[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Leming. Councilor Malayne. Councilor Scarpelli. Present. Councilor Tseng. Present. Vice President Lazzaro. Present. And President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Present. Seven present, none absent. Please rise to salute the flag. Meeting is called to order. Announcements, accolades, remembrances, reports, and records. Paper 26086 offered by Vice President Lazzaro, Councilor Leming, and President Bears. Resolution to commemorate the life of Leonard Glenn Gliona. Be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we offer condolences to the family and friends of Lenny Gliona, commemorate his life. Len was a loving husband, brother, father, grandfather, and friend, a U.S. Army veteran, a retired attorney, a candidate for Medford City Council in 2023, and an ardent follower of Medford politics for over 70 years. Len often served as a generational and ideological bridge and mentor to many newcomers to Medford politics, and his presence will be deeply missed in the chambers and in our city. Vice President Lazzaro, and then Councilor Leming, and then Vice President Lazzaro, and then Councilor Tseng, and then I'll say something, and then we'll hear from any members of the public who might like to speak about one. All right, Council Vice President Lazzaro, Councilor Leming would like you to go first.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Len Gleona was a very dear friend of mine. I am disappointed to not be in the chambers tonight. I wrote some things down so I wouldn't forget anything. I attended his wake and funeral last week, spoke with his family. I knew Len as almost a colleague, though he attended city council meetings and events at the city as though they were entertaining. He really enjoyed local politics, and he enjoyed supporting people who took local politics very seriously. I think that because of Len and his ability to bridge the gap between people who had done politics in Medford for a very long time and people who had maybe recently moved to the city or who had just started getting involved in politics because of an issue that was important to them. In my case, the cost of childcare, the wage gap, a lot of issues that young families and young women started becoming interested in. He bridged the gap between Old Medford and New Medford very smoothly. He was a bridge that was very critical for me when I started becoming involved. First time I met Len was at the State Democratic Convention in Worcester in, I think, 2017. And we sat next to each other, and he asked me right away, almost right away, when I was going to run for office. And I think he was the first person that ever asked me that. And I've read a statistic that says that women need to be asked seven times to run for office. So I think Len was the first one for me. And he ran Nicole Morell's campaign the first time she ran. He was unafraid to allow Medford to entertain young politicians in Medford, people of color who ran for office, women who ran for office, when that was very uncommon. And he saw Medford as a place that could welcome anybody in. And I really valued that in him. We would meet for lunch, we would meet for coffee, we would meet at the boat club in Medford. watch my kids play and have lunch and talk about, we would do a lot of gossiping. We would talk about who was doing what in town and what direction the city was going and what we would like to see. And he was my friend. And I will really, really, really miss Len. And I thought that he was a wonderful example of the sort of person that can understand what it's like to be somebody who grew up somewhere and thought that they understood the way their hometown was and yet could welcome in a new way of being and celebrate it and not let go necessarily of the way that he grew up, but expand his willingness to see a place for all its potential. So, I will really miss Len. I think the chambers will really miss Len's presence. He used to sit over on the side at the table and just watch what we were doing and celebrate everything Medford could be. So I express all of my condolences to his family. I'm so grateful to know them and I'm very sad to say goodbye to Len.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Lazzaro. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you. I think I remember the first time that I ever saw Len, talked with him was sometime in 2021. It was in a backyard. a kickoff party where a couple of the progressive city council candidates were doing a fundraiser. I didn't know anything about anything back then, but he was sort of near the entrance. He just started talking about the mayoral elections at the time. He was talking about which city councilors he thought would make it. You could just tell the guy loved following it. He just absolutely enjoyed the scene. He enjoyed talking to people. I don't think it's any secret that there's generational, political, ideological gaps in the city. If you were to ask me on any day, who is the bridge between these different communities in Medford? The only person that I would have been able to say is that bridge is Len. And I'm not just saying that because there's a resolution now. This is a question that has come up before. And a lot of people will say, I want to bridge the gaps in the city. I want to make friends with different sides. The only person, literally, who I could think of that actually did that in practice was Len. I mean, the guy followed. Medford politics for over 70 years, and he was nice to everybody. And often he would support candidates that his friends that he'd known for a very long time initially wouldn't want him to support, and he would get some flack from that. But he loved talking to people, he loved talking to new candidates, and everybody respected him for it. So this is a real loss. I definitely remember how, when I first got involved in local politics, how there were people who were willing to talk to you beforehand, but most everybody's willing to talk to you if you're not involved in anything, but then suddenly you get involved and you say, these are what my politics are, this is what I believe in, and suddenly a lot of people will just completely flip on you. They'll engage with you totally differently, and it's a weird thing to deal with mentally. You also remember the people like Len who they just treat you the same no matter what. Like they don't let politics get in the way of who you are personally. And that's a quality that I treasure in any human being. So thank you, thank you so much. Medford's lost a real important bridge in our community.
[Zac Bears]: And Councilor LeMing, Councilor Tseng,
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you to the Councilors who sponsored this and to the council. I know all the nice words that are going to be said that really deserve to be said. Glenn was someone who was like a mentor to me. He was one of the first people I met on my very first campaign. And as a young Asian guy getting into politics here, it often felt daunting to speak to folks who you weren't super familiar with, who you weren't sure about what they would say to you. And the first feeling I got from talking to Len was that this guy really loves Medford, and he really, really wants to see all of us involved in making it a better city. He was nothing but encouraging and nothing but loving to all of us and to the residents of the city, even those who he only knew a day or he didn't know at all. He was someone who, I mean, I think councilors have said this already, but who really was the bridge. He was someone who felt comfortable walking into any room, was loved walking into any room that everyone would be excited about seeing there. When I would go to all these candidate kickoffs or these city events, I would just smile every time I saw that he was there because I knew I had someone to talk to and I knew that I would learn something that day. He always shared his perspective and he always got all of us I think from across the aisles to think bigger and to listen more and to be more empathetic to each other. And that's the kind of man he is. And you see it in the work that he's done even before most of us have met him. That he really is a man of community and someone who really deeply cares. He's someone who always stuck to his guns and and said, you know, that Medford deserves to be a place where everyone feels welcomed, where everyone gets a say in how things are done. And I could go on and on about LEND, really, because this loss is one of the ones that I think is the toughest for me as a councillor in the city. Through the wake, I couldn't think for hours just because everything that that has taught me has made me into the person I am today. And I know has made other folks, other politicians, Councilors, school committee members in the city, the people that they are today. And his contribution to the city is so immense and it will last for generations.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: 1st, let me apologize to the family because, um. This is so important that I wish I was in that seat because that's what Lynn deserves. Um, um, but, um. What everybody said is is boy, did you hit the nail on the head with that? Being the Councilor that's on the other side of a group, you kind of felt alone sometimes. And Len would be that guy that I remembered years ago. I mean, I remember when I started 18 years ago, having that conversation with Len. I think everybody had that conversation with Lenny Gleyoner. And you really wanted to get his blessing because of the type of person he is. And when everybody talked about him tonight, and you talked about the bridging the gap and trying to find that common denominator that brings everybody together and what's dividing our city. And Len was that bloodline, right? He was really, truly that. There were times that, you know, privately talked to Len, and I'd want to lambaste him for something, right? What's wrong with you, Len? And he'd sit you down, and with his infinite wisdom, look you right in the eye and tell you how he felt, because he didn't waver in his beliefs. And he brought you over to his side, and he brought me back to the way my dad always taught me, you know, in his Jesuit learning and processing. in the seminary, my dad always said, always put yourself in the other person's shoes and understand that process. And that's what Len did for me a few times, and I appreciated that. But really what I find amazing is Lenny Glaiona, the man of Medford and how he raised his family and how he lived his life in Medford. Boy, did he love Medford. And you could see it by what he left to his family. And you can tell how they give back to their community, whether it's coaching or teaching or just being a great neighbor, right? And, you know, Len was always there. I mean, I still remember my son's first hockey game in the Boston Garden, and it was his birthday. And who do we run into? Lenny in his Boston Garden suit. And I said, yeah, it's John's 10th birthday, Lenny. look up at the end of the first period, and it was happy birthday, John Scarpelli, and a birthday cake for him. So Len's going to be lost, missed, so God bless you, my friend. Thank you for what you've given us. And I've said it a thousand times, right? You said, um, you, you lose so many legends, right? Who's going to pick up that torch? And, um, Lenny Gleyona is gone, but his legacy lived forever. Uh, so thank you, my friend.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just want to chime in with what my fellow Councilors have said. Len was truly a unique ability to be a bridge in this city between different people. He really was also such a role model, I think, for everyone involved in politics in any way. You know, he has left such an incredible and beautiful mark on the city and he will be sorely missed. I think for many years, we will be talking about his presence and what he brought to us. And I'm sad, but he had an incredible, incredible life and I'm very grateful. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan. Councilor Maloney.
[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. There's really not much more I can say than what many of my other Councilors have said as well. But personally, as someone who is new to all of this, when I was going through the process, I remember going to an event and everyone was like, you got to talk to Len. If you really want to know what's happening in Medford and really get a sense of what this is, you need to talk to Len. And I remember having my first conversation with him, and he was just so warm. and welcoming and it felt like there was not any question I could ask that he wouldn't be willing to answer and to be able to help me with. And I still remember when I did my first event and he showed up and it was like, he was like my star person that was at that event. And he was just a wonderful sounding board. And to what everyone has said, he has been an amazing bridge. I want to thank his family for sharing him with us, and, you know, to thank him for the huge mark that he has left here, and he will be very much missed.
[Zac Bears]: I think Councilor Mulane, I think Len would want to go seven for seven, and I'm not going to not say something about Len. If we were here in two years, he'd be going 11 for 11. I'm going to know less about Medford in the next weeks and months because I don't have Len to tell me what's going on. Something that you always knew you were getting when you saw Len was a good story. Most of the time, mostly right. And always shared with good intention. over the past six and a half years, we've had some rough meetings in this chamber. And going back to my first election, you know, Len didn't meet with me as much because he wanted Nicole to win. And he thought that if I won, maybe Nicole wouldn't. So, but once we both won, Len was like, okay, I'll talk to you. He was nice before that too, but he really wanted Nicole to win. I'm really glad that he did because my first four years on this body would not have been sustainable or sane without Nicole. And he saw that in Nicole. He knew that she would be an exceptional Councilor and chose to support her. And I thought that was, and he was just very passionate about that. But we had some difficult meetings over the years and I'm sure we will have more, although fingers crossed, not for at least a few weeks. And the one thing that always on the hardest nights really meant a lot was Len would stick around pretty late most of the time or I'd step out for a minute and I'd go to Len and I'd be like, how am I doing? How are we doing? And he'd be like, you're going to be fine. And when the other 150 people in the room are mad at you, it's nice to know that someone who maybe doesn't even agree with you on the thing that you're fighting about still cared about how you were feeling and wanted to make sure that, you know, wanted to say the right thing at the right time. It really meant a lot to hear that. I'm going to miss that and I'm going to miss him. And that doesn't even begin to speak to all of the folks in our community who are going to miss him and the way that he showed up for organizations, for city government, for his neighbors, his family, his kids, his grandkids, and for Medford. At the end of the day, Glenn was really for Medford. I think something that we can all do to honor him is step up for our city. When someone, when you see something, when there's an opportunity to step up for Medford and you're like, I don't know if I'm gonna do it or not, think of Len and say yes. And I think you'll be better off for it and our city will be better off for it too. So with that, we'll go to members of the public and the audience who may like to speak tonight about Len. Name and address for record, please.
