[Zac Bears]: Meeting Medford City Council July 14th 2026 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming. Present. Councilor Maloney. Present. Councilor Scarpelli. Present. Councilor Tseng. Present. Vice President Lazzaro. Present. And President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Present. Seven present, none absent. The meeting is called to order. Please rise to salute the flag. Announcements, accolades, remembrances, reports and records. And we'll do this how we've been doing it, which is we'll have a motion to join and approve. The records of the meeting of June 23rd, 2026 were passed to Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Unfortunately, I have to motion to table these records.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to table the records of the meeting of June 23rd by Vice President Lazzaro, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming.
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilman. Yes. Council Scarpelli. Councilor Tseng. Yes. Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: And President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven. The affirmative. None. The negative. The motion passes. Records of a special joint meeting of June 24th were passed to Councilor Leming. Councilor Leming, how did you find those records?
[Matt Leming]: Find them in order. Move to approve.
[Zac Bears]: And we have reports of committees 26-107 offered by President Bears's Committee of the Whole, June 23rd, 2026. This was to discuss with Medford Arts Council and Arts Collaborative Medford, the funding of the arts and the relationship with the city. That was before our last regular meeting. On the motion to join and approve the records of the special joint meeting and the report from Committee of the Whole by Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Levin? Yes. Councilor Millan? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative, the motion passes. Motions, orders and resolutions 26-127 offered by President Bears, order to elect Laurel Siegel as city clerk effective August 10th, 2026, whereas the Medford City Council has the duty and requirement under Section 2-7 of Chapter 30 of the Acts of 2025, the City Charter, to, quote, elect a city clerk to serve a term for up to three years. Now, therefore, be it ordered by the Medford City Council that we appoint Laurel Siegel as the city clerk of the City of Medford effective August 10th, 2026 for a term to expire on August 1st, 2029. Any discussion by members of the council? Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I'm just very excited to move to the next phase and welcome Laurel Siegel to our team, and I'm just happy to be pushing forward, and I'm just very excited.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Laurel is here tonight. Laurel, if you'd like to say anything, we welcome you to the podium.
[Laurel Siegel]: Thank you. I appreciate the confidence in me, and I'm really looking forward to diving in and working with all of you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Laurel. I just wanted to say thank you and we're really excited to work with you. And once we're done here tonight, I will be in touch with you and acting clerk Alicio to talk about the next steps and transition for August 10th, 2026.
[Laurel Siegel]: Sounds great.
[Zac Bears]: Great. All right. Any further discussion by members of the city council? Seeing no hands and nobody else in the chamber, I will take a motion. On the motion to approve the order by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[Zac Bears]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Malayne? Yes. Councilor Scapelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? And President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Yes 70 affirmative. None of the negative. The motion passes. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Clerk Siegel. That will be the first and last time I make the mistake. All right. On the next paper, paper 26-128, resolution to inform residents regarding the July 21st and July 30th MBTA bus redesign Medford meetings by Council President Bears and Councilor Tseng. Be it resolved by the City Council that the MBTA is holding important meetings on July 21st and July 30th regarding the bus network redesign proposals. Please attend and share with others because it's an opportunity to save Route 94. The meeting information is available below. There are links on our online agenda. In addition, the public comment period ends August 5th, 2026. Please send your comments by email to betterbusproject at mbta.com and send your comments by mail to Better Bus Project Team 45 High Street, Floor 5, Boston, Massachusetts 02110. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you, President Bears. You've read the important part that we have meetings in Medford on July 21st and July 30th. It's really important for our community that folks know about it, that folks show up. And I hope the administration gets the word out to residents, particularly in Hillside and West Medford, about these meetings. Two years ago, or a few years ago, might be more than two. We save bus route 80. This is our chance to save bus route 94, which a lot of people rely on to get to work. The MBTA is looking at three different options in addition to the status quo plan. Really, it's option B that would save route 94 and better service the city. A few of the other options would increase frequencies to some areas of the city but actually take away service from others too. And I would really encourage all residents to write in to the MBTA to send their comments to betterbusproject at mbta.com. I'd encourage folks to, folks on the council to write letters as well.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. And the July 21st meeting is virtual and the July 30th is an in-person open house here at Medford City Hall. On the motion of Councilor Tseng to approve, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: I was just curious if I know you mentioned that you hope that the administration does inform residents in particular areas. Do we want to amend this to ask anything of the administration that they use their text messaging, that they, like is there anything in particular that we would like to request?
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: I'd be open to that. We did make a bunch of requests in our last resolution on this, including having the MBTA have meetings here in Medford. I'd say reach out or request that city administration reach out to residents by all available means, including phone call, like robocall, text message, email, and fliering.
[Anna Callahan]: I would very much appreciate that. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Given the timing of responses we're getting from the administration, I would also suggest directly contacting the administration with that request. It may get a faster response than our resolutions and the response is delayed. All right, on the motion by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan as amended by Councilor Callahan to request that the administration use all means of communication to inform residents about these meetings. Any further discussion by members of the council? Seeing no one in the chamber and no hands on Zoom, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malayne? Yes. Councilor Scott Felly? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Having the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. 26-129, offered by Councilor Callahan, resolution to investigate auto pay option for residents paying city bills. Whereas the City of Medford seeks to provide high quality accessible and convenient services to its residents and whereas many residents increasingly prefer electronic payment methods and automated payment options for recurring obligations. And whereas automatic payment auto pay programs can help residents avoid missed payments, late fees and administrative burdens associated with managing paper bills and payment due dates. And whereas auto pay options may also provide administrative efficiencies, improve payment compliance, increase the predictability of revenue collections and potentially provide financial benefits to the city through earlier or more consistent receipt of payments. And whereas many municipalities in Massachusetts offer residents the ability to enroll in recurring automatic payments for taxes, utility bills, and other municipal charges, now therefore be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we request that the mayor, finance director, treasurer, collector, and other appropriate staff evaluate and report on the feasibility of offering an automatic payment, auto pay option for city bills, including and not limited to real estate taxes, personal property taxes, and water and sewer bills. And be it further resolved that such a report include whether the city's current payment systems, vendors, and financial infrastructure support recurring automatic payments directly from residents, bank accounts, and or credit cards, any legal, administrative, technological, contractual, or financial barriers to implementing such a program, estimated implementation costs, and ongoing operational costs, and whether the city could realize an additional investment or interest income from voluntarily making, residents voluntarily making payments prior to statutory due dates, and if so, an estimate of such revenue. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. I'm tempted to table this. So I wrote this after going multiple times to the treasurer's office to pay my own property taxes, asking each time about auto pay options, being told multiple times that it was not possible, the city cannot do auto pay. And of course, talking to my bank, but I also then went to City Hall Systems. I went through the website where you can do electronic payment. I went to City Hall Systems. I signed up. There did not appear to me to be any way to set up auto payments for the city of Medford because as soon as I selected Medford that those auto payment things were missing. But the reason I'm tempted to table is because there is a resident who swears that they are auto paying through that system. So what I think I would like to do is to table this for now, but I will, I'm not, it's not a motion quite yet because I want to hear if there are any other comments. I will talk to the resident, I will talk to the staff because potentially if it is in fact possible, potentially what we really need is to request that the staff be retrained because residents should not, be asking about auto pay and told that it's impossible. So I may end up changing what this resolution says depending on a little bit of further research, but I do want to see what other city councilors have to say before I make a motion to table.
[Zac Bears]: Any further discussion by members of the council? Seeing none, do you have a motion?
[Anna Callahan]: I do move to table it.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to table by Councilor Callahan, seconded by? Seconded by Vice President Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malauulu? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng?
[Justin Tseng]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. And the affirmative, none the negative, the motion is tabled. 26-063 offered by Councilor Leming. Resolution to update the ordinance establishing the Medford Commission for Persons with Disabilities. be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we update the ordinance establishing the Medford Commission for Persons with Disabilities. There is ordinance language attached. I will recognize Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you everybody. Could you see my screen?
[Zac Bears]: Yes.
[Matt Leming]: Yes. All right. First off, thank you so much to the Commission for Persons with Disabilities for all their support and basically just ownership of drafting this ordinance. We already did have a city council meeting where we had a basic overview of what the updates to this ordinance were. Again, it is a project of theirs, so I'm very much just the conduit for that. For a high level overview for those tuning in for the 1st time, the update to this ordinance essentially just removes exclusionary language from the previous ordinance draft concerning drug use. It modernizes terminology, getting rid of terms like handicap in favor of disability or persons with disabilities and things like that. And it clarifies and positively defines the commission's role So, you know, gets rid of phrasing such as like, uh, like addressing problems of the, of the disabled, um, just to, uh, and just really attempts to really attempts to rephrase this by Sam, um, in a more, um, their role and the role of persons with disabilities in a more positive light. So it's things like that. The current draft, we got back from legal review from KP Law. And I do apologize to my colleagues that I didn't include a redline and commented version of this in the agenda. I think we're dealing with some I'd say some intermediate, like some intermittent troubles where there's insistence these days that legal review is confidential, privileged, and saying city councilors don't have the ability to waive that. But I'm just going to quickly go through here some of the red lines that are the difference between the previous draft of the ordinance that was originally submitted by the commission and the version that KP Law went through. Obviously, the date would need to be updated here. So this is the original date of submission. But all of it seems to be pretty routine things. It's just small things like changing refers to the means. There's a couple of places where KP law did go through and change it to be consistent with state law. Like, there's a comment here saying that Mass General Law C40 Section 8J sets a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 13 members. Whereas the original version of the ordinance said it will consist of not fewer than three. So there's just a couple of housekeeping items here that made it consistent with state law, which I'm in agreement with. Another instance of that is saying that it needs to meet a minimum, things like saying that they need to meet a minimum of 10 times a year instead of the six that was originally proposed in the ordinance right here, just because that's another piece of state law that was pointed out by KP. by Happy Law. And yeah, just other just other basic, basic things like defining, like defining acronyms and adding language and adding language here and there. So my personal recommendation for this, again, we've already gone through discussion of this ordinance. And my just initial assessment of this is that a lot of these changes are essentially kind of basic due diligence. I don't see there as being any particularly controversial changes here. So I would recommend, I would motion to pass it for a 1st reading. I would, I would not feel comfortable, even though I don't think the changes are that controversial. Waving the 3rd reading just because I do want to give. Francis's office and the commission time to kind of go through it themselves and just. Let us know if there's if there's just any any of these small changes are a little bit more a little bit more substantial than I initially than I initially gave it credit for. But I'm not seeing that right now, but again, that could be the case. So that's what I have. I'd be pleased to hear any comments from my colleagues, but yeah, my motion right now is to pass this for first reading.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Any comments by members of the council before we go to members of the public? Seeing none, thank you, Councilor Leming and thank you to the commission members for working on updating this ordinance. I really look forward to getting this done for our community. I think it's a very good update and I appreciate all the diligence that went into it. We will go to either members of the commission or members of the public who would like to speak on this item. You can come to the podium here in the chamber or raise your hand on Zoom. Give me one second. I see we have Nick from our office of DEI. Nick, I'll recognize you first as a member of our city staff.
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_02]: Good evening. Councilors and everyone, thank you so much for the opportunity. I just want to say thank you for your help in working towards passing this ordinance. Both the Office of DEI and the Commission are very excited to see this pass, and so thank you so much, and have a great night.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Nick, and thank you for all of your work and Frances' work to support the commission and for our residents with disabilities here in Medford. Are there any commission members who'd like to speak? All right. Hi, Anthony. A little bit to your right. Perfect.
