Community Preservation Committee 2/10/26

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3.8-flash 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 Community Preservation Committee approved a $10,000 small grant application for Trees Medford to inventory invasive plants across city parks. The committee also planned its FY27 cycle schedule, officer elections, and upcoming community engagement activities.

1:53 Meeting Minutes of December 9, 2025 — Approved the meeting minutes from December 9, 2025.
2:37 Upcoming Officer Elections — The chair invited members to consider running for chair or vice chair positions ahead of elections scheduled for the following month.
12:26 Draft FY27 CPA Calendar and Policy — Members reviewed the proposed 2026 CPA calendar and agreed to hold the annual public hearing in March, focusing invitations on key boards and municipal staff.
35:20 2026 Public Engagement and Community Survey — The committee discussed potential community tabling events and revised the upcoming annual survey, deciding to remove questions regarding preferred funding percentage allocations.
1:04:01 Trees Medford Small Grant Application — Approved a $10,000 small grant recommendation for Trees Medford and Wilderscaping to inventory invasive plant species across city parks.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: So we have a quorum and it's 6.30. So there we go. I will call the meeting to order. Recording in progress.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Perfect. Okay. I am calling to order the meeting of Medford's Community Preservation Committee, Tuesday, February 10th, 2026, 6.30 PM. And we are meeting hybridly with some of us being located in Medford City Hall, room 201, and some of us on Zoom. With that, I will, we should call the roll.

[Ari Fishman]: Ari? Here, and just going to keep my video off for a few more minutes.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: That's fine. And is there anyone that I missed online? You. Well, I'm not online. I'm in the room. Myself here.

[Theresa Dupont]: And Maisha and Reg are absent. Am I missing anybody? I'm missing someone. Kaylee? I might just be running a few minutes late because I believe I saw that she accepted.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Okay. So seeing that Therese Medford is not on quite yet, can jump ahead and take care of some business and then come back to that on the agenda. The most easy business to take care of would be the meeting minutes from December 9. We don't yet have the January 13. Does anyone have any comments on the December 9 meeting minutes?

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: No comments, but make a motion to accept the meeting minutes from December 9. Second.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: And myself, yes. All right, and we still don't have them. The next thing that I wanted to mention, and it's unfortunate that we don't have everyone here, is elections to be held next month for officer elections for the CPC. So since 2017, Joan and I have served in the role of chair and vice chair, and I can't speak for you, Joan. I'm willing to continue serving in this role for another term. But I don't feel as though I have to be the person serving in this role. And I would be very happy to work with somebody who wanted to wanted to step up and take on leadership in this capacity. So I wanted to invite people to think over the next month about whether they would be interested in taking on being chair or vice chair of this board. And if so, please reach out to Teresa and let her know.

And maybe Teresa, you can pass that message on to everyone else as well. Of course.

[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, I'll make sure that our members who are not here get that message as well.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: I'm happy to continue, but I'm also happy to step aside and let someone else participate. Thank you, John.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: So, yeah, with that, we would invite nominations next month for an election of officers next month.

[Jeremy Martin]: Would you both be willing to just speak briefly to what your roles are? I mean, I think I see Roberta, your role, month to month, pretty clearly, but what does the vice chair do?

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: So, I'm basically a backup, you know, in case, you know, Roberta's not available to lead the meetings and do what she does so brilliantly. We obviously have a great resource in Teresa. So I suspected if I had to step in, Teresa would guide me, so very diligently. But other than that, I mean, separate from the vice chair, I do help Teresa with any website stuff that we might do. But other than that, It's pretty much sitting on deck.

[Jeremy Martin]: And Roberta, I know you do a lot of things in the background with Teresa. Is there a way to easily summarize some of that or?

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, so I would say that one of the wonderful things about having Teresa is that the background work that I do is a lot of because I'm just passionate about the work that the CPC is doing and not because I functionally have to do things. To help Teresa. Teresa is doing a great job of running things like the work that that is that functionally has to get done to run this program. So it's really a degree of how interested am I in helping to drive the agenda and consult on decision making. And some of that, throughout the years, we've had the opportunity to lean on committee members who have expertise in specific topics to contribute behind the scenes when we have questions about certain projects. So that type of engagement can continue, whether I am not the chair, but I still have ideas that I want to pass on to Teresa, or somebody else wants to pass on that. That kind of active guiding of projects is something that, through Teresa, anybody can be involved in, and the chair doesn't necessarily have to be doing that work.

[Ada Gunning]: So I was just observing the turnover happening on the CDB and thinking about just how these things like functionally work for those of us, for myself, for example, I'm a mayoral appointee, is the expectation that at the end of my term, If I want to continue, I can. Is there a process by which I have to meet with the mayor since I'm a mayoral appointee? Is it just you? What is the formal and what is the informal situation here? Can we just clarify what that is?

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: So the CPA does have an ordinance that defines how this committee works. And that ordinance has each member serving a three-year term, and our terms are staggered so that there's not mass turnover at the same time. Um, the, there, there are no term limits. And so that, um, that means that there is no, there's no official point at which we, um, we have to step down, but we, um, you know, we, we each, uh, I, the mayor does have discretion. when it comes time for reappointments every three years. So far, the mayor has never stepped in and actively asked people to pass on the role to a new person. I think that's a matter of convention at the mayor's discretion, and that's not a formal policy. that the mayor has been willing to allow us to continue to serve without reconsideration.

