[Bruce Kulik]: Before we get started, I'd like to remind the audience to please mute their cell phones. Good evening and welcome to the Medford Democratic City Committee City Council Forum. The general election will be held November the 4th, with early voting beginning this Saturday, October the 25th. Tonight's program is being broadcast, streamed, and recorded for later playback by the Medford Community Media. My name is Bruce Kulik, and along with Phyllis Morrison, we are the co-chairs of the committee. All candidates, regardless of political affiliation, were invited to attend. Tonight we will hear from 10 of the 14 City Council candidates. Nate Merritt is unable to attend due to a previous family engagement. Paul Donato Jr. had a previous work commitment and is unable to attend. Rick Caraviello is recovering from knee replacement surgery and is unable to attend. His wife Cara will be arriving later this evening to deliver his closing statement. And George Scarpelli declined to participate. The moderators for tonight's forum will be myself and Phyllis. and we're joined by volunteers from Jumbo Vote, a nonpartisan student-run organization from the Titch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. The co-president of Jumbo Vote is Tegan Mastone. Tonight's volunteers also include our timekeepers, Julia Kiko, Macy D. Giuseppe, and stage managers Amy Zhao and Ella Hochman. We also have a volunteer from Medford High School, Jacob Yee, who will be operating the lights and providing technical assistance. The format of tonight's forum will consist of two rounds of questions and responses, with each candidate receiving one question in each round. We will then have each candidate deliver a closing statement. The order of speaking was determined by a random selection conducted earlier this week by members of the organizing committee, with candidates allowed to swap positions if they wanted to by mutual agreement. Each candidate will be allowed two minutes response time for each question and two minutes for the closing statement. The timekeeper will display a yellow card when 15 seconds remain and a red card when time has expired. The moderator will then tell the candidates that time is up. We will now introduce each candidate. When your name is called, please stand if able, greet the audience, and then please be seated. Justin Tseng. Liz Mullane, Matt Leming, Nick Guerrillo, Anna Callahan, Zach Bares, Melanie Tringali, Emily Lazzaro, Miranda Prezzino, and Patrick Clerkin. We will now conduct the Q&A portion of tonight's forum. The questions will be asked in two rounds, with each candidate responding in the order previously determined. We have developed several questions for tonight's forum. The questions will be drawn from a glass bowl by one of the student volunteers and provided to the moderator, who will then ask the question to the candidate. The candidate will then have two minutes to respond as they wish.
[Bruce Kulik]: That concludes the first round of questions. We will now proceed to round two. We have replaced the questions in the jar with a separate set for round two that will include different topics. The first question goes to Justin Tsang. The new charter would give the city ward representation on city council a four-year term for mayor with four-term limit and the ability of the school committee to elect its own chair, among other things. What is your position regarding passage of the new charter?
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you, Justin. Next question is for Liz Mullane. How would you approach your role in oversight, funding, and collaboration with the Medford Comprehensive High School Building Committee to ensure a transparent and fiscally sound process?
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you, Liz. The next question is for Matt Leming. What specific steps should the city take to support small businesses and local entrepreneurs while ensuring Medford's growth remains responsible, sustainable, and aligned with the needs of residents and the community?
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you, Matt. The next question goes to Nick Girelio. Closer, Girelio. Girelio, thank you. I apologize.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's insulting. Please explain your position on whether using free cash to cover operating expenses is a fiscally sound policy and why.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you, Nick. The next question goes to Anna Callahan. Medford has many heat islands, a diminished tree canopy, and areas vulnerable to flooding. What is one specific action you would like to take to address climate change risk for Medford, and how would you pay for it?
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you, Anna. The next question is for Zach Baird. What is your position on the current divestment policy recently vetoed by the mayor? How would you monitor and enforce it without undermining the city's fiscal flexibility or return on investments? Or, if you don't agree with it, what alternative ethical investment criteria, if any, would you propose?
[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to note that at this time Carol Caraviello has joined us on stage. She will be delivering Rick Caraviello's closing statements shortly. The next question goes to Melanie Tringale. What city department do you feel is most in need of significant increase in its budget for the next fiscal year and why?
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you. The next question goes to Emily Lazzaro. What specific tools, meetings, or outreach methods will you use to strengthen communication and engagement with the community?
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you, Emily. I'd also like to remind the candidates at this time to refrain from invoking the names of other candidates in their responses. Thank you. The next question goes to Miranda Roseña. Did I say that right?
[Bruce Kulik]: Looking ahead five to ten years, what is your vision for Medford's future? What role do you see the city council playing in helping us get there?
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you Miranda. And the final question tonight goes to Patrick Clurkin. If elected to Medford City Council, what is your top priority for the city? How do you plan to turn this into action? And what specific steps will you take to make measurable progress about that within your term?
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you, Patrick.
[Bruce Kulik]: And welcome to the Medford Democratic City Committee School Committee Candidates Forum. Tonight's program is being broadcast, streamed and recorded for later playback by the Medford Community Media. My name is Bruce Kulik and along with Phyllis Morrison, who is absent tonight, we are the co-chairs of the committee. Tonight we will hear statements of responses to questions from all nine school committee candidates. The general election will be held November the 4th with early voting beginning October 25th. The moderators will be myself and Anita Tucker, who is a member of the committee. We are joined by volunteers from Jumbo Vote, a non-partisan student-run organization from the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. Tufts students' volunteers tonight include our timekeepers, Tegan Mastone, Dombian Kurt, Eleanor Shockney-Martello, Jules Zinn-Rothorn. We also have a volunteer from the Medford High, Jacob Yee, who is up in the booth operating the lights and providing technical assistance. Mayor Brianna Lungel has graciously declined to participate tonight to allow the focus to remain on the school committee candidates. The format of tonight's forum will consist of opening statements by each candidate, followed by questions and responses by each candidate, and concluded with a closing statement. The order of speaking was determined by random selection conducted earlier by members of the organizing committee, with candidates allowed to swap positions by mutual agreement. Candidate Intoppa has notified us he has additional personal engagement this evening and will need to leave early. He has designated Lacey Intoppa to deliver his closing statement. Each candidate will be allowed two minutes for the opening and closing statements as well as two minutes response time for each question. The timekeeper will display a yellow card when 15 seconds remain and a red card when time has expired. The moderator will then tell the candidate that time is up.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you to all the candidates for their opening statement. We will now conduct the Q&A portion of tonight's forum. The questions will be asked in three rounds with each candidate responding in the order previously determined. We have developed 27 questions for tonight's forum. Each candidate will draw a question from a glass bowl. The question will be provided to the moderator who will ask the questions to the candidate. The candidate will then have two minutes to respond as they wish. The first round begins with candidate Mastro Brioni. Please draw a question from the bowl and return to the volunteer.
[Bruce Kulik]: What motivates you to run for school committee and what particular skills or experience qualify you to serve? So to repeat the question. What motivates you to run for school committee and what particular skills or experience qualify you to serve?
[Bruce Kulik]: What do you believe the primary roles and responsibilities of a school committee are? Provide some examples of the differences between the school committee's role and the superintendent's role.
[Bruce Kulik]: Provide some examples of the difference between the school committee's role and the superintendent's role.
[Bruce Kulik]: John Intoppa. What are your views on school safety policies and disciplinary practices? What steps would you take to address behavioral and mental health challenges facing students and staff?
[Bruce Kulik]: Jenny Graham. Oh, excuse me, Jessica Parks. What ideas do you have to engage parents and taxpayers to ensure their voices are heard?
[Bruce Kulik]: Jenny Graham. What role do you think school committees should play in supporting the rights of gender-flexible students?
[Bruce Kulik]: Lisa Kingsley.
[Bruce Kulik]: What do you see is the district's greatest strengths and weaknesses regarding student achievement? What are you proud of? What would you like to see improved?
[Bruce Kulik]: Nicole Brandlue.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do you believe that students should have access in the classrooms to the personal devices like phones, tablets, laptops for research or learning tools? How should the school committee ensure equity for students who might be unable to afford such technology?
[Bruce Kulik]: Do you believe that students should have access in the classroom to their personal devices like phones, tablets, or laptops for research or to use learning tools? How should the school committee ensure equity for students who might be unable to afford such technology?
[Bruce Kulik]: Erika Reinfeld. Should we increase or reduce the resources applied to special needs or English language learners? Please explain.
[Bruce Kulik]: Paul Rousseau.
[Bruce Kulik]: Does Medford need a new high school building? Please provide examples supporting that choice.
[Bruce Kulik]: Does Medford need a new high school building? Please provide examples supporting that choice. That feels like a softball. Thank you. They were randomly assigned.
[Bruce Kulik]: That concludes the second round of questions. We will now proceed to the third and final round. Michael Mastrobianni. Massachusetts voters recently approved a measure to eliminate MCAS as a graduation requirement, but to retain it to assess student achievement and identify schools needing support. What is your perspective on the decline in MCAS scores post-COVID and the decision to eliminate it as a graduation requirement?
[Bruce Kulik]: What is your perspective on the possibility of federal budget allocation being subject to federal guidelines or curriculum and policy requirements, such as teaching the history of enslaved people, DEI policies, or the treatment of transgender students?
[Bruce Kulik]: As indicated earlier, John Antofa had to leave due to a previous personal commitment. We will then proceed now to Jessica Parks. Will you support a debt exclusion tax override to build or renovate a new Medford High School?
[Bruce Kulik]: OK. Next to Jenny Graham.
[Bruce Kulik]: We'll get out early this way.
[Bruce Kulik]: After-school programs have been an ongoing challenge for Medford. Do you think that after-school programs are important, and how would you help address this challenge?
[Bruce Kulik]: Lisa Kingsley. What are your views on the district's current literacy or math programs? Are there types of programs you would like to see put in place to provide more flexibility in instruction?
[Bruce Kulik]: Nicole Ranley. What can be done about improving the nutritional value of food provided to our students?
[Bruce Kulik]: What can be done about improving the nutritional value of food provided to our students?
[Bruce Kulik]: Erika Reinfeld. Around the nation, parents and groups have expressed concern about certain books being available to their children or used as optional teaching materials. Are there certain types of books or books with particular message or characters that we should restrict at any grade level?
[Bruce Kulik]: And finally, Paul Rousseau.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll read it afterwards. All right. Medford currently has an interim superintendent What criteria and methods will you use to ensure that the best superintendent is selected from a broad range of internal and external candidates?
[Bruce Kulik]: At this time I would like to invite Lacey and Tapa to join us on stage. And while we're waiting, I will read the question, which is one I wish had been asked. How will you evaluate technology purchases to ensure they provide a strong return on investment? How should the school committee ensure equity for students who might be unable to afford internet at home? So you can all think about that and dream about it tonight.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you to all the candidates and thank you to the Medford Public Schools for allowing us the use of the auditorium. Also to the volunteers from Tufts and from Medford High and finally the staff here who helped us this evening to set up the stage, get everything ready. We truly appreciate your help. That concludes tonight's School Committee Candidate Forum. Please note that the Medford Democratic City Committee will hold a forum for City Council candidates next Thursday at 7 p.m. here in the Caron Theater. and it will be broadcast, streamed, and recorded by Medford Public Media. Thank you for attending and viewing this forum. Have a good night.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, Daniel Nuzzo-Miller, chair, is absent. Emily O'Brien, vice chair.
