[Unidentified]: Test one, two.
[Zac Bears]: May 19, 2026 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Present. Councilor Leming? Present. Councilor Malauulu? Present. Councilor Scalpelli? Present. Councilor Tseng? Present. Vice President Lazzaro? Present. And President Abeas?
[Zac Bears]: Present. I'm present. None absent. The meeting is called to order. Action and Discussion Items 26-061, Annual Budget Process for Fiscal Year 2027 Preliminary Budget Meeting 5. This will be the fifth preliminary budget meeting of the fiscal 27 budget process. The mayor has communicated the following departments will be present, Cable slash Medford Community Media, Health and Civil Defense, Planning Development Sustainability and Associated Commissions, Law Executive and Associated License Commission and the Hormel Commission. I think we'll take it in that order. PDS Director Hunt has communicated that she's running a little late. So maybe we'll jump into something if we're there by the before she gets here. And we are continuing preliminary budget meetings after May 15th. the deadline in the city's budget ordinance. We're having one today. We will have one next Wednesday, May 27th. And there may be further meetings the following week, the first week of June on June 2nd and June 3rd. And while the budget ordinance has a deadline of May 31st, you know, in discussions with the administration, they communicated that it's likely the budget won't be submitted until June 4th or 5th for the agenda on June 9th. All right, let's get started with Cable Medford Community Media. We have Kevin Harrington. Kevin, are you going to be presenting a presentation or you just have your computer for notes? Verbal, great. Oh, give me one second. There you go. I'm just going to adjust it height-wise here. All right. Just to kind of give you the general prompts, you've been here before. I feel like you're wearing your budget shirt. But in general, we go through. Kevin wears this like every budget season, every time Kevin's here before us. It's awesome. We are going to be basically asking you to describe your fiscal 27 proposed budget and the differences between the last year's budget and this year's budget. Tell us about some of your accomplishments this current fiscal year, some of your plans for the upcoming fiscal year and anything that wasn't able to be funded in the upcoming fiscal 27 budget that you hope will be funded in future years.
[Kevin Harrington]: Absolutely. Thank you, President Bears. Thank you to the rest of City Council. Bear with me. I'm going to pull up some notes here real quick, but I can also vamp a little bit. I'll start off just by talking about the kind of year we had. We were lucky to have a full year with two full-time staff, myself and Jim Corbett, who is back at the station helping out members create a TV show at the moment. We want to thank all of our members and volunteers, including folks like Joe Smith, Mark Davidson, some of our members like Laura Duggan, Paul Garrity, Steve Bertarelli, the Petrellas, all sorts of folks who've come in and out of the studio. to all of the other department heads I've worked with over the past fiscal year, whether it's DEI, PDS, we did a lot of one of our accomplishments in my opinion was with the zoning and some of these other ongoing projects with public hearings, with info sessions. We've been able to provide hybrid meeting coverage in non-standard locations, so outside of the chambers, outside of our studio, whether it's a location at Tufts or a middle school, so on and so forth. We also were able to upgrade our VOD platform, our video on demand platform, so that we have better playback. We have improved performance. We have streamlining on the back end that I won't get into. I don't want to get too inside baseball. We have also been able to cover well over 400 different meetings over the past fiscal year. And we have also been improving storage at the studio. We have been starting to take steps to better quantify our member usage of the studio so that we have folks signing in so we can kind of get some metrics to work with as we move forward towards growing the studio as well. I will now, I will circle back in case I forget anything, but for the moment, I'm going to go back to our proposed budget. So the increase that we're going to see that's most prominent is to permanent employees. We are going to add an additional full-time production coordinator who will be coming in at CAF 3 step 1. We also are going to be adding, I believe, $975, sorry, not thousand, good Lord, $975 to our, one can dream, $975 to part-time. That is a slight expansion of our part-time salary. We are going to split that line item into three positions. We are going to have a, a Medford Vocational Technical School co-op as we have the past few years, but we are also going to have a summer intern which will, and I budgeted to cover the beginning of their time being the tail end of this fiscal year and the remainder of their time being the beginning of fiscal 27. And then also, someone who I forgot to thank, who I'm gonna do right now, because it's relevant to what I'm speaking about, Shane Colbert, of course, a reliable booth operator, but he's a busy fella, and so there might be booth duties that fall outside of his purview and availability, so we wanted to have some money for a part-time booth operator that we could have fully trained up. and we could have cover various events, whether it's absences or additional needs. And so those personnel changes are really the only, you know, marked increases in the actual line items. Most of the other operating expenses are going to remain the same. And so that'll bring our total up to $276,101.97. All right. Thanks, Kevin. Anything you want to talk about upcoming year? Yes, upcoming year, we, you know, like many departments, you know, we've submitted some capital improvement plan projects. One of them that shares, that's going to be kind of a multi-department endeavor. is the updates to these very chambers as a result of the charter study, not study, but the charter passing. That's gonna involve, you know, buildings with the furniture. It's gonna involve audio for sure. We're hoping to have video upgrades as part of that. But if that is not inclusive, if that project is not inclusive of video upgrades to the chambers, I also would be pursuing a capital project that would be renovating that in parallel.
[Zac Bears]: My only request is you keep me 720p. Everyone else can be full HD. I just want 720p.
[Kevin Harrington]: Exactly. Selective resolution is not a term of art I'm too familiar with. The other things we're looking to do this year, we are looking to get a lighting grid upgrade in the studio. That would give us greater flexibility. It's something I've been working on for a while and, you know, we're trying to balance that. That would be a significant capital project. It would be in the 50K plus range. We're also, you know, some of the other things we're trying to do in terms of our services. We are hoping to, with the additional staffing, continue to grow our outreach, continue to grow some programming, continue to start to bring back maybe, if we can't do full-fledged multi-week classes, which might be more of a personnel hall, we could do drop-ins. Without revealing too much of myself, I spend time doing improv comedy every once in a while. And a lot of those studios do drop-in classes so that you don't necessarily have to commit. So members of the community could just come to one night, one random Tuesday, Thursday, whenever, and get exposed to the equipment. Some of the other projects we're working on in conjunction with the mayor is to start creating outreach videos for the different departments of the city so that each department can have informative videos they can put on their website, talk about their services, talk about what they can provide to help keep that information flowing out to the community. And then some of the other elements are we're going to be You know, I won't get into too many of the kind of nerdy tech stuff, but we're continuing to work on some of our data storage. We were able to clear a significant chunk, over two terabytes, out of our CASUS unit, which was a bit of an undertaking, but we got there. And other, another thing that's super coming to mind, but again, I'm dealing with the Wi-Fi a little bit. But yeah, that's all I can think of. You're talking about stuff going forward into next year, right? Into next fiscal year?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and then if there's anything that wasn't able to be funded in this budget that you're hoping for in a future budget.
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah, so I was hoping to have two additional production coordinators. So my hope would be in a coming fiscal year, like if we're adding one this year, I would hope to add another one in the subsequent year. to kind of be able to build out that full-time roster. We are very lucky in having, we have volunteer help. We do the program that Pam Kelly leads with the tax abatement employees. And that's been really successful for us. We have the co-ops. But there's limits to what we would expect out of those positions. There's some things that full-timers with their experience in the field with the equipment is just stuff that they can do that we wouldn't ask of our volunteers. And the hope would be that, again, we would be able to free ourselves up to kind of, you know, getting the word out there. and to be even providing other services within our meeting coverage. If we could get to a point someday where we can have agenda items show up as chapters, like in YouTube, that would be a pretty cool thing to do. The issue is, personnel, timing-wise, we don't really quite have that bandwidth as of this moment. And then, yeah, I think that about covers that.
[Zac Bears]: All right. I have a few questions, but first I'll go to Councilor Leming. Sure. If the thunder is disruptive, we'll take a pause. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you, Kevin, for all the work you're doing. I will say for the first couple of initially when live streaming to YouTube, I did try to have like a YouTube chapter. video like YouTube chapters as agenda items, but you're right, that takes quite a bit of time to do for every meeting. I was wondering, is it a priority or do you think it could become a priority in the future? Because I would like to see this to start digitizing some of those old council VHS tapes that they have sitting in the basement and possibly putting them either on the cloud or on a or on YouTube, I would be interested in the future of that and if it's possible to just like get any equipment or staff funding to put a little time towards it.
[Kevin Harrington]: Thank you for the question, Councilor Leming. Yes, we have done some of that already. We had a huge box of DVDs of old City Council meetings that we were able to digitize. Those are all up on the Internet Archive. Medford Community Media has its own page on the Internet Archive. That's, of course, only one of possible solutions. And of course, if you're familiar with the Internet Archive and that project, if it runs into issues with funding, server space, it's one of a few possible places for it to live. We're looking to duplicate some of our older legacy meetings that are on YouTube to places that are on Internet Archive, also on the YouTube. We usually restrict the videos that live on our Cloud VOD to within the past five years, just to make sure that we're keeping space free. But yes, to more succinctly answer the question, we've been doing it somewhat, partially, like any boxes we have. We have digitized DVDs. If there are more boxes at the clerk's office, we are more than happy to take those down. We have a bunch of boxes we got from the schools of VHS tapes. Those take a little longer just because the DVDs were able to use software like Handbrake, and it's a lot faster. But using tape means real-time encoding, which means if it's a six-hour meeting, you have to sit there and watch the tape play for six straight real hours. in order to be captured, which is, as someone who's done it quite a bit in his past, it's a real barrel of laughs. A blast. Yeah. But all joking aside, again, that is a perfect job for volunteers, summer interns to do in smaller bites, not doing it all day long, doing it in between other more active tasks. So yeah, that's something we're very open to doing. City Council, the clerk, school committee, if anyone has old bankers boxes full of tapes and DVDs, give me a holler and we'd be more than happy to get those digitized for y'all.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, thank you. Sorry, through the chair, just one quick follow up. How how far back did those did those tapes go? Like what's the oldest that you've seen? And just from what you and is it your impression that there's sort of a complete record there? You have like one tape from 1981 and then the second oldest is from the 2010s. So
[Kevin Harrington]: I can give you a more detailed follow-up over email, but I know for sure the DVDs aren't, they're going back to around 2016. The tapes that we have from the school committee are much older. We're talking 90s, and which I know isn't that old, but 90s, and I believe some late 80s tapes snuck in there as well. In terms of city council, the only, the DVDs we've encountered have mostly been the 2010s on. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: I just had a quick follow-up on that before we go to Councilor Tseng. Sure. In general, so it sounds like we're clearing out CASTUS, but we're using kind of off-site things like Internet Archive to maintain records. Is there any duplication? Are there two places where something's stored? And I know you mentioned a little bit if they have funding issues, but I'm just wondering, I'd hate to lose them forever if we're not maintaining control.
[Kevin Harrington]: So we also have backups of all the city meetings that we cover, especially. We have those also on our server. And one of the other projects that I keep not really having a lot of time for is we have a An 8 bay server that can take 12 terabyte optical drives that we would be able to use to greatly increase our server space. We would also set it up. We would set the raid and all that stuff up to have mirroring so that instead of like. eight active drives, we're having four. And then they each have a duplicate. So the idea of meeting that you have within that storage setup, you have some redundancy. So yeah, those older meetings that we captured, we made sure to have those on the internet archive. And we have them on our server at the studio. And then we want to start uploading those to YouTube as well to have it basically in three different distinct places. And that's kind of the plan at the moment.
[Zac Bears]: Great. I appreciate that. And did we ever, you know, this is kind of a, this is something you need to look into. I totally understand. Do we have the TV3 archives anywhere or did that not come to Medford Community Media?
[Kevin Harrington]: So I haven't seen any, I don't have any boxes full of like TV3 stuff. What I will say is, don't hold me to it cause I don't know exactly, but I know that we have some content on our, um, We have the main CASIS unit, we have the Cloud VOD, but on both, I believe, we have some older material that was provided by Joe Fortunato, and I believe a lot of that stuff, I think there's a mix, I think there's some TV3 stuff there, and I think there's some MSTV, which I think was the old Malden station, so there is some legacy stuff there, but yeah, we don't, unfortunately, yeah, there's not a lot of, like stuff labeled TV3 that we have easily accessible. Yeah.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Thank you. I'll go to Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thanks. It's exciting hearing about the new initiatives. It's really, in particular, I think department heads reaching out to the public via MCM is a great idea. And this is less, this is me pontificating and less for you. This is more for other department heads. But it'd be great to have a conversation about, I know certain departments do a lot of training about how to apply for certain benefits or how to navigate XYZ systems. It'd be great if that could also be on MCM. at the very least in an online form, so we just have these video resources we can give residents to see. I guess, as for a question, I know this is also something that you probably haven't looked into yet and will take more work than it sounds right now. I know that Zoom meetings like these, you have the captions and they actually auto translate to different languages. I'm curious if there's any way or if we could explore any way of kind of doing that for when we post the meeting to the MCM website to have an option like that carry over or maybe even for a video recorded in the studios and not over Zoom to kind of like find the automatic translation kind of thing.
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah, and I would say quickly in order, I want to make sure credit where credit is due. The mayor came to me about the department wide videos and stuff like that. So that's something we're taking on, but I don't want to make it sound like I dreamt it under a park on a park bench someday. But yes, and I do also agree that You know, if people have public facing video of any kind that they want to send me Dropbox links to and we can make available like we're more than happy to do that. As far as the translation stuff, yeah, we're in a tricky spot with that because. For one, as I'm sure all of you have noticed, the automatic captions with Zoom are not always a precise instrument, such that there's time I want to spend on trying to finesse how it handles when it thinks that swear words are being said, when they are not. And making it so that we can have those accidental swear words be asterisked out instead of just showing up kind of apropos nothing. It's not a huge all the time everyday problem. In terms of the language part of it, the tricky part about that is that. You know the way we've been doing it since I started is that we have these captions that you see here are being recorded burned into the video so that later when it's shown on the website you will see whatever is being generated now underneath me there. And I've wanted to upload, you know, different language captions to it. The trick then is how do you make it so you don't have two different languages and alphabets superimposed on top of each other and give everyone a migraine. So part of it is we either would have to stop doing the burned-in captions and find a way to have the captions be selectable. which we could, but that would be a separate charge with CASTUS, so that was something we would have to kind of allow for. And also, too, you know, Dealing with captioning and all that stuff would again be like a pretty big lift that I would be, you know, more than happy to try to look into how to do. I know years and years ago, we looked into hiring live captioning services for meetings, and the bid was bigger than my budget right now. So, you know, I know a lot of that stuff can be pretty expensive. And to be clear, as someone that used to be a legal video specialist and worked with a lot of court reporters and stenographers. It is a very skilled position. So I would be open to figuring out... If we can figure out a way... My other thing too that I don't wanna forget is... Having dealt with this in previous positions, in previous video projects, when other languages get involved, we then have to also make sure we have speakers of that language. So that would be a little bit of coordinating. OK, if we want to have three additional languages, OK, who's going to be kind of the designated person to check through these before we upload them, just to make sure there's nothing super glaring? and all that. But yeah, I mean, that would be something, especially down the road, if we were able to have, you know, if we had someone who their entire job was just government meetings, we might have a little bit more time that we could kind of carve out for that.
[Zac Bears]: Sure. Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Just a couple things. You touched on the chamber renovations, so appreciate that. I look forward to working with you on that and the rest of the council. Glad to see we're getting a full time position increase. I know that that's going to be really meaningful to you and hopefully for certainly all the people who are helping out and making content, but hopefully bring more people in. I think that's going to be really great. Is this, in terms of like the PEG fees, is this able to happen because there's like more of the cable fees, and we're allocating more of those fees towards your budget than we had in the past, or could you explain a little bit more about why we're able to increase that position this year?
