AI-generated transcript of City Council Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee 04-14-26

[Liz Mullane]: Okay, calling to order the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee for April 14th. Clerk, can you call the roll please?

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

[Liz Mullane]: Present.

[Marie Izzo]: Present.

[Liz Mullane]: All right. Okay, so to just get us started, thank you everybody who has stayed later. I know this has started later than we had anticipated. The first piece that we wanted to go over is the newsletter. So the resolution to publish a city council newsletter be it resolved by the Medford City Council, the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee shall have the authority to draft and approve. A regular newsletter summarizing the activities of the city council and can vote to publish a newsletter by whatever mechanisms available without referring the draft newsletter to a regular council meeting for a vote. Be it further resolved that this paper be referred to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee as a standing agenda item. So since we had the last meeting had to get canceled in order for another meeting to happen we did not have a review of February. And so we are a little bit trying to play some catch up on some of the newsletter information. So I'm going to share my screen. I had put together some pieces from February and Councilor Lumming was very gracious to take a look at adding in some from March. And a little bit from April as well. So if this works for everyone if everyone can see this on their screen I'm sharing I will just kind of slowly kind of scroll through it. And if there are any other pieces that you'd like to add please let me know. Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Chair Mullane. If this is the same draft that you have that I sent earlier, I could just send it over to folks on the committee if that's okay. I just want to make sure that the draft is the same.

[Liz Mullane]: Yes. The one that I am sharing on my screen is one that you emailed over to me earlier. If you'd like to share it out, that might be helpful. Great. So per usual, there's a lot of activity happening throughout the months of February, March, and a little bit of April. Actually quite took a lot of time to go back and forth, even on the February one. So that's not to say after March we had many additional meetings as well. So, as I go through this, these are separated out by the different areas of the newsletter that we've normally had in the past. So, starting with any kind of commemorations and acknowledgements, mention what happened at the February 23rd. Councilor Leming put in some information from April 7th so that we could highlight all the different things that have happened over the past several months. As we get into the general business we tried to condense and put together kind of an over lay of everything that happened within February, certainly starting with February 3rd from the city council meetings, talking about any one of the different resolutions that were introduced, certain conversations that we had around different contracts, and certainly some of the different spending allocations that we approved that were sent to us that we discussed as well throughout the meetings. I also included if there were any additional approved licenses to also highlight some of the businesses that were coming through. And you know as you go through the rest of this newsletter again and a good portion of this is also available on the city website too. It basically tries to take all the different pieces that we've talked about over the past couple of months and try to condense it as best we can. Again, a lot of information, try to be as concise as possible. And then also try to include different meetings that we had, not only just from the city council, but our joint meetings that we held. Certainly there were many of them as well to talk through with the community development board. We had information from the committee of the whole meetings that we discussed, a variety of different items there. And then certainly as we get to the end of this newsletter draft, we tried to pull out information per each of the different committees that met in the meantime. There is obviously information around the planning and permitting committee. Other pieces around committee of the whole and the public health and community safety committee as well as the previous resident services and public engagement committee. So it's a lot of information. I know it's a lot of different pieces coming together. I appreciate Councilors taking a look and adding or making any suggestions as we go through. I'll turn this over to Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: If we're trying to kind of get it up to date, do we want to include the public works and facilities meeting where we discussed the snow? Like we did have that meeting and since it's mentioned earlier, it might be nice to kind of button it up at the bottom. We just be like, and this, you know, thing was discussed with the DPW on blah blah date.

[Liz Mullane]: Yes, Councilor Callahan, we can add that into the bottom of it. Probably what I'll do is put a little blurb in, but maybe just have you take a quick look, make sure I capture everything. We can add that in as part of it as well, and move around what we have at the top.