[Bruce Kulik]: Bruce Kulik, secretary, here. Gerard Powell, appears absent. Ernie Meunier.
[Bruce Kulik]: Noam Reuveni.
[Bruce Kulik]: Mary-Kate Christopherson, appears absent. Leah Grodstein appears absent. Rebecca Wright appears absent. Adam Shire. I'm here. Chris Stivers.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hannah Renkert.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you. And we have a quorum, we can continue.
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, Adam Klein. That's a new one. Yes, you're right.
[Bruce Kulik]: Why don't we return to him? Hi, is everyone there? Oh, there you go.
[Bruce Kulik]: We have an infrastructure agenda item scheduled for about 755. If necessary, we could move that forward at the discretion of the chair. I guess I appreciate it.
[Bruce Kulik]: One more person, someone, Kaitlin.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's a part of the eight o'clock review of goals, priorities, and procedures master plan. Uh, we can discuss it at that point.
[Bruce Kulik]: We have that under events 735.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think I don't have the minutes. I can bring it up and confirm if you want.
[Bruce Kulik]: What was that question?
[Bruce Kulik]: You had requested who was authorized, and I did get the minutes. Yes, Daniel was authorized to write to DCR. Sorry.
[Bruce Kulik]: Bruce? Yeah, I'd like to suggest that we actually get more formal about this. We need somebody to kind of take the lead on giving us a design, whether that be Arlington or whether that be us. And then we review with the other team and come to a consensus on what we want to present. And I think the idea of blacking out the lines is a great one, just so that it's clear that It's perfectly okay and encouraged if you so desire to take the lane and ride the rotary like you normally would, because frankly, that's the only efficient way to get through there. Yeah. So, to that end, I will suggest that we take the lead on that. I'm not quite sure who can do this in a timely manner. I am going to be traveling for a few days and back on Wednesday. That seems a little bit late. So unless somebody else can volunteer to do it on our side, then maybe we should ask Arlington to take the lead.
[Bruce Kulik]: Is that in our chat?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, good. I'll copy it from there. Thank you.
[Bruce Kulik]: And our Chris, Chris Stivers, was that you that produced that diagram? That very simple sketch? Yeah. And is that something that you're comfortable doing, I mean, from several angles? Because that was pretty quick and easy and better than that.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think that if you and I can work together, I'd be happy to do that. And you can come up with a proposal. We can kind of run it past a few of us, not as an official vote, but just to get ideas and then present it at their next meeting. Again, not as something we have definitely approved, but as a starting point. And then we can come back with hopefully an approved version from them. maybe perhaps another representative or Anton can come and then we can work out in conference committee, if you will, any changes we need, or hopefully we'll just need to rubber stamp it at that point.
[Bruce Kulik]: So can you... I'd like to make an official motion so we can close down on this because we do need to move on to the car pump track.
[Bruce Kulik]: I would like to make the motion that we authorize Bruce and Chris basically to do the verbiage we just talked about, come up with a diagram, get it sent to Arlington, attend the Arlington meeting, at least one of us, and then come back with a proposal that we can vote upon.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you, too, Anton. We'll see you in a few weeks.
[Bruce Kulik]: Point of order, Scott. When you get a chance, could you provide either a link that everybody can use to reference this or a PDF, whatever works best for you?
[Bruce Kulik]: If you could pop that into the chat now, that would be great. Otherwise, we'll get to it later.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to move that we create a letter of support, perhaps sending it, I guess, going to the mayor might be the right place and identify people who we would want to provide the letter to.
[Bruce Kulik]: We need a second on a motion if someone's willing to do so. I second. All right.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it's probably best if you actually follow up on that thread. That way we'll be sure to get it.
[Bruce Kulik]: And you'll put the link in shortly?
[Bruce Kulik]: We had gotten kind of blindsided by that. And I realized what happened is we had an email exchange about it. And it never made it back into any of our official agenda. And Emily, I think you were involved in that email thread as well. And so at the last minute, we thought we'd try to put it together, only to discover that there weren't sufficient. We didn't have enough manpower to do it. So we wrote to Cash and said, we're not going to do it. So bottom line there, we don't have to worry about it. And yeah, you're right, Daniel's taking care of Harvest Your Energy, that's in a while. Do you want me to move on with the Tufts Community Day?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, so I'm the coordinator for Tufts Community Day. And whoops, hang on, let me.
[Bruce Kulik]: We've already applied as far as I know.
[Bruce Kulik]: How can I tell?
[Bruce Kulik]: All right. While we're checking that, we could move on. So Tufts Community Day is October the 5th. And I at least will show up. And we are there. Good. All right. And I'll send out email to anybody who can help volunteer for that. It's kind of standard tabling. We'll show up and answer questions and say hi to everybody. So that's that.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, but I'll do so before then by just watch your email. I'll send it out to the whole list and we can coordinate any scheduling or logistics.
[Bruce Kulik]: One person will do, it's just, you know, if you're there for three hours, it's kind of, you get a dry mouth and it's always useful to have two people because often people show up in pairs for some reason, you know, so it's good to have two or three people at the booth.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do we have any other possibly identified fundraising sources. Did Brookline Bank not step up? Did I hear that from before? Or is that another one? Or are there other organizations we think we might be able to get some funding from?
[Bruce Kulik]: Do we need to authorize anything specifically for them to authorize them to ask Alicia to purchase approximately 400 or 48 helmets or whatever the number is at rounds appropriately.
[Bruce Kulik]: Correct.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think it was primarily the, the Clippership Drive Main Street, um, interface, possible signal, et cetera. That's why Todd needs to be involved because he was going to present what's happening with the Contra Flow Lane, et cetera. And that's what we're waiting for on that.
[Bruce Kulik]: Emily, you had asked me to add a door zone bike lane question. Right.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so just a couple of clarifications regarding Boston Avenue. Are you referring to the whole distance or specific blocks? Just so I understand the context.
[Bruce Kulik]: I have a lot of experience riding Boston Avenue all the way from High Street to College Avenue. I do find that the lane on the lower, I guess maybe it's the upper part, towards High Street is narrow, but does offer sufficient space, being aware of the possibility of dooring, which is the case even when we don't have bike lanes. So I'll put that out there, that putting the bike lane in or not, I don't think for an inexperienced rider has much effect on the possibility of touring. In fact, if anything, the bike lane might increase that. That's hard to say. I will definitely say that if the roadway has any sort of a downhill, in that area, that configuration is absolutely inappropriate, as we've seen on the downhill side of Boston Avenue, where we've chosen to put in sharrows. And that's because simply any inexperienced cyclist can get up to 18 or 20 miles an hour without breaking a sweat, and that becomes extremely dangerous to be in a door zone at that speed. On the uphill side, on the other hand, cyclists, including myself, are often going significantly slower, 8-10 miles an hour, and therefore the the notion of being in the way, which some people are uncomfortable with, is higher. And it would mean that without a bike lane, there's things we could use to mitigate it. But you would be out in traffic more, going slower, which does become uncomfortable for a lot of people. and for motor vehicle operators who feel they don't have enough room and don't know that they can cross the line. And of course, at rush hour, you can't really cross the line on Boston Avenue because there's too much traffic. So one of the other points is that if there are no bike lanes put in, then the default configuration is to center the yellow line so that there's equal amount of space. However, if you were to leave the line where it is currently, and not provide a bike lane, you would effectively have a 14-foot lane on one side and a 10-foot lane on the other side. It looks funny, but I'm not quite sure what that would do. So the real question here is, given the lack of space, what does the paint actually do or not do? And is it really more dangerous to have an uphill bike lane at that location than nothing at all. I'm torn and you know how I feel about a lot of bad infrastructure. Yep.
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, and by the way, the area where the construction is is a whole other deal.
[Bruce Kulik]: I will say- You were completely stopped prior to this because you either knew the door was opening or you staged this?
[Bruce Kulik]: Kind of like the rotary situation we discussed earlier. Yeah, exactly.
[Bruce Kulik]: And that's- I think it's only four feet for the bike lane as well.
[Bruce Kulik]: So I want, I want to be clear about what your proposal would be. You would want us to have a minimum set of width that before we recommend a bike lane, otherwise we would recommend share us.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think the biggest difference is the yellow line has moved left. And so the lane is effectively wider with or without the bike lane.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I think that I understand your dimensions, and I've looked through them myself. I think, practically speaking, in an urban environment like Boston and Medford in particular, That is not a practical set of criteria for deciding whether or not a bike lane fits, because we just do not have the room, period. I always contrast it to what it would look like without the bike lane there. And I'm going to have to say that I can't support your minimum concept that you're putting forth because I think what would end up happening is it would end up getting painted in a symmetrical way, thereby narrowing the uphill lane significantly and making it worse. The only thing that you've really put forth as a potential safety hazard is people who are not aware of the door zone and do not ride accordingly and that is not going to change actually if a bike lane is taken out because people will not ride in a narrow lane out where we think they ought to, because they're afraid of harassment, they're afraid of getting hit, they're just not playing comfortable with it, etc. And so I think that even though it is not ideal, I don't think we have much of a choice but to go with the absolute minimums, which is what we've done in this situation. So I've got to say at this point, I can't support this, if it would be a resolution, I can't support going that route and saying that we should only recommend them when we have a certain amount of width, otherwise we'll put sharrows in.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I'd like to reiterate that if we remove the bike lane, that we retain the asymmetrical lane widths so that there's sufficient passing room. Otherwise, you're going to end up with a 12-foot lane and absolutely no space for anybody.
[Bruce Kulik]: Could you put a reference in the chat, please?
[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to make a motion. Yeah. Are we ready to move on to the next piece? Because I wanted to make a motion.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I want to make a motion that we table this until the next meeting. And I would like to move it as the first item in the agenda, possibly at the expense of other items that we, cause we never seem to get to this and it's an important issue. Okay. That's my motion.
[Bruce Kulik]: Motion to adjourn. All right. Thanks all.
[Bruce Kulik]: With the record, could you identify yourself so we have that?
[Bruce Kulik]: All right. That's great. Got to make sure we haven't started the meeting officially yet. I wanted to add it as a preamble to the minutes.
[Bruce Kulik]: Daniel Nuzzo-Muller. Present. Emily O'Brien, vice chair.
[Bruce Kulik]: Bruce Kulik, secretary, here. Jared Powell here, Emily manure.
[Bruce Kulik]: I did, but that's because Emily is right above your name. And I just did one of those, you know, whatever.
[Bruce Kulik]: No.
[Bruce Kulik]: Mary Kate Gustafson present. Thea Gronstein, not present. And Rebecca Wright, not present. Adam Shire, not present. Chris Stivers, Stivers? Stivers. Stivers. What is it?
[Bruce Kulik]: Say again? Stivers. Stivers, sorry. Present. Yep. And Anna Rankert. Excellent. So let me mark the ones who are not present. All right, we have a quorum and we may proceed. We have a guest tonight.
[Bruce Kulik]: Seconded.
[Bruce Kulik]: Put that in the infrastructure section.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hopefully Todd will be with us if he's joining us.
[Bruce Kulik]: Before we move on, we have actually a clipper ship connector access that I had asked Todd to help us with later. We should keep any other further comments for that section.
