Medford City Council Resident Services & Public Engagement Comm 10/07/26

AI-generated transcript — the recording is the record.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: All right. Okay. That's OK. I know we're running a little behind today but we're getting there.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: All right.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: So just started again. Now is the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting October 7th 2026. Clerk do you mind calling the roll.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Councilor Callahan.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Councilor Leming.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Absent. Councilor Scarpelli.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: should be here shortly. Yeah. Councilor Tseng present and chair Malone present three here to absent. We can get started. All right, so the first item on the agenda that we have, we're just going to go through it pretty quickly, is the City Council newsletter. So the resolution to publish the City Council newsletter, be it resolved by the Medford City Council that the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee shall have the authority to draft and approve regular newsletter. summarizing the activities of the City Council and can vote to publish a newsletter by whatever mechanisms available without referring the draft newsletter to a regular Council meeting for a vote. Be it further resolved this paper be referred to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee as a standing agenda item. So I know Councilor Tseng has been working on the September meeting. And we will hopefully be getting that out later this month. And the summer edition will be in inboxes shortly. So we will be caught up and ready to start in the fall.

So with that, we'll turn it over to the next resolution, next agenda item, is to schedule the neighborhood ward meetings hosted by the City Council. So be it resolved by the Medford City Council that the Council's Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee discuss a plan to schedule neighborhood ward meetings hosted by the City Council in 2026 and 2027. So, I actually put together just a document for us to kind of go through because obviously we had our first ward meeting that took place on the 23rd.

So, I thought I would just share. Can everyone see my screen? Is that coming? Okay, great. So for the ward meetings, the first one we had about, I'll give a quick recap and then Councilor Tseng, if you want to share some of your thoughts as well. But we had about 30 people that were in the room, about seven that were on Zoom. I think the format actually went well for people to not have that set agenda, to have the floating microphone and really allowing people to have the ability to share kind of what their most pressing areas or concern or things they'd like to have addressed. I put together, these were some of the top issues that were discussed.

The biggest topic was around noise. We heard a lot of feedback around noise ordinance. specifically certain areas and streets within Ward 1 that they were talking about, but just in general, wanting to get involved a little bit more with the ordinance and how to enhance what we currently have, which we'll talk about a little bit later. Pedestrian and bike safety was a big one too. What was great about it was that people could actually give us specific streets and intersections where they really wanted us to look at and put on the list of things to review, which I think was really helpful. certain streets around traffic calming measures and cut throughs that people were utilizing. The city website came up, which is why it's also again on the agenda later on, but being able to navigate it and who to go to for which issues that came up a couple of times. to try to streamline that a little bit. And then there were a lot of people that are interested to hear more about what comes out of the Wellington study. So we did have a presentation on that. I know that there was some documents that we kind of directed people to be able to review online if they wanted more information.

Councilor Tseng, anything else you might want to add about the award meeting or any thoughts, recap from what you picked up from the conversation?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Not particularly. I think you summarized it pretty well. I thought it went really, for the most part, really smoothly. And we got really positive feedback towards the end, especially about people feeling heard, people feeling they had the time and space to kind of make their points. I think occasionally there was moments where some residents wanted to speak on an issue, but then think they were just waiting for another resident to finish speaking. I don't think it'd be conducive to really put strong time limits when we're getting into the meat of an issue, but I think towards the very start, when folks are introducing themselves and giving that one sentence about what the issue that they're there for, Maybe having either a timer or a like giving clear examples of like, hi, I'm Justin. I'm here to talk about noise and traffic calming and like making that a bit more kind of like quick. I think would help us get into the the substance a bit quicker. I wonder if something that would be helpful is to give everyone kind of like an index card towards the very start where as you're walking into the meeting they can kind of put what they're there for really like really briefly and then right before we start the meeting we can kind of scan through to kind of generally organize the issue areas that we talk about.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Yeah, that's a great point, because when we were doing it, I was trying to take notes to kind of capture what everyone's major piece was, and then we had those sign-up sheets that people get involved in by then going over and writing those out. So I definitely, I like that idea of having some index cards or something that people can feel they can write it down, and maybe that will help it be a little bit more succinct in the beginning, so that everyone can feel like they are heard. Because you're right, that did, was a bit of an issue in the beginning.