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah, so essentially, yes, I think we are able to, I was able to do some research and figure out what the receipts were coming from the two companies and was able to ascertain that the amount total coming in for PEG is going to be enough to absorb that. So that was part of the discussion. So when I proposed my budget, that's why I proposed for two positions, because based on the math, it's like, oh, we should definitely be able to handle two additional approximately 50K positions. OK. Yeah.
[Zac Bears]: And so this year we're doing one, but PEG should in the future maybe support another one?
[Kevin Harrington]: Yeah, I think it would certainly, you know, the thing with the peg fees is that they are slowly decreasing overall. You know, and last, I have not heard a lot about having streamers have to kick any of that in. which was a possible state law that was getting thrown around, but I haven't heard anything about it in a long time. So with that being said, of like a little bit of a reduction, there is still, you know, we would be projected to, like as of right now, fiscal year 26, and we would be expecting additional, the last of like the four quarterly payments would be coming in around now. So as of right now, we have about $530,000 coming in from both cable companies.
[Zac Bears]: Every year?
[Kevin Harrington]: This year. So the way I looked at it was, well, if we basically bumped up to $300,000 and change, that should probably be able to get folded in. And I understand that if we maxed out our staffing and then had to reduce force because of the, you know, dwindling fees, you know, we wouldn't want to run into that. So I, you know, I understand the idea of like incrementally adjusting it and making sure we can stay within that. and because staffing would be what I would want to use most with our fees. It's both our most expensive line item and probably our most essential at this moment.
[Zac Bears]: All right. I appreciate it. And this is probably more of a question for Bob and the administration. But, you know, I'd like to understand a little bit more where we see PEG fees on the revenue side of the budget, you know, should we be, how is that getting factored in, you know, is that part of our revenue bottom line figure for the general fund budget, you know, and then essentially is some of the PEG fee going to do other stuff for the city and so that's more of a question for Bob Dickinson. So, Mr. Clerk, if you could take that down as a question and we'll submit that in or if Nina, if you want to talk about it now. You know, that would be helpful to understand where the PEG fees are fitting in. Is that fitting in local receipts? And so we're getting 500 in and 300, you know, 200, 300 is going to Medford Community Media and the rest is going to, you know, support the rest of the budget. We could talk about that.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Pierce. Yes, so historically the fees that were coming in for cable have gone into the general fund and have floated through the general fund. What we're going to be doing is we're going to be proposing a special revenue account for the start of fiscal 27, which will collect all of it in a separate pot. And will allow us to track it better and will allow us to manage it better. So the revenue side will take a little bit of a hit, but the expenditure side will take an equal hit. So it's a wash. And that way we can also. look at capital improvements down the road using those funds and using that available resource to cable, to our future goals, to some unknowns potentially that are relating to the high school and the space. No set as far as capital is at this point, but that can help us moving forward because it will be separated as well.
[Zac Bears]: In the past, has that been like in local receipts or transfers in or?
[Nina Nazarian]: It has been in what would be local receipts, yes. Okay. It would come in as local receipts. All right.
[Zac Bears]: So, special revenue fund, PEG is going to be going in there starting fiscal 27 and then eventually.
[Nina Nazarian]: Pending council approval, yes.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and then MCM will be funded out of that and won't be in the general fund budget anymore.
[Nina Nazarian]: Correct.
[Zac Bears]: All right. We're still going to talk to Kevin at budget time? What are we going to do? If the council would like to. Yeah. No, I mean, I think something that whenever I read the ACFR is very clear to me, it's just how much of The work of the city is done outside of the general fund budget and, you know, we see the general fund and the enterprise fund but even like, you know, we have our two big grant funded departments here today with planning and health and, you know, a bunch of the work that they do is outside of the general fund budget but obviously is really important to the city and we get to talk about it, you know, we get to hear about it but it's not actually reflected in the budget items and I think, you know, I think it's helpful for the city, for the residents of the community to be able to understand kind of this big third pile, if you will, of funds, which is all of the state and private and federal grants. You know, we see CDBG through its required process. We see CPA through its required process. But really, you know, it's not just general fund and enterprise fund. It's also special revenue funds or other funds or however we want to term it. And I think that that's just a, A useful thing for us to maybe start trying, you know, over time, trying to get in the practice of for the residents is showing them this great, you know, tens of millions of dollars of work that's happening every year that our city government is doing that isn't reflected in the general fund budget. So we'd love to see Kevin, you know, next year even though you're going to have a special revenue fund.
[Nina Nazarian]: And if I could use this opportunity to just segue minor nuances to point out, I realize that the proposed position on the fixed and new expenses should have been in the bottom. That's on me. But I think that's apparent. And we can talk about some nuances in the other ones as they come up. But I just figured I'd mention that for MCM, even though it's all there. It's just one's in the wrong category.
[Zac Bears]: OK. Well, looking forward to, I think this is going to be great to better understand the fees coming in and support for MCM and I appreciate the kind of long ranging thought about the status of the MCM space as the high school project moves forward.
[SPEAKER_09]: So, great.
[Zac Bears]: And I will come to the public just after I ask if there's any other Councilors questions for Kevin. Seeing none, I see one resident who'd like to speak about Medford Community Media. So we will recognize you. Name and address for the record, please. And you'll have three minutes. Hi, Laura.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I'm Laura Duggan. I'm at 31 Hickory Ave. in Medford, Fulton Heights. I came here to speak on behalf of Kevin's work. He does a wonderful job with Jim, and they do all of this. We know how important they are. You're talking all these extra things you want, but think about recording all the meetings I mean, without that, you wouldn't have no recording. You're concerned about legacy of past meetings. Yes, but all of this takes staff. It takes staff. Two guys doing, trying to do what they do now, and let's add on to that? That's asking a lot. I do remember the previous director, who was a really fine fellow, Patrick. I worked with him, too. By the way, I've had a show at the station. I've been there for about maybe six years, so I've seen a lot of history of people coming and going. I wondered why Patrick left, and then I found out he went to another community that had a staff of five, and he was working here solo. It took a long time before he actually got one other person to work with him. Now, keep in mind, you want your meetings recorded. What if somebody gets sick, you know? Well, you're not going to have anything to try to resurrect. It just won't be there. So it's really important to fully staff a cable show. Now, I did ask questions around, why does Medford have such a small staff at their cable station? And after digging a while, I found out that the cable fees went into a general fund in the city. And then they would divvy out some money, as they saw fit, to the station. So I said, oh, that's why. Because I ask questions when I don't know the answer. And so I'm really glad that people are also starting to ask that question and consider acting on that to support. Because we know Kevin has done a fantastic job. Just imagine if he had a staff of three more people, what he could do. Maybe he could get all those old meetings recorded or, you know, digitized, you know, and all the other things you're suggesting, great ideas, maybe he could do all of that. Plus, he has a whole lot of ideas himself, as do I. So, I just urge you to support what he has presented here, what he's doing, and look towards the near future to give him greater funding, and then I guarantee you, you'll be amazed what will happen. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Laura. Really appreciate that. And Kevin, thank you. You know, it's exciting to have a new position in. You know, I know we've been asking for, you know, certainly since you've been here for a few years now about peg fees and what should we be getting. And so thank you for tracking that down. And I'm excited that we're going to be kind of putting that, you know, this is the money that funds MCM and here's where we're going to look in the long run. I think that's a really a good improvement to the funding structure and to the support we'll see for MCM. So I'm glad to see not just the progress you make every day on all the things that you do for the city, but also this bigger structural question. I think it's really great.
[Kevin Harrington]: And let me know, because we have, I don't have fully complete data, but I have, thanks to Daria Tejera, I have receipts for the past three fiscal years, including this year. So I can send that along to folks if you want to take a look. But yeah, no, I'm very excited about. You know, again, I'm not a finance person. I'm sure there's a lot of whys and wherefores that will go into creating this and pending council approval. But yeah, I think it'll be exciting. And I'm just, yeah, I'm really stoked to add another member to the MCM team. Because I'll end with this. A lot of us who work here at the city, we're here because we love not just the city of Medford, but we love the work, we love the people. making people, helping people create their own TV shows, helping people keep track of what's going on in their city. It does fill me with a lot of pride. I love so much about this job, and I just hope to continue to do it and to try to do it bigger and better as much as I can every year. So there you go.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Kevin. Yeah, and definitely, you know, we'd love to meet with you guys once the special revenue fund is set up and we can, you know, look at the revenues and expenses and we'll see, you know, all on its own MCM budget. So, that sounds great. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Kevin. All right. Next, we will go to Board of Health Animal Control Civil Defense and we have Director Marianne O'Connor with us. Thanks, Marianne. You know, I will go through it again but basically same questions and you've done it before and you'll do it again. What is the kind of the difference between last year's and this year's budget? What is some of the work that you've been able to do this past year? What are your plans for the upcoming fiscal year? And what are some things that weren't able to be funded in this upcoming budget that you hope to be seeing funded in future years?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Okay, I'll start with just a quick overview of some of the accomplishments we were able to do this past year. As you know, the health department provides environmental health inspection and enforcement services, infectious disease surveillance and follow-up, and a vaccination program for both adults and children. I just want to share a few numbers with you that we shared with the neighborhood ambassadors last week, and they were pretty surprised. I want to share them with you as well. For the last 10 months of the fiscal year, we've provided 715 inspections of food establishments, housing units, pools, camps, and body art establishments. 2400 permits were granted, including 705 food permits, 543 resident complaints were responded to, and almost 1100 vaccinations were given through both homebound visits and clinics and also office hours for children in need of vaccinations. We're also providing monthly reporting to the Board of Health on all reportable diseases and monitoring those as we go. But the Health Department also provides human services activities and programs through its Office of Prevention and Outreach. OPO offers social service navigation to high need residents, recovery coaching to residents entering or trying to maintain sobriety. substance use and problem gambling prevention programming to our parents, youth, and schools. New this year, a youth works program, and we are also leading regional prevention efforts. These efforts are all taking place while we're ensuring we are reaching and serving our most vulnerable populations and our non-English speaking community members. Most of this work in OPO is funded through grant funding. This year OPO wrote for a $250,000 a year five-year federal prevention grant through SAMHSA and was awarded. Highlights of the first three quarters of OPO, 180 unique residents in need of services with housing, employment, health care, and behavioral health care were served by our social service coordinator with over $14,000 secured in emergency financial assistance for those residents. 45 to 50 individuals monthly engage with our recovery coach services through outreach, group support, and post-overdose follow-ups. The weekly recovery group has grown to 20 plus participants and many achieving major sobriety milestones. Our community liaisons navigation and translation to more than 600 residents, ensuring access to mass health, SNAP, housing, and legal support in six different languages. Our OPO team coordinated or supported over 40 major public events, including back to school night with over 200 residents, winter preparedness distribution, of coats, hats, and scuffs. That served 240 residents, a National Night Out, a Recovery Month, a Black History Month, as well as numerous cultural celebrations and Caregiver University workshops. Seventeen volunteers were recruited to assist with food security efforts, delivering groceries to elderly and disabled residents, maintaining the community fridge, and supporting food pantry access for hundreds of families. ESOL and immigrant support programs served more than 100 learners, launched new classes through nonprofits and faith partners, and trained over 20 volunteers to expand English instruction and hosted immigrant workshops for 45 plus community leaders. Our YouthWorks program has placed 20 local youth in employment and career readiness positions, with six more hired to lead community health initiatives. We also hosted our second annual youth summit, connecting close to 100 youth with summer job and volunteer opportunities. Other highlights include our financial security and financial literacy workshops provided by partnering with Cambridge Savings Bank, MassHire, and Bunker Hill Community College. We partnered with the Medford CEDU Center to relaunch the IUOK program and targeted outreach to draw older adults with diverse backgrounds to the senior center programming. Climate resilience and equity initiatives and educational events include home electrification outreach and work with the Climate Equity Council. We've created a comprehensive strategic plan to address problem gambling among young adults resulting in a new set of educational prevention and outreach initiatives to be launched this year. Our Welcome Baby program has ongoing distribution resources and educational materials to new parents in Medford, and we've expanded our prevention effort with the Medford Public Schools, coordinating youth action teams at both the Medford High School and the Andrews Middle School, certifying that all Medford health teachers in vaping prevention curricula, and assisting the launch of the I Decide Diversion programs in schools. So that's just a few of our accomplishments for the year. Going forward, obviously we hope to continue with all of those efforts and expand on what we can. We continue to apply for grants. We continue to try to expand our services and our outreach, and we hope we have three pending grants right now we're waiting to hear from, and hopefully soon, before the start of the fiscal year, we'll know if we've received those grants. Not a lot of changes in the budget this year. Some of it is just permanent employees as your COLA and STEP increases. Our part-time employees increased because our public health nurse is now gone part-time and we've supplemented her hours with a second part-time nurse. The professional services increase, that does include some data conversion. Our current inspectional data program is actually closing or converting or going to another company. The company itself is changing its programming. So we are moving to citizen serve completely. The other expense would be the smart sheet expense, which was previously APA funded. We've had to increase because our order letters by constable have increased for our housing purposes and complaints. The rodent program, there's a $30,000 line included now. Again, that previously was APA funded. We're also hoping that thanks to your new rodent control ordinance and the fees going into the revolving account, that we'll be able to supplement that going further, going on. Canine contracted services, our kennel expenses always continue to grow. 453 days of kennel services this year. And it's just something you just can't predict, unfortunately. And then the increase of mosquito control was just what they currently charged us for this year. Any other questions?
[Zac Bears]: What are you doing?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We're a very busy office but it's really very rewarding and we're doing some great work and I'm really proud, really proud of the team.
[Zac Bears]: It's really awesome and you know, I know it's not easy, I know it's some of the hardest work the city does. you know, trying to address some of the problems that our residents are facing that have the fewest resources at city, state, national level to address. So you're saving people's lives every day and it's much appreciated. So thank you for sharing everything that you guys are doing. I'm going to go to Vice President Lazzaro and then Councilor Scarpelli. Oh, sorry.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you for being here as always. Your department does the work of like, five to ten normal departments. I wanted to ask a few questions. The mosquitoes have not been treated this year. Is that because it doesn't happen until the end of the fiscal year? It just doesn't have any actuals for
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So that's one invoice we get. We're part of the mosquito control regional office and they invoice us on an annual basis for the services they provide.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I'm sure, I thought it was something like that. A lot of the stuff that doesn't happen in the actuals is because of things like that or maybe it's ARPA funded and it's expected in the future that it won't be like that and that's fine. I would be really curious to see how much grant funding your department receives total the fact that all of the community liaisons are grant funded is it's such a huge part of your department and and how people interact with the Board of Health and or the Health Department generally that I just would be curious to see how many grants I would be curious to see, but I don't want to ask you to put it all together because it would be annoying and time consuming and you do enough, unless you have it.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I have it. Oh, you do? Well, I have some of it probably. I think we're around 1.25 right now total annually for grant funding.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Million?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yes, yes, yes.
[Emily Lazzaro]: That's quite a bit.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yes.
[Emily Lazzaro]: That's more than what your fiscal year 27 budget is, just to be clear. that you're already getting in grant funding. Do you have a grant writer on staff?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: No, we're all grant writers on staff. Everybody's a grant writer.
[Emily Lazzaro]: So I'm not a grant writer, and my day jobs tend to be in nonprofits, and that's like a whole job that people can have.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Luckily, we do have a couple of folks who are really skilled in grant writing and have been doing it for a long time. We did receive that $1.3 million from SAMHSA. We were only one of two in the state that received that SAMHSA funding. The other one that received it was out in Western Mass, I believe, in Springfield. So it was very competitive, and we were able to get it. So luckily, we do have some really talented folks. And we are continually looking for additional funding.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Well, I'm so grateful for the work that your office does to bring in revenue. There are many different ways that our departments are bringing in revenue. One of them is writing grants, in which you ask private funding organizations to give money to city departments that we then turn into services for our residents. The services that you provide are things like really services for our most vulnerable residents, people who need help with housing, people that need help with food, and also really basic stuff like rodent control, mosquito control. I mean, animal control is part of this. I also noticed that there was a big jump in the canine Contracted services? Is that an outside? Do you contract with a separate?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Kennel services. Kennel services.