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay. So you want to add a, I thought we, I thought I saw an email about that as well.
[Bruce Kulik]: I've noted that you want an agenda item for next meeting.
[Bruce Kulik]: Daniel, what is this? You call it the Hills Hill contract? Yes, playground by the ice rink. That's the official name of the playground.
[Bruce Kulik]: This is a mountain bike track path. What is it?
[Bruce Kulik]: It is apropos to the next agenda item, which, unfortunately, Scott emailed me about an hour ago and said that he will not be able to make it tonight, which is too bad, because I was looking forward to hear more about what his ideas were. And he's asked to reschedule. For next week's, I'll have to go back and be in touch with him to find out if he can make it to the next meeting instead. So I just wanted to relay that. But it is interesting that maybe several of us on our own might want to just go over there and see what it's all about so we have a sense of what Scott's talking about.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's a request for an agenda item, so that's now in the minutes.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, why don't we keep that thought for the next meeting when we have the agenda that'll just talk in general about the master plan and we can figure out what that means.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think it was mostly Pat who put it together, right?
[Bruce Kulik]: Can we just email these to you?
[Bruce Kulik]: Who seconded?
[Bruce Kulik]: Please raise your hand. I didn't hear it was Leah. Thank you.
[Bruce Kulik]: Um, just summarize at this point, the motion that's on the table, which is to, um, empower Daniel to provide a C click fix agenda items, basically at his discretion to figure out, um, who should get them and lobby the city to have that happen. Do I have that recorded correctly?
[Bruce Kulik]: Aye.
[Bruce Kulik]: In the past, we have said that we would assign an individual who would be responsible for making sure that everything's coordinated so that we don't have repeat of the circle square where either nobody shows up or the tent's not there. Do we have somebody on this? Is that you? Is that somebody else?
[Bruce Kulik]: I would like to suggest that maybe some of the newer people think about this.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm willing to staff it and be at the table, but I was being reluctant to coordinate it because we also have another event which I'm planning on coordinating, which we haven't talked about yet. I would certainly be available to be at the, at the booth.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hang on one second before I get too committed about that. Oh, no, I'm good. Thank you.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think I've got access to it. I'd have to double check, but I think I do.
[Bruce Kulik]: OK. I can work with both of you and figure out what we want to do. For me, it's mostly just been a matter of attention. I won't even say bandwidth, but just getting my attention to think about what should we do and what changes need to be made. So by having additional people doing that, I think that might be helpful.
[Bruce Kulik]: We can just do that offline.
[Bruce Kulik]: So I left a link in the agenda, which I will copy to the chat for everybody's edification. And it's basically going to be on October the 5th from 11 to 2 PM. They are looking for people to sign up, they say as soon as possible. So hopefully we're not too late, but I would take the lead on that and get us there. And if we are accepted, then organize for people to show up. Otherwise I would just show up and I would volunteer to be the coordinator for that event as well. So that's assuming we want to do it. So all we need is just approval for me to go ahead with it and I can take it from there.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it's our basic table. And we hang out at the table. People come and talk to us. And if we have lights to give away, we do that. I have in my head to get some better handout material or better program. And I know, Chris, you and I are on planning to get together. I think, who else was the third person who was going to do that? Adam. Adam.
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, Adam, OK, not on today. So anyhow, where was I going with that? Yeah, so basically, that's what we do at the tables, and answer questions that people might have. How do you get places? What are we doing about blah, blah, blah? When does ClipperShipConnector open? Blah, blah, blah, that kind of things.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's a general crowd that when people show up, it's like literally a community day, and it's really more externally facing than internal for Tufts.
[Bruce Kulik]: All right, I will send out separately a call for volunteers as we get a little bit closer. And assuming we get accepted, I do need to contact them, which we'll do in the next day or so. So I heard a motion, I think. Anna, that's right. That's what I had you named out for. One second.
[Bruce Kulik]: And we're looking for a second, I think.
[Bruce Kulik]: Emily.
[Bruce Kulik]: Aye.
[Bruce Kulik]: Breakstone. Breakstone.
[Bruce Kulik]: So, again, this is working group stuff, I suppose, but... I'd like to move that we form that working group and appoint people to that group at this point.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, that's fine.
[Bruce Kulik]: Please raise your hand when you second, so I can tell who did it. Thank you. Thank you, Chris.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so I went through there, I think, after the signs were put up. And I've got to say that I don't remember there being a kind of continuous path as to how to do things. Maybe I missed a sign or maybe someone pulled down.
[Bruce Kulik]: It could be that because I was on my bike and perhaps going faster than a pedestrian would be, I bypassed some of them without realizing it. Yeah, I mean, we did our best.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll endeavor to do another survey at some point in the next week or two, just as I go through that area to see. Maybe some have come down or if either suggestions.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thanks for the effort.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm not sure what they did there. They said they were going to do it. There was some modification of the islands planned, but it was not a major thing. I don't know, Jared. I don't know. Why are you listed as the person?
[Bruce Kulik]: That's fine, I think we can do that for when Todd's here. However, we had pushed some of the Mystic Valley Parkway repainting discussion to this agenda item. And I did have some comments I wanted to make in that area.
[Bruce Kulik]: I was quite surprised when I saw the ghosts getting painted prior to the actual painting, because I was not aware that there were going to be any changes. I didn't see any requests for comments, anything of that sort. So it was really kind of a blindsiding, in my opinion, of the public with regard to painting what they painted there. And I've got to say, frankly, it's substandard. It does not adhere to many of the guidelines, particularly with regard to entering rotaries, traffic circles and the like. The bike lanes supposedly that went across the bridge, basically doesn't have any provisions for crossing straight onto Medford Street going into Arlington. All it does is turn you to the right at Mystic Valley Parkway. So it makes it kind of difficult. A couple of things it does, it discourages lane control, which is vitally important if you're going to be riding right through a rotary. It kind of makes the assumption that you're going to get off and ride through the crosswalk or dismount, et cetera. And I just think that it was, was done hastily and without sufficient input from stakeholders.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's correct.
[Bruce Kulik]: This link that was provided is basically for the paths and not so much for the rotary, it looks like. OK.
[Bruce Kulik]: So, I do remember this 1. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's not what was implemented.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think the big problem with the current design and where I'm afraid this is going to go is it basically provides, there's two ways for cyclists to safely get through this intersection. One is by merging with traffic that might be wanting to turn right or effectively controlling the lane as you do so and proceeding through the rotary as a vehicle. The other option is to be shunted basically off to the crosswalk, but because of the nature of where those crosswalks are, that's an incredibly non-efficient mechanism for most cyclists, especially if you're coming down the hill from Arlington into the rotary, you have substantial speed at that point coming through. At least any non-trivial cyclist will have that. So it really becomes a question of making sure that motor traffic that's turning right is aware that there are cyclists potentially continuing straight. And whether that's done with signage or paint markings or whatever, that in my opinion is the biggest issue that needs to be faced because this rotary serves a fair number of what I refer to as fairly experienced cyclists. It also is kind of trepidation for those who are not. So it's fine to provide a pedestrian-like approach through here for those cyclists who don't want to ride it, but not at the expense of making it more dangerous or more confrontational for cyclists who are competent and are willing to ride through with traffic, which is probably most of us here. with the exception of maybe some of us when we're using a larger bike that's heavy and so on. So that's my comment about that and why I'm concerned with what is there now, similar to what Emily said.
[Bruce Kulik]: I don't do it. I just ride with traffic there. It's also a very slow rotary.
[Bruce Kulik]: Well, that's on the Medford side, less so on the Arlington side.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's also that the motorists are more familiar with the patterns and therefore have an expectation of cyclists being to the right in those situations. And I think that's part of the problem that we have here is to the right is out of sight, out of mind. And therefore, it's really important to be able to assert oneself in those situations. Yeah, I wish we had what we had in Sweden or wherever, because they do it right somehow.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, but I mean, it never has felt like I'm being slowed down deliberately because I've approached an intersection. I feel like I've got the same throughput that motor vehicle traffic has whenever I'm in those situations.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so just a couple of comments regarding the points that Leah had made at Outer House. I can understand how the current way it's set up is more comfortable for somebody who's willing to basically walk their way slowly through the intersection and watch every time they're crossing one of the ways that somebody is not taking their right of way. I can understand that. But the second thing is the rotary on the Arlington side, at least, is a much faster rotary than the one at Powderhouse Square. Both College Avenue and Broadway are slower streets. Powderhouse previously didn't used to be, but they put in mountains all over the place, making it harder to go fast on Powderhouse. In any event, that rotary is inherently a much slower rotary than the one on the Arlington side there is. And that is one of the reasons why pushing the people to the outside of the rotary like that can result in the issues that Emily was bringing up, where people get hidden by other cars, people exiting the rotary at higher speed than they ought to, but nonetheless at speeds that are apparently normal, that can create a real problem for somebody trying to cross that crosswalk. As a pedestrian, I cross that crosswalk from time to time and find it's very tricky to make sure that people coming off the rotary, particularly those making the left turn through the rotary, see you. People making the right turn seem to see you more often because you're kind of in the way, but people in the rotary don't, and that becomes a very scary aspect as a pedestrian. So it'd be great if we could make those into more modern roundabouts where, you know, you're deliberately being slowed down to 15 miles an hour. that would make it easier for bicycle traffic to get through at a reasonable speed and remaining safe.
[Bruce Kulik]: What? that get in the way. Of what? When you're trying to make a turn, for example, or trying to merge with traffic as you approach a conflict point, the flex boats are generally spaced in a manner that they are in the way of bicycle operation. I can cite several examples around the metropolitan area if you want to go look. and experiencing it. But there are places where flex posts across the bridge on a straightaway, no big deal. They're not a problem. Except when you're trying to pass another slow cyclist, but that's a different problem. But when the flex posts continue too deeply into the intersection, they don't allow for effective lane control if that's what's necessary to be safe at that intersection. And that's why it's a problem. You might disagree with me, but it is a problem. What I would ask for is that flexible. That's debatable.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm not sure what you mean. But anyhow, that's an argument we don't need to have at this point.
[Bruce Kulik]: I follow you, Ernie.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, that was what I was going for. First, point of order, first a motion to table the next agenda item, then a motion to adjourn. Oh. Motion to table the next agenda item on reviewing our goals.
[Bruce Kulik]: All right, everybody, if you have a chair, please take a seat. There's still a couple here and a couple over here. Otherwise, I believe we're ready to get started. Welcome tonight's candidate, a forum put on by the Medford Democratic City Committee. Our intention was to invite all the candidates to share with the citizens of Medford who they are and why they are running for office. I'm happy to announce that all the candidates expressed interest in attending. Also, before we move on, I wanted to introduce myself. My name is Bruce Kulik. I'm co-chair of the Medford Democratic City Committee, along with Phyllis Morrison, who will also be our timekeeper tonight. Unfortunately, George Scarpelli and Justin Tseng are unable to attend in person due to previous commitments. Mr. Scarpelli sends his regrets, and Mr. Tseng has asked Jessica Attadio to represent him in his absence. Additionally, Matt Leming has indicated that he unfortunately needs to leave early, so if you see him bolt out, that's the reason for it. This event is also being broadcast and recorded for later replay on the Medford Government Channel, which is 22 for Comcast and 43 for Verizon, and via YouTube live stream at YouTube at Medford Community Media and 391. We have also published a list of websites, Facebook and Instagram IDs supplied by the candidates. There are cards distributed around the room with this information and a QR code to access the recording and Medford Democrat webpage directly. Additionally, the Medford Democratic City Committee plans to hold additional forums in October before the general election. We'll let everybody know when that's going to occur. Before I continue, I'd like to acknowledge any non-municipal elected officials who are in attendance. I didn't see anybody come in. Oh, stand please. So I'm looking for non-municipal candidates and elected officials. Yes. Elections Commission. Okay, thank you. Anybody else? I think we're all set with that. We will first introduce all the candidates, followed by each candidate speaking for up to three minutes. Any remaining time will be used to allow the audience to interact directly with the candidates on a one-to-one basis. Due to the time limitations, there will be no questions asked to the candidates and no questions from the audience. Please hold your applause until each candidate has finished their talk. And with that, Phyllis will introduce the candidates and continue with the program.
