[Anna Callahan]: So I just have a frank question for you guys. Do you think that staying open until two, you would be able to be pretty successful if you were not having the loud music on the, you know, like if an event ended, you know, if like a music event or something ended at one, but then you stayed open until two o'clock, like, can it be quieter? I know that we can't like write that into the, the rules here we kind of binary but do you think that you'd be more successful if you know and would you basically sort of commit to making every effort to keep the noise down after one o'clock yes absolutely absolutely yeah yeah like no one's outside everything's off outside the lights are off so everyone's inside that would make me feel more comfortable um if like you're aware that That is an issue and making your best at like people can have as good a time as they want to indoors without the you know music layering and all that stuff. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks, just a little follow up. I'm hoping and kind of assuming that we're going to have a 30, 60, 90 day follow up to this change so we can check in with residents and make sure that it's working out. And then also wanted to say that you guys are going to have some stiff competition with Donuts with a Difference, which makes amazing donuts. So we'll see how, as a donut person, I'm excited to do a comparison. Awesome. Perfect.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I hope that you hear that I certainly and many members of the councilors really want you to be successful and want to approve these hours. I think for me personally, I want to see improvements on the neighbor's experience before increasing the hours. I think that's just how I feel personally. So I don't think I'm gonna vote in favor of these hours right now. I am not a sound engineer, but I really took to the comments saying that, you know, maybe hiring somebody for some small consulting to really dig deep into how you can ameliorate those issues and working with the neighbors. And I would love to see you come back if this does not pass. And because I want you to be successful and
[Anna Callahan]: I'm just curious, how many stump removals do we normally do, like within our budget per year?
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. No, I understood that you said it was being 40 and 50. But like, yeah, when we normally not asking for capital funds, like within our normal budget, like how many do we normally?
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, but my follow up question is about when these stumps are removed, and these are, I assume sidewalk trees?
[Anna Callahan]: Predominantly?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Will the tree pits be left open?
[Anna Callahan]: Great, but those tree pits are not gonna be filled over with cement as part of this?
[Anna Callahan]: And if I may ask, these places where there were trees, where there is now a planned non-replacement of the tree, that stuff is all gonna be in the final, the big, I'm missing the term, the tree, not the inventory, but the tree master plan that we're developing?
[Anna Callahan]: Great, tiny follow up question. Do you know if the tree report and the master plan will include information about which tree pits are currently too small for us to replace those trees? Because it sounds like, am I correct that that's the size of the tree pit is what, like, if it's too small, that's probably why the tree is dead. And then let's not keep that tree pit.
[Anna Callahan]: There will be information in that sort of master plan about which of our tree pits are too small?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: So I'm just curious. I note that we're replacing the fire truck from 2001. We're replacing the police cars from 2018. And one from 2014. Yes. I know I didn't own a car for 20 years, and then I bought a 20-year-old car. That was six years ago, and my car this summer, finally, 26-year-old car, finally died. So I bought a 15-year-old car. But I'm curious about, like, is this a thing that we will see, like, that the trucks are going to be, you know, 25 years before we replace them, but the cars are going to be seven years, the police cars are going to be seven years? Like, just looking at that sort of differential between, like, the age of the vehicles, clearly there are different kinds of vehicles.
[Anna Callahan]: So I guess I'm just, I'm just looking ahead thinking, are we going to need like the age of the fire trucks, are they all like way, and I know we've been through this before, but we're gonna need to be spending on fire trucks more because those are so much older.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I would just love a super quick update on our, you know, 300 million year old sewer and water lines, if you can give in a minute or less.
[Anna Callahan]: Just a little bit of Like, where are we on our ability to be able to make all these repairs? Like, we're still in the planning phase, right, of how we're going to make all these repairs?
[Anna Callahan]: I just had a question about the capital improvement plan update. Do we know?
[Anna Callahan]: There's no one here to talk about it, but still, do we know if that's like paying a consultant? Is that like, what is, we don't know what that's for?
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. It's a tiny discrepancy. I wanted to make sure, um, in this third, whereas you say strongly incentivizing 20 unit properties, but not 21, I assume you mean 24 unit and not 25. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much for hosting this and thank you all for being here. My name is Anna Callahan and I am a first term incumbent. I am really proud of the things that we did this term. We took many steps to stabilize our city's budget. We really worked on our rodent problems, enabling our staff to be able to take more actions. To reign those in we we protected did a number of things to protect our residents from the Trump administration and we've taken steps toward more affordable housing and affordability in our city and You can count on me To be a vote in favor of what I believe are the values that we share here in Medford and that includes affordability and affordable housing. It includes environment and climate change. It includes being a more inclusive city. But today, I want to highlight for you the things that make me unique as a city councilor. That really is in the question of democracy and engaging people in the political process. I take it very seriously that 90 or 95% of the people who live in Medford will never come to a city council meeting and they will never reach out to their city councilors. So I take it upon myself to spend my time and effort in going into the community and listening to those people so that they have a voice. I currently have five different teams of volunteers who help me with different parts of my city councilorship. The first one, and by the way, if anybody here wants to be on one of these teams, please do let me know. The first one is what I call my legislative team. It's a group of people who meets with me before every city council meeting and we go through every item on the agenda. They do a lot of research, they'll reach out to other members of the community. It's a great way to really level up people who already are active. The second team I call my democracy team. This is a group of people that helps me to set up listening sessions throughout the community. Sometimes they're based on a policy, sometimes they're based on a demographic group, sometimes they're just in a neighborhood. And then I have three different policy teams. One of those is around trees because we plant less than half as many trees each year as we lose. So we are organizing, we're gonna be organizing with the city to have events where big groups of neighbors come together to plant trees in our most barren neighborhoods. The second one, the other two are around housing and housing affordability. One is a group of people that came to me and were interested in getting co-housing here in Medford. And the last one is around home sharing, which is really enabling people to age in place. So if anyone's interested in working with me, please let me know. And I really appreciate you all being here.
[Anna Callahan]: Diolch. Mae'n gwestiwn i mi ynghylch y cynllun gynllunol. A yw hynny'n rhywbeth rydyn ni'n gallu ei angen arnyn nhw? A oes gennym unrhyw gyhoeddiad o'r Llywodraeth er mwyn cymryd hynny arnyn nhw? Dweud ychydig mwy am yr hyn rydyn ni'n ei angen, y proses o gofyn am gynllun gynllunol, ac iddyn nhw mynd trwy'r proses gyda'n gynllun. Ychydig munud.
[Anna Callahan]: Diolch, ac yna fy mhrofysgol o'r gwestiynau yw, dydw i ddim yn gweld Somerville ar y llwyr, ac oherwydd mae Somerville yn rhannu'r campus Tufts gyda ni, ydyn ni'n gwybod beth y maen nhw'n ei wneud ar hyn o bryd? Dwi'n meddwl nad ydyn nhw'n ei wneud mewn cynllun maestr universitarnol, oherwydd yna, yn amlwg, byddai'r cynllun hwnnw'n y maes, oherwydd mae'n Tufts.
[Anna Callahan]: Diolch yn fawr, dim ond ychydig o gysylltiadau. Roedd e'n ymwneud ag ymdrechion cyntaf, ac rydych chi wedi ymdrech cyntaf yn ymwneud ag ymdrech cyntaf. Rwy'n meddwl eich bod chi'n ymwneud รข'r ymdrech cyntaf. Rydw i eisiau ymdrechu, rwy'n credu yw hynny'r rhywbeth ar gyfer yr ymdrech cyntaf, os ydych yn gallu ymdrechu, diolch.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, I just want to catch up my fellow Councilors as well as members of the public that at our last meeting, we sent this particular ordinance to have discussions with staff specifically, um. With the DPW commissioner as well as our the DPW commissioner had already sent me some edits to it and some concerns, things to change. So we updated the wording with them. And then I also met with Trees Medford. Trees Medford has been instrumental in creating this ordinance. And they were also very happy with the changes that were made. So today I'm hoping that this ordinance, which has been in committee a number of times can get sent to the City Council, but obviously we'll go through it one change at a time and see how the committee feels.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep. The purpose of the ordinance, I'll just read it right out of here. The Medford Tree Committee will promote a diverse, healthy and sustainable urban forest that will provide for the health, general welfare and quality of life of Medford citizens and the beauty and quality of the city's environment. And really the purpose of this is just to have residents involved, to have a committee. We have many commissions and committees and to have one that can specifically focus on trees. So the changes that were made were primarily to the duties. And I can go over some of those changes. There were a couple of items that we removed from the duties because Commissioner, DPW Commissioner McGivern mentioned that these are already duplicates of things that are being done by the DPW, their DPW jurisdiction and should not be given to a committee. So we removed those. We also changed some of the language. So for example, around the community forestry management plan, Commissioner McGivern again felt that this was a little bit more the jurisdiction of the DPW and the tree warden. So rather than actively creating or working on that, We change it to reviewing the community forestry management plan provided by the DPW forest division, reviewing the administration's progress and implementing the plan, as well as reporting any concerns to city council. So just sort of being available to make sure that these plans are being followed. and to help if they can. Similarly, with the annual report of tree planting and tree removal and maintenance, so this already is a report that is created, so rather than, you know, handing that to the tree committee, it's simply reviewing, requesting the annual report, reviewing it. and much of it otherwise has remained the same. I believe we did have a long discussion about the tree inventory and came to the conclusion that it would not actually be helpful for the tree committee to update the tree inventory because reasons. I could go into that long detail if people are interested, I'm happy to. But basically, switched it again to reviewing the inventory, as well as the administration's sort of ability to maintain the inventory, just keeping a check that the inventory itself is being updated. And then the very last point, which is labeled as A, but I believe that should be I'm looking at my copy, I'm not sure if I'm looking at the same copy, but the very last point of being available to assist the tree warden really rather than putting, sorry, to assist the tree warden in intended placement or replacement of trees, just switching the language a little bit so that they are available to help as needed rather than it being specifically in the hands of the tree committee. So as you can see, most of it was taking a few things that, that had been officially like the tree committee will do this and saying no, actually, those things are already done by the DPW and saying that now instead, the ordinance says that the tree committee will be available to help or will review. And that's most of the changes. I'm going to pause there and ask if there are any questions about the duties. But after that, I'd like to go back to the appointment section.
[Anna Callahan]: No, it would not. It could not cover private trees. It is only the public trees.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. And just a quick reply, which is that letter F does specifically say promoting equity of tree planting across the city, including in neighborhoods identified as needing more trees. So I feel that that's adequately covered in there. And thank you for bringing that up.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I was actually just about to go to now review the appointments section. So that was just the duties section, and I'd love to go over the appointments section, because that is one of the comments. So in the appointments section, the staff did not ask for changes, but they did make some comments. And so if I can just go over those comments with you all, and folks can make any suggestions. One is that, I apologize, what? I'm not, let's see. Do we wanna, I mean, let's see, I'm not looking at the same copy that you're looking at. I'm looking at a copy that I have, like the track changes.
[Anna Callahan]: Let me see. I mean, I need the copy that I've got some notes in, that's all, so.
[Anna Callahan]: I think so. I think that would be helpful for the public and everything.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. So the first comment, which was from Director Hunt was whether there was a process for removing people. And she mentioned that for sort of advisory and educating committee like this one, it's good to allow it to be fairly large, but then you may want to have a process for removing people for non-participation because otherwise you sometimes can't meet quorum. So that's one element, and I think I have some language that we could pull from the HRC ordinance, the Human Rights Commission ordinance about that. So that's one. And then the second one was specifically about the line that you were just mentioning, Councilor Leming. It says in letter A, two youth members shall be between the ages of 15 and 22 at the time of their appointment. We could leave that in. Therese Medford is also happy for that to become softer, either a suggestion or only one. So I think that's something for us to discuss. In letter B, there originally was more stringent language, so we've already softened letter B, which says at least one member of the committee, it now says, will demonstrate expertise in the field of urban forestry and or landscape design. And Medford residency is not required if this requisite expertise is demonstrated. It previously said that they had professional experience, and so I think this is softened language. And then my other comment, which I think I noticed very late today, is that we currently under letter C, the appointments are split among one year, two year, and three years for the first five people. but it does not really adequately deal with if, for example, we appoint 10 people, like those other five people would then be appointed for terms of three years. And then we would suddenly have like one person, two people, and then, you know, seven people all up at the same time. So maybe some language around that would be helpful. So any comments on those specific questions that staff had?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I am very happy for them to be Medford residents. I would lean maybe toward just the one member with demonstrated expertise, the residency being not required. So I'd be interested in what other Councilors think of that. And I do think that we should have a removal process. The one that's from the Human Rights Commission is quite simple. It just says they can be removed for cause by a majority of the commission. So that's something that I would consider recommending after hearing from other Councilors. But I would also love to, I don't know if this is a good time for public comment before making a motion or if you want to make all the changes in a motion before we take public comment.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, I would make some very minor but specific recommendations, like the committee shall consist of between five and 10 Medford residents, rather than of five Medford residents and up to 10 members total, but leave the rest of it that says the demonstrated expertise, that one person, the Medford residency would not be required. So I might make that suggestion and then I would add an ability to remove if, you know, voted on by the whole commission. So those are the kinds of things, the things that I've already mentioned are the things that I would maybe make some recommendations for, but it might be informed by public comments. So I would be happy to take public comment first.
[Anna Callahan]: So there is a tree inventory. It was done, I believe, last year. And the administration is still, the DPW is still working on being able to keep the tree inventory completely updated. So they're working through the process of having that be part of staff duties.
[Anna Callahan]: I appreciate that final question, and I am going to answer it. I actually, um, I feel quite strongly that the changes that were made were not changes that, um That lessened the impact of the tree committee. I think, um In many cases, what happened was it became clear to me through long discussions with Commissioner McGibbon that in the case of the tree inventory, it actually was not possible for the tree committee to do that work because we talked in detail about exactly what that work would mean and who would be where at what moment in time when that needed to happen. So for that specifically, I think really it does need to be done by staff. I think in the other circumstances, for example, the very last one, it really was just a question of You know, these are things that that are being done and and it wasn't even the desire of the folks writing the tree committee ordinance to take it away from the tree warden. It was simply kind of a little bit of a misunderstanding, but that this work is being done. This is the intended placement and replacement of trees and what they wanted was to be available. So I don't feel that it is weakened. I just feel that it fits more closely with, because I don't think those conversations, the deep conversations between the forestry department and the writers of this ordinance had happened yet. So I think it's quite strong and I'm really excited for the tree committee to come into existence. I think it's gonna be a fantastic help. The truth is we have an incredibly small forestry division. And so it's, When we talk about accountability, it's really more like many hands make light work. We need more people who can just kind of have their eyes on things and be available to do things, to show up at the hearings, to review things. Our staff is very, very busy doing the work. And so having some folks that can be there to sort of help with management and help with education efforts and all of that, I think is gonna be incredibly helpful. So that was my first. My first one, I wonder if we could, I'm gonna make a couple of motions or I could make it in one motion. So I'm going to suggest that we change the last line of the last sentence in appointments letter A to say, something like, if possible, two youth members shall be between the ages of 15 and 22 at the time of their appointment. And up for discussion, Medford residency not required for youth members. Maybe, see what my fellow Councilors think of that before we put it in writing. And then I would take a quote, I would add a bullet point about removal. And I would say tree committee members may be removed only for cause by a two thirds vote of the commission, including for unexcused absence that exceed 25% of the number of meetings. that the committee has held within a 12-month period. That's directly out of the Human Rights Commission ordinance. So I would add that line in case we have a large tree committee and they're not able to take votes because of absences.
[Anna Callahan]: Should we add something about, oh, yes. My third one, and please let me know if people have any comments before I write them. if you have any immediately. But under C, it says upon formation of the Medford Treat Committee, two members will be appointed for a term of three years, two members will be appointed for a term of two years, and one member, what I would say is one third of the members shall be appointed for a term of three years, one third of the members shall be appointed for a term of two years, and the last third shall be appointed for a term of one year. That way, if we appoint nine members or 12 members or however many, if we appoint more, then they're evenly distributed between the three years. I will email you those changes.
[Anna Callahan]: So I'm about to send this email. What I have is the committee A, the committee shall consist of between five and 10 Medford residents. So that's a change. And then before the last sentence, if possible, two youth members.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, sure.
[Anna Callahan]: The committee shall consist of between 5 and 10 Medford residents. One appointment made by City Council and all additional appointments made by the Mayor subject to confirmation by the Medford City Council. If possible, two youth members shall be between the ages of 15 and 22 at the time of their appointment. Do you have language for the youth members being in an institution that is?
[Anna Callahan]: Okay. I am sending it now.
[Anna Callahan]: Motion to approve and send to City Council.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, if you could just let me know a little bit about the make up union, non union of the engineering staff.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay.
[Anna Callahan]: I am very sorry to hear about this. I want my city to be a pro-union city. I think the janitorial staff should be union members. So I will certainly do what I can to look into it. clearly. City is not the purview of the City Council exactly, but I really appreciate you coming here and bringing your stories. And it definitely is something that we can have an impact on. So let's see what we can do.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I know that I am in favor of the good landlord tax credit. I know there has been some investigation sort of behind the scenes about asking the assessor about whether it would in fact be limited to two to four unit properties. And I think that it's just, it would be best for us to have this discussion in a committee where we can all hear the assessor's opinion. It would be great. We have a new solicitor or bigger to have the solicitor, you know, provide legal opinion because really it is a legal opinion on what this state law, whether the state law will actually do what it is written that it will do, or if it will not be upheld to that writing that passed in the past session. And I really want to get to the bottom of whether we can pass this here in Medford because I would like to, and I just want to understand and have the full council be able to understand if there are reasons why we're not able to get this thing passed.
[Anna Callahan]: This is a good letter of tax credit. Asking the city for their opinion and then the assessor for the motion.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. This was a meeting with we invited our facilities manager Paul Riggi to come out and talk about our facilities. We have requested that he present us both with a spreadsheet of all of the buildings and some information about those within the next. and then within the next month, he's also gonna, or a couple of months, he will also get us an estimate for how much it will cost to get a true long-term planning document about our facilities to understand the state and the cost to repair each of them. And I move to approve.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, do you know if it will affect any trees? The placement of the pole and the placement of the wires?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So, as I think many of my fellow City Councilors, I also feel that we are relatively powerless in this situation, which I'm not happy about. I really appreciate the work of Councilor Lazzaro in talking to our police chief and getting an understanding from our police what they feel capable of doing, what they feel that they can do, what they are willing to do, and I'm very appreciative of that behind-the-scenes work. I do think that this will be really important for people, and my hope is that we you know, the reports are that there is not a lot of ice activity and that people then feel more comfortable. But of course, if there is, I think that is also very important for the public to know about. My only request was going to be, which I believe Councilor Collins also just put into her request, that it's specified that it is done at a City Council meeting so that it can be to be part of the public record because I think that's that's a to me almost the most important part of what this request is about is about getting this information to the public. Um so thank you so much for this work that you're doing.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. It is my understanding that the last time the National Guard was brought into a state to assist was with the permission of the governor. It was in 1992, during the Rodney King riots. There were many millions of dollars of property damage, and I believe there were quite a few deaths. And it was requested by the governor to aid and assist. Far, far worse had happened, certainly than anything we're seeing in Los Angeles right now. There is no permission from the governor of California right now. And the last time that the National Guard was sent in to any state without the permission of the governor was, I believe, after the Civil Rights Act.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you very much. Exactly. In Alabama, 1965, to enforce the Civil Rights Act, it is truly bizarre and disturbing that this is happening now. And again, I really have to echo some of my fellow Councilors in saying that I don't think that it helps us to sit by and try to not be noticed. I think at this point, despite our not having power at the national level or at the state level, I think that it is important that we speak up. Thank you for putting this together.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. My only was a friendly amendment, which is just what you said, which is to send it to the Public Works and Facilities Committee. We have good discussions there, which include residents, as well as talking to staff.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um so I have been asking about this sort of behind the scenes. I'm gonna just be more public now. Um. I understand that it's important for the city to have certain savings accounts. The stabilization funds. I understand that we need to maintain certain amounts of money in those accounts. Um and if there's a certain amount that we should I believe that we should not be seeing more than $20 million in excess of those accounts just lying around not being used. And what I hope to see from the administration is, so this basically says, well, there's $550 million in existing needs. Like, wow, it's so much more. I don't wanna see the $550 million in needs that we have. I want to understand how much of free cash needs to be maintained because it is a smart move to maintain it, because that is what we need in order to keep our bond rating good and all of that. And I want to have an idea of how we're going to spend the rest of the money. I mean, we had $28 million a year ago. We can't continue to put more money into, you know, I completely get it. We need to have a certain percentage of your budget that you have to have as free cash at the end of every year, and I completely approve of conservative budgeting so that we do every year have some free cash like coming back into that free cash. We can't just not spend it because The way that certain things work, like our roads and other maintenance projects, the longer you allow them to become more and more dilapidated, then it costs 50 times as much to repair. We can't just let this money sit there. And so that, I think, is what Councilor Lazzaro was trying to say, that the money isn't doing anything. And there are things more important that it could be doing and it should be doing. So what I would like to see is, I get it if some of this free cash should remain as uh you know in stabilization funds or even in the free cash account if there are reasons why that those should remain there i understand but i think we we shouldn't be taking i mean since i've gotten on the council it's a year and a half we don't have a plan for the tens of millions of dollars in free cash that we have, we need to have a plan so that money can be used in a way that is smart and means that in the future we have to spend less money, right? Those are things, like roads in particular, I just find it hard to believe that letting plus million dollars in free cash sit around is better for the city than spending that money. For example, on roads, and I also understand that if we're going to be spending on roads, we're going to increase our spending on roads, then we have to hire more engineers like these things can't happen immediately. I get that. But to see this, a year later, that there isn't a plan. that to me seems overdue. And I would love to, I would actually love to hear from you. And I thought this was what Councilor Lazzaro was asking for when she said timeline. What I would like is not just a timeline for like when we're spending the money, I'd like a timeline for when can we see the thing I just described? When can we see that the administration has a plan for how much of this $22.12 million remaining is going to be reserved because I understand that, and there may be unknown expenses, there may be other things. I get that. That's what we have the stabilization funds for. But I want to know timeline. By the end of the summer, will we have an understanding of how this $22 million is going to be spent? What is the timeline for us seeing a plan for free cash, including one for reserving some of it as savings?
[Anna Callahan]: yes, staffing is absolutely, I completely understand that those are issues, but you can't start staffing if you don't have a plan. So, the having of a plan, I think, is the thing that I'm looking for the timeline on. So, I appreciate that you think that, you know, at the end of the summer is when we'll be able to see that. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I forgot to ask a couple of questions. So more than half of this $550 million is the water and sewer infrastructure work plus the lead line replacement. And I just wanted to ask how much of that, like we have the water and sewer enterprise fund. How much do you think we will be using other savings accounts to work on one or both of those two items?
[Anna Callahan]: So if I may, it's entirely possible that we might dip into free cash for, you know, or some other sort of savings account for that, but it's also quite likely that we may not because the rates might be put. And that includes both the lead lines as well as the water and sewer infrastructure.
[Anna Callahan]: No, I'm sorry. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I just had a super quick follow-up to Councilor Leming's point. I just want to make sure when you're looking at that $28.3 million from last year and the $22.12 million this year and comparing it to other cities, in comparison to other cities, are you taking their total amount of savings? Because this $22.12 million does not include the stabilization funds. And if you add those stabilization funds to the $22.12 million, than I believe we're actually over the 28.3 million that we had a year ago. So this may be more than the 14% that we were a year ago, and it might be that we have more to spend to be in line with other cities.
[Anna Callahan]: Let me know this is a meeting of the Public Works and Facilities Committee for June 3rd, 2025. This is the, I will restate that now that I'm on mic. This is the Public Works and Facilities Committee for June 3rd, 2025. This meeting will take place at 6 p.m. in City Hall. And if, I think I will go ahead and just start by having you call roll call. Great.
[Anna Callahan]: Present. And today we are covering paper 24-034 from President Zach Bears. It is a report request from the Facilities Manager. Be it resolved by the Medford City Council that the Public Works and Facilities Committee request a report from the Facilities Manager containing the following information. One, a complete inventory of city-owned properties and city-managed properties. Two, cost to restore each property on the above inventory to a state of good repair. Three, cost to maintain each property in a state of good repair once restored. Be it further resolved that the Public Works and Facilities Committee invite the facilities manager to present and discuss the above report once completed. And we very much appreciate our facilities manager, Mr. Riggi, being here. Mr. Riggi, please take the floor. Let me, let's turn you on. I don't, this thing is not, ah, there we go.
[Anna Callahan]: Can you give a timeline and a cost estimate for what it would take to provide the, and you got a copy of this.
[Anna Callahan]: Sure, but you're talking about a cost estimate for the cost estimate, right?
[Anna Callahan]: Yep. Do you have a sense for, I mean, is a better process that you provide us with an estimate of how much it will cost you to do this report? Is that something that you?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. I'm going to turn to my fellow Councilors and see if folks have questions. Oh, sorry. Your mic doesn't say your name on here. Oh, sorry. You're the... Thank you. Ms.
[Anna Callahan]: Do I have questions from other councilors? can you let Zach in? President Bears?
[Anna Callahan]: Could you at least provide some version of that just to the city Councilors?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, Before we move on to public comment, I just wanna see what you think about a little bit of a timeline. Do you think that if you can get us that database, just the spreadsheet, in a couple of weeks, is that reasonable? Yeah. Okay, beautiful. And then do you think you could get us an estimate by a month or two from now, like an estimate, sorry, an estimate of how much it will cost to get the cost estimate? I should be able to do that would be beautiful, right? If you can get those things the next month or so, that'd be really helpful. And then I think we can, um Maybe. Uh, maybe what? What accounts are think about us revisiting based upon that estimate and making a decision as to whether we want to, um Request. That that full, um, estimate of seem reasonable that we revisit that in this committee?
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, so that'll be our plan. And so once you get us the estimate for the estimate, we can let you know whether, you know, what we think about moving forward with that. Wonderful, great. I will open it up for public comment. So if there's anyone, I do not see anyone in the chamber. If there's anyone on Zoom who wants to make any commentary on this topic. Ken Kraus, we are asking you to unmute now. Great, go ahead.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Do you have any comments on the comments?
[Anna Callahan]: Any other public comment? Oh, we do have Matthew Leming, Councilor Leming, who is not on the committee, but maybe he is on the committee. Oh, great. Glad to see you here, Councilor Leming. We're having you on mute.
[Anna Callahan]: No, no, you go ahead, Councilor Laming.
[Anna Callahan]: And can I clarify, it sounds like maybe it does help lower the overall cost.
[Anna Callahan]: Anything else, Councilor Leming?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. And do you think that in the two weeks, you would be able to also just add a column that was like the, whichever estimate for maintenance you think would be preferable if you want to do the like 2% or some sort of per square footage maintenance estimate in that spreadsheet would be great. Perfect. Any other comments from councilors? I want to thank you so much for coming out. It has been really great to have you here. We look forward very much to the spreadsheet and then the estimate for the estimate. Do I have a motion on the floor?
[Anna Callahan]: Fantastic. There is a motion to keep in committee and adjourn from Councilor Bears, seconded by Councilor Leming. Clerk, when you're ready, if you would call the roll.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes. Five in favor, zero opposed. The motion passes and we are adjourned. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. And 1st, I just want to apologize for not being there in person. I am feeling pretty under the weather. Um, and in fact, I think I will probably drop off after this budget vote. Um, but, uh, but I also want to thank Councilor Tseng for, um, mentioning the tree planting the volunteer tree planting project and just give a tiny little update so that people understand and then ask 1 question. of the mayor as well, that the volunteer tree planting project is full steam ahead I have a team of dedicated volunteers who are working on it. We anticipate having our first pilot planting happened this fall, and we are working with trees Medford and you know, beginning to talk to folks in the administration. So I believe that that project is going to move forward. And Madam Mayor, I know that you had suggested when we met that the trees themselves, which is a relatively small part of the cost of planting trees, might come out of free cash when that happens. And I just wanted to see if that was still the plan.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. I really appreciate that. And I'm also very, very excited to see the free cash and stabilization fund plans later this summer. Thank you so much. Thank you feel better.
[Anna Callahan]: just super basic, why are we doing soil remediation there?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. This is, I'm quite sure you're correct, but just, you know, running the numbers in my head, 1,100 a year is more than three a day. And that's a part-time person that can assess more than three buildings a day. That's like, maybe I'm not, I'm just curious, like, with the part-time.
[Anna Callahan]: That's amazing, okay.
[Anna Callahan]: Awesome. And then thank you, President Perez, for mentioning the, what am I sitting on now? Thank you, the residential exemption. My understanding is that applications wouldn't begin until July, like we would open an application process in July and that you would need people starting some extra help starting in July, right? But the way you phrased it, it sounded like it would be submitted by July. Or can you just talk a little bit more about that process?
[Anna Callahan]: But I think if we vote in December, can we vote in December to have it apply to the next? I'm just trying to understand. It seems almost like it's become impossible for us to ever do it because we have to have already hired the people before. I thought that our deadline for making some sort of decision was really going to be around July.
[Anna Callahan]: For the following July.
[Anna Callahan]: And that's why you would need to have that extra on the budget, because those people would have to be hired. So you're not talking about this July.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Great. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. How many different pieces of debt do we have that end at different times?
[Anna Callahan]: Three years at 100.
[Anna Callahan]: I would love to see if it's 60 things, and I don't know if you could, you know. I don't mean like asking me right now, but if we could just have it emailed, that would be really interesting and useful to understand sort of when it's gonna get retired, when different pieces of it are gonna get retired. That'd be useful. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: City Council. Good evening and welcome to the City Facilities Committee for May 20th 2025. This meeting will take place at five p.m. in the City Council Chamber of Medford City Hall. 85 George B has to drive. Uh. Today we are covering item 25-069 offered by me chair Callahan. It is a resolution to invite the friends of the
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So to start us off, I will just read the resolution first. Whereas the Chevrolet theater is a historic thriving cultural center used by our residents, which brings together people from all over Greater Boston, be it resolved that the city council invite Cindy Watson from the friends of the Chevrolet to attend a public works and facilities meeting to inform our community about the state of the Chevrolet theater. And I would love to invite Ms. Watson to come up to the podium and give us your Give us your take on the State of the Chevalier. Sorry, let me just... Hello? There you go, you're on. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, this is just, you've just been sort of rattling off some events that happened and I don't have the budget numbers right in front of me. I mean, I'm sure there is a budget for the Chevalier. Would you like us to follow up with the administration to figure out what the budget is?
[Anna Callahan]: So it sounds like $100,000. Let me just ask the $100,000. Was that for this fiscal year so that that would be from last July 1 until ending in June 30. Correct. So that would mean that was since we're three quarters of the way through that year, that maybe there would be $25,000 left. That was all he had. That's what he told me. Right. But it sounded I mean, I look, I wasn't at that conversation. I mean, I'm really just going off of what you said. It sounds like there are twenty five thousand dollars remaining in the budget and there is a quarter of the year left to go. So that doesn't sound particularly odd. But again, I don't have like I was not I did not realize if you'd asked I could have prepared and had the budget at this meeting, like with all those numbers and knowing what everything had been spent out of that budget. I did not realize that that was what you were going to be asking about today.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, my main reason for coming here was to get additional lighting for the balcony, so that great and that that was what I understood that you had some requests of things that you wanted done which, you know, we're happy to, you know, pass along but I think if you want a deeper understanding of what's going on with the budget like we can do that it just might take a little bit of time I'm going to go to Councilor Lazzaro. Oh, sorry. My bad. You're number five? I'm gonna tell. Oh, who's requesting? Did I get you?
[Anna Callahan]: So by the way, if I may. Today, at six o'clock, we will have the Chevrolet theater budget on the, so if you just stick around, then you will hear the presentation of the budget for the Chevrolet theater so who's going to present that. Good question. And by the way, also, I believe Paul Riggi is on Zoom and has raised his hand. So shall we go to him? Is that all right if we go to him? Fine. Great. Thank you. Can you? We're asking you to unmute.
[Anna Callahan]: Go ahead.
[Anna Callahan]: If I may, the Hager Center is actually not on the agenda and I really am interested in understanding. I thought that you would be giving us the state of the Chevrolet, and I know you specifically wanted to talk about the facility.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. And I still do want to ask, aside from the lighting, it seems like the lighting is on people's radar. Are there other needs that you see in terms of the facilities, things that you would like to happen in the near future? Are there other needs that you see in the Chevrolet?
[Anna Callahan]: So it sounds like there is a motion on the floor. Could you maybe repeat? Did you catch that motion? Mr. Clerk, thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Is there any more discussion on this particular topic?
[Anna Callahan]: I was just fast.
[Anna Callahan]: Is there anything further that you want to discuss about the state of LA?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. Do we have a motion.
[Anna Callahan]: By Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. Clerk, please call the roll. When you're ready.
[Anna Callahan]: I was just hoping, I know you're excited about statistics. You brought them here. You want to bring them up next time. And I'm so excited. I'm hoping that you can maybe just email the clerk, and then he can forward some of those to us. Just the ones you mentioned today. Don't go to any extra trouble.
[Anna Callahan]: I especially like the rankings and the program it provides. the part-time pay as compared to Winchester and if you have anybody else to compare to. And I really would like you to include the fact that people work for us because we are more fun than other cities. This is my theory. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: unclassified, which is almost tap.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, I'm so sorry.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I'm so excited about the neighborhood community hubs. It's been my favorite part of zoning so far of everything that we've done. And just my sort of initial thoughts about the types of businesses that would be there. And I think this is, I'm not married to this. I think it's totally up for discussion. But I would, I think with the concept that, These are going to be within a half mile of every home. Right. And so there's a there's a limited sphere of no parking right so the concept is really this is for people to walk to to make us a more walkable city. I think I would lean toward. choosing businesses that can survive on that amount of traffic. And by that, I kind of mean another way to think about it is that these businesses should be the kind of businesses that any one family might go to multiple times per week. So I think to me that means co-working. I want to make sure we get co-working in there. I didn't see it. I want to make sure that co-working is absolutely in there. Co-working, coffee shops, bookstores, kids activities. You know, I think there are places that, you know, laundromat, sure, but I think there are places where you might go multiple times per week. I think a store that people go to only once every three months or so, like perhaps, you know, a hair salon, and I could be wrong about this, so, you know, maybe people who know more about that particular business model, I think if their primary, if we have them everywhere in the city and their primary people are only within a half mile, they may not have enough business to survive, which is why I'm trying to think, like, what are the, what are the businesses, like a bakery, you know, like, I mean, we stopped by there, we walked by it every day on our way to school. And sadly, it means that I eat a lot of pastries because we can't help. We got to just walk in, you know, we got to get something. So I hope we can think carefully about the kinds of businesses that we think will survive and will do well if in fact they are within a half mile of folks and don't have parking. If it's truly like the design is that it's for the people who can walk there and we want to have small ones but scattered throughout the city so that everybody has their local ice cream shop, everybody has their local you know, co-working space, their local coffee shop, where they see their neighbors, and it really gives us this feeling of this neighborhood feel, where people get to know the folks that live within a half mile, mile of them.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I just have a question. I would love it if somebody could give like a slightly different definition of the different types of districts, like overlay, the two kinds of overlays. And like, I will admit, I haven't really understood how they differ in terms of our decision making and where they will allow the businesses and who can, you know, so if I can have like maybe someone take a stab at that explanation, that would be really helpful.
[Anna Callahan]: And if I can ask, is that still laying on top with very specific, like these plots of land, only these plots of land, or is it a little more lucid than that?
[Anna Callahan]: The one question I've been most curious about is, could one of those triggering things be, it is more than a quarter mile from the nearest neighborhood, other neighborhood commercial?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. That's super helpful. And kind of exciting, I think, if you know, include like artisan, like, I like that kind of what was a glassblower stained glass or something that exists, like if we include the sort of artisanal stuff there, then what's exciting to me is like, if it's more than a quarter mile from any of the nearest one, then you who could be a glassblower could, you know, convert your your first floor into an artisan's space, and then maybe next door it'll be a coffee shop, like allowing residents to use their own creativity to be able to use their spaces for these kinds of things, I think would be a lovely organic way to make this happen. Or somebody who loves baking. They'd be like, I'm gonna use my garage, it's gonna become a bakery. Wouldn't that be cool? It'd be super cool.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Do you have a date Thank you. And I, if I may also remind people, not just that we have the senior center ones, but that we do listening sessions. So I want people to understand that we do listening sessions and for folks, you know, who maybe do not come to city council meetings, you know, the purpose is really to hear from folks who are not coming here. So just for residents to understand that, and if you have suggestions, we would love to hear them. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. It really pretty much speaks for itself. I was talking to them and they suggested that they come here to City Council so that we could just get the word out about the services that they offer.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. This is a very exciting project. I'm really quite happy to see these plans coming together after so many years of work. Just a few comments and then a couple of questions. I know that in one of the master plans, there really was an analysis of Medford Square and the very specific types of businesses that we have there and the difference between the types of businesses that we have and the types of businesses that create a really walkable, safe, a kind of vibrant square that I think everyone here talks about and wishes for. And many people even look back to 30, 40 years ago with warmth about how it used to be more that way when there were bookstores and other places that people frequented. So I say that because I'm very excited about the grocery store coming in. I'm also very excited to see a coffee shop coming in. And, and I really also do appreciate all the work that you do in talking specifically to developers. I recently got, you know, an email from a resident, asking if they can if we can stop a bank from coming into Medford Square. Because they they're like we can't have more banks and insurance companies and places where you don't you know need to go or enjoy to go. And please, I hope no one is offended by my mention of those two specifically but I think there are there are many in Medford Square that are. not the types that were identified in that master plan as being ones that are going to create the vibrancy we want. So I do appreciate all of the work that you are doing too, because we cannot simply dictate as a city council what people rent to and what businesses come in, but we can talk to developers and try to encourage them to bring certain types of businesses in. So I appreciate all your work there. I did want to mention also that I think one of the benefits, and I think this came up in a conversation that we had about this particular project, one of the benefits of having a garage that is not underneath the residential units, that is actually a small bit away and maybe you have to cross the street, is that I certainly hope that the residents who move in will hesitate to jump in their cars just a little bit more and be more likely to walk to walk into Medford Square, we're talking, you know, obviously, those who are young and able to do that, but hoping that people that this creates naturally just a little bit more of a walkable square. and lowers our need for like people get very concerned about the traffic that's caused by new development and new residents moving in and new housing. And I hope that that will be a little bit ameliorated by the fact that the garage is not underneath the building of the residence. So I really appreciate that as a very thoughtful way to approach some of these things. I had a couple of questions. One is about the parking. And I do understand that there are a lot of some of the seniors who are concerned that the senior center parking will not be as large. And I'm curious if any of the parking will be designated for seniors or how many of those spots will be designated as handicapped spots. That might also help for those seniors who really do need to have a spot that is very, very close to the senior center. If we have a larger number of handicapped spots because it is directly across the street from the senior center. So I wanted to ask about that. And then this is more my curiosity about your opinion based upon a lot of the zoning that we have done. But my second question is really about step a step back. So looking at the sort of envisioning diagram that they, the picture that they painted of what it might look like when standing in the memorial garden, that it does create a little bit of a sort of a corridor, like one of these wind tunnels of height. And I was curious, because in my mind, the step backs where you start off like coming up from the sidewalk, but then the top couple of floors are actually backed away, that that might help to reduce a little bit of that feeling. And I was curious about what your thoughts were about that.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I really appreciate the constituent who is bringing up the specifics of the affordable housing. I just wanted to make a short comment, which is that if you actually run the numbers, I will say I was a little surprised that 80% of AMI is 92,000. That's higher than I thought. And if you run the numbers at 92,000, 30% of that per month is 2,300. And I assume that's one person, so it'd be a one bedroom. I'm making a guess because between 92 and 132K, which you said was one person and four person, 80% of AMI, making a guess for two people that it's around 108. I don't know if that's accurate, but something like that. that would that would be around like 2700 a month for a two bed. I'm just like actually running the numbers and these numbers don't, to me appear to be much different from market rate.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, hang on, hang on. So and I understand that you're saying market rate for new construction. So I just want us to be sensitive to the fact that if this is close to market rate for a lot of our existing housing, then calling this affordable when it's new construction, I just want us to be sensitive to this idea that
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. And, and I think that is in fact what I'm bringing up which is, I think that people in the city want colloquially affordable housing, right? They don't want something that fits the legal definition of affordable housing. If it's not actually creating more housing in our city, that is gonna be affordable for people. I mean, even at 80% of AMI, let alone what the constituent was mentioning of people who aren't at 80% AMI. Like I hope that we can consider having some steps or something, that's all. And I know it's conversation, but I think actually looking at the numbers and being open with the public about what numbers we are looking at and whether we're creating lowercase a, colloquially understood to be affordable housing, I think is an important discussion.
[Anna Callahan]: And I, and I don't disagree that like we also have a very specific issue in Medford which is we have a lot of older folks, we have the largest of my understanding from the Senior Center, and the Council on Aging is that we have the largest proportions or cohort of seniors that we have ever had. And a lot of them, especially I've talked to tons of them they live in. They live in a four or five bedroom home and they're by themselves or with two people and they don't actually even want that, but there's nowhere in Medford to go. So I appreciate that this will resolve that issue, but I think creating affordable housing is its own question, and that I would love for the City Council and the Planning Department and the Mayor and everyone to sort of grapple with in a real way, that I hope we aren't just creating more housing and hoping that that theoretically resolves a lot of our problems, but that we actually make some efforts to create affordable housing in the different variety of ways that it can be. And I don't necessarily mean create as in built. I just mean that, you know, whether that's the Royal Community Land Trust, whether that's the Affordable Housing Trust, whether, you know, there's many avenues, I think, doing our best to create housing that is lowercase a affordable is something that I hope we can
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. Thank you. So, this $5,500, is this adding to a fund to make this happen, or is that the whole amount to make this happen?
[Anna Callahan]: I will say it does strike me that like this project is like $5,000 and replacing the HVAC system in the school is $25 million. I mean, I understand that these things are real, but like, wow.
[Anna Callahan]: I am excited about it, thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just have a super quick question, which is, do I recall you saying correctly that you said before that there was some concern about being able to fill 15? Can you just talk a little bit about the balance and what people on the commission have said in an administration about filling 15 spots?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I have to say I don't I don't really have much of an opinion. I'm happy to go with what other people think is right. I'm happy to go with what folks who have been on the commission feel is right. I think, you know, 335 would be fine 444 would be fine like I don't have much of an opinion so I hope people can offer some stronger opinions in mind.
[Anna Callahan]: I feel like it's more important when you do a roll call. What I might say is that they actually can't hear us anyway if you're on Zoom.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Before I give my opinion, what is their current budget for the commission?
[Anna Callahan]: So, I'm sorry, can I just clarify? So it sounds like they don't have currently, they don't have an actual budget, but they have in the past used the DEI budget with permission.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, thanks. And then I guess I would say as a general rule, happy to hear that the council has been like one commission at a time giving small stipends. I think that and I really love that the speaker brought up the idea of child care. I do think that if we want a true cross section of people to be able to participate in commissions, then I think it's smart to provide a small stipend and also to provide child care. I generally in terms of the budget, like I'm very aware that our budget is our whole entire city budget is minuscule and it's a miracle that we are able to run this city as well as we do on the tiny, tiny per capita budget that we have. However, I also think that we are not going to win that, you know, we're not, we're not helping ourselves when we battle over pennies. And I think what we're talking about here is something that's meaningful as an unbelievably small percentage of the budget. So I would like to leave something in and I'm, I don't really have an opinion between 1000 and 1250. I think 1000 would be fine. you know, maybe that will feel have the mayor feel slightly better if we, you know, put it at 1000. But I do think it's important that we're able to bring in a true cross section of the community. I think this does help. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, hello. I didn't press my button, but that's fine. I will speak away. I think.
[Anna Callahan]: that I must have accidentally pressed it. That's OK. I will speak anyway. I'm always prepared. Always prepared to talk. I'm going to try and move us along, because I know we have other things to cover in this meeting. We have another meeting after this. I'm going to say, let's go with $1,250. Great.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I think we can make a motion at the end, if that's all right.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, let's keep it at $1,250 and move on.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Are there other, is this common in commissions?
[Anna Callahan]: So if we don't, I'll state my opinion anyway, without that information, I do think that the Human Rights Commission is primarily a, well, correct me if I'm wrong, maybe I should look through all of the work that they're going to do, but I think that they really are in a position to speak out And that is one of the primary things that they do is to ensure that the voices of people who are, you know, marginalized or you know, especially in today's world, under the Trump administration, there are a lot of people who are in precarious positions, and to ensure human rights, you know, violations, and to ensure that those people can be heard. And so I'm more reluctant to allow those people, someone with that primary role to be removed. that I am for people in a different role where their role is to protect trees or their role is to approve zoning advances or to do other things where they're sort of have a different role aside from speaking. So I'm leaning against it. That's kind of where I'm sitting right now.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. After hearing from folks, I feel I think even more strongly that I don't I'm not in favor of the amendment, so I'm perfectly happy if we say that the City Council may request the agency remove any of their own appointees and the mayor may request that the agency remove any of their appointees, but not that they have the ability to do so.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep.
[Anna Callahan]: City Council may request removal of their own appointees. Mayor may request removal of their appointees.
[Anna Callahan]: The red is stuff that we accepted last time.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I think I'm in favor of all of them, except I just want to ask a little bit of a clarifying question about the second to last. So they're empowered to advocate for laws, policies and practices that support human rights. I don't quite understand the difference between what they can do now and what she is suggesting. Can you go a little bit more into detail? What can they do now that they can't?
[Anna Callahan]: But the power is to do what exactly?
[Anna Callahan]: So she's saying that they can't pass their own resolution saying the HRC of Medford supports X, Y, or Z.
[Anna Callahan]: Right. Well, I feel completely comfortable with them saying the Human Rights Commission of Medford supports X, Y, Z. But I don't feel comfortable with them saying the city of Medford supports X, Y, Z. They're not elected body. They already have elected bodies to do that. So to me, this is a very clear thing. And I just want to, like, I would be in support of it saying that. But that isn't what I read here.
[Anna Callahan]: Technically, it does say they shall be empowered to advocate for laws, policies, and practices that support human rights and improve social equity in Medford. But what she is saying is they cannot advocate for laws, policies, practices that support human rights and improve social equity in Massachusetts or the country. Well, I'm sorry. I think to say that the Human Rights Commission cannot come up with their own opinions on human rights outside of our cities is going to rule out probably nine-tenths of everything they want to talk about. In my opinion, if you live in Medford, it doesn't mean you don't have a sister in some other state and a parent in another country or an entire community. And that's what human rights are about. So I definitely feel very uncomfortable if they cannot simply advocate for or put their own opinion and say that the Human Rights Commission itself. They're not saying the city does. They're saying the Human Rights Commission is, and that's what they're there to do. This is what I would like for the Human Rights Commission to be able to do. So that's my opinion.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um so I would if I were reading this, I would think that Cindy Watson already appeared on 4 29 and she has only been invited on May 5 20. I would just remove the whole section because the meeting is going to happen on 5 20.
[Anna Callahan]: All right. Aside from that, it's beautiful.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Thanks for being here. So I have a really kind of a follow-up question to Chair Lazzaro's, just because I did notice that the sort of percent and number of incidents between January and December didn't seem to change. And I think I understood that, Chief Buckley, your response was that there are actually types of incidents that are just difficult to, you know, make that happen from beginning to end. And I was curious if there if, like how our sort of percentage rate compares to other. cities who also use body worn cameras. If we have a goal, if we have already reached the goal in terms of like percent of, you know, special notification forms that we get per month compared to like out of the recorded events. Um, so just curious if, uh, we feel like we are at our goal like as an average of 0.72 or if we think we can get better, or do we think that this is where we're where we're expected to be a year or two from now?
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: I like it. Good catch.
[Anna Callahan]: Not until 1 AM forever though, like on every day.
[Anna Callahan]: It's like- I only mentioned it because this is the kind of thing like restaurants staying open until one is a kind of thing that occasionally some residents are not happy about. So I know they're kind of a part, they're not in a residential area, so it's probably fine, but- They are in the first floor of a building where people live, so.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay.
[Anna Callahan]: That's it.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. As someone with kids, I have to say that the Bedford Family Network is truly a gem. I think people don't realize the dearth of activities for families with young children. And, you know, everywhere else except for here in Medford. And it is truly an amazing institution and really shows such incredible leadership from Marie Cassidy. So just such appreciation for the work that she has done, the leadership she has shown, and the organization that she has built and the incredible value that she has provided to parents at a time in their lives, which can be quite tough. So thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I do not want to play any favoritism for our public buildings. I love them all. We are in one now, but I will also say the Chevalier Theater is, of course, so much more than just a building. And, you know, what they bring to our city is truly wonderful in terms of events, as well as just, you know, economic vitality and what they bring to the square. So I'm very excited to have them come again this year. I think you know, they they have some requests in terms of the actual physical building. And I'm excited to hear what they look for, and what the city might be able to help them out with.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I have to say, I have attended one of the Boston Glory games at Hartmell Stadium with my kid, and it was amazing to see all these kids like racing back and forth down the edge of the field with these gigantic flags going by. And of course, the Frisbee was also good. I enjoyed it very much, and I highly recommend it to everybody.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Let me know if I'm reading this correctly, that the one that we approved before, which is for a loan for $5 million with the estimated total project to be an additional $20 million, so $25 million total. And then in this one, it says the $5 million still, but that the total project cost instead of being $25 million looks like $30,775,000. And because it looks more detailed, perhaps there has already been some planning or a little bit better estimation. Is that just the, am I correct in that that is an increase in the guesstimate on the total project cost or am I being that wrong or?
[Anna Callahan]: That's basically all I wanted to know, was this is a sort of updated project cost?
[Anna Callahan]: If they feel that what you said is accurate, that's all I was asking was like, this is like an updated amount from that original one that we've passed back in.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I appreciate the, you know, noticing that this is a big number. And I will say that when I was going over this item with some of my volunteers that helped me to go through what's on the city council agenda. We all noticed that this was a big number and one of my volunteers actually did a little bit of research and looked at what other cities have paid for you know, things like replacing roofs on schools, things like HVAC systems on schools, things like, you know, replacing air conditioning or whatever it might be. And while there was a fair-sized range, this number did not stand out as unusual. It was not on the high end. It was not on the low end. It kind of sat in the middle of what other school districts do spend for this kind of repair. So I think that's a, it's a perfectly reasonable question to answer, or to ask, and, and I, you know, we did ask and we looked around and least got sort of that sort of lay person's understanding of yes, this is what it generally costs in Massachusetts to do this kind of work. Um, and then the thing that I would like to say about free cash, um, and I echo other city councilors' statements that, um, you know, the Massachusetts state has, um, it has resources for city councilors to understand how to properly use, uh, their money, and it does say that it really No city should be using free cash or stabilization funds for operating budget. And so this is why we had overrides was to increase our operating budget that we can spend, as people are saying, on ongoing expenses that we have to budget for every year and that if that If the amount of money ran out, we would be in deep trouble. So that's the reasoning why it is not just people sitting in the city council that think that it is the state that thinks that it is the credit agencies that think that if you spend all of your free cash if you don't have free cash the end of each year. then if your amount of free cash gets too low, then your credit rating goes down. So it is really important that we do these things correctly. But what I'm also excited about with free cash is I'm really happy that we are spending $5 million of our free cash on this project. And I really want to know from the administration, and I know that there's discussions happening between city councilors and city council leadership and the administration, but I am very excited to hear what the plans are for spending the amount of our free cash and capital stabilization funds that is above the recommended amount that we maintain in those funds. Because I do think we have more than the recommended amount that you need to maintain. And we obviously have capital projects. Just this one capital project would wipe out all of free cash if we use free cash for this project. Our roads have tens of millions of dollars of road debt. We have many, many capital projects that need money. So we do not have more free cash. than projects, and I am excited to understand better what the priorities are that the administration has for how to spend the free cash that we have that we could be spending in the near future that will still maintain a healthy level of free cash and stabilization funds. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having us. For waiting until this late hour, not as late as sometimes. So my only questions really are, just sort of how, is there any way in which these changes might affect our homeowners? Is there any way in which these changes might affect people's ability to get FEMA funds, their ability to get flood insurance? Like, is this simply just a totally routine update and that's it, or is there gonna be some changes that might affect?
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful, and I guess the sort of overarching question is, this is a routine thing that they do every 10-15 years? From my understanding, yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Given the state of our national government, there was some question when looking at this about like, hmm, what is the meaning behind this change? But it sounds like this is just routine, updating the maps, updating language.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Just for those listening, can we have like a one-sentence reminder of what it is that we are citing?
[Anna Callahan]: But am I correct that this was one that one councillor asked for us to get a legal opinion on?
[Anna Callahan]: And we got that legal opinion?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. My question is actually also about the prop two and a half overrides. And I just, my understanding is, and I want to make sure this is correct, and for anybody out there listening, that those overrides were passed one, you know, one for the schools, one for the schools plus roads, and at least in that first year that they do have to be spent on the schools. So just to make sure that that million dollars isn't going to come out of the override that we passed, which was designated for the schools, just want to be checking
[Anna Callahan]: How long would it take you to write up a one or two page document that essentially laid out the difference between keeping the software we have and moving to the new software, both in terms of like upfront costs, long term costs, like at what point we would sort of break even or begin to be saving money if we move to the new software, how much work it would be? Do you think that you could put that into a one or two page document and would it be terribly burdensome for you?
[Anna Callahan]: I just wonder if, because, you know, I hear all these names of different software is going around and then all this different amounts of money and, and I, I have trouble wrapping my head around it if it's not like written down. So I would really appreciate that I don't know if that's something that you know that Council feels is worth, worth the time of the staff time to like put together like a one page doc just of the basic outlines, but I would appreciate that.
[Anna Callahan]: I am happy to make that motion unless anybody has in particular, before I begin making a motion. Is there anybody who's like, no, don't do it, because I'm happy to make that motion.
[Anna Callahan]: perhaps I put a due date of July 31st to make it so it's not like during budget season. If you can finish budget season and then you know. It's always budget season in the fall. I know, I know. I don't know if that's helpful.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. In which case, I would love to make a kind of simple motion. I'm not going to put a ton of details in because I think you understand what we're looking for. And the motion is that we request a document outlining what it would take for Medford to update our financial software.
[Anna Callahan]: That's fine as well. Perfect. By September, it doesn't matter. I think it's fine as long as it's this year.
[Anna Callahan]: Aye.
[Anna Callahan]: Correct.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. First of all, your work is fantastic. I'm so glad that you are here in our community. And I'm just curious how you get the word out to renters about your services.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I absolutely echo those sentiments for everyone doing all of this work, which is incredibly vital to our community as well as the planning department. I did have a question about the entitlements and, you know, I really appreciate you explaining that there were some COVID funds, but I'm curious about the reasoning why the entitlements do go down every year. I assume that's something from the state, their determination of
[Anna Callahan]: Just I think I'm really happy that you brought this up, I think term limits for all. Like fairly extended like eight terms that's a lot of time, I feel very comfortable with that. I also think that, you know, nobody should be able to start 32 years with a tiny two year break in the middle. And so I'm, I'm in favor also of taking up the consecutive. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I am not happy with how this process has gone for the charter in general. I appreciate Councilor Lazzaro's description of a two compromise where no one is happy with the product. I think that is also accurate. I think that if we do not put the mayor back on the school committee, this charter will not make it to the state. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Are we going to vote on the charter approval before we vote on this one?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, there's the one that says both of the- Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that one is a little- I can highlight that one.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Or if you just want to say that- I just don't want to approve this if that language isn't there because we haven't taken it out yet.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Just on on this chart. This was really just for discussion only this is the 2024 numbers not the 2025 numbers, and mainly what I wanted to ask about before I run the 2025 numbers is I grade out and put in brackets, three items. because I want people to understand that those three items are not things that are under our control at all. And one is insurance, one is pensions, and one is bonds, bonds and interest. And I just wanted to, so we don't talk about it right this second, but like, so that you know, this is not like the final chart. It's really for us to discuss. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Do we want to discuss the chart now?
[Anna Callahan]: I'm happy to discuss the chart.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. I'm liking that. My main question was, are those three the three that should be grayed out? I just want to make sure that everybody agrees. Yes, just the general fund. In my mind, those are the three that we just can't control them. And so they're just unmovable.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep, I can plan on doing that tomorrow.
[Anna Callahan]: Mr. Chair.
[Anna Callahan]: And I'm just curious why one to 15, and not one to 25.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm just, I mean, I guess we won't know until people answer the question but like we might get zero like 11,000 a year like who earns. Yeah, I mean, well, I don't know maybe so many people.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: This isn't exactly a suggestion. It's more, I don't know what it is, comment, I guess. What is the easiest way for you to participate in the budget process? And then it's like emailing your elected official, calling your elected official, or attending city meetings. If I were a person who is not a city councilor, I would be like, wait, I have to email my city councilor? What am I going to tell, what am I going to say? Like, what do you mean? Like, it doesn't, I'm not sure what we can say there, but those three options, like attending city meetings, that at least makes sense to me because like you attend, right? And then you get some information, but like emailing your elected official, like with no, it just seems like an impossible ask.
[Anna Callahan]: I was excited by Councilor Lazzaros suggestions here was just what I was. hoping bringing this up would come to you. I love the idea also from Councilor Tseng of like first say, how are you keeping up to date? And then after that, I think we should use this to figure out what we should do. And so attending regular city council meetings in the chambers, then we could say, you know, if we offered, you know, a listening session in the community, would you attend? If we offered a Zoom, special budget Zoom meeting, would you attend? Not promising that we're going to do these things, but saying we're curious to see what interest there is. If we offered these things, would you attend?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you and I apologize person and don't want anybody else to get what I have. So just a cold, but my question is about whether there. Uh, is any agreement with the company that provides this information or provides this technology, um, in the contract or, uh, with. Any partner of theirs, any 3rd party that any information from that is captured by Medford cameras would go to anyone aside from Medford.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, and to follow that up with, so it sounds like SenseN and GTEC, if I've got those correct, at some point, each of them has the data. Do you know if SenseN deletes the data once it is transferred? And do you know if GTEC has any access to the data?
