Name: City Council 09-29-26
Uploaded: 2026-09-29
Duration: 4 h 19 min 30 s
Description: The Council approved $2.3 million for road resurfacing and stadium turf replacement, authorized the 2026 general election, and adopted a zoning amendment for inclusionary housing fractional payments. Significant debate focused on legal department transparency and the Mayor's refusal to publicize Council neighborhood meetings.

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3-flash-preview from the transcript below, which is the record. It may be incomplete or wrong; it does not report votes. Every item links to the moment it began.

The Council approved $2.3 million for road resurfacing and stadium turf replacement, authorized the 2026 general election, and adopted a zoning amendment for inclusionary housing fractional payments. Significant debate focused on legal department transparency and the Mayor's refusal to publicize Council neighborhood meetings.

5:10 Ward 5 Neighborhood Meeting — Approved a resolution inviting residents to a neighborhood meeting at the Missituk Elementary School on October 20.
9:03 Condolence Resolution: Police K9 Seamus — Approved a resolution expressing condolences to the McGillivray family and the Medford Police Department on the passing of K9 officer Seamus.
12:50 Fire Prevention Day — Approved a resolution inviting residents to the Medford Fire Department's interactive safety event on October 10.
13:54 Meeting Records — Approved the records of the September 15, 2026, meeting.
14:28 Resident Services Committee Report — Approved a report detailing feedback from the Ward 1 meeting and plans for future neighborhood sessions.
17:45 Zoning Ordinance RFP Referral — Referred a draft request for proposals for zoning updates to the Committee of the Whole for public discussion.
19:25 City Website Improvements — Referred a resolution to modernize the city website and improve accessibility to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.
21:58 Support for Encore Strike — Approved a resolution supporting striking workers at Encore Boston Harbor and urging the city to honor the picket lines.
42:29 2026 General Election Call — Authorized the call for the November 3, 2026, general election, detailing polling locations and early voting periods.
55:56 Election Warrant Approval — Approved the official election warrant, including nine statewide ballot questions.
57:47 Road Resurfacing and Capital Improvements — Approved a $1.3 million appropriation for milling and overlaying 23 city streets.
58:17 Hormel Stadium Turf Replacement — Approved $1 million from the Capital Stabilization Fund to replace the aging artificial turf at Hormel Stadium.
58:27 Medford Connects Funding — Approved $40,000 for the Medford Connects program to restore staff capacity lost after a state grant cycle was not renewed.
1:33:54 Grant of Location: North Street — Approved a petition by National Grid and Verizon to relocate utility poles at the entrance of the Walkling Court redevelopment.
1:38:52 Zoning Amendment: Inclusionary Housing — Ordained a zoning amendment allowing developers of smaller projects to make fractional payments to the Affordable Housing Trust instead of rounding up unit requirements.
2:01:41 Law Department Information Requests — Tabled the response regarding litigation costs after councilors argued the data provided for $5.7 million in legal expenses lacked sufficient matter-level detail.
3:12:03 Law Department Supplemental Funding — Approved one month of funding through October while requesting that the Fire Chief appear to discuss ongoing legal disputes.
3:24:13 Neighborhood Ward Meeting Publicity — Approved a resolution objecting to the administration's refusal to publicize official council neighborhood meetings and the removal of listings from the city website.
4:10:30 Police Chief Search Tabled — Tabled a $35,000 request for an executive search firm because the administration has not yet scheduled a public meeting with the consultant.
4:12:41 Food Truck Permit — Approved a one-day food truck permit for Trolley Dogs at the Brooks Elementary Fall Fest on October 4.

[Zac Bears]: The 16th regular meeting of the Medford City Council is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Seven present, none absent. The meeting is called to order. Please rise to salute the flag. Announcements, accolades, remembrances, reports, and records. Resolution to invite residents to the Ward 5 Neighborhood Meeting on October 20th. Councilor Mullane.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Yes, we are excited to host the next ward meeting for Ward 5 on October 20th. It's at the Missituk. It'll again be hybrid. Truly want as many people as possible who can come and join us. We had a really nice turnout for Ward 1, learned a lot of great things that people are really addressing and want some help from city council and from city government. So it was a really great way to engage with neighbors and I think they appreciated having that opportunity to speak directly to city government. I think it makes a huge difference that we're there in their neighborhoods having these conversations and really listening to everything that they want to share with us. So it will be hosted by Councilor Tseng and Callahan and we're looking forward to this next one. Thank you.

[Anna Callahan]: I'm super excited about this. You know, meeting with constituents is a big love of mine. I do want to see, can we also let people know there is an RSVP and you can put your concerns in the RSVP if you would like. So I don't know if we can share that link tonight.

[Zac Bears]: That would be great. We can get that updated online and you should be back on the city events calendar after tonight.

[Zac Bears]: Do you have the link? Can you read it out? Do you have the link in your e-mail?

[Justin Tseng]: Councilor Tseng. I don't have much more to add. I just wanted to say that the Ward 1 meeting was one of my favorite nights I've done as a Councilor. We learned so much from the residents, including, you know, real places where we can make tangible change, and I'm really looking forward to this one. Great. You got the link?

[Zac Bears]: A motion to approve by Councilor Callahan, seconded by? I'm sorry, by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, seven, the affirmative, none of the negative, the motion passes. Do we have a representative from the fire department here or online? I'm not seeing anybody. So Councilor Scarpelli, can we take your resolution first and give them some time to show up? 26173, the condolence resolution. Could you motion to take it under suspension? Not that yet. All right. Councilor Scarpelli has submitted a late condolence for a loss on Friday. So he's requested that we consider that under suspension. It's resolution 26173. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. 70 affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. Give me one moment. All right. Oh, great. We'll do it in a bit. Be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we send our deepest condolences to the Medford Police Department, Lieutenant Harold McGillivray and the McGillivray family on the passing of the beloved canine dog Seamus. Lieutenant McGillivray had a 10 year partnership and friendship with Seamus who unfortunately passed away Friday, September 25th, 2026. As professional Seamus served our community with honor as a patrol dog and drug investigator and was a strong community officer, police officer where he often performed for our children at numerous community events. Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. We found out this weekend that Seamus had a medical emergency and unfortunately passed. I know the relationship that Lieutenant McGillivray had and I've often witnessed the love of a pet as well with the McGillivray family and I know that canine Seamus was some a police officer you could depend on and I will tell you as a member of the community we love to take our kids to different city events where Seamus would perform and he really performed amazing duties as a drug a drug investigator and as a patrolman and he served by Harold's side for 10 years and We just want to send our condolences to the Medford PD and Harold and the Lieutenant McGilvory and the McGilvory family. So thank you, Mr. President.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I was really saddened to hear this when I saw Lieutenant McGilvory's daughter's story on Instagram where she also posted photos. of, you know, the canine who served our community so well. Something I think that Councilor Scarpelli got at is that we often talk about and we recognize the work of those who serve our city. And 99% of the time, that work is done by human beings. So much of the important work that does go on behind the scenes to keep our community safe is done by animals as well. And, you know, a canine isn't just a pet. A canine has a job, has a duty for their lives, for their whole life, being trained to, you know, sniff out drugs, to protect residents. I think we oftentimes as human beings underestimate how much work that is and how difficult that work is for animals. And so many members of our community have formed a strong bond with the canines at MPD. And so I would like to join Councilor Scarpelli in sending my condolences to Lieutenant McGillivray, the McGillivray family and to the Medford Police Department as well.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Tseng to approve, any further discussion? Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. 26-171, resolution to invite residents to the Medford Fire Department's Fire Prevention Day, Saturday, October 10th. Be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we invite the residents to attend the Medford Fire Department's fire prevention day on Saturday, October 10th from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Medford city hall. Just to notice that there is a fire prevention day hosted by our fire department, Saturday, October 10th, interactive learning experience on charging and electrical safety. And that event is free and open to the public. Do we have any members from fire department who'd like to speak at this time? All right. Seeing none, is there a motion? The motion to approve by Councilor Callahan, seconded by seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. Records. The records of September 15th were passed to Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Scarpelli, how did you find those records?

[George Scarpelli]: I find those records in order. Move approval, Mr. President.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion. Councilor Scarpelli to approve the records of the meeting of September 15th, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. I'm in the affirmative. None in the negative. The motion passes. Reports of committees 24-354, 26-024 and 26-138 offered by Councilor Mullane, Chair of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee from September 16th, 2026. Councilor Mullane.

[Liz Mullane]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yes, in terms of this resolution, one of the things that we did here as we were at the ward meeting was there seemed to be a lot of confusion and navigation issues when it came to the city website. how to get to certain documents, where certain things were, who can do what from which piece of it. So it came to our attention this was probably another opportunity for us to take a look at it and figure out how else can we make it a little bit more user friendly and be able to have that conversation with the city and figure out better ways for our community to be able to engage and understand what's happening across all the different city departments throughout Medford. So part of the reason of doing this and then bringing it to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee too is part of the things that when we talked about it, we asked residents to come to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee to also help us be able to address and identify some of these areas.

[Zac Bears]: Councilman, I gave you the incorrect information. This is about the committee report from the previous meeting.

[Liz Mullane]: So at the previous Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting that we just had, we went over some of the remaining pieces of the summer newsletter so that can get out to everybody. We also went into in-depth about the Ward 1 meeting that happened on September 23rd and had a nice conversation to talk about different ways to publicize it, to get the information out, how we wanted to host it. and giving just general information for people who wanted to be engaged. We also talked about what that looked like for newsletters moving forward, and some of the councilors signed up for those, as well as talked about the upcoming ward meetings, which we already talked about, the October 20th one for Ward 5, and then the Ward 2 meeting, which is happening on December 2nd, that's being hosted by myself and Councilor Scarpelli.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Mullane. On the motion of Councilor Mullane to approve the committee report, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I do want to give the link for the Ward 5 RSVP. It's a Bitly link, bitlymedfordmeetw5. That's B-I-T dot L-Y slash M-E-D-F-O-R-D M-E-E-T-W and the number five.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, on the motion, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. Refer to committee for further discussion, 24-033 offered by President Bears and Councilor Leming. This is zoning ordinance updates, the zoning consultant RFP to be referred to committee of the whole. So there's a meeting tomorrow on potentially the next phase of our zoning project. And I will recognize Councilor Leming. This will be referred to committee for discussion tomorrow night at six.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you. This refers to the request for proposals draft that we already passed around to members of the council so that we can have a more dedicated time to have a little bit more of an in-depth discussion around that and have time for the whole council to consider it in public prior to final approval of that. I will say beforehand my apologies. I will be on a flight tomorrow, so I will be unable to attend because airplane Wi-Fi is not great. But with that motion to refer to Committee of the Whole.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Leming to refer to Committee of the Whole, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, 70 affirmative, none of the negative, the motion passes. All right, this is the one Councilor Mullane was just talking about, 26-169, the resolution to improve the city website. This is going to be referred to Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee. Whereas MedfordMA.org is the primary digital interface between city government and Medford's residents, businesses and visitors and whereas a review of the site reveals outdated content, navigation, mismatching resident needs, limited language access and a gap in online services compared to peers. Now therefore, be it resolved that the city council refers this matter to the committee on resident services and public engagement which shall solicit public input on website improvements, invite the communications office and IT department to present on current capabilities and constraints. and report back with recommendations. Councilor Malauulu, if there's anything you want to add?

[Liz Mullane]: I think I covered it earlier about this. And I think there's a lot of areas that we might be able to help improve that will be helpful for our residents like we heard as we've been speaking with them. So I'll leave it at that.

[Justin Tseng]: Since this is a paper to refer, I'm not going to say too much, but the website is one of the most important access portals between residents and the city. I've heard a lot over the years about the work that needs to be done on it to modernize it and to make it more accessible and more useful. So I'm looking forward to the discussion and committee.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. On the motion of Councilor Mullane to refer to the public and resident services and public engagement committee, seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Mr. President, I'd like to suspend the rules to take papers one 26-162, 163, 164, 167, please.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to suspend the rules to take papers 162, 163, 164, and 167 out of order, seconded by? Seconded. Seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. Resolution 26-162, Resolution to Support Workers on Strike at Encore, offered by President Bears and Councilor Scarpelli, whereas Encore Casino and Resort Workers are ambassadors for the greater Boston area's travelers and tourists, and whereas the over 1,400 members of Unite Here Local 26 and Teamsters Local 25 who do the work at the casino reflect the strength and diversity of the city of Medford and our region, And whereas Unite Here Local 26 and Teamsters Local 25 workers believe one job should be enough to live in the city they work in, raise a family and retire with dignity. And whereas after months of negotiations, Unite Here Local 26 and Teamsters Local 25 have gone on strike indefinitely at Encore Boston Harbor. Now therefore, be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we go on record expressing support for the strike of Unite Here Local 26 and Teamsters Local 25 workers, honor the strike by not eating, meeting or sleeping at Encore Casino while a labor dispute is in effect. and to join all picket lines and encourage all cities to employees to do the same, be it further resolved that the city clerk be and hereby is requested to forward a suitably engrossed copy of this resolution to the general manager of Encore Boston Harbor. And I'll recognize Councilor Scarpelli and then I'll speak quickly and then I know we have some folks here from Local 26 and Local 25. Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. This is a resolution that's a long time should have, we should have done this weeks ago. As I follow our brothers and sisters in unions, we see that the number one focus is to make sure that you're treated fairly and you're heard by your leadership. And it seems like Encore, like many other big businesses, just don't listen to the people that make their businesses run every single day because without the union brothers and sisters that put in the work every single day and give them their fat pockets that they live on every day and their towers high above us, I think that we need to let them know that our communities are Local communities are going to stand strong with our union brothers and sisters in making sure that they hear us and they come to the table with respect and honor and give all of our union workers a wage and a working environment that they deserve. It has been long waited. I appreciate our friends from Encore being here this evening, our union members, and I hope that the leadership group from Encore hear this little corner of community involvement and hopefully they support you. So I think that I will make sure that my family and friends will not be attending Encore and if they really need a casino to go somewhere where they honor their union workers. And again, stand strong and we're standing right beside you every step of the way. So thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. I just want to add to that. I saw James speak and so many others at the rally last week out in front of Encore and was proud to walk the picket line and attend the rally. I know it's been a long fight. I know you guys have been struggling for months in negotiations. I know you guys want to work. and provide the amazing services that you provide. And it's really, really disappointing that your bosses won't let you do it considering how much money you make them. So I really believe that you guys deserve fair wages and good benefits. I think the city of Medford stands with you entirely on that. And I hope that by adding our voice along with, I know a bunch of other cities have done it and so many residents who have supported you guys that it will help get a fair negotiation and a contract as soon as possible so that you guys can get the paid to what you deserve. So thank you for being here. I know a couple members wanna speak tonight and just really thank you all for being here and one day longer, one day stronger. Any other councilors and then we'll go to the members. Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Um, I wanted to say that wearing the many different caps I have worn throughout my life as a son, as a neighbor, um, as someone whose friends, um, parents have worked, um, you know, similar jobs as a city councilor, as someone who's you know, has done work in employment law, I've seen throughout my life, or rather, I've come to the realization throughout my life that there is this kind of trend in our history where large corporations and the fat cats have really just They don't care about the fact that folks are trying, they're just trying to be able to put food at the table, on the table at night. They're just trying to pay rent, to be able to pay their medical bills and not have to worry about going bankrupt. And especially in this cost of living crisis that we're living through right now, it's especially disheartening to see Encore treat its workers the way it has. This is a union city. Medford was built by families like yours. And for that reason, I really, really hope our community stands in solidarity to stay away from Encore until they come to the table and treat their workers correctly.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I always consider these issues to be among the most important. I think the inequality in our society right now is absolutely detrimental to, of course, the lives of people who are not earning enough, as well as it's detrimental to our democracy. It's really, really important. I hope that if there is language that any of us could share with our lists of people who, you know, we have mailing lists, if there's anything that we can do to help to spread the word, please, you know, don't hesitate to let us know. So I really appreciate that you are here and to my fellow councillors for putting this motion forward.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Sorry, we all have something to say. For whatever it's worth, I just wanted to add my voice to the support for this resolution and for your work towards fair wage. I used to be the assistant director of the Malden Warming Center, which was an emergency is, continues to be, I'm still on the board, an emergency overnight homeless shelter in Malden that's open during the winter months as a place for people to go to be warm and safe in the cold months so that they don't have to stay outside. And I remember one winter when I worked there, one of the regular guests that we had always came right from work and he always wore his uniform, which was an Encore casino parking bust. A lot of people who are in very vulnerable positions, they have jobs. And I don't think anybody agrees that it should be possible to have a job and not be able to afford a place to live. Not everybody who's homeless is homeless because they have substance use disorder or mental illness. Sometimes it's just because they've made a few mistakes or they've had some hard times financially. If that's the case, if you have a job and you're being well taken care of by your employer, you should not be homeless. So I don't know if it, you know, I didn't know that much about his story, but I was always surprised by that. There were a lot of people that we helped who had jobs, had to rush off in the morning very early. They had to go to work or they would come late and sometimes they wouldn't get a spot to stay at our shelter because they were coming from their job. Somebody else worked at the mall at the Prudential Center at Club Monaco. I just don't think it's right that people can have jobs and still be homeless. I really appreciate the fight that you're all doing. I support you and what you're doing is not just for yourselves, it's for everybody around you, everybody that works there and everybody who is working for a large company that's making a lot of money for maybe shareholders, maybe people who are in the higher levels of leadership, but not letting that help the people who are most vulnerable. So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, thank you so much to the workers who showed up today to represent themselves. I don't have too much to add to what my colleagues have already said except to say that I know from what I've seen on previous labor disputes that it takes a lot, a lot of frustration to get to the point where you're striking indefinitely. In other disputes I've seen the frustrations and the attempts by workers to negotiate for themselves and I've seen how management has often just completely ignored them and usually the problem is nothing more than greed on the side of management. It's really often not as complicated an issue as it may be spun to be. The solution to doing this is exactly what you are doing right now, which is to strike, to publicize, to fight for yourselves. And I just want to say that I'm proud of all the folks who showed up who are in the chamber right now. So thank you so much.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Leming. All right. Some of the members want to speak. We would love to hear from you guys. And especially if you could tell us how people can support you, either support you from home, not going to Encore, and joining your picket lines.