[Bruce Kulik]: Number 13, Melanie.
[Bruce Kulik]: We'll be starting in just about five minutes.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm also worried about... Doesn't everybody get to know their business?
[Bruce Kulik]: including me for that matter. And it also means no scrolling. All right, everybody, if you have a chair, please take a seat. There's still a couple here and a couple over here. Otherwise, I believe we're ready to get started. Welcome tonight's candidate, a forum put on by the Medford Democratic City Committee. Our intention was to invite all the candidates to share with the citizens of Medford who they are and why they are running for office. I'm happy to announce that all the candidates expressed interest in attending. Also, before we move on, I wanted to introduce myself. My name is Bruce Kulik. I'm co-chair of the Medford Democratic City Committee, along with Phyllis Morrison, who will also be our timekeeper tonight. Unfortunately, George Scarpelli and Justin Tseng are unable to attend in person due to previous commitments. Mr. Scarpelli sends his regrets, and Mr. Tseng has asked Jessica Attadio to represent him in his absence. Additionally, Matt Leming has indicated that he unfortunately needs to leave early, so if you see him bolt out, that's the reason for it. This event is also being broadcast and recorded for later replay on the Medford Government Channel, which is 22 for Comcast and 43 for Verizon, and via YouTube live stream at YouTube at Medford Community Media 391. We have also published a list of websites, Facebook and Instagram IDs supplied by the candidates. There are cards distributed around the room with this information and a QR code to access the recording and Medford Democrat webpage directly. Additionally, the Medford Democratic City Committee plans to hold additional forums in October before the general election. We'll let everybody know when that's going to occur. Before I continue, I'd like to acknowledge any non-municipal elected officials who are in attendance. I didn't see anybody come in. So I'm looking for non-municipal candidates and elected officials. Yes. Elections Commission. Okay, thank you. Anybody else? I think we're all set with that. We will first introduce all the candidates, followed by each candidate speaking for up to three minutes. Any remaining time will be used to allow the audience to interact directly with the candidates on a one-to-one basis. Due to the time limitations, there will be no questions asked to the candidates and no questions from the audience. Please hold your applause until each candidate has finished their talk. And with that, Phyllis will introduce the candidates and continue with the program.
[Bruce Kulik]: I apologize.
[Bruce Kulik]: Daniel Nizzle-Miller, chair.
[Bruce Kulik]: Emilio Bryan, vice chair, not present. Bruce Kulik, secretary, present. Jared Powell.
[Bruce Kulik]: Bernie Muneer. You are muted. I see you. Noam Uveni. Not present. Mary Kate Gustafson.
[Bruce Kulik]: Right. You are listed as someone else, right? Leah Grodstein. Not present. Rebecca Wright.
[Bruce Kulik]: Adam Shire. Present. Chris Stivers, is that Stivers or Stivers? Stivers, present. Chris Stivers, thank you. Anna Renkers?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, we have a quorum and we can proceed with the July meeting.
[Bruce Kulik]: I received it and I removed her.
[Bruce Kulik]: I don't ever listen to you in the minutes either.
[Bruce Kulik]: Guest introductions are next.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think we have a guest, Paul Morgan.
[Bruce Kulik]: Are you a Medford resident?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay. We will have announcements coming up shortly. I think we'll be able to figure in, uh, briefly in that period. Okay.
[Bruce Kulik]: Aye. Aye. Uh, I opposed who seconded it. I think you're right. Thank you.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, approval of minutes.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, so moved. We can discuss that after the second.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, not yet, we gotta discuss. The problem I've got, somehow or another, I neglected to retain the record of who attended last week's meeting. I think because I was paying attention to the new people. And so I just wanted to go around the room and recall who was actually present at the meeting. Daniel, did you recall that you were here?
[Bruce Kulik]: Emily was here. Uh, here she was here.
[Bruce Kulik]: Mary Kate was not here. Is that true? Mary Kate?
[Bruce Kulik]: You were not there. Okay. Thank you. Rebecca and Ernie was late.
[Bruce Kulik]: I was, I was here first. Anna, were you here?
[Bruce Kulik]: You were not okay. And I think no one was here, wasn't he?
[Bruce Kulik]: You do or you don't?
[Bruce Kulik]: And Adam, I don't think you were here at the last meeting. Is that correct? No, I was there. Oh, you were. Okay. Thank you. And Chris, you were there, right? Yeah. And Rebecca, you already said you were. All right, thank you so much for all that. And I think we had two guests, Caitlin Robinson and Simon Alcindor. Anyone recall anyone else? OK, that is it. Otherwise, I am good and we can proceed to approve the minutes.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, there were about 50 people there. It was really well attended. We started down in Assembly Row in the park there with the steel uprights and rode up one side of the river. and examined exactly what we were talking about, crossing Main Street and coming across the Clippership and actually rode, formally rode the Clippership on the first opening day. Was able to work our way down through it. And let's see, then what did we do? We worked our way up, basically on Revere Beach Parkway. And let's see if anyone will... Revere Beach Parkway, and then up along the Northern Strand Trail until, and we stopped at the bike kitchen, which I was actually quite impressed with. It's a couple of containers that have bicycle tools and some spare parts and is occasionally staffed by volunteers. So that was quite interesting. And then we made our way over to Idle Hands. and had a good social time. So it was a good fun Mystic ride and I do recommend if you're able to make it next year, they do this every year. And there are also other landline rides that are of interest. There will be another one tomorrow leaving from downtown Boston. is the North Station area going up to Salem. So that's going to be a pretty aggressive ride to look at some of the paths and so forth that are going on there. So I'm looking forward to that if we don't get rained out tomorrow. How does one get clued into these rides? It's put on by the MAPC, which is the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. They have a website. And I don't remember if I was specifically placed on a list or whether I was able to subscribe myself. But let me make a note to look up that information for you. All right.
[Bruce Kulik]: All right, yeah, so that's that. And then the other announcement I wanted to make is that we will be reviewing the MBAC goals later in the meeting, just so we have enough time to really talk about it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Exactly what permits do you need for a ride of this nature? I wasn't aware that in Massachusetts, permits were actually required. I know if you want to get police detail, that's a different thing. Maybe that's what you mean?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, that's fine. I'm just curious about that. One other question is I saw on a thread that you had said something about the Arlington start site was not going to be in effect. What happened there?
[Bruce Kulik]: And what do you need specifically from us?
[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to point out it's a great idea to have people at strategic points even along the route. I know last year there was actually a key point that in retrospect we could have done better with right where we made the very sharp I should say hard right turn to go under the Route 16 bridge. Traffic had to slow down and there was one collision without any serious injury, but the potential could have been there for a little bit more of a pileup. So I think one of the things we should consider is actually running the route and making sure that there aren't places that could be of that ilk. I'm thinking, for example, Where am I thinking where they might be? Any place where you're crossing and queuing up, stopping, that kind of area is right for it. You were going to come from Arlington, but I guess if you go from Delaware, we might still.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. I'd be willing to do that. you can make a note, put an email for me so I know when you're planning to do it. Thanks.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think it's medfordbikes at gmail.com.
[Bruce Kulik]: It was pretty straightforward. You know, we show up, we put the table up, and people come by and we chat. I think we're still missing some good collateral to hand out, and we need to figure out kind of how to do that better, just so we have something. Ernie eventually showed up with some bike lights at my request, and we were able to hand out some of them. I have an agenda item later about helmets. We'll discuss it there. And that's basically it. We talked to a handful of people, and I had to leave about 6.30-ish. So I'm not quite sure if anything exciting happened after that. But we had like three people at the table at all times. So it was good. Oh, there was also a ride. Maybe Emily wants to know. Emily's not here. Was anyone else involved in the Clippership ride? that came to the farmer's market?
[Bruce Kulik]: She's not here either, OK. Well, they arranged a ride, and I think there was about a dozen people, kids and adults, that showed up at the market having ridden on the new Minuteman, the new Clippership Connector.
[Bruce Kulik]: All you do is say, I'd like to move that we, and then you say what you'd like us to do.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, I don't think we've ever done that. I think we just, you know, we create the group and and then the three of us will decide who should chair it. It's pretty informal, that's why it's just a working group and not a quorum.
[Bruce Kulik]: Tell us more at the, uh, at his slot.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm not sure who brought that into the I brought that up just because it was in the June meeting. We had an action item and I'm going to take. make a habit of putting action items in bold in the agenda so that we can review them, maybe nudge people or find out if they're no longer an action item, et cetera. My note was that Dennis said he would check with the Hormel Commission to see how to proceed. And I know people get very busy and sometimes don't get to it, but maybe you did.
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, cool. Well, that's good action then. All right. Do they need our input for anything?
[Bruce Kulik]: That's correct, yes. I'm a certified league cycling instructor. And for each state, we do talk about and refer people to the laws of the state, not as legal advice, but basically saying, here's a summary and here's where you can look for information. Most groups, most state groups will have an advocacy group that's actually summarized everything by their legal staff. And we can usually just crib from that and go through it. I believe the goal is, how to say it, a lot of people have what I'll call default attitudes with regard to bicycling. And that means that they don't fully understand what the rights or the responsibilities are for cyclists. And that can create tension and can result in, you know, particularly with police officers, if they're not aware of what an issue is and then they get called to a crash or something like that, they might not be aware or fully understand whether the cyclist was operating properly or not. And sometimes people will blame a cyclist no matter what without really understanding it. And so I would like to see that information be provided so that they at least have a better sense of what's actually you know, important.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's possible. I would need to look up exactly what the well you could either go on the League of American Cyclists website and find about becoming a bike instructor, but basically they have a typically it's a two day session where they walk through. At the time they walked through a lot of operation on the road and what some of the pitfalls are and how to actually operate in a vehicular manner so that you can get through situations that might otherwise be uncomfortable. I think that the curriculum has probably been expanded now to understand some of the pitfalls that you have to watch out for even when operating an infrastructure, whether it's a shared use path, bike path, or separated bike. All these things have their own perils that you need to be aware of. But anyhow, you would learn about all that and learn how to present that to people, as well as the basics of how do you learn how to ride a bike to begin with. It's a fascinating course to go through. I did it five or six years ago, as I recall, maybe more. It'd be kind of interesting to see how they do it again for it. But yeah, if I don't remember to connect to you about it, let me, you know, look on the web, the league website, and you can probably find information on that.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, and that might be the kind of thing where you could get a stipend perhaps to help offset the cost of either lodging that you have or the actual cost of the training. I don't recall that it was very expensive, but it also wasn't free.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm happy to do so.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll second that.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that was my item, and that came up because one of the questions I was asking at the farmers market was, didn't we used to give away helmets? And so I just wanted to figure out, I think Pat might have been coordinating all that in the past. I wasn't certain about that, but I wanted to know if anyone recalls how it is that we ended up with a bunch of helmets, whether we still have a bunch of helmets, and if we can get more.