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: On Zoom.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I just want to make sure that we're not sending stuff to legal that we don't need to send to legal. My understanding from the building commissioner is that on that we are the appropriate body to make appeals and final decisions when it has already gone through the building department on things like signs. So. I'm not positive it doesn't need to go to legal, but I think we should not just send everything to legal just to send things to legal.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Yeah, I think the most frightening thing to me is that it is very clear that people are being snatched off the street with absolutely no due process at all. So this question of someone who it has now come out is really innocent of anything, even being in this country illegally, who has been deported not to his home country, but to a prison in El Salvador that is renowned around the world for torture. And this person is not being recalled, even though it has now been made clear that they were not who the government thought that they were. Seeing Rumesa snatched off the street in that video was genuinely, should be frightening for everyone. And I think we should remember the famous poem from Nazi Germany that says, first they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me. So anyone who feels safe should really just pause and think about what it means for people to be snatched off the street by people who do not have a warrant and are not declaring who they are, with absolutely no due process. I think that that does not end well for anyone. Anyone here could be mistaken for someone else and shipped off to a gulag. So I am very happy to be on a city council that is doing everything that we can in this moment to try to protect our residents who are being targeted for a variety of reasons. But really, that ends with anyone. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I apologize for not being there in person. I am sick and I did not want to get anyone all sick. I want to encourage anyone who was not at our last meeting to read my blog post. I have been interested in the nitty-gritty details of how democracies work, including different voting systems and wards versus districts versus at large and all that stuff for a long, long time. So if you want to know my full thoughts, that's on my blog at annakalahan.com. The short story is that both nationally and internationally, people who study democracy and democratic systems all are pretty much in consensus that single seat first past the post districts, which is what ward or district seats are, are known to be one of the worst at appropriately representing people's political views. Now, I want to mention that. So I mean, I've been for 30 years, probably a person who believes that we that, you know, we're in a hybrid system, but one that is balanced, right, that does not have too many water district seats, and does not have too many at large seats. I know the Charter Study Committee did do a survey, and a lot of people are talking about, you know, what came out of the survey. I want to remind us that there were 663 responses to that survey. So, you know, I really am happy that they did a survey, and I know how hard they worked to get those responses. I will also comment that there never was a question asking how large the wards or district should be, whether we should have districts the same size as Somerville, which would be 4 or wards, which would be 8. So. I'm unconvinced that the community, from that particular survey that we can read out of that survey, that what everybody who answered those questions is that they wanted to have eight wards rather than districts the same size as other cities near us. I will say one thing that we do know is that Medford voted strongly in favor of ranked choice voting in a statewide vote. And I think that over 10,000 people voted in that election. So if we want to know what Medford actually thinks with confidence, we know that Medford wants rank-choice voting. And my concern is that by passing this, we are locking ourselves into a charter that won't allow us to have rank-choice voting for these single-seat first-past-the-post districts. So whether it's wards or districts, we will not be able to have rank-choice voting. If we had rank-choice voting, I would be happy to have eight and three. But the more districts that you have compared to at large, right, the greater percentage of awards you have, the more it is a problem when you have this first-past-the-post single-seat district. And when I say locking in, my understanding is, and I really hope that we can get a definitive answer to this, that if we pass this charter, that we will not be able to get a home rule charter for decades. So I would like two things. I would like, number one, if anyone among the city council can answer the question of who do we need to ask to get a definitive answer about whether passing this charter is locking us out of having a rank choice voting a home rule charter that allows for ranked choice voting within the next 10, 20, 30 years. I want to know who we can ask to definitively answer that question. And then I would consider all of these amendments and things as long as we have one more week to work on this, as Vice President Collins suggested. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: No, I believe Anthony Wilson did answer my question, but I am interested in the answer, excuse me, to that question as well. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I can't hear Councilor Tseng.
[Anna Callahan]: Anna, can I jump in?
[Anna Callahan]: Um, yes, I, I would much prefer, like, I know we haven't yet voted on whether to move this to the city to the committee of the whole. Um, but I would much prefer not to vote on this, that particular motion tonight, but to vote on that at the committee of the whole.
[Anna Callahan]: Can I amend can I, um. I don't know if I can amend Councilor Leming's motion to ask that that be voted on next week.
[Anna Callahan]: I think I might have, I might have misunderstood. I thought that I was asking Councilor Leming. I thought that we were voting on the removing the mayor from the school committee. And if we were, I thought that was from Lemings and that was the one that I was hoping to move to next week. So I didn't quite understand why you were asking Councilor or Vice President Collins to amend her motion to move to next week. So maybe I misunderstood.
[Anna Callahan]: Ah, I did not realize that.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm so sorry, my internet has been in and out. Can you, I completely missed the one that we're voting on. Can you tell me again?
[Anna Callahan]: I concur. I don't think we have to worry too much about consistency between them with something with a change as small as this.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: That was like the one that we pulled in from Unfinished Business.
[Anna Callahan]: Just one quick question. Yep. Sometimes we say the council or council and sometimes we say we. That's probably fine.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, sure. So if you look under March 25th, we say council submitted, and later we say the council received, and then later we say we approved and we passed. Should we make it a little bit more consistent and either say the council or we?
[Anna Callahan]: I am happy either way. That's what I'd ask.
[Anna Callahan]: Motion to approve. Second.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So I am going to make a suggestion, which is that we use this not only as an opportunity to get feedback, but as an opportunity to educate. I found that at one point during the fall, it was incredibly educational for the people that I talked to, to actually see a pie graph of our budget and to understand which of the elements in that pie graph are things that are discretionary and which are things that we cannot change. And in fact, sometimes like insurance, which is our second budget item, our first is our school district and our second at 15% is insurance, that insurance in fact goes up. We can't even keep it at 15% because it goes up by 10% this year. So I would love it if we could include a little bit of education along with this and just have like a pie chart that shows our current budget. And maybe we can, I think this is the 2024, which is, you know, or 2020, whatever the fiscal year starts in, in, in the summer. And so I forget, is it the 2025 one, whichever is the current one. And I have one that's colored, but I think what I would want to do is gray out the sections that are not discretionary, just to educate people on what parts of the budget do we actually have any ability to increase or decrease on our own, so that people have some idea of like what our budget actually looks like. Once people see it, I think they often are like, oh, wow, like I had no idea. And they stop arguing about things like, you know, all the stuff in there that's like 0.5% of the budget, you know, they're less concerned with how much it costs to do these, you know, incredibly small departments that are very mighty in their ability to help our city.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. By the way, the Zoom is not responding. It's covering the whole screen here just so you know. What? Zoom is not responding. It's covering the whole screen so no one can see your screen anymore.
[Anna Callahan]: There we go. I'm sitting at home.
[Anna Callahan]: So I just have a question I'm excited to bring up in a public meeting so I can ask my fellow Councilors if anyone wants to work with me on this. Many years ago when I was the president of the board of a 432 person housing association, I did a participatory budgeting measure where I actually invited everyone who lived there to basically put in like they got to see the exact budget and they, you know, got to make their own adjustments to it. And it was advisory, but it got a lot of interest and it was very educational. And I wonder if any of my fellow city councilors would be interested in working with me to put together something similar that would allow our residents to really kind of dig into the budget and make their own recommendations as an advisory to our budgetary process.
[Anna Callahan]: I just want to have a co sponsor. So if there's one person that can work with me on it I can kind of put it together and then.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, exactly, like, put together, just somebody that we can put together a motion and then we can chit-chat about, like, how to put together the first draft so that when it comes to committee, we'll be able to... I'm personally happy to step in for that.
[Anna Callahan]: I mean, we're three members of the committee right now. Right. But I'm just looking for somebody. I just want to know who it is that I can work with. I think having one other co-sponsor and not two because we're all on this committee and it's going to come to this committee I think is best.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I would just add that the specifics of our city and the fact that we have, we don't have that many like giant apartment buildings, but we have a lot of like duplexes where one or both of those are rented out, it is super hard to reach those people. You just can't. It's very, very, very difficult.
[Anna Callahan]: That one.
[Anna Callahan]: I think that's great. And I'll provide, I'll bring my pie chart and I'll gray out the ones that are not, you know, actionable, not discretionary. Um, and we can vote. We like it. I should change colors and whatever.
[Anna Callahan]: To schedule our next meeting, this committee's next meeting for two weeks from now.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I just wanted to clarify. To me, it actually looks like there aren't very many changes. A lot of these are simply a comment saying that it is consistent with state law. So that is, you know, 1234567 just on the first page and almost all of the comments on the first page as well as in one of the comments. I might be wrong about that. But many of these what look like changes aren't. And I wonder, could we go over just the substantive changes first? Would that be okay?
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. You notice one thing as I'm looking, so just below that, after D before E, all city agents shall comply with any state regulation pertaining to reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare, not otherwise explicitly stated in this ordinance. And the change is all city employees and officials shall comply with any state or federal law. Clearly, we understand the current state of federal actors and potential for federal law changes. And I wonder, was that state regulation very specific to not include federal regulation when it was originally written? Is that something that we specifically want to keep and perhaps leave out federal law silently? Because I don't think that's going to get us in any trouble just to not include the words or federal.
[Anna Callahan]: I have something small, and I'm mostly just asking if this language means what I think it means. under the role of the police department. So the language changed from the police department of the city of Medford shall not to blah, blah, blah, no officer or employee of a law enforcement agency of the Commonwealth. And I'm not a lawyer, I'm more of a layperson in terms of legalese. To me, a law enforcement agent of the Commonwealth is a state police. So I think what we're trying to say is the Medford Police Department, and the new language does not say that anymore.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, why are we writing language for any random city in the Commonwealth? Like we're Medford, we should only be talking about Medford.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So my only thing about that is, I think in the city agent definition, it's kind of a little bit more encompassing. It says employee of the city, whether full-time or part-time, regular or seasonal, any intern or volunteer when acting on behalf of the city of Medford. And I kind of like that definition. And I feel like it's a little bit more encompassing. Is there a reason to not go with that one? No.
[Anna Callahan]: But shorten that, shorten it to that, just the beginning part of that.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I'm of two minds of the contractor part. I think we might need to check. I don't know what we need to check, but I'm sure that first part, and I think we're all agreed that not the grants and the award, people who got an award. So I think we're just in the middle section of the contract.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I also support and I'm curious about the idea of having height next to 93. So in that parcel furthest to the east. So I mentioned the answer to that question from the planners. I also want us to look at the parcel furthest to or the parcels furthest to the west. When I look at the other map that you provided a number of meetings ago that shows the actual Current zoning or not zoning but current like existing buildings that is marked as orange, which says condo conversion two to three family so I'm not sure exactly what buildings exist there at this moment that did not seem. to go drive with my recollection of what buildings are there. But like understanding what height is there right now would be helpful. It does, you know, that whole section abuts on multiple single family or like currently mostly single family places. So I'm a little bit curious about can we get more height close to 93 and maybe get something on the other side that's a little bit closer to match the residences that are just to the west and north of it.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm looking at the planning and permitting agenda from the 12th of February, which is an amazing one because it included a lot of maps, and this is one of those maps. It's just the one that shows like every parcel and what exists on that parcel, and it's marked as orange, which is condo conversion duty family. Not sure why.
[Anna Callahan]: I really appreciated those look at the heights and the shadows. The one that I was curious about was the Salem Street one. It does appear that all of the others covered where the shadows would be on the north side for Salem Street. How does it work as we're looking north of Salem Street? When we look at the housing that's north of Salem Street, and there's a road there, how does that? I think that wasn't covered. Almost everything else, it covers what happens. But those buildings, which we're changing on the left side that you're circling right now, what about the housing that is on the other side of that? That's what I'm curious about.
[Anna Callahan]: That's great. Thanks so much.
[Anna Callahan]: I am just curious that the cemetery lot is zoned as mixed use.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just had a question. I know that when I looked at one of the Medford Square master plans, it talked about very, very specific types of businesses that we are lacking in the square. And I should look it up. and go back and recall more exactly which types of businesses those were. But I think it was things like more restaurants and less insurance companies or something. Not that I want to pick on insurance companies or anything, but more of the places where people go and walk in and less of places where people don't actually have to walk into that store on a daily basis. So, I'm curious if that is something that we do with zoning, or if that is something like, is there a micro zoning that you do in a place like Medford squared? It took to sort of try to incentivize the kinds of businesses that we want that are to be in the center of the square. Or is that something that we rely upon our generally our planning department and our economic development director and those sorts of. people if we want to change the percentage of those types of businesses that we have in the square to make it a more vibrant and walkable square.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. That's actually incredibly helpful to hear what other communities do and that there is this possibility of, you know, like a economic district supported by a group of, you know, public and private, I suppose, might be a good name for it. That's great to know. And thanks so much for elaborating on the usefulness of zoning in this particular thing and how we actually do it, which is not through zoning, but really through our staff and our administration. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Um, I'm gonna say something somewhat similar. Um, This is not our specialty. We have a building department that it is their specialty. I don't quite understand why this has come to us. It seems like at a minimum, like, I don't know if this is the proper process that like, at some point, if we are the appeal authority, we are the final authority. Great. I think having, you know, the someone from the building department here would be incredibly helpful to understand the final issue. You know, I have not read any word in this large town. So On the face of it, I mean, you just want to change the sign. It seems pretty reasonable. But again, this is not our specialty. We are not the people who normally do this. So I would at least want to have at least a little someone from the building department chime in to understand why have they not approved this. So thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I guess my first question is, if this waits a week or two is that gonna be horrible like is there some is there some great urgency.
[Anna Callahan]: for clarifying that we are in fact the appropriate body for this to come to after the building department. Given that, I would actually prefer rather than paying the, I don't think we need to pay a legal team. I think that we want to honestly hear from the building department and whether they show up here or whether, you know, at the thing so we can ask them questions or whether, you know, we can have an understanding. Like, I read it and it's like, they just want to change what's on the side. Like, it seems like a no-brainer and I just want to understand from the building department, like, why is it that They can't like I've read the legalese, but like I would love to have the building department chime in.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I definitely agree in the need for us to support to find money to do these, the nexus study so that we can update the linkage fees especially for affordable housing which I think we should do first. I'm absolutely supportive of that, but I will not vote in favor of selling off public lands, which we'd never get back. when we have $28 million sitting in free cash, let alone the money that is in stabilization funds. I cannot understand why we are selling off public lands when we clearly have many times that amount of money in free cash that we do not know what that is planned to be used for. So I will not vote to sell off public lands at this point in time.
[Anna Callahan]: First, I completely agree that one-time expenses, just like this nexus fee, is exactly what Free Cash is designed for. It is what it should be used for. We have plenty of free cash. We should be using free cash for this. Once you sell public lands, it is gone forever. I have yet to see that there has been any that we're going to have to sort of brainstorming or real in depth study of what could be done with those parcels. Uh it isn't simply that there could be permanently affordable housing on them. There are many other things that can be done with public lands. Um and II really urge my city Councilors to not rush through to sell public lands when it has not been thought through. And to urge the mayor to pay for the next study as soon as
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I do support many of the other items that other folks have brought up. I'm just going to talk about the two that I put in that have been projects that I have been working on for quite a few months. So one of them is about the volunteer tree planting program. I have been working with folks in Trees Medford and also talking to tons of volunteers about this program. We did have the DPW commissioner come in to the committee to speak about what it would take to get this program off the ground. And let me just say a little bit about why it's important that, you know, we do lose about twice as many trees as we plant every year. And yes, we live, we, you know, a third of Medford is the fells. We have lots of trees. I think if you you know, live in the kind of northern part of Ward 6, you feel like there's lots and lots of trees, but if you live south of the river, you really, and especially if you've lived there for a long time, I talk to many people who say that they have lived on their street for decades, and it used to be a canopy of trees, and you look now, and it is barren. This depresses home prices. It causes us to have heat islands, makes people pay more for heating in the winter, for cooling in the summer. There's so many reasons. It doesn't clean our air from pollution. There's so many reasons why we need to be replacing these trees. Anecdotally, you can just see on my street, not that my street is any more important than anyone's street, but on my street, you can see these little squares where there used to be a tree planted in front of every house. And now, on the whole block, there is one remaining tree. So I really believe that with our small budget in Medford, with our small budget and our mighty residents, mighty in their willingness to volunteer, I think that we can solve this problem with very little addition to the budget. And we can do it through activating our community and getting people involved in community events, meeting their neighbors, And the DPW commissioner said that all it would take would be one staffer, like a halftime staffer, who was a volunteer coordinator. So that's my first request. My second request is a halftime person involved in housing to run a home sharing program. And again, I've been meeting with our housing person and other, you know, many other residents. You know, we've been meeting for months. We have met with people who run the sort of national home sharing organization that helps people start home sharing programs in their cities. I'll tell you a little bit about the idea behind home sharing. In our city, according to our senior center, I hope I am not incorrect if I'm not wrong. What they said is that we have a larger percentage of seniors, people over 65 than we have ever had in Medford. And the reality is that many of those people live in houses that have four or five bedrooms. And As I have talked to seniors, both of the senior center, you know, as I was knocking on doors people that I, you know, interact with some of these folks that I've been meeting with many many seniors here in Medford would like to downsize or they are worried about aging in place. but they either, the rent is getting hard to, sorry, they could use a little bit more financial security or they need a little help around the house. We are not the only city facing this kind of issue. It is really interlocked with our housing crisis because 50 years ago, we had 9,000 more people living in the city with less housing. So our problem is that we have fewer people per bedroom. We have one person living in a three-, four-, five-bedroom house, and that isn't how it used to be, and that isn't how it could be. So we can really help both our seniors to help them to age in place help them to be financially comfortable. And we can also help our housing crisis by helping to solve this problem. And what a lot of other cities are doing is they're starting a home sharing program and it's a matchmaking service a very hand holding personalized matchmaking service that ensures that older folks who have extra bedrooms can find a person who usually it's some mixture of financial payment. They call them hosts and guests, kind of like Airbnb. It's a mixture of financial payment and service. So they can help take out the trash. They can help do a few things around the house for someone who is older and needs a little bit of help. I think this program could be really successful in Medford and it could solve a lot of our sort of interlocking problems that we have that are basically because of demographics. And so that's something that again, I think would be a very big impact for a very small amount of money. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I guess I'm, like, curious if we are suggesting increases in the budget in six places and don't cut the budget anywhere. I'm just curious, how do we, like, you know, how do we grok that? Because that doesn't add up to me unless there's, like, obviously the money from the Prop 2.5 is spoken for. Yeah. So... for level funding, everything, and then we're asking for increases. Like, I'm trying to understand how we get to that.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks Um, just a super quick actually make the decisions about reducing line items. But I think that when we're like we we also can't tell the mayor what to add either, you know, and and so I think this is our opportunity to do that. And I would just say that I I think there is something to be said for us making those thoughts known in some way. And I don't know, for folks who've been on this city council longer, if this forum is exactly the way to do that or if there are better ways to do that. But I do hope that keep everything the same and then add all of these other things. I suspect that is less likely to get us any of those extra things. And, you know, this is our opportunity to make these kinds of requests. So that's, that's my thinking. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, just a super quick question. The next study is the linkage fees related one.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wanted to add my support for the solicitor, which is already on there. And also this study for the linkage fees, even though it's one time, I would love to see it added. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: I will happily third that with my support, thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: you. I'm just a little curious about the part that's near Magoon Square. And mostly, I apologize, because I was looking for a previous map that you had that showed like the existing heights and structures. And I apologize, I can't find that right now. But I'm just curious for that urban residential to at the very bottom of the map is that one that's that's, you know, just just north of Bow Street, The furthest south wine red urban residential. Sorry. Yeah, the furthest south wine red one. I'm just slightly curious, like whether that is like existing buildings, like similar to existing buildings, or if this is like where we're going to hope for growth because it is close to T-stops down there and Boone Square and everything.
[Anna Callahan]: No, I totally get that. I'm actually just asking about the existing buildings.
[Anna Callahan]: No, I think either way is great because it is close to some of these MTA stations that are not in Medford, but are clearly affecting, we should be building there. I was just a little bit curious, thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Go ahead. I know no one ever likes whatever colors you choose. I apologize, but I do wonder if it would be possible to make the like mixed use and commercial, you know, somehow make them like the neighborhood residential being like yellow, green and red, like all possible primary colors like is a little hard for me to tell where is residential versus where is, you know, there's possibility for commercial and I don't know if there's a way to make that slightly easier to grok. I have to keep going back and forth. It just doesn't make sense in my brain. If it's not too much work.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, thanks. We had a really great meeting. We invited the parents of students with disabilities to come and speak. We discussed possibilities of how Medford can provide more activities for their children, covered many things between having it through the rec department and having it through more of a citywide effort. And I think that was the discussion and we're moving forward with trying to support those children here in Medford.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just want to express how excited I am that we are including green score in our zoning. I think it's going to help us meet our climate goals. I live relatively close to Vistacab and it is an absolute tree and greenness desert. It is an incredibly this incredible heat island and deeply unpleasant to walk by. And I think that having this and especially the way that we have incorporated into Mystic Avenue and the way that we will be able to incorporate it into all of our zoning is just incredibly important. And I'm very excited about it. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I have a very simple question, which is on this request. It does say that the facilities assessment is being conducted by Habib Associates, who is an approved on-call house doctor for the city. And I just, I will say, found that a little bit confusing. Do we have an on-call house doctor? which my understanding from the internet is an actual doctor, like who works for a hospital or an institution, which could be the city, and a doctor is conducting a facilities assessment. I just didn't seem to, I was wondering if there's a typo.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm not gonna speak on that motion, but I'll speak on the more general topic of the charter?
[Anna Callahan]: It is late at night. I apologize to my fellow city councilors. I'm going to keep you up for another few minutes. I have been very interested in voting systems for decades. I studied the mathematics of voting systems while getting my undergraduate degree in math. And so I think I really want to take this opportunity since I haven't previously spoken very much about the charter to talk about why I am in favor of the four districts and five at large system for the city council. So if you look at both national and international organizations that study voting systems. It is well understood that multi seat systems are better than single seat systems and within single seat elections that first past the post is one of the worst possible electoral systems. I'm going to catch people up on what these terms mean single seat versus multi seat. So in a single-seat election, people in a localized geographic area, usually called a district or a ward, they only get to vote for one person, who usually is required to live in that ward. And only one person represents those people. So ward representation is single-seat representation. In a multi-seat election, people in a geographic area, like a city or a state, get to vote for multiple people, and multiple people represent them. So at-large representation is multi-seat representation. I want to talk about the terms proportional representation versus winner-take-all representation. So first, all single-seat elections are by definition winner-take-all elections. But multi-seat elections can be proportional, or they can be winner-take-all. So if you think about how the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries work, and you may not know how they work, but I'm going to tell you how they work. In the Democratic presidential primary, delegates in each state are allocated proportionally to the candidates based on the statewide vote. So if a candidate wins 40% of the vote, that candidate gets 40% of the delegates from that state. It's proportional. In most states in the Republican primary, all of a state's delegates are allocated to the candidate who receives the majority of votes in that state's primary election. Or I think it's actually the plurality of votes in that state's election. So if you were to get 52% of the vote in that state, you would get 100% of the delegates from that state. That's called winner-take-all. And the third set of terms I'm going to talk about are first-past-the-post, runoff elections, and rank-choice voting. There are lots of different ways to run a single-seat election. But these three are the only ones that really we do in America. So I'll talk about those. In single seat elections in America, you most often see what's called first past the post. So everybody votes for one, whoever gets the most votes wins, even if you have five candidates and the highest vote getter only gets 25% of the vote. That means the 75% of people who voted for those other four candidates don't get their preferred choice. Now, if you have a runoff election, then, and you have five candidates running and one of them, the top voter gets only 25%, then there's a runoff later with the top two vote getters. And during that runoff, since there's only two, somebody is gonna get over 50% of the vote. Ranked choice voting is also called instant runoff voting because voters rank the candidates in their order of preference. And essentially you're asking the voter to tell you their took their vote and their runoff vote on the same ballot. And that's why it's called instant runoff voting. And so what I'm going to talk about is how groups and researchers who study these different voting systems, what they see as outcomes for these different voting systems, or at least for the one considered to get the best representation and the one considered to get the worst representation. Multi-seat proportional representation is associated with a greater likelihood that each constituent has at least one elected official who agrees with them on policy. It is not possible to gerrymander in this system. Minority representation tends to improve under proportional multi-seat systems. They tend to be more competitive with more seats in contention per district. They create space for more than two parties, and they lower polarization. They tend to have less extremism in the general population. And the elected officials in multi-seat proportional representation systems tend to be more likely to problem solve with people from other parties or platforms, and they tend to maintain democratic norms. Winner-take-all elections, which only, sorry, winner-take-all single-seat elections, have a greater likelihood that a constituent's policy beliefs are not represented by their elected official. They are susceptible to gerrymandering. They uniquely disadvantage racial, ethnic, religious, and other political minorities, especially when they are not concentrated geographically. They also reduce political competition. They create safe zones by creating safe districts. They increase effective polarization, which is also called negative partisanship. And that means that voters from opposing parties don't just disagree with one another. They actually come to believe that people, voters from the other party are bad people. And I will say, I've read about this particular thing, negative partisanship, because it is an indication when you have high negative partisanship, it is an indication of a failing democracy. So we are beginning to have in America high levels of this effective polarization or negative partisanship, which is not a good sign. They are They're high stakes elections. Politicians are worse at problem solving. They're worse at maintaining democratic norms. And voters and politicians who lose in win or take all elections are less likely to trust democratic institutions and more likely to resort to violence. I'll just take one quote from one of the organizations that does this kind of research, the organization called Protect Democracy. It says, researchers are especially concerned about the use of winner-take-all elections in highly polarized and diverse societies like the United States. As one global study of democratization concluded, winner-take-all electoral systems are ill-advised for countries with deep ethnic, regional, religious, or other emotional and polarizing divisions. So if you've fallen asleep because of the wonkiness of all these terms, I'm going to tell you the conclusion. So this is the part to really pay attention to. Single-seat, first-past-the-post elections are known, according to experts and researchers, to be among the worst possible methods for getting people appropriately represented in politics. I'm going to rephrase it. Single-seat first-past-the-post elections, otherwise known as ward or district seats, are, according to most experts, known to be among the worst possible methods for political representation. Okay, I'm gonna guess that a lot of progressive heads are spinning around right now because this is not what you hear in progressive circles, right? We've been told that wards are better than at-large. So why is it that in America, research shows that ward-based is a better system at the city council level, right? And I think there are two important reasons why. One is the distinction between identity-based representation and policy-based representation. And the other one is historical redlining. So in America, we have a skewed understanding of what representation is. We think that to be represented, you elect someone similar to you. To have women's issues represented, you elect a woman. To have black or LGBTQ or immigrant issues represented, you elect someone from one of those groups. If you want to be represented in your city, you elect someone who lives in your ward. This is a fundamentally different understanding from what people in other countries understand to be the essence of representation. Now, I believe, and people in many other countries believe, that true representation politically is when you elect someone who is going to vote the way that you want them to vote on policy, because that is the job that you are electing them to do. The argument for wards is based almost entirely on an identity politics viewpoint. And this is also why most of the time in cities across America, it is typically Democrats and progressives who want more wards, and Republicans and pro-establishment people who want more at-large representation. Research on wards looks for outcomes based upon identity. You have to understand that ward representation research also exists in the reality of American cities that have had historic redlining, meaning that we force minorities to be concentrated in certain districts. From an identity politics perspective, wards hold up pretty well in research in cities that are highly geographically segregated. people from these historically underrepresented identities are in fact elected more often in these cities. There's not a lot of research on whether it's true from a policy perspective. In terms of policy representation, it would be good for more research to be done. But it's important to note that when minorities are spread throughout the population, word representation does not even do a good job of bringing in different identities. And in fact, it has shown to be the opposite. Multi-seat representation does a better job of electing representatives from minority communities than single-seat districts. So I think that's something that's important to understand. I think I will go ahead and stop here. Those are my main reasons why I'm very happy with the idea that we are going to have a nice even mix of award representation and at-large representation. I wrote a blog article for people who want more detail and who want to understand a little bit better and have some insight into what I actually have spent a lot of my time as my day job doing for the last eight years in terms of reinvigorating democracy. I'm not going to bore you with that here. It's late at night. It's, in fact, not even late at night. It's early in the morning. But you can see my blog for those things. I wanted to say a couple of things. A final point, one is just that most cities in Massachusetts have larger wards than we do. And there are many cities, I believe Somerville and Lowell are among them, that have wards that are twice our size, which basically means they are wards that are equal to the size of the district in the current city council proposal. The other thing I want to say is I find it quite frustrating that the dialogue in the city council meetings has turned into this. If you're for eight wards and three at large, then you are a good and righteous and virtuous person. But if you vote for four districts and five at large, then you're an evil, power-hungry, and dishonest person. And I want to mark this as that rhetoric is exactly the kind of polarization that we have come to in America, because we don't have very good electoral systems, and we have this, you know, effective political of a negative partisanship problem, right, this is what these things lead to. I am hoping that we can all try to to understand that we don't need to accuse others of being evil and bad, and hopefully also understand that the difference betweenโthese are both hybrid systemsโthe difference between 8 and 3 and 4 and 5 is not a gigantic difference. I personally think that 4 and 5 is in fact better representation for all the reasons that I said, and I would love it if we can, you know, try and tone down a little bit the rhetoric that paints people as being bad people. So that's what I have to say. Thanks so much.
[Anna Callahan]: It's about number of constituents per councilor, I believe.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Hey there. So thanks so much for all the work that you've done and all the folks you've talked to and everything that's, you know, I know there's a lot going into this. I had a question as I'm looking over the roles, powers and duties, and please tell me if I'm misreading this, but it does look like The, the four essential roles are all related to Medford specifically and I just know from some of the folks I've talked to that they felt that their hands were tied and they were told they were not allowed to discuss human rights, anywhere outside the city. So I just, I wanted to raise that and see what you think as the person working on this document, if you've had those kinds of discussions, you know, maybe I'm wrong and that's, you know, that's not what this does. So I would just love to get your feedback on that, just Councilor Tang.
[Anna Callahan]: I was actually just thinking, instead of deleting the words in Medford, I think it is appropriate that it be about Medford, but I think maybe there could be a, you know, letter E or something that is, you know, sort of, I don't know how to phrase this, but like an outlet for discussion of, human rights issues that affect the people of Medford, even if those issues are not occurring in Medford. Because there are, you know, I mean, look, just thinking about the, you know, the great desire here in Medford for a ceasefire earlier last year, that there were many families here who were directly affected, directly affected by what was happening abroad. So I think at least the ability for them to discuss those things and to be a place where people in Medford can go to raise issues of human rights that are affecting them personally. I don't know how to phrase it, but I think having that as, you know, one thing that they are explicitly allowed to discuss, I think might be a benefit, but I'm open to people's opinions as well.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, thank you. And I did have one other question if I may, and that's about the question of whether the city solicitor is the council or the commission has access to other council. I mean, I'm inclined without hearing more about it, I'm sort of inclined to, say that it probably should be the city solicitor or the council of the city because they are a commission of the city. But I would be interested in understanding a little bit more at least of how that would be paid for. I mean, anyone can go and find another lawyer that they happen to know or get some advice from somebody else, that's fine. But if we're talking about it being like paid legal counsel, I would wanna have some idea of where that funding is coming from.
[Anna Callahan]: Would you mind telling me where that is? I'm looking for it.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks, I just wanted to chime in and thank Faringer. I read that whole part and I believe that you're quite correct that that we're already covered. So Councilor Tseng, no need to add anything. I think that language covers, thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I mean, I feel similarly. I suspect that if we do strike that first sentence, then the mayor will have an opinion and, you know, we can like strike it as a suggestion. But if the mayor comes back, I'm not concerned that this will ever be used to say that they cannot. use some other legal opinion. I think the fact that we have discussed it here and that we are saying it is our intention that that second sentence means that they are allowed to seek other counsel, I think is fine. So I'm not, I'm not concerned about it. And I think either way is probably fine. And even if we send it to the mayor with only one sentence, only the second sentence, she may send it back with the first one added. So, which I think would also be fine. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, no, that was that was not intentional.
[Anna Callahan]: Would you mind rereading the motion back? Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to give my own little bit of report back on this. I think my take on it was slightly different. I did, you know, the first interaction I had with someone after the official hour was over was someone who said that she felt that the whole tone was very angry and that she, you know, felt uncomfortable. And so, being a person who has done other listening sessions, you know, with other groups. I know we have all done some of them. But my hope is that for the next one that I attend, I will be more facilitating. I will come with, you know, some visuals on topics that can be discussed. I do think that when one or two people dominate the conversation with angry rhetoric, it makes it very difficult for other people to discuss the things that they need. And I felt that the conversation that started the second the hour was over were actually conversations that were not pet projects. These were the real things that people are concerned about. I heard people talk about their need for housing as a senior. The things that I heard over and over and over at the doors that to me are the primary issues that did not get discussed during that hour. It was things like the lack of transportation for elderly people, that there used to be something called Megan Transport, and there used to be other ways that they could get around the city, but those things are not there anymore. So they, you know, were wondering what we can do about that. And then some talked about housing. And, you know, as I mentioned, some of the things that I'm working on, the home sharing, bringing home sharing, matching service to Medford. And I talked about co-housing, and I talked about, you know, other Like the RFP and how the hope is that that will have a lot of smaller units that older people can move into because they talked about wanting to downsize. So these were the conversations that I think are the, the more general ones that many, many seniors want to talk about, and the ones that we ended up talking about for an hour were more the pet projects of like, my street has a pothole in this one place, and I want to know about that pothole, or I want to continue talking about Salem Street, when we already have public forums for talking about the Salem Street zoning. That should be something, it's fine if somebody wants to bring it up and talk about it for three minutes, but that shouldn't dominate the conversation at these listening sessions because it prevents us from hearing from the nine-tenths of people who are in attendance who aren't there for that particular issue. We already have forums for talking about that particular issue. My plan is that I will be facilitating more, And then I did take some of these issues and following up with city staff. I talked to the economic development director and talking about the RFP, talking about parking near the senior center. I'll be following up with the planning department. I followed up with DPW as well with some more general questions about when do they have plans that they post on the website, like the engineering department actually posted last year, two different plans, like a crack ceiling plan and I believe like a pothole filling plan. And just when were we gonna be able to see those? Because people do wanna know when these things are going, like which streets are gonna be done next. And so I was kind of looking for a timeline for that. And just generally following up with city staff on some of the specific questions. that were coming up during that session. So I do think it was a good session, but I think that we can do better in terms of our ability to make sure that residents who are showing up at these feel comfortable, that they don't feel like it's Like they are shut out by a small group that has a particular agenda, but that we are actively asking questions about the things we have an idea that, you know, seniors care about or any listening session that it might be, whether it's like parents or folks at West Medford Community Center, or no matter who it is, we might have some facilitated questions where we are asking people, hey, we'd love to know your opinion about, you know, housing. Like, how is housing going? We want to know your opinion about transportation around the city. We want to know your opinion, you know, about, like, how is this affecting you in your life? So, thank you so much for letting me give a little bit of a longer report back on that. I'm excited that we're doing these. And I think the more of them we do, the better we'll get. And I'm really excited to make them places where residents feel comfortable and welcomed and that they are, their input is, you know, that they can also give input. And we have kind of a step up, step back, understanding that these are for everyone to contribute equally. Thanks. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Hey, thanks. I am going to yes and. I'm excited about what Councilor Lazzaro was saying. And as often happens with me, I didn't mention that, yes, of course, we also will listen to concerns that people come with. I think maybe we either have the first half or the second half of the listening session dedicated to that. so that there's a specific time that is like, hey, we're going to ask you questions. And then there's a time that's like, hey, you ask us questions. But I think it's rare that elected officials do the part that I'm talking about, where they're actively asking people, hey, I actually want to know how housing is affecting your life. And that's a piece that I think is really important. So I would love to have that piece added to what I think what we have been doing, which is more of an office hours. Office hours is like anybody can show up and they ask you whatever they want. But I think the listening session part which to me is like finding out from like asking targeted questions and hoping that everyone there can talk about their own experience to give you a picture of how our policies are affecting people. That is a part that I would love to add as a yes and thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: I mean, it's coverage both both sides, right? So it covers the city side and then also the resident side of of the pipes that they determine are lead, which is probably far fewer than we think.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, neither. It's the city is going to do all the work.
[Anna Callahan]: And the city pays for it.
[Anna Callahan]: I actually really appreciated that it was formatted properly because it made it look so much more professional. I did read it. I actually thought it was fine. So I'm good on the newsletter. I will happily vote in favor.
[Anna Callahan]: Which might I add was the thing that I proposed. dearly similar to the things I proposed.
[Anna Callahan]: They were super mad until someone on the other side proposed it and then they loved it, exactly as I said in that council meeting.
[Anna Callahan]: You remember I was like, I was like,
[Anna Callahan]: Never mind. I said what I said. And now I said it.
[Anna Callahan]: I move to approve with edits.
[Anna Callahan]: Second.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Yeah, I just want to give my kind of perspective on things. First of all, if this were coming into Yeah. Yep. So if this were coming into, because I was not on the governance committee, if this were coming into this body, whether it was eight and three or five and four, four and five, I guess, either way, I would vote in favor. I believe that we want a combination of more localized members as well as at-large members. I think that is what I am for. So either way, whichever of those it was, I would be voting in favor of it. I think it is also fair to say that the survey that the study committee did included a question about combination of wards and at large. It did not ever ask whether that should be four districts or eight wards. A little odd because they are recommending four for school committee and eight for city council. It seems like maybe you include that in your survey so that you can get that information. I personally don't believe that we have any idea how many people in Medford would prefer the eight wards versus how many people in Medford would prefer four districts. I think I can look at the numbers right now, people who want a combination of wards and at large, and you know, I get it that ward in Medford means a very specific thing. I think our wards in Medford are quite small compared to a lot of the other cities. So combination of some sort of localized and at large is 60% of people. I think that is what we are voting on. To stay as is, meaning all at large, 18% of people think we should stay all at large. 17% of people think we should be all wards. you have approximately the same number of people who think it should stay like 20%, 20% almost. It's like 18%, 17% say that it should be all at large, 17% say it should be all ward, and 60% say it should be a combination. I think there's a decent argument to say that something that is near half and half is maybe something that people in Medford want. It's unfortunate that we really have no idea whether the community would prefer eight or four, because that was never asked. So I just want to push back a little bit on this. We know absolutely certainly that everyone in Medford wants eight words. I don't think that that question was ever asked or answered. And, uh, yeah, like I said, I would be in favor of mixed whether it was eight or four. Um, I think going to a slightly larger council is good too. Um, so that's just my position.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I actually wanted to bring up a totally different topic, the topic of ranked choice voting for single seat elections. So that would be any districts or wards as well as the mayor. And I apologize that I did not attend the final and I don't know whether this was discussed. I was not on the committee. I did try to attend the other two meetings, but I would love to raise the topic. Um, and here. From folks about the topic of ranked choice voting.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So I have downloaded from the state of Massachusetts, a database that includes the sizes of all wards and precincts of every city and town in Massachusetts. And I will say it looks like most cities, and of course we're only looking at cities because towns have a totally different government structure. So we're only looking at cities.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, this database includes all towns and cities.
[Anna Callahan]: All municipalities in all of Massachusetts.
[Anna Callahan]: sadly, this particular database, I wish I'd done this before, because I would have marked them as cities or towns. So this particular database does not in fact tell me which ones are cities, which ones are towns. But as I am looking through it, I've gone up through letter N, and I have not yet found any cities that have wards as small as our wards. So far, everything looks about twice as large, one and a half times as large, three times as large in terms of population, just the population. So, I mean, look at Chelsea. And some of these are considerably smaller cities than we are in population. I thought that really matters, right? But it looks like Chelsea's are twice the size of ours. Chicopee actually would be similar. Everett, we're looking one and a half times, not quite one and a half times. Somerville are twice the size. Fall River. more than one and a half times. I'm just looking, I understand that people want local representation. And I understand that we are unusual in Massachusetts. And I made the argument last time that in other states, we are not at all unusual in terms of the representation that we have, either the current representation that we have in terms of being at large, because all over the country, that still is the same. But I think the point I'm trying to make is the argument that we should definitely be wards, because that is just like all the other Massachusetts cities. And again, I would love to dig a little bit more into this database. So I'm not sort of trying to understand at a glance, like, am I making sure we're looking at, I think all of those I mentioned are cities and not towns. And I would want to double check that those are in fact the ones that are, that the size of the wards are as listed, the things that are listed as wards, though they each have like a person per ward. But it does look like our wards are smaller than most cities wards. So I just want to make that point.
[Anna Callahan]: I apologize, I gotta correct myself. Chicopee would be smaller.
[Anna Callahan]: And I haven't dug deeply into this. So this is really just kind of trying to get a sense.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Thanks for all this work that you're doing. And I'm hoping, can you give us a little bit more of the big picture? Because I know that we have like 125 year old water lines throughout the city and it's hundreds of millions of dollars for us to replace them all. Can you fit this into the context of that? I know that this is a specific APA project that has a deadline, but give us a little bit of context in terms of how does it fit into our sort of longer term plans to replace these aging pipes?
[Anna Callahan]: Is it safe to say that like, this is just the very end of like the sort of roots or tree branches or whatever you want to call it, of the water system. So at this point, because of the deadline and the funding, we're going to be working at the ends of the system. And that after that, when that deadline is no longer pressing, that we will move on to working to the rest of the aging water system.
[Anna Callahan]: Correct.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks, just one super quick question, and I think you already said it, but if you can repeat, when would this work be completed? Approximately, do we have any ideas?
[Anna Callahan]: Can I ask a question? So I'm specifically thinking of some constituents who have reached out to me and like begged me for any sort of resources that they can do that they can possibly get for replacing their lines because they know they have lead in their water. Do you have any thoughts on should they just pay to do it themselves? If they replace their part, but then the other part isn't replaced, is that then possibly going to be worse? What should they do, given that they're concerned right now?
[Anna Callahan]: It's so incredibly helpful.
[Anna Callahan]: Great.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Yes, I wish there were much more that we could do. It is really, I believe, quite ridiculous that we cannot actually get this without a home rule petition, which is almost certainly going to be denied. We should be getting real estate taxes from these large institutions. A master plan is really small potatoes, and it is quite frustrating that we have to do a homeown petition, and it is unlikely to be approved, but I am certainly in favor of this homeown petition. I hope that it passes. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So, I appreciate so much that you're here again, I was there at the library with you and I was with, you know, with one of your very first meetings with Councilor Leming. I, I really have heard from you guys very clearly that this is not about just rec programs. I loved the way that you phrased it about it including restaurants and places of worship and meetings and events, live entertainment, holidays, employment, the library. There's so many things that we could be doing. My volunteer team has found a volunteer who is a specialist in special ed, both in her work and in her education. And what I'm hoping we can do is set up a meeting where the group and this volunteer and I can all meet together because I believe that she has volunteered to do 20 to 40 hours over the next few months, and budget season is coming up. So if she can pull on all these threads and find out and do the legwork that the mayor is gonna want to hear, about what this is actually going to look like. She can do that. She wants to volunteer to do that, then we'll be able to have something that is much more concrete for the mayor to approve of in budget season. So this is where I think this volunteer is going to be really incredibly helpful. is to hear all of the ways, all of the ideas that you guys have and the ways that Medford could be like this, you know, the inclusion specialist that you want to be housed somewhere in the city, the ways that that person could bring these kinds of activities. And that way, she can do the legwork to ensure that the mayor feels comfortable with funding this position and also where in the budget and where this person should be housed. I think having that volunteer do that legwork before budget season is the way that we're gonna be able to have this placed in the best place that you guys feel comfortable with it being funded in the city of Medford.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, I think my suggestion has been that we meet with her. Well, I would love to see her here. I don't know if she's coming tonight. I think we need to have like a deeper, like her hearing this meeting would be great, but having a deeper discussion where she can really dig in and ask tons of questions to you guys, that's going to be a lot deeper than this meeting. Great. But let's set up a meeting where I can be there, she can be there, we can make sure that we get this off. Okay.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wanted a super quick clarification. It sounds like you're saying that if we don't do anything differently, and this is a UR1, but there's a lot of single family homes, they will not be able to build an ADU. And I just want to have a little check in, maybe I missed it, but that we can, in fact, write something into the zoning to ensure that they will be able to do an ADU by right?
[Anna Callahan]: I just want to make sure that we're not like allowing ADUs in all the single family places. But if there happens to be a single family home in a, you know, zoned something that's not single family, that they're not then not allowed to do the same thing all the other single families are. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I so appreciate you looking into this and especially into where they these small commercial districts already exist in Medford. I will say as we have gone through this whole zoning process, I think the thing I am most excited about is what I have been calling community mixed use, which I think is exactly what we're talking about. The idea, and I phrased it as, you know, within a half mile of every home, having a corner where people can go and there would be a space that was co-working by day, community events by night, there would be a cafe, there could be a bookstore, you know, a small grocery. So all of these things, and I love the reframing that I a five minute walk to an ice cream shop. Everyone should be five minutes from ice cream. So these things I think to me are what I'm the most excited is to really bring walkability and the neighborhood feeling and the idea that you're going to get to know your neighbors in this specific place that really is designed for you to meet the people who live on your block, two blocks over near you. And in part, what I am really hoping for is as I talk to people who have lived in Medford for a very long time, one of the things that they don't like about the changes that are happening is that they have known their neighbors their whole lives. And they really feel this break with the people who are new here who aren't getting to know their neighbors. That that is, is troublesome and, and I personally agree as someone who has moved often. I wish that I knew my neighbors better. I wish there was somewhere that I could go I mean for me it's Colette bakery, because, you know, we pass it every day that we go to school and so we stop in and we know people there. But I think everyone should have a place, whether they have lived here for 50 years, or whether they just moved here, they should be able to walk somewhere that they will have an opportunity to get to know their neighbors. So this is very exciting to me. And among the uses, I would love for us to consider children's and teens activities. Because I think that is also something that I hear often from residents is that we don't have enough activities for families. And if there were something that were walkable, especially teenagers, that's like a great opportunity to have something where teenagers can go and hang out, it's a safe space. where they're a few blocks from home, they're very close by, and yet it's also designed for them. So those are the kinds of considerations that I'm thinking of. And I'm hoping, I apologize if this was already sent out, but I got the full color maps of the the proposed zoning and the existing use, but I didn't get the map of this one that has these existing commercial spots in the neighborhoods, and I would love to have that if that's possible.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. And I did want to just respond quickly. I think the reason why this is one of the more major changes that is happening in the residential zoning is this very specific spot, because it was single family too. And now we are changing it to urban residential. And the reason is because there's a brand new T stop that, you know, 10 years ago, did we even know 10 years ago that it was going to come to there? Maybe around 10 years ago? We hoped. But the zoning is 37 years old. So like 37 years ago when this zoning was written, that T stop was not even a twinkling in the eye. of the person who ended up planning the T stop. So this is why this particular neighborhood is seeing such a change is because it really is right where that T stop is. And the whole rest of the city is going to see much less change. So I do understand that this, you know, for folks who live in this neighborhood, you know, we may want to have more discussions and really talk to them. And this is also why I was, you know, wanted to deeply ask these questions about like I want to make sure that single family homes, people who only have single family homes in this particular neighborhood are able to do with their homes, what every other single family homeowner can do in Medford, that I think is very important that they be able to do, you know, an ad you that they be able to, you know, put on a porch or whatever it is that they want to do to their single family home. I do not want people to, I think we already have too much turnover in this city, you know, because of the skyrocketing housing prices and the pressure on people to, you know, sell and move somewhere cheaper. I want to make sure that the folks who currently live here is the people that we're serving. But this is this one neighborhood is going to be the spot that looks like in the zoning in terms of the residential neighborhoods does get the most change, and it is purely because of that T-stop.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. First, I really want to thank Councilor Lazzaro, of course, for bringing this forward and working with residents. I do want to thank the residents. Their letter is incredibly well thought out. The requests they have made are well thought out. They have gotten many, many, many signatures for people signing on to this. So they've done a lot of organizing work. I think, and I completely agree with Councilor Lazzaro that it is, incredibly frustrating that deaths, injuries, accidents continue to happen, and we do not have the ability to have the control that our residents would like us to have over these roads. You know, even just in the question of like whether signage is put up saying what the speed limit is the correct speed limit so you know even small things small requests go unanswered. I wanted to ask a little bit of a procedural question I hope it's okay. This is by no means to not say that this is an important topic but. Is it actually allowed for motions to be put in remembrances, and I'm only wondering because I think there may be people in the community who would want to know about this and might want to speak on this topic but they wouldn't look in remembrances for promotions that are happening. And my only suggestion, like I've been thinking about whether. It would be useful. I know there's been an email thread with more data about the state roads and accidents happening there. There is data online that we can see about injuries, deaths, accidents happening on the state roads. That data is available to us online. And I was wondering if we might think about putting this either in a committee to then go to City Council, but having Todd Blake, who's our traffic guy or anyone else that that folks think is the appropriate person to talk to us about navigating our relationship with DCR and what we can maybe provide, is there anything that we can do to push DCR to take action more quickly? So I guess there's, like, should we move this to committee? Can these motions be done in a remembrance? And then... I had one other suggestion, which is wondering if city councilors can sign on to this letter, if that would be more impactful for us also to sign on to the letter to maybe send to our state delegation.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. This is a little bit more of a general question about this whole section. And I just, I do have a question for the chair of the study committee who I so appreciate being here in person. I didn't see any survey questions about strong mayor versus weak mayor or about the strength of the mayor. My understanding is we have one of the strongest mayoral sort of systems in the whole state. and country. And I'm just curious if there was discussion among the community that you heard how much of the, you know, whether this. was talked about on the commission. And specifically, I'm really talking about appointments, both department heads, as well as boards of commissions, the budget. And it just comes up in here because of the ability of the mayor to veto you know, anything coming out of the City Council. So I'm just curious kind of how the sort of strong Mayor Week Mayor fit into the discussions both internally within the committee as well as more broadly within the public.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Just a super quick question about we did pass a budget ordinance and I know that the charter basically is a that takes precedence over ordinances in general. I'm curious how you might see this piece of the charter and the ordinance that we passed as interacting with each other. I mean, you may not know about the ordinance. The ordinance basically lays out a timeline for when the mayor will provide certain information and different meetings that the state council will have with department heads to understand their individual budgets. So it has this more details, and I don't really know if the actual dates are probably not identical to these, but I'm just curious if you have an understanding of how that, would that ordinance kind of be washed away or would that ordinance just be assumed to be fine unless it's specifically against the charter?
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan, sorry, I'm still working on the mics. I don't have a motion exactly but I would, I think it's probably easiest to just keep it in this committee. I don't think there's current urgency because of the state that we live in. So I would, I would say we just keep it in this committee and then we take it up next month when we've got the legal review and go from there.
[Anna Callahan]: As long as we have finished and everyone has spoken, I would move that we adjourn.
[Anna Callahan]: Make sure you go to ours.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I, myself, am very excited that we're going to have some meetings about zoning that are not in this room. Going out, you know, where the people are, places that people feel more comfortable. I think that's really great. I get that we are under-resourced, but I appreciate Councilor Scarpelli's push for us to really do more and to do our best effort to get all this information out to people. And that being said, I do want to make a comment that we have been, am I correct, 37 years without zoning changes? Over 30 years. I think it's closer to 40, yeah. Close to 40. Not deciding to not change anything is a decision, and the world changes and the demographics of our city changes and coven happens and you know things happen in the world the.com bust in the 2000s happened and, you know, things. change in the world and in our city. And the choice for the city council to not change the zoning is a choice, as much as a change is a choice. I personally have talked to many people who, you know, have been wanting a lot of the changes, zoning and legislative that we have, you know, on our governing agenda. have said to me, I've lived here for 30 years and I have wanted these things to happen for 30 years. I thought they would never happen. I'm so excited that finally some of these things are happening. So I think, you know, it's just important to remember that while change is hard, the whole world changes and zoning needs to be updated. A lot of the zoning things that we are doing is bringing things to the current non-conforming structures that exist. So in many places, we're not, you know, yes, we are changing many things, but there are places where we're simply trying to reflect what actually currently exists because what's built there is not conforming to this old zoning. And on that note, I did have just one small request that in some of our educational materials, I don't know whether it be the videos or just you know, infographics that we create or in the writing or whatever that might be, I think it's important for people to be able to see very simply what the old zoning said. what currently exists and is non-conforming, and what the new zoning says. And if people are especially concerned about heights and about density. So in very simple, as much as we can have incredibly simple ways of describing, here's the old zoning, here's the new zoning, and here's what is currently built, and why you can see that in these places, we're actually not changing anything. We're literally, we're changing the zoning, but we're only making it meet what exists. and in these other places where we are changing the zoning. I think those, you know, as much as we can simplify it for people, that would be really helpful. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I know that in the first proposal, then it was amended by President Bears, and I just wanted to kind of note that in the amended, sorry, in the proposal two, there are, interestingly, there is a part of the northern part of West Medford that even in the before amended proposal one, was Neighborhood Residential 1, which was nothing but single-unit dwelling plus ADU and historic conversion, amended to be a larger portion that was only gonna be that. And now in Proposal 2, it's actually Neighborhood Residential 2, and so it allows two units. So I think that portion, and when I look at the reality, there are no two-unit dwellings there. So I think that, I just want us to be careful that places, and I think this was the intention, President Bears, of the proposal that you made, which I was supportive of, please correct me if I'm wrong, but that in single-family areas that were single-family that are in fact single-family, there are no two units currently built there, That I think I certainly felt that adding a to use and historic conversion was the right amount of change for those areas and I believe there are two areas, one is the northern part of North Medford and the other one is a triangle in Lawrence estates, but that both of those cases. And I would be totally like every resident there is like, yeah, let's have two fellows here but my guess is that that's probably not going to be the reaction that we get. So, that would be my. inclination. And I don't know if other councillors would be supportive of that, but I think that was kind of what President Bears's amendment was going towards. So I wonder if we could, you know, come to some sort of agreement on whether we think that that's a good idea to roll it back, especially the northern west Medford part, roll it back to neighborhood residential planning.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep. So if you look at the difference between the proposed neighborhood residential districts version 1 and the amended proposal 1, and I believe that is President Bearsar's amendment, in both of those, the very northern part of West Medford, that thing that goes way up by the lakes, right? In both of those, it is neighborhood residential one, both in the original and also in the amended. And if you now look at proposal two, that I believe is neighborhood residential two.
[Anna Callahan]: I mean, I could make a motion, but I don't know if a motion is really necessary. I feel like if there's some consensus on this committee, then we can trust our Innocence Associates planners to do a slight revision.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Can I make a suggestion then that if a councilor wants to propose something that maybe we say, are there any objections to, then we don't have to vote or anything and people don't have to every single person chime in. It's a little bit simpler. And I will make the first one. I will say, are there any objections to the very northernmost part of West Bedford as it goes up Grove Street? Somewhere in there, there being a boundary between Neighborhood Residential 1 and Neighborhood Residential 2, currently it's all Neighborhood Residential 2, let the furthest north part be Residential 1. And I think we can kind of look at the original proposal before the amendment. that that may be a good place to look at for the differential between one and two. Any objections to them making a change like that?
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, but to me, that is a little, like, I would not get from that what I think you mean. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm happy to, yeah. So to me, that sounds like when you push this off to the other, whereas we're still discussing it internally. I would just be, if you want to probably say no decisions have been made yet, I would say that.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, a little more direct.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Just two minor edits. The first is under planning and permitting. I believe that we just found out today at planning and permitting that they're not going to be, the CDB is not going to be talking about Salem Street on February 5th.
[Anna Callahan]: They pushed it. Yeah. So I just don't want to put February 5th because I'm pretty sure that they are not talking about it on February 5th, so.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, that would be great. And then the second one, and this is very minor, but under public works, the last sentence, we also heard from the commissioner and city engineer on the possibility of, the city engineer did not chime in and had nothing to say, so we just removed the city engineer part of that sentence. The city engineer was really there to talk about the roads.
[Anna Callahan]: So the last sentence should read, we also heard from the commissioner on the possibility of, yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, these are great. I love the fact that you're for each one of these, you're asking, does staff have the capacity? Do you see any ethical concerns? You know, these are, these are great questions to ask to everybody. I would just ask the mayor's office as well, what other data aside from these she thinks would be interesting, or might be helpful to the to the community. Um, I don't know if the health department has data that would be interesting or helpful to the community to understand over time. Um, you know, there are maybe other departments. Um, you know, we have our housing department is incredibly small, not even a department, but you know, with housing data that we have over time, like there are other things that might be useful. And so just adding that one question to the mayor's office would be good. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Councilor Lazzaro, I so appreciate you bringing that up. I do think that that's a real concern given the skeletal nature of many of our departments. And I guess what I would say is staff capacity is a question people can answer many ways. People could say, well, if you pass it, we have to do it. So yes, you have the staff capacity. They could say, no, we don't have the staff capacity because we're already at our max. even if it's five minutes, right? So I think adding a question of a rough cost estimate would be more helpful because that would, some people might say, yeah, that'll, you know, it would take me two hours to do everything. And that's one thing. And another person might be like, yeah, that's gonna be like five hours a week for the next six months, right? So I think having an idea of what each department thinks might be the cost to putting it up for the first time and or keeping it maintained. I think that would be helpful information.
[Anna Callahan]: For the amendment, can we send it to the mayor first? Wait, give the mayor a heads up before we send it to the department. Sure.
[Anna Callahan]: My assumption was that it was going to go to the mayor first. Can I jump in?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, I appreciate that.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, I found them in order pending, tiny, tiny corrections that I sent to the clerk.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. At the Public Works Committee, we had Commissioner Tim McGivern and our engineer Omar Tella to give us an update on the roads, both their conditions, as well as how they are going to be spending the new $500,000 per year from the overrides. And we also discussed the potential of having volunteer residents helping to plant city trees.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, I do want to thank Councilor Scarpelli for bringing forward a number of ideas that I think are really pertinent to what's happening right now. I know it's quite difficult to get information out to people. And, you know, I do hope that we can do a better job. of informing people on a topic that is as important as these overrides and the way that it's going to affect their taxes. There are a number of things in here. I just wanna state where I am on these various different things. The listening and education sessions, I think are fantastic idea. I'm always a fan. I would love to be at them and help as much as I am able to. I believe as I think Vice President Collins mentioned that we have maxed out our ability to the statewide exemptions for our seniors, veterans, disabled, and other communities. I believe that we are already at the max, but I think asking our state representatives what else, what more we can do is a great idea. I'm personally in favor of the homeowner exemption. I know that not everyone on the council is, or at least I don't want to guarantee that everyone on the council is, I think looking into that and beginning that discussion now so that we are in time to be able to make that decision later in the year is a great idea. Absolutely getting information about the abatement process as quickly as possible in every means possible would be fantastic. Any grants and fees that can be used. You know, I certainly am in favor of. So, that is where I said I am in favor of both this proposal as well as the proposal so I will vote for both.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. In addition to amending this, I assume it's what you're suggesting that we amended to send it to a governance committee. I wonder if we could also do a friendly amendment to just add in language saying we urge our fellow councilors to not place other items of discussion before these hearings from business leaders. Business people. because a lot of the problem it sounds like is that we just, you know, we take things out of order and then we end up accidentally pushing these things until 11 o'clock at night when really let's not do that.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I absolutely so appreciated our former messenger, Lera Lepore, who's a wonderful person. I do hope that we can update the messenger role a little bit given know, the digital age and that we may not need the exact services that were in his job description before. I will say that if the city is going to hire a staff person for the city council, if the city council has a staff person, I would hope that some of their time might be dedicated to constituent services, which I think in, you know, most cities that is one of the first staff that is hired for a city council. in, you know, there are certain cities, Cambridge and other cities, where every city councilor has a staff person who basically does constituent services. I think constituent services are incredibly important to the number of emails that we receive with people who have questions, you know, that really are questions for the administration of us, you know, sending them to the right administrative person in the, you know, in City Hall. And I'm hoping that either the messenger position can be one that can do a little bit of that kind of work and less driving around to deliver us. As much as I enjoyed having the paper copies of the agendas delivered to my door, I hope that maybe some of that time can be used for constituent services and that we can just kind of look at that role and update it for the 21st century. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. First, I want to thank you for all of the meetings that you attend. You're one of our most engaged residents here in Bedford. And the fact that you happen not to be at that meeting is completely understandable. And I'm glad that you're here asking this question, because most residents don't, in fact, go and look back at the committee meetings. But they may, in fact, come and look at this meeting. And you asked some questions that I asked. So I specifically asked Commissioner McIvern. I'm sorry, I can go on. No, no, not at all. Again, I think it's important that we do discuss these things here at the official regular City Council meetings. I did ask about resurfacing because I know with roads, you can save a lot of money by doing that kind of repair in between, and so I asked if maybe we would be able to save money in the future by doing these kinds of intermediary repairs. He said, as President Bears noted, that unfortunately, because of the nature of playing tennis, that it might affect the way the ball bounces that might cause people to sprain ankles, that doing those kinds of repairs doesn't actually work on the kind of surface also as noted that the underlying, you know, structure just needs to be repaired at this point. And then importantly, I think also Councilor Scarpelli noted, if I may, to let me know if I'm wrong, that the high school uses this as well. Like it is a very used tennis courts that really, Medford really would suffer if we did without. And so I appreciate your question.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm sorry, I don't have a memorized who's microphone or who's. Yes. So as a general rule, I'm often hesitant for the city to sell off its owned property. And this particular proposal I have quite a few questions about, we have a newly formed affordable housing trust, it is looking into community land trusts. It seems like city properties where housing can be built are perfect candidates for community land trust, you know, land. I am like the language in this seems vaguely to point toward the funding probably being used for portable housing but not necessarily it says for general municipal purposes and or for the purpose of disposition on such terms and conditions as in the best interest of the city like these to me what we are doing is handing over to the mayor the ability to sell a city property with no conditions, and I am not comfortable with that, with the way that this is worded. So I would have a lot of questions about how the Affordable Housing Trust fits into this, why there is a rush when the Affordable Housing Trust is probably not really prepared to deal with land right now because they're in the early stages, and we don't yet have a community land trust, why we are now suddenly desperately selling something that has not been used since 1950, So I have quite a few questions, and I don't believe I will be prepared to vote in favor of this tonight.