[Theresa Dupont]: I'll just add to that as part of the new charter adoption. It does address mayoral appointee. Actually, I believe it's all appointees to a border commission are subject now to city council approval. So it's just a little bit of a new procedural thing.

[Ada Gunning]: There's some exceptions, like CDB is an exception to that. I can't remember exactly, but yes, there will be a change for a bunch of them.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: That includes the statutory members because I'm reading the order right now. Definitely, the appointed members have to be confirmed by the city council, but it doesn't say the statutory members are.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Correct. The statutory members are just named to our board by the board which sends them.

[Theresa Dupont]: And that's changing, I think she's got, I think she has some power to veto that. Should she ever make that that decision, but that would be under the under the charter.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: That's that's not in our ordinance. Our ordinance doesn't give the mayor oversight mayor. appoints everybody to the boards that are represented on the CPC, the mayor doesn't decide who from those boards serves on the CPC. Yeah.

[Doug Carr]: That's right. The Historical Commission selected me to serve on this committee.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: There's the planning of the annual social outing that is on the vice chair.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: Have you tried the New Mexican place in Medford Square, Doug? They're going to get to know to run for their money.

[Theresa Dupont]: Oh, I'm going to taco place and yeah, where the whole place used to be not yet.

[Theresa Dupont]: I've tried their water town location. Very good. All right. But if you end up coming up with any random questions, feel free to send them my way. Happy to have a discussion. I'm available 1 on 1 if anybody wants to talk about it. Thank you. Okay. And I haven't heard from our Trees Metro friends yet. I'm wondering if there's a garden commission meeting happening at 7. I'm wondering if they've got their wires crossed, perhaps. That's happening Tuesday night since City Hall, so. Yeah. The calendar was stacked today. What was that?

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: I had to keep scrolling for our meeting. So we can continue with CPA business then before we take up the small grant application. Review draft FY27 policy changes. So Teresa had included in the meeting packet this CPA calendar for 2026. So this is a calendar of all of the CPA agendas as we can anticipate them throughout the calendar year. And also shows in the middle column is the agendas, on the right hand column are the tasks that take place each month. And so maybe we could start from the end of the year and work backwards. because we've just been through the funding cycle. Last month, we made the remainder of our funding cycle decisions for FY26. So if we were to follow the pattern that we have the last several years, we have We've been deliberating in December and January on the funding cycle, and hearing presentations in October and November, and then working backwards from there, September, we look at the, we kind of give the applications a preliminary review so we can anticipate what are the questions, what's the information that we need to ask of the applicants. August is when the applications are due.

Eligibility determination forms are due in July. August also happens to be when we take a hiatus. So the applicants are busy working, but we're going out and having a drink. The so June, there's some flexibility about what we cover. Um, we may even June, July, August right now are the agenda looks light. So we might be able to skip another meeting in that range if we don't have a lot on the agenda, um, may. We're looking at establishing the CPA budget to give to city council. Um, and so, oh, my goodness. I'm sorry. My phone is just doing weird things right now. Okay.

So working backwards, April, we're talking where the public hearing is in March. April, we're reviewing what we heard in the public hearing and the public engagement activities, survey and so forth. And looking at the Affordable Housing Trust presentation.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, yeah. So like we're over February, March, April, we're in the process of kind of evaluating our, our, our cycle and deciding what are, how is it going to work? What are our needs and priorities? Um, so that's, that's how that's an overview of what our FY 27 cycle would look like. Um, any thoughts, anything that, that you feel we could improve on? What would work better for us?

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: I've said for a while, and I know that we just haven't had time to do it, but it would be good to have something on the website that lists every project that we've done and what the status is. Most of them are completed, hopefully. Some of them are still in process, but it would be good to see the results of the work that has happened over time.

[Theresa Dupont]: Agreed. And all that information lives in various places. So just cobbling it together in one central place is, you're right, Joan, that's a good idea.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: Is there an opportunity for, because I remember, you know, Danielle used to have a trusted sidekick to kind of help her with those sort of busy little tasks and projects. Is there opportunity in our budget for you to hire a student to kind of help or somebody to help with putting that as a little discrete project?

[Theresa Dupont]: I think there's some opportunities for that this year. I rolled into the planning department, PDS, and we just put out some new feelers for interns for summer, spring, and summer. I used to be mostly, uh, it was me that was Daniel's helper towards the end of her time at the CPC coordinator. So, um, but I didn't know she brought in an intern once or twice for that. So that's something I can explore working for her when Amanda was in school, Amanda was yep. And then Amanda ascended. Um, but yes, you know, there's definitely opportunity for that. And that's, that's something I'll explore with Alicia.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: We would have money in our admin budget to be able to help cover that, you know, once we... The other thing I thought of, and this is just kind of an out there thought, but I always think about Dee Morris and how she walks around and talks about the history of Medford. But it'd be great to have a tour of Medford that highlights the different CPA projects. You know, we could do it in different areas, like do like one area, know, hit three or four, you know, how many are in that space, and then go to another part of Bedford, just ways to get people more sort of engaged in and understand where their money is going, you know. Ada.

[Ada Gunning]: I was just thinking on along those lines, the church. that is housing the Bonsai Nursery School is going to that nursery school is going to be opening their doors in April, according to my friend who's enrolling her baby there. And I was just thinking it would be like a cute event, like evening cocktail hour in the space. I mean, that is the CPC project, because we are their primary funder for over the course of many years. So that, I don't know, I'm thinking that could be a nice effect.

