to ask questions if they didn't. Yeah. You know, I mean, the more the more information that you know, we get, we're fed, the better we are collectively.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: I'm very much in productive, productive. Like I said, I don't want to waste your time. I don't want to waste my time.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: I feel like we're always going in a lot of different directions.

[Brenda Pike]: Be efficient. Yeah, great again, along those lines, you have other things to talk about.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, I can leave you, I can stay or I can go home. So, stop by our office. Well, thank you so much.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Wait, so Bill, if you have time, if they're going to talk about events and activities, can we listen in in case?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I'm going to stick around. If it's all right with them, I'm sticking around. And also, once Alicia leaves, you can say all the really critical things about this program. Then I can take notes for myself.

[Director Alicia Hunt]: Maybe that actually makes the most sense. I have been sick, so that's why I'm wearing the mask. So maybe I'll go home. Okay. Thank you so much. That was great. And yes, if there are things that we should have a table at, or we should speak at, or a group that you think we should come talk to, let us know. Plus Will's going to be organizing programming and stuff. And once we have that out, we'll appreciate help pushing out, like letting people know about the stuff we're doing. That's awesome.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: And Brenda, I'm not going to say my email over the live stream, but you're deputized to give my email out to everyone here.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I want to hear from everybody. Truly, I'm talking to so many corners of Medford right now to organize little projects. But let's reach every corner of the city and make sure everyone's talking.

[Brenda Pike]: That's great. Yeah. I'll share your email with everybody and vice versa. Yeah.

[Unidentified]: Okay, but moving to events, let me share my screen here. Let's see.

[Brenda Pike]: That sort of works. So I dropped in here the events that I knew that were coming up. The Black History Month event on Monday, is that something that you guys are involved with? Yeah, some of us are helping. Yeah. When is that going to consist of?

[Jennifer Yanko]: It's just... I don't know. Just, you know, some music and dance and art, you know. Yeah, we've got the agenda. That sort of thing. Yeah. It's not vendor kind of thing, tabling.

[Brenda Pike]: That makes sense. Yeah. And then the next one I know about is March 11th.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Yeah, so before that, on the 28th, we have the West Med Forklift.

[Jennifer Yanko]: Yeah, the West Med Community Center is having a Black History Open House from 2.30 to 5.30, 111 Arlington Street. You know, music, poetry, they'll do a tour of the community center, you know, that sort of thing.

[Brenda Pike]: Okay, so it sounds like that's not really a tingling event. No, I don't know.

[Jennifer Yanko]: I don't think so. It's just kind of a drop-in, pop-in kind of thing.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: And also the 28th have the Lunar New Year at the Senior Center from 10 to 1 p.m. Isn't it 11? Yeah, she said it was 11. The paper that we received was 10. Okay, she said 11.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: I mean, but you can talk to Francis, you know, see if that is a possibility for the table or something, because we don't know anything about the event yet.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so I want to now mean, that's good. I think to both of them. I know.

[Brenda Pike]: And then the patient advocacy event at the senior center, is that the next one? Yeah.

[Brenda Pike]: What time is that? 6 to 7 30. And that sounds like more of an educational event, again, probably not a tabling.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: The onus out of my winning table is focused on how health issues, you know, kind of being your own health advocate.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I know the person that they were working with to set it up was the person who came to the West Medford Community Center to talk about asthma that one time. Oh.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Do you have materials right now that you would like to be given those events, like if you have an opportunity for tabling? Because I've been going to an event tomorrow. And the only thing that they're going to have over there is going to be our table. Because all of the school events, I don't want to talk about, you know, the meeting, which event. So they're trying to keep it kind of low, you know.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I'd love to have you have the utility bill check up by then. I can definitely bring that. I don't have that translated yet though. I think I sent her the translation.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: It's fine. If you see any trouble, you can get the contact information later. That's great. But let me send something, you know, that would be great.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I'll send that along. Did I send it after last month's meeting? I think I sent it last month. I'll send it again just in case, but I think you might already have it. And let me know if you need me to print it out. Okay, or if you can do it in your outreach and correction office, if it don't find a standard. Okay, then. March 18th, we have the national driven at the senior center. I saw your email, Stacey, today. Did you have that already scheduled with them?

