City Council: Ward 5 Neighborhood Listening Session - 2026-10-20

AI-generated transcript — the recording is the record.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: All right. People in Medford are so on time. It's amazing. I can't believe how many people are here. It's seven on the dot. We've already got, you know, a couple dozen folks here. It's incredible. We are waiting just a little couple minutes or two before we have the Zoom rolling. But Justin and I thought that we would just do a little intro for y'all, kind of tell you what this is about. I'm Anna Callahan, I've been a city councillor for, this is my second term, so two and a half years so far.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: I'm Justin, I am a third term city councillor, started in 2022. I'm very excited for these. So basically what the city council is doing is we're hosting a bunch of listening sessions throughout the whole city. They're neighborhood meetings, and basically we just, there's an open agenda, so we just want to hear from you all about the things that are on your mind, the ways that the city could improve your life, the small fixes to streets, to sidewalks, that could really help you guys. So yeah, we want you guys to put that on our radar.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Fantastic. You know, I think Justin and I, both of us, have been really excited about listening sessions. It's something that I ran on, you know, my first term, and I do listening sessions. Like, if anybody's interested, I have listening sessions in people's homes. They invite their neighbors, or if they have a particular issue that they're interested in. You know, recently I was at one about traffic in South Medford. came up with some great ideas, and we're going to keep working together. You know, I've had different volunteer groups that came out of listening sessions that worked together for a long period of time on different issues. So, you know, it's...

So these that we're doing, we're actually doing one in every ward. And these are official city council ones, which are like public, official public meetings of the city council. So that's what this is. This is for this ward down here, Ward 5, right? And we're going to have one in every ward. We're doing about one per month. But, you know, like afterwards, so we have these, we had a little RSVP and some people RSVPed and they told us different issues they were interested in. So we took the top like four or five issues and we created these sign-up sheets. So if people want to do discussions afterwards, after this meeting, to get together and discuss topics that we can work together to like create solutions for, that's what these sign-up sheets are for, and it'd be great to keep in touch and to, you know, form a little group together. There is, like I said, a traffic one. So if you're interested in traffic, we'll probably just loop you into the one that we already had a meeting for. But there's other ones as well. So it's really fun. You get to meet your neighbors and improve your community. It's great.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: We need to pick this back up, but last term we did a bunch of listening sessions at the Medford Senior Center, which I think generated a lot of conversation as well. So this, like for Anna, doing listening sessions is kind of my dream of how local government should work, especially because we're supposed to be the ones who are close to the ground, right? And I'm just so excited for this. We had one award one meeting last month in East Medford, and that went excellently. So very excited for tonight.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Do we have Zoom set up yet? Oh, we're ready to go. Awesome.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Where's East Medford? Well, Glenwood, but Wellington, Glenwood. But people call it different names. I grew up there and people called it all sorts of names.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Well, I think we thought what we might want to do is start, just to start off, we're going to give every person, we want to make sure that everybody gets to speak. So we're going to give every person like 30 seconds or so to mention, you know, just your name and one issue that you would love for us to talk a little bit about or a question or whatever you like. And that way we just make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak and then after that we may sort of take those topics, like one topic at a time, and kind of discuss a little bit more deeply. Sound good?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Sounds good.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Awesome. And we'll do, I think, in-person first, and then we'll go to Zoom.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Cool. We should hand the mics over, because folks on Zoom do want to hear what folks in the room have to say. And so they can't hear us unless we talk into the mics.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Hi. Come on in. Does anyone want to be the timer? If no one wants to, I'll do it. Anyone? 30 seconds, just put your phone on and do a little 30 second. I think we got to take her. Yes. I appreciate you.

[SPEAKER_24]: Awesome. Should we start right here?

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Cool.

[Erika DeRoche]: Hi, I'm Erica. I'm supposed to say the issues I want us to talk about. I'd love to talk about affordability, allowing people to stay in the neighborhood, and greenifying our community.

[SPEAKER_24]: My name is Ann Laver and I live in South Medford. My number one concern is zoning. I'm afraid that the new zoning is going to destroy my neighborhood. My home, it was built in 1911. The surrounding homes are also built in the turn of the century. And for some reason, Benton, Radford, and Burrick got couched in to the most radical zoning of the entire situation. So I'm very concerned about losing my neighborhood.

[SPEAKER_38]: I'm going to time myself too. Maria Mayorga, I live in South Medford as well with Anya. And my concern that I have is about trees. I would like to have the people that live in the neighborhood like landlords or owners to decide what trees go there and not absentee landlords. So yeah, we have some issues where some people that don't even live there do not want to plant a tree because they don't like leaves or things like that. So my 30 seconds is up.

[SPEAKER_20]: Welcome, welcome. Thanks for coming.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: By the way, if you're new, sorry, if you just arrived, thank you so much for being here. We're just, every person's going to get 30 seconds to mention an issue or two that they'd like us to discuss.

[SPEAKER_17]: I'm Martha. I live on Granville Ave, and I'm mostly concerned with the traffic issues on Winchester, Harvard, and Main Street.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hi everyone, my name is Charles. I live here in South Medford over on Clayton Avenue. I think one of my main concerns is how cut off South Medford feels from the rest of Medford in terms of walking to Medford Square or walking to bike access to the middle school or high school and things like that.

[SPEAKER_11]: I'm Lydia. I would love to have an additional pair of crosswalks on Main and Albion. I think that would be neat.