[Anthony Andreottola]: Here we go. Hi, Anthony Antriadola, 75 Lawrence Road, Medford. I'd like to start off by thanking Councilor Leming for bringing this revised ordinance forward and thanking the city council for taking the time to allow us on the disability persons Commission for persons with disabilities to work on updating this ordinance. I think it's very important that we as a community update this ordinance and get it in effect as soon as possible just because of all the issues and modernization of our city and how the commission can better be utilized to kind of work with the community to ensure that the accessibility needs and the inclusion needs of the residents are met. addressed. I think it's very important that the commission be used to amplify the voice of the disabled community in changes that are happening in the city so things get done correctly the first time. And I hope that this process doesn't take too long and that by drawing some attention to the commission that the community will use us to to amplify their voice and to assure that the disabled community has not only a seat at the table, but a voice that can be heard and that we can plan for the future of our city together in a way that causes us to have pride in all our community members. And I thank you for your time and your efforts. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Anthony, and thank you to the commission. All right. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak on this update to the ordinance? Seeing none, on the motion of Councilor Leming to approve for first reading, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming.
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Maloney. Councilor Scapelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative and none in the negative, the motion passes. Thank you all. Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Motion to take papers 26133, 26091 and 26106 out of order.
[Zac Bears]: On the motion to suspend the rules to take papers 26133, 26091, and 26106 out of order, seconded by, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Malauulu? Yes. Councilor Scapelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? And President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. 26133 submitted by Mayor Brianna Lingo, current capital and general stabilization fund appropriation requests. July 9th, 2026, recapital and general stabilization fund appropriation requests. Dear president bears and members of the city councilors, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body approve appropriations from the capital stabilization fund and the amount of $571,550 and zero cents on the following items. Roberts hot water tank replacement for 250,000 interactive panels for classrooms, 180,000. address facilities condition assessment projects at schools for $75,000, defibrillator replacements at schools for $25,000, conceptual building study and construction cost estimate for Oak Grove building at $224,000. $1,550 and admin server replacement for $17,000. Given the appropriations made June 23rd, the balance of the capital stabilization fund before this vote is $13 million. General stabilization fund in the amount of $35,000 and 0 cents for an executive search for an end recruitment company to hire a new police chief, the balance of the general stabilization fund before this vote is $6 million. As the council knows, free cash is not available. at this time of year and where this is not a capital item, the only remaining source that's acceptable would be general stabilization. Small amounts out of this fund will not impact the city's bond rating. A school department, Medford Public Schools representative will be in attendance for items 1A through D. DPW Commissioner Tim McGovern will be in attendance for item 1E. IT Director Rich Lane will be in attendance for 1F. And Human Resources Director Lisa Crowley and Police Chief Jack Buckley will be in attendance for item 2. Thank you for your kind attention to these matters. Respectfully submitted Breanna Lungo-Koehn, Mayor. All right. We'll start off with the four schools items. I do see Ken Lord, the Chief of Operations for, Medford Public Schools is with us. Ken, I will recognize you to talk about the school's items.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yes, thank you, Chairman. So these are some items that were in our operations budget that we are requesting to move to the capital stabilization. This was an effort to reduce the school's overall budget to meet our budget needs. These are a variety of capital projects that we need to move forward with as soon as possible.
[Zac Bears]: Great, thank you. I am not seeing Commissioner McGivern here, so I will go to Director Lane, who I am seeing here, or was here. All right, I don't see him either, so I'll go to Lisa, Director Crowley. HR Director Crowley, I'm requesting that you unmute. all right hi lisa hi sorry about that my computer didn't want to work thank you uh do we have chief buckley is he available um i thought he was going to be on but i can't see all the names he's not as far as i can tell so do you want to wait for him and i can go to rich lane or um
[Lisa Crowley]: I can answer any questions that you have. If the chief comes on, he can chime in.
[Zac Bears]: Sure. So this is for the search for executive search and recruitment company to hire a new police chief. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?
[Lisa Crowley]: Sure. So as you may or may not know, or by now you do, our police chief Buckley is retiring at the end of the year. And in order for us to find the best qualified candidate to replace him, we would request him to do a national search with a search company. Typically, this is a position that we would go outside to try to fill. It's going to take a lot of time, at least four months to find somebody. And it's not something that my office could handle on its own. However, we will be the point of contact and we will be involved in every phase of the process. Pretty much there's like four or five phases that we typically go through for a position like this. that we would do that we believe is most appropriate for the city of Medford. We do some type of announcement or when I say we it's really the company that will organize all this and then. develop a brochure that's specific to Medford that would go out to all the qualified candidates. Then once that piece is done, that takes a few weeks. We would do some advertising. They would do candidate recruitment and outreach. They will also vet all the candidates, do background checks, make sure that they have the qualifications that we believe are necessary to be the police chief for the city of Medford. They would weed out anybody who applies that may not have specific requirements, such as maybe civil service experience and items like that. aside from all the state requirements that you need to be to be a police chief of the state of massachusetts they will do all the candidate evaluations and screenings they'll do all the pre-screenings they will coordinate with the candidates reaching out to neighbors and prior employment and go through that background process. Once they vet down to a certain number of candidates that we believe, then we would want to set up search our own committees. We would have members of the administration. There may be members of different groups. That would be something that we would have to discuss as a group at the administration level and then work with this company to make sure that they're reaching out to everybody and setting up these subcommittees so that they can kind of go through a vetting process of what is important for the city of Medford. At that point, once we get down to a selected few, they would do a further background check to make sure if there's anything else from when they started the process to when they get to that final step. You know, nothing in between has happened. They'll do that final vetting. And then we would go through having them work with the city, work with the mayor's office, and finally come up with a finalized candidate to take the position. So it's an extensive process. It does take several months to conduct. And again, we're reaching out to companies that do this. This is their jobs. They find police chiefs, fire chiefs. They've worked with cities like Brockton and Gloucester and Somerville and Cambridge. So most of the bigger cities and cities of our size would go this route to hire a new police chief.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Thank you, Councilor. We have questions from Councilors. Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you, Director Crowley. I was wondering, you know, as councillors, we work a lot with the police chief. on numerous policies, on providing, being essentially a liaison between residents and the police department. Many residents also reach out to us on matters that surround policing. Some are hot button issues, but a lot of them are just understanding our community better and making sure that the police chief is seeing everything that we're seeing as well. I was curious. where in the process will Councilors be able to provide input in the hiring of the next police chief, if you could answer that.
[Lisa Crowley]: Yep, that's a great question. And again, we're just in the initial stages, so I don't know where any of the interview process is going to fit into the grand scheme of things. But I think once we hire a company and have a contract with that company, we would sit with them and the mayor's office and come up with You know, after the initial groups are vetted, who is going to be on what committee and who may participate? I don't have a good answer for you yet because we're not really at that point. But I'm certain that those are discussions that we'll have once we know who we are going to have do the search for us. I just don't know where in the process that will fall.
[Zac Bears]: All right, Councilor Malauulu.
[Liz Mullane]: Thank you, Director Crowley. Just a quick question. In terms of the executive search firm, have you already identified a couple of firms you're looking at? Can you just walk us through what that process looks like, what you're looking for in terms of that executive search and recruitment firm? I see you already have, obviously, the 35,000, so it seems like you may have a ballpark of what you're looking for in terms of the full range of services they're going to be providing you.
[Lisa Crowley]: Sure, of course. So we worked with, we put out a bid to four different companies that actually do this work in this area. The chief had, received a name from one of our other communities that they had used. We reached out to Somerville and Newton to see who they used and what we've done is we sent out a request for them to submit proposals and they have already done so. We have interviewed those four, actually we interviewed three of the four companies and now we're at the point where we want to make a decision on who we want to move forward with. We want to make sure that they were able to, first of all, do the search within a short time because although it seems like the five months is a long time, it's really not. Sometimes it takes longer. We want to make sure they had the capacity to actually take on Medford and that they weren't working with too many other communities at this time. We need to make sure that they're within budget and we want to make sure that their understanding of what method is all about and what method needs and what Medford is looking for and achieve that they're going to be able to accomplish that. We've looked at different communities again that these three companies have worked with and now we just have to make the decision.
[Liz Mullane]: Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I just want to finish out this paper and then we'll go to public comment after that. I will go to any more questions for Director Crowley on section part two of the proposal. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. Just a question to the Director. Are we still waiting for confirmation from the state for this position to even go this route? It still hasn't been cleared to the straight, I've been told.
[Lisa Crowley]: So I don't want to misspeak because I'm not 100% sure, but I was under the impression that that has already been forwarded to the state and that it is something that is being reviewed now. Therefore, once that gets passed, we can move forward with this process. But I think the mayor's office may be better suited to answer that question. I don't want to misspeak on that.
[George Scarpelli]: So Mr. President, if this hasn't been moved forward yet and hasn't been approved. I don't know why we would approve any funding for it, so.
[Zac Bears]: This is the home rule petition that we approved about six months ago?
[George Scarpelli]: We have, but it hasn't been. I know, but it hasn't been.
[Zac Bears]: Right, but the state house hasn't yet.
[George Scarpelli]: Right, so until we get that approval, I wouldn't, I don't feel comfortable voting for it, so thank you.
[Zac Bears]: All right, thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. All right, let's go to the admin server replacement for $17,000. We have Rich Lane. Rich, could you tell us what this is?
[Rich Lane]: I can. Basically, you know, the admins run basically our financial package for the whole city, so all of our finance is done. We're looking to move away from that. We're evaluating other products, other projects. So the problem is, you think once you get a new product, you just go on to that. Well, obviously, we have to keep historical records. And it's going to be a five-year, at least, project to get to a new platform. Where we're at right now, the server's end of life. So given that if something happens to it, no alternative out of the scramble and figure out what to do. I'd rather replace it now and it'll carry us past the time getting onto the new platform and then it'll be sort of like historical read-only for audits and trending and things like that. So now's probably the time to do it versus waiting for something to happen and break and, you know, be concerned about getting parts and replacement and what do we do in the meantime because everybody basically in any every department uses this every day. not everybody in every department, but everybody that they have in Smiley House.
[Zac Bears]: All right, thank you. Do we have any questions for Director DeLayne? All right. Seeing none, do we have Commissioner McGivern either in person or on Zoom? I'm not seeing him, so it sounded like approving paper part 1A, B, C, D and F and tabling 1E and 2. Is that the general consensus I'm picking up here? I'm seeing some nods. All right. We'll go to public participation on this item and then we will come back for the motion. First, we'll go to the podium. in the chamber. Give me one second. If you could give your name and city for the record, and then you'll have three minutes.
[Simon Alcindor]: All right. Simon Alcindor, Medford. I was just curious for item two. I know it was mentioned that most other comparable cities go through this outside search process. I was just curious why Medford is choosing to do this specifically rather than promoting from within or anything of that nature. Oh, OK. That was my only question. That's it.
[Zac Bears]: I'm not sure exactly why. The mayor did propose about six months ago that this move from civil service to being a non-civil service position and said that was negotiated with the police officers. Yeah. All right. We'll go to Zoom. We have Mr. Castanedi. Name and address for the record, please. And you'll have, or name and city for the record, you'll have three minutes. I'm requesting that you unmute.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Yeah, just a question. Probably repeating the gentleman before me. Generally speaking, we usually choose a new chief from within the ranks. I'm wondering if the city is ready, willing, and able to pick a new police chief from within our department. That's all.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Yeah, you would have to ask the mayor. This is her decision. All right, and we'll go back to the podium, name and address, and you'll have three minutes.
[Ralph Klein]: Ralph Klein, 172 Park Street in Medford. I'm wondering why we are going out of the city. And if they do go outside the city and have this search done, will the Medford police officers or surrounding communities go to the top of the pile to be looked at ahead of everybody else? Because these people have worked to get promoted and worked their way up the ranks. They've been in Medford, they know Medford. I think it's crazy. I don't wanna see the same fiasco we went through with the fire chief and that whole thing, the civil service and not, and I can do this and I can do that. I mean, it's crazy what you're doing. I think you should wait and find out what the rule is before you appropriate any money for any search until you know what the rule is and what everything's going on. Nobody's answered any questions tonight. There's really no answer.
[Zac Bears]: We're planning to table it and the decision this was put before us by the mayor, we don't have any more information than you have and what you heard tonight.
[Ralph Klein]: I know, but until we have more information or you have more information, I think you should table it.
[Zac Bears]: We are planning to do that.