[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. I love the idea of expanding it. I've been in some preliminary discussions with Shiloh Baptist Church about doing like a ribbon cutting ceremony, but I do like the idea of it just being something a little bit more than a ribbon cutting.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: I would love for that to be a community fundraiser to help pay for their windows. That would be great.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: Yeah. Yeah. I'm just trying to think of different angles of engaging the public than the ones that we usually do. Only because, you know, we've been doing it for a long time. It is always good to kind of change it up a little bit.

[Ada Gunning]: And that one, that particular location is like a couple blocks from the Brooks. Like I could picture sending something home in the folders of Brooks kids that week. That's like CPC, like come celebrate this, whatever. Families are like right in that neighborhood.

[Theresa Dupont]: Anyways, I love that idea. That kind of segues into something we were going to it's later on in the agenda talking about some tabling events, but you're kind of hitting the nail on the head of something. I've been thinking about, like, how can we yes, it's great to get up to our regular tabling events, but. how can we better engage in more unique and different ways this year?

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: Circle the Square can be circling the square, pointing out CDPA projects near the square.

[Theresa Dupont]: Love that for 2027. Unfortunately, Circle the Square is on hiatus this year. I see a date there, no? Yeah, well, that wasn't there before.

[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, just so. Cache and Medford Arts Collaborative are merging as groups into one big super group. So for this year, Circula Square is off the table.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: But they will be doing a Medford Open Studio event. Yes, which April or May? I don't remember. Wow, Jeremy.

[Jeremy Martin]: I wanted to ask about the affordable housing trust presentation that you've got penciled in here in March. I know that's also our public meeting. It seems like the Affordable Housing Trust presentation could have a meeting of its own, just to really dig in on that. I'm wondering, not to add meetings or to lose June or July off, but what seems, is March the right time to hear from them? Is it possible to hear from them later in your April alt or even one of the other meetings that doesn't have anything dedicated to it right now?

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: That's actually a great question. I'm glad you raised this question, because going back a level, our public hearing is That's an opportunity to bring some folks in who can speak to Medford's needs. That's how we've typically used our annual. So the annual public hearing is required by the state legislation, but it's not exactly prescriptive about how we use the public hearing. So what we've always done is use this to invite people to talk to us about what they see as the community needs so that we can evaluate our priorities before we go into the funding cycle. And so it's been my experience that we only get people to talk to us if we invite them.

it doesn't tend to bring a lot of people from the public to come and give comment at the public hearing. So we've started asking specific city staff or organizations to come and share their observations about what the needs are. And Teresa and I have talked a little bit about like what are the questions that we feel like we'd like to ask and who are the people who might be able to answer those questions. I don't know, Teresa, if you happen to have that handy, what we talked about. It's about 15 feet above my head in my office. I will not make you run up and down the stairs.

[Theresa Dupont]: I know for housing, it was inviting the trust to come to our public hearing to talk about what they are doing and what their priorities are as they're evaluating development needs in the city. I just, that's like the big 1, because, you know, historic preservation, we can always bring in an enthusiast. So we are talking about inviting the cemetery trustees, the cemetery trustees as well as for parks and open space, actually inviting our recreation director. We always hear from our parks planner, Amanda, who's great and has wonderful things to say, but we do have quite a bit of.

um, in progress or about to be in progress projects with recreation directly. So we love to have Kevin come, um, and speak on the needs of recreation because recreation touches so much, touches all of our parks, touches Hormel. Um, so we're, we're inviting Kevin from recreation, um, the cemetery trustees, uh, to, to speak on historic preservation as well as our, our friends at the housing trust. Another thought I had was perhaps also inviting our housing families. Recently just got quite multiple awards from the city, CPA, CDBG, as well as our community fund relief as well.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: That would be helpful. The Affordable Housing Trust would be really relevant to hear from them around that time about what they perceive as the community needs that they might want to address, especially since they finished their Housing Trust Action Plan last fall and have been mobilizing to undertake next steps since then. But they may not be ready to talk about how they've spent CPA funding at this point because they are still on the one project Really? They funded one project, and they're still trying to figure out what is the best way to get more projects in the works.

[Theresa Dupont]: So to Jeremy's point, perhaps it might be best to have them come and speak briefly as part of the public hearing, but then perhaps to push their annual presentation to later, to give them some more time to keep doing what they're doing. I'm kind of thinking, Jeremy's got a good point there. Yeah.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: So we might want to break their, like our ask of them into two. And in March, they can tell us what they see as the needs and yeah, maybe June.

[Theresa Dupont]: And maybe we can make June a housing themed meeting, you know, have the housing authority come and speak on, where they're at with the walkway and court redevelopment, which is a project we've heavily funded as well. So that, I don't know, it's just a thought maybe June could be our housing month, you know?

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. I mean, these agenda items that are not related to the application cycle are flexible and they can jump around. Maybe we might want to, under the public hearing, have sub-bullets that mention who we want to invite.

[Theresa Dupont]: We can have everybody. Everybody's getting this invite, but I will put these particular folks on the hot seat, but welcome anybody else who has been a past recipient for historic preservation to also speak.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: And if you all have ideas about people we ought to specifically invite, that would be helpful.