[eWg7lyFP5WI_SPEAKER_25]: Hi, everyone. Ryan. I live on Hicks. The issue that I wrote into the form was I sit at our courthouse, but I'll jump in on bike lanes in our very, very nearby neighborhood to get me to work safely.

[Councilor Matt Leming]: Hey, I'm Matt. I'm also on Medford City Council with my colleagues here. I'm just crashing their listening session, but I'm also here to listen to folks' concerns.

[MCM00001445_SPEAKER_46]: I'm Nancy Ann Marion, and I would like to see South Medford less car focused and more focused for pedestrians and bikes, making that a priority. And I would like more transparency on what they're doing with Tufts Park. We hear about plans in the minute or the aftermath. And some of the recent changes have changed the purpose of the park. So I feel like the communication is not Open and clear about that so yeah, so less focus on cars and more focus on pedestrians and including speed bumps because

[SPEAKER_04]: Hi, I'm Michael. I live on Willis. Like everyone here, also one of my top issues is the amount of traffic, especially cut-through traffic. We get a lot of that, especially on Willis, especially on Main, especially everywhere. I also have kids in the school, so high school. Yeah, the traffic around the school is, it's a systemic problem. But yeah, less car focus, more bike, pedestrian, friendly, walkable neighborhoods.

[SPEAKER_32]: Hi, I'm Kevin Wong. I live on Smith Street, and my primary concern is residential development and tree removal on private property, but areas that sort of are central to the neighborhood.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: How are you people?

[Rony Simcha-Miller]: My name is Simcha. I live on Winchester Street, like many other people who have already spoken. Traffic is a huge concern. Again, I live on Winchester Street. I constantly see accidents and, you know, there was a hit and run at the end of Winchester and Harvard, and mostly I just really want to see, like, traffic calming. Not enforcement, traffic calming, right? Make it intuitive.

[SPEAKER_29]: I'm Simcha's roommate, and I second that. Yeah, traffic calming, because nobody's going to enforce anything. So make it idiot-proof, please.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: I'll come over to this side. Hello. Oh, sorry.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: It's okay. I'll accept your apology. Andrew Castaneri, I've been a Method resident since 1955, and I just want to observe and pick up. Thank you.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: I think we've gotten almost everyone there.

[SPEAKER_15]: Hi, I'm Jenny. I live on Main Street, and traffic calming is my biggest issue, but I totally agree with the people who were talking about trees as well.

[SPEAKER_35]: Hi, I'm Zach. I live across the street over on the East Alley on the street actually. I'm on the traffic committee too. So aside from that, my other concern for the neighborhood is the number of vacancies we have between residential and commercial properties. I think there's a lot of space that's really underutilized here that we could try to incentivize more.

[Micah Kesselman]: Hi, I'm Micah Kesselman. I'm at 499, I'm on Main Street, sorry. City Council comments instead. I think my traffic calming is obviously a big issue and I agree with that and the green space as well. I think one of my top issues is this community vibe, for lack of a better term, but basically third spaces, accessibility, so that includes biking and pedestrian ways, and general, like, community engagement among each other.

[SPEAKER_14]: Hello, my name is Donna Pietropalo. I'm just here to listen to everybody's criticisms and suggestions and, you know, some good ideas. But other than that, I have no complaints. No complaints, wow. Amazing.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: We're coming around. Everybody is going to get to speak. We've just got the mic continuing to pass along.

[Robert Carney]: Rob Carney, 50 Hicks Ave. Number one, insufficient snow and ice removal for sidewalks and public parks, especially Columbus Park and the Hicks Ave. private right-of-way on the industrial side. Two, unresolved frustrations around odd-hour noise from neighbors, especially work trucks on industrial hicks and then sometimes from the Willis Ave. housing complex. And three, public access, council votes, and public comment time starting on certain measures, in my opinion, way too late, as late as 11 p.m., and it's, in my opinion, negative effect on public participation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, my name is Jerry Denning. I live on 599 Main Street. I've been here since 1976. And I have many concerns. The first one I would be is not for me, but for my neighbors, because I have my own driveway. I think the snow removal this year was the worst I've ever seen it in my life, and I blame the mayor for that. And number two, for my neighbors, the problem comes into is when you have a snow problem, where do you park? There's no place to park and no one tells you anything. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_37]: My name is Peter. Excuse me. I'm here to listen mostly, but does anybody have a concern about the air traffic? They go over my deck every two minutes, I would say, sometimes, after midnight, midday. I know MIT did a study on it, but I'm not sure where that's going.

[Dina Caloggero]: My name is Dina. I've lived in Medford over 62 years. South Medford. Many issues. Traffic calming is a huge one for me. I understand that Medford is a cut-through city. I get it. We have 93 exits and on-ramps onto 93. Access to 60, 16, 28, whatever you want. They're all here. But we really need to establish the calming measure. I agree that the enforcement is not good, right? And I'd like to determine how it is determined where to put the speed bumps.

Like I would love one on my street. Stanley is a cut through on it, right? So is it, how do you monitor the speeds to keep track of the cars that go down? Which streets get it? Golden has it, Hicks, Willis, all of it. They're there. So we need to determine that. Trash for absentee landlord.

[SPEAKER_20]: That's been your time. Here you go. Oh, we got one here though.