[Ralph Klein]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you. Just so the public knows, This negotiation was part of a process with the rank and file. They actually, the police officers are the one that said, we'll settle this contract if you do this, this, and this. So they're the ones that put it out there. I personally wouldn't have, but.
[Ralph Klein]: But my question is, are they generally just removed because of this action?
[George Scarpelli]: In other words, can an officer who's in the Benford Police Department- No, no, I don't think any, I think it'll be open for everybody. It's an option to open it up for everybody. So our officers will still have an opportunity.
[Ralph Klein]: Okay, I want to make sure that's in there.
[George Scarpelli]: You won't be locked out, so.
[Ralph Klein]: Like I say, these officers who work in the city, they know the city better than anybody else. So to see them move up, not be removed just because we're going through a big process. of looking around, and like I say, the fiasco with the fire chief.
[George Scarpelli]: I remember.
[Ralph Klein]: I know you all do. And that's why I'm up here.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you.
[Ralph Klein]: Thank you very much.
[Zac Bears]: We'll stay at the podium. Naaman City, you'll have three minutes.
[Micah Kesselman]: Michael Kesselman, 499 Main Street, Medford. Yeah, I just want to to remind people, because of the questions we just had, Councilor Scarpelli answered them just a minute ago. But yeah, to be clear, the mayor petitioned to remove this seat from civil service requirements, what, six months ago, like you guys were saying, and it is pending approval at the state legislature. But I do think it's worth, recognizing that this highlights an issue with that, which I pointed out then and continue to be vocal about this, that effectively this converts the chief of police into an at will employment position, which in terms of the executive authority and power that the mayor has in this city has some ramifications and repercussions and it's not like a great thing. So I mean, whether or not the, police union was cool with it, like great, I don't, few other unions, few unions I care as less about than the police union, but. There's some real practical concerns for just the way that our city government is managed by having this seat not regulated as a civil service position. And I think that the confusion and concerns here tonight really highlight that. Such that it's a possibility, I really encourage the city to revisit that decision and maybe not go through with it and have further conversations with the staff and the working folks over at the police station to see what, you know, why. So, yeah.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no more comment on the motion of Councilor Tseng seconded by councilor Scarpelli to approve 1A, B, C, D, and F, and table 1E and 2. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Milling? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, 70 affirmative, none negative. The motion passes. So items 1A, B, C, D and F are approved. Items 1E and 2 are tabled. We have 26091 and 26106 from unfinished business. 26091, amendment to personal ordinance assistant network administrator. In council approved for first reading May 12th, 2026, advertised June 25th and July 2nd, Medford Transcript and Somerville Journal. In city council, July 14th, eligible for third reading. Is there a motion? On the motion to approve for third reading, amendment to personal ordinance assistant network administrator by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Vice President Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilman Layton? Councilor Scapelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. I have the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. 26106, Amendment to Personnel Ordinance, Tree Warden. Same information, it's eligible for third reading July 14th, 2026. Is there a motion on the motion to approve for third reading by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Vice President Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[Zac Bears]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Council Malone? Yes. Council Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes and 26091 and 26106 are ordained. All right. That brings us back to the regular order of business. Communications from the Mayor, 26125 submitted by Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. Main Street order to acquire easements, order of taking, and order of alteration of layout. We do have our Assistant City Engineer, Sarah Schatz, here with us with an eight-slide presentation, I think, so. Yeah. Okay. Would you like to be tabled for a bit? Okay. We'll take as long as we can, but yes. Great. Thanks. At the request of the Assistant City Engineer, can we table this until later in the meeting? On the motion to table until later in the meeting by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callaghan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming.
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Mullane. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro. Yes. And President Pierce.
[Zac Bears]: Yes. Having the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. We'll go to 26130 Board and Commission Appointments. We have the Board and Commission Appointment for the Hormel Stadium Commission, Ryan O'Keefe. Submission date, 7-8-2026. Do we have any discussion of the appointment? Seeing none, on the motion to approve by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Mulvane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly. Councilor Leming?
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Millan? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng?
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Paris?
[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. 2613N, submitted by Mayor Brandon Lungo-Koehn, fiscal year 2026, year-end transfers. We have Director Dickinson here with us to talk about the year-end transfers. We did get a revised paper from Director Dickinson today. It looks like there was a $10 difference in the election salaries, $6,000 difference in the building salaries. A couple other changes, I'm not going to try to do a red line in my head, so I'll just let you let us know what changed. Director Dickinson.
[Bob Dickinson]: Hi, everyone. As usual, there are some appropriation deficits that we need to cover at the end of the year, especially these days with the budgets being extremely tight. This year was a little bit more problematic than it has been in prior years. But I believe we've managed to cover everything. Here's some highlights on that. Elections, salaries, that's over time, partly, and also there was a... Journal entry mistake made last August where expenses that should have been booked to 2025 were actually booked to 2026. So at that point, we had closed the books and could not correct that. It was about $35,000. Little things, building expenses. Well, we can start at the top. Finance expenses, we have a consultant working on receivables reconciliation and cash reconciliations. That's been extremely helpful. Getting everybody up to speed, the assistant finance director and the receivables reconciliation has been an audit finding for the last couple of years. And I think we've finally nipped that in the bud, so we should be good there. I don't know why Rich's salary went over. It was $500. In any event, we talked about elections, building expenses, that's extra phone bills that we had. Police salaries, that's a big one. Obviously, the contract settled. We covered the retro pay with existing funds and free cash. But obviously, the budget for police salaries for fiscal 2026 couldn't accommodate the cumulative raise. So we needed to do that one. Parking expenses. Unfortunately, parking had extra money in salaries because that's IPS, G-Techno, pay by phone. Those are the electronic processing for all of the parking meters. So if people actually pay us more for parking, we have to pay them a bigger amount. But in net, that's a good thing. So that's one. Fire salaries. Overtime is a big problem there. The overtime budget was over by $750,000 on a budget of $1.8 million. So obviously that's something that we have to cover. We need firemen. We have to have them. But anyway, it was things that we had to do.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Sorry, can I interrupt you just for one second before we move on to all the rest of this stuff?
[Bob Dickinson]: Sure.
[Emily Lazzaro]: How much did we budget for overtime for fire for this fiscal year?
[Bob Dickinson]: $1.8 million.
[Emily Lazzaro]: That's what we budgeted for the coming fiscal year?
[Bob Dickinson]: Oh, for the coming fiscal year. I don't actually have the breakdown
[Emily Lazzaro]: I think I remember. I think it's like 1.9 we budgeted for. Yeah. Yeah. But how much did we go over?
[Bob Dickinson]: Last year. We should play the theme to Jeopardy while we're doing this. Over time, we budgeted 1.8. It came in at 2.557.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Did we make any changes that would mitigate that happening again?
[Bob Dickinson]: Well, I think we would have to talk to have meetings with the chief.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Did you have any meetings with the chief?
[Bob Dickinson]: We have not yet had meetings with the chief. Sorry, I'm confused.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay, so we budgeted Last year, $1.8 million. We spent $2.55 million. This year, we budgeted $1.9 million with no plan to not spend $2.55 million again for overtime for the fire department.
[Bob Dickinson]: I think we will be addressing this in the future. It came kind of as a shock to me. In the last full week of June, the fire department booked $80,000. in overtime for one week?
[Emily Lazzaro]: My understanding is some of the firehouses have only one or two more staff members than are required to be at each fire station at a time on staff available. So if people go on vacation at the end of June when kids get out of school, It's probably hard to staff that station to the required level. So probably a lot of people have to come in when they're over their allotted amount of time. So that's probably why they would have accounted up to $80,000 in overtime and not for any other reason. Would be my guess. I just want to.
[Zac Bears]: At $2.5 million, it's also averaging $50,000 a week in overtime. Yeah.
[Emily Lazzaro]: So are we, is the plan for next year to just do this again, over and over?
[Bob Dickinson]: Obviously, I would prefer not to. We will be trying to address this. As you'll see, the next item is, yet again, fire expenses. That's also, those are also over budget. That's professional services, especially medical exams for injured firemen, I believe. So that's, that's, uh, sorry.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh, injured firemen. Yeah. When you're, um, working more than the normal amount of time, is it more likely that you would get injured?
[Bob Dickinson]: Uh, I would assume so. I am not, and I, you know, I'm, I'm not the fire chief, so I couldn't really tell you, but we will definitely be looking at that coming forward.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Bob, could you pick up the mic and put it on the higher shelf?
[Bob Dickinson]: I'm sorry I'm so tall.
[Emily Lazzaro]: You should be. That's OK. Sometimes I say things in one meeting, and I think it's likely or possible that people are not in attendance at the meeting where I might have said something similar. But I want to say it again here, that I think that the only way we can avoid excessive expenses in the fire department, and not because the concern is that it's too expensive to run a fire department, but that it's dangerous, it's inefficient, it's less safe, and it's more expensive for the city to run the fire department this way. The only way that we can avoid this in the future is by hiring more people to work in the fire department. And that I know that there are more firefighters wanting to work in Medford. and that we're just not offering those positions to them. So I think that this is a strange way to pay for a fire department that is getting more injured and more burnt out faster. And we could solve this problem. We know exactly how to solve this problem. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: All right, Bob, just while we're on the fire, why was there so much in DPW that was available for this?
[Bob Dickinson]: Well, it's kind of accounting magic. We were unable to fund the snow and ice deficit. On the recap, like we usually do, so we used free cash to do that, but we have to fund the entire amount of the snow and ice deficit.
[Zac Bears]: And that left a fair amount of money, obviously, in DPW highway that we could then... So we budgeted for snow and ice deficit for fiscal 26, but then we had a lot more snow than we thought, so we paid it with free cash, which left that money in the DPW budget.
[Bob Dickinson]: Right. Yes. We basically, in DPW, highway we re-injected roughly 1.3 million dollars which left a fair amount of money that we could then transfer at this point into other departments to cover the deficits there. So not my favorite way of doing things but It's basically the option that I did have. So we covered snow and ice that left money in DPW highway because we have to raise, we have to cover the entire snow and ice deficit, which as I said was roughly $1.35 million and that left.
[Zac Bears]: So why, it sounds like we though maybe appropriated more free cash than was needed if it's still available.
[Bob Dickinson]: Well, my understanding is that if we're going to cover the snow and ice deficit, we need to cover the whole Department 423 deficit, which at the time was 1.35 million. So we used free cash for that. But then the way we vote DPW Highway, it's five different departments. So having that, those other departments then had excess money because of how we voted that.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, how much did we, so we, let me see if I can get this right. We spent $1.3 million on snow and ice removal in fiscal 26.
[Bob Dickinson]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: And in the fiscal 26 budget, we appropriated some amount of funds for snow and ice.
[Bob Dickinson]: Yes, 275 I think it was. 275.
[Zac Bears]: And then, but we then used free cash to pay all of the snow and ice. So it's really the 1.3 plus the 275 is how much was. Yes, that's what snow and ice cost this year. All right, and so the 275.
[Bob Dickinson]: I'm hoping for a calm winter next winter.
[Zac Bears]: Yes, but so the 275 was essentially What you're saying is because of how the state allows the deficit funding for snow and ice deficits to work. If we were paying that out of free cash, we had to use all free cash for that. And that means that the original money that we appropriated for snow and ice was in the DPW budget after we funded the snow and ice deficit.
[Bob Dickinson]: Well, the budget, the DPW budget was Essentially what that meant is that the turnbacks from the other departments, 421, 422, 431, I have them here, 422, 429, 430, and 433 had surpluses. And that's voted as one budget. So when we took out the deficit in 423, those other departments had surpluses. Does that make sense? I know it's a very complicated spreadsheet, quite frankly.
[Zac Bears]: I guess I'm just wondering what were the surpluses? Was it that we didn't have people in jobs? Why were the turnbacks? $300,000 and $500,000.
