[Kelly Catallo]: Hi. Hi, Kelly Catalo, 23 Salem Street, Medford, and a 33-year realtor of the city of Medford, which makes me an expert on the valuation of property. That zoning proposal to tear this city apart, to put a six-unit building in the middle of West Medford, what happened on Salem Street, what they want to do on Garfield Street, is going to negatively affect the value of all of those properties. Those six units will go up. The developers are calling everybody in this city. You guys all own homes. You're getting phone calls. They want to know if you want to sell your property, because they want to buy it today, because the minute that that passes, They're going to go put up three to six units. Then they're going to convert them to condos. Then they're going to go sell them for over a million dollars. That's not going to help the values of the city of Medford. It is not going to bring, density is not going to bring affordable housing to Medford. Look at Stations Landing as your example. When Stations Landing was built, the people of Medford could not afford $3,000 for a two-bedroom apartment. People from other communities that could afford it moved into Stations Landing. At that time, across the street, those condos on 9th Street, the ones that were rented, were renting for $1,400 to $1,500. Well, pretty soon, the people that were paying $3,000 went across the street and said, well, I'll pay you $2,500. All's the density did was drive up the cost of housing. You do have some tools that could really bring affordable housing to Medford. If we look at the GIS maps and we look at North Medford, the majority of the lots are 4,000 square feet, yet your zoning says that you need 5,000 square feet for a single family. On Wilson Street, there was a piece of property recently sold. There are two McMansions that are now built on a piece of land that is just shy of 12,000 square feet. However, If you brought down the zoning on that to be 4,000 in North Medford, you could have had three single family homes that meet the neighborhood, that fit into the neighborhood. If we look at a four... The ADU units, I know I'm running short, I'm gonna ask you for another minute, because I'm trying to give you something that you can use. I can give you about 30 seconds. Thank you. The ADU units, we have 7,800 single family homes in the city of Medford. A one bedroom apartment right now, the low end is $2,100. An ADU in Medford is going to rent at about $1,600. How many of your kids could stay in Medford at that? They could stay here. How many of our elderly people, they can't afford these bigger places. They could stay in Medford at that price. So creating the ADUs is creating housing that is affordable naturally to the people of Medford. However, if you take that same single family and you now make it a two-family house, I guarantee you, now we're at 1.5 million for the two family, or maybe we'll split it in half, go sell it to two condos, and a million one or a million two apiece. None of that is gonna create affordable housing. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catala, 23 Salem Street. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Through the chair, can I talk to
[Kelly Catallo]: Okay, this will help housing, because the universities are part of your housing problem. They overcharge for their housing, they don't have enough housing, then their students end up moving into the neighborhoods, then because they're coming from wealthy areas that are willing to pay much more than what the people in Medford can pay, that raises the rents there. Then they double up, they triple up, they quadruple up. If I look to the right side of the room, which I won't, They all came to Medford because of universities. They all came to Massachusetts because of universities. They're coming here, they're staying here. It's increasing the population that is part of the problem. Not that we don't want you here, but it is part of the problem. So if the university is gonna benefit, and I do believe Tufts just raised their tuition to $90,000. It's not about the buildings. It's the fact that they're increasing the cost of housing just by being here. Mayor Menino was able to do a lot with the universities in Boston. Harvard went to the city of Cambridge and they came up with a plan. Cambridge is benefiting from them. I'd like to see Medford benefit on the housing end too. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: When you look at the cost of housing and where the highest costs of being paid from, they're not from the people that have been here all their lives. The people that have been here aren't being able to pay for it. People are coming in, they're getting wonderful degrees. The companies are coming in to get the young graduates. They're getting great jobs and they can afford to pay more than what most people are here. Unfortunately, we have a lot of elderly people. that need to go into housing, they're being told they need to wait five years. There is a huge housing crisis, the university is a part of it. In regards to Harvard University, they went to the city of Cambridge with a plan back in 2000, which I don't have all the statistics right in front of me because I didn't plan on going there tonight. However, they helped the city of Cambridge produce and keep 2600 affordable units. They don't give them money, they help leverage them the money. That would be great if Tufts did that for Medford, that could help Medford, that would be a partnership. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: I'm Kelly Catalo, 23 Salem Street, Medford. I am in the real estate business. And I'd like to tell you something. As far as Anna, through the chair, Anna, I know that you mean well. I had a 72 year old woman that emailed me. My mother was asked to be put on a registry and that was in World War II in Germany. People do not want their names on a registry. They do not want their name, their address and their phone number listed on a registry. The city of Medford has a registry of all the property owners. I can stand here as somebody that's in the real estate business and tell you, you have approximately 5,002 families. Out of those 5,000, approximately 2,400 of them are not owner occupied. Out of your single families, there's approximately 500 of them that are not owner occupied. There are registries out there where you can go get that information. The FCC passed a law in December that nobody can contact anybody come July on their phone or their email without their written consent. So it doesn't matter what they give you. I've gotten phone calls in the last week from tenants Don't you dare give out my lease. Do not give out my name. Do not give out my phone number. I've gotten the same information from landlords. Do not give it out. I am a company that does over 275 leases a year. We will not be giving you their information. They will not be giving you their information. The only information I've been given permission to give you is their attorney. I've gotten attorney phone calls, do not give it. You wanna have a rental registry like Lynn, which is what I heard today? You wanna tack on $175 a year to the cost of housing? You can't sit here one week and say you wanna lower the cost of housing, and then the next week put another tax on top of it. These are good people. I will tell you how other cities deal with problem properties. Malden has had a problem property unit for at least, 15 years. They meet every single month. It is the head of every department. Landlords and tenants know if there is somebody putting out more trash than they're supposed to, or there's more cars, you can report it as something to be investigated. But it doesn't matter if you create this other registry. The city of Medford does not have the people to enforce it. There are two code enforcers down there. Try filing for a permit. I have people that are waiting months just to renovate their bathroom. You don't have enough people in the city to do the work that's here. You shouldn't be adding to it. I know you're good intentioned. There's other ways of doing it. And I ask you to implore those, and please, can we just get away from housing for a few weeks? The city of Medford has been incited week after week after week for a city that wants affordable housing. This isn't the best way to go about it. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 23 Salem Street.
[Kelly Catallo]: Can I speak to Anna for a minute through the chat?
[Kelly Catallo]: I will speak to you to Anna. So I feel like you just want to reach the landlords and you just want to reach the tenants. And I will tell you the majority of the leases renew in June through September in the city of Medford. If the city of Medford budgeted for an every door mailing in the month of November, you could include anything you want on that mailing, it's one mailing a year, it could cover what you're looking for here, that if there's a problem you contact this department, it could cover a letter in my email this weekend from somebody, a few of them. It had something to do with the board of health thing. Everything could be on this one mailing in November. And then you would be doing your outreach and you would be letting people know when you have a problem, this is what you do. We don't need a registry. We have that in the registry of deeds. We have that in the assessor's office. tenants don't want you to have their information if they wanted to they all get told the city of Medford has a reverse 911 we recommend that you go ahead and register for that, so that you receive city notices, I've asked you before, whenever you as the council puts up a notice or agenda or something. It would be wonderful if anybody that was on this reverse 911 from the city got the email. So now you've put something up that you've put it on the website because you want the people to know, wouldn't it be great for you if it automatically came in our email, you have access to that system, we do not. Well, I think you should. And I think that would solve a lot of these problems. And I feel like everyone in this room is here for the best intentions. I just really want to feel like that. And I feel like everybody wants their American rights protected. People are being tired of being told what to do. I do know that there's some slumlords floating around. I just don't do business with them. But those people there, the code enforcers know who they are because those tenants are calling the board of health, right? John Bavosa, he used to spend all his days at problem properties. Maybe we need somebody else in the building department. I think if we can start looking at solutions that really work within the means of the city, people wouldn't be so upset. And I think you guys could do more business. So I hope you take that into consideration.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 23 Salem Street in Medford. The night of the transfer tax, I didn't get to talk till 1230 at night, but I'd like to think that the information and the education I was able to give this council was taken into consideration and I'd like to think it was helpful. If you had a 90 minute roll, I never would have been able to speak and I stayed here all night long. I didn't speak just on behalf of myself, but on a lot of property owners and a lot of tenants in this city. People that can't find their voice, they're not gonna send you an email, they're not gonna come to this podium. They'll call me, they'll call somebody they know, can you go speak for me? I had an 81-year-old lady ask me the other day, Cal, I give you my proxy. Do you need me to sign it? No, I don't need you to sign it, but I will go. All of these people, they need a voice, but they don't have a voice here. They don't feel like they can walk in the door. When we talk about trust, that You're just asking for a discussion. That's what we heard. President beer is the night of the transfer tax. You said we're only here to open a discussion. That's what you said. Councilor Lazzaro wrote a blog. We are crafting this ordinance. We voted to craft a transfer fee ordinance. We only have a new discussion. Are we crafting an ordinance? That's a big question. You are doing things differently. Never ever in the history of the city of Medford have I seen more than The council work on three or four different things, and they're usually things to improve the city. They're not things to change the city. I've never seen so many housing issues in front of a local city council, we have three branches of government because every branch has different resources, different funds in access to different specialized people. I asked a couple of state representatives and a couple of state senators. If a housing issue comes into your house, what do you do with it? We put aside money, we send it for a study. They send it out to other people. that have the knowledge and the expertise to bring back the information to them. And if on the state level, that's what they're doing, I question if any of this is local level. When you look at the agenda and you look at everything that has been put forth, and we're only on April 2. It's a lot. And I get that you're proud of this big governing agenda. I have read pages 12 through 15, because all your housing issues are there, but it's too much. People do not like change. People want to be heard. You've got this big, long agenda. I think maybe you might find some more balance by picking what's most important and what's beneficial and what can actually be accomplished within the next 12 months and lowering the agenda before telling people that they can't come to the podium and speak anymore, that their voice isn't valued, that if they don't get here, It's seven o'clock and there's not already 200 people here to speak. They may not get to be heard. The email doesn't always work. We met the 80 year old lady that doesn't even have a computer. She's been here twice, right? How many other people are across the street that they were not heard at all during COVID? They don't do Zoom. Does it make them wrong? No. They want to be heard too. So I'm going to ask you, please don't put a 90 minute limit that if you're not here to be heard 90 minutes, you can't be heard. You know, maybe the forums. I love the whole idea of the forum. I really do because then maybe, you know, Javier, the guy who was the, he's on the board of directors for the affordable housing council.
[Kelly Catallo]: Right? No, but Harvey, what a great resource. Wouldn't you like to sit down and have a conversation with him? But then I look at these subcommittee meetings. I don't know how in a one hour frame, you're going to talk about transfer tax. There's three and a half hours here that night. And now you're going to take it and put in a subcommittee that's only an hour long. I don't understand it.
[Kelly Catallo]: Can you please not put a 90 minute limit?
[Kelly Catallo]: But topics need to be discussed to the point of exhaustion if you're going to make laws. And I don't think it's funny. And I think that I give a lot of my time to kind of this podium for other people. And I don't appreciate the two Councilors that are sitting here laughing at me. Thank you very much. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 23 Salem Street in Medford. Is Kit still with us?