[Paul Garrity]: Hi, my name is Paul Geraghty. I live on the other side of the square, but I have lived in the city since 1969. The two items that I've been traveling around following these conferences to see what's going on in different parts of the city. One thing I hope we can get to sometimes is economic growth within the city and balance against taxes.

[30Tq2YcwQa8_SPEAKER_01]: Hi, my name's Marco, I'm over on Wellington. Well, traffic, of course, in Wellington, right? I think one of my major concerns is I hear a lot of people complaining about the rising rent costs, and it's directly linked with the tax costs, and with the upcoming building of this potential new high school, I think it's gonna be a real serious problem for both people who wanna stay in their homes and people who wanna rent here, because taxes are gonna go up quite a bit.

[SPEAKER_18]: Hi, I'm Jamie. I live on Main Street in the section that I think Medford forgets exists and is part of the city. I don't think everyone realizes Medford continues past Collette. And I share all the other concerns people have around traffic. Safety as a pedestrian, as a cyclist, it's impossible to get to safe bike routes from the neighborhood. And the tree canopy is really causing a huge amount of problems. And over the past 10 years, it's just gotten really bad. I believe this neighborhood is considered a heat swamp. I think that's the term. And thank you.

[eWg7lyFP5WI_SPEAKER_03]: Hi, my name is Javi. I live on Princeton Street. I agree with pretty much most everyone, anything everyone said. I've only been around for five years, so kind of new. But I wanted to bring up third spaces for teenagers. We don't really have them. And I would love to see more of that in the city, because I think that's really important. I also want to focus on the ICE out of the courts stuff, because there's that incredible article that came out on Tufts Daily that I feel more people should know about, and trees.

[Adrianne Appel]: Hi, my name is Adrienne, and I live up on Tseng Street just up the hill, so also right in this neighborhood. And traffic, yeah, it's huge on Main Street. It's just, you know, you take your life in your hands trying to get across that road. Another thing that I've noticed is coming from the T on Lowell Street and walking down Dexter at night, there's something going on or not much going on with the streetlights. It's very, very dark.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Thank you.

[Adrianne Appel]: And we have one.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Are you OK walking across? Thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_20]: We just have everybody has had a chance to say an issue or two that they're thinking about. So would you like to speak? Oh, not yet. I'm sorry. It's all right. We can come back to you.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: We can come back to you later. I should be speaking into the microphone. Great. How should we split this up? Oh, sorry. We have Zoom people. I almost forgot. Thank you so much.

[Station Manager Kevin Harrington]: And for all the Zoom participants, if you can please utilize the raise hand feature whenever you wish to speak. To start us off, I'm going to unmute Ben Johnson. Ben Johnson, I've asked you to unmute your mic. And as soon as you're ready, feel free to contribute. Okay, we're gonna put a hold on Ben Johnson for a moment. We're gonna go next to Oliver Maupin.

[SPEAKER_06]: Hi everyone, I'm Oliver. I live on 164 Harvard. I'm here with my spouse Stephanie.

[SPEAKER_25]: Hi!

[SPEAKER_06]: Some of our concerns are I would say affordability in general in the city. Living on Harvard, I'm concerned about noise coming from Maine and from Harvard, a lot of motorcycles ripping through late at night.

[SPEAKER_25]: I care about sustainability and I care about ice in our communities. Thank you.

[Station Manager Kevin Harrington]: Thank you very much. Next, we're gonna go to CQ. CQ, we're gonna ask you to unmute, and whenever you're ready.

[SPEAKER_39]: Hi, I'm Cyril, and I live in Winchester. And I think question more of like is concern is like, I think when the winter is coming, I know it was very hard across Winchester specifically for walking since the walkways wasn't, cleared and we had a lot of snow last year. So hopefully that's something on top of everything people have raised so far. I feel like that's something we need to have it when we are trying to get out as well.

[Station Manager Kevin Harrington]: Thank you very much. We're going to now go to Danielle's iPhone. Danielle's iPhone, if you can please unmute when you're ready.

[SPEAKER_30]: Hi, I'm Danielle. I live on Morton Ave. So I'm right across the street from Tufts Park. So people who talked about Tufts Park, I feel you. I'm really concerned about the snow removal at Tufts Park. So many dogs and families walk around this park and they only plow one fourth of it. So there's only one cleared walkway and the rest of it is on ice. I'm also really concerned about just the lack of care in general. There were trees that were planted that are unwatered and dying. There's a big thing of dirt that people haven't taken away and they also put in new bleachers and never finished them. So they're on the sides like empty. Thank you.

[Station Manager Kevin Harrington]: Thank you, Danielle. Next, we're going to go to Jason Rabin. Jason Rabin, we're going to ask you to unmute.

[Jason Rabin]: Hi folks, my name's Jason. I live on Main Street right by the Somerville border. I've lived here for about 12 years. I don't know if it's just me, but we've been worried about water quality most of the time we've been living here. We've had really terrible water pressure and sort of, you know, A lot of reasons to worry about it. And anytime we've had somebody come to work on it, they've said, oh, this is just something we notice and all the houses around here in Medford. It's line build up in the pipes and things like that. That's 1, you know, we've lost a lot of trees in the last several years. And when we first moved in, there was a gas leak in our basement. And it's not uncommon for us to smell gas around the neighborhood. And we've actually wondered if that might have been what led to some of the trees dying. And then, apart from all that stuff, I'm really glad that folks brought up ice at the courthouse. That's something that worries me a lot and I hope we can work on.