[Jeremy Martin]: Well, you mentioned Amanda. She works technically under the mayor's office. I think we've had, just in this last cycle, two or three requests from her. That could be another one.

[Theresa Dupont]: Amanda's in Charlotte. Yeah, she technically rolls into the planning department under Alicia Hahn. But I mean, we all work for the mayor, so at the end of the day.

[Theresa Dupont]: room for PDS and recreation. And knowing Amanda, she'll probably just come to support us anyway, and she might have comments to share regardless. Yeah. She's very engaged.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. I would invite them as attendees. I don't know if we want to invite city councillors to tell us what the needs are. to give testimony.

[Theresa Dupont]: Right. And just so everybody's aware, they always do receive our agendas. It's not like a formal, hello, Teresa's inviting you to come to this meeting. But they are always aware of when our meetings are and what we're discussing. So kind of a passive invitation. But I can formally invite them to come to our public hearing. That's a good idea, Autumn.

[Doug Carr]: Theresa, my question with regard to the city councilors is they obviously just approved everything that we voted on, right? As far as I know, there were no real speed bumps or any alternate, anything that came up that was significant in terms of opposition. Is that correct?

[Theresa Dupont]: There was, I wouldn't call it a speed bump. It was just a comment, social media. uh, comment about funding church institutions, which is an understandable thing for residents to ask questions on. Um, but there was just some clarification from that, that, um, you know, I, I just explained, you know, what the eligibility under historic preservation just happened to be a church. Um, but other than that, no speed, uh, no hiccups. Everybody was, uh, very appreciative of the variety, the diversity of the projects that we brought to them. So, yeah. No complaints from the City Council.

[Jeremy Martin]: And Teresa did a masterful job explaining that particular project and consideration.

[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you, Jeremy. Appreciate that. It is an annual question that comes up every year, so I've practiced it a few years now.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: As I'm looking at this, a few things jump out at me, one of which is we didn't put on this calendar the actual officer elections. Do we want to have officer elections in the same meeting as the public hearing, or should we bump the officer elections to April? What's your concern? I don't know how long our public hearing is going to be. Often our public hearings are not excessively long, so we might be able to do the public hearing and then have committee business. It might be fine.

I'm just not, I don't want to crowd too much if you feel like that would be too much.

[Ada Gunning]: Anna? I'm wondering if anyone wants to run for those positions, if they could maybe email Teresa ahead of time. And if not, then it feels like it'll be just a really quick thumbs up, in which case it would really be crowding the agenda.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: You know what I mean? OK. So we could keep it in March. Yeah.

[Theresa Dupont]: If it looks like there'll be a multiple campaign election season for it, then maybe we can push it to April.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, we could ask to continue the discussion if it's more than a light discussion. And I should mention that the Mystic River shoreline revitalization plan really fits into the public hearing theme. Yeah. So under open space and recreation, it's a presentation of a public study on what our open space and recreation needs are along the Mystic River. So I would consider that to be a sub-bullet under the public hearing. If they don't mind being considered part of the public hearing, I don't know if they feel self-conscious about that. I'll clarify, but I doubt it. Okay.

[Theresa Dupont]: Carl's pretty flexible. Yeah. And he loves talking about this project. So yeah, it's a great project. If you're not familiar, definitely tune in. Be here next month. Okay.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Okay. So that would be our public hearing. April, we review public engagement, discuss updates to our goals, evaluation criteria, and priorities. And the question for me, actually a question for Teresa, how do we feel about a draft plan for April? I feel good about it. OK.

[Theresa Dupont]: That will help them feel into that discussion as well, because what we do in the annual plan every year is update. on our public engagement, discuss our updates to goals, evaluation criteria. So having a draft plan would make sense to really have an engaging conversation. Yeah.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: I'm committed to that, folks. Thank you. So we have a draft in April, finalize it in May.

[Theresa Dupont]: This will be static in all of our meeting packets going forward, so it'll be available for anybody who wants a quick reference, like, oh, crap, I'm going on vacation in September. When are we meeting? Or just you're curious about the content.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: And if you hear of anything that bubbles up that we need to put into the agenda, you can drop it wherever it belongs, though it might be updated every month for whatever is our latest version. Great. Thank you. I haven't heard from trees Medford. So I'm do we want to just we have one more item of our own business. And if we don't hear from them, then we can see how we want to proceed. Yeah. So the other item of our own business was review of the 2026 public engagement process and opportunities. So we started to talk about this earlier and maybe didn't give the question its full due. We talked about the public hearing already, but community survey question we can come back and talk about. But before we do that, we can talk about tabling and other event opportunities. So Teresa has made this incredible list of events that the CPC might have an interest in.

And yeah, we can see whether. whether this list looks like something that we could support. We can think about how we can engage with people at these different events so that we can get input from them and give them information about the CPA program that helps to generate that diverse list of applications that we receive during the year.

[Theresa Dupont]: So, this is not an exhaustive list of all the various events that we do. It's just, I feel like this is the 1 that we can really get the bang for our buck with really getting a nice capturing a wider audience here. The 1st, 1 that I was just thinking of is every year around Earth Day. We, the city sponsors a city wide cleanup. A city wide clean up of our park. So we already have a lot of people out in our parks and I participated. I believe, Joan, you have to in the past. So I'm not sure how many people participate, but might be something fun where, you know, it can be something a little bit more casual. I haven't thought it all the way through, but just capitalizing on that as an opportunity. People are in our parks. Let's go meet them in the parks. Talk about CPA. Not sure what that looks like quite yet, but.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: I would probably get data from Lisa to find out which ones have the most participants, because I usually run one of them, and last year we only had two people. Yeah. We've had like a dozen, so. Right. But we're up in the heights, so probably something more in Medford Square or some other, you know, more attended.