[Emily Lazzaro]: So that's when dogs are loose and you have to put them into a kennel?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Correct. Or they're abandoned. Oh, okay.
[Emily Lazzaro]: That makes me sad. When you do that, is it just something that happens some years where it's more expensive than others?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: It's really hard to predict. Yeah, you never know. We don't have any animals in the kennel as we speak, but we did have like four in previously, so it varies off and on.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay. Another thing I wanted to ask you, because I think I have the wrong information, is I thought that Chris Suma, who is our recovery coach, was part-time, but he is not? He's full-time?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: He's part-time. He is part-time. He's part-time, but he's funded by our opioid funds. So he's not listed as a...
[Emily Lazzaro]: Got it. And OK so if you could you explain what the opioid settlement funds are and just to like we I think the council knows what they are but for the public to understand.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Sure, so it's from the lawsuits that have been settled with either Big Pharma or pharmacies for the proliferation of opioids for the last 10, 15 years, 20 years in our society, and all the damage that they caused. So major lawsuits, and there are still lawsuits pending, and there's still additional funds hopefully coming in from them. to really kind of correct those wrongs. And it's very prescriptive as to how we can spend those opioid funds. They are specifically for folks addicted or facing addiction issues or families who are facing addiction in their family. But it's also for prevention services and other support services. Currently right now we use some of that funding not only to fund our recovery coach position, but to also we provide sober home scholarships to folks in need. And we're looking to launch a program, a support program for folks to pay for other expenses that have to do with addiction, so whether it be someone in the family is suffering and the child needs to go to camp, if they apply, we can pay for the camp scholarship.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Small grants that they can apply for that are very simple, but that pay for something that would otherwise be paid for by the parent, but since the parent has opioid use disorder, those settlement funds can be used for that. Are 40 to 50 people in recovery in the city who work with Chris, is that manageable for him or is there any discussion about extending his hours?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We are looking at that and we would love that and we probably, you know, really need to take a hard look at that. Again, we have the opioid funding to do it. I know you've all met Chris. He's just all in. No matter what, he would do it. We need to rein him in sometimes. Yeah, we would love to expand his hours, but he's contracted to North Suffolk. Okay, got it.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yeah Yeah, I think that would be maybe worth looking at, not that that's part of, I mean that's your decision because it's not even part of this budget separate. Chris will also be at our next regular meeting to talk about the new recovery group. So the regular recovery group is one that's already established, but there's a new one. There are posters up around the building. recovery group for people who are first responders and veterans specifically. So a lot of great work happening. I just really appreciate everything that you do. And I would love to talk in the future about the potential for splintering off a smaller department somewhere down the line. I have no power to do this. Similar to Somerville's Office of Housing Stability, other cities have the same. But, you know, Jason's work as the city's social worker, a lot of the work that Catherine Dingra does in prevention outreach and just keeping people in their homes and keeping them from being evicted. Instead of keeping people in their homes can be a lot less disruptive for everybody, a lot less expensive for everybody than helping people get out of homelessness. Something I've been thinking about since I came and started as a city councilor, but it's a big undertaking.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: It's a lot of the work that Jason does.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Somerville started with one person who was part-time, so it can be done. And I know you guys do a ton, so I really appreciate that. Thank you very much. Sorry for all the questions.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Lazzaro. Just one quick follow-up, Mary Ann. Does that $1.25 million in grants, does that include the opioid settlement? No. So that's on top of that?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: The opioid settlement is on top of the grant funding.
[Zac Bears]: Is there anything else other than the grant funding and the opioid settlements that is supporting your department?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So two of the five folks are city funded. Catherine's position is city funded, and Jason's position is city funded. The others are partially or fully grant funded.
[Zac Bears]: So of the 11 listed here, how many more people are working for?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So there's five full time in OPO. And there are, of the five, two are city funded. And then there are 12, sometimes there's 13, part time. Right.
[Zac Bears]: Right. So sorry just the total total in your department full time and part time is that.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Oh including the inspection services.
[Zac Bears]: Everything. Yeah.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I'd have to count.
[Zac Bears]: You can get back to us on it. But you know this budget list 11 but it sounds like.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So it'd be 11 plus 17. OK.
[Zac Bears]: All right. All right. That's huge. Thank you for that. And so in terms of your funding, there's the general fund allocation, 1.25 million in grants, money from the opioid settlement, and then is there any, is the tobacco settlement, is that?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So that's in a separate revolving account.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We did use some of those funds to actually train the teachers of the vaping curriculum.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: We had one of our prevention coordinators trained, and then she was able to train them. So we do use that funding for education and prevention reasons, but it doesn't fund a position or anything. OK.
[Zac Bears]: Great. All right. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. Marian, thank you so much. I know you do so much, and we appreciate you. My thing is just probably the top issues that we hear is sometimes I think it's not, it's unfair that it has to fall into your department because you have so much going on is the road control. And I know you're doing Yeoman's work and trying to really stay ahead of it, but are we doing enough for this council and asking to allocate enough for what we're seeing as truly a serious issue, a serious health issue. We're looking at neighboring communities that have gone out and hired specific, you know, rat czars, rodent czars, and looking at different aspects and looking to a way to safely eliminate the rodents. I know a lot of, we're hearing the, you know, some communities with mixing of some of the chemicals that are killing our birds and pets. It's frightening. I see it's a $30,000 line for the rodent program. In my opinion, I think we need to do more. If it's not I don't know if it has to be you. It's just under you possibly, but I think it's just so much work on top of what you're doing. This is something that I think that helped me understand, helped convince me that we're okay. Because like I said, probably one of the top complaints and calls and emails we get, George, there's a rat in my yard, and we never had rats, and there's this and there's that. So I appreciate that.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, it is the season, right? It's starting to tick up again. But obviously it's not just in Medford, it's everywhere. Like you mentioned, all the communities are doing the same. Surprisingly, I'm probably going to jinx this, our complaints have gone down quite a bit, honestly. And the inspectors are doing a pretty good job of keeping on top of of all the places they come in, Yankee Pest has been helpful. And I think the education we're doing is starting to finally kind of take effect. Again, like the ordinance, again, thanks to you all for passing the ordinance about the bird feeders. And we still have folks that want to continually feed the animals. And God bless them, but it's not helping the rat problem. So we're doing our best to stay on it. I think when the $30,000, combined with the ordinance now that sets that revolving account with the fees going in, we increase the fees a little bit. We're really starting to get working with engineering to make sure that the national grids and folks, when they dig up the grounds, are actually doing the IPMs and paying the fees. So I think right now we're pretty good and hopefully the complaints will tailor off.
[George Scarpelli]: For one council, I think it's important that we do revisit this as a council with your office. Really we should be doing it on a quarterly basis to make sure that we stay above all the work that we're putting into it right now. Because you are right, it's less complaints and especially right now it's a You know, my neighbor keeps telling me, don't get rid of your skunks. I said, why? He says, it gets rid of the rodents. So they don't care that my house smells, but it's okay. But yeah, so I think that it's important. So thank you for all your feedback and input.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. And I appreciate that. Questions from Vice President Lazzaro, Councilor Scarpelli about all the great work and sometimes difficult challenges that we ask our health department to take on. Definitely more to do.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: There is one last thing if you don't mind.
[Zac Bears]: Civil defense or?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: With the health department. I guess as for what you just heard about, you know, how the health department now provides a lot more than what was traditionally thought of as a board of health. And, you know, we've gone beyond those traditional functions of inspections and disease control and really have become a wide array of human services activities and programs. So I guess to better reflect the breadth and depth of what the department does and the scope of services we provide to our residents, I'm asking for your support, actually, as I'm proposing to formally change the name of the department from the Board of Health to the Health and Human Services Department to really better reflect the work that we do.
[Zac Bears]: You took my question. No, that's fantastic. Thank you, Marianne. George?
[George Scarpelli]: I think that's perfect. You say most communities, it's not, when you say Board of Health, it really thinks, it defines that the Health and Human Services really defines more what you're doing. And, you know, I know that I work very closely with our Health and Human Services and it has, it encompasses what it means. And I think that you're right. I think that if we can do that, I would move to, to move that in favor of changing the name. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: We'll add that to the committee report that we support the name change. I think that's really fantastic. Yeah. Thank you. Well, maybe.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I couldn't agree more. I really think human services needs to be like primary to this. Board of Health feels like it's like a group of like a board of directors or trustees or something. It's really not that, and it's misleading. And human services is so much of what you do. The health department is one thing, and it's for sure that. You have nurses. You have sanitarians. But the human services element is so critical. So I just really support that suggestion.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Thank you. I will take that. We'll take it at the end, but a motion of Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Vice President Lazzaro to support the name change. I kind of had a bigger question around that. I'm interested and excited to hear about kind of the branding change, you know, when we talk about kind of the governance of the Board of Health versus you're the Director of the Health Department and, you know, does the Board of Health oversee everything that you're doing or just kind of parts of it? Is it, are they just the regulations and certain elements that, you know, I'm just interested in that a little more. And kind of where I'm leading with this, if you don't mind me asking is, In other communities, we've seen kind of a shift to an inspectional services model, which is a little bit different where you, you know, we have our building inspectors, we have our sanitarians and health inspectors is what they're called in many other places. And here, they live in separate departments. But in other places, they kind of live as a unified inspectional services division. And I'm wondering in the long run, you know, what are your thoughts about that and also in general, how does the, you know, how much of what you do, you know, you're leading the department, how much of it is under the Board of Health taking a look at it versus how much is kind of happening outside and because of the way that the state law works? Yeah.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So, yeah, I know several communities have done the inspectional services model and they all do it kind of differently as well because it does get a little bit muddied when you have the Board of Health because it is the Board of Health rules and regulations that we follow in order to do our permits, do our inspections, write our order letters. They're all based on Board of Health regulations or the state codes that the Board of Health then adopts. So they are the governing body around that, like we had a housing hearing today. So they are the determining factors as to what the final say is, whether we condemn a building or just write an order letter. And same with food permitting. All of our inspectors are agents of the Board of Health in order to do the work that they do. So it gets a little muddied, and I get confused with folks when they, like, I'm like, well, how do you, you know, if you have a problem with a restaurant and it's inspectional services, how do you, who's permitting, you know? I'm not a big fan of the inspectional services model just because of that. I think health is very different than building code. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: And in general though, like, so you guys are seeing, you know, Board of Health is really focused on the kind of traditional public health elements of the work, but are they also overlooking at prevention and outreach or is that kind of separate from what they do?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: They're certainly kept up to date and we let them know all the work we're doing. We take their suggestions for work that should be done and certain things that they're interested in us looking at, we do that. One of the, we just had a presentation a month or so ago on the combined sewer overflow with the MISTIC and the MWRA as to, you know, what's going on there. And they're very involved and Dr. Kladowitz, our chairman, has to sign off on all our vaccination programming purchase of all our vaccines. And so they're very involved in the vaccination program. And obviously, you know, when things happen, like, you know, COVID, they were very involved. So yeah.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. One last question. I noticed there's just two things in the staffing, the health equity coordinator, that's mostly coming on to the general fund. Is that because of ARPA and
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: That's because of one of our foundation grants that was kind of the promise of the grant that eventually, gradually, we would, you know, wean it onto city funding. They had eventually funded the full position and every year it's kind of transitioned more to the city budget.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. And the nurse position, I noticed that switching from one full time to one kind of 75%, 1.7.3, so I'm just wondering what the shift is there.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So our public health nurse, Jill, who was full-time, she had twins, so she's asked to be part-time. And so then we were able to hire another part-time nurse to make hole for a position.
[Zac Bears]: And will that services be affected by that, or is that?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: No, they're pretty much covered, still the same as always. Okay, great.
[Zac Bears]: All right, last thing we have for you is civil defense. I'm noticing very little change, but if you want to talk about our civil defense budget.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: That's another name change we need to talk about.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, we could change that. Emergency preparedness.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Because what it is really, it's emergency planning. Our emergency management is what it is. And so really, we've done some work, and I'm hoping to come forward by the end of this month in front of you with the hazard mitigation plan for adoption, because we just completed that. And we've been approved by FEMA. So we're hoping to bring that forward so that you can adopt and we can move forward, because that's how we get federal funding for some of our projects and mitigation projects. And the only real line item there is dues, conferences, and travel. We pay dues to our regional emergency planning council that we're a part of on an annual basis. So that's the line item there. So there's not much else.
[Zac Bears]: Any questions on civil defense? Maybe to be renamed next year. I don't think we have an issue with it if you want to change the name. Vice President Lazar.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Motion to change the name.
[Zac Bears]: Sure. We support the motion. We'll add that to the record. Vice President Lazar supports if you want to update that name to better reflect what it is. That's seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. And we'll take votes at the end on everything.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I guess there was one little error in the Board of Health budget. So under the personnel line items, the prevention outreach coordinator position.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: that increase there, there should be an asterisk next to that because that increase will be funded through the administrative funds that we get from the grants. So. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: So that's partially grant funded. So that's partially grant funded.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah.
[Nina Nazarian]: I wasn't particularly, what I was asking, I apologize for the interruptions, and thank you, Mary Ann, Director O'Connor. The other thing we wanted to identify here today is that with this change that Director O'Connor is proposing, it would also be a change in the organizational structure of the department. So the Prevention and Outreach Coordinator is proposed to have an increase and that increase is going to be grant funded because we'd like to adjust that person's role and responsibilities as more of an assistant director. So that's a part of all of this and a part of the, you know, appropriately staffing that department. So that's the only other thing I wanted to highlight. And other than saying I should have put the citizen serve licenses in the new expenses and that I will also plan to put those citizen serve expenses in the building department budget as well, so.
[Zac Bears]: So those are going to move out from here.
[Nina Nazarian]: Yep, similar to city clerk because it will all get paid out of the building department for seamless processing as opposed to, hey, can we charge a little here, can we charge a little here and more administrative burden that is necessary for anyone.
[Zac Bears]: I do hate to ask you this, would it be possible when you submit the budget book to also submit anything that's moved like something to a list, running list of what's,
[Nina Nazarian]: We can try, yes. I don't think there have been a lot of movements right now. It is, and I shared this with you, President Bears, it has been a particularly, you know, challenging budget season. We are onboarding our new budget manager, so with that comes a lot more steps and processes that we need to take. So we will do our best. And I think to the degree, I just don't want to commit to putting too much on the group that's already trying to pull together a budget book. And you know, it's, it's, and I also, if I'll take this moment to say, I also communicated with you, president bears, I don't know if procedurally, you know, if this is the right time, but I had proposed to president bears, if we could deliver the budget book. on Friday, June 5th.
[Zac Bears]: I shared at the beginning of the meeting. Okay, thank you. I must have missed that. You're good.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Yes, so maybe not necessarily every single movement, maybe a general list.
[Nina Nazarian]: Yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you.
[Zac Bears]: That would be great. All right, any further questions for Director O'Connor, health or civil defense? Seeing none, we're moving on. Thank you, Marianne. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you very much.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Planning, Development, Sustainability, and 10 Commissions. Director Hunt. We'll start with the main PDS budget, and then we can go through commission by commission, if that's cool. Great.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yep.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Same questions as before. Thanks for being here.
[Alicia Hunt]: Great. Good evening Mr. President and city councilors Alicia Hunt director of planning development and sustainability. I do have. Would you like me to start with highlights and goals or with changes to the budget. We start with the goals versus money or money first.