[Anna Callahan]: And I apologize for not just typing it up right now, which I would normally do, but my computer battery died, and so I'm actually, I'm not able to do that right this second, I'm sorry.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I think for me, this looks really great, by the way. Thank you to both of you. I don't know who worked on this. I know you worked on a lot of it. I really love the idea of highlighting businesses. Those are the two things. the budget requests from individual Councilors. I think we could also note that we put together the council's list of requests and then link it. I know that got sent to the mayor, and then the second thing, and I forget, I was in the middle of looking this up, I forget which state it is, but I think planning and permitting voted the vacant building ordinance out of committee.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng, for those suggestions. I will go back through and put those additions in there. I know that when we do put this into the actual newsletter format, when it goes out, we'll be able to link things. But to your point as well, like just kind of highlighting, there is actually an overarching document from the council that was sent to the mayor with our budget priorities. We'll be sure to add that. And I will go back in about the planning and permitting the vacant ordinance, the vacant storefront ordinance as well. Vacant properties ordinance. Thank you.

[Justin Tseng]: It's okay with you. With the appropriation for the Elections Commission, it might be nice to just say what that was for. I think it was for voting pads. It was, right? Yeah. for voting pads, oh, for the 13,800 for the Elections Commission.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Any other thoughts, suggestions, edits? I, Councilor Leming, do you want to go?

[Matt Leming]: Well, I was just going to motion to approve and also request that the chair tap another member of council to draft the next version of this so that you're not always doing it. Seconded.

[Liz Mullane]: Great. Clerk, do you want to call the roll?

[Marie Izzo]: I'll be glad to call the roll. Councilor Callaghan. Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. And Chair Maloney.

[Liz Mullane]: Yes. Five in the affirmative. Five in the affirmative, zero in the negative. That passes and we'll move on to the next document. Give me one. Second. So the next part of the meeting is to discuss our defer the discussion that we had at the previous meeting around the resolution to establish the city council neighborhood ward meetings. I wanted to take all of the information that we discussed at the last meeting and I just wanted to put in one kind of strategy document for all of us to look at, review, see if it makes sense and I left some pieces of it open to get some feedback from people to be able to get appropriate next steps in order to move this along because if we are going to to put these ward meetings together. We're going to need to do it sooner rather than later. So essentially what I put together was just kind of an executive summary from our last meeting that we had approved a neighborhood ward meeting proposal. Throughout the course of the next two years, we're looking to host at least one ward-based meeting throughout the eight wards of Medford. Through the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee, a plan will be created that establishes a schedule, structure, strategy, and format to successfully execute this type of engagement opportunity for residents. So at the last meeting we kind of talked about a general idea of which wards we wanted to go first and it kind of lined up with some of the larger conversations we were going to be having that would be impacting those different wards. So that is what I started with here and tried to do a time frame of breaking it out over the next And one of the other things that I did also want to bring up, and again, open to conversation, I know we had discussed and gone back and forth between whether these would all be, or we'd have separate ones for in-person and then separate ones for hybrid, for our Zoom meetings. Thinking about hosting another 16 of these meetings seemed rather daunting to try to fit it within this framework, as well as given it might just be overwhelming for all the different meetings and things that are important things that are happening as well throughout the city. So thinking that we would have these be hybrid meetings, which then means some of the locations we may need to really be thoughtful about if we're going to be able to have the technology to be able to have this be a hybrid type situation. So I started putting in different location suggestions for each of the different wards. Obviously there are some blank because I was hesitant to pick a spot if I wasn't quite sure we'd have the technology for it. Or if you know we wanted to focus more on the fact that some of these areas we may want to look at places that are able to host us both online and in person even though I know we had wanted to be in every single ward if we're positive that we have that kind of technology available. So, the other piece that I put down at the end is just kind of like overarching thoughts and things that I pulled together. And again, this is an open conversation. This is certainly not like set in stone. I'm just, I personally am better if I can react to something. So, I thought we could start here and then take any feedback. But for the ward meetings themselves, we pair Councilors together to co-facilitate each of the ward meetings. Set up the meetings in an open format, allowing for more collaboration and discussion. I know that was a big piece that we wanted to make sure happened. Not having a standardized agenda, but really focusing on what the constituents and our residents really want to talk about, what are their concerns facing them, any feedback that they have. We can bring that up word specific and then soliciting input in advance of the meeting so we have some ideas and topic areas as well to talk about. And then the second piece of this is around communication and outreach. So trying to at least have one month's notice of when we do decide on the meeting to get that out there to everyone and all the different ways in which we could try to get this information out in different communication channels. Again, this was just trying to pull it all together. So from there, I will turn it over for discussion, any pieces that kind of stand out to people. And I will start first with Councilor Lemayne.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to thank you for putting this together. I guess my only question would be, if you have reached out to the administration about getting outreach support for these, or if This is just sort of, I say that because we have requested outreach support from the administration for city council initiatives before and have received very minimal response to that. So I'm just curious if there's been a whole lot of conversations about those.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you, Councilor Lennon. So, in terms of this plan and sharing it with, I have not had the opportunity wanting to pull this all together. In terms of trying to put together a job description or kind of follow up around having kind of a constituent services person, we have had, we've started to have those types of put together that information and you're just trying to be in the early stages of where that might land with the administration.

