[Matt Leming]: Find the records in order and move to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, this has been a tricky one for me because last year when the ceasefire resolution came up, I voted present for it.

[Matt Leming]: And when another resolution came up that also directly mentioned the conflict, I also voted present.

[Matt Leming]: even for the motion to table that one.

[Matt Leming]: This is a bit of a tricky.

[Matt Leming]: This one's a little bit trickier for me, because it doesn't actually, as President Bears just mentioned, it doesn't actually mention any one country specifically.

[Matt Leming]: So somebody was coming up and saying, well, why can't we divest from China, for instance, because they're detaining the Uighur Muslims?

[Matt Leming]: that actually is something that can be done under the framework of this ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: I also asked about the option of potentially severing parts of it, but that's not a thing that really can be done for ordinances.

[Matt Leming]: So just going by the text of the ordinance itself, I don't think that it

[Matt Leming]: does explicitly target any... I see this as more of a long-term thing.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think it explicitly targets any one company, any one country, although the rhetoric around it has been, of course, very different from that.

[Matt Leming]: And so that's something that I've been personally struggling with.

[Matt Leming]: Sometimes it's said that

[Matt Leming]: Perception is reality.

[Matt Leming]: I don't really believe in that quote.

[Matt Leming]: I try to vote on what is in the text right in front of me.

[Matt Leming]: And what's in the text right