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you. So I got to have coffee with kit couple of weeks ago. And we had great coffee at grounder, which was awesome. But we also had a great conversation in an hour. And in that hour, a lot of the stuff that I was telling kit that the people in Medford are going through whether they rent, or they own, it just doesn't matter. Here is a housing crisis. We all see it, we all understand it. I have a 34 year old son who's a school teacher. I pray someday that child can own a home. I want him to be able to own a home. My oldest brother who passed away in 2015 spent most of his adult life homeless. I don't think anybody should have to worry about that. I do think that the way that this is happening this year, process matters. It really matters. There was no announcement about any of these things. If people weren't watching the stuff being uploaded to the city council, you know, like when you guys upload stuff, if it could automatically be emailed to anybody that gets a notice from the city, that would be better communication. Anything that's going to affect The property owner, I would love to see the whole city mailed I get it it's expensive, but at least if you can mail the 60 and over crowd, there was a woman that was here a few weeks ago talking about walking court. She doesn't have a computer. She doesn't have the internet. My office is in the square. Many a time, the elderly people from the buildings, they'll come walking in and whatever, and they have no idea what's going on in Medford. And that's really sad, because I don't think that that's your intent. When we talk about a transfer tax, I will tell you, I have never seen anybody add a cost to housing that made housing more affordable. work. There are plenty of studies that are out there. It's okay that 18 other communities have already signed on to it. It doesn't mean that it's right, because it doesn't matter what everybody here said. They don't get a vote. The people that were here only knew because of social media. If you mail this out to everyone in the city, and I mean everyone, all 58,000 people, what would they have to say about it? And is that the only answer? It's not. There are a million answers. You know, former Councilor Marks, hit on a big one that we all talked about a few years ago with all these vacant lots. I was in Alicia Hunt's office two, three weeks ago, talking about a couple of vacant lots. I get a guy that'll sell this lot cheap. You match up with the city and Medford stuff. Let's gear it to it's an affordable housing developer. There's two more units there. You know, when you guys were talking about a couple of the other housing things, and I think rent control was what was being talked about that night. Even Alicia said, I don't think that is going to lower the cost of housing.
[Kelly Catallo]: No, no, no. Before that, I'm sorry. Zach, unfortunately, I've been in here an awful lot lately, but it's not going to lower the cost of housing as you're sitting here talking about adding a transfer fee. There are realtors that are in Washington DC for the last two years petitioning Congress. Could you give us a moratorium on capital gains for either three months or six months, because this is a 31 year realtor in this community and there's a quite a few other ones that can come up here and talk about their own lived experience. Our entire first-time homebuyer market in 2017 and 2018, it got bought up by investors. We're talking about those single-family homes, a lot of them in North Medford. Alicia talked to you about how she was excited to buy her starter home. Those starter homes are now the forever homes. However, we do have a lot of those that are owned by investors, adding a transfer tax. is not going to help them let go of those properties. It's another reason for them not to. Kind of like people aren't letting go of their real estate because they don't want to let go of their 2% rate or their 3% rate. There are people that are in Washington, D.C. now that are trying to do something with the mortgages. There's too many clogs in the funnel of housing. There's clogs with the rentals. There's clogs with the purchases. Somebody here said, you know, all the people buying homes in Medford now are millionaires. I guarantee you they're not. We are seeing two and three generations of a family go buy a house together, because that's the only way that they can afford to do it. I don't care if that tax is $500 in the buyer and $500 in the seller. It's another fee. All of you have moved at some point. You've moved. You moved to college, right? You've moved. You've all moved.
[Kelly Catallo]: Can I have one minute? I'll give you- Come on. 45, 45 seconds. I want a minute. 45 seconds, but you've been- Here's what I'm gonna ask you. I am going to ask you to just think, if you table this paper and you table these other things, because I got to tell you, the fact that you bring it up in the spring housing market is causing a lot of issues. I have a landlord that has a little old lady for a tenant who only pays $1,200 a month for rent. He's like, I don't want to raise her rent, but if I don't, they're going to cap that rent, and then my house is devalued. Just because you guys are just discussing it now, this is what the people of Medford are thinking. This thing with the transfer tax, it's another reason for them not to let go with their house, when reality is that single person that's 80 years old, she doesn't need nine rooms anymore. Maybe your family needs that house, but if we can't get them to let go of that one, we can't take you from paying rent to making you a homeowner. And there is plenty of opportunity. One question, my only question. Yes. I am going to ask you to consider, to deeply consider, to take the paper off the table, to have a housing symposium where everyone can come in. You have a lot of educated people in the community of Medford and they can sit here and we can discuss housing. What are all the opportunities to relieve the housing opportunity. Wait until you open up the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Medford is extremely generous. They can donate to it. Go after the CPA. Take 80% of your CPA money for the next two or three years. Put it into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Ask the taxpayers to raise that to 3%. That's equitable across the city.
[Kelly Catallo]: Please. I'm asking you.
[Kelly Catallo]: You've made it really clear. The seven of you are the only people they're going to get to vote on that home rule petition that you're going to send to the state house on behalf of 58,000 people.
[Kelly Catallo]: Okay. And you believe that you have that right to do that because you were elected regardless of who people vote for. Once you sit in that chair, you serve. 58,000 people in this community like unfortunately in the last four years, we haven't seen citizens brought into these chambers to discuss these things, the way the former mayors used to do that that doesn't happen anymore, but maybe in your capacity, you guys can make these things happen. There are better ways, not just the best thing that you're being told from way down the street to go sell to the people of Medford. It doesn't mean it's the best thing for Medford. Look at Cambridge, look at Homebridge. They've had an affordable housing trust fund since 1989. They've done amazing things. I've sold properties over there that they've matched the money and made people homeowners, but they've been working on it a long time. I'm just asking you to take a step back and reassess the situation.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 23 Salem Street in Medford. I'd like to point out a point of information.
[Kelly Catallo]: I can't? Okay, can I just speak regular?
[Kelly Catallo]: Okay. I'm red, I'll face it. Everyone's here because of the sales tax thing, but I get that you want some money for affordable housing. So I went back through from the CPA site. Thank you. They did a great job. And in the last seven years, they have estimatedly collected $7 million from the taxpayers in Medford, which was an extra one and a half percent that was added onto their property tax. They have spent $1,187,000 on housing, which is about 25%. I keep hearing Medford needs affordable housing, and there could have been a larger portion of that, but I'm not surprised to hear that the majority of the applications that they got were for the parks and for the recreation stuff like that Medford is most 40% conservation land. which we have Alicia to thank for protecting that. And that's what the people of Medford love. They love their history. We are the fourth oldest English settlement in the country. So yes, they want to protect their history. We're not seeing applications for affordable housing, but the point of information that I want to make is that the application that came in for $69,500, it says in their request that it was for attorney fees to defend tenants that were being evicted. So if you are, if you don't have the money for your rent, you're considered indigent. If you go to district court, you can fill out the application and they will need an attorney of the day. The courthouse, and I did check this with housing attorneys today, still has a two tier system where it's mediation before it goes into court. So nobody's being thrown there. If you think that we need $69,500 to create housing, that would be wonderful. But I don't think that we need to be paying attorneys with it. And you do have the affordable housing trust right now. And cities do have the right to earmark a certain percentage of CPA funds actually above your one third if it's going to affordable housing. And this committee, your body has the right to do that. And if we're not seeing that it's needed now, I question if there's any need to charge the taxpayers another 2% when they sell their house as well. So I'd ask you. You guys have a lot in your plate, I get it. You have full time jobs, but before you approve this round of CPA funding, I would ask that you go back and you actually read the request from these people because $69,500, it's a lot of money to a first time buyer. It's a lot of money to somebody that doesn't have the money to pay their mortgage because their rent's not being paid by their tenant. The homeowners in the community matter just as much. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, and I live at 9A Mountain Road in Burlington. I am a former Medford resident that was displaced as a property owner. I couldn't afford to buy a house in Medford, and that's how my family ended up in Burlington two years ago. Are you going to do anything to stop the price of the increased cost of housing? I don't think so. I think it should be pointed out to the public that both of your speakers that you just had are actually an organization that comes in and they organize tenants to get them to fight against landlords. So if we go back to the building on Bradley Road, everybody should know the person who bought that building paid millions and millions of dollars for a building that needed a ton of work. The people that were living in the building, I happened to replace quite a few of them. Their rent was well below what anybody else was paying. So there is a big attrition there. There is no way that those people were going to be made whole, whether they stayed there or they went somewhere else. Their rent was brought up. Medford is a victim of its own success. It's not a bad thing. Everyone said, bring in the green line. We want the amenity of the green line. We call that the money line, because where does it go? It goes to Kendall Square. It goes down to the medical buildings. People that work in those high paying jobs, that's where they travel to, is on that train. They're coming to Medford, and I'll tell you, I represent 732 landlords in the city of Medford. So if you need me to come back with a petition, I will. They would like to be heard on this. They don't want just the tenant end of it being heard. There really is not a problem with a lot of the landlords and a lot of the tenants in Medford. They communicate very well because the majority of the landlords in Medford are small property owners. They own one or two units. I have an email here, which I am going to read into the record, and it's from one of my clients who emailed everyone on this council today. Dear housing members, as a homeowner of a three-family house in Medford for almost 60 years, I have never written to the mayor or city council before. But when a friend told me today that there was a meeting at city hall tonight at 6 p.m. where the Medford City Council's Housing Self Committee will propose creating zoning that will control rent And also, and landlord rights to evict a tenant for any reason, I was appalled and had to write to all those concerned in this matter. Firstly, regarding rent control around 1970 Boston, Cambridge, Sumbul instituted rent control, Medford did not. It ended in the late 70s there about with Boston abolishing it around 1994. Voters voted it out for the simple reason that the homes in those cities were deteriorating at a rapid pace. The landlords, mostly small, did not garner enough revenue to fix important breakdowns. So the apartments eventually were like trash. The carpenters, electricians, plumbers wages were going up during that time, but not the rents. So it was difficult to fix deteriorating structures without the proper income. Please don't let that happen in Medford. As far as ending landlord's rights to evict a tenant for any reason, whoa, that's not a good idea. In our almost 60 years of marriage and many tenants, last year found us with a tenant who always missed paying his monthly rent with unbelievable excuses. We had to call him three to four times the week before the first of each month to remind him that the rent was almost due. Even then the rent was not received until two to three weeks later. Also, we told him that another tenant had an allergy to cats for so pets were not allowed within three months he's serendipitously brought in a cat. My other tenant was about to give us notice for that reason. So I told the cat tenant that since we're not on the same page, and he has about two to three months to find another apartment. He left quietly on the first of the month. Imagine if I did not have the right to evict him for any reason. Also, that was the first time in all those years that I've had to evict someone. I have more to say, but I want to get this email over to you all before the 6 p.m. meeting tonight. I wish we all knew sooner about this meeting. So I am going to ask you, maybe you could publish the entire community, a lot of communities, they send their notices out with their water bills, you're mailing it anyways, you're mailing a tax bill, send a notice to the whole city that you would like to discuss the landlord and the tenant issue here. The problem is if you cannot come up with a solution that is going to help the rising interest rates, what?