Great, so just to give some follow-up that happened post, I did send an email to everyone who signed up in all the different sign-up sheets. I also followed up with MCM about getting the video and trying to figure out how best to get that up potentially on YouTube or somehow easily accessible. with a transcript so people would be able to read through it. You know, people signed up for different projects, so trying to figure out, when I sent the email, I, you know, for anyone to have our direct contact, but also to come to this meeting if there's anything they wanted to share around, especially the noise ordinance. or any other pieces from that meeting as well. But I think there might be something else to share for people if they're interested. Some people signed up for bike safety, for noise, Wellington, traffic calming, so somehow figuring out other ways for people to feel more engaged and hear about some of the things that are happening. One of the things I was thinking is maybe like with the bike commission, would it be helpful, you know, if people don't know that it exists, but they're interested in bike safety and what we're doing there, if I sent them information on it, maybe they want to join those commission meetings. So just different ways to try to engage residents, but truly open to suggestions of trying to figure out the best way to follow up.

So then I just put together a couple of things, ways to improve better communication and outreach. Microphone use, I did get some feedback from people that those on Zoom, if someone moved the microphone away from their mouth, they couldn't hear them. So it was a little bit difficult. So making sure that residents really do utilize them. I had talked with MCM about having a standing mic as opposed to a floating one. I just felt like the standing mic might be intimidating to people. And the floating mic when you're kind of seated in a crowd is a little bit less intimidating. But definitely reiterating that people should need to put it closer so that people can hear. I'm not sure about the online experience for Zoom. And I think maybe one person raised their hand to ask a question, but I don't know we got to it in time or fast enough. So trying to figure out how to better coordinate that in the meeting. I think having someone really focused on the Zoom as part of it, I think, would be helpful.

Someone had offered or talked about offering child care services so that people want to come. So there is a resident that's looking into it for now. Seeing what we've done in other types of meetings, we don't think it'd be possible for this one in October, but potentially further on in December. And then I will reach out to the schools about coordinating with any other kind of like back to school nights or something like that that might be happening.

So those were some of the things. But in my email, I also asked for people to respond back, let me know what else we could do, any other ways to improve it moving forward. So if I get anything else, I will share it. And then moving on to the next meeting for Ward 5, this is kind of put together kind of the checklist for Councilors Callahan and Singh, who are going to be hosting the Ward 5 meeting Tuesday, October 20th, 7 p.m. at the Mistak. I'll send you some of these contact info, people, so that you have it, but really connecting with the director of facilities, just confirming with them everything's set. I also did it the Sunday before the meeting as well, but I checked in earlier and did a little bit of a walkthrough. That was just me for my own anxiety around events, but might not be for everybody. Connecting with Kevin to get the Zoom information for MCM.

The invitation I think is already done with an RSVP link for people. Then the sign up sheets, you know, I had a sign up sheet for the city council newsletter. It might just be easier to have a QR code for people because it is kind of hard making sure I have the right email addresses from people's handwriting. So any way to kind of make that a little bit easier. easier to have people put that information in. Then just outreach to different publications, email notification to the neighborhood ambassadors. I sent the invitation and all that to all of them. I didn't specify which neighborhood because I know that they have outreach across Medford.

And then I do have a Google location map that some residents shared with us as well to post locally where there might be some spots that would get a lot of visibility. And then obviously ongoing posting to social media and encouraging people to spread the word that way. So I can shoot this in an email to both of you and with the contact information to follow up for this next one. And then I will kind of handle it for the December 2nd one. Yes. Councilor Callahan.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Do we know what room it's in at the mistook. They said the cafeteria. Great. Sounds good. And then I plan to ping Councilor Tseng this weekend and have a little phone conversation, if that's okay with you, Councilor Tseng, and we can kind of divvy up these roles and make stuff happen.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Sounds good with me.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Great. Thanks.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Thank you. So then just the remaining ones we have to schedule are, this is what we kind of tentatively had put together for Ward 4 in January. It's myself and you, Councilor Callahan. In February, it's Councilor Tseng, Councilor Leming for Ward 7, for Ward 6. Anna, I don't know why I have you one more time. It seems like too many. Okay, so somebody else will be doing four with me. them and I will send out some dates that I already know won't work because we have city council or other meetings scheduled and try to work around Councilor schedules to make sure that those dates are in. Great. Any other questions, thoughts, additions to this at all?