[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, I ran Hickey Park last year, and I had two people as well. Lovely folks, but yeah.

[Ada Gunning]: Anna? I'm just thinking, since I've been to many, if not most, of these events, that there are some that are just hordes of people. like nonstop conversations, like Teresa, when we did Oktoberfest, comparing that to when we did the, whatever that was at McGlynn, I think it was the... I almost wonder if what might be an effective approach for us as a committee is to choose like three like high-impact tabling experiences and try to get like several of us to go be there together and have as many conversations as possible instead of having this really overwhelming list and then like nobody volunteer for anything have it be more of like a social thing and then do the events that are like just Just like waterfalls of people like all over you like millions of conversations. You know what I mean? So that's a thought.

[Ada Gunning]: And the tough community is like that too, except that's a lot of summerville people. So just something to keep in mind.

[Ari Fishman]: Yeah, I think Harvest, your energy was like that too, and I agree with kind of having the lower key and not bringing Teresa out, although I know you have enormous amounts of energy. I did kind of notice that a lot of these are very active and focused at kind of... younger kind of folks with kids, middle aged folks, folks who are physically active. Are there any specifically elder focused events that we could maybe do? And also maybe something specifically that's at the West Medford Community Center, which I know it is a major hub.

[Theresa Dupont]: Well, yeah, absolutely. I'm I wouldn't say I'm besties, but I'm pretty communicative with the director of the Council on Aging, and they're constantly having events over there. And I have gone over a couple of times and just very casually tabled and engaged with folks over there. Lots of really good dialogue comes out of that, a lot of really good feedback and comments. Thank you for pointing that out, Ari. make sure that we're diversifying.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: And if we were to get the timing exactly right, we might be able to combine one visit to the West Bedford Community Center to capture seniors and families with children. Yeah. So.

[Ari Fishman]: Uh, 1, 1 more sorry, something. Some events that's co sponsored by with the Medford family network. I know I just said we have a lot with kids and that covers, for example, the farmers market, but and Halloween fest never mind. We've already got that covered. Sorry.

[Theresa Dupont]: Oh, no, it's it's that's a great idea because they, I know they will do like fundraising galas kind of randomly here and there. So by having more engagement with the Medford Family Network is a good idea. And there's always hordes. Yes, lots of folks. I think I saw Jeremy had your hand up.

[Jeremy Martin]: I did, but it was an in-the-weeds question. I was going to ask if the April 27th date was intentionally on a Monday, that citywide cleanup, or if it would

[Theresa Dupont]: It's usually a Sunday and sometimes it's the same week as Earth Day, sometimes it's not. It's May 2nd? Yeah, it's May 2nd, Saturday. Thank you. That's a good question. One thing I was thinking actually, and I wrote it down here for me to remember, is maybe CPA could sponsor a community event ourselves. And Saturdays in the Park is this idea I kicked around last year, wasn't able to commit to it for reasons, but I want to try to do it this year, just engaging folks in a park. Um, on Saturdays bringing lemonade and ice creams or something, but maybe we could sponsor like a movie night. So that way, yes, it is. It ends up being a little bit more family oriented, but the idea is if we can distract the kids, engage the parents, um, you know, uh, because it's a formula that, that works really well. Um, not saying that has to be a movie night, but maybe we can all start thinking about. low cost but high impact ways that CPA can sponsor or hold a community event rather than us just piggybacking off of other ones that exist.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: I wonder if we were to hijack something like the pop-up park to do a demonstration of activities like water and Like something that can be transported to that site just like water, a community garden stand, and like a skateboard ramp. Like, put all of these little temporary things into 1 location so that we can try to envision what would we like to see elsewhere in the city?

[Theresa Dupont]: Well, that's a great, great idea. And it's actually funny that you say that because just today I was on a call where they were discussing a tentative plan for sometime in May. That's actually what this, this 1, I've got highlighted here at the clipper ship pop up park. May is bicycle safety month, I believe, so this mayor's office is trying to plan some sort of ride that begins or ends at the clipper ship part. And maybe we could.

hijack that a little bit and insert CPA as something. I think there's an opportunity there.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: I can flush it out a little bit more, but like maybe some pickleball paddles and a little portable net or something. So like people can try all kinds of things that they can do in other parks around the city.

[Theresa Dupont]: And just so everybody is aware, Recreation has bought a little mini skate park kit that they can go and set up in parking lots. That would be perfect. Thank you. Yeah.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. So I wonder if we could, like, expand beyond just the size of that pop-up to take on a little bit bigger area within that. Maybe. Maybe. So it's something to explore. Maybe there's potential there. Jeremy?

[Jeremy Martin]: What I'm about to say doesn't sound anywhere as fun as the other things that you all just put up for consideration, but I'm just remembering that our friends at the armory committed to opening their building for some kind of community resource thing, and that could be another resource that we could use potentially as a gathering place or to host. That is very true. In the time of year when you don't want to be outside in a park.