[Zac Bears]: I think it's helpful if you want to do that narrative, what have been the accomplishments this year and goals for next year, and then we'll go into the specifics.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'll say that the money is so teeny that it doesn't really line up with the goals. There's not a direct correlation. I do want to actually just start by saying that our Board of Health and our OPO department really deserve some accolades. I'm not sure if most people realize this. So I, as the Sustainability Director, lead our work with the state on climate and resiliency. And the main grant program is the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program from the state. And the state has rolled out a 2.0 version of that that is, in fact, based on our office of OPO. And so all communities are now being asked to do the outreach liaisons, the community liaisons with the various languages to identify their primary languages and to do that work as a condition of getting MVP grant money. Medford was the only community that did not have to go through the recertification process. We were automatically certified because they in fact based their recertification process on what we've been doing in our Department of Health. So I just want everybody to realize how fabulous that work is. So and the state recognizes it. So and I personally appreciate it because I probably would have had to manage that recertification project program if we had not been automatically certified. So I just wanted to flag that.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. We all really are really proud of our health department and and their work with you.
[Alicia Hunt]: And Mary Ann didn't ask me to say that. She didn't know I was going to say that. So I wrote up some stuff for the budget book and I'm going to try and go through that. It's a little bit grouped. So starting with some economic development, we worked this year a lot with the mayor's office on the transom, the Medford Square. While it doesn't seem like a lot's been happening with that, we were literally meeting weekly with them and with consultants. We brought on real estate consultants to help negotiate the site control agreement. The draft lease is going to them probably in a couple of days, according to an email I read this evening. So things are moving along with that, but it actually took a lot of behind the scenes work to negotiate the details of that arrangement. been working on the vacant storefront grant program. Some of that is, there's a lot of things that are starts and stops. We actually had a grantee and a state matching grant all lined up and ready to go and then the property owner decided that he would rather keep his space vacant because maybe he might want to sell his building. So things like that happen and something like that, you'll never see the fruits of that work. But we were doing a bunch of work in the background. It does look like we are actually about to award a different vacant storefront grant. This one in Haines Square. I'm told that that one's going through smoothly, but I thought the last one was until the last minute as well. To no fault of ours. Although one of the things we want to do is work with developed property owners like that to understand the best way to move forward with their property and how do we move this forward to meet their interests and our interests because having a building sitting vacant and derelict in the heart of West Medford Square is really not beneficial to the city. Unfortunately, we hired an economic development director who decided after four weeks that it wasn't a good fit for him, mostly because of the commute. I have to think that the pay factored into that, but we are now about to start looking for a new economic development director again. So I have goals, but some of those goals are contingent on filling these roles. So another thing is working on the rezoning. Obviously you all know that we were very active in that and a lot of that is to increase commercial growth and to bring new shoppers to our squares by bringing people who live in our districts where we have businesses to shop in those businesses. We completed a wayfinding study to support all modalities, and we've applied for an implementation grant. So one of my goals for next year is to start rolling out those signs. There's a little bit that we can do. We're hoping to do a kiosk in Medford Square with our remaining grant money, and we've applied for $250,000 to roll out these signs citywide. CDBG established a new online system for managing of public service grants. That's both for the public service entities to apply and for managing them. Because CDBG is a federally funded program, there are a lot of hoops and requirements to that program. So having a particular system that is actually designed for federally funded grants is particularly helpful. I don't know that it would be helpful to all of our departments just because this one is designed to meet the requirements of the federal government, which are a heavy lift. So we worked with the Affordable Housing Trust creating a strategic plan awarding a a construction grant of three affordable units. We've started to get some funding into that. Some is that we negotiated a payment with regards to the Tufts norm and with regards to a property over in the River's Edge area. They are not subject to our linkage agreement over there, but they agreed to an affordable housing payment, which was straight up negotiation. They didn't have to do that. We worked on the housing rehab pilot program. This is for low and moderate income homeowners who need specific kinds of rehab to their home. When we work through it, it's not a great fit for everybody. So we actually last year had 12 applicants and worked through all 12 and ended up not moving forward with anybody. We now have 20 applicants, and it looks like Three of them are ready to move forward, and we're still working our way through the list. It has a lot to do with ownership, with how this ends up being a loan on your property. There are details involved in it, but it is a great opportunity. Nothing is payable until the house is sold or the owner passes away. We've been working with the market rate developers. As you know, we have a bunch of market rate buildings coming in to include affordable housing. We have to manage all of that affordable housing. We developed a fractional payment methodology for the inclusionary housing requirements. And I will take a moment to let you know that we are going to be recommending a change through the Community Development Board, unfortunately, that the number we were basing the calculation on from the state, the state has now informed us they are no longer doing that calculation. So we have now reached out to our other communities that do inclusionary housing fractional payments, said, what do you guys use for a number? Because this number is not going to be available in the future. So I hope to have that answer in the next few days so that that can move forward because we strongly think this is the right thing to do, but you have to have a number to charge the fraction on. Under our climate work, so actually I'll let you know that our climate planner has decided that working a full-time job is not the best fit for her, and so she's moving on. But she has given us three months' notice, and we have gotten permission to start the hiring process. She would really like to recruit somebody. and find a good fit for our office and then stay on to train that person so that it'll be less of a lift on us. I've actually really loved having Brenda here because she came in knowing everything that I knew about climate and energy. And so she's hopeful that we can recruit somebody who's knowledgeable, and if not, that she could do that training for us. But through, her position is partially grant funded, 40%. That grant funding ends next April. So you'll sort of see that reflected in my budget numbers. I don't know how that's, I don't know that you see those grant split calculations. But after this April, she'll need to be fully, that position will need to be fully funded on the city's budget. So through that program, they coached more than 50 residents on ways to save money on their energy bills and reduce their carbon footprint. That's the Electrify Medford program. They have 56 reported actions, including nine mass-save home energy assessments, eight heat pump installations, and seven solar installations. which is excellent. She worked directly on the McGlynn and the Andrews HVAC and solar projects. So she meets regularly with the contractors and the school staff on that. And she will be very involved with the installation of the solar that is supposed to go in this fall on both McGlynn and Andrews. We are very excited about that. She found and got a grant to install pure air outdoor air quality sensors at all five schools through a mass DEP grant. You can see the purple air sensors online and anybody can see the network in the New England region. So she's developed a strategic energy management plan with National Grid. And by doing that, we automatically get more energy efficiency incentives. So that brought us $200,000 of additional incentives on, I believe, the Andrews and the McGlynn projects. And then we got money for the Willis-Abb Resilient Community Center through a congressionally directed earmark. We really love Representative Catherine Clark here. She's helped us a lot with earmarks. And I think you all got a notice today about updating our community electricity aggregation plan. One of the things we were able to do with the way the state's updated the system is now anybody who is on the low income electricity rate will automatically go on to our lowest tier, the basic tier of our aggregation with no extra renewable energy to help cut their costs as much as possible. Open space, we've completed, well, we've almost completed car park phase two. This is written for the end of the fiscal year. The goal is by June 30th. The solar will be up and running. The basketball courts will be open. The teen swings will be there. Our skate park up there is so popular. I constantly see people up there. I'm often talking to them. Some are local and some will come over from other areas to check it out. And if you haven't been to the playground, you should definitely check it out. Logan Park Natural Play Area is getting close to finished. Riverbend Plaza is getting shade sails, and a water fountain, and some extra decking to protect the roots of the trees. Everybody moving those tables and chairs under the trees is actually really bad for those mature trees there. So by putting some decking in, we're going to protect their roots. Let me just quickly, oh. A couple of our projects are advancing and Berry Park Community Garden, we helped a lot with that and getting that up and running, getting that installed. We completed the Wellington Transformation Study. Well, you're going to get a presentation on that in two weeks, and it will be complete by June 30th. That's when the contract ends.
[Zac Bears]: Next Tuesday, right?
[Alicia Hunt]: Next Tuesday. 26th. Is that what it is, the 26th? It's one week. Yes.
[Zac Bears]: Sorry, time is going a little too fast. I just wanted to make sure I had it right before I did the agenda.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes. We did a citywide economic assessment that was originally supposed to be a West Medford economic assessment, but because West Medford is really too small of a commercial area to do its own economic assessment on, it was really citywide with emphasis on West Medford. We've heard a little feedback, why does it keep mentioning West Medford, because that's what the earmark, it was actually a state earmark, was to do a West Medford economic assessment. But as I said, we needed to expand it. And we worked. We updated the linkage fee with the Community Development Board and in partnership with this organization, with the council. You got the thing that the state passed so that we could automatically increase it. So they have started increasing the linkage fee annually. And actually, we've moved our zoning applications and special permits to CitizenServe. And we're in the process of working out how to do Community Development Board applications through CitizenServe. It is really helpful to us to get all the staff, the departments that review these applications, CitizenServe licenses as well, so they can all get in. So when you see that in the building department budget, we need everybody to be in there. Because we did lose our building commissioner who is so excellent with citizen serve, we might not move as quickly on to community development board as we were hoping.
[Zac Bears]: Director Hunt, just very quickly on the linkage fees, did we do a one-time update to write, you know, they hadn't been updated in 30 years. You know, and I know we can do the annual increases. Are we doing a one-time update to get those up to?
[Alicia Hunt]: We are not doing a one-time update right now. We would need a full-blown $100,000 study to do the one-time update. We are also very hesitant to do it right now when the market is so tough for developers. because we're already seeing larger developers with a big slowdown. And we don't really want anybody to challenge our linkage fees, because we are the only community in Massachusetts allowed to do linkage fees. They're otherwise illegal in Massachusetts. We don't really want anybody to start saying, why does Medford have them and nobody else? So our thought was to start with the 2.5% or the plug connected to CPI increase at this time.
[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lummi has a follow up. So I would, okay, so it was my impression through the chair that the linkage fee updates would retroactively cover the time since the 90s when they were established. And I don't think that would require a full blown $100,000 study. It would require an additional study to add an extra bucket to it, but just for, retroactive inflationary costs, I don't think so. And my fear is that there would be less of a, if you did decide to do that in the future, there would be less of a basis for doing so after the law was passed. So I didn't know that that was actually what, that you weren't planning on just doing the update, but I would like to see the linkage fee updates applied retroactively.
[Alicia Hunt]: So we have been advised by our council and by consultants that if we were to just apply CPI back to 1990, that would be such a dramatic increase to the fees that developers would be incentivized to take us to court over that. And they would want to challenge us. Whereas right now, the numbers are manageable. Herb Chambers gave us a check this week for, I'm going to say, $130,000. Um, sorry, it was on my desk this morning. It was something slightly north of $100,000. Um, and so our concern is that we just don't want to push them if that, that for $250,000, they might have wanted to take us to court over it. it might not be worth it to them. Also, it's not clear that it's justifiable to just apply CPI because it's much more complicated than that. It's you have to look at the impact of development on our roads, our highways, our police and fire. And you could say year over year, sure 2%, but if you go back 35 years and say that it's just that percentage compounded annually is a lot harder. It's much more complicated than that. We'd want to look at the development potential at this time, the cost of development, the impacts on all of our, it's just not a linear straight thing like that. We also, we are doing the study to add affordable housing in. So the way that would work is that commercial developments that bring in new jobs would be subject to an affordable housing linkage fee to help increase the availability of affordable housing for developers who bring in, it would be based on the physical size because that's what's easy to measure, but it would be proportional to jobs they bring in. And that is a current common thing that is done throughout Massachusetts. And so in fact, that study is going on right now. And I think that's, approximately a $75,000 study just to do that piece of it.
[Matt Leming]: Well, the base, I mean, just to follow up, the basis would be whatever study was originally conducted in 1990 to establish the linkage fees, and then everything from then would be an inflation index. So I mean, I would be interested in seeing whatever correspondence and counsel you received on this subject, because those linkage fees are about, they're approximately one third as valuable today as they were when they were first instituted. So they're already, we're already pretty severely under balling it compared to what we were when they were first instituted. So yeah, I guess this entire line of reasoning does surprise me, and I would be interested to know what you've been told and what you've been looking at specifically.
[Alicia Hunt]: If there's an opportunity to do a phone call on that, I would recommend that, just because of the items that I just referenced.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, all right.
[Alicia Hunt]: I realize that might be difficult right now.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Well, we're counseling. We can follow up on that. Can contact you. And just to be clear, was Council KP law?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: OK. All right. Sorry to interrupt you. Continue.
[Alicia Hunt]: OK. What was I hitting? Linear zoning, special permits. OK. And then I was going to move on to goals, a bunch of which I've actually mentioned. But we continue to implement the Climate Action and Comprehensive Plan. One of the things that we'd really like to get going is a forward-facing tracking system of that. It's just been a bandwidth issue. We are looking to update the open space and recreation plan. We're working on getting a grant to fund that work. We definitely want to do an inventory of parks and open space facilities and their condition. So something like that would be part of an open space plan, but we'd like to do something more comprehensive and we'd like to do something earlier. Like, you can go onto our webpage right now, the city's parks page, and sort of see a list of the parks and what's there. But it's not a very current list. And we thought, and it could be much better laid out with like a graph and like a chart that shows you, you know, what kinds of facilities and which playground parks to go to. And there could be a map that you could see where in the city these parks are. So that's something that we're very interested, we're hoping. We just brought on four graduate students from Tufts in addition to the one we already had for this coming year. And so we are hoping that this is gonna be something we can get moving with this summer. Additional parks work. You may have seen the surveys on Tufts Park. We actually have a planning grant that we have to spend by June 30th. So we're kind of pushing full speed ahead with the Tufts playground. But we have also applied jointly with engineering. on a climate grant for Tufts Park that would basically build an underground storage tank for water that would infiltrate underground that would help with flooding in the region. But in order to do that, you'd then have to reconstruct a lot of the stuff on top of it. So our office and engineering are working together. We're hopeful to get that grant. If we don't, we'll apply again. We'll look at other funding sources. Let's see, we'd love to see an affordable housing project constructed by a mission-based developer where the entire project is affordable housing. We've met with multiple affordable housing developers over the last several years. We've looked at some city parcels. We've talked about various ideas. But we need to come up with somebody who sounds pretty good about ready to do something. There was something that was in the works on a private parcel, and then the funding fell through for that on the developer end, so it never reached the point of coming here. But we had submitted sort of some letters of support to see if we could move that one forward. People who lived immediately around it knew about it because he actually went door to door and talked to people about it. But then the funding fell through. So home rehab, getting the solar panels installed, implementing the wayfinding work. We are working on the Hegner Center along with the mayor's office and the Board of Health to make that a resiliency hub. So the intention would be that it would have after school programming, recreation, and some offices for our social services. One of the things that OPO needs is a place where people can meet privately about their social service needs. And so a room or two would be set aside for that as well. And we would bring resiliency to it so that it would be useful in the event of a climate emergency. And we have a first grant of $850,000. It's an earmark from Representative Clark. It's one of the many reasons why we think she's wonderful. And we have applied for an additional $4 million. The $850,000 is really design and architecture on something of that scale. Working on expanding our citizen service. Oh, we were accepted into a lead for city certification program. So basically, it's a cohort where we are getting advice, guidance, and support to get certified as a lead certified city. And that's something that Brenda has been leading. We do need to start talking about a climate action plan update. It's kind of amazing how quickly these things get old. We've been working on the high school construction project. We do consult with the city's MSBA team on various sustainability, open space, energy type pieces with it. And we're applying for the green community's climate leader certification. We're looking to do some proactive business retention and expansion work. We actually have a grant with MAPC to sort of look at business retention. And we're working on the commercial vacancies. Often we are finding that it is the property owner less than it is finding people who want to take the spaces. We actually know of some coffee shops that would like to come to Medford and helping to make that match between businesses that want to take them in. So that's one of the things we look to in our economic development director is to make these contacts with Medford property owners and have conversations about what's best for them and their community. I do think that we will see some redevelopment on the Hamilton properties or Medford Square along Clippership Drive. One is the vacant building. That is unfortunately going to need to come down soon. because it's sitting there vacant is causing some problems. They've applied for a demo permit, but we, my office as well as DPW and engineering are working with the property owner on what a configuration would best benefit the city, what that should look like. So we've started to have some preliminary conversations and the mayor's met with him as well. And we've been working with small business growth and entrepreneurship. We both have just run a cohort of business owners or potential business, people who want to own businesses through a program that we were able to fund. It was an educational program. through Community Development Block Grant, which is for low and moderate income people. What we would really like to do is be able to provide programming like that for anybody who would like to do small, open up business and provide additional outreach. So one of the things we're looking at is being able to certify portions of the city as eligible as opposed to having the people be eligible. We want the area to be eligible. And then it wouldn't matter as much about the, building owners, which it's really a shame. A business owner is like, well, I'm not low income, or my partner is not low income, but I want to start a new business. And then they don't qualify, because our funding comes through CDBG. So we are looking at how we can change the, how we do this and use CDBG money a little bit more broadly. So that's something you'll probably hear about over the course of the next year. That was a lot. Let me stop.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you Director Hunt. Do you have any questions or anything you want to talk about the specific financial changes in your budget.