[Nicole Morell]: Nicole Morell, 21 Ronalee Road, former member of this August body. I could, former Councilor Penta said it best, so I just have to keep repeating it. And Len would appreciate a call back to old Medford politics. A lot of what I have to say tonight has been said, and as some of you know, I really don't like to repeat other Councilors. I like to save the time. But if anyone deserves it, it's Len. So I just want to say a few things about him. One of the great perks of getting deeply involved in politics in your community are these intergenerational friendships that you otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to have. Similar to Vice President Lazzaro, I met Len first when I went to my first Medford Democratic Caucus meeting over a decade ago. He quickly clocked me as a new face, and at the time the youngest person there. and he nominated me to go to the convention, which he went to as well. We reconnected a few years later when I ran for city council, and he quickly became a fixture in my life. Over weekly coffees, a spot on his schedule that I'm pretty sure I usurped from former councilor night, Len regaled me with seven decades of Medford political history and his insights. He offered lots of good advice and the occasional ominous warning from some person you'd never heard of, and I would roll my eyes and he would take it in stride. He had a genuine nonjudgmental curiosity about politics and people in the city, and he was rewarded for that with friendships of people who have been here forever, who were brand new, people who agreed with him, and people who definitely did not. Over my political career, Len would rotate through titles for himself within my campaign, senior advisor, old hand, campaign manager. But in retrospect, the most apt title has always been friend. So I'm lucky to call him my friend. The city has been lucky to have him, and we're all going to miss him very much. And I thank his family for lending him to the city so much, and to every single politician in this room, and everyone who ran or considered running. He was a boon to Medford, and we were lucky to have him. And we're all gonna miss him very much. So thank you for taking the time to have this remembrance on the agenda tonight, and just giving me the time to speak. Appreciate it.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Is there anyone else who would like to speak at this time to commemorate our friend, Len Galeona? Of course. Thanks for joining us and you can share your name and address to the record.
[SPEAKER_11]: Chris Galeona, 50 Noah Circle. I just want to thank you. This was overwhelming. I appreciate the kind words. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: We're sorry for your loss and we'll miss him very much. Is there a motion to approve? on the motion of Councilor Leming to approve, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Callahan. We'll call the roll and then we'll take a moment of silence.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming. Councilor Mullain. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro. Yes. And President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. Please rise for a moment of silence. Thank you. Records and reports of committees. The records of the meeting of April 28th, 2026 were passed to Councilor Malayne. Councilor Malayne, how'd you find those records?
[Liz Mullane]: I found the order and I move to approve.
[Zac Bears]: If we're amenable, we have that be a motion to approve the records and the reports of committees. Great, on the motion of Councilman Layne, seconded by Councilor Leming. Reports of committees 26-074 offered by President Bears. This was the Committee of the Whole April 28th on the CDBG grant program for the upcoming fiscal year. 26-061 Committee of the Whole April 29th. This was a preliminary budget meeting. 24-033 Councilor Leming on May 5th was?
[Matt Leming]: Thank you, the Planning and Permitting Committee on May 5th, we discussed Boston Avenue after we got a draft from the Inland Strategies Group, had a back and forth on it, and ultimately referred it to the meeting for tomorrow.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. And 26-061, May 6th, 2026, Committee of the Whole was also a fiscal 27 budget meeting. On the motion to approve the records and the reports of committees by Councilor Mullen, seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Mullen? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli?
[George Scarpelli]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative, none in the negative, the motion passes. Hearings 26-074 submitted by the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability, Community Development Block Grant CDBG Action Plan for Fiscal 2027. A public hearing will be held by the Medford City Council on Tuesday, May 12th, 2026 at 7 p.m. Details to be posted by the city's clerk's office prior to the hearing. The purpose of this public hearing will be to invite the general public and representatives of public service agencies to express comments regarding the city's community development block grant annual action plan and on the city's housing and community development needs and development of proposed activities. The annual action plan contains the proposed use of CDBG funds for program year. which extends from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027. And copies can be obtained in Medford City Hall, room 308, 85 George B. Hassett Drive, or may be downloaded from the city's website at www.medfordma.org slash cdbg. The Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability will be requesting that the City Council authorize Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn, official representative of the City of Medford, to submit the Program Year 2026 Annual Action Plan, application for funds, and all other assurances and certifications to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD. The city is applying for an estimated $1,433,520 in block grant funds for program year 2026. I will recognize, looks like we have Laurel Siegel, who may well co-host our CDBG and grants manager to present any additional information on the CDBG plan for the upcoming year. And then we will open the public hearing. Manager Siegel.
[Laurel Siegel]: Thank you. Sorry, it took me a moment. Thank you, President Bears. As you referenced, we reviewed the proposed plan at the committee of the whole meeting on April 28th, and I'm happy to answer any questions, but otherwise I respectfully request that the council approve our submittal of the plan to HUD.
[Zac Bears]: Any further questions for members of the council on the CDBG plan for the upcoming year? Seeing, oh, Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: I actually just want to thank you for all the work that you did. It was really great at the committee meeting to have the opportunity to ask detailed questions about this. All the time you put into it, the time you put into the previous meeting that we had on it. All the work that you do is so incredibly important to our city. I'm always impressed every time I come to one of those where we get to hear all the details about how much really fantastic work this program supports. So thank you.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Thank you, Councilor Callahan. And yes, thank you, Laurel, for all your work on this. I know it's a big project every year. I'm very, very appreciative. So I'm going to open the public hearing now for anyone who'd like to speak on the Community Development Block Grant Program Action Plan. Public hearing is open. And Manager Siegel, I'm just going to ask you to once again repeat that you would request that we approve this plan.
[Laurel Siegel]: Yes, exactly. Thank you. Yes, I respectfully request that the council approve our submittal of the annual action plan.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak in the public hearing on the CDBG action plan? Can raise your hand on zoom or come to the podium in the chambers. All right, seeing none, I'm declaring the public hearing closed. On the motion of Councilor Callahan to approve the action plan, seconded by, seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Mullane? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli?
[George Scarpelli]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng? Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. I'm in the affirmative, none the negative. The motion passes. Thank you, Laurel.
[Laurel Siegel]: Thank you.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you. All right, I'm gonna, sorry, I just need to present a weird Canva presentation very quickly. Yeah, yeah, sorry, were there any others besides the fire one that? All right, yeah, motion to suspend the rules and take the communications from the mayor out of order.
[Zac Bears]: I've just been notified that manager Dupont can't be on until 8 p.m.
[Matt Leming]: Which one is she doing? I have a redevelopment block grant.
[Zac Bears]: Well, let's try it out and we'll table that one if we have to. On the motion of Council, I'm going to take communications from the Mayor out of order, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Maloney. Ms. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly? Yes. Councilor Levy? Yes. Councilor Maloney? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng. Vice President Lazzaro. Yes. And President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, 70 affirmative, none the negative. The motion passes. 26-087 submitted by Mayor Brandling of the current board and commission appointments. Historic District Commission appointment for Roberta Cameron is requested. Roberta would remain serving on the Community Preservation Committee but would likely step down from the Affordable Housing Trust. This was submitted on April 28th. If not rejected, the date of appointment would be effective by May 28th. And we did receive an attached resume and form for submission. Council Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I would motion to approve Roberta Cameron. Her resume does exhibit. uh, evidence that she would be a great candidate for the historic commission. And she has a wealth of experience in this and other areas and housing and development. And, um, I appreciate, I just appreciate being able to review her resume and, uh, being given enough time to do so, uh, before the 30 days. Um, so I would motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: Motion to approve by Vice President Lazzaro, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Maloney? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng? Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, 70 affirmative and on the negative the motion passes. 26088 submitted by the mayor request for food truck permits for all Belgian waffles and Kona ice for the city and town softball 10, 10 and under and 12 and under tournament at Tufts Park Saturday, May 16th. and rain date of May 17th. And this will be the CityTown Spring Softball Tournament hosted by Medford Youth Girls Softball. We do have the permits and it looks like we'll be welcoming teams from Arlington, Belmont, Boston, Cambridge, Charlestown, Everett, Medford, Somerville, Watertown, and Winchester. So thank you.
[George Scarpelli]: On the motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: Second. By Councilor Scarpelli. Seconded by?
[Rich Eliseo]: Lazzaro.
[Zac Bears]: Seconded by Vice President Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Councilor Leming? Councilor Malate? Councilor Scarpelli?
[George Scarpelli]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng? Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, having the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. I'm gonna take us with paper 26090, and then we'll come back to 26089. Paper 26090, Capital Stabilization Fund Appropriation Request, Fire Department Capital Improvements Plan. Dear President Bears and members of the City Council, I respect the request and recommend that your honorable body approves the following appropriations from the Capital Stabilization Fund. A ladder truck in the amount of $1,697,104, Equipment to outfit the two pumpers on order and anticipated for delivery this fall in the amount of $243,048. A fire chief vehicle in the amount of $90,886.28 and two fire prevention vehicles in the amount of $90,363.56. Capital stabilization fund balance has a balance of $7,691,244 and fire chief Todd Evans is available for questions on the above requests. Chief Evans, if you could share a little bit more about the requests and then we'll go to questions from the council.