[Kelly Catallo]: Oh, sorry. Thanks. We need a little clock. If you're not going to be able to stop the rising cost of the repairs, stop the rising cost of real estate, stop the rising interest rates, we're not gonna be able to fix the problems because right now you're trying to handicap people and just trying to help the community. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Name and address for the record, please. Sure. Kelly Catalo, 23 Salem Street. I was a candidate in the 2021 election and there was a lot of problems back then. And I was told by this city hall that it would never happen again and that the problems would end. We're hearing that there's 4,000 ballots that were not counted in public. I was a poll worker for the Caraviello campaign. I saw a lot of things that if any of these Councilors were sitting in the room, they would have stopped. Are we just going to kick it forward again? Are you going to kick it forward again to next year and say, we hope it doesn't happen again? You had a voter stand here. your constituent who asked you, let's just recount the vote, let's just do it, and let's prove to Medford that integrity in the vote exists in Medford. I challenge you to do it. I challenge any candidate that was on the card to call for a recount. Do it by hand. Let's prove to the voters that their election has integrity. Right now, as a voter in America, I don't know if I'll ever vote again. It's really sad, because you know what? I love this city. I love this city more than most people. And it's sad that this is where it happens, 400 years after the day this city was born. And I hope that you all bring it to an end, and you prove to the voters that they can still believe in Medford. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catala, 4602 Street, Medford, Massachusetts. I'm also the broker owner of Realty One Group Cosmopolitan. And this morning, an elderly resident of this city who has worked in Medford Square for many, many years that most of you all know came in my office crying because she got this email. So a lot of this is not coming down to whether or not the property owner has the right or whether or not this is right. There was a time where we could call City Hall when a situation happened between a property owner and a tenant, and somebody from City Hall would call the property owner and just work it out. So he didn't serve notice correctly, and the lawyers can go battle that out, but telling the tenants, oh, go call a lawyer, well, telling everybody to lawyer up is not gonna solve this. We're not gonna be able to find anybody housing within 30 days. There's no housing, there's nothing for rent. There's nothing for sale. We are in crisis, where I think City Hall and the council can help everybody in the city is through advocacy. And I know Alicia said that, you know, they told them to call housing families for a lawyer. And you know, this or that. And I appreciate that she did make the phone call to the owner. And I'm hoping that somebody here from City Hall is going to sit this person down and try and work it out. I'm sure that he's just trying to, you know, move forward with his property rights. But maybe if somebody can kind of put it to him. in a nice way of us being able to go through this to be able to get people housing. It could take four to six months and everyone can all sit here and say my right, my right, my right, that's not going to solve the problem. We need negotiators. And, you know, I wonder is there, are the people in community development, are they trained as mediators? Because if they're not, maybe that's something that this council could fund is for those people to be trained as mediators so they can help people through it. This is not the first housing situation that we're having. We have elderly landlords that aren't getting rent from their tenants. I was told that there's money for that. I told them to call community development and they were told, no, no, there's no money for you only for the tenant. Well, the tenant's not calling back. They're trying to fix the problem. If there was somebody there trained as a mediator that would step in, we wouldn't need everybody calling lawyers. We'd be able to work through all this. We're in a tough situation as a community. It's not going to get any easier anytime soon. but hopefully the council and City Hall can help the residents of this city through advocacy and mediation.
[Kelly Catallo]: LA Catalo 46 Otis Street in Medford. President Morell, I totally understand what you're saying about the signs, but this community had a big upheaval about seven or eight years ago because there were signs on every corner. And there was a huge push to get rid of a lot of signs. There's so many signs in Medford Square that people don't know which way to go. And at some point they all become blind. I know myself as a realtor in the community I'm really, you know, cognizant about telling people, make sure you sign up for the reverse 911. I know the city has their new welcome to Medford program maybe there could be more outreach on that. Maybe it could go on the literature that gets delivered to every household in regards to the trash and the recycling and the calendar, maybe it could go there on, but I don't think adding more science is going to help. People will always say well I didn't see the sign, if you if you care to know something then you find out every community has a reverse 911, so it doesn't matter what city they go to, they're being told, you should go to the city website and you should register for the 911. And hopefully that will help and there's always going to be something that somebody is going to want for another sign. But it's at some point there, it was just too much we're so overrun with them so I personally would like to see better communication and other venues, and a lot less signs. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Number five, we have report on the Universal Safety Committee, Ms. Joan Bowen and Ms. Tanya Sullivan. They will actually turn the mic on for you, Mr. Gordon. So you don't have to touch it. Don't touch it? Yeah, so you don't have to. Oh, okay. Thank you very much. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Dr. Edward Benson and school committee members. Tonight, I'm joined at the podium by Tanya Sullivan, who is our co-chair of CPAC, and tonight we're here to do a presentation regarding our Universal Safety Committee and the work that we've done during the school year of 2019, 2020, and this past school year. The members of the Universal Safety Committee include myself, Jan Hollenbeck, who's our coordinator of related services, Miss Susanna Campbell, who's our coordinator of speech-language hearing services. Mr. Paul DeLeva, who's the principal of Medford High School. Miss Stacey Shulman, who's our supervisor of clinical and behavior services. Member Melanie McLaughlin, who is our school committee member. Craig Droschke, who's the principal at the Curtis Tufts High School. Tanya Sullivan, who's our co-chair of Medford CPAC, as well as the Medford Public School principals who join us on a quarterly basis. Our story and how we began, the Universal Safety Committee was formed in response to a 2018 scare in Medford schools that raised many questions around the equity of safety for students with disabilities in an emergency situation. As the Universal Safety Committee progressed to what it's become today, safety for all students, faculty, and administration are considered in the representation, planning, and goals of all of our initiatives. Our Universal Safety Committee mission statement, the Universal Safety Committee's commitment is to promote and maintain equity in safety within our schools and our community, and to advise the Medford School District on emergency planning, providing professional development opportunities and implementing best practices in emergencies of any kind, while delivering transparency and communication with families and guardians of students with special needs and all students. The Universal Safety Committee meets monthly, realizing and putting into practice ways for school staff to provide necessary accommodations organically to continue to create adaptive change in culture, demonstrating that all students are Medford students. Some of our accomplishments for the past two school years are the first one we did was our classroom go bags. These were created for all of our subseparate classrooms and they include items that individual students may need in case of an emergency. There may be a fidget toy, a stress ball, noise reducing headphones, a notepad to draw pictures while they're out on a fire drill, or if there's an evacuation. We also had our second I believe it's our second annual safety preparedness presentation. And with that, we received 96 emergency go bags that we were able to distribute to the community and members of our school department and also our special education students. We also developed our USC resource webpage, which will be accessible to all our families and community members. It has different resources that members can use and look at when items come up or questions come up about different situations that happen within the community. And then our last accomplishment is our individual emergency response plans. And these are for our students with disabilities. There's a discussion at their specific team meeting and we talk about what sort of specific needs that they may have. And we create a document that goes along with their individual education program. And what we have next is a few pictures of the assembly of our classroom emergency go bags. Our project transition students took this on as a project. We had many donations and we also had funding from CPAC and other sources. It includes hand sanitizers, like I said, fidget toys, things like that. And the students in our project transition classroom put these together and distributed them across the district to our different classrooms. This is us organizing and distributing the home emergency go bags that we received through our emergency preparedness from Homeland Security. So, Tanya, Jan Hollaback, Susanna Campbell and I, we organized them according to drop-off, pickup, and we all were able to get those bags to community members who had requested them. And this is just another picture of the distribution. This is the many bags that we had in our speech and language center. And our goals for school year 2021 to 2022 for advocacy and awareness campaign to increase awareness and the use of smart 911, which is a program that Medford has in place already. If you have, someone in your home that has a disability or has an illness, you can note this with the SMART 911 program. And if there's an emergency and the fire department or the police department show up at your home, they will know that they are going to find a person or may find a person there that has the disability that's listed in the SMART 911 program. We're also for advocacy and awareness, the file of life when fire personnel or police officers show up at a home, they typically will look on a refrigerator for what's called a file of life. It's a magnet that lists allergies, illnesses, disabilities, and things of that nature. And they are trained to look there first. So it's something we really want to get out into the community. For training and resources, we would like to host our third annual emergency preparedness event. Emergency Preparedness Event 3.0. It should be amazing. And hopefully it will be in person this year. This year we did it virtually and we had a great turnout and we think it will be even better next year. To create and distribute pamphlet on available resources, including self-advocacy, civil rights, and ADA. And then monitoring of the projects that we currently have in place. So ensuring the continuation of these projects by refilling the classroom go bags, and ensuring the implementation of the IERs. And are there any questions? That's our presentation. Great job, ladies. Thank you. Member McLaughlin? Do you want to go first? I just wanted to say thank you, guys, for presenting. It's been such a pleasure working with you all the past two years. Our emergency preparedness events have been really remarkable and I want to make sure that the community knows that, you know, the work we're doing certainly originated with persons with disabilities as we thought about well how did they get out of the building in a fire or what happens in a school shooting or any of these instances and we sort of really had to start to think through those things but I also want to assure the community that this is for every individual. And that's what you learn in the emergency preparedness meeting. Suddenly you start to realize that we haven't thought through these things as families and as individuals, like where do we go in a crisis? What do we do if there's suddenly a national emergency and we have to evacuate? Where are we going? And this is sort of what the emergency preparedness program has taught. And so the Mass Office on Disability has partnered with us on this program and they have been really tremendous. you all and the IERs as well. I just wanted to say the individual emergency response has been a model for DESE. So it's sort of, it was a takeoff on the IEP, but individual emergency response also obviously are for people with and without disabilities. Some people might break a foot, need additional assistance, what have you. So these can be made available to all individuals. So this has been a really remarkable program in our districts. And I wanna ensure open invitations to the community invitations to our school committee members or community members. The meetings occur the last Friday of the month at 8am prompt. In the future, we'll be in the superintendent's conference room. So the equity and safety, I want to thank you all for that. You have really brought that to our district as well and the importance of that and really took you know, a concerning situation and made the best of it and continue to make the best of it. And those emergency go bags for people who don't know what's in there, there's everything from chargeable flashlights to crank radios to, you know, just an amazing toolkit. So thank you guys so much.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you. It's our pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. On number six, we have CPAC report presented by Ms. Alex Lark and Ms. Tanya Sullivan, co-chairs of the special education Parent Advisory Council. I feel like it's been years. So we are here to present for the Medford Special Education Parent Advisory Council, Madam Mayor, Superintendent, and school committee members. The board members are Alex Lorak and myself. We are the co-chairs of BCPAC. Our treasurer is Jamil Webb Davis, and our secretary is Anne Herzog Russo. Membership includes students, families, and guardians of children on IEPs, 504s, and any other interested parties. The Medford CPAC is always looking for parents or guardians of children with special needs and other interested parties, including students, to be a part of our community. If you would like to learn more about how to get involved with the Medford CPAC, please email medford.cpac at gmail.com. We would love to have you. Our mission. So what is CPAC? Some people watching may not know what CPAC is. Our purpose is to fulfill the directive stated in Chapter 71B of the Massachusetts General Laws, which requires a school district to establish a PAC, Parent Advisory Council, and assigns both an advisory and a participatory function to the PAC. In meeting this requirement, the mission of the Medford Special Education Parent Advisory Council is to advise the district on matters that pertain to the education and safety of students with disabilities by seeking input from the special education parent members. We meet regularly with school officials. We participate in the planning, development, and evaluation of the school district's special education program. and we participate in planning workshops and activities as prioritized by the CPAC board. We have some highlights to let you know about. There's a couple pages of them, so sorry if we're going on and on, but we were very busy this year. This has been a crazy year for everybody. The CPAC co-chairs, Alex and myself, were involved in the Medford reopening strategy. I was part of the district-wide reopening task force, and Alex was part of the McGlynn reopening team. CPAC hosted four Q&A sessions with Joan Bowen to address questions, concerns, and challenges our families experienced regarding school reopening. The feedback on that, I will say, was tremendous. Parents so appreciated that, and they so appreciated Joan taking the time to actually participate in the Q&As and offer explanations and valuable information. The four sessions were held during August, September, and October of 2020. CPAC participated in the tiered focused monitoring process and received a commendable rating, recognizing the collaboration among district leadership, the CPAC and the school committee. There's still much work to do moving forward and we look forward to our next steps. CPAC has continued advocacy for the adoption of a disability awareness curriculum in Medford public schools and is presented to the curriculum subcommittee. We continue to collaborate with the special education department and with the curriculum subcommittee to advance issues important for our community. Both Alex and I were panelists for the disability awareness professional development program offered to teachers and administration. And Alex was part of Medford team and the Desi sponsored family school partnership initiative. CPAC offered several content rich presentations throughout the school year, new for the school year of 2020 and 2021, CPAC presentations qualified as PDP credits for teachers and staff who attended the presentations. And the topics included basic rights to evaluation and eligibility, transition planning and services for students 14 and over, understanding dyslexia with a focus on Orton-Gillingham reading instruction, out-of-district community connections, differentiated curriculum accommodations and modifications, and vocational presentation on opportunities for students on IEPs. CPAC goals, we're focused on moving the disability awareness curriculum forward for students in all schools. Through this disability awareness curriculum, students will develop understanding and respect for fellow students with physical, intellectual, sensory, and developmental disabilities. The curriculum will provide age appropriate information that highlights the unique perspectives and strength people of all abilities bring to our community. This will begin with a pilot program being implemented in the fall. We will also continue to serve on the special education and behavioral health subcommittee where for the special education part of this committee, forming authentic peer friendships in school and in community and for the behavioral health side of it, the trauma informed schools to really have our schools be on point when it comes to being trauma informed. So we have a lot of great people in the district that are helping us work on that as well. And we actually have a few awards we wanted to give out every year. CPAC presents an award or awards to members in the district who for the current school year have embodied what it means to go above and beyond for our students and families. So as we read the names, we request that each person come up and then remain up here until they're all done so we can get a photo up. Mel, do you mind taking the picture? Okay. Okay, our first person, I'll read what I have here. So our first award is going to go to Carla Andre. Carla is a fifth-year teacher. Yes, absolutely. Carla is a fifth year teacher in the access program at Medford High School. The access program, for those that don't know, is a life skills based program. It's focused on functional academics, independent living skills, and community interactions. Carla has always been a think outside the box educator, and this past year was no exception. Carla took the pandemic as a personal challenge and raised the bar on new ways of teaching her students and providing virtual community experiences. She was integral in transitioning students to virtual and back to in-person, making it look seamless. Thank you, Carla. Our second award goes to Denise Desjardins. She is the district-wide physical therapist. She is not happy that she has to come up here, but that's okay. Denise provides PT services, physical therapy services in three of our elementary schools, both middle schools and Medford Vocational. If a student requires PT services through their IEP, chances are Denise has worked with them, advocated and provided support for them and their families. During the pandemic, Denise worked tirelessly with families and students to transition from school to remote learning, from elementary to middle school and from remote learning back to in-person and I'm sure I have forgotten something because she does so much in this district. Thank you, Denise. Our third and final award we'd like to give to Joan Bowen. Having worked in the district for many years, Joan became the Director of Special Education and Pupil Services in 2019, right before all this craziness happened. Just in time for the COVID pandemic, we are offering this award for outstanding collaboration with CPAC, transparency of the special education process during the pandemic, and her advocacy for the speedy in-person return to school for children with high needs. We are also offering this award to Mrs. Bowen on behalf of all special education teachers and service providers in Medford. who were the first to return to school in person, while also making remote learning work for students with special needs. They were truly frontline workers during this pandemic. Thank you. Mayor. Do you want to take a picture?