[Anna Callahan]: Um, just a hypothetical question. Looking down the line, if, um, this land were not to be sold and were to be, is it possible for the city to transfer ownership of this land to the Affordable Housing Trust or to a community land trust, should we have one?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, and I so appreciate the, first of all, the work from the commission and also the Collins Center. I am not a member of this committee, so thank you so much for allowing me to ask a question. This is on the same exact point. I know that, for example, when we were working to try and reduce the rodent population, that the person sponsoring a piece of legislation was communicating with the staff in order to understand best how we can help the staff through the ordinance. The staff needed an ordinance to be changed. And so working together with staff to understand how we can best tailor the ordinance to meet the needs of the staff, that to me, like, I'm 100% in favor of nor shall any member of the city council give orders or direction. Absolutely, I 100% agree.
[Anna Callahan]: It just says, you know, the city council shall contact only solely through the mayor. And it seems like getting information on how to craft ordinances to best meet the needs of staff, that's, I just wanna make sure, again, we're all asking about this.
[Anna Callahan]: That would be amazing. I just specifically, I mean, I wasn't the sponsor of rodent control, but I know how much, you know, that was something staff needed and that the sponsor of that ordinance needed to just hear from and worked with staff members to craft it carefully so that it met the needs of the city. So those kinds of things I think are important that we are able to accomplish. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I just had one quick question, which I think Councilor Bears may have just answered. It's not clear to me who is on the committee or who puts people on the committee, but it sounds like what Councilor Bears is suggesting is that it says, this review shall be made by a special committee to be established by a vote of the council. So that would be the council that is I just wanted to understand what that. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, So I definitely am in favor of having a hybrid system that has some wards or districts and some at large. To me, whether it is four districts, eight wards, each of our wards has two parts, that would be 16. That to me is not as much of the question in terms of do we have boards or districts? If we have four districts, we have eight wards. To me, we are still using, like forming these more local elected offices, which I am in favor of. I do definitely appreciate a lot of what President Bears has said about first past the post, single district. Those genuinely are, not the greatest way to elect people, not necessarily the best representation of democracy. They also lead to long incumbencies because it is far more difficult to oust an incumbent. I was very curious. I know that in Massachusetts, we do We are a little bit of an outlier currently, especially with seven at large, but also in terms of the number of city councilors that we have for the size of our population. And I was really curious to look outside of Massachusetts. And if I could share my screen.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I'm sorry that this is so small. And this should only be, hang on. I only wanna share that one. Let me see if I can do that. This is the one I picked, but it didn't, oh, I see. Oh, okay, great. Okay, so what I did was I went ahead and I looked at other states and other cities, and I mean, I literally just went to Chattopiti, and I asked Chattopiti, please give me 10 cities in New England that are around 60,000 population. And I said, please give me 10 cities in the South. I said, please give me 10 cities in the West, 10 cities in the Midwest, and I just, Like, you know, there was no picking of which cities these were. These are, I believe, a quite random sampling. And they're all, you know, somewhere around 60,000. And I looked just to have an understanding of other states and other cities that aren't Massachusetts, and how many city councilors they have per population. So there's a range. I think population per city council ranges from about 4,000 to about 15,000. There's a lot of, you know, there's a big range. There's a large, there's wards or districts, and there's a lot of hybrid. There are a few that are purely wards. And what I thought was interesting is that at the number seven, and this has, I think it ended up with 48, because there was one that was 99,000, I got rid of that one. So there's 48 listed here and we just so happen in population per city councilor to rank 24th, which is exactly in the center. And again, this is a pretty random sampling of cities that are close to 60,000. So I just wanted to sort of provide that as what I think is know, looking, it includes some in Massachusetts as well. And Massachusetts does tend to have far larger city councils per population than other states. Maybe we want to be more like other cities, maybe we think that other states and cities in the country also understand how to do a democracy. I personally don't have an opinion either way. I don't think that Massachusetts is necessary. The way we do things is necessarily better. I don't think the way other states do it is necessarily better. But I just thought it was interesting to kind of take a look at a random sampling of cities across the country that have approximately our population and what their size of city council is and also what their sort of composition is. So I just wanted to provide that. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just want to note first that I independently also came up with a thought of what Councilor Leming suggested, which was for the four districts plus five at large. So I thought it was amusing that you independently came up with that idea. I also am fine with a larger city council. And then I just wanted to say that I'm not on this committee, and I so appreciate the opportunity to be here. I will not be able to vote today. I do actually have another appointment, and so I will be leaving. But thank you all so much for your incredibly thoughtful comments and proposals. I, for one, genuinely believe that everyone here is doing their absolute best to come up with what is going to be the best for Medford. Not slightly better. I think there are, I think we should listen to what councilors say. We should take what they say as what they mean. And I certainly, when I do have an opportunity to vote in the city council meeting, I will be voting for the thing that I believe is the best possible charter that we can have for the best representation in the city of Medford. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Test 1-2, test 1-2.
[Anna Callahan]: We're ready to go? All right. Welcome to the Public Works and Facilities Committee of January 21st, 2025, taking place at 7 p.m. in the City Council Chambers. Today, we will cover two items. One is paper number 24-492, Resolution to Receive an Update on Roads, and the other one is 24-493, Resolution to Establish a Volunteer Tree Planting Program. Before we go on, Mr. Clerk, would you call the roll?
[Anna Callahan]: Present. Then we might as well move on to our first paper. So this is the resolution to receive an update on the roads, whereas it has been more than six months since the city council was last updated on our roads, and whereas during the election of November 5. The voters of Medford considered a budget override provision in Question 7 providing funds for, among other purposes, quote, fiscal year 2025 general operations of the Department of Public Works, $500,000, including but not limited to additional staff for road and sidewalk infrastructure repair, unquote. and that ballot question was successful. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Public Works and Facilities Committee invite engineer Owen Wartella and DPW Commissioner Tim McGibbon to attend an upcoming meeting that is today to talk about the state of the roads and the plan moving forward, given the outcome of the election. Thank you so much to Commissioner McGibbon and Engineer Wartella for being here. I would like to go ahead and pass the floor to you. And if you can give us an update on the roads, especially given the new budget, that would be great.
[Anna Callahan]: Let me see if there are any questions from the city council members. Sorry, I'm not sure. Can you help me with this? on the left. We're trying to click the green one and nothing's happening.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I don't actually have one other question before we go to you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just wanted to put in one last comment just because I think You know, a lot of this, we do this for the public. We do this not just for us to understand because we're obviously involved in budget considerations, but we do this for people who are listening to be able to really understand what is happening with our roads. And I just want to put this in a little bit of context that when we did our first roads assessment in, am I correct that it was 2019? 2021 was the first one? Yeah. Great. Then when we did the first roads assessment in 2021, At by that time, we are roads already were quite degraded in that 49% of our roads were in the, you know, category four and five of the five, one being the best and five being the worst. So we found ourselves, you guys are in a situation where you're trying to dig us out of a hole that has come from the past and from the fact that maybe they didn't have the information because there was no roads assessment, maybe utilities were not being kept track of and so they, No one was preventing the degrading that they were doing. And for who knows what other reason, not enough funding or whatever else, that we found ourselves at the first roads assessment in 2021 with roads that are quite degraded, and now trying to dig ourselves out when just to stay at the same level would cost $5 million a year. Would you say that's relatively accurate?
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, great. Five would be just able to begin improvement.
[Anna Callahan]: Right. Okay, great. So just for people to understand sort of the context of where we are in terms of this roads update. So, wonderful. Is there anything else? Oh, sorry. Let me go to Councilor Lazzaro.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks so much. I would just want to see if you have any last things. I know we do have another agenda item that I'm hoping to get to. Is there anything else you'd want to add about roads?
[Anna Callahan]: Starts with a single step. Great. Thank you so much. So if we can, I would love to move on to 24-493, which is the resolution to establish a volunteer tree planting program. Whereas Medford loses an estimated 500 or more trees each year and plants less than 250 trees each year. And whereas the cost of planting city trees is primarily in the labor to plant the trees rather than the cost of the sapling. and whereas Medford only has one full-time staff member dedicated to our trees, the tree warden, and whereas Medford currently contracts out for tree planting, which is more expensive than planting with an in-house crew, and whereas trees are a vital part of fighting climate change, help cool buildings and streets in summer, and add to the beauty of our city, and whereas Medford has many residents who want to volunteer to plant city trees, therefore, be it resolved that the Public Works and Facilities Committee invite DPW Commissioner Tim McGibbon to attend an upcoming meeting, that is today, to begin discussing the possibility of allowing Medford residents to volunteer to help plant city trees. This is a project near and dear to my heart that I talked about a lot as I was campaigning a year ago last summer. So I would love to just open the conversation. I really appreciate Commissioner McIvern that you are open to discussing this possibility. There are other cities in Massachusetts that do allow residents to help volunteer to help plant city trees. And I would love to hear your thoughts about whether this is a project that we could start looking into here in Medford. I know a lot of residents who are actually excited to help. So if you can give us a little bit of sort of your opening thoughts.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Can you tell me a few, I have a few questions. What season is the best for tree planting?
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. So a couple other questions. How comfortable would you feel with a volunteer, volunteer coordinator, or do we need to wait for a budget item to come and put a halftime person in the budget before you would feel comfortable with a position like this?
[Anna Callahan]: Let me go ahead and go to councilors for any questions or comments. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. A couple other questions, if you've thought a little bit about it. Aside from a volunteer coordinator, do you see any kind of structure? Like, how would this fit in with the tree warden or with anything else in the DPW? Like, what would you imagine to be like a structurally, how would it work?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Any other, I can think of a bunch of next steps that I will, by the way, I have talked to Chief Medford about it. And so I think I have some other next steps for me personally that I want to do. Do you see other next steps? You know, I'm thinking like a pilot, like we get something in the budget and then figure out like a place where we could do a pilot project where we can do one or two tree plantings in a particular neighborhood and you know work through the warden and the volunteer coordinator and really have a first project to happen. Just curious if you see sort of other sort of next steps that we would do in this process.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Are there any other questions either from councillors? Well, from councillors first. Are there any questions from the public? I see one and I don't have. Amanda Bowe, we have asked you to unmute.
[Anna Callahan]: That is so exciting. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you bringing that to our attention. You're going to make that happen. Anyone else? Wonderful. On that note, I believe we are at the end of this discussion. I so again, super appreciate that you're open to the idea, really looking forward to moving this forward either through the administration with a part time volunteer coordinator or with a nonprofit, but potentially working with you know, the Mr. Graber Water Association or some other nonprofit, and of course with Trees Medford. Thank you so much, Trees Medford, for the work that you have done in previous years on this project. And with that being said, is there a motion on the floor?
[Anna Callahan]: with a motion to adjourn from Councilor Lazzaro. I'm so sorry. Seconded by Councilor Leming. Mr. Clerk, would you please call the roll? Oh, do we need to call the roll? We don't need to call the roll. All in favor? Aye. And all opposed? We have three in favor, one opposed. The motion passes. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Hello. Great to see you. I am curious, just because of the information I know about our roads, that once they get past a certain deterioration rate, then they become a lot more expensive to repair. And I'm curious about tennis courts. Is there that kind of a lifecycle where they should be repaired within a certain number of years, and then it becomes more expensive, only noticing that this is the most expensive item on our list? So I'm curious if that's something that we could pay less for in the future by repairing them earlier?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks so much for the work that you do. It's really important. I just wanted a quick, for the record, for folks listening, can you let us know what 100% of AMI is in Bedford? Anyone? I know it's area median. I was just going to look it up, and then I was like, maybe the public should know, too. But off the top of your head, nobody knows.
[Anna Callahan]: I was looking up. I didn't find it instantly. So, We don't have to stop the meeting for that. I was just, I just thought it'd be interesting information. That's all. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. First, I'll say that given the garbled nature of the Zoom call and the complicated nature of the request, I definitely need that reread because I did not understand what that was. I had a couple of things. Number one, I'm really excited about the idea of historic conversions. I think that's wonderful, like not changing the exterior of the building but allowing for it to become maybe, you know, a five-bedroom becomes a two-bedroom and a three-bedroom is such a great idea. And then I wanted to ask a little bit about the NR2 and NR3 areas that used to be single-family. And I'm specifically thinking about, as I look at the map, like Lawrence Estates and those parts of West Medford that were single-family, single-family one. And curious, because you did mention that you're trying to get it to reflect what's currently there, Do you think that in those areas, the two-unit and three-unit allowance under these new zoning neighborhoods, is that reflective or is that going to be a significant change in those two areas, the Lawrence Estates and the West Medford?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, no, mostly I was kind of, what I was looking at, and thanks for pointing out this particular map, because now I can actually see it for myself and zoom in on it, but like in that Lawrence Estates especially, it really does look like it's currently mostly single family, and we are, you know, upping it by one and two, potentially like, you know, one and two levels more. So, just, I just wanted to know how much change was suggested. I had a question that is perhaps a silly one, but I was curious when I look at the, the sort of diagram, the very last page that has the two and a half stories and the three stories. And I know that I see that architecture all over the place and like the two and a half story looks, you know, a certain way and the three story looks very like blocky and cut off. how much does it, that half story matter to like not blocking people's view or not blocking people's sunlight or not blocking other things because like as an architectural piece and for the amount of extra space people get in their homes, like it, I don't know, to me seems like that might be nicer actually. But I'm just like, this is a, I'm totally not an architecture person. So I'm just curious more than anything, not making a suggestion.
[Anna Callahan]: Does a half story, does a two and a half or three and a half limit encourage pitched roofs?
[Anna Callahan]: What mic number are you?
[Anna Callahan]: Go for it. Thanks. So what I heard Zach say is the opposite of what I wrote down that you read. So my understanding is that now the lightest yellow and the northern parts of Lawrence Estates and the middle part of West Medford would all include two-unit dwellings. That's what I heard, Zach. That's what I heard in the rereading of the thing and I am concerned because I think that's I'm not really comfortable if that's what we're doing is making every like two unit everywhere like that's I believe president bears please step in and correct me I think it's the opposite I think it's that yeah I'm saying the opposite I'm saying that this is an increment too far and each shade should go down one increment That is, I feel much more comfortable about that, but I'm a little concerned about the wording because to me, the wording said the other.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I'm much more comfortable with that.
[Anna Callahan]: We got a lively debate. This is exciting. So I am in favor of sex change. And I'll just let you know why. I think, like, I'm really encouraged by the fact that we are allowing for historic conversions and ADUs by right throughout what is currently considered single family. To me, that is enough change in those areas that I do not feel like we need to move further than that. And I think we will get pushback from the community is my concern that, you know, that's a little bit like those areas of Lawrence Estates and West Medford that already that is, I think, excellent and just the right amount of change that we're going to allow that doesn't really change a character of the community. I think once we're allowing two units, that for me, that belongs more in the areas that were on this new map considered neighborhood residential three. And that also will be a change for much of those places, but I'm comfortable with that level of change. So I feel quite good, and I think better than the current suggestion, given that I do understand that because of some of the existing housing that is there, because you guys plotted this very carefully, that the boundaries are going to adjust a little bit. But to me, this feels more comfortable. And it also does mean, because of the ADUs and the historic conversions by right, that we are allowing more housing throughout the city, but just in a way that I think feels more comfortable to the residents of the single-family, current single-family one areas.
[Anna Callahan]: Three out of five is a quorum, isn't it?
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks so much. I really do. First of all, I appreciate the time of these parents, you know, having heard a lot of their stories. And as you will all hear today. I think, you know, it really is. They are in a situation of really needing to be supported and needing to be supported in their own city and not to have to drive like long distances to get to somewhere that they can get the support they need. I'm excited to work with them as parents. I hope also that we can find someone in the community who is not one of these parents to like help us to really sort of move forward on this issue. I'm excited to work with the administration, and to really be creative in thinking about the ways that we can support them as quickly as possible. And, you know, we've been in these discussions so we've been in this administration already with these discussions so we're moving forward. And I'm really excited to hear from them, and excited to. get them what they need quickly and in the long term, making sure that that's something that is going to be, you know, a long term thing in the city of Medford that they can count on. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks so much. If anyone is curious about more information on this project, we just had a meeting at six o'clock that you can find online. And, and they provided a ton of information. So I think we all feel like quite informed. including all of the different state and federal grants that they've been looking into. I really appreciate all the planning that has gone into this, the amount that they are balancing our goals, including things like climate goals and everything else with our limited budget and our desire to make sure that we are, you know, spending what we need to spend in the most financially responsible way. I really appreciate what Councilor Tseng just said, which is that often if you wait and defer projects, it in fact costs the city far more money. So I appreciate that they are trying to look to the future and do these repairs now rather than waiting any longer and having it be more costly in the future. And I will be voting yes. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Just a quick point of clarification. It is my understanding that the chief of police was invited to participate in the discussion around these changes. Is that correct?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I was actually just hoping you could read back the B paper.
[Anna Callahan]: I was hoping to write an amendment while other people were speaking. Okay. So if you don't mind.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Thank you. I wanted to see if I could make a friendly amendment to the B paper. I have sent the amendment to the clerk. The amendment is that we request that the administration work with the building department and other public safety departments to alleviate concerns about after hours building inspector availability. This really is the job of the administration. And I appreciate that we've had quite a public forum here for folks to speak and really for us to understand what these issues are. And I think the appropriate move here is to both get information and also to encourage the administration to make sure that these issues are covered.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I was very sad that the porch closed. I went there many times and I would love to hear your 30 second elevator pitch for your vision for what you're creating.
[Anna Callahan]: Many other cities do have a hard stop in their rules. So they will have, as Councilor Collins, Vice President Collins mentioned, that they will have something in their rules that says at X time, everything is tabled.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I really appreciate all the information you provided for me. This is enough information that I all the information that I need to hear. I very much appreciate a number of things. First of all, that you've been looking into state and federal grants to make sure that we get as much as we can from other sources. I really appreciate the balancing that you're trying to do between our goals, like, for example, our clinicals, but also with our limited budget and really trying to do the best that we can there. And most of all, this, I think, is an example, and I feel like this has been true Most of the times that I've interacted with this administration is that that you really are understanding that there are times when delaying a project actually leads to it costing far, far more than it would have if we had just fixed it in the first place. So I very much appreciate that level of financial responsibility where you're saying, no, we do need to fix this now, because if we don't, then it will be more expensive for the city in the future. So I very much appreciate those things and all the information you provided. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I also just wanted to say that very few cities do this. Very few cities have a document where you can actually see what are the goals? What is the, not just a pure value statement vision, but what are the actual policies that we're trying to pass? And I just want to thank whoever came up with this idea, because I think it's really brilliant. And to be able to have it visible to the public, and then we go over it in public meetings, I think is crucial. And like you said, great for transparency. So thank you to everyone who put it together.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, I said they just had a question. What is the appropriate next step? I don't think it's a huge rush, but I would love to see that. So it sounds like you're going to check in with them. Just was curious about what the next step is.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, and it sounds like you're willing to at least just ping them and see what the update is.
[Anna Callahan]: because I have not gotten the briefing that you have from the assessor, I am very curious and I just want to make sure that for myself I also agree that it is, you know, if I, like to me, if I think that it might be something that might help some folks. So I'm just curious, is the assessor the right person to talk to? Is there Like, how can I understand a little bit more about it just to kind of get my own sense of what it is that that state law is in fact offering to us?
[Anna Callahan]: That would be lovely. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So pardon me if I forgot I was up late last night. And I just wanted to ask, I think the mayor was going to provide us with a little bit more of a long-term capital spending plan now that we have the stabilization funds. Did that happen? Are we still waiting for that? Is that something we expect in that administrative finance committee?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I'm absolutely in favor of us checking in and making sure that that money is spent well. I will say that Clearly, the mayor and the administration knew that there was a possibility that the overrides would pass. They knew about this 1.75 million. I'm sure that they had a plan for how to spend that money in case those got passed. But again, I appreciate it, and I think we should look into it. But I doubt very much that we lost that money.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. This is a good reminder for some of the things that I said I would work on that I should maybe move forward. So thank you very much for that. I also wanted to ask, I'm going to guess because it wasn't on this list at the beginning of the year, but we did discuss getting, and we also got a little bit more information from the assessors on the possibility of a residential exemption. And I'm just curious what, what committee that would be discussed in, if we decide to, you know, to have a discussion around the information that's provided?
[Anna Callahan]: I welcome anyone who has traffic related or roads related or sidewalk related, anything to ask that it go into the public works and facilities committee. I would be happy to take those in my committee. So if that seems like the appropriate place, then I welcome it.
[Anna Callahan]: The fat cats. I mean, the fat rats.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I know that one thing that is a top topic for people in our city to talk about and to complain about is roads and sidewalks. For perfectly good reason, we got into a hole because the roads and sidewalks were not properly updated for many, many, many, many, many years. So we are doing our best as a city to dig ourselves out of there. I think my plan, so we had one, we had the, DBW commissioner, as well as the lead engineer, come to a meeting in the spring. They will be coming to another meeting, which I thought was going to be in December, but it turns out it's going to be in January. And I think my goal is to have them come in twice a year, just to give updates to the public, have a public meeting with them there, being able to report, see how we're doing in terms of getting our roads back from the brink and really getting us on that uptake where every year our average road rating is getting better instead of getting worse, which has been happening for a long time in the past. So that's kind of my plan on that one, is to have them come in a couple of times a year. I know Councilor Bears has also asked for some information from our building commissioner and some others on city facilities. So I will check in with President Bears about that, and perhaps we can have one where we have an update on that as well. We have the public restrooms and parks and squares that has come into our committee. We're working on that. Lead ordinance, clearly with the notifications that came out from the city about lead pipes, I think it is more on people's minds than it was. It is something that has always been important to me. And so I hope that in the new year, we do start working on this lead ordinance, which we have not yet given a paper number. There is also a home rule petition to increase excise taxes for large trucks. Vice President Collins, do you want to give us a tiny update on that?
[Anna Callahan]: it will likely go on the back burner when we discuss these projects at a committee meeting in the future. Public utility accountability, I will say when I have spoken to staff, they are actually doing a really excellent job compared to prior years and prior administrations on holding our public utilities accountable and forcing them to do road repair and sidewalk repair as much as we are legally allowed to force them to do that. So, we can maybe also get an update on that from the DPW commissioner when they when they come into our committee to talk about roads. The Tree Planting Volunteer Network is something that I talked about a lot on the campaign trail. It's probably my absolute favorite policy. I'm very excited about it. And at our next public works meeting in January, the public works commissioner will be, sorry, DPW commissioner will be having our first discussion about how to implement this. This is basically allowing residents, because most of the cost of planting trees in the city replacing, we lose far more trees than we replace, so we're losing trees every single year. And for sure, the major cost of that is labor and not the price of the tree. So the goal is to allow residents to volunteer, to work together with training, with appropriate trees, with the appropriate depth, doing it all the right way, but to allow residents to plant city trees. So it does sound like that is something that the administration is amenable to, and I'm really looking forward to our first conversation about that in January. And aside from that, we are just, you know, reviewing other things. So I'm looking forward to 2025 and us getting some of those things done. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I was just going to say it's been a pleasure to be working with you all in this first year, my first year of being an elected official. I appreciate all the support that everyone has given in just understanding how things work and whom to talk to for information. And I really appreciate the way that we've been working together. Also appreciate the clerk. Thank you, Mr. Clerk, for all the work that you do for the city.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, and thanks to everyone who is tuning in, whether it's live or after the fact to any city council meeting. We appreciate your participation. We appreciate you keeping up. Appreciate the emails. We appreciate all the communication. And please do reach out and let us know what we can do for you in the new year.
[Anna Callahan]: Steal my thunder. I basically was going to see if you had, like, how short is your short version of your presentation? And if there's something you can give that's five minutes or less that can really give us an overview. And as well, if you can also give us a little bit of an understanding of exactly how important the timing is and whether getting something, you know, obviously this is a process, it would not be approved tonight, it has three readings, whether us bringing it forward tonight is crucial to the timeline. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Real quick, this was something that I have dealt with a lot being a renter, living in a lot of different houses, all of which I led when my child was under six years old. And I do think that it's crucially important. I'm very excited that Medford is incentivizing people and giving people this opportunity to get those fixed and providing a little bit of help with that. I also understand that this is simply putting it in place so that it can be used by the residents. Obviously, that'll depend on how many applications come in. So I'm very happy to support this.
[Anna Callahan]: I actually would make a motion to sever. I would sever it into five. Perhaps we can do that after public discussion or whatever before or after either one is fine. But I think there's one that's about the essentially lines two and four, which are the cost of terminating. Then the one in the middle, that line three, Uh inviting all communications. I think that's a a separate one. Um there's a question of the bond rating is a third. The question of the private investigators is the fourth and the question of the drug testing is a fifth. That would be my suggestion to sever it into those five.
[Anna Callahan]: comment was actually from earlier just to explain. To the person who's asking us to respond that like actually, I think I at least for one Councilor was really hoping to hear from the public first. I did not want to interrupt and put in my own comments. I really wanted to hear a little bit more about what people had gone through and experienced. That was why I was not responding to that. I also do hope that we can. Are we going to sever before we discuss each one or are we going to sever at the very last second? I think it might be easier to sever and then discuss each piece.
[Anna Callahan]: My mic is on. Does that mean I am allowed to speak?
[Anna Callahan]: I would just say that I, I think rule 21 is very unhealthy for us to use. I think that we should use it incredibly sparingly. I believe that a financial paper is in fact one that moves funding, and we are not doing that. This does not actually move any funding anywhere. So to me, classifying this as a finance paper with regards to Rule 21 really makes Rule 21 far more broad than I am comfortable with. I did not think that was what, like, I don't read rule 21 as saying that. So, you know, I think a ton of people have come here to hear our thoughts on this and to hear us make, you know, either move this forward or not. And I think it is, it's not really the best, I think, for anyone if we do not allow this discussion to have a conclusion tonight.
[Anna Callahan]: It's her motion to sever. Can you please repeat exactly how you want to sever it?
[Anna Callahan]: The reason I had split it into five was because the first and third sentences, their cost associated with terminating school superintendent's contract and anticipated costs of superintendent search committee and interim appointment, those to me seem to go together. Asking for any and all communications, corresponding meeting minutes, I may have a very different opinion of that one. So I would start. Thank you very much.
[Anna Callahan]: I would be in favor of something that was not exactly this, but that requested from the administration to understand what is our policy? What is the reason which we are doing this? I mean, for me, both of these last two paragraphs are, I will say, I hope we have a really good reason if we are doing either of these things. I looked a little bit into different state laws, in different states, different state laws on drug testing, for example. And it has to be only under certain circumstances. So I think for me, I really want to have an explanation of what our policy is as a city for both of these. And if we are doing either of these, what the reasoning is behind it, I don't think that I am completely ready to vote yes on this before I have more information, a flat-out cease and desist, although it does, like, I mean, hearing the language, you know, may seem attractive, but before I have more information, I'm not willing to vote yes on it. I would vote yes if this were amended to say we want to know a full policy, we want to understand, you know, when this is used, and then the cost as well.
[Anna Callahan]: let me do my best to request that the city administration provide its policy regarding the use of private investigators with regards to any city all any or all its city employees and then I'm okay with the second sentence be it further resolved that the city administration report back with the identified line items in the budget
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. If I may, I have to say, I am overall, whenever I have looked into specific questions, things like how much free cash we get at the end of the budget year, and whether that is something that is viewed by the state of Massachusetts, by bond agencies, et cetera, as is that something positive or negative? There are other things that I have looked into that the city has done that have been questions about what the city is doing. And when I've looked into very specific things like those, I am usually, I find that what, or for example, the other one is like creating capital stabilization funds, these sorts of things, I have found that the city administration is actually doing things that are considered, in those two cases, considered best practice by the state of Massachusetts. And that being said, I, if, if we were a city council where I genuinely believed that the mayor or the administration were doing something that I disagreed with, even if it were the purview of the mayor, I, as a city Councilor, I would feel comfortable making a motion that says the city council does not agree with X, Y, Z practice if that were the case. Um, so I just want to make it clear that I don't think that we as a city council are in any way trapped against saying what we believe our opinion of what the administration should be doing is. I think that we can say the same thing to Tufts. We can't control Tufts, but we sure can say we wish Tufts were doing something different. We would like Tufts to do something different. I think we can say that to the administration. So a slight disagreement, I think, with my fellow Councilor, or maybe not, but if I was understanding you correctly. I just think I don't have the information, and I really want to have a lot more information before I make any kind of decision on something that would say something so strongly worded as that. But I'm happy that I think we're going to get a wording change, and we'll be able to get a little more information.
[Anna Callahan]: I actually, to be honest, I would like to know what our drug policy testing is for all city employees.
[Anna Callahan]: I do think that the reasons for these particular tests, I would be interested in that as well.
[Anna Callahan]: I honestly I think that we might because of the reading that I did on drug testing in different states in the United States. There are certain, there are only certain times that it can be done, it is not at the whim of the mayor or anyone else in the city. there, you know, it falls into certain categories where it is legal and then other categories where it is not legal. So I imagine that we will, we will get an answer that at least will fall into like some vague category. And I would be happy with that.
[Anna Callahan]: I wanna have some clarification. Um the requested meeting. So, I'm assuming this is a meeting between the administration and the fire department that you're talking about. Like, can you be a little bit more clear?
[Anna Callahan]: So you're asking that the meeting with the council also include the fire chief and the union leadership.
[Anna Callahan]: But that if there needs to be an executive session, we would have that without those folks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I apologize. I don't see where the zoning board. I'm on page six.
[Anna Callahan]: They're not in the pocket.
[Anna Callahan]: My computer is dead. Yeah. So, I see page six, I see. That's it.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. The one change I would additionally like to make is I am hoping, I know that we have not had a chance yet to discuss co-living, which as far as I understand it is really just people who are not related to each other living, renting an apartment. And I feel a little bit uncomfortable with the fact that that is disallowed in certain sections of MSTICAV. So I'm hoping that we can just remove that definition and everywhere it appears for this particular approval tonight. And that'll give us time to talk about it. And we can always add that definition later. I don't think it's going to delay anything or be problematic to simply remove that. But I'd love to ask you your opinion. Do you think that we could just
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. I just wanted to say how much I appreciated the comment about our values. I think it's always really important to discuss our values. And I agree that in the comprehensive plan, it really is sort of filled with that kind of discussion. And you can read about what people in the community, what values other folks who live here wanted to bring. I know for myself, one of my highest values is a sense of community and vibrancy and people being able to walk to a place that they meet with their neighbors and really love. So that's something I'm always thinking about. I know for Mystic Ave, it really is not a place that people just love to walk down. So it's something that we've really been trying to work on is to make Mystic Ave something that serves us as a community and as residents. But another underlying thing that we understand that people want is there to be more new growth right so that new growth is both going to be commercial businesses moving in it's also going to be about new housing that brings in new revenue to the city they both bring in revenue to the city so I think those are among the many different things as well as well as you know we have these new green score that is going to bring more places which I think were mentioned about like where young and old people can, you know, spend time together where there's trees, where there's benches to sit on and places to, you know, to chat. We're going to be incentivizing that from developers. So these are all things that I think we have, we have brought forward as, as values. Each of us individually has values, but we also have some values that came out of the comprehensive plan that we are trying to make happen through the zoning process. So thank you so much for asking about that.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I also not inclined to agree with any sort of waiving of three readings. I think the three readings are good. Also, there were a lot of changes that just came in recently. So I think, you know, I'm comfortable passing it for first reading. It'll, you know, give me a chance to go through line by line every single change that was made, which I know was recommended by KP law. And I would be perfectly fine if we want to make an official request that in between our first reading and the third reading that we ask the police chief to come to a
[Anna Callahan]: But I think it's a different request when it's past first reading. So if we want to make a request that he show up to a committee meeting where we can discuss this and any reservations he has, I would be open to that as well.
[Anna Callahan]: So we get it in between.
[Anna Callahan]: Ah, yeah, right.
[Anna Callahan]: I was just going to suggest that maybe public comment at this meeting is not the best, like given that late hour and everything else is maybe not exactly when we want to be line by lining, you know, specific wording and that you know, the sponsors of the legislation working with, you know, like between now and third reading. Does that make sense that that might be a better way to make edits that may be doing it right now?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I would simply request that we do the same thing we did for the last thing, which is just remove strike table abuse regulations line eight.
[Anna Callahan]: Present
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, clearly this is going to be part of the ordinance. I'm sure that the language is pretty clear based on it being in the ordinance, but it does like on first reading external from the ordinance. there is this question of like, could it be used to say that residents who have their own video footage cannot use it in a criminal investigation for criminal proceeding? I don't know if it's like, that would be a question for a lawyer as to whether to specifically say any video footage or other data recorded or obtained by the city, by a city entity, right? By a municipal entity, illegally or in violation. like just adding in to be very clear that we're only talking about video footage or other data obtained by the city.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, just a super quick follow up. Was this previously part of the language that was sent to the legal before? Has this language passed through legal at least once, the stuff we're adding?
[Anna Callahan]: I think that makes me feel more comfortable. Yeah. Cool. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Yeah, this ordinance seems very thorough. I do appreciate all the work that has been put in, both by the former administration of police chief, as well as by the activists, by Councilor Tseng, and everyone else who was involved. The one thing I noticed as I read through it is it is very thorough. It has a lot of details. things that as a person who is not an expert in police ICE integration, you know, I am not an expert in whether these things are boilerplate or not. So my main question is just, and I would love to hear either from Councilor Tseng or from the ACLU, just about whether there are details in here that are Medford specific, if these are pretty standard boilerplate that have been passed in other cities. And then my final question would simply be to ask if this has been run by KP Law or if that's maybe our next step, just to see sort of what the next, in terms of the legalese, because I don't, being not super expert on this, there are lots and lots of details in here that I have not had a chance to research each one individually.
[Anna Callahan]: Just a super quick question. Did we this year maximize tax deferrals for seniors? I thought that had already been done in the past.
[Anna Callahan]: Leave it as it's too confusing. Like, we don't need the super hyper detailed. Yeah, I was.
[Anna Callahan]: It's like, let's just have like a footnote or something like that.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I am super happy if we want to do these because maybe these are even more interesting to some people than other things, but like the Bedford Donuts Cafe, the Demets Donuts, the Buns House. That might actually be really interesting to people. I thought we were not including them, but I'm happy if we want to.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, just a little update, which is that the session that was supposed to be on the 7th got postponed, so that's going to be in January. January the, do you remember the date? I can look it up. The 4th or something, and because we changed the date, weren't sure if you could make it, but we just want to make sure there's going to be a second City Council.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, it is going to be the 4th at 1030, which is a Saturday, January 4th. So if you're available, great. If you're not available, then chair Leming, if you don't mind helping us to make sure that somebody can make
[Anna Callahan]: And our community liaison, Stacey Moore, will be helping with outreach for that. But it's great. I think the West Medford, we rescheduled because they misunderstood who was doing outreach for it. And then once we were like, no, actually, it should be the venue that does outreach, and they said, We're going to do it in January, which gives us enough time to fill the room. So we can expect there to be 20 or more people, which I think is going to be probably our largest so far, which will be very exciting.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, now it is. Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. You know, looking at this over the weekend with some of my volunteers like going like going through Google Maps and doing street view and looking very specifically like at an individual blocks like it's it's really impressive. What you've done to sort of preserve the neighborhood as well as really help us get to the point where we are able to develop in a way that. that just amplifies what we have and doesn't overdo it. So I really appreciate your attention to detail. I actually have one very tiny question that is sort of not specifically related to Salem Street Corridor. I just, I'm curious because I noticed that there is co-living that is allowed, and I noticed this also in the Mystic Ave when it came through City Council to go to CDB, that co-living was disallowed on Mystic Ave, and here there's places where multiple dwelling is allowed and yet co-living is not allowed, like in Mixed Use 1 and Mixed Use 2. Um, and perhaps this is a conversation I can have with someone, you know, maybe after the meeting, but, um, to, like, my understanding of co-living is that it is explicitly making it okay for people who are not related by family, um, to rent together. So I would be curious as to why we would have rental properties where that was disallowed. Um, so I, that's, maybe there's some nuance that I'm not understanding, um, and if, talking about it after is more appropriate, that's totally fine. I just was curious about that small detail. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Thanks so much. I think talking afterwards is probably appropriate. I would just say co-housing. That is what I think co-housing is. But I think co-living, according to the definition that we wrote, is a little bit different. So let's talk about it after the meeting. Thanks. Sounds perfect.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. Just one incredibly short for anyone who heard us talk about co-living. I want people to be reassured. Co-living literally does not mean anything outside of a normal rental apartment being rented by people who are not related to each other. That's literally it. It's not congregate housing. It's not any of those things. It's incredibly simple. It's really adding nothing. And if you want me to explain to you why we are putting it in the zoning, I'm happy to explain. you know, why we're trying to differentiate between that and other kinds of housing. But it's nothing changing, nothing new in that particular definition. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: mechanical problems. Thank you for being here. I have a nephew who got into rowing in high school that all through college had changed his life, the sheer amount of time and dedication and, you know, muscles that you got to put in to be, to do rowing and teamwork. I think it's an incredible achievement for you to reach the state level. It is an incredible achievement for Medford. And I'm just so proud. I'm excited for you to be here and thanks each and every one of you for all the work that you do.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks so much. Yes, it was an excellent time to see a game on Thanksgiving day. It was fantastic. Really great to see some touchdowns. I will say as a total band geek that I was sad that I missed the marching band, but it was okay to see a wonderful winning game and an excellent game of football. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. As previously stated, I am a band geek. I did marching band all through high school and college. I love the way that the marching band supports the football team and the sports. You know, all of the work that people put in. I really appreciate what Councilor Lazzaro said about kids being able to find an activity and a community in which they feel they can really be themselves and express themselves. And I'm so happy that we have not just a marching band, but an amazing marching band that is, you know, really striving and pushing itself. So I'm really excited and I congratulate them. And I'm super proud of what they bring to our community. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I love the idea of having a catch all. I was going to ask that we specifically mention South Border Road because there are a number of residents on the upper part of governors who have for many years been complaining about the safety issues. They're really concerned about their kids. You know lots of very fast traffic because of South Border Road. So I hope we can leave some specific mention of things as well as having a catch all and I would love to have South Border Road specifically called out in this resolution. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. As everyone has already said, thank you so much for all your work so far this season. There's a lot going on for you, I know. And thank you for being here. So, I have some numbers that are from housing Medford, and I just want to ask you if you think this is like close to accurate that we have approximately 47% single family homes, we have about 32% that have two to four units. We have about 2.5% that have five to nine units, about 2.5% that have 10 to 19 units, and 15% or so that have more than 20 units.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm sorry. Can you explain this a little bit? Because I just see these columns are like 101, 102. Yeah, so sorry.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep, so what I'm looking for is percentage of the residential. So it's hard to find that in this document. What I'm trying to understand and what I have from Housing Medford, which I'm asking you if it's relatively close, is of our residential. We're talking about a residential. We need to compare residential to residential in this particular case. So that almost half of our residential, less than half is single families.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, well, we have to vote today. So I'm trying to kind of understand this. Okay, so- For this discussion, rather than waiting until after we have the vote, I'd like to have that information for this discussion.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, maybe I can ask a couple other questions first, so we can have everything at the same time. The way that I'm looking at it, and I understand the arguments for that if you're above the threshold, then your taxes will go up. If you're below the threshold, probably your taxes will go down. It seems to me that we have, it looks like, just under 50% that are single family. Those people are almost all certainly Medford residents. Maybe 30% or so of our residential housing is between two and four units. Some of those are going to be Medford residents. Some of them are not going to be Medford residents. And then 20% is five units or more. And those are almost certainly not owner-occupied. It sure seems to me that if we are looking at this from the sense of how can we benefit Medford residents and how can we especially benefit Medford residents who Our working class are people who, you know, we have a really large cohort of people who moved here, when we were affordable, because this was where working class people could afford to buy, and those people most of them now are seniors, they're on fixed incomes. You know, I'm thinking about this a lot because today is when we're supposed to be voting on this residential exemption. It is really our last chance to make a decision like this before the taxes from the Prop 2.5 override go up. And so it really seems to me, and especially you have said that, what would happen is condos go down, single families, some would go down. And then two and three families are the ones that are going to be starting to be the ones that are paying more, as well as the much larger properties. you know, from my perspective, it really seems like we are now in that position, given the valuation that you, the sort of threshold of 982,000, that we really are gonna be benefiting almost all of our Medford residents, and certainly the ones who are most in need, by passing this residential exemption. And so my second question for you, because I understand that, it is considered that we would have had to do this earlier in the cycle in order for this to happen, but this was not on our agenda earlier in the cycle. It sure seems to me that if the administration believes that this could not be voted on now, and it needed to be voted on six months earlier, then the administration should have put this on our agenda six months earlier. I'm having trouble with the fact that we are supposed to take a vote tonight, and yet we're told we cannot vote in there. And I'm not blaming you. I apologize. I'm looking at you, which I'm probably supposed to be looking at the chair. In no way do I think this is, I hope you don't hear me as if I am putting this on you. I am not. But I do think that this is something that we are supposed to vote on. It is our job to vote on this. This is something I believe would benefit almost all of the homeowners in Medford, except for those who own multifamilies and have some rental income. And I am feeling frustrated that we are now told that we are not allowed to vote in favor. So my question for you is, what would happen if we voted in favor? What would the city have to go through? How much pain and difficulty and money would it cost if we voted in favor for the city to actually get this stuff done on time? Can we hire enough consultants or full-time employees or whatever to make this thing happen?
[Anna Callahan]: Can you talk a little bit more about the overlay account?
[Anna Callahan]: So it's not that we would have to get out of the overlay account, it's that we would have to have come here to this meeting with an option of a tax rate that would cover that, but is the question that you don't know what that tax rate is because you don't know how many?
[Anna Callahan]: Because you haven't had the applications come in yet?
[Anna Callahan]: And I just want to understand, you couldn't, for example, yesterday or tonight and we post on the news tomorrow, just saying hypotheticals, you could not come up with that number.
[Anna Callahan]: You could not come up with the appropriate tax rate for us to have a residential exemption.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So how does that happen? Like, let's say we wanna pass this as soon as we can. When do you open up those? I mean, since the city hasn't passed it yet, would the city have to then pass it This is what you're saying, I think. The city would have to pass it in maybe June so that you can receive enough applications so that when it comes to tonight's vote in late November, you can set the rate, which you can't set because we don't have any applications. Correct.
[Anna Callahan]: I would like to make a motion that we ask KP Law exactly how we do that.
[Anna Callahan]: Do you happen to have the other numbers for like two or three families or over five or anything like that?
[Anna Callahan]: We're apparently not gonna vote on it tonight anyway, so we can get another time.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: But that's parcels and not units.
[Anna Callahan]: So units would be useful.
[Anna Callahan]: Can I make another motion?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you for the assessor's office to provide us with the percentages and numbers of the single family, two family, three family, four family, five to nine, 10 to 19, over 20. as well as valuations, average valuations, I think, for them.
[Anna Callahan]: That'd be great. Yep. Or any other information that you think would be helpful for us to make a decision about a residential exemption. Understood.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I hope it is not considered off topic to talk about the residential exemption that is on the agenda. So I'm just curious, do we have good information on the multifamily housing and how many are owner-occupied? Is that something that you could provide to us?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. If it's something you can provide, that'd be great. If you don't know, then yeah, I totally get it. That's fine. I was just curious. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So I want to give a little brief history. As President Bears mentioned, this was introduced by Councilor Knight in 2019, early in that year. It also went to the Energy and Environment Committee later that year. In 2021, it was looked at by the zoning subcommittee, and they allowed the trees Medford volunteer organization in Medford to draft and submit revised ordinance. Later in 2021 that came back. And then in 2022, that ordinance was split into three parts. And so those three parts are the ones that we'll be looking at today. One creates a tree committee for the city. One is about public shade trees. And the third one is about private trees, trees on private property. So because it's been so long and because there have been a number of changes made, our goals today are really to sort of get everyone up to speed, all the city councilors, the members of the staff, and everyone else up to speed on where these ordinances are at to figure out what our next steps are, and to basically set when is the next time that we will be discussing these ordinances in committee. So that's kind of the goals. And on that note, I would love to have, I'm very excited that we have a wonderful group of volunteers here in the city from Trees Medford who have done a lot of work on this over the last couple of years. And I know that they have a long history with this and they have offered to give a, they wrote a letter and if they wouldn't mind reading that in or I could read that for them. or President Bears's gonna be there for them. But then after that, if we can maybe begin with the tree committee ordinance, and if they can give us a tiny introduction to the tree committee ordinance, that would be great. So I don't know if they wanna go ahead and come up to the podium.
[Anna Callahan]: Go for it.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So if we want to go ahead and start with the tree committee ordinance, I'm happy to share my screen. What we have is a redlined version. And Councilor Beres, can you go ahead and let us know for this redlined version, what are the different colors? What are the things that are added or removed?
[Anna Callahan]: So actually.
[Anna Callahan]: Zach just did this. He took your version, and he created a red line. Because we can't look at the.
[Anna Callahan]: So I don't know exactly what we feel is the best way to go through this.
[Anna Callahan]: Mm-hmm. Do people want me to read it? Should we just read it silently? Should I read it out loud for your call?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. I mean, I'm only just seeing this now.
[Anna Callahan]: That would be great. I'm sorry. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Yeah, my only question is, I think that the intention is to provide help so that in case, you know, given the new ordinances, there is in fact more work to do that the tree committee might be able to help with that work. So I just want to be, I want to get your input, like if the language has changed to be like, you know, when needed, help support DPW in? Like, would it be okay to include these things?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I just wanted to mention the changes to the appointments and see if anyone had any comments on that. Sounds like, you know, five men for residence up to 10 total, two youth members, one who demonstrates expertise in the field of urban forestry and landscape design. Just wanted to see if there were any comments on that particular portion since we didn't really, nobody really made any comments before we move on.
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. All right, great. Unless, are you interested in doing an intro to this one or no? I could just do a little bit of the purpose. It does, this one is preserving, protecting public shade trees and trees otherwise located on public property. And it is different from the third one, which is trees on private property. So it looks like, let me see if I can do a little bit about the changes. Looks like there are some changes to the intent and purpose, adding something about MGL Chapter 40A. A paragraph about that and state legislature granting municipalities rights and responsibilities. It does talk about establishing a tree fund to supplement the city budget for tree maintenance, tree planting, stump removal and site preparation for tree planting. A few changes in the definitions of caliper in terms of diameters of the tree trunks measured. A few very small minor changes in construction and demolition. Then this looks like more changes to the diameter at breast height. Tree diameter in inches measured four and a half feet above the ground for multi stem trees size determined by the measure of all trunks, then adding the total diameter of largest trunk. A new definition of drip line the area directly under the tree at the outer circumference of the tree branches, where most the rainwater shed from the tree canopy drips to the ground. Then also a new definition of a landmark tree. Any healthy tree may be designated as a landmark tree if it meets one or more of the following criteria. A, a tree that is documented to be 50 years old or older. B, is 24 inches in diameter or more at breast height. C, represents a rare species. D, is associated with a historical event or person, unusual feature, or scenic enhancement. All landmark trees are protected trees, except those listed as invasive species on the Massachusetts Invasive Plants list. Then a few very small changes. A change to protective trees. The change to protective trees is accepting trees listed as invasive species on the Massachusetts Invasive Plants list. Looks like a new definition of the tree fund, an account established pursuant to this ordinance for the deposit of payments for mitigating tree removal in lieu of tree replanting. This fund may only be expended as a means of promoting a healthy tree canopy and will be applied to the cost of site preparation, tree replanting, and new tree maintenance. And a few other very small changes. The tree warden has some some new language in it, which really is defined in saying as defined in GLC 87 S2 and Medford Ordinances 1974 Chapter 26 Section 2. The tree warden is the city employee responsible for the management of city cities, public trees. Applicability these versions shall apply to the activities related to trees on public land. Changes to tree permit. In addition, if a public tree has fallen on a house resulting in damage to windows, puncturing roofs, or similar significant damage requiring immediate action, the homeowner may proceed to have the tree taken down after notifying the tree warden and no permit is necessary. Also under that section of tree permit, city tree removal and replacement, a hearing process. When the city removes a tree from the sidewalk strip, it must replace the tree within the next planting cycle unless the following procedures are followed. A, if a tree is cut down by the city and is not to be replaced in the next planting cycle, the city must hold a hearing and invite interested parties, tree groups, and residents within the city block to attend. The hearing must provide the opportunity for community members to contest the decision not to replace the tree in a timely manner. B, the decision must be announced on the city's website for one month prior to a hearing. C, if the intention is not to replace the tree at all, one month prior to the hearing, the city must inform members of each residence within the city block in writing of their intention not to replace the tree and the reason why the city seeks to reduce the tree canopy in their neighborhood. The city should plant with native trees wherever possible. Removal of a public tree must include stump removal within 60 days of the tree removal. If removal of a stump within 60 days is not possible, the city must inform residents of the date of removal. And there are more changes under tree planting. Promote an equitable and diverse urban tree canopy that provides adequate shade for all its neighborhoods. That's an addition. Looks like a lot of changes under record keeping. The city will maintain an updated inventory of all public trees, tree removals, and stumps. The tree warden shall keep a publicly available electronic record of removal requests, which shall include the species and size of trees to be removed, the reason for the removal, photographs of the trees documenting the reason for removal, the date, the contractors involved, and the name and address of the person who requests removal. The city will maintain and make publicly available in electronic form an inventory of trees that includes tree and stump removals and new planting. New section protection of landmark trees. The city shall make extra efforts to preserve landmark trees, including treating disease trees where feasible, enhancing pruning schedules and regular monitoring of the tree. A landmark tree shall not be cut down or removed without a permit. We are close to the end here under enforcement and penalties. Two sections. Section A, citizen removal of a public tree. Any person or entity damaging or removing a public tree without authority will be fined, and the fines will be deposited in the tree fund. Enforcement shall be by the tree warden or the tree warden's designee or the police. Citizens may report damage or removal of public trees to the tree warden. Section B, penalties. Any person who violates any section of this ordinance or violates any stipulation of a permit issued pursuant to this ordinance shall be fined and the fine shall consist of the cost of compensating the city for the cost of replacing the canopy that was lost. This compensation shall be calculated by measuring the canopy cover used using recent aerial photography such as Google Maps cover coverage or aerial photography, determining the number of young trees that would have the equivalent canopy coverage. The fine shall be the sum of the cost of preparing the site, planting those young trees at the current contract rate, and salaries and costs for staff time for selecting, watering, and monitoring those trees. So that is all of the additions and changes. Do we want to have staff?
[Anna Callahan]: I just figured before we leave this one, it sounds like we want this to go to department heads for their feedback. Do we want to wait and have that feedback first before we send it to KPLI? I assume we do, because there might be some changes. Do we want to have a cost analysis done? Or should we have those? I just want to have a better sense of our plan. what the different steps are that we need. Because I think a cost analysis was mentioned. KP Law, I think, as the last step.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So again, the purpose of this is to protect specified trees on private property in the City of Medford. I will just go through some of the changes that have been made since the last draft. In the intent and purpose, it does add a last sentence to the first paragraph. Medford's current tree canopy stands at 29%. Protecting and increasing trees on private property is one way to protect tree canopy. No trees shall be removed except in accordance with this ordinance. And then there's another added paragraph similar to the public tree ordinance saying state legislature has granted municipalities the right and responsibility, blah, blah, blah, and quoting MGL chapter 40A. There are some changes in the definitions. Under Caliper, again, some changes similar to those in the public tree ordinance. Definition of certified arborist, a professional arborist possessing current certification issued by the International Society of Arboriculture and or the Massachusetts Arborist Association. Definition for code enforcement officer, the building commissioner or designee. Definition for construction construction permit, a building permit issued by the building department allowing construction demolition or renovation of buildings and structures on a parcel of land. Some tiny changes to definition of construction. A new definition for critical root zone, the minimum area beneath the canopy of a tree which must be left undisturbed in order to preserve a sufficient root mass to give a tree a reasonable chance of survival. The critical root zone is represented by a concentric circle centering on the tree's trunk and extending outward towards the tree's dripline. Small changes to demolition. More changes to the diameter at breast height, which are similar to those in the public preordinance. Definition for developer, an individual or firm who purchases a property in order to improve, renovate, expand or demolish a structure with the purpose of reselling the property. Again, the definition of drip line, same as from the public preordinance. Some small changes to the definition of a hazardous tree. Definition of a landmark tree, which is the same, I believe, as from the public one. Definition of landscape design plan, a written description and scale drawing of the future site that includes the locations of plantings, structures, hardscape, green space, topography, and future canopy. A handwritten drawing is acceptable accompanied by photographs. small changes to the definition of Medford Tree Committee and person. Protected tree. Any tree on private property with a diameter at breast height of eight inches or more, or a multi-stem tree having an aggregate of 24 inches or more. Species that have a small height at maturity or are slow growing, such as flowering dogwood or American holly, with a DBH of six inches or more are eligible to be considered protected trees. Trees listed as invasive species on the Massachusetts Invasive Plants list are not considered protected trees. A few changes to the definition of replacement trees. The trees must be a minimum of three inch caliber and a minimum height of six feet. It again mentions the tree fund. It has tree protection, replacement and mitigation plan, a site plan drawn and stamped by a certified land surveyor or engineer and stamped by a certified arborist or landscape architect. It must show all protected trees as defined herein, including public shade trees near the property and must indicate which protected trees will be retained or removed and how critical root zones of each protected tree and public shade tree will be protected from damage during site work. Tree removal application process and forms required to be used by any person as defined here in seeking to remove a protected tree. The $100 fee must accompany the application. The fee will be $35 for owner occupied properties. Tree removal permit. a permit issued by the building department for removal of trees based on the appropriate application process on privately owned property. In addition to the actual cutting down of living trees, quote, removal includes any act that A, has caused a protected tree to die within the previous 12 months, or B, is likely to cause significant decline or death within a three year period. One sentence added to tree warden, the duties of the tree warden are redefined in this ordinance to include private trees. And then there are a lot of additions here under applicability. These versions shall apply to the following activities on privately owned land. Do you want me to read this whole thing? There's a lot. There's pages of
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. I think that at this meeting, we're really kind of getting back up to speed with like what the purpose of this is, what some of the ideas are in it. It sounds like it does need some, you know, discussion with the building department of, you know, what we can and can't do, maybe some understanding of how this can be covered by zoning and the building department, which I myself don't fully understand. And I'm curious about other cities, how they deal with this from a zoning perspective and a building department perspective to see how that is done in other cities. So I'd be interested in understanding a little bit more about that. I'm hoping that the next step might be to have a sit down. I'm happy to be involved with the building department. And I know Trees Medford has been incredibly generous with their time. And maybe we can all sit down and have an understanding, look at some other cities, discuss what's gonna be possible here in Medford as well.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wanted to quick ask if at this stage, is there anything that we would want to ask of Innocent Associates in terms of their, you know, like, can they give us like a very general sense of like what people do in terms of zoning? And without even sending them this whole piece of paper, but maybe with the purpose of it and just say, hey, what do you recommend in terms of zoning? Or how would this piece fit into zoning? Or if we're too early for that?
[Anna Callahan]: I was just going to make a motion.
[Anna Callahan]: I move that Vice President Collins and I work with Therese Medford and the staff to do a next draft and update of this that we will then bring back to Council.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I noticed that there are some younger trees. So the two areas where there will be sunshades, the left one and then the lower one. Near the lower one, it seems like there are some younger trees. And I'm just curious if you anticipate that at the point where those trees become larger, that this is sort of something for the next 10 years that these sunshades will be really helpful and that hopefully those trees will then provide more shade there.
[Anna Callahan]: Any thoughts of like planting a tree in the south side so that eventually it will shade that area as well if that's something that we think is necessary long-term? I know it's not in this project, but I just thought I would mention it.
[Anna Callahan]: Just one other comment that I really appreciate how much, I'm always impressed with how much our city administration looks for grants. And just so that people know, grants often come with this kind of requirement where there's the grant, but then they also require the city to put in funds that are sort of roughly equivalent. So I really appreciate the work on that front.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just wanted to note for anyone listening that Commissioner McGibbon will be at the next public works meeting in order to give us an update on how these funds be used, what we can kind of expect from this new funding to the DPW.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I so appreciate this, the thought, the gesture. I actually went on Amazon and found some solar floodlights that are like either white or multicolored that cost around a hundred bucks. So I think this is something that we could easily make happen pretty quickly. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Who knew? Great. Mechanical failure. Did you send this out? Is there a copy? Can we see copies?
[Anna Callahan]: What's the name of the, I just don't see the, I'm looking at all of the clerk's emails right now. Is it under the newsletter draft or?
[Anna Callahan]: What's the title of the email?
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, I can get it later, but I would like a copy.
[Anna Callahan]: Maybe the clerk can find out the subject and let me know.
[Anna Callahan]: I don't see, did I get it?
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, to my Gmail.