[Bob Dickinson]: I have not investigated that, I'm afraid. I will look into that and perhaps talk with our DPW director on why that is.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. All right. Let's come back to fire, although it looks like Tim is maybe getting up to say something. The table does move out, you know. Tim, could you kind of come give some clarity on this question? Sure. So why was there $520,000 in surplus in the DPW budget? Sure.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks, mine's super related. Just want to make sure that salaries is part of that. I understand the expenses, but how do salaries fit into that?
[Tim McGivern]: If we budgeted for a salary, but we didn't hire someone for that position, that's going to be in that surplus, I think. Is that what they're asking?
[Bob Dickinson]: I believe so, yes.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, OK, right. So like at the end of the year, if we didn't hire somebody for a position and it was an $80,000 position, then that money is left over. So it would be a surplus at the end of the year, for example. We did have a lot of that. I don't have a full explanation for you, but I could spend some time and try to figure it out with Bob.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, it's just it's a lot of your, you know, once you take the trash contract out, it's a big chunk. 500,000 on your budget is not, it's pretty significant. It's 325 in salary and then another 195 in expenses that we budgeted for that didn't get spent. So.
[Tim McGivern]: Sure.
[Zac Bears]: Just trying to wonder, it seems like we know why the fire needs the money, which is they went way over on overtime and they had a bunch of professional services expenses that were uncovered. But it just seemed interesting that all of that was coming from your side of things.
[Tim McGivern]: Sure, I know we didn't spend enough on line painting because we couldn't get The line contractor in as much as we wanted, so that's a six-figure number right there. So that would be part of that. I'm just trying to think of big things. And then salary, that would be the big, so open positions.
[Zac Bears]: How many open positions were, like there was like $325,000 worth?
[Tim McGivern]: At any given time, there's like five or six open positions in the DPW. So if each one of those is worth, you know, $50,000, $60,000, it adds up pretty quick. Yeah. All right.
[Bob Dickinson]: And just the relative numbers, the DPW budget for 2026 was over 15 million dollars. So.
[Zac Bears]: Right. But like 10 of that is the trash contract, right? 8.8 or 9 point something. Yes.
[Bob Dickinson]: A lot of that is trash.
[Zac Bears]: So it's like 10 percent of the salaries and ordinary expenses if you, once you take the waste management contract out. It seems like I'm, these are my questions, I'm satisfied. I'll go to Councilor Scarpelli and then Vice President Lazzaro, or at least I understand more. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Mr. President, I'm not too satisfied. I think this is so, it's like who's on first. So much is coming at us right now. Is there a timeline that we have to have this voted on? This paper?
[Bob Dickinson]: It needs to be voted on by tomorrow.
[George Scarpelli]: This is, see this is, There are so many questions I have that honestly, bringing it up right now, bringing up the director of DPW, he's not here for this. Questions that I had, understanding the salaries and understanding not filling positions and then understanding the roles we have and understanding where those positions and maybe creating positions that we can make here that we're not, because we can't find contractors or whatnot. There's so many questions I have going in my mind right now. And the fact that we're giving this and have to be voted in by tomorrow. This isn't the way to do business. It just isn't the way to do business. It's just, you know, it's bad when you sit up here and you work for another municipality and you see what other sides do and how efficient and we see when proper information gets put out there. It's very frustrating. When you come up here and we ask a question, unfortunately, you're not prepared for that question because you know we're going to ask the question, but then you don't know the answer and then the whole idea is we're left with Monies that, it seems like, it's like, let's bit in peace, because I mean, even the fact that we talked about retro, and we're taking money out of somewhere else to pay retro, where you would normally put retro in a certain fund, knowing that it's coming up. And we don't do that. I mean, there's so many other questions. I mean, staffing-wise, we're seeing the lack of staff. Departments come to the podium every year, time after time, talk about how we need staff, but we can't afford it. But then we come to this paper, and you're like, well, we didn't spend this money. It's just so frustrating. And again, My frustration comes out to the wrong people, and I apologize for that. But I tell you, Mr. President, I'm not voting on anything. I'm not voting on another money paper. This is ridiculous. We need to vote on it tomorrow.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. To clarify, I'm not satisfied with the answer. I get it. Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. The things that I am frustrated about in this paper is that we just finished last month, at great expense, if your time is worth something, which mine is, really digging into the budget. And if we're going to do this, then the budget doesn't mean anything. If you've made a budget, that means that the intention This is not you guys. This is not you guys. You just happen to be here. If you've made a budget, it means that your intention is to spend money in a certain way. And then if you're just going to take all the stuff that's left over and you're going to put it somewhere else where something came up, just that's completely unrelated, because money is money and it's all just a big pile of money. You have to have a balanced budget and you're winning awards for the budget book. I mean, truly, it makes me feel like this elected position is being disrespected. It makes me feel like the time spent is being disrespected and that all of the things that we are trying to achieve in which we argue that the budget is a representation of our values, that we are saying that the money that we spend and the way that we allocate funds is an expression of what we value and how we care about things. And money should be spent the way we say it should be spent because we are elected to do this. This is one of the major things that we do as a body. So if you just take stuff and you just give it to something else at the end of the year with no time, for people to see it, for the public to understand, and with no explanation. I just don't think it's fair. I don't think it's reasonable. I don't think it's a respectful way to spend public funds. I understand why it has to be done, but especially with the fire department stuff, and especially it's kind of a slap in the face, guys, that there's the position for the city clerk's salary of $35,000 that just gets put into election salaries. Like, we know what that position is. It wasn't posted. It just wasn't posted. That was the position we wanted to fill here, and it just didn't happen. So you're just going to take it and put it somewhere else? And it's, now it's like not even, I can't, like the, like, it feels like thrown together. It feels last minute. It feels disrespectful. I'm, especially the fire department stuff, because the next year has already happened and we have done nothing to solve a thing that we know is already happening. We know what's happening. Why are we doing a budget? Why do we even do a budget? What is the point? I could have been doing so many other things. Thank you for presenting this paper to me. I am sorry for yelling.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I just, what happens if it's not approved?
[Bob Dickinson]: If it's not approved, all of the deficits have to be reserved, so they're a hit to free cash, and we also have to raise them on the recap. And right now, there isn't room on the recap to raise these deficits. There just isn't. The reality of the situation is that Budgets are very tight. Budgets are going to be very, very tight next year too. You know, a lot of these things, maybe there's, maybe, a lot of these things happen to a certain extent aren't predictable. And usually, usually, well, yes, but usually, usually there's extra money to put into the budgets to cover emergency situations. We simply don't have that money. We don't have it.
[Zac Bears]: I know you're not here to answer this question, but are you aware of a revenue generation plan by the mayor to get us the money so that, you know, how are we doing on new growth? I don't know what the... It just seems like you guys get sent down here to basically say there's no plan, the city has no plan, everything's really tight, you know, we're trying our best. And if you guys say we're unsatisfied, if the council says that we're not satisfied with that answer, then we're kind of screwed, like logistically. And I don't want to make your life harder, Bob, but I think there's a reason we get the end of year transfers usually with the budget. So that we're not on the day before the deadline. And like for me, I have one very specific concern here. I get what Councilor, Vice President Lazzaro is saying. It seems like fire had a problem and they're going to continue to have a problem because there's a generally like an approach that's not working. Workers comp is really high but like my question and it's for Tim is like I was just looking at the fire but it looks like we're taking like over a million dollars from your budget, maybe like 1.2 million, like 20, 25% of the non-trash contract DPW budget to cover other stuff. And that seems like, you know, a really significant, that seems like something where there should be a little bit more of an understanding as to, you know, if it was just all those positions were vacant for that much time, you know, that's one thing. But there's, you know, $87,000 in the parks expenses, you know, $500,000 in highway expenses. I just think that if an end-of-year transfer is coming in and basically saying that the DPW spent, like, 20% less than it was budgeted for this year, that should come with more of an explanation as to why that happened. And especially, I mean, it's hard for you to do, like, live right now without having us time to ask you that question. And if we had been able to ask it three weeks ago, we wouldn't be asking it the night before it needs to be approved. And so that's just a big question for me. I guess I hadn't fully captured the scope of just how much is getting transferred from DPW and understanding why there was such a significant surplus and underspent in the DPW budget. In addition to the points that my fellow Councilors have made. So I don't know if you guys want to talk about that, but it sounds like there's some general discomfort with going forward here and I want to, yeah. I'd like to try to get to somewhere that's not that, given what you said. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So I do want to just state that, like, City budgets are big, end of year transfers are relatively normal in some amount, in small amounts, because sometimes you can't always hire a person and so that, but you know, you can't predict exactly what the budget is going to be, so this is a normal process. But the amounts, I also like President Bears and Vice President Lazzaro. The two things that I noticed the most were the fact that we spend so much in overtime instead of hiring for the fire department. And then I did highlight that all of these items are coming out of DPW. And to me, I would love to sort of, that seems to open up a little bit of a deeper question, which is maybe there is some reason why we were unable to hire to those positions. And I would love to understand a little bit more about that. Is it because they aren't paid enough? Like, is it a compensation problem? What is happening? If that's the primary, I understand that there's also the snow and ice, and that does make sense, but that's, you know, whatever, $275,000 or however much it was, it's relatively small compared to the total amount being taken out, and it's the reason I asked specifically about salaries. You know, I've been pushing for a long time to spend more in the DPW, to spend more on our roads. I think it would save our city money in the long run. just like hiring more. you know, people in the fire department would also save us in the long run. We wouldn't be spending so much on overtime. We would be spending on salaries instead. So I would just love to get a little bit of a better understanding, and I think probably this is also what President Bears was mentioning, of what is the difficulty? Why have we been unable to hire? Why have we had so many open positions in DPW that it leaves this budget unspent? Thanks.
[Zac Bears]: If you guys have any answers to Councilor Callahan's questions.
[Bob Dickinson]: I do not know why the fire department has not been able to. I know it's a long process to actually hire new fire and police officers, but I don't know what the holdup is or how much that would alleviate this problem.
[Zac Bears]: Tim, do you have anything on the, larger questions around why there's so much surplusage?
[Tim McGivern]: I mean, I can generally speak about it. I haven't had time to have time to look at this. Sure. But I think salary is a big one. We have open positions pretty regularly in the DBW. especially when we added more positions and then you have this effect where you have to backfill positions. So it becomes, I think I spoke to you guys a lot about it. We had like three positions just in highway perpetually open for a year and a half because we were promoting internally, so that's what happens. We had an empty engineering office for about a year, so those are salaries that didn't get paid to people, but they were in the budget. The line painting contract, again, that's probably six figures worth of money that we didn't spend because we couldn't get the line painting contractor in here. This is just off the cuff, this is live, me thinking about things. So I don't know what the value I'm up to already is, but it's $300,000, $400,000, just me speaking about it here. Granted, the DBW budget, which is $42, $43 million, whatever it is, 20 of that is water that we buy, and then 9 or 10 is solid waste. But we're still a much larger order of magnitude than a lot of the other budgets in the city. So I think it can make some of these numbers look bigger than they are comparatively to the DPW budget as a whole. And I know we spent a lot in snow and ice this year. I think you guys might have been talking about that before I got up here, but over a million dollars just in snow and ice. So that probably factors in. Maybe you already thought of that. So anyway, anything else I think that I would have to have some time to look at it with Bob and really dissect it, but that's what I have to offer you today.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Yeah, I mean, for me, I'd really like to see, I mean, if it sounds reasonable to you that there was like $500,000, $600,000 in salaries across the general fund DPW departments that was unspent, and if it sounds reasonable that there was, you know, about 600, 650,000 in just highway expenses that didn't get spent. It's just a lot of money.
[Tim McGivern]: Sure.
[Zac Bears]: And, you know, I hear what you're saying, it's a huge budget, but, you know, you take out the enterprise fund, you take out the trash contract, it's like five and a half.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah.
[Zac Bears]: And it's, and it's a, you know, a million of that. So it's a big chunk of what's left after you take all of that out.