[Kelly Catallo]: Can we get a picture with the school committee, actually? Can you guys come right in here? And then may I, Mayor, just for a moment? Yes, Member Rubio. Also, I just wanted to say thank you to our co-chairs for our CPAC and your tireless efforts in advocating for students with and without disabilities and the folks that are here. I also want to say Denise Desjardins was distributing lunch to students all summer long. And Ms. Andre was doing a presentation on differentiated curriculum to make sure that we're presuming competence for every student in our schools. So they're just really wonderful examples of folks here. So a community shot would be great with us.
[Kelly Catallo]: Some great things, okay. Number seven, recommendation to approve Medford Public Schools strategic plan updates. Dr. Marice Edouard-Vincent, Dr. Peter Cushing, and Ms. Suzanne Galusi.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you very much, Dr. Cushing. Thank you, Madam Mayor and members of the school committee. I'm just going to talk the next piece. We wanted to make sure that this document is accessible to the entire community so that you will know that there is a glossary of terms that will be included in the strategic plan. Just a brief example, there's several terms in this document, but just a brief example are located here so that parents can, or community members can look and see what we're referencing in certain items of this plan. You'll see that this brief example just gives an explanation for what a 504 plan is, what a BCBA is, it's an employee within the city, it will explain, Credit for Life, which is an organization that works each year with high school students. So we just want to make sure that this plan, when members of the community are reading it, is accessible to all. So you'll also find a glossary of terms. Moving forward with the rest, I'm going to start off with the achievement bucket. I just want to say Dr. Cushing and Dr. Wadvinson gave a very nice overview of the strategic plan. What you're going to notice here is just a high level, a more detailed, as Dr. Cushing mentioned, it was provided to the school committee and will eventually be posted on the website for those to see the more, the sub documents that Dr. Cushing was referring to. So in the achievement objective, there are going to be four initiatives. You'll notice that as I speak about them, these initiatives start at like a foundational level and move forward that way. So for example, the first initiative is going to talk about curriculum. and then move into an effective instruction, and then common assessments to make sure that we can monitor the curriculum that we're utilizing and ensuring that the instruction matches that, and how we can use technology efficiently to wrap that all together in a nice little package. So this first one, as I mentioned, is establish an ongoing curriculum review cycle. So the anticipated outcomes for this would be an alignment of curriculum with the Massachusetts frameworks, assessing curriculum for bias, which we do annually through the use of a rubric tool and professional development to support curriculum. Now we are in the process of a lot of alignment right now with our curriculum here in the city of Medford. As standards are being updated through the department of education, we have to align our curriculum. And as such, we're in the process of that through the humanities department, as well as the math department. The second initiative is the use of evidence-based instructional practices to implement the curriculum. So the anticipated outcomes for that are educators utilize teaching practices proven to work. Students are both challenged and supported. Students engage in academic conversations and metacognitive activities. All students have access to instruction that benefit their learning style and progression. Instructional feedback is rich, authentic, and targeted. And so these outcomes are aligned with the five core actions that Dr. Vincent has brought with her here to the Medford Public Schools. We work with this, with building leaders, as well as department heads and teachers. That focus is continuing next year, as well as training and integration. The third initiative is to implement common assessments to inform instruction and make modifications to our current curriculum. Anticipated outcomes are utilization of student data to inform instruction, data to better identify students in need of additional support interventions and enrichment, growth determination per student, and streamline and update district-wide assessment schedule. So this outcome, I think, speaks crucially to the work that we have ahead of us. A lot of this is in place. but we need to refine, align, and enhance what we currently have in place due to what COVID has done to disrupt student learning. So a big focus next year will be on developing reporting systems and progress monitoring through the enhancement of our school-based data teams. So we'll have a lot of work on that. Another piece to this is finalizing our early literacy screener. which we've been piloting for the past two years, as well as coming up with common assessments district-wide with a norm-based assessment tool. That way we have district-wide data with common goals and terminology to help us with our progress monitoring of students, ensuring they get what they need. And the final initiative is provide instructional technology that meets the curricular needs of educators and learners Those anticipated outcomes are to create a district technology plan, which I think is the biggest outcome and piece of this, which means we are going to assess our infrastructure, personnel, digital resources, and staff development needs, and then work really hard to create a plan and implement that plan. engage stakeholders to support the effective use of instructional technology and digital learning resources, assessment of current technology management and infrastructure staff and recommendations for future growth, critical elements necessary for effectively utilizing technology for teaching and learning identified and implemented. I'm now going to pass off to Dr. Cushing to speak to you about the collaborative
[Kelly Catallo]: Good evening. Equity represents equitable learning opportunities. Specifically, the district's objective is to understand the needs of our diverse population and support the academic, social, emotional, and physical needs of our students. As you will see through the five initiatives under this objective, as a district, we believe in supporting the whole student. Our first initiative is increase the support and understanding of the health, wellness, and social-emotional needs of our students. The anticipated outcomes are that we will have a social-emotional inventory to share with the public, social-emotional resources that are available to all faculty, social-emotional learning plan, excuse me, learning action plan, professional development plan, increased ability for students to access the curriculum, increased students' social-emotional skills, data cycles and screenings will be established, and we will have increased evidence-based groups for counseling. An example of one action item from this initiative is an annual assessment of the district's current, thank you, of the district's current social-emotional learning programming. Each year, the district will identify areas of strength and need. This information will be used to develop social-emotional learning action plans at school and district levels. A monthly review of the action plans will take place to ensure that we are moving forward productively. Our second initiative is to prioritize development of systems that support a shared vision for disability awareness, anti-racism, anti-bias, and cultural proficiency across the school district. There are five anticipated outcomes of this initiative, which include emergence of an increasingly diverse staff, culturally proficient curriculum for all students, assessment of the state of our district with regard to diversity, district-wide disability awareness curriculum, and social justice curriculum for secondary education. When we think about and speak about diversity, our district vision encompasses numerous stakeholders. We are working toward building a community that sees diversity as a strength, while also recognizing that bias is real. We are considering many groups of people who are at risk of being marginalized. This includes people of color, people with disabilities, students of various religious, cultural, linguistic backgrounds, and more. I would like to also point out that for many individuals, they are a member of more than one of these groups. I would like to highlight two action items from this initiative. First, our racial equity task force. This group of community members, parents, caregivers, teachers, and administrators is focused on implementing a means by which to diversify staff. In addition, the racial equity task force is focused on assessing the district's cultural proficiency through an equity audit. That is being done this fall. The results of this audit will provide us with information that will help us incorporate information into this living document, our strategic plan, so that we can move forward productively. Also, I would like to briefly touch upon expanding our disability awareness curriculum, something that was also mentioned by our CPAC here tonight. This will include further professional development so that we can reach more staff. In addition, we are piloting disability awareness at the kindergarten, first grade, and high school levels this coming school year. Initiative three. Initiative three states provide equal access to academic support and enrichment. The anticipated outcomes are to define and adopt MTSSE. For reference, MTSS stands for multi-tiered systems of support. It's a well-known framework for how school districts can build necessary systems to ensure that each student receives a high quality educational experience. Under Dr. Edouard-Vincent's guidance, our task force added an E to MTSS. The E represents enrichment. We understand that enrichment is a vital component in meeting all of our students' needs. There are four anticipated outcomes of this initiative. Oh, excuse me. Hang on. Let me go back and tell you the anticipated outcomes. We will establish common practices, procedures, and terminology for screening, assessment, data collection, analysis, and focused evidence-based intervention. We will expand a library of special education assessments, and we will have extended day opportunities. One action item within this initiative relates to the Massachusetts Dyslexia Guidelines. To analyze this guidance, we are forming a team to review the guidelines, review Medford's current level of compliance with recommendations made in the Massachusetts Dyslexia Guidelines, and develop, begin implementation of an action plan that will target items from this guidance. Initiative four, ensure positive school culture. has three anticipated outcomes, demonstrated improvement of school culture based on data collection, responsive classroom implementation at elementary level district wide, and restorative justice implementation at the secondary level district wide. Numerous stakeholders also weighed in on this objective and the initiatives. We considered various developmental levels, thinking about preschool all the way through high school and how to create the most positive school culture all the way through. One of our specific initiatives speaks to promoting positive school culture by developing a culture climate action plan. When we think about a positive school culture, we're also thinking about building a community that sees diversity as a strength, as we mentioned previously. These practices work in tandem and we remain inclusive in our thinking. For example, enrichment opportunities are an excellent occasion for students to learn about cultural experiences, seeking out a diverse group of professionals to present to middle school and high school students about career paths, helps to break down stereotypes and gives all students a model. For clarity, when we say diverse, this encompasses all types of diversity. We're talking about racial, cultural, linguistic, disability, LGBTQIA+, et cetera. Seeing students who look like you or sound like you or have had similar life experiences achieve great things has a powerful influence on our students. Initiative five, The final initiative under equitable learning environments is to recruit retain and develop a diverse staff. The anticipated outcomes of this initiative are to cultivate a diverse workforce and increase retention rates for all new employees. One of the specific actions included in this work is to expand our human resources recruiting activities to fill all positions and develop more diversity through using memberships in the New England Minority Network and the Massachusetts Partnership for Diversity to facilitate this goal. To highlight and understand why this is so important, we need to consider our current teaching workforce. Based on information from our human resources office and DESE data, 1% of our teachers are Hispanic, while 13.5% of our students are Hispanic. 0.41% of our teachers are Black, compared with 11.9% of our students. And 1.9% of our students are Asian, while 9.5% of our students are Asian. The district is committed to increasing diversity of our workforce so that it better represents our student body. In closing, as you have heard, equity is a large umbrella under which many key initiatives reside. Thank you. I'll turn it over to Dr. Edward-Linson.