[Todd Evans]: Good evening. Thank you for taking this up here. We were looking for the funding for the new ladder truck. As I've mentioned before in discussions that prices are getting crazy for trucks now and the wait times are just Wild also, we're looking at like four-year wait times for trucks. And just as like a comparison, we have a couple of fire pumpers on the way to being delivered here probably September, October this year that was supposed to be delivered earlier in the beginning of the year. The wait time got extended on those back when we first ordered those pumps in 2023. They were about $980,000 each. And now current quotes on those same trucks are about $1.4 million. And the current ladder truck that we're requesting for funding here is a different brand from the previous ladder trucks that we ordered in recent years. So this ladder truck in particular, which is close to 1.7 million there versus the brand that we currently have where we got quotes for. They were talking that those would be about 2.3 million dollars if we had ordered those same trucks. So this ladder truck will be significantly cheaper than those other ones. But again, the wait time on this ladder truck could potentially be about four years once we order it and start digging into the specs of this truck. And then the other items on the request were for the chief vehicle and two fire prevention vehicles. And then the other request was for equipment that is going to outfit those new pumpers that I just mentioned that are arriving in September or October. So again, the price of equipment has been going up, up, up, and just like everything else. So this is where we're at on those.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Chief. Just before we go to questions from everyone else, what are the fire prevention vehicles?
[Todd Evans]: So the fire prevention vehicles are currently what the deputy chief of fire prevention would be taken out on inspections and also the captain of fire prevention would be taken out on inspections. The current vehicles that those would be replacing actually those vehicles We'll probably have to put those out to auction once these new vehicles arrive because those vehicles got into some bad shape. The undercarriage of those vehicles were kind of in dire need of repair, so. How old are they? Those particular vehicles that are being replaced are 2014s. Okay. All right.
[Zac Bears]: And this is like when we're going out for a cert on a sale or new construction or you just describe a little bit more about the work that's going out there.
[Todd Evans]: On what?
[Zac Bears]: On the inspections. Oh. That's just inspections on like before new construction.
[Todd Evans]: Oh yeah. Any new constructions, home sales, all the home sales in the city, any other type of inspections that are requested of them. People will call fire prevention and arrange appointments for various things that they might have to go out on inspections for.
[Zac Bears]: Great. All right. We'll go to members of the council for questions. Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. So fire prevention is a department in the fire department? Yes. And are they responsible for all of the inspections of new businesses?
[Todd Evans]: They are. Yeah, they have to do all the convictual license inspections and hood inspections at restaurants and things like that also.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Every time a business wants to open, they have to have an inspection from the fire marshal. Fire marshal is part of fire prevention? Yes. And the, um, what would make somebody fail a fire inspection for a new business? Just, this is just as long as we're talking about this. I hope you don't mind.
[Todd Evans]: Uh, it would depend on, um, like say for instance, if they, if they were inspecting the alarm system, if there was something wrong with the alarm system or if they didn't have the proper, equipment like fire extinguishers or things like that. If they were inspecting somebody's hood system in a restaurant, they would have to make sure that that was all up to code and inspected properly by a company.
[Emily Lazzaro]: What kind of vehicles do they need for these sorts of activities?
[Todd Evans]: So I believe the ones that they're getting are Hyundai Tucsons.
[Emily Lazzaro]: They're just kind of regular cars? Or do they have something special?
[Todd Evans]: Yeah, they're just hybrid vehicles.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh, OK. They don't need any special equipment to go do the inspections?
[Todd Evans]: Some particular inspections, something to reach certain things, poles or something like that. In the past, they've used like fake smoke or something like that to test, uh, to test where it would go.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yeah. Um, okay.
[Todd Evans]: Do you have radios and things like that? Obviously.
[Emily Lazzaro]: So is it like, is it like fixed up with some extra equipment just in the front, like in the driver's area?
[Todd Evans]: It has to get all outfitted with lights and things like that. And, um, okay. Got it. maybe some, you know, decals on the vehicle, Medford fire and then the radio equipment.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Is there, how many fire inspectors do you have?
[Todd Evans]: Right now there are three people in fire prevention.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Is that enough for the amount of inspections they have to do?
[Todd Evans]: Sometimes it's tough to keep up with the demand.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay. Um, have we, we haven't done fire the fire department for the budget yet, right?
[Zac Bears]: We have not. No, we have not.
[Emily Lazzaro]: No. Okay. Um, I think I'll have a lot of questions about this probably then. Um, because I do think that, uh, streamlining our processes for, for, um, opening businesses is something that's important to me as we go on having conversations about this stuff. But obviously you want to make sure that the vehicles that they're using to inspect new businesses when they open and new developments, new housing that gets built, making sure everything's safe and up to code is really critical. Um, I guess I would just want to say, I do think it's important that we have functional vehicles for fire marshals to make sure that they can get places. Um, and I want to make sure that fire marshals are going to facilities and doing the testing, even if it's on like, say a Friday or, um, something like that. And they wouldn't, obviously nobody would ever just, you know, fail somebody because, uh, they couldn't like get there or they weren't communicating with someone or, um, anything like that. But that is great. We want the vehicles to be working. We want everything to be in working order. $90,000 does seem like kind of a lot of money for a car that is just kind of mostly a regular car. But maybe there's something else in the car that I'm not totally understanding. Is there something else?
[Todd Evans]: That one is a that's a separate one. That's the OK, great. Yeah, this one is only.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Fire chief vehicle.
[Todd Evans]: Yeah, that would be the replacement.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh, the other, that's two cars that are 90,000.
[Todd Evans]: Yeah, there's something else.
[Emily Lazzaro]: The fire chief vehicle is 90,000 and that has special equipment?
[Todd Evans]: Yeah, that's outfitted with, I have other gear in my vehicle that fire prevention would not need.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay, what kind of gear is that?
[Todd Evans]: So you'd need equipment for like, I also bring, self-contained breathing apparatus to me, with me to a fire, things like that. There's also like a mobile repeater that's involved that could amplify our radio signal from our fire ground channel to communicate with our dispatch center. So that's a separate item. I have radio equipment for my vehicle. medical equipment that I would carry with me. I have the defibrillators and charging equipment for flashlights and radios and other things also.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Great. Okay. Awesome. Great. I would motion to approve.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Any further questions for members of the council? Just a few more chief. This ladder is looking like four years out if we order it today. Yeah. All right. About.
[Todd Evans]: So of course we would have to start coordinating with the sales rep and start looking at the specs of the vehicle and seeing if like any changes you made might reduce the wait time if we made any particular changes about like cab size or cab height and things like that. You kind of find out the final wait time once you start digging into the whole process of specking it out and building it.
[Zac Bears]: And which ladder is this replacing?
[Todd Evans]: This will replace our ladder two on Salem Street. And then that way, once the new vehicle arrives, that ladder two could now become a reliable backup. It would become the reliable spare for our ladder trucks.
[Zac Bears]: And how old is ladder two right now?
[Todd Evans]: Right now the latitude, that was a 2021, double check on that. Ladder 2 is a 2021 Seagrave.
[Zac Bears]: Okay.
[Todd Evans]: So if we're looking for almost four years or if it ends up dragging out to five years, you know, that thing is going to be almost 10 years old by the time the new truck arrives. And Ladder 1 is? Ladder 1 is also, those two trucks came together. Came together? Yeah. Okay. So, and right now our spares, our spare ladder truck, Ladder three is 16 years old and ladder four is 17 years old. So by the time this new truck arrives, we don't, who knows if those trucks will even make it to the time that that new truck arrives. So that's why it'll be important to have this reliable spare once we switch up the ladder two with the new one.
[Zac Bears]: And the two pumpers are replacing
[Todd Evans]: Those are going to replace our Engine 1 and Engine 2. Those are both 2015s. So that'll actually make it so that we have a reliable now Engine 3 and our spare, our Engine 7. Engine 3 is currently 26 years old. Really, the truck should be getting, they should be gone after 25 years no matter what. We're kind of stuck holding on to that for now. And then engine seven is 21 years old. So that's our spare. So we're just kind of, yeah, we thought that those trucks were going to be here at the beginning of the year. We thought we were going to be, you know, so we just kind of.
[Zac Bears]: So this will bring us up to our, to our backup and our spare.
[Todd Evans]: We'll be in a good spot now that, you know, those, the engine three and the engine, we'll make the current engine one and engine two, our engine three and then our spare. So we'll be in a pretty good place there. as far as those, the condition of those are now.
[Zac Bears]: And right now Engine 3's not running, right?
[Todd Evans]: Basically, yeah, it just kind of sits there and we use that for like, if there's like a multiple alarm fire, we'll put that in service.
[Zac Bears]: And that's a staffing thing, we need to get more people staffed so that Engine 3 can get out?
[Todd Evans]: Yes, so that's parked at the Salem Street station, Engine 3.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Well, I'll ask the rest of my questions about that when you're back in a week or two. All right. Do we have any questions? Obviously, these seem pretty essential. How old is your vehicle?
[Todd Evans]: That's a 2014. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: All right. We have a motion from Vice President Lazzaro to approve, seconded by? Seconded. Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming? Councilor Malay? Councilor Scarpelli?
[George Scarpelli]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. Thank you, Chief.
[Todd Evans]: Thank you very much. Have a good night.
[Zac Bears]: You too. All right. 26091, submitted by the Mayor. Amendments to the personnel ordinance. Assistant Network Administrator, Dear President Bears and City Councilors, I respectfully request and recommend the City Council approve the following amendment to the revised ordinances, Chapter 66, entitled Personnel, Article 2, entitled Reserve, the City's Classification and Compensation Plan by adopting the following change. Amendment A, the language of PW15 shall be amended to remove the following position and the language of PW16 shall be. to include the following position, Assistant Network Administrator, Human Resources Director Lisa Crowley is available to present. So we'll recognize Director Crowley. What is this role and why is it moving up in the comp and class plan? Oh, one second. No, you want to go down. Give us one moment. All right, we're back on. Director Crowley, if you could present on the Assistant Network Administrator position.
[Lisa Crowley]: Yes, thank you, President Beas, through you to the Council. The Assistant Network Administrator is a DPW position that is responsible for assisting the network administrator with backup of the network, using their PC software, installing and training analysis of hardware. So it's more of a technical in-office position who assists the network administrator. The reason for this change, President Bears, was In 2007 and 2013, these positions, both the network administrator and the assistant network administrator were housed in City Hall. And sometime thereafter, they were then adopted into the DPW contract and moved over to the DPW yard. At that time, those two positions were working 35 hours per week. However, all DPW employees work 40 hours per week. And instead of changing the hours that they were working when the current people were in those positions, Teamsters Local 25 and myself, along with the mayor's approval, had an agreement that we're putting before you today that when the positions were vacated, we would move those positions from 35 hours a week to 40 hours a week. to be complimentary to the other DPW workers within that same contract. And in doing that, we believe it was fair to move the CAF up one step to account for the extra five hours somebody would have to work in that new position. So that was an agreement that myself, the business agents of local 25 Teamsters, and again, with the approval of the mayor came up with a compromise to move this forward. With your approval and moving this along, we will be able to post for this position so that we can fill the vacancy.