[SPEAKER_25]: Good morning, or I'm used to morning shifts. I've been up all day at the strike line, so I'm used to it at this point. Good evening. My name is James Atkins. I just wanted to start by thanking any of you that have been at the picket line or who have been showing support how you can. I'm the chief steward for teams just local 25, as well as I'm the lead gardener at Encore Boston Harbor where I've worked since 2022. It's a job that I've loved. I've always loved working outside in, in the field. And I've been proud of the work that I've done there. Obviously a hard reality to know that despite the 40 hours I commit to there, I, like many of my co-workers, work a second job. Some even work third jobs to make ends meet to take care of their families. I often, even though I live with three other roommates, I often walk probably about three miles every morning from Somerville down 16 all the way to the casino just to save money, to make those ends meets a little bit easier for myself. And obviously you know that last year alone, Encore raked in $847 million for just their individual property. which they send out and invest in other properties, as you know, in the Emirates or into further projects in Georgia. And I think that I just speak for all of my coworkers when we want to see that a fraction of those profits, those insane profits, frankly, go into the working class communities where those members can spend it supporting their local their local families and stuff, their local businesses. I'm very, very supportive of those kinds of, those mediums. Approaching four weeks on the picket line. It's been insane. It's been stressful. It's been exciting. And I think I'm going to take a lot from this experience going back. Many of us come from obviously diverse backgrounds, speaking different languages, and from many of the surrounding communities, myself in Somerville, some of my members back here as well, from Medford, Everett, Cambridge, and all over the greater Boston area. And as many of you know as well, When Wynn first was seeking the contract to open the building, many of us union workers were one of the stronger proponents that allowed for them to build this property, to expand this industry in the state. And I just know that without many of us advocating for this, they might not have ever gotten that green light. Today and every day of these past few weeks, we've been sending Encore a message that they must respect the membership, be a true community partner, and that those same workers who make their success possible deserve a share of those profits. I would call on many of you as our elected representatives to go beyond this resolution and reach out to individuals like Craig Billings or Jenny Holliday, and urge them to, in good faith, meet us at the bargaining table and hash out a fair contract, something that meets the needs of the working people, and respect the value of our work. I wanted to thank you guys all for having us today. I appreciate you guys very much.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hi. Hi. Good evening, everyone. My name is German Escobar Shapiro. I live here in Medford. I have worked at the casino port at Anchor Boston since it opened seven years ago. We work hard and take pride in the work we do. Anchor Boston continues to bring in millions of dollars in revenue and does not want to pay its workers their fares shared compatible to what the others pay in Boston, the other hotels based in Boston. Our responsibilities increase more and more, but the company doesn't want to support us as we try to support our families. Our union contract ended August 31st, and we are in need of your support. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Anyone else like to speak on this resolution? All right. Thank you guys so much for speaking up, for standing up. You really don't deserve to be out for four weeks on these lines. You should have had a new contract before this one was up. They should have bargained a fair contract with you from the start. And you're standing up not just for yourselves and for your families, but standing up to a big corporate interest that is going to send a message and sends a message to others who would try to do the same to other workers in other places, you know, places represented by your unions and others. And I just want to say also, I think it's really inspiring to see Local 26 and Local 25, people from different places at Encore, different jobs, different unions joining together and standing together. I think that's the kind of solidarity we need to see. So thank you so much for your fight, and we stand with you. And are you guys on the line 24-7? Is that what I heard? All right. So if people want to go down to Encore Boston Harbor 24-7 and stand with these guys, please get down there. All right. Thank you. All right, we'll take a vote so that we approve this, and then we'll send it up to the general manager at Encore, and maybe some of us will even see if they'll take our call too. So thanks for that. On the motion of Councilor Scarpelli to approve, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. Having the affirmative, none in the negative, the motion passes. All right. Can we take a photo with you guys if you guys are comfortable? You can come up here and take a picture with us and you can send that along too. All right, we're gonna take paper 26163 offered by the Medford Election Commission, the call for election November 3rd, 2026. Call for election, 2026 general election, Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026. Be it ordered that the Elections Commission be and is hereby authorized to direct and notify and warn, directed to notify and warn such inhabitants of the city of Medford as were qualified by law to vote for candidates at our state general election on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026, to assemble at the polling places in their respective wards and precincts, then and there, to give their votes for Senator in Congress, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Auditor, Representative in Congress, Governor's Councilor, Senator in General Court, Representative in General Court, District Attorney, Register of Probate, and ballot questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. We all have our research ahead of us. All right, and the polling places have not changed since the primary. Ward 1, Precinct 1, Andrews Middle School. Ward 1, Precinct 2, Firefighters Club, Salem Street. Ward 2, Precinct 1 and Ward 2, Precinct 2 at the Roberts Elementary School. Ward 3, Precinct 1, Medford American Legion, 321 Winthrop Street. Ward 3, Precinct 2, Temple Shalom, 475 Winthrop Street, Ward 4, Precinct 1 and Ward 4, Precinct 2, Tufts University, Gantcher Center, right rear entrance and that's for Precinct 1 and Precinct 2 and Ward 4. That's still different. Ward 4, 2 used to be at the Walkland Court, it's now at Gantcher Center. Ward 5, Precinct 1 and Precinct 2 at Missittuck Elementary School. Ward 6, Precinct 1 at the West Benford Fire Station. Ward 6, Precinct 2 at the Brooks School. Ward 7, Precinct 1, Mystic Valley Towers, 3610 Mystic Valley Parkway. Ward 7, Precinct 2 at the McGlynn Public School. Ward 8, Precinct 1 at the Senior Center, 101 Riverside Ave. And Ward 8, Precinct 2 at the South Menford Fire Station. There will be in-person early voting Saturday, October 17th through Friday, October 30th. 30th, and I think that is everything. So Jim, I will recognize you.

[James Blatchford]: President, right? Jim Blatchford, Elections Manager, or Director of Elections, City of Medford. This is obviously becoming, not becoming, has been an annual process. mainly to inform the residents as it is the call for elections with the next piece being the actual warrant that is posted and I recommend approval.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Mr. Blatchford. All right, do we have any questions from members of the council on the motion to approve the call for election by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Mullane. Any further discussion? Any discussion by members of the public on elections? All right. Mr., oh, one, we have one. All right. If you want to talk about the elections, this is a good time to talk about it. You'll have, if you could just give us your name and your neighborhood, and you'll have three minutes.

[xl-rVBoybgA_SPEAKER_20]: Yes. My name is Zoe Dukach, Z-O-E-D-U-K-A-C-H, and I live, like, in Ball Square, like, right next to Somerville, but in Medford. I'm not, again, I'm not sure if this is the right moment, but I believe that there is some concern about some of the guidelines for the upcoming elections in terms of not specifically setting out guidelines for what to do if ICE shows up at any polling locations. I know that there is a statewide law that will go into effect on election day, but of course we have early voting, and I want to know if there's any intention to put forth any procedures for what our municipal election workers should do, how they're going to be prepared to handle any possible ICE interference at our polling locations in advance of that statewide law and its protections.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'm going to take everybody and then we'll let the elections manager talk about some of the training, but there's one person behind you who wants to speak first, so I'll go to them. Thank you for your comment. If you could give us your name and neighborhood, and you have three minutes.

[Julia Hendrix]: My neighborhood or my address? We're going to neighborhood. Okay. My name is Julia Hendricks. I live over in the Wellington neighborhood. I also am here to talk about having a lack of intimidation at our elections, which state law prohibits intimidation of voters and interference with what they are doing. Federal law also prohibits military and armed federal agents being at election places. So I know that we have procedures in place in our election guides in Medford that talk about lack of intimidation, but we also are living in a very unusual time. And the PROTECT Act actually goes into effect on November 3rd, which is our election day. So I'm really particularly interested in hearing about how our election workers are being trained and taught and helped to deal with what will happen if ICE agents do show up or armed federal agents show up. I wanna know how our police who provide security at our election sites and always do a wonderful job at what training they are getting. I also wanna know who Medford citizens can complain to, which it will be a complaint, if we either have intimidation at voting sites and it is not being dealt with, or since it is the first day the PROTECT Act is in place, If we see police officers who are talking with are working with ICE agents on that day because we can't wait to figure out what to do because the day will happen one way or another. So I'd be interested in hearing those things. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Is there any further comment by members of the public. Yep, seeing none on Zoom, stay at the podium. Name and neighborhood, you'll have three minutes.

[Micah Kesselman]: Sure. My name is Michael Kesselman, South Medford, 499 Main Street. I just wanted to respond via the council to one of the questions that was just raised. One thing that the AG has been asking for with regards to the PROTECT Act is that people document violations of it that they've seen and that be provided to the AG's office. As far as I know, there's not any I don't know that there's been an actual website or mechanism of reporting, but such that you do see any violations of the PROTECT Act at election sites on election day, when the PROTECT Act is in fact in effect, you should at the very least document everything you see. And be prepared to provide that to the AG's office as they build up a case and decide how they're going to further enforcement of it. So I just wanted to share that. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Seeing no further comments from members of the public, Director Blatchford, I don't know if you want to talk about some of the training and making sure that folks aren't intimidated and what might happen if the federal government follows through on threats to bring agents to the polls.

[James Blatchford]: This is not one of the things I got into elections for, just to make that clear. All I can say is we will be providing training for our election workers. We will be speaking with the police department and the chief regarding procedures for the day and laws that need to be enforced and observed by the officers. And it's, Unfortunately, we're living in unprecedented times, so I can't give all the correct answers. All I can say is I'm going to provide as much training as I can on the laws that currently exist and that are going to be in place, and then follow up conversations with the police chief and the officers of the day. to make sure that they understand their role and their authority, as well as making sure that our wardens and our clerks are fully trained on their procedures for the day and what they need to do to make sure that everyone is observing the election laws as they exist and making sure that there's no shenanigans, let's put it that way.

[Zac Bears]: And just if a resident, say they're at a polling location or they're here for early voting and they see something or they're concerned about something, how can they report that to you?

[James Blatchford]: Absolutely. So calling the office is the easiest, fastest way to do that. Additionally, calling the Secretary of State's office as well. My office first because of the immediacy in the sense of I can contact an officer, I can contact, I can get in a police car and go there as quickly as possible. Secretary of State's office is obviously for more documentation. And in the sense of if something is not being addressed, make sure that if we're not addressing it, that a phone call gets to me in some way, shape, or form.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Perfect timing. All right. Thank you. I do see Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I just wanted to remind everybody that because of our welcoming city ordinance in Medford, that there shouldn't be any police officers Medford police officers deputized and that's also state law, as, as I think the public commenter knows, because of the protect act so once that's. implemented, there shouldn't be any police officers that are part of any kind of ICE organization. So the police officers who are part of the elections and keeping tabs on everything and preventing intimidation, that's their only job. So I remember when I worked as an election worker in 2020, I think, or 2021 or something, during the height of COVID and it was, it was never, you know, the police officer who was there was really just there to, you know, keep tabs on stuff and they're not, you know, doing any operations. And if anything appears to be out of the ordinary in that way, it would be something that you would report to the warden, who's the person who's working. And just like Director Blanchard said, so in Medford, we have laws against this. So this is something that we talk about a lot. And it's not something that should ever be happening in Medford. And we're working hard to try to make sure that that's in our code of ordinances.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, and there's one more public comment. I will go to Zoom, and this will be the last public comment. I think I missed your hand. Steve Schnapp, just if you could give us your name and your neighborhood, and you'll have three minutes.

[Steve Schnapp]: Okay, thank you. Steve Schnapp, 36, Hillside Ave. in Medford Square. I just want to thank my neighbors for raising this issue, and I want to thank the city, both elected and appointed officials, for taking this issue seriously. We want to protect the rights of all registered voters to vote. It's an issue of democracy. And I'm just very appreciative that Medford residents have spoken out about this and the city is now alerted to protecting our vote. Thank you.

[Justin Tseng]: I also want to thank the residents who spoke up. I want to thank you, Jim, for having, you know, being aware of this and having a plan for it. I want to highlight what Councilor Lazzaro said. Please report if you see anything. We have a welcoming city ordinance in the city as well. The last thing I'll say and the thing that I wanted to bring up is we should be ready to litigate and to file an emergency motion with the courts if needed. I think the behavior that has been spoken of is violative of federal law, it's violative of state law and the 10th Amendment as well. And so we should be ready to act if anything, God forbid, does happen.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no further discussion on the motion by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Malauulu. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, 7 in the affirmative, none in the negative, the motion passes. 26164, this is the election warrant, basically has the same content in it but this is the one we have to sign. Jim, is there anything else you want to add?

[James Blatchford]: The language is in here for all the ballot questions as well but I want to point to my office, the library, the senior center and literally in the lobby. We have booklets for anyone interested. It has pro and con. So if anyone has any further questions, additionally there is online versions as well as an audio version of a reading of the entire booklet. So extreme access for anyone who is interested on learning about those ballot questions. It is one of those things you can't go in and say, how do I vote on this thing or what should I do? And we will have those available on election day as well. So if anyone has any questions, those red books that everyone has seen are available. We also have large print versions for anyone who's interested in our office at the library and the senior center. There's a lot of questions. I think it's tied for the most amount of questions we've ever had on ballot before. So it's a lot of information. So make sure to do your homework before you go to the polls.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Jim. Is there a motion? Motion. On the motion to approve by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, 7 in the affirmative, 9 in the negative, the motion passes. And Jim, you'll come around and have us sign that. Great, thank you. All right, vote, November 3rd, 26167. offered by, submitted by Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. This is Capital and General Stabilization Fund appropriation requests, road resurfacing, Hormel Stadium and Medford Connects. Dear President Bears and members of the city council, I respect the request and recommend that your honorable body approves the following appropriations from the Capital Stabilization Fund and the amount of $1.3 million for resurfacing work on a number of streets. There's a map attached, $1 million for the replacement of the turf at Hormel Stadium. And then the Capital Stabilization Fund currently has a balance of $12,428,450. And then General Stabilization Fund and the amount of $40,000 to fund the Medford Connects Program attaches a document that outlines the history of Medford Connects. As of the writing of this paper, the balance of General Stabilization is 6 million. A request to appropriate 35,000 for an executive search and recruitment company to hire the new police chief is still pending. City Engineer Wartella will be available for request for item 1A. and Recreation Director Bailey for 1B, Health and Human Services Director Marianne O'Connor and Assistant Director Catherine Dingra for questions on request two. Thank you for your kind attention. Signed, Breanna Lungo-Koehn, Mayor. So we'll go in order. If we could start with the road resurfacing and we have the city engineer.

[Owen Wartella]: Hello. How are you all. So there is one little comment I want to make. There's some typos on here with the roadways. Some of the roads that are listed are other than Second Street and Fern Road. There's some three more that are partial roads. Partial in quotes. It's Fountain Street, Mitchell Avenue, and Walter Street. We are only doing the public portion of those roads, not the private portions of those roads. And I just wanted to make sure that's clear. But basically this is just appropriations for milling and overlaying 23 roads and trying to move that needle. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

[Zac Bears]: First, just thank you, Owen, just quickly, when do you expect these to occur?

[Owen Wartella]: Probably not this year. If we get appropriated and then go out to bid, it'll probably be too late in the season to do, get started. Never say never, they might do a few if they're, but probably more likely it'll be the spring. There are a few things I need to get done, so the ideal is the spring, maybe the summer, It'll get done.

[Zac Bears]: Great. But I will go to Councilor Callahan and then Councilor Scarpelli.

[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. First of all I'm thrilled. I've been suggesting for years that we need to spend some of the savings on roads because it You know is it leads to us owing less money in the future. So I have a few questions. One I am kind of assuming that this is not done by our in-house. These are ones that go through the engineering department because you're contracting them out.

[Owen Wartella]: We will be contracting these 23 roads out. These roads are at a pavement condition index which is ranks from 0 to 100 in the mid 20s. These are roads that We do not intend to have any infrastructure work under the roads for the considerable future. There's no problems with leaks, water mains. We have no plans to upgrade the water mains any time. So we feel confident that, I mean, fingers crossed, that we can get in there, pave the road, and not have to touch it again for at least a few decades.

[Anna Callahan]: And you partially answered my next question, which was, I'm curious about the conditions of these roads. When you say 0 to 100, is 100 the best?

[Anna Callahan]: Ah, OK. So these, I'm actually quite excited about this. I know that from a purely financial standpoint, it actually is financially better to do some of your, like, if you go A, B, C, D, F, right?

[Anna Callahan]: Some of your C roads to B roads. always do the F roads, and so I have been concerned just about the equity issues of having some of these really dilapidated roads. So I'm excited if these are some of those more dilapidated roads.

[Owen Wartella]: They're not the extremely dilapidated roads. These aren't ones where we have to reconstruct. This is just a milling and overlaying so that we can get them to last another 25 years, because depending on the weather, it may not.

[Anna Callahan]: But these are not the, you know, these are not the patch ones. These are the worst.

[Owen Wartella]: These appropriations are not for those. The ones that on the CIP we still intend to do this fiscal year. And there's, but the money that you need for those roads is considerably more. That's why we can get 23 roads with this.

[Anna Callahan]: Yep. But I'm excited that these are the 20 percent roads and not the 50 percent roads.

[George Scarpelli]: Yes, thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Ms. Wartella. Just a quick question. I know that there are partial streets for the private road. Have we had any discussions with those residents on the private side to see that there might be an opportunity to have those residents work in conjunction with what we're doing on the regular side?

[Owen Wartella]: That is something that the city could not legally do. We couldn't do, okay. They could do that once we have a contract in place, but that would have to be outside the contract.

[George Scarpelli]: Right, but is there a way that legally we can just inform them that they can meet with or talk to them or not?

[George Scarpelli]: I don't know. I will tell you that you'll see the next few meetings. I know you've already, I've already started, but I'll be, I'll be really digging in to the private ways because I think we have to find some solutions as you move forward. I appreciate your hard work and I know that we've talked a bunch of times and I've talked to Commissioner McGiven as well. So I think that, um, you know, that, um, that's that's good to know that legally we can't say anything so but but it's it's important because these are the things that if we can find an avenue or have a city solicitor that we can reach out to and get some language that possibly could reach out to those residents might be you know On Fountain Street, it's not that big of a street, so you might have two residents to say, hey, geez, let's try to make it work.

[Owen Wartella]: I have these weekly conversations with residents on private properties. Yeah, I'm sure you do. an individual came in, pulled, I told them the process, you know, you got to talk to your neighbors, see if you can pull some money, and that's what they did. And they're moving forward with that. That is the process. That's not, it's not something that's, we don't have rights to their private property. They do.

[George Scarpelli]: Right. Again, I get it. And I understand that. I think that's very important. But I think it's also, if there's a way that we can, as leaders of our community, reach out to those residents that are saying, hey, there's an opportunity that we have crews that are there. I don't think you could legally do that.

[Owen Wartella]: You can't legally say like, oh, we have our contractor, use them. You can't do that.

[Owen Wartella]: There is an approved contractor list on the engineering web page. They're bonded, certified, insured. Anybody can call anybody on that list. the city would not be, you know, we wouldn't wanna, say, use this person.

[George Scarpelli]: Sure, as a city councilor, I'm just letting you know, would love to work with a legal representative to see if there's a way that we can work with the residents of Private Ways when we do projects like this to help those residents that do live on Private Ways that abut public ways to see if we're gonna, that's all I'm saying. Okay. You're saying we can't do it. I agree with you, we're good with that. I'm saying as a councilor, Maybe we should look at avenues that we can help our residents on private and public ways to try to help mitigate something like that. That's all.

[Owen Wartella]: I also try to help them every time, so yes. I'm sure you do, so thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I just, following up on that, we do have the, and I don't know how, exactly how it's been going. And I noticed that Tim jumped on, so he might have something to say. But the preferred hauler program under the solid waste ordinance is something that we put into place so that residents who now maybe have to purchase hauling services, there's a preferred hauler for race services. And I think, you know, it sounds like maybe there's a different procurement law here is what you're saying, so.

[Zac Bears]: Not your field, yeah, okay. So, you know, if you wanna pass that up the chain. Sure, of course I will. To whoever the lawyer is today, we'd love to know. The lawyer of the day. The lawyer of the day. Because I do think that something like that, you know, I think there's a, to me, an obvious efficiency if they have the materials and the machinery out there, right? So, I get it. Looks like we have Vice President Lazzaro and then Councilor Mullane. Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I am wondering if uh, road safety or anything, any higher incidence of traffic issues related to safety matters was something that was considered when you were choosing which roads to resurface or if that's ever something that you all look at?