[Anna Callahan]: I think it only went to my Gmail. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: second. Now it's on. Thanks for your work. I'm really impressed with, you know, initiating the program, having the ideas, then finding out it's not gonna work the way you think, and then finding a way to make it work. So that's excellent. I will say I am very excited about the owner occupied. I think that's exactly the way that we want to do it. And I, it seems like we're all on the same page. But I wanted to informally ask that you might come back to this committee in a year and just give us an update. Perfect. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm still on, how nice, how convenient. Given Councilor Tseng's suggestion, I wonder if there is a way to not tie it to $750. I wonder how we can, if there's a way to sort of craft some language that isn't gonna require us every couple of years to be like, well, that's not 750.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, so this is a little bit of an update. I know when we first drafted the, I think we came up with nine different ones we were hoping to do, you know, this year or so, we wanted to take advantage of our community liaisons. So we split those up. I have a couple of reports back from those that will be upcoming. Hopefully, we also can move. I think the senior center is fantastic. We also had, I think, tough students in the high school. And I would love for us to, at some point in the new year, to start doing things at each of the schools for parents of the schools. I think that's a great way. And there's other ways for us to really get into the community. I think getting out of this chamber and getting into places where folks who maybe don't come to this room able to hear from more folks. So my two updates are that this Saturday through the um, Arab speaking, uh, liaison. Uh, we're gonna do one at the library. So that's coming up Saturday at noon. And then, um, we have two potential dates for doing one through, uh, Stacey Moore, and we decided to do it at the West Medford Community Center. Um, and the two potential dates for that are, um, Saturday, December 7th at 10 or 10.30 a.m., and Saturday, January 4th at 10 or 10.30 a.m. So we can pick either one of those, and then I can get back to her.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry. Thank you. Um, I would like us to choose now, like sure.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. We have a few minutes. I know I mentioned, you know, maybe doing some at the schools. I also thought just thought we could have like a couple minutes of brainstorm since we're nearing the end of the year. But, you know, I think for parents at the schools, you know, one each at each school might be nice. What do you think of maybe looking at where the lower income Medford residents are and trying to do like neighborhood ones where we flyer? Just trying to think of like, how can we reach the folks who are like, likely to come here that we don't often hear from and that we would really like to make sure that they're doing okay.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I just appreciate all the work. It's very thorough. Thanks so much for adding in things that like vegetative walls, remembering suggestions that we made quite a while ago. So really appreciate the work. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: That was that was me seconding.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Second.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I would note that I forgot to remove that last half of the sentence so at the bottom of full text and description before the potential language. It should also remove and to encourage the city council to regularly to consider regular cola adjustments that whole half should be removed, because I removed all of that, that that would be my revised. As I stated in January at the meeting, I believe that, I know that this is the law in a number of states. It is also the law in some other cities in Massachusetts. And essentially what it says is that you can vote to change the salaries, but they can't take effect until after the next election. And that is essentially what I'm proposing be discussed in the governance committee. It probably makes sense if, like, if we vote this to the Governance Committee, when the Governance Committee takes it up, for the very first thing be to send it to legal to see whether it could even be passed by an ordinance, or we could do that from here. Because if it can't be passed by an ordinance, and it can only be passed by a charter change, then obviously there's no point in us discussing it. So I'm happy if that's the first step.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, thanks to reply. So what it what this always was even from the beginning was to disallow any future city council from voting to increase their own salaries. And then in addition, I had it. put on the agenda to discuss whether the future would have a color adjustment. But, you know, as I was discussing them with this with some of my volunteers. Somebody brought up the point that that really doesn't belong in an ordinance, it's not in the other cities ordinances, that would simply be up to city Councilors to bring that up as something if they feel like bringing it up. So the important meat and potatoes of this was always what I have here, which is making it no longer legal for city councilors to increase their own salaries, but simply to vote to increase the salary of a future city council. That's always what this was about. And I simply removed the part that really shouldn't be part of an ordinance, but would be at the discretion of city councilors in the future.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm sorry, I have to comment here because I am really. I brought this up. I'm supposed to speak to the chair, because I literally was trying to appeal to I think the people who are here because of misinformation. I brought this up because I wanted to make sure that the city council could never again vote for their own raises that is what this was always about. It did absolutely not suggest that we have coal increases every year or anything of the kind. If you read the original that I wrote, and look, I can understand if some people read it very quickly and did not understand what that said, but the only thing that it mandated is that no future city council could ever vote to increase their own salaries. So I will say that I am feeling surprised that I am trying to bring forward things that I believe the people who are here would genuinely want to be passed, genuinely. And yet somehow, the part that said like, hey, maybe it should be like, on an agenda to consider, which does not mean that it should happen. Like, that is the thing people focused on instead of focusing on the only actual thing that it did, which is to make sure no city council could ever vote for their own raises, and I'm surprised that Councilor Scarpelli wants a future city council to vote for their own raises to be able to raise their own salaries. This is the only thing that it does. So, I'm... I am surprised and I hope that people will read what is actually being proposed instead of making assumptions based on who is putting something forward. What does it say? That's what it says. I mean, read it. It says no city council, no change in the salary
[Anna Callahan]: I hope that people can discuss what is on here with the removal of that second half of the thing because this is the only thing that is being proposed.
[Anna Callahan]: I have revised it. This is the revised version.
[Anna Callahan]: It's not there, it is gone.
[Anna Callahan]: This is all the branches, and this is what I'm trying to do.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I brought this up and I apologize for having anything about COLA in it at the beginning. I wish that it had been this second version, which almost no one talked about. I brought this up knowing that it would not be friendly to many of my fellow city councilors. I brought it up because I believe that it is the right thing to do. I believe that city councilors, as is true in many states, and as is true in some other cities in Massachusetts, city councilors should not be able to raise their own salaries. That is why I brought this up. I brought it up despite knowing that other city councilors here who voted yes, when I voted no against those raises earlier this year, that those other city councilors might have their feelings hurt. They might feel that this was not friendly to them. I felt a little ballsy and I felt that I was doing the right thing. I still feel that I'm doing the right thing. And I don't mind being ballsy. I'm just a little bit sad that I am attacked not for what is actually what I am, this, what I am proposing today, which I believe if it had been put forward by councilor, that every person in this room who spoke out against it would be speaking out in favor of it. Now, maybe I am wrong, but I think that Wow, okay. I should not have said that. I apologize. I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth. I am very sorry.
[Anna Callahan]: I genuinely was trying to do what I believed and continue to believe is the right thing. And I do hope that things like this can be read and spoken about with some attempt at understanding that it is a good faith effort. And literally what is written here and what I am trying to do is to make it not possible for the city council to raise salaries of any sitting elected official. I believe that is what I personally believe in, and I will stand by it.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Six or eight months ago we had these. So engineer own we're Tella and the Commissioner Tim McGivern at the public works meeting, and it was great to sort of be able to get their take on an update on the roads. because they will have the extra $500,000 per year. We want to go ahead and get another update from them. And I invite everyone who's interested in our roads, which I think is everyone, I hope, I'm certainly interested in our roads, to come and have questions for them prepared so that we can get all the information that we need.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. This was something that I talked about a lot, as I was knocking on doors. Last summer, and I found that a lot of people were especially in South Medford we're really interested in helping to plant trees in their city I know that there are other cities that allow residents to help with this. program. Obviously, it's this only with the proper training with the proper trees at the proper depth, you know, doing everything exactly the right way. It sounded like as I talked to Commissioner given that he is open to it. And this is simply to have him come to a meeting and so that we can begin discussing how this might work in our city and get the sort of best ideas of the way this would move forward. And I hope that we might by spring, if spring is the right time to plant trees, that we might be able to have our first pilot program.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wanted to note that I was actually kind of peeking through the RFP. Just now, definitely it specifically calls out the parking of the senior center that that must be that that must be like. I think replaced or continued at least the number of parking spaces, but it also talks about the idea that the parking that is created has to not only consider the senior center, but it also has to account for new business development in the square. So I'm not saying that what's in the RFP, sorry, I'll talk to the, I'm supposed to talk to the chair. I'm not saying that what's in the RFP is definitely what will happen in the end product. But I think that it just so that you know, it is in the RFP specifically that those requests are there. And then this you coming to this meeting is absolutely fantastic, because, you know, it has to come through this body. So we are now extra aware. I also would love to be in one of the future listening sessions at the senior center. And we can even specifically bring up this topic of the RFP. And, you know, as we go forward, I think there will be other public meetings about the development that is going to be done. So I really appreciate all of your comments, and we will take them to heart and we will, you know, make sure to be pushing forward as the RFP moves forward through the process, that we will make sure that not only are there enough spaces for the senior center, but also for the growing needs of parking in Medford Square as it grows.
[Anna Callahan]: I had a thought as we were discussing this because I and I do remember going to some of those public participation community events organized by the planning department to discuss these three lots. And I, I wonder if there is something of a timing problem because you know that was At least it was a year and a half ago, or over a year ago for sure. And I think what may happen is that when it's so far away from a reality. People might not realize that it's going to impact them. And then when it becomes like now there's an actual RFP and it's already been sent out. And so now people are worried. So I'm wondering if maybe, you know, we can have like just a chit chat with the administration and talk about maybe having, spreading the community meetings in such a way that there are some community meetings closer to or like before or after an RFP goes out, because now that it's becoming a reality I think people are realizing the way that it's going to impact their lives in a way that a year and a half ago. It wasn't, it didn't seem like something to attend so anyway, I'm just thinking about that as something that maybe You know, if the administration is in fact, you know, we are having these community meetings, but the timing isn't lining up with what people need in terms of it being really applicable to their lives and then wanting to take the time out to come to these community meetings. So I think I may just have a little, and I might talk to some folks in the administration about that possibility of changing the timing of some of those.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So on page 22 of 39, I just have one question, which is that. And I just want to make sure there's not a typo in here. I really remembered, and tell me if I'm misremembering, that the height, the building height differential between MX-1, MX-2, and MX-3 was more gradual. These MX-1 numbers and MX-2 numbers are identical. And I really thought that it stepped up between MX-1 and MX-2. Is that not accurate, page 22 of 39? Yeah, yep, 22 of 39 of the packet. I thought there was a step up between MX1 and MX2 and not like they're identical and there's a giant leap to MX3 in terms of height.
[Anna Callahan]: And if I may, I also noticed that co living is explicitly denied in MX one, two and three, which is probably fine, because I'm guessing that those are all going to be one and two bedroom places that are built there. But just a note.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just have three questions. My first question is at these times in the past, did they have other cost of living adjustments or raises? Or are these the only ones? And my second question is just about parking union titles. Does this include everyone in the department? I just want to understand what parking union titles means, and I understand that it's part of contract negotiations. I mean, my third question is a little more broad, probably not really able to be answered. So I assume that the reason that we're looking only at raising parking right now is because of union negotiations rather than raising salaries of other unions.
[Anna Callahan]: You don't you don't touch the cemetery soil removal. You know, I saw this on here. And I was assuming that was part of the Halloween zombie uprising initiative.
[Anna Callahan]: But I thought it was part of the whole business from Tim McGivern. Halloween Zombie Uprising Initiative. Sorry? The Halloween Zombie Uprising Initiative. You're making me say it four times.
[Anna Callahan]: Actually stole my thunder because I was going to ask about that specifically, but I know the tree inventory is, you know, going to be done soon and just was going to ask about the plans for like how to keep that up to date.
[Anna Callahan]: I was only going to say that I did walk by this yesterday. And there's a, I mean, you can see the retaining wall that has, you know, just totally fallen all the way down the hill. It's, it really looks like it's needs immediate attention.
[Anna Callahan]: I only just noticed that we are a new blonde chicks panel. So I wanted to talk for a good picture because a lot of people are asking why do we have to increase hope? Why are we trying to increase sexism? And so the basic question is really, do we have enough money to do the services in our city that we want, that we really are expecting from anyone that lives in any city in Massachusetts? So I'll start by saying that we rank 320th out of 351 cities and towns. That's the 2024 budget, in terms of our budget per capita. So that means we have a smaller budget per person than all of the other 58 cities, and it is smaller per person than 90% of towns. The only towns that have a smaller budget per person than we do are all much smaller than New York. So the truth is, We just can't run a city on the amount of money that we have. And Prop 2.5, I don't know how much we're, we need to get into that specifically, but Prop 2.5 in Massachusetts means that if we're gonna raise taxes more than the total amount of taxes that we bring into the city, more than 2.5% per year, we put that on the ballot and ask the voters to make that decision, and that's what we're doing here. The other thing I want to raise now, because people ask this question a lot, Is there somewhere in our budget that we can scrimp and save? This giant blue piece of the pie is our schools. I think everyone on both sides of this question understands that we have a huge funding gap in our schools and that we need to find more funding for our schools. The next one is insurance. Insurance is required by law. We cannot, this is not discretionary, we can't cut that budget. The next budget is pensions. Pensions, again, are a contract, but we cannot just decide. The next two are fire and police. I don't think that anyone on either side of this fractured and wrapped question wants us to drastically cut our fire department or our police department. The next one is DPW highway. That means our roads. And the thing that's important to understand about roads is that the more you underfund them, the more money, you're ballooning the amount of debt that you have to pay later. So, for example, we had a road assessment done. It has five ratings, one, two, three, four, five. 49% of our roads fall into the worst two categories. And here's the problem. It costs at least 30 times as much to fix a category five road as it costs to fix a category two road. So if you just always fix your category two roads, and always have your roads in good condition, you can actually do it with the state funding. But when you allow them, when you underfund them, and you allow them to get in such a dilapidated state, you just haven't. In prior administrations, You're ballooning the amount of debt that we have. So you can't underfront your roads. After roads is bonds. Again, we have to pay that money back. This is not something that we can just decide not to pay. And now we're getting into these tiny, we're not working up here in these teeny, weeny little ones. With the library, facilities, and other small departments like HR, things we simply cannot cut. There is nowhere in this budget that there's a ton of waste. There's nowhere in this budget. We already have, over decades, cut and cut and cut and cut. There's nowhere else to cut. We simply do not have the budget to support a city of our size. And I would like to pass it to Mayor, if I remember. Thank you very much.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, I think I'm going to take what is free cash, and then the mayor is going to take what are the projects that are waiting in ways for free cash to be used for. So, free cash, dumb name, not free, not cash. Okay? So pre-cash is the official term for, at the end of budget season, let's say your budget was $108 million, and at the end of the budget, you spend $107 million, that $10 million difference, it's called pre-cash. Now maybe you had a little more revenue than you expected, maybe you didn't spend on something you thought you would spend on, but it's very common, and what's important to understand is that it is recommended by the state of Massachusetts that cities and towns have between 3% and 5% of their budget in free cash each year. Now, 3% to 5% of the federal budget is between $5 million and $9 million. And the reason it's recommended is because bond agencies will give you a rating based in part, so that's one of the things they use to give you a bond rating, which is like a credit rating. So if you don't have free cash, if you end up spending every penny, which I have heard from people like, we should spend every penny, it's mismanaged, we don't spend every penny. It's actually financially mismanaged according to bond agencies and according to the state of Massachusetts if you spend every penny. It is considered that you are not being financially responsible with this. So that's the most important thing to understand is that we need to have free cash in order to have a good profit. And what else can I say about free cash? Maybe the next thing is just to talk about what it gets used for. The one other thing I will say is that in 2024, we, for the first time, created a capital stabilization fund. Now, we were one of the last five municipalities out of 351, sorry, 10. We were one of the last five to create one, so we finally did that, and that's where you're supposed to put pre-cash so that it can be spent on capital projects.
[Anna Callahan]: And just quickly, the city council has been working on rezoning, and we're pretty excited about this to ask, because we're gonna rezone for a lot of mixed use and a lot higher stories. It'll gradually, as it goes away from the metro squares, it'll gradually get more and more stories, but we're very excited about the amount of people who might have their, and I will also just, I will switch over to Ross. So this is our, This is the commercial sector, new growth, and I don't know how much you can see, but the last two years have been higher new growth than any time in the last 20 years. So we really are doing better.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, we haven't actually explained Prop 2.5 fully. Would you like to start by explaining Prop 2.5? Let me just do Prop 2.5 and override versus a debt exclusion. So, unlike almost every other state in the country, where city councils are allowed to raise the taxes that they determine that they need. They're elected, they run on it, they either want to raise taxes or they want to not raise taxes, and then as elected officials, they make that decision. In Massachusetts, a statewide ballot measure passed in 1980 that said that no city or town can raise the total tax levy, total amount of money brought into the city, more than 2.5% per year.
[Anna Callahan]: New growth changes the model, that's different. But the point is not that they can't raise the taxes, it's simply that to raise those taxes, they put it on the ballot and they allow the voters to make that decision for themselves. Even the proponents of Prop 10.5 did not want it. So it used to go 30 years without ever 40 years without ever putting it on the ballot. They believed that it should be put on the ballot and the voters should decide. Override is something that you increase the total amount that the tax levy can be. So in our case, it would be $3.5 million for question 7, $4 million more for question 8. And at that point, that becomes a new tax levy, and that can be increased 2.5%. because it has a limited, it can only be used for the thing, well, they can both only be used for what they're supposed to be for, but it's for capital projects, and once it is paid off, that tax then goes down again. That's pretty much it.
[Anna Callahan]: The only thing I have to add is once you negotiate contracts with the teachers, then you have a contract. I don't see how that's possible. And how often have we cut the school budget?
[Anna Callahan]: I just want to say one very quick thing. Every year, for the last 40 years, that we have not put this on the ballot. We have not allowed our community to make these decisions for themselves.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I did have a very quick question, a comment. First of all, I'm extremely impressed with certainly everything that I had suggested language on or had advocated for. Everything has gotten in here. Definitions are great. Like everything looks wonderful. So thank you so much for all your work. making sure that all of these different pieces from the different Councilors made it in here. And my only question looking at this whole thing is really about the environmental resilience piece and the table of development incentive bonuses. And I know we have had a tiny bit of discussion about green score, and here it is, just there's one line, like ideal green score is one additional story. I'm just curious, like how does that, I think we haven't passed the green scoring yet, so I'm curious what that looks like if we pass this and we do green score later. I'm just curious about how that fits together.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Just a quick question, since Director Hunt had mentioned it. There was like a sort of adult stuff allowed. Where is that going to be re-added back in here on this map?
[Anna Callahan]: In the chamber. Uh huh. Oh, that's looking good. Yeah. Tasty. Um. Just there's a typo at the end of the first general business point and invest $4 million to invest.
[Anna Callahan]: I've looked through everything and it looks good. I know that Councilor Tseng is updating just the governance committee one, but I think my committee is good and the rest of it looks good to me. So thank you so much for putting it together.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, just, didn't we also have that commemoration of Larry Lepore? But I'm wondering, do we, in the past, we've left those off of this. I think that is accurate that we have not put in like the personal ones about, you know, I started so I started I started doing that because I figured it was it was nice.
[Anna Callahan]: We'll want to put Larry Lepore in here.
[Anna Callahan]: Larry Lepore.
[Anna Callahan]: And I actually do have one like to me. This seems grammatically awkward. This section that I like we started discussions on the city charter review process, including setting a timeline as we expect the Charter Review Committee's recommendations to like to me there has to be an ending to that sentence, but.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm not sure what you mean as we expect them to continue to arrive or as we expect.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I move to approve and send to, just to approve.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Motion to adjourn.
[Anna Callahan]: Invest in Medford, the place we love. We're just thinking of the best for Medford. Invest in Medford for our schools. Wouldn't it be cool to invest in Medford? I gotta stop asking teachers to do more with less. our students. Let's set them up for success. Invest in Medford. For all the kids. Our kids deserve the best. No more but surely no less. That's why we're here to confess that it's best to invest in Medford.
[Anna Callahan]: Just clarification. So it sounds like this is to ensure that we are in line with state law. So state law already has changed, and we want to have something explicitly supporting the state law?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So I think in addition to the cost, which is important, I would love to have, you know, either if you have already done some of this research, possibly we do more research into the need in the community. And, you know, I'm sure you've already thought of this, but we may want to reach out to the Disabilities Commission, we may want to see if we can reach out to Mothers with newborns and small babies because I just remember from that time period that like finding a bathroom that had a changing space was like absolutely crucial and if I, you know, couldn't find one, it's like very bad. And maybe we can think of other, you know, groups of people that might have special needs or not even that special, but like, you know, some understanding of what the need is in our community. And I think that would also help us sort of make the case for the cost of these going on. So.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So, I think this is a basic question why do we need these overrides. And as Councilor Leming stated, we, we actually I will say we rank 320th out of 351 Massachusetts cities and towns. in the amount of budget we have per person. So we have less budget per person than every other city in Massachusetts and we have less budget per person than 90% of towns. All of the others that spend less per person than we do are much smaller than we are. Our budget is too small to provide the services that we need. I want to go ahead, I don't know, this is probably gonna be too small for people to see, but this is a chart of our budget. And this large blue area here is the schools. That is what we are looking for more money for, so we cannot cut that. The next one is insurance. Insurance is something that we are required to have by law. We cannot cut that. The next one is pensions. Those are contractual. We cannot cut pensions. The next two are our fire department and our police department. My feeling is that no one on either side of the Prop 2.5 debate wants to drastically cut our police and fire departments. The next one after police and fire is our roads. And I appreciate your question about the roads, because underfunding of our roads has caused us to have $67 million in essentially road debt it's called the road backlog 30 seconds. Thank you. After that, our bonds, which we are also required to pay, and then we get down to smaller things, the library facilities, many other small departments. None of these, if we even cut the entire department, could possibly fix the $3 million to $5 million that we need for the school budget. Our budget is simply too small. I'll let someone else talk about which of these increases more than inflation. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I hear a lot of people asking about free cash. I think misunderstanding what free cash is. First thing I'd like to say is, free cash, dumb name, it's not free, it's not cash, okay? So, free cash, sorry?
[Anna Callahan]: Free, free cash.
[Anna Callahan]: May I get my two minutes? Will I get my two minutes?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Free cash is the term that the state uses for the money that is left over after your budget season has ended. So it's the difference between what you budget, which, let's say, is $180 million, and the amount you spent, which, let's say, is $172 million. That $8 million, which is the difference, is called free cash. Now, the state of Massachusetts has a group called the Division of Local Services, and their job is to help cities and towns become financially responsible. They highly recommend that cities and towns in Massachusetts have 3 to 5% of their budget left over in free cash every single year. In Medford, that amount would be between $5 million and $9 million. If you don't have between 3 and 5% of your budget left over in free cash, you are considered financially irresponsible. by credit agencies and your bond rating goes down. Now that is very bad because it changes, just like if your credit rating is bad. It changes the amount that you have to spend anytime you borrow money. So we want to be a financially responsible city. So having money left over in free cash, and I'm going to I have another chart here because I think it's important for people to understand that this city was in the past very financially irresponsible. If you notice that before 2012, we couldn't even meet our budget many years. We definitely never reached that 3% in free cash and our bond rating was terrible. So it's only in recent years that we have begun to have anywhere close to the required 3%. in free cash. Now free cash according to the state of Massachusetts should never be used for an operating budget. It needs to be used for capital projects. We currently because of underfunding of our roads have $67 million in road debt. We have $79 million in our capital improvement plan for things that need to be done only in the next Three to five years.
[Anna Callahan]: So we cannot use free cash for something like our school budget that is absolutely verboten according to financially responsible people in the state of Massachusetts.
[Anna Callahan]: two minutes councilor calvin and then councilor collins very quickly the reason that those other cities don't have as much money in free cash is because they weren't last to the table in getting a stabilization fund having a stabilization fund again is considered financially responsible Medford didn't have one. There are 451 cities and towns in Massachusetts. We are one of the last five. Only five remained this year that did not have a stabilization fund. That's why we have all this free cash, because we didn't have any stabilization funds.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much for your correction, because I do know it's 351. I'm surprised that I said that, but thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I just wanted to speak to the question, which is, where is the money going to go? So my understanding is that in that first year is when that strong encouragement to spend it on what was mentioned in the- It's a legal requirement. A legal requirement. Thank you very much. A legal requirement to spend it on what was talked about in the ballot question. But what happens over time, because Prop 2.5 overrides don't end, right? They sort of just mean that the total amount of the budget is increased and that will continue.
[Anna Callahan]: It is a sustainable source of revenue. And what that means is that over time, there may be, you know, like 10 years later, 15, 20, 30 years later, it may be that that budget needs, you know, the city council should be able to spend that budget in the way that makes the most sense. So that's the reason why It's a legal requirement at the beginning, but it does go into the general fund, right?
[Anna Callahan]: Sure, I think it's important to understand that the money from both seven and eight will go to the schools, obviously not the 500,000 for the roads, but the rest of it, and that it is the job of the school committee with the mayor and with the school superintendent and the financial people and the whole administration of the schools to figure out how best to serve children with that budget. It's possible that a tiny percentage of that may be necessary to boost our busing so that young kids are not walking across dangerous intersections. And I'm not going to be making that decision. That's simply a tiny example since people have mentioned busing. a zillion different decisions that can be made when you're talking about the school budget. And it's the job of that part of the electeds and administration, the school committee, as well as the administration of the school system to make the best decisions each year, given what is happening that year with the budget that they have. And of course, as always, with the best interests of the students in mind.
[Anna Callahan]: That's a tough question to answer. I simply want to say that chronic underfunding, unfortunately, causes people to mistrust their government. So, you know, half of our roads are in the worst two road conditions, and that's from chronic underfunding. It costs between 30 and 50 times as much to fix a road in condition five, that's the worst one, as it does to fix a road in condition two, And, you know, we would be able to pay every year for all of our roads to get repaired with chapter 90 funding if we never let them fall into that kind of disrepair, but through underfunding. chronic decades long underfunding, we have created a city that cannot service basic, basic needs. And that does make people mistrust the government, unfortunately. But the fix is, and someone here mentioned, you know, that what other communities do when they're in these situations is bonds and other things. I think that what other communities do in this situation is they pass a prop two and a half override.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks again. Always good to see young folks coming up here and asking these great questions. So I just want to talk a little bit about the difference between 7 and 8, Proposition 7, Proposition 8. And 7 is going to make sure that we provide the same resources and the same you know, budget, basically, that we have been providing. Prop eight is gonna be where we make sure that we can actually really do a little bit more, that we can take care of our teachers, that we can pay them better salaries, that we can pay paras better salaries, that we take care of them the way that they are taking care of you. So that's just a little bit about the difference between those two and why they're separate.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. And again, these questions are better answered by school committee folks. My understanding is that you can't really compare what our entire school budget is to other cities very well, because other cities don't include a lot of the things that we include in the school budget. So it's not apples to apples. And I wish I could rattle off all the things that are included and not included. The ones that I recall are, I think, IT, and now because of post COVID, there's just a lot more, you know, Chromebooks required for students and other IT related things. IT is often not included in school budgets in other cities, but it is included in our school budget. I think there are parts of building maintenance that are included in our school budget that are not included in other city school budgets. So while it appears, if you just look at the number, it appears that we spend more per student, I don't believe that that is an accurate way of looking at it simply because of the things that are and aren't included. And then I just wanted to comment about the school day. Unless I'm mistaken, please correct me if I'm wrong. We have one of the shortest school days of anywhere in the entire state that we are barely like a minute or two above the state absolute minimum for the number of minutes that children have to spend in school across the entire year.
[Anna Callahan]: Just a super quick comment that teachers who are underpaid compared to how much they could make in other cities, they do think about whether the city is able to fund them the next year. So if we want people to stay, it's just healthier for us in terms of teacher morale and longevity to have, for them to know that the budget is there for their salaries for the next year, because people do try to think ahead you know, they're less, we'll just have more turnover, that's all, thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: If I can, oh, sorry. Go ahead.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I just um, so my understanding is that there are some numbers going around comparing Medford salaries with communities like Arlington, but actually just have an accurate numbers. And, and those are all public so you can actually go on the web and like look up those numbers so I encourage you to do that just to make sure that the numbers that you're seeing are accurate. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: I love that question. Thank you so much for bringing it up. I think there are a few basic. I don't want to say rules of engagement, but just pieces of advice that people hopefully understand as like good for group dynamics healthy for a community healthy for a group. I hope that people in their conversations with neighbors can think about these things. I hope that we on the council can also do these things as well. They are things like treat other people with respect and dignity. Assume good intent. Don't assume that the other person means you ill. Just assume that they have good intent. Listen to what folks are actually saying. Don't use accusational language. Basic decorum, basic showing respect for other people is what I encourage for everyone in all of their discussions with the friends, family, neighbors, city councilors, and all of those folks. And I hope that if I am not following that, people will call me out, because I do hope that I can always treat everyone, no matter what their political position on a topic is, with respect. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I also did not know him nearly as well as I wish I had, but I think we will really never be able to replace him. No matter who we get for this position, we won't be able to replace him because of his personality and because of who he was. So I'm, you know, someday we'll have someone in that position. They'll be different, but Larry is definitely truly missed.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. Thank you. I wanted to take this opportunity to answer a question that has come up pretty often in these chambers, and that really is a question about why we can't use free cash. People say that they heard that we have $34 million in free cash, and why can't we use that instead of raising taxes, which I think is a very fair question. And I would like people to consider the way that city budgets and city finances are similar to household finances. When you run a household, you've got income, you've got expenses. If you make your operating budget, your normal budget for the year, you want to look at your income and hope that your budget adds up to less than your total income. And in your household, you probably also have a savings account. It's good to have a savings account for one time or unexpected expenses. Your kid might need braces, your roof might need repair, you might need to get a new car. Cities also need to have savings accounts for similar reasons. At some point, we will need a new fire station. We will need a new high school. There might be a pandemic, and our schools suddenly need HVAC systems to all be replaced at the same time. The short answer to why we should not use free cash for normal budgeted items is that free cash is savings, and we need it to fix things that are getting older, like buildings or firetrucks, or in case some unexpected emergency happens. Now what is free cash exactly? It is really a dumb name because it's not free and it's not cash. Every year the city makes a budget and throughout the year we spend money. If we spend less than we budgeted, that amount left over is called free cash. So if we budget $180 million and then we spend $172 million, that gives us $8 million in free cash. And what's important to understand is that every city is strongly encouraged by the state to have free cash every year. Cities must spend less than their budget. If they spend more than their budget, their bond rating goes down. Bond rating. It's like a credit rating. And if your bond rating goes down, then it costs you an arm and a leg in interest and fees to borrow money. Spending more than you budgeted is a big no-no. It's a sign that your city's being poorly run. So yay for Medford that recently we have free cash every year. This has raised our bond rating up to a double A plus rating in the last few years. The Division of Local Services is a state body that helps cities and towns be financially responsible. It recommends that cities and towns have between three and 5% of their total budget in free cash every year to maintain a good bond rating. And in Medford, that is between 5 million and 9 million each year. Our $34 million in certified free cash is primarily because we had $9 million in 2023 due to remaining ARPA COVID grant funds, $9 million in 2022 because of unfilled state positions and legal funds not being spent. Both of these years are within the recommended 3-5% of our budget. Before about 2012, we had almost no free cash each year, which really is a sign of not being managed, financially managed properly. And the state recommends that municipalities create what are called stabilization funds. Almost every city and town at the start of 2024, all but four cities and towns out of 351 had at least one stabilization fund. We were one of only four that did not. We finally, this year, have created two stabilization funds. And what's important to remember, do not use your savings, free cash or stabilization funds for normal operating expenses. The Division of Local Services says, quote, free cash should be restricted to paying one-time expenditures, funding capital projects, or replenishing other reserves. It recommends that communities adopt a free cash policy that avoids supplementing current year departmental operations. So, We are recommended by the state to have a certain amount of money in our stabilization funds for Medford, it's five to 7%, which is what they recommend would be between nine and $13 million in our stabilization in our general stabilization fund. Just to understand a little bit about what we might use these stabilization funds or free cash for, we do have, according to our payment analysis, $67 million in essentially road debt, because we have not kept our roads up as much as we should have. It costs less. each year if your roads are in good shape, and it costs if your roads are in bad shape. So we need to make sure that we are doing those improvements. And then we also have a capital improvement plan, which has recognized $79 million in needs from about 123 projects across the city. So I just want to be pretty clear that when you look at what we are recommended to do by the state in order to be a financially responsible city, that means that we should continue to create a budget that we know we won't exceed. At the end of each fiscal year, we should have between 3% and 5% of that total budget unspent, which is called free cash. Those funds can move into a stabilization where we can spend them to properly take care of our city, which will allow us to spend less in the future. And of course, we also want to have new growth through more commercial growth and new housing. We already are doing that. The last three years have seen Medford's highest new growth in the past two decades, and we will continue to encourage new growth. Unfortunately, this is a slow process. It cannot fix our budget shortfall. and because of rising costs of schools, insurance, pensions, inflation affecting every department and other costs that we cannot control, we need to increase our annual budget and that means voting yes on the overrides and on the debt exclusion. Thank you. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So, in looking over these I had a few comments, starting with the co housing. I think that definition is pretty good, but if you look at. So, in Cambridge there are two different co housing. places. One of them is more like townhouses, and the other one is more larger buildings, a little bit more like apartment buildings, I think. And so I would want to, like, I think the definition of co-housing hopefully should not limit it to small single unit or two unit buildings, but rather be a building or set of buildings, right? just to open it up a little bit in case people want to basically build co-housing that's a little bit more like an apartment building but has a bunch of shared facilities as well. My second one is about co-living and I think what I'm hoping to do is to make a distinction between co-living and which is tenants choosing to live with each other as something we specifically want to allow and encourage in Medford. And there's also something else that I think we specifically want to discourage in Medford. And the difference is really whether the tenants select who the other tenants are, or whether the landlord selects the tenants. So for example, I did a slight update to the co-living. saying a building in which a group of residents pay rent to occupy a single unit with private bedrooms and shared living spaces, including cooking and sanitary facilities, such residents have input over the selection of the other residents living in the housing unit. And I have a little bit of extra language in case it's necessary. I don't know whether it's necessary, but the end of that sentence could be either because they apply for the lease jointly or because when one or more tenants moves out, the residents jointly select a new tenant to add to the lease. I think that the concept that residents have input over the selection of the other residents is important in co-living. And then the one I would want to discourage is basically the same, but saying residents of this other thing, which I don't know what the name would be, do not have input over the selection of the other residents living in the housing unit.
[Anna Callahan]: You say a group of residents pay to rent, pay rent to occupy a single unit.
[Anna Callahan]: Great and I would love that that'd be amazing. I think that's most of my, my, my comments. I did notice when I was looking through the definition, the definition of like a lodger, and of a lodging house. To me the definition of a lodger was not clear but apparently it is pretty clear because you know to the staff because they have been dealing with this code for you know this zoning for you know many years. They understand what it means which maybe is plenty and that's all we need to do. I thought that lodger and lodging house were related to each other, which apparently they really aren't. I think the lodging house definition is slightly problematic. Let me just find, sorry if I can find that. Oh, my other comment about congregate living is I don't know that we need them. I know that elderly-oriented congregate living, we have a lot of senior housing definitions already in our zoning, so I'm not sure that having an elderly-oriented congregate housing would conflict with that. Yeah, I'll leave it there, thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: That's your calling? I don't think we need a motion at this point because NS and associates is going to take this feedback and bring it back to us. Is that accurate?
[Anna Callahan]: My only question is I sent an email with the language that I had suggested, which doesn't have to be exact, but is there anything else that we should do with this language or will Innocence Associates come back to us with these updates?
[Anna Callahan]: Hello, sorry about that. I'm not at my desk anymore. Yeah, so this, the northernmost commercial lot on the south side of the street, the sort of easternmost, just wondering about that being commercial as opposed to one of the mixed use, just because it does abut right up to the public housing.
[Anna Callahan]: I was just gonna want, out of my curiosity, like, is there a reason why this, because it seems like we have a distinction between these two, and like it would make more sense to the I if this was commercial than that was commercial? Like just, you know, is there a reason why? Is it because of the size of the lots, or is there some reason why this is, excuse, and that's commercial instead of switching those?
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. Just super quick. We still are intending to have a co-working definition added. Since it was mentioned that like a co-working space, I just wanted to double check.
[Anna Callahan]: All I know is that when I was doing some research into it, it seemed like co-working spaces had difficulty finding an appropriate place within zoning in most cities, and I don't remember exactly why. I'm looking to see if I can find why. I might be able to find it in about one minute.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, Emily. Councilor Callahan, go ahead. Thank you. And just to close up that thought I found the whole thread that I had run into before, and they are in fact talking about the fact that a lot of co working spaces want to be in retail, where there's zone for retail. And they don't want to be shunted off into like commercial office space zones because it doesn't really work for co working nobody wants to rent there if it is in that space so as long as we're aiming toward, like this whole idea of mixed use, maybe, you know, it'll fit perfectly in there, but as long as that's in our minds, and I think, yes, we will wanna have co-working definitions, both to promote it, as well as to enable it to be the tiny little, in the same way that retail in our code, I don't know if we're continuing this, has different definitions for like, convenience store and other kinds of stores that have different sizes, there may be usefulness to having that sort of definition for co-working so that we can have like neighborhood co-working spaces that are tiny in, you know, more across the residential neighborhoods, as well as be able to have more ones like on Mystic Ave. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, Councilor Calderon, go ahead. I apologize. Only because Mr. DiStefano, you had mentioned the idea of tough students and how many businesses they were coming out with. And it made me think about the spaces, not just co-working spaces, but for example, in Kendall Square, they also have places where they have accelerator programs. And I don't know whether that would be something at all interesting to us or if it would be if there's any difference between that and co-working, if there's any reason to define it differently, but just in the back of our minds to think about how do we have a technology hub here in Medford, where not just from Tufts, but also from maybe some sort of tech hub, a startup generator, if we can encourage that.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wasn't sure if I quite understood you properly, but this, I assume, has not yet gone to legal review, like we're finalizing it to make sure that it's what staff needs first, and then we'll send it to legal. Is that correct?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: You can borrow mine in a second.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. Present. Vice President Collins.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Lazzaro. Present. Councilor Leming. Present. Councilor Scarpelli.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Tseng.
[Anna Callahan]: That would be miraculous. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan? Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: I move that we take this out of order, put it at the end of the agenda.
[Anna Callahan]: I retract my motion.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. Glad this is on the agenda. I think hearing from constituents and also informing constituents is crucially important. Among the many vulnerable populations we have here I think our children are definitely on that list. I would hope that parents would be explicitly reached out to. I don't know if we can go through the PTOs of the various schools, but I think that those people also will be highly, highly impacted by the override vote. And I would hope that we can not only reach out to seniors who are a vulnerable population, but also reach out to parents and make sure that they are also included.
[Anna Callahan]: Reaching out through, say, if we're going through the senior center, then also being able to go through the PTOs.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. Thanks for putting this on. You just said what I was going to say, which is it is important for people to understand this does not eliminate MCAS. Some people are confused about that. It simply removes it as a graduation requirement. I completely agree that it is really damaging as a graduation requirement. So just as long as people understand that. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Welcome to the Public Works and Facilities Committee of October 1st, 2024, at 6 p.m. in City Hall. Mr. Clerk, would you call the roll?
[Anna Callahan]: Present. Thank you. Today we are talking about Resolution 24-422, resolution to host a discussion of MassDOT plans for Medford Square Main Street intersection. Whereas the Massachusetts Department of Transportation is planning to make changes to a busy intersection in the heart of Medford Square, which will impact drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians for many years to come. And whereas the Medford Bicycle Commission attended an informational meeting and expressed concerns with the plans made thus far, now therefore be it resolved that a representative from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation familiar with the plan shall meet with the Medford City Council, a representative of the Medford Bicycle Commission, and a representative of the City of Medford Traffic and Transportation Department in committee to discuss said plans. This is a resolution of Councilor Lazzaro. I leave it to you.
[Anna Callahan]: Fantastic. Let's go to Emily O'Brien.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, uh, Councilor Lazzaro.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Do we have any other councilors that want to speak on this topic? Councilor Lennon?
[Anna Callahan]: If I may. Yes, please. This is the meeting we're having right now. This is this meeting. So this resolution isn't to have another meeting. The resolution which got passed through the city council was to have this meeting right here.
[Anna Callahan]: I will ask for any public participation. Anyone in the chamber? Anyone on Zoom? It is Council President Zac Bears. The floor is yours.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Anyone else like to speak on this topic? Yes, I do see Emily O'Brien. If you want to speak one more time, go ahead.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. And I see that Todd Blake, Director of Traffic and Transportation, is raising his hand as well. Go ahead, Todd.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. It's amazing that you're there to help us facilitate the extra meetings. Any other comments from the public or from councilors? Well, thank you so much to everyone, Councilor Lazzaro, to Mr. Blake, Ms. O'Brien. Sorry, Councilor Lazzaro, do you wanna go ahead?
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful, thank you to everyone. And Councilor Lazzaro has motioned to adjourn. Do we have a second? No one is seconding the motion. Great. Seconded by Councilor Leming. All in favor? All opposed?
[Anna Callahan]: That is an aye. Okay, thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, I just figured while we're getting the Zoom up, we could ask some questions.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I have one, just a question for my own curiosity, and then I also have a suggestion. So I'm curious why the commercial is like 50% lot coverage and the other ones are 80% lot coverage. Is that like a standard thing, and is there a reason why that's so?
[Anna Callahan]: And I saw that and I'm curious about like permeable surfaces. If it's going to be 80% lot coverage. Do we have a recurrent just because I know in that area, we're really concerned about it being a heat island.
[Anna Callahan]: My final, oh, did you?
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. My final kind of suggestion was, because I live down there and I'm, and I, my kid goes to the method took looking at option B. I wonder if, rather than that sort of southwestern portion being all commercial, if it's possible to split that and have commercial. Right on the road and then having those back parcels be mixed use or something else not have so much of the audio auto usage close to the school and the park and also this public housing there. So having you know a little bit nicer usages right butting up to those those three would be great.
[Anna Callahan]: Back, you mentioned that maybe keeping that not having incentive zoning and keeping that to.
[Anna Callahan]: I wasn't sure if he was asking about that, so.
[Anna Callahan]: Mine was actually very similar. I'm just curious if it would be useful for us to have a definition of life sciences or R&D in the definitions, or if simply having a maximum height that allows for taller stories would be enough.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. This may not be something you guys can answer. But, um, in terms of like commercial buildings, uh, I know that ever since Covid, there's a lot less need for commercial buildings. Do we still think that there is enough need that if we zone something that is purely commercial that, um people going to be developing that.
[Anna Callahan]: And just as a follow-up question to that, given the, I guess, ongoing crash in commercial real estate, do we think, in terms of this option A or B, I just wanna get a sense for like, If we exclude commercial, do we think that we'll be missing out on folks who want to develop here? If we include commercial, will we be risking having a whole zone that does not have a lot of demand? Just obviously, you can't fully answer this question, but do you have a sense between those two?
[Anna Callahan]: incentive zoning not being in that one section, but I assume that everything else would have incentive zoning.
[Anna Callahan]: And also behind, like, yeah, the HICSAB one, right?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Thank you. It does have.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. It might be nice to say something like the city council is taking the issue of rodents in our city seriously. Like start off with sort of the purpose of the wildlife feeding ordinance.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, exactly. And the Wildlife Feeding Ordinance is one of our tools. I think that just helps people to kind of understand, like, if I just see the Wildlife Feeding Ordinance, I don't really know what that is. But like, if it's like, we're taking rodents seriously, and this is one of our tools for doing it.
[Anna Callahan]: So I just want to update that next sentence a little bit. The purpose of this ordinance is to ensure that residents do not intentionally feed wildlife. I don't think that's quite right. I think it's more like do not feed unwanted wildlife. I mean, it's really the purpose is to make sure that, you know, people aren't accidentally providing food for pests. But I don't know exactly how to phrase that. I mean, I don't think anybody's intentionally feeding rodents, right? That's not a thing.
[Anna Callahan]: I would lean toward, I agree with putting all three of those at the top because it is a thing that we do. And then I would put ordinances, the definition of ordinance down with the commonly used terms and keep it out of that one line. the top. Does that make sense?
[Anna Callahan]: Um well, I would remove motion the previous, I can't see it cuz it's covered by the.
[Anna Callahan]: I suspect that for people who are, you know, coming to their first city council meeting or something, that is not a thing they need to know. I would just take that one out because I don't think it's like super important to know that one motion. There's other stuff that we could put in there in terms of commonly used terms. I would rather see ordinance than that one. That's what I would do. I would remove that one and put in ordinance.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I don't think that what Councilor Lazzaro was saying was that this is going to be improved. I think that there are different people who understand things in different ways. And I completely agree. I think this is fantastic for what it is. I love the idea of laminated copies being in this room for people to just like maybe on every row, there's a copy and people can look at it. And I would love to offer to work with Councilor Lazzaro on the apples and worms version.
[Anna Callahan]: I would like to suggest that we consider giving the weekend hours to one, perhaps not the during the week, as sort of matching with with during the week is just till midnight. Yes, but during the week is till midnight, which is later than they're currently are, which was 11pm. Is that correct? believe so yes yes so that is what I'm suggesting that it be weekend till one during the week till 11 but a little bit of a compromise on that point I don't I also don't particularly see a reason why consistency is the reason why we should agree or not agree I think you know different businesses are in different areas of the city. They have neighbors closer or farther away from them. They have different track records of complaints with the city. I think it's pretty clear that Panda Express has all of those check boxes that we want to see in terms of being pretty distant from the closest housing. But I think there could be some consideration to a possibility of giving them the extended hours for the weekend for this vote.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Yeah, I totally agree. It would be great. I also agree that, you know, we have to be aware of costs. I simply wanted to add that after I had my son, I remember traveling around and talking to all the other new moms about where you could possibly change a baby in the bathroom without laying them on the floor. So I hope that we can include that in the discussion. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I just, I hope that we are infrequently asked to waive three readings and that we can- There's not three readings on this paper.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. As a general rule, I hope that we are infrequently asked to make quick decisions. Apparently this is not waiving three readings, so maybe it is not a big deal. But just wanted to make that short comment.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I wanted to take this opportunity to answer a question that has come up pretty often in these chambers. And that really is a question about why we can't use free cash. People say that they heard that we have $34 million in free cash and why can't we use that instead of raising taxes, which I think is a very fair question. And I would like people to consider the way that city budgets and city finances are similar to household finances. When you run a household, you've got income, you've got expenses. If you make your operating budget, your normal budget for the year, you want to look at your income and hope that your budget adds up to less than your total income. And in your household, you probably also have a savings account. It's good to have a savings account for one time or unexpected expenses. Your kid might need braces, your roof might need repair, you might need to get a new car. Cities also need to have savings accounts for similar reasons. At some point, we will need a new fire station, we'll need a new high school, there might be a pandemic and our schools suddenly need HVAC systems to all be replaced at the same time. The short answer to why we should not use free cash for normal budgeted items is that free cash is savings, and we need it to fix things that are getting older, like buildings or fire trucks. or in case some unexpected emergency happens. Now, what is free cash exactly? It is really a dumb name because it's not free and it's not cash. Every year, the city makes a budget and then throughout the year, we spend money. If we spend less than we budgeted, that amount left over is called free cash. So if we budget $180 million and then we spend $172 million, that gives us $8 million in free cash. And what's important to understand is that every city is strongly encouraged by the state to have free cash every year. Cities must spend less than their budget. If they spend more than their budget, their bond rating goes down. Bond rating. It's like a credit rating. And if your bond rating goes down, then it costs you an arm and a leg in interest and fees to borrow money. Spending more than you budgeted is a big no-no. It's a sign that your city is being poorly run. So yay for Medford that recently we have free cash every year. This has raised our bond rating up to a double A plus rating last few years. The division of local services is a state body that helps cities and towns be financially responsible. It recommends cities and towns have between three and 5% of their total budget and free cash every year to maintain a good bond rating. And in Medford, that is between 5 million and 9 million each year. Our $34 million in certified free cash is primarily because we had $9 million in 2023 due to remaining ARPA COVID grant funds. 9 million in 2022 because of unfilled state positions and legal funds not being spent. Both of these years are within the recommended three to 5% of our budget. Before about 2012, we had almost no free cash each year, which really is a sign of not being managed, financially managed properly. And the state recommends that municipalities create what are called stabilization funds. Almost every city and town at the start of 2024, all but four cities and towns out of 351 had at least one stabilization fund. We were one of only four that did not. We finally, this year, have created two stabilization funds. And what's important to remember, do not use your savings, free cash or stabilization funds for normal operating expenses. The division of local services says, quote, free cash should be restricted to paying one-time expenditures, funding capital projects or replenishing other reserves. It recommends that communities adopt a free cash policy that avoids supplementing current year departmental operations. So, We are recommended by the state to have a certain amount of money in our stabilization funds. For Medford, it's five to 7%, which is what they recommend would be between nine and $13 million in our general stabilization fund. And just to understand a little bit about what we might use these stabilization funds or free cash for. We do have, according to our payment analysis, $67 million in essentially road debt because we have not kept our roads up as much as we should have. It costs less. Each year, if your roads are in good shape, then it costs if your roads are in bad shape. So we need to make sure that we are doing those improvements. And then we also have a capital improvement plan, which has recognized $79 million in needs from about 123 projects across the city. So I just want to be pretty clear that when you look at what we are recommended to do by the state in order to be a financially responsible city, that means that we should continue to create a budget that we know we won't exceed. At the end of each fiscal year, we should have between 3% and 5% of that total budget unspent, which is called free cash. Those funds can move into our stabilization funds where we can spend them properly take care of our city, which will allow us to spend less in the future. And of course, we also want to have new growth through more commercial growth and new housing. We already are doing that. The last three years have seen Medford's highest new growth in the past two decades, and we will continue to encourage new growth. Unfortunately, this is a slow process. It cannot fix our budget shortfall. And because of rising costs of schools, insurance, pensions, inflation affecting every department, and other costs that we cannot control, we need to increase our annual budget, and that means voting yes on the overrides and on the debt exclusion. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: So this is... Yes, we will reconsider severing. Or no, we will not reconsider severing.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm disappointed that I cannot show my support for each of these individually.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So currently those fees, I assume they are associated with not just rodent control, right, that you have to have themsters and that seems like a normal fee for any kind of construction that is not solely for rodent control. Are those fees going into the general fund? Are we, I mean, I don't know how large this is and if there will be some pushback from other parts of the administration that, you know, these fees really are not just for rodent control and perhaps should be going to the general budget.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: I just want to chime in. I totally agree. I think it's important to be involved, and I'm excited for it.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks Um, yeah, just quickly that I puts the work on us and not on the developers. Because the developer will be like, oh, what is it for this neighborhood? Ah, it's fairly simple for this neighborhood. It means that we have to do the work in advance, but that the developers may have more simple instructions because there will be neighborhoods where we're not worrying about one thing or another thing.
[Anna Callahan]: I definitely want to take a look at this doc later with a little more time. First thought is that, you know, want us to encourage more density within buildings we have a lot of homes that have four or five bedrooms and one person living in it. And I think that we want to go ahead and encourage folks to live with each other. to relieve our affordable, our sort of housing issues that we have here in Medford. So I just wanna make sure that if we're making definitions that we're not sort of defining anything as more than four people living together, it's like a separate sort of definition of living. And I just wanna be a little bit careful on that front. It looks like some of those definitions are like anything more than four and you're defined as a strange form of housing. So that's my only thinking without really having time to sort of look more deeply into it.
[Anna Callahan]: Just wanted to ask, it does say Monday through Sunday, so seven nights a week. Can you talk a little bit about whether you've seen more demand on weekends, are there certain days that you would like it to be later, other days when it would be earlier, just based on what you've seen, what you think would work best for your business?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I wanted to mention that I did knock on thousands of doors last summer and fall, and this issue came up really a surprising number of times. How many residents commented that within the first few years after completely repaving a street, that some project would come in and rip up the street again, and that they felt that that was a poor use of city funds. So I think this is important that we, as a city, require full repaving of city streets when it is within five years of the paving of a street. I'm sure that it is within the business model of National Grid to fully repave roads that have been from curb to curb that have been paved within the last five years. simply because that is just a normal process of doing business, doing the kind of business that you do. It may also be something that you realize that when a city council has changed personnel, that perhaps you might get a different opinion. And that may be your job, but my job is to fight for what the city should be getting in this business contract. And within this business contract, it is, The normal thing, the thing that we need to request is that you do full curb-to-curb repaving. And if the agreement was made in the past, that it makes more sense for both parties for that to be moved to a different street, but that the cost of the repaving is fully reimbursed by National Grid, then I feel very comfortable with that agreement that was made in November.
[Anna Callahan]: No.
[Anna Callahan]: No.
[Anna Callahan]: I just want to comment that I'm incredibly thrilled about the work that Council on Learning has done. Okay. I'm thrilled about the work that Councilor Leming has done on this. As I hope people understand, this City Council has really taken the funding of this city very seriously. We have been underfunded for a long time, and the linkage fees are one of the few places where we can actually obtain more funds that does not affect property taxes. So this is something that I think everyone here should be really excited about. It has not been updated in 34 years. It is definitely undervalued. This is a way that we are going to bring income into the city. And then these changes that make sure that even if a study is not done regularly, that we continue to increase those at the price of inflation is truly a fantastic work. I'm very excited about it. So thank you, Councilor Leming, for the work that you're doing.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm just curious if you have any predictions that if you raise it from $0.25 to $0.35, which based on your chart is one of the higher, is a little bit higher than surrounding cities, do you think that that will lead to fewer people charging in Medford or
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Thank you so much for coming here. I'm really excited about the program in general. I'm happy to see that there has been increasing demand. So I think that's a good sign.
[Anna Callahan]: Just a question, is this out of the Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund or is this out of the, these bonds, are those the bonds that we see coming out of the operating budget?
[Anna Callahan]: Find them in order. And I move to approve.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks so much for coming. It's great to have you here. I just wanted to see if you had any opinion on the topic that one of the previous speakers mentioned about poison versus population control.
[Anna Callahan]: Poison versus population control.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, exactly.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Lovett.
[Anna Callahan]: I plan to vote in favor.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Can we vote on this motion? Can we vote on this motion?
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Just one quick question. I don't see any mention of spaying or neutering, which I assume is intentional. Sorry, I totally missed that. I don't see any mention of spaying or neutering these feral or stray cats. I assume that's intentional. It does say vaccinating, but it doesn't mention spaying or neutering.
[Anna Callahan]: I also reached out after seeing this, I reached out to the State Auditor and I also reached out to the Attorney General. It seems quite clear from the letter that Councilor Scarpelli wrote that the request in the letter, and he says right here, to examine the issues set forth in said letter. That letter is to address issues that he mentioned, which include whether the chair properly ruled out of order a certain state piece of legislation, C43 section 22 of MTL. When I reached out to the state auditor, what the state auditor said was, our office does not conduct audits of city councils, full stop. We can, however, conduct audits of cities if requested to do so by a city council. So there's something I find very interesting happening here, which is this motion, as written, says that it is to examine the issues set forth in the letter. And I'm going to tell you right now, the state auditor does not do that. That is what they told me in writing. They don't do that. This is a legal question. And Councilor Scarpelli seems to think that for some reason, the contracted legal team, KP Law, because they work for the mayor is different somehow from a city solicitor, which also would work for the administration and for the mayor. And I've talked to to city councilors from many cities for many years about the fact that city solicitors do work for the administration, and they tend to, you know, have administration centric ideas right that is a totally normal well understood thing. But this idea that somehow if we had a city solicitor, it would not be hired by the mayor, and yet the KP law is hired by the mayor. And so therefore we should never take the opinion of the legal team that we currently have. What we need to know and what was in this letter is a legal opinion. And I, unfortunately, I did not have time because this was sent out on Friday, and I reached out to them on Monday, and today is Tuesday, so I have not yet spoken to the Attorney General, but I am sure that if what we want is a legal opinion from the state, we can get that legal opinion from the state. Now, what's interesting is that the motion that Councilor Scarpelli has now stated is not to examine the issues set forth in said letter, which would be essentially to audit the legal opinion in the particular legal statements made by the city council, which the state auditor does not do. But now it is to look at our finances around financial mismanagement. Now, that is something that the state auditor can financially audit a city. They will charge the municipality, so the taxpayers of Medford will pay for that.
[Anna Callahan]: And I would like to ask a question. Is there not a regular audit done of the city every year?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. There is a regular audit done of the city finances every year.
[Anna Callahan]: Which I approve of 100%. City's finances should be audited every year and they are.
[Anna Callahan]: I would simply want to understand, because it is not at all clear to me, which of these two things we're actually voting on. Are we voting on for the state auditor to examine the issue set forth in said letter, which is what is written, which I'm pretty sure they will not do, because that's not what they do, or are we voting on them to look at our finances which was what Scarpelli said out loud, which we already do every single year. And I'm really having trouble imagining why we would want to pay the state to do a second audit when we already do them every single year. So I would wanna know which of those we're voting on if there's gonna be a motion. I am unclear.
[Anna Callahan]: I also feel like there are so many responses that I could give. It's really not possible to respond to everything. First of all, I was sad that your motion was Rule 21. I was going to vote for it then. I was also going to vote for it the week after when it was pulled. I also want to know the answer to these legal questions. I do not feel as sure as Councilor Tseng that I know exactly what that law states, and I would like an official legal opinion, and I look forward to what the Attorney General says. I also wish that, as a general rule, financial matters were brought to us earlier so that we were not under the gun and had to do things. So that is a situation that we are put in. And while it is accurate to say that some pink slips went out, some pink slips go out every year, and there would have been dozens and many dozens more pink slips if we had not passed what we passed. I think it's not accurate to say that it made no difference, right? It made a big difference to our schools, whether we voted that week or the next week. I don't like being, would I like another week or two to be able to look at these financial questions? You bet I would. I'm not the one putting these matters to the city council at the absolute last second so that we are forced to vote on them as fast as possible. I don't like that. I really wish that I had some miraculous way to know how the 60,000 people in Medford all think. I'm surprised to hear anyone say that they know how those 60,000 people all think. I also am really having a lot of trouble understanding how the, like, auditing the way that the overrides were passed because the overrides are a major problem, you know, that our community is not being listened to. This whole argument really, I'm really struggling with this because, you know, the overrides was a question of rule 21 and basically us being able to vote on them that week or not. I don't think there's any argument that rule 21 was suspended and that whether that was suspended in a way that was legally like okay or not okay. I think that simply is unfortunately what it is. Maybe you don't like the politics of it, but that was voted on properly. And then whether the whole community has listened to it. I mean, we're literally allowing the voters for the first time. We're allowing the voters to be listened to. We are allowing them to be listened to for the first time in decades. And I'm really struggling with this argument. or how putting overrides on the ballot so that the community can in fact be listened to by having a democratic vote where everyone can come to the ballot box, how that is not listening to the community. And I will also say that all the people, I mean, the wildly overwhelming support of people who came to that meeting and spoke in support of putting the overrides on the ballot, and we're yet being told that we aren't listening to the community. That's really struggling. with how that can be when number one, wildly overwhelming support from the community at the meeting where we discussed it, and number two, all we're doing is putting it on the ballot so that we can listen to the community. Now, finally, I wanna say that this particular matter, there is no deadline for whether we vote for an audit. And I am completely, do not understand what the heck we are auditing, because we are gonna audit everything. We're gonna audit financial mismanagement. We're gonna audit the management style of the council president, which I pretty much guarantee you the state auditor is not going to do. The number of things that have been mentioned that we are auditing, I have no idea. what this motion is here to say, and I am not gonna vote on a motion to have the state auditor come in and who knows, spend millions of dollars auditing, I don't know, any random thing. This is not a reasonable thing to vote in favor of.
[Anna Callahan]: Is it possible to move to table?
[Anna Callahan]: I would like to move to table because I, here's my reason. I am not confident that the money that we would spend right now would be any different from the yearly audit that we already have done by an independent team. So until I understand that it would be different, I cannot vote in favor of this because it would literally just be duplicating work that is already done.
[Anna Callahan]: Everyone in the waiting room is me. City Council.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: I am present, this is Councilor Cownie and I am present. Thank you, we heard and noted you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I... Hang on one second. Do I sound like I'm getting any feedback? No?
[Anna Callahan]: Great, thanks. So we have done a little bit of looking at the street and sidewalk repair and accessibility. We had an update from our DPW commissioner and an engineer around where our roads were, and we got a nice view of the 2024 update of the pavement study, which had originally been done in 2021. So we got to see what has been done over the last few years, and we're pretty pleased to understand that they did get utilities to do all of the repaving work that they are supposed to be doing. So we're going to continue. We have a few questions with them that are ongoing, and we're going to catch up with them when they have more information about the total look at where the last year or two of funding has come from and how that has been spent. The second piece we're looking at is city facilities and equipment. Really, the main thing we did there was because we have a new building commissioner, we have asked them to do a review of all of our public facilities. So we will meet with them to go over that. We also have public restrooms and parks and squares that we have not really begun on yet. There is a lead ordinance that we also are going to be looking at a home rule petition to increase excise taxes for large trucks, that also is in the future. And this public utility accountability, we have touched on that, especially with the roads. So we are sort of on that and making sure that that is moving forward through the administration. And then I would say the final thing is to look at the tree planting volunteer network. So all of these are things that we will be doing, except for the streets and sidewalk repair and the facilities maintenance, which were planned for the first half of this year. All of those are happening either the second half of this year or in the second year of the term.
[Anna Callahan]: Huh? Yep, I'm here. Yep.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan is present. I didn't hear that you call me.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Whenever you're done, I just, I have two very small changes.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, I'm having trouble with my mute button. I'm here. Just two very small things in the very first paragraph. I would I would have us use a word other than elected. I tripped over it when I read it. And I think if we can say we voted to place or, you know, there's other ways to put that I would just use a different word than elected. Because it's easy to read, like, we were elected to place these, you know what I'm saying? Like, just another word. And then the other one is... Sorry, can you, wait, sorry.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, just change it to voted and then people won't be, they won't trip over it. Ready for my second one?
[Anna Callahan]: So I'm going off the one that you sent out today, which I thought was the latest. Sorry. Why don't I mention my only other thing, and then if you guys already fixed it, then great. Is that okay? It's under general business. The first bullet point should be two sentences. One about the budget and the second one about the school system. It's just a little confusing and kind of run on. Thanks. Okay.