[Zac Bears]: All right, thank you, Director Crowley. Do we have any questions? for Director Crowley on this item. Seeing none, is there a motion? On the motion to approve by Councilor Leming, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malauulu? Councilor Scarpelli?
[George Scarpelli]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: 26092 submitted by the mayor, amendment to the personnel ordinance wage adjustment for non-union personnel. Respectfully request and recommend the city council approve the following amendment to revised ordinances, chapter 66 entitled personnel, article two reserved, non-union personnel effective July 1, 2026 increased base salary by 2.5%. Thank you for your kind attention to this matter. Submitted by Mayor. Director Crowley, do you want to present on this?
[Lisa Crowley]: Sure. Thank you again, through you, president bears to the council. This is the yearly Kohler keeping in line with the unions that we have, um, also put in that coal is for the next couple of years. So this is just to get the non-union members of city hall in line with, um, a Kohler increase for this year.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Do we have any questions for director Crowley on this item? Just have one, Director Crowley, are there any city contracts that are outstanding right now to be negotiated or are we all in agreement right now? Any expired contracts?
[Lisa Crowley]: So we're now revisiting FIRE because that contract has now, this June will be expired. So we're currently in negotiations with them right now. And then I believe the other contracts are through next June. and then we'll start moving forward with those as well.
[Zac Bears]: So everyone's under contract, like the first contract that's expiring is fire on June 30th and then the rest next year.
[Lisa Crowley]: Um, yes. Uh, I want to believe that it's just fire because that's the only one I have on my docket right now. But, um, all contracts are valid right now. So nobody's expired.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Any further questions for Director Crowley? Seeing none, is there a motion? The motion approved by Councilor Leming, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Councilor Leming? Councilor Maloney? Councilor Scapelli?
[George Scarpelli]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng? Vice President Lazzaro. Yes. And President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative. None of the negative. The motion passes. Thank you. All right. I'm not seeing Teresa. Thank you, Director Crowley. I'm not seeing Teresa. So we will just go to paper 25.054 offered by Vice President Lazzaro, Councilor Leming and Councilor Tseng. Under motions, orders and resolutions, chapter 10, article eight proposed vacant building ordinance. And I'll recognize Council, well, everybody. So I'll go to Vice President Lazzaro, then Councilor Tseng, then Councilor Leming, if that makes sense.
[Emily Lazzaro]: If possible, I'd love to just briefly say that this was an ordinance that Councilor Leming and I had been working on, it was a very simple version and then Councilor Tseng and Councilor Leming did extensive work, beefing it up and going into a lot of detail. And I would only say that I believe Councilor Leming has a good deal of background to add and I have, total faith in the work that's gone into this. I really like this version and I think that the city is clamoring for a way to revitalize our squares and our corridors and see just how vibrant our commercial areas can be in Medford. I think we deserve to see all of the ways that local business owners can bring in their, the restaurants, the shops that they want to open. I personally know people who are trying to open places and are unable because of the current landlords that own spaces and have no incentive to rent to them. So I'm excited about this ordinance. I really think it's going to move the city forward. And I'm really looking forward to moving ahead with this. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Lazzaro. Councilor Tseng and then Councilor Leming. Or are you going to tag to the presentation?
[Justin Tseng]: I think Councilor Leming is going to do the presentation and then I'll follow up. All right. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yep. All right. Just going to share my screen really quickly. Okay. Still haven't quite mastered the art of going totally full screen on a Mac, but we're gonna, so yeah, so basically what we're, what I'm gonna present is because the vacant properties ordinance is still, a little bit new for some of the people looking, and I know for a couple of folks on council that weren't able to attend that meeting, we're just going to walk through the presentation that we gave at the Planning and Permitting Committee meeting when we discussed this, I believe back in March, and then Towards the end, I'll go into just some of the FAQs, stuff that's come up, how it's changed since then, all at a very high level. So we're not planning on going through a line by line like we did during the CAL meeting on this, but we're just gonna talk about some of the background and what's in it. So for a little bit of background, vacant properties has been something that Medford's been dealing with for years. There's a couple of high profile instances of this. This always came in, this always came up during my campaign. What are you doing about these places in West Medford? What are you doing about these places along Boston Avenue? And it's something that over and over residents are thinking, are telling us, please come along and do something about it. It creates blight, it creates a sense of urban decay. Initially, I proposed a commercial vacancy tax, but in my naivete back as a candidate in 2023, I learned we can't actually levy a tax without permission from the state. So this quickly became a version of a vacant building ordinance, which is something that many other cities have done. So I've been pushing for this. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. In the current version that we're seeing today, I'd say 95% of it came from Councilor Tseng, who drafted the current version of the ordinance as a project with this team at Harvard Law School. So this is why I'm kind of giving the high-level overview of everything that's in there. And if it gets into the really nitty-gritty policy discussions or legal background, then I'm leaving it. I'm leaving it up to him. After he drafted this and he did a lot of the background, the research, we sought and incorporated feedback from the building commissioner, planning development and sustainability, other interested parties, municipal leaders that they talked with, other cities around Massachusetts that had done exactly the same. exactly the same thing. And we earnestly sought feedback from many other stakeholders in the community over the past two years between myself, Councilor Tseng, and Councilor Lazzaro. What we found is that typically landlords like to hold out for higher paying tenants. And so the reason that we have a lot of these vacancies in Medford is a landlord doesn't really care if they have to pay property taxes year over year. and keep the property empty if somebody will eventually come along and give them a huge amount of money for it. So it is a money problem. We've tried in the past to have things like state tax credits, which require very long vacancy periods you can qualify for. Our current vacant building ordinance doesn't really have a whole lot of teeth to really enforce anything. Essentially, the problem that the building commissioner and PDS is left with is sometimes they don't even have a way to get in contact with a lot of the landlords who own this property. If they don't want to do anything with it, then under our current ordinances, that's their right. And just to offer a little bit more background for the feedback that we've been getting, we do tend to get a lot of feedback about this from residents. This is a couple of emails that I found in my inbox. prior to the planning and permitting committee meetings. Since we passed that version to the city council, we've gotten a lot more support on the idea of a vacant building ordinance from the general public who are like, why doesn't the city have more teeth to actually do something about this? And so yeah, there's, so yeah, we tend to, knocking on the door is canvassing as much as I did. This was just a policy idea that was universally approved by people who just wanted to see something done about this in their neighborhood. Councilor Tseng's team did a good amount of research on other municipalities that have done these. They've typically found great success with these approaches. East Hampton has vacant building ordinances, and I believe Councilor Tseng spoke with the mayor of East Hampton about this. They impose a $500 vacant storefront registration fee that escalates during each year of vacancy. And the mayor thought it was the likeliest, that the implementation of this was the likeliest reason that their own rates of vacant store fronts plummeted after implementation. My understanding of these is that a lot of it just comes from the fear. of having these fines imposed that sort of encourages landlords to get out there and fill up their long-term vacancy. Lowell imposes a $1,000 vacant storefront registration fee that escalates an additional 1,000 each year vacancy. Arlington, they've implemented a similar policy with an annual vacancy registration fee as well, which they've also found has been a useful tool in building upkeep and facilitating contact with property owners. So if it's part of the vacant building ordinance that property owners put their contact information out front of the vacant properties or register their names, and that is really helpful for communication. New Bedford implements a similar vacancy registration fee, gave positive results, maintains a database of information on vacant properties, which is also part of this ordinance. San Francisco, an out-of-state city that we researched for this, they They have vacancy feats in which landlords of spaces vacant for over 182 days must pay an annual tax of $250 per linear square frontage with a tax stepping up in subsequent years. So frequently, the way that these are structured is in the first year of vacancy, they'll charge you a bit of money and it just keeps going up the longer that it is vacant. And in the research for this that Councilor Tseng and his team did, they found that it overall improved communication with property and property upkeep, and it led to sharp reductions in vacancy rates reported. So it's actually in the proposed ordinance. The first starts with a purpose section. The purpose is to establish, develop, and maintain an online registry of vacant properties, conduct inspections provided for in this section, provide an appeals process for people who are aggrieved or maybe don't have maybe have legitimate reasons for it to be vacant, or there's, you know, there's, the appeals process tends to be, the ordinance has a lot of sort of exceptions and cases where he might actually have a legitimate reason for it to be vacant, in which case they wouldn't be charged. And generally attempts, and generally the purpose is to mitigate the negative effects of vacant and foreclosing properties on the health, safety, welfare, and economic vitality of the city and its residents. So the database that, so the fees collected from the vacant, from these vacant properties would go towards maintaining a database. This is the difference between a fee and a tax. A tax is for generating extra revenue that the city can use on other things. A fee would end up being used just to maintain, just to pay the staff and the technical cost to maintain this database. The fees have to have things like, the database has to have the owner's name, property street number, whether or not the, the storefront is vacant, leased or sold to another owner. Basic things like square footage, so something where the building department knows about it and furthermore the public can sort of look and inquire about where the vacant properties are in the city in case anybody wanted to rent from these landlords. So the fees would end up, the fees are, there's an annual registration fee in which it would be 1,000 years for the first year vacancy, 2,000 for the second year, and 3,000 each subsequent year. After the city council planning and permitting committee meeting, I believe that we ended up kind of differentiating between different properties at a different square footage, so larger. properties, you would end up charging more than smaller properties. You would end up charging the base rate. Fees are waived in cases of demonstrated substantial financial hardship of the owner. So if the owner genuinely can't pay the fee, then they wouldn't end up being charged that. if the building owner puts on a public art display. So in early 2025, the Chamber of Commerce reached out to me specifically because they wanted to have an ordinance that allowed for public art displays in these vacant properties. And this does, we had a discussion, I believe in February, and this current ordinance does contain that. The building, it can be waived at the building. It ends up being used for community events. There's a demonstration that the building is being improved for future use. So if you're renovating a building, you don't have to pay, and it's empty for that reason. They don't have to pay a fee on it. And special cases like condemnation or upcoming changes to the zoning code. So if a building is condemned, obviously you don't want to try to occupy it with renters. Under the vacant building ordinance, building owners are required to inspect vacant properties monthly, affix a 24-hour contact number of an individual or property management company in charge of it, make repairs to things like broken windows and doors, and keep it free of rats. It's pretty self-explanatory. The building commissioner, police chief, fire chief, and health director, they're the ones who may inspect the property. They can do it on a quarterly basis, inspect on a quarterly basis the exterior and interior of any properties. Again, these are the slides from the Planning and Permanent Committee meeting. I'd like Councilors saying correct me, but I believe this may have been changed, too. This may have been changed to more frequent allowed inspections. Would have to go back and check. And may issue fines or citations for violation of the ordinance. The enforcement, a lot of the ordinance is enforced at the discretion of the building department. So