[Matt Leming]: Great. I would also recommend, and I'm mainly saying this because I'm currently in the process of trying to reserve. Well, I spend time trying to reserve meetings for zoning stuff that I would recommend that we reach out and reserve the spaces for each of these places. months or even a year ahead of time, just because things like the main, the hall in the Medford Public Library, for instance, that fills up really quickly. So I think the best way to go about this would probably be to just have somebody make all the reservations and just like mark the rooms and locations well ahead of time and then publicize the schedule then so that each one of these doesn't seem like a separate piece of outreach and it's sort of clear to residents where each of the ward meetings are.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. I having had to reserve some spaces in some of these places before. I agree with you, it does take a while. I am happy to, if we can figure out which of the different places we want to be able to host each one of these, I am happy to take the lead of just calling through and setting these up. I agree with you, I'd rather get it. locked in and advertised as soon as possible. So I have no problem doing that. Just really would love any advice, suggestions on those locations. And then I can start going and figuring out you know, if they have availability. I guess the other piece of it is I would also need to and then share this out with all of the other Councilors too to get a sense of who has availability to be able to kind of sign up for each one of these because I don't want to pick dates for different meetings that if Councilors are able to do, they can't sign up for in advance as well. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: In Ward 5, is that the firehouse at 0 Medford Street? I think it is. That has some community space in it, and I wonder if that would be a good spot. It's pretty central to Ward 5.

[Liz Mullane]: I have been in a meeting there before. You're right, it does have an open space. I don't know about the technology piece, but for the hybrid option, but I can ask and see what they say. Thank you. Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I know that this kind of throws the hybrid option out the window, but for some of the wards that we maybe don't have a great idea at this point of, like, public spaces for them, because one of the troubles of finding these public spaces is that sometimes they cost money, which we don't really have too much of. We could just choose a restaurant or something like that. Great American Beer Hall would be a very nice place for an informal sit down kind of award meeting. Although it would be a very different one than one that's hosted in the high school, the high school for instance. Cuz I think that some of these will probably see very low turnout anyway and sometimes that's just the nature of it, how it always goes. Sometime and I do remember that we had a Medford Square zoning meeting in the auditorium of the. the McGlynn, and a good number of people showed up, like a dozen to 20 people or something, but given the size of the auditorium, it felt very empty. So I'm thinking that in some cases, we could just kind of... Choose a restaurant on like a week on a weekday night and just Say that we're gonna have like an informal discussion about things there and that could be more of a low-key word meeting

[Liz Mullane]: and forego the hybrid side of it? Because it's not like we could throw up a Zoom and agree on that at all.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, look, I definitely think hybrid would be worth it for a lot of these. But it is, I mean, we do need to think about logistics of doing this. It is a nightmare to set up, especially in unfamiliar locations, we would definitely need Kevin Harrington to help us out with that. In places like the public library, they would provide us with an owl or something like that where there's an infrastructure without having to rely on Medford Community Media to do that for us. So I think the whether we do hybrid would wholly depend on the location that we end up getting. And yes, we will be getting some flack from residents, rightfully so, for not having hybrid in every single one of those. But by the time we're doing like meeting number six or seven, it'll just be a complete headache. And I just don't know if we're going to have capacity to worry about that in every instance. So I think we should have hybrid but I don't think it should be like the top priority for every single ward meeting.