[Anna Callahan]: It looks great. Great.
[Anna Callahan]: It was Friday. It was a Friday, so it was a week ago Friday. I think the 19th.
[Anna Callahan]: I don't know if- I would just state that we did it, honestly. I think we- because otherwise, like, some people might be offended that their thing didn't get mentioned, and I think it's easier to just say that we met with them and had a fruitful discussion.
[Anna Callahan]: Can I just chime in very quickly?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just wanted to say that I think an easy way to make it okay for the populations that we're talking to is to have the person who organized it just send them a draft. And I don't think we're gonna say anything super personal. We're not gonna mention anybody. But if we send them a draft and be like, hey, this is what we're gonna say. If you don't let us know by next week, we'll go ahead with it. That at least gives us, you know, like allows them to say, oh, you know, they prefer that they that we don't mention that one thing.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, I love the idea. I think in addition to what we hear from people who already attend the meetings, I would hope that maybe at the top, we put some information for people who have never attended a meeting that simply says, hey, here's how to find out what we're going to talk about. Here's how to come. Here's what will happen when you come to City Hall. You will have the opportunity to speak for three minutes on any topic, like letting people who've never been know that they are welcome and how they can begin participating. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: You're confusing him with Kit. That's Kit.
[Anna Callahan]: That's right.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I'm now that I'm hearing all these things, I'm envisioning like a table at the front of the hall, the minute people walk in the door, and there's one that says, so it's your first council meeting. There's another one, like the green one says, so it's your first council meeting. The blue one says, here's the purview of the city council. The yellow one says, frequently asked questions from people who have attended council meetings. Like they're all like separate pages that just cover a sort of one topic. Maybe that's going overboard, but that's what once councilors are starting speaking, then I was like, Oh, like, this could be something that people can be like, Oh, which of these is the right, you know, one for me, if we can't put everything on one page.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, I'm just talking for just a second. Tell me tell me again. That's me.
[Anna Callahan]: Did you hear me just ask you?
[Anna Callahan]: That's cool. Yeah, great question. Your guess is as good as mine.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, it was.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. And thank you, Councilor Lazzaro. I know that this intersection has been a sore spot for many years, and I look forward to a discussion in the Public Works Committee. So I welcome that to come into the committee. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Second.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. And thanks for, for all the work that you guys have done to put together these proposals. I wanted to ask a little bit about the capital stabilization fund. whether with the general stabilization fund, if that way that it is set up through the recommendations of the state, if that can be spent on capital, if the point of having a separate capital stabilization fund is to limit the ways that those funds can be spent. I'm trying to get to sort of why establish a capital stabilization fund separately from the general stabilization fund. And by the way, I am really glad that we're establishing a water and sewer capital stabilization fund, which we desperately need. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I apologize. Can I just do a short follow-up question? Do you have any data on how many municipalities or the percentage of municipalities that also have a capital stabilization fund?
[Anna Callahan]: Um, I don't think so.
[Anna Callahan]: I apologize, could you re-read the B motion, please?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So, I guess I have a second, I hesitate on two points. One is that I think that the cost of living in Medford is going up more than 2%. So for non-union employees, you know, my general understanding of salaries in Medford is that they are across the board too low. And I do look forward to us receiving and reviewing the overview of how we compare to nearby cities. But, you know, I mean, I'm happy to give a raise, but I also hesitate to give This to me is not a raise, right? It's clearly not a raise, it's a COLA. But even at a COLA, I would like to see us being commensurate with other cities. And then secondly, also, I'm not totally convinced that As well, looking, you know, I, I probably should spend a little time reviewing mayor salaries and nearby cities of similar size and all those things. I don't think you simply say it's 2%. I also don't think that the current pay of the person who sits in the mayor's chair, given the two positions that they are legally required to sit in, and the pay that they get from both of those is not a living wage. I don't think that can be argued. So I do have two points of hesitation on this one.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So it seems to me that really, if we're just talking about timeline the most important thing is we don't choose to do one thing first, that we will realize when we then look at something else, but those are conflicting. So, things like for example. creating more affordable housing and the natural environment. Like if we're gonna be like zoning, great, we're gonna zone everywhere for tons of housing. And then we're like, oh, when we get to natural environment, we're like, oh crap, like we forgot that we actually meant to also prioritize this. So can we just look to see which ones could conflict with each other and make sure that we look at those at the same time or close to each other?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Councilor Callahan. I just want to follow up on the point I was making and see if our planning department has any particular thoughts on that question, because I'm not convinced that the rating system that they came up with covers what I'm talking about. So for example, if we're like affordable housing, We're gonna do that first and then mitigating heat islands is gonna be last. Those could in fact be in conflict with each other. Whereas I think 18 hour communities and balanced growth are less in conflict with each other, but I don't know. So I wanted to ask and see if you just have any initial thoughts that you could put in on that. If any of these goals are things that if we don't consider them at the same time, we might regret it later.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. I just have four that I would say are from my four priorities, housing, the 18 hour community and specifically creating walkable neighborhoods. So, you know, little neighborhood centers, and then buildings and energy but really like two thirds of our emissions come from buildings, and almost all of our buildings are existing buildings. So I'm not really focused on the new building stuff, but anything we can do for existing buildings, which I know is not easy and zoning and the natural environment. So those would be my four. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor, for being here, for all the work that you have done on the budget and providing us with the information early, and also on working on these proposals. People who know me will know that I believe two things. One, I believe in democracy, and two, that I believe that this city has been underfunded for many, many years. So... to the first point, again, as Councilor Tseng mentioned, we are not voting to approve of these monies. We are voting to allow the people of Medford to make this decision. And I think that we need to do that. To me, that is the most important thing, is that we not, the only thing that we could do now, tonight, that would be the most undemocratic thing to do, would be for us to refuse to allow the voters to make this decision, right? That would be undemocratic. So that's my first point. My second point is about the chronic underfunding of the city. And while I certainly am all for new growth, I think it simply doesn't add up if you look at the reality of the funding of the city and at what we need in order to not be financially irresponsible. The problem is that costs rise faster than Prop 2.5 allows us to raise taxes. And if we simply look at the budget, we can see that in many ways. So the largest portion of the budget is our schools. The second largest portion of the budget is insurance. Insurance is going up. We do not have any control over that. It is going up higher than we are allowed to raise taxes. The third one is pensions. Pensions we also do not control. Those are the top three. After that come police and fire. And the fourth one after that is roads. I want to talk about roads. So I just want people to understand that these costs, many of them are going up. They are uncontrollable by the city. And they're going up faster than we are allowed to raise taxes. So this simply is something that, you know, It's math, you cannot make those numbers match. I want to talk about roads because we had a great meeting with the Commissioner, the DPW and one of the engineers. There was a roads assessment done. If people have not looked at that roads assessment done in 2021. It basically said that, so the grade roads, they call them 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. I like to call them A, B, C, D, and F, because everybody understands grades that we get in school. 49% of our roads in 2021 were rated D or F, the worst two possible qualities of roads. Now, it costs 50 times as much. to bring a road from F to A as it costs to bring a road from B to A. So the problem is if you are simply not spending enough on your roads every single year that you're allowing roads to get to be D and F, that is unbelievably financially irresponsible. because the amount of money it takes to then repair those roads is like 30 to 50 times more. So this is years of underfunding our roads that has led us to this place and it is financially irresponsible. We came out of COVID and during COVID, students everywhere suffered. They suffered mental health issues. They suffered academic issues. They suffered from family issues. And this is a reality that our students, all of our students in our schools are facing. They need more supports. That is just a reality. And the other thing about schools is that we have school buildings that have not been properly maintained, that the money to properly maintain them has not been spent in the past. That means that we are in debt. So we are in road debt, we are in school debt, we are in school support debt, we are in trees debt, and I'm glad we planted 200 trees, but it is my understanding, and this is colloquially that I have heard through the grapevine, we do not have actual study yet, it's not completed, but my understanding is we lose more than twice as many trees every year as we plant. So we are in tree debt. We are in debt in terms of the salaries because we do not, our salaries are not commensurate with other cities, surrounding cities. And what that means is that it is incredibly difficult now for us to fill positions. We have turnover. This is financially irresponsible. So the problem is not, like the problem that we have, new growth, there is no city in the world that could create the new growth needed to fill these gaps. These gaps are real. They are due to many things that we cannot control. And I believe that the proper thing to do is to allow our community to make the decision through democracy. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just wanted to mention one thing for folks concerned about seniors. We also have in Medford, there is something that people can request. If you're a senior, you can request that you can be exempt. In fact, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, from all of your, up to all of your taxes, and that can be until your property is sold. So that is something that seniors in Medford have the option of doing. So we hope that this Prop 2.5 override will not negatively impact folks in their day-to-day living expenses.
[Anna Callahan]: I guess my only, not knowing very much about this, my only comment is that I will admit I do not quite understand what this actually does and if it restricts the ability for people to speak in a certain way or, like, I'm just trying to understand what this actually changes material for people.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: No
[Anna Callahan]: So the other one. That part I understood. Maybe I'm not understanding the other one. It's two different lots, but they share one wall? Yes. OK.
[Anna Callahan]: So I know that the same way that we don't want height things into the zoning definitions, we probably also don't want hours in the zoning definitions. But I will say that when I think of a neighborhood cafe and about zoning and having neighborhood cafes in more closer to residential neighborhoods, I do think of ours as part of the reason why a cafe is more acceptable than an eating establishment, than a dinner place. Because a dinner place is going to be open until 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night. A cafe, you know, big closed by 8. So I don't know where that belongs or if it just doesn't belong at all. But I just wanted to mention that in terms of, it does seem to me to be related to zoning in terms of where we might want to have places that are open late at night and where we might not want to have places that are open late at night.
[Anna Callahan]: I really do, given what you said. I think having two frontages and a primary and a secondary makes a lot more sense because of the sort of spacing that will happen between front lines and the house. I think that would really help.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes. Did you hear me? Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Would you mind sending, because I'm not sure if I have access to this document and with OML, but I probably shouldn't. But if you can, I would love to send the ability to sign up the sign up form to folks that I know. So if you can send that bitly link out, that would be great. And I did have one and only one comment. I love the newsletter. Thank you so much to Councilor Lazzaro for writing it up. And I enjoy the exclamation points and the this is very exciting. I think that's a lovely personal touch. I have one suggestion, which is that we do not say, we make statements like this is popular legislation in Medford and many residents spoke in favor of the resolution simply because, you know, it is my experience having talked to city councilors across the country and also looked at a lot of studies on, you know, what happens inside city council chambers and who emails and you know talks to their legislators and who is usually left out of that conversation that just because people appear at the city council chamber and make a statement does not mean that it is popular in the city. So I think we should not be stating as a city council, this is popular in the city, because I think it's not a fair statement for us to say. So I would just recommend that we don't make statements like that in the newsletter. I think people who disagree might be unhappy that we are making this as a blanket statement. That's just kind of overall, I think that we should probably refrain from using those kinds of commentary about popularity of stuff in the city of Medford.
[Anna Callahan]: I have a suggestion.
[Anna Callahan]: Can we just, at the April 30th meeting, the final vote was taken to make the budget ordinance law, make that the first bullet point. Even though it, you know, things may be slightly out of chronological order, nobody cares. I think people just need to understand what happened. So make that the first bullet point. At the end of that bullet point, have our one sentence about what it is, and then the next bullet can say, in anticipation, we met many times to hear a city department's budget proposals. Or in alignment with the budget ordinance, we met many times in committee of the whole to hear city department budgets.
[Anna Callahan]: Redundant, yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: To the law, and so the sentence at the end of that first bullet point can be something like, this new ordinance requires that the city council and public be more be involved earlier in the budgeting process. Is that fair? Do you want to say more than that?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just did want to mention that I have to leave at 10 after, unfortunately. And I wanted to ask, I'm fine with the newsletter as it is. I don't know whether other folks are ready to vote on that, but I would ask that we That I can make a motion to disband the subcommittee on listening sessions today. Because I think, as we discussed earlier, that it does make the scheduling part very difficult for the listening sessions. So that would be my request that we'd be able to do that before eight.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, sorry, I thought that we were specifically going to do it at this meeting but maybe I was wrong.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. Can I move that the chair can always add the links in? Any links that the chair deems necessary, the chair can always add those links that are relevant and necessary into the final document.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, to approve the newsletter.
[Anna Callahan]: As amended, as edited.
[Anna Callahan]: And keep the paper in committee. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Just one question. As a newbie councilor, there are a number of canine services, canine workers maintenance. I'm just curious about this.
[Anna Callahan]: I just have a general question. I know that we're having a tree inventory done, and I've come to understand that we probably lose more trees than we plant each year. Do you have a dream for the forestry department that would allow us to plant as many trees as we lose each year?
[Anna Callahan]: And just to follow up, do you know when we'll get the geometry and the vulnerability assessment?
[Anna Callahan]: The compost, you say you're building a list, and currently we have a relationship with Is It Garbage to Garden? Correct. And is that how the list is built, is through them, or is there also a separate list?
[Anna Callahan]: And so just so that I understand, that is through Garbage to Garden that we're doing our long-term compost project. It's not going to end up being in the city.
[Anna Callahan]: So is this the fund out of which we have to repair all of our 120-year-old pipes?
[Anna Callahan]: And I apologize for this newbie question, but where in here am I looking for an increase because we got to start repairing these pipes? Which budget item?
[Anna Callahan]: And if I hope you don't mind if I just follow up a little bit. So we're trying to wrap our heads around an issue. And You're saying if we had sort of in-house people, which I imagine is because you say it's part of a plan for the future, like that is really how a city would normally be run is you're using this budget to make sure that you maintain all of the lines.
[Anna Callahan]: So is there. I mean, should I be looking in this budget for like us at least beginning to do some of that work this year, this fiscal year? Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: And then my final question, I think, is about retained earnings. Retained earnings, by that, do you mean what enters the enterprise fund from the rates that is not spent in that fiscal year, that that should be something that we are, you know, sort of filling that bucket year by year. And is that something I can see here? Or is this really just a budget? So we're not seeing sort of what is being retained?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wanted to check in on something, which is, I do have a, I have a workshop, an old workshop that I used to give on how to do these kinds of listening sessions. So I haven't sent it because I'm like. Is your mic on? It is on, but I'm not talking to it. I've just been thinking about, uh, not getting in trouble with, uh, bidding law. And I, I guess what I should do is send a copy to you and the clerk, and then it'll get distributed at the next meeting. Is that the appropriate thing to do? It's just like how to run one of these sessions.
[Anna Callahan]: and that works for open meeting law?
[Anna Callahan]: Great, okay, good.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, and then I will look it over before I send it, because I know it's not exactly designed for what we're doing, but it's kind of like a, general like how-to designed for local electoral politics generally.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes and and part of that is gonna and I think part of what is recommended in because it's really designed for like one City Councilor or one like Mayor or somebody to run them. And so I think one of the things we probably will not adhere to very closely is that really the meetings are designed to be not public, not open to anyone. They're designed to be like safe spaces for a specific community. And I think we will not be doing that. We will have ours be more public, which is fine. But the idea that if you really want to understand, for example, the Haitian community, you go to a Haitian church, you don't have it be like any random person from Medford could show up. You have it be like a community. of people that knows each other and you know in a place where they usually congregate. So what we're doing is going to be a little bit different but I think it'll also be, it'll still have a little bit of that kind of flavor of a you know, a space where people feel comfortable because we're going to go through the community liaisons, we'll have it like at the senior center because we're going to these places. I think, you know, it will lend itself a little bit more towards people opening up, which is the idea. It's like for people to feel comfortable that they can open up about what their lives are like.
[Anna Callahan]: And if I apologize, I was just realizing I didn't really answer your question. Your question was more about the gist. And I said what we weren't going to do. But the gist is the purpose is not for us to be like, here are policies that we want to know about. The purpose is really for us to ask more general questions about what their lives are like. But ideally, we've talked to someone in that community beforehand. We've had a conversation, like whoever's going to facilitate a conversation talks to somebody beforehand who can say like, hey, this community is probably going to want to talk about X, Y, or Z. So we have some idea. We're not just sort of randomly asking questions about their lives, but we know a little bit about them. And let me just give one example. before COVID, I was running a campaign for, you know, the first couple of months before COVID hit. And then COVID hit and I couldn't do these listening sessions, but I did get a chance to speak to someone from a particular community who, and you know, it was, I was wishing that I could have a listening session, but I didn't end up having one because of COVID. But the person that I talked to really helped me to understand that Most of the people in that community were health care workers. Many of them were working with the elderly. And so the impact on that community of COVID specifically was really devastating because the number of their patients who were dying, the number of you know, the other people that they knew who were also, you know, nurses and caretakers who were dying of COVID. I mean, it was really an eye-opener for me. And to think about like how to ask those questions and really understand like what could be done from a policy perspective. And obviously that's like a, that was a critical time and a really unusual thing, but I wouldn't have known about that particular aspect if I hadn't talked to someone who knew that community really well first. So knowing sort of what to ask is always good. And I think with the community liaisons especially, we'll be able to talk to the liaisons themselves and maybe get some of that from those folks. It'll be easy because they work for the city and we have access to those people. So that'll be a nice conversation.
[Anna Callahan]: So I actually would, I think that the senior center is a really good opportunity. As I was talking to seniors on the campaign trail, I'm sure you also have like stories on the campaign trail, you know, we all do. You know, they had very particular concerns that are things we can address, concerns about transportation specifically, like how to get from one part of the city to another. Folks in West Medford talked about the, you know, commuter rail, not being ADA compliant, like at that one particular place and how difficult that made their ability to use that. Obviously, we don't have control of the commuter rail, but as city councilors, it is something that we can, you know, push the state legislators for. You know, I wouldn't go in and talk about whether they have job opportunities. You know what I mean? Like, there are things you do and don't talk about. And I think, you know, it can definitely be tailored toward seniors and talking specifically and asking them questions to sort of bring out like, how is Medford serving you? We're at the senior center, so we don't want to get them complaining about the senior center itself. So we want to be delicate about that particular aspect. But I think there are a lot of things that Medford can do. And even maybe some conversations, I know like Arlington, because I met my mom, they have a really great like senior, you know, I forget what they call it, but it's like the senior center, it's like a community center for elderly, Council on Aging or something like that. And they have tons of programming. I've heard seniors talk about lack of programming. They want to talk about the sidewalks, you know? I mean, so I think there are like very directed questions that we can have to understand how Medford can serve seniors better. And it's a really, I think it's a great one to try out this, targeted, facilitated conversation rather than just a chitchat. That's what I would do if I were there.
[Anna Callahan]: Um, it does. And again, it is designed for like one elected official to be doing these rather than like a group that so therefore no open meeting law, you know, we don't, it doesn't consider any of those things. Um, let me just take a peek.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, wonderful, thank you so much. Great, that makes me happy.
[Anna Callahan]: Hang on.
[Anna Callahan]: I love that idea that one person is the point person and they're the facilitator and they meet with the person beforehand to figure out what the question to be.
[Anna Callahan]: I really believe that we would actually, after this meeting, where I think we should Like I like your suggestion about one person kind of owning. I think we should also maybe divvy up the work tonight for how to reach the different, it's only nine groups. We just split it up between the three of us. And after that, I would actually really like to disband this subcommittee because I think it makes it very difficult. No two of us can ever talk about it. And I think that we will have, more ability to get things done if I can call one of you and say, hey, did you call this person or not? Like, it just makes more sense to me if we disband this after tonight.
[Anna Callahan]: I just sent it to Adam, sorry, the clerk. So hopefully we can take a little peek at it before we leave today.
[Anna Callahan]: Matt, are you getting these extras? Putting them on the list? Sorry, I was- Should we have a spreadsheet or something? We write these down somewhere. and the date that we have them on. I don't know, this might be useful.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, so, so far I have- And we can, from this subcommittee, if you want, we can meet with the president. I mean, we already have nine groups, so we can, any additions, we can always be like, people committee, we would like to add these.
[Anna Callahan]: Vote.
[Anna Callahan]: And then on it goes, so.
[Anna Callahan]: And then... Unless she thinks two in different parts of the city. Right.
[Anna Callahan]: I would take the nine that we already decided and split them up between the three of us. The eight left aside from the three of us. Just split them up between the three of us. And then just for scheduling purposes, as soon as we talk to somebody, we'll pay you. I don't think they'll overlap naturally. I think a lot of them will be like, oh, let's do something two, three months from now. And as we're scheduling, we'll have a moment to check in and make sure that they're not too late.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, I thought the three of us are doing all this. Just the three of us.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm happy to do anything. I love the community liaison.
[Anna Callahan]: The two high school sites and Tufts, that's already three.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay. And will you send this out in the meeting minutes?
[Anna Callahan]: I will do both. I'll do the Spanish-speaking community liaison. I'll do the Black African-American community liaison and also the West Medford Community Center and I'll work with both of them to see whether we want one or two.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, I'm happy to do that. Great.
[Anna Callahan]: Haitian.
[Anna Callahan]: I mean... Yeah, I think he thought you said Asian-American, but you probably said Haitian-American. Oh, okay, okay, that was... Yeah, that's the confusion. Okay, so, sorry. So Haitian is you, unless you want to give it to me, either way is fine.
[Anna Callahan]: I would also mention that like I have where I've had a long ongoing conversation with Kuliyan from the Bangladeshi community. He is supposed to be working on setting up one of these for me, a listening session literally just like this. And so, you know, if we want to, I think we loop him in. Yes. Because he is interested and already was planning on it.
[Anna Callahan]: Sure.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. If I am, then maybe you take Haitian. Okay. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Unless you want to do the Haitian. I know Whomiyoon and also Foxy and Nicole pretty well, so, and I've been talking to Whomiyoon about it, so I'll work with Whomiyoon in ICM. And also I've been doing the West Country Community Center a bunch, so I'm happy to be doing that one as well as the Aftermarket Community Day event.
[Anna Callahan]: Can I super quick talk to you guys through this doc?
[Anna Callahan]: So I actually had to cut out a bunch of other stuff out of this particular document. So this is like a portion of it. So if there's anything that's like, oh, see the XYZ earlier in this document, it's not there, don't worry. I left in just this little introduction about the model that you will find humorous. Because it's like, oh, you know, We're on a slate of candidates on a single platform. They're like, oh yeah, I recognize that. And then I also left in what is called the pitch, just because, I don't know why I left it in there, but I know it happens later, I mention it later, so I think that's why I left it in there. Anyway, starting on page four is where we start talking about the continuous time hauls, and you can see that before doing it, you choose the constituency, you contact the group leader, you set a time and location, And then you work with that group's leadership to come up with questions, right, that relate to the concerns of the group. And then at the event.
[Anna Callahan]: That's why it's not really like, we fit it into like a raising small dollar donations workshop. It was one of the pieces, including like house parties were another piece, there were different other pieces. So just don't worry about that stuff. Like I said, I would have pulled all that stuff out, but in this particular case, it's more just for the part that's like starting at page four.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Yep. I agree. I will do that. Um, but like a short intro, so people kind of understand what's going on. And then it should really be 70% listening. And I do think that, like, you know, this sort of 30% helping to educate people, because a lot, like, the idea is that a lot of these people, maybe if they don't vote in city politics, have no idea what, how it even might affect their lives. And so helping them to sort of understand how they can become more involved in the community, how can they become more involved you know, politically and people that they know can run for office or get involved like that, I think is a helpful part of it if it comes up, but we don't have to do that.
[Anna Callahan]: I don't think so. Oh, to disband this committee, I think is not a bad idea.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Could you just talk a little bit more about the data processing, what it covers, what the systems are?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, wonderful. Thank you both so much for being here and for all the work that you do all the time. I'm just curious, again, one of the newer city councilors. about how the estimates for court time work looks like from 40 to 60K and just curious about how you budget for that.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. I'm excited that you and Councilor Leming are bringing this to us. I have many questions. I'm excited to get into it. And I'm also excited that we have this section where it's clearly marked. This is simply what we're referring to committee. I will save all of my questions for committee.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, really thank you for not just your flexibility, but your creativity. And I'm excited for you to explore having your own drivers where I think you can keep more of the proceeds here in the city of Medford amongst you and your employees as well. So I love the creativity of that idea and thank you so much for that as well.
[Anna Callahan]: I will try to find that. I did find the exact number, 2129.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, it was quite shocking to realize that it has been the practice of cities, at least has occasionally happened that they seize entire property. for a small amount of debt and then keep the profits, keep the rest of what they sell that probably for the sins, utterly absurd. So I am in support. I will say that as I was canvassing, I remember talking to someone who lived next door to a micro lot. that the city had appropriated from a, this was the story, so this is not verified, but this was from a resident saying that the micro lot between their house and their neighbor's house was something that the city had taken because of past due taxes. And that it then was an eyesore filled with weeds and rats that worked with their nearby residents to try to come up with some sort of plan to purchase it from the city and the city refused. So at some point in time, Medford had been taking portions of lots to instead of back taxes. And I will also say that even if I'm happy to hear that the court has now determined this is not lawful, but even if the city of Medford is not currently doing something, administrations change, and it is important that we ensure that this is not allowed to happen in the future.
[Anna Callahan]: The same rate as all residents, homeowners, sorry.
[Anna Callahan]: Did we feel that it was discussed? Because I had questions about the first one. Sorry. Sorry, sorry.
[Anna Callahan]: For the multifamily dwelling, I visited a property in Medford that was two buildings, a single family and a two family on the same property. The owners lived in the single family, and they rented out both those two families. And according to this, that would not count as a multifamily dwelling because it says two or more buildings on the same lot with more than one residential dwelling unit in each building. Because one of those was a single family, that whole lot would not count as dwelling multifamily. Is that accurate?
[Anna Callahan]: So I guess if I could just finish up my question, I'm just curious, like, how much do we need to hash these out here in this meeting? Or is, like, before we officially agree on these definitions, like, at what point are we, like, sitting down and saying, okay, do we think that, you know, this is the definition that we want? Or do we want it to be more like some rules? Or do we, like, when is that appropriate time for us?
[Anna Callahan]: I found the detached two-unit is Philadelphia-style, because it doesn't share the walls.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, above and below. Philadelphia style just means there's one room of the first floor on the second. Anyway, that doesn't matter. But like above and below, I thought was detached. And duplex is attached.
[Anna Callahan]: might I suggest that we go through all these other terms that are maybe a little bit, require a little bit less discussion and see if we can get through some, and then we can come back to this, you know, multi-unit definition, which may require more discussion.
[Anna Callahan]: Just an amusing anecdote. As I was canvassing, I passed by a van, and inside that van, they were washing dogs. It's like mobile doggie daycare. It's so weird.
[Anna Callahan]: I will say, I believe that the colloquial is doggie daycare and not dog daycare. I think people say doggie daycare, so I would leave it as doggie because that's what people say.
[Anna Callahan]: I was just gonna say, for what you're talking about, which is housekeeping, in the non-housekeeping example, do they each pay the landlord individually rent? Because that's another way to sort of define it, is to say, Are these people all paying rent as a unit, or is the landlord requiring, like, are these people who don't cooperate, and therefore they each pay separate rent to the landlord? That's a little bit more easy to define than housekeeping.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. I will say this issue is very important to me as someone who has lived in intentional communities for almost my entire life and had difficulty being able to live with other people, being afraid that the landlord will discover that in a four bedroom house, the four of us are unrelated and therefore we're going to be kicked out. I think there's a lot of fear among tenants. And yet I also think that the idea of being forced to live with other people that I don't know is horrible. So to me, what you're surfacing here is exactly has been a lot of my life experience. And so to me, this is an extremely important issue. And I really like the way that you're thinking about the things that matter are not the number of people, which is a health department issue, but the things that matter are, do the tenants want to live this way? Or is the landlord forcing them to live this way? So I very much appreciate this difference. But whether we define it using housekeeping or define it using separate rents or define it, you know, the way that we determine it, I think can be massaged. But to me, those are the two important. That is the important difference between the two is like, is this something that tenants are choosing? And yes, they are fine having, you know, one extra person, or if somebody there has a young child, they're fine with it? Or are these people who are really being forced to live together by the landlord? So I would want to be able to zone. It doesn't mean that we're saying it can't happen. It just means we can zone them and have an awareness of what's happening.
[Anna Callahan]: I will say I'm particularly fond of tiny homes, given especially how much demand we have for one bedrooms and two bedrooms that we don't have. So I think having a definition would be great.
[Anna Callahan]: It says accessory, but it's very clearly a use. It's like a use. So it's pretty clear, the exact same word. So it sounds like you're saying that the not changing the character of the premises of a neighborhood is a standard, and you want to remove that?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I apologize, but I will have to leave due to family Not quite emergency. And I just want to ask a pre-question before we start discussing the coverage of lot and ask whether we need any kind of a definition of permeable surfaces. If we're going to be adding something in about percentage of lots or amount of permeable surface, something like that. I just wanted to toss that in there to see if that can be discussed in this last.
[Anna Callahan]: I'll just say I did read through the whole thing. It seems pretty comprehensive. I don't see any glaring omissions or anything that I would change at this moment.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm not convinced that that is accurate, and I don't want to put that in here in case it is not accurate. I think open meeting law is open meeting law, and we don't need to write our interpretation of open meeting law into this document, is what I would say.
[Anna Callahan]: I mean, it is my understanding that I, as a city councilor, can post whatever I want on X, like I can say my opinion on X, and it doesn't mean that other city councilors cannot also state their opinions on, and by X, I actually mean X Twitter. I'm talking about the actual thing, not like a thing with the letter, not the algebra. So this is why I'm concerned, because if we're putting into this some interpretation of open meeting law that I think may not be applicable And it doesn't really matter whether I'm right or wrong. It just, I think, matters whether we are 100% legally sure that that is, in fact, accurate. And even if it's accurate, we already have opening law? I don't know. I just feel like it might be not necessarily and potentially inaccurate.
[Anna Callahan]: I move to approve the social media guidelines.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm sorry? I refer it out of committee.
[Anna Callahan]: I apologize, I've been looking for this as a document. Do we have this, was this sent to us or is it the one that's, oh, thank you so much. It's sitting right on the desk, looking in electronic form. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm sorry, could you repeat the motions?
[Anna Callahan]: would you like Councilor Tseng to go first?
[Anna Callahan]: Um, so I think just for logistics, we two things. Number one is that we should not have more than two Councilors at each one of these, we should just decide that that is what we're going to do because I think it's impossible. to ensure that some policy that is upcoming won't be discussed. Like that's just the nature of these things. And so I think we should just decide no more than two councillors. And then the question is, how do we make those decisions from a logistical standpoint? The other question that I have is, and I know that we, I was the one who proposed that we have a subcommittee, that subcommittee has not met yet. Given that there is a subcommittee, even any two of us on that subcommittee cannot appear at the listening session. So I'm wondering if perhaps, given that there's already a listening session later this month, if perhaps tonight we should disband the subcommittee. Even though it would be nice to have a subcommittee to discuss this, I think it might be more in the way, given open meeting law, then it will help. And maybe we just have these discussions here. So I will make that as a motion, but I would love to discuss it. I'm not, you know, for sure, that that is the right way to do things.
[Anna Callahan]: Through the chair, I would be super interested in understanding if there are any specific questions, what exactly would be asked of legal counsel?
[Anna Callahan]: I would like to withdraw withdraw my previous motion and make a different motion.
[Anna Callahan]: My new motion is that the chair of resident services committee will appoint which one or two city Councilors would attend each listening session based upon their availability.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: I did find one error, which I already sent to the clerk. Do I say what that error was?
[Anna Callahan]: I do remember, so.
[Anna Callahan]: Aside from that, I found the records to be in order.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor CUMMING, yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Vice-President Pearce, yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. We had the pleasure of having Commissioner Tim McGibbon as well as our engineer Owen Wartella there to discuss our roads and sidewalks. There had been a pavement assessment done in 2021, and we got to see the pavement assessment that was just done recently as an update. We, there were, you know, essentially they talked us through how the roads have, basically what they have been doing with the roads, which includes coordinating with the utilities when they need to do repairs on the road, making sure that utilities are, in fact, doing all the road repair that they are supposed to be doing, as well as getting all the different kinds of funding that they possibly can. We are, in fact, repairing roads at approximately... There were five different strategies that were recommended, and we are repairing the roads better than the middle strategy, but not as well as the top strategy because we do not have the funding to do that level of repair to the roads. So if there is going to be an improvement in the roads in Medford, it does look like funding will have to increase. It just comes straight out of both of those pavement assessments. And that was what we discussed in, oh, they also have, they bought the equipment to do a hot tub crew, to have an internal crew doing road repair. They just need to have to access the funding to be able to staff that, which we think will be less expensive than, for certain levels of repair will be less expensive. So that's the update for that.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callan. Yes. Vice-President Collins. Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: As a city, we are a cash-strapped city. There are many things, our water pipes, our roads, our schools, I could go on and on, that really require more funding. Property taxes are one of the very few ways that we are able to raise any money, and it seems just not right to me that we ask every homeowner here to pay their property taxes without fail every year, and yet large organizations with billion-dollar endowments do not have to pay anything. The 25% number, as I understand it, was gotten to because that is approximately the amount of services that they use of the city that we do not get any reimbursement for. I agree that 25% is not enough, but at least it is something, and I'm in favor.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I have to say, I am trying to understand how we can be discussing the transfer fee when it is not on the agenda. And I implore the chair to limit discussion to what is on the agenda, because people need to be noticed publicly so that everyone knows what is on the agenda and what we are discussing. This can't be a body where you put something completely vague on the agenda. And I have to say, when I read this, I had no idea what was going to be discussed. We have to know, and the public needs to know, what is on the agenda, so that people who are interested in talking about that topic can come.
[Anna Callahan]: Second, I would like to say back to me.
[Anna Callahan]: I wanted to just make a comment that it seems that people do misunderstand the subcommittee process. So, since this is what is on the agenda, I would like to discuss the subcommittee process. That is, that when we are going to begin to discuss some piece of legislation, for example, that before we can come in with all the wording ready, set, go, we have to give it a paper number. So we bring it to this body for it to get a paper number so that it can be discussed in committee. That is the way that we do things. And then it will be discussed in committee. Committees are open to the public. They are held right here in this room. any member of the public may come, they may be part just as in city council meetings, they can be part of the discussion where we craft the language together as a community. That may take one committee meeting, it may take more than one committee meeting. It will then, especially if it is an ordinance or some larger piece, it will be required to have three hearings, three readings. here at the city council meeting. So I am somewhat confused as to why what was said that was my description that this was the beginning of a process is being questioned. It is definitely the beginning of a, this is what subcommittee, subcommittee, but committee process is about. You get a paper number, it goes to committee, it gets discussed openly, with the public in committee, that is where language can be drafted, and then it comes to this body, and there are still public hearings in this body.
[Anna Callahan]: It was not. It was not.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So I just want to comment that what I described as the process is for ordinances. It's not necessarily for resolutions. Resolutions don't have to go through three readings. Different things that we pass through this body have different requirements. I certainly was not under the impression that the newsletter had a paper number. Each individual monthly newsletter has its own paper number, and therefore, must come out of committee and then be discussed in this body. I'm happy to do that if that is what we want to do. But I did think that that committee had the ability to pass a newsletter, since it's simply a thing that is happening. I totally appreciate it. I'm very happy to change that understanding of mine and to have those sent to this body. I'm not convinced that that would be a great idea, because I think editing, you know, hundred and fifty word newsletter in the city council meetings does not seem like a super great use of time.
[Anna Callahan]: I hope this can be clarifying for people. I think the idea is that we have a discussion as a community about what we would want, whether we want it, what it would look like in terms of a transfer fee. The letter that was signed is for the state to allow us to have that discussion, right? I mean, we can discuss it all we want, but we won't be able to- To give us the authority. To give us the authority, right, to have to, once we've had that discussion, to actually pass something. The idea of like, I think we all want to be able to have that discussion. We've literally not written a single word. We want to have the discussion. And that letter doesn't do anything but try to enable us to be able to have the discussion as a community.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, through the chair. I understand that many constituents oppose a real estate transfer fee and that know to make an analogy with theft makes it makes it seem like something of conviction uh for or against something i think a much better analogy is a minimum wage law so in california and other states cities can pass any kind of minimum wage law they want to in massachusetts we cannot um i would sign a something at the state level saying please allow any city or town in Massachusetts to pass any minimum wage that they deem necessary in their own city. But that doesn't mean that I would want an infinity minimum wage in Medford, right? So you vote, you push for the state to enable you, it's called enabling legislation, to enable you to pass the laws that are correct for your community. And then within your community, you have the discussion about what would be the right minimum wage for Medford? And that is the question that we are having, which is, you know, we are about to begin a long discussion, including the public, about what kind of real estate transfer fee might be the right one for Medford. But that doesn't mean that individual sitting elected officials who also, by the way, have websites that declare that they, you know, people run on issues. You know, there are things that are on my website that are issues that I support and I ran on those issues. I told people when I was running that I would support those issues. That is why I got elected, because those things were on my website at that time. And as city councilors and other elected officials to sign in support of the state, allowing communities to make whatever decision they want doesn't mean that you know, I'm gonna support a $500 minimum wage in Medford, even if I think that any community should be able to have any kind of minimum wage they want. So I just think that that analogy-wise, it's a better analogy that we want the state to allow us to make those decisions.
[Anna Callahan]: speaker, I appreciate you coming up to the podium.
[Anna Callahan]: I would like to remind everyone that we are discussing the process dealing with possible home rule petitions. It is very important to me that comments made by constituents who are knowledgeable, who should be heard from, and comments made by members of this committee who also are knowledgeable and who should be heard from, all of those comments should be heard by the public at a meeting where they know that this is going to be discussed.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, so today we are doing a pavement management plan update, and I want to thank Commissioner Tim McGivern and our engineer Owen Wartella for being here. I will go ahead and read the text of the motions that we passed at our last meeting. President Bears has moved that we create a new paper in this committee to request an update on, one, the pavement management plan and sidewalk management plan for the DPW. including the financial plan recommendation that the City adopted based on the pavement and sidewalk management plan. Two, what the City has spent on pavement management and sidewalk management since the plans were released. Three, how much was spent from authorized bond orders if funds were spent on streets and sidewalks other than those initially listed for the bond orders. Four, when the pavement and sidewalk management plans may be updated. And then Councilor Scarpelli moved to ask the DPW Commissioner to do a cost analysis for road and sidewalk repairs and to request a sidewalk and hot tub crew to do the work in-house and to look at the costs for Luke's sidewalker and to have that be added into the duties. I welcome you and thank you so much for being here. If you would be able to give us kind of the update as requested, that would be fantastic.
[Anna Callahan]: So I think maybe a little bit of understanding of the five strategies and which one of those strategies we've been following. If you can go a little bit into that, that'd be amazing.
[Anna Callahan]: You're talking about both the year 2021, year 2022, year 2023, that all of those numbers in terms of being able to sort of calculate what we spent, that all of those are ones that you're working on?
[Anna Callahan]: So if we're looking at what was spent each year, and you're saying that these calculations really haven't been done before, are you working on those from years starting with the 2021 pavement management study? Or are you just talking about the last year?
[Anna Callahan]: Second.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes, I think we're fine.
[Anna Callahan]: That's right. We are reconvening, planning and permitting as soon as this meeting is over. Did you call me? Yes. This meeting is adjourned.
[Anna Callahan]: Present
[Anna Callahan]: I would love to hear more about the last one, state aid, chair sheets, and other things.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Is there somewhere that we can look up what new growth has been in previous years?
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Gallagher. Sorry, that $250,000 is included in your new growth figure from before? This $250,000 is included in the new growth figure from the previous year?
[Anna Callahan]: So just a quick question, if you happen to have these numbers off the top of your head, if not, I can look it up later. On this fiscal year 2025 budget impacts with these four sort of unavoidable cost increases, do you happen to know for each of those what sort of percentage of our budget those are? Like, what is the health insurance, you know, what about what percent of our budget? If not, that's fine, I'll finally look at it.
[Anna Callahan]: Can you just let me know a little bit more about what those, these two, 5240 and 5310 are, what those cover? Yes, maintenance and professional technical services.
[Anna Callahan]: It looks like I can't really read all that on the screen. So some of these may have already been covered by Vice President Collins. So I would say like the leaf flow ordinance, for example, doesn't need to be covered both in the general business as well as in the planning and permitting committee. It just might be confusing because it says, like if they only read one, they'll say, they'll think it's a second reading. And then under sent to committee, a home rule petition for a real estate transfer fee, that to me is a little too, strong sounding, right? It sounds like we sent a home rule petition to commit, like, if I didn't know much about the city council, I would think that there was one completely written up and this language was all finalized. So I think the phrasing should be different. Open day discussion or something like that. Gave a number to, same also with like developing a home rule petition. That's, I don't know, exactly what to do with that one, but I think in the same way that governance committee has just a one-liner, we also could put in public works committee as just a one-liner of like currently discussing roads and sidewalks, renovations as, you know, according to the assessment studies, something like that. Could be a nice simple way of just saying that, hey, this committee is looking at those things, so people care about that. Currently discussing road and sidewalk renovations. I don't have perfect language for this, but according to the pavement and sidewalk assessment studies. Something like that.
[Anna Callahan]: Under planning and permitting. Yes, I would just remove it. I can't tell if Councilor Collins did that already.
[Anna Callahan]: And making the language about the... Yeah, the sent to committee a home rule petition for real estate transfer fee, that one, it just, I think it's a little misleading to put it that way.
[Anna Callahan]: You saw it first.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. First of all, you have the toughest job of doing the first one, getting all of these edits, so I really appreciate all your hard work doing that. I do want to mention that if we are going to use email, if we are going to use anything that uses people's phones, which includes text messaging, which includes WhatsApp, which includes Signal, we have to have opt-in. So the idea that we can't start anything until we somehow have a way to reach everyone, the way that we reach everyone is by producing something, and including, I want to make sure that we have something near the top that says, please forward this information to your friends, or here is how your friends can get on this email list, so that people will send this information to people that they know, and it will be very easy for them once they receive something from a friend or colleague, for them to get on the email list or on a mobile list or something. So getting folks to spread the word about this. And then two other things. I just want to make sure that with the real estate transfer fee that I think the wording that we chose was really great. I think also for the rent stabilization ordinance both of those because they are very hot button issues. We have to make sure that the language is accurate to what has happened, which is we're simply opening the discussion. So whatever language we're using for the real estate transfer fee, we should use a similar language for the rent stabilization. And then this is a general question, something to think about maybe for next time. I would love it if in our newsletters we can include not only what has happened in the past, but what is upcoming. so that maybe even if it's only just that very next week, if we know, so that people can make a plan to come, or even if it just includes maybe a link to the events page that shows people what is upcoming and a thing at the bottom that says if you want to know what we will be discussing in the City Council and in the committee meetings, go to this link.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. A few things. Number one, I will second your motion to have you reach out to Mr. Nwaje to do that. Second, you also partially answered my question, which is going to be, what is the schedule? Because I said I would do whatever was free, so I have no idea what month I'm on, but at least I'm not next month.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm so sorry. It's in the agenda. I missed it. And the third thing is, I'm curious why I would love to avoid having these unless there's a reason having the wording of the newsletters go to the full city council meeting, it seems like really this should just be in this committee. I don't understand why we would want to send it to the full city council.
[Anna Callahan]: I just can't imagine having the, you know, a 200, 300 word document be edited in a city? I literally think that's the wrong place for like that is that is not the place. I mean, this is a just a communication from the city council.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm not seconding that one.
[Anna Callahan]: I don't want us to forget. So anywhere you can just put this so that we don't forget. Just put it in that document and then we'll look at it next time. Like that we should really have a way for people to forward this to others so they can get on the list. And then the idea of putting upcoming, like even just a link to the upcoming meetings would be great. Those two things I think we should include in every newsletter. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: The other one is a way for people if they forward it for people to get on the list.
[Anna Callahan]: Maybe you guys can work together to figure it out. And even if it doesn't end up in this newsletter, that's fine. But in the future, I think we should keep it.
[Anna Callahan]: But isn't there a link that has all of them? There's a link where you can see the upcoming meeting agenda.
[Anna Callahan]: The question is, how can people opt in?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I believe this can be quick and exciting. So I'm not sure which of these should actually be motions and which should just be that we plan to keep this paper in committee and move forward. But I think we should, I would like to make a motion that we form a subcommittee that includes me, Councilor Tseng, and Chair Leming. I hope that's okay. That's my emotion. About the listening sessions to ensure that these listening sessions happen. And then, besides that motion, I want to open up two ideas for discussion. One, that we try and hold approximately one per month. So we try and hold maybe nine, you know, eight or nine this year. And then I would love to have a quick brainstorming session about which groups to reach out to Is that all part of your motion? No, no, no. Sorry, sorry. The motion was only about a subcommittee.
[Anna Callahan]: Correct. That's the motion. Everything else is just for discussion. So that we do, you know, one a month, seven or eight this year. And then Councilor Tseng and I already came up with a short list. So we can very quickly, I think, you know, brainstorm a list of groups to reach out to this year. Okay.
[Anna Callahan]: That is a great question. I think we'll meet as a subcommittee. We'll have to, you know, discuss exactly the logistics of how that's going to work. But we certainly can. you know, we can make the subcommittee. I think we can make a subcommittee open to as many people as our.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And basically it will be a lot of it is just going to be doing the logistics of, you know, when to have these meetings set up and who's going to be there, that kind of thing.
[Anna Callahan]: I will say that I think part of the idea is not to use conference rooms and buildings, but to really go to the place where these less represented folks feel comfortable, sort of go on their turf rather than our turf. So that'll be something that we're doing. May I open the discussion of some possible groups to reach out to?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. So first we thought there are five community liaisons. And those are, you know, five groups that we would love to begin with. And then we also thought that high school students would be a really fantastic group and we could do potentially either have just have one group or we could have separate groups for the vocational school and the other half of the school. And then we thought the senior center would also be great. And reaching out maybe to some tough student groups. And that right there is like, let's see, five for the community liaisons, one or two for the high schools. Yeah, that's nine. That's this year. Okay.
[Anna Callahan]: I don't know the names of the liaisons themselves, but the, you know, The groups that they represent are the Haitian community, the Arab community, the Portuguese-speaking community, Spanish-speaking, and I believe the fifth one is black residents in Medford. I hope that's accurate.
[Anna Callahan]: I think that is something that we should discuss in the subcommittee. I think there's going to be a little bit of trying to figure out exactly how that's going to work. And we'll do a little bit of brainstorming to sort of you know, understand the possibilities. I think that's just a longer discussion that we probably want to have to make this already pretty late.
[Anna Callahan]: If there are other groups that folks want to reach out to, uh, you know, now is great or don't hesitate to, you know, There's zillions of groups we could reach out to, of course. We don't want anybody to feel excluded, but we thought this would be a good starter set.
[Anna Callahan]: I apologize. I meant to include veterans. Veterans? Yep.
[Anna Callahan]: Move to adjourn.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I'll use this opportunity to thank everyone for coming out. Just save a little bit of time. So appreciate your work that you do every day as well as the time that you're taking in an evening to be here. My specific question for you is how much funding comes from the cable companies and sort of what percentage of your budget is that? Just curious about that.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Wonderful to have you. Very excited. And thank you so much for being here. Just a few questions. And pardon me for my sort of not having a lot of history with the veteran services and asking some very basic questions. But do you have a sense for just the number of veterans that we have in Medford is one question. And maybe if there's any sort of age breakdown, like how many of them are really older and are also able to use the senior center and the Council on Aging services. So that's two questions I'm happy to, I don't even, I'll tell them all to you and then I can remind you. And the third question, and this is my nubiest question, which is, in addition to payroll, I actually would love to just get some vague sense of what the other funding. Oh, absolutely. So as of, ooh,
[Anna Callahan]: Move to adjourn.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes. Councilor Lazzaro?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So to me, these letters were a quite frightening reminder that our water pipes are 100 years old, almost older than any other city, and that instead of over the decades spending the money that came in through our water system on the water system and replacing these pipes for decades, that that money went into the general fund. and was spent on other things. And so we have, for decades, not improved our water system. We have, for decades, not improved our roads, which is why that 49% of our roads as of 2021, hard to know whether that's improved or gotten worse. probably has gotten worse. 49% of our roads are in the worst two classes of roads out of five. That's the most expensive kinds to replace, to repair. Our schools, which are 20 years old, have not been properly maintained for the last 20 years. Salaries, and we talk about the salary of this particular position in the water department, but salaries across the city are not commensurate with other cities. So we can't find people to fill a lot of positions. It's not just that position. There are a lot of positions we cannot find people to fill. Previous administrations have been like 30, 40 years ago were given a city in pretty good shape and did not do the repairs that were needed. And that has left us in a position that I'm really, they've kicked the can down the road. And I'm trying to understand what kind of management style it would make up for. I mean, if $500 million is the amount to repair our water system, and we know that it's $100 million probably or more to repair the roads, get the roads back into shape, there isn't a style of management that can magically make that money up here. My thing about the management is not that I'm making any kind of statement, but my statement is about the funding that we have to do the absolute basics necessary for a city to function. You cannot have water pipes that function. You do not have a city, functional city. You don't have roads. These are the basics. And this isn't purely the fault of this mayor. This is something that we have kicked the can down the road for many decades until we find ourselves by doing things that were financially irresponsible, but were made taxpayers happy. And now we're in a position where we have had that situation going on for so long that we're going straight off a cliff. I talked to some of the engineering folks about the water systems, and they said, oh, you know, there is money coming into the water system that we can use to repair it. But of course, that money used to go to other things. That money has always come in, and it used to go to the general fund. So now that money isn't going to be going to the things that it used to go to. So those things will go down. There is not enough funding to take care of the financial irresponsibility of former administrations and former city councils. really administrations because the state councils do not have do not have hardly any effect on the budget because it's really up in the hands of the mayor.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um I definitely do believe that, uh, our city's underfunded. I think it is a pretty simple math problem that when you don't fix your water price for 100 years, you don't fix your roads for decades. You don't fix your schools for 20 years. You don't for years so that those salaries are below commensurate for other cities. I think that that math problem is pretty simple one, but that doesn't mean that I believe that all of our money is being spent properly and I really appreciate this resolution. I think it's incredibly important that we understand and that the community also understands how money is being spent. and that we are really responsible and that that money is not being wasted. So I really appreciate this resolution and any other resolutions that come to us having transparency and understanding the way that the city is being run and to make sure that our funds are being used well.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I'm sad that we cannot have any impact over that, and it's too late. And so all I'm saying is to you guys, but also to anyone else, don't hesitate to come to us. If we can put pressure and make the difference between that FEMA grant being in a better position to pass, then reach out. And secondly, I really wanted to talk a little bit about this question of mismanagement. because I think it is raised all the time, the question of wasting money. And I'm curious about it, and I want to learn more. I want to ensure that we know in terms of transparency and that the community knows how money is being spent. But I do also think there's another question that we haven't been talking about as much about recently, which is being able to the fire department. We have run departments where sorry, um, support being supportive of unions. We have many unions in the city that do not get contracts for years. Um my opinion of what has been happening this year with the fire department is that it really has demoralized a fan of what has been going on between the mayor and the fire department, as I said at one of the previous meetings. So I am interested in understanding, I really question how you guys can have a consulting firm where you're already looking into this, the mayor is doing separate consulting firm and the wisdom of that. And from a union perspective, that it seems like you're, many combined years of experience is not being looked to at all. You know, I have to say that I do really question the wisdom of this, and that I want to be supportive of the fire union, and I will leave it at that.
[Anna Callahan]: So I just had a question. It seems that no one really is in charge of making sure that this happens. No one at the trust is in charge, no one at DPW is in charge, and this sort of has just gone on because nobody's been focusing on it. Is there any way to get somebody to, it's their responsibility to focus on it, or is that, you know?
[Anna Callahan]: Is this the right moment for questions?
[Anna Callahan]: I did just have a question about the site plan review topics. This is just my lack of knowledge about this. Is there a super brief? What is that covering?
[Anna Callahan]: If I may, we could take one step back and say like site plan review, like what?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, just a quick question. I mentioned this last time, and I'm just curious who would be the right person to talk to about potentially what it might mean to add a coworking as a zoning use. With the concept that instead of office, like office building is sort of the place that it might fall. And we might not want giant office buildings like scattered across Medford, but to allow like small coworking places that are designed as neighborhood connection spots and places where people can have one desk and meet their neighbors and go during the day now that we're sort of in a world of remote work. It is not something I've thought through super deeply, but I'm curious, aside from one or two Councilors, if there are staff people or whoever that I can talk to that know more about zoning that might have some ability to speak to whether it would be useful or whether there is no need
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. Just looking through theme five, the climate resilience. I just wanted some of these seem like they kind of lean towards this but I wanted to ask if there is currently or if there are plans to have sort of percentage of lots that can be covered by impermeable surfaces. I mean, I would imagine that is where it would go.
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. Just wondering if there is anything currently in the zoning or if their plans to put in the zoning any sort of limits on the percentage of a lot of it. you know, amount of a lot in some way that is covered by impermeables.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So one thing that I feel pretty strongly about is that the folks who live in Medford and rent out properties in Medford, these are always the best landlords we have. I know that the city is currently making an effort to reach out to landlords to make sure that they know about the different rebate programs that there are at the state level. And tax incentives in order to retrofit their houses, but it's very difficult to reach that group of people because we just don't know who they are. There are also. you know, we have on our docket for things that we are hope to do, and I know I'm excited to do is to implement what the state has now allowed, which is a good landlord tax credit. That would also, you know, you have to apply to that, and that would be much easier for us to reach those good landlords in town if we knew who they were. And there are all sorts of other reasons down the line that it could be really helpful for us. I know in the climate adaptation and action plan, it has. There are ways that, you know, reaching out to landlords, knowing who landlords are in terms of retrofitting buildings is going to be really helpful in terms of, you know, being able to provide rental protections. I know that we many people as I campaigned were upset with absentee landlords who allow their buildings to fall into disrepair or allow to have there to be know, junk in the, in their yards, and being able to know who landlords are what properties are landlords and reach the tenants in those buildings as well to communicate them we we have tenants rights ordinance which we passed recently. being able to know who which properties those are so we can reach those people would be great. And really all we're talking about is simple, simple registry that would just have the listing of which properties and how many you know which units are rental properties, and who is a contact person that we can reach out to in terms of the property management or the landlord. So that's what this is about. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan? I would just reply that I have spoken to the planning department and they say that they're actually kind of excited to have this because a lot of the things that they're trying to do are very difficult. For example, that they have on their docket to reach out to landlords specifically about rebate programs at the state level, and that's very difficult. They just don't have access to who those people are. So I think that from the planning side, they are kind of excited to be able to have this information, and they see it as being beneficial to them rather than a burden to them.
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. I mean, my direct response is all we're doing is giving this a number and we're beginning the conversation. So the truth is, we're going to be taking input from the planning department, from the building commissioner, from the administrative staff to understand how is this best implemented. So really, this is all we're doing is starting the conversation. But as far as who will implement it. I think that the administration already, because this was in the plan that would come up a few years ago, I think they already have ideas and I would look to the administration for information like that.
[Anna Callahan]: Again, this is the beginning of the conversation.
[Anna Callahan]: So this is the beginning of a many months long process. Yes, this is the beginning of a many months long process at which the public is welcome to attend any of those meetings that we have. And My understanding is that at a minimum, it is the address of the property, the address of which unit is a rental property, and information on how to contact the landlord or property management.
[Anna Callahan]: My name is amazing.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan just to a point of information. Renters are not on the registry. There's rental properties that are on the right, so just be property owners and renters themselves are not on registry.
[Anna Callahan]: I hear everybody here. And I think what I'm struggling with is that My understanding of how we work on policies is we bring a suggestion for something that we might pass in a year or two years or six months or whatever, we bring it here to get it a number. Now, any policy, whatever policy that is, it is by definition, it is not totally worked out. Not all of the answers are there, because this is how we create policy. We create policy by giving it a number, and then by sending it through a process. And that process, and tell me if I'm wrong, please. That process involves three public hearings, right? It has to go through first reading, second reading, third, something like that, after it's been written.
[Anna Callahan]: After all of the committee meetings, it involves three times that it has to appear before the city council. And that's when the answer, when all of the questions, when it's been worked through with the staff, with, you know, in committee with the public, with, you know, whatever sort of listening sessions and other things that we do. So what I'm struggling with is, You know, we're bringing things here to give it a number. And what that does is it allows us to then begin the process of discussing it publicly where everyone is welcome for many months. And I think for the, like the leaf blower ordinance, we had eight or nine, was it nine public meetings about it?
[Anna Callahan]: I thought that we had the eighth leaf blower like public swap but we had a lot of meetings.
[Anna Callahan]: So, I think what I'm trying to say is, this is the second time since I've been a city council which is like three months. people come, dozens of people come to the meeting to prevent us from ever being able to discuss a policy and we're being accused of not knowing all of the details. Well, the reason that we have this process is so that we can include the public in the entire discussion of every aspect of it and every detail. So what I'm struggling with is I want to begin the discussion. And I will say, I'm saddened. I'm very saddened that I now seem to be on the receiving end of something where, specifically for in-town landlords, I have for years talked about how in-town landlords are the people that we want to support. And there's video of me from years ago So, like, this is, I just want to know we're coming up on the 15 minute limit for the previous question today, you have about a minute, then I want to go a minute but that's what I'm struggling with is I want to begin the conversation, so that we can talk about it for many months in open public committee meetings, and then we can have. the three public hearings in the city council, all of which are designed to answer those detailed questions and for you to have input on those answers, those questions and answers. So that's what I'm struggling to get to is the point where we can actually discuss this rather than having it shut down before anyone is allowed to discuss it.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Kelly. I'm sorry. This is a thing.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, so I was, I'm not actually in favor of reducing the amount of time that people, so I would have done this differently, let's put it that way. I do think that having, and I've looked at some other cities, I have to say, I am so happy that we do something that I have not seen really anywhere else, I guess maybe Revere does it, but that we let people speak on every single agenda item. Most cities, there's one public comment period that applies to like anything that's on the agenda. You have your two minutes during that public comment period and that's it. And you don't get to be there when they're debating the whole rest of, while they're debating the body is debating that particular agenda item. So I love that we do that and I think that we should keep that. I'm glad this doesn't in any way get rid of that. I do think that meetings that go to one, two, three o'clock in the morning, the poor people who have to speak on a topic that doesn't come up until after midnight, like that's also, that's just not good democracy, right? The way I would have done it, and I don't know how much people are open to changes on the floor, but I think that we should have a limit on the end time of the meetings. And if we limit the end time of the meetings, So that nobody has to stay up until you know one o'clock in the morning to be heard on their on their agenda item. Then, allowing the chair, which I think we already have as an option to before any public participation to declare hey like there's 100 people in the room for this item, we're going to leave it to and we and this is currently our policy anyway that we have done for this item, we're going to have two minutes per issue we did that you know a number of weeks ago for a different issue. And that the chair can do that in order to meet the deadline of the midnight 1231 o'clock whatever it is that we decide is the final hour that this. that the city council meetings end on. So that's where I would go with it is have like a meeting end time so that nobody has to stay up till one o'clock in the morning just to speak on their issue. The other possibility is to let public comment happen at the beginning and then have it apply to all of the agenda items. That's very common. And then nobody, no members of the public have to stay until midnight, one o'clock in the morning in order to speak on their agenda item. So I think there are other ways to go that would let people speak. I'm just not sure that this is the one that I, I'm not sure that I love this one.