[Bruce Kulik]: What is the name of that organization? Breakstone?
[Bruce Kulik]: How do we get back on board that train? Just contact them?
[Bruce Kulik]: Was there any administrator reason we were storing them on city property as opposed to not?
[Bruce Kulik]: I just meant, was there any city policy with regard to that that we had to adhere to?
[Bruce Kulik]: Maybe we can figure that out as well and just have a handful at members' places, like a dozen or 10, so that we can arrive at the events with them more easily.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, no, no. He's with Mystic River Watershed Association.
[Bruce Kulik]: What did I say? You said Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think someone was ahead of me, or are they set?
[Bruce Kulik]: I guess it's me. Yeah, so I just wanted to say that I have been riding the Clippership Connector currently at every opportunity. I've been coming almost exclusively westbound at this point, and tried several different routes just to see how they fared. And the one that was actually the worst was to go down to the police station and try to cross there. And I found that crossing the street at that point, it's very difficult, especially with a bicycle. As a pedestrian, you can kind of step into the street and people will actually stop. And I found when trying to do so with a bicycle, you can't really step in far enough without your bike kind of being in the way. And therefore, I didn't seem to get as much cooperation, and it took a while to cross the street. So that was one.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, at South Street, the South Street intersection with Main Street, right across from the police station.
[Bruce Kulik]: Please do, sure.
[Bruce Kulik]: I actually stayed on the sidewalk on the side of the lane yet. Yeah, down to. Oh, sorry. No, I guess it wasn't quite that far. It was just north of the police station at that light right here. Right. And crossed over to South street. and then had to ride along the sidewalk a little bit there to dismount and get into the not quite contraflow lane that's at least marked with a yellow line currently. And I found it to be incredibly awkward and would not recommend it for people who were trying to serve who don't know how to work their way through here. It really was not a good idea to do it that way. So another approach I took, and this was on a Sunday afternoon, so traffic was quite light. I was able to simply pull off the curb and make a left turn, similar to what will be proposed once the signal is in place. And that worked pretty well. I then took the bike lane south on Main Street and picked up the river path with the awkward kind of U-turn that you got to make to get on the path. And that wasn't so bad. The third approach that I took was to actually go down to the crosswalks in Medford Square proper, cross over those crosswalks, and then pick up the bike lane southbound on Main Street. So while that worked quite well, It was not very efficient. It really took a while, because in order to get through those lights, there's got to be like three or four different things you've got to coordinate. And they're not designed so that you can just sort of go through. And I got frustrated and just had to cross one of them, even though it wasn't green.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so I think what we're looking for here is the least worst of all the ideas that we have. The thing that I found to be the most
[Bruce Kulik]: I was going to tell you that that was my fourth approach.
[Bruce Kulik]: And Chris, I'll say that that works great for experienced riders, those who aren't timid about it. We've had reports that Medford Square is one of the more intimidating places to ride your bike through if you are not an experienced vehicular cyclist. If you are, it's not so bad. I do it many times and I find it works well. And so from my standpoint, what you said is totally true. I was able to go up, do my standard route through City Hall as if I was coming from Riverside Avenue and that all worked. But I'm not going to recommend that as sort of a family or kid or inexperienced cyclist way. to get through the area. So I think we need to really figure out what's the least problematic of all these choices that still allow inexperienced people to get through. And I think, unfortunately, it's probably to go to the lights in Medford Square, even though there's not quite enough room, like you said, with a cargo bike. because I think, I don't know, Chris, did you try going to the crossing down at South Street as well? And that technique, because that's just as bad. There's no space in the middle.
[Bruce Kulik]: We could propose different solutions and basically say, if you're comfortable riding on the street, this is the best way. If you're not, this is the best way, or at least the worst way.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it is, it is. But maybe just suggesting alternative paths. And the two alternative paths would be up around on Salem Street, and then the other would be going through the crosswalks. So that way, people who aren't sure where to go can say, oh, yeah, there's no way I'm riding on City Hall Mall. I'm not going to do that. Or people who are comfortable and say, oh, there's no way I'm going to ride down the sidewalk and through the crosswalks. So that would at least give some wayfinding guidance to people on how to get through. So that's my observation from what I've done.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I see your point. So that's another alternative would be to use the parking lot, which has its own perils, but at least you're going in the right direction.
[Bruce Kulik]: Maybe the thing we would do would be suggested off-road route through Medford Square.
[Bruce Kulik]: Safest is a judgment, you know, because I don't consider it necessarily safest. I often find that riding in traffic is the safest approach for me, given my speed and abilities. So, you know, if you say it's off road, you're not You're not making any judgment as to which way is safest. And that provides guidance westbound. I'll continue to do these experiments eastbound, which, again, I haven't done, and offer my view of how that all works as well. But where do we want to go with this, I guess, is the next question.
[Bruce Kulik]: Let me add another clarification. When I came down Main Street from the crosswalks, I went through what we've called Sleepy Hollow and across the dangerous crosswalk on Mystic Valley Parkway. And then across this route-studded path, that was not very fun to ride on. No, I didn't go that way. I went on the path. Yeah, I'd recommend going through the parking lot, and then I picked up the Contra Flow lane. Yeah, okay. Basically, the only reason I did that is because that's the natural way to go. I think actually one of the times I may have, yes, one of the times I also went along Mystic Valley Parkway and picked up the Mystic River Path by the Condon Shell instead. Yep. I like that better. But that's still, yeah, that's a little bit better choice. Of course, the bridge and the sidewalk are kind of a pain in the butt there. But that's another approach. I've crossed. Mystic Street, both at that crosswalk and gone down to the path itself and crossed, those are six of one, half dozen of another. There's not really any benefit to one or the other other than maybe you have a crosswalk light if you're on the path as opposed to crossing by the ballparks. Right there, you don't have any light, you just have to go, whereas up at Mystic Valley Parkway, you actually have a crosswalk light. So those are different ways. Normally, I just go through Medford Square and down High Street. But I've been, as I said, deliberately using the path just to get a sense of what people are facing.
[Bruce Kulik]: I mean, I suppose we could have a series of, right, a series of paths that basically point in the direction, sorry, a series of signs, rather than having a diagram or something like that, that basically say, you know, Mystic River Path continues and direct them through the crosswalk directly. And then once you're through the crosswalk, they can decide, you know, what is the best Mystic River Path to take. Actually, that would work well. You'd go through Sleepy Hollow, cross at the crosswalk, and then continue across the narrow bridge to pick up the path at the Condon Shell. That's probably actually the closest to the real route, the ideal route that we would ultimately want this path to take.
[Bruce Kulik]: Interesting. I'll try that sometimes just to see how that fares. I hadn't considered that.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do we know where those specs are?
[Bruce Kulik]: Maybe Todd knows.
[Bruce Kulik]: I propose that I can put together a draft based on what I've heard us discuss and maybe circulate it. We wouldn't be able to make primary decisions, but we can gather information to bring to the next meeting. Hopefully everybody will have reviewed it by then, and we can have a quick vote on how to proceed at that point. Maybe making a recommendation to Todd that they purchase these either temporary or perhaps a little bit more permanent wayfinding signs until the contraflow is available. So I'm willing to do that and distribute it. I don't know if we need a motion for that. It's just an idea I have. What do you think?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, so here's what I'll do. I will I will go back out, maybe even take some pictures and figure out what signs ought to be where for eastbound and westbound. And the goal will be directing people onto the Mystic River path, as opposed to any of the other solutions that we've said. It basically will be, how do you get to the next part of the Mystic River path? and people can decide, you know, how they might peel off and use a Chondroflolane or anything like that on their own. But I think that would be at least helpful to people that have no clue, you know, they get to the end on either side, it's like, now what?
[Bruce Kulik]: Say again?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, I've got that as an action item for me then.
[Bruce Kulik]: When you say Riverside, do you mean Clippership? connector at Clippership Drive?
[Bruce Kulik]: Point of order, we're coming up on 7.40, 8.40, and one of our main things we wanted to do today was to review the goals of priorities, which I think is going to take us half an hour. And I'd like to move that we curtail discussion on this particular item and pick it up on our standing Clipper Ship Connector Access agenda item in the future.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's a motion.
[Bruce Kulik]: OK, thank you.
[Bruce Kulik]: What item are we going to?
[Bruce Kulik]: I move to table this item until the next meeting.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay. Sorry.
[Bruce Kulik]: I was- You jumped. That's why I went back to it. Sorry about that.
[Bruce Kulik]: Watch out what you vote for.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think that is correct, but let me go back. The new members are Adam, Chris, Anna. Yes, all set.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to augment why that's important in our experience. People have come to us as if we are an advocacy group only, and we need to know that we're not. Right.
[Bruce Kulik]: uh as you all know point point point of clarification we we can get together even as a quorum we just cannot discuss anything that is bicycle commission related and you gotta be real careful there because it's real easy to stray into something like that right we can't we can't deliberate right and we can't deliberate right under under the law of almost everything counts as deliberation could be construed that way
[Bruce Kulik]: I think I'm actually officially secretary. We voted on that a couple back.
[Bruce Kulik]: Daniel, when you get a chance, could you put the link to the slideshow in the chat just so I can make a record of it?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay. Maybe I can move it into our collateral material point and make it publicly viewable or make a copy of it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you.
[Bruce Kulik]: I generally put the agenda in by noon time on the Monday before the meeting. Yep.
[Bruce Kulik]: You noted in your original note, City now has dedicated bike related officials and engineers. I think that probably means Todd and to some extent, DPW Director Tim.
[Bruce Kulik]: several things including you know funds um and the mayor point of information there i think she might actually be a different title now part of community development or if she returned to her role strictly as energy and environment okay i think she was called the director of planning and development yeah they changed they changed the department name uh okay noted um i will
[Bruce Kulik]: I threw a link in the chat just to the web page on it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, here we go. Jareb Powell, not present. Bruce Kulik, present. Emilio O'Brien, not present. Ernie Munier, not present. Doug Packer, not present. Daniel Nuzzo-Miller.
[Bruce Kulik]: Noam Rivini, not present. Mary Kate Gufteson-Cleat, not present. Leah Grudstein.
[Bruce Kulik]: Rebecca Wright, not present. With no quorum, we are proceeding with an informational meeting at this time.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hey, Mary Kate. Mary Kate joined the meeting. At 7, 11 PM.
[Bruce Kulik]: 2nd, point 2nd, point it is.
[Bruce Kulik]: Preparation piece that I would just like bumble every time we might have we might have a good combination then Because I am NOT typically very good at taking notes because they talk too much and Then I listen and then I don't have time to record but I'm fairly good at keeping organized with like the formal Items the announcements the agenda etc. So and that's the secretary who does that correct, correct? Yeah, so, um, as long as you're willing to take the notes portion of it, I would be willing to take on the administration portion of it.