Great. Okay. So that's kind of is where we stand on the board meeting. So I'm going to move on to the next resolution, which is to update the NOE's ordinance. Oh, sorry. Just sorry.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: I think Councilor Scarpelli has his hand up.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Oh, I'm sorry. Councilor Scarpelli, do you want to go ahead?

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Yes, I'm just sorry. I just wanted to let you know that I was here. I apologize. I just got back from work, so.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Oh, no problem. Thank you. Councilor Scarpelli, would you be able to do a January Ward 4 meeting with me?

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Yeah, no, I'll do that. I was just trying to chime in. Yeah, I know that Councilor Callahan has been jumping in, but I'll jump in with the Tufts at January 4th.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Great. Thank you. And then you and I are scheduled for December for award too.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Right. I hear that the crowds are already lining up. So it's going to be great. Can't wait.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: We'll be quite the duo. I can feel it.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: I can feel it now. Batman and Robin.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Love it. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Great. OK. So with that, I will Turn this over to Justin. So the next one that we have is the resolution to update the noise ordinance. The full text and description is whereas the city of Medford's noise ordinance was last updated in 1974 and is lacking any recent updates to types of noise that can impact residents. And whereas residents of Medford have shared a variety of ways in which different noise levels have been impacting their daily lives. And whereas noise levels can also be considered a health hazard and is left to the community to help regulate and advise on noise restrictions throughout their city and towns. And the rest of the next piece of it is just a statement from the American Public Health Association about the loud noise. But be it resolved by the Medford City Council that the council's resident services and public engagement committee review the current noise ordinance to update its language, function, type, and current usage.

So. I'm going to stop sharing my screen. Councilor Tseng, did you want to share your screen and some of the work that you put together on the ordinance?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Yes, please. I'll do that now. Give me a second. Figuring out how to do this best. Sorry, I'm not used to this version of Word. I have a PowerPoint, but I'm figuring out how to put it in presentation mode. There we go. OK. I'm sorry this took a while for me to get together and to send in. I understand that most folks will not have read or seen any of this before this meeting, which is fine because personally, I think what makes sense is to keep this in committee. I just wanted to have us have a draft that we can look off of and then kind of use as a reference point when residents have feedback for us. I based, oh, I believe this might be the wrong PowerPoint.

the draft that I have off of the Somerville ordinance that we talked about last week. It seemed like as a council and from the residents that spoke at that meeting, that that was the ordinance that folks were Familiar with slash really liked they liked how I was carried out in Somerville and They like the scope of it and their approach. So that's kind of where I kind of based this draft off of and We'll have the drafts and the presentation available for Councilors hopefully after the meeting. I know I just sent them right before the meeting, so they might not have gotten to you guys yet.

First, to take a look at what this draft does, it creates a clear rule that city staff can enforce. Follows what Somerville does in terms of naming 17 specific disturbances. Some of these two I think will address what residents have been talking to us about in the Ward 1 meeting and at previous council meetings. Measurable decibel limits, that kind of goes to what we said last time about our current ordinance being unenforceable. And then like a simple penalty schedule also based off of what Somerville has. Um, so this kind of gives you a really, like, general view of what is in this ordinance. So, A, purpose and scope, B, definitions, C, the general rule and the list of factors for city staff to be able to consider, and 17, disturbances that are kind of common in cities like Medford that residents complain about that we would want to be able to take action on.

Part D is the decibel limits. That's where we kind of get into conversation of how we want to set that up and what numbers we want to set. which I think should still be open to policy discussion, for sure. Part E talks about enforcement. This would essentially broaden enforcement compared to what we have today to allow more people, more city staff to enforce the noise ordinance, and then very basic legal stuff, severability and effective date. For the general rule, the rule that you find across ordinances in the area is that no one may cause a noise disturbance. So the standard would be that a sound is a disturbance if it endangers or injures anyone's health or safety. That goes to what Councilor Mullane talked about with the impact on hearing and health. your ear health.