[Anna Callahan]: I just want to be slightly more clear than what I said before, which is I would actually really like to discuss this, to be able to come up with some other ideas in committee rather than voting on this right now. So that'd be my preference.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just wanted to address one thing, because I'm feeling frustrated that I brought the rental registry here And I very purposefully did not decide a lot of things. I did not want to have come up with all the answers because I wanted to be part of the public process. So this you have already decided everything, that's why I couldn't answer questions about the details of rental registry because I don't want to come here having decided everything. So that's the process. We get a number for something. And it's frustrating that dozens of people are coming out to say, don't give it a number so that it can be discussed. That's what I'm having trouble with. I want to be able to give something a number. And I think we should not have all the details before we give it a number. But then I'm being... criticized that I don't have all the answers. But the reason I don't have all the answers is because I don't want to have come here having decided everything. I want to give it a number so that we can have a public process of many public meetings so that your opinions, the public opinions, can exactly be part of this process that you're talking about. So that's part of what I want to be able to do here is have fewer long extended discussions, and I'm not talking about this particular resolution, but fewer long extended discussions that prevent us, people saying, please do not begin a discussion about this. I would much rather people come to the discussion about it. Like, let's agree to have a discussion. And then we can have the discussion where people can give their opinions. But to come here with dozens and dozens of people saying, Whatever you do, you're a terrible person, if you agree to allow this to be discussed, I find it... This is why you might see me not, quote-unquote, listening to dozens of people, because all I'm voting for is for it to be allowed to be discussed. And I think it should be discussed and that's for, you know, these other things, whether it's the real estate transfer fee, the rental registry. All I'm saying is, we should be able to discuss it in open public meetings. This is part of what I'm a little bit frustrated with is the idea that we're coming here having already decided and then suddenly it's like, to zero or six to one or five to two because we've already decided, but like all I wanted to do is discuss and be able to like have the open public forum that you are asking for. So I guess that's it. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, I just don't exactly understand. Is that there's a B paper attached to this motion.
[Anna Callahan]: Can you restate that B paper?
[Anna Callahan]: I think that is a great idea.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, just that when there is a question of whether we're going to send something to committee to be able to open a many months long discussion, I'm going to vote yes. I think we need to be able to have those discussions. This is actually something that we're gonna be changing these rules today, and that will be a permanent change. And I don't feel comfortable. I didn't feel comfortable when I read it, and my position has not changed. So I'm not gonna be voting this one.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Yep, I think it says it all. We are really just sending this into committee to discuss. Hopefully it will be a way for us to reach out to people who rarely or never come to these meetings. Those 70% of people. Well, the 50% of people who never vote in city elections, 70% who didn't vote in this particular city election. 70% who didn't vote for me. Those folks who are not engaged politically, we want to be able to hear what their lives are like, and that's what this is about.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I'm just curious if that monthly report comes in, who goes over the report and then what happens after that?
[Anna Callahan]: Do we think that it's appropriate given that a lot of this is for new construction, and some of it may be fossil fuel stuff construction in buildings, is this a place where we can request that the departments that we're talking to take into consideration. incentives for our climate goals or our affordable housing goals that are lined out in our various plans, like the CAP, the Climate Action Adaptation Plan, or our Affordable Housing Production Plan. Can we ask that they take those into consideration when they are updating?
[Anna Callahan]: As I'm scrolling through all these many fees, I do notice taxi cabs on here, and I'm curious if the city has done anything about including the gig worker cab things into, I assume that this only applies to actual taxi cabs and not to like Uber drivers and everything else, So I don't know whether, I mean, that seems to me clearly to be totally outdated, and maybe we need something totally different.
[Anna Callahan]: Do we have a way of knowing which of these fees bring in what amount of money? Or which categories of fees bring in what amount of money?
[Anna Callahan]: Move to adjourn.
[Anna Callahan]: Second.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I'm curious if we know how other cities are currently doing this. Nobody knows. Okay. That's something we might want to look into is see some of our surrounding cities, how they deal with food trucks, and if they all have to go to the city council, if they just have it done by, you know, the administration.
[Anna Callahan]: I just had a question because it sounds like what the attorney is saying is that according to our laws, we only have the ability to give permission for these food trucks on public ways and all the other entities like the parks and the schools do their own food truck licensing. What it sounds like Councilor Scarpelli is saying is that this is not the practice that we have done, and it is also perhaps not what our former city solicitor said. So to me, that makes things a little muddy. And I would love to have, I mean, maybe that's just the reality, but if there can be any clarification on that, I think it would help us understand.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just want to ask you about civil service law and whether we are currently following civil service law. So the appointment of the active chief, was that done appropriately? Was was the are we gearing up for the required testing? Do you know if we're currently like on schedule to follow through with civil service law as we are supposed to right now?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I appreciate all the work that has been done on this. I just want to comment a little bit about what I saw when I was campaigning and what I have also seen here in these chambers and heard people speak about, which is that when people do not trust the way, when they don't understand how their money is being spent, and they don't trust the way that that money is being used, then they never want to give the city another penny. So when you combine lack of transparency with underfunding, which I believe is what has happened to Medford over many, many years, what happens is you have a breakdown of democracy. So to me, making sure that the public through this budget ordinance has access to seeing and understanding how are the money that comes into the city is spent, and to know that that money is being spent on things that they are in fact seeing. I think this is going to help not only the way that we move the budget forward, but it's also gonna help get people to understand that, yes, the city is or is not, you know, whatever we find, right, when we've got this transparency, using the funds wisely. And I think we will also see that there's genuine underfunding of most city departments.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wanted to ask if you have run this by the Community Development Board as well as the Office of Planning.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, Mr. Castagnetti. I just wanted to mention that I do have a friend who lives in one of these cooperatively owned buildings in Boston, and he raves about it. So I'd be excited to talk about that as an affordable housing possibility as well.
[Anna Callahan]: If that proposal goes through, then it probably makes my point sort of moot. But I was sort of looking as a relatively new Councilor to understand, obviously the Metro Public Schools is the largest department in terms of funding. But there's dozens of departments listed here on the website. And I'm looking for a chart that shows me the size of the budget for each one. So we have an understanding of like, okay, are 20 of these so tiny that they're not, you know, worried, concerned about them, but I will do some research there. And I think that rephrasing to make it any grant funded position is probably a good one.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, it was just a quick, did this not already go into committee as a request that we were making in the committee, in Public Works Committee? I thought it maybe did. I just wanna make sure we're not doubling up two motions for the same. I'm totally in favor, and also the five-year plan for the roads, I think, is going to go through that committee as well, rather than be a budget request. Mr. Clark, do you happen to remember if a motion went through the committee, the Public Works Committee? I'm looking it up. either way we should have to look.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Yeah, super excited to be working on this and to have a team of people dedicated to all the research and legal and urban planning work that needs to be done to do this right. I'm excited to hear where specific policies that we have all proposed might fit into here, into the timeline. So I just want to encourage if it's possible and if this that fits into your presentation, feel free to drop in mentioning policies as examples of things that could go in there. I think it might also help folks who are in the audience, both on Zoom and here in person, to understand what kinds of things we mean with these more generic buckets that we're talking about. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm just gonna throw in one thing that I've heard from some constituents, and I think we should also think carefully about because it does seem like a post pandemic request, but folks who have been working from home would, folks that I've heard from would really appreciate having a mini office space that they could go to that's very close to their home. And I don't know if that's another thing we could think about as a possible zoning is having these micro pockets of, you know, tiny office space, like, you know, one of these spaces where you just rent a desk, tiny micro office space, coffee shop, lunch place, something like that, which would allow people to sort of start getting out of their homes who currently don't have to go to work. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, I just had a question. It would be really helpful to be able to see the list of minor changes that have been requested from staff and from the Zoning Board, and what is our best way of doing that within open meeting law? Can we request that they send those to us in advance of a meeting and then make those public, or are they ready to do that? Is that something you feel like we're at a space where that would be useful for the City Council to see that list?
[Anna Callahan]: do you think we can do both? Just timing wise. I think economic development and climate put them both on the 24th. I guess we can always, if we don't get them covered, we can always put them up.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, I do have a clarifying question. I just want to make sure we're talking about an email newsletter specifically, or do you mean more broadly the sense of a newsletter that could be email and other things as well?
[Anna Callahan]: I just didn't know whether when you said the word newsletter. No, that's a great clarifying question. That you meant the email part of it, or if you were talking more broadly.
[Anna Callahan]: on the second, but also a question.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, so I I'm assuming that this, um, sort of voluntary sign up will be available to all because and not just those are this committee.
[Anna Callahan]: This is how we do it, if it comes to me for questions. No, it's great.
[Anna Callahan]: So it seems to me that in addition to an email, like having our own email list, specifically because of the laws around opt-in, that any list really should, if you want to have an email list, then you'll have to be opt-in. If we want for people to be able to get access to this information, they should be able to opt in. They should also be able to follow a social media account on their preferred social media platform. So I want you to reread that. But to me, that sounds a little vague. The language, I wasn't sure exactly what you meant by it. And I wonder if we can very specifically have something that's more talking about the creation of, um, followable distribution platforms, which would include things like an email list that people can opt into, um, a, uh, you know, an X account, a YouTube account, you know, blah, blah, blah, like accounts on those specific platforms.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm sorry, what's the third motion?
[Anna Callahan]: When you say that, it might take a while to set up.
[Anna Callahan]: Just I was going to answer the question.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I agree with both of y'all. And I just wanted to add that I'm probably even more excited to put into the newsletter things that are upcoming than things that already passed, because that allows for people in the community to participate in the decisions to be involved in engaging in democracy. So those are difficult to spin. We simply just state what is coming up and what is going to be on the agenda. And that way, people will know when to come if they want to speak out about something. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, so I assume this is because I only had four hours of sleep, although it could also be because you only had four hours of sleep when you wrote these. But I didn't fully understand the first three motions. And if it's okay with you, because, hey, we're in a body where words matter, do you mind reading those slowly? And I think I will probably make slight amendments just to the wording to make sure that that wording is easily understood by everybody. Is that okay? One at a time.
[Anna Callahan]: The only thing for me is the word newsletter to me, it means email newsletter. So I wonder if we can call it a communications plan or communications or I'm not sure. I don't know if there's a better word and if everybody else thinks it's fine, that's fine with me. But like I was confused when I really thought you meant an email newsletter.
[Anna Callahan]: That just, that just feels like it. I think that's difficult because... If you guys understand it, that's fine. To me, it meant something different from what you meant.
[Anna Callahan]: What if we say monthly newsletter content?
[Anna Callahan]: and when we will have perhaps left a little bit more.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I didn't realize.
[Anna Callahan]: As long as it specifically includes any city councilor, not just this Okay, I'll make sure that yeah, beautiful. Thank you. Love it.
[Anna Callahan]: Beautiful. Great. Beautiful. And so it is.
[Anna Callahan]: Love it. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: That does it.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, I was just going to say like, you know, if the mayor helps distribute or any of these other email lists agrees, then what they do is they don't just distribute our content as if it's theirs. They say, you know, sign up here, like here's the content sign up here. And that gives everyone on their list the opportunity to opt in.
[Anna Callahan]: really make an effort to be on all of those platforms, because that's kind of the point, is that each platform has its own subset of people that actually check that platform and prefer that platform to other things. I think we should not neglect to at least consider texting, WhatsApp, discourse. These are things, so especially like texting and WhatsApp are used by a lot of less affluent immigrant communities. And so if we don't even discuss them, and I understand that texting probably would cost us money, but if we don't at least consider those, I think that we are sort of blocking off certain people to engagement and specifically people who tend to be the least engaged. So I would love for us to consider those as well.
[Anna Callahan]: I apologize, I will have to leave in nine minutes. I move that we join these and approve them.
[Anna Callahan]: I can be that person creating a paper to report and putting on the agenda at some point?
[Anna Callahan]: All right, yeah, I better.
[Anna Callahan]: Move to adjourn.
[Anna Callahan]: As far as the question of getting proper budgetary information out of the administration. I believe that's an entirely separate discussion, I agree that that's a big problem, and we as a city council have been working. I even before I got on the city council to make sure that that's a more transparent process that the mayor is asked and has been asked repeatedly and now has to follow a schedule to provide information this is something that this city council and the city council before me has worked very hard on. So this is not something that we are ignoring this is something we are working very hard to make sure happens, but it is a totally separate issue from whether we have 12 month availability of free cash, essentially, or if we only have free cash after it has been certified, which can take six to nine months. So that is what this question is, is a question of whether we have, as a city, have availability of that free cash for 12 months, or whether we have availability for that free cash only after it has been certified six to nine months later. I completely agree with many of the people who spoke here that the city The roads are in terrible condition. Our school buildings are in terrible condition. Our school budget is not anywhere near large enough for the amount of teachers that we need. I completely agree with those sentiments and that reality. I believe that it's because of decades of underfunding of this city, because that is why the roads have come to the point where they have come, and why the school buildings have come to the point where they have come. That is also a separate issue from the question of whether we have year round access to essentially free cash, or whether we can cannot access that free cash for the first six to nine months. So, to me, this really is a question simply of whether, and I appreciate cancer Scarpelli for your consideration for the newer city Councilors of which I am one. I would not mind a little bit more time to understand this. But I will say that it seems quite clear to me that, first of all, we're not taxing anybody. We're not increasing the funds. No, no, no, no. This literally does not have to do anything with that. It converts free cash from something that we cannot access to something that we can access. And that free cash is literally what happens when the income that comes into the city and the budget that goes out of the city, the actual spent budget that goes out of the city differ, which they have to do, or else you don't have a bond rating. So understanding the budget of the city and how it functions, I do believe that creating this fund is the smart thing to do. And I'm willing to vote on this tonight.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Yes, I know that on that lot right now, there are a lot of wonderful tall trees that block the busy Broadway street from those other streets that are a little bit further in. Can you talk a little bit about the proposed green space and whether there will continue to be trees there or be new trees planted, aside from the pocket park?
[Anna Callahan]: They're quite lovely and tall.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: I am going to reiterate what has been already said a number of times. All we are voting on tonight is whether we are allowed to discuss this topic. So anything that comes before us has to get a number and go to committee. That's how we start the process. That's how we have a discussion. That's how we also continue to get public input as we craft any sort of legislation of any kind. We literally don't have a single word written about what kind of transfer fee we would do because we can't until we get a number and we send it to committee. And this is going to take months because we're going to take a lot of input from the committee. So as far as having a well-functioning democracy and being able to discuss important issues, this is how it starts. We're only voting on whether we can discuss this issue. So that is what we're voting on tonight. I also really want people to have a little bit of understanding. I know way too much about state politics. And I can tell you that of any communities that have passed a real estate transfer fee, as with many other housing related issues, the state does not approve them. So what is going to happen is if we are lucky enough to pass anything, that is related to a real estate transfer fee. It will not be approved by the state. The only thing likely to come out through the state is what is gonna be very similar to Governor Healey's proposition. Governor Healey's proposition, just so you know, is 1% on either side. Nothing will affect anyone who sells a house less than a million dollars. And the only tax is on what is over a million dollars. So if you sell your house for $1.1 million, the total tax for you is $1,000. So, you know, I hope I can assuage some people's fears. And I really hope that we can have a respectful discussion tonight and that you all can participate in our many months long discussion that we hopefully will be about to begin. that will happen in perfectly open committee meetings, which we invite you all to come to. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks, just point of personal privilege and I appreciate the opportunity in case other folks, maybe I misspoke or people didn't understand what I said earlier. I was not saying that if we pass something like this, it will never get through the state house. What I was saying is that the likelihood that our version, that any version we pass is different from Governor Healey's version is very low. And what that means is that it will be a 1% tax on buyer or seller, it will only affect homes over a million dollars and only the amount of money over a million dollars. That was the reason that I brought up how difficult it is to pass through the statehouse. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to restate that.
[Anna Callahan]: I apologize. Can you, we are voting to do what exactly?
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Callahan. Thank you. On the idea of like having a lost cat or other pet and trying to lure them back, I do think that that is already accounted for in section B, number D, number, sorry, section D, number B, that there's an exemption for feeding of pets. And only if the food intended for pets is determined to be the source of wildlife feeding. So it seems like it's okay to do that already according to this. but only if it is determined to be the source of wildlife feeding, would then there be some sort of a, you know, they would be required to take some steps to render that food inaccessible to wildlife. So I think that probably already falls under the ordinance as my suspicion.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks so much. I apologize to my fellow Councilors for not submitting mine in a timely manner, but I want to, first of all, just state my agreements with points that other folks have brought up. One is level funding for Medford public schools, including those positions that have been paid for with funds that may be ending or may have ended. I agree with Councilor Scarpelli's request for a DPW hardtop group. I want to make sure that we maintain our funding for community liaisons. The elections department needs to be fully funded as it was in the past with an elections director. I definitely agree with everyone that the city solicitor and assistant city solicitor salaries need to be increased. We need to find those people and fill those positions. And then two that I think have not been mentioned. One is our tree planting budget should equal an amount that can fund the amount needed to plant the number of trees that Medford loses per year, whatever best estimate that is we have for like a five year average. I would like to see a, this is not exactly a budget request but it's like information that I think needs to come along with the budget. I know that We have requested from the administration an explanation of what our five-year plan is for fixing our roads and sidewalks and how that matches with the pavement report, pavement management study, and the sidewalk study that were done. I believe that we need to see a five-year plan so that we can understand how the upcoming budget fits into this plan. At a minimum, If that plan is not ready in time, the budget for roads and sidewalks should come with an explanation of what is going to be accomplished with the funds just for this year as compared to the plans from the pavement management study and the sidewalk study. So those are mine. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm sorry, I do have one question.
[Anna Callahan]: Is there, for example, if there were creative ideas that came from the community about how we can support our local small businesses, is there some sort of a fund where small amounts of money like $2,000, $4,000, those kinds of things can come out of?
[Anna Callahan]: I would request there be a small slush fund for, you know, creative events and other ideas that can help our local small businesses. We're talking like 10k maybe for an entire year, just very small. You know, we're talking small, but you could do some interesting events and things with 10K. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So I hear this sort of coming up with five. I'm curious, what do our boil down recommendations look like? Are we supposed to come up with five? It doesn't say anything about that in the resolution. What are we expecting this to look like? How many is too many? What do we want?
[Anna Callahan]: I wanted to ask, should I email mine, or is it okay? Do you have reasonable notes from what I said?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I'm really happy to see these changes. I think the readability is very important. I remember hearing from some constituents that they felt that it was more lenient on the municipality than it was on residents. And this, I think it wasn't, but I think this reading of it makes it really clear that actually it's stricter on the commercial owners and the municipality than it is on residents. So I only have one very small question, which is about the use of wheeled leaf blowers powered by four stroke engines. I'm sure there's a good reason why they're carved out from any sort of phase out. So I'm curious what that reason is. And then I'm wondering if there is any phase out for those planned or if we're just, you know, maybe there's a reason why there's no plant phase out.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, could we say, you know, the user of the leaf blower?
[Anna Callahan]: Suggesting suggesting each year by September 1.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, just wanted to add to that. But in addition to there being plenty of studies showing that over the life of the product, it is environmentally more responsible to use electric. It should be noted that battery technology changes and changes fairly quickly. So when we're talking about lithium batteries, the design of an electric leaf blower is different from the design of a gas powered leaf blower. And if we convert now to electric as battery technology improves, we will be able to more easily get the benefit of those new batteries, which, you know, I'm sure will be environmentally more sustainable because people are not quite aware of the problems with lithium batteries.
[Anna Callahan]: No, yeah I am seconding but I'd also like to discuss.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, I just want to comment that there have been many public meetings on this. There have been many, there have been dozens of people speaking very eloquently in favor of passing this. I personally believe that there are more residents in Medford, who are incredibly frustrated with both the noise and pollution of gas leaf blowers than there are people who do not want this ordinance to be this to move out of committee and to move to the City Council for passage. And I also really want to reiterate that the very well respected institutions and scientists in climate science have studied whether battery powered leaf blowers or gas powered leaf blowers are which one is environmentally better in the long run. And they have determined that electric powered gas blowers are better for the environment in the long run. And they include all sorts of things in that determination, including the dangers of lithium batteries, including, you know, all the metals that go into those. So We do not need to debate things here and talk about individual metals that go into them because we are not those experts. Those experts have come to conclusions and those conclusions are that it's better to use electric. And I certainly do believe that between the environmental impact and the noise pollution, that this is what, passing this is what the majority of Medford's and residents want, which is why I support this.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. I want to really thank all of the people who reach out to me. I have received more emails on this topic than I've probably on any other topic and spoken to a number of firefighters. And honestly, my position on this, I am finding it extremely difficult to believe that a healthy fire department filled with people who want to do their jobs, respect their leaders, and are, you know, doing the best that they can here in Medford in this incredibly difficult job is going to be helped by a process that almost to a T, like every single one of them does not want. So, If we are looking, that is just very difficult for me to believe. I want to make sure that whatever process that we have for selecting, and it was very interesting to me to hear, and I really dug into the process and how it has worked in the past, and how people are satisfied with it, and why it is that this particular process that the fire department has builds trust, builds respect, builds a really good, as Councilor Lemmie said, morale, And I am finding it very difficult to believe that a process that every firefighter does not want is going to get better leadership into the position. So that's where I start from, but I'm open ears and I'm very interested in hearing from everyone who is here to speak about this topic. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, and thanks so much to everyone who has come tonight. I consider myself to be a pro-worker and pro-union person, and I know that there are other Councilors on this council who agree with that statement about themselves. I think the absolute minimum that we can do if we are pro-worker, pro-union people, is to not make this permanent change to essentially at will employment based solely on flimsy corporate arguments and a totally unproven allegation. So from the arguments standpoint, I have heard a number of things tonight. and things like this process should not be hamstrung by all sorts of bureaucratic blah blah blah. It sure is real simple when you can fire anybody for no reason and Process is something that helps us have good democracy. It helps us have good workplaces. I do not think that this argument of needing to have a quick process is one that I would agree with or that vibes with me. This idea that we need leadership that is most qualified, that we're going to find the best candidate. I talked at length with firefighters who described the process, the civil service process, and believe me, Having a mayor select someone is not merit-based. If you want the best candidate or most qualified candidate, then you're going to go with a civil service process because that in fact is totally merit-based. And this question that this decision does not affect other people in the department is, frankly, totally not true. It is true to say that it does not remove those other people from civil service, but it totally affects them, aside from the fact that all these promotions, you know, would, you know, waterfall down. and affect a lot of people every time there would be a new fire chief. That, of course, is true. But if you want to know if it affects the department, look around the room. It affects the department. Why else are all of these people here? And as far as the allegation, you know, I am very concerned that we are being pushed into this decision based on a totally unproven allegation that the mayor herself says she doesn't even have any idea why these people would do a coordinated sick out. Now, people don't do a coordinated, like, they don't through their union coordinate to all be sick at the same time without a demand. You don't, like, that just isn't the thing. And the other thing about being sick is that, you know, diseases are contagious. Right. So people all get sick at the same time when they work in the same place. That is normal. And you can think what you want about that particular instance. But whatever you think, there is no proven anything going on here. And this is not the time for us to make this kind of decision. It also I really have to urge Councilors to understand that there is not one firefighter that is in favor of this. And I am, again, as I said at the beginning, really boggles my mind how we could possibly improve our fire department with leadership that they themselves will refuse. It simply does not make any sense. So I am not in favor of this, and I don't think that it helps us to move this to a committee where we'll discuss it more. I have made my decision. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: No.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. And I really commend the CPC for all the work that you do and, you know, the whole approval process and researching all these projects. I want to understand a little bit better the process. So there are applications that come in. Are those applications ones that have been, do people go through the planning department? Is it all simply, are these organizations coming to you directly? Is there what is and I guess what I'm asking about is I've been hearing from constituents about sort of equity across the city, folks in Barrie Park, Barrie Park playground, thinking that they maybe are not getting as much attention and as much funding. So I'm just curious if like who who's job would it be to look across the city and determine which of these sort of resurfacing projects or any of these projects are the ones that are most needed and ensure that those applications are getting in.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. So yes, these are a number of pro-democracy reforms. I just want to clarify for folks what I mean by pro-democracy reforms. These are things that ideally would help Medford have more people voting. have better actual voting rates throughout our population and or would allow for people who tend to be underserved by government and underrepresented to be better represented and better served. There are many of these that we could consider. These are the ones that I think that we can consider most easily as a city council in Massachusetts. So the reason why the salaries for elected officials are prioritized is because if any salaries are going to be raised then I personally would prefer, even though this isn't a law on our books, there are cities in Massachusetts and in other places around the country that have laws that say that if salaries are going to be raised, that they need to be decided in the first 18 months of the term, and they cannot take effect until the next term. So the idea of having a recommendation finished by December 31st, out of this committee means that the council could then make a decision before June, which would be within the first 18 months of the term. So that's the reason behind that particular issue. But I will say there is no rush on any of these. Nothing needs to be decided. There's also no There's no legal language on any of these. So this really is just an opening discussion and no rush on any of these. There's no particular timeline for them. So whenever it pleases this particular committee to put them on the agenda, I would be happy to appear again.
[Anna Callahan]: From the public?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. In our last meeting, not the last meeting, but one of the meetings we had yesterday, I believe that the clerk said that if we receive and place on file, then we're essentially putting it away to not look at again. We have to reopen it if we need to. Doesn't this just remain as something that is, don't we need to not receive and place this on file? I'm asking maybe the clerk.
[Anna Callahan]: I am, thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I have a few questions. First, I don't, I don't see. So there are seven different Home Rule petitions listed, potential Home Rule petitions listed. Do we have any actual legal language for any of these seven?
[Anna Callahan]: My second question, if I may, if I may just ask my second question. So I just wanted to double check. So we are, right now we're not discussing the other six. We're discussing the rent stabilization, which is referenced in a separate email. Is that correct? We're only discussing the rent stabilization today? Correct. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: No, really, President Bayer said what I was going to say. I think the person who wrote in that was read in public comment misunderstood what is in this draft with the idea that currently you can evict people for any reason. And if we change that, that doesn't mean that you can't evict them for any reason. There are many reasons that you certainly can evict people. You can evict them if they don't pay their rent. You can evict them if they have a cat and that's against the lease. You know, any of these things are perfectly valid reasons to evict someone. So I think there was a misunderstanding and I hope that that came through in President Bears's message. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks, I was just saying if you prefer to do these other two first, we can, because we know the better, then we can have more general discussion after, but then we can just move to move 006 to after those, if you prefer that. But I also am fine if we do the sort of general discussion first.
[Anna Callahan]: Perhaps we move it to move 006 to the end and we get your stuff, do all of your stuff, and then 006, if there's anything left over in 006, we can cover it at the end.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep, I was just curious if, like, if we have a subcommittee, are only people who are on this committee allowed to be on the subcommittee? I think that's a question for Adam.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm curious, yep.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. So I definitely think it's, I love the idea of having something that is, you know, unbiased, sort of lets people know about what has been passed recently, and especially opportunities for people to get engaged before things are passed. That's the part I'm most excited about. I am, Curious if we have talked to the communications department and seen whether we can sort of fold this into what they're doing, like we come up with sort of the brief description. I mean, I don't think it has to be long either. I think we're talking, it's simple. And then, I don't know, can you quick answer that before I make a couple more comments?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Just to finish up, I'm someone who thinks very deeply and has for seven or eight years thought very deeply about how to engage people who are not currently engaged in city politics. I'm not worried that if we send it to some people, there are people who aren't getting it. I think that's the way all newsletters are. You start with with the people who you know you can access. And I think this kind of update is just trying to get a certain piece of information out. The question of how do you engage more people, I think, is something that we reach differently. That's not what we discuss now. That's what we discussed specifically when we were discussing, hey, how do we reach those people and bring them into any of these discussions? To me, that's what the meetings with underrepresented groups is really dedicated to as well as the community liaisons and other things. So I'm not, I'm not really concerned about, you know, having a newsletter that does not go to every single person in the city. I think you start, you know, that's how newsletters are, right? You start with what you can. I just, I would love it if we can also talk to the communications department and see if that's one of the avenues that, you know, we can sort of fold this into if it's something nice and simple. Thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I was just hoping because I know we're short on time, but it would be great if the ordinance those that are listed here would major partisan ordinances if someone could simply give like a very basic sort of status of those that would be very helpful.
[Anna Callahan]: public works facilities convened, and we have discussed ways that we can keep up to date on the roads and sidewalks, as well as all of the buildings that the city owns in Medford. We are excited to keep the public informed of how these efforts are moving forward with the administration.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Leming spoke quite well on this. Really, this is a, remember, this is a resolution. This is not an ordinance that we are passing. This is a statement of the views of the council on not prioritizing our law enforcement to spend resources, to arrest and, you know, you know, sent for incarceration, people who simply have possession of such controlled substances. So given that and what Councilor Leming said, I believe this resolution is a fairly reasonable state and there are many other cities that have passed something very similar.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. As a co sponsor of this, it clearly is important to me that we do consider the spirit of what we're trying to do here. But I also want to mention that this is a fairly long resolution, and it includes a couple of state recommendations about state policy. And I want to ensure that other Councilors have had the time to consider those policies and to consider the entire text. And that I also mentioned this because I am the first in the alphabet, which means that I have to state what I'm going to do first. And that's simply to say to my fellow Councilors that I would definitely respect people's desires to have time and committee to understand the issue more. And I will, as a co-sponsor, make sure that this does move through committee. But I just want to state that I'd love to hear from other Councilors in terms of whether sending it to committee is something that you would prefer.
[Anna Callahan]: Because I work for a 501C3 organization that takes a position on a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza, among other things, I have filed a disclosure form with the city clerk, but I have been advised by the State Ethics Commission that I am able to vote on this issue.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I so appreciate everyone who is involved in this process. And I want to say, just for a moment, about the amended language, that that is actually part of the democratic process. So the original language that was posted was there for people to interact with. That is why it was there, right? It wasn't there to remain untouched until we arrived here today. It was there so that people could be involved in democracy. Sorry, I'll direct my comments to the chair. Could be involved in democracy and they did, right? They reached out to Councilor Collins and probably to, I certainly had someone reach out to me. People reached out to the councilors and to the sponsor of this particular resolution. to state what they wanted, their vision of what they wanted this to be. And I know that many, many people did that. And that's where the amended language came from. So I don't want people to think that we are simply looking at amended language that sprung out of one of our minds without input, and that we're voting on it without you know, thinking about it. But this was something that really was worked on by many people. I appreciate all of their time. I appreciate all of the time of everyone who has been here. It is well worth our staying up late for the things that we do. And I really appreciate that and just wanted to chat for a minute about how much I appreciate people being involved in our democracy. I do hope that folks will come back and will stay on top of the things that are coming up in the city council and will reach out to us before they're voted on to help us make them better.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wanted to mention for anyone watching, listening or in the chambers that this is a resolution that simply sends it to committee. This is an opening of the discussion. So if people are interested in this topic, please come to the committee meetings where this will be discussed. Same with the warming center, same with some of these other resolutions that were passed today and maybe passed later today. This is really the beginning of the discussion, certainly not the end. And we really encourage people to come to those committee meetings because that is where the sort of you know, meat and potatoes of developing laws for our city comes from.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wanted to mention that in one of the committees, perhaps you can remind me which one, we were talking about the importance of holding companies accountable for any damages that they do, or for following through on their promises of things that they've committed to. And I see this as part of that ongoing work, but we will be, as a city, we will be doing more to be proactive about these kinds of things.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Um, yes, as I mentioned earlier today in this committee, we have discussed getting updates from the administration on roads on sidewalks and on all publicly owned buildings. We also have a new facilities manager. So we feel this is a really nice way for them to get themselves situated in terms of what all of the city owned buildings are, what state of repair they're in, how much might cost to repair them. So, this is just something that we're, you know, putting forward. And we think that it will both be beneficial to the city and also be beneficial to the facilities manager.
[Anna Callahan]: This resolution really is all about just getting the information that we need to make decisions like that in the future.
[Anna Callahan]: I was just gonna say, I worked on this. I'm in support of this. I do, as a general rule, I think councilors should take time to understand everything in everything that we pass. And I know that there's some state laws involved here. And that's why I just wanted to know, but I'm perfectly happy to pass tonight.
[Anna Callahan]: Hello, welcome. We are convening the Medford City Council Public Works and Facilities Committee meeting for January 31st, 2024. Mr. Clerk, can you call the roll?
[Anna Callahan]: present. And I want to recognize Emily Lazzaro as our vice chair. We will go on to the action and discussion items. And the primary one here is is 24-006 offered by Isaac bears Council President, the resolution that each council committee review the 2024 2025 Council governing agenda as amended at the January 24 2024 committee of the whole meeting. So we do have that agenda in front of us. And as with the other committee meetings, we can go ahead and just run through those items to discuss how we are going to move forward on them for the next year or two. We will start with our major projects, and I'll start with the street and sidewalk repair and accessibility. and sidewalk repairs. Um while we don't implement street and sidewalk repair as a city council, um, we do want to be, um. Aware of and to also provide residents some awareness of what the city is planning to do in terms of street and sidewalk repair. And one of the the administration, which of the proposed plans in the 2021 payment management study we have chosen, or if we haven't chosen any of those plans specifically, then what are our plans for the next five years, including both the funding as well as which streets or category of streets we will be repairing? Comments from city councilors? President Bears.
[Anna Callahan]: Do you think that we can request that for a month from now when we have our next
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, do we have, this is a motion, do we have?
[Anna Callahan]: Do we have a second?
[Anna Callahan]: Seconds the motion. All in favor?
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Scarpelli, thank you so much. I love that idea. I might suggest that we add to this motion that we have a report back not only on the pavement management, study, which is specifically roads, but there's also a sidewalk study. So maybe that belongs in it and then maybe a separate motion for a comparison of the price of having our own sidewalk. And yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Zero.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Is there more discussion? Do people feel comfortable, even though this is a very long motion, do people feel comfortable voting on the motion?
[Anna Callahan]: But I believe that currently we're only considering your motion right now. Oh, OK.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, any more discussion on the first motion of President Bears? All in favor?
[Anna Callahan]: All opposed? Motion passes. Councilor Scarpelli, do you want to make that motion now?
[Anna Callahan]: Does it go boing?
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Any more discussion on this motion? Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro. All in favor?
[Anna Callahan]: All opposed? Motion passes. Great, let's go ahead and breeze through some of these other ones. We have one under City Facilities and Equipment. Is there anyone who wants to speak on this one?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. I completely agree. I think having some sort of assessment. And I do think that if with a new facilities manager, that is exactly the time for them to be given a task like this, as long as they have enough time, because it really sets them on the right path of being aware of all of our facilities and the shape that each one of them is in. It'll help them to get all that information on board quickly.
[Anna Callahan]: Any other discussion around this one? Moving on to public restrooms in Parks and Squares, and Councilor Tseng is not here, but it is fairly self-descriptive, just developing plans to have more public restrooms in our parks and squares. Moving on to ordinances, is there any discussion? We're good. Ordinances, the lead ordinance, Councilor Beres, do you want to introduce this one?
[Anna Callahan]: Any discussion?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Moving on to a homeown petition to increase excise taxes for large trucks. This is Vice President Collins taking the lead on this. Is there anyone that wants to introduce this one?
[Anna Callahan]: That's what rings in my head.
[Anna Callahan]: Any other discussion? Moving on to the oversight and engagement, public utility accountability. Cerulli is looking at holding utility companies accountable to provide services and benefits to the community and mitigate impact of their assets and poor asset condition on the city.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you for mentioning that. It also reminds me that I heard this same thing that you say that you have heard for many years I also heard this talking to neighbors at their doors. And also I wonder if we can fold into this. to understand from the administration how much coordination there is, because in some other cities, they put a moratorium once a road is truly repaved and brought up to like a number one.
[Anna Callahan]: And my understanding is that then there are a lot of emergencies, and that this happens all the time. So to really have an understanding from the administration of what that moratorium is, what can get in the way of it, how often it happens, that, in fact, it's torn up much more quickly than every five years. So I think that might fold into that, or it could be separate. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Anna Callahan]: So there, yes, Councilor Lazzaro?
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Scarpelli has a motion on the floor and as we read it back, if you wanna, no, no, just let me know if you think it makes any sense to add in something about the moratorium and how often it is broken. So let's go ahead and read that back.
[Anna Callahan]: Do we want to have a second for this motion?
[Anna Callahan]: Maybe. We can always add my stuff as a different motion or something.
[Anna Callahan]: Any more discussion on the Councilor Scarapelli's motion? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion passes. Great, we are near the end here.
[Anna Callahan]: Seconded by Councilor Caraviello.
[Anna Callahan]: All right, Councilor. Already?
[Anna Callahan]: Do you want to read that back, and then we'll take a vote? We'll have a discussion and vote.
[Anna Callahan]: Any discussion? Great. All in favor?
[Anna Callahan]: Motion passes. The final thing on our list is simply the tree planting volunteer network. That is really something that we're at a very early phase. We're just at the point of like talking to city staff and kind of seeing, you know, they're like talking to city staff and also looking at what other cities have done just to get an idea. So we're not, I think, at the point of any kind of an ordinance or taking action. So the idea is that the city would allow certain volunteers, residents to, with training, with the proper placement, with the proper trees, with the proper depth, and with all the training to be enabled to participate in the planting of certain city trees.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, wonderful. And I do think also that as a, like if this becomes something of a resolution or who knows what exactly it will become, that it will be for, it's kind of stopgap measure, that the purpose really is to have a larger tree planting crew, but that at the moment, while we are dealing with budgetary difficulties, that this might be able to help us to increase our tree canopy. President Bears?
[Anna Callahan]: Does anybody have an idea for what is the next step for this?
[Anna Callahan]: Do we have any other public comment, any discussion of anything else as we've reached the end of our sort of list of things that we hope to cover in this committee? What we were just talking about just now. Oh, I apologize. Yes, 19-554, resolution to add noise barriers along Route 93.
[Anna Callahan]: It was discussed.
[Anna Callahan]: I did not call it from my chair.
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. Please do. Absolutely. Can you state your name and address for the record?
[Anna Callahan]: I think that our clerk actually has some some answers for you.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, unfortunately, I think that the reason this has been stalled for six years is because it's really up to the state. This is not something that we can decide and our administration can implement.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: No, we can't because it's really up to the state. So we don't have any control over it. So what we're suggesting is that we reach out again to our state representatives to ask them for some information, but it's nothing that we are able to.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Fantastic. Any other public comment?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: OK, all rants aside, cut you off, President Perkins.
[Anna Callahan]: Is there any other discussion? No, there's not. Does anyone move to adjourn?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Motion to adjourn from Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Zach Bears. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you very much to everyone. See you all next month.
[Anna Callahan]: Present.
[Anna Callahan]: Sorry, I cannot hear you. Can you move the thing onto the podium, maybe? Yeah, good idea. With air conditioning. Is this better?
[Anna Callahan]: I just was hoping that we can, for all of these, have a status in each of these. I think it's super helpful to have a status. So even zoning reform, it's helpful for us, but also for the public to know, oh, there was zoning reform. There was a minor zoning reform that happened last cycle, but we expect to be doing more major zoning reform. But I think even for any of the ordinances and things, even if it's not started, it would be great to have a status put in there.
[Anna Callahan]: So status being things like not started, proposed, like I don't know what they all are going to be, but like a status. And if there's anything that can be easily put into like a short sentence for people to give people any context around that.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Councilor Callahan. Would it be helpful under descriptions and goals if we actually called out housing production plan section 5B to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the climate action plan 2.2.D, blah, blah, blah. So rather than these generic implement Medford Comprehensive Plan, which even I who have read the Medford Comprehensive Plan don't, that's so vague. Would that be a helpful way for us to have a full list, even though I know that would be long? Is there a way for us to maybe each of us take things that we're like, I'm trying to figure out how we can break this into chunks to make it into like a list of things that we actually want to accomplish.
[Anna Callahan]: So these are definitely out of the climate adaptation and action plan. Really, the energy disclosure and benchmarking are kind of linked. So what other cities have done is to first start with having buildings, usually large buildings above a certain amount, have required energy disclosure. And then after that, after they've been doing that for a few years, then the city can benchmark certain energy goals and have fines for buildings that are not meeting those goals. So it is definitely part of the same, it would be part of, I believe, the same ordinance that would have one thing for a few years and then benchmarking part of it for the next few years.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. You just reminded me. I also had a talk with Brenda and Alicia about this and heard that the state may be working on something like this. The state's version will only apply to very large buildings. I think our first step is really to investigate, number one, what the state is working on and number two, how quickly that might be done, because being someone who actually knows quite a lot about how state politics works, I know that it could be 10 or 20 years. So we need to understand whether they're actually going to accomplish something or if this is just something that is, you know, quote unquote, being worked on. And then number three, if whatever law they are working on is even going to have any impact in Medford, given the size of most of our buildings. And if not, then we want to consider what could we do that might be like a slightly smaller building size or how we could have impact. I'm super passionate about this because two thirds of our emissions are from buildings. And so this is really and almost all of our buildings are existing buildings. There's like a half a percent gain in buildings per year, maybe, maybe less. So we cannot affect this carbon emissions through new buildings and new construction. Yes, there's new construction on old buildings, but if we really want to get at our carbon emissions, this is something we'll have to consider.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep, I can speak to that. It's basically something that will allow us to reach both some of our climate goals as well as some of our affordable housing goals. It just means that if you're a landlord renting units that you would have to register with the city. Pretty simple. Councilor Tseng?
[Anna Callahan]: Sure this energy retrofits for existing buildings is really right out of the climate action adaptation plan. It's supposed to be something that the planning department is doing this year. Maybe started last year. I think they're actually going to start this year. So I think we just want to have our eyes on it and ensure that that effort is moving forward.
[Anna Callahan]: I think there are other things to do with that before we look at any zoning. We have to look at the state legislation and everything else.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm just curious about procedure, and I know that the committees were different in the last cycle. These tree preservation leaf blower, which seem like they might be under environment, are they in Committee of the Whole because of the change of structure of the committees? Or is there a reason why things might go to Committee of the Whole rather than be in a specific other committee?
[Anna Callahan]: I appreciate that the current status is in there, so we can, we don't even need to ask, like, we can see immediately, like, what is it waiting on, so thank you for that.
[Anna Callahan]: I was so excited to see the percent for art ordinance.
[Anna Callahan]: Will there be an updated digital copy of this regularly as things change?
[Anna Callahan]: I want to bring up two ideas that came up as I was knocking on doors. I hope to, you know, encourage these to happen. One is to encourage our schools to offer more opportunities for our children to spend in the fells. and in nature. And the other one that I got from a 10-year-old at the doors is called Lemonade Stand Days, where we send out a text message to everyone in the city saying, if you're a kid, get your lemonade stand ready. If you're a grown-up, put cash in your pocket. The night before any day, it's going to be over 90 degrees.
[Anna Callahan]: I just want to highlight that the energy disclosure and benchmarking ordinances, I'm happy to take, to kind of review that and look, because certain things have to happen before other things, and Anyway, if you want to put my name there, you can, on the Energy Disclosure, just because I want to work together with Patel in terms of looking at those
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. I'm going to bring up another idea that I heard while I was knocking on doors. This is not at the point of writing an ordinance yet, but simply at the point of having discussions with the public. Someone asked if we could pass something allowing folks to have chickens in their backyard. And I know that the way other cities do it, it's a certain number per lake. or nine blocks or whatever that is. So it's not like anyone can have as many chickens as they want. So, but again, not ordinance stage, simply curiosity because someone mentioned it when I was knocking on their door to see if this is something that the people in Medford are interested in.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much. Again, I'm excited to dig into these and to work with the committee to prioritize these items. I do want to say I'm happy to put the public utility accountability if you want to put my name as the lead councilor. Sure. That's fine. I'm also really grateful for seeing the lead ordinance on there. That was on all of my original material that I knocked on doors with in May and June. So I'm very happy to see that there. Yeah, that's it for me.
[Anna Callahan]: I just wanna make sure that people, that we understood you correctly. You're talking about municipal energy. It says you broke up a little bit right then. Renewable energy. Renewable energy or municipal energy. I think he was talking about municipal energy. Yeah, which I think is very exciting.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. And I so appreciate this being brought up. Given our discussion right now, and discussions that I had many times at people's doors over the summer and fall, I would love to organize one meeting of this Public Works and Facilities Committee that is devoted to discussing private ways with the public. Hopefully we can have a lot of lead time. We can also come up with some written understanding of the history of private ways, how they became what they are. I would love to do something like that, so I don't think we'll do it right away. It's something that will require a lot of preparation for, but I do think that that would be beneficial for our community, for people to be able to come and discuss the issue as a whole with each other.
[Anna Callahan]: I would lean toward a debt exclusion. A debt exclusion. Like a real big public campaign for a debt exclusion. Everybody knows exactly what it's for and the public gets to decide whether or not to do that for the people who live in the city and yet do not get a lot of the services that everybody else gets. Really could be a question of equity. And then the voters are deciding and we're not doing anything that is not, we're not making the decision. Voters are making the decision.
[Anna Callahan]: Is that the $64 million question?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. As I was looking through our whole governing framework, I noticed that there wasn't any obvious place to put a lot of the revitalizing our squares work. And I thought about the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee as a good place where we might be able to do some of those. I know some of our neighboring cities have, they actually have city run offices that can help local businesses. They have grants for you know, both exterior and interior design. They have trainings in, you know, how to, you know, run, you know, employment, and how to run a business, all sorts of things. And I think that's, I heard so many times from people that we really want to be revitalizing our squares. So one, it's just really a question if there is another place aside from zoning, which I know is going to be, you know, obvious, that's more obvious place. but if this seems like the right place to put some of those discussions. And then I would love to offer that I will go ahead and make some suggestions for things we might be able to do based on what some other cities have done and ideas that came up during the campaign.
[Anna Callahan]: I simply wanted to address Councilor George, I mean, Councilor Scarpelli, and say that we miss your cheerful disposition in the chambers.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So, when I was reading this after action report, I assumed that it would include some explanation of the things that had gone wrong, and why they had gone wrong. And I, I just don't see anything like that in here I see a lot of things like, you know, I mean, As Councilor Scarpelli said, we often have these results by 9pm, and yet we didn't have the results until 1 o'clock in the morning. And rather than any sort of explanation of why that happened, it says all ballots must be counted on election day. The tabulation facility will post the tabulated tapes in the same method as the individual precincts. Unofficial results will be released once, like there is nothing in here that explains what happened. So my first question is perhaps I misunderstood what this report was supposed to be. So I'd like to ask what the report was supposed to be. And I think it would be incredibly helpful to have some sort of understanding of what it was that actually went wrong because I don't see that in here at all.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. It's been 24 years since a school committee has gotten a pay raise. I believe that the school committee is overdue for one. We need the school committee to be paid enough to ensure that enough people run so that elections are competitive. We need the pay to be enough to attract people who are less wealthy, people who cannot afford to spend up to 20 hours a week doing something that you know, doesn't pay or pays very little. I see raising the school committee salary as a pro-democracy reform along with many other types of pro-democracy reforms that I will mention later. Reforms that I have presented in communities across the country for seven years that are deeply important to me. As I said last time, pro-democracy means not just people who are willing or dedicated. It means having people sitting in those seats who represent, for example, the lower 50% of wage earners in our city. These are not the people who usually run for or win elected office. Pro-democracy reforms usually happen in the next cycle because it is not about paying the people currently sitting in those seats. It is about getting diverse people to run. Many cities and states have it in their laws that any change in salary for elected officials cannot go into effect within the same electoral cycle. I did not look hard for these, right? So just in three minutes of Google searching, Illinois and Georgia both have state laws for all municipal elected officials. stating that you cannot raise the pay within that electoral cycle. Even in Massachusetts, and again, no exhaustive search, Watertown and Everett both have city codes that say that any pay increase for school committees specifically must be voted on in the first 18 months of the cycle and cannot take effect until the next cycle. On the question of pay parity, I tried to find examples of pay parity between school committees and city councils discussed anywhere. I found almost nothing. No well-known elected officials, no organizations that I've heard of or haven't heard of discussing this issue. It came up for a vote in Fall River. a proposal to bring the school committee pay up to the city council pay, it did not pass. In Worcester, there was one school committee member who wanted for the school committee to be paid the same as city council, but that is not allowed by the city charter, which in Worcester states that the salary for members of the school committee will be equal to 50% of the salary established for members of the city council. So unless they change the city charter, They cannot do that. And I will say that across the country, school committees getting paid 50 percent of the city council is pretty standard. That doesn't make it right. Right. But it is the norm. I also tried to find anyone talking about this issue as one of parity between men and women. I could not find, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I could not find anyone talking about this issue. I did look up some numbers. So according to the National School Boards Association, 51% of school board members are men, 49% are women. We should note that this is a much higher percentage of women than in other elected bodies. 28% of Congress is women, 33% of state legislatures are women, 32% of city councils are women. Northampton, which is a pretty progressive city, commissioned a study on compensation for elected officials in 2014. That's a little while ago. The end result was a recommendation that they pay their city councilors $17,000. That was a raise for both city council and school committee. That they pay their school committee members $9,000. They have less than half the people living in Northampton as we have in Medford. It was 10 years ago. I don't think that we should look at those specific numbers. But it is interesting to note that their commission did have a difference in pay between the city council and the school committee. I am not stating that this is right, that school committees across the country are paid approximately 50%, but there appears to be nobody except for us here and in Fall River, even discussing this issue. I believe without a doubt that a pay increase for the Medford School Committee is long overdue. I personally believe there are many reasons why it is appropriate that pay increases for any elected officials come take effect the next cycle. I would like to make a motion. It's somewhat long. I can email it to the clerk, the president, the vice president, or whoever is appropriate. If it is possible to vote on it tonight, that would be great, but if not, that's fine. My motion is to send the following pro-democracy reforms to study in the Governance Committee. Salaries for elected officials, public financing of elections, rank choice voting for single elected offices, allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote, and allowing non-citizen residents to vote. along with that, a request that the Governance Committee prioritize the salary discussion and come to a recommendation on this issue before December 31st of 2024, so that the City Council can vote on whether to implement those salaries starting January of 2026, which is the beginning of the next electoral cycle. Also a request that the Governance Committee consider the following factors in their salary recommendations, in addition to any others they deem important, getting enough people to run so that elections are competitive, enabling less wealthy people to hold elected office, and gender pay parity.
[Anna Callahan]: Non-citizens.
[Anna Callahan]: Councilor Kelly, are we not covering 2402?
[Anna Callahan]: As a new city councillor, I would love to ask how this discussion is going to proceed. So it sounds like my understanding was that there were going to be some proposals that would change either the number or the start date or something like that. Are there any proposals to do that, or is this simply discussing the original?
[Anna Callahan]: Whew, wow, so much to say about this. First, I want to say that a number of years ago, the Somerville School Committee, the paraprofessionals were asking to have their salaries raised to, I think it was $25,000 a year, which I can tell you in Somerville, nor here is a living wage. I was outraged that the school committee was like, nope, flat out. wouldn't do it. And one of the reasons that they gave was that they were talking to other school committees and the other school committees from other cities didn't want Somerville to raise the wage because, oh no, then it would mean that they would be under pressure to raise the wage. And I said right there that it was my, I was incredibly disappointed. They should be proud to be the first city to do the right thing for the paraprofessionals. right? So, and I want to start off by saying how much I believe that our paraprofessionals, especially, but also our teachers are underpaid for the work that they do, how incredibly important that work is. You know, I'm boggled by the types of industries that get paid twice as much as teachers, genuinely. So, That is very important to me. And I think, unfortunately, the only way that we are going to get the things that we care about in this city to be properly funded is to increase the total budget. Because we're not going to steal from affordable housing stuff to pay the teachers. We're not going to steal from the teachers to pay for putting us in line with our climate change goals. We're not going to pay for those. We're not going to steal from one thing to pay for another. Our roads, everything is underfunded. We are wildly underfunded in Medford and we have to solve that problem. So I wanna make sure that we don't come into these detailed arguments that are like, oh, well, we can't spend this $60,000 this way because it's gonna come back and fight and compete with the other 70 things that we could spend $60,000 on, right? So I wanna talk a little bit about the value of having a genuine democracy, right? I truly believe, and this is something I've spent like seven years working with experts on, studying, training people around the country in how to get a better democracy. It's very important to me. I know a fair amount about it. So when we talk about getting better representation or good representation on a city council or on a school committee, it is not about getting people who are dedicated. It is about getting people who genuinely not only represent but vote in favor of policies that even the scales. Our government in America at all levels overly supports and overly serves people who are wealthy, people who own property, people who are white collar, people who have white collar jobs, people who are overly educated, people who are white. And when we talk about having a better democracy, it isn't about getting people who are dedicated.
[Anna Callahan]: New city councilor, you gotta correct me on these things.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, thank you. So having run workshops around the country for many years and having, in these workshops, to create these workshops, I studied with experts, mostly in democracy and specifically in democracy at the local level. So city councils, town councils, more city councils than anything. And I'm just gonna, I pulled up here something that was from one of my workshops so that people understand that this is in, like a sphere of things you can do to structurally have a better democracy and better meaning we're not only representing home owning wealthy white people in your city. that you are properly representing the people who earn less than 50% of, you know, half the people in the city earn less than 50% of the average wage. Okay, that's the way it works. So things that you can do to make your city be better represented. are public financing of elections, having district awards, making sure you have vote-by-mail or early voting. I'm not going to read all of these. There's like two dozen of them. Are your elections on paper ballots? Is there a hand-counted audit of at least 1%? And are your elected officials paid a living wage? So the problem with this idea that it should be a volunteer effort is that there are lots of people, mostly people who earn less than 50%, less than the average wage in your city. that they just can't volunteer 20 hours a week. Neither they nor their spouse earns enough money that they are able to spend time with their families and live a decent life and pay their bills, their rent, or their groceries, or whatever it is. It's not about them not being dedicated. do the job if it doesn't pay. And I'm going to say, I don't think any of us on the city council, and I don't want to speak for other people, but in most cities, no one on the city council and no one on the school committee falls into those categories. And that's why these people are underrepresented. So I care a lot about democracy. And I genuinely believe that the right thing to do is to increase the pay of the school committee. Now, that doesn't mean, that being said, right, I also believe that as a city, as an elected city councilor, it is my style to make a bunch of, to be able to pass a lot of things that materially help people. Fix the roads. make sure all of our positions in the school are properly, that we have people who are second language teachers, that we have after school programs for everyone, that we have these things before we do anything that is either for ourselves or cultural. That is my style. So I feel incredibly uncomfortable voting on this as the very first thing that comes up in my term as a city councilor, because that is not the way that I want to serve. That is not the way that I want to serve. But I want people to understand that my viewpoint on this is not something that I come to in the last month because this particular issue came about. This is a viewpoint that I have held for many years, having worked with many experts on how to get your city to properly serve the underserved, which includes the paraprofessionals and the teachers and the other union workers who work here for the city or in the city. Those are incredibly important to me, and it's important to me that we serve those people first before we serve ourselves. But it is important because the only way you can sustain a city council or a school committee that makes those right decisions is by paying a little bit more so that we can have people on those bodies who come from those backgrounds and not just people who want to to hope to serve those people, but never actually talk to them because we all live in our own bubbles. Okay, stop there.
[Anna Callahan]: I was only going to ask for the motions to be read more slowly before we vote.
[Anna Callahan]: Can you clarify the dollar amounts?
[Anna Callahan]: I'm a little bothered by the fact that it looks like in both of these proposals, the final landing pay is more than the lowest paid paraprofessional that I don't feel, unless I'm incorrect about that, that's what it looked like to me. I won't be voting in favor of anything that puts them above a full-time paraprofessional.
[Anna Callahan]: This is to put this to the next meeting.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: I second it.
[Anna Callahan]: Lawrence Lepore.
[Anna Callahan]: I approve. Okay.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I first wanted to really thank President Bears for all the work that went into this. It looks like a really excellent framework that we'll all be able to add to. And I especially wanted to highlight how, like, I think a lot about democracy, and to me, that's engaging people in the political process, and also just engaging people in their own ideas for making Medford better. I think that this document, in terms of the transparency that Councilor Scarpelli mentioned, It really allows us because especially with the timelines it allows us to communicate with our residents and to engage them in the process right and I understand that this is not in any way finalized but for example, someone who is really concerned about any of those housing home rule petitions. that I think a lot of folks in Medford are either for or against, that being able to sort of point out what timeline we think that's going to happen on and when they can get engaged, that is crucial in terms of getting people to engage in the process politically, which I'm very excited about. So thank you so much, President Bears, and thanks to everyone here. I really look forward to seeing what everyone adds to this framework so that it can truly become a document that we can share. with the public as the plan that we see as our ability to engage the public in what we're doing.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi, yep, I very much agree that this is important, and we need to protect those residents health and safety. I would love to hear from President Bears. If you happen to know any sort of just a tiny bit of details about Obviously, if this is under state regulations and other cities are passing this, there's going to be, you know, places that the Board of Health will go for the kinds of details about how this might affect, like, small local landlords and the ways in which the sort of, you know, is there funding that is available? Is there, you know, how is this sort of effectively done? I have not looked into how that is done at the state level or at other cities. if there's a word or two you could speak to on that point.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I read this section of the state code. I was very excited about it. It's something I talked about on the campaign trail. You know, this is something that really just gets right at affordable housing in terms of rentals, and it attacks the problem exactly where it exists, by rewarding those rental properties and those landlords. who are renting below market rates. So that is exactly what we want to be doing. I'm pretty excited about it. I also am excited about the fact that it will just by the fact of doing this, you know, most of the people, the landlords who are renting below market rates tend to be local. Many of them live here in our city. If not right here in our city, then they're in nearby cities. And I think being able to target these tax credits for folks who live here is what I wish we could do if we can legally, if we can find a way to do it legally for Medford residents, I would love to do that. But I'm also very happy that this will target people who are local, a lot of Medford resident landlords, as well as folks who live in nearby cities. So I'm excited about it. I'm excited to discuss it on the committee. So thank you for putting this forward.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. So where can we, whether we are city councilors or members of the interested public, where can we find the Wellington Circle Study?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Mr. Brown, I want to commend you for being a model resident of Medford because I am so impressed. I mean, I'm pained to hear that you have been trying to get this done for 10 years, but I am so impressed that you, you know, you're not just complaining about something. You are talking deeply about the issue. You have looked into how it could be funded. You have looked into the proper surface that needs to be done. You have looked into what other cities have done. You have truly looked at what the solutions should be. And I am also very happy to help. So I will, you know, in conjunction with Councilor Scarpelli and Councilor Mulroney. There you go. Like, I'm happy to help in any way I can. And I do, I know this is not a simple issue. But I do hope that Medford can become a city that can respond to people like you, to people who come to us with well-thought-out proposals that they have already dug into the solutions for and already done a lot of that work. Because the point that that has happened, we really need to be able to say yes to our residents. That is how we engage people in the political process when someone, I mean it's a miracle that you're still here 10 years later, because normally when people come and they propose these well thought out solutions, and they're told no or they simply get nothing, they will go away they never come back. the best thing our city can do to take these amazing solutions that are provided by people who genuinely care about a specific issue and to find ways to incorporate those into a solution that we can make happen. So I'm really hoping that we can do it, not just for your issue, but more broadly for folks in Medford who want to engage in the political process in this way. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: So, congratulations.
[Anna Callahan]: Take a photo?
[Anna Callahan]: miss.
[Anna Callahan]: So the other day, I was talking to someone who had donated to me and some other candidates in 2020 when I was running for a different seat. But now he said that he doesn't believe in electoral politics anymore. He had lost faith in our democracy. And I told him that in 2016, I had a similar crisis where I was really wondering if our democracy was still functioning. And I've spent a number of years researching what makes democracy tick, creating my own theory about how we can improve it. So I told him that I had a rough draft of a book on this topic and I sent him the first chapter. I didn't expect anything because he said he wouldn't donate. And the next day he actually sent me a very generous donation. Thank you so much for that. But I thought in case anyone else out there is worried about our democracy and wondering what you can do. and also have time to read a 20 page chapter that I wrote. It is linked down below. And if you can donate a little bit to my campaign, because I am going to be doing all of the things that I describe in the chapter to reinvigorate our democracy right here in Medford. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi, I am here with Stephanie Johnson, who owns SwapIt.