[Station Manager Kevin Harrington]: Thank you, Jason. Next, we're going to go to Jeremy Martin. Jeremy Martin, if you can unmute yourself as soon as you're able.

[Jeremy Martin]: Hey, good evening, everyone. I live in Burgett Avenue, so not quite in Ward 5, but I spend a lot of time in Ward 5, going to and from the school. Concern is about street safety and road safety. And while there have been some modest improvements along main street, that really doesn't feel safe to bike through or walk through any of the major corridors in the ward. And so I'm really curious to hear what the city council can do to accelerate improvements and really push the DPW to make those improvements and make them happen sooner. Thank you.

[Station Manager Kevin Harrington]: Thank you, Jeremy. Next, we're going to go to Naila Germanis. Naila Germanis.

[Nayla Savage Romanos]: Hi, I don't live in Ward 5, but I'm very curious to see how these meetings are. I've lived in Medford for 40 years, and I've never been to a ward meeting, so this is very interesting. Thank you for holding them. I'm just here to listen and understand, but my grandchildren go to swim at the Tufts Pool, and so sometimes it's concerning if we need to cross the street there, back and forth to the pool as we park. But that's my major concern for that area because that's what I understand the most. Thank you.

[Station Manager Kevin Harrington]: Thank you. And before I hand it back over to our Councilors, just a reminder to all Zoom participants to please use the raise hand feature if you would like to contribute. Thank you.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: And I think the way we've organized it is if they see a raised hand, they're going to raise their hand. So if you notice them raising their hand, let us know. Great. I felt like traffic was maybe the top issue here. Shall we start off with traffic?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Let's start with traffic. Oh my gosh.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: I will start just by saying that I had the great, like, honor and fun of being part of a neighborhood traffic meetup not long ago, and a few of those folks are here today. And it was, like, amazing to have people brainstorming different ideas for what we can do for traffic calming. and of the specific intersections that Kat talked about. So just so you know, there already is some planning underway that neighbors are doing together who live here in this area.

Tell me if this is, you know, if you disagree, but, you know, Medford is a, relatively cash-strapped city and we have a what I call like a skeleton crew administration which means like we actually didn't even have a traffic person until what six years ago there was no one now there's one person in Somerville they probably have like five people doing traffic alone right So just so that you understand, I have worked with other folks like on Governor's Ave and in other places that are trying to get traffic calming measures and the city is in some way sort of overwhelmed, which is why I encourage people to like brainstorm, work together, we'll come up with a plan that we all as neighbors agree is great. Because when it's one person saying one thing, when 50 different people all have a different idea and they all reach out, with their different idea, the city isn't going to move forward because we're cash strapped. I would love to hear, wait, let me bring this over, here we go.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I hear that you guys got one person doing traffic. I'm curious what his stance is in regards to traffic calming. One of my first experiences here after moving to Medford was prohibiting parking along Willis, which had historically done traffic calming by making that a very restricted road. And I had brought up in the meeting that this is going induced demand and increased the speed on Long Willis. And yeah, like if he's the one guy making traffic decisions and he's the type of person to just open up roads to allow more cars, I feel like that is counterintuitive to the overall goal of traffic calming. So I'm curious where he stands on that.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: What I would comment on that is like my basic interaction with the traffic person is simply that there isn't enough funding for him to do what he would like to do for residents. When residents request that a speed bump be put in or, you know, that a signal be put in or whatever it might be, the funding is the problem. There are too many requests and not enough funding. Yeah, so it sounds like your question is more about what are his philosophies on traffic and I can't answer that question for you, but I do think like working together to come up with like some specific things that we can all agree on or like 20 people can say like we all want this one thing that I think will be helpful. But I don't want to talk the whole time, so let's pass around.

Oh, yeah, and we all have a meeting on Sunday. If you're curious, that's good. There's one coming up on Sunday. It's at the Zero Medford, the firehouse.

[Robert Carney]: The fire station, yeah. Okay, thanks. So I wanted to share an idea and also ask the councilors a question here. So I grew up in a small town, lived on a cut-through street. When we had issues, we would be able to get the police to come in and do speed traps. My wife and I walk down Willis Ave many nights after dinner, go for a walk. I cannot tell you how many people I see blowing through the four-way stop signs as well as going way too fast. I've never seen a speed trap down on that street. I've never seen cops. I've lived here for two and a half years. The other thing that I'm concerned about is resources for the police department. May 2nd, 2026, committee of the whole meeting, we're told that the city used to have 102 officers. We now have 78. Many are working overtime. So my first question is, what are your thoughts on trying to get more speed traps in this area? And two, do you think there's an issue with understaffing of the police department? And in a perfect world, would we hire more police officers?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Did you have a? It might be easier if we collect a bunch. It might be more efficient if we collect a bunch, yeah.

[Dina Caloggero]: Okay, on back to the traffic calming measures. I live right near College Avenue, and what we try to do is we try to get Tufts University, every time they go through a development, like whether it be the aquatic center or the gatcher, put a speed bump there while you are tearing up the street. And do you know what Tufts did? Nothing. So it goes back to the necessity for a pilot agreement with Tufts University, not to say how much they give back by enrolling students or doing community development, but do things for our community. Speed traps, speed bumps on the street, like even a lit crosswalk, put a sign up, please help your neighbors, please help and be a good partner in the community.

Moving forward with the pilot is an excellent idea, and let's work with Tufts to help us.