[Owen Wartella]: Not with this project. This project would just be milling, overlaying, and then if there are any safety pavement markings, reestablishing those. That's all.

[Emily Lazzaro]: OK. So are there any projects that, like curb cuts, things like that, intersections, bump outs, that are being actively looked at as part of anything to do with your department? Or is that all in Todd's department? There are? Yes.

[Owen Wartella]: Almost every one of our projects, we look at that, yes. But just not this one.

[Emily Lazzaro]: So almost all of them, except for the really, really big ones that are really expensive and are major.

[Owen Wartella]: When we're reestablishing a complete reconstruction of a roadway, we look at the wheelchair ramps. This is not going to do anything with sidewalks. It's not going to do anything with curbing. It's just pure paving.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I understand that. I mean, let me clarify my question a little bit. I believe that there are some roads that are in disrepair and happen to be also, and I think that some of the disrepair can contribute to this, are like maybe near intersection or near a section of a road that is very dangerous. And I think that sometimes in situations where the road is also in disrepair that can contribute to a higher incidence of traffic issues or is that, I'm just asking if that's something that you guys consider, but it's not really, I'm hearing.

[Owen Wartella]: I don't believe that's what we're, we're not looking at that for this project.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. I just had a couple of quick follow up questions actually from Councilor Callahan. But I know. Thank you for putting this together and letting us know which of the roads that you're addressing and the rating of it at 20. Is that what you said from in the 20s. Is that like the defining reason of how you pick these streets or.

[Owen Wartella]: Yes. So we do. a pavement study and a sidewalk study every couple of years. We're trying to do it more often just so we can kind of keep track of what the road conditions are because I want to make sure they don't accelerate into disrepair. And with those, it The consultant gives us a list of roads that fall into this category. And that's how we came up with these roads. So it's just basically a scientific study. They go around. They analyze the road. They use equipment to analyze it. And they say, these are the roads that fall into this conditioning.

[Liz Mullane]: Oh, that's great. Do you, and just, I don't know if you would know this off the top of the head, but where do we, where do most of the roads line up? If we've got 23 that are in this 20 range?

[Owen Wartella]: Our average is in the high 40s. High 40s? OK. We were around 46 at the beginning of this year. And I think with all the pavement that we've done over the summer, we're probably closer to 48. OK. But we still have a lot of work to do still. There's still a few months left in our season. And we plan to do a little bit more.

[Zac Bears]: All right, any further questions for the city engineer? Okay, can we take all three and then just move approval up? Yeah, all right. I thought I had one, but I guess you can go. Okay. All right, and we'll just take a vote on all three of these items when they're complete, but we'll go next about Hormel Stadium. We have the recreation director, Kevin Bailey, talking about the turf. Do you know what color you're gonna paint it?

[Kevin Bailey]: I have already received a couple of messages on ideas of what it could look like, yes. OK.

[George Scarpelli]: Remember, remember, blue is detrimental for birds, especially seagulls, because it's an easy way to commit seagull suicide. They think it's water. I have heard about that, yeah. Yes, they think it's water. Yeah. Yeah, so. All right.

[Zac Bears]: Okay, well, our colors are only blue and white, so. I did not have bets on seagull suicide coming up at this meeting, so yeah. Well, that's a good omen. Director Bailey.

[Kevin Bailey]: Kevin Bailey, Recreation Director for the City of Method. Thank you, Councilors, for taking our paper this evening. As I mentioned, we're looking to replace the turf at Hormel Stadium. To give you an idea, typically a turf is good for about 10 years. We're going on our 12th year right now. So we certainly have used this lifespan. It's gotten great use and it's time to replace it. We feel like this is a very important time right now, especially with the high school potentially being rebuilt. We know that will have an effect on Egerle Field. And we wanna make sure that while that turf is going to be taken down on whatever type of renovations is finally decided, we know that during that time, the athletic department is really going to rely on Hormel Stadium to be used for not only the high school athletic sports, but continue with our youth sports and all of our regular scheduled activities over there. So we wanna make sure that right now is a good time to do the turf, have it replaced to make sure that during the construction and the renovations at the high school, we have a new turf field.

[George Scarpelli]: Just to be clear, we're not building on the turf fields. We don't want to scare anybody. That's been ruled out where it's so the turf fields. But during the construction, we understand it's going to pose a problem as we move forward to scheduling and not having it. As a professional in this field, I will tell you, we start the process at year eight to make sure that our turf fields are turned over by 10. So we're way behind and we are, you know, one of our biggest fears is that, as well as you know, maybe the community doesn't know, that we take, we do intensive testing on our turf fields to really protect our participants from concussions, really. And I think it's a GEO study that's done.

[George Scarpelli]: Right, so it's very important that we've been, But I think if we wait any longer, the ramifications are going to be that we shut that field down until it's forced to be treated and resurfaced. So I appreciate that we're a little behind, but we're still ahead of the curve, because even if we say yes today, it doesn't mean the turf's going down tomorrow. We're looking at a year process, so we have to make sure that we do our due diligence. With this, I will also, Mr. President, in future, Resolutions will also be looking into the high school field as well, the field of dreams, and look at that possibility as we move forward because that's of age as well and surpassed as well. So I would move approval without hesitation. I know the number scares a lot of people, but I think that when you talk about just our high school teams, if we had to move those programs that are housed at Hormel and we have to go then outside the city, just the busing alone is crippling when it comes to cost. So, you know, there's so many variables. I know that I've heard some people that hear the number and think it's a lot. It's a necessary cost that we need to perform as elected officials to make sure that we're protecting our residents and our participants, mostly our high school age students, so I move approval, Mr. President.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Kevin. Any further questions for Director Bailey on this item? All right, we will go next to Director O'Connor. Thank you. On the Medford Connects program. And while you're getting up here, I just want to read thank you for providing this update on Medford Connects. I think some of the quick highlights are, in the last fiscal year, the Connect program reached more than 7,000 residents through direct outreach, 780 help navigation sessions for MassHealth, 1,000 food deliveries for low-income older adults, 230 children getting back to school supplies, 230 residents helping them get prepared for winter, engaging 150 teens through a job readiness summit, bringing 1,000 residents together for cultural and community events, and a number of other partnerships. The program has been funded through the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Grant Program from the state in recent years, since 2021, but did not get an award in the current cycle. And it also looks like there was this additional $40,000 for this year due Restoring weekly, increasing weekly capacity across the team because of high demand. So that was a quick attempt to summarize a one-page document. But I would love to hear from you guys about this request. And also if you do want to start to talk about now maybe what we're going to try to do to bring funding in for the program now that this MVP grant has gone away.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yes, thank you. Thank you for having us here tonight. Unfortunately, we weren't funded this year by the state's MVP grant. It seems that they were interested more in investing in infrastructure as far as dealing with climate vulnerability as opposed to community resilience in dealing with climate vulnerability. So we are still searching for additional funding. We've reached out again to the Barr Foundation. We're going to be submitting to the Cummings Foundation. And we're always on the lookout for additional funding. As you know, our team originally consisted of 12 members at 15 hours a week each. Now we have to cut that back to eight members at eight hours a week. And we are really feeling the impact of not having those hours available for the residents of Medford as far as the need of resources and looking for assistance. We've had to cut back on mass health assistance and it's we can really feel the impact and I think the residents do too. So what we're asking for tonight is the additional 40 which would at least, we won't be at the 12th, but would still be at the 8th, but at least those 8 folks could bump their hours up to 12 hours from the current 8 hours a week that they're at. And this is Assistant Director Dengra, who really the program is under her management. If you want to add anything.

[Zac Bears]: So it seems like you've gone from 170 hours a week to 80 hours a week, or 60 hours a week, about that. And this would get you back up to 170 down to 60. This gets you up to back 80 hours a week. All right.

[Catherine Dhingra]: And we're trying to be creative, too. We're leveraging, you know, opportunities. So we took the senior tax program and adopted one of those individuals as our senior connector. So we're really trying to think out of the box to do this work in the most efficient way for the city. But recognizing with the change in public benefits lately, the demand on our most vulnerable residents, our seniors with things like heating assistance, are increasing dramatically. So we really want to have a team that's able to respond to all those needs.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I think, you know, it's really an example of how you can't just do more with less in every moment, right? This is a really important program. We, I reached out to Senator Jalen and our representatives about this and heard a little bit back from Senator Jalen and Representative Donato about trying to see if the state can do anything maybe in the supplemental budget. I, you know, I'm not, no promises but that's what I had a conversation with Representative Donato about that yesterday. Because it's a really important program and, you know, I think this 40,000 is helpful. I appreciate you guys being creative. But, you know, it doesn't replace 100 hours of time that was going to help residents that isn't anymore. And it's not on you guys. You guys are so creative about getting grants and not every grant is going to come through. But I do think it also speaks to the fact that, you know, we've talked about this during budget meetings many times, Director O'Connor, like what happens if the grant goes away? What do we do if the grant goes away? Because this is really important. And it really speaks again to the fact that there's so many things. We're trying our best to be as efficient as possible, but we're relying on unreliable sources of revenue to fund essential programs. And I think it really just speaks to our long-term need for more revenue for development and new growth in ways so that we can make sure that this isn't something where you're losing half of your capacity or more because of one state grant because they decided to go a different direction. So, really looking at it on all fronts and appreciate you guys working to help as much as you can and, you know, I think it's just can't always do more with less and it's really tough when it's not a reliable source. So, and I think we thought this was one, right? So, that's a double.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: And unfortunately, the timing of the announcement of the grant was just beyond budget season. So if maybe we had known prior, we could have then maybe built something into the budget, but we didn't find out until after the budget season was over. Okay.

[Justin Tseng]: I'll go to Councilor Tseng. Thank you. I don't have questions. I think what you've presented is, I think, really highlights the work that has been going on with Medford Connects. I mean, these are impressive numbers. The food deliveries, the mass health navigation, these are basics that our residents, many, many, many, many of our residents count on. For that, you have my full support. I mean, as someone who grew up in this community with parents who don't speak the best English, this is the type of support system that would have been really helpful for them when they were raising me. And I know for a fact that for many, many of our residents, it's a lifesaver for them. So you have my full support, your team has my full support. It's unfortunate that you guys didn't get the grant, that we as a city didn't get the grant. And it's unfortunate that our fiscal position is that we couldn't have built this into our system before. But I'm really, really glad that we have the opportunity now to keep this program running. Thank you, Councilor Tseng.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I wanted to highlight a couple of things and what you've presented. First of all, I really think that this program is so important that we should have been talking about how to build it and fold it into the budget, a while ago. I can't remember if I did talk about it during budget season the past few years, but I really think it should be part of that discussion. It should be part of the, I mean, it's a part of the fabric of our city services. These are basic services in other cities that are not funded by a grant from the state that are part of the operating budget. We will always have food insecure people. We will always have housing insecure people. And the fact that we have one social worker, we're asking Jason to do so much. We have our Office of Prevention and Outreach, which it feels to me like is a skeleton crew, and that this is this program. Is not part of our operating budget, but that we are asking the state as like kind of a special add on to fund all of these people that are out that are our outreach team to every, you know, community that speaks another language to everybody that's part of a special. subset of our population, I think is wild. So we should definitely, definitely for next year for budget season be building. I mean, I would be happy to work with your team. And I mean, not that I have some kind of special, but like, I think that we should be talking about that very early and figuring out a way to build in those this programming so that we make sure it's part of every budget season going forward. I did want to ask what are which which of the connectors or the liaisons did we have to lose when we lost folks I think we used to have youth, a youth connector LGBT QA connector, maybe, or liaison, I can't remember.

[Catherine Dhingra]: The connectors that we have lost are our climate connector, our older adults connector, which we are replacing with a tax person so that fortunately is all set. Our ESOL connector and our Arabic liaison.

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: But they'd all already decided to move on. We didn't have to let them go. So we're just not replacing them at this point because we don't have the funds to do so.

[Catherine Dhingra]: Yeah, we were actually excited. Our Arabic liaison got a full-time job in the Medford Public Schools. Oh, that's great.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I was going to say, Sierra was such an important part of the city.

[Emily Lazzaro]: That's great. Good. And OK, so I also wanted to mention. I know this is slightly off topic, but I wanted to mention that since this group of folks does so much work with people who are navigating services that are offered by the state and the federal government, and that those services are all changing very suddenly, I was wondering if you could talk about the thing you have coming up to sort of give people sort of a cheat sheet shortlist of how those changes are affecting people, because that's the sort of work that these folks would be able to do and help people along with. There are new work requirements. There are new re-sign up requirements, things you would have to reapply for once a year you now have to do every six months. You have to work in order to earn the ability to get food assistance and cash assistance and whatever. I don't know. There's all kinds of stuff. I don't remember the details. But yeah, Catherine, if you could just speak to that.

[Catherine Dhingra]: Sure. Yeah. So this Thursday we're having this is actually comes out of our Medford connects meetings when we meet with partners across the city to understand what the needs are and a lot of people didn't understand some of the federal changes and benefits programs. So what we decided to do was reach out to our partners who really have the best knowledge bring them together with our city partners and stakeholders nonprofits school officials to provide information on updating changes to Mass Health, to SNAP, which is the food assistance program, to WIC, and to fuel assistance, because the federal changes and the Massachusetts changes, people need to understand the landscape, who qualifies, what those work requirements are, and to give people the understanding of, you know, that a lot of people are losing some of the benefits. So their SNAP payments might have been $140 a month. That might be down to $30, $35 a month. So just to build up the landscape so people understand. So our partners at the different City agencies really can communicate that to residents and our team has that full information. So we'll have experts in to inform our even a lot of our department heads will be there to understand because a lot of people might be coming to pay a parking ticket and Become overwhelmed because you know, I can't pay this parking ticket because of that so they have the knowledge say hey We have people here in City Hall to help you

[Emily Lazzaro]: That's so, so important. I really appreciate you all doing that because the more everybody knows and can share that information with residents as they come in and they can redirect people to different departments, I think it's so important. And it really underscores what I was talking about with how I really would love this department to be really absorbed into the Health and Human Services Department in the city instead of being considered like a special add-on. Just have it be part of the budget. Then we won't have to scramble. You won't have to go to Cummings. You know, it shouldn't absorb this much of your time and attention. And then you can really focus on making sure that the people in the city have all of the help that they need. And your work is so critical. I just wouldn't want to take you, either of you, away from having the capacity to do your work to the best of your ability.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. I also want to echo what the other councilors have said too. Thank you so much for all the great work that you've been doing and I'm so sorry that you're in this spot in terms of financially trying to figure it out and appreciate the work that you're doing. When it comes to some of these foundations, is this work that you all as a team internally are doing to apply for the foundations? Okay. So do you work with other departments within the city to maybe coordinate what's a larger gift grant or is it kind of solely per each of the different departments working on it?

[MaryAnn O'Connor]: It depends on the grant requirements. If we could partner with another, like sometimes we look at planning and development, you know, partner with some work that they're doing to submit grants. But for this, it's solely within OPO.

[Catherine Dhingra]: Yeah. We'll do some collaborative work with the schools or, you know, different departments. But we look at who the funder is and then what the best strategy for a successful application will be.

[Liz Mullane]: I mean, you have some, for someone who works within fundraising, you have a lot of great metrics and things to be able to share and demonstrate your impact. So if I can be helpful in any way, please let me know. But I appreciate you guys thinking outside the box of looking at these different foundations to find support too. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Mullane. Any further discussion by members of the council? Seeing none, thank you guys. We have a motion from Councilor Scarpelli to approve all three of these items seconded by Councilor Tseng. Is there any discussion on these items by members of the public?

[Micah Kesselman]: Name and neighborhood for the record, you have three minutes. Sure, Mikey Hussman, 499 Main Street. I just had like a small question about the roadway mill and pave plan. So, I mean, well, I don't want, like, every road should get milled and paved that needs it. I do notice that South Medford is pretty poorly represented on this plan. I do know living in South Medford that the whole gamut of disrepair exists on the roads in South Medford, and it's all on the lower side. of the CIP or whatever index that you use. So I'm just wondering if there's like a specific reason that it seems pretty weighted towards like the north of the city or if there's any plan for South Medford to get some, you know, mill and paving, love and care because it would be really dope and people would really appreciate it.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. We'll just wait for the rest of the comments. Is there anyone else has a comment on any of these items? Seeing none in Zoom or in person, the public comments for this are closed and we'll go to the engineer.

[Owen Wartella]: I just would like to say that this map doesn't include all the other work we're doing in South Medford. We're doing over probably close to a mile of not just milling and paving, but reconstructing the roadway. We're doing all of Willis Street, all of Bowen Street, partial of Golden, as well as we're doing Arlington Street in West Medford. So we're following a plan. while this is scattered throughout the city, we have been focusing a lot in South Medford and it's gonna be moving to West Medford and then over to the Heights and Wellington area as well in the coming years, okay?

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right, on the motion by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Tseng, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. And the affirmative, negative, the motion passes. Thank you all. Hearings, petition for a grant of location, National Grid and Verizon for North Street and Walkman Court. Do we have a representative from National Grid present? Please raise your hand on Zoom or come to the podium in the chambers. All right, I will read this now. A petition for a grant of location, Massachusetts Electric Company, DBA National Grid and Verizon New England. petition to install new joint-owned pool and replace and relocate joint-owned pool proposals P.O. 165 and P.O. 164 on North Street. Bureau Hillbride notified by the order of the Medford City Council. The City Council would hold a public hearing in the Howard F. Alden Chambers at City Hall 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford and via Zoom on Tuesday, September 29th at 7 p.m. A link to be posted no later than Friday, September 25th, 2026 on a petition by the Massachusetts Electric Company, DBA National Grid, Hey guys, guys, could you guys whisper? Owen, Micah, could you guys whisper that conversation? Thank you. To install one joint new joint on pole to replace and relocate one joint on pole on the North Street right of way for the Medford Housing Authority redevelopment at Walkwing Court. We have the plan attached and the conditions from the recommendations from the engineering division. Engineering recommends that this grant of location be approved with the following conditions. Grant of location limited to one joint-owned pole within the cement concrete sidewalk at the existing entrance to the walk-in core development on North Street and labeled P-1065 as depicted on the sketch. Grant of location is conditioned on the removal and replacement of one existing joint-owned pole currently in the North Street right-of-way and labeled P-1064 removed. as depicted on the sketch to replace the relocated pole 30 feet to the north and labeled P-1064 proposed. Before starting work, the contractor shall notify DIGSAFE and obtain all applicable permits from the engineering division. Project must retain a public right-of-way occupancy PRO permit pursuant to section 74-141 of the city ordinances. No other utility structures, conduits, ducts, banks, pipes, or other appurtenances are adversely impacted. National Grid shall ensure that all sewer, water, and drain lines are marked prior to any excavation. Placement of the joint utility pole must be within the quote furniture zone and provide at least 40 inches of clearance of accessible travel path around the structure in accordance with ADA regulations and city standards. Placement of the joint utility pole must be no closer than six inches from the back of the granite curb. And six, the cement concrete sidewalk restoration shall be done at the time of installation removal and in consultation with the engineering division per the requirements of the approved PRO permit. Any concrete sidewalk damage during this work must be replaced in kind and cleanly cut at the control joints. Temporary patching unit using bituminous concrete pavement will not be permitted. And this was a petition presented by the Royal Segal City Clerk and plans can be viewed in the city clerk's office 781-393-2425. All right, now that I've read that, thank you for being here. If you could tell us just a little bit more about the project, short summary, and then I will open the public hearing.