[Alicia Hunt]: Our financial changes. So the ones that are sort of the official requested change. Where you see two, if you look so closely at the staff salaries, the two that are going down, it's because somebody with a higher step level, we're budgeting step one for econ dev director and climate planner there, so it looks like a decrease. It's not really a decrease. Everybody else who goes up is either COLA or step increases. We actually have, One or two people who are going to become eligible for longevity, I think it's two, I think that's, I'm not doing the math right now, this year. And then we requested additional funding for training and conferences. Our budget was originally set for training conferences at $2,000 when it was two people in that office. We are now 10 full-time staff. But for quite a while, the pandemic sort of limited what conferences were occurring and where we were going. And with all the bringing new staff on board. So now we have a higher number there to allow us to be more flexible about sending people to appropriate training and conferences. And COSTAR is increasing. The one that was a new expense that we asked for was to increase our budget for GIS. Some of you may have seen when Danielle was playing with a system that would let her build a box, a house, and show where the shading was. That's the new GIS system. And so we're going to have licenses for three staff in our office, and that's based on three staff who said, I've used this before. I know how to use this software. I want access to it. It's actually an increase because we were paying for it. We've been paying for GIS for Dennis for quite a long time. So this is adding two more staff to that license. So that's really the changes and then there's a decrease in Let's see how it's going. Yeah, so we use other services as climate resiliency, and then professional technical services. And those are really hard things to budget for, because they tend to be grants. They tend to be co-pays. Like when we, oh, somewhere in this, I was supposed to mention that we have installed Five new curbside charging stations, those went in recently. So we got grants that paid for almost all of it, and then the bits that were not covered or co-pays, we would pay for out of climate. We were using that to pay the national grid bills for all of our charging stations, but this body voted to allow a revolving account, so now that money that is collected goes into the revolving account, and we're now paying the national grid bills. for the electric charging directly and not out of that budget. And then we hired the real estate consultant to help with the transom project, but then we were able to bill that back to the transom project, so we were able to move that out. We are working, when we have unexpected conditions, like the Cross Street Cemetery, we're able to fund the preliminary work on that, or the Cross Street the old Cross Street Cemetery, the one that needs to be relocated. Sometimes we'll use that money for figuring things out in advance. If somebody appeals a decision of one of our boards, then it has to go to court, and we have to have lawyers that defend that. That gets paid out of that budget. completely unpredictable as to whether somebody is going to appeal a project. And it could be that the applicant appeals us, or it could be that an abutter, like another interested party, appeals the decision. And so we then end up having to pay for legal representation. And because that's going to court, that's not necessarily something that an in-house lawyer would even do. because it needs to be a specialty land-use lawyer when they're going to land-use court or housing court. I think that's, so they asked us if we could cut our budgets. I said, if you cut that line, we'll have less flexibility. Somebody, sorry, there was some conversation about a broken piece of playground equipment at Magoon Park. because the transom money is now reimbursing us for our real estate services. I said, oh, now I have a chunk of money here. Why don't I pay for this playground repair that's completely out of proportion to a normal playground equipment repair? We can pay for that with our money that's now suddenly in our budget at the end of the year. So it's things like that that we'll come up with. The schools wanted to start composting back of house, but they hadn't budgeted for it. And so we got the amount, and it was going to be about $2,500 for the last several months of the year for them to be doing it out of the kitchens. I said, look, why don't you just start? I will pay out of my office budget for you to start this as a pilot, and then you incorporate it into your budget for next year. So there are things like that. That's not the first time that we've done a project with the schools where we've picked up some costs in order to get them started before the end of a school year. And then they pick it up. So that's sort of that kind of flexibility. That budget originally started getting big when we discovered some brownfields on city property 15 years ago, and we suddenly had to pay for that. Those are no longer an expense to us. In fact, our DEP line went down because we are closing out one of those. So we won't get charged an annual fee anymore. Sorry. Is that clear? I'll take questions.
[Zac Bears]: Sure. Very quickly, brownfields, and I got you. Your button's on. We've remediated them so we're no longer being.
[Alicia Hunt]: So what happens is while the remediation is going on, you get a DEP assessment where we have to pay a fee. When you close it out and put an AUL on the parcel, then you don't have to pay it anymore. AUL meaning? Activity Use Limitation. OK. So, for example, the Riverbend Park, we discovered contamination. We had to pay while we were figuring it out, cleaning it up. In that case, we didn't clean it up. We put a labyrinth on top of it as a protective cap. But at that, we also filed an activity use limitation. Where that labyrinth is, you can't do stuff. You have to like file reports and stuff to dig. And so now we don't have to pay an annual fee to DEP for that parcel anymore. For example, West Medford is almost done, but we're still paying the annual fee under that parking lot.
[Zac Bears]: Got it. All right, Vice President Lazar.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I have three questions, and I'm going to go in order, starting from how you mentioned them. So the first one is from a long time ago. When you mentioned the building owners, commercial real estate owners, is there any kind of a role that you think the city council might be able to play in helping to liaise with the owners? You know, you mentioned something falling apart. Maybe there's, I just, it's, I believe there are members of this body that are interested in, trying to help cultivate. People who are wanting to keep their storefronts vacant because of some reason must be very frustrating for your office, especially as you put work into trying to facilitate things. Is there anything that we can do to help you?
[Alicia Hunt]: I think that what's interesting is that it tends to be people who have owned properties for a long time. Real estate investment firms are not. They get stuff done, right? They're not the kinds of firms. It is my impression that it's not legislative that this body could help. But potentially relationship wise.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: And so it could be that property owners might respect the fact that they're hearing from a city councillor as a person who has taken interest in the property. And that would be something that would be better. talking about the exact locations and the details, et cetera, in a public meeting might not make them want to work with us. But it might be that getting a call from a city Councilor might, in fact, make them interested, that they would feel good about that and want to work with us more. So if there is some potential for that, I'd be happy to have sort of some offline discussions about specific people and locations where they might just like that you that you as an elected official had taken the time to reach out to them directly to see how we could develop a win-win for them as opposed to throwing sticks at them.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Totally. I think that, I don't think anybody on this, well, I'll speak for myself. I have no interest in making enemies of any business owners in Medford. I mean, I think we, like, I really want to cultivate an environment where people want to participate in our local economy and want to have, we need that element in our squares and corridors so that we have a thriving, bustling business community that serves people who live and work here and spend time here. So that would be something I would be super interested in. My second question is I have a question about people leaving jobs. Do you have any suspicion that the requirement that employees be in person every day might have a small contributory factor. The housing price is being very high. pay in municipal government is not historically very high necessarily. People may live far away. The commute, that stuff, is there anything like, I'm not sure if the study that we heard about from HR that they did on compensation would have any input on that, but I'm wondering if there's anything we can do to try to retain employees a little bit better.
[Alicia Hunt]: And some of it is sort of a personal work-life balance and how does that work out? We have found that employees who live locally have a better work-life balance. I have staff who will take their lunch to go pick up a kid and then come back and stuff like that and that works and it provides a work-life balance. We did hear from one of the staff that left that he attempted to find an apartment in Medford or in this area and was stunned by, he didn't do his research in advance and didn't realize how high housing costs were here. Which, you know, we can all talk about how we should have done that. But we did actually discuss the commute in the interview. And he in fact had said, well, I would move closer. and then chose not to. It's hard to say. I would say that it is important for my staff to be in the office. It is also important for my staff to be able to have quiet time when they can focus on grants and applications and a lot of them spend time on Zoom meetings. And occasionally I have to say to a staff person, take that call from home and then come into the office. That's okay. I get it. But if you live an hour plus away, it's not that easy to just do that. But everybody makes their own choices. We do not take where people live into account when we're hiring.
[Emily Lazzaro]: No, I don't think that would make any sense. I guess there is a difficulty when there isn't a lot of flexibility and there isn't something that's correspondingly a great perk that would necessarily retain employees. And it does end up, I think what sometimes ends up happening is that you end up spending more of your time as the executive in the department Instead of doing things like applying for more grants or doing more high-level stuff Like talking to more business owners and you know, like you're now hiring another economic development jerk, you know person and that I think ends up with It ends up not being fiscally responsible it ends up being a frustrating thing for the department and it's not like I'm not saying that I'm not saying anything about you. It's just like economics. It's just how it works out.
[Alicia Hunt]: And we were very clear that we don't have remote work in the interview, so it wasn't a surprise after being hired. And the only thing that was suggested to me sort of not, it was half tongue in cheek, but not really, was maybe we should do our interviews at 9 a.m. in person so that they're subject to the rush hour commute and not the, you know, 10, 11 a.m. commute that is different.
[Emily Lazzaro]: So, yeah, for sure. Yeah, just a thought. And, okay, the third question I have is, you mentioned charging stations. I did want to mention, so I have an electric car, and I sometimes try to charge it at this charging station behind City Hall. It does not work very well. First of all, what is like the lifetime sort of, how long are they supposed to work? How do they get reported if they're maybe not working? And where are the new ones?
[Alicia Hunt]: So if it's truly not working, we are supposed to get an alert if it's not working.
[Emily Lazzaro]: It goes, it went for like, you know, 15 minutes instead of the hour and a half.
[Alicia Hunt]: And definitely you can email us in my office. I think those charging stations actually say Enviro at Medford as the contact. And we do, communicate with ChargePoint on maintenance on it. We have contracts and stuff. The electricity in this area behind the city hall is not the best. And I suspect we've actually been told that we literally couldn't add another one because the electricity couldn't handle it here. And frankly, my response to that is we're about to redevelop the whole thing. We'll have charging stations in the new parking garage. And it'll be new electricity. And we'll just deal with it then. But all the schools have charging stations now, which people can use outside of school hours. The West Medford parking lot one is finally up and running. There's one up at Carr Park. That one can be a little bit flaky. It's because of cell service. Oh, I used that yesterday. It was great. Great. Sometimes the cell service at that location is a problem and it actually connects, it communicates with Chargepoint via the cellular system. There's one at Tufts Park in their parking lot. I'm trying to think where the others are. And then the new ones are The playground that is closest to Whole Foods. I mean, I can't remember which one that is. I want to say, like, Cummings. Thank you. And then, that's on the street. And then, shoot. Logan, Magoon, and the third one over there. Morrison. Morrison. There's one, sorry. Amazing.
[Emily Lazzaro]: President Bears knows all about parks. He knows all the parks.
[Alicia Hunt]: Morrison has one of the new street ones. And actually, I think there's, is there one actually in front of Whole Foods as well on the street? No, I think we did it at the park instead. That was the backup location. I'm not sure what the other one is.
[Emily Lazzaro]: This is helpful, thank you. When you mentioned Magoon Park, you did say that you had in your budget money for that park repair, and you and I talked recently about who owns safety-related park repairs, and you clarified for me that DPW does. Yes. And I think that we could do better on communications about that on the website, and that is something that I would like to talk to DPW or IT about, but Rich already came and talked to us, so I can't do that anymore, but I'll talk to DPW.
[Alicia Hunt]: The website updates would be communications through the mayor's office.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Communications with the mayor's office. Well, we'll do that later.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, and actually they're meeting either today or tomorrow, staff from my office in DPW. That repair is extremely complicated, which is why my office is involved. Normally we wouldn't get involved in a safety repair.
[Emily Lazzaro]: It would really be purely DPW.
[Alicia Hunt]: And we do have a webpage on our Go Green site about electric vehicles, about the charging stations. It lists the 12 operational locations as well. Okay great.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I'll email you next time something isn't working. So you're welcome. And thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you for presenting this.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Any further questions for Director Hunt on the main planning department budget. Just two quick ones Alicia from me. There's a stipend reduction in your budget. Is that just a shift or.
[Alicia Hunt]: It's a shift. The Affordable Housing Trust stipend was in my budget. And sorry, Nina, the Affordable Housing Trust budget is not one that I received in email, but the stipends were being moved there. Sorry, the Affordable Housing Trust was being, the stipends were agreed upon. The budget didn't exist as a separate budget last year, so we just put the stipends in my budget and I, We actually literally pay out all these different boards and commissions stipends, all the ones you're going to see, out of my staff manage that. But they have their own line items, or their own separate budgets. And Affordable Housing Trust did not, but we had talked about creating one. Do you have one?
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears, through you, to both Director Hunt and the Council. So what we learned over the course of the last year, and maybe a more abbreviated period would be appropriate to say, is that really affordable housing trusts should be entirely separate. So it's funded separate. It's its own entity in some ways, not directly in the same way that, let's say,
[Zac Bears]: Housing Authority.
[Nina Nazarian]: Say that again?
[Zac Bears]: Medford Housing Authority.
[Nina Nazarian]: That's a great example. I was trying to think of something completely disconnected. Medford Housing Authority, not in the same way that Medford Housing Authority is, but in the same way as perhaps water and sewer enterprises, or in the same way as we discussed that the Medford Community Media would be. So we don't have a budget for them, because we're just in the initial stages of kind of separating it out, putting it in its own category, in its own bucket. But we can certainly do that.
[Zac Bears]: Long story short, stipends aren't going to be paid out of the general fund.
[Alicia Hunt]: They're going to be paid out of the trust.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I'll get an account number by June 30th. Actually, this year's, this budget's in here. They're in my budget for June 30th. They're in my budget for the June 30th payments. But then by December, we'll be paying them out of the Affordable Housing Trust directly. Thank you. So that's literally what those are.
[Zac Bears]: Fantastic. And then in terms of grant funded positions, Are any, do you have any positions that aren't in the total listed here?
[Alicia Hunt]: All, so let's see the way we're doing this. All of my positions, so if you notice that up above personnel, the personnel total is 722,000, but then full-time total is one million. The difference are the grants paying for CDBG manager, housing planner, CPA.
[Zac Bears]: So that's all 11. Yes. There's no positions that aren't in here at all.
[Alicia Hunt]: No positions that are not on here.
[Zac Bears]: And like everything here is listed. Even there's one that is fully funded through other sources. It's listed in this table. Yes. All right. Because with Mary Ann's budget, there were some positions that were. you know, not in here because they're fully grant funded. So just trying to understand. It goes back to this thing at the beginning of the meeting where there's like the big third bucket that now affordable housing trust will be.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will just, for total transparency, Electrify Medford pays some stipends to people who were hired through a process. to go out and reach out in underrepresented communities. They are paid hourly based on the actual work they do, and the budget in that grant was four hours a week per person. They are doing much less than that. So we're probably paying out on the order of four hours a month per person on those from that grant. And then they're using the grant money for other work. And then our interns are covered in here. And big shout out to Tufts Federal Work Study that is paying a big chunk of our interns.
[Zac Bears]: Great. All right. Let's maybe do a bit of a speed run through the commissions. So bicycle commission.