[Erika DeRoche]: I have no, I'm Erica Willis-Eve. I have no data to back this up, just anecdotes, but I have, I'm going on 20 years, I'm Willis-Eve. I get the impression that this area, that our area of the city is not a priority for the city. And I mean, you know, again, just caveat, I don't have any data about that. But why does Summer Street have a speed notification, the speed ramps? Why are other areas of the city able to get these things and we're not? Do they think we're all just going to move out in five years and not know each other? No, that's not going to happen. We're going to do this, right? Who would be into doing like a petition to really overhaul our streets and make them walkable, make them safe? Want to see I want to see street trees because what we don't have in South Medford is a whole lot of private property We have very limited private property. We're denser, so let's let's like Talk about our strengths as a as a neighborhood, and let's you know identify Who who our neighborhood is and like say hey these are our limitations? this is you know the type of The type of neighborhood that we want to see and what can the city do to help us get there?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: And you know we're we're going to like stop a lot of accidents from happening And then one more and then we'll answer I think I think we're we should answer this first batch and then we'll move to another batch and

[Rony Simcha-Miller]: Okay, I'm gonna try not to start fights. I do want to personally put in another perspective, because the, got thrown into the ring of, would a solution to this be increasing our police force? And I'm gonna say, overall, the thing that will cost more money As we go, we'll be paying labor for cops, and what we need to do is invest in infrastructure that just doesn't let this stuff happen. And the other thing is, when I've seen cops in my neighborhood, what are they doing? I saw six cops tackle a black teenager and put their knees on his back on my street. When I see cops in my neighborhood, that's what I expect to have happen, not to have them actually do like anything that will be a consistent measure. They come and they go. And I think that we have to understand that we can't just have a cop posted up somewhere, both because that also doesn't fix the ongoing problems in our neighborhood. It also doesn't fix the streets themselves, and I'm not gonna ramble too long, but I also wanna say the street calming and the trees can be looped in together, right? If we're bumping out the streets, that slows traffic. We're bumping out the streets, we have space for trees.

One, two punch, it can happen.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Thank you. So I think we got a spectrum of questions related to I think it'd be smoother if we just kept it to bunches. We got a spectrum of questions all related to how we solve this traffic problem. I'm gonna start by saying that I think Anna has identified one of the kind of core problems that we have right now. I heard some examples of what's happened in other neighborhoods in Medford. And in those neighborhoods residents got together in meetings like this and they signed petitions, they lobbied their city government to put in those speed humps, those traffic calming signs. And I think that is, I think getting everyone in the same room and having a conversation about what that shared vision is is really important. So I do encourage people to go to that neighborhood meeting that's on Saturday.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: It's Sunday at?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Sunday.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Anyone remember what time? There's a few people. 4 p.m. It's at the firehouse.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: And I do want to speak to the differential treatment of neighborhoods. I grew up in Wellington, and most of my high school friends lived right across the street near Tufts Park in this neighborhood. And when you look at neighborhoods across the city, rank them by how good the roads are, how much street coverage there is. You see that Wellington and South Bedford really do fall behind, and that these are, I think, not coincidentally, the two immigrant, the two most working class parts of the city, and renter heavy. And I think it's imperative for the city government to tackle that problem. Something that I've been working on as a Councilor is really asking the city government, the city administration, to re-rank its priorities by neighborhoods that haven't received public services and haven't received things like fixing roads and trees. And when you look at the kind of priority ordering, on the road plan that we have and on the tree plan that we have, a lot of focus has been reshifted to these neighborhoods, South Bedford, East Bedford, that have really lost out. But there's still so much more that we can do, and I think a huge part of these meetings is amplifying the voices of people here.

I think another trouble with traffic is that people, I think there's a lot of siloing going on, and so not everyone in City Hall who needs to know about these traffic problems are hearing from everyone. I wanted to kind of quickly note that we have a traffic commission in the city that really they vote on what we do with intersections, where we put speed bumps, and those kinds of questions. And that's comprised of our police chief, our planning development sustainability director, and of our DPW commissioner as well. I think it's important when you see those problems to write to us and we can send it along to them or to send it directly to them as well, so that when they walk into their meetings they know which intersections that they have to work on. On the question of enforcement, I think it's a complicated question, and I think we're jumping the gun a little bit by saying, you know, we need to fund 50 more police officers today. And I do want to say, outside of what we think of police policy and public safety policy. I do know that MPD officers feel extremely overworked. You can see it on their time logs. And that the staffing that we have right now is not normal, nor do we have much of a plan to get to normal staffing. And the key problem here, I think, that unifies kind of all of the potential policy responses that we have to traffic is the question of funding. And the fact that our city is so under-resourced. And so we have to, I think, be smart about the money that we're investing. And I think it's really important, as was said, to put in speed bumps, to kind of bump out streets more. That's the stuff that I think will solve the problems more systemically right now. And of course, I think it's an open conversation about what enforcement looks like. And I actually think to that point, the cost-effective thing that we could do right now is to have a conversation with the police chief interview committee. We're getting a new police chief next year.

I think we need to pose, as councillors, the question of what are your plans when it comes to traffic enforcement? What are your plans? I think you said racial justice, right? And I think that's important to bring up to the Police Chief Search Committee as well. I've seen the good and bad as a minority in the city. And I think there's a lot of work to build trust and to build scrutiny, program more scrutiny into the system that we have as a city government.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: I would just add one last thing on this particular topic, that I think across the city administration, in addition to our funding and staffing problem, we additionally also have a not enforcing our regulations problem. So even the people that we have are not enforcing our regulations comes everything from traffic to leaf blowers to you know cutting to noise like literally everything our regulations are not being enforced and that again is a thing having to do with the city administration.