[Cam Hansel]: Hello, I'm from National Grid. We're requesting a grant of location for a new pole or relocation of pole 1064, because the current one is going to be in the way of redesign of the housing authority entrance. And then also a grant of location for a new pole, because the span would be too long otherwise with the relocation of the original poll.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Do you have any questions for the proponent or members of the council? Seeing none, I'm going to open the public hearing. Public hearing is open. Is there anyone here who'd like to speak on the petition in favor, opposed or otherwise? You're in favor?

[Zac Bears]: Great. Anyone else who'd like to speak in this public hearing? Just give another moment. If you'd like to speak, please come to the podium in the chamber, raise your hand on Zoom. All right, seeing none, I'm declaring the public hearing closed. Is there a motion? On the motion to approve with the conditions by the engineering division by Councilor Tseng seconded by seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: All right. 25.136, public hearing proposed amendments to the Medford Zoning Ordinance Chapter 94, Inclusionary Housing Fractional Payment. A public hearing will be held by the Medford City Council and the Howard F. Alderman Auditorium, City Hall, 85 George B. Hassett Drive and via Zoom on Tuesday, September 29th, 2026 at 7 p.m. relative to the proposed amendment to the city of Medford zoning ordinance amending section 94-8.1 inclusionary housing to provide a new provision to allow for fractional payments. A link to this hearing and an agenda containing the text of the proposed amendment will be posted to the city's calendar at medfordma.org slash events calendar no later than Friday, September 25th. For additional information, contact the Office of the City Clerk at 781-393-2425. By order of the Medford City Council, signed Laurel Siegel, City Clerk. This is advertised in the Medford Transcript and Somerville Journal, September 10th and September 17th. And this is on the... Fractional Unions Amendment, and to be honest, I'm not even going to try to summarize it. I'll just let you do it, Danielle. And just to add that we got a letter August 19th that in accordance with General Law Chapter 48, the Community Development Board held a public hearing on August 12th to make a recommendation on the amendment. Specifically, the proposed amendment would allow the option to elect to make a fractional payment to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. When the required number of affordable units result in a fraction of a unit less than one half of a unit, all members of the CDB were present. After consideration, the Community Development Board voted unanimously to submit the zoning amendment to the city council. The recommended amended language which describes the process and calculation method along with the calculation example are attached to this memorandum as attachments A and B. And I will turn it over to you, Danielle. Do you need to share your screen?

[Danielle Evans]: I don't have like a presentation or anything set up, but I could. I don't, so I don't need to share screen, but if there's questions.

[Danielle Evans]: Okay. Good evening. I'm Danielle Evans, senior planner in the Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability. I'm here tonight for the amendment to the inclusionary housing ordinance to allow for fractional payments. What that means, currently our inclusionary housing ordinance requires certain size developments, so 10 or more, to set aside a certain percentage as affordable. You know, affordable, they're still not exactly affordable at 80% AMI, but they're income restricted and they have capped rents. So if it results in a fraction, you currently have to round up to the next whole number. And so, for example, an 11-unit development, 10 percent of those would be required. So 1.1 rounds up to 2. So 2 affordable units would be required. No developers are building 11 unit developments because the cost to offset the haircut that the developer takes for that unit, it doesn't pencil out. But if we had a fractional option, Perhaps they would build the 11 unit development rather than go down to nine and we could get a payment to the Affordable Housing Trust which could be used for other purposes for the creation of affordable housing in the city elsewhere. We don't have a lot of steady income streams for the Affordable Housing Trust aside from Community Preservation Act. Set aside a certain percentage to the trust fund. But other than that We don't have a lot of other sources for it So this could be a good source and this has been something that's been talked about for a while But since we didn't have an affordable housing trust fund set up We couldn't implement one because there wouldn't be any place to park the money. So now that we have a trust up and running We're revisiting this and Councilor. Let me put this on the City Council agenda a while back to direct staff and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Board to develop an ordinance or an amendment to our ordinance to implement this.

[Zac Bears]: All right, thank you, Planner Evans. Do we have, Matt has a question, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: No, not so much a question. I just wanted to thank the Affordable Housing Trust, the Community Development Board, and Planner Evans for their work on this. I live in a nine-unit apartment complex, so that's a pretty stark reminder of how the seemingly small calculations such as this can end up having a pretty substantial effect on our city. The just just to be clear, because there have been a number of back and forth on this. So this is the final final version. There's no sort of issues with this and we're comfortable passing and just planner Evans are comfortable with us passing this for the third reading tonight.

[Danielle Evans]: Yes, this is the final version. As you may recall, originally we were going to take a different approach to calculating how this would, how that difference in, you know, that the subsidy would, sorry, I'm getting kind of, Convoluted in my head. Originally we were going to do the total development cost, but that number is pretty tricky to identify and is pretty much a moving target now. It used to be something that was published in the qualified allocation plan. And the local initiative, no, low income housing tax credit program, but they've stopped publishing that number because the market and construction costs are all over the place that they're not pinning low income housing tax credits to total development costs. So while The inclusionary housing fractional payments has nothing to do with the low income housing tax credits. The reason why we were looking at that document was because it was a pretty like handy kind of like off label use to get that number. So the other approach is the basically we call the subsidy gap. So the difference of a market rate unit and an affordable unit and to get so that that delta times the fraction of the unit. And so just to back up, it would be for, only for calculations when it's below 0.5. So if it's 0.5 or above, you still have to round out. But 0.5, but under 0.5, it would be the fraction. So like 10% of that subsidy gap number, and it's roughly around 400,000, so 100 percent of that subsidy gap, so the 10 percent of that would be, you know, 40,000. The .4 would be 160,000. So it could add up. And, Daniel, a follow-on to that, does

[Matt Leming]: With the way that this calculated, do you sort of still run into the same issue once you get to that 0.5 threshold where developers are maybe disincentivized once they get to a slightly higher threshold of units from kind of building the extra 0.5? I just kind of wanted to understand a little bit about making the, are you not allowed to make a payment to the Affordable Housing Trust if it's like the calculation comes out to 0.7, for instance?

[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, that was the decision that was made. Going through the process, yes, there'll always be kind of this like gaming and sizing of the developments. So you're right. If the total amount is, you know, ends in five or six, maybe even seven, they probably wouldn't build those. So you might not see a 15 unit development, but maybe we'll get the 14s. And, you know, 17 or 18. So yeah, you do run into that issue. But we didn't want to. make the like a total cash like in lieu payment in lieu of actually providing the units. We didn't really want to go there because we think it's important to actually build the units too. So. That was just the approach that we took. And is anything with zoning, you know, it's a living, changing thing. And, you know, within maybe after a year or two, we'll see how it's going. And if it doesn't seem to be working, we can tweak it.

[Matt Leming]: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Just, just wanted to make sure that my own, my own understanding of the, of the issue is correct. And with, with the way it's written, if it does turn out that we see a bunch of, you know, 14 but not 15 unit developments as they're sort of a. With the way this is written, is it sort of turnkey where we could just say, OK, let's just update this really quickly? Or do you think it'll take sort of another kind of several months worth of consideration to make that change? Because I understand that this first change was the first in a long time, and there definitely was a lot of back and forth. with the state but I do want to understand if you think that you know should we decide it's not working out would it be a lot simpler to edit that.

[Danielle Evans]: Yeah I think it would be easy it would be an easy change because pretty much it would be making the distinction of, so it's where the required number of affordable units results in a fraction of a unit that is less than one half of a unit. That's what we, that's the beginning of that sentence. It could be if it's less than, you know, three quarters of a unit or, I mean, you could do that if it's less than 0.75, you could try to change it that way. I don't think it would be very complicated.

[Zac Bears]: I think Councilor Leming, any other Councilors have any questions on this? All right. I have a couple of really quick ones. Just how often, you know, I appreciate Councilor Leming's line of questioning and I think it makes sense for us to maybe take a look at it, but do you have any thoughts on how frequently have you run into a situation where you think this would have been a really great provision to have and kind of how many times do you think we might see this every year?

[Danielle Evans]: Well, we have a lot of nine unit developments. One, I'm thinking of one example that it could have helped was You know, the former pit on the corner of Park and Salem, you know, that size just to be below, maybe they would have done more if we had a fractional payment option available. I know that the other development that was just, or not just, but within several months approved on Salem Street, you know, now they're kind of looking at their numbers and they might, because they had done, they had 14. And now they're not seeing how this is going to work because they didn't factor in some of the stretch code expenses. And now they're trying to figure out how do they make this project work out. And one of the changes was reducing it down to nine units. And I was like, well, just hold on before you do anything rash. we might be having, fractional payments might be an option. So perhaps you could still do the 14 and provide the one unit and be able to make the fractional payment of 40% of that subsidy gap to the trust. And maybe the numbers would work then. Because I mean it's, you know that makes up about like over half a million dollars it recovers for them. So we would be able to get more units in general.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, so we'd be talking about nine with no affordable units versus 14 with one affordable unit and a 0.4 fractional payment to the trust.

[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, which if we did the exercise today, it would be about like $160,000. All right. Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I just appreciate, I think, making it a little bit real. Yeah. Because it's a little bit of a convoluted calculation, but I think that that's a helpful example. So thank you so much. All right, do we have any further questions for Planner Evans? All right, I'm going to then open the public hearing on the fractional payments. If you'd like to speak on this item, you can come to the podium in the chamber or raise your hand on Zoom, public hearing is open. Do we have anyone who'd like to speak about this zoning amendment? I got one hand on Zoom. Marie, if you could just change your name, if you could just add a last initial or a last name, we generally don't unmute folks on Zoom. I'm gonna also turn on the power to turn on video. So if you could either rename yourself or turn on your video, then we can take you on Zoom. Marie, you should be able to turn on your video or rename yourself. There we go. All right. I saw you, Marie. I will unmute you now. If you could give us your name and neighborhood, and you'll have three minutes.

[SPEAKER_24]: Um, yeah, so, um, you know, I appreciate all that was just said this evening, but we did have an original plan to have, you know, a certain percentage of affordable units in Medford. And, um, can anyone tell me what the percentage is right now in Medford? Um, that we have actually reached, because I feel that if we start, you know, not even doing a 10%, regardless of the trust or no trust, you know, it's sort of setting us back quite a bit. And that's very concerning to me. So can anyone give me an actual percentage that we are, in fact, utilizing towards affordable housing right now?

[Zac Bears]: So, I think there's two things that I might need Planner Evans' help on part of this. So, the ordinance says if your building is 10 units to, is it 10 to 24 or 10 to 25 units, a new building, then it has to be 10% of a certain income restriction.

[Danielle Evans]: Yeah. So, between 10 and 24, it's 10%, 25 or then, yeah. 25 to 49 it's 13% and then 50 plus is 15% so With the fractional payment, that lower scale will always at least get 10%. It's 10% plus that fraction. So if it's 11 units, well, it's of the whole number. Let me rephrase that.

[Zac Bears]: Right. There will always be at least one unit in any development. Yes.

[SPEAKER_24]: Right. I am just saying to the stock of affordable, outside of the fact that they're barely affordable, but to the stock of affordable, it seems like we're looking to decrease instead of increase. And I find that to be concerning because I think we're losing sight of what's really needed in this city to sort of, I don't know. In my mind, the math is not working. Again, I just need that to be sort of on the record that we seem to be not going in the right direction. And, you know, with units being affordable at 80%, I find that that is not even an affordable conversation. So we're not reaching our goals as far as I'm concerned. That's all.

[Zac Bears]: All right, do we have any other people who'd like to make public comments on this matter? Seeing none, I'm going to declare the public hearing closed. Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: No, I did just want to address some of Marie's points because they are very good points and they're frequently part of these discussions. On the point of 80% AMI being not really affordable, that's 100% true. It's just the state definition that we have to go by when doing these things. What I will say is that with the way that the system is now, Nicholas J. Schalkevich, Ph.D.: : Nine units no affordable housing is very incentivized So if you start adding on like. Nicholas J. Schalkevich, Ph.D.: : About if you can imagine us adding on a bunch of nine unit on affordable developments like that's 0% affordable housing actually being built right there. If we were to change that to incentivize 14 unit developments, one affordable unit there, then that at least gets us that one affordable unit on the whole. The reality is that the bulk of these affordable units are usually built with much larger developments, and that's how we're going to get Medford to that 10 percent minimum that I don't believe. Danielle can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe we're there yet.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, well, that's better than we were. We're getting closer. Yeah, OK. No, that's progress. That's definitely progress, so I appreciate that. OK. Getting there, getting there. But at the same time, building completely outside of the percent of affordable housing issue, building more housing just from a straight up supply and demand perspective does help affordability when we're talking about just its effects on the market. So that is another part of the economics here that needs to be considered. So that's all I have, but Marie's points are very, very well taken.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right. Seeing no further comments from members of the council and Jeremy, I'm sorry, I saw you raise your hand, but I did already close the public hearing. This would not be, I'll recognize you for three minutes, but this technically won't be part of the public hearing. It's just general public participation. If you could give your name and neighborhood, you'll have three minutes.

[Jeremy Martin]: Sure. Thank you, Zach. I appreciate it. Councilor Leming's comments spurred a comment for me, so I appreciate the opportunity to speak. It's interesting to hear the discussion of large developments being a really important way to contribute to the affordable housing stock in our community. And I just think it's worth pointing out that, at least as I understand it, purpose-built student housing is both exempt from the minimum affordable housing unit count and also not able to use the incentive for affordable housing. And so we should just be aware that any large development of purpose-built student housing will not contribute to our affordable housing stock. And I hope that the city councilors are taking that into account as they think about zoning. But this is a great program. And I think anything we can do to bolster our affordable housing program is worth proving. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. All right. Mr. Clerk, can you write it? Do we have a motion here? All right. Do we have a motion? Any councilors?