Two, it's a disturbance if it disturbs a reasonable person of ordinary sensitivities. That's legal language as well. Basically setting a reasonable person standard, which I think makes a lot of sense for noise. It's a disturbance if it's specifically listed in the ordinance. So that's the 17 specific noise sources that I referenced. And then if it exceeds the decibel limit in D, which I'll talk about later. What's on the right, the factors that officials may weigh. So that's kind of for city staff to exercise discretion over. So this is basically saying like, even outside of what we've listed as specific disturbances, these are things that city staff can consider in determining whether a noise is a disturbance or not.

So part C talks about construction and when when construction is allowed. I've taken these directly from Somerville. I believe currently we have different standards. But you can kind of take a look through the table. Um, so basically, for ordinary construction, we, the current draft would allow it for weekdays and Saturdays from 7 to 7 on weekdays, 9 to 7 on Saturdays, and not allowing it on Sundays or holidays, especially since that's when I think most people have said that they're resting. We'd be more stringent on high impact construction and the examples in the ordinance that I've listed are jackhammers, pile drivers, blasting, saws, where that wouldn't be allowed on weekends, but would be on weekdays.

For outdoor power and yard tools, we already kind of we have the leaf blowing ordinance, but this kind of would allow us to do a bit more with really loud things that impact residential life. Basically, making sure that that doesn't go on past 9pm that. On weekends or weekdays, it doesn't happen before 7 a.m. and on weekends that folks have the two extra hours to sleep in or to kind of have peace in their day. Loading and unloading 7 to 7 every day. That's for businesses to be able to stay in operation. And we should reach out to business owners in the community to make sure that works well for them as well. Loudspeakers, PA systems, 7 to 10.

Especially given that a lot of the kind of events that people might use these things for a little bit later, I thought it might make sense to push it a little bit later. But of course, all of this is up for discussion. And then radios, TVs, instruments, amps. This is what Somerville currently has, but it might make sense to pull it back a little bit. and loudspeakers would be barred overnight unless a city official gives them a permit for it. And the days after Thanksgiving and Christmas would follow Saturday construction hours. The current draft also contains some exemptions for city and school projects. We know the new high school, if the debt exclusion goes through, if everything goes to plan, might kind of need a little bit more flexibility than what's here. Although, I've been talking with school committee members.

They kind of expressed an interest that we Give them a bit more flexibility, but I traditionally that that kind of construction work has not happened in my to my knowledge outside these hours. And they would still be required to minimize noise to notify butters and to follow state and federal law when it comes to noise and construction. This, I'm not supposed to be in this list. Yeah.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Councilor is saying, I think like in your past one that we just had, I think the Medford goes only to 6 p.m. for the noise ordinance too.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Yeah, I, the only reason why I changed it is to match it with Somerville's. If we want to go back to other drafts or shorter hours, we can definitely consider that. The current noise ordinance is very, I don't have it in front of me right now, and I can't look at it because I'm screen sharing, but has different hours than what was proposed there. So I think that's up to this committee to kind of discuss and to find, to get resident feedback for too.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Yeah, thank you.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: I'm not really going to go through this list, but you will all receive versions of a copy of this presentation so you can kind of look through what Somerville has listed as specific noise disturbances and their exemptions as well, especially for religious use, which we need to be careful of because of their First Amendment rights. And of course, emergency vehicles, sirens, I mean, public safety is non-negotiable, so there's an exception for that as well. I talked about having a discussion about the way we do decibel limits. There are kind of two ways, again, we could go about it. One is dividing it into times a day. So Somerville does three blocks the day, day, evening, night. So they do 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. which is the day slot. They do 6 to 10 p.m. for residential and 6 to 7 a.m. for all other districts for the evening slot. And for the residential they have a night slot which is 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. where basically they adjust the decibel limit so it's quieter at night and louder during or you're allowed to be louder during the day.