[Theresa Dupont]: Right. And maybe we can do a movie night in their lobby space or something. Movie nights are easy, and I have that in my wheelhouse to execute. So that's the only reason why I keep defaulting to that one. But yeah, that's a good point. Thank you.

[Ari Fishman]: I believe we had talked specifically around doing something with the veterans organization, with the armory, given its history. I wonder if kind of an adult movie night with that group could be an interesting change of pace.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: But I'm just really excited. They're giving you so much to think about. Yeah.

[Theresa Dupont]: But yeah. Not really asking for anybody to hard commit to any of these dates right now, but these are just things. It's not every single one of these is going to be something that we commit to. It's just throwing these out there as our regular scheduled tabling events. But I love the idea that's kind of getting a lot of feedback about maybe we can think outside the box here.

[Jeremy Martin]: Teresa, will you share this list with us? And if possible, could you just flag the ones that we have tabled at in the past? Yes, I can do that. Thank you.

[Theresa Dupont]: And this is something, again, I'll leave static in every meeting packet going forward, too, so that it's on our radars.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: All right, so that was reviewing known tabling of opportunities. We have one more thing in this section of our agenda, community survey question review. So Teresa had included in the meeting packet Some survey questions that we used last year. And so we could use this as a launching point to talk about how we might modify this survey for next year. So the survey form has a first section, first question, which is, what CPA sites have you visited in the past, listing all the CPA sites? So that is helpful for us because it finds out what is the impact of the investments that we've made in the past. And it's helpful for them because they learn where CPA funding has gone to. So that's the first question. Second question, I think we will skip this question this year. Have you participated in public engagement of design? Because we haven't had any design projects in the pipeline. We only have the one COVID memorial growth that we did on that project. So let's skip question two. Question three, have you or someone you know benefited from any of the following affordable housing projects that we've done and list some affordable housing projects? We could add to that list Fellsway West. Yes.

[Theresa Dupont]: Which is completely leased up, folks. Isn't that wonderful? Yes, it is.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: That's great. Um, CPA funds can be used to so the next are open ended questions. CPA funds can be used to create, expand, improve, rehabilitate parks, open spaces and outdoor recreational amenities. I feel like. We might be able to make it a little bit less wordy. Sure. But that's basically this is an open ended. And then we give some examples of open space projects just so that it jogs people's thinking about them. And then the next question is the same for preserving historic buildings and artifacts.

And we'll give some examples of things that we've done in the past. And are there any specific projects that you'd like to see? And then the next question asks the same about affordable housing.

[Theresa Dupont]: I will say, if I can jump in for a second. Please. Question number four about, hey, what are some specific open space projects you'd like to see? This one's really easy for people to answer. Yeah. As we move into our other questions, though, like historic preservation, it tends to get a little less engaging with our responses that we receive. Usually it was something akin to, we love what you're doing, keep it up. Nothing really specific, which is fair. That's why we did include examples to see if maybe that would pop anybody's, get any thoughts going.

I will say we get a lot of engagement on open space, not so much on historic preservation. And affordable housing is usually build more affordable housing units. Doesn't really get terribly specific beyond that. Just wanted to share that with everybody.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: That is true. That's been my experience as well. I don't want to give short shrift to the other program areas, but it is easier for people to relate to. the recreation projects. Jeremy?

[Jeremy Martin]: So with that said, do you think that we're asking the right question about affordable housing? I don't know what the question should be, but rather than asking people to identify needs, I don't know.

[Theresa Dupont]: We did actually. I think this was something that bubbled up last year and I am realizing that we did reword a housing question about comment, asking people just for comments that you have about housing needs and not necessarily, how would you spend this money? And it was still the answers were like, we support affordable housing, please keep doing what you're doing. But you're right, are we asking this question the right way? Is there another?

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: So some text here could work backwards from how would we use this information? Um, we might, we might be influenced to put more money toward, um, construction or. more money toward housing stabilization programs. But then we also have to remember that we're going to get a very non-representative sample of responses to this survey. So we'll take whatever people tell us in the survey as just a little bit of anecdotal observations that that we need to pair together with information that we get from other sources.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: So what if we present the data in a different context? So rather than say, which of the program areas would you like to see supported, maybe we say, since the inception of CPA, for the three program areas, we have funded this amount of projects in each of the program areas. And you're going to see a high amount of the open space and recreation, a little bit less of, you know, much less of the housing because we just weren't getting the applications, and then the historic preservation. And just say, is this the, you know, is this the mix of spend that you support or would you support, you know, maybe tipping the balance a little bit? Because we always ask that question, where should we spend the money? And they always say equal. But maybe if they see that we're not spending as much on housing, even though they say we want you to support housing, maybe that will drive a different answer.

[Theresa Dupont]: So we have provided that context in the blurb, but maybe we can call it out more. To your point, Joan, specifically asking, do you support how we've been in the past allocating funds?

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: Now, see, that number is surprising to me. Is that since the Affordable Housing Trust came in?

[Theresa Dupont]: Yes. Yes, this did include last year's allocation to the trust, which was $250. Walking Court was a big investment on our part as well.

[Theresa Dupont]: But I'll update those numbers to reflect what we've funded this year so it's accurate.