[Bruce Kulik]: They get filed and they're formally, we just approve them, but I've never known that we have to submit them to any place. Do you recall, Daniel?
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll take on the role of Secretary Pro Tem until the next meeting that we have a forum at and officially bless me as being the Secretary.
[Bruce Kulik]: OK, one second. Let me make a note here.
[Bruce Kulik]: Well, like I said, I'm not good at note taking, but Mary Kate, if you're wishing to do it, good job.
[Bruce Kulik]: Is there actually a bill that's proposed in either the House or the Senate?
[Bruce Kulik]: That's all in the state proposal?
[Bruce Kulik]: Is there an H number or an S number?
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, I guess that would be on the proposal itself. We don't need to worry too much about it. I just wanted to get as much information as I could.
[Bruce Kulik]: It would be 65 divided by 5, which is 13-ish.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm guessing from the past that it's about 65,000.
[Bruce Kulik]: We would also want to know whether the DCR and other police agencies also are able to deploy them independently or if it's only municipalities that can do so. because obviously a lot of our streets are DCR streets and perhaps the ones that most could use speed cameras.
[Bruce Kulik]: I don't remember hearing that the governor has signed it yet.
[Bruce Kulik]: Interesting.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hmm. Is that later or earlier?
[Bruce Kulik]: I could look at the listing from the state that's in melegislature.gov, I think it's called, and it provides the text of the laws. So I could look that up and provide that to everybody just so we have the information directly from that website for at least for the next meeting.
[Bruce Kulik]: All right, I'll take that upon to look it up and get that out independently. We're done with that.
[Bruce Kulik]: So for the record, I would put down that you are announcing you made an executive decision to sign the letter.
[Bruce Kulik]: And if anyone objects, we can bring that up at the next meeting. I don't think that anybody will, but that's the protocol.
[Bruce Kulik]: OK. Could you provide a copy of a letter to maybe to the email address?
[Bruce Kulik]: So, as a matter of protocol, if you sign the letter. It would make sense that the members could get a copy just so they know what it is that you signed without approval. So, I would say that's kind of tacit approval that you get provided to the committee, but if you want to check with her.
[Bruce Kulik]: I don't know.
[Bruce Kulik]: And that's a recline, right?
[Bruce Kulik]: Hang on. Dudley to Haines Square. Yep. What direction did you say that was in?
[Bruce Kulik]: Eastbound. Okay. Thank you.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hang on I want to clarify a couple items for the Albion street 1. what's the scope?
[Bruce Kulik]: One moment because Albion Street, I'll be in the street in one way, southbound between Medford Street and Broadway, and a small stretch northbound between Medford Street and Main Street. All right, I'll just record that we don't really know, but we have bike lanes in progress.
[Bruce Kulik]: And the River Road Contra Flow will be in which direction? I believe that would be northbound.
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, yeah, okay. I had my, I had it. My memory of which direction that road went was incorrect. Okay, got it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it becomes two way between Arlington. Well, actually, it turns into Arlington Street, which is two way.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do you know, again, the scope of the counterflow? Will that be from Riverside all the way to Main Street, or will it pick up where the trail joins currently?
[Bruce Kulik]: Well, that's interesting. That's a really cramped area between two, one non-functioning signal and the main street at High Street, Forest, Riverside, Salem signal. It'll be interesting to see how that's connected.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it's been only casually discussed in the context of.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's not good.
[Bruce Kulik]: I am a co-host as well. But I don't see.
[Bruce Kulik]: All right, I got the recording started so Mary Kate in response to not knowing not knowing that these were in progress. It's only been casually mentioned in the context of a couple of different places. Like, when we talked about Salem street. We've talked about the South street. And Todd said, oh, it'd be good to do something about Clippership because we brought it up a few times, but that's basically the extent that's been. That he's mentioned it, so it'd be great if we could. I agree with you. It'd be great if we could get requested plans just so we can. React to that as well, and I have down down that you're looking into it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Interesting. I never had any difficulty going through that intersection. I thought that was simply a timed intersection. Or maybe it's because there's been automobiles at the same time that I've been there.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. Austin street and mystic Valley parkway doesn't work.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's, I think when they repave Winthrop, they put new detectors in and certainly the left lane detector works fine. If you're coming from Winchester to turn left onto Lawrence. Um, I don't know about going left from Lawrence on to Winthrop heading towards the circle. Cause I, I do.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: You come down and why many, and you turn right there.
[Bruce Kulik]: And does that detect you?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that's what I thought. OK, good.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think we should put that on the agenda for the next meeting. Listen, people will volunteer. And maybe field check their. Their sense if they can, so that we have an accurate list of. Intersections, which are problematic and maybe ought to be prioritized. I'm gonna make a note of this here. Hang on one second. How did you phrase it? Advise versus react?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay. Anything else?
[Bruce Kulik]: So just to clarify, you said Amy, is that her name?
[Bruce Kulik]: All right. A chance, you know, her last name.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thank you. Great.
[Bruce Kulik]: Are there any further agenda items?
[Bruce Kulik]: All right. So in Leah's interest, I move that we adjourn.
[Bruce Kulik]: All in favor?
[Bruce Kulik]: I guess that's it.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll get these notes out. by tomorrow or to tomorrow sometime.
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, no, you don't want to do that. I scribbled them and I will try to get them written up tonight while they're fresh in my memory, at least tomorrow it's not.
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay. That's excellent. How about if I send it to you then to turn into information?
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, yeah, that would work. Sure. I can update that doc and then I'll be ready to go. Where does that exist?
[Bruce Kulik]: Excellent. Thank you. You did?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I'm on it.
[Bruce Kulik]: I've added a bookmark and we're good. All right. Good night everyone.
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay.
[Bruce Kulik]: You got three of them. Yeah, so, okay, so this came into my email box and I followed it because I said, oh, that's kind of interesting. And it's basically, it was done by someone at the Harvard Crimson, and it's pretty well done. They took four or five intersections around the Harvard area and just did some discussion about it. Didn't offer any solutions, but simply pointed out what they viewed as some issues with them and questions and was sort of a, let's talk about this article. The reason I brought it up is because I thought it was interesting to kind of. see what the discussion was and some of the points that were made regarding what's good what's bad about particular infrastructure and I also thought not that we've ever been able to really kind of do something like that with any kind of regularity but It does make for an interesting, we could have discussions about intersections in our area as well with either hints about how to get through them or what we ought to do about them or pointing out issues with them, whatever. It was just sort of food for thought. And I just threw in the announcements because I thought it would be something that on our own time, we can all do a quick run through. If anyone has it open, you can see that if you browse down quickly, there's a handful of little maps that have been put together, depicting the layout of the infrastructure, and then some verbiage about what's good, what's bad about it, and so on. So there you have it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, that sounds fun.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, for example.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hey, yeah, so 1st of all, Emily, I want to thank you for doing all that work. I know it's a lot of follow up work and it sounds like there's at least. a notion of some motion with them, which is better than we've had in the past. I mean, the fact that the chief himself is actually contacted rather than a lieutenant of some sort is actually, I think, a good sign. At least, I think it's a good sign. I'm assuming that the conversation was cordial and inviting to discuss issues as opposed to, oh, what's this all about?
[Bruce Kulik]: Right. The fact that the mayor is also interested, I think that really shows some good motion on the part of the city. Yeah. I would look forward to having a one-on-one meeting starting with the chief if he's available so that we can have a frank conversation about what do we want as far as policy goes? What do we want as far as education goes? Because I think that's the big thing. We need to know that we're supported. And if we make a complaint to the police, at a minimum, it'll be noted. And preferably, if we get a license plate, et cetera, a polite phone call. Right, which is simply, you know, informing them of what the role, the rights of cyclists are. And in many cases, that would be enough to let somebody say. Yeah, absolutely.
[Bruce Kulik]: These are all mystery things. I appreciate that the department is at least making What's the word I want? Outreach, I guess is the word. Yeah. I do hope that we're able to get something together. You said after the holidays?
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm available to it. I would like to extend as possible.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thanks again for your efforts on this. I appreciate it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that's the case with a lot of stuff.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's an interesting point. I'd like to get that clarified if possible. And maybe it's more of a legal thing than it is a law enforcement thing.
[Bruce Kulik]: Can they even go so far as to harass someone or warn them? Right.
[Bruce Kulik]: Although I don't know if that's- Was that as a cyclist or as a motor vehicle operator?
[Bruce Kulik]: I think it's also a key reason why many people choose not to cycle. You're not genuinely afraid of getting injured, but they are afraid of being harassed, which is uncomfortable, as we all know. Even if you have a steel will, it's sort of annoying to get into a verbal altercation with someone.
[Bruce Kulik]: I do have one quick question, which is, do we have new people? I thought there were some additional people coming on board.
[Bruce Kulik]: And how many people are missing from today's meeting?
[Bruce Kulik]: Three, okay. Doug, Becca, Mary Kay.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I would not dismiss it, but one of the beliefs that I have although perhaps I shouldn't worry about this at this point, is it's important to have... It's important to pass the championship along, if you will. A lot of organizations that have kind of a founder and a champion, when that champion disappears, the organization falters. And one of the things we did with this commission was deliberately make sure that we had people moving forward in different roles. That was something that I initially made sure that we set up the first time we had transitions moving forward so that there'd be a lot of different people. Yeah, so along that line, I would not say I'm 100% against my doing it. I would have a preference to not doing it just yet, maybe again in the future. But if push comes to shove and there is nobody else willing to step up and say the vice chair, I would be, I would entertain the notion.
[Bruce Kulik]: You step down.
[Bruce Kulik]: There'll be more in keeping with the tradition, actually, to have you.
[Bruce Kulik]: I am not a good secretary. I self-admit that I get too distracted and wound up in meetings to keep good notes. It doesn't work. So I'm going to say no, I won't do that.
[Bruce Kulik]: We could, in theory, split those two as well and have a position of reporter, if you will.
[Bruce Kulik]: If we're- I move that we postpone the selection of secretary until the January meeting.
[Bruce Kulik]: Point of order? Yeah. I just, this is something that has been, I guess the word bugging me is the right thing. According to Robert's rules of order, the correct procedure is to request ayes and then separately request nays as a voice vote. And although pro forma, there's also the option for somebody to object to the vote. So it's sort of, You know, there's always that if you don't quite follow the rules and no one has so I'm not saying that that's a big deal, but I just wanted to point that out as a, as a. A walk of robbers rules of order. Okay.
[Bruce Kulik]: I nominate Daniel to be chair and Emily to be vice chair. Now we have a slate.
[Bruce Kulik]: Any points to be made by the candidates?
[Bruce Kulik]: Call the vote. All in favor of that slate?
[Bruce Kulik]: I make a motion to suspend the rules and appoint Emily as chair of Pro Tem for the remainder of this meeting.
[Bruce Kulik]: Let's move on. We've got that sorted out. Next up is the
[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to make a quick proposal with regard to that. I know there's also a Somerville-ish committee that's looking into traffic calming on Mystic Valley.
[Bruce Kulik]: But it does seem like there's no reason for it to be four lanes in the section between Auburn Street and the Rotary at Zilboy Field.