[Alicia Hunt]: Bicycle has a small increase. And I'm just going to read their statement. After discussions with the police department, we believe that sending a member per year to become a League of American Cyclists safety instructor will be a good step in helping us better educate members of the police about bicycle safety best practices. The instruction and conference work will allow us to also gain input from other similar bodies at such things such as the National Bike Summit. The commission will take every opportunity to reduce the travel costs associated with this, including staying with friends or family when possible to keep lodging expenses as limited as possible. And it's a $700 increase.
[Zac Bears]: And they aren't here this year, but last year there was an issue where some grant money hadn't been going to the right account. Do you know if we've gotten that mostly worked out?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, there was. And in fact, I think somebody was here in the past couple of months accepting a $500 donation for the bike commission. So we've been working through some of that as well.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Great. Next, unless anyone has a question. Seeing none, Community Development Board, stipends are going up. What's up?
[Alicia Hunt]: So we have been saying for years that the community development stipends, so actually you don't mind if I did board of appeals and community at the same time. Board of appeals stipends are $1,500 a piece annually and the community development board has been $900 a year. And the Community Development Board meets at least twice as often if not significantly more often than the Board of Appeals and has a lot of responsibility. We've been saying for years we'd like these stipends to go up. And so this actually raises the Community Development Board to be each member to be $1,500 in line with the the Board of Appeals, which is each member is $1,500. And then if you did the math, the chair each makes a little bit more than that. And then there's the staff stipend in there as well. So that's what the increase is.
[Zac Bears]: All right. So that's increase for community law board and zoning board is no change.
[Alicia Hunt]: Correct.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Conservation commission, slight reduction also in stipends.
[Alicia Hunt]: We did the math, and I'm not really clear why the stipend number was a little bit higher. The stipend number can be a little bit lower. I'm unclear what happened. We did the math.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Any questions? Historical commission, no change.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: Historic district commission, no change. Correct. And you're not doing Hormel, right?
[Zac Bears]: All right. Do we have any further questions for Director Hunt? Chief of Staff.
[Nina Nazarian]: Just one minor correction. Sorry, Director Hunt. Just one minor correction on CDB. It would be $1,400 a year, just for purposes of noting that in case it came up later or something, you know, the numbers appeared. They didn't add up or anything like that.
[Alicia Hunt]: My apologies. I was looking at the other document. No worries. No, I know. All good. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Seeing no further questions and no one in the chamber from the public or on Zoom. Thank you, Director Hunt. And thank you for everything your department is doing. We know you're doing a lot. All right. I think that leaves four things that the chief of staff is covering. We have executive, formal, license, executive license, formal, and law. Do you want to take that in any particular order?
[Nina Nazarian]: I was going to ask the same.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Well, maybe let's get license and Hormel out of the way then. Then we'll do executive and then law. License commission looks like a slight reduction.
[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, we essentially had some, we noticed that there was a redundancy between the license commission and our budgets, the executive budget, so that was addressed. It hasn't been, that redundancy didn't get spent and it won't get spent, but there was extra funds in the budget for no reason.
[Zac Bears]: And Hormel Commission, no change.
[Nina Nazarian]: Hormel Commission, no change, correct.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Well, those were easy. If you want to do some presentation on the executive and then we'll go to the law after that. Same questions as all the other departments, if you could talk about what's changed between this year and next year, some of the work of the folks in the department this year, some of the plans for next year, and some of the items that you're hoping will be funded in future years that weren't able to be funded in the upcoming year.
[Nina Nazarian]: Sure, thank you, President Bears. I usually leave the executive presentation to the mayor, so with the presentation occurring on Wednesday the 27th, I think that's the best place for that to take place. I'm happy to answer questions or discuss any specific items that the council may be interested in with regard to the department. But as far as changes are concerned, what we have tried to do is With the budget gap that we have been working through and everything that's been presented in front of us as we try to close the gap, we have been trying to find more and more creative solutions to funding sources. Director of Community sorry the director of community affairs position was previously fully funded by the operating budget. It's presented here as partially funded through other sources because we are planning to place some of the cost into the beautification fund under casino because that position does a lot of work in that area as I'm sure you all know. And then we have the director of communications and the communications specialist that are effectively that make up the city's communications department. The communications specialist has, especially in the last two years, worked quite considerably in OPO and doing a lot of work there. There's a lot of grant funding that is associated with that position. That grant funding is reducing, but we're continuing to allocate funds from multiple funding sources. to pull the budget up here and talk more specifically about it, but there's the ARPA piece where some funds will continue to be funded through ARPA up until, you know, 12-31-2026 and then shifting over and, you know, going through other funding sources as well. kind of based on the way we can administer it, as we discussed previously, there's going to be an impact to FY28 with, you know, potentially any positions or all positions that are half year funded through ARPA. Beyond that, I think we're just talking about minor adjustments we have under professional services in particular. Half year for the city website because that's another item that was funded by ARPA as well as Zoom licenses for the ARPA drop off. That's generally all we have there. Otherwise everything else is consistent with cost of living adjustments and steps.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Do we have any questions on the executive budget from members of the council? Should we put this on the agenda for next week as well so the mayor can speak to it?
[Nina Nazarian]: It's up to the council. I don't know that the mayor, I mean, she's gonna give a broad overview of all things just in the same way that she provides a budget message. I don't know that she's gonna be prepared to discuss this or have, so if there's specific questions you all have on this particular budget, I'm happy to answer them.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. And I think to that, it looks like some lights are popping up. So I will recognize some other folks in a minute. Is the mayor, so the mayor will join us next Wednesday. Is the mayor also planning to join us on the 9th?
[Nina Nazarian]: At this point, I'm not aware one way or another. I think the plan was to present the budget on the 27th and then I'm not sure what the plan is for the 9th at this point in time.
[Zac Bears]: All right. I'll recognize, I think we won't have a full budget on the 27th is the only reason I asked. So I don't know if the mayor would want to speak to the full budget on the 9th. If she wants to come on the 27th to start or have more of a conversation and then do something on the 9th as the presentation at a regular meeting, I do think people will be paying attention on the 9th because we will have had the budget book out, you guys will do the press release, you know, so I just want to make sure. I mean, we're, you know, the 27th certainly gives us more time and flexibility. in this setting, in a committee setting versus not having a ton of other stuff on the agenda. So it's great if she can join us for that dialogue. But I also want to make sure that when the full budget is presented that there's a, you know, if you're going to present that, if that's the decision of the administration, let us know. But just my kind of thoughts at this point. If you want to respond and then I'll go to Councilors Callahan and Lazar. Okay, I'll go to Vice President Lazar.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I think I might have missed this. The Medford Arts Council is. Can you explain why the Medford Arts Council hasn't had any actual expenditures yet?
[Nina Nazarian]: Yes, thank you. So it's more of an entry, is my understanding. It happens kind of on an accounting basis. And to the best of my knowledge, basically, funds just need to be moved from this budget to another place. Couldn't detail that any more deeply for you at this moment, because I would be going outside of my knowledge as to the specifics. But the Arts Council has appropriated the funds. It's my understanding that they spend the funds, I think, We basically just take the amount to cover their expenses. It's like a journal entry. Yeah, that's where I need to confirm because I don't know as a fact.
[Emily Lazzaro]: So, okay, so it is an active thing, though. It does happen. Okay, great. And President Bears, this is maybe a question for you. What is the difference between May 27th, the meeting on May 27th, and the meeting on June 9th?
[Zac Bears]: June 9th is when we will have the budget.
[Emily Lazzaro]: We'll have the full budget, and that will be a discussion.
[Zac Bears]: We could vote on the budget that night. And we will. We could vote to make cuts to the budget. We could vote to approve it or not. Approve it. We could vote to delay it to the next regular meeting. May 27th is another one of these where.
[Emily Lazzaro]: But we have still a lot of departments we haven't heard from, right?
[Zac Bears]: Fire, police. We may be going through, yes, there's quite a few departments. I know that the chief of staff sent me a long list. DPW, fire, police, library. Schools elections. Oh my God.
[Emily Lazzaro]: No no no.
[Zac Bears]: We were talking about potentially also looking at June 2nd and June 3rd. So we're behind a little bit here.
[Emily Lazzaro]: So this is why the schedule is what it is in the ordinance. is that we're supposed to start in March 15th with our proposals. And we messed that up too. So like credit where it's due, some of us did not send our proposals in on March 15th. But this also happened last year where, I'm just saying this to say it, where we had all of the biggest departments at the very end and we had one big budget committee of the whole at the end that took hours. And the purpose of the budget ordinance is for us to not do that, because it used to be that you would do the entire budget right at the end in June.
[Zac Bears]: And it's not that. Purpose of the budget, yeah, it's, we're.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay, there are a lot of purposes for the budget ordinance. That's not the point. Don't, don't be, well, we're not being pedantic. I'm not being, okay. But the point is, it's frustrating that we have the biggest budgets. I just went to the, board of trustees meeting, the library, they know what their budget request is now. So they could have presented tonight, they could have presented probably a week ago because they showed it to me. And I'm confused about why we're not talking about the library until next week and why we have to push everything to the first week of June. I'm frustrated, I'm frustrated, I'm frustrated and that's okay. Maybe next year we can try a little bit harder to do it a little bit earlier and spread it out a little bit more.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I think, you know, I'll let the administration speak for themselves. They have, Chief of Staff has communicated to me several times that the administration needs more time. And that especially I think seems around the larger budgets. I don't know if you want to speak to the scheduling and why it's taking longer.
[Nina Nazarian]: I mean, beyond what you know, President Bears, all I can say is I understand where you're coming from, Councilor Lazzaro. I'm feeling a lot of pressure myself, too, to be candid with you. And this has been a very challenging budget season. for a variety of reasons some that are you know perhaps in our control some that are totally out of our control. You know I we got started right on time this year on our side and you all I appreciate the flexibility that the council has provided. Sorry.
[Zac Bears]: We were three days late. OK.
[Nina Nazarian]: That's not bad. That's not bad. And I appreciate all the flexibility and all the you know I feel like the scheduling and the budget process and working with the council has been very fluid and I've appreciated the support of you, President Bears, and the work that we've been doing to try to get things scheduled and the understanding. But I feel some of the pain as well. I can't say I necessarily feel all the pain because I'm not in your chairs and I don't necessarily have to absorb the information at the level you're absorbing them. So I do empathize with you all on that. You know it's really hard when you have large gaps trying to address some of those largest gaps. You address them along the way with the budgets that you have to keep the process flowing. You know I think it would have been much worse to say we can't start with any hearings until we've got it all figured out. So we've kept it rolling and that's the way that's the only way it's possible at this point considering the budget gap.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Councilor Callahan. You good? Or you want to go? You don't want to go. All right. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thanks. Just slightly going back to the Arts Council. Residents have been reaching out to me for the last few months just basically saying, I guess there are two things that they've been asking for the city. The first thing is just the money to the Medford Arts Council. I think year after year, we've put $60,000 in that line item. They also get a $36,000 annual grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Despite all of that funding, about $125,000 in proposals from local artists go unfunded still. And they've been asking for us to explore an increased line item for the budget. I know budgetary constraints are real, but it's an opportunity for us to invest in our local economy with small dollars. I'm curious what work we've done to kind of evaluate increasing that line item also like looking at potential grant opportunities out there for local arts and helping at least communicate to Medford Arts Council what those grant opportunities are. And I think the other bucket that folks have been asking is that years ago, this was before you and I have been here, there was a cultural affairs staff member to help local artists navigate and promote the arts and humanities scene, especially those in in regards to municipal properties, permits, working through city departments. I'm curious, has there been any thought put into reestablishing that position, or if not, then identifying staff members who are doing that work?
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank You councillor saying I I think you may all know but the mayor is you know huge arts person So I'm gonna punt this question over to her. I will make her aware of the question And ask if she can specifically address it when she's here I can tell you I can tell you that largely I get the focus on some of our more technical departments, and I certainly enjoy that on my end, but I am not the arts person, so I'm not prepared to answer the question with any material insight at this point. Sure.
[Zac Bears]: All right, thank you, Councilor Tseng. Specifically on the executive budget, is all of the city's Zoom funded through the executive budget?
[Nina Nazarian]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: Great. That was my only specific questions.
[Nina Nazarian]: Well the translations line is just well if I can correct myself there may be certain departments that I don't you know schools probably not.
[Zac Bears]: Sure.
[Nina Nazarian]: I don't think other departments have any but it's My instincts are telling me there may be one department that has a separate account. But I am not pinning that right now.
[Zac Bears]: OK. And the translation, is that coming into the general fund? Because it was previously ARPA funded.
[Nina Nazarian]: Yes. I apologize for missing that. I wanted to highlight that because I know the council has expressed the importance of that and historically it was essentially ARPA funded but now we have it placed in the DEI budget as well as placed it back into the executive budget where it was at one point as well.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Any more questions specifically on the executive budget line items? Okay. See none. Got the law department. This should be a fun one. For who, President Bears? For who? Well, maybe not for you. Maybe not for any of us, really. Perhaps. Yeah, this is obviously an ongoing area of Disagreement and concern. So I will recognize you. Same questions if you want to talk about the changes between fiscal 26 and fiscal 27, any of the work over the past year, goals for next year, and items not funded this year or this upcoming year that we hope to be funded in future years.
[Nina Nazarian]: Sure. So not really any material changes in permanent employees. As far as personnel in general, it's fairly flat lined. The professional services legal line, which is the contracted line where we pay for the retainer for KP law, is increasing as it has historically each year. Then we have some minor adjustments to the budget where we don't believe we need the funding. For instance, publications is going down but it's widely accepted that the materials available online and can be researched online as opposed to having printed documents. I've had conversations with staff to make sure we're not interrupting you know, in a library system so that, you know, if you don't get a copy of something, that you've totally missed something entirely. And in going through that process, I believe we're on the right track to go more digital as opposed to having things that cost and collect dust on a shelf when they are typically researched online. And beyond that, everything else is flat. I don't have any other specific comments, but I'm happy to answer any questions. And I can tell you that between the work that the council has done, between the work that the city has done over the course of the last year, we have made very good use of the city retainer. I do track that. So I know that we get a very good bang for our buck, if you will. And I guess that's all I have for that.