the building commissioner kind of does get a lot of leeway to make these calls. It's hard to define if a person has a very good reason for having a vacant property or if it's just a landlord who is just being negligent. A couple of the infractions that they have that are punishable by fines of up to $300 a day are failure to register the property, failure to identify an individual management company on the building, failure to provide a proof of sale or occupancy to the building commissioner when it becomes vacant, if you don't pay the annual registration permit fee or you just don't maintain the property. They're given seven days to remedy issues prior to the issuance of fines. And the fines may be waived if everything is found to be in order and the violations are abated. And we also have an appeals process with the building department. In terms of enforcement, this is something that came up a lot when we're talking about vacant buildings. When you're a private landlord and you currently own a piece of property and you're not really maintaining it, There are, like, we kept getting asked what are the actual mechanisms of enforcement that the city has. You know, we can't force anybody to sell their property. We can't tell them to do, we can't tell them to do things with it. They don't want to do, so essentially the only mechanisms that we have are charging fines, which is, you know, basically what this ordinance allows us to do, and condemnation, which is a much more, which is a much more nuclear process. If you condemn a building, you essentially have to knock it down. So these are really, it really reduces to these two mechanisms. We can have more stringent inspections, but if you have inspections and you can't charge fines for it, then it really doesn't reduce to, then it really, they don't really have any teeth. So in summary, what this proposal will do is it will give the city far more leverage than before against negligent landlords. It encourages the productive use of commercial spaces by improving neighborhood vitality and aesthetics, and it adds a practical, legally sound tool to Medford's toolkit. It will reduce vacancies, incentivize communications, and improve building upkeep and inspections. All right. And this is a graphic that Councilor Tseng designed to kind of show a little flow of everything that I've just described, like how the vacant building property, how the vacant building ordinance works, sort of the, you know, if you want to take a screenshot of this particular slide, then it would kind of give you a nice high-level overview of what we're looking at here. All right. So in terms of some FAQs, yeah, when we were seeking out feedback from city staff and other community members, a couple of things kept coming up, like questions kept coming up, so that, you know, we decided to put this FAQ section directly in the slides. The first is, will this proposal attract undesirable businesses, you know, if they're forced to get a new property in there, will the store owners just, you know, open up another bank or will they get a punch up in there just in order to keep it from, keep themselves from being charged the fees. The vacant building registry will actually help to combat this, because it will act as a central repository for businesses to go to if they want to find available locations. So implementing this will actually help out with advertisements of these properties to potential interested property owners. potential interested tenants who may want to open up a business there. So it really does help with letting folks know what's available in Medford. And it gives the building commissioner significant discretion to distinguish between these absentee landlords who do absolutely require negative incentives to act, which I think we've seen in Medford the past couple of years, and landlords who may be experiencing genuine financial hardship. So if a landlord is genuinely not able to make payments, then it's very unlikely under this ordinance that they would actually be charged for anything. And the other point to this question is that zoning changes, which the city is currently going through right now, is really the other tool that we have to kind of help determine what will be the future of Medford, what businesses we want to see. So, you know, folks were complaining about, have been rightfully complaining about the overabundance of banks in Medford Square for a long time. Well, with the recent zoning changes we had, it's now a lot more difficult than it was before to open up a bank there. Can't the city just charge more for inspection infractions? Not directly. So state law limits how much we can charge for inspection infractions. And again, other communities have found it necessary to adopt these sorts of vacant building ordinances in order to have a legal basis for doing this. Will this encourage or discourage development? It'll encourage it because there are exemptions for properties being sold and new construction in the ordinance. So, you know, you could imagine that if this didn't account for those cases where land was actively being redeveloped, it's not considered vacant during that time period. So it incentivizes selling a vacant property a lot more. It makes selling a property to a developer more preferable to a long-term vacancy. Now, in terms of legal review that it's had so far, so there was a very robust legal review and research process that Councilor Tseng and his team did. We did just receive today a legal review from KP Law, so I received that about 12 or one or so, so I did go over it today, but I haven't had time to really go over it in super in like a lot of detail, but I would say the major points that I found from my initial reading on it, one, there's a disagreement on whether the property manager has to be local or not. So the current draft of it specifies that whoever the property manager is has to be local to the area, and they didn't think that, they thought that there would be contractual issues with that, which, you know, fair enough. There was a lot of requests to clarify certain items of the ordinance. So a lot, but this was a decision that was made during the drafting of it. So KP Law, they wanted more specifications about, you know, like what proof of occupancy consists of, whereas we're giving the building commissioner a lot of discretion to make these decisions on their own. clarification on the basis of the fee to maintain the database and pay city staff. So when you're coming up with a fee structure, you do need to make sure that it's revenue neutral. It doesn't generate revenue. It's only enough to pay for to pay, you know, city staff and the cost of the database, and it can't generate revenue in other areas of the city. This was an analysis that was already in Councilor Tseng and his team's memos, so I believe that they've already covered the ground for those. And just generally a responsibility for, like, who's responsible for different aspects of it. I think that these were, that these items are generally pretty clear within the ordinance, but we can certainly do a little bit of squeaking them before third reading. And another thing which I've already emailed the Board of Health about is there's some lack of clarity over when these monthly required ports for properties that may have rat infestation, when they end. And we requested clarification from the Board of Health for that, and they got back to us. So, yeah. In terms of major feedback that we've received, again, from the public, overwhelming support in virtually all stages of the process. If it's just a general member of the public that you're talking to, I don't know a single person who has said, I don't want you to have more stringent vacant building laws. They just really want those vacant storefronts that they've been seeing for years to go away. The economic development, and the Deputy Economic Development Director did give us some, you know, they were what encouraged us to kind of clarify some of those aspects that we went over in the FAQ section. They also instituted, gave us some language for spelling out exactly what constitutes a good faith effort to sell or lease the property, which is currently in 10-122-4F. City Council, you know, we had a discussion on this. One of the major things was incorporating different fee structures for properties at different square footage and changed and just clarified the relationship between residential and commercial vacancies. And this, the Board of Health wanted more frequently reporting in case of infestation in properties. The building commissioner, We had a lot, there was a lot of back and forth with the building commissioner over this, so we gave them the draft of the ordinance and had a few discussions with Scott when he was with the city. A lot of it was, again, just like clarification on just what the, like, clarification on like what the building commissioner had discretion over and what should be clarified in the ordinance. So there's a lot of stuff like that. We did, we had a couple of meetings with the Chamber of Commerce in addition to like a lot of informal conversations with members that different members of council had had. I met with I met with them in February 2025 to discuss the aspect, to discuss the potential storefront public art display ordinance and requested feedback later of an earlier draft of this from folks. I met with Councilor Lazzaro at a government affairs meeting in March 2025, and I believe had a meeting with Councilor Tseng. January 2026. So there has been, there has been quite a few, uh, there has been quite a few, uh, meetings over the past, uh, two years with, uh, both, both the chamber's body and individual members who, uh, who have been involved with the chamber. But anyway, uh, I have spent a lot of time talking. Thank you so much for listening to me and, uh, for, would love to hear Councilor Tseng.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you, Councilor Leming, for such a comprehensive presentation of the problems we face and the solution that we're proposing. Since Councilor Leming covered the background, I'll focus on how we got here, how I got involved personally, and why it matters. This all, for me, started with Gus Tringali, a 23-year-old Tufts alum who grew up here, still lives here, And he was telling us that he feels like he has to leave Medford to have a social life, that he goes to Somerville, Cambridge, Boston, because his own city doesn't have enough places to gather. And we heard versions of that story time and time again from young Medford residents across the city, from West Medford, small business owners watching a dilapidated dry cleaner sit dark on their block. from a resident on Bower Street who told us that he prefers, he generally prefers carrot statistics and still wrote in to support this. From someone on Hillcroft Park asking what she could do to help us. What all of them were really asking is, does this city work for us? And my involvement in this started directly with business owners at a chamber meeting in January who asked me to act. Not city staff, not this council, and it was business owners. Some of the concern I've heard from residents is from skeptics, from critics, is that this ordinance wasn't built with the business community, but the business community is why it exists. We took that seriously at every stage. I talked to folks who were skeptical of this and found a middle ground where we could all win. We worked with the building commissioner, planning, Board of Health, municipal law experts at Harvard Law School. We talked to staff in Arlington and East Hampton, including the mayor there who wrote and has been executing their version of this ordinance. And that ordinance helped fill all but two or three of their vacant storefronts. Every one of them said the same thing. that the tool works mainly because it changes the conversation with property owners before any fee ever kicks in. It gets city staff to really cooperate to fill our vacancies, and it gets absentee landlords to finally come to the table. I'll be honest, I was probably 50-50 on this approach at first. Those conversations with other cities are what moved me. Seeing the evidence. Seeing the goal isn't to collect fees, it's to open doors that have been closed. One of the things opponents asked for is that inspections come first, that the city lead with the carrot before the stick. And this ordinance does exactly that. Before any fine issues, our staff must provide notice and a reasonable opportunity to fix the problem. There's a seven day cure period. And the building commissioner has explicit discretion to seek voluntary compliance first and to work with collaboratively with owners engaging in good faith. It raises the standards for health and safety as well, as well as building safety. This fee is what creates the incentive to have that conversation. But the conversation comes before the penalty. Communities that have adopted ordinances like this report that most properties come into compliance before any fee kicks in at all. And that's the point. Much of what critics said they wish were in this ordinance is already in it. the community event waiver, the public art waiver, the good faith marketing waiver, the hardship waiver. This ordinance also calls for building health and planning staff to work together and to work directly with vacant property owners before these issues become a real problem for the city. Again, this fee is what creates the incentive to have that conversation, but the conversation comes before the penalty. At the same time, our city staff is already hard at work to expand our public grants program, and I'm gonna sit down with the people who wrote in with concerns after this vote. The ideas that they presented are worth discussing as we hear more from residents before the third reading of this ordinance update. That conversation should happen. They are and they should be heard, and we'll have time to find common ground. But still, I want to mention that the conversation about what goes in this ordinance has been happening for over a year, and this is where it landed. Right now, we don't have a registry. We don't know which properties are vacant, for how long, or whether they're being marketed. We have no direct line to property owners when problems emerge. Medford dispersed one grant under the existing state storefront program last year, one of $10,000. The carrots only approach isn't working and residents can see it on our streets. While Massachusetts law doesn't allow a vacancy tax outright, we built something legally sound that achieves the same purpose, the same approach that's worked in municipalities across the state, from East Hampton to Lowell to Arlington and New Bedford. I think of it as more tools in the toolbox, tools that we can choose to use. The fee is what finally makes the conversation worth having for a landlord who's been holding out for years. Or a small local owner who's genuinely trying, trying to get into Medford and start a business and to find a place for it. And the pathway for waivers are there. And the ordinance asks staff to work with owners to find a solution first. Gus wants Medford to be a vibrant community to call home. So does the resident on Bower Street who prefers carrots to sticks and supports this anyways. So did the business owners who came to that meeting with me and asked us to act. This is how we act. This is how we act. This is how we help. I asked my colleagues to support this ordinance.