And I would just put out there that traffic is one of these things that I specifically, when I think about police and traffic, I think to myself, why are we sending armed people to do traffic? That is completely unnecessary. We could easily have a traffic department that had traffic enforcers. which would be a different solution and makes the police question a separate question and allows the police not to be overwhelmed with work that is not, you know, the kind of work that they are specialized to do. So that is another possibility that we should have traffic enforcement done by a traffic department.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: I completely agree. And it is, again, it saves the taxpayers money. I think it protects people who have traditionally been marginalized as well. So I would completely agree with that answer. And I think your answer reminded me of two points that folks brought up in the beginning. One being noise. Is I forget who but someone mentioned about that? You know the sound of exhaust pipes and cars and motorcycles going through these cut through streets it's just keeps people up at night when you people should be resting and What Councilor Liz malign and I have done is we've gone back into our code of ordinances and looked at that ordinance the noise ordinance and the noise ordinance doesn't mention this at all I mean the only thing it really really calls out is singing in the streets and I think on top of that, legally, I'm a law student, so I think about all of these problems through the scope of law, right?

One of the problems with the noise ordinance as it is right now is that it's not enforceable and doesn't have standards. And so Liz and I have introduced a proposed update to the noise ordinance that would help us tackle the issue of loud exhaust engines and motorcycles on our street, at night especially. And that's still moving through committee, but if you're interested in hearing more about that, please come find me. On top of that, cut through streets. So I've heard a lot from folks in this neighborhood, be it kind of lighter cut through traffic by Uber, Lyft, and Waze as a navigation system. Something that we don't do enough as a city that I think we should be doing more and that other cities do is to reach out to these companies directly and say, We want you not to list these streets for your drivers as a cut-through. And other cities across the country have actually done this successfully, and I don't believe we've tried it, I brought it up years ago, but I think we got a lack of response back then from the folks that would have to reach out.

I think the other big category of cut-through traffic that at least I've heard about is heavy trucking. and Heavy trucking it's it's so unsafe for pedestrians for cyclists it causes noise problems. It's a quality of life issue and We're kind of stuck in a weird position right now because the state government says that heavy trucks can't use state roads and so they're They're pushing the traffic onto us, right? Now, there is one way that we can get around that. And I think this is what we're going to be talking about at our upcoming public works committee meeting.

[SPEAKER_14]: Exactly, yes.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Which Anna will tell you more about. But the one way that we can get around it is when the city measures that heavy trucking, we can measure how many trucks pass through, we can measure how much of an effect it's having on their neighborhood, and then we can submit that to the state and lobby for a waiver for South Medford. And I think that's the work that I want to start building. And that's the work I think we can do in committee.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. And everyone is always welcome to come to committee. Do you want to take a couple of comments before we go on? While we're getting those comments, I do want to mention We have 15 minutes left. We've been on one topic. So I'm going to try and push us through the next couple of topics before the end.

[Dina Caloggero]: I just want to say on the heavy trucking, please come down College, Harvard, Boston Avenue. Tufts is going bananas up there. There are heavy trucks that come down each of the cut through streets off of College, off of Harvard and Boston Avenue. It's terrible. The other thing I just wanted to bring up is parking. The beer hall went through. Willis is a disaster to try to park and like people blocked in their driveways. There's no enforcement on Sundays during the World Cup Patriots games. People are really upset. Can't park and can't even get out of their driveways.

[SPEAKER_18]: Thank you. I'm humored about the cash-strapped kind of perspective, knowing how much is happening in our neighboring communities, which I know it's all different. However, they're not just using revenue. They're going after funds that exist maybe in partnerships. Tufts University Community Development, MAPC, which is a regional planning council, is doing a tremendous amount of work in other neighboring communities on many different things that I think are related to climate change. everything that we've been talking about. And I think that a regional approach on some of this, particularly South Medford, which is a cut through on Main Street, not just Little Streets, from 93, from Somerville, avoiding all of their speed bumps and so on and so forth. And so I really think that the city could do better going after grant funding, leveraging state and federal funds, utilizing leadership in those roles as well. Thank you.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Thank you. Do we have more?

[SPEAKER_11]: I just had one question kind of on the funding topic as well. Is there any sort of mechanism if, like, I want to go and talk to my neighbors on my street and be like, hey, can we fund a stop sign, like, here? Like, is there any option for, like, you know, I don't know, random private citizens to be like, how much can a stop sign cost? We'd really love to have one. Like, if money is the problem, like, are there faster ways for us to, like, directly install a stop sign?

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Thank you, and I see one more hand.

[SPEAKER_04]: I guess kind of on that mindset, are there ways for citizens to just kind of fill in the gaps that the city can't do? For instance, the question about snow clearing Columbus. I actually have a plan to donate a snow blower. I have it. I'm gonna store it at a neighbor who lives right next to the park. I'm gonna go and clear out the park because that is a really important cut through for me for my commute.

And why not help my neighbors?

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Can I comment on the volunteering question? Oh, I'm so sorry.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Sorry.