[Jennifer Yanko]: Yeah, I didn't know. Yeah, when I saw that, I didn't know if maybe there was another group or another set of folks who could do the other side. So, okay. But you said March 3rd in the evening? Yeah. Yeah, the request was for potentially two events, something for after work hours and the other one, I think there might have been a meeting that day. So, you know, there would have, you know, there would be a collective group of folks. So, you know, I don't, you know.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. So I will reach back out to National Grid and ABCD. They have originally said that they were available March 3rd. but I just want to confirm that. Do you know what time?

[Jennifer Yanko]: It wasn't a specific time, but it was like after work hours. So I don't know, maybe 6.30, 7ish. We could figure that out. So the 18th is unknown. 18th is unknown because they only have

[Jennifer Yanko]: Okay, so we'll have to look at the dates again because I think that might be a good... that would have been a good day for the community center. What about trying to bring people to the senior center? probably because they already have something planned. They already have a meeting or something.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: So that's why I'm saying is do... Combine everything. Yeah, that's good. Take advantage of the people that already come for that.

[Brenda Pike]: They're there. But if it's that Wednesday meeting that we're trying to hit, can we try to do it for like March 25th? I don't know.

[Jennifer Yanko]: I think it might... might be monthly i'm not really sure what the frequency is of the meeting but that was just what came up in the conversation when we were talking about dates and stuff so yeah let me um you know let me let me uh go back and see if there's another day. Because I don't know, like I said, I don't know if the meeting is a monthly thing, or if it's every other month.

[Brenda Pike]: OK. When I reach back out to National Grid and ABCD, I will include you in that too, just so that you are visible. Yeah, so that the response rate is faster, so we're not, yeah, I'm not the bottleneck in between the two groups there. March 30th, I'm planning another National Grid and ABCD bill checkup event at the library. I still have to confirm with them that they are available for those hours in particular, but I think we should be good for that. And that's just the same thing that we did for the winter preparedness event, where they'll be set up so they can sit down and have private conversations with people about their bills, and they can get them set up for discount rates, or they can get them onto a forgiveness plan if they need that, or a budget plan, or something like that. So just being able to have that face-to-face conversation instead of talking to someone with a customer service rep over the phone could be really helpful.

[Jennifer Yanko]: Brenda, what about, because in my email I had mentioned about, you know, the scamming or how easy it is for the third parties to switch someone's plan over to something different. Would they speak to that at all, the National Grid folks or the ABCD folks?

[Brenda Pike]: It would be one of the things, if people will bring their bill, and if that's something that they see on the bill, then they will point that out.

[Jennifer Yanko]: But we'll be there, too, so we can talk about it. Well, that's why I was asking if you or Lizette could speak to it, because that was a big selling point for the group, because some of the elderly folks. You know, so they just don't fall victim to something without realizing it until they can't afford their bills.

[Brenda Pike]: I just spoke to someone last week who signed up for, I think it was Inner Choice Energy, I think he said, because he got like a gift card or something for signing up for it. And then the price jacked up after a certain amount of time, and he had a $1,400 bill. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah.

[Jennifer Yanko]: yeah so i mean even stories like that i mean it's worthwhile to to tell because you know if it sounds too good to be true yeah originally as generally it is yep yep well um oh what a scent okay so yeah so we'll lock we'll we'll lock those and we'll find another gate to do yep i like that she wants to do two there yeah i The question was posed, I said, I don't see why not. So I wanted to put it out there if there was an issue.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. And if National Grid and ABCD can't do it, then at the very least, me and the energy coaches can be there to talk to people about these things. Yeah. OK. So the next thing that I had heard about was the multicultural night at the Mississippi on April 16. what is it going to consist of?