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Council President, to the Chair. To my colleagues, well done. This is something that has been in the works for a long time, and it's been something that I think it's a lot of hard work, and I appreciate that. But at the same time, I would, in fairness, I think that the emails that we did receive and the conversation that I've had with especially a business community and, um, understanding some of the penalties, I think, um, is something that, um, is something that we need to talk about. And I appreciate that, uh, uh, Councilor Tseng is, is, is going to reach out and, and discuss with them. But I think it's important that, um, The enforcement part, I think it's something we've all been looking for and trying to figure out what the process will be and possibly this ordinance affecting the process in a negative manner and hurting the wrong people. So I think that I want to support this and I know we're close. I just think that looking at the process and I think that talking to different groups, I like the fact that as we move forward for that third reading, we look at the different concerns. One being that, you know, a building commissioner is leaving, has gone and looking in the enforcement piece, but also maybe trying to, I would put this in a form of a motion for us to think of as we move to the next steps is looking at an option where we could create through this ordinance, a working group or a board or a commission that we would look at bringing in people from our business community, the health department, the building department, and try to start a committee where we can have a working group maybe as we implement this process. I think it's important because there are so many questions and I don't want it to work in reverse. I know there's a lot of work and there's a lot of data that's shown that the process can work and I trust that, but I also think there are a lot of questions that are still out there in Medford. specifically for the fact that we don't have the staffing to, to move forward with, you know, any type of penalty, regardless when I feel if it's too high or if it affects the type of landlord that we want to work with instead of just penalize. So I think it'd be important if we could maybe before the second reading to the chair, to my colleagues, that we have a committee of the whole meeting and maybe bringing these stakeholders and at the table and try to figure out a process where we bring all the stakeholders together that help us through this process and maybe use their expertise when it comes to base case to case basis. So, again, I applaud my colleagues. This is a job well done. This is you really put uh, some work behind it, but I, I really think that, uh, we need to sit with our stakeholders and try to, um, really, um, really work as a partnership to bring the people that are in those buildings next door to those vacant buildings mostly and listen to what they're saying and use their expertise as a partner. So, Um, I hope you could consider that and, um, thank you for listening. And again, I don't, this isn't, this is a pat on the back to, to my colleagues who did a very nice job in bringing this forward because, um, this has been something that has been looked at for years and years, but this group is finally putting it together and I appreciate your work. So thank you.
[Zac Bears]: I think Councilor Scarpelli, I will say given our meeting schedule, the best thing to do might be to invite folks back for the third reading to have that discussion. But I think we could have that at a meeting, at a meeting, definitely. I'll go to Councilor Malauulu and then Councilor Leming, Councilor Malauulu.
[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. And I just want to thank all the councilors that have worked on this as someone that knocked on a lot of doors. I did get a lot of feedback about seeing so many vacant storefronts and what can we do about it. And I'm hoping just to ask maybe a couple of clarifying questions through the chair to Councilor Tseng. And essentially, I know there's been some conversations back and forth. Like I said, a lot of residents have been, have spoken to me and have been very much in favor of doing something in order to get rid of as many vacant storefronts as we've had. But I know there's been some questions from different business owners, and I'm just curious, Councilor, if you can just share in your conversations that you've had, have you seen a big difference between small business owners and larger corporations when it came to the impact of these fees and fines and what that looked like or what they shared in terms of was there any big difference of impact between the two.
[Justin Tseng]: Thanks President Bears and through you to Councilor Millane. In talking to city staff and economic planning staff from other cities where they're already doing this, there's actually no impact for small business owners because they're not the ones who own the properties. And if anything, they see a really positive impact. One, from the foot traffic that filling vacancies brings in, and two, the structure creates an incentive for those large corporate absentee landlords who are sitting on large parcels of land who really aren't taking care of it, aren't trying to fill it in. It creates an incentive for them to either actually fix their buildings so that new businesses can come in or for them to sell that property to someone who can actively maintain it. It also kind of creates this market effect where rents might even go down a little bit for the small business owners because right now the market is so kind of so hot and so active that a lot of tenants or a lot of landlords can raise rents on their tenants, which is creating a really big effect on small businesses as well. And this kind of mitigates that effect a little bit.
[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. And I just had one other kind of clarifying question too. I think in Councilor Leming's presentation, he was mentioning about the fines and when and if they're, you know, actually incurred by business, that those fines would actually help to provide funding for this database or registry. Because I know as we are sitting through all of these budget meetings and trying to put together some of these different structures in there, it seemed like that was one way to be able to utilize those fines. And I just wanted to make sure I heard that correctly. And I don't know if that's Councilor Tseng or Councilor Lamain on that one. Maybe Councilor Tseng, I'm not sure.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, I can jump in if that's okay, President Paris. Yep, go ahead. So essentially how the state law works when it comes to like cities that wanna charge The charge kind of things like this that aren't taxes is that it has to be tied to how much it costs the city to implement a program like this. And so when we were in committee and working separately with city staff who've been really helpful on this and with other other people who've been involved in this project, we really sat down and broke it down by how many hours we think that each staff member would be required to kind of take out of their day to implement a program, the kind of technical costs associated with it, the software, launching the website. And with that calculation, we actually got to amounts that are a lot higher than what are proposed in this ordinance. But we also didn't want this to be overly punitive, and we didn't want this to go way out of the scope of what other cities are charging. And so that's how we arrived at these amounts. This is within that reasonable range. Most of the fines and fees that we're talking about in this ordinance are exactly the same as comparable cities across the state. They're not higher. That's I guess that that's my answer to your question. I don't know if Councilor Leming has anything to add.
[Liz Mullane]: He's saying no next to me. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you kind of highlighting and talking through that as well. And again, I appreciate all of the hard work. I also appreciate that if there are additional questions that people have in between, I know that you kind of said this, but I just want to highlight again that you're open to talk to anyone who has other kind of thoughts. concerns, questions about it moving forward. So I appreciate Councilor Senior offered to do that as well. So thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming, then Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: No, I was going to make the motion before public comment, but if then I'll go to Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Sorry Council President, my hand was up. I didn't put it down.
[Zac Bears]: When have I ever called on two Councilors in a row and neither of them want to talk?
[Matt Leming]: I want to talk. I wanted to give Councilor Scarpelli, you know.
[Zac Bears]: Oh, no, no, no.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Counsel. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Well, so much love tonight. No, no, no. All right. Councilor, let me.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so my motion on this would be, cuz I think that everything we've heard, everything I've seen from the legal review seems pretty easily addressable. My motion would be to pass it for first reading and refer the deletion of the current vacant property ordinance from the sections of the zoning to the Community Development Board. Part of this is moving our current vacant properties policies out of zoning, which is actually very unusual for ordinances to be structured that way. But in order for zoning to be changed, it would need to first go through the CDB. So I would motion to put that deletion, refer that deletion specifically to the CDB and pass the rest of it for a first reading.
[Zac Bears]: He beat me to the punch. I was really excited to say I'm sorry but your motion is wrong but you got it right. Yeah we need to sever this paper. We need to refer the Section 94 7.5 repeal to the Community Development Board and then the second part to approve the Chapter 10 Article 6 Amendment to for first reading. So is that the motion?
[Matt Leming]: That is, that sounds like a wonderful motion that you came up with.
[Zac Bears]: I was really excited. But then you got it right. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: I'm sorry, Mr. President, I do have, I just want, I don't wanna hold this up for the first reading, but if I can, I think that if we can, as a form of a motion, just look into the process of a working group or see if we can, I know we're super busy with all these meetings and I know we have a few very important ones on the back burner, but if there's a way we can fit something into one of these meetings that, We could discuss this before the 2nd meeting. I think it's something that talking to a few of the people that had some questions. I think that that might be an avenue that we can. We can broker where everybody would be working forward in a positive light with this, this process. So, again, nothing against what everybody's done doing a great job and I appreciate that. But I think if we could do that, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Miss present.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. It seems like Councilor Tseng, you have a thought on this, Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, I'm happy to support that idea of exploring what we can do with the working group. I think it's a good suggestion. I think there are different paths this might happen. Maybe the best way is to do a resolution on the next meeting agenda to accompany this ordinance. but Councilor Scarpelli, we can connect offline and see what the best approach is.
[George Scarpelli]: Yeah, we could do that. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: All right, great. Okay, that sounds like Councilor Tseng, Councilor Scarpelli are going to work on just further reviewing the implementation with the relevant departments and parties. either in the form of a resolution or potentially discussion at the meeting where we take this up for third reading or another venue. So I think we'll have a few options to make sure that we get this discussed further on the implementation elements just so everyone's clear about how implementation will work. So we have a motion to sever from Councilor Leming and then we'll take two further votes on the motion to refer the repeal of the zoning ordinance, old zoning ordinance, the Community Development Board and to approve the draft ordinance for Chapter 10, Article 8 for first reading. But before that, we'll go to the any public comment on this matter. If there's anyone who'd like to speak about the proposed vacant building ordinance either in person or on Zoom, please come to the podium or raise your hand on Zoom. We will start in the chamber. Give me one second here and we'll alternate between in person on zoom. Please give us your name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[Simon Alcindor]: All righty, Simon Alcindor, 44 Tainter Street. And thank you, President Bears, it's a duty to the council for bringing this forward. And I probably support this, I just have some clarifying questions. First of all, it was mentioned that like initially the thought was to have like a tax on vacant buildings. I was wondering like what the difference, like you think in terms of like enforcement and like general effects will be with this just being a fee? And like also like does this preclude or replace a tax?
[Zac Bears]: Simon, if you could go through all your questions, and then we'll try to answer them after you're done.