[Zac Bears]: on the motion to approve the and ordain this ordinance and adopt all the recommendations of the Community Development Board by Councilor Leming, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. I've been the affirmative. None of the negative. The motion passes. All right. Motions, orders and resolutions. 26-142B offered by the city council. This is the city council response to paper 26142 law department appropriations in The city council submitted a response to the administration's request to reverse cuts that were made to the fiscal 27 city budget. The city council voted to reduce the law department budget to two months due to several months of not having received information back about the costs of litigation and settlements to the city. That was initially requested back in February. And the city council voted in August to extend that by one extra month to September 30th. And that was along with this item around a request for a number of, you know, a repeated request for information about the city's legal liabilities, the cost of litigation to the city over the past several years, and in general, why the city council had had difficulty receiving that information for so long. We did receive five or six emails over the course of the end of August and the beginning of September, both from the mayor and the chief of staff that responded to these, to the resolution. We had basically made seven requests. The administration requested that we delay this to, from September 15th to September 29th. And also I worked with the city clerk and the chief of staff to try to get their responses into a single document, which is attached to this agenda. So I will quickly just read through, I'll just generally summarize. Our first request was a written response to our original resolution back in February, which requested, a comprehensive litigation report and a quarterly status update on litigation. And we did receive a response that the administration reviewed the resolution and that the amount of information was a significant challenge considering that the info for them to provide considering the information was dispersed across multiple departments and filing systems and that they didn't have the, capacity to answer and that they had provided a number of pages of information in response to that item. So that was prior to our request in August. For number two, we requested an independent review of the city's litigation costs and the mayor did say in an email on August 31st that she is open to a review. I have been reaching out to some firms to see if They would be interested and I also have some contact with the state auditor's office who said that they would be willing if the city council and mayor both requested for them to review the city's litigation costs and practices. They said that it would likely cost the city $10,000 to conduct that review. They also said they don't have to if we ask, but they did say that they do cover many of the items that we requested. For response three, we asked for a categorization of the KP law expenditures that were provided and in the email. The response here just says see attached email. I believe in the email the mayor said that they don't have the resources to categorize the expenses, although they do sum up to nearly $2.4 million in expenses to KP Law. We also asked for a report and categorization on other services provided by firms that weren't KP Law, and they didn't do the categorization for those either, but I had to do the math. For the firms that they provided, there was a firm called Clifford and Kenny that was $10,000 since May of this year, and this is from, January, 2020 through, I believe about September, early September of this year. So Clifford and Kenny was $10,000, Mellick and Porter was $50,000, O'Hagan and Meyer was $48,000, Peabody and Arnold, and this is just the report for 2020 and forward was $260,000. And then a firm Saferth and Shaw was $630,000. So that's a sum total of a million, 1,070,000. And then item five was that we requested a financial summary of all settlements and judgments against the city since 2020. And that sums to $2.25 million. And then number six was that we requested an estimated cost of all of the budgeted legal expenses for fiscal 27. And the administration responded that it would be at least $400,000 within the city budget. So just those first items, three, four and five, That totals $5,717,283 from 2020 to 2026. It's almost a million dollars a year and that's just for outside council and legal expenses. That doesn't also count the times that we did have a city solicitor which is a little less than half of that time. So that's the response from the administration. I, you know, certainly would want us to move forward with the independent review because I think once you add up all the numbers and the bills that we've received, $6 million is pretty significant to spend on outside counsel and legal settlements. So with that, I will close the meeting. go to my fellow members of the Council for discussion. I recognize Councilor Scarapelli and then Vice President Lazzaro.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. To say that I'm frustrated is minimal. I'm beyond frustrated. When we see these responses, we see the work that's been put into it, we were told The reason when we started and asked and then had to be forced to go into a FOIA request and then pressure the administration to get us these numbers, the response was the job was too daunting. But as we received this information, we received more information, it's more information that's telling me you're spending Plenty of time. You have plenty of time. You have the knowledge of what we're asking for. And Councilor Callahan even simplified it, and I believe she even sent it to the mayor's office on a simple spreadsheet that just highlighted the law firm that you used, the case that we used in fighting any situation, the amount of money that we spent on a settlement, where that money was coming out of, what part to pay them from, the amount of money that we're paying the opposing attorneys, and the amount of money we're paying our attorneys. I mean, we made it very simple, but they still refuse to give us that breakdown. Instead, we're getting these cryptic messages, these reports that just don't make sense. It's clearly we're spending millions of dollars. That's clear. But why not be direct as we're asking you to? So for one, this council will not support, I won't support anything moving forward to move forward with anything or prove anything that our administration is sending us. I'm actually going to move forward. to provide a letter next week, next meeting that will go to the Secretary of State's office to demand what we've asked for. We've given the city administration months and months to respond to this, but all we're getting back is negativity and the audacity to go public and say everything we're talking about this is all a political ploy between some sort of old boy network that we still don't know who's defining it and the OR. This is something that this council started questioning multiple years ago. And my colleagues can refresh my memory, but I believe it was back in 2022 that I started asking this information. We can go back to the budget hearings where the mayor sat at that podium laughing at me, saying, ha, we never go over the line item. We never go over that line item. And what is the first thing that we get when we finally ask for information? We get a breakdown that in those years, we spent close to $400,000 in legal fees. And it shows that we were being misled. Here we are today, and the reason why I brought this forward months and months ago is so we could find a resolution to stop the bleeding that the mayor went out and publicly said that this is all a ploy. But the next day, DPW and the Teamsters settled with the city for the civil rights violation that they failed, and they needed to settle because they knew they were going to lose. From what I hear is up to $70,000 that we had to pay the union's attorney. Forget about the settlement for the members that were being brought out for this. Well, this could have been taken care of internally with the city solicitor. To hear that the mayor mentioned that we don't need a city solicitor because KPY gives her access to 300 attorneys. But it's killing us financially. We're bleeding, bleeding financially. I got a phone call today from the rank and file from the fire department, who just by the way, the next day after the civil rights suit was finalized and settled on, that they were awarded a firing of a firefighter that was wrong, and then we have to pay that person back. Why do we know? Because the attorneys from the firefighters, they actually put it on social media, every victory. And the comments are, well, you know what? We don't put ours out there when we win, because you don't win. They don't want to see this anymore either. The firefighters don't want this anymore. They're tired of it themselves. The situation they brought forward to me is that they're questioning the MOA that was written back with Mayor Burke about paying our firefighters the educational credits that they are owed every year. That's part of negotiations. That's part of a contract. I saw the ratification contract and signed by the mayor at the time and the union president. I have that, and I'll share that with my fellow colleagues. And then they shared a piece of paper that the chief sent to the rank and file that said that, oh, no, this piece of paper says that we don't pay you that. But that piece of paper isn't initialed, isn't signed by any party. and bears no weight. In the meantime, it's something that this chief has done for the last two years, paying out our firefighters. So I'm going to make a motion that at our next meeting, Mr. President, because we have the right to do this, I request the chief of fire, Chief Evans, to be here in front of us so he can answer some questions. So maybe, even with absence of a city solicitor, maybe this council can broker an understanding so we don't have to pay any more money to fight a suit that we're going to lose again. It's getting to be that desperate for me, at least. that I'm going to ask the chief to stand in front of us next week, and I'm going to ask him some questions. Because if there's a way to figure this out or settle this without going, again, to the legal route and lawsuits and settlements, it's getting tiring. And instead of understanding why we're asking for all this information, instead of understanding it, instead of looking yourself in the mirror and saying, jeez, you know what? Boy, we are spending a lot of money. And boy, maybe a city solicitor is something we need. Instead of looking at that, they're doubling down and saying, no, we're not going to go after you over things that. My background's in physical education. My background's in education. I work in recreation. But I could see these two documents by being on a negotiating team, both for education and in my municipal union. And I could see that if it's not initialed and it's not signed, the document that the chief has has no bearing at all. I shared it with a few attorneys that were former city solicitors in different communities, and they said, exactly what we're thinking. If it's not signed, this is a legal document. It's signed. The MOA was signed. And what the MOA is an agreement that goes into the contract that carries on from 2014, 2016, 18, 22, 24, until it's renegotiated. That's when that comes out. That's when you could say we're not going to pay you anymore because we negotiated that. But instead, we're going to double down and say, we're going to fight this. And now here we go again. We're going to go to arbitration. We're going to go to hearings. We're going to have to pay attorneys. We're going to have to pay and then lose and then settle. It's getting tiring, Mr. President. So for one council, I'm done. I've given the city administration plenty of time. I've asked to get the information. We've even simplified it. Councilor Callahan simplified it for them even. And the still would just, if they can't give us that, then Mr. President, I'm going to move forward with presenting a letter at our next meeting to the Secretary of State that we demand this legally. And then we move forward from that, Mr. President. I just, I'm at a frustrating level that we don't, we're talking about money, we're talking about private ways, we're talking about residence and affordable housing, we're talking about a new high school, we're talking about so many different things that we need. And instead we keep fighting about the same thing and the millions of dollars are going out. At least they're showing us something, right? And that something is pretty damaging. It's a lot of money. And here's what I ask the mayor. Let's add another line. Please also include the lawsuits that the city won, so we can see that too. Because if that's been being spewed that they win and we just don't spread it out, well, we want to see that too, because let's celebrate that. Because here's the thing. I don't think any council behind this rail has said to this administration, that if something is going wrong, you should do your due diligence to make sure if any employee is doing something that's shady or illegal or dangerous to our community, that they should look into it. But that doesn't mean that you go after every single member of this community and every member of this workforce. And that's what we're seeing. So we have enough to worry about in this community. Streets are a mess. The sidewalks are a mess. Trees are coming down. There's so much going on to see that we're spending millions and millions of dollars on lawsuits that we're losing is just ultra frustrating. And I'm getting tired because that the answer on the other side is that this is all a political ploy. And you know that I'm working for a certain council president and I'm going to be his campaign manager for governor. So I think it's just, it's getting tiring. It's really getting tiring. This, this banter is just useless. It's not helping our community. And it, I tell you what, the divide's growing and that's not a healthy way to live for our residents. It just isn't. Thank you, Mr. President.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. I will go to Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I agree with Councilor Scarpelli that we've heard too many stories tonight about things that are concerning to our residents. We've heard about people who work at Encore who are not making a living wage. We've heard about people who work for our city to help people who need assistance, connecting with the services that the city offers, getting their jobs eliminated or their hours cut. We've heard about the roads that are in disrepair and we're paying for those things out of funds that are not the operating budget. But those projects are why I became a city councilor. I want to be somebody who is working to make sure the city is operating properly and who is moving forward. Even the, I mean, it was not the most exciting part of the meeting, but the fractional payments toward the Affordable Housing Trust is a very important thing for us to be working on. I have to say, I am, all done with talking about the expenditures for the law department because it has become, I can't tell you how many emails we get about this, it's become Practice and avoidance from the mayor's office. I mean, every time we suggest that the mayor's office does something, the first response to it is, that's going to be too hard. So we can't do it. And then we have to say, well, it's the law. So you, I mean, we've made it an ordinance now. So now you have to do it. And I mean, this happened before the budget ordinance was implemented. But even though that happens already in the school department, even though that happens in every other city, that you go department by department and we hear about the budget beforehand. So the excuse can't be that it's too hard. You just have to do it. That's how it works. Maybe we should have made it an ordinance. But it's exhausting and it's ridiculous. So it just has to be completed. But now, I simply, as a human being, need to move on. I can't keep doing this. So I just think we've done enough. I don't think our residents are concerned about this to the level that we have given it this much airtime. And I want to be talking about Road safety, I'm going to be talking about the person who was killed by a train in West Manford Square. I want to be talking about how we make sure our residents who are on mass health, make sure that they are signing up at the right time to maintain their coverage. I simply don't want to give the mayor the attention that she is asking for on this issue. Because she has turned it into they're doing a political hit job against me. And we are simply trying to protect the people that live in the city from unnecessary expenditure of their tax money. But it's, it's, it's, I can't keep doing it. It's making me go insane. So I really like would love to move on and If we perhaps just fund another month of the law department budget so that we don't have to fire the nice lady that works there, fine. If we need to write an ordinance that says you need to post the position of city solicitor so that you just pay one person one salary instead of spending a million dollars a year on a law firm that you're retaining and all these unnecessary lawsuits. I mean, honestly, I don't think it's a matter anymore of anything that we can do. We have a strong mayor city. I think it's just a matter of the public understanding what the mayor controls, which is most things. And that's just the structure of the city. And I think we just need to explain to voters that this is what the mayor has decided to do. This is how the mayor has decided to spend your tax dollars. And your obligation as a voter is to know that. So I think that's the position I feel like I'm in.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Council Vice President Lazzaro. I will go to Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I agree with my colleagues about the frustration that we faced to get more transparency about these matters that are really important to the city. I agree with Councilor Lazzaro that I prefer to be talking about fixing roads, making roads safer, about providing better access to mass health and to all these benefits. But I will say that residents have come up to me, and especially increasingly, residents have come up to me to ask for transparency about these numbers and to ask me what's going on and why we're spending money on this, on KP law when so much of the city is going awry. And to the point about fixing roads and funding schools and doing all the good work that our city should be doing. Fixing this problem can provide more money for all of that, which is I think what Councilor Scarpelli was saying. I appreciate that we have more information now than we did months ago. I will say the information that we've been presented with raises a few numbers, a few figures that still concern me. What we have received, what's in the agenda packet, and what we've received over email over the last few months shows that there's been about a 573% increase in unfair labor practice charges. That's going from 22 over the span of the last decade to 74, just between 2020 and 2024. The numbers also show that we have at least $5.7 million in disclosed legal costs since 2020. And that's not including sub 10K set settlements. It's not including the estimate of 10 to $25,000 being spent on legal services for schools. The numbers also show that, numbers also show $992,501.50 in settlements with an unconfirmed funding source and Not knowing which budget paid out the $1 million is a real financial control problem. And finally, for me, another number that sticks out is the $487,943 sitting in two opaque KP law retainer lines for general legal slash labor services without the matter level detail. And that makes it impossible for us to audit. So I'll just leave, leave folks with those numbers. Because I, you know, as a Councilor, I want to be able to answer these questions that folks come up to me with. I want to be able to tell folks that, you know, this money is really important. This is what we're spending it on. This is good for the taxpayer. And that's really, at least for me, and I know for other Councilors too, the real motivation behind this whole back and forth is just getting answers so we can give residents the confidence in their city government that they deserve.

[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I similarly to Council Vice President Lazzaro. I also came to this meeting feeling that I'm I'm kind of done with this topic. There are other things in the city that I would prefer to focus on. But in part that's because we do have enough information for me to feel that I understand enough. One of our big questions and the reason this all started was because of this argument that we had a legal department, a law department budget and that That was the amount of money that we were spending on our legal expenses. And that was what I believed was accurate. And so, you know, in requesting a lot of this information, for me the big question was, Are there large expenditures that are legal expenditures being spent out of other departments? And we now have enough information to know that yes, absolutely. There are, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There are at least seven or eight other budgets that you would not expect. The building department, the clerk's office, $235,000 out of DPW, that's supposed to be going to our roads and sidewalks. The fire department, the HR department, Almost twice as much money has been spent on legal expenses from our school department a million over a million dollars out of our school budget. And that's almost twice as much as our entire law department budget. So it's, it really is disappointing to me. But I also feel like, you know, I don't think further us spending more time on this is going to get more information out of the administration, even though I do think that they could provide that information. I have a question. and I might make a motion depending on the answer to this question. Am I correct in my understanding that if we approve of a law department salary, because that is split out separately from the rest of the law department budget, that that can only be spent for the city solicitor salary because what I'm, Like my understanding, we have for years been asking for them, the administration, to hire a city solicitor, which would be better for our city for many reasons. And there has not been a real effort to hire a city solicitor. So, I am hoping that we might be able to approve of the budget for a city solicitor, but not approve of that budget being used for other legal expenses. If that's the case, then I would propose that we approve for that budget, for that line item. We approve that. in addition to an extra month for, you know, if other city councilors want to spend more time asking for more information or do other things. So that's my primary question is like can we approve only of the salary and would that salary necessarily be used to hire a city solicitor?

[Zac Bears]: I think the short answer is no. If we approve the funds that they could spend it on, non-salary expenses and then come to us at the end of the year and say we need an end-of-year transfer to move it from the ordinary expense to the salary. Quite frankly, I expect that if we don't approve any additional funding that money would be spent out of another budget and then they'd come to us at the end of the year and say we need an end-of-year transfer.

[Anna Callahan]: Given that reality, I am still tempted to make a motion that we approve for only the salary for the city solicitor. Because that would allow the administration to, in good faith, post that position and make an effort to hire a city solicitor.

[Zac Bears]: I will say, I mean, obviously I'll recognize the Chief of Staff who's on the call at some point after Councilors are done. But the mayor has said that she will not host a city solicitor position unless we store all the funding. So unless their opinion has changed, that's the mayor's position, no city solicitor unless we give up asking questions. And I will just add, you know, I did talk about the 5.7 million dollars. If you add all that stuff we got up, it's 5.7 million dollars. But for item two, the mayor did say she would agree to an independent review. So I think that's an important thing that we could continue to fight for is actually someone outside of us and outside of the mayor's office who can come in and say what is figure out what's been going on. Go to Councilor Leming and then Vice President Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, so I don't have too much more to add to what my colleagues have said I would just like to kind of. Clarify what the magnitude of some of these requests are so because we have been getting a lot of that the. So I reached out to the mayor and told and asked, just asked her to just, you know, get KP law to generate a list of charges that they've made to the city. And, you know, to present that to council is proof that, you know, we're doing that you are, you know, making effort to fulfill this request. And the result of that is in the council agenda, the amount that KP laws build. Um, and you know, it's, it's, it definitely is like a, you know, a level of clarity as to what, as to what's going on. But I think the major thing was that, uh, we also wanted to know the, uh, settlements and other payments paid as well as the funding source of those settlements, which was not, uh, included in the bills. And so councilor Callahan and I, or, uh, really mostly Councilor Callahan, I should say, figured it out. She made a spreadsheet, which is 172 lines long, which is not, I mean, you know, it's not nothing, but if you filled in six lines a day, you know, you can make progress on these things over time, then you would have the entire thing filled out in a month. So this is not some, isn't like this is not some impossible request that council's putting that council's putting on it has been simplified in the form of a spreadsheet it is enough for one person looking at pieces of paper that's working over like you know a month month and a half to you know fill out accurately and the fact that we've been getting this run around for like six months i i think is i It's, yeah, it is a little bit absurd. I mean, you know, just fill out the spreadsheet and I think we should be good here, but I did just wanna clarify that for any folks watching that that is the nature of the ask at this point, at least it would satisfy me personally if that spreadsheet were filled out.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. I want to address a couple of things President Bears mentioned. Personally, I do not want an independent review for $10,000. I don't want to hear anything else about this to that degree. I don't want to spend $10,000 of the city's money on anything that isn't protecting our vulnerable residents, supporting food security, helping people get housed, helping Our roads get fixed, helping, you know, the basic necessities of running the city. I understand. I understand why we might want it. I don't think we need any more clarity. I think we have all the clarity we need from what we've heard so far. The exact numbers and some official person saying this is bad. Is not going to change the fact that this is this has already happened it's already taken place, and this is the mayor we have all right we know what may or we have what I do want to point to is that the. How can it be permitted for the mayor to say, you can't have a city solicitor unless you give me XYZ? That's an insane thing. It sounds to me like a quid pro quo. I don't think you should be able to withhold posting what I believe to be an essential city position. posting it to a job website, like having the salary be commensurate with the way that people are paid in this region. It's just better for the city. It's better for the residents of the city. There's a whole contingency of people that believe that our ordinances that we've written when we didn't have a city solicitor are invalid, which is not accurate, but like, I mean, people are going insane online. It's, I mean, I don't know what to, and what they don't understand, I think, is that the mayor is it making a decision to withhold that position from hiring, the absurdity has gotten so far out of hand that I just don't think, and this is my own take, but I don't think that doing another independent review to tell us what we already know, which is that this is wrong and bad, will help further clarify anything. I think it'll just make it take longer. So we know it's wrong and bad. I think anybody who would be looking at it would know it's wrong and bad. she's saying no to the city solicitor. I don't understand why we can allow that to happen, but once again, I don't think that we have that much power in this situation as a city council, because what we do is we write ordinances and we approve the budget and we allocate funds, but that's it. And it's frustrating, but I think that that's where we're stuck. And we just have to know this is the mayor we have until the end of next year.

[Zac Bears]: I think a number of the things you mentioned would be ripe for an independent review. Do we have any further discussion by members of the council? All right, seeing none, I will go to the Chief of Staff, Madam Chief of Staff. Thank you for being with us.

[Nina Nazarian]: Hi, President Bears. Good evening, members of the council. I, um, I do believe that the council has its perspective, which you've all shared this evening. Um, we have ours. I believe you all know that we have been. We can agree we've been at this for some time. As the mayor and I have stated in the past at these meetings and by email, the initial requests were significant, burdensome, and information was not centrally available to compile the information requested by the council. without going through all the milestones that have transpired in this lengthy process, which I think we're all, I mean, I share some of the sentiments of being tired with this matter, but I don't mean that in any way other than empathy toward you all. I have my own challenges in that regard, and I think Um, our departments are challenged as well. But I just say that at surface level, not to point accusations, just to say these are just facts. We're all collectively tired. We've asked for clarification, specifically ways to narrow the requested information. And as you stated, President Bears, in August, the council voted this be paper and provided us with a consolidated version of the requests, which were manageable in our opinion to focus on and produce. Um, we believe we have produced the majority, if not all the requested information and our consolidated submission certainly might not be in the format that the council was requesting. Um, but all that said, you know, the only other thing I want to say at this point without going through each item that's been discussed tonight is to say that you know, the characterization that this whole picture is bad is really quite far from the truth because, you know, I've been managing municipal government for nearly 20 years now, or at least been in municipal government for 20 years, management around 15 years. the city. And, you know, for community our size, and we have spoken with peers. We've spoken with attorneys. We've spoken with various people, including, um, the director of a bond rating agency who was filling in for one of their staff who specifically said, you know, they see the liability to the city at, you know, roughly $1 million is all of this That's a reasonable liability for a city our size with a budget of $235 million annually. And I just think a lot is being confused or blown out of proportion, whether it's, and I'm not necessarily saying that's the council, but I think that these discussions are creating some of that confusion in the community as well. From there, I'm here to answer further questions if I can.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam Chief of Staff. Do we have any questions from members of the council? Just a couple for me, Madam Chief of Staff, just very quickly for the responses from Do the responses to items three and four, the list of expenditures for the outside firms, is there any overlap or double counting between that and the response to number five, which is the settlements and judgments? I just want to make sure I have that right.

[Nina Nazarian]: Could you just repeat that once again so I can look at the factual information on my computer and see if I can answer that question?

[Zac Bears]: Sure. You just, so you gave us a list of KP law expenditures, then you gave us a list of the bills from all the other firms who aren't KP law. And then you also sent over a list of this financial summary of all the settlements and judgments. And I'm just wondering if the settlement amounts are also, are any of those also included in the list of expenditures?

[Nina Nazarian]: No, I don't believe so, but there is a possibility there would be some minor overlap.

[Zac Bears]: All right, just wanted to minor, I would understand, but in general, those should be separate buckets. I think that was just because I had to go through and add everything up myself to get the figures. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't double counting anything. Sure. Appreciate that. And, you know, again, I think that I would certainly agree that we have different perspectives on this. But I do think that there's some outstanding questions especially around hiring of a city solicitor, the kind of theories that have been going around online about what it means that we haven't had a city solicitor, the fact that there hasn't been an announcement and the website hasn't been updated to reflect that KP Law is the city solicitor. As well as, you know, I appreciate that in your opinion, this is a reasonable liability. I appreciate the anecdotes of talking to people that they think it's a reasonable liability. But, you know, I did ask the mayor for this and I think, you know, I really think there's a lot of value to having a third party. look at the litigation approach, the cost to the city over the period, the situation where we're using outside council and having some independent third party that's not been in the middle of this situation take a look at it. and frankly just provide recommendations or assessments of these outstanding questions because there's a lot of trust deficit both between the council and the mayor and I think also residents have some serious questions here as well that would be better answered by an independent third party. And I personally just want to say that I think that that was really the one point of agreement that I had with what the mayor sent back which was agreeing to do an independent review. So I'm wondering kind of how you would want to approach that going forward.