[Paul Garrity]: Sorry. I wanted to just follow up on what the young lady said over there. I think the result of these things should not result in a divided city. It should come as a united city. I live on the other side of the square. Yes, it's private property. But I'll tell you, we have private ways. Let me tell you the joy of living in a private way. Try and get a pothole fixed. You'll get a pothole fixed down here on Main Street. You will not get a pothole fixed. I mean serious potholes that will break an axle. Someone can get injured. Cut throughs. try to get something done in a private way. We lived near an island. It was a safety factor. The shrubbery was growing out into the road. I was advised, well, you know, it's a private way and you're free to take care of cutting it yourself.

So there's issues across the city. I hope whatever we resolve, we come together, look at things comprehensively, not as individual neighborhoods.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: So private ways, by the way, let me just make a few quick comments and hopefully, because we have 10 minutes left, right, hopefully we can get at least some information out to folks about some of the specific topics people have brought up. Private ways, the very next public works meeting, which I chair, is going to be talking about two motions on private ways that I believe are both yours. So please come if you're on a private way or you want to understand more about private ways. We're going to have the DPW commissioner there to talk about private ways. The next one after that is going to be the one on, the one that you mentioned on. Heavy trucking, right? So come to those committee meetings. People do complain that our regular city council meetings go really late, but no one ever comes to committee meetings where we have like an hour to talk about one topic. So please come to those. Those are usually on the other Tuesdays and Wednesday nights. at six or seven, right? So please come to those. I want to mention for people who talked about pedestrian and bicycle safety, we have a bicycle commission, and they have a lot of long-term plans. So if you're interested in that, like there's a lot of good information that you can get from there. Let me just cover a couple of topics, then we'll come around, we'll do some more comments.

What are some of the other, oh, ICE. I wanted to talk about ICE because people did mention it. So I think I have been and Justin maybe has also been like on every ICE motion that we have made with the city council. We've done a number of different things. You know, everything from the welcoming city ordinance, which prevents our local police force from working with ICE directly. More recently, we had a couple of different motions. One just sort of reinforcing that the Fourth Amendment does apply in Medford. And another that does not allow law enforcement in Medford to use masks outside of certain very specific conditions. So there are a number of things that we have done, and there's also a local group called Luce that does a lot of great work. So if you're interested, there are some local like signal chats you can get involved in. And if you have ideas, let us know. We are doing everything that we can. So if you have some ideas that we haven't thought of, please come to us.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: And on ICE, I just wanted to add, I was really, really proud to be part of that effort. I know Councilor Leming here also did a lot of hard work on that first draft of the welcoming city ordinance and getting it passed. an upcoming committee meeting at some point, hopefully in the next month, where we're going to be reviewing edits to the ordinance, amendments to strengthen the ordinance, and to essentially protect our residents even more. Because I know so many people are fearful right now. My parents are immigrants, right? And I'm afraid of what happens. And so I think it's really important that we tackle this issue. I'm trying to think of trees.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: So let me bring up a trees, quick trees thing. I know a lot of people did mention trees also in the RSVP. Trees are a huge problem in South Medford. I have talked about them since I very first started running for office. I have been working with the administration. Now that we have a new tree warden, we are going to be able, thank you, we are going to be able to have volunteer tree planting of sidewalk trees. So that's a really important project. I think it's going to begin in the spring and not this fall because we just got the tree warden like a week ago. So it's a little bit too late for us to do a fall planting. But if you're interested, sign up. We have a, you know, one of these sign ups is for trees and we'll make sure that you're on that.

[SPEAKER_24]: A lot of the problem in South Medford is that we have a lot of absentee landlords, and the absentee landlords are strongly not into trees at all. In fact, I know that the old tree warden had planted some trees on Yale, had planted some trees on some other streets, and those trees disappeared. by accident, I'm sure, but landlords actively sometimes do that. And then when we try to encourage landlords to request trees, they don't want to because they don't want the leaves.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: And it's really hard. On trees, I just wanted to quickly add, we've passed the tree committee ordinance that I think you referred to earlier. We've just passed the public trees ordinance, which essentially protects trees planted on public property. Like you're talking about. And so.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: If it does, then we have a penalty for it.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: Right. And then now we're gonna be working on a private tree ordinance. That one's more complex because it intersects with private property rights as well. But we wanna be, you know, not just reacting to the diminishing number of trees in this community. I mean, it's a two to one ratio when you compare what we lose versus what we plant per year. We wanna be, you know, at the forefront of planting. And I think that's where the volunteer task force is a really exciting prospect. On the topic of absentee landlords, it's always a difficult question for a city to address.

One way that we've started to tackle this is by tackling the question of vacancies, which I think you might have brought up. And over the last few months, Councilor Leming and I have worked a lot on a vacant buildings ordinance. Our previous ordinance really didn't say too much, it wasn't being enforced. This new ordinance creates standards for how properties should be taken care of while they are vacant. It gives city departments like our inspectors, our board of health, our planning development sustainability department more power to to reach out to these landlords, to have a conversation with them, and to force them to comply to certain standards. When it comes to vacant properties in particular, something that we've heard time and time again is that a lot of these landlords, especially corporate landlords and kind of medium scale landlords are holding their properties vacant in the hopes of a tax break or something else. And one way that we're fighting that math equation is by saying, look, we all see the cost that commercial properties impose on the city. They impose the cost on our city staff who have to spend time mapping this out, putting it into a database, reaching out to businesses, and oftentimes, reaching out unsuccessfully to landlords. We see the cost on our community when it comes to public safety and vibrancy and how well our commercial squares are doing. And so this vacant building ordinance levies a fee if the landlords are not making an active effort to find tenants and to take care of their properties.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: We do have a Zoom comment.