[Bruce Kulik]: Incidentally, if it was reduced to 2 lanes, that would provide sufficient room for bicycle lanes as well, and possibly a turning lane if they reconfigured that road. I mean, for those who don't want to ride on the sidewalk slash shared use path, which doesn't exist in that area.
[Bruce Kulik]: Even changing it as two lanes would reduce it from being a super highway type road that some people seem to think it is. Of course, if you've tanked up a few too many at some local tavern, which I suspect is maybe the cause of some of these crashes, maybe that won't make a difference.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do we know if the bridge is DCR or is that a mass thought?
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, no, no, the bridge over the river often bridges are.
[Bruce Kulik]: I've already got on my screen. If you want to just let me share, but that's where you're trying to figure out.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's prohibited to make a left turn on Auburn Street at that point.
[Bruce Kulik]: Conversely, it is not prohibited to make the left turn southbound onto Auburn Street.
[Bruce Kulik]: Which is a very awkward movement to get from the river, to get from the path to the west side is very awkward through those two intersections.
[Bruce Kulik]: And my question, there's a crash cluster all out the differences between pedestrian cyclist and motor vehicle to motor vehicle crashes. Sort of a aggregate of, oh, this is. You know, checks a number of boxes, so we call it a crash cluster.
[Bruce Kulik]: I can believe that most of the crashes into that guardrail are the result of late night shenanigans. Maybe I'm just being speculative here, but the person would, as Emily pointed out, still be able to drive the car away and not want to have the police involved.
[Bruce Kulik]: There's no protection on the sidewalk side of that guardrail. At least on the Eastern side of the bridge, I don't know about the Western side because I never use it. But on the Eastern side, the guardrail posts are basically I-beams that are about 4 inches thick and have sharp edges. So if you run into those I-beams, it's not comfortable.
[Bruce Kulik]: In my opinion, that powder house, but I know what you mean. It works well for traffic control.
[Bruce Kulik]: There are bike racks at Whole Foods.
[Bruce Kulik]: And right in front of the police station, no less.
[Bruce Kulik]: I lost my agenda here. Here it is. So, what was this federal grant for? No, I would not have sent out. Blue bike expansion grant typically.
[Bruce Kulik]: I just wanted to comment that I'm somewhat pleasantly surprised, as I sometimes bike in parts of the city I haven't been to for a while, that I see more and more bike infrastructure making its way in, mostly in bike lanes, some sharrows, but I'm glad to see that, and I guess I have to give credit to Todd mostly for pushing a lot of that forward. So credit due, I guess.
[Bruce Kulik]: Actually, technically, in a case like that, you should call for a roll call. But again, it's a de facto roll call, since she's the only one who said she abstained.
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, yeah, ravine road right near where I walk all the time.
[Bruce Kulik]: Across that crosswalk many.
[Bruce Kulik]: The speed limit is 25 miles an hour on the parkway. Most cars do about 30, which is not unreasonable. And of course, a minority, but large enough, you know, create like an expressway and we'll be cruising past at 50 miles an hour. In the evening, there tend to be frequent motorcycle drag races, it sounds like. I can't, well, I was only out there once when there were a bunch of them, but that's not so much relevant for what happened there. I don't know the details of the crash, although I think I read that the driver said the person stepped in front of them, but it is a crosswalk. It's well marked. It's one of the few crosswalks that are actually on Mystic Valley Parkway. I think the next 1 is probably a Shannon beach. And then up at bacon street, there is no crosswalk at high street on the rotary. The visibility at ravine road is a little bit. I know. Sorry. Yeah, that was ravine road. It's a little bit limited. I know that, for example. When I'm riding my bike out, I will deliberately come out at Sagamore so that I can see left and right on Mystic Valley Parkway. But on the way home, I will turn onto Ravine because it's a more direct route. If somebody is traveling at the speed limit, it's not an issue. If they're traveling 50 miles an hour, it's potentially an issue. I don't think the injuries were particularly serious. From what I read, I believe a dog was injured and taken to, they said a nearby vet, of which there was one just down the street. I don't know if that's what actually happened. And I do not know the individual who was struck by the car.
[Bruce Kulik]: I don't know that the report, that the news article mentioned it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so... We should also be aware that there's a redesign currently in effect for the parkway and the trail adjacent to it.
[Bruce Kulik]: We don't know if it's serious yet, if it's at what they would call 25% or if it's still at concept.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's what I was asking. I think it's, I think it's concept.
[Bruce Kulik]: Um, do we have short term short term fixes? Ernie? I agree with you that something like that would actually be useful. Because, um. It's it's being used as a pretty major commuter thoroughfare, both by bicyclists and by motor traffic. Commercial traffic is not permitted, which is 1 saving grace. But yeah, I wish that most of the cars behave like most of the cars do, like all the cars would behave like most of them, because generally people are not traveling at ridiculous speeds, but it only takes 10%, right?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do we have a recommendation coming out of this that we want to vote on or not?
[Bruce Kulik]: It's a somebody's going to get killed here spot.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's what you call profiling, Jared.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, I do, actually. Great. I just came off a meeting that started at 6 o'clock, hosted by Somerville for the Elm Beacon Street Connector, and they're basically kicking off the project to make improvements In the quarter that I think many of us use, or at least people who go from Medford from Western Medford to. Kendall square or downtown frequently go through that that intersection. Of moss land, Somerville Avenue, beacon street. So, it'll be interesting to see what they have and I have put into the chat. A, a link, which is on the Somerville website to get more information and to get the. The reporting of the current session that's still actually going on, I had to leave at 7 to join this meeting. But I'm looking forward to see what facilities they have in mind, a quick build, that sort of thing. I just wanted to alert everybody to that.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I haven't seen the station, but I'm pleased to see that they're popping up literally all over the place. So that's really great that Mets has finally gotten really mainstream with blue bikes.
[Bruce Kulik]: Better, yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: The northeast side has probably the most space. as opposed to the others, which are just sidewalk, just speculating.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, I've actually used them. They're north of where I live, just north of the railroad bridge. And they go all the way to the Winchester Line.
[Bruce Kulik]: There's two places where sharrows have been put just before the bridge so that you see a sharrow as you cross the bridge.
[Bruce Kulik]: Really? I thought I could have sworn. I saw one there.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll sit right up there and check, because I could have sworn I saw it there as well.
[Bruce Kulik]: Not northbound? OK.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, no, it wouldn't be southbound. Right. Maybe I'm conflating what I saw at the bridge.
[Bruce Kulik]: They've become so ubiquitous, I've lost count.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think I think there's like, um, at least the 1 on Grove street is comfortable at 25 miles an hour, which is the speed limit.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, the one at Woburn Street narrows down to maybe 10 or 11 feet worth of distance, so you're sharing the lane, which of course is not comfortable for some people.
[Bruce Kulik]: Right, but that also means that you're typically running at about the same speed as traffic, so it's easier to manage.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, but frequently you'll hit 25 or 30 by the time you've hit that point. Your point's well taken.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do you have a sense of what caused the motor vehicle to lose control?
[Bruce Kulik]: If so, when is that again?
[Bruce Kulik]: Who do we contact about that?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I would consider serving as a marshal for that.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I've got to check my calendar. I just remembered that we have a wedding one of these October weekends, and I need to confirm exactly when that is. But I'll look into it nonetheless.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm free. Wedding is not that way.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. It looks like I'm free as well. Okay. I always enjoy going to that one.
[Bruce Kulik]: When is it Saturday? What time is it morning or afternoon?
[Bruce Kulik]: Uh, if we want to get ambitious, um, in, in the past, we've actually sponsored a ride. Along some of the river paths, like to assembly row and back.
[Bruce Kulik]: I've actually got a picture of her holding her dog and sitting in the bucket with Chris. And sit in the bucket. I haven't distributed that because I wasn't sure what she wanted to do with it. I sent it to her, but I haven't seen it surface anymore yet.
[Bruce Kulik]: It was just... It was kind of a ridiculous vehicle, wasn't it?
[Bruce Kulik]: The Ford pickup truck that people use for commercial use is probably about the same size. It just doesn't look as, I'm not quite sure what word I want to use, unusual.
[Bruce Kulik]: Well, that's a good point.
[Bruce Kulik]: Anyway. Yeah, but it is aluminum or stainless steel or whatever it is.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, how many people do we need? I mean, we can get two people to cover the whole time. I think that's fine, right? Yeah, and I'm free, so I'm willing to do it.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, certainly.
[Bruce Kulik]: So we actually need to get signed up then. I can cover a little bit of it as well.
[Bruce Kulik]: Any idea if there might be a soft open in that, you know, it's not officially open because the signs aren't in and that kind of thing, but is accessible.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. It's usually, usually it says trail closed and the fence is open.
[Bruce Kulik]: Jared, would you mind sharing the street that this happened on? I'm sorry, say that again, Bruce. Would you mind sharing which street this occurred on? Brookings Street. It was on Brookings and you were heading south, northbound rather to George or the other way?
[Bruce Kulik]: I would like to ask us to do something formally, which would be to engage the representative of the police department. Maybe it's Carl Brooks, maybe it's somebody else, I'm not sure. But to really understand what we can do in those situations when somebody deliberately doesn't honor the forefoot passing, for example, or verbally harasses or intimidates using their vehicle. Because I feel it's the kind of thing which nobody does anything about it because it doesn't get taken seriously. And I'd like to have us somehow enter a dialogue. I don't know if we need the mayor involved, if it's something that Todd can help us with, but I guess I would like to make an official motion that we look into engaging the police in some fashion to understand what we would recommend to people, right? And maybe get some actual feedback from the police so that they know this does happen. And if you get a license number, you know, at a minimum, they'll make a phone call, for example. You know, that happened to me once in Belmont, I called the police and they actually tried to call the individual couldn't get through, but, you know, they at least gave good lip service to it.
[Bruce Kulik]: There was an interesting article a few days ago, maybe last week, on I think it was WBZ TV, where they kind of did a poll about what What is permissible and what isn't by bicyclists and they were very. I thought evenly handed in basically, you know, describing the rights of cyclists. That people typically didn't know about, you know, things like. Oh, you have to ride in the bike lane, right? Well, no, right? I mean, things like that. So there was quite a bit of surprise by both the anchor who was doing it and, in general, the way they presented it. But it does feel like that's another layer of education that people need to learn. I have also seen on the back of buses now, I always wanted this, and I'm glad they're doing it, the four-foot passing law. Is actually now on the back of some buses as an advertisement. I don't know who's paying for it. But you might recall about a year ago, I looked into what it would take to get that advertising. And it was way too expensive for a group like ours to do.
[Bruce Kulik]: So I actually, I believe I have a motion on the table to put together some sort of response for us to look into working with the mayor and or the police department to at least clarify exactly how members of our community should handle such incidents with regard to reporting.
[Bruce Kulik]: We also, I guess I'm requesting that we put forth the resolution that we be more. assertive about this particular incident, and in particular, an understanding of who should we contact or what should we do, so it's not just something that ends up in a vacuum. Because it's obviously not going to change, and it happens to more people than some, but It's a very intimidating factor for many people who don't want to ride. In fact, I believe when people say they're worried about traffic, it's really a surrogate for not wanting to assert their right to the road because they're afraid of these kind of encounters.