[Nina Nazarian]: President Bears, I assume that was a question to me and not to your fellow members. Thank you. I mean, I think as the mayor indicated, you know, if the council can provide a couple of options that we can explore, I think we have, as the mayor stated in writing and is in this packet, there's the mayor and I are happy to pursue them.

[Zac Bears]: All right. You know, obviously the state auditor's office, I already reached out to them, but you know, would you want more options than just that?

[Nina Nazarian]: Well, the procurement person in me would say, if ever there is a circumstance where we are going to do anything, we should always get multiple quotes and multiple proposals. So yes, that would be important in my opinion.

[Zac Bears]: All right, well, I will send you what I have and if you guys want to look into more of it, personally and again, I'm open to other thoughts from members of the council. It seems like there are multiple proposals here. Perhaps we could extend this another month and you could get back to us by the end of October with either a list of firms or the firm that you brought on and the contract that you've signed and we can go from there. But, you know, I do want to hear from other Councilors if there's a proposal that they want to put in, put together here. Councilor Callahan?

[Anna Callahan]: I would just like to ask directly the question about hiring a city solicitor. If we approve the funding for salary, would the mayor move forward with hiring a city solicitor? Salary only.

[Zac Bears]: Chief of Staff, Madam Chief of Staff, could you respond to the Councilor Callaghan's question?

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears. Thank you, Councilor Callahan for the question. Admittedly, I can't answer the question because what I know that the mayor has presented is that she would be prepared to move forward quickly with a posting of a position and recruitment once the law department funding is restored. I think what you're asking is some sort of hybrid, and I don't think I have an ability to answer that question without consultation with the mayor.

[Anna Callahan]: I would love to get the answer to that question. Eventually, not today. I understand.

[Zac Bears]: All right, Madam Chief of Staff, will you bring that back to the mayor?

[Nina Nazarian]: Sure. Yep, absolutely. And can, may I ask President Bears, through you, clarifying question. To Councilor Callahan, could you please clarify the scenario? How does that look for the framing of the rest of the law department budget?

[Anna Callahan]: Sure. The rest of the law department budget, I assume that there is going to be some proposal from the city council. I just want to know independently of whatever the city council decides for the rest of the law department budget, if we fully funded the salary portion, would the mayor move forward with posting and hiring a city solicitor?

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam Chief of Staff. Do you have any further questions from members of the council? All right, seeing none, is there a motion? Technically this is a paper 2416B or 26142B. So the vote on the actual appropriation would need to come later, but Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Like I said, I'm going to stick with my original process so I will request a one month addition. That will give us enough time to get to the October meeting where I could present a more thorough response that I want and Councilor Callahan can maybe get the response that she's looking for. And again, I don't, everybody wants this to be over, but until we get the answers we need, I think we're doing a huge disservice to our residents. Just because it's getting tiring doesn't mean that we walk away from it. And I hope that we look at this with the thought process and understanding where we were just months ago, years ago. when we were promised a city solicitor when it was on the, and we had a city solicitor and he was let go for no apparent reason. So I don't think that, I don't feel like any response from the mayor's office right now is genuine until we see things factual. Whether it takes us time and whether it makes us more irritated, I think we've gone down that rabbit hole that I think that people need the response that people can look at because we know we asked for in the FOIA and what we got back was told that it was too daunting to do. But from what we're seeing, it really isn't. It's just picking and choosing what wants to be said. And don't forget that this mayor did say that, why do we need a city solicitor when KP Law Office 300 attorneys for them? So I think that this might be sour grapes. Maybe I'm angry about what's happening. But you know what? Yeah, I am. And I'm not willing to. to waver one bit and way I feel about this because the residents voted us in to get the answers that they need. And, um, if we're gonna move forward and allowing millions and millions of dollars to be spent with this situation, and we don't have a resolution because that's the end. The end result was to get this information dissected, sit down with the city administration and say, Okay, so here is where the issues are. Let's correct these issues so we can stop bleeding money. Whether it's the HR process, whether it's the process with our department heads, whether it's the mayor's ego, or whether it's the city council's ego, let's figure it out. And let's stop whatever's hurting this community and hurting the members that work in this community and stop these lawsuits. Because we've been thick of it. And as of just a few weeks ago, We just settled hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits again. So if we think, Hey, we've heard enough now, let's lay down now and let's say that's enough. And we think we're gonna get the answers that we want. I'm sorry, my friends. I don't I don't agree. I appreciate everybody's opinion. But, Mr. President, I would give it one more month again so we can keep the business moving forward and give the administration another month to give us the answers that we need. And maybe sit down as a leader with our leadership team in this organization, our council, and try to find a resolution to see what we need so we can stop this. I've worked for municipality for a long time. And the situations that we're seeing in neighboring communities that the chief of staff is bringing forth doesn't happen in other communities. Why? because the leadership team sits down with the parties involved and find solutions. They just don't go to frivolous lawsuits and lose. So when we talk about liaisons for our senior citizens or we're talking about the health department needing $40,000 and we can't do that because we were told one thing years ago, we were told one thing just a couple of months ago, but now the numbers say different. And the same answer that keeps coming back, Mr. President, that, you know, people are telling us that the size of our community in the budget that we have, this is probably pretty normal. No, it isn't. Let's not be fooled. You could work in administration in municipalities for 20 years. So have I. It doesn't happen in other communities like this. It doesn't. that's my frustration. So if it's if it's if it's me, I feel I have a response of fiduciary responsibility to the residents that voted me in to make sure we get the answers that we started with this and going down that rabbit hole because we deserve it. They deserve it and then get to a resolution so we can find a way to stop it. That's why Mr. President, I asked for a B paper or a motion to ask the fire chief to come before us next week so we can talk face to face to see how we can stop these lawsuits that are happening. How can we help? Since we don't have a city solicitor, how can we help mitigate this? Because as a leader in other communities, this is how I would do it. You would find an avenue so this didn't have to go to legal. This will be taken care of with the city solicitor, the HR director, your department heads, and the union representation to try to figure out the best course of action. So again, I know I'm beating an issue to death, but that's my opinion, and I'm going to move forward with that motion. Thank you, Mr. President.

[Zac Bears]: I think what we'll have, and I do see Councilor Leming, I'll recognize you in just a moment, is we'll have a B paper to request that the Fire Chief appear before us on October 13th, and then we can also add Councilor Callahan's question to the Mayor to get a response by October 13th. and then we can table this response paper and then I think someone should take up the appropriation request and we should make a decision on that. I'll go to Councilor Leming and then I'll go back to the Chief of Staff, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just quickly like to say that I'm generally in the camp of keep going with this until we get to a conclusion that satisfactory. I mean, I appreciate where my colleagues, Council Vice President Lazzaro and Councilor Callahan are coming from that we have heard far too much of this already. But I think we've seen these sorts of bullying tactics before where the mayor will just kind of keep doing what she wants to do until the council caves. And I don't really think that that's a good modus operandi for this body. moving forward, like, you know, if the mayor knows that just stonewalling council and just kind of saying, oh, it's too hard to get those papers that you want, I'm just not gonna do anything. If she knows that that works, she'll just keep doing that in the future. So I just don't think it's great to, it's good to cave to these tactics. So I'm perfectly fine with continuing along this route and I'll support Councilor Scarpelli in this.

[Zac Bears]: Seeing no further comments from members of the Council, I'll go to the Chief of Staff.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears. You know, I just I think we need to redefine some of the history and restate some of the history because what's being stated here tonight suggests that the mayor, I mean, negotiating is not the same as bullying and that characterization is a major concern of mine. There are a number of things that I'd like to refresh this council's memory on, and especially if there's members of the public who are watching, because I'm sure the council is aware, but even for me, right, some of this history gets, that some of the details of the history do get forgotten along the way as we try to work through the requests that are made of the office. the characterization that, you know, we don't want to do it, we don't have the resources to do it, and so we're using, we do have the resources to do what we're saying, we don't have the resources to do it, and all these kinds of comments suggest to me that We should touch on some of the history and that history included a very difficult budget season as you all know FY27 was incredibly challenging. Despite the numbers that we had provided to the school department very early on in the process in February of 2026 if my memory serves me correctly the school department identified some material significant gap I think on order of magnitude of three million dollars but I could be mistaken about that. We clarified to the school department that you know that the numbers were very tight on a number of different ends and there was no way that the city side was going to be able to identify or make up a three million dollar gap considering increase in health insurance costs that we were seeing on order of nearly double-digit percentages that other communities are also seeing. Pension increase costs as the city works towards fully funding its pension liability, which is a major and significant burden on Massachusetts cities and towns, as well as other significant costs across our organization. The least of which is the inflation that we're all experiencing as individuals and the communities experiencing as business owners and as residents and the city is facing in terms of contracts. We went to work. The mayor did a lot of hard work. Our department heads did a considerable amount of hard work. They cut things that could be deferred. They made adjustments to where we needed to make adjustments. And we, the mayor specifically, turned a million dollars over to the school department. And In doing so, between the work of the school department and the work of the mayor and the department heads, a million dollars and their work at the school level closed the gap. And really, truly, you know, the mayor listed out three or four specific things that fully funding and no cuts to the FY27 budget would include. Those things were a increase in arts funding, including a liaison, funding for the Medford Family Network, posting and hiring a city solicitor. I haven't been able to get an answer at this point from the mayor on the question, but I know she's true to her word and I know that she negotiated in good faith and I know that it is unlikely that she will make a change, but I will ask the question. I think that you all have the answer already. It is documented in a paper that was before you all during the budget season. It was clearly outlined. And you know this council you know gladly accepted the compromises that were made by the administration to ensure that the school department had the necessary funding to move forward into the 2027 school year. This council Um, you know, voted the B paper despite the mayor's language that it would not be that it would not move forward. I can pull up. Emails and communications and that paper and we can go through it, but I think that this is, um. Getting, you know, mischaracterized on a number of levels and things are out of proportion in terms of what the history was and what the mayor's commitments were and, um. You know, I think it's important that I say those things. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam Chief of Staff. I would just say that an ultimatum is not a negotiation and the council didn't accept the ultimatum. So, and the mayor wasn't present to negotiate at the meeting where we discussed it. So I understand that you believe things went the way that you did, but it wasn't a negotiation. The mayor just said, Here's what I'll do if you don't cut anything. And then we said, well, we believe that you should do those things, but we have these questions about the law department budget. It wasn't a negotiation, and the mayor wasn't present to have a negotiation. So it's hard to negotiate without the other party being present. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: I just want to clarify because what is being talked about is the mayor said that if we voted to fund certain things, she would not fund them unless we agreed to not question any of these legal questions. And we were incredibly clear We said very publicly in the public meeting that we absolutely do not agree to that ultimatum. So I understand that there was a written document that the mayor wrote down that said that she wasn't going to fund these things unless we agreed to this. But let me tell you how clear we were in a public meeting that we absolutely did not agree to the ultimatum that the mayor gave us. Did we then request that she fund the librarians and the other small things that were tiny, small potatoes that she should fund anyway? Yes, of course, we approved that funding because those things should be funded and we do not have to go along with her ultimatum. So I just want to be really clear, stated incredibly clearly in a public meeting, we did not agree to her ultimatum.

[Justin Tseng]: I agree with everything that Councilor Callahan said. We did not accept an ultimatum, nor does the mayor have the legal authority under state law, the city charter, or case law to present the council with an ultimatum. The law is pretty clear that we got a paper with recommendations for the budget, including what was for the libraries, for the Bedford Family Network, et cetera, and we approved We approved that those line items, and they were passed. They were passed in the budget, and it's not up to the mayor to decide whether or not she's going to spend this money, period. First, because it was passed. Second, it's not up to the mayor to decide whether or not she gets to attach an ultimatum to it. But I think now we are deviating from from this conversation, from this paper, and I don't think it does our residents any service by, you know, turning off the highway so quickly.

[Zac Bears]: You know, I don't disagree with you, and I'll try to be brief here, but I don't think it's turning off the highway. When we talk about the bullying, that's the bullying. It's that. It's lying to the public about a number of things that have happened. over and over and over again saying, well, you know, just basically saying, you can't do anything about it. It's not correct, it's not legal, but you can't do anything about it. And over and over and over again, you know, misrepresentations of what the council said. We absolutely did not have a negotiation. We absolutely did not agree to any of that. You can watch the video. We did not. But it was just said that we did and we're quote, unquote, redefining history. I mean, I agree. We're absolutely redefining history. We're creating a fake history that never happened when we say that. And yeah, I think we're all pretty sick and tired of it. So I understand Vice President Lazzaro and Councilor Callahan and all of us being tired of this. I'm tired of the false information. on multiple issues in the past week, completely false information, sent out using city resources, sent out to reporters, sent out in responses to the council. The next thing we're going to talk about is an entirely just false statement. Yeah, so you can call it whatever you want. Redefining history I think is a great terminology to define how the administration is choosing to characterize reality. As I said, I think there's a B paper here to get answers to questions and table the one, I guess it's technically a C paper. Tabling 26142B to the next meeting. And then someone should probably suspend the rules to take up the actual appropriation. Anything you'd like to say before we take some votes and then we can move to the actual appropriation paper.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. You know, I think The other piece that we need to recall in our minds with the history is that the council outlined, I don't know, it was somewhere in the teens, low teens, maybe 13 to 15 page paper of budgetary priorities. The mayor took the time to review each and every one of those with department heads and sent responses to the council. The mayor communicated on multiple occasions to the council where how she was following and where we were able to follow the council's requests for the FY27 budget. Because that's what we're here to talk about, the FY27 budget and the law department budget and legal matters, as I understand it. And she worked through all of the things you guys asked. And I apologize for the informality. All of the things that the council asked, she specifically tried to bridge all gaps wherever possible, and outlined that there were certain things that were conditioned upon ensuring that there were no cuts. And so, you know, without repeating some of the things that have already been stated about those pieces, and you all have your perspective and, you know, My recollection of these pieces and how this unfolded was there was actually a back and forth exchange between the mayor and members of this council where the mayor asked and welcomed council members to contact her to discuss further. Whether the mayor's physically present at a city council meeting or not, the mayor's door was physically open for those discussions. And that's all I need to say.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam Chief of Staff. The mayor is welcome at any of our meetings. We're a body of seven who can only act in a public meeting. All right, on the motion on the C paper by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Callahan to request that the Chief of the Fire Department attend our next meeting and that the mayor respond with the question about if the, full year of the city solicitor's salary were to be funded by the council, would the mayor post that job and hire a solicitor or would she use those funds for other outside council? Any further discussion by members of the council? All right, seeing none, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll on the C paper.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative, none of the negative motion passes on those two items. Is there a motion to table the 26142B to the next meeting on the motion of Councilor Tseng to table seconded by? Seconded. Seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. And then is there a motion to suspend the rules to take paper 26142 on the motion to suspend the rules to take paper 26142 out of order by Councilor Tseng, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm in the affirmative, none in the negative, the motion passes. So this is the supplemental appropriation request. We cut to. At the August 4th meeting, we cut 382,506 or 586, I'm not 100% sure, from the proposed request of the mayor of 425,000. Madam Chief of Staff, I know that you didn't submit an updated supplemental appropriation. So just wanted to, confirm with you what the current, what's the current appropriation request for going forward and then for the, for one of the October meetings, could you submit an updated appropriation request to reflect the cuts in August and it appears that there might be some now.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you, President Bears. I think that it's my understanding that the council, based on your records, that the council approved two months' worth of certain lines, and then another month of other lines. I believe Councilor Tseng was the one who initially did the calculations. Hopefully, Councilor Tseng has it before him. It would just be a full restoration of the rest of the appropriation. But, you know, that's the council's decision. We have certainly negotiated historically without a full board of the council, full vote of the council with a couple members of the council in the past, as you may recall, President Bears.

[Zac Bears]: So you're saying that we cut We cut $382,000. I'll go to Councilor Sangham. I really think it would be great if the administration would submit a paper with the amount of money that you're asking us for.

[Justin Tseng]: I also don't have, well, I can't guess because we don't have that paper in front of us. My best calculation, my best estimate right now would be that If we want one month, which seems to be a kind of developing consensus here, it's a cut $340,060 to fund, and the remainder would be to fund $42,507.63.

[Zac Bears]: All right, so it would be the motion by Councilor Tseng would be to cut $340,060 which would fund 42,507.63 which is what was funded for last month. All right. On the motion of Councilor Tseng, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Mullane. Any further discussion by members of the council? All right, any discussion?

[Emily Lazzaro]: Just real quick, real quick, President Paris. I really definitely agree with the fact that we should have this number written out fully if it's something that we should be voting on. And I want to express some frustration around that.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I agree. All right. Is there any discussion seeing no further discussion by members of the council? Is there any discussion by members of the public on any of these items? Take just a combined public comment on this whole discussion and we'll go to the podium. If you could provide your name and your neighborhood for the record and you'll have three minutes. Oh, one second. Sorry. Go ahead.

[xl-rVBoybgA_SPEAKER_20]: from Ball Square. And this whole situation is kind of horrifying that the mayor's office wants to treat it like it's all fine and normal when I've heard The mayor is refusing to hire a position that the city needs, that supposedly the liabilities are totally normal and what's expected for a city, but is going like what, what was it? Six times double, way over budget and pulling from other departments. If this is normal and expected, why isn't it budgeted for in the standard budget the mayor worked so hard on? And if this is all fine and normal, why is the funding getting pulled from our schools and roads and things that the rest of us actually care about if. Having 300 lawyers is not necessary or normal. What is going on? Yeah, and as to the discussion of like, oh, should we keep, you know, having this back and forth tug of war with the mayor's office and the city council for months and months indefinitely and try to get more information. Gosh, wouldn't we all love some transparency? But if the mayor's office is not playing nice, what can we do to play hardball? You're saying it's a strong mayor city and you don't have a lot of options. So, I, I, I don't know, like you, you said that there's some kind of, like, oh, if, if you don't allocate the budget that the mayor wants, she'll pull it from other departments and put in some kind of end of year transfer thing. Is that something that you can approve or not approve? Like, what does the power of the purse mean if there isn't the point at which the buck stops and the mayor doesn't get money unless that money is not going to KP law? I, I feel like this is the kind of situation that in any other organization would be grounds for some kind of embezzlement suit. I'm also curious about this $10,000 state audit. I thought I heard you mention something about them, the state potentially being able to cover a lot of the items there. I, like, I'm also wondering, like, okay, how much more information do we need to say that the mayor saying that everything is fine and normal is just straight up lies? But if there's some amount of this information gathering that could be done by the state and that they could pay for, rather than the city paying for it, that would be great. But I wasn't super clear on how that works. I don't know. All of y'all are frustrated. I'm frustrated. This is absurd. Yeah, if, yeah.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I'm sorry that that is the timer sound. I just changed it. Yeah, just specifically the state auditor's office does reviews for municipalities if the legislative body and the executive agree to such a review. They ask for basically a $10,000 amount because they don't want to just be doing these for every town at any time. Then they'd be doing them all the time for everybody. But it's not just Basically, I think all the information that has been provided and hopefully more information, the state auditor's office could provide recommendations to the city about actions to take. They could say, say on your website that KP Law is the solicitor, those kinds of things. And I'm sorry, I have to wait to take you until everyone else who has wanted to speak can speak but you'll have one more minute. I will stay at the podium. If you have a comment, name and neighborhood, you'll have three minutes. Sure.