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: So a lot of family involved what they you know bring the culture like if they sing or if they do a dance or something or a lot of kids dress up you know represented their family culture you know like their country um and then we have tables normally our table is like about the two or three tables where we as a team bring something special from our country, kind of make a very multicultural table. And then we have, we have been doing this cabbage hunt, you know, with the kids where we kind of put a little bit of each country that we represent, you know, but like they need to find, let's say you need to find the Tucano, you know, the toucan from Brazil, but then have a little brief, you know, message over there, a little fact from back then the kids, it's not just about finding, And then they should come back and they need to choose two of those things and tell us a fun fact about that. So that's what we're kind of trying to do. But this time, you know, we want to do kind of the same thing because the kids love that, but the climate, you know, and maybe even the trash issue, you know, incorporate the game with those things, you know. That's what we're going to be working on.

[Brenda Pike]: And I think this would be a great thing to talk with Will about is something interactive that we could do at an event like that. Because for some reason I'm thinking of like, I don't know, some sort of like basketball thing where you have like different things that you can recycle and you're like throwing it into the correct bin or something.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Yeah, we don't have much space because they want to keep everything on the first floor.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: They are in April because the weather is nicer, but we did this eye, our eyes thing going on. They don't want to go outside. They want to keep inside, you know? So we have some limitations of the space and stuff. Lizeth had some more, you know, ideas like that, but like, we just don't have this space, of course, you know, so we kind of need to... There will be something more added. Yeah, like that. You can do over there, but like our Tables are always so busy, you know, as I was a lot of kids coming to our table. So that is not much thinking that it can do one, one, you know, like it's a long line. So it's something that can give the kids to grab their table and go look for it. But they had the binoculars to go look for the stuff and they come back, you know, and that was a fact, you know, and they get the prize, you know. Yeah, we can work on it and find something fun.

[Brenda Pike]: And then the next thing I have is the citywide cleanup on May 2nd. Is there anything else scheduled right now between then? Okay, no.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: There is the American Heritage Month coming up. We're thinking either the 11th or the 18th of May. Of April, sorry.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: It's either the 11th or the 18th. We haven't confirmed. I think we're leaning more toward the 11th. Just because I think that's when the mayor was able to go.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: It's in the same fashion. I will get back to you. Okay.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: We're planning the Haitian flag day on the 16th. That'll be on a Saturday. Of May? Of May. Okay. We're hoping the weather's nice. Is it going to be outside? I always try to shoot for that, but I don't know. We'll see. But I do like the idea if maybe we could come up with some kind of activities for the children, because we usually try to create something for the children while we're in the cafeteria. There's usually children at the gym, but they don't really do much. So maybe we could create, hoping Lizette will be A-OK, and create some games of how to recycle. What do we put in the recycling bin? What do we put in the trash? What do we put in the compost? And kind of make it fun for the children. Yeah. While they're in the gym, because usually they're just running around. Yeah. Doing nothing.

[Brenda Pike]: So that's going to be at the McGlenn location. Yeah. And do you know the hours?

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Not yet. Because we're kind of talking now, because A lot of the community is afraid to go out now, so we're still trying to talk and let people know. Yeah.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: It'll happen, but yeah, we're just in the planning stages now. I think it's always nice when the best people are mentioned.

[Brenda Pike]: Oh, lucky. So I think the last meeting we had when we mentioned the Citywide Cleanups, I think some of you might have suggested you look at team building. That's what I want to ask about.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: I want more information about that, because when I went to Facebook to kind of explore this idea, it's still different than what I thought. So I'm going to give you an example, like the City of Everett, what did they do, you know? You can have your teams, you know, it can be nonprofits or departments, you know, and you can come. They give a shirt, the city shirt for everybody. So, you know, everybody can make your own group shirt if you want. But then everybody have a section, you know, that you work. But then after that, we all get together, have a barbecue and have fun. I didn't see anything that happened. So if I'm going to work, I better have a hot dog waiting for me after that day of work. I think that's a thing that each group would have to organize themselves. But that's what I think. That's what I saw too. It's not really like a bunch of people getting together and doing it. It seems like, you know, this group is going to send to that park and the other side of Medford. You know what I mean? I thought it was like a whole group of people.