[Tim McGivern]: Sure, yeah, we're left with $13 or $14 million or something like that in total. Like I said, I'd have to take a close look, but I will say that when we prepare the budget, we prepare it with the idea that this is what we think we are going to spend and this is what we would like to spend. And then it doesn't always pan out. I will tell you, by perpetually for the whole year, not perpetually, but for the whole year, having down a couple of folks in that means we can't spend as much out of the expense account because we don't have that many people. So it took a while to get the hirings in place so we could spend the money on the gas, the money on the trucks, the money on the asphalt, the money on the concrete. So if you think of a salary, $80,000, $90,000, $70,000, $80,000, somewhere in there, plus another 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 for material costs. Again, I'd have to do the math and probably sit down with Bob a little bit and do the math. We're already starting to get up to those numbers now. I can't tell you if I'm like, again, this is live on the spot. I can't tell you if I'm comfortable with it. All I can tell you is that a six-figure number that has a five in front of it, that's for salaries, that doesn't seem crazy to me based off of the open position history that we had in the last year. So, okay.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you so. I appreciate everything that Tim is saying. I think we have had the conversation about staffing in the DPW a couple of different times in different council and budget hearings, and I don't want to put I don't want to put Commissioner McGivern in a spot where you know he has to kind of think of these things on the spot, but I would be interested in just getting a bit more of a thorough write-up when He's had what you know when he's had a bit of time to like, you know think about it sit down with Bob and Owen just about how many vacancies there have been in the DPW over the past couple of years and the likely reasons for those. I'm just interested in understanding this a little bit more and kind of not, you know, like not putting people in a spot where they have to kind of think of a lot of different reasons off the cuff. So I would appreciate That report if we could we could get a follow-up from that be willing to put that in the form of a motion, but I I'd also just be you know, if if tim has time to do that, I'd you know, I just appreciate kind of like a Handshake thing in this council meeting where you know, we could just we could just get a write-up about that because it is something i'm interested in the other The, the other thing just real quick question to Bob through the chair. I heard a couple of heard a couple of different numbers thrown around and I may have missed it in the conversation. How can you clarify and just repeat again how much. How many of these transfers, estimated dollar amount, are due to the high amount of snow we've had this year? I heard a million, I heard 200-something thousand. I just want a brief quantification of how much money was due to something that we couldn't, you know, a weather event.
[Bob Dickinson]: Well, the snow and ice deficit was, I think it was $1.35 million. And that, again, was covered with free cash. That's on top of the 200 and whatever, the $275,000 budget for snow and ice. So is that what you're looking for? The numbers that I managed to, you know, get out of, at that point, the turnbacks, I'm looking at the spreadsheet, the turnbacks from DPW totaled about $900,000, which I then gleefully stole from Tim to cover other deficits.
[Zac Bears]: Right. I don't think the explanation is super clear on what happened there. Is it just, I don't want to belabor it to be honest, and I don't know how the vote's going to go. I really think going forward, we need to have a better explanation and or we need to have this paper earlier to Councilor Leming's point. I don't think we're putting Tim in the position of coming up with these on the spot. I think the mayor's administration is putting Tim in the position of coming up with these on the spot because Bob says we have to approve this tomorrow or we're messing up the entire recap for the next fiscal year. So, you know, that's really what happened. I just think if we're talking about $900,000 in turnbacks, that we should have a clear explanation coming to us or this needs to come with us to us three weeks ago so that we can say we don't have the information we need. Can you come back with it? Because now we're in the position of screwing over the finance office if we don't approve something where we don't have all the information that we need. So, and I don't understand enough about the, what you're saying about the recap to, to know whether or not, I mean, it sounds like it creates extra work for you. Does it also impact the city's fiscal position?
[Bob Dickinson]: Yeah, unfortunately, yes.
[Zac Bears]: How does it impact the city's fiscal position?
[Bob Dickinson]: Well, I don't think that we can cover all these deficits by raising them on the recap.
[Zac Bears]: So how would they be covered? How would they be covered if we didn't do end-of-year transfers?
[Bob Dickinson]: We would have to, essentially we'd have to put together a new budget for 2027. A whole new budget? A whole new budget, yes.
[Zac Bears]: That's crazy. All right. Council Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I think it's important that we look at why we are facing this conversation right now, and it can't be the city council torpedoed the whole budget because of this one paper about these little year-end transfers. It has to be that the mayor tried to slide in these year-end transfers that have nothing to do with anything and ignore how you're supposed to do money for a city. And that tanked the whole budget that we spent months talking about. It cannot be, the conversation cannot be that because we asked a few follow-up questions, the whole budget fell apart because we had one day. There has to be a backup plan, Bob.
[Bob Dickinson]: At this point, these are the deficits I'm looking at in admins. This is what the departments have spent. So we've been trying to, we've been getting people to close their POs. Part of the reason that it's been hard to put this together is to make the departments actually understand that you know, we are at the end of the year. We need to have all those things dealt with. But these are the deficits that I'm looking at, so I have to cover them somehow.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Sorry. Yeah. Through the chair. The fact that Nina's not here, the fact that the mayor's not here, these are responsibilities of the leadership of City Hall to have directed department heads to do this stuff earlier. It's not the responsibility of the City Council to like retroactively be instructing department heads to have cleared this stuff up. It's just not. I mean, I don't understand why the obligation wasn't, oh, make sure you convince city council that these are good transfers instead of forcing us to do it or else. That's not how, that's not how you run a fiscally responsible city.
[Zac Bears]: Councilor Scarpelli, then Councilor Malayne.
[George Scarpelli]: I don't want to keep beating this, and I apologize to the two gentlemen at the podium, but, you know, if you open the Globe today, the headline was something pretty alarming for the city of Medford. And something that Mr. McGibbon said, and it's happened probably with every other department, we talk about the legal costs. When we talk about filling vacant positions because they're waiting to be, there were positions throughout the city that there were a process of hiring. with internal, and then there were grievances, and then they had to go through the process of going through the legal processes of what the administration felt was fair or just, and then goes through arbitration, all this time, all this money, and then you realize, okay, you wasted all that time when the person that should have received that increase or that new position, because it's their right, Everything's relevant. We've been asking for financial breakdown of our legal finances for a reason. Then it comes up tonight, and we hear it just maybe by accident. You hear and you see that it's all relevant. It comes back. It's one big full circle. The funding mechanism in place, because I'll have questions. Like, I have questions. Are these positions with fire? Is part of the funding that we're paying fire back the funding that needs to be paid for the lieutenant who was back paid for years in their settlements? Could be said for the same thing with any of the DPW or the building departments or any of the lawsuits that were put in place. These are the questions that I want to ask when it comes to papers like this, but this isn't a point or the place for the people to be asking right now, I don't think. So I hope you understand that it's all relevant. When you don't get the answer that you need and it's stonewalled, it becomes a snowball effect. And here we are tonight with the same issues in the back of my mind saying there's one factor to the other. And it just doesn't give me the confidence to say, as a representative of this community that's supposed to be the watchdog of the finances of this community, to say, did you get the answers that you wanted to say you've protected the finances of our residents? I don't think I have that. And it's not your fault. I'm not saying it's your fault. I hope you understand that. But this has been something we've been standing on this top of this mountain screaming the reasons why. And tonight's just another example of saying, well, we don't have the answers because it is relevant one thing to the next. So, again, I don't want to keep beating this, but people have to understand the frustration that comes with this position.
[Unidentified]: I have to leave at nine. I know.
[Liz Mullane]: I apologize. I apologize to everyone. It is rookie move. It is rookie move. I have to understand this better.
[Bob Dickinson]: When I started really digging into this, usually it's like a little bit here, a little bit there. It doesn't seem so tight this year.
[Zac Bears]: Sorry about that. I think we have it back for Councilor Mullane.
[Liz Mullane]: Great. Thank you. Director Dickinson, I'm, you know, again, I don't want to belabor all this. I know that I have to agree with some of my other councilors here. We're seeing all of these transfers coming through and not having full explanations on them. difficult especially since you know some of it when it comes around salaries and we had all the discussions even with librarians like all of this just makes it very difficult. I guess if you could just explain to me I think it was sort of asked earlier but so I did a quick calculation we're talking about a little bit over 2 million in transfers on a 217 million dollar budget. Can you just explain to me how us not passing these deficits will then somehow torpedo the remainder of a $217 million budget. I guess I'm just not understanding that piece of it, that you'd have to redo the whole thing again.
[Bob Dickinson]: Okay. To get a little bit into the weeds, we calculate the money that we have available to spend by doing a basically doing a pre-recap recap. And every year I've been trying to, well every year we've had, I've been trying to underestimate local receipts just so we had room on the recap for things to come up. This year we haven't done that. everything that on local receipts, which is the one thing that we really have some flexibility on. Because we know from Proposition 2 1⁄2 what we'll get for tax revenue. We know from the assessor what he estimates new growth to be. This year it's $2.1 million. That could change. Usually if you have some slack in your local receipts, If new growth comes in less than you thought, then you can actually cover that. There are only a few places on the recap where I can adjust numbers based on the reality we face next November. If I try to put roughly $2 million additionally on the recap, the probability is the Department of Revenue will say, prove to me you can make that number. Prove to me that you think you're going to get $8.5 million in motor vehicle excise, not $7 million, which is what you got last year. If they don't accept those explanations, then they won't accept the recap. Then we have to have a new budget, essentially. vote a new budget to make the numbers work. I don't have anywhere else in the recap personally that I can see where I can cover all of these deficits. It's just partly how the municipal finance, the tax recap works. So.
[Zac Bears]: All right. We are where we are. I really share the frustration of my colleagues, especially that the mayor who never attends these meetings and the chief of staff are not present and have left you here to take the hit for this. Do we have any more questions from city councilors on this? Councilor Tseng?
[Justin Tseng]: Not questions. I just concur with all my colleagues. I didn't want to extend this meeting too long. I know there are folks waiting.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Do we have any motions? Motion to approve by Councilor Tseng, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Huh? Yeah, is there anyone from the public who wants to speak on this?
[Unidentified]: Oh.
[Micah Kesselman]: Mike Yasmin, 499 Main Street. I'm not going to make a speech. I just want to point out that, you know, a million and some odd dollars in DPW and doing infrastructure work, goes a lot farther in public safety than a million and some odd dollars in the COPS budget. So, I don't know. It's just something to like keep in mind.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no further discussion, is there a motion? We have the motion to approve by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Councilor Leming?
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Mullane? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? No. Councilor Tseng?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro? No. President Pierce?
[Zac Bears]: No. Four in the affirmative, three in the negative. The motion passes. 26132 submitted by Mayor, the Mayor, litigation settlements, three settlements for a total of 10,649.26. We have the settlements as Roger Cook, 3,800, Anthony Barone. This is for a motor vehicle accident where the claimant's vehicle was parked at 52 Morrison and was struck by a city snowplow. Claimant requested 7,000, settled for 3,800. Second is 3,800, Anthony Barone. Motor vehicle accident March 4th on Fulton Spring when a city snowplow hit and scratched the vehicle. Requested and settled amount is $3,800, $42.71. Then James Lee. James Lee lives on Equivia Road where city snowplow driver pushed snow onto Mr. Lee's front yard causing damage to his Pritchard hedges. He is requesting a reimbursement of $3,006.55 for landscaping repairs. We have Attorney Tom Lane from KP Law present. Attorney Lane. If there's anything else you'd like to add here?
[Tom Lane]: No, we had evaluated and they were all clear liability cases. The Roger Cook case, we settled it a little bit less because he had asked initially and put an appraisal in for $7,000 plus some change. But the book value in the vehicle was only $3,800. So we, you know, that had been authorized by the mayor to make as a settlement offer, which he's agreed to accept. The other two, there were appraisals to back up the damages to the vehicles that were reviewed. They're all clear liability cases. You know, and again, the idea was to settle those before none of these were ever put into litigation. So no additional litigation costs were incurred.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Thank you. Do we have any further questions or discussions for Attorney Lane? On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to approve, seconded by Councilor Tseng, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Maloney? Yes. Councilor Scapelli? Yes. Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. President Bears?