And then they also set it at kind of, they'll look at duration as well. Somerville's also built in exemptions from decibel limits for certain work or sources of noise that are really, really just almost impossible to control, like traffic, lawn and yard tools, construction equipment. I would note that the concern that was brought to us from the Ward 1 meeting about engine exhausts, that is separate. It's in that last list of 17. An alternative plan would be to also look at zoning district, basically separating the noise limits based on residential, commercial, and industrial as well. A lot of cities in Boston, as we kind of noted at the last meeting, do it this way too. This is just kind of proposed numbers. Both of these are just mere proposals.

So up to edit this as well. And you can kind of see at the bottom how it would be bifurcated and how it would be set. So 7am to 10pm, 10pm to 7am potentially using the receiving properties zoning as the as the kind of how we measure it. So, for example, on Mystic Ave, we know we have the beer hall, and then we have residential neighborhoods that are receiving noise from the beer hall. So, we would measure this, we would set the standard based on the residential rather than just looking at the beer hall's commercial status itself.

For mixed-use neighborhoods, which are always kind of complicated when we do this residential versus commercial separation, It seems like most municipalities that do it this way use commercial limits, and that homes get an extra five decibels for residential stuff. And this would still keep the residential night limits and the Sunday and holiday limits. Going on to enforcement, which is the next section, section E. For most violations, you'd have a warning at the first instance, $100 fine at the second instance, and then $300 fine for any subsequent instance. The $300 is the maximum set by state law. These would be non-criminal, and I think it's important that they remain non-criminal.

for construction demolition because we expect these actors to follow more stringent standards and because it is generally louder noise than all the other noise that we're talking about. And we should expect that developers and construction companies should know our laws. and should be ready to kind of practice construction under our laws. We, Somerville, I think it's reasonable that Somerville sets the first offense at 100 and then ups it to 300 for every offense after that. And then basically, so there are a few open questions. I should have put just the numbers itself. But yeah, should we go with, should we consider decibel framework A, the Somerville approach, where it's just day, evening, night? Or should we consider option B, where it's set by day and night, but also looks at residential, commercial, and industrial?

Another question is, are the hours fines? And I would throw in the decibel levels right for Medford. And for that, we should find more feedback from residents, businesses, and we should talk to the enforcing department. But yeah, that is my presentation. I'm happy to go back to anything if Councilors want. All that to say, we're still very flexible on everything, but I wanted to make sure that we had a piece of paper in front of us to, or something in front of us to look at and to work off of.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Sure. Councilor Tseng, thank you so much. This is great to kind of take a look at and the way that you've outlined it. I'll go, I saw Councilor Scarpelli's hand and then I'll go to Councilor Callahan. Councilor Scarpelli, if you want to unmute

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: uh thank you uh madam chair uh first of all justin thank you for this i think that this is a good starting point i think it's important that uh we do get the um the input from our business district and our residents i think that both options uh are going to be um sufficient but i think that we spent some time to look into that ask our code enforcement officers and then i think that You know, having our community, the whole meeting for the, uh, you know, for the enforcement piece and making sure that, uh, the enforcement that is issued has some teeth with it and making sure that we, um, implement, uh, what we can do in the future meetings, um, with the partnership with building department and a treasurer and city assessor and the legal team that, um, we can. move all fines into, you know, unpaid fines into the tax tax bill. So we make sure that they know that if they're, there's an offense that they're, they're going to be held accountable for that. So, but again, I appreciate all your hard work. And I think this is a great starting point. So thank you.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Thank you.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. Also just want to really thank you. It's an incredible amount of work. It's great to have a draft going in. I am curious, like, I do think that people, a lot of people will be interested in this. And I wonder how we can get the most from the public and get input. I wonder if we should bring this up in all the ward meetings. Like I don't know how long we want to sit on this.