[Kelly Catallo]: thank you for the presentation. member russell, member mclaughlin and then member kretz.
[Kelly Catallo]: Member McLaughlin, then Kreatz, then Member Van der Kloot. Mayor, we had a motion on the floor with a second. Did we want to do that before I speak? I was just keeping note of it. OK, that's right. Thank you. I just. Thank you. Okay, your microphone wasn't on. So we're not broadcasting in West Medford, but we're on YouTube and online.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you. Thank you for the report. And for the plan, it's really great to see it broken down into both the acronym and the initiatives and their relative, you know, prefix and the initiatives. And I especially appreciate the glossary. And I too would just encourage folks to consider the definitions and to consult with our experts in the community on the definition. So, for example, the definition of a 504, I would ask that respectfully that we talk with, you know, Dr. Hollenbeck or Ms. Bowen around strength based language is really sort of, you know, what we want to, what I would recommend using. And to member, through the chair, to member Ruseau's point around equity, I always think of sort of equity versus equality, and this is not from me, this is a quote from someone else who I'm sorry, I can't credit right now, because I'm not sure who, but it's, you know, equity is not that everyone gets the same, it's that everyone gets what they need, as opposed to equal, in which everyone gets the same. So I just really like that sort of a definition, but I also appreciate having the definitions be universal and be across districts so that we're all under the same understanding when we hear these different words or acronyms or what have you. So with that, I actually also wanted to put a motion on the floor, but I don't know that I can do that if there's one on four hours, so I'll wait. Motion to approve, but I will wait. Thank you, Dr. Edward-Vincent and everyone on the tactical team and within the district for all your hard work. Appreciate it.
[Kelly Catallo]: . So thank you for all the work that everybody put into this. Thank you. Thank you, member van de gloot. Member graham? Just one final note that this is substantially different than what we saw in February before the pandemic sort of upended everything.
[Kelly Catallo]: So this is like a year's worth of work on its own. And instead you all did it, you know, with just a few other things going on. So I'm really appreciative and I can't underscore how much work this was, so thank you. I second that. Me a third then. Great work. Number eight, report on the business services. Oh, yes, that's right. Motion to add this to the annual presentation list by member Rousseau, seconded by member McLaughlin. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion passes. Can I make a motion to approve the recommendation? of the NPS strategic plan. Motion to approve the recommendation by member Glossman, seconded by member Van der Kloot. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion passes. Now number eight, report on the business services audit of the Metropublic Schools by the Management Solution, TMS, Mr. Andrew Parkett and Mr. David Murphy. Hold on, Mr. Murphy, let me just get your microphone on, sorry.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Welcome. Good evening. We're pleased to be here this evening on behalf of TMS to present this report to you. I'm Judy Hull. I am the Senior Vice President and Chief Education Officer for TMS, and I've been in this business for over 40 years. It's a hard number to say. But I have been a teacher of students from grades three through adults. I've been a curriculum director. I've been a business administrator and I've been a superintendent of schools. So I've been in most places that education happens. So it's nice to be on this side of it and to be able to be a resource to districts as they try to move forward. Alan, I'll let you take the next side of honors.
[Kelly Catallo]: So the report is broken into two parts. The first part is the findings. And basically what we did was we combed through the data from the interviews. One of us asked the question while the other was the note taker so that we could each focus on our relative tasks around facilitation and note taking to make sure we captured everything. And then we looked for common themes that came across from either all or most of the interviews. And so that's what you have in the findings piece of this. And then the second piece of the report is a set of recommendations around budget development and financial management. And these recommendations really stem from state and national organizations as well as TMS's own best practices. We have worked in several districts across the Commonwealth and collaboratives as well. And so we have learned along the way about what our best practices and how we can make those real for our clients. That's where the recommendations stem from. So we're gonna start with the findings first. And let's talk a little bit about the budget development themes. And these were things that were common recurring themes in the interviews that we did with folks. And we interviewed about 20 staff members, both on the city side as well as school side and superintendent as well. So these are where the themes came along. One of the themes that came out in our discussions with folks was that the timeline for putting the budget together seemed to be too late for the kind of presentation, preparation, discussion, and revision that's necessary to put a comprehensive budget together. And I think when we get to the recommendations, you'll see why we came to the conclusions we did about that. people also felt that prior to the current administration, that there was a lack of input and advocacy for student needs across that. They have also reported to us that the current administration is beginning to change that work in the way the budget is developed so that there is input and there is the opportunity to have some advocacy for student needs in the process. So I think that's an optimistic sign. The other part of the data told us that also because of some high turnover in administrative positions, that some of the history of requests along the way got lost in the shuffle. So again, just hopeful that the current administration, as things gel and come together and you have some longevity together, that you're gonna be able to really have some good budget history on which to build. And so people really in the interviews seem very optimistic about what the future holds for the budget development process. And I'll let Alan speak to the financial management themes.
[Kelly Catallo]: Just if you could clarify what encumbered means for the community, please.
[Kelly Catallo]: Yeah, and it also gives an opportunity for people to see what's left. What you pay, what you need to pay, and then what the net is that's left allows you to really calculate and track the budget in a way that makes some sense and to be able to have a software package that can do that for you versus manual calculations is certainly gonna be a much more efficient way to be able to do that work. Mayor.
[Kelly Catallo]: Right. And some folks reported that the process for submitting purchase orders and tracking them was different from department to department. Again, I think it's because you don't have, at the current moment, an accounting system that can take you through that process in a way that is efficient. So that was something else that came through in the data as well. So those were sort of the major themes that came out of the interviews that we did. And so we'll move on now to the recommendations. And we'll begin with budget development. And it's interesting to see and hear that you have a new strategic plan because you stole our thunder a little bit, but that's okay.
[Kelly Catallo]: Yes, nice job superintendent, great job. So we would recommend an expanded timeline. Both of us in our positions as superintendent usually begin this process in November with our administrators. We begin that process of looking at where it is that you want to go. And aligning the document with your school improvement or your district strategic plan is critical. They should fit like a glove. You should not have one document over here and another document over here that don't speak to each other. Because the only way you're going to be able to accomplish the ambitious goals you've just set for yourselves tonight is to make sure that they are resourced properly so that the things that you have committed to can happen. And the only way to do that is to put those two things together. So it requires the budget process to begin much earlier in the cycle in to begin November ish, give or take. I used to with my principles tell them that their ticket to their December vacation was their budget requests in my hand. You know that was often a way to kind of motivate to get the thing done. And it's a collaborative process. Now that you've got the roadmap in front of you, you really can begin doing a collaborative process on the budget and how all of the pieces impact each other. It also allows for accountability in the budget cycle. It's a term used in business world, it's called value chain analysis, but you measure the effectiveness of the resources with the metrics for success of goals. So we heard repeatedly tonight looking at improve student outcomes, and how you measure those student outcomes gives you a window on how the resources are being used to accomplish the goals that you've set for yourselves. So it, in a way, puts in its own accountability system within the budget process as well. Are the resources we are targeting towards these particular outcomes, are they making a difference? And if they're not, then how do we need to resource things differently? So it's sort of this cyclical process that really keep asking those questions of yourselves. Here are the goals we want to accomplish. Here are the resources we're gonna put toward it. Did we get where we wanted to go with the resources? If we did, let's continue moving. If we didn't, then we need to think differently about how we do resource allocation. So that's all of sort of tonight's presentations kind of wrapped up in one tiny little package in terms of how we put those things together. And as we think about that, oftentimes people are looking to the business office for how to spend the funds. We are not advocates of that. We think that the budget belongs in the hands of the people who run the district, most importantly, the people who are closest to the classrooms. So your principals, your directors who are really directly involved with the act of teaching and learning, those are the people in whose hands the budget should be. What we do in our work is we advise people, we tell you if you have the money or you don't have the money, and we advise you about ways that you can make use of all of the funds that you get, whether it's your local appropriation, any of your grants, those kinds of other resources that are out there, revolving accounts and whatnot, to be able to put those pieces together to get a comprehensive budget picture. But it really should be in the hands of the people who are closest to the students. So again, that's part of what, beginning this process earlier allows to have happen. You can take a look at the data. How are our kids doing? Obviously, you're going to be gathering baseline data right now. And then say, OK, what do we want to do in the first year of this strategic plan? And what resources do we need to get us to that first year end game? And then measure the effectiveness of those resources on that. And if things are going well, move forward. If they're not, then reassess and reevaluate on that. You're on. Thanks.
[Kelly Catallo]: And it is a long process. It will take you probably a good six to 12 months to get this fully up and running. So be prepared for that. It is arduous. And making sure that not only the initial training goes on for staff who are going to be using it, but that there's ongoing training that you invest in to make sure that, again, the features that are available through something that's far more robust can be available to you to make the accounting system easier. When you have multiple systems, there is opportunity for error. There's no way around it. And if you're trying to do things like, I have done step and lane changes in a spreadsheet, it is not easy work. It's very time consuming. an opportunity for error. So, you know, the fortunate thing at TMS is we work together as a team. So you do your work and you have someone else check it. And oftentimes we do find errors if we have to do it manually, because it is just such a difficult task to be able to do. So to be able to say to the financial software, can you please roll everybody over and it just does it. And you know that the algorithms are in the background to support that work. It just makes it a whole lot easier and a whole lot more accurate as well. And if there's any one thing we know in this business, it's pay needs to be accurate. Absolutely. So just some final conclusions from the report. You know, as you've gone through tonight's presentations, you are a large and complex district with a diverse student population, certainly. But now you have really a strong professional team in place, both at the business office level. I can't say enough for your business office staff. They're very competent and very, caring people. They want to do right by the school district and right by the children that you educate. They really do. So my hat is off to them. I think Alan would certainly echo that sentiment as well. Very professional, really wanting to do the right thing. So you've got now a good administrative team in place that's working collaboratively. So I think this is the moment for you to be able to move forward. The challenges will be. difficult because it is a change of the way of doing business and that's always hard. But I think if you're willing to do the work, I think you'll find that, you know, that's going to really just pay off for you in ways that are amazingly wonderful. And it was just interesting as I was looking on your website just to see about policies, which your policy manual is in really good place around the business practices. So that was not something we had a concern about by any stretch of the imagination. But just noticing that, you know, your tagline at the top is that you are curing educational partnership of school, family and community. And that's what it will take to be able to just build a really strong school district. And I think you're really right on the right path. And we hope that this information will help you move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Member Van der Kloot and Member Graham.
[Kelly Catallo]: But you can't blame me for trying, though.