[Theresa Dupont]: They're going to be breaking ground, I believe, in June or July. Did we see? They will be coming to our June meeting with a presentation on that. Yes. But yeah, they were a little, I don't want to steal their thunder, but they were a little worried there for a while at the end of last, end of last calendar year, but they're moving forward with it. They will still need some further funding down the road, but phase one is moving forward. Yeah.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, so that would be interesting to add a question of, do you agree with this? And then I wonder, Do we want to ask people to use percentages to indicate how you would divide the funds? Or do we want to ask, if not, what would you give more to? Ari? Here's a question. Sorry. Go ahead, Ari.

[Ari Fishman]: We ask this question every year. The only two serious answers we get are either divide evenly or give a bunch more to housing. What do we do with this data for this question, and does this actually lead to any actionable decisions?

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: Do you want to add more, Joan, before I try to... I was going to say, I mean, it kind of informs our decision-making process. And to that point, if we got direction from, you know, these constituents to say, not this 30-30-30 thing, we want you to spend 60% on historic preservation. So say we only get, you know, one or two applications for historic preservation, Should we hold that money for historic preservation, because that's what the constituents want us to spend the money on? Or if we don't get the applications, we just give it to whomever presents an application?

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Right. That's a really great question. I know some other communities, like Somerville, Cambridge, They determine in advance how what the distribution is going to be between all three program areas, like either the whole distribution or the majority of the distribution only leave a little bit flexible. We leave it more flexible because that allows us to support whatever the best projects that come along. I do want to come back to your really critical question, Ari, but Doug, Go ahead.

[Doug Carr]: I think I'm going to echo what I've been hearing a couple of people say, which is, essentially, this survey, while providing anecdotal information, doesn't actually change what we do. Right. Because we're about a third, a third, a third. And that's a general criteria. But it all depends what's in front of us. The cards were dealt every single year. So, I guess I somewhat question what this is actually achieving beyond anecdotal. Anecdotal evidence doesn't change policy, at least it shouldn't. So, I'm struggling with this a little bit because I don't want to not ask people, but I think a better use of this would be give us project ideas from any category. You know, I find that more interesting. Tell me something about Mifida I don't know. That could be a future property that's more meaningful than I want more housing or I want more historic preservation. I need better parks. We all know that.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: So skipping the funding distribution question altogether. Yeah. Yeah, I see a thumbs up from Ada. Yeah, like coming back and from Ari, coming back to that question of how are we using this information. The whole survey, to me, and you all might have other ideas that would be helpful perspective, but to me, it's a two-way tool for outreach. So we're teaching, we're using the survey to teach the public about what is CPA and to invite them to think about how do you CPA and then we're also. Hoping to get some ideas, which, of course, we can't use those ideas directly, but we share what we learn with other boards and committees city staff or the mayor's office. So we take what what people tell us. and share that with people who might directly go out and implement things. So this question about funding distribution, I can't imagine any scenario where we could possibly get a representative enough sample to feel confident actually making a decision based on the answer to that question. Someone strike it. Okay.

Really good dialogue on that. I'm glad we talked about it. Thank you. And so the last section is demographic questions. These are demographic questions that I've used over and over again because they're really easy. The answers are really easy to compare with the census, which enables us to see how representative the sample is of people who respond to the survey. assuming that we get a big enough survey response. And really helpful this year, adding ward location, which includes a visual map. In the past, we've used neighborhood identities, but ward location is kind of an important thing to educate people about every chance we get this year.

[Theresa Dupont]: I will say the map that I created for the survey, because interstitial in all of these survey questions, I try to add visuals so that people can I'm a visual person. It helps to see what historic preservation project. But regardless, I was just going to toot my own horn. The map that our GIS coordinator created for me for our wards was heavily used outside of this. It was pretty much the most modern ward map that we have in the city. So just a little fun thing that came out of this exercise. Thank you, Teresa. Thank you, Steve Morris.

We'll keep the same demographic questions. I will commit to getting this survey put into, you know, there's five languages aside from English that we at City Hall translate things into. That's Portuguese, Brazilian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, and Haitian Creole. So I will get that translated again. We had one respondent last year. in Spanish, which was exciting to see. It's always great whenever you see more engagement happening, so we'll do that again this year.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, and invite our liaisons to help us distribute the survey to people who are using those languages. Yeah, I will get that out. Wonderful.

[Theresa Dupont]: So the plan is to get this published Friday so that we've got a good seven to eight week period of having the survey circulate, people finding out about it, people engaging in it. So I'll share that with this group because obviously you're all residents and I would love your participation as well. But yeah, that should hit the interwebs this Friday. Thank you. Okay. I have not heard from Trees Medford. I'm going to assume that there was.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: So the question is, we have this off-cycle, it's a small grant application that was submitted by Trees Medford. How do committee members feel about reviewing and voting on this this evening without having them here to present it to us? Or would you prefer to hold it until next month? Doug?

[Doug Carr]: I think it's such a simple application. I think we should just go for it because I don't think there's much there that we really need them for. That's my own opinion.

[Theresa Dupont]: I'll also add that I've been inconsistently involved with invasive awareness outreach that we've been doing out of the mayor's office. I'm pretty communicative with the actual vendor who proposed the estimate for this, Dan Bender. So I can try to answer questions that the board may have if you would like to proceed with deliberation and consideration tonight.

[Jeremy Martin]: I agree with Doug. I'd like to at least discuss it and see if we can get to an agreement on it.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Okay. Thank you. Do I need to screen share the application material?

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Sure. I can do that. Can you stand in for them and give us a quick presentation? Sure.