If we can do at least a couple of ward meetings while we're still considering it and, you know, bring it up as one of the topics. I just, I'm trying to. brainstorm and think like how can we engage people on this because I do think that a lot of people will be excited that we are doing this or making it enforceable and that we're making it reasonable. I think our last one was neither reasonable nor enforceable. So I think it's pretty exciting that we're doing this and I'd love to get input if we can.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: I couldn't agree more. I think we talked about this the last time, too, about how to get a survey out or how to get in front of people. I think maybe even, I don't know. even if we had like an ability for QR codes that people could do, like that we have out at different events, that if people want to access the survey that way or something, I just don't, I feel like it's so difficult to try to get the word out. I think it'd be great to keep having the conversation in the ward meetings. to see what people's thoughts and opinions are and especially as Councilor Scarpelli mentioned too with the businesses, kind of getting a sense of what people really think would make most sense when it comes to decibel levels and probably also setting up some time to talk with the police chief, building commissioner, parking, like parking, the permit office, just to figure out like how best to navigate this and what those fine structures might actually look like and be effective.

Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Scarpelli, you're, oh, there you go.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: I'm sorry, yeah, I didn't lower my hand. Shame on me, I apologize.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: No problem. Any thoughts, suggestions, ideas to try to get this out to more people and get more responses? I personally don't know that we need to rush on it per se. I feel like it allows us to get some more time and input from people and keep bringing it up at these various meetings. I like the idea, Councilor Callahan, talking about it at different war meetings, getting feedback then too from people. So I guess what we could do is maybe continue. Oh, Councilor Tseng, did you want to add something in?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Yeah, I brought up last meeting the idea of having a survey about this. I haven't been able to write it, but I've put some thought into it. And I think oftentimes, like, if we just have asked about numbers, like, folks won't know what decibel level, what, you know, certain things are. So I think keeping it a bit open ended and just asking, What time are you encountering these problems? What's the source of the noise? Is it a boom box? Is it an engine? Getting a sense of what exactly those noises are and keeping it pretty short and open-ended would be pretty helpful, in my opinion.

And I second the idea of the ward meetings.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Great. Maybe we can start our, at least for the next meeting, I can start putting together some survey question ideas so we can kind of all brainstorm so we have something cohesive together too with what Councilor Tseng has done and continue to bring it up at more meetings, see how else we might be able to advertise and get feedback from people. So I think at this point, we probably just want to continue keeping this in committee. and continue talking about it at the next meeting. So we'll continue it here. And unless there's anything else further, I'll move to the next one. Councilor Callahan. I'll just move to keep the paper in committee. Oh.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Second.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Thank you. Clerk, do you mind taking the roll?

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Yes.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Councilor Tseng.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Yes.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Yes. Four in the affirmative, one absent. We will keep this paper in committee. All right. So the last piece that we had to discuss at the meeting tonight is a resolution to improve the city website. So whereas MedfordMass.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 residents' needs, limited language access, and a gap in online services compared to peers, now therefore, be it resolved that the committee 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.

So I know, Councilor Tseng, I think you had started putting some things together, but as I kind of mentioned at the top of the meeting, this was brought up in our ward discussion. It was certainly an area that people felt that we could dig into to make it more accessible and easier to navigate for information in general. So I think this is a great time to begin having those conversations and figuring out how best to navigate it and to bring those different departments to the table at perhaps our next meeting since we did this, you know, so quickly. But Councilor Tseng, I don't know if you had other pieces that you might want to share with the committee as well on it.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Yes, yeah. I've prepared some slides about my own review of the website. But before I talk about any of it, I think the most important thing for us to do is, again, go to the public, ask them, ask members of the public, Are there any times that you've used the website and it was hard to navigate where you couldn't find information you wanted to find where you were confused by the website, I think just getting a sense of what that looks like for folks who. Unlike us might not use the website all the time would be really helpful. So I, again, I don't want to give people survey fatigue, but I actually think this might be something that's useful. I know folks online on social media have a lot of thoughts on the city website and perhaps even just alerting them to our next meeting if we continue to talk about that might be really helpful or at least get folks to write in about certain changes that they want to see. So before I kind of delve into my review I just wanted to say that I think that's the most important thing we can do.

and also to get IT and the comms department to one of these meetings. Let me just share my screen real quick again. Is that working? seems like from my Zoom screen it is. Okay. So, I mean, over the past few months, I've spent time reviewing the city's website systematically, working through it page by page and section by section, and then looking at what neighboring communities and what other big cities across the nation are doing with their city website.