[Kelly Catallo]: And it depends on the number of user licenses you have, the number of employees that have to be processed through the system. So it's really, dependent on your specific instance. So again, as Alan has reminded me, that I don't think I would do you a good service by trying to give you a number at this point. But there are several major players out there that we have worked with at TMS that I think you can certainly evaluate for your specific needs. But that would certainly do a great job for you and make things much more efficient than
[Kelly Catallo]: I do believe that he and Mr. Parkett have had that conversation. Okay. Okay, that's true. You're on the spot. Thank you. Member Graham? Thank you for your report. I just had a couple of clarifying questions. Is it standard practice that school committee, school expenditures would require authorization from city hall? It's a great question. And some of it depends on city charters and how things are written. Some of it, again, it's sort of district specific and municipality specific. Um, you know, right now we're doing a lot of work for the Greenfield public schools, which is a small city, certainly the size of, by any stretch of the imagination. Um, but most of the, um, purchases, you know, daily purchase orders and whatever are processed on the school side with good, what we call in the business internal controls. So we have people who put forward requisitions that get signed. Um, you know, we have, um, bookkeeper who then processes them, sends them to the business administrator, you know, who then verifies and so on and so forth. So there's internal controls along the way. I think that's the key issue. For example, in Greenfield, however, it's a big procurement. We work with the city procurement officer to make sure that that process is all done in the way that it should be. So I would say that, you know, your city charter may govern some of this. you know, not having seen it, I can't speak to that. But again, you know, it's how much of the routine things could be done in the school department internally with a good set of internal controls. And again, you have a great staff who could certainly provide that check and balance for each other. So it's again, how do you put those processes into place to make them work efficiently and well? And Mr. Murphy, are you aware whether the charter outlines that as a requirement where the mayor
[Kelly Catallo]: I would assume finance laws, but I don't think the charter is only a couple pages long. I don't think the charter outlines it.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you. Thank you. And I think the other question or clarification I just wanted from you both is the budget system that you're talking about, is it a requirement that the city and schools would need to implement together or is it possible that the school district could pursue an implementation to make its own shop efficient with or serve with or without the city? I'm just trying to understand, is it like a package deal? Is it recommended to be a package deal? And what do you give up if that is not the case?
[Kelly Catallo]: And there are reporting requirements obviously on the school side to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education as there are reporting requirements on the municipal side and those do cross paths and end-of-the-year reports so schools are required to report on the city's contribution to the school's efforts and likewise on the municipal side the city reports also to the Department of, Division of Local Services, how they're expending funds in the name of the city and also on the school side. So having a common software to work with allows for that reporting to be pretty seamless between the city side and the school side. Most districts I work in, I've worked in, that is the case that they do share the same platform because it just makes it easier again, and more efficient on both sides of the ledger. And I just have two more questions, if that's okay. So my first question is, you mentioned a six to 12 month implementation window, and as a systems implementer in government, that is like lightning fast. So I'm just curious, why is that the normal experience of implementing such a software? I mean, usually in a complex organization, which certainly the city of Medford qualifies because of all of its disparities across like departments who do completely different things, all kinds of different structures, lots of different like kind of cross sections, like you're looking typically at like 12 to 18. Is there a reason why these systems implement so fast? Or is that just like the best case scenario? Um, probably best case scenario, obviously, the smaller the entity, the shorter the period of time. Right now we are working with Windsor Connecticut public schools that just started a implementation process of one of these systems. And it's going to be about a year by the time the town and the school department have all of the training and all of the integrations that need to be in a city the size of Medford. It could be more like the 12 to 18 month window. sure okay thank you and my last question i think is for mr murphy um mr parkett would like to potentially answer one of your questions we already asked so why don't we give him a chance and i'll go back to you mr parkett uh yes good evening everyone uh i apologize for not being able to make it in person um just one of the things i'll say regarding that timeline yes
[Kelly Catallo]: And many of the systems now have the ability to easily import what you can export from what you currently have and dump it in. And so that does, again, you're not trying to build it from scratch. So that's also something that'll be helpful along the way. And my last question, you all alluded to lots of things that are already happening because the change of leadership happened earlier this year. Is this procurement something that is actively in the works or is this not yet moving forward.
[Kelly Catallo]: And what else I make a motion to approve the report. Miss it on file sure section to replace which one. Okay, motion to place the report on file by member Graham, seconded by member McLaughlin. Roll call. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? This is received and placed on file. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Okay. Number eight.
[Kelly Catallo]: Oh, okay. Oh, you're going to add to the number eight?
[Kelly Catallo]: Number nine, introduction of engagement hub initiative. Mr. David Murphy and Ms. Megan Fidler-Carey.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you for this opportunity to speak. It's really nice to see everybody in person and see everyone's face. So this is a really exciting opportunity for me personally, of course, but I think for the district, I think it's just a way to bring together terrific departments that are already working well and working well together, but it's just sort of formalizing the communication between departments. It's sort of formalizing, if there's a request for information from one department to the other, I can be there to sort of facilitate the urgency of it, and it's not piling more work on and it's making it clearer what's urgent and what's not urgent. So I think it's just a way to improve our communications. I really like that this presentation is following the strategic plan presentation, because I think that these things dovetail really nicely. I think that a lot of the student support is going to be happening here. Family engagement happens at every level. The principal is doing family engagement in all of their outreach. The teachers constantly, the guidance Councilors, adjustment Councilors, this new re-engagement team will be there to just sort of fill in some of those cracks, prevent cracks from happening. I think, you know, when I, I think you guys have heard me say this before, when I hire for the before and after school program, I always say to them, it just takes that one adult to be the change in any student's life. And isn't it exciting that you might be that one adult, you know? So if it doesn't happen to be the principal or the teacher or the guidance Councilor, maybe it's somebody from this re-engagement team that will make a connection with the student or make a connection with the family to build the necessary trust to re-engage them back into it. So I love the idea that we're putting together a team because we'll be able to get people's human strengths and experience and kind of put it together into a nice circle like this, like a puzzle. So, you know, we're gonna do that marketing that we mentioned in the, I think that's in the ACE of ACEs, you know, get our marketing together so that we can do a better job of explaining to families what our public schools offer, that they're not getting at charter schools, that they're not getting at parochial schools, And I think that that's a way that we can really hyper focus all eight hours of our day and beyond as we all know that you know teachers and people in the schools don't have because they're focused on curriculum instruction as well. So we're everybody that we've looked at so far for that's applied for this job has had has mentioned social work, has mentioned restorative justice values, and that's really exciting. It's all very positive, it's all very strength-based, and it's all really away from that punitive, that truancy officer driving down trying to catch the kid, going to the mall. We're totally moved away from that. It's really about establishing relationships, figuring out if there's a student not coming to school, figuring out why, and then meeting their needs, connecting them to the resources they need. So I'm very excited, I think. It's gonna be very successful.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you. Thank you very much. Member Graham, Member Ruseau, Member McLaughlin, Member Van de Vroegh. Thank you. This is exciting. You know, we've talked throughout the budget process about a couple of different things. So one is sort of students needing more, especially sort of into as we start the next year. And we've also talked about the need to revisit our own organizational structure. And I feel like this sort of starts to do both of those things at the same time, which is really exciting. But I was just curious whether you had received any feedback from the administrative team as you created this and what that feedback was.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you, Member McLaughlin. And Member Van der Kloot. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. It is very exciting. It's long overdue. Family and community engagement is critical throughout any business and district to engage all your stakeholders. You know, I know you said we'll see where we are in a few years, but if we're building relationships, I certainly don't think that we're going to be able to cut them off after a few years. So that's encouraging. And we'll have to find a way to make sure that we continue this and make this happen. But I wanted to ask, I guess, about the interdepartmental collaboration and the tactical team that you're building. A few things. One is obviously the re-engagement specialist. And I wonder if there's, you know, just sort of the name of it, but we're not, just thinking preventative, we're thinking proactive. And so re-engagement feels like to me, we're talking about, oh, people have become disengaged and now we have to go and re-engage them, right? We don't wanna get to that point. We wanna be proactive and really start. And I know that we have a year that we're reflecting on where people have been disengaged. So I just sort of wanna make sure that we're focusing on the proactive and to that end, the school in Maine audit that we were able to have recently. and looking at that family and community engagement audit and being able to, it's late in the end of the year and the end of the school year. So we had talked about having some sort of presentation around that in September, around what that audit really showed, how we're proactively marrying to our strategic plan in this tactical team would be really great. And then obviously I know that you guys are looking at diversity. And so we're more thinking about our most vulnerable populations, as you were saying, ensuring that we're reaching them you know, through and by people who they identify with, and that we're considering that as we're picking up. And I'm sure you are, but I just wanted to, yeah, put that out there. Thank you, very exciting.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you. Member van de Klook? Yes.
[Kelly Catallo]: Motion for approval my second seconded by member Kreatz. All those in favor.
[Kelly Catallo]: Opposed. Paper passes. Thank you both. Thank you very much.
[Kelly Catallo]: Motion is on the floor, seconded by Member Kreatz.
[Kelly Catallo]: Great job. Yeah.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you. We have next up proposal of dates for school committee meetings is school year 2021-2022. Dr. Maurice-Edouard-Vincent. Motion for approval by member Mr. Stone, seconded by member Kreatz. All those in favor? Member Ruseau.
[Kelly Catallo]: Yep. 8th and 15th then.
[Kelly Catallo]: Okay. Your microphone's on. Is that? All those in favor?
[Kelly Catallo]: Number 10, I believe it's communications. And then we have new business. Number one is the request for one week extension from the advisory committee to rename the Columbus Elementary School offered by myself. I did speak to the chair and they have, working extremely hard on a 30-minute presentation plus for us next week, and I know they're putting a lot into it. So they're meeting, I believe, Thursday this week to finalize that, and they'll be here next Monday, the 14th.
[Kelly Catallo]: It goes against our policy, if I may, through the chair, because we did say they could extend up through July 31st.
[Kelly Catallo]: If I may, through the chair, I think we give them the benefit of the doubt. And if we choose on the 14th to pick a name out of those three, and we choose to do it, that means all of us would be prepared to have read any research that they have available. But I'm not prepared to vote to definitely pick a name if they needed another couple of weeks, because we do are going to have potentially one more meeting, short meeting. But still, I want to give them that opportunity.
[Kelly Catallo]: Member Ruseau?
[Kelly Catallo]: So and if we don't vote on the 14th, if we don't have any other meetings, obviously, for the summer, then we're talking about September. So I just want to make sure that I'm understanding that the implication if there's not, you know, if there if there's a request for another extension or something like that, I want to give the benefit of the doubt to looking forward to the presentation on 14th. So I just want to ensure that they have enough time to do the presentation. And it seems that they've been working on it for a while. So I'm excited. It seems three names they should be able to do a presentation for the 14th, which is next week.
[Kelly Catallo]: I think that's what we're debating right now. We're debating member Ruseau's amendment to vote on it no matter what. point of information. I'm sorry, I didn't hear miss. I didn't hear him through the chair. I didn't hear him. She's asking a question about next week. We're definitely getting the presentation, which is their hope. And I know they're working hard on it and that's what they've asked for an extension. She's also asking if we're going to be, when we, after we get the presentation, I'm going to be voting on it. But that's what I'm, thank you for that. I'm trying to understand. Are we scheduled for another meeting after the 14th currently? Currently? No, we're not. So very well might need one because of you know, the ESSER funding.
[Kelly Catallo]: How do we deliver that? I like that amendment. We can respond to them in the morning that we approve the extension to the 14th, that we'd like a fair presentation, however long that may be on the 14th, because we'd like to take a vote. Second. Is that your motion?
[Kelly Catallo]: We could also say an even number of slides, and it doesn't have to be lengthy. Right. It doesn't need. Whatever they get to, Thursday night, they get to, and we want them to be presented to. OK. I'm really looking forward to hearing the presentation. The motion is on the floor as amended by Member Van der Kloot, seconded by... Can we restate the motion?
[Kelly Catallo]: The motion is request for one week extension from the advisory committee to remain in Columbus School. And Member Van der Kloot's amendment is that we send a message to the committee tomorrow that we would like a equal amount of slides, however that may be, and whatever is ready at the end of their meeting on Thursday evening to present on the 14th so that we can pick a new name for the Columbus School during that meeting.
[Kelly Catallo]: Their meeting's tomorrow. Okay, their meeting tomorrow. So that would give them the opportunity to schedule another meeting if they needed it on Thursday or Friday so that they could have it ready for us Seconded by member Rousseau. Rousseau, all those in favor?
[Kelly Catallo]: All those opposed? Motion as amended passes. Number two, the rules policy and equity subcommittee will propagate a policy on the inclusion of public comments and public participation, emails, letters, and other artifacts within the official minutes of the school committee offered by member Rousseau.