[Simon Alcindor]: All right. And then my second question is, having been next to a residential building that was left vacant for about a year, what are the effects going to be in terms of what registry is going to be like in terms of residential buildings? Because I know that commercial buildings are brought up a lot, but I think that even though it's rare, it is valuable to also be monitoring for vacant residential buildings, because they're similarly not a good thing to have in our neighborhoods. And then also, I presume that the public art in that is going to be similar to how Somerville does it, where it's going to be storefront. I'm just sort of curious what would be qualifying for that, especially just generally, and then since we just heard from the fire department that sounds like it might be a little bit stretched in in terms of what they could do in terms of inspections, I'm curious just what conversations have been had about that in terms of the capacity for especially far more frequent inspections than usual. And like what sort of impact that's going to have generally, and similarly for, I know that I think it was mentioned that there will be like other inspections possibly. And then also, lastly, I'm just curious what the new construction exemption is, because in a lot of cases, for example, with some of the new towers in Union Square, a lot of those have been sitting vacant, just because you have things that were built for a market that's no longer there, and I wonder what... Like, how that's going to apply to things like that, because I think that is often a source of, like, where a lot of these vacancies are coming from, or just, like, things being built for a market that's not there but is profitable, like, at the time. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'll go to Councilor Leming. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you, and I'll let, I didn't quite catch the third question that you had. You mentioned, sorry, something in Somerville I tried to write down.
[Simon Alcindor]: Yeah, I was wondering, for the public arts events exemptions, is that gonna be similar to what Somerville does currently, with having stuff in windows? I was just sort of curious what that's going to look like.
[Matt Leming]: So the idea with that one is that if you genuinely can't, if vacant properties don't look very nice, so one way to address. Only got three seconds to reply. So one way to address that is instead of having like, you know, windows covered up and super ugly, you have some public art displays that would be approved by the artist, PDS, and so on. So that's just a mechanism to prettify the neighborhood a little bit in the case of these long-term vacancies. I believe the, and Councilor is saying jump in if this is inaccurate. When talking about new construction, it meant to cover like when the building was being constructed. So obviously, you know, you can't house anybody in a building that is actively under construction even though it is technically vacant. So that is, so that's exempt. A lot more of the conversations we had were really with the building inspector and the Board of Health. I could say that the Board of Health was very favorable to the idea of like having more frequent inspections just because they wanted the ability to kind of get reports on buildings that were infested with rats. And so we did see a lot of support from them with the building commissioner, mostly like Capacity is always going to be a bit of an issue with all of the city departments in Medford, but basically the building commissioner was saying that he didn't really feel like he had the tools to do anything about these vacant storefronts. A lot of what we hear from city staff is that they literally just can't get in contact with the landlords to begin with, and so that's a pretty substantial piece of this ordinance. So if you can't get in contact with the landlords consistently, you can't really make a working relationship with them. Again, a lot of the effect of passing something like this is that landlords, knowing that it's about to happen, will end up making them comply or making them stop being absentee and just kind of waiting on waiting on a really big offer for somebody who wants to buy up their property, which is the case for a few residential, or for a few vacant properties. With the tax versus fees, so yeah, when you're going around as a candidate and you want to, you're trying to do something about the, about a lot of the vacant storefronts that folks are talking about, but you don't know all of the details of municipal government, because you've never held office. You've kind of interchanged the word tax and fee without really knowing the differentiation between them. And so something that I campaigned on was a commercial vacancy tax, which in Massachusetts, most of the In Massachusetts, we are only allowed to levy taxes if the state tells us that we're allowed to levy those taxes. So municipalities can't just invent a new tax and tell people to pay it on their own. It has to be done with permission of the state. And taxes are revenue generating. So when we get property taxes, that generates revenue for the city, which we then can pay school teachers, we can pay city staff, we can use it to repair roads. With a fee, it has to be revenue neutral. So what makes this a fee is the fact that it's paying for itself. So the vacant registry, the vacant building ordinance is kind of like a closed loop. It's not generating money for the city outside of maintaining that database. And that is something that we can legally do. With the residential, I believe Councilor Tseng has a better idea.
[Zac Bears]: He has raised his hand, so I'll recognize Councilor Tseng. Go for it.
[Justin Tseng]: Could you just repeat the residential question so I know I have it correct?
[Simon Alcindor]: Yeah, I was just curious how this is going, if there's going to be any effect on residential buildings, because that has been, it's a smaller issue, but it does come up occasionally when buildings seem vacant.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, that's a good question. So this ordinance kind of creates a two-track kind of system, one for residential and one for commercial and industrial properties. The reason why we're doing it slightly different is because the kind of impact on the community is a little bit different. With the residential, it's mostly contained to the immediate neighbors, whereas for industrial and commercial properties, that effect is kind of felt across the whole square, which then trickles into affecting our meals tax and stuff like that, and just kind of overall commercial vibrancy. It essentially has pretty much exactly the same inspectional standards. to keep for residential and commercial properties, the only difference is the registry part, which is really the hook to which the fee is attached. I think we also just didn't want to penalize landlords who are kind of in between like finding tenants as well, although that's not really a huge problem in the Boston area. There was also, in talking to the mayor of East Hampton, I believe, he brought, we talked about residential as well, and he brought up that it can be really, it can be tough to know, to have legal language to include for residential properties, because some people might just be away for a few weeks, a month, an extended period to take care of family and inadvertently they might fall into the definition. And so to keep it simpler, we're basically trial running at first with commercial industrial properties. So that's, I think the commercial residential portion of it. The other thing that I would add to what Councilor Leming said before to one of your previous questions about the, new buildings. The way that it's worded in the ordinance, it really is about improvement for future use. And so everything Councilor Levin said applies. I think the other thing I would say is currently as we're rezoning a lot of the city, there may be people who are trying to build more mixed use buildings in the city as well. And they might be in that in between period. And so that exemption is also meant to cover the landowners who kind of have the plans to build that kind of building, to build kind of like mixed use commercial and residential properties.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We will go back to... public comment will go to pay for the ends in page name and address the record please you have three
[Page Buldini]: Sure, thank you so much, Paige Woldini, 37 Winter Street. I first want to say thank you so much to the city councilors for supporting Medford Youth Girls Softball and saying yes to our food trucks for this weekend. I also need to give a big shout out for Councilor Scarpelli and to Clerk Rich, also to Josh Hunter at the Board of Health, because getting food trucks in Medford is tricky and they made it really seamless to navigate. Thank you very much. If anybody wants to come down to Tufts Park, we're going to have a blast this Saturday. Please keep the rain away from us. And then just a quick question. Councilor Tseng, thank you so much for being so open to speaking again with the chamber. And I'm greatly inspired that you were inspired by our chat in January. We did share a lot of our feelings as the Medford Chamber of Commerce and as small business owners. So I'm grateful for the opportunity to continue to talk to the city councilors when it comes to an important variance and ordinance like this. And I do think that there are some great things that the Chamber of Commerce can bring specifically when it comes to this. to be proactive and supportive stakeholders. So I'm really looking forward to that. And I know all the city councilors received emails from a lot of our chamber board members today. So I just really greatly appreciate all of the time and effort to respond because we are here to help. And we're looking forward to making this a really successful space, not just to penalize, but to create a funnel to really support the business community. So thank you all.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you so much. We will go back to the podium. Name and address for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes.
[Jennifer Yanko]: Thank you. Jennifer Yanko, 16 Monument Street. I just wanted to express my deepest appreciation to the council for putting forward this ordinance and for all the work you've done on it. I mean, I've been in support of this for some time, not realizing how deeply complex it is. And the way that you've gone into all these details and it's very impressive and I'm very grateful. I live in West Medford and the light in our square could be corrected hopefully by this. I mean, I'm hopeful that your research, you know, talking with other cities and communities, that this will serve as a motivation just to sort of change the culture almost. I think that's great. I mean, my first, my initial reaction was like $1,000. They'll just consider this part of their doing business. But it sounds like you've thought of that and figured out that this will be a way of sort of changing the ways that landlords behave. I do have one question about residential. And this, I don't need an answer for this particular property, but it's a particular case that I'm wondering how this ordinance would deal with. So there is a property in West Medford that, where there was a pretty severe fire at least five years ago. And I notice it because I kayak on the river, and it's always the same. And that is a vacant property, and it's severely damaged. And I wonder how that kind of a property will be dealt with.
[Zac Bears]: That one is in pretty, I think they're caught up in a legal dispute, a pretty significant legal dispute. just some context I have specifically on that. I'm not sure. And it's a residential property. So I think it would just be subject to the kind of, not the fine elements of this, but I don't know, Councilor Tseng if you've thought about that a little bit more.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, that would be covered by the maintenance requirements. So under this ordinance, they would still have an obligation to, to meet those standards. The legal parts of that property, the legal challenges to that property in particular are really complex. And so I don't, it'd be a little tougher to say how it works there, but there would be an obligation on someone's part to keep it up to standard. There, I would say it's an edge case because it's so legally complex. That's the best answer I can give you right now. If there is, I will note, and I think Councilor Lemmy alluded to this, for the registry and the fee and the fine part for like properties, properties that are also going through really complex legal disputes, There would be an exemption for that just because it would be hard for us to find who would be responsible or reliable or not following the ordinance there.
[Jennifer Yanko]: Okay. It is a complicated one. Anyway, thank you so very much. I know I speak for many other people and particularly in West Medford that we really appreciate your efforts and look forward to a brighter square.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you so much. We will go back to Zoom. We have Chris on Zoom. Chris, name and address the record, please. And you'll have three minutes.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Hey there, Chris Stivers, 23 Bower Street. Just want to say a big thank you for all the hard work that's gone into this, clearly over a couple of years. So impressive. Yeah, I, as you may know, support the proposal here. But I have a question. Maybe this is a simple one. But what happens if a landlord just chooses not to pay the fines? So they just stack up and stack up and they don't get paid. How does that get enforced?
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Chris. I'll go to Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, I think and Councilor Leming can add to this if I'm missing anything. There are basically two ways that cities like, I've talked about this with the other municipalities as well because It's rare, but each, they basically, each city is like zero to one case where this happens. Most of them do pay it. The main thing is that it would be, it could be established as a lien against the property. And so that would be, that would be a significant kind of legal kind of rule that we have in the box with regards to them not paying what they should be paying. The other way is just to sue them over it, which the municipalities have been looking at as well. But talking to the staff there, even the people who are hesitant to follow it, pretty much all follow it. The one case that I did hear of from them where they didn't pay was because it was actually a more administrative problem. where a large national corporation owns the property but didn't necessarily have its invoice address listed. And so they're currently trying to sort out where to send the invoices. OK.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I was wondering if it was a lien and that's possible. It sounds like that's the main preferable recourse. So that's the only question I had. Thank you. Yeah, thanks guys.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much. I'm not seeing any further comment either in person or on Zoom.