And I think Our website has some, it shows real effort. There's a lot of information on there, but there are some significant and fixable gaps. And these gaps make it harder for residents to find services or get information. that they might need in their everyday lives, or even to hold their government accountable. And we certainly don't want to, we certainly want to close all the gaps that might carry some legal exposure. So I wrote up a draft memo, which I believe you guys are getting via email.

It's just a draft because I want to wait until we hear back from residents to kind of flesh it out even more. But I've basically organized my findings into three tiers by in terms of things that are high priority, things that are easy to fix within 30 days, medium priority, things that will take longer but would meaningfully affect residents' experience. For example, how the For Residents page is organized, how navigation works, accessibility, multilingual access, more information about City Council and our work. And then, Things that are lower in priority, but are structural improvements that require planning and resources. For example, an online services portal, a budget dashboard, content governance policy, and potentially a new platform, because I think our city website isn't built on a very kind of complex platform. Which is great in terms of letting city staff edit it, but also difficult in terms of the user experience and just having things be more confusing in the first place. So with the quick fixes.

The mayor's page, for example, currently lists past events that are already gone, and this is as of today. So there's still a winter extravaganza page for 2025 that's still live. The vaccine statistics are from 2021. There are archives that, for example, for the state of the city that stop at 2023. The last three years of information aren't on them. So these aren't hard fixes, they just need some attention. On broken links, the COVID-19 entry in the city resources menu links back to the home page and not to any resource page. So there's no link to anything public health related.

The textile recycling URL is a truncated slug that goes nowhere. So basically, just fixes like that. There's confusing terminology where the Senior Center, for example, is called two different things on the menu, or just a number of different things on the menu. That might be because they're technically different official titles, but I think it lends itself to a confusing user experience. There's some, for example, see click fix. We know what it is. But for a resident move just moving into Medford, they might not know what it is. And then they're they're random asterisks that have no explanation to them. There's also social media mismatch. So these are just really quick fixes for content and navigation.

The For Residents page is currently a bare list of links without any grouping, without any descriptions, so a resident looking for help doesn't really know where to start. I think it would make sense to reorganize it around what residents are actually trying to do. So, for example, paying their bills, filing something, getting a permit, handling an emergency. Grouping it into those, like, user experience, like, as a citizen, what are you looking for from City Hall, I think would vastly improve the website experience.

There's also navigation overload when there are a few tabs and when you click on the tabs, for example, more than 35 departments might drop down. And that's just kind of hard to use. Cambridge has a A to Z directory. Somerville limits their top navigation items to six items, and they put their 311 system front and center. And of course, you can still find everything else. It's just that it's kind of more considered and carefully considered. Compared to other cities, too, the city council part is really not built out.

Something that Director Smerdy once raised to me was the idea that we have individual city councilor bios and contact pages or links and to integrate Civic Clerk in the newsletter better. I'd love to take him up on that offer. I think that makes a lot of sense for residents who are trying to reach us or at least trying to know who we are. Those are just a few, I'm not going to go through everything just because it would take too much time, but I think those are a few examples of these medium priority fixes that could could really meaningfully improve people's user experience in the city.

I actually I should fly to the building department note here. It's building department work is always really complex I mean we've seen with the noise ordinance already. It's regulatory it's technical. And sometimes I think. I did this for the vacant building thing, I went to the building department website as if I were someone trying to open a business in Medford, and it can be a lot to navigate because there's so much regulatory text, and so restructuring it as task flows I think makes a lot of sense. And housing resources too. This is again another issue that residents really reach out to me about. And we do have the resources and we even have one pagers, but there's not really like a tenant or renter page for them to just find everything all at once.

And to have to go to planning the development and sustainability. because we don't have an Office of Housing Stability can be really confusing. A lot of residents don't know that that is the place on the website to look for things. And then these are less important fixes, but fixes to UX, so basically the interface experience, that would really help. I want to highlight number four here, the accessibility. And I think number three is linked to that.