[Kelly Catallo]: motion to approve? Can I speak on it for a minute or so?
[Kelly Catallo]: All those opposed? Motion is approved. Number three, I believe we're going to- Move to table number three by member Rousseau, seconded by member Graham. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Number three is tabled. Number four, resolution on recyclable materials offered by member Mustone, the Metro Public School Committee. Yes.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you. Seconded by Member McLaughlin. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion is approved. Thank you Member Mustone.
[Kelly Catallo]: Motion by member Rousseau, seconded by member.
[Kelly Catallo]: McLaughlin, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion is approved. Number five, MHS vision committee development for school year 2021-2022 offered by myself in conjunction with speaking to Dr. Edouard-Vincent, they'd like to work on a plan throughout the summer and propose that plan in September to get started. So asking that we allow administration to do so. Member Ruseau?
[Kelly Catallo]: That's kind of what I said, give them time to give us a proposal. We'll have a meeting, one of our September meetings, hopefully not September. We can shoot for a September meeting to discuss that and move approval and start the process.
[Kelly Catallo]: Yeah, I think our admin needs a break to do the work, to do the day-to-day work, okay. Was that a motion for approval by? Second. A motion to approve.
[Kelly Catallo]: All those opposed? Motion passes. Number 12, condolences. The Medford School Committee expresses its sincere condolences to the family of Ralph Scopa. Mr. Scopa was the father of former Community Schools Administrative Assistant, Denise Scopa. Also, the Medford School Committee expresses its sincere condolences to the family of Peter Heining. Mr. Heining was the father of Medford School teacher, Mr. Max Heining. You all may take a moment of silence. motion to adjourn motion to adjourn by member McLaughlin seconded by second press all those in favor aye opposed
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 46 Otis Street in Medford. I understand the process is the way the process is right now, but there seems to be people are missing the connection between the naming of the building and the value of the building. So protecting the asset definitely is in the purview of the city council, regardless how this goes this point forward. I think that the council should come together and should have a meeting in regards to renaming of any city building in the future. A lot of people that have been in New York City can have fond feelings for Rockefeller Center, and how many people would not be happy if it was named Trump Center? How many people would be happy with that? The naming of a building absolutely goes to value, and I'd like to see the city council come together in the future to perhaps come up with a resolution so that we don't all of a sudden see the renaming of every building in the city based upon the feeling of poor people. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: about now. No.
[Kelly Catallo]: Is this the time that you want to hear it?
[Kelly Catallo]: So in Q4 of 2020, you've all seen the house on the corner of Forest Street and Westfield Road that was blighted for many years. It's been being renovated, and after sinking all that money into the property, there was a day that city workers were installing a speed trap directly in front of the house. The owner asked them not to do it, and in so many words was told, too bad. I did reach out to Mr. Caraviello. He spoke with the traffic engineer. We were told that this was going to be addressed. It never got addressed. It is still sitting in front of this house, and it's directly in front of the door. And I actually have a... Somebody wants to take these. I have pictures for all of you that kind of show you exactly what's going on. This B-trap, you stand in the master bedroom of one of these units, and I actually didn't know about it being installed that day. I was upstairs in the master bedroom, and I see this flashing light. It's this B-trap in front of the house. When I went to the other unit, I'm standing in the living room, and you see this flashing light. That is not fair. If you guys all know Forest Street, he could have gone down a couple of houses. And you have houses that are set way back from the street. That speed trap could have been put there. It wouldn't have bothered anybody. He could have gone up a couple of blocks. It could have been installed in front of the houses that are up off of Forest Street. It wouldn't have bothered anybody. On the flip side of that paper that I just gave you is Highland Avenue. So 914 Highland Avenue, that buyer paid $800,000 for that house. And now the city of Medford has installed a crosswalk with a traffic light and another structure right there for you to press the button, not just in front of the property, but directly in front of the front door. Nine houses down, the same exact thing was installed. So you guys all know how the job there's a lot of places this stuff could have gone. I don't understand why we need to have a nine house away. I mean, we're all pretty healthy people here. But And to put it in front of somebody's front door is to encumber their residence, but also to devalue their property. I did try to take this up over the course of the last two days. Thank you, Mr. Mark, Mr. Caraviello. I would include you in those emails to numerous people in this city, because I don't know who to address it to. And the answer that I got from the traffic engineer today It was a beautiful email, but it didn't address the situation on why we're doing this for our residents. So I'm coming tonight to the council to ask for your assistance in resolving this, because it's totally changing the landscape of Medford. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just can you hear me.
[Kelly Catallo]: Okay. I just want to echo and follow up with Dave just said, because this entire thing about renaming the schools reminds me when the city was going to sell the old schools and they were going to build the new ones. And, you know, if anybody didn't live in the city at that time, this was done in a very careful manner. In fact, Madam Mayor, you were on that committee. that went from neighborhood to neighborhood, and the neighbors were allowed to have a voice. And this isn't about whether or not the school gets renamed in the end. It's about allowing the community to go through the process so that they all still feel like they are part of the community. This renaming of a school and the way that this was handled was not very professional and it's ripped people in part. Neighbors who used to like each other are fighting over the name of a school and it's a really sad day in Medford. You do have the opportunity to just step back a moment and let the community be heard. Let their voice be heard. When they elected you, they trusted that you were going to let their voices be heard. And I almost feel like as somebody who watched that meeting go on in June, I felt like a couple of people really didn't care what 60,000 people thought. Nobody cared that people felt like they got to go through the process. And when you think about your daily life, when you get up in the morning and you get your kids breakfast and you get them to school, you follow a process because it allows you as a human to be able to get through life in a very comfortable way. What if you didn't have that process? How would that feel? This isn't, I don't feel like this is something that can't be stepped back. There's no urgency to push it forward. I'd really like to echo it. And I really like you to just allow the people to be heard, just to let them speak on it. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo 46 Otis Street. Mr. Caraviello is a member of the public, I would like the option to be able to come into the council chambers. If I can go into Wegmans with a mask and I can spend a couple of hours in there I think it's time that City Hall has been opened up to the residents of the city. If there's some people that don't feel safe being there, they don't have to. It's great that we always have this option of Zoom, but I think a lot of people like being in the room. They like having that amount of interaction. So I would ask you that at least you give us the option. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: No, sorry, sir, wrong topic.
[Kelly Catallo]: I just want to make everybody aware on this eviction thing. So there is a process in housing and it's not easy. There was an article last week in the Globe that I hope some people read it and caught the last paragraph. In order for the landlords to be able to collect the federal money, they have to issue the eviction notice. They do not want to evict people, but in order for them to be able to collect the arrears, they've got to be able to put something on the table. Nobody's trying to put people in the street. Housing Court has reached out to the realtor industry, and they are recruiting hundreds. across the state in order to mediate between the tenants and the landlords. So when the landlord is able to access that federal money, part of getting that money is an agreement that they're not going to evict the tenant. If it's just a money issue, if it's a legal issue that they're breaking the law and they're making people unsafe, I think that's a different situation. But I am on the Housing Sustainability Task Force group there and it hasn't met since last May. I've been asking when are we going to meet because I'm really concerned for everyone in Medford, the tenants and the property owners. We have a lot of people that can't pay their mortgages and one of the best things that the city can do is is to be able to compile resources. And, you know, Alicia Hunt and I have had numerous conversations. She's pulled together an awful lot of stuff. I've been sending her stuff. Everyone wants to help each other. But what I'm afraid of is, like, the state purposely backed off on extending their eviction moratorium because of the federal one that was put out. And the federal government did extend today. they extended theirs until the end of January. So I feel like if, as a city, we start getting involved in that and start making these home rules, it's actually gonna hurt our property owners that they're not going to be able to access the funds, because at the end of the day, they still need to pay their mortgage. Nobody really wants to put anybody in the street. And a lot of our landlords in Medford, they're elderly people, and they're relying on the rent in order to actually live and buy their food. So it's important that we can keep the resources there for everybody, the tenants and the landlords. And I don't think that we're helping everybody if the city steps in and puts an eviction moratorium. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: I'm not saying that this is not just about the 18 I think we can get everybody to the same meaning we can come up with some great resolutions that benefit everybody. Thank you. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 46 Otis Street in Medford. Thank you, Councilor, President Falco. Councilor Knight. Thank you very, very much. For many, many years, I've seen viable apartments being gutted out of these homes as the family moved out, and they were great living spaces. They were affordable for people. Councilor Marks, I know that you have a concern about the cars, and this idea actually came from a fellow realtor in a different state, but what they do in her city is that they only give a certain number of parking permits per house. So if that person wanted to be able to rent out their accessible unit, if they had an extra parking permit for that person, then that person could park on the street. If not, they wouldn't have a parking space. I just think that housing has gotten to the point where it is so expensive right now. What information, Mr. President? What information, Councilor Larkins?
[Kelly Catallo]: I'm just asking you to consider working with the parking situation just because the housing situation is that dire right now. With COVID, you know, a lot of the younger generation has all moved home. They would love to have an in-law apartment in their mom's house if they still have some independence. So there are so many great ideas and so many places that you can go with this. And if you could also consider what the city of Boston has done, they've taken accessory dwelling unit and they've actually called it an additional dwelling unit. And there is some legislation that's online that you can get right off of the city of Boston website. And if you would consider that, I think that it would help a lot of people be able to afford to stay in our community. Thank you. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 46 Otis Street in Medford. To follow up what Ms. Caraviello just said and what Mr. Knight said, first of all, Massachusetts state law does allow a owner-occupant to rent up to three unrelated people by the second degree of kindred in their property. So there are access for apartments right now in the city of Medford that a little old lady lives upstairs and she can't afford to pay her taxes and maybe a college student or a young adult is renting her apartment. She is still within the guidelines of the state law. and she's able to pay her tax bill. That young person who's living in that apartment is only paying $600. That is housing stock that we all need. We need for the people in our community to be able to live here. Most of the people in our community are not the people that are going to qualify or even go after you know, some of this housing subsidy stuff that people are talking about. And I really don't feel that Adam Knight was looking to do that. He's looking to make Medford affordable to the people of Medford. And I really hope that everybody can get on board with that. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you, President Falco. So I am here tonight to talk to the council to ask you to readdress the historical demolition delay order, which the last it was amended was in 2017. I've emailed the whole council. I hope that everybody took an opportunity to read what I sent you. I feel like part of what's going on is only going to increase the cost of housing and it's going to cause a lot of problems in the city of Medford. So I would ask that you would meet and that you would discuss the demolition delay that you have and what the intent of it is. Because on July 16, the building department instituted some new rules which are not in the building code. They are not part of the historical demolition delay, which already has definitions on what the demolition would be. And right now, you cannot do anything without the Historical Commission's approval if you're going to removal of more than one quarter of an existing building. If you want to replace all the windows in your house, that is more than 25% slash one quarter of the building. Removal of a roof, if you want to dormer your third floor, now the Historical Society gets a say over that. Removal of one side of a building. So if you want to add a room for grandma to move in, historical gets a say on that. The gutting of a building's interior to the point where the exterior features, the windows, doors, walls are impacted. Excuse me, Councilor Falco, but this is design review, and we don't have design review in the city of Medford. We have a building department which has a building code. None of this is in the code. This is not fair to the property owners or the people that are looking to buy property in the city of Medford. If you're looking to buy a piece of property in the city and you know you're going to do work, you're going to go read the building code. None of this is in the building code. It's not fair. they're going to buy the property, find out after the fact that the historical committee can say no. And it doesn't matter whether or not they will, but should that group of people be deciding who gets to do what, or should the building department be deciding it? And if it is the building department, it is going to be part of the code. Please put it in writing. That's only fair before people spend their money in this city I would just ask that maybe you bring it to a committee of the whole or whatever it is that you're going to do and Discuss with the intent of the demolition delay was the definitions that are in the demolition delay are very different than what's in here you have definitions as to what a demolition is and The historical commission here has gone and now they're going to go use the definition of the National Park Service. Our building code does not reference the National Park Service. It is very specific into what a demolition is. Thank you, sir.