[Brenda Pike]: But it does affect people. Like the last time that I headed up a team for this, I suggested the location and it was the point of contact for that. But we had other people sign up to help with it. And then the day of, even people who hadn't signed up, who just looked nearby and saw that we were doing it, also came out and helped too. It turned out to be a really nice, friendly, kind of fun thing to do.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Yeah, so I couldn't understand. I mean, I see two people in this picture doing this part, and a couple of pictures of me, what's going on? I don't see a bunch of people working and doing, you know what I mean? I don't understand with two people. I mean, it's a group, you know? Go and do something. She was a charcoal girl.

[Brenda Pike]: I don't know anything about Medford, so you are a resident, so you tell me where we need to clean up. So I had one at the West Medford parking lot. I noticed when I got the EV charger installed there, people throw trash there all the time. And there's just so much trash around the EV charger. So I was like, okay, let's clean that up. So that was why I chose a particular location.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: well we can talk about it and decide together um and then what time is it charbel there's that predatory electricity yes i just need to um do you have like a i guess like a rapport with with kevin

[Brenda Pike]: I occasionally will like email back and forth about getting these videos online.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I don't know him personally and I'm trying to contact him to see if we can plan to do this. So what is this? So you know Sierra who came in and gave us the presentation about the third party? Yeah. So we're trying to organize to have her present and have the Medford, what is it called again? Medford Access? Community Media? Yeah, Medford Community Media, Access TV, and it will broadcast it to like Medford residents.

[Brenda Pike]: Oh, okay. So it'll be online and then it'll also be on the channel that they have.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. So, yeah, hopefully it will be good. The original idea was to have her come and present in the in one of our weekly meetings. Right, right. But this seems like it's a better idea and we'll reach more people.

[Brenda Pike]: Absolutely. So if you think it might be easier, sure, I can email Kevin and copy you and then you two can read it. Yeah, great.

[Unidentified]: I think that's all for events. Anything else? No, so you don't need a flop.

[Brenda Pike]: Just some quick city updates. I don't have a ton. Electrify Medford, we have 229 people have signed up so far. 114 have been coached. We're doing Facebook ads this month. Um, and those are translated into five different languages too. And they're supposed to be targeted towards people who, um, speak those languages. I think they've been up for a week now and I haven't gotten any signups from them. So I'm a little concerned that they're not having the reach that we thought they would. You guys done anything like that before? Like any, like Facebook ads. Okay.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: actually we have been yeah that's why i've been writing every year for us to do for the bills i think would be a good thing for us to do um we always got very lucky with that um when they did yeah so we reach a lot of people so good for the area you know like in the ages that you want to reach yeah yeah you can be very specific about your look down yeah We're very successful with the plans that we did. And I think it would be a good thing for us to do it for the national bills. And especially if they're going to be translated. I think that would be a good thing to do.

[Brenda Pike]: Oh, the Energy Committee. They would like to get more involved in putting in more pollinator gardens around the city. Um, and it turns out there's an adopt a site for, for different, like, you know, how you see businesses doing like adopt location on the highway and there's a little sign with the name and stuff. Um, so we have something like that. And, um, if a group wants to adopt a site and put in a pollinator garden, the city does have some funding for supplies for that. So that's something you guys are interested in or interested in, like.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: Reaching out and getting volunteers so our residents can have in their backyard.

[Jennifer Yanko]: Oh, okay. Yeah, like that or a little patch of land or, you know.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: in front of some statue or something. No, because I know some people have the backyard and they don't use it at all. That could be beneficial.

[Jennifer Yanko]: So what does that entail? So is it just a matter of cleaning, digging up and planting? Yes, it's planting it and then maintaining it. OK, so you have to maintain it.