[Bruce Kulik]: All of the legality is gonna be handled by the state. I mean, that's cut and dry in the regulations and mass general law. So it's really a question of the policies of the police department and any of the safety organizations as to what they're recommending. But you have a good idea there, I mean, we don't need to reinvent the wheel, right? If, if, uh, have come up with policies that are useful.
[Bruce Kulik]: I mean, I'd like to I'd like to modify my resolution. We put together a working group to to proceed forward on this.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's not even quite that far. This proposal is to put together a working group to try to figure out how we should address the problem. Maybe it's discussing with the police. Maybe it's figuring out how to do more. or we're working with the other cities and towns on getting information, but it's really the proposal I'm putting forth now is just that we put together a working group so that we can explore a handful of different options as opposed to discussing it just in this meeting.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll put together, whoever's involved, I'll put together an email and see if we can, you know, put together a working group of some kind in the next several weeks.
[Bruce Kulik]: Very clearly, particularly it's a very slow residential street that nobody has any business going more than about 15 miles an hour on anyway.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it's just, it's a. Particularly outrageous, it's not like you're on, I don't know, mystic Avenue. Right and not that that's an excuse, but I'm just saying it's a different situation.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, exactly.
[Bruce Kulik]: Um, what's going on with South and nevermind. Sorry, South and I was thinking South Street is going to say, I just was on South Street recently and it looks fine, but it sounds like you got it.
[Bruce Kulik]: The, no, that was, I think that was a meeting that they had, which was sort of the kickoff and getting initial feedback. And then they're going to go stew on it and then they'll eventually come back and Leah, maybe, you know, more about it. Because I know you're involved directly in that. Project correct no, you are not. Okay. Not correct. All right. Sorry. I thought somebody was in any event. I believe that once they've stood on it and come back with their next plan, there'll be another similar meeting that we need to keep our ear to.
[Bruce Kulik]: I've heard nothing. Emily might be looking into that, or that's what the request was, and I've not heard anything.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to at some point suggest to Todd that we get Sheroes on city hall mall. Which right now is a bit of a. A bit of a bottleneck as you're coming through Medford square from the East. You know, there's three lanes there, one which turns right and two which turn left. And then you have people coming eastbound on Riverside that have to merge through that. Typically, those people are going towards Malden. So you have a lot of cross-traffic through that area. And at a minimum, it would be good, I think, to have Sharrows there and Bicycles Meashere full lane and perhaps even a four-foot sign or something. in those areas. Is that something we could request Todd to do?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. I mean, if you're going straight from the right turn lane, people who are going to Malden get on your case. If you're sticking far to the left because you want to stay left on Salem Street so you can continue south on Main Street, for example, then you get another set of people who worry about you being there and in the center, you're in the center.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that's true. That would be useful.
[Bruce Kulik]: On the other end as well, to continue from the Brooks War to the Winthrop Street Rotary would be useful as well. But the better thing would be to get that part repaved, because that's in pretty rough shape.
[Bruce Kulik]: It is, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's owned by the state.
[Bruce Kulik]: So that's where the state got involved.
[Bruce Kulik]: So that's a good question. And I can only tell you what I read in the general laws. And I think this is the kind of thing which if we really want to know, we should check with the city solicitor, who may or may not be as responsive as the previous city solicitor was. I do recall that we were told that commissions can weigh in on items that are germane to their, what's it, where their function. So, you know, that could mean that, for example, the streets might be something that we'd be able to weigh in on, but it's not clear that it'd be a stretch for like the fire department one. And I forget the exact order of these. I know there's another that has to do with schools. Schools, yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. The only problem is that I don't see how we're going to get a decision, a definitive decision between now and when we'd be able to do anything for the election. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we'd be able to in our next meeting.
[Bruce Kulik]: Well, the city's got to have a city solicitor in some fashion.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, we did. We used to ask directly to, and he was quite responsive about clarifying these things. And I don't know who the current city solicitor even is.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that would be within their purview for sure.
[Bruce Kulik]: Well, they are, but in a different way than we are. I think we should try to get a clarification from the mayor. And if she needs to talk to the council, that'd be good. If she recused herself at the school committee meeting, it might be because she thought there was a conflict of interest for herself. I don't know. Why don't we just get it resolved somehow?
[Bruce Kulik]: We could call a special meeting if need be to specifically vote on which, if any of the proposals we support. Okay.
[Bruce Kulik]: We would do adjourn.
[Bruce Kulik]: Good evening, everyone, and thank you all for coming and for those of you who are watching on TV. On behalf of Paul Donato, I would like to welcome you to tonight's City Council Candidates Night. And I'd also like to thank Henry Milleron, the Ward 6 Chair, for organizing this event this evening. Thank you, Henry.
[Bruce Kulik]: Bruce Kulik, Grove Street. I would like to say thank you to the council for considering this matter. I think it is very important and that I'm here primarily tonight to listen to hear what any objections there might be or what other ideas people might have. I believe, as has been pointed out by Councilor Knight, you have the information about where the proposals were. And from that, that should be, I believe, sufficient for most people to understand whether or not their area is affected. And you had a primary question, actually, that you would ask.
[Bruce Kulik]: I can't be responsible for that. I don't know when the mayor dispatched them.
[Bruce Kulik]: I recommend that you might visit Arlington or Somerville, maybe Cambridge, and you can see how it's applied at those places, which are done basically to DOT and AASHTO standards, which are both adopted by the state.
[Bruce Kulik]: Good start. I expect full vetting of the Traffic Commission as well.
[Bruce Kulik]: For that information.
[Bruce Kulik]: Cyclists are basically just like any other traffic. They have the exact same rights as all motor vehicles, except for being on interstate highways. That means that you're responsible for merging with bicycle traffic just as you would any other slower traffic that might be there. to address Councilor Penta's point. Any two lanes come together, whoever is in front at that point in time has the right of way and the person behind has to yield or overtake safely. Thank you.
[Bruce Kulik]: and all of that, so. There's no regulation about clothing at this point, other than your possibility of adding something to the state, which you brought up a couple of weeks ago. However, there is no currently anything that requires clothing. There are reflection standards that need to be met, lighting standards, and of course, you're right, part of the responsibility of being on the road is to follow the same rules of the road that all other traffic does as well.
[Bruce Kulik]: That's correct.
[Bruce Kulik]: We've reviewed them through Google images and other photographs that we have. Um, there are some places where we'd be interested in finding actual road widths, um, before we would make any recommendation to the traffic commission or to the city about.
[Bruce Kulik]: Certainly.
[Bruce Kulik]: I will say this is one of the strangest city council meetings I've been to. Nice and festive.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, in fact, that's another area that we are considering a recommendation to the city, which would be at some point the purchase of additional bicycle parking facilities. Many of the recent private developments that have gone in have put in very good modern racks, and we really appreciate that. But within the squares, for example, that does become a question because nothing is discouraging like going to find a place to park your bike and not really having a place when you want to go to a merchant that you want to buy something. So I think it is important that there be sufficient bicycle parking in the squares as well as automobile parking.
[Bruce Kulik]: At some point once we've, you know, there's a lot of work to do. And, uh, as it's been pointed out, we're all volunteers and you know, we get, get done what we can get done. But that is one of the ideas we have for future recommendations.
[Bruce Kulik]: That would be if it passes muster with all the people that have financial control. I mean, obviously it's an extra, an extra item, but it certainly would be useful. Right.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm going to bring my bike in here and sit on it more quickly.
[Bruce Kulik]: Well, as part of the educational piece that we're putting forward, as you pointed out, honoring the rules of the road, both by bicyclists and by motorists, is a very important facet. And to encourage the police department to watch for and enforce both for bicyclists and for motor vehicles, I think would be an important item. As well as any sort of detailed reporting of any incidents that might occur that involve a bicycle. That's something which across the state, a lot of times it's varied and there's not as much information as you'd like to see. as far as what might have happened that caused the collision, whether it's something that bicyclists did, something motorists did, that's always, I know it's not always easy to figure out what happened after an incident, but that would be useful. Okay, great.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think that was Ben Everbrook at the time. And Saving Lives, I think, was the group. And there were several, I think about a half dozen, put throughout the city in some areas.
[Bruce Kulik]: The bike lanes would be put in with whatever paint presumably is used for the rest of the street markings and would have the same maintenance schedule.
[Bruce Kulik]: I couldn't tell you what that is.
[Bruce Kulik]: Well, can you tell me how often the lines are redone? Not often. I couldn't tell you that. I just know that you become part of the street and um, unless they're being removed, they would be repainted on whatever schedule the streets are being refreshed.
[Bruce Kulik]: Thermoplastic would certainly be longer wearing, as we've seen on all markings. There are some paints that are less slippery than others. And generally, that's not an issue, except where the lane is painted with green paint that you may have seen. If that's done with thermoplastic, that's not a good idea. Other than that, it's more expensive and longer lasting. Thank you. Thank you.
[Bruce Kulik]: Bruce Kulik, Grove Street. I am the chairman of the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission. One of the additional areas that I believe was on the docket was the stretch from Magoon Square into Medford, which has just been recently repaved and either recently re-striped or about to be re-striped.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, we're developing a master plan that involves basically a staged approach starting very conservatively to begin with until people become accustomed to them and working our way towards additional streets. Also in conjunction with the mayor as far as, you know, what he believes to be the best applications.
[Bruce Kulik]: Right now, we've worked with the DPW, gotten some estimates from them, and we have a sense of how much per mile, per bike lane things cost, but I don't recall what those numbers are.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, for sure.
[Bruce Kulik]: There are basically two types of pavement markings that can be applied depending upon the width of the street, traffic considerations, and so forth. The first and one of the most common is referred to as a SHARO, which is basically just a reminder regarding state law which permits bicycle operation within a full lane at any time at the discretion of the bicycle operator. So those chero is basically look like a bicycle symbol with a couple hats on top of the large chevrons is what they're actually called. And you can see them in some of the neighboring communities, particularly on College Avenue is one of the closest ones within Somerville near Tufts. The other pavement markings are actual bike lanes, which are generally five feet wide, and depending upon whether parking is permitted on the street and how wide the street itself is, might be outside the parking lane, or rather, it might be between the parking lane and the traffic lane, or might be all the way against the curb, again, depending upon whether parking is permitted. In the case of Winthrop Street, we will be looking at exactly where those go. I don't recall whether parking is permitted on that stretch of Winthrop Street or not, or whether parking is generally used in that area. On Playstead Road, certainly parking is permitted, so likely the bicycle lanes will be between the parking lane and the general traffic lane.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, we're referring to the stretch between the Winchester town line and approximately Wildwood Street, which is near the high school.
[Bruce Kulik]: The absolute minimum is four feet wide, and that is only to be used in places where it's permissible, depending upon the width of the lane. We've recently gotten some standards that are being used by the town of Arlington regarding decisions as to where bicycle lanes, how wide, whether share or should go in or whether there should be no markings at all, depending upon traffic volumes and width of the street. And that was really well put together for them. And we hope to adopt that at our next general meeting, which will be December the 3rd, so that we can have some guidance as to what other towns have done, where lanes have been put in. But generally, five feet, to answer your question, five feet is the preferred minimum.
[Bruce Kulik]: Bicycle signs. I believe that's part of the $25,000, and I don't know whether they're manufactured locally or purchased.