[Zac Bears]: So move to the motion. We'll take three votes. First, there's a motion to sever by Councilor Leming. So we'll basically we'll vote to sever. And then we would vote on referring the repeal of the old ordinance and the zoning ordinance to the Community Development Board. And then finally, we'll vote to approve the new ordinance, which is a regular standard ordinance for first reading. So three votes. First is the motion to sever this into two items. By Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming. Councilor Mullane. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I have the affirmative and the negative, the motion passes. On the motion to refer the repeal of chapter 94, section 7.5, the zoning ordinance by Councilor Leming, seconded by? seconded by Councilman that's referred to the Community Development Board. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malate? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I have an affirmative and a negative. The motion passes. And finally, on the motion to approve, the new Chapter 10 Article 8 for first reading by Councilor Leming, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malayne? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli?
[George Scarpelli]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, 7 in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. 26089, submitted by Mayor Brianna Leuco-Kern, Medford Square Redevelopment Project Grant. Dear President Bears and members of the City Council, I'm excited to share the city has been awarded a $450,000 Mass Development Finance Agency Mass Development Grant for the Medford Square Redevelopment Project. This grant will, I'm just going to go to Theresa because I don't want to read the rest of this. Theresa DuPont is our Community Preservation Act Manager who's here to talk about this Mass Development Grant. And it is required that a copy of the certified vote to get this grant be incorporated into the final grant agreement to be executed no later than June 30th. So, Teresa, if you could tell us a little bit more about what this is and why it is useful, and then I can go through the actual vote language when you're done presenting it.
[Theresa Dupont]: Very good. I first want to say thank you for your patience. I learned tonight that I am in fact incapable of being two places at once. So I apologize for not being here earlier and I appreciate your patience. So this project is part of the Medford Square redevelopment project. This specific grant will help fund pulling up the parking lot that is directly across from City Hall here up against the 93 embankment. to basically prepare that site for redevelopment. Right now there is evidence of an old municipal cemetery still intact at the site as part of the 93 redevelopment. That parcel was taken by eminent domain by the state and the project was to remove all of the burials there and then reintern them at Cross Street Cemetery. However, we discovered that that project was not fully completed. We had a due diligence project last year where we did discover some evidence of human remains as well as cultural artifacts. So we have a cemetery that's intact over there. We need to do our due diligence and properly bring these former residents of, and actually current still, residents of Medford and re-intern them back up at Cross Street Cemetery at Oak Grove. But in order to do that, we need some money. So this grant will help fund that project of the excavation of the parking lot as well as the archaeological work that needs to be done, and then the reinstatement of the parking lot whenever it's complete. So we applied to the Eco One Stop grant, which is essentially a grant portal where all these various different state agencies now under one umbrella fund projects. And so this one was, this particular grant was brought to us by Mass Development, who has been supporting the Manford Square redevelopment since I believe fiscal 2018. Predates all of us, I think, except for perhaps Mr. Scarpelli. So here tonight, as part of the documentation of that grant acceptance, it does require a vote from this body. with a super majority, I believe. So I'm here tonight to ask for your support and to help answer any questions that you may have.
[Zac Bears]: All right, thank you. That was a lot. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Such an interesting project. I'm very curious about the archaeological artifacts and if there's anything that you can tell us. And I'm specifically thinking about, given the nature of, you know, this project, if there is anything that when the project is complete or at some point it would be appropriate for this body to have some sort of a, you know, commemoration or, anything that we could sort of mark a remembrance of what was there that we thought had been moved but perhaps wasn't?
[Theresa Dupont]: I really appreciate that sentiment because I feel the same way. It's an interesting project. It's a very unique project. Everybody that we're talking to at the state level is, I've never heard the word unprecedented so much. So in terms of What this body could certainly help do on the back end of it, we intend to have a new commemorative memorial stone up at Cross Street Cemetery, which is inside of Oak Grove Cemetery. We will intend to do some lab results and some DNA testing. You know, it is difficult because these burials were completed, I believe, 1830 to 1920. So it's not a recent thing, but we will do all of our due diligence to try to identify the folks that were buried over there. But I really appreciate that sentiment and definitely will bring it to this body to see what we can do to mark, I don't wanna say mark the occasion, it sounds crass, but to acknowledge. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It is a very interesting project. I'm curious about how it was that the previous iteration of this project was so mistaken. Do you have any information on that? Like how they could have missed a portion of the remains?
[Theresa Dupont]: I can only ascertain because this was completed in 1959, so the records of that time are very scant. So again, it's pure speculation. It was taken by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the iteration of it during that time. I think that they took up all of the, they definitely removed all of the headstones that were there, but I just, you know, I don't wanna slight any past colleagues at the state level, but it just seems like it wasn't completed to the satisfaction of everybody. So unfortunately, now the city is left to clean up the work that should have been. completed in its entirety. So here we are today. And it's unfortunate that it happened. And again, I can't, I don't have a great answer for you as to why it wasn't completed adequately, but here we are today trying to rectify that.
[Emily Lazzaro]: It's President Bears, if I may.
[Zac Bears]: Vice President.
[Emily Lazzaro]: It's, yeah, I think it's totally, it's absolutely necessary that it be completed and handled. And I don't think I understood that it was done in the 50s. That's like, what can we do? My other question is, is it a very, it's a very extensive, it sounds like it would be a very extensive project to do DNA testing. Is this the cost, entirely in its entirety what we have here, or will there be further allocations required?
[Theresa Dupont]: Well, I will say actually to kind of piggyback off of your last question, Vice President Lazzaro, again, I don't want to speculate on behalf of the state, but I will say that when we applied for funding for this project, the state did elect to give us additional funds beyond the maximum award. Again, I really hate speculating. I know we're very much on the record. From my own thoughts, perhaps this is a way for them to help give us additional assistance to fix a problem that wasn't necessarily the cities to begin with. So the entire scope of the project, we actually have RFPs out right now for both archaeological as well as the excavation work. We're estimating this project to be somewhere around 900 to perhaps 1,900,000 to 1,000,000. So this grant at 450 would help cover a large portion of that. We also did receive funds from not mass development, mass works in the amount of $250. So we have a total of $700,000 in grant funding to go towards, which is a significant portion of those funds. We're also seeking some earmark money through representative Donato's office to help pony up a little bit more to complete the project.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Understood. Thank you so much.
[Theresa Dupont]: Of course.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Teresa. And you know, I've been aware of this issue for a bit now I know as we all have. I think it really the carelessness of the highway the forced highway era rears its head in many ways not least of which a bumper sticker you have on your car reminding people which lane of traffic yields to which other one at the beautiful Roosevelt Circle that I grew up living by for 20 plus years of my life. Our city is persistently affected by the manner and form in which Interstate 93 was created and plowed right through the heart of our city, splitting our city in two. This is yet another example of its negative effects on You know, it's been a long time, so maybe those folks who would be most upset by this unearthing, literally, of fact and remains, maybe they're not around to hear this, but, you know, there were a lot of people in 1959 who may have been told that someone they cared about was moved to Oak Grove Cemetery, and they weren't. And they've been under a parking lot and under a highway for 65 66 67 years now. So yes certainly I appreciate that the state is maybe stepping up a little belatedly to give us a hand in addressing this and that we'll at least be able to say that this is not not going to be underneath our. Something new that's built on that site on that property but there's probably people under the highway and I'm guessing we're not we're not getting to that.
[Theresa Dupont]: Unfortunately no.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. So you know I just there's so many different ways you have a resident and you know we had to redesign the Salem Street Rotary because resident was injured and never mind the fact that so much of our downtown core is steeply impacted by essentially being a car cut through because of poor design choices and urban development choices from the 50s and 60s so. My little rant about how a few people made a bunch of bad decisions in 1954 and Medford continues to live with it. And quite frankly, I hope that the state ponies up quite a bit more money. And that's the thing, it's still costing us millions of dollars to redo the Salem Street Rotary, a million dollars to address this issue, and probably more to come. But I do appreciate your point that maybe they are noting their role in this in maybe even a little informally in providing these funds to address this problem. So thank you. Any further comment or discussion on this paper? Seeing none, is there a motion? On the motion approved by Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Council Kelly? Yes. Council Leming? Yes. Council Malone? Yes. Council Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. Thank you, Manager DuPont.
[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you all again.
[Zac Bears]: More to come. Before we go to public participation, I do have one request. There are two papers on unfinished business that I think are being it we can place, receive and place on file papers 25-103, the very old other corridors district which we're now reviewing Boston Avenue and that's just an old paper that I think we can receive and place on file. And there's a 24-031 which is a two plus year old request for a report about BJ's Wholesale Club and I think we've addressed that issue. Is there a motion to receive those two papers and place them on file? On the motion of Councilor Leming, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Millan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Lemmie? Yes. Councilor Millan? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: And President Peterson?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. I've been the affirmative. None of the negative. The motion passes. And we'll go to public participation, and then I know Councilor Leming would like to say something, but public participation, if there's anyone who'd like to speak on any topic for three minutes, you may come to the podium or raise your hand on Zoom. We have one person at the podium. Name and address for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes.
[Simon Alcindor]: All right, Simon Alcindor, 44 Tainter Street. I just wanted to highlight, just because a lot of this stuff will probably happen before the next council meeting, that one of the things that may be coming up is a lot of changes around federal accreditation for universities. I think that is definitely something that the council should be keeping an eye on, just because it really does have quite a significant impact on how Tufts especially will function, but amongst a lot of the universities. in and around Boston, and I think that should be something that could have quite a significant impact on our city to make sure we really are monitoring and making sure that we're able to address if anything does indeed come up. But yeah, that's all I wanted to say. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right, seeing no one in the chambers and no hands on Zoom, public participation is closed and I'll recognize Councilor Leming. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so thanks everybody. Before we adjourn, I have a quick announcement to make. So as many of you know or may not know, I'm an officer in the Navy Reserves. I've been called up for deployment, so I'm gonna be leaving for about six months tomorrow morning. Talked to my commander, he should be fine with me zooming into council meetings, but I would ask folks to, for patience and understanding if I'm not always able to do my role on the City Council as fully as I might like during this time. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. And motion to adjourn.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming, for your service. And let's get you home for one last night here in Medford before you ship out. On the motion of Councilor Leming to adjourn, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Mullane? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative, none in the negative, the motion passes. Hope everyone's looking forward to me running all the zoning meetings now. Have a good night. Bye.
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