[Zac Bears]: Yes. 7 in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. That reverts back to 26125 Main Street Corridor. We have Commissioner McIver and Assistant Engineer Schatz here with us. This is something we discussed at our last meeting around the MassDOT project to upgrade the Mystic Avenue in Main Street and Medford Square intersect well. Mystic Avenue and Main Street in front of the police station and going up towards Benford Square. There are some easements and orders of taking that are required to alter the layout of the street. We had requested that the Assistant City Engineer and Engineering Department return with a presentation that's a little bit more visually and just a little more descriptive of the project and also communicate with some of the folks who are being affected by the takings. And it seems like from the update we received from you by email that you've had more discussions and most of the folks are understanding. There's some folks who still have some concerns. So I'll turn it over to you for the presentation. It looks like we also have Sharon Everett from KP Law here, just saw her as well. So if you need to go to her at some point, let us know. We'll hear the presentation from you, we'll go to questions from Councilors and then we'll hear from the public. And I do apologize, I may have to leave at 9 o'clock so I may have to turn it over to the vice president at that time. So with that, I'll go to you, Sierra and Mr. Clerk, could we? Oh, Sierra is already a co-host.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Great. Can I share my screen?
[Zac Bears]: You should be able to, yeah. Okay, awesome. Great, thanks. I will do that. I appreciate it.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, there we go.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Okay. Present.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Oh, I think I got it. Okay. Cool. Everyone see that? Okay. All right. Hi, everybody. I'm Sierra, one of the Assistant City Engineers. As President Bears said, I was here last meeting and back with some more information that the Councilors and the public requested regarding the Main Street or Route 38 Corridor and Intersections Improvements MassDOT project, and we're working on the right-of-way aspect of the project. This is just a visual of where the project is taking place at the intersections of Main Street, Mystic Avenue, and Mystic Valley Parkway. The yellow outline is a rough outline of where all the work is going to happen. Just so we have a visual. Okay, so a brief overview of the project itself. The main overall purpose of the project is traffic safety improvements for all modes of transportation, vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists. It's a, particularly the intersection of Main and South Street is a historically hot spot for collisions. It was one of the top 200 crash sites in the state of Massachusetts. The city did do some interim improvements at that intersection, but this project will make more permanent improvements. So some of the main things, this is not an all-inclusive list, but just the bulk of what the project is doing is putting in time traffic signals with vehicle detection at the three listed intersections, Main Street and Mystic Avenue, South Street and Mystic Valley Parkway, the westbound on and off ramps. Some intersection improvements include dedicated left-hand turn lanes, new lane separation, as well as bike lane extensions on Main Street and Mystic Avenue. Part of the new bike lanes will be elevated sidewalk level bike lanes, particularly under the Route 16 overpass. There will be additional crosswalks, new signalized crosswalks, and then more or better sidewalk connectivity in areas where there is not sidewalk connectivity currently. I just put these in here. We can come back to them if need be, but these are the traffic and traffic sign and pavement markings just kind of showing the extent of the work. Here is Mystic Avenue and Main Street intersection going up to the eastbound on and off ramps and the westbound on and off ramps. So this project is federally funded and MassDOT is managing the project and we are helping, we are in charge of, the city is in charge of the right-of-way aspects. This is just the public outreach that was done for the design of this project. There is a public information meeting in May 2024, design public hearing in April of last year and then a traffic commission meeting. And then our role in this portion has been communicating with all property owners that border the project area that will require temporary and permanent easements on their properties in order to complete the project. So the easement process So this project, excuse me, sorry, this is a little lag. I want to start by saying that there are no fee takings involved in this project. So the city is not going to be acquiring any land from any property owners. It is only easements. So permanent easements basically allow the city to enter onto the property, and I'll visually show this in a minute, mainly to maintain sidewalks, utilities, and signage. Temporary easements are they last five years starting from when they're filed, and that's just for the duration of construction. Mostly in this project is to redo sidewalks and driveway aprons, and again, allows the construction contractor to enter onto these slivers of the property to be able to complete this work. So we initially sent letters to all the property owners with easements in February. We've done in-person meetings with all of them, as well as phone and email correspondence between February and now. We also had title examinations done to verify the legal ownership of every property, and we had a certified real estate appraiser appraise every easement. That took place between February and April of this year. based on the amount, the appraised amount of each easement, so that these are going to be the compensation that the city will pay to the property owners for their easements, for the use of the easements. Those amounts were determined by an appraiser, and so we sent letters to each owner with that amount in May. And then since then, we have met with, I've spoken, yeah, notified all of them just following up with questions on the easements. We've had some follow-up conversations. The next step, which is why we are here tonight, is to ask the council to vote to approve the order of taking, which basically, which takes the easements by eminent domain. And once again, they're not, we're not, these are, there are no fee takings. It is permanent and temporary easements. and then vote to approve the order of alteration of layout, which edits the official roadway layout of Main Street, which I'll illustrate that in a second. Next step after this, we'll pay the just compensation amounts, the appraised amounts, All of the property owners will get their information to make the payments, file the takings with the registry, and then MassDOT's advertisement date for this project is August 27th. That's for the construction. They will then select a contractor and do pre-construction work and submittals and everything this winter with the goal of starting the construction in the spring. And the last estimate I got from MassDOT is that they expect the construction itself to take about two and a half years. Here's an illustration. I'm sorry that I know it's kind of hard to see on the screen, but this is an illustration of all of the easements that are involved in this project. Yellow easements are permanent and blue are temporary. So you'll see that the majority of the square footage of easements that are involved are temporary for construction. And again, it's mostly for sidewalks and driveway repouring the concrete. The yellow easements, Yeah, those are the permanent easements are for roadway alteration, utilities, and signage. For example, on the corner of, you'll see the top right-hand corner of Emerson and Main, that yellow strip there is a permanent easement. Currently, it's a sidewalk. after this construction project, it will still be a sidewalk, but right now the road layout does not include that sidewalk, and this is altering the layout to basically include all the sidewalks so that the city can access that sidewalk for maintenance work. So the use of the land effectively is not changing, but again, the city will be able to access that. It'll still be the property, that private property, but the city will be able to access it to maintain the sidewalk. And then here, I know it's, yeah, this table is the, shows all of the easements, organized first temporary and then permanent. It has the square footage, usage, address, owner name, as well as the use of that property. And yeah, all of these easements, yeah, these were all appraised and they will all be, there will be monetary compensation offered for all of them. And we can come back to any of these slides. Yeah, so once again, the request that we are making following the process that we've been given by MassDOT is to adopt and sign the order of alteration of layout, which is one of the attachments. physical copy here as well, vote to take the easements by eminent domain and in turn adopt the order of taking. And then the order of taking, in order to adopt it, it requires signatures by a majority of council members. And I just wanted to add as well that we've We know, we recognize, we've heard from several affected property owners that boarded the project that there are concerns about disruptions to business and like difficulties during construction, which we completely understand that construction is, yeah, can cause you know, as a disruption to normal life and operations, particularly for those that are bordering this project area. And we, even though MassDOT is going to be managing this project the day-to-day, they'll have a resident engineer on site to do all of the notification and work through any issues. I just want to say that we're here, the engineering department is here to help, and we want to support all of the residents and businesses in the area to try to minimize any adverse impacts of construction, including traffic management plans you know, hearing and resolving any issues. And just now we're here to, yeah, with questions on the design, we'd be happy to continue facilitating discussion with the design engineers that created this design, as well as any legal questions regarding easements, we'd refer to our legal counsel. I think that's all I have. Yeah, are there any questions?
[Zac Bears]: I just want to say thank you for giving us enough time to have our questions and then come back with an updated presentation. I know this is a really very important project and I think a huge improvement for drivers, cyclists, pedestrians and people using any mode of transportation at this very dangerous intersection that has been way too dangerous for way too long. So I'm really glad that this project is happening. I understand there are some folks who still have concerns, but I just wanted to thank you for hearing out our concerns, going back to the property owners to try to communicate with them again, and bringing us an updated presentation that more clearly kind of visually described the project. I just want to confirm one thing, and then I'm going to have to go, and I'm going to ask Vice President Lazzaro to take over from this point. And I know there are some people in the public who are going to want to speak once councilors' questions have been done. In terms of the city council, we need to do three things tonight. That's vote to adopt the order of alteration of layout, vote to adopt the order of taking, and then the majority of councilors need to sign that order of taking.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Correct.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Is there anything else we need to do?
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: No, that is all.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, so two votes and the signature.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Great. I will recognize Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. Sierra, thank you so much, because one thing, the phone calls received prior from the last meeting, you did your due diligence, and I know you went out and talked to everybody, and I know it's not what everybody wants to hear sometimes, but we appreciate doing that job, and both you and Mr. Blake, I know he was out there as well. I think the frustration I'm hearing throughout the community, just so you know, and this isn't you, this is obviously a DOT job, it's a state job, but when is the project going to happen? It's going to happen in August. When is all this information happening? It's happening in July, right? So where is everybody? Is anybody paying attention to this? No. This has been a bone of contention for the community for years when there's a concern or an issue or project that is put through during the summer months where people really aren't paying attention. So, I will share with you, there's probably going to be a lot of frustrated people when the shovels do hit the ground, because a few people that have reached out to me said, why are we doing this now? Maybe we did do some notification, but so many people aren't even around right now and even paying attention. So, I wanted to share that for the record. I think that's important. But if you can, I know that if you can go back a couple of slides where we saw the map, yeah. Right here, just so as I'm talking to people, just so I understand, is there going to be an island here, Sarah, do you know?
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Correct, yeah. That long crosswalk is going to be split in half by a pedestrian island.
[George Scarpelli]: So it seems like the people in this area right here, I've heard the most about. Yes. They're really concerned. Now, is this truly going to be a two lane now? This is now going to turn into two lanes and one, still stay one.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, there is starting just a little bit before the intersection of Union Street, there begins a taper for a dedicated left-hand turn lane onto southbound Main Street.
[George Scarpelli]: On this side.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Yes.
[George Scarpelli]: So that was the concern. Yeah. Could we move it up forward? Could you could we petition that with the state to move it closer to the unions so it's not in front of the business? That's
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Yes I'm yeah I'm aware of the request. I have passed it on. So we did talk to the state. It was in May. I brought it up to the state and they said that the time to make design changes had passed. I did bring it up. I. I got some more information just, I know, got a request from Chamber of Commerce this morning and got some more information from the state just today, more explanation on the traffic engineering for that intersection, specifically that lane, which I did, I just got it this afternoon. I did share with the Chamber of Commerce. I don't think, again, it's an answer. MassDOT are the ones that can make that determination, but I have passed on the concerns to MassDOT, and I think we can continue the conversation. after today.
[Tim McGivern]: And I can just add, just based off of my experience with these things in MassDOT, they have very strict rules when it comes to how long a lane needs to be for a certain wait time on a traffic light. So this intersection is going to be a fully functioning traffic signal intersection. So because of that, we need a little bit more space on the right of way. And we need some of that space from the parking lane to create that safe turn and for all the signaling to work the way it's supposed to work. But again, like Sarah said, it is a topic of conversation and it has been for a while because the concern was brought up quite a while ago. So it has stayed on the list of things that get discussed in the design. And that will continue to be that way through construction as well.
[George Scarpelli]: That makes a lot of sense. I think a lot has to do, but I think that the question is when did we know and when do we start advocating for our residents? And I think that should we as Councilors reach out to the state delegation saying, hey, we need some support here, can we ask if this works or not? Because if the case is by law, we need this many feet, and there's nothing else we can do, it is what it is, because I know how important this is. Just to be clear, so the light, we're talking about the light on south where, past the police station, that's where the light will be?
[Tim McGivern]: No, we're talking three sets of lights for this project. So Mystic and Main, this intersection that we're looking at here, will have a light.
[George Scarpelli]: Just to be clear, there's going to be a light here now?
[Tim McGivern]: That intersection.
[George Scarpelli]: On the other side.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: I'm sorry. No, it's okay. I can maybe.