[Station Manager Kevin Harrington]: That's right, Danielle, we're going to unmute your microphone. So feel free to begin.

[SPEAKER_30]: Yeah, I just wanted, I know we're near the end. And if you just had any information about like the upkeep of Tufts Park and the plowing of parks, I think that would be helpful to know.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: I have to say on Tufts Park, we often find things out at the same time as you guys do. And I think that's a real problem. That's a real problem, right? Because we should be the ones who kind of have that conversation with residents. If we understand the plans, we can have those conversations. And if we don't understand the plans, it's really hard to have that conversation. And I hate that this is, you know, a bad response. But the truth is, we do find things at the same time as you guys do.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: I sadly also do not have any insider information on the plans for Tufts Park.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: On plowing, though, because I know a lot of folks brought up snow removal. I think we can all acknowledge this last winter was not great for snow removal. And that comes down to tons of factors at once, right? There's always a factor of systemic underfunding. There's always the factor of underfunding when it comes to city budgets. And the fact that our DPW department over the last few decades has been shrinking. On top of that, you have a series of blizzards that we haven't seen since I was growing up, so we haven't seen that in over a decade.

To be honest, and this is true of Medford as it is true of any other city, despite the hard work of those who work for our city, we weren't prepared for that. And we should have been, but we weren't. And we should be for this year. We held some meetings together with DPW trying to make sure that the plan is better going in next year. I think that's an active conversation. I think a third factor is just the difficulty of staffing, even when you take the budget out of the equation. The number of snow plow drivers in Massachusetts has plummeted in the last decade, and private contractors that the state is hiring are able to pay so much more than the city is. I think on top of that, a mistake this time was And this isn't something that we were involved in, but something I had heard was that people who are snow plow drivers who usually plow for Medford have said that this year felt a bit bureaucratic when it came out to filling out paperwork. And I think we need to smoothen that process out and to cut out some of the paperwork that is needed.

And I think my very last thing on snow. We had a kind of lack of equipment for snow removal last time. And so when this budget came around, it was, I think it came in a supplemental paper, but it was a priority for us to make sure that we had the newest machinery that cities like Somerville and Malden have that we don't when it comes to removing snow. And hopefully that machinery, that equipment will help us remove snow faster.

I mean, I said a lot about snow. I guess one more thing just came into my head. But I think it's also, I think we need to review the order in which we're removing snow in the city. There's different priority lists and different rankings. And I think a lot of it does make sense. Of course, emergency roads first and big traffic corridors. But I think there's a real... How do I say this? I think a lot of small businesses and folks who live around public areas like parks feel shafted, and I totally understand why. These are places that the public goes on, that they walk on, and sidewalks are especially a big problem when it comes to these areas where maybe you have the road plowed, but the sidewalk isn't, and people still need to access the parks. They still need to access businesses and restaurants.

We've been having some conversations, I think, especially earlier this year with DPW when it comes to that priority order.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Okay, it is eight o'clock, it's after eight o'clock, so here we are at the very end. If you are interested in getting more information, with meeting with your neighbors, talking about things, please do come up and put your information here. We also have a city council newsletter, and so you can just put a little check mark next to your name if you want the newsletter, and we will sign you up on that newsletter, it comes by email.

Any, do we have, I would say because it's already eight o'clock, Obviously, people go whenever you need to go, but Justin and I, I think, will be happy to hang out for a little bit.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: We're happy to talk more. We do have an update on air traffic.

[Micah Kesselman]: Yeah, so, Jesus Christ, okay. So, for those of you who don't know, which none of you would know this, so that's fine, but I am the Medford rep on the Massport Community Advisory Committee, so when you are, annoyed by air traffic. I am the person who gets those emails if you end up reaching out to someone and is unable to really do anything, but I do try to listen and read all of them. But I will say that there's a couple runways that impact us in particular. And this was a really big discussion online recently, especially on the city subreddit.

Since that discussion, we have managed to have the MCAC reopen investigation of the air traffic patterns, specifically impacting our community in Somerville and a few other communities in Cambridge, like a tiny little sliver, and they're going to do, Because of bureaucracy, we need to go through another whole round of studies. So it's not something that's going to happen overnight. It is going to be a year or two. I'm pushing as hard as I can to have them use the existing data from 2014, because most of it hasn't changed when it comes to volume and residential patterns and everything. So most of it's still applicable. But pending that, we will be looking at, asking the FAA to sort of, to change those flight patterns, because before it had been raised, it had been raised to them many years ago, and basically the MCAC could not get a unanimous vote to change the ones that impacted Medford, Somerville, and Cambridge, because certain people were adamantly against a slight uptick in inconvenience for parks versus a huge improvement for our community. That's different now, so that's sort of the update I can give you. It is being worked on. I just want you guys to know that.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: I mean, so this is the end. We had everyone speak at the beginning, including you, I believe.

[Councilor Justin Tseng]: I'll make it brief. If it's brief, we're happy to answer. We just want to be respectful of other people's time.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Yes. So thank you so much. I want to also, if we can just thank our.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: I'll be very respectful. Can I finish?

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Yes.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: Yes, please do. Thank you.

[Councilor Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much, everybody.