[Jennifer Yanko]: I know what it means, but I don't know what it means. more details. I don't have a green thumb.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I mean it's not like a garden where you're like eating it regularly. That's what I was saying.

[Jennifer Yanko]: You maintain it, you know, rain falls and kind of waters it and the sun shines.

[Brenda Pike]: Well, I think one example is right here. Sorry, I'm getting mixed up which way we're facing. Before you get into the rotary, there's a little patch of So the grass there, that was an adopt a site that somebody had been doing, that they're not maintaining anymore. And so the city would really like to have somebody else like take that over and do something. Where is it? It's right out here, right before the getting out to the rotary.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, there is a pollinator garden right in front. It's already established right in front of the City Hall. Right, like on the city, yeah, the property, yeah. City Hall.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, this one in particular she's talking about is the roadway, but yeah, it's like the median island there.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. I could donate some plants. I don't want to take it over, but I do have a lot of natives.

[Brenda Pike]: I'll send a link around in case anybody's interested in trying to get some volunteers together and get the word out about it. Along the same lines, the Tufts Park is going to have a mini forest in the summer. We'll call them, you know, rocky gardens. Yeah, they have one at Wright Lock Farm in Winchester. Yeah, the idea for those is that you're planting a lot of things really densely in an area and they actually grow faster because of that because they're like competing with each other for sunlight and stuff.

So Trees Medford is looking for volunteers to help planting that in September, October, so there's some time. And Trees Medford is also looking to distribute some free trees to people this spring, so people can sign up now and then they'll already have trees. I do have.

[Jennifer Yanko]: What kind of, what kind of students? Is it a certain? Do you have specific type of students that we would sign up for?

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: One of our students that are ESOL classes is interested in getting a degree. Is it Maria Joseph? No, no, that initially. Oh, yeah. So we wanted to get information to pass at all.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I will send the links out for that because the form to sign up for it is out now.

[Brenda Pike]: And it's specifically for people in certain neighborhoods of the city to get the free trees. If people outside of those neighborhoods are interested in doing it, they can still get a tree through Trees Medford, but it would cost $150. So for people in those neighborhoods, it's a really good deal.

[Brenda Pike]: And then I just want to plug that in the last week's last Energy and Environment Committee meeting, there was a discussion about artificial turf and poured in place rubber, like artificial turf, like on Mel or Mel's playing field or like poured in place rubber, rubber like on the playground, because members were really concerned about the chemicals and PFAS that was in the artificial turf. So our open space planner from my office came and talked with them about it. So if you are interested in learning more about that, you can check out the video from that meeting or I can share some more info with you.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: So turf, they would want to replace the turf with like real grass.

[Brenda Pike]: I don't think that that's part of the discussion right now. And one of the things that she was talking about was the fact that with real grass, you have to let it rest for a certain period of time. So you can't use the field as often. And so you have to move to different locations to save that grass. Could you do the link for that?

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: That's not a good reason. Yeah. The Super Bowl was played on real grass. Yeah. And how much money they have to keep the grass.

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: It is kind of bad for the environment. Yeah. It's not the best. Yeah. Exactly.

[Jennifer Yanko]: So I'll share the link so you guys can take a look at that. Was the tree medford, was that recorded? The library events?

[MCM00001801_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. I don't know. I haven't seen anything. I don't think they do record their events. They say they don't have the technical support for it. Yeah. So I was at a meeting there Monday.

[Unidentified]: It's possible to treat them differently. Well, you know, you're the online part of it.

[Jennifer Yanko]: At least you're the online part of it. To hear, you could at least hear. That's why I was asking, because I couldn't make that.

[Brenda Pike]: I'll send a link around so that we can check out this on the page. Yeah. Okay, that's all that I have.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: All right. Motion to adjourn. Second. Second. All in favor. Aye. I have a watch, it's Sister Nakjoo.

[MPS Member Jenny Graham]: And then when they tried to glue her, you know, the chair, and she's about to do anything to one of the kids, what is that?

Jenny Graham total time: 13.94 minutes total words: 2625