[Theresa Dupont]: All right, so this is an application being put forward by Trees Medford. Trees Medford is a very active advocacy group here in Medford that advocates for more of the right type of tree canopy. So one thing that they have noticed in all their work over the years is how invasive plants in our city parks are starting to grow and be more prevalent and encroach outside of public land onto private land. So how do we first address the problem is by identifying where we have problems. So they want to undertake an inventory project led by, I think at this price point, it would not necessarily need to go out to bid. So Wilderscaping is a local, invasive landscape management company, local to Medford, lives and breathes Medford, and has put forth an estimate of $10,000 for them to go through all 20, I believe it is, city parks. This includes our passive parks, which are still considered open space and recreation and therefore eligible. These are going to be like your little pocket parks that don't get as much traction as the bigger parks. but it would create a visual map of all of the invasives as they're known. This would not undertake any sort of removal. It's purely identification. I believe the plan from there is, okay, great, now we have a plan. They may come back to us for more funding for the removal efforts. They are looking for volunteer sweat equity to also help with the removals, but there's just, there's going to be some professional removal needs here. So this is something that they are looking to undertake, I believe, this spring. Invasives are always here, but obviously right now they're under snow. But once the snow melts, I believe that is the plan, is to go out and start identifying what we have and how we can tackle it.

They are asking for the full $10,000 from us to fund this project. There is no match money, although I think Trees Medford may have some pocket change if this increases over 10,000. But I think wilderscaping is holding firm to that estimate.

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: Jim? So this is to identify where the problem is. What are we committing to to solve the problem once we identify it?

[Theresa Dupont]: At this point, again, they have It's not a firm plan. They want to first identify the entire scope of how much work there is to do. But the idea is to institute an annual maintenance plan because a lot of these invasives, some of them you can remove and they never come back. And isn't that great? A lot of these invasive need a multiple year treatment plan. So such as like Japanese knotweed, oriental bittersweet is another one that if you don't properly treat it over multiple years. So right now it's a There's not a firm plan in place as to, okay, every January we're going to go out and do this, or every July we'll go out and do that. They want to first do the study to better inform the removal efforts, but they are committing to having some sort of volunteer-based effort that is led by a professional guiding them on this removal efforts. I know that the city has also out of the mayor's office, it's called Keep Medford Beautiful. It is an invasive awareness program that really started last year and kind of later in the season. So we're very optimistic that this coming year we'll have some more engagement earlier and stronger throughout the year. So there's some commitment from the mayor's office on, you know, spreading that awareness and supporting the efforts.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: I see this project as being kind of similar to the condition assessment or the plan that we funded for the Oak Grove Cemetery monument restoration, where it's like step one. Yes. And you only get to step two through completing this treatment plan.

[Jeremy Martin]: Yeah, I think I see this as a great opportunity to bring some clarity to the problem because I think the conversations have been local and very much appreciate what the mayor's office is pushing with the initiative. But it would really be, you need to have the plan to know how to act and There are a lot of people who are very interested in doing something, but aren't quite sure where to start. And this would be a huge step in support of that.

[Jeremy Martin]: If I had my druthers, I'd give them more money to start some of the city training that is contemplated here, but not included yet. But they can come back and ask for that when they're ready to do that step.

[Ari Fishman]: It's a shame they couldn't join us, but we do have an invasive problem and it can't be dealt with on the individual level. So it makes sense to have someone figure out what the plan should be before we all go at it willy nilly. Although I do walk around the city pulling up.

[Doug Carr]: I wonder if the schedule for this, could they get on the cycle to get a full, a large application in for what Jeremy said, which is part two this year, later this year?

[Theresa Dupont]: What is the timeline? I believe so. In my conversations with the vendor who's an expert, and the city defers quite a bit to him in his expertise, he can conduct this at any time of the year as long as he can see the ground. There's always evidence of black swallow wart, even in February as long as you can visually see it. So I think that this, heat plus C already actually knows where quite a bit of the hotbeds are. So I think that there's a good opportunity for them to get in on the regular cycle.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: So this envisions creating a plan management plan for city parks and we're receiving our applications in August. So it's a little bit tight timeline, but theoretically possible for them to at least maybe accelerate the vision for what they need to spend money on next. and then maybe complete the report and the training framework that might not be like a this year funding project in the fall.

[Theresa Dupont]: I don't have hard numbers, but I imagine that this will be the city moves forward with it, which I believe that they will support increase Medford in this joint effort. I think we'll be seeing an application. This could become an annual a perennial application that comes to us every year because, you know, one park, you know, I think of Carr Park because that's my park, that's what I live near, and there's thousands of hours worth of invasive work that needs to be up there, and that's just one park. So perhaps we can get them in on the full funding cycle this year for a portion of it, knowing that this will be a substantial multiple year effort.

[Theresa Dupont]: I can also encourage them to make sure that they get one in on the full funding cycle. This was just a tentative timeline here, but yeah.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: All right. Does anybody want to make a motion to recommend funding for this project?

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: All right. I will call the roll. That was Doug. That was Doug. Joan?

[Vice Chair Joan Cyr]: I'm calling her now. The thing is, if I don't talk, then my mic goes dead.

[Theresa Dupont]: On behalf of TREES Medford, thank you very much. Thank you. I'm very excited. We're going to get this on the February 24th City Council agenda. All right.

[Chair Roberta Cameron]: Well, that covers our entire agenda for this evening. Thank you all, everyone, for a really good discussion.