[Zac Bears]: All right. We'll go to questions from the Council on the Law Department Budget. Start with Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. The last time our Chief of Staff was here, I was accused again that for some reason our Chief of Staff felt that my passion for my position and the questions that needed to be asked felt attacking, I believe. I wasn't here in the room when she made those comments, so I will make the comments to you, President Beas, out of fear that this Chief of Staff is leading a dialogue that's very disrespectful and untrue. If I can, Mr. President, we know where this is. I'm going to make it very simple. We've asked for a FOIA request. We were informed that the city asked for a 30-day extension because it is so extensive of what we're asking for. That will get us beyond the budget season, which is disappointing to me. What I've read in some of the reports already, I feel that it's already gonna be a battle and some concerns. I mean, just the fact that it was mentioned that the city has never entertained non-disclosure agreements, which is totally false, I feel that that's gonna get us nowhere. So I'm going to recommend on budget evening that we cut professional service legal line of $156,000 and then I'm going to I'm going to end the suffering and I'm going to ask to cut the line for the position of solicitor of 144,957.80 and that'll save the city $300,957.80, Mr. President. I think we're at the point right now that we have tried to be professional. We've asked questions. We were given the dog and pony ride and it was to a point where we as a council had to ask for our own information through a FOIA request. And I think that I've come to a realization that we're never going to get a city solicitor. It's not going to happen. So instead of this line going directly into free cash where the mayor can use it as will and pay other law firms, because I know that the person at the podium has mentioned KP Law, but some of the questions that we ask for need answers. or other law firms that are being used for the city in the process of defending accusations or labor disputes. And we know it's just not KP law. So I think that there's a lot here. We're spending a lot of money. It's not a secret. We've had legal documentation. We have the settlements. We've seen it personally. What we don't have are the answers that we've been asking for, which is the fees that are being covered. When we lose these cases, what we're paying our legal teams in-house and for the other side, and then the process of what the impact is happening to our insurance fees and what we're paying out. So that's something I'm going to request. I'm not even going to entertain a discussion in my end. I'm secure in what I'm saying. I said I will not vote for a budget because until we know what the fiscal picture, the true picture is in our community, where the money's going, I cannot support this budget. We're not going to see it. So to move the budget forward, the only thing I could see, Mr. President, is eliminating the city solicitor line and then also eliminating the professional service legal line. Because if they don't have the money, then we can't spend the money. So it's that simple, Mr. President. Or maybe we'll know where the real money is coming from, what department, what line it's coming from and other parts of our our budget, Mr. President. So I leave you with that and thank you for your time.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I had this exact same thought, independent of my colleague, and I couldn't agree more. Also, it's so much savings that we could use it to fully fund other department budgets that we're told they had to cut, including the library, which I learned at the Board of Trustees meeting this week. that the library pays their part-time employees $17 or $20. The people with master's degrees get $20, which is what I pay the high school student who babysits my kids per hour, $20. That's the people that are required to have master's degrees. And that's $10 to $15 under market per hour. So guys, guys. So in Arlington, these same jobs, they can go to Arlington, 10 minutes away, and get $28 to $35 an hour. And they're getting $17 or $20 an hour. And it would cost $91,000 to to fully fund their budget. And this, if you cut those two lines, what was it, $300,000? Oh, that's no big deal. Absolutely no big deal. And isn't the library the crown jewel of Medford? Don't we always say that? So it would be so easy. Just cut the two things that are not benefiting any part of the city that we can observe. Yeah, so second. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Do we have further questions from members of the council on the law department budget? Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: I have a question about the reduction for the city solicitor. It was a priority for the council a few years. I mean, well, it's always been a priority to fill the seat. But it was a specific priority of the council a few years ago to raise the salary for that position to make it more competitive. That was the thought behind it. And I guess the question about the cut is, have we given up on searching for a new city solicitor? Is that what that signals?
[Nina Nazarian]: President Bears, through you, to Councilor Tseng, no, we have not given up on that. The amount that's listed here is part of the scale that the Council approved in terms of the CAF change. As you may recall, I believe we went from a Classification of 21 to 21.5, this is a part of that scale. If someone is hired at a higher step, that would be adjusted and compensation would be commensurate to that.
[Zac Bears]: Madam Chief of Staff, why isn't the job posted?
[Nina Nazarian]: Getting through the budget season, we're planning on posting it, revisiting it after the budget.
[Zac Bears]: Has it been posted since Mr. Foley was removed in November?
[Nina Nazarian]: I'd have to check that. I don't know that off the top of my head.
[Zac Bears]: I haven't seen it posted. OK. If you want to check, that's fine. But I really do share the concern that we are not committed to filling the position if we're not posting it for six months. Economic Development Director has been posted, filled, lost, and posted again in three months. So I understand. I have my own concerns about. The level of, I have a lot of concerns about our legal budget and our law budget. I don't think we have the answer. I think we've been asking for like pretty clear and direct answers about the city's approach to litigation strategy. What are the firms that we're engaging? What is the actual cost of legal services? I mean, we, you know, you look at the actuals in here for claims, we approved in one evening four times as much in settlements than is listed here on the actuals of May 13th. Now, part of the reason we're asking for litigation report is I think there's a disagreement in what the city's approach to litigation strategy should be. And I think we all understand that we're the city council and we're not the executive of the city. So we don't get to dictate unilaterally what the litigation strategy approach of the city is, but we are accountable to providing the funding for it. And, you know, I think we've articulated pretty clearly in both the original resolution requesting litigation report, and the subsequent public records request that we believe that we need additional information, ideally presented in the form that we requested initially, but at least maybe the basic facts, if possible, to receive through a public records request in order for us to do the analysis we need to do to feel comfortable approving funding for the law department going forward. You know, my colleagues have proposed some cuts, right, and we'll consider those when the budget is presented. But I, for one, also, you know, I'm in a pretty similar position where I would have a hard time approving a budget that continues to fund the same approach that we've been seeing to legal services. So, you know, I think you're going to see that this council does not feel comfortable with that. I think my colleagues have articulated it. You know, several councilors haven't spoken so we'll see what their position is on it. But I'm deeply concerned that we have had the city solicitor job vacant for another six months. The job hasn't been posted. I personally don't understand. It's budgeted for the year. I don't see why we'd be waiting to get through the budget to post it again. You know, the funding is there right now. And really my other questions are, you know, we did receive the response on that initial litigation report request from you. It was essentially kind of our resolution rehashed in bullet points and, you know, the statement from you that it's an extensive resolution and the city staff are busy on other projects and that you're working on it. I'm wondering if there's a report on if we're going to get get that resolution answered in litigation report prior to the vote on the budget. As Councilor Scarpelli noted, the public records request is extended for 30 days, so it's unlikely that we'll receive that information to do our own analysis. And I think the thing we all would prefer not to be in the position of is having these cuts such as those proposed be what's in the budget, but, and then having to come back and do some sort of supplemental appropriation for legal services after the start of the fiscal year once we have that information. That's my general question. Do you have an update on when we're gonna receive the answers in the resolution we requested? And kind of a more specific question, you know, there've been a lot of large settlements, either a few approved by this council, some that we've been told to expect to be submitted to the council. Do you have the total for those for the fiscal year or any of those expected to go over into fiscal 27? And are those coming out of lines 5761 and 5762?
[Nina Nazarian]: President Bears, thank you. Okay, so to address the overarching comment regarding a potential proposal, or I take you to be very serious, Councilor Scarpelli, and same with you, Councilor Lazzaro, as far as a potential cut of all those pieces, the reality is these, these lines fund the work that this council does as well. And I can go into depth about that. So I think that would be pretty problematic for a variety of reasons. Again, happy to go into that, but I can appreciate that there's a significant divide on how the council views the way that, I don't know the exact terms you used, President Bears, but I can appreciate that you all feel that there's a significant divide with how this is managed and this is handled. I feel confident with the way that it's handled and managed, candidly. I think there's complexities on the side that we sit on that isn't something that can be discussed in public meetings. I think when we've reached out to have conversations on public meetings, there have been newspaper articles that suggest something very off the beaten path as to what's actually even happened historically. So that's a very deep and large concern of mine. I also can say that publicly there's been discussions about confidential information being released, and that's a deep concern of mine. I am not sure exactly how to communicate confidential information moving forward to the council, although I may have an idea from a meeting that I had today. But, you know, overarchingly, I just, I think it's incredibly problematic if we get into a situation where we don't have legal support. There's a lot that's provided through the resources that we have, through the funds that we've used, and we've done an analysis historically. Some Councilors weren't present for that analysis in historical budgets, but we had contacted a number of different communities, and we had done an analysis of how much the city spent versus how much is spent in other communities. And the number that we were using was an all-in number. It wasn't a number that was just the retainer. It was an all-in number. You know we could go through a similar analysis and we could provide similar data updating it to this year if that would be helpful. The reality is that there are significant complexities to the city's work towards ensuring There's accountability and the culture from the history changes in terms of what's expected of people. There's the vast number of employees that we have are doing an excellent job, coming into work, trying their hardest. But unfortunately, we do have circumstances historically, and I can't speak to them specifically here in public on the council meeting floor, but we do have circumstances where employees have taken advantage of the city, and the city has to draw a line in the sand on those things. Also, you know, President Bears, you referenced that there was settlements that were approved in May. I don't know if you said May 13th. I don't remember the date specifically.
[Zac Bears]: The actuals are as of May 13th. I think they were approved April 28th. So I'm, you know, it was over $300,000. The total actuals here we're seeing is $83,000, so.
[Nina Nazarian]: One of those items was over $200,000. It was for Cardello and Sons, and it was, I believe, stated at the time that that would be coming through other available resources. So that explains that very clearly and easily. So there's a lot in this picture. As far as the public records request is concerned, You know, I've never, candidly, been ever in my years, in my almost 20 years in government, ever been overwhelmed by a public records request. And the city council's public records request is, quite frankly, overwhelming. When we received that request, we had no other conclusion but to conclude that the resolution, the council doesn't wish to continue on the resolution that you wish to continue with a public records request. Doing both is virtually impossible.
[Zac Bears]: Madam Chief of Staff, I'm just going to stop there. I'm just going to pause you right there. I don't think we ever communicated that we don't want to continue with the request. It's been months. The only thing we've received back on the request is bullet points of what we sent you with no timeline for understanding answers. I just want to be really clear. I think you've heard from my fellow Councilors you know, you're right, you know, you are, the mayor is the chief executive of the city and is able to pursue her preferences as to litigation strategy up to a point, which is the point at which the city council needs to approve appropriations. And the council has stated that we're not going to approve appropriations for the law department until we have the answers to the questions that we've asked, which, you know, you talk about complexities, I think it's very simple. We're losing almost every case or settling almost every case that's being pursued by the administration. And the numbers, you know, are not showing up in the actual line items. that we're seeing here. Now, I don't know if that means are things being appealed, and so settlements that have been, or cases that have determinations have been made against us, we're choosing not to pay them out. It just doesn't seem to me that it's a responsible course of action for us to continue funding an approach where we're losing almost all the time, and we're not sure when and if the money's gonna be appropriated, or when we're gonna be asked to appropriate the money, and we've had almost no voice in the process of making the decisions that have resulted in us losing case after case after case against our own employees. And I don't think that the argument that I completely agree that there needs to be accountability for employees if they do something wrong. But I also think there needs to be accountability for the administration if it's pursuing legal cases or labor disputes or grievances that we end up losing and paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to employees who an independent third party or a court has determined actually didn't do anything wrong. And we're seeing that that number is piling up. So I understand what you're saying, but I don't think it's about complexities. I think it's pretty simple. At a certain point, the city council approves appropriations. We've made it very clear that we have a bunch of questions about the litigation strategy and the liability to the city. and the approach of the administration, and that we don't feel comfortable funding the current approach until we have answers to those questions. We've asked through a resolution. We've now asked through a public records request. We've now been told that our public records request negated our resolution. If you want to provide the original report, which we asked for now three plus months ago, I think we're welcome to that. But we're coming down to the line here.
[Nina Nazarian]: President Bears, if I may. I guess it would be very helpful for me if this council could provide some clear direction on the public records request versus the resolution. Because if the council would like the resolution to be fulfilled, then we can put our energy into that. Where it currently stands, I have to put, if the resolution is still on the table, which I'm hearing from you, President Bears, that the resolution is still on the table, I cannot allocate time to that. considering the amount of work that I'm going to need to direct with our law department to take on the public records request, which will overwhelm the city's staff. Less so myself, but the city's staff as a whole, the office manager in the law department will be overwhelmed with that work for the foreseeable future. So if this council would like to provide some clear direction to us, you know, that would be helpful because I, there is zero doubt in my mind, I will not have time to address the council's resolution because I'm statutorily required to address the public records request. with certain and strict timelines under the public records law.
[Zac Bears]: I'm going to recognize Vice President Lazzaro in a second. I think my guidance is if that much work is going to go into the public records request, if you were to put that work into the resolution and we were to receive the resolution before the time frame, you know, a response to the resolution before the time frame, you know, I'm sure that we would consider not completing the request but, you know, the only reason we filed the public records request is that we have received no timeline and really I think going back to some of the other things you've said there, there's a deep loss of trust both between the council and the administration and between this city council and the outside legal council. that our request will be fulfilled or fulfilled with the intent that we requested them to be fulfilled. So we put forward the public records request. I personally can't say either way I'd have that likely we would need to have a vote of the council since the council voted collectively to file the request. You know, if you can say it's a 30-day clock from I think today or yesterday, I'd have to look at my email from the supervisor of records. You know, if you can say we're going to have the answer to that original resolution by that time, I'm sure that we would consider it not doing the public records request element of it. I'm going to go to the Vice President and then to you, Councilor Scarpelli.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Since neither the resolution nor the public records request are on the agenda and we've gone through everything that's on the agenda now, I would suggest that this conversation be carried out in a different venue. and I would motion to adjourn. Keep the paper in committee and adjourn.
[Zac Bears]: Is there a second? Is there a second on that motion?
[Matt Leming]: Council President Bears, I have a question.
[Zac Bears]: I hear everybody, but I have to follow the rules here. Is there a second on the motion? Councilor Scarpelli seconded the motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan.
[Zac Bears]: We got to call the roll on this one now.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Leming. No. Councilor Malayne.