[George Scarpelli]: Union Street and Mystic.
[Tim McGivern]: Not Union, Mystic and Main.
[George Scarpelli]: So Mystic and Maine.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: You can see right here the traffic. These are the traffic or the pavement markings for this new intersection at Mystic and Maine. So you can see where the left hand turn lane begins. There's also I believe a space for the fire department to exit. That's why there needs to be more space for that dedicated fire department driveway.
[Tim McGivern]: I will say that the concern was brought up early, it was looked at. We, I think, lose two parking spaces in the parking lane there. The two in order to get the signalized lanes in place, which you lose two spaces in a parking lane and gain a signalized left turn lane. is a pretty good trade in the public perspective, with the complete acknowledgment that businesses use those, rely on those parking spaces, certainly. But don't forget, the spaces that run down Main Street there, there's a lot of them. We're only removing two in order to get the lanes in and the signal in the way that the calculations tell us to.
[George Scarpelli]: Okay, so the final question is, starting from South Street, that'll be a traffic light? That'll be one there, and now there'll be one on Main Street about 100 yards further down, and then there'll be another one where? If you could just show them.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: On the, so actually there's also one on the other side of the west, sorry, yeah, westbound on and off ramps. So they are, yeah, they're three in a row and that was necessary, a traffic engineering necessity when you have, you want to, you have to signalize all of them. And they will be, they are, they will be timed and with vehicle detection as well. And so they've, the MassDOT engineers have assured that they've, you know, they've done their best to maintain traffic flow as well as, you know, improve traffic flow as well as signals for pedestrians and bicyclists.
[Tim McGivern]: And it will be tied into the existing light in Medford Square as well. So you're going to have four synchronized sets of lights. So the experience of a driver, you're driving it, it turns green. It's likely you're going to get through all the lights in green. You know what I mean? So it's cycled to provide efficiency, which we don't have that now. So it should be an improvement overall.
[George Scarpelli]: Well, it'll be interesting, but I'm sure everybody's prepared, because this to me is, I'm a city councilor, and that's my route every single morning. So either I have to get a helicopter, or travel to Somerville through Everett.
[Tim McGivern]: Right now, you're getting your life in your own hands by going through a blinking yellow.
[George Scarpelli]: Well, listen, that's why I bought a pickup truck. OK, all right. If we can, I think that. Again, that's something I hope our communications team with the state really starts educating our residents, especially in that corridor, that they should be prepared for this because it's going to be You know what's going to happen. It's going to come back to city council. How come we didn't know? Shame on you guys. And then we're going to blame.
[Tim McGivern]: I will say that we've been talking about this project for going on six or seven or eight years. Oh, we know. And MassDOT has done the full notification process as shown there, as well as the public meeting and traffic commission. So we're at the point in the project where there's They're going to put it out to bid, and then it's going to be about the city notifying, MassDOT notifying when the start dates are. And then it really gets into actually the communication with the abutters and the impacted landowners that surround the project. So that's really where, from my experience, you get the most feedback on these types of projects. So the project is set up to handle that. They'll have an in-house resident engineer on a daily basis. Our engineering team will be working with them to resolve every day-to-day issue that construction projects have. Maybe the driveway can't be closed during a certain time because that's peak time. Okay, we'll work with you on that. So all of those little tiny things. Yeah, so.
[George Scarpelli]: All right, well, I know it's a lot of questions, but I appreciate the help. Yeah, we're here to answer questions. All right, thank you.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Councilor Callahan.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I'm also very excited that this project is happening. It's been a dangerous intersection forever. I think the long-term impacts are really going to be fantastic for anybody who drives or walks or bikes through there. I also very much appreciate the different presentation that, you know, I think the explanation of easements was actually incredibly helpful as well. That, you know, it sure sounds like if you don't know what easements means, I heard from people that, you know, they're like, oh, why are we eminent domaining, you know, taking people's property? And that is not what is happening. So that's great to have that explanation. And then I had a small question about the sidewalk, the one that is being like a permanent easement. Yeah. Are there a lot of sidewalks? I just assumed sidewalks are generally owned by the city. So this is a sidewalk that's owned by a private party. I'm kind of curious about that.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Go ahead.
[Tim McGivern]: I call those housekeeping land issues. We have a lot of them, whether they're encroachments, people's fences are over the road layout line, for example. Stone walls is another one that's over the road layout line. We have a fair number of sidewalks that go onto people's property by a few inches all over the place. A lot of roads laid out in Medford were laid out at the end of the 1800s. And the equipment and the accuracies then were not as great as they are now. So the back of sidewalk may be on someone's property and some of those old streets. And just a quick comment, it doesn't need to change what we're doing. But this project doesn't do any fee takings as we've talked about. We're doing it with permanent easements. And they're relatively small pieces of land. But if you were to do a full fee taking, it's not a huge change. It just would change the parcel geometry. So ultimately, you end up the parcel that the square footage and the tax rolls lines up with the back of sidewalk, basically. So it's just one of those things. It's a game you play. Do you take the whole parcel, or do you just take an easement? When you take an easement like this, you're basically stripping that land of all of its rights anyway. You basically have a sidewalk there. So it's not much different than a full fee taking. So just wanted to get that in.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Thank you. And I just, sorry, can I add something real quick? Just there's not any confusion. There is, as you see that this slide right here only shows a portion of the project. The rest of it, there are also takings on South Street and then the main going up to Mystic Valley Parkway. But that is all handled by the state. Those are state takings and we don't really have any say in those. So they're actually gonna be doing some easements and takings from like the, fire and police, also like along the sidewalk for this project. But I just wanted to, just in case you're wondering why it's just, these are just the municipal acquisitions, the rest are handled by the state.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Great. Thank you. I do want to give folks an opportunity to do public participation on this paper. So if you wouldn't mind stepping aside for just a moment. Oh, sorry, Councilor Scarapelli. I'm sure he will keep it brief.
[George Scarpelli]: Just to be, on my notes, I thought the business said they were taking four spots in front of his building. You said two tonight. Is that, do we know that?
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: So, oops, sorry. Let me back up. Based on what we see on these plans and the distance between the intersection and legally not parking within 10 feet of an intersection, it's approximately two to three spaces. There will be one spot. Yeah.
[Tim McGivern]: For small cars?
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: Is that what I was saying?
[George Scarpelli]: I have to respond back tomorrow, so I could say that to him. Four small cars, two big cars.
[Tim McGivern]: I was probably minimizing it by saying two, but it marks me two to three. It sounds like the right answer.
[George Scarpelli]: All right, thank you.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Are we ready to move to public participation?
[George Scarpelli]: Should I stop my screen share?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay. If you, yeah, you can just step aside. And public participation, if you would like to come up to the podium, I'll start at the podium, not seeing any hands on Zoom. Just state your name and location for the record if you like. And you can, wait, sorry, I don't remember how to do three minutes. Do you know how to do that? No, that's okay. Okay, you have three minutes.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_12]: Good evening. Thank you for allowing us to speak up here. My name is Thuy Truong. I am one of the owner of 1113 Mystica. The other owner also here. I want to be here because we want to be heard and we would like to be treated fairly. So our home is two families. One unit has an elderly member living in it. Today, we want to share some of our concerns. So we do not oppose this project, and we do recognize the importance of this project. What I would like the council to understand is this easement, what actually means to our properties. The overhead wire currently in front of our house will be shifted closer to our house. The easement being requested tonight is allow that work to happen directly in front of the home and our family where the elderly members live every day. Construction activity, the noise, the equipment, the dust immediately outside in front of our house for up to five years. This is not an abstraction for us. We have an elderly member leaving the house. It affects their sleep, their health, their activity in their own homes. It affects our entire family's daily routine. These are not small things. These are everyday moments that part of our life, and they will be disrupted with years with no protection currently in place. Over the past three weeks, we have done everything as of us, and I would like to share the experience over the last three weeks. So we never received the certified mail to us. Then we received a receipt sharing a signature from a completely stranger that no one in our household recognized of it. Then obviously the last meeting was only a couple hours notifications. We have worked with an attorney to send back a proposal in a good faith. And what we got back is the amount, there's a table in the mail that offered to us from 1800 to 1300. There are also three, there are also six protective conditions that in our offer, that the daily work hourly, that van notice before work begins, the full restoration of our properties. These are the condition, protective condition to protect our family, especially to protect the elderly member in the household. But when we get the respond, none of it was addressed, not one. Our attorney has been in writing, because we advise to send in writing, request a meeting with the city's authority. Yesterday, we haven't, since last week, so that email was sent last week. Yesterday, I tried to make several phone calls. I actually took time from work, came here, but obviously the lady was on vacation. We haven't received any response today. So we are not here to stop this vote. We are here to ask the council to ensure that before the easement, instrument is signed, our family is given a chance to meet with the city's social leader, with our attorney. Because the important to us is those protective conditions to our family, to the elderly member in our family. And we ask, I do believe, we do believe we deserve to have that chance to have that meeting.
[Emily Lazzaro]: That's all we ask for today.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_12]: Thank you.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I understand that. We don't currently have a city solicitor. So we have a firm that is retained by the city for legal matters. So my recommendation would be to go to the mayor's office during the day.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_12]: I did yesterday.
[Emily Lazzaro]: You went yesterday and she was on vacation?
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_12]: Yes, and I spoke to the mayor's secretary. Okay. She sent me to the engineering team. The engineering team sent me downstairs, so I was a little bit bouncing around.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Classic City Hall situation. Nobody has time to do this, but I would also be very frustrated. I'm sorry to hear that. I'll give you my card. But I'm sorry to hear that. That's frustrating. Thank you.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_12]: So I will try to, I mean, my attorney and myself will try to reach back again to have that meeting. But thank you for giving us a chance to speak up today. Of course.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you for coming. I will go to you in one second, Tim. Councilor Leming put his hand down and then back up. Councilor Leming.
[Matt Leming]: I was going to make a recommendation that the motion for approval also come with a recommendation to have KP Law meet with their lawyers, but I wasn't really thinking that we still need to finish public comment.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Commissioner McIvern.
[Tim McGivern]: I just wanted to say that the intention is still to arrange the meeting between the lawyers of the two parties. Yeah, that is still the intention, and the conversations will continue. The conversation, that conversation will continue.
[Emily Lazzaro]: So that you're aware of that situation. We are. And is MassDOT part of that conversation as well, or is that purely a city conversation?
[Tim McGivern]: Right now, it's city. We've received advisement from MassDOT on procedural items.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I know it can be frustrating to work with state departments on constituent issues when it's complicated by that.
[Tim McGivern]: So any action tonight wouldn't preclude any legal action by another entity. It doesn't prevent lawsuits or anything like that. It doesn't prevent legal discussions. It doesn't prevent further coordination with design. But basically tonight is really just securing the property to do the project.
[Emily Lazzaro]: I understand. Yeah. Okay. And I would just say that I appreciate you coming here. I appreciate you waiting through the meeting. One of the things that we do as city councilors is constituent services. So if you send emails to us, we can often help with matters like this. There's somebody that sends emails sometimes because of very loud dumpster activity at three in the morning at Wendy's and that's something that we can connect people to how to fix that. So, like, sometimes that's a great thing to access city council about. We can't always help during meetings, but we can help in other times. Yeah.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_12]: We really appreciate that offer. Thank you so much. How can we, can we find out?
[Emily Lazzaro]: I'll give you a card. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. And Mike Seven is just, Councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: It seems to me that this situation is one where we can find hopefully a solution. if not a complete solution, one that respects the folks who are living there. So hopefully we can get everyone's lawyers together and get everyone's brains together and try to work something out. I appreciate, Tim, what you said about this vote not precluding any discussion of that type moving forward. I do think this project is really important. I think it's something that you had mentioned as well. As someone who goes through that intersection way too much, and knows it from way too many perspectives, it's a pain to get through. And not only is it inconvenient, it's unsafe. And I really don't, I mean, we already heard the tragic news of what happened in Boston a few days ago, and an awful intersection there. This is in the top 200 of the, in the top 200 list of crashes happening in Massachusetts. So I really do have to address this and this project does need to go forward. But the details are where I think folks can feel seen and heard and respected. So that's where I kind of urge everyone to kind of focus is let's talk about working hours, let's talk about the details like that.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes, and we do have ordinances around noise and working hours, things like that. Councilor Scarpelli, perhaps you have a motion.