[Liz Mullane]: Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I think with respect to Councilor Loewen's point, I could see us going either way, and it making sense. We can try out hybrid first and then see if people really are joining via Zoom. And if people aren't, then maybe we focus on in-person and then think about the Zoom kind of participation after, think about alternative approaches. that actually get people out. I think it's hard to tell at this stage without having done these. So I think that was just to that point. I think there might be a typo in that I think Ward 1 might be repeated twice and I don't think we have a Ward 3. I didn't notice that.

[Liz Mullane]: I think you are correct.

[Justin Tseng]: I just want to make sure War 3 gets some love as well. Yeah, agree, agree. We'll put it there. And I think with Ward, definitely with Ward 1, maybe with Ward 7, we could consider doing like the McGlynn or Andrews cafeteria instead of an auditorium. Because the auditorium is really, I think would be really big and would feel kind of unnatural for like, for a community conversation like this. But a cafeteria might feel a bit more casual and also be, I think quite flexible in terms of like capacity. If it's not a lot of people, it won't feel too weird, but also it can accommodate a lot more people too.

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

[Matt Leming]: I didn't, this is on from the last time, so.

[Liz Mullane]: That is very helpful. Thank you, everyone. I guess my next question would just be if I were to email this out to have the Councilors then just figure out which ones they'd want to do and the two people, two Councilors could be able to sign up for each one of these so at least we can start moving the needle on getting these out. Does that seem like a good next step for everyone? Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: It might even be easier for us to just at least toss some ideas out right now, just so we're not all signing up for the same one, because we can't CC each other, right? So I don't know whether we could CC each other. So it looks like.

[Justin Tseng]: Can I ask though.

[Anna Callahan]: Is there some element where we sign up for something and then we're actively helping to coordinate that and organize it and find a time and blah, blah, blah? Is that what we're looking for or are you just saying to actually show up and help run it once we're at that date?

[Liz Mullane]: I think what I was thinking was if we can at least figure out the different locations and then we have Councilors sign up for which ones make the most sense, I can call these different locations and find out when they do have some availability and we can, once we have that kind of firmed up, I would turn it over to the Councilors to then be the ones to advertise and push out to their networks or however else you want to send out this information. But just to try to streamline it, I can be the one that goes and actually calls and make sure that everything is set up for each one of the meetings and then send that out. But I just feel like once that happens, I would turn over to the Councilors to do their outreach from there. Great. Thanks. Thank you. Councilor Lemon.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I would agree with that plan, Chair Malan. I'll just say that when it comes to things like scheduling, I don't think we need to worry about O&L as much, especially if individual Councilors would just be going back and forth with the chair and we're not like, We're not like debating on how to vote on a certain issue and I also think it's better to Sort of to do this when we have more uh when we have uh all Councilors sort of being considered and are knowledgeable about the plan. I definitely agree that having um that the process of getting everybody everybody's dates and general time periods locked down and then leaving it to an individual to do the scheduling itself would be the best way to do, would be the best way to go about it and then turn over responsibility. I think that's a very, that's a very solid plan. But yeah, that's what, so I do agree with that way of doing things.

[Liz Mullane]: Okay, so I will make some of these edits, we'll start trying to figure out when there's availability, get this out for Councilors to kind of sign up on. And then, of course, you know, we can have other conversations when it comes more to agenda, non-agenda, et cetera. But I did want to open it up to any kind of public, unless there's anything else from Councilors, to see if there's any public comments or except Councilor Leming, are you still? Hanging out there, okay. All right, so we have someone at the podium and I will turn it on.

[Micah Kesselman]: Mike Acosta, 1499 Main Street. I just wanted to suggest that you, So the idea is that you'll have different Councilors in different wards, or different, like, you'll have different Councilors in the same ward at different meetings, or are you thinking about having the same Councilors go to the same wards for those ward meetings, like, repeatedly? Because I would suggest the latter, since... Say that one more time, sorry, Michael.

[Liz Mullane]: So... It's like 9-3, and I was like, you're saying?