Our current city website doesn't really have mobile design as a main priority. While I think a lot of residents probably use like access our city website on their phones. Similarly, for folks who need more accessible content, there's a big gap there. There's something called the WCAG. And it's essentially a group that creates standards for civic websites to make sure that they're accessible. And I think it would make sense to audit our website using those guidelines. And it's not a huge task. At least to compare it to the guidelines is not a huge task. Fixing it might be more of a task. But Massachusetts municipalities have faced increasing ADA scrutiny over accessibility of city services, and the website is one of those.

I'm not again I'm not going to go through this one by one, but for Councilors who are interested in a quick snappy summary of what other cities do better. You can find on this slide. And then, this is just a list of a table of my recommendations based on what I. presented tonight and what you can find in the memo. And then this is kind of what I just said at the start of the meeting or of discussing this paper, requesting that IT and comms come to a meeting so we can develop a timeline and resource plan together. We need to know what's realistic, what's not realistic, what we have the money for, what we need to ask for money for.

We need to solicit public input and we need to kind of, again, work on benchmarks and when we're going to get that stuff done by. That's all I have.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: That's it, Councilor?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: That's it. No, there's actually more. Is there more?

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: No, thank you so much. This was really tremendous work, and I really appreciate everything you put into it. It really did condense, I think, a lot of the different areas that we heard. Even when we were in the ward meeting talking to residents, I couldn't agree more with the I want to kind of functionality for residents to be able to utilize the website. I heard that numerous times in the award meeting about trying to figure out and navigate who to go to for what and which piece that they were looking for. So those types of things I think would be huge wins. And I agree, it's having tried to navigate the website myself, it's pretty hard with so many drop downs to try to figure out where you want to go and what that looks like. So I think this is a tremendous start and really does kind of target in on some of the high item areas that we could focus on. And I look forward to hearing from my other Councilors, too, about their thoughts on it.

Councilor Callahan, are you? OK. I think it's a good start. But I think that

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: with everybody's input, I think once we once we delve into it, it's it's a lot. I mean, it's you hear it. And, you know, Councilor Tseng just reminds us when you when you go on the website, I've heard this multiple times from people when you still see things from 2021, it's really who's you know really understanding I think having the meeting with the leadership team in the city and saying okay who's monitoring our site and who is taking down and adding things that are needed I think that's so important so I think that calendar piece and that updating piece is so important I mean I know that you know that we look at the uh new high school building committee and what's been happening and all the work they're doing and really having something on our site that we could, you know, using that example, which is a very important piece that's coming out. It's going to be a big vote in June and making sure people see that and where people won't have an issue to say, we didn't know anything about it. So I think these are pieces that I've heard. So, but I appreciate it. And I think that the sooner, the better with the meeting with our, our communication team and to see where we can go with that. So thank you.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Great. Yeah, I can reach out to our communication team and invite them to come to our next committee meeting so we can kind of talk through these different pieces. And you're right, Councilor Scarpelli, there are some of these other websites like the high school you can, a little bit more robust in terms of finding information. And certainly when we go to our city council page even, there's not that many things that are really listed on there. And I think there's a lot of work that's happening that we could be able to share with residents a little bit easier online like that. So I think we want to continue keeping this paper in committee, and I will work on trying to get IT and communications to attend one of our next meetings. In the meantime, we can continue having these conversations at ward meetings as well as Trying to figure out how best to do the survey as well to get more input from residents as we kind of figure out how best to update the website.

Terrific. Is there a motion to keep this in?

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: So moved.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: And adjourned. Thank you. Clerk, do you mind calling the roll?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Councilor Mullane, can we add adjourning to that just to save time?

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Sure, I just wanted to, I wasn't sure if there was any public comment. I see that there's, if anyone else had any thoughts or suggestions they might want before we just adjourn. Let's see, no hands raised on Zoom then. Yes, if we'd like to motion to keep this paper in committee and adjourn the meeting.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Friendly amended.

[Councilor Liz Mullane]: Perfect. Thank you. Seconded by Councilor Tseng. Clerk, do you mind calling the roll?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Councilor Callahan. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Yes.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Councilor Tseng.

[Councilor George Scarpelli]: Yes.