[Micah Kesselman]: Mikey Hussleman, 499 Main Street. First, I will just say that I empathize that you guys are tired of dealing with this. I am tired of dealing with this. Most of the city is tired of dealing with this. However, you do not have sufficient clarity on the legal spend. Because I don't have sufficient clarity on the legal spend. Because they don't have sufficient clarity on the legal spend. So we need more clarity on this. It is wild that it's taking this long to get a very basic report from a bunch of law firms. They literally, these are PDFs of tables of CSV exports. Just have them export them in a freaking CSV. This is problems babies can solve. So it's crazy it's taken this many months to get to this point. And your minimum need to have that, like look, Clifford and Kenny did a great job. They did the best job in that they at least gave you an hour breakdown for the hours that they billed for. Every firm should be giving you this. This is just basic common sense. It's just common sense. It's baffling. Also, why the hell is Medford using Safe Earth Shaw? Like, we're not Boston. We're not Cambridge. You're using one of the most expensive law firms in the country? What? What are you? What? So you need to keep pressing. And you do have ways of actually enforcing and demanding accountability from the mayor. You can sue the mayor as a body. City councils sue their mayors. This happens across the state. You have other avenues of enforcement. You're not just sitting there and being, I'm tired, I can't do any more. You have a lot more to do. I demand it. The city demands it. And also, through the council, I'll just say that The Madam Chief of Staff and the Mayor repeatedly keep actually doing things that are unlawful and exposing the city to increased liability and just making up the law as they go along. Both these people, most of the administration has been in office for a very long time and they've worked in the city for a very long time. It would be really lovely if in the last year that you are in your appointed positions, you learn how to do the basics of your job correctly. It's wild to think that you can do conditional budgeting requests or that you can veto via nullification in a litigate. such absurd basic deficiencies and failings of people who supposedly have been doing this job for decades. I don't know what the hell is going on in the city. It's ridiculous. But sure and sweet of it is you guys do still have a whole hell of a lot more work to do. I'm sorry to say. But you do. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Well, I thought I changed it to something less funny but thank you, Micah. All right, seeing no further public comment on this item on the motion to cut the requested appropriation and approve one month through the end of October, hopefully pending answers and hopefully pending an agreement to actually do an independent review. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I understand, but I have a question. This is pending a review by the auditor's office?

[Zac Bears]: No, this is just one month and hopefully... Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm the affirmative. One of the negative motion passes. There's one more month and hopefully we can finally land this somewhere where we get the answers we need. Thank you. All right, 26170 offered by Councilor Mullane and Councilor Tseng. Resolution to object to the Mayor's Politically Motivated Refusal to Advertise Council Neighborhood Ward Meetings. Whereas the Medford City Council has launched public neighborhood meetings in every ward as official council events to bring City Hall directly to the people with an open agenda so residents not elected officials can drive the conversation. And whereas after the council has asked the city administration to help publicize these meetings and was informed that the city lacked the staffing and resources to assist. Residents across the political spectrum volunteered their own time to spread the word, create materials, offer childcare, and encourage their neighbors to participate. And whereas before the first neighborhood meeting had even taken place, the mayor relied on unsupported claims about outside political involvement to refuse city publicity for these official council meetings, suggest potential ethical impropriety, and subsequently remove meeting listings from the city website. And whereas the first neighborhood meeting in Ward 1 demonstrated exactly why these forums matter, with residents engaging in a cordial, substantive discussion about pedestrian safety, noise, public services, and concrete improvements they want to see in their neighborhoods. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we affirm that our neighborhood meetings are official, nonpartisan public meetings open to every resident, and call upon the mayor to immediately restore all neighborhood meeting listings to the city website and calendar, and be it further resolved that the City Council rejects the use of unfounded allegations, insinuations of ethical impropriety, or inaccurate information as a basis for withholding ordinary city communications. Support from lawful public meetings intended to foster dialogue and improve city services and affirms the taxpayer-funded communications channels should not be used in a manner that creates barriers between residents and their elected representatives. or undermines transparency in city government. We have further resolved that the city council will continue bringing government directly into Medford's neighborhoods and invites the mayor, city staff, and department heads to attend the remaining neighborhood meetings, answer residents' questions, and hear firsthand what the people of Medford have to say. So thank you, Councilor Mullane and Councilor Tseng. Would one of you like to take this first? I'll go to Councilor Mullane first, but before that, I will say the mayor did respond and requested that I read something. It's so objectively false that I'm absolutely not going to read it out loud. I will not put it in my voice. And the mayor is welcome at these meetings to read such a document if she wants to come and lie to people. Councilor Mullane.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you. So both personally and professionally, I am disappointed that we even need to have this resolution or the fact that these ward meetings are being politicized by the mayor in this way. I'm going to start off by saying that no political organization is planning or has been planning these ward meetings full stop. These are city council meetings. And as an elected official for the city of Medford, it is my responsibility to be out there talking to residents, and this is an appropriate way to be doing that. In the vein of full transparency, I did want to provide the public with some facts and to clear up some misinformation about how these meetings were initiated. On February 3rd, President Bears has put forward a resolution for the city council to schedule neighborhood ward meetings to bring city government into the neighborhoods. The resolution was sent to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee, which I chair. Councilor Scarpelli is vice chair. Councilor Tseng, Callahan, and Leming are all members. Now, just for clarification, there does seem to be some confusion around this initiative and the program that the mayor established called the Neighborhood Ambassadors. Following the City Council's resolution on February 3rd, the mayor put out a call on February 11th for residents to apply for a task force that aims to strengthen relationships and communications throughout the community. Point of information, at that original time, the ambassadors who were appointed by the mayor, several of them had actually run for city council at some point previously. which is fine. It's great to have as many people want to be engaged as possible. Going back to the ward meetings, knowing that there were already a lot of meetings scheduled around the city council, the budget, zoning, and the high school, the city council decided to wait until fall. Over the course of the spring, the resident services and public engagement committee discussed a variety of options for these meetings and landed on the following. No agenda. With the goal of truly hearing from residents about their concerns, we made the decision to not predict what those concerns might be by any way of a formal agenda and just leaving it open so they can be comfortable to talk about whatever they'd like. A hybrid option, allowing residents who can't attend in person to join via Zoom. Ward locations, ensuring that they were in each of the different ward and neighborhoods and easy for people to access. We received emails directly from residents with suggestions for locations for these meetings and opted for familiar ones that we thought would be helpful. They were already an established voting place for the ward, they should be ADA compliant, they were free, they had easier parking, and could be compatible for hybrid access. I met with school facilities and Kevin and the Medford Community Media to see if they could host them virtually. They could. I booked them all by mid-June. I wrote to the city communication director on July 14th to get all of these ward meetings listed on the city of Medford website and then set up an additional call with him again on August 11th to discuss outreach. At the August 11th meeting, I was told the city was understaffed and had limited resources to help and I had to get approval by the mayor for any possible assistance. I emailed the mayor on August 18th to see what else she needed from us to advertise these meetings, and her response was that she would put them up on the calendar, which they already had been, and would work on a social media post for the city page. I also asked for the meetings to be included in the robocalls that go out, because I don't believe that just posting on Facebook alone will reach all of our Medford residents. Nothing went up on the city's social media page, and since that email exchange, two other robocalls went out for the city without any mention of the ward meetings. In the meantime, residents continued to contribute in a variety of ways, helping create graphics, sharing on social media. I sent an email to the city council asking them to advertise. I sent another email to all the neighborhood ambassadors, since they are also helping to spread the word in the community on behalf of the mayor. and I put it up on Facebook, on Reddit, and I asked everyone, everywhere, regardless, to please share it as broadly as possible. When nothing had happened to promote the Ward 1 meeting from the city, I followed up again on September 17th and asked if we could go in the next robocall with it linked back to the city of Medford events page. On Saturday the 19th, just a few days, this ward meeting was scheduled for the 23rd, so just a couple of days before, I received an email from the mayor saying that It was reported to her that a graphic or some kind of thing had been outlining the wards, was designed by some sort of political org, and that someone had said this ward meeting was being coordinated by the city council along with a political organization, which it categorically is not true. The mayor said to share with me what specifically she is referencing, even after I responded to her email. When the mayor told me she would not promote the Ward 1 meeting, in addition, I was unaware that she had gone and deleted all the future ward meetings from the city of Medford events page. So, unbeknownst to me, I started receiving a few angry emails and a reporter asked me why it wasn't listed or publicized better by the city. I took the criticism because I didn't want the real purpose of the meeting, listening to residents, be overshadowed by all of this noise. Removing mention of the meetings from the city website and refusing to advertise then ultimately resulted in confusion for residents, which was the opposite of what these meetings were intended to be, to create a forum for residents of Ward 1 to come and discuss the issues that need to be addressed in their neighborhoods. And I just want to bring it back to the fact, again, that I chair what's called the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee, which means that I'm working with residents on issues that they bring forward and working to engage the public. And I do want to thank the residents who did reach out, who helped create graphics, posted on social media, spread the word through their networks. to the neighborhood ambassadors who sent out information. Someone had emailed us about helping with offering babysitting services. And somebody even sent me suggestions and a Google map on where we could post information locally to get more people engaged. I did not turn down any of these offers, regardless of where I may have thought a resident may stand politically, because it is my job to be open and receptive to all residents of Medford, and not pick and choose where I think they voted for me or not, but accept their feedback and assistance. I want to thank my fellow Councilors who agreed to host these meetings. These are not photo ops or ribbon-cutting ceremonies, but actual work, an actual meeting with an open agenda and a forum for every Medford resident to be heard. And I want to thank the residents who did show up to the meeting. In person and online, I appreciate your candor, your willingness to share your thoughts, and to be part of the solution. I learned a lot about more of the issues that you're facing in Ward 1 that I had no idea about, and I'm going to pull together all of the information and we can begin to start tackling what we can. I know we've already mentioned the ward meeting that's happening on October 20th at 7 p.m. for Ward 5 at the Missituk with Councilor Tseng and Callahan. December 2nd, Councilor Scarpelli and I are hosting the Ward 2 meeting at the Roberts School at 7. And I'll just end on this. I feel very strongly that my role as an elected city councilor is to represent all of the residents of Medford. Regardless of whether you voted for me or not, your priorities, your challenges matter to me, and one way for me to learn about what those are is to meet you where you live. These meetings are opportunities for all of us, community members, to come together, but also for those in the council to learn what challenges our neighborhoods are facing and work with the community to try and solve them. The people who really lost out most because of the mayor's decision to not publicize are the residents of Ward 1, and I'm hoping we won't have a repeat of this issue moving forward. Walking out of that Ward 1 meeting last week reminded me of why I ran for City Council in the first place, to help improve the lives of Medford residents. It is my hope that the mayor will join the City Council and, instead of hindering their ability to participate, allow for more voices to be heard. And that's it.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you, Mr. President. Like Councilor Mullane, I'm simply befuddled that we have to sponsor this resolution. Earlier this year, the City Council made a simple commitment. If residents can't always make it to City Hall, then City Hall should go to them. That's what these neighborhood meetings are. One in every ward, with an open agenda, giving residents a chance to tell us what's going on on their streets, in their lives, and what they need from their government. That's the job we all signed up for, and that is the essence of democracy. We asked the city administration to help get the word out. And we were told that the staffing and resources weren't there. So residents across the political spectrum stepped up. They made invitations, they hung flyers, emailed their neighbors, and they even offered childcare so parents could participate. They weren't paid. They weren't campaign staff. They were neighbors helping neighbors show up. And somehow, that ordinary act of civic participation became an accusation of political impropriety. Talk about redefining history and false information. I do not object to someone asking ethics questions, but what troubles me is what happens next. Before asking us what was actually happening or simply just going back and reviewing our meetings, And before the first meeting had even taken place, the mayor relied on allegations about who some residents supposedly associate with, refused city publicity for these events, raised the prospect of ethical impropriety, and then the meetings disappeared from the city website, poof. That sequence is reflected in this resolution before us tonight. That is the danger of conspiratorial thinking in government. You connect the dots first and you check the facts second. And just to show how strange that logic is, tonight the Red Sox opened the playoffs against the Yankees. Everyone here knows I'm a big Sox fan. I can post hype edits of the Red Sox on my Instagram story. I can send my friends clips of Peyton Tully being hilarious. I can bring my friends to Fenway Park. But that doesn't mean I'm playing game one in the Bronx tonight. Being associated with something is not the same as running it. Supporting something is not the same as sponsoring it. A resident having political views does not transform an official city council meeting into a political organization's event. On the ethics question, the basic point is simple. Public resources should not be used for campaigns or private political activity. I know Councilor Mullane and I agree, and I know everyone behind this rail agrees. I've gone through the Ethics Commission's guidance on this. It distinguishes election-related political activity from other political activity and restricts the use of public resources for campaign purposes. That's good. No one at this event was asking anyone to vote for a candidate. No one was promoting a ballot question. No one was advertising a political organization's meeting or joining any political organization. We asked the city to tell residents about an official public meeting of their elected city councilors. And the commission's own guidance recognizes neutral public notice of a town meeting or city meeting and a city's encouragement for everyone to attend. Our meetings are open to everyone, and open to everyone across every ward. Political affiliation is not an admission ticket to democracy, and it should not be a disqualification from participating in it. The mayor has also pointed to the fact that these meetings, and this happened today, this afternoon, so this is a last minute kind of addition of reasoning. She pointed to the fact that these meetings are organized by ward, while Medford prepares for ward representation. But saying, your government is changing, come talk to your representatives, find out more about the ward system, is not the same as telling people who to vote for. And that's certainly not what we did. And we don't have to speculate about these meetings, right? Because we already held one. After all the allegations and insinuations, let's talk about what actually happened at that Ward 1 meeting. People talked about crosswalks. They talked about pedestrian safety, noise, city services, concrete improvements they want on their street. They didn't show up with complaints. They showed up with ideas. And they let us know which small fixes in their neighborhood would improve their quality of life. We listened. We took notes. We left with work to do. And that is democracy in action. And that is what makes the misuse of official city channels here so troubling. Those channels are being used to attack individual Councilors and repeat unsupported conspiracies while being withheld from publicizing meetings whose entire purpose is to hear directly from residents. Official city communication should be used to inform the public and strengthen participation in our democracy, not to amplify suspicion while making that participation harder. Democracy is not confined to this chamber. And it does not happen only on election day. It happens when residents walk into their neighborhood school, ask hard questions of the people they elected, and expect us to listen. And that's why the double standard here matters. Official city channels are taxpayer funded channels. They don't belong to the mayor. They don't belong to the council. They belong to the public. They should make civic participation easier and not harder. And folks who would have wanted to come to these meetings and didn't because they didn't hear about it really did lose out. So our invitation remains the same. Madam Mayor, come to the next meeting, sit with us, hear what residents have to say. There's a seat for you at the table. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Any further comments from members of the council? Councilor Mullane.

[Liz Mullane]: I think one of the last things I will say to you is that what was really heartening walking out of that Ward 1 meeting was how many people wanted to be a part of the solution. It wasn't just that they wanted to say all of these things and then walk away. They signed up because they want to be part of how to be a better part of Medford. And for us, and for someone, again, Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee, so many of them were interested in getting involved, sharing their thoughts, and bringing perspectives around the noise ordinance that we may not have thought of before if we hadn't been out there having these conversations. So I just, I really, really, really hope that we can change the narrative on this and go back to where it was supposed to be, listening to residents and trying to help some of these problems that are within these different neighborhoods.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Mullane. I'm just gonna add one thing, which is this is just stupid. This doesn't make any sense. Again, I'm gonna go back to the fact that I've received like three communications from the mayor in the past week and a communication from a reporter asking me to confirm something that the mayor said that just contained outright falsehoods. And it's just a waste of our time. It's a waste of our time. Now we're spending time talking about this instead of talking about what happened at the Word One meeting or how we can get more people to the Word One meeting. And I think you'll find over and over again that we spend a bunch of time at these meetings wasting our time over things that never needed to happen. because people decided that they think they're allowed to redefine history for their own purposes. I think that's a really helpful quote that we heard from the administration today that they like to redefine history. So, I'm just going to do this. I will appoint the special subcommittee on neighborhood board meetings. Councilor Mullane, Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Tseng. And we'll post an agenda for each of these meetings. And even though you guys decided you didn't want agenda, maybe the agenda can just be, we're gonna listen to you. We'll do our best to some sort of public participation. Those will get posted on the city clerk's office and then go to the administration to post because they are Just as they were before, official public meetings of the city open to everyone so that residents can come and talk to city councilors about the issues that they're facing. I appreciate all the outreach that you've done, all the residents who stepped up to help out in the absence of the city doing anything to help. And also appreciate that you're able to make some connection with the Neighborhood Ambassadors Program. I really encourage neighborhood ambassadors to go back to the mayor and ask her why she didn't tell them about this, didn't engage them directly, decided not to use city resources to publicize these board meetings. We have a lot of work to do. As Councilor Tseng noted, there's a brand new city charter that's going to be going into effect, or is in effect, and the first offices will be in the next election, next November, 2027, the first time the city has had ward representation in at least I wanna say at least 80 years. So I think it's great that we're building civic consciousness around our wards. And it's a preview of next week because I have to put something on the agenda asking why the mayor hasn't given us anything to submit to state agencies to actually codify the new city charter and why we haven't gotten a response on that in 10 months because We keep having to waste our time on stupid stuff that shouldn't be happening. So Councilor Tseng I'll have plenty to talk about next week and the week after on the fact of the city charter, because we were meeting with them at least in January, maybe even earlier, and still hasn't come to the city clerk to get into meeting code. Apparently still hasn't gone to state agencies, still haven't gotten an opinion from KP law that says whether or not they think the charter is even in effect. That's next week's stupidity. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: I just want to comment that, you know, look, whatever we want to call these meetings, these are town halls. These are the kinds of things that constituents at every level, constituents for our Congress, for, you know, state level elected officials, for city councilors, just demand, demand, demand. People want to be able to talk to their representatives. That is something that people want at every level of government. And I, you know, something that I ran on, frankly, you know, three years ago when I first ran for office, that I would make sure I was in the neighborhoods, like talking to people, not just individually, but in groups of people. I do listen to people. groups of people all the time. It's something that you know is really important to me. I think it's part of why I got elected because I promised that I would in fact do that. And it's shocking to me that when the city council has an official body which is called the Resident Services Public Engagement Committee. And in that public body discusses every single detail about having these town halls or listening sessions or whatever it doesn't matter what you call them. Like that is literally a thing that we officially did as an official body of the official city council. And we're doing something that everyone wishes their elected officials did. It's just absolutely mind boggling that it would be called some sort of, I don't even know, political, whatever it's being accused of is just beyond me.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan. Just before we go to public participation, Councilor Mullane, Councilor Scarapelli, Councilor Tseng, if I make a special subcommittee on this, is that, I guess, who is hosting next month is actually you and Liz and George, so it should be you, Councilor Callahan. It's us two.

[Anna Callahan]: Is there going to be a problem if like, because it's different councilors going to all of them.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I think I'll have to change the membership every month just to, yeah, it's a complete waste of everybody's time. But for November, that's you guys. October is you guys and November is George and Liz. December. Okay, great. Well, we'll start with the Ward 5 meeting then we'll do the Ward 2 meeting. Great. Okay. We will go now to public participation. Please raise your hand on Zoom or come to the podium in person. Give your name and neighborhood and you'll have three minutes and we'll start at the podium.