[George Scarpelli]: I will not have a motion, but through the chair, I see the relevance and this is an important project, but again, because of the timing and the response from the DOT and like issues, I won't support this. I also understand the need for that and I appreciate the hard work from Sierra and her team for at least doing the city's job and making sure that there's someone out there. But again, don't like the business of projects in this time of the year. So thank you.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Are there any motions? Oh, I have one. One more public participation. You know what, I'm going to ask, all right. Okay. Excuse me. Oh, that'll be after this paper. On this matter? Sure. If you would like to come up to the podium. Yeah, I'm going to take one on Zoom and then you can come up to the podium. Andrew, if you'd like to speak on this paper. Andy, do you want to speak on this paper? All right. You can come up to the podium.
[Jeremy Martin]: Jeremy Martin, 65 Burgett Avenue. I wasn't really planning to speak because I think I hear all of the Councilors generally in favour of this, but I just want to speak to the idea of we shouldn't be reviewing this this time of year. You're all here at 9.30. I was at a city meeting last night. We had CPC tonight. conservation commission tomorrow night. Everyone is working through the summer. The business of the city doesn't stop in the summer. And I think we have to get over this idea that we should not be reviewing projects or moving the work of the city forward in this time. If people choose not to participate because they want to go on vacation, that's up to them. We need to act. This is an important project. I biked through this very intersection tonight. I had to wait multiple minutes. I got caught off, cut off multiple times by cars. It's unsafe as it is now and this project needs to go forward quickly. So let's get out of the way and make it happen. That's it. Thank you.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I'm going to close public participation on this matter and we can, is there anything else that any other Councilors would like to say? Do we have any motions? Motion to approve from Councilor Callahan. Do we have a second? Second. Seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Oh, sorry. Councilor Leming? No, I was just seconding. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll? Oh, we have to do two votes. What do you motion? What's the first vote? First vote is a motion to adopt and sign the order of... Alternative layout. The order of layout. And let's do that first. Do you, is that what you motioned? That's what, that's what Councilor Callahan motioned. And seconded by Councilor Tseng.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Mullane? Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Councilor Tseng? Vice President Lazzaro?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes. Six in the affirmative, one in the negative. The motion passes. One absent. Oh, one absent. The motion passes. Five in the affirmative. And the second motion required is to take easements by eminent domain and in turn adopt the order of taking. So moved by Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Tseng.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Malayne? Yes. Councilor Leming?
[JOz8NJmqO-Y_SPEAKER_22]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Scarpelli? Councilor Tseng?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: And President Bears is absent.
[Emily Lazzaro]: And President Bears is absent. Five in the affirmative, one in the negative, one absent. The motion passes. And now this paper is finished. We are moving on to public participation, I believe. Yes, public participation. Is Andrew Dahl here? Andrew Dahl? Is Andrew Dahl on Zoom? Please raise your hand. No, seeing none. Would anybody else like to? Come speak for public participation. You can come up to the mic. And you have three minutes.
[Simon Alcindor]: Can you please do the three minute timer for me? Okay, all right. Simon Alcindor, 44 Tainter Street. I just wanted to note that I think it's kind of saddening that a lot of stuff with this mayoral administration has gone to the point where when I left my house, I made a joke that I was going to go yell at the mayoral administration because it's week after, sorry, every two weeks after every two weeks, they keep on coming back here and finding new shenanigans going on. It is really quite outrageous. And, like, simply there needs to be something done at this point to actually get a handle on this. I don't know what. There's definitely options that I've heard discussed. But, yeah, that's all I want to say.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Andy, do you want to speak in public participation from Zoom? I'm asking you to unmute now.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Yes, Council President, can you hear me?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Thank you, Vice President. I try to get in a little earlier. I have a comment and I have two brief questions, but I don't know if your people are still there. One is I used to live on Mystic Ave way back, but this area is a critical traffic area. I'm sure it can use improvements. So my first question is, if you know the answer, what is the earliest start date for this project and what is the absolute time to complete the construction, please?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I will do my best to get those answers to you. I believe it's five years is the estimate.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Okay, the people are already gone.
[Emily Lazzaro]: We may have an answer. Yeah.
[-MlgNixuHJY_SPEAKER_15]: The earliest start date, all I know is spring 2027. I don't know the exact month, but basically whenever construction opens after winter moratorium in spring 2027. The estimate, current estimate from MassDOT is about two and a half years of construction, but it could go slightly longer. That's all the info I have right now.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. OK, thanks, Andy. OK, back to the podium.
[Micah Kesselman]: I was just saying that this might eat into my time for what I came here to mention, but I did want to I have become very aware of the conversation regarding airplane noise that's happening in various corners of the internet right now. And I am still, I have not yet been replaced. The Medford representative on the Massport Community Advisory Committee, or MCAC for short, I have managed to, we are going to reexamine Block 2D2 and take into consideration, and that is a plan that would hopefully greatly alleviate the airplane noise over Medford. And hopefully I'll have some more of a presentation to update folks with in August about that, and hopefully it'll be good news. But that is not what I am specifically here to talk about tonight. So I am entering public comment today to call for the city council to begin the critical work of protecting our city's vibrant civic community from politically motivated targeting. I earlier emailed this council a draft resolution titled Resolution to Protect Nonprofits, Charitable Foundations, and Local Public Interest Activism Groups from Politically Motivated Targeting by Federal, State, and Local Governments. which is largely modeled off of an ACLU mayoral memo from earlier this year that the current city administration was uninterested in engaging with. For the sake of brevity, I will not read it aloud here, but I will submit it to the clerk for scanning into the minutes, so those who have not yet seen it may review it, if that's possible. I don't know how that works entirely, and perhaps even provide their own input as residents and stakeholders, because it is only intended to be a starting point to trigger the real work that must be done, and because we are all of us stakeholders in this national moment. Medford is an incredibly and disproportionately to its size engaged community of neighbors. Not only do we have larger organizations represented locally, we also have numerous fully homegrown organizations aiding our residents who need help when struck by disaster. attempting to protect residents from the too many to count growing threats beset upon our community, advocating for a better city at every turn, advising and counseling our neighbors and electeds on items of critical importance to the functioning of the city and otherwise filling in for the myriad gaps our municipal government constantly fails to bridge. And these threats to our neighbors and communities are only getting worse. It follows that the necessary response and advocacy by those neighbors who actually care about each other, so many here in our city, is only going to increase in volume and visibility in turn, which means only further increased risk exposure to the increasingly petty, pernicious, and politicized governing institutions from D.C. to all the way over here in our very own city hall, as this council is fully aware. So I sincerely hope you will take up this fundamentally necessary endeavor with all the diligence, focus, and urgency it demands. And I want to be clear about the breadth and seriousness of the threat we are seeing. The administration would label most everyone in our city a terrorist under its current wildly unlawful rubric. I am anti-fascist because anyone who supports and enables fascism is an enemy of humanity. Full stop. The federal administration and their enablers say this is grounds for investigating someone as a terrorist. I am critical of capitalism because I think anyone who thinks about these things for more than a moment realizes the absurdity of a theory which takes as axiom that the driving purpose of wealth is to generate more wealth for its holders.
[Emily Lazzaro]: If you can wrap it up a little bit, soon.
[Micah Kesselman]: I will. Yes, soon. This is apparently terroristic speech. I strongly believe in the power and fundamental nature of mutual aid because it is quite literally the basis for the human invention of society. They say that this is also terroristic speech. I will never stop supporting our LGBTQI and more fellows because every human has a right to live their own personal truth. This also makes me possibly a terrorist, according to this administration. I will forever stand in solidarity with the oppressed, be they the victims of ongoing systemic racial, ethnic, and cultural discrimination here at home, or Palestinians, Kurds, non-Arabs, Sudanese, Rohingya, Uyghur, and more abroad and also here at home, because it is the only right and moral thing to do. This is apparently terrorism to these scared fascist fools. Every single one of us, especially those of you empowered to engage at an institutional level, has a moral obligation to evoke this sort of terror in those who seek to abuse the reins of power to hurt our neighbors. So I urge you, the city council, to do whatever you can to protect all of us from the deluded nightmares of power-hungry scoundrels.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Thank you. You can leave it on that table there, the desk, and we will. No, that's not a trash bin. That was Larry's desk. Thank you. This concludes public participation. Do we have a motion? Motion to adjourn offered by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Oh, Tim.
[Tim McGivern]: Did I miss an appropriation request from earlier that you guys tabled?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Tim McGivern]: Do we still need to do it?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Which appropriation request?
[Tim McGivern]: A concept plan for the cemetery, $24,500 and something. What did we do?
[Emily Lazzaro]: We tabled it? Did we table it because of Tim?
[Tim McGivern]: I wasn't here. I'm sorry. I was at the cemetery.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Why did we table it? No.
[SPEAKER_18]: Why did we table it? Who tabled it? Who tabled it?
[Justin Tseng]: Do you want to pick it back up?
[Emily Lazzaro]: All right, on the motion of Councilor Tseng to remove from the table the thing we were talking about. What were we talking about? Paper.
[Tim McGivern]: Correct, correct, yep. It's the Oak Grove one?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yep. What number is it? One E. Yeah, one E. Okay, but what's the number?
[Tim McGivern]: I'm working on a cloning machine. It just is not ready yet.
[Emily Lazzaro]: All right. All right. All right. All right. Motion to remove from the table paper 26133 item one e Oak Grove conceptual building design building study and construction cost estimate for Oak Grove building for twenty four thousand five hundred fifty dollars and on the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to approve. Can you do them together? Seconded by Councilor Tseng. All right, before we vote.
[Tim McGivern]: I'll be real quick.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callaghan. I would like to request that before we vote, can we just vote on the untabling and then let him talk and then vote on the thing.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Just untabling. Just untabling.
[Tim McGivern]: Glad to hear the support.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Just untabling Scarpelli Sang.
[Anna Callahan]: No, that was Sang Callaghan.
[Emily Lazzaro]: No. It's very important to me. I'm doing a good job chairing, everybody. Thank you. Please call the roll.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Councilor Leming. Yes. Councilor Malayne. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Vice President Lazzaro.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: President Baez is absent.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Six to the affirmative, one absent, the motion passes. And Tim, what do you got?
[Tim McGivern]: Sure, so just quickly, this is for our on-call architects to prepare conceptual designs and a conceptual cost estimate for a new operations building at Oak Grove Cemetery. And the cost estimate will be used to compare to renovation costs and preservation costs of the existing two buildings. So it's really just to finish a cost analysis to determine the best way forward for building space for cemetery operations.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Does the cemetery bring in revenue?
[Tim McGivern]: Yes, it does to the Perpetual Care Fund.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Great, I love to hear that.
[Tim McGivern]: To the Perpetual Care Fund.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh, not to the Perpetual Care Fund.
[Tim McGivern]: We sell grave lots and stuff like that.
[Emily Lazzaro]: It doesn't bring revenue into the city?
[Tim McGivern]: Not General Fund, I don't think, no. Perpetual Care.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Fine.
[Tim McGivern]: To the cemetery.
[Emily Lazzaro]: On the motion of Councilor Tseng to approve, seconded by Councilor Callaghan. I wish I made money though.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Kelly. Yes. Councilor Lennon. Yes. Councilor Mullane. Councilor Scapelli.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng. Yes. Vice President Lazzaro?
[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Okay, and President Bears is absent. Thank you.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. Motion to adjourn by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Leming? Yes. Councilor Maloney? Yes. Councilor Scapelli?
[George Scarpelli]: Yes.
[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Tseng? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. And President Bears is absent.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Six in the affirmative, one absent.
[Unidentified]: The motion passes.
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