[Anna Callahan]: It has been so fun and so fun to meet people, really just a joy. So yeah, can you tell us a little bit about how SwapIt got started?
[Anna Callahan]: That's amazing.
[Anna Callahan]: That is amazing. Sounds so great and an amazing gift for Christmas. Now, how have you guys been doing since COVID? And I'm sorry, I missed, when did you start?
[Anna Callahan]: And yeah, how have things been going since COVID?
[Anna Callahan]: I can't wait. So yeah, just how can people shop with you for the holidays?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, for your cat.
[Anna Callahan]: And do you have a website? Like how do people make that happen?
[Anna Callahan]: Like if it were like a gift membership for somebody, let's say.
[Anna Callahan]: Awesome, and is there a way to donate to you or like people have clothes or is it mostly just members who come in and bring clothes?
[Anna Callahan]: Got it. Great. Sounds super exciting. I think it's such a great gift. Very, very fun. Yeah. And so, yeah, thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Bye-bye. Bye.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Hi, I am here with Christina Pascucci Ciampa. I hope I said that right.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, and she is with All She Wrote Books and is going to tell us a little bit about how she started the bookstore.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm so moved. So it sounds like you opened during COVID. Yeah, ultimately. I imagine that you expected to open during normal times, like when you first signed the lease and those sorts of things you didn't realize.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, speaking of the rest of 2020, we are in the holiday season and people love books.
[Anna Callahan]: And how can, how could people shop with you?
[Anna Callahan]: Hey, no worries. You got another delivery of books. You're busy.
[Anna Callahan]: But let me. In-store appointments.
[Anna Callahan]: I haven't heard of that.
[Anna Callahan]: Amazing. I'm so happy to meet you. I love, I love your story. Um, I can't wait to visit your shop. Thank you. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi, I am here with Madison Lewis from Mamas Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville. Madison, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here today. Oh, yeah. Pleasure to have you. So can you tell us a little bit about Mamas? and how it got started and your role? Absolutely.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. I've, you know, kind of seen a little bit of what's going on. It's really amazing seeing like you have pods where each neighborhood, like each, you know, three or four blocks has like its own, you know, small network. And you also have these email lists for different subjects. Can you talk a little bit about the structure just so people know how they can plug in? Oh, absolutely.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. So I'm curious what have you heard from the community about the need the changing needs so especially like what's been happening lately as we approach the holidays.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And how can people either get involved or donate? Like how can people help? Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, great. Any more specific information about like, because I saw that you have like an $11 holiday thing, like are there any particular sort of holiday, like what happens to those funds?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. It's truly an amazing, amazing organization started at exactly the right time. And I'm so, it's just so great to hear that it's still going strong. Yeah, they're still doing great work. I know a ton of people who joined recently even, not just at the beginning. So yeah, thank you so much for the work that you're doing.
[Anna Callahan]: But thank you for having me. Amazing. Absolutely. Great to have you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye bye.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi, I am here with Joyce McKenzie, who owns Nelly's Wildflowers in Somerville. Thank you, Joyce, for being here. Hi. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Can you tell me a little bit about Nelly's, when it started and how you started?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I have to say, you know this, but the viewers and listeners don't, but Nellie's well-forested my wedding. So I have such a warm place in my heart for you guys.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, no, thank you. Yeah, so, you know, you obviously, COVID I'm sure affected your business. Can you tell us a little bit about what it's been like and what it's like now?
[Anna Callahan]: Great.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm sure people would love to have flowers for the holidays, to get flowers for their loved ones for the holidays. How can people shop with you?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And what's the website and the phone number? And how can people find you on social media?
[Anna Callahan]: Amazing.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi, I'm here with Joanne Keith, who runs Stinky's Kittens and Doggies 2. Thank you, Joanne, so much for being here.
[Anna Callahan]: Of course. So yeah, I would love to hear a little bit about your shop and about when it started and how you started it and maybe a little bit about you as well.
[Anna Callahan]: How has it been since COVID started?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I'm sure you would rather be grooming cats and dogs.
[Anna Callahan]: So it sounds like there are a lot of things that people could buy from you for the holidays if they have loved ones who either have a pet or if they have a loved one who is a pet.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, yeah. Great.
[Anna Callahan]: Fantastic. That's our whole goal is to- Oh yeah, it's like,
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, great. So tell us the website and any social media you have.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I'm so happy to have been able to kind of catch you and learn more about you. I've passed by the shop so many times.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Well, thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: We'll share it around, spread the word, and have a great holiday.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi, I have Kenya Alfaro here with the Welcome Project. Thanks for coming. Hi, yes, thank you for having me. Of course. Yeah, I would love it if you can just tell us a little bit about the Welcome Project and the community that you serve.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Can you tell us a little bit about how those families have been doing during COVID and even now that we're, what are we, nine months into COVID?
[Anna Callahan]: And how can people watching this help? How can they donate or do other things? And then where do those donated funds go?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing. And thanks for coming on. It's always a pleasure.
[Anna Callahan]: Great.
[Anna Callahan]: Hey there, I'm here with Eddie George from Neighborhood Kitchen. Thanks for being here.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So I would love to hear a little bit about Neighborhood Kitchen and how it got started and your role. And, you know, a little bit about the shop, store, the restaurant.
[Anna Callahan]: That's awesome. Yeah. And, and you, were you both, um, you know, you're both cooks or chefs previously, or?
[Anna Callahan]: Amazing. So great. So yeah, well, how have you guys been doing during COVID? How has it affected the business?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And I assume that things are still, things are still tough, right?
[Anna Callahan]: Yep, me too. So how can people shop with you for the holidays if they want to get for a neighbor, for a friend, for a loved one, if they want to get, you know, something to support you and get something wonderful for their loved one?
[Anna Callahan]: My mouth is watering.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. By the way, did I notice that you're wearing? Are you wearing a Neighborhood Kitchen t-shirt?
[Anna Callahan]: Hey, can people get those?
[Anna Callahan]: Yes. Did it go up like an inch and then we'll see the whole thing. I mean, we know what it says, but there you go. Perfect. I got a math that says that.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, let us know when you get those that kind of swag that people can buy because I'm sure we'll sure. Great. Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm excited. I can't wait to eat there. And I think we'll buy ourselves some and then we'll buy some other people. So great. Wonderful to talk to you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep. Have a good holiday.
[Anna Callahan]: Bye-bye.
[Anna Callahan]: Hey, everybody. It is great to be back. I'm really excited today to be talking to Molly Kivy, who I met while we were knocking on doors. She's a resident of the 34th Middlesex. And we are going to be talking about unemployment. As I'm sure everyone watching can understand, unemployment is one of those policies that has really kept tens of thousands of families afloat. It's unbelievably important to people who have been put out of work by the pandemic. But it also is in some ways sort of keeping our economy going right now. So it's a crucially important program that I think most people think it's probably running fine, but it actually has some very deep structural problems. And I'm really excited to talk to Molly. And let's go ahead and bring Molly on now.
[Anna Callahan]: Fabulous. First, I would love to just ask you a little bit about why this is so important to you. When I read through your proposals, I see so much work has gone into this. It's really incredible and very impressive. And I would love to hear your story about why this is so important to you and why you've decided to spend so much of your time trying to fix unemployment.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, it's an incredibly important program and it sounds like you, because of your upbringing and the cyclical nature of certain jobs, there are jobs where that's the job, right? And it's just a crucially important program. Can you talk a little bit about what are some of the problems? And not too much, we can dive in, but if you can kind of summarize some of the problems at first, then we'll dive in.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, when I first heard that from you, I thought that was crazy. I had no idea. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Is that the part where there's like a cap on the amount that, is that that part you're talking about, that there's a cap on the amount that businesses pay?
[Anna Callahan]: Okay. Yeah, I got it. That's the fourth one. Right. And the fifth one?
[Anna Callahan]: So let me see. I don't know if I can remember the five. Let me try. So one is it doesn't pay people enough to get by. Yes. Right? Number two is that Number two was something about small businesses paying into more than big businesses, but not the cap, right? Right, yeah. It's a regressive tax structure. It's a regressive tax structure. It just by its nature, even without the cap, it's a regressive tax structure. Number three is that, I forgot this one.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. That's crazy, that just doesn't, it punishes businesses that have to lay off workers. Which in the end does not do, just as in punishing people for criminal offenses does not in the end lead to people behaving better, same thing with businesses.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, that tells you a lot. Number four is the cap, but they cap the amount that the salary that gets taxed, and then businesses that pay above that salary, that the tax is not applied. And the fifth one, which in some senses is a giant one that affects all sorts of things, is that Massachusetts does not, we don't have money in the funds to pay for this program. And I'm excited to hear you talk about it, because I only know all of this stuff from you. But apparently, because we don't meet these standards, we now don't get interest-free loans. We now have to pay all this money to, I presume, Wall Street banks. Just to service the loans, I'm being able to pay for the unemployment. So it's really problematic.
[Anna Callahan]: were we already not solvent?
[Anna Callahan]: Massachusetts. Ah, the Massachusetts. Yeah. So that costs Massachusetts $1.4 billion. Yep. And FUTA, just because I know we're going to be talking about FUTA, it stands for the Federal Unemployment?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Good. Good. Well, I don't know if we want to dive into some of these problems individually, or if you want to start talking about solutions, or maybe both. Maybe start with one of these that you feel like can be solved and how you might solve it. I'm going to let you lead. OK.
[Anna Callahan]: Can you talk a little bit about purchase power? What does it mean, and what is the definition that makes it not working now, and how would we define it differently to make it work?
[Anna Callahan]: That sounds like a simple change, right? So 50% or 40% of what they're getting paid is not enough if what they're getting paid is not enough. So we want to just increase the percentage of that that they get through unemployment.
[Anna Callahan]: Right, it still complies even though we're in a pandemic, we're literally like tens of millions of people have been thrown out of work and there's no way that those people can all find jobs. Totally impossible no matter how hard they try. You're suggesting something that would be great in normal times and absolutely necessary for what is happening to people right now. Love it.
[Anna Callahan]: This is something I love. I think that should be done way more often is to say, well, what do the other, you know, 50 countries most similar to us do, and if they all do something different, then maybe we're, you know, maybe there's something wrong with the way that we're approaching it.
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. Yeah, so someone has a question about, because our last Solidarity Live was about MMT, modern monetary theory, and the fact that our national government does not have the restrictions on spending, right? It's not actually spending. They're creating, right? They're increasing the number when they spend, the national government spends. You're increasing the number of dollars that exist. And so there is no reason at all why the national government can't create a jobs program, do the Green New Deal, pay for Medicare for all. All of these things are, there is no how can we pay for it. And so the question is, how does that relate to the Massachusetts budget and the need to have those funds in that trust fund?
[Anna Callahan]: And the federal government creates dollars, but the state governments don't. So the state governments are just like you or me or a company or your city. They can't just create dollars. They have a budget. And so their budgets are just as fixed as yours or mine. So the trust fund, I'd love to hear more about that. Let me think about that for a second. And how you would fix the problems that we have at the Massachusetts trust fund that it's not solvent.
[Anna Callahan]: Yep. And how do we fix this trust fund problem here in Massachusetts?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And by removing the cap on salaries that are taxed, do you have an idea, a sense of how that would affect the amount of money in the trust fund?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. I mean, it makes sense because we're in a huge crisis right now. So asking to suddenly make a fund that was insolvent for decades to make it solvent during a you know, gigantic crisis where we're doing nothing but pour funds out of it. Obviously, I think that's too much to ask. But it sounds like removing the cap would bring in a lot more money.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you said that it's at 15,000? Yeah, which is- That's insanely low. It's insanely low. Only like the very smallest companies are paying like, you know, the full, I mean, it really is- Full wages. Yeah, the full wages. And it really makes it clear that only companies, the more you pay your employees, the less and less and less and less and less you pay.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. I'm curious what sort of pushback you've had. I know that you've been sort of talking to some folks in the State House and trying to get some interest in some of these policies. And I don't want to out anybody by name or anything, but I'm just curious a little bit about sort of what have people been like, oh, this is great. Like, I'm really excited about this part of it or that part of it. Have people just been not interested? Is it too much change? Is it too wonky? I mean, I hope nothing's too wonky for people at the state house because that's kind of their job.
[Anna Callahan]: OK, so did they tell you why? I mean, we all know this is what happens, right? But, like, I'm a little surprised that they're, like, just saying it straight out. Like, well, you know, if the giant corporations don't like it, then what?
[Anna Callahan]: Because we have lobbying and because they're allowed to just pay people, you know, $100,000 a year to sit, you know, to show up at the, ah, I'm sorry. I'm getting a little aggravated about my whole money in politics thing. It sounds like, you know. The problem is that those are the people in the room. That is the problem.
[Anna Callahan]: It's a terrible way to say that. Actually, it's people. You're supposed to be representing people.
[Anna Callahan]: Speaking of participate, I'm so glad you said that, because great segue. What can people do? You have so many great ideas. You have done so much incredible research into this. I really encourage anybody, if you're open to it, to call you and talk to you about this, because you have all the data to back it up. And I would love for you to just let us know, what can we do? How can we help?
[Anna Callahan]: Awesome, awesome. Do you wanna spell your name for folks so they can, and they can look you up on Instagram and Facebook? M-O-L-L-Y.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Is there anything else? I mean, I think my sort of wrap up about this is, number one, unemployment is super broken. I had no idea. It is. And I'm sure that the budgetary problems are affecting other parts of our state budget, right? We're spending, what did you say, like $60 million a year just on interest. That's $60 million a year that we cannot spend on other things.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, so it's actually, it is a separate thing. It's not going to affect the rest of the state budget, but it is going to be levied on business owners. So this is going to hurt the economy and hurt small businesses a lot more than large businesses. No, it's the worst time. Yeah, but number one, the unemployment is deeply broken. Number two, that our legislature, they're just saying it straight out, like special interest rule, And if you can't get them on board, tough. Yep.
[Anna Callahan]: It's been eye opening, but I think it's, I love your idea that people just, just like, just open up your email or pick up the phone, call your state rep, tell them everything.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Fantastic. Any last words? Anything else you want to get out before we finish up?
[Anna Callahan]: Always a pleasure. Likewise. Thanks so much for coming on. I love the work that you're doing. Thank you. OK. Bye. Frank, are we off the air?
[Anna Callahan]: You're muted.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi, this is Anna Callahan with a post-campaign update. By the end of my campaign, I had started to think a lot about what I wanted to do if I were elected. And when I lost on election night, I realized that all of the things I was the most excited about, engaging new people in the political process, building the movement that we need in order to pass a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, a criminal justice overhaul, and housing for everyone here in Massachusetts, that all of those things were things that I didn't need to be a state rep to do. I can do them right now. There has never been a more important moment in our country. between the presidential elections and an ongoing pandemic leaving 40 million people unemployed, with a climate crisis and the racism in our society and our criminal justice system. We need to step up our game to make the political process work for us. And I agree with AOC when she talks about what we need to be doing right now. She says we have to bring new people into the political process. And I think her words were that we have to do that in every pocket of this country between now and the November elections to save our democracy and even after the elections as well. And I couldn't agree more. I had the great privilege of being able to spend every day engaging people in state politics. And wow, I really miss it. loved it. I loved walking outdoors. I loved meeting new people. I loved hearing what matters to people, what issues people care about, and how it affects their lives. And I really miss dreaming big about what we could have if we all worked together and if our government worked for us. So my team and I will be engaging people in the political process right now through conversations about the upcoming election on November 3rd. We are going to be knocking on doors. We are going to be hosting Zoom meetings. I'm most excited about going on walk and talks in the different parts of the district so that we can meet people where they are. And I hope that you'll join us. I really believe that if we build a movement here in this, one of the most progressive districts in one of the most progressive states in the country, that that is the way we can move our issues forward. So I look forward to seeing you soon.
[Anna Callahan]: You let me know when we're live. Awesome. Great. Good to see everyone. Thanks for tuning in today. This is Solidarity Live, where we talk about the issues that affect people in Medford and Somerville, and how we can work together to solve them. Today, we are going to be talking about an issue that affects everyone. everyone in the United States, everyone in many other countries. And that is the question of our national debt and our money supply. So before, I do have an exciting guest, but before I bring our guest on, I want to have people in the audience just think about a few questions before we start. And one is, do you think that our national debt is a problem? Is it something that worries you, the size of our national debt? And if we could reduce our national debt to zero, would that be good? Is that something that you think would help solve some of our problems? And my third question is, who are we borrowing this money from, right? If we have national debt, we've borrowed it from someone, we owe it to someone. Who have we borrowed it from? And who do we owe it to? And how do we pay it back? These are questions we're going to be talking about in addition to the even more important questions about how a new way of understanding our national debt can help us be able to fund things like a Green New Deal and Medicare for All and other programs that are important to us. So now I'm going to introduce Fadel Kaboob and Frank, if Frank, our producer could bring Fadel on, that would be great. First, let me just make sure if I pronounced your name correctly.
[Anna Callahan]: Fantastic. Great. So Fadl Kaboob is an associate professor of economics at Denison, and he's also the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. And Fadl, I would love for you to go ahead and just introduce yourself and your work.
[Anna Callahan]: And it's so ingrained in us, right? Because we live with it day to day and we have this fear of what might happen if we go into debt. We've known people have gone into debt. It's a thing that's very difficult for us to think differently.
[Anna Callahan]: Can I just pause you for a second? Yeah, of course. So I want to go back a little bit, right? Because I think when we use this term, spending, like the government is spending. I think it's very hard for us, you know, as people who spend money, who earn money, spend money, borrow money, when we talk about the federal government as spending money and borrowing money, I think it's hard for people to understand how it's different for the federal government. So when the federal government, let me just ask this question, when the federal government spends money, and you say spend into existence, like they're actually creating more dollars, right? So they're increasing the money supply, right? So it's not like they're spending. They're just creating more dollars and giving those new dollars to people or companies. Is that accurate?
[Anna Callahan]: There doesn't have to be a war either. We can just increase the military budget for no reason at all. And that money is created by the federal government because the federal government is the only entity in the world that can create dollars.
[Anna Callahan]: And that means that it created more dollars in the economy than it destroyed, right? So it simply increased the amount of money in the economy.
[Anna Callahan]: And the same with the debt, that's also true of the debt, like that the total amount, I've heard Warren Moser talk about this, that like the total amount of the national debt is equivalent to the net amount of dollars in savings in the world.
[Anna Callahan]: So is it fair to say that the debt, right? I mean, the deficit is what each year, like the yearly difference, right?
[Anna Callahan]: Right. And so is it fair to say that the debt is the money supply? I mean, money supply has its own sort of definitions. Is that right?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So another question, because I know part of what excites me and a lot of other people about this idea is the things that we could do, the things that we could afford, and how it affects those things. And I know a lot of people are interested in the question of inflation and how that, once we realize that there really is no problem with the federal government creating money, right, spending money or creating money, that we can afford these things and we don't have to say for Medicare for all, we don't have to say how can we pay for that, we never have to say that. So now the real question becomes inflation. And so I'd love for you to talk about maybe the jobs guarantee and or Medicare for all and or other programs that we could be spending more on, maybe, you know, college debt and how that kind of intersects with inflation.
[Anna Callahan]: Or we don't know what we're doing in the central bank.
[Anna Callahan]: And by the way, I'm gonna let you go on in a second. We do have a question from the audience, so.
[Anna Callahan]: If you want to keep going, then we'll come back.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Wow. OK, so let's go ahead and do a question. This one is from Frank Lee. And the question is, why has there been such low inflation despite the massive money creation responding to 2008 and responding to COVID?
[Anna Callahan]: And this seems like it's related to the inflation deflation problem, that if all the money being spent goes to the 1% who are not going to buy more consumer goods, then it doesn't help bring inflation up, which is apparently I didn't know this is what people are trying to do now because their inflation is not for normal consumer goods. There isn't enough demand. Does that sound right?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So, wow, I think we could talk for hours and hours. It would be amazing. It's such a deep, deep subject, really. And I think hard for, you know, when I first learned about it, just wrapping my head around it, it took me hours and hours of listening to all sorts of different MMT people give lectures and reading and everything. I hope we can do more. Let us know how we can help get the word out. We're going to certainly do our best to get the word out here. I just want to ask you if you have any final words. We don't have a specific time limit, but we try to keep it under around 45-50 minutes. What are your thoughts maybe on what are our next steps?
[Anna Callahan]: I just finished it this morning.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Hey, Fadal Kaboob, thank you so much. Wonderful to chat with you. Thanks so much for the work that you're doing. And thanks everyone for tuning in. Don't hesitate to reach out. We'll see you soon.
[Anna Callahan]: Some people say that I'm a little too honest to be a politician. But I've never understood why you wouldn't want to be clear about what you think and what you feel. And it's one of the things that I love the most about the culture here. People are really open about what they think and what they stand for. My name's Anna Callahan. I live in Somerville. I've been here since 2003. I live with my husband and my son and several absolutely wonderful housemates. Because really, who could afford the rent here? I was a software engineer until four years ago, when I realized that I just could not sit by any longer, and I became devoted to political activism. I started an organization called The Incorruptibles, and through that I have spent the last few years training people in cities across the country to really build progressive electoral power from the ground up. The Massachusetts Statehouse is not a very progressive body. And the more you learn about it, the more it is obvious that it is a dysfunctional and deeply broken institution. It is very difficult to find out what is happening at the Statehouse. And it's designed to keep voters in the dark. I want to mobilize the people of Medford and Somerville. I want to lift the veil off of the statehouse so that my neighbors can hold me and my fellow state reps accountable. Our state rep has voted again and again to make sure that that doesn't happen, and it is wasting our time. We are in a moment in history when big changes are going to happen. We need a statehouse that is ready to make bold, progressive change. This election is about good government. This election is about whether our state rep's votes are secret. This election is about whether we as constituents have enough time to organize around legislation before it's already been voted on. And fundamentally, this election is about the concentration of power in the hands of the speaker that prevents us from passing the no-brainer progressive policies that the people of Massachusetts want, need, and deserve. We all have progressive values here. We need progressive action.
[Anna Callahan]: We now have someone who is from here, but is currently in South Korea. And I don't know how many people listening know about South Korea and the way that they have dealt with COVID, but it's very different from how the US has dealt with COVID. And so here is Howard Kim. I'm just gonna pop your name up here. And you are live, so Howard, it's great to see you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks for coming on.
[Anna Callahan]: When you say you're hearing this news, you mean in America?
[Anna Callahan]: So, yeah, what I've heard is that it was, at first, you could only get tested, even if you had symptoms, you could only get tested if you had a known contact, if you'd been in contact with someone who was known to have had COVID. That was how limited the testing was. And now, then it was if you had symptoms of COVID, they're loosening it up a little bit, but it is still very difficult to get a test.
[Anna Callahan]: I was just going to ask if the test results had come back yet. Okay. So yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Get the test back.
[Anna Callahan]: So even though you were tested and your test came back after one day, did they ask you to stay indoors for two weeks or did they just give you two weeks worth of food and then tell you you could go out?
[Anna Callahan]: So you had two weeks of staying at home. You got tested. Your test came back negative. Yes. And then you were at home for two weeks, maybe because there's some chance that you could have had and it hadn't shown up yet on the test for whatever reason. you stayed home for two weeks. And after that time, now tell us what is your life like?
[Anna Callahan]: Now, when you were staying at your parents' house, did they have to stay home?
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, great.
[Anna Callahan]: But restaurants, coffee shops?
[Anna Callahan]: Can I ask you, where does South Korea get all these tests? We cannot seem to get tests. You may not even know this, Why is there such a difference in the ability for people in South Korea to access tests than people like in Somerville, for example? Why can we not access tests here?
[Anna Callahan]: I heard about this.
[Anna Callahan]: Can I ask, does South Korea have a national healthcare system?
[Anna Callahan]: Wow. It is such an amazing story. And I'm so glad that you started with the personal story of your own experience living in Somerville. And I had not realized that you were here when COVID started. And you decided to go to South Korea knowing that the South Korean reaction to this was going to be much better, was much better, and that you would be both safer and more free to go about your normal daily life in South Korea than here?
[Anna Callahan]: And now in Somerville, you would be forced to work remotely anyway. Like you would still be having to work remotely right now.
[Anna Callahan]: But South Korea's response sounds like it's just a lot more sustainable than ours. Because you guys are going about mostly about your normal business, but with the testing and tracing program that they have, the contact tracing program, they can contain it very well while most people are kind of going about their daily lives and the economy is not under a huge hit. Does that sound about right?
[Anna Callahan]: Is that crazy? I don't know. We'll have to check. I really have no idea. We'll check on that.
[Anna Callahan]: It might be right. I mean, hey, we're in the US, where medical things cost ridiculous amounts of money.
[Anna Callahan]: South Korean ones or United States?
[Anna Callahan]: We'll get to our experts and we'll ask about that here as well.
[Anna Callahan]: So amazing. So we have something to look forward to. We can get life back to normal and keep this thing under control. So it has been really eye-opening to talk to you. I appreciate you coming on so much. And I have to say, it is kind of amazing that your Skype feed is great. half a world away from us. So good job Skype. Yeah, no kidding. So yeah, thank you so much. Do you have any last, any final words before we let you go?
[Anna Callahan]: Really, really fascinating to hear about what life is like there for you right now. And I hope we get there soon. Thank you so much. Great to talk to you.
[Anna Callahan]: Everyone, thanks for tuning in to Solidarity Live, where we take questions and stories from the community in Somerville and Medford. We bring in experts to talk about those issues, and then we work to solve those together. Today, I have on someone from the Welcome Project. She's going to talk all about everything they do with our immigrant community and a specific fund that she's working with today. And I'm going to bring her right in. So this is Let me have her join us. Great, this is Kenya Alfaro of The Welcome Project. Hi, Kenya, you're live.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi, how are you? I'm doing well, as well as I guess you can be right now. Yeah, yeah. I would love for you to just tell us a little bit about what the Welcome Project does in general, and then specifically how you're dealing with COVID.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Um, I will mention, I just got a comment from someone saying that there's a little bit of an echo, so I don't know if anybody's not muted or because we have people later in the show who are on right now. But if you can mute, that would be great. Hopefully this problem will resolve. Great. So it sounds like you guys really have good insight into our immigrant population and how they're doing. And I would love to hear as much as you can how our immigrant community is doing now during COVID.
[Anna Callahan]: You're saying food resources are a problem because of just lack of funds, is that right?
[Anna Callahan]: I think it seems like you've frozen. So give me one second, everyone. It looks like we had a little problem with Skype. Hang on. We are just trying to get Kenya Alfaro back on from the Welcome Project. I'm going to go ahead and do what I can. to get Kenya back on, to get our folks from Tufts Mutual Aid back on. They are also, ah, great. So it looks like, ah, we have everyone back, amazing. So sorry about that, I do not know exactly what happened, but I lost all of you and my whole Skype went down. So I apologize, thanks everyone for sticking with us. So Kenya. You were talking about food resources and how the city of Somerville has really done some work there to make food resources available to people.
[Anna Callahan]: Right, yeah. And do you know if folks in that community have been plugging into the Mutual Aid, so the Medford and Somerville Mutual Aid, or in any of the other cities' Mutual Aid projects?
[Anna Callahan]: Great, yeah. And you have a particular fund that you administer, is that right? Do you wanna talk a little bit about that?
[Anna Callahan]: I'll just remind people that if you have any questions, you can just put those in the comment box and we can pull those right in. In your outreach, you guys must have a lot of languages on hand, I imagine. When you're calling through people, how many different languages do you have to rely on to reach out to people?
[Anna Callahan]: Great, that is great. And are there ways that people can help? I mean, it sounds like people can donate to that fund specifically. And the fund, I assume, is directly related to COVID, and it started with COVID, and so it really has to do with that. Are there other ways in addition to that that people can help?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, good. It sounds like at one point there was a need for masks. I know you know, a lot of folks and mamas are excited to make masks, so I don't know if that's something that people still need.
[Anna Callahan]: Let's be clear, there's a new law in Somerville saying that when out of your house, you must wear a mask, and there is a fine, up to $300, I think, fine related to that.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, do you wanna give just a little plug for like how people can find you, how people can donate to the fund or help out in other ways? Like specifically, like what's the website and?
[Anna Callahan]: Wow. Thank you so much. Great work that you guys are doing. Wonderful to have you on and keep us updated. Let us know as things change, if there are more needs and other ways that people can help.
[Anna Callahan]: Great to have you.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm Anna Callahan, I'm running for state rep, suffer engineer and mom. And then I ask, do you know much about the state house? And they're like, not really. And I'm like, oh well, I'll tell you two fun facts that you can share with your friends. Number one is that there's no way for any of us to know how our state reps are voting. And number two is that the last three speakers of the house have all been convicted of felonies related to corruption and bribery.
[Anna Callahan]: But I hope that you two will introduce Tufts Mutual Aid and introduce yourselves. And somehow my computer is not plugged in, like it's plugged into my ear and my battery is gonna die. So I'm gonna duck out for just one second in this COVID home studio here. But why don't you go ahead and introduce Tufts Mutual Aid and yourself. I have you live now. but I think you're muted. Ah, great, Nikhil, great.
[Anna Callahan]: So can you tell us some of the stories that you've heard as you've been working with the folks that you're working with? What do you hear from people? what's happening in their lives, right, as a result of these changes?
[Anna Callahan]: We have a question from Joel Greenberg. He says, how much notice were people given to move off campus? Seems like a huge burden for students and families.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And would you say, I mean, obviously you don't know numbers, but maybe you do, like what percentage of tough students actually had to leave town, like had to find, like were on campus and had to find somewhere else and ended up maybe going home?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And so, you know, it's interesting because when I, when I first heard of Tufts Mutual Aid, I thought, okay, it's like, you know, the other mutual aid societies helping provide you know, helping people make sure they're safe, that they can pay their rent, that they can get groceries and things, but it sounds like you are also pretty deeply involved in making sure that students who have to now continue their education are able to do that part of it. So, like, how do you balance those or, you know, You know, what do you feel has been happening for students who have to continue their education, have to do everything online? Like, how disruptive has that been to their education? Maybe talk about that side, just the educational aspect of it.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, yeah. So just a last question about the other side. So the making sure people can get groceries, they can pay for their rent, all of these things. Have you seen, for the students that remain, are you interfacing at all with mamas, with another different mutual aid? Is this mostly students helping students? How are you able to help those students who are in the area to be able to sort of afford the changing circumstances that are happening to them now, but specifically like rent, food, the basics?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, absolutely. All right, how can, what can people do? I mean, does it like, like it really has been, the Tufts Mutual Aid is the students helping the students, students who have moved, leaving food, and the graduate students helping in the, you know, so are there ways that other people in the community can be helpful, and what would that be?
[Anna Callahan]: And how can people reach you? Is there a website? Is there an email address people can reach out to, a phone number, anything?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks both of you for coming on. It's really great to hear about, you know, this part of our community that we probably don't hear a lot about, you know, outside of the Tufts community. Really great work you're doing. Thank you for doing it. And thanks for being on.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks for being here. This is Solidarity Live, where we discuss how COVID-19 is affecting Medford and Somerville. This show is really about getting through this crisis together. So if you have been affected by COVID-19, if you have lost income, if you're worried about a family member in a hospital, in a nursing home, in a jail, if you're struggling with school closures or anything else, please reach out. Good policy is based on hearing directly from people in need. And this show is about uplifting those stories so that we can solve these problems together as a community. One example of how we are doing that is with the SNAP, a food assistance program. Someone did reach out to the show a week or two ago to say that his doctor had told him that he needed to stay indoors because of his lung condition, but he cannot use his SNAP card to purchase groceries online. He has to go to the grocery store in person. So we had an expert come on the show and give some advice, but it turns out that other states are allowing people to do online grocery delivery, and that is where you, viewers of the show, come in. Please sign our petition to make Massachusetts one of the states that allows SNAP recipients to get their groceries delivered. Together, we can help our neighbors through this crisis. Our campaign is hearing directly from people in need, uplifting their voices, and engaging the community to solve these issues. So today I have on Hannah O'Hanlon from the Somerville Homelessness Coalition. She's going to talk about the homeless population here and how they're being affected. Then we'll have David Tizell from the Somerville Community Corporation to talk about the tenants that they have and what they're doing to keep them in their homes. And after that, we will have Movami Callahan, who's a Medford doctor, and she will be talking about how our medical system is holding up under the stress of COVID-19. So I will go ahead and get us started here. I'm gonna bring in Hannah O'Hanlon. I just have to get her on the screen. Oh, there we go. I... There we go. I have managed to find the right button. And by the way, anyone who is watching on YouTube, you can simply comment in YouTube's comment box and then ask any question you like and I can pull that question in and we'll answer those questions live. So, great. Hannah, thank you so much for being here. I would love to hear a little bit just about your organization in general and the work that you do.
[Anna Callahan]: That is great. Really needed work. Do you have an idea of how many folks you interact with as a homeless population in need, like on a daily or weekly basis?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that's amazing. Can you talk about how COVID-19 is affecting the people that you're helping?
[Anna Callahan]: Wow. What do you think is the best way for people to be able to help out? Where can they donate? Can they volunteer? Are there other ways that they can help?
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. Do you have any final thoughts, anything else that you want people to know about what's happening? Oh, you know, I heard on WBUR there was a segment on homeless shelters, and all I remember is hearing that they had gotten enough tests to test an entire homeless shelter, like every single person in the shelter, and that some crazy high percentage of them One in three. Yeah, that's what I remember, but I didn't want to quote it because it seems so high. But a lot of them were asymptomatic and they didn't show signs of the disease. What do you think that that means?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, absolutely. And so it sounds like the program that you have where you actually house people is the safest for them. Correct. In addition to being obviously the best for them. When you can house people and they can have their own home, it's clearly better for many reasons. But here in COVID-19, it's even more crucial.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, thank you so much. The work you guys do is totally amazing. And I don't envy you the amount of work that you have to do these days. So, you know, we will be encouraging people to help you out, to volunteer and donate. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's really good to have an update. And stay safe. do personal care, everything that you need to do. And thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. So first, we're going to talk about how COVID-19 is affecting folks in jails. And I would love it if you would go ahead and just introduce yourself and how you are sort of related to this topic.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Yeah. Before we talk a little bit more generally about what's happening, well, you tell me, do you want to talk generally about what's happening in Massachusetts prisons? Or do you want to go, should we just go straight at what's happening related to COVID-19? I think let's start with COVID-19 and why it's so dangerous for them at this moment. And then we can broaden it up a little bit after this.
[Anna Callahan]: Do you mean that the prisoners themselves are spending their own money to buy soap?
[Anna Callahan]: So before you go on, I do want to just mention, um, we have someone who's commented on YouTube saying, um, they're hoping to hear about what correctional facilities are doing to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Um, and so it sounds like one thing that they're doing is they have, they seem to have obtained masks, which, you know, it's so incredibly important for our, like there's a shortage of masks. And it's so important for our hospital staff and doctors to be able to have the masks that they need. And of course, it's important for correctional facilities to have masks as well, but not if they're just wearing them around their neck and using it to, you know, taunt The inmates.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So I'm going to jump in. I can't resist jumping in here because I did spend two nights in jail in 2000 when I was illegally arrested for protesting. There were about 71 of us. We were illegally strip searched. The women only were strip searched twice during our time there, and there was a giant lawsuit afterwards and all that. But I will say that this was in Los Angeles, and I will say that we were We were arrested and literally not allowed to wash in any way. And the police who had arrested us had us leaning up against, like, pushing us against a chain link fence that was, like, covered in grease and oil because it was right directly underneath a freeway. And so our hands and our bodies were just, they had all this black grease all over them. And we were not, there was no, ability for us to wash anything at all for like, you know, 30 hours or more. So, And the whole taunting thing, people may not realize how much psychological games are played to inmates by correctional staff. So the idea that correctional staff are joking about purposefully getting inmates sick with COVID-19, that is, you know when this is real psychological I mean, it's terrible. That should not be legal for them to do that. And then I want to, for a second, before we go on, to talk a little bit about how dangerous it is to be in these close quarters with people. I mean, we're talking about social distancing, and people who are incarcerated do not have that ability. So can you talk a little bit just about how dangerous it is and if there have been any outbreaks inside of any correctional facilities?
[Anna Callahan]: We have another question here. Are there ways for people to get involved and support the incarcerated population during this time of crisis? Canteen money for soap, masks, letters. I am sympathetic to those who are in prisons.
[Anna Callahan]: And before we go on to the next questions, we do have another question. You're saying that letters and emails are really helpful. Is there a particular easy way? I know that a lot of people who are involved in Mamas Mutually Medford and Somerville are, people want to help. People want to be able to do something. What's an easy way for people to get involved that way?
[Anna Callahan]: And I assume we can't do that right now.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, no. Yeah, there's no visiting, right.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. There is another question, which is, do you know what sort of medical care is available in case someone in prison does get the virus?
[Anna Callahan]: Right. So, you know, I've heard, I know that a couple of our city councilors here in Somerville, Ben, you and Kevin and JT Scott, and as well as other people have been talking about releasing certain portions of the prison population. Certainly the the ones who are oh, what's I'm forgetting the term I I sometimes call it debtors prison, right? It's people who their pretrial detention. Is that right? So they they haven't been convicted of anything and they just can't pay bail. And so they're held in jail.
[Anna Callahan]: It is so insane. It's really mind-blowing to me that this is true in America today.
[Anna Callahan]: Is there some way that we can pressure people? Is there a way that folks listening here can help with that?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Do you want to talk a little bit about, we've talked a lot about COVID-19 and how it's affecting people. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you were working on before COVID-19 and about solitary confinement?
[Anna Callahan]: How is that legal?
[Anna Callahan]: And by the way, I think you once mentioned to me the limit. Isn't there a limit under the sort of world human rights? Who has a limit that's... Oh, 15 days.
[Anna Callahan]: That is totally insane. Yes. That's horrible. Horrifying.
[Anna Callahan]: Wow. Well, let's end on a slightly better note than that one. Do you have any better notes than that one in terms of the incarcerated population? Is there anything on the horizon? Are there any bills that you think are happening right now, maybe at the state level, that have a good chance of passing? Or Rachel Rollins, she seems pretty good. And maybe through our elected DAs, we're going to be having some positive movement.
[Anna Callahan]: That's exactly right. That is right. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on today and for talking about this incredibly important, I think, too often overlooked topic. And also for all the work that you do. Oh, thank you. It's really important. I'm going to actually go on. I'm going to see if I can get some mamas folks to some mama's folks to start writing letters. We have one final comment. As the mother of a previously incarcerated, I agree with Caroline when she says the medical care is lax. Inmates are often not taken seriously and there are longer than average wait times for care. Yeah. So medical care in prisons, important topic, especially now. But yeah, we're going to see if we can get some folks to write some letters. And thank you so much. Great to talk to you.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm so happy to be back at the doors, right? Knocking on doors and talking to voters is super fun. I really love it. I'll just tell you a little bit about what I say to people because it's kind of fun and how people react. I'm like, hey, you know, I'm I'm Anna Callahan, I'm running for state rep, software engineer, and mom. And then I ask, do you know much about the state house? And they're like, not really. And I'm like, oh, well, I'll tell you two fun facts that you can share with your friends. Number one is that there's no way for any of us to know how our state reps are voting. And number two, is that the last three speakers of the house have all been convicted of felonies related to corruption and bribery. So I just had someone today who after I did that, and then of course I go on to explain like why, how that, why that matters and what the policies are that we cannot pass because of this broken system, blah, blah, blah. But somebody just today was like, I really like your pitch because when you said there were two things that are fun facts, I thought, oh, well there's only two, I have time for those. And then when you're done, it was really interesting. I was like, yes, that is what I was going for. So, you know, almost everyone I talk to is convinced and they're going to vote for us, or they just want to do some due diligence. They just want to kind of look and read up a bit. But I've even, I tell you, I've had a number of people who, the longest conversations I have are with people who, the rare person that I talk to who has worked with Christine on something or who, you know, is a kind of regular caller and those people are, All very, very rare, but just talked to one the other day. And you know, she had time, I had time. We talked, the concentration of power in the hands of the speaker, she was interested in that, but she wasn't convinced by it. And it wasn't until I started talking about the work I've done over the last four years and co-governance and how people who have been marginalized, who are not engaged in the political process have got to be at the decision-making table. And that was what convinced her. That's kind of my, you know, I keep it in my back pocket for the people that aren't convinced by the first argument, which is almost everyone is convinced by the transparency and the power of the speaker argument, but that's always there. You know, the movement building aspect, which in my heart is kind of the true reason why I am running and the thing that will be different about me from most other people who are elected representatives.
[Anna Callahan]: Is it okay? There's not so many people on. Can those folks?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, Anna Callahan, she, her. I am running for office. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. And let's see, I'm so happy to be back at the doors, right? Knocking on doors and talking to voters is super fun. I really love it. I'll just tell you a little bit about what I say to people because it's kind of fun and how people react. I'm like, hey, you know, I'm I'm Anna Callahan, I'm running for state rep, software engineer and mom. And then I ask, do you know much about the state house? And they're like, not really. And I'm like, oh, well, I'll tell you two fun facts that you can share with your friends. Number one is that there's no way for any of us to know how our state reps are voting. And number two, is that the last three speakers of the house have all been convicted of felonies related to corruption and bribery. So I just had someone today who after I did that, and then of course I go on to explain why that matters and what the policies are that we cannot pass because of this broken system, blah, blah, blah. But somebody just today was like, I really like your pitch because when you said there were two things that are fun facts, I thought, oh, well, there's only two. I have time for those. And then when you're done, it was really interesting. I was like, yes, that is what I was going for. So, you know, almost everyone I talk to is convinced and they're going to vote for us, or they just want to do some due diligence. They just want to kind of look and read up a bit. But I've even, I tell you, I've had a number of people who, the longest conversations I have are with people who, the rare person that I talk to who has worked with Christine on something or who, you know, is a kind of regular caller and those people are, all very, very rare, but just talked to one the other day. And you know, she had time, I had time. We talked, the concentration of power in the hands of the speaker She was interested in that, but she wasn't convinced by it. And it wasn't until I started talking about the work I've done over the last four years and co-governance and how the people who have been marginalized, who are not engaged in the political process have got to be at the decision-making table. And that was what convinced her. That's kind of my, you know, I keep it in my back pocket for the people that aren't convinced by the first argument, which is almost everyone is convinced by the transparency and the power of the speaker argument, but that's always there. You know, the movement building aspect, which in my heart is kind of the true reason why I am running and the thing that will be different about me from most other people who are elected representatives is that once I've always got that. Okay, I probably spoke too long. I'm supposed to say something about the difference between me and Christine. I'm not sure anybody here doesn't already know, but you know, we've got we've got a real problem at the state house, right? We cannot pass no brainer legislation. Caitlin, you're gonna love this. I was at a door today and I was like, and we can, you know, because of this concentration of power in the hands of the speaker, we cannot pass election day registration. We can't pass, you know, 100% renewables by 2050, 2050. And she was like, those are no brainers. And that's what I always say at the door, is no-brainer policies. So she took the words right out of my mouth. Those are no-brainers. I'm like, yes, they are. All right. That's enough from me. I am going to go ahead and pass this on to a voter in the district, Mr. Greg Nadeau.
[Anna Callahan]: And really- I think you actually grilled me.
[Anna Callahan]: Great to see you, Bob.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Thank you. And we still have Wednesdays as well. Mondays, Wednesdays and Wednesdays. Yeah. Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Amazing. Oh wait, I know. I'll sing the step-by-step guide. That's my little video weirdness.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you so much, everyone. Great to see you.
[Anna Callahan]: What is the biggest point that differentiates you, Ms. Callahan, from your opponent? Sure. I think I probably already said it, but I'll say it again. I think right now, the Massachusetts Democratic Party platform is very progressive. It is essentially the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren platform. It is very popular in the district. We have a veto proof super majority of Democrats in the House and Senate and we cannot pass. Medicare for all we cannot pass real climate change legislation, we can't we can't pass any of the things that are in that document, and it's because there is a concentration of power in the hands of the speaker. And that is the big difference between. the two of us. Representative Barber voted to end term limits for the speaker. I would vote to have term limits. She voted to increase the pay for the speaker and the pay for all of the committee chairs and co-chairs that the speaker alone chooses. I think that the speaker should not be choosing those. I think they should be chosen by a secret vote for the entire house. She voted against transparency, like making committee votes public. making committee votes that are public putting them on the website, all of that stuff we need transparency everywhere. In fact, we actually need for our legislature to no longer be exempt from public records law, we are one of only two states in the country where all three branches of government are exempt from public records law, and that is ridiculous. The lack of transparency, the lack of time for legislators to look at bills, means that we can't organize as activists around those bills either. And this whole situation, the culture, the rules, the financial incentives, prevents us from passing progressive policies, prevents us from passing the Massachusetts Democratic Party platform, and I will work very hard to end that.
[Anna Callahan]: One thing to realize is that every time we turn around, scientists are saying, oh actually we were wrong, climate change is way worse than we thought. So, we need to look at everything through a lens of environmental justice. The Green Justice Coalition has the right idea which is to put together Marginalized communities of color that are most impacted by climate change with labor and environmental groups, and that is how we develop a Green New Deal. We have to commit to sourcing our electricity from 100% renewables by 2035 at the latest. We have to divest from fossil fuels. We have to convert government transportation to electric. We have to make sure that all new housing is passive housing, is zero emissions housing. But more than that, we are eventually going to have to have a plan for how are we going to switch our private transportation to electric? How are we going to retrofit all of our housing and commercial buildings so that they are not also emitting carbon emissions. And so it's a very complex problem. And again, the way we go about it is through a coalition of groups that really centralizes the voices of the people most impacted by climate change. And I really want to say that the people of Massachusetts are totally ready for this in every poll, willing to pay extra money for it. The legislature is not ready. We have to get rid of the concentration of power and the stranglehold that the speaker has over the state house, because that's how we can get this done.
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. I am running for state representative in the 34th Middlesex District, which is part Somerville and part Medford.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, there is something that someone I highly respect said to me a few years ago that really drives everything that I have done for the last few years. She says, if they have the money and we have the people, we cannot win by preaching to the choir. So that to me drives home this point that we're not gonna pass a Green New Deal without a movement behind it. Not here in Massachusetts, not nationally. We're not gonna pass Medicare for all without a movement behind it. We're not gonna get any of the things that we want, need, and deserve, including literally saving our planet and our species from extinction. We are not gonna get those things. unless we really bring more people, like a lot more people, into the political process. So I've been spending my last four years training people in kind of a different model of political organizing that elects slates of progressives to city councils while building a movement on the ground to support those people. And I just concluded that it's about time for me to step in and do the candidates part of that.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, so the model is really quite different from what most people around the country are currently doing. And we got this, so I started this organization four years ago, three and a half years ago, called The Incorruptibles. And that's what we've been doing. We've been training people around the country in this model. So the difference between the two models is, here's the old model, probably sound kind of familiar. You get a bunch of people together, You wait until candidates announce that they're running. You choose the least bad one of the candidates. And then you do everything that you can to get that person elected, which is where most of the training in this country happens. The training is around getting people elected, whether they are great, good, or mediocre. And then the last step is after that person is elected and they start doing something you don't like, get angry, and start over at the top. It's not actually a very effective model. It doesn't lead to sort of lasting change. We're always back at the beginning again trying to elect one more progressive. The new model involves putting together a coalition that comes up with a single platform and then runs slates of candidates. And those candidates hopefully are not people who self-select. When people self-select, they are more likely to be wealthier, more likely to be white, more likely to be male. But when through your coalition, you are, and the coalition is all of, you know, a lot of working class people, marginalized, vulnerable communities. And when you work through that coalition to bring people, to sort of train people up to be candidates, to encourage people to be candidates who might never have thought of being a candidate, then you get a much better diversity of candidates who's more likely to maintain those ties. And then once you run these slates of candidates on a single platform, once they get elected, and this part is really, really different. Everybody talks about holding representatives accountable, and that is an antagonistic relationship. But the way that this model works, there is an intimate working relationship between the coalition and the elected official, where that coalition is really co-governing. So they are helping to figure out what is on the agenda, what maybe is missing on the city council meetings, or the state agenda for that cycle. to strategize together about how we're going to pass policy, to be involved sometimes in writing the policy, and really to work together and get the grassroots out to pass that policy.
[Anna Callahan]: I did not create it. So I had the great fortune of working with Gail McLaughlin, who was the mayor of Richmond, California. And in Richmond, the town of Richmond really had been owned by Chevron for 100 years, to the point that Chevron actually had a desk inside City Hall. And they would pay off every single politician. And by pay off, they're donating to their campaign. So in the early 2000s, some people formed the Rich and Progressive Alliance and they did this whole model and over the course of seven or eight years, they had a majority on the city council plus the mayor and they passed most incredible suite of policies. They passed the first rent control bill in the state of California in 30 years. They reduced the homicide rate from the second highest homicide rate in the country. They reduced it by 75%. They got $100 million in new taxes from Chevron. I mean, I could go on and on. There's like some amazing, amazing things that they continue to do, right? They're still in power. So that does not change. They are still there. They have a strong coalition. And so I got to work with them. I also worked with Jane McAlevey, who is such a powerhouse. She's one of the most successful union organizers in the last 40 or 50 years. She gets 95% participation in the unions where she organizes, and it's not because everybody there is pro-union. It is because she does the really hard work of convincing people to join the struggle. And she has done it thousands of times. She has perfected this, you know, the sort of convincing conversation, this long relationship where in the end, those people join the struggle. And so I got to incorporate her ideas. She's the one who said, if they have the money and we have the people, we'll never win by preaching to the choir. So she has really proven that herself hundreds of times and gotten, you know, her, the unions she works with, get amazing wins.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, yes. So people who have listened to this podcast will have heard this many times. In Massachusetts, there is a combination of a set of rules, financial incentives, and a culture that basically puts all power in the hands of the speaker. You know, AOC talks about the vice grip of pressure that she is under, psychological pressure, social pressure, political pressure, every moment of every day to conform, and that kind of pressure exists at the State House as well. Specifically, one of the things that we're trying to change first is transparency, that there is really no way for you or anyone to know how their state rep is voting. It's all done secretly. And so most bills, the decision as to whether a bill will move forward or not is done by a very small group of people in a backroom deal, and it is completely undemocratic.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay. I'm going to give a little bit of a long answer here. I'm going to, I'm going to start with, with national politics, only to make a point. So there was a study done by some Princeton researchers on, they took about 20 years of bills that went through Congress, every single bill, 20 years of Congress, every single bill that entered, that passed, that failed. And they basically looked at whether how people felt about those bills, how, you know, the top 10% of wage earners felt about those bills, and how the bottom 90% of wage earners felt about those bills. And the conclusion of that research study was that it was about 2000 bills. So the conclusion of that research study was that The top 10% of wage earners pretty much control which bills pass and which bills fail, especially which bills fail. Anything that they don't like, they can absolutely make fail. The bottom 90% of wage earners, I believe their quote was, the desires of the average American have a minuscule, near zero, statistically insignificant impact on public policy. So that is really something to like take some serious pause at. That our Congress serves the wealth, period. Full stop. And what people say a lot is they talk about money in politics. It's all money in politics. And I don't believe that it's all money in politics. I, like you, I believe that most people enter public office with good intentions. So now I want to talk a little bit about what life is like for progressive elected officials right after they get elected. And this is from my experience providing these training sessions to people around the country, in Oklahoma, in, you know, northern, central, and southern California, in Pennsylvania, in Kansas, in Rhode Island, in Massachusetts. and sometimes having mayors or city councilors attend the workshops. And these are all, the progressive ones are the ones attending the workshops, right? Because we give these workshops through an Our Revolution group, through a DSA chapter, through an indivisible group, through a PDA, Progressive Democrats of America. So it's always, we find a group that is interested in the coalition building side of it. And then elected officials that are friendly with them sometimes attend. So here's what happens when a progressive gets elected. They have a whole team of people. This is to city council or state. They have a whole team of people working to get them elected. And they have this great party on election night. And everybody is really happy. And all those volunteers go home and pretty much totally stop interacting with that elected official for six months, eight months, a year. right? They just, they're gone. Meanwhile, the elected official goes to work. And while they are at work, they're contacted and asked to have meetings with developers, lobbyists, chamber of commerce, CEOs, the As things pass through the city council or through the state house, there are all sorts of consultants that develop, you know, beautiful reports that have all these graphs that are well-researched, that have lots of photos. And most of those, who's paying for those? Corporations are paying for those, right? Somebody has to pay for those reports. That's where these sitting elected officials get their information. because no one else is providing information for them. And even their own constituents, I talked to a state rep, actually one of the earlier podcasts, one of the state reps said that if she didn't go out of her way, out of a district of 40,000 people, she would probably hear from the same 100. The people who feel like it's their prerogative to contact a state representative are people in general in the top 20% of wage earners. So even your own constituents, that's part of the job, is you have to serve your constituents. But if you don't try to have some control over who you listen to, you will literally only hear from pro corporate, pro wealthy, top 20% people, 24 hours a day. That's the nature of the job.
[Anna Callahan]: Yes. So part of the model. is a very specific, deliberate strategy to ensure that the elected official is hearing not only from the sort of grass tops, like the leadership of organizations that either serve or whose members are part of working class communities, but that you're directly listening to vulnerable, marginalized working class people. And here's how it goes. It's not super difficult, but it's time consuming and it's hard work and you have to do it. You start off, and I recommend doing this with others, not by yourself. So hopefully with an organization that wants to be involved because it's a lot of work and they can help you out. Step one is really to list who are the underrepresented, marginalized, vulnerable people who live in your city or district. And that's probably gonna include like 30 or 40 demographics, sometimes overlapping. With that list, you then start to make another list, which is who are the individuals or organizations that have access to those people? Who are the ones that are trusted by those people? Who are the ones that serve those people in some capacity? And then you start having one-on-ones. and you meet with those folks with the goal of setting up listening sessions. So let's say, for example, that you want to meet with, you know, that there is like a Haitian community in your area. And you have done a few one-on-ones, and through talking to those people, you've identified that there is a particular church leader that knows a lot of folks. And you meet with them, and they're very excited about the idea. So then they help you set up a meeting that they bring their people to. with translators if necessary, you know, whatever you need to make happen. And ideally, it's at their location, so they feel comfortable, and it's at their timeline. So if it is at a church, it might be like immediately after the service at the church. And it's this the whole meeting is 70% listening. So the idea is you ask people how state politics affects their lives, right? How many people in this room have not gone to the doctor because of cost. And then you get their stories, their personal stories. After, so you do that throughout for every, you keep doing this and you, and this never stops. You can be in office for 20 years. Frankly, this is exactly what Bernie does and has always done. I remember reading, I kind of knew this, but I, I remember reading in one of his books and on page 202, one of his books, he says, oh, I, it's May. And I just had my sixth town hall with high school students only of the year. So he had already done 600 town halls that year, more than one per month, that only included high school students. And you know, he's also done half a dozen for every other, you know, underrepresented community in his area, right? In his state, in his city, whatever it is. So, so this is the way that you maintain those connections and you hear the stories of how policy is actually affecting people's lives. And the last thing I'll say is that it doesn't quite stop there because those personal stories, like when you're at the meeting, you are engaging, you try to engage those people in the political process, right? You help them to understand, you can narrow in on some particular policy that they want to change, and then you help them and get them to be activated in something that they can affect. But after that, the personal stories are incredibly effective for motivating other people to action. So those personal stories, you can use them with permission to help everyone else that you have then been involved with. Everybody from like all the more politically active activist organizations to all of these, you know, more underserved groups that you're meeting with. when they hear that personal story they will be motivated to act on an issue that maybe isn't their issue. So that's the model.
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. Movement building is the reason that I'm running. I think we can do a lot, not just within the district to, you know, I just described it. So, you know, doing all of that work in the district will be important. But I think with those connections with people in the district, you also connect with people in other districts. I'm also running, I mean, you know, you said, It would be great if more politicians were doing this. And that is the entire purpose of the incorruptibles and what I've spent my life doing for the last four years. So I really intend to help bring this model to other elected officials. It really is to their best interest, because if you do this model really well, you will, they can run anybody they want against you. They can pour millions of dollars against you and you will win your reelection. So those sorts of, like the long-term goal of being able to, as an elected official, I think I'll be able to get the word out more and get more interest in the model as an elected official than I have been just as a regular person. And then, you know, transparency matters. The culture at the Statehouse, the rules at the Statehouse, the financial incentives at the Statehouse mean that Massachusetts cannot move forward. We cannot be a leader. Our people, the Bay Staters, are ready to lead. We are ready to lead. We want to lead. On environmental stuff, everybody is ready to even spend a little bit more money so that Massachusetts can lead in, you know, really pushing back against climate change. But we can't do it because of the the culture happening, the rules, the financial incentives, essentially the stranglehold that the speaker has over policy that passes. So I will do everything that I can to get democracy at our statehouse.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, thanks for asking. AnnaCallahan.com is the website for the campaign. Donations are always appreciated during COVID. Everything costs more. We can't just knock on doors. We've got to pay for phone banking tools, text banking tools, and all of that. And we would love to have more volunteers. So we have a volunteer page on the website. You can sign up there as well.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Thanks for doing the, uh, for doing the interview.
[Anna Callahan]: All right. See you next time.
[Anna Callahan]: Hello everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in to Solidarity Live. This is where we take questions and stories from our community here in Somerville and Medford. I try to bring in some experts to talk about what's happening and how we're being affected by COVID. And then together we figure out how we can solve our issues. You can always make a comment in YouTube and I can pull that comment in. We can answer it live, so don't hesitate. And I am going to bring in my first guest for the day, which is Nicole. Nicole Mosalem. Tell me if I said that right, because I think I used to pronounce your name wrong. You did. You got it. Wonderful. Nicole, so happy to see you. So happy to see you. Yeah, so there's different things we can chat about. I think if we can start, I would love to have you just say who you are. And we will begin with a conversation about the Muslim community here and Ramadan. And then after that, I'd love to talk a little bit about your run for state. Sure.
[Anna Callahan]: So can you talk about the Islamic Cultural Center and its mission and, you know, sort of what you do there?
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, hey, JT. You know, I apologize. I think I answered the call from you, and I accidentally lost Nicole and Paola. Let me see if I can grab them. I was right in the middle of talking to Nicole. Good to see you.
[Anna Callahan]: Fantastic. Thank you so, so much. I am going to grab the two of them. So hang on everybody. JT is coming right up. Okay. I'm dialing them in. We're going to have them on the line in just a second. Hello? Nicole, I am so sorry. We had a Skype kerfuffle. So let me go ahead. I don't yet have your video. I've got JT on here with Nicole's name under it. Oh, there we go. Okay, I'm going to switch. I'm going to switch out JT. I'm going to switch in Nicole. All right, we're doing this thing here. Ah, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I think we've got everybody on the call now, so that's great. So, Nicole, so sorry about the interruption. If you can talk a little bit about, yeah, you were talking about the mission of the Islamic Cultural Center, providing, you know, sort of spiritual space for them, and if you don't mind picking up from there.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I mean, we're sort of all in the same boat on that front. Everybody's programming, doing everything had to be cancelled. And it's so great that there is this physical space for the Muslim community in the area. And I imagine that you, given your role, that you hear from a lot of the Muslim families and the Muslim people in the area. And I'd love to kind of ask you, how is that community faring during COVID-19?
[Anna Callahan]: Which both you and I know about. Yep.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm sure that is tough to have that going on at the same time.
[Anna Callahan]: And I imagine that for people who live alone, it's maybe even more difficult. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: So, you know, mostly this is about sort of reaching out and hearing from the Muslim community and how you're doing, but I can't resist asking you about your own race. And I would just love, you know, without spending too much time on it, I would love to kind of hear, you know, why you're running and, you know, just to say, feel free to talk a little bit about your race.
[Anna Callahan]: And that just happened. For all those families, that just happened.