[Unidentified]: No.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Scarpelli. No. Councilor Tseng. No. Vice President Lazzaro. No. President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: No. 0 in the affirmative, 7 in the negative. The motion fails. I will recognize Councilor Scarpelli and then Councilor Leming. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Mr. President, I can appreciate your effort trying to get this through, but there are things that we've already seen in the reply and what we've asked for in the FOIA that we know is not true because we have done our homework. The idea that there is no non-disclosure agreements, that that doesn't happen in the city, is false. So if that's how we're starting, I can't see us moving forward without putting our eyes on what we've requested, Mr. President. This is something I've been asking for for years. not just a couple of months, this is for years. I've been asked for a detailed breakdown. And again, Mr. President, the focus, no matter how much work it is for anybody in this building, our job is to make sure that we are the stewards of the financial process of what goes on in this community. And we see what's going on. It's not a secret anymore. You have law firms publishing their successes all over the world. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fire department, that's going to be in limbo to try to replace people in different places and moving people around now. So, Mr. President, I don't want to be emotional. I don't want to scare anybody off. I think that I'm trying to intimidate anybody. But I will be honest with you, I'm tired and I'm done with this. We need to see where we are. If we had a city solicitor, Mr. President, it's funny, because the former city solicitor, do you know what he was doing in his new job? He's in charge of creating the whole process of FOIA requests in the new community he's in. And that's what his job is. That's one of their roles. as a city solicitor. We wouldn't have to worry about city staff that has no clue what they're doing, focusing on trying to get what we're asking for. Because the legal mind in your community is the person sitting there and figuring this out for you. So I apologize for my frustration, but we know we're not going to get a city solicitor. We know that money can be placed somewhere and save a job, possibly teacher, police, fire, DPW, wherever it may be. We know that whatever money is going into the K. P. Line is being lost and being thrown away. Enough. We have to hold people accountable in this building. That's our job, right? So I appreciate what you're trying to do. I You know what? You know, God again. If I give you another compliment, we're going to have an administrator go public all over social media tomorrow that I'm now not only a campaign manager, but I'm also donating right in front of you. I'm writing you a big check. But I'm telling you, this isn't the place. It's getting tiresome. It's getting old. We're bleeding finances, and we have to know where. And right now, without answers. I'm sorry, Mr. President, I don't care what they give me until I see it and then have people that I respect in my circle that can look at those documents that can say yes, George, because I can't people in other communities, legal minds in other communities, have called me to watch us on Verizon or Comcast. This is serious. This is seriously happening. Yeah, this is serious. And when you have unions coming up and showing us legal documents of settlements, When you have us sitting in meetings and seeing what settlements are, when you're seeing social media ads from opposing council to the city celebrating the fact that we just fought something that they knew they weren't going to win, but they fought it anyway and appealed it and lost again. These are the issues why we need to know why. Because what it seems to me, Mr. President, over and over again, it seems like someone is using a position of payback. It seems like it's personal. It seems like people are being attacked in this community that came from certain regimes that some people didn't respect. And it's sad because you're really hurting good people. The people that are being hurt right now are hard working men and women that work for our community for years. So again, I I think that I've made my case. I think that $300,000, I've thrown the white towel. I give up. What I can't control is voting down a number in the budget. And I can look at my colleagues and say, if this happens, we know maybe we can help the library. We know we can maybe save a teacher. We know maybe we can help save a firefighter or add another firefighter or a policeman or maybe two police cars, whatever it may be. At least it's something tangible that our community knows that We did our due diligence when it comes to finances in this process because ultimately you know we do. We do ordinances and we pass the budget or we approve the budget to that end. I am sorry it has to come to this. For me, it's absolutely embarrassing. I've been doing this a long time. And I've sat toe-to-toe with Mike McGlynn, and I've sat toe-to-toe with Roy Belson, and I've sat toe-to-toe with Stephanie Muccini-Burke. And you know what? We sat in a room respectfully. We got the questions that we asked for publicly put out there. We understood it. We eliminated the social media negativity or the banter, and we got the job done and made sure that we protected our community. So right now, I appreciate my rant, Mr. President, but thank you. Thank you. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, I mean, I think I don't want to rehash too much of what we've talked about tonight, except to say that getting transparency about the things that we've asked for time and time again, I think would really help build more trust in the process. Look, there are concerns in the community about how we're spending our money writ large, but especially with regards to this department. And even though, yes, it's a big FOIA request, but that's the nature of transparency. That's exactly what FOIA is for. It's for us to learn more about what we're doing as a city, to scrutinize that and to help us do our jobs with regards to that too. It is, I mean, it's to help you guys sell the budget to us and build support for the budget as well. I mean, I think the claims point brought up earlier tonight too is another important one. I think that is more just as structural with respect to what's on that page. But putting aside the claims and the FOIA requests, I am curious, something that we talk a lot about in the law world, the legal world, is about billable hours, about rates, about how we're spending that time, and really scrutinizing law firms. for on on those questions and I'd love to see if possible and I'm sure I'm sure the data is out there because it's it's required by the ABA a breakdown of the number of billable hours spent on what matters, so billable hours, the matters that the time is being spent on, the rate at which we're being charged for the services. And I'd love to see that compared to other providers, other municipalities. And I think only with that information can we really also make a determination about whether this increase to the KP law line item is reasonable or not.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Thank you. So, I'm also concerned about the city solicitor and how seriously the city takes hiring a new one. But I see it more in the context of the other openings and sort of constant turnover that the city has in a number of other areas. And I understand that Many people are overworked, but I see that as a result of the fact that we have such high turnover and there doesn't seem to be in this budget any serious consideration being put towards lessening that turnover. So in an earlier budget hearing that we heard just now with the PDS director, You know, she was she gave us to, you know, important and to me surprising pieces of information one that we lost our, I don't know what fourth economic development director that we've had in the past couple of years after only 30 days. And two, that she had been advised by legal to only increase our linkage fees by something like 3% or so instead of tripling them, which I think she would have had the right to do so, given that they hadn't been increasing so long. And to me, that kind of says two things. One, that we're not fundamentally addressing the issue of staff turnover, which just puts more work onto everyone else in City Hall, including and especially the Chief of Staff. And two, the City's not really taking seriously the avenues that it has for more revenue, even when they're provided by this Council. I mean, we're working right now and are pretty close to passing a vacant building ordinance which I think will do a lot to help with to help bring more businesses into some of these long-standing vacancies in this city and my concern is that the city won't actually exercise that and you know get more revenue into the city to begin with. So you know we're we say we want a city solicitor but we're cutting the salary by $8,000 and we haven't actually advertised for it so far. We want to keep our elections manager, but we're getting emails from the HR director saying that our effort to increase it by an additional CAF level is too excessive. And we lost, we lost our building commissioner. We've cycled, we've cycled through many other department heads. And I would be interested, I'd be interested in hearing about and receiving some sort of report on how many other positions within the city that are below the department head level we are consistently cycling through, which just means that staff members are constantly trying to hire new positions and train new people who then just leave the city in a very short period of time. And yeah, I'm not I think the frustrating thing to me, it's not just that we don't have a city solicitor. We've that's been the most high profile these positions, but it's just that there is a systematic problem of high turnover in this city that I haven't seen a serious attempt. to quell in the past couple of years. And I think that if that were focused on, it would take the burden off of a lot of the other staff who are just trying to work days, weekend and nights just to keep up with the workload. So yeah, that's why I have to say, I think it's a budgetary issue. I also think it has to do with some of the policies that the city has around staff benefits, work from home for lower level employees, vacation time, et cetera, et cetera, but culture and city hall. But it is something that we need to address. And it is a big part of the reason that, we're not able to fulfill a lot of these work requests that the council would like to see.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. And to be honest, I think what both you and Councilor Scarpelli and maybe some of my other colleagues have somewhat danced around or spoken to specific elements of it More and more, when I speak with city employees, and I am reluctant to do so, to say what I'm about to say, I persistently and consistently am described a situation where there is a culture of fear to speak out, to have an idea, and in general, fear that they will be punished or silenced. And beyond the fact that it just makes me sad, I don't think it's an effective way to run an operation. And when we see, I think we see that most clearly expressed in a series of labor disputes and investigations that have continued to result in determinations against the city and its accusations and in favor of employees who have spent months and years facing human impacts on themselves and their families, and then the city facing a significant financial impact for having pursued an accusation or an investigation that, in the end, failed. And in terms of the guidance that you requested, Madam Chief of Staff, I only speak for myself. Other Councilors have spoken tonight. It seems to me that there are at least three or four people, maybe six or seven, who would seriously consider the proposals outlined by Councilor Scarpelli and Council Vice President Lazzaro to cut both of those lines. And the best guidance I can give you is kind of what Councilor Tseng says. Work on the information you think you can provide to us that would allow us to vote for a law budget that isn't zero. And again, I can't speak for everybody else, but that seems to be what I'm hearing from my fellow councilors. Councilor Callahan.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn. Second.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn by Councilor Callahan, seconded by There's no second. There's no second yet. Do you want to withdraw the motion or? Withdrawing a second. Withdrawing a second. All right. Are you withdrawing the motion? There's no second. I'll allow you to respond.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears, Councilor Callahan, Councilor Tseng. I took a lot of notes. There was a lot, a lot said. I can't possibly comment on everything, nor would you want me to. But I think it's important to, I'm just going to go in whatever order I can come up with here. Maybe I'm going backwards. I'm not really sure, to be honest. I think you can all appreciate that it's incredibly tough for me to stand here before you and answer questions as to accountability and why the city has taken the approaches that we've taken. But I can tell you that when we discuss these matters, we put all of our heads together and we don't always have the same thought when we're discussing these. They're discussions that we have that we go into depth on and we determine what's best for the city, what's best ultimately, what's the end goal, is the fight worth fighting, candidly. There's all sorts of things, but I can't stand here and give you examples. I can't provide for you specific data points because we're here in a public meeting and not to belabor the point, but I can't discuss personnel issues here, nor can I really discuss those issues with the council as a whole. I'll leave that one there. So it's very, very difficult for me to combat these types of things. But the fact of the matter is, when someone has been warned about an action, a lack of action, behavior, and they've received multiple warnings, unfortunately, that does sometimes result in discipline. We start with coaching. We start with coaching, we go to guidance in writing, then we, you know, everything is done. in accordance with best practices. I have a master's in public administration. I have spent the last 15 years managing municipal governments, and I can tell you, going back to another comment that was made, that people leave jobs for different reasons. I left a number of different jobs in my past to climb the ladder. I climbed the ladder. I had my sister once ask me, what's next? I said, I don't know what's next, this is where I wanted to be. And I was there and I was very happy. My life circumstances changed, I left that employer, but those kinds of things happen. I worked for the city of Melrose when I came out of college for one year as an assistant city engineer, assistant civil engineer, correction. There was an opportunity for me to go back to a community that I had worked as an intern. I worked for them for four and a half years as a project manager in their engineering division. Point being, circumstances change, people leave jobs. We have department heads stay on with us all the time. It is not from a lack of a cultural issue that has been presented here, it is because They believe in the missions that we're working on. They want to continue working for the city and they're helping, you know, collaborate with us and there's continuity. Our current building commissioner is an example of that. He continues to work part time for the city and support the department, provide continuity for the department, provide continuity for the city. Incredibly important. The public records request in terms of the resolution, as I said before, you know, I will certainly take back the comment by Councilor Tseng and the highlighting of that by you, President Bears, as far as potentially supporting documents. It's an untenable situation that the council has put us in, to be honest with you, based on timing. But I understand the question and I think I certainly will do my best. And I think it's... The biggest problem that I have is if the council could possibly put a pause on the public records request that it has made or potentially withdraw it, it would substantially change the outcome of what we're talking about. If the council, and this would be something that the council, I recognize, would have to go out on a limb on its own, but if the council could put a pause on its public records request, it would genuinely allow me and the team to focus on the council's resolution. You may not want to do that, but I'm telling you that's the only way for me to actually put time into the council resolution, because the time that is required to respond under the law with the public records request is so significant that there is no scenario where I can focus attention to that resolution considering the public records request. If the council would entertain something in writing from I mean, I can't commit us tonight But this is me thinking out loud if the council would entertain something in writing from us that indicates that, you know, we're going to do X, Y, and Z and provide, you know, as many of the records as we possibly can under that resolution so that we can get things rolling and the council will withdraw its public records request, that will give me a chance to actually work on it. But I unequivocally can tell you that it is humanly impossible for our teams to work on both requests simultaneously and we have a legal obligation to work on the public records request given the timeline and the statute and the clock that has started. Oh, geez, there's so much. I missed the comment, I think, by you, Councilor Tseng, and I can certainly catch up on at another time so the Council doesn't have to go into it. But it was something about, did I misunderstand you, Councilor Tseng? Did you say something about the ADA? I don't.
[Zac Bears]: American Bar Association. Thank you.
[Nina Nazarian]: AB, okay, thank you. Thank you. You know, as far as the question you asked, Councilor Tseng, I can tell you KP Law has a rate of $280 per hour. I believe that's considered a very reasonable rate. You know, happy to go into further information on that. I'm trying to think of how to actually phrase this one because I have to be very cautious. I'm going to be more general than I wish I could be. The fact of the matter is, going back to some of the work that the administration has done to address accountability and issues in the city, we have seen circumstances where it has been publicly disclosed that people are in other places when they are required to be at work and that they are being paid for being at work. So that's one example that I will say broadly. We cannot tolerate that kind of situation, so we have an obligation to pursue it. If that results in a determination by a body that it has to be overturned, that is somewhat out of the city's control. In a reality, arbitrators and the division, the Department of Labor, it is anecdotally said that they lean towards employees. And perhaps that's fine and fair, but the reality is we can't receive information that someone is not at work, that there is evidence of them being elsewhere where they are then claiming to have been at work and not address it. We also similarly can't ignore situations where people have prior injuries and they claim that they were injured on the job. We have no choice if anybody wants an accountable government but to pursue those. So I think that's the best I can probably do with that. It's a little different what I was thinking but that's that's probably the direction to leave that in because those are the realities we face every day that quite frankly and with all due respect that this council doesn't have to deal with. And it is a tough job and it doesn't result in an easy day to day operations for us. We don't want to do these kinds of things. We find no joy in them, and they keep us up at night sometimes, especially if we know that someone is, hypothetically speaking, or we suspect that someone is, hypothetically speaking, using illicit substances or may be on the job. Those are things that keep us up at night. So I'm sorry to the council, but those are our realities that we face every day that this council doesn't have to deal with. And they're in public safety positions sometimes, or they're in positions where they can injure themselves, hurt themselves, hurt others. Those concern us. We have no choice. I can't discuss those here. Thank you. I'm done.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Councilor Scarpelli. Mr. President.
[George Scarpelli]: And that's what's so frustrating. What we just heard was so frustrating, because obviously no one's listening to us. Because we just showed examples why we are struggling. Because what we just heard was reasoning. What we see in practice, in real life, is obviously those accusations or those concerns are not founded because it's costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars. So whatever's making the decision to say, hey, let's do this, maybe that's what we should evaluate. Maybe we should ask for that type of FOIA. Because someone's making a decision to move forward with these investigations, and it's coming back as losses over and over and over again, costing us how much? We don't know. I've worked through municipality many, many, my whole life, actually. And obviously, I know that there are situations where there aren't good employees. But to this extreme, since 2019, what was the number? An increase of 594% in lawsuits against our own employees. If that's not shocking, and if that's not waking people up to look at it a different way, shame on them. That dog and pony show was sad. And I'm not, I'll be honest with you, I'm not dropping anything, Mr. President, because I'll tell you, I'll do it as a Councilor alone, because there's answers that we need to know. We've been asked, this is something we've asked for just a couple of weeks ago. This is something we've asked for for years, years. And I appreciate Councilor Tseng and his breakdown, and I understand that. But we're also, we need to know what the impact is when we settle these suits, how much we're paying the opposing attorneys. How much we're getting charged and how much we're paying when we go to arbitration and we lose. And then we appeal and we lose. Because that costs money. When you go in front of an arbiter, you have to pay. Someone has to pay them. And I think sometimes this administration thinks that this council lives in a bubble, that this council doesn't actually talk to real people. They're real people that are being attacked here. And the same people that are scared to come out publicly because they're afraid they're going to lose their jobs in a city they love, in a city they've worked for for years. You know a lot of these employees go work somewhere else, but they love Medford. They're working for Medford. But when good people are being attacked, and they're being accused of this negativity that we just heard, but then come back and settle with those people, and lose lawsuits with those people, what are we saying to the world? What are we saying to Medford? What are we saying to our residents that we're in charge of their money? What are we saying? That these people, these administrators, are making these decisions, that can't sleep at night, are waking up the next morning saying, you know what? Let's go after them. Let's go do it. But in the same breath, we also hear the same stories of people doing worse but not being touched because of who they're aligned with. Medford is a small town. It's a small city. Everybody talks. People want to talk to you. They tell you everything. And a lot of times they say, prove it. And you know what's sad? When they come up to the podium and they're showing us legal responses from the courts, what do we say to defend that? We can't. It's gotten to the point where we can't. So, you know, sure we hear all the rumors about who's been representing us against different departments, and how much we've spent the cities giving them money from K.P. Lahr, and if they're really working with them anymore, or are they representing this department anymore to fight against this department? These are the questions that we know, we hear it. And this is why we need to get the public records request, because that puts away all the questions, whether it's an employee not telling us the truth, or whether it's the city filing these fraudulently, and we're losing a lot of money. I think it's time that we stand up and say, you know what? We're bleeding money. We're hurting for finances. And we're not getting in new growth. We've got to figure it out. And I think the only thing we have to do as a city council is to figure out if this is the issue. And the only way to find out if this is the issue, I don't trust anybody anymore on that side. Because when you try to talk to them, you try to trust them, they come back and try to spin the narrative as if a father of a strong young lady and a brother of an amazing sister and a husband to an amazing wife who are all very strong, independent women. who I'm very proud of, and a person that oversees over 40 females that are amazing employees, and then be accused because you want to spin the narrative. It's called deflection. And that's what we just heard just a minute ago, was deflection. So, Mr. President, I'm going to stand tall. Let's do our homework. Let's make sure when it comes to the vote, we know what we already know, and we make our decisions, because I think $300,000 What I feel right now is $300,000 can save a lot of positions and $300,000, we know it's not going to a city solicitor, we know that. I've thrown in the towel, I've given up. Thank you, Mr. President. And now I want to adjourn.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'm gonna recognize Councilor Leming and then Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I would like to second Councilor Scarapelli's adjourn. That's all, that's it.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Callahan? Yeah. I mean, I appreciate it. We do need a different motion. Do we have a motion to refer the questions and statements of support that we made earlier to the administration and keep the paper in committee and adjourn? On the motion of Councilor Callahan, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. Yeah.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Yeah. Councilor Leming. Yeah. Councilor Malay. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. Vice President Lazzaro. Yes. And President Villes.
[Zac Bears]: No. Six in the affirmative, one in the negative. The motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.
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