[Micah Kesselman]: Yeah, I know. I'm trying to think of a way to phrase it. Huh? Per year. In this term. Oh, in the term. OK, in the whole term. OK, gotcha. OK. Then never mind. Then what I was thinking is moot on that. But I would suggest that I do think you should try to do a hybrid like a quasi-hybrid setup, but it doesn't have to be like a Zoom call. Like you could just have like video and then ability to send by text sort of questions and inquiries to the ward meeting. And I think that would probably be like a really good middle ground that would be very effective and helpful for the community. Also, I would say that I mean, you're constrained by what's available, obviously, but insofar that you're able to, I would really, really like to see these board meetings take place in more underserved parts of various wards. So you talked about Great American Beer Hall, and that's great, it's cool, but if you could actually bring it closer to the subsidized housing area around there. And if there's somewhere that I could facilitate that in that area, just to bring people into those areas to get the wards to know each other to a good bit more, I think it would be really nice. So that would also be another suggestion that I have on that. I had a third thing, but it is, like you said, it's late. But yeah, those are my suggestions.

[Liz Mullane]: And I appreciate those two. And if you have suggestions of where some of those different places, I'm happy to call and see if we can try to get something set up.

[Micah Kesselman]: Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the issue.

[Liz Mullane]: That's the part. That's the, I don't know.

[Micah Kesselman]: That's also the problem. By virtue of them being underserved and sort of underrepresented very often, I don't really know where would be great for them, but yeah, I mean, such that you're able to find something that's sort of, yeah.

[Justin Tseng]: Yeah. That'd be dope.

[Liz Mullane]: I think that's a great idea, Councilor Tseng. Thank you.

[Micah Kesselman]: Yeah, I think there's like a Haitian church, right, that's like down towards Mystic Avenue and that sort of area that's a little bit like, I don't know how big it is though, but like that might be worth looking into. I mean, also like, such that you're able to host these, I don't know what the rules are that apply to it, in like churches, like religious buildings. I mean, those are probably like good, ideal locations, but I don't know if there's issues with that.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Councilor Lame.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think most people are fine with using churches as general community spaces. There's plenty of folks who do that. With churches, there's... Most of the ones that I've hosted or scheduled previous events at usually require some kind of a booking fee. Some of them don't, some of them do. The Medford Public Library does, and that's what makes it so favorable. So when I'm thinking of this, and I have gone through the process of scheduling events and then having it all be on me or one or two people to do all the advertising and set up for that. It does tend to be a lot of work. And one thing that I'm always conscious of when we have Councilors doing these things is just the capacity of individuals. And so much of these ward meetings will end up sort of coming down to that. And that's kind of why I was also talking about hybrid Zoom stuff. Would it be nice to have? Yes, absolutely. It's just... It just ends up being a lot of setup at the end of the day, which ends up falling usually on one or two people who already have full-time jobs. So most of my comments and sounding like I'm sketchy about all this stuff, yeah, it's mostly coming from... You know, like, just to do the newsletter, like, I proposed a newsletter last term, which Chair Mullane is very, you know, is doing a wonderful job working on and taking on the mantle as well. It takes several hours just to format it after. It's even after it's been drafted, so like the amount of work that this ends up putting on, you know, a seven-member council does end up getting pretty substantial. So most of my concerns sort of come from there. But yeah, that's what I got to say.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. I'm not seeing any hands for public participation online. No? OK. So what I will do from this is make the edits to the newsletter. We'll be able to get that one kind of wrapped up and sent back out. I will go ahead and make these edits to this rollout plan. I'll send it around to the city councilors to start taking a look at signing up again with just you can email. I'll email it out if you want. I'll send it out. to the clerk who will email it out and people can respond back to me separately and just let me know which ones they're able to sign up for. I will start proactively reaching out given these different location suggestions per these different months and see if we could start getting it lined up so that by the time we have our next meeting we'll have some of this a little bit more hammered out. Any other thoughts, suggestions, comments? Any motions? Keeping the committee. Clerk, can you call the roll?

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callahan?

[Anna Callahan]: Yes.

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Leming? Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. And Chair Malauulu?

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