[Kelly Catallo]: So I would just like to answer Councilor Bears. Zoning is determined by the council. It is not determined by the building department of the historic commission. These items all relate to zoning and the zoning as a contract with the property owners to be able to purchase a piece of property in this country is your constitutional right to be able to improve it. is your constitutional right, and it is to go by the zoning code. I have already called the state building department in regards to this, and none of this is in our building code, and you can't just institute this without the city council approval. That is why I am coming to the seven of you, and I hope that you can appreciate that I am coming to you. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Hello Kelly Catalo, 46 Otis Street in Medford on I understand that we need to do zoning changes, Mr. President. But first of all, I don't think that this should be happening in the middle of the summer and the middle of a pandemic when we can't even all be in the same room. There are people that wanted to be part of this meeting tonight, but they can't communicate via a screen. So if at some point you decide to put this off to another date, there are people that have valuable information to add to this that would like to be in the council chambers and do so in person. What I will say is the way that this is written to bring commercial into apartment 1, apartment 2, or apartment 3 zones, I will tell you some of the apartment 1 zones. If you're going up Oakland Street, which is across the street from City Hall, that's all houses. But the right side of that is apartment 1 zoning. If I lived up there, I would not want stores or commercial property put in there. If you go down Riverside Avenue underneath the bridge from Medford Square, The right side of that is apartment one zoning. I wouldn't want stores all over there. When we go down Main Street in Medford, we're talking apartment one and apartment two zones, and it just doesn't work for that. As far as the mixed use zoning districts, Medford Square, we've been asking for mixed use zoning for 30 years. I would love for that to be part of this amendment here. that we can have apartments as well as commercial. And it's not that we're trying to take away things, but we have a lot of vacant storefronts across our city, and you're going to see a lot more due to COVID in people working from home. I love the recommendations from the Community Development Board, except for one. I don't think that you should require the commercial to be ground level, because maybe the commercial piece is something that's on the same lot, like what we're seeing across the street from Wegmans, We still have a bank on the lot. Maybe that bank makes up that 25% that is needed in that zone. The other thing that we're seeing is a lot of the apartment houses and the complexes that are being built are talking with companies like WeWork, and maybe that's on the sixth floor, but it's a level of commercial property for people to be able to work at home. Thank you. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Name and address. Hello, Kelly Catalo 46 Oda Street in Medford. So, Councilor Marks, thank you very much. I've been in this neighborhood for many years, off of Washington Street, and we just recently got a sidewalk. Thank you Rick Caraviello, I've been complaining to you for years. a crosswalk because from these side streets to Riverside Ave, there's kind of a cut through where the people can walk with their dogs and we can run and we can get to the lake. And we want everybody to be able to enjoy our river. But going across that sidewalk, even though we have the sidewalk, Washington Street is a speedway. And everyone's trying to avoid Riverside, and they're trying to avoid Salem Street. I love the idea of the raised crosswalk, that if that crosswalk could turn into a raised crosswalk from Otis over to, I think it's Pembroke that it opens to, that would be awesome. I do appreciate what's happening on Summer Street. I know what goes on over there as well. We've got traffic issues everywhere. But this particular issue, thank you for bringing it up. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 46 Otis Street, Medford, Massachusetts. Mr. President, there are 40 permits that were put on hold two weeks ago in regards to this. There are approximately 25,000 property owners in the city of Medford that are affected by this. Paul Mochi has done an exceptional job as the building commissioner, and he should be able to decide who gets a permit and who does not get a permit. In addition, some of these properties were already demoed. And this ordinance is asking for a site plan review of what they're going to put there. What does that matter if the property's already demoed? How does that affect the historic commission at that point? So what I would like to ask you to do is to stop and think about everything that's going on with the housing shortage. The more government regulation that you put on housing, the less likely that housing is going to be built or that housing is going to be renovated. People should not have to invest $800,000 into a single family house in Medford and then have to wait a month for the historic commission to give them an okay because they wanna change the outside of their property. If we have a historic district, I get it. I understand not wanting historic properties to be demolitioned. I am for that. But to have this go across the board and to shut down housing production for two weeks is not acceptable. Governor Baker himself said this morning, nobody should be doing anything that's going to hinder housing production. I'm going to call the elephant out in the room. There's a property on West Street, and there's a property on Park Street that some people think that they have over exceeded what they should have built on. If there's a problem, deal with the problem. Do not hold the entire community responsible for it. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 46 Otis Street in Medford. I think that this can really be accomplished. I negotiate for a living. It is extremely hard. People have, they communicate very different ways. Your council has always negotiated in person. We have a budget that there's a lot of people that are gonna get laid off. There's a lot of money that is not there. If you're in person, you're going to be able to get through it and hopefully understand each other's opinions to the point where everybody feels like every department has been served and that it's equal. I don't think that I was part of a couple of hybrid meetings in the last couple of weeks. And it wasn't difficult at all. Um, yes, there was people in the same room that had a mask on the microphones were wired to the mask it can happen Um, we live in 2020 anything can happen right now I don't think that the people the public should feel like they're not going to be a part of it Because it's just like you are right now here on zoom. You are a part of the public meeting um, nobody, I don't think that any of these people are trying to negate that or take people out. They're just trying to have more options. And as somebody that had a sit through that Zoom meeting of that school committee last week, I want meetings in person. I want to be able to speak up in person. There's some city Councilors that are sitting here saying that it's not safe, but they thought it was safe to go to a protest. And there was pictures taken of that Councilor without a mask on. I don't want to argue. I want to see happy Medford again. But I think if everybody works together, this can happen so that you're all comfortable. The public feels that they can be a part of it. And one more thing I'd like to bring up while I'm speaking, Mr. Falco, signs are not allowed inside the council chambers. And I'm finding it very distracting that there's signs all over the screen here. So I don't know what the rule is on that. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, negative, the motion passes.
[Kelly Catallo]: Hello, Mr. Falco. So, Zach, this is a great paragraph. Nobody wants anybody homeless. I think we're all on the same page. However, there's an awful lot put in here, and it's very compounded. And what my eyes are going to is a rent freeze. So if we have a rent freeze we're going to have people in our city that can't pay their mortgages I cannot tell you how many people in our city own two family homes that are 80 years old Relying on their rent payments in order to be able to buy their medicines and buy their food Roberta, I agree with you 100. We do need a task force And I think that we need people from the entire circle that touch housing on this task force, so everybody can show what they're seeing. The landlords and the tenants, and I've talked to so many in the last week, because Adam, I also got a lot of phone calls from tenants who thought that they didn't have to pay their rent this month. Um, so we need the landlords and the tenants to work it out. They are working it out. I think when we put government restrictions on housing and on people's private property, it just kind of makes them angry and it's not good. You know, nobody is looking to evict tenants today. I have not heard one person say to me that they want to evict. I have landlords that are very, very afraid of not getting their rents. I have landlords that have had tenants serve them notice, and they can't go in their property to re-rent it or to sell it right now. So I think, again, if we can get everybody into one group and we can come up with a solution that benefits everybody, that could work. Freezing rents doesn't work. The only thing that's being offered right now from a lot of mortgage companies is forbearance. Forbearance means we're going to let you not pay your rent for three months, or your mortgage, but in three months, we want it all. So if it's a deferment, it's great. It goes to the end. But again, if we have a housing task force, we can get the message out to people, we're not going to end up in a mess.
[Kelly Catallo]: Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: I get where you're coming from we're on the same page Zach but I want you to look at your resolution in paragraph for the one that starts with be it further ordered. If you go down to line five, you did put in there and freeze rent payments. But this is where I think if we can have a group. Instead of a resolution, we can get everybody on the same page and help our whole city.
[Kelly Catallo]: Do you think it's gonna be a long meeting?
[Kelly Catallo]: So I guess my question is, since it's on the table here and you guys all might vote on it, do you have a problem with a homeowner that wants to allow us to show their home? So if they live in their home, and Zach, I get what you're getting, no tenant wants to feel like somebody is going to barge into their home and they're going to feel unsafe. However, if a homeowner puts their house on the market, is it okay for the homeowner to allow somebody in? Are you okay with that?
[Kelly Catallo]: So the eviction thing, the way that it's written, evictions are not easy. So to say nobody's going to be evicted if you mass murder somebody and somebody wants to evict you, you're gone. If you're dealing drugs out of the apartment, there's a two-year-old that lives downstairs, you should be gone. The House and the Senate are already dealing with this. The House bill is 4615. The Senate is bill 2621. And they are trying to come with a consensus. I think once this is already on the state level, we as a city need to back off and let our state legislatures do what they need to do. I do believe that your heart is in the right place, that we do need a housing task force. We want to protect people. But at the same instance, we don't want to do it at the financial, um, rhetoric of the property owner either. So the property owners aren't bad people, but they are the people that are paying you the taxes that you said in January that they wanted you to raise. They don't want you to raise them, but they're paying all your increased fees for everything else in the city. And I think at some point we need to back off as a city and let the state legislators do their job.
[Kelly Catallo]: President Falco, so just for everybody's information, the city of Medford does have a page on the website which relates to everything that we've been talking about tonight with resources for tenants and homeowners relating to foreclosures, evictions, if they can't pay their rent. There are a ton of nonprofits out there that can help people We are just at the very beginning of this entire thing. But there's so many resources, and the city of Medford has actually compiled quite a bit of them. So maybe we can look at those. I love the idea of increasing the RAF funding. I think it's great. But we have a lot of other resources as well that I just want everybody to be aware of.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 46 Otis Street in Medford. I would also urge you all to vote against that. Number one, I don't think we should be doing zoning piecemeal when we know that we have a lot of issues, but it does inflict a hardship in regards to affordable housing. So the more creative that we can get with housing in Medford, the more that we can develop housing that actually fits our neighborhoods and suits the people that lives here. There are some lots that are out there that you've all seen, I've already pointed out a few of them, that putting the second dwelling on that piece of land, that it fits, it works in the neighborhood, everyone's happy there. I don't agree that every single lot should have two houses on it, but I do think that many of them actually could. There's a lot of property out there and I think it needs to be piece by piece. Thank you. Thanks.
[Kelly Catallo]: Kelly Catalo, 46 Otis Street, Medford, Massachusetts. First of all, I will state I am a tenant. However, I am going to ask you not to put any stricter, put anything out there that the governor hasn't already done. I think Governor Baker has been very responsive to the people of Massachusetts, and I think for each city to go about making different rules, we're going to have a bigger problem. In regards to telling people that they don't have to pay rent, not every mortgage is underwritten by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And right now, those are the only people that can call and get a stay on their mortgage. And what's happening is people are being told at the end of those three months that they have to pay the whole thing in full. So if people don't pay their rent, the mortgages can't get paid. I think that the stimulus package in itself is going to be aid to everybody. So I'd really rather you didn't do any stricter restrictions than what the governor has already done. Today, he turned around and actually made real estate, residential, and commercial services as deemed essentials, which does give me the right to go open up my office again. I'm not going to do it because I don't feel like we need to. We can work remotely. And we are working with precautions So I don't think that we need any stricter guidelines than that either. Thank you.
[Kelly Catallo]: So on behalf of our Kiwanis family, we want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to partner with you on all these great things for our children, because it creates one great community in Medford. I'm very proud of how much our club has grown in numbers. and in spirit this year, and the many things that we've been able to do. And this was a night that needed to be shared with the whole family. So we hope that we didn't bring too many. No, no. I love it.
[Kelly Catallo]: And thank you to the city of Medford for helping us put on jail day 5K and shutting down the streets so we could do that. Awesome.