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. Hair, hair. I am totally with you on that one. And by the way, if anybody wants to comment, ask questions, we'll take those questions live. So feel free to just comment in the YouTube comment section. Um, wonderful. So I know candidates are very busy. Um, if you can stick around, um, and be on at the same time as, uh, like a little bit later as Paola and JT, um, that would be great. But I also completely understand if there are other things that you have to do. Um, so, uh, so yeah. Uh, if, is there any final words that you want to say, talk about in terms of, um, the Muslim community or the work that you're doing, uh, right now under COVID?
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Great. I am going to bring in Paola. Hello. One second, let me switch this here. Paola, you are live. Hi. So this is Paola Masoli with Mothers Out Front. Paola, if you can introduce yourself and a little bit about Mothers Out Front, that would be great.
[Anna Callahan]: We have a little bit of connectivity problems. So I don't know what your data reception is like right now.
[Anna Callahan]: Unfortunately, we're getting a lot of sort of connectivity issues, so it's very difficult to understand you. Maybe we can, let's try again in a second or two, or if there's a place near you that you get better data. Ah, you know... I like the idea of doing it without video that maybe we'll get better audio. Try speaking again. Unfortunately, we just did not. Yeah, we are not able to. It's not understandable. So we had had this idea earlier today that maybe we would just call you on the phone and we won't be able to see your face. Or maybe leave your... No, yeah, it's unfortunately just not working. We might be able to, the video was actually not too bad. So if you mute your audio, I'm gonna call you on the phone and we will have that play if that sounds good to you. So you're welcome to put your video up if you'd like. Otherwise, we'll just go.
[Anna Callahan]: Great, so we can hear you fine now.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Great. Um, awesome. So I will just leave your name up here, but I'm going to, um, not have your video on because we don't see you. If you want to turn your video on, that's fine, and I'll put you in there over Skype. So yeah, Paola, go ahead and let us know sort of a little bit about you and about Mothers Out Front.
[Anna Callahan]: I know, I'm with you. I just wanted, like, because gas, when I think of gas, it's like gasoline for the car.
[Anna Callahan]: And the Weymouth Compressor Station, as I understand, this five-year battle to prevent this new infrastructure for fossil fuels coming to a not wealthy community in Massachusetts. Because when you build new infrastructure, then the only way to get the money back from that investment is to do more fossil fuel extraction for the next 20 or 30 years.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And can I ask you, I know that you've been particularly involved here in Somerville with the gas, the problem with gas leaks. So natural gas, which is not natural, right? The methane that is pumped into our houses to supply heating. Yeah. that the infrastructure in Somerville leaks, and in other places as well. I know it's a problem in Medford, and it's a problem across the state, that it leaks so much that, and I'm going to let you finish this sentence, how bad is it? How bad are these leaks in Somerville and Medford?
[Anna Callahan]: Great, and as long as we have those, as long as we have gas flowing through those lines, We've got to fix them. But ideally, we move totally away from fossil fuels. And then we'll never need to repair those again.
[Anna Callahan]: And we're one of the dense, like Somerville is one of the densest cities in the whole New England area. So the percentage of our housing that is new is small.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Absolutely. you know, the work that you are doing here and that Luggage Out Front is doing all over the country is very important. I know sort of, you know, uplifting the stories of like, you know, the health stories that have happened to people because of these gas leaks, because of the Weymouth Compressor Station. And also the trees, I remember you talking about, you know, these trees that have died and going there and actually testing the ground and finding that it's- So, so much more gas in that soil than is allowable. So, those things are really important as well. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Are there any ways that people can get involved in Mothers Out Front?
[Anna Callahan]: That's right. I love that you say more hands on deck because I always talk about it is an all hands on deck moment. for climate and other things. Well, thank you so much. It's been really great talking to you and hearing. Thank you. Yep. Hearing more about the work you guys are doing. So glad that things are moving forward in terms of Somerville and we will keep pushing on the way with the compressor station. So yeah, thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Me too. Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye. And the next guest that we're going to have on is J.T. Scott, who is a Somerville city councilor. I'm going to remove Paola's name and move that front and put yours. I've got you in, JT. JT, how are you doing? Yeah, we don't have your audio.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Nothing is as it was.
[Anna Callahan]: So JT, I didn't even really introduce you. I would love you to talk a little bit about who you are and really we're focusing on COVID-19 and how it's affecting Summerville and Medford. And if you can talk to us about what's happening at the city council now and what you guys are doing around COVID-19.
[Anna Callahan]: So we've actually, we're having a little bit of trouble understanding you as well, JT. Give me just a second. How is your data? I hate to say it, but I actually cannot understand you. It's that bad. It makes me wonder if maybe it is my data, but I hope it's not. You think it might be mine? It might be mine. I think it is. I'm on a 5G network. That's usually pretty good. You know what? I'm actually going to move from my lovely background here. Background will probably, hey, we're all in COVID-19, right? So everybody knows that you're at home and things look weird. And I'm going to plug right into the internet here. I'm going to hardline it. I can get my lights to work. There we go.
[Anna Callahan]: Just one second. Oh, and of course, my computer does not have this kind of jack. Say another couple things.
[Anna Callahan]: We're all facing challenges. So I am going to ask, I'm going to do something here. Can I have one of those? Because I can't hear through mine.
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, so apparently everybody here is the same thing that I hear, which is that folks can hear me fine, but they can't hear you. Drat. You know what? Here's what I would love. Because this worked for Paola. Your video is actually fine. Totally fine. Leave your video on. Mute the audio. We'll have the audio by phone. I think that'll work great. So I have two numbers for you. I'd hate to read them off on, do you end in 3-2 or end in 2-1? Great. Fantastic. Okay, so we can see you and now we can hear you. Wonderful.
[Anna Callahan]: The best thing is if you can mute the computer completely, not just yourself, but also mute the computer and then use the phone for audio, that would work great.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, I'll ask you some questions. I mean, I know that a lot of great things have been passed in terms of making sure that we're all safe, that the whole shutdown and all of that, and Somerville was very early on in that. I would love to look a little bit at the future. What is the plan, right? How are you guys handling the, do we have enough testing kits in Somerville? Is there any sort of a tracing plan? Or is that something that the state will really take care of? How does that side of things look from the city perspective?
[Anna Callahan]: Well done. Give him a push there.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Can I, can I ask you a little question about that? Like, I think some of the stuff that Somerville has done amazingly well is to provide aid to people. Can you talk a little bit about, um, what, what sort of things are available, like even to people who are listening here, like what they can, how they can, um, look to the city of Somerville for some of their needs during COVID.
[Anna Callahan]: I know, they were the very first, our very first show was someone, one of the founders of Mamas.
[Anna Callahan]: So, I could talk to you forever, and I'm wondering if you're okay with it. I would love to see if Paula and Nicole are still around. So, if Paula and Nicole, if you guys are still here, go ahead and turn on your video. Paula, hopefully we can get you in. Great. Nicole is... Oh, good. Let me add Nicole. Ah-ha-ha.
[Anna Callahan]: Fantastic.
[Anna Callahan]: And I'm going to bring in a couple of seconds for you guys, and then I'll bring Paul in.
[Anna Callahan]: We all love Mike. Who doesn't love Mike?
[Anna Callahan]: You know, I've never had four people on. I don't know how it's going to position people in the frame. Let me give it a shot. I'm going to bring Paula in here as well. Aha. Hi.
[Anna Callahan]: Like that. Great. I'm just going to move the names around. So JT is over there.
[Anna Callahan]: Nicole is there. Paola is here. Oh, wonderful. Good to see everybody.
[Anna Callahan]: Sure. It's funny because this is such a listening session. Every week I'm listening and hearing stories from the district and bringing in experts to figure out how we can solve these together. So I don't really talk about my race on the show, but now is my opportunity. Thank you, JT. You know, I'm running because I really believe that we cannot... I think the other side has the money and we have the people, but if that's true, we cannot win if we're preaching to the choir. I think we will not win a Green New Deal if we don't have a movement behind it. I think we will not win Medicare for All if we don't have a movement behind it. I've been training people for four years in a style of... build movements through local electoral organizing. And I see the primary role of an elected official as a movement builder. And I think we must have movement builders as elected officials, because that is the only way that we will get the policies that we want, need, and deserve. So I am running to be a movement builder in the district and across the state with some very specific tactics that I learned from some amazing union organizers and other elected officials and other folks, very specific tactics that I've been training people in for years now. And I'm excited to do it as an elected official.
[Anna Callahan]: Awesome. Thank you so much. I really could stay in this call for a long time, but I believe it or not, you know, candidates have busy schedules and I have a meeting starting now.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Thank you all so much. It's been wonderful talking to you all. Thanks so much for all the work that you do. And thanks for tuning in. We will be back in a couple weeks. Have a good night.
[Anna Callahan]: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to Solidarity Live, where we take stories and questions from the community here in Somerville and Medford, and then we bring in experts to talk about those issues, and we also figure out how we can solve these problems together as a community. So today I'm actually quite excited. I'm going to be talking to a musician here in Somerville and the difficulties that you can imagine they have living under COVID, trying to live as a musician in the economic climate that we have. And we also will have on a musician from Canada. And so we will talk about the differences there. So I'm going to bring those folks in. We have with us James Lesuey. I hope I said that right. You'll be able to introduce yourself as well. And Kat McCleavey. So awesome. You are both live. And I'm going to go ahead and start with James. So if you want to just introduce yourself briefly and talk about what has happened in your life since the lockdown started. OK.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, and when we talked earlier, and by the way, I will just mention to you, it's a little bit awkward on the screen because all three of us are like, one, two, three. And so you're very narrow. So you're going to stay kind of in the center of the screen. But yeah, stay there. So James, when you and I had spoken earlier, you mentioned that you were doing a lot of music gigs and really kind of living the life of a musician. But that recently you had taken on the restaurant job because you wanted to be able to save money, right? You didn't want to just meet your expenses, but you wanted to save. Can you talk a little bit about that and about the timing of when you took this job as well?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, so both the music gigs and your restaurant job have really been shut down by the economic climate. Exactly. And you are an opera performance major, is that right?
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Fantastic. So I am going to... Well, before we switch over to what's happening in Canada, I just want to ask, if it's okay, how are you doing financially? Can you talk to us about, like, were you able to pay this month's rent? And how did you do that? And then are you able to pay next month's rent? Like, what does it look like for you? What does the future look like for you?
[Anna Callahan]: The second month- And that's a mutual aid, that's a mutual aid organization. So just reaching out to neighbors and people in the community.
[Anna Callahan]: Who knows, right? So I mean your life is completely up in the air and it must be very stressful and you have no idea where you're gonna be able to pay your bills a couple months down the road.
[Anna Callahan]: I am going to go ahead and switch over to Cat McLeavy. So you're both still on, but Cat, just introduce yourself and what's happening with you right now, especially since COVID.
[Anna Callahan]: They had a little pause. You and James are both working musicians. You both were in the Boston area, both, you know, graduated from music school and working as musicians. So tell us what happened when the lockdown started and you're in Canada.
[Anna Callahan]: And you have any medical issues that you have are covered because Canada essentially has a single-payer national Medicare for all style.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So the other question that I want to bring up for you, James, is you had mentioned to me that you might look for work. Can you talk a little bit about that and about your concerns around that?
[Anna Callahan]: We've had, what, 30 million people file for unemployment in America since the start of COVID, something like that. It might be a total of 30 million. And, you know, I, like, through talking to you and other people who really are facing this choice of, okay, I either get myself a job that is dangerous for my health or I have no idea how I'm going to pay my rent and put food on the table. I don't know. And I think neither of you have kids. I could be wrong. I don't know. I didn't ask that question. But for parents who have children they have to feed, it's yet another level of question there. And I do worry that these, you know, the way America is set up, that we let everybody fend for themselves, that this lockdown situation is creating an environment where we allow people with white collar jobs to remain safely ensconced in their apartments, and everyone else has to, you know, basically become an essential worker serving those people and putting themselves in danger or else.
[Anna Callahan]: And it doesn't have to be this way. So this is actually, this is the second, it's like a new segment on the show called It Doesn't Have To Be This Way. You know, I mean, same situation, two musicians, similar life stages, one in America, one in Canada. It does not have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way. Kat, I assume you're not like running around, you know, thinking you're gonna have to get a job as an Amazon worker or a grocery store clerk in order to pay your bills.
[Anna Callahan]: And that was because of city policy or national policy?
[Anna Callahan]: I remember. You know what, though? I'm guessing that as soon as the lockdown happened, you would have high-tailed it to Canada. You know, last week, our It Doesn't Have to Be This Way segment... Here, my quotes didn't show up. The It Doesn't Have to Be This Way segment was... It was actually a guy who was living here in Somerville until the lockdowns. And two weeks after the lockdowns happened, he got a flight to South Korea because that's where his parents were. He's like born in America, but his parents are from South Korea and they happened to be there. And they were like, you got to come here. And now he's in South Korea. And guess what? He, you know, he goes to work. People are going to school. people are going out to restaurants and things, they have testing and contact tracing, they have everything under control, and they are leading normal lives because of policy. Because their government has their head together. Oh, man. So I bet you would have gone.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Yeah. Boy, I am going to give you guys both an opportunity to say any final words, but I first just want to thank you so, so much. James, it's not like we have millions of viewers, but it takes bravery to let your personal story be out there for people. And I really, really appreciate you doing this, because there are many people in your shoes. And personal stories motivate people to action. And I think it's really important that we get these stories out there so that people understand the gravity and the impact of policy and how much it affects people's lives. So I really, really appreciate you coming on. And Cat, of course, love you dearly. We were housemates. I don't know if people have really fully understood that, but we lived together for a whole year. She's wonderful, wonderful. And James, I know you're wonderful as well. We don't have quite the same history. And so thank you so much, Kat, as well, for being on. I'm going to let you each say some final words. Maybe, Kat, why don't you go first?
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, my pleasure. Wonderful to have you both. Stay well. And let's, you know, let's all get together and make some serious change because our country is in deep need of you. Wonderful. All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. We will be signing off, and we will see you next week. Thanks so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Bye-bye.
[Anna Callahan]: everyone. Thanks for tuning in to Solidarity Live where we take questions and stories from the community in Somerville and Medford. We bring in experts to talk about those issues and then we work to solve those together. Today I have on someone from the Welcome Project. She's going to talk all about everything they do with our immigrant community and a specific fund that she's working with today. And I'm going to bring her right in. So this is Let me have her join us. Great, this is Kenya Alfaro of The Welcome Project. Hi, Kenya, you're live.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi, how are you? I'm doing well, as well as I guess you can be right now. Yeah, yeah. I would love for you to just tell us a little bit about what the Welcome Project does in general, and then specifically how you're dealing with COVID.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Um, I will mention, I just got a comment from someone saying that there's a little bit of an echo, so I don't know if anybody's not muted or because we have people later in the show who are on right now. But if you can mute, that would be great. Hopefully this problem will resolve. Great. So it sounds like you guys really have good insight into our immigrant population and how they're doing. And I would love to hear as much as you can how our immigrant community is doing now during COVID.
[Anna Callahan]: You're saying food resources are a problem because of just lack of funds, is that right?
[Anna Callahan]: I think it seems like you've frozen. Ah, so give me one second, everyone. It looks like we had a little problem with Skype. Hang on. We are just trying to get Kenya Alfaro back on from the Welcome Project. I'm going to go ahead and do what I can. to get Kenya back on, to get our folks from Tufts Mutual Aid back on. They are also, ah, great. So it looks like, ah, we have everyone back. Amazing. So sorry about that. I do not know exactly what happened, but I lost all of you and my whole Skype went down. So I apologize. Thanks, everyone, for sticking with us. So Kenya. You were talking about food resources and how the city of Somerville has really done some work there to make food resources available to people.
[Anna Callahan]: Right, yeah. And do you know if folks in that community have been plugging into the mutual aid, so the Medford and Somerville mutual aid, or in any of the other cities' mutual aid projects?
[Anna Callahan]: Great, yeah. And you have a particular fund that you administer, is that right? Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
[Anna Callahan]: I'll just remind people that if you have any questions, you can just put those in the comment box and we can pull those right in. In your outreach, you guys must have a lot of languages on hand, I imagine. When you're calling through people, how many different languages do you have to rely on to reach out to people?
[Anna Callahan]: Great, that is great. And are there ways that people can help? I mean, it sounds like people can donate to that fund specifically. And the fund I assume is like directly related to COVID and it started with COVID. And so it really has to do with that. Are there other ways in addition to that, that people can help?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, good. It sounds like at one point there was a need for masks. I know you know, a lot of folks and mamas are excited to make masks, so I don't know if that's something that people still need.
[Anna Callahan]: Let's be clear, there's a new law in Somerville saying that when out of your house, you must wear a mask, and there's a fine, up to $300, I think, fine related to that.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Do you want to give just a little plug for how people can find you, how people can donate to the fund, or help out in other ways? Specifically, what's the website?
[Anna Callahan]: Wow, thank you so much. Great work that you guys are doing. Wonderful to have you on and keep us updated. Let us know as things change, if there are more needs and other ways that people can help.
[Anna Callahan]: Thank you, great to have you. So our next guests are from, hang on, we're gonna add, from Tufts Mutual Aid. We have, I'm getting closer, here we go, Madeline Clark and Nikhil and Nikhil, I'm gonna let you say your name because I think I might get it wrong. And you know what, I hope that you two will introduce Tufts Mutual Aid and introduce yourselves. And somehow my computer is not plugged in, like it's plugged in to my, and my battery's gonna die. So I'm gonna duck out for just one second in this COVID home studio here. But why don't you go ahead and introduce Tufts Mutual Aid and yourself. I have you live now. But I think you're muted. Ah, great. Nikhil, great.
[Anna Callahan]: So can you tell us some of the stories that you've heard as you've been working with the folks that you're working with? What do you hear from people? What's happening in their lives as a result of these changes?
[Anna Callahan]: We have a question from Joel Greenberg. He says, how much notice were people given to move off campus? Seems like a huge burden for students and families.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And would you say, I mean, obviously you don't know numbers, but maybe you do, like what percentage of tough students actually had to leave town, like had to find, like were on campus and had to find somewhere else and ended up maybe going home?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And so, you know, it's interesting because when I When I first heard of Tufts Mutual Aid, I thought, okay, it's like, you know, the other mutual aid societies helping provide, you know, helping people make sure they're safe, that they can pay their rent, that they can get groceries and things. But it sounds like you are also pretty deeply involved in making sure that students who have to now continue their education, are able to do that part of it. So, like, how do you balance those? Or, you know, what do you feel has been happening for students who have to continue their education, have to do everything online? Like, how disruptive has that been to their education? Maybe talk about that side, just the educational aspect of it.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, yeah. So just a last question about the other side. So the making sure people can get groceries, they can pay for their rent, all of these things. Have you seen, for the students that remain, are you interfacing at all with mamas, with another different mutual aid? Is this mostly students helping students? How are you able to help those students who are in the area to be able to sort of afford the changing circumstances that are happening to them now, but specifically like rent, food, the basics?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, absolutely. All right, how can, what can people do? I mean, does it like, like it really has been, the Tufts Mutual Aid is the students helping the students, students who have moved, leaving food, and the graduate students helping in the, you know, so are there ways that other people in the community can be helpful, and what would that be?
[Anna Callahan]: And how can people reach you? Is there a website? Is there an email address people can reach out to? A phone number? Anything?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks both of you for coming on. It's really great to hear about, you know, this part of our community that we probably don't hear a lot about, you know, outside of the Tufts community. really great work you're doing. Thank you for for doing it. And thanks for being on. All right, so our next person, and I'm just gonna click click here for a minute or two. Okay, we now have someone who is from here. But it's currently in South Korea. And I don't know how many people listening know about South Korea and the way that they have dealt with COVID, but it's very different from how the US has dealt with COVID. And so here is Howard Kim. I'm just going to pop your name up here. And you are live. So Howard, it's great to see you.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks for coming on.
[Anna Callahan]: When you say you're hearing this news, you mean in America?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, what I've heard is that it was, at first, you could only get tested, even if you had symptoms, you could only get tested if you had a known contact, if you'd been in contact with someone who was known to have had COVID. That was how limited the testing was, and now, Then it was if you had symptoms of COVID. They're loosening it up a little bit, but it is still very difficult to get a test.
[Anna Callahan]: I was just going to ask if the test results had come back yet. Okay. So yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Get the test back.
[Anna Callahan]: So even though you were tested and your test came back after one day, did they ask you to stay indoors for two weeks or did they just give you two weeks worth of food and then tell you you could go out?
[Anna Callahan]: So you had two weeks of staying at home. You got tested. Your test came back negative. Yes. And then you were at home for two weeks, maybe because there's some chance that you could have had, and it hadn't shown up yet on the test. For whatever reason, you stayed home for two weeks. And after that time, now tell us what is your life like?
[Anna Callahan]: Now, when you were staying at your parents' house, did they have to stay home?
[Anna Callahan]: OK, great.
[Anna Callahan]: But restaurants, coffee shops?
[Anna Callahan]: Can I ask you, where does South Korea get all these tests? We cannot seem to get tests. You may not even know this, Why is there such a difference in the ability for people in South Korea to access tests than people like in Somerville, for example? Why can we not access tests here?
[Anna Callahan]: I'm not sure. Can I ask, does South Korea have a national healthcare system?
[Anna Callahan]: Wow. It is such an amazing story. And I'm so glad that you started with the personal story of your own experience living in Somerville. And I had not realized that you were here when COVID started. And you decided to go to South Korea knowing that the South Korean reaction to this was going to be much better, was much better, and that you would be both safer and more free to go about your normal daily life in South Korea than here?
[Anna Callahan]: And now in Somerville, you would be forced to work remotely anyway. Like you would still be having to work remotely right now.
[Anna Callahan]: But South Korea's response sounds like it's just a lot more sustainable than ours. Because you guys are going about mostly about your normal business, but with the testing and tracing program that they have, the contact tracing program, they can contain it very well, while most people are kind of going about their daily lives, and the economy is not under a huge hit. Does that sound about right?
[Anna Callahan]: I don't know. We'll have to check. I really have no idea. We'll check on that.
[Anna Callahan]: It might be right. I mean, hey, we're in the US where medical things cost ridiculous amounts of money.
[Anna Callahan]: South Korean ones or United States?
[Anna Callahan]: We'll get to our experts and we'll ask about that here as well.
[Anna Callahan]: So amazing. So we have something to look forward to. We can get life back to normal and keep this thing under control. So it has been really eye-opening to talk to you. I appreciate you coming on so much. And I have to say, it is kind of amazing that your Skype feed is great. half a world away from us. So, good job Skype. Yeah, no kidding. So yeah, thank you so much. Do you have any last, any final words before we let you go?
[Anna Callahan]: Really, really fascinating to hear about what life is like there for you right now. And I hope we get there soon. Thank you so much. Great to talk to you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, thank you. So that is it for our show. Thank you everyone for tuning in. I hope it was everything that you dreamed of and we will be back next week with more stories and questions from our community, with more experts to talk about those issues and with more ways that you as a member of our community can plug in and how we can solve these problems together. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks for being here. This is Solidarity Live, where we discuss how COVID-19 is affecting Medford and Somerville. This show is really about getting through this crisis together. So if you have been affected by COVID-19, if you have lost income, if you're worried about a family member in a hospital, in a nursing home, in a jail, if you're struggling with school closures or anything else, please reach out. Good policy is based on hearing directly from people in need. And this show is about uplifting those stories so that we can solve these problems together as a community. One example of how we are doing that is with the SNAP, a food assistance program. Someone did reach out to the show a week or two ago to say that his doctor had told him that he needed to stay indoors because of his lung condition, but he cannot use his SNAP card to purchase groceries online. He has to go to the grocery store in person. So we had an expert come on the show and give some advice, but it turns out that other states are allowing people to do online grocery delivery, and that is where you, viewers of the show, come in. Please sign our petition to make Massachusetts one of the states that allows SNAP recipients to get their groceries delivered. Together, we can help our neighbors through this crisis. Our campaign is hearing directly from people in need, uplifting their voices, and engaging the community to solve these issues. So today I have on Hannah O'Hanlon from the Somerville Homelessness Coalition. She's going to talk about the homeless population here and how they're being affected. Then we'll have David Tissell from the Somerville Community Corporation to talk about the tenants that they have and what they're doing to keep them in their homes. And after that, we will have Mavami Callahan, who's a Medford doctor, and she will be talking about how our medical system is holding up under the stress of COVID-19. So I will go ahead and get us started here. I'm gonna bring in Hannah O'Hanlon. I just have to get her on the screen. Oh, there we go. I... There we go. I have managed to find the right button. And by the way, anyone who is watching on YouTube, you can simply comment in YouTube's comment box and then ask any question you like and I can pull that question in and we'll answer those questions live. So, great. Hannah, thank you so much for being here. I would love to hear a little bit just about your organization in general and the work that you do.
[Anna Callahan]: So that's what I do. That is great. Really needed work. Do you have an idea of how many folks you interact with as a homeless population in need on a daily or weekly basis?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that's amazing. Can you talk about how COVID-19 is affecting the people that you're helping?
[Anna Callahan]: Wow. What do you think is the best way for people to be able to help out? Where can they donate? Can they volunteer? Are there other ways that they can help?
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. Do you have any final thoughts, anything else that you want people to know about what's happening? Oh, you know, I heard on WBUR there was a segment on homeless shelters, and all I remember is hearing that they had gotten enough tests to test an entire homeless shelter, like every single person in the shelter, and that some crazy high percentage of them One in three. Yeah, that's what I remember, but I didn't want to quote it because it seems so high. But a lot of them were asymptomatic and they didn't show signs of the disease. What do you think that that means?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, absolutely. And so it sounds like the program that you have where you actually house people is the safest for them. Correct. In addition to being obviously the best for them. When you can house people and they can have their own home, it's clearly better for many reasons. But here in COVID-19, it's even more crucial.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, thank you so much. The work you guys do is totally amazing, and I don't envy you the amount of work that you have to do these days. So, you know, we will be encouraging people to help you out, to volunteer and donate. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's really good to have an update, and stay safe. Do personal care. Thank you. Everything that you need to do. And thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and bring on David Tissell from the Somerville Community Corporation. Let me just switch the titles here. Here he is. Hey, we've got you on. Hi. Hey. Hi, Anna. Thanks for being on. I would love to hear a little bit about what the Somerville Community Corporation does and your role specifically.
[Anna Callahan]: You're getting close.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that's very important. I mean, it seems like there's only a certain amount of new construction you can do in the densest city in the whole of New England.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that is great. So I'd love to hear how COVID-19 is affecting your organizing, is affecting your tenants, like what do you see happening?
[Anna Callahan]: Is that something new to COVID-19 or is that something that existed before?
[Anna Callahan]: So can you talk just a little bit more about that in case there are people listening who might be interested in looking into that?
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, good to know. You know, it's funny, shortly before this call, I happened to be talking to my mom who lives in California, and she was saying that Governor Gavin Newsom you know, had very recently given a speech or a talk where he was saying that 10% of Californians are undocumented and that these undocumented workers were the people growing the food, were the people delivering the food and other essentials, they were the people working in the grocery stores, that these are the essential workers, and that he was going to ensure that they had medical care, that they were all gonna get unemployment. And I just wanna, I haven't looked into that from a policy, like I don't know what exact policies he passed, because I literally just got off the phone with her, but I'd love to hear from you a little bit about your thoughts on that.
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. Are there other ways that people can get involved? can help out in the work that you guys are doing. Tell us what we can do as far as... Yeah, thanks.
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. Great. Thank you so much, David. Great to see you. Thanks, Hannah. And thanks for coming on and talking about the great work that you guys do.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. We are going to wrap up this episode with having my sister come on one more time because there are always updates in the medical community and we want to know what is happening with our medical personnel? What is happening? How are doctors and nurses doing? How are hospitals doing? Are they able to cope with the stress of all of the new patients? Are there enough beds? Are there enough ventilators? What are the numbers? Tell us your updates. And I apologize. I asked all these questions, but you know what? People who didn't see the episode two weeks ago, please introduce yourself.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. That's incredible that all these beds have been built. It's really amazing.
[Anna Callahan]: And I know there was a ballot measure recently to limit the number of patients that nurses would have to deal with at a time, and that didn't pass. Do you have any sense of whether, I mean, obviously there's no avoiding in a pandemic that people are gonna have more patients, doctors are gonna have more patients, nurses are gonna have more patients, everybody, you know, and some medical health professionals are going to get sick and be out. So as far as just the medical professionals, are people working crazy hours? I know there was some sort of rotation happening. How is that working out?
[Anna Callahan]: With drive-through testing, how long does it take to get the test results? Or are you just getting tested and then you get the results later?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. How is it going with personal protective equipment? I know that's something that you see in the news all the time. There's not enough equipment. People are having to wear the same mask for many shifts in a row. Has that changed?
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, that is good to know. Great. I would love to, first let me ask if you have other thoughts, if you have other things that you think people might find interesting?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And I'm just going to go ahead and have you finish up with a reminder, like washing hands. What is a reminder of what is the proper, how do we best protect ourselves and others?
[Anna Callahan]: That is amazing. Thanks so much for that tip. That is really great. Hopefully we'll soon get enough testing that everybody can know whether they have it, whether they had it, if they have been interacting with someone who has it or had it. So hopefully we'll be there very soon. Great, thank you so much for the update. It's really great to hear about how the medical community is coping and that it seems like it's going okay. We're not gonna be totally overwhelmed. Yay! And of course, thank you for being the front lines of this fight. It is really, you guys are all the heroes of the coronavirus. We're glad to do it. We're glad to do it. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. I think that is the end of our show this week. As I mentioned before, please do send us your stories of how COVID-19 is affecting you, is affecting your family. Let us know what sorts of issues we can dig into, what things you're interested in, and we will bring people on to talk about those issues to uplift the stories of what's happening to people in our community and to try and solve things together. Thank you so much.
[Anna Callahan]: everyone, thanks for joining us. Here we are on Solidarity Live. This is our second week. We're talking about how COVID-19 is affecting Medford and Somerville. So I have the great pleasure of having Medford City Councilor Zach Baers here with me. Zach, first I would love to have you just introduce yourself and maybe say a little bit about what is happening at the Medford City Council now.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So thanks. One thing that I really want to do in every episode is, in case there are people, probably everybody's gotten the memo, but in case there are people who haven't gotten the memo, just how serious this is and why it's important to what they call social distancing, which I wish they were calling physical distancing. I pass people on the street, like I'm walking with my son or something, and we're like more than six feet away, and I'm like, hey, how are you? And some people are really friendly and some people are like, meh. So physical distancing, why is it really important and what are we facing?
[Anna Callahan]: By the way, I just got a comment that says if it's okay for you to mute your own computer, either put in the headphones or mute your own computer screen while you're speaking, that there's a little bit of... Sure.
[Anna Callahan]: I have headphones in, so yeah. If the other, we also have two other folks who are on Skype. I don't know if it matters if they mute, if, you know, if they're in headphones or mute, that would be amazing. That might make a difference.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. I bet I can probably mute her if she is not muted. Hmm. It's not as easy as in Zoom, but Caroline, if you're listening, if you could mute, that would be awesome. Thank you. Great. And so, you know, one thing I want to emphasize is that the real danger here is the idea that we may overwhelm the hospitals. So that's what, like, big picture-wise, that, I think, is what we're trying to avoid and why social distancing, why it's worth it to, like, literally almost crash our economy temporarily, because if we don't do this, you have so many people going to the hospitals that you literally just don't have enough ventilators and beds and doctors to treat them. And then there's no treatment. And if there's no treatment, then people simply, they just, a ton of people will die. So that's kind of the reasoning why it's important. And if you can, you know, we've talked about this a little bit last week, but if you have some notes of hope for people who may realize how bad it is and be at home feeling very down about things, that this maybe won't be forever, like what is your sense of us pulling out of this?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. I'm really interested in hearing a little bit more from you about the two sort of avenues that you talked about. One is direct payments and the other is freezing the economy, right? So I know In Denmark, they're paying every worker 75% of their income, I believe, for the time being. Just the government, that's the way that they're handling it. But in Boston, there is a new movement for Massachusetts, I believe it's called Housing Guarantee, that's talking about in addition to a moratorium on mortgage payments, having some sort of a cancellation of rent for people who are unable to pay. Can you talk a little bit about either of those? Talk either about the freezing economy or about the direct payments side?
[Anna Callahan]: By the payment stuff, you don't mean direct payments from the government, you mean... Sorry, I mean... Freezing.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, absolutely. Anything else going on at the city level?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, we've seen that on the mamas list, the Mutual Aid Medford and Centerville, that people are helping with that. And they also have a lot of good advice about how to, wearing gloves, washing before you go out. And that if you're leaving something in the pantry, that you want to do that safely. So that even if you're completely asymptomatic, that you're not leaving something for someone that could potentially infect them. Right. So I know that there are a lot of good people who are helping to fill those as well.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Yep. Great. So we actually do have a food insecurity person who's just about to come on the call. And I wanted to ask if you have any final words for people for this week before we go to the next guest.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Do you want to say one more time the website that people can go to for Medford?
[Anna Callahan]: Fantastic. Thank you so much for being on. It's great to hear about the great work that you guys are doing there and chat a little bit also about state and federal policy. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. We're going to go ahead and switch to Becca Miller. Becca, I've got you on screen now. I'm going to switch out the name so that you don't look like you're Zack Bares. There we go. Awesome. So first, I would love for you to introduce yourself before I kind of read the story that led me to invite you on here.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks for all the great work that you are doing. So I would like to just go ahead and read. Someone sent an email to the show, and they wanted me to read it. So this is someone who says, I am a 58-year-old disabled Medford resident. My doctor advised me to shelter in place due to my congenital lung disease. When attempting to set up an online grocery delivery, I discovered that Massachusetts does not allow SNAP EBT recipients this necessary service. Why is this? This presents a very dangerous choice to high-risk individuals. Go hungry or expose oneself to a potentially fatal infection. Please explain.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, and also you had mentioned when I first asked you about this that the HIP program, you actually can order fresh produce through the HIP program for delivery. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that's an amazing program that Massachusetts has. And can you either, like, do you happen to know the phone number for Project Bread, or is there a website for them? Like, where can people find this information?
[Anna Callahan]: That's awesome. I'm slightly curious just about the tech issue that you talk about. So when you're saying that we can't get it here in Massachusetts, I understand the issue with Amazon and Walmart being the two options in the five states that do have it, right? That's not perfect, to say the least. But what's the tech issue between us and getting at least those two who are piloting it in other states to be able to deliver to people in Massachusetts?
[Anna Callahan]: Okay, at least we've got HIP here, that's great. Do you have any final thoughts for folks who either may have some, either are on SNAP or maybe aren't on SNAP? For example, who's eligible for SNAP? And would people now who have lost their jobs, maybe they would be eligible for SNAP and they don't know? Who can apply?
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. Great. Well, thank you so much, Becca. It's been great to have you on. And again, for the work that you do, always. And I think we are about to start a conversation about incarcerated folks in Massachusetts and how they are dealing with SNAP. So thank you, Becca. We're going to say ciao to you. I'm going to invite on. Carolyn Bayes. Great, Carolyn, you are live. I fear that I have a frozen version of you. Hang on. Yeah, Carolyn, we might have to reopen our phone call. You might have to dial in again. Yep. Let me see if I can get Carolyn on the horn here. Meanwhile, I will say you can always send in your stories. You can send in your questions. You can comment on YouTube, and I can see all those comments, so we can bring those in. There is Becca again. Hi, how are you? I'm going to try and get Carolyn on here. Let me call her back. Aha, she is calling in. Pardon me, I have a little bit of an issue with Skype. Give me one second. Trying to get Caroline on here. Let me, I don't have your video, but I do have your audio. Ah, I've got you. Thank you. Great. So first, we're gonna talk about how COVID-19 is affecting folks in jails. And I would love it if you would go ahead and just introduce yourself and how you are sort of related to this topic.
[Anna Callahan]: So. Yep. Before we talk a little bit more generally about what's happening, well, you tell me, do you want to talk generally about what's happening in Massachusetts prisons? Or do you want to go, should we just go straight at what's happening related to COVID-19? I think let's start with COVID-19 and why it's so dangerous for them at this moment. And then we can broaden it up a little bit after this.
[Anna Callahan]: Do you mean that the prisoners themselves are spending their own money to buy soap?
[Anna Callahan]: So before you go on, I do want to just mention we have someone who's commented on YouTube saying they're hoping to hear about what correctional facilities are doing to prevent the spread of COVID-19. And so it sounds like one thing that they're doing is they seem to have obtained masks, which it's so incredibly important for our, like there's a shortage of masks, and it's so important for our hospital staff and doctors to be able to have the masks that they need. And of course, it's important for correctional facilities to have masks as well, but not if they're just wearing them around their neck and using it to, you know, taunt the inmates.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So I'm going to jump in. I can't resist jumping in here because I did spend two nights in jail in 2000 when I was illegally arrested for protesting. There were about 71 of us. We were illegally strip searched. The women only were strip searched twice during our time there, and there was a giant lawsuit afterwards and all that. But I will say that this was in Los Angeles, and I will say that we were we were arrested and literally not allowed to wash in any way. And the police who had arrested us had us leaning up against, like, pushing us against a chain link fence that was, like, covered in grease and oil because it was right directly underneath a freeway. And so our hands and our bodies were just, they had all this black grease all over them. And we were not, there was no, ability for us to wash anything at all for like, you know, 30 hours or more. So, And the whole taunting thing, people may not realize how much psychological games are played to inmates by correctional staff. So the idea that correctional staff are joking about purposefully getting inmates sick with COVID-19, that is, You know, when this is real psychological. I mean, it's terrible. That should not be legal for them to do that. And then I want to, for a second, before we go on, to talk a little bit about how dangerous it is to be in these close quarters with people. I mean, we're talking about social distancing, and people who are incarcerated do not have that ability. So can you talk a little bit just about how dangerous it is and if there have been any outbreaks inside of any correctional facilities?
[Anna Callahan]: We have another question here. Are there ways for people to get involved and support the incarcerated population during this time of crisis? Canteen money for soap, masks, letters. I am sympathetic to those who are in prisons.
[Anna Callahan]: And before we go on to the next questions, we do have another question. You're saying that letters and emails are really helpful. Is there a particular easy way? I know that a lot of people who are involved in Mamas Mutually Medford and Somerville are, people want to help. People want to be able to do something. What's an easy way for people to get involved that way?
[Anna Callahan]: And I assume we can't do that right now.
[Anna Callahan]: Visiting, yeah, there's no visiting, right.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. There is another question, which is, do you know what sort of medical care is available in case someone in prison does get the virus?
[Anna Callahan]: Right. So, you know, I've heard, I know that a couple of our city councilors here in Somerville, Ben, you and Kevin and JT Scott, and as well as other people have been talking about releasing certain portions of the prison population. Certainly the the ones who are oh, what's I'm forgetting the term. I I sometimes call it debtors prison, right? It's people who their pretrial detention. Is that right? So they they haven't been convicted of anything and they just can't pay bail. And so they're held in jail.
[Anna Callahan]: It is so insane. It's really mind-blowing to me that this is true in America today.
[Anna Callahan]: Is there some way that we can pressure people? Is there a way that folks listening here can help with that?
[Anna Callahan]: Great. Do you want to talk a little bit about, we've talked a lot about COVID-19 and how it's affecting people. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you were working on before COVID-19 and about solitary confinement?
[Anna Callahan]: How is that legal?
[Anna Callahan]: And by the way, I think you once mentioned to me the limit. Isn't there a limit under the sort of world human rights? Who has a limit that's... Oh, 15 days.
[Anna Callahan]: That is totally insane.
[Anna Callahan]: That's horrible. Horrifying.
[Anna Callahan]: So, yeah. Wow. Well, let's end on a slightly better note than that one. Do you have any better notes than that one in terms of the incarcerated population? Like, what do you... Is there anything on the horizon? Are there any bills that you think are happening right now, maybe at the state level, that have a good chance of passing? Or, you know, Rachel Rollins, you know, she seems pretty good. And maybe through our elected DAs, we're going to be having some positive movement.
[Anna Callahan]: That's exactly right. That is right. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on today and for talking about this incredibly important, I think, too often overlooked topic. And also for all the work that you do. Oh, thank you. It's really important. I'm going to actually go on. I'm going to see if I can get some mamas folks to some momma's folks to start writing letters. We have one final comment. As the mother of a previously incarcerated, I agree with Caroline when she says the medical care is lax. Inmates are often not taken seriously and there are longer than average wait times for care. Yeah. So medical care in prisons, important topic, especially now. But yeah, we're going to see if we can get some folks to write some letters. And thank you so much. Great to talk to you.
[Anna Callahan]: So just to close this out, you can always, as you can see, we take comments over YouTube. We really want to elevate people's stories. So if you have a story, if anything has been happening to you because of COVID-19, if you've been affected by either the health crisis that we have or if you have been affected economically. We know a lot of people in the district have. We know there are a lot of students in Medford and Somerville who had to leave school and either are stuck having to pay rent where they're not living or are stuck not having a place to live. and then having to find places to live. So if you have any stories, please send them in. We can talk about them anonymously. We can have you on the show. I really believe that good policy is based on uh, hearing directly from what's happening to people. Um, and so, uh, I also think that we help people understand why policy is necessary by really elevating these stories, um, so that we all understand, uh, how policy affects our lives. So thank you so much. Um, great to have everybody here. And that is the end of today's show. We will be back next week. Thank you.
[Anna Callahan]: So it looks like we are live. I want to say hello to everybody who's watching. I see that Hannah is a little bit frozen, so I'm going to go ahead and switch her over. Hey, we've got her. Awesome. So I'm Anna Callahan, and I have with me Hannah Friedman. who has been doing just amazing work with mutual aid Medford and Somerville. So fantastic, really great. So Hannah, I would love to have you just say a little bit about who you are and how MAMAS, Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville started.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, absolutely. So we're going to talk more about mamas in just a second. I thought we might open up with a couple of public service announcements. And I don't know if you've had a chance to read these. There have been some Medium posts that became very popular by a guy named Tomas Pueyo. I'm not sure that I pronounced that correctly. I don't know. Oh, and by the way, if you're watching on YouTube, you can just write a question or a comment and then we can see those and we'll answer people as this goes on live. So in the first Medium post that he made, it's called Coronavirus, Why You Must Act Now. That one is really about how serious this is and the importance of social distancing or what I like to call physical distancing, right? We need to be physically distant from each other. Keeping six feet of space, not touching things other people have touched, just the the reality of how incredibly contagious coronavirus is and how important it is that we slow down, we like flatten the curve, as I say, we slow down the number of people who are infected because of the fear of overwhelming our hospitals. So I don't know if you have any thoughts about that.
[Anna Callahan]: You seem good, I can hear you.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So I just wanted to kind of start this off in case there are people who don't really understand the magnitude of the crisis that we're in and why people are doing all these measures, like why all the schools have been shut down, why all the restaurants have been shut down, you know, why all of this stuff is happening. that it really is critical that we not overwhelm our hospitals, basically. But the other one, and he did a second post after he got many millions of views on that first post, and basically it's talking about what does this look like? Do we have to stay indoors, socially isolated from each other for six months or a year? For people who are maybe aware of how bad it is and want to not be need a ray of hope. So the ray of hope is that already in some countries they have flattened the curve and so it's really a question of right now doing everything we can to reduce the number of people who get it at the same time. But you know there was a great video of a doctor talking about what's happening in Taiwan and in Taiwan you know they are they are currently kind of going about their daily lives. They have tons of tests. They have testing for everyone. They have plenty of masks. Everyone wears masks. As you enter public places like schools or shopping malls, they have little people who have like a little forehead temperature check And then if you are quarantined, the government actually calls you at national health care. So the national health care system calls you three times a day to ask you about your symptoms. And if you need to go to the hospital, they arrange to have you delivered to the hospital. And they pay people to stay home. So, you know, there's a lot of hope there that we are not going to have to live like this forever. And if we can just, you know, be good for the next few weeks, we'll see. Every country is different. Every region is different. But hopefully we can get it under control and have some hope for more normal lives soon. Okay, great. So now I want to ask more questions about Mutually Medford and Somerville. It's so exciting. I know you guys have, you have a lot of email lists. Can you just talk about sort of what you have available to people and how people are communicating through Mamas?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that's awesome. So I know that we don't wanna, you know, give it any personal information, but what are the needs that you're hearing, right? I'm assuming, like, there are people who've lost their jobs. There are people, there are, you know, college students who have been kicked out of the dorms. So tell me what are some of the things that you're hearing from people in their needs?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, definitely. I want to go ahead and take this opportunity. There was someone who posted a need, and for the show we kind of reached out to a few people, and she said she's very happy to have her email that she had sent read on the show. So I'm just going to read the very opening. My name is... So my name is Ivy Ryan and I am a Somerville based actor and teaching artist and I just lost three quarters of my income and I'm scrambling to make it through March and April. So I think there are all sorts of needs that people are posting. It's really amazing to sort of see what you're talking about, that there are people posting what's going on in their lives, and then there are all sorts of people who are offering to help. And I think it's very exciting and really what every community needs, what our community needs, what every community needs.
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely, you know, so thanks for that great segue because I was gonna, I was gonna run by you. So Ben, you and Kemp and City Councilor was going to be here tonight and then you know how everything is changing like every five minutes. I feel like in the last week we've been through like a month. Things are changing so quickly every day, so he's not able to make it tonight, but he sent over some of the things that he and J.T. Scott, two Somerville City Councilors, have requested. They did a resolution for things that they say the state and national government should do, and I'll just read a few of these off, and I'd love to get your sense about them. For workers in small business, including universal paid family and medical leave for all, unexpanded unemployment insurance for all workers, including self-employed, hourly, and gig workers. Financial assistance, including regular direct cash payments to all people without means testing for the duration of the crisis. a public ownership stake of any large corporation receiving a federal bailout, and a prohibition on stock buybacks for any large corporation receiving a bailout. And I know stock buybacks are this thing that's confusing, not a lot of people understand it. They were illegal until 1982. So it is very recently that corporations have been allowed to sort of buy up all of their own stock, which increases the price of their stock, which makes all their shareholders richer, and does nothing for the company except put it in deeper debt. So any thoughts on those before I go on to the next two? Keep going. Keep going. Awesome. Voting rights, including immediate implementation of vote-by-mail policies in all states and territories in order to assure that our democracy functions during this crisis. And the fourth one is incarcerated people, including taking all steps to avoid COVID-19 infection among incarcerated people, such as releasing all people currently held in pretrial detention. A lot of those are people who just don't have the money to pay for cash bail. So sad. Prohibition on detaining people for greater than 48 hours without a court order. without a court order finding a threat to public safety, and immediate clemency and release granted for incarcerated people who do not pose a threat to public safety. Your thoughts?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, totally. I will say, I think we're going to have a criminal justice person on next week to talk about what's happening inside of jails where, you know, there literally isn't soap. It's like people are forced to like eat at the same table. I mean, it's just... terrifying, terrifying.
[Anna Callahan]: Exactly, exactly. And the number of people who are in jail for like marijuana. a lot of crimes, which is not a crime. It's like so crazy, so crazy.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Any final words before we go on to invite our local doctor in to chat with us?
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks, Anna. Thank you so much for all the incredible, incredible work that you guys have done. It's amazing. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you soon. Thank you so much. So I am now going to invite in a doctor whose name is Mvanwi Callahan. And yes, it is not an accident. She is my sister. And here she is. Let me switch over the name. It's the first time I've done this. There we go. Mvanwi, hello. Hi there. I appear to, unfortunately, you are frozen at the moment. Let me just see if I can. You're frozen in Skype. Oh, dear. Oh, no. We've got your photo, but we cannot see you in Skype. So let me, do you mind if I just call you back? That's absolutely fine. Go ahead. I'll be right here. Let me do that. Oh, no. Let's see. I have lost both of them. I'm going to do, A quick dial in.
[Anna Callahan]: Hey, hey, it's Daphne Boland. Hi. Hang on one second. I'm going to see if I can get my sister in here. Daphne is going to be on with us in just a minute. Hi there. Hopefully this is working. Great. Give me one second. I'm going to switch over the camera. That looks perfect. One second here. OK. Hi. Excellent. Great to see you. So first, if you don't mind just introducing yourself for the audience.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. That's awesome. And yeah, can you, first of all, I'm gonna interrupt to say there was a question, I'm just now looking at the comments, so if you're making a comment, said the guest audio is echoing, hopefully we just, hopefully it's not echoing anymore. Got a thumbs up, that looks like that's right. Someone asks, hey everyone, what's for dinner? So it's always good to have fun on these shows. And someone asked, how many people are involved in mamas? Oh, I meant to ask that question. I'm sorry that I didn't. We'll get, well, next time we'll get some updates on that. So move on. I would love to ask you just a general question. Like what is it like to be a doctor here in Medford during this craziness?
[Anna Callahan]: Can you give an example of a recommendation that was yesterday or the other day?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And if we only had the testing, then people could get tested and they wouldn't have to.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about other ways that clinics that are still open are protecting both the clinicians and the patients?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And so one thing I also wanted to ask you about, just because I know we've talked about a little bit, is there's some sort of rotation schedule? So there's specific places where the COVID patients are being sent, and other places where they're not coming in, and then there's a rotation schedule. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, and is there a rotation of
[Anna Callahan]: It's really incredible the sort of organization that is happening between these different hospitals and different, you know, different sort of corporate entities, right? So there's, you know, various different organizations that own different clinics. And so it's really amazing to see that all this coordination happening.
[Anna Callahan]: And the idea of flattening the curve is that the action you take today will flatten the curve 10 days from now? Something like that?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And you were mentioning earlier today, I think that we have more hospitals and medical clinics per person than most places or? Than most places.
[Anna Callahan]: So all you out there, this person you're seeing on the screen is one of the people that you will save a big nightmare and headache and staying up late and working too hard and maybe getting coronavirus if you stay home, keep your social distance, wash your hands. Can you just say one little thing about why washing your hands is really effective, that that is effective and why it's effective?
[Anna Callahan]: And the good thing about washing your hands is like the virus itself is encased in like a lipid. Absolutely. Thank you. Yes.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you, of course, for the work that you're doing. You guys are the heroes of the day, the week, the month, the year, probably. And thanks for being on. Absolutely, thank you. Good luck out there. Okay, be safe. Okay, so our next guest is Daphne Ballin. Here she is. Hey, Daphne, how are you? Hi, how are you? I'm good, and Daphne is one of our paraprofessional teachers in Somerville Public Schools. Do you wanna give a little, I just gave the intro already, but do you wanna say anything more about sort of who you are and all that?
[Anna Callahan]: I've been in the education field for years. Oh, great. You can tell. So I really have two questions for you. The first one is what it's like to be a teacher during the whole coronavirus craziness. And then the second one is going to be about the paras and the current contract fight that you're in. But if you could talk first about what is it like? You're a teacher, and then all the schools are closed.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And what is your, is, are you, so are you doing things during the day through the public school system that they have? Are you doing training? Are you doing, you know, are you interacting within Zoom calls with the kids? Like what's, what's, what's happening day to day?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, we have a comment from one of the viewers that says, thanks, Daphne. And the Welcome Project is offering translation services for free to help communicate resources, et cetera.
[Anna Callahan]: Good, good. Yeah, so I would love to hear from you a little bit more about the paras. I know you guys are in a contract fight with the city of Somerville for a living wage. And if you can give us a brief sort of rundown of what it is and then sort of what's the state of it now.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that's so insane. Sorry, that's like so horrible. It's like I can't even believe it.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Great. It's good to have the update on what's going on with that. Oh, of course. Absolutely. There's lots and lots of us who are on your side. We appreciate that. Of course. So yeah, great to talk to you. Do you have any final thoughts? By the way, if anybody has questions, we can always throw your questions up here. You can just put them in the comments in the YouTube comments section. So yeah, if you have any final thoughts you want to about just about how can we weather this? How can parents get through this time without child care. How do we do that?
[Anna Callahan]: And by the way, being outdoors, A-OK, right? A-OK. A-OK. This whole stay at home thing doesn't mean you can't go for a walk, go for a bike ride, go to a park, and stay six feet away from the other people. Right.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. They do. Great. Thank you so much. Lovely to see you. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Good to see you too. Absolutely. And we'll keep in touch and we'll keep people updated on how the Paris fight is going as well.
[Anna Callahan]: And so that's it. We're going to go ahead and I will close up just with a reiteration that Number one. Oh, I have a lot of comments coming in. Let's see. This is funny. Living in a roommate situation can be tricky in easy times. How do you convince roommates who won't agree to stop having guests over to agree? Is having one guest in your personal quarters over okay? Wow, that's a very interesting question. Who knows who is the best person to answer that question? I have lived with roommates for pretty much my entire adult life. I live in co-ops and my family now lives in co-op and we love our housemates. But we all sat down and we had the conversation about Who is going to be invited over? Who is not going to be invited over? Where is it okay for us to go out of the house? real conversations about the sort of danger, the actual danger of what it could be like. And not, like I know a lot of people, because it's more dangerous for people who are older, maybe younger folks are thinking like, oh well, even if I get it, it's like a flu, it's not a big deal. Like even if you are okay, and even if it is like a regular flu for you, or even if you do not show symptoms, So the reason this thing, you know, my sister who was just on was saying that there were 700 and something cases yesterday in Massachusetts and like 1,700 cases today. So more than doubled the number of cases that we saw come in. That's because you transmit the disease to anyone that you interact with before you even have any symptoms at all, before you know that you have it. For other people, it is really important that you guys have that conversation and talk about like, hey, you know, who is going to come over? And where are those people going? And what are those people doing? And washing your hands and all those things. I do feel for you. Having roommates can be a big blessing, makes you less lonely. But it also, you know, these things to discuss and agree upon are pretty important. So good luck with that discussion. And oh, and we have a comment from someone saying, I would have a conversation with your roommates about not having guests over. The more closed loop, you could have the better chance of not spreading, less interaction, less spreading. So great. And then finally, I will put, I don't know how to do it right now. I'm still new to this thing of broadcasting at the same time as having other people, other speakers on, so using some new software. But I'm going to put some links to the Tomas Pueyo articles, the Medium articles, about why you must act now, so the importance that might be helpful with the roommate discussion. And then the hammer and the dance, which is a lovely, a really good article that gives you hope that we're not going to be here social distancing forever. I also have someone commenting, saying that if it's multiple roommates and having a group conversation and getting everyone on the same page is really important. And I totally agree with that. Thank you, everyone. It has been great. I want to say one of the big goals of doing this, we're going to try and do it every week with different folks. We have city councilors from several and Medford that we'll have on the show, and lots of other people. And one of the big goals is to hear stories of what's happening in our community. and to have others in our community be aware of what's happening to the sort of more vulnerable people. So we know that there are folks here who have lost their housing because they were at Tufts. We know there are folks here who have lost their jobs. And so finding ways that we can support each other is what this is all about. Thank you, everyone. We're going to sign off for now. You can always go to AnnaCallahan.com slash getupdates to sign up there to make sure that you hear about future shows that we're going to have. We'll try and have them once a week. Thank you. Bye bye. Stay safe.
[Anna Callahan]: Hi there is Anna Callahan, I'm one of your city Councilors and today I want to talk a little bit about why we have these prop two and a half overrides on the ballot in November and why you should vote yes. So a lot of people may feel that they already pay a lot in taxes, and they want to know where that money is going. I think that is a fair question. I think, first, it's important to understand that it costs money to run a city. So the question is, are we spending just as much as other cities but getting less in services? Are we spending more money than other cities and somehow wasting it? Are we spending less money and not able to meet our expenses? So in fiscal year 2024, Medford ranks 320th out of 351 municipalities in our operating budget per capita. Of all of the other 58 cities in Massachusetts, Medford spends less per person than every single one of those. Our budget is smaller per person than every other city in Massachusetts. Our budget is also smaller than 90% of all towns in Massachusetts. 90% of towns spend more per person than we do. They have a larger budget than we do. The few that spend less than we do are much smaller than we are. So we really do not have a budget that is large enough to properly fund our city. Our budget is too small. I wanna get into a little bit of a detailed discussion of our budget. And this idea, I've heard a lot of people talk about the idea that we should be able to like scrimp and save our way out of this budget crisis, right? So let's go ahead and show you a graph that I made. So this is our budget. And I want you to just look at the largest expense we have. This is our schools. And I think everyone agrees, no matter what side of this issue of the Prop 2.5 issue you're on, everyone agrees that we need to fund our schools and properly fund them. There was a crisis this year that we did not have enough in the operating budget to properly fund the schools now that the ARPA funds, the city, or sorry, the federal funds that were there for COVID, now that those funds have ended. So we were looking for how to find at least three million, maybe five million more dollars to fund the schools. So we're not taking money out of the school budget, that's for sure. The second largest one is insurance. Now, insurance is required by law. Unfortunately, it goes up as well. It's not something that stays fixed. It's something that goes up, it increases every year just due to normal inflation and everything else. And it's uncontrollable. There's nothing we can do. We cannot cut out of the insurance budget. This next one is pensions. Now, pensions, our contracts, we are required to fulfill by law. They also are not staying the same or going down. There is an uncontrollable expense. We cannot take money out of the pensions budget. Next is the fire department. And after that is the police department. I suspect that no one, no matter what side of the prop two and a half override question you are on, wants us to drastically cut our police and fire departments. After police and fire, the next one is highway, right? That's DBW highway. That means our roads. And I do want to get a little bit into roads because I think talking about roads can help people understand why we are in the situation that we are in. We had a roads assessment done for the first time in 2019. And that assessment rated our roads one, two, three, four, and five. And with one being the best and five being the worst. A full 49% of our roads rated four or five. They're the worst two categories of roads. Now, you can tell, right? You know that. I know that. We drive on the roads. I bike on the roads. We walked on the sidewalks. And we can all basically, we didn't need an assessment to tell us that. But what the assessment can tell us is that it costs between 30 and 50 times as much to repair a category 5 road as it does to repair a category 2 road. Now, if we just always fixed the Category 2 roads to Category 1 roads, if we just always fixed our roads every year, the state Chapter 90 funding, it would cover everything, right? But when you allow your roads to fall into such disrepair, You balloon this road debt, right? You balloon the amount of money that's called a backlog, the amount of money it will take to repair your roads, because it costs so much more to repair dilapidated roads. It's as if you have a house, and you allow a leak in your roof to continue. You don't fix it, and you keep letting it get worse and worse. That's going to destroy your ceiling. It's going to destroy your hardwood floors. It's going to destroy the ceiling on the next floor. It costs more and more money. by not repairing. Now, we have underfunded our city for so long. that we are ballooning these kinds of debt, the amount of capital projects, buildings, fire trucks that need to be replaced, that are long overdue for being replaced. We have many tens of millions of dollars, $67 million in road debt and many tens of millions of dollars in capital improvement debt because we have underfunded our city, chronically. So going back to this, this is roads right there. And we do not want to underfund our roads because it just makes the problem so much worse. After roads is bonds. That is debt that we must repay. And again, we can't cut that. It continues to increase, like not increase, but it continues to be something that we have to pay. And then you get to the library facilities. And there are other much, much, much smaller amounts in here. But none of these are going to cover the $3 million that we need to give to the schools. So there is literally nowhere, unless you're willing to cut police and fire, there is nowhere to scrimp and save and find the money that we need to fund our schools. The only way that we are going to get a budget that appropriately funds our schools and our roads is by doing what almost every other city and town in Massachusetts has done, which is to pass a Prop 2.5 override. And I will also say that the proponents of Prop 2.5 in 1980, they didn't pass it to make it wrong or bad or illegal. to increase taxes more than two and a half, not increase taxes by two and a half percent, but to increase the total amount, the total tax levy, the total amount of taxes that a city brings in more than two and a half percent. They wanted cities to put them on the ballot so that when it was necessary and appropriate, those taxes would in fact go up. So I hope that this has been informative. I look forward to any kinds of questions that you have and do reach out. And I hope that everyone will vote yes on six, seven, and eight. Thank you.