[Nick Giurleo]: Hello, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So I can speak tonight as a guy who comes up here a lot, and also I'm one of the neighborhood ambassadors for West Medford. So I think our city, obviously I think everyone agrees, facing a lot of different issues at this time. We've got the new high school, we've got zoning, we've got the legal transparency, which we talked about a lot tonight. But I think one issue that doesn't get enough attention, but really is an issue, is public participation, public involvement, civic engagement with our government. So I see the award meetings as a great way to bring people to government, right, and also, you know, bring government to the people. I think the Neighborhood Ambassadors Program has been a success so far. We've been meeting with various city officials and have had opportunities to ask some questions about what's happening in the city. And I've been getting some good answers that have clarified a lot of things that I've been trying to communicate. to residents. Of course, I can't speak for the other ambassadors. I'm not here to represent all of them. I'm just giving you my own kind of perspective on that. So, yeah, I don't see the reason to not promote the ward meetings. I really don't. And I would encourage everyone to go to them. I'm happy, you know, as in my ambassador role, I guess, to ask the mayor directly if I have that opportunity, you know, why She doesn't want to post these meetings. I do think they should be advertised. And I don't think they're in conflict in any way with the ambassador's program. I think both should exist. Really, as many ways as possible to get residents involved. We see a lot of indication that residents are very disengaged right now. You know, you look back at the last election where only about a third of registered voters even showed up to vote. You know, that's not something anybody should be happy with and anybody should accept. You think of things like people not knowing that we're building a new high school yet, although we're this late in the process, or just not understanding where we are. You think of things like going to these meetings, right? How oftentimes not a lot of people come up here to give their opinion, their take on stuff, right? So what can we do to bring people to government and also to bring government to people? So that's what I have to say tonight. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, appreciate your comment. We'll stay at the podium because I'm seeing no hands on Zoom. So name and neighborhood for the record and you'll have three minutes. Hi.

[Haggerty]: Anne Haggerty, West Medford. I just want to say I'm in support of these ward meetings. I think that it's a great way for you guys to meet the members of the community and for the members of the community to get to meet you. I loved what Councilor Tseng said about we left with work to do after that first meeting. I think that's going to happen in every ward and what Councilor Mullane said they signed up because they wanted to be part of the solution. That's important. We need everybody to be more involved and with the loss of a local paper. It's hard to get communication out and advertise things like that. So the city plays an even more important role in that. And I just respectfully ask the mayor to participate in advertising for the future meetings.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no hands on Zoom, we'll stay at the podium. If you give your name and neighborhood, you'll have three minutes.

[Micah Kesselman]: Mike Acosta, 499 Main Street. This is the first I'm hearing about this tonight, so I'm really pissed, and I'll explain why in a second. To be clear and fully transparent, because I think it's the right thing to do, I am the resident who provided a graphic and a flyer to advertise these ward meetings. I think they're really important because I think we need to engage as much of the city in our municipal governance as possible. It's my guiding political philosophy, not partisan politics. I think people deserve to be engaged and involved in their governance. That makes sense to me. Maybe it doesn't to the mayor. But I did not attend the Ward 1 meeting. I didn't. I don't live in Ward 1. I just wanted to make sure people could go to it. I will attend Ward 5 meeting. So, I don't know. Maybe the mayor will show up. I don't know. That would be great. I won't attend the other ones. If the issue that the mayor has, and she's so petty and petulant that she will harm the wards and the community in our city to air this grievance, I can step away from doing any of the flyer and everything. Like, there's a template. I can hand it to Nick. I don't care, I'm glad to hear he's in support of this. I'll hand it to whomever. I want these meetings to happen because the people need to be, they need to know who is in their government, who is representing them, who is affecting their day-to-day lives. That said, I am so beyond furious that this is happening. This is crazy. This is crazy. It's unacceptable. It's unacceptable. I'm so disappointed in Brianna right now, beyond disappointed. It's crazy.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Is there any further comments on this matter tonight by members of the public? Yes. Seeing no hands on Zoom, we will have three minutes. Name and neighborhood for the record, please.

[xl-rVBoybgA_SPEAKER_20]: Zoe Balsquare, Zoe Ducrotch Balsquare. Yeah, I saw a post on social media about the Ward 1 meeting happening about three minutes after it started. I would have liked to go to it, but at that point, it was three minutes after it started, and I did not have time to get out of the house and go to where it was. I will try to figure out when the rest of them are. I would like to be at least one of them. That would be great. I know you said this is like a strong power mayor situation. My God, if she's doing all of these shenanigans, Is there anything that you can do? Oh my goodness, at what point do you stop following through the procedures of normal municipal behavior and start just yanking on whatever strings you have? Because this is out of control, and it's nuts, and I'm so done with hearing about this ridiculous behavior from the mayor's office. Yeah, I'm so sorry that y'all have been dealing with this. I would have really loved to go to these award meetings and I would love to see them be publicized through official city channels and for it not to just be used as some kind of cudgel against all of you who are trying so hard to actually come talk to us and hear what we have to say. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Seeing no further members of the public who want to participate on this item, is there a motion? Motion to approve by Councilor Tseng, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, having the affirmative, none of the negative, the motion passes. So we will send that to the mayor and hopefully when these have official agendas, they will go back on the city website or we can hear why the mayor thinks that city council meeting shouldn't be put on the city website. 26-172 offered by Councilor Scarpelli, this is in order to place the adoption of Mass General Law Chapter 40 Section 6C before the voters in November. This is regarding liability on private ways, whereas in Gallagher v. City of Medford, a resident brought suit against the city after suffering injuries caused by a defect on a private way, and whereas the city sought summary judgment, arguing it had no maintenance obligation over private ways. And whereas the appellate division of the district court department found that the city's informal maintenance on that private way performed without having the city having adopted mass general law, chapter 40, section 6C has stopped the city from denying the public way of status under general law, chapter 84, section 25. And whereas the court stated directly, it is undeniable that a city or town which has accepted general law, chapter 40, section 6C may remove snow and ice from a private way without risk and such services will constitute repairs. recognizable under general law chapter 84, section 25. And whereas the following Gallagher ruling, the city has not acted to adopt general law chapter 40, section 6C. And whereas the city of Medford continues to perform informal maintenance, sweeping and ice removal on private ways. And whereas section 6E's liability carve out only protects the city if the city has actually accepted it. And whereas 39% of Medford roadways are designated private ways. And whereas since 2020, the city has appropriated $0 for private way repairs. And whereas no maintenance or upkeep services are provided but for the informal services outlined in Gallander. And whereas without acceptance, the city is unnecessarily exposing itself to public way, full public way tort liability. And whereas acceptance of the measure requires a ballot question at the next regular city election. Now, therefore be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we hereby vote pursuant to Mass General Laws chapter 40, section 60, To submit for acceptance to the registered voters of the city at the next regular city election, the question of whether the city shall accept the provisions of Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 40, Section 6C. Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. I know I'm a little ambitious, and I'm thinking this is going to be in November. There's a trend now, as you can see, without a city solicitor. I've done a lot of research now with some support, with some hard work in looking into where we are for private ways. And I think that we started last week with really just getting the information out to the residents. And there was truly, like I said, it's difficult. Last week was around this time, right? People were getting tired and we really didn't hear too much about it. Tonight I think it's the same thing, but I think with 39% of our roads and streets are private ways, we're realizing that there's a disconnect in what's happening, both in legally, from what I found, and again, Councilor Tseng hopefully will look into it a little bit, not having a city solicitor, this is what I found for some evidence that shows that back in some time now, there has been recourse that hasn't been fully gone through with method and we haven't fully looked into or followed through with what the courts have outlined so we can protect the city for liability. At the same time, this doesn't stop the work that we're doing for our private ways, but I think it opens the opportunity that we can see what we really can do. for our residents in private ways. Unfortunately, I know our city engineer today seemed like he was getting a little irritated, in my view, that I wasn't asking for the city to do anything. I was looking for avenues where we can support our residents who pay taxes in the private ways. Now, this is a terrible law, a terrible rule, and we understand the limits with it, but I think that First, we need to really, if this is the case, we really need to find a way to tie this down to make sure that we're doing what we have to do as a city council to protect our interests as city councilors managing the city's viability. With that then, you'll see avenues that we can use to really support our residents in our private ways. Because this was all about a phone call. about a tree that was dying that was hanging over an area where there are kids waiting for a bus stop. And unfortunately, the call to the city came in says yes, the tree has to come down. They reached out and talked to Tim McGiven has been very responsive. He told me that he reached out to the resident and told the resident you have to take this tree down. The resident doesn't have the means to take the tree down. Unfortunately, Well, in an emergency situation, what is a recourse? If we're seeing something that is going to pose a danger to our residents, what are we to do? So as I started doing my research, I realized that Gallagher hasn't been completed yet. And I think that's one issue we should follow up with. And then I'll be following up with other resolutions down the line to see what we can do as city councils and city administration to really start to support our residents in private ways. Because I think they deserve it. I know that's law, how we fund our streets. And I know it's difficult to make private ways into public ways, but there's also avenues that we can take and some efforts we can make to fix these issues. Um, up until this, this, this administration, if there was a sidewalk issue where senior citizen was falling, it was a dangerous situation. The city administration back in the day made sure that was taken care of. If there was a tree that posed a danger, they made sure the tree service tree department was there to make sure that if it was dead that they took it down in matter of public safety. This has been a different. angle and different format that the city has decided to go down. So what we can do is make sure that this piece, and that's through a vote, maybe I would adjust, Mr. President, and maybe with the leadership of the chairperson for our governance subcommittee, that we maybe bring this to the governance subcommittee. Maybe there's another avenue we can take instead of going on the ballot. The ballot is the easiest way that has no blockage with the mayor or anybody else that we can ask this to go through. Now I realize November is really difficult to get the information out. I don't think this is an innocent question but maybe adding it to the ballot would pose a financial issue with our elections department in the state. So I know there's some issues there, but I just want to bring this forward and maybe send this to the governance subcommittee that we can look at this particular issue and then move forward with some support and understanding what else we can do to our residents for our residents that live in private ways that are struggling financially, that, you know, when they want to pave the street, like our engineer said, right, I'll use Fountain Street as an example. It might be 40 more yards that we need to, but we have limitations legally of what we can offer or even present to those residents. That's the avenue that I want us to look into to see if we can focus on maybe supporting those residents by giving them options until we can figure out how we can all fall under Chapter 70, Chapter 90 money. So if we can do that, I think that's my goal with this, ultimately with this resolution and moving forward maybe we can look at some other avenues and I'll beg the council president maybe if I put another private way resolution and we could go at 7 o'clock or 7 to 1.

[Zac Bears]: I'm just going to keep referring them to the public's health committee and you guys can all have a meeting about it.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I'm struggling to understand how it's a public health issue, though. I mean, well, it's because of the tree. It's because of the tree. I think you're the one who asked for it last time, but no, I know it was the it was the Anna's Councilor Kelly public works.

[Anna Callahan]: Just for the public, I want to make sure that I'm understanding this correctly, put it in a little bit of plain language, that this is a, you know, one obscure law and if we as a city adopt this, Then, when we do things like plowing the snow on private ways or doing some small maintenance on private ways, which we do from time to time as a city, that when we do that, we won't open ourselves up to liability. It's not just possible that we could have liability. Actually, we happen to be in a lawsuit about this exact thing. So it really does happen. And my understanding is also that there really is no downside to us adopting this Chapter 40, Section 6. So as far as I know, that's in a nutshell, a sort of plain language explanation of why Councilor Scarpelli is proposing this, and I agree with it.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you. Thank you for clarity. I was getting a little tired. So again, I appreciate your input. I think that helps. All right.

[Zac Bears]: I'm going to recognize Councilor Tseng. And then Tim McGibbon's on Zoom. So he, I don't know if he's here for this or if he just forgot to turn his Zoom off, but.

[Zac Bears]: Councilor Tseng. I just forgot to. Okay. Didn't want to talk. All right. Tim, if you're here to talk about this, I'm going to ask you to unmute. I don't know if Tim's here to talk about this. All right. I'm just going to quickly go back to the records from our last meeting to make sure we know what committee we referred the other public safety, the other private ways item to. Does anyone have that off the top of their head?

[George Scarpelli]: I think that's what we want to do. But if we can, if we want to put it all into the government and because as I'm bringing more information out, I think right now it has to do with, it all plays a factor. So I think that if we don't mind, we could start with there and then go forward with it if we can. Let me just quickly look to. Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Sorry, one second. Yeah, it went to public health and community safety, but if you want to send it to governance instead.

[George Scarpelli]: Well, with Tim, I think that we can do that, but I think, you know, with that issue, are you in the public works too? All right, so maybe that would help. But yeah, if that's fine, we can go to Public Works.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Okay, so there's a motion to refer paper 26-172 and re-refer paper 26-160 to the Public Works and Facilities Committee by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Callahan. All right, on the motion to refer this paper to Public Works and Facilities, if you could schedule like work with Clerk Siegel and anyone else we need to be there. just to get this done, that would be great. So on that motion, is there any further discussion by members of the council? Tim, if just one last shot, if you're here to talk about this, if you want to raise your hand. Oh, no. Okay. Further discussion by Vice President Lazzaro?

[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes, just very briefly, I want to thank Councilor for doing the work to put this on private ways. There are too many private ways in Medford and he makes an excellent point about how important it is to take care of our residents who have real and meaningful issues related to the, you know. the issues that should be the responsibility of the municipality and not of private residents. So we can try to help. And this is a first step towards that. So thank you very much for doing it.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Vice President Lazzaro. Any members of the public would like to discuss this item at this moment? There will be a future committee meeting on this question. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes. I have an affirmative and a negative. These motions are referred to the Public Works Committee. Councilor Callahan, who's the chair of that committee, will work to schedule meetings. Communications from the Mayor. 26133, submitted by Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. Capital and General Stabilization Fund request request to police chief search. This is going back again to the police chief search, 35,000 that they've requested. We sent a resolution about a committee of the whole meeting at our last meeting requesting a committee of the whole meeting on the police chief search and the mayor has not responded scheduling a date. She has tried to get us to meet individually with the search firm. I don't know, Councilor Callahan, I think you actually attended one of those if you wanna talk about it but there's also, I don't think there's a representative of the administration here to speak to this paper at this time. Councilor Callahan?

[Anna Callahan]: I think the only thing I would say is I really do think it would be much more helpful for us to meet with this search firm consultant as a group. I don't understand why we were asked to meet individually with them. I think it would be a lot more helpful and certainly a better use of time for us to meet together as a group.

[Justin Tseng]: I'd like to say I still really want to meet in Committee of the Whole with the search team. I wasn't able to make any of the individual times that were offered to the Councilors, but I also think a lot of public safety policy requires discussion across people and for us to have a candid conversation. Without anyone from the administration here, I'd like to table this motion.

[Zac Bears]: On the motion to table by Councilor Tseng, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, 16 affirmative, one absent, the motion passes. 26166, request for a food truck, Trolley Dogs at Brooks Elementary School Fall Fest, October 4th, 2026. Dear President Bears and members of the city council, I respectfully, on behalf of the below entity, I respectfully submit to the city council the following request for a food truck permit in the city of Medford. In addition to city council approval, vendors are required to adhere to health department food safety requirements. Business name, Trolley Dogs, 26 Claudette Circle, Framingham, Massachusetts. Date and time, October 4th, 2026 to 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Location, Brooks Elementary School. Event, Fall Fest. About the event, Fall Festival with Games, Rides, Arts, and Craft. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Sincerely, Brian Alendo-Kern, Mayor. Is there a motion? Motion to approve by Councilor Tseng, seconded by?

[Zac Bears]: Seconded by Councilor Leming. This is the food truck, George. We're voting on it. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, I'm affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. That's the end of the agenda. We'll go to public participation. If there's anyone who'd like to participate on any issue, you are welcome to participate. You can come to the podium or raise your hand on Zoom. If you could provide your name and your neighborhood for the record and you'll have three minutes. You're the first one in line.

[Micah Kesselman]: a minor suggestion about the committee of the whole meeting with the police chief search firm when you do have it. I just very much encourage you to make sure that's an open meeting and not an executive session meeting if possible because I do think that the general public and residents should also have substantial input on something like this directly with the firm that's doing the search. And since I have time still also, I think I should really consider a resident police oversight board at some point. But that would just be dope, maybe next year. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Any further public participation on any topic? Please raise your hand on Zoom or come to the podium in the chamber. All right, seeing none, is there a motion?

[Zac Bears]: Oh, okay. Hello. Thank you. If you could give your name and your neighborhood for the record, please, and you'll have three minutes.

[Angela Murphy]: Angela Murphy, 16 Cotting Street, which I've been there for 70 of my 75 years old. And what I'm going to summarize is I heard a lot of things this night. And some things I'm taking into consideration can move forward in a positive way, but I'm very skeptical about other things that I've heard said. I mean, I love the idea of ward meetings. But I feel that you can have a meeting of any kind, because I've stood in front of this podium lots of times in the past few years, and I felt I've talked and I've given my opinion of changes that would happen to my neighborhood, but I don't feel heard. So it's great to say you're going to listen to residents. I just want to see positivity come from anything that you go forward with and that you actually hear what the people are saying and act upon it and not just take it in consideration and then go to total opposite. But sometimes residents of a certain part of Method will object to. And it's not what they object to change. They object to how the change is going to affect them. So I want to be heard. That's all I want to do, is be heard. When I say something, my residents, my neighbors who say something, I want them to be heard. And that's how I feel. So when I see positive change come out of what we say and actually pass on to you, our concerns, our objections to sometimes things that are going to happen, we want them heard. We want them to take in consideration why we're saying these things and why we are coming up maybe a different opinion of what you're proposing and be heard and have positive effects come out of it, not just be listened to and then totally ignored what we say. Thank you. So I'm hoping everything positive comes out of this. ward meetings and all that's been said tonight. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Is there anyone else? Yes. If you give your name and neighbourhood and you'll have three minutes.

[xl-rVBoybgA_SPEAKER_20]: I would just like to affirm my appreciation for everything that this city council does, for all the ways that you listen to your constituents, knowing that many of us in Medford have differing opinions. And obviously, when there's a difference of opinion that you are listening to, we appreciate that you listen to and hear all the opinions and then move forward with what you think is best for our city. to reflect the interests of the voters who put you into these offices. And that does mean that sometimes not every single individual constituent in Medford gets exactly their way, but that overall, I really appreciate the many positive changes that this city council has brought about. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you very much. All right. Seeing no further discussion, is there a motion? On the motion to adjourn by Councilor Callahan, seconded by? Somebody please. Second. By Vice President Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Zac Bears total time: 71.21 minutes total words: 11390	Liz Mullane total time: 13.95 minutes total words: 2553	Anna Callahan total time: 11.87 minutes total words: 1754	Justin Tseng total time: 17.51 minutes total words: 2540
George Scarpelli total time: 31.2 minutes total words: 5035	Matt Leming total time: 10.22 minutes total words: 1474	Emily Lazzaro total time: 17.85 minutes total words: 2915	Nick Giurleo total time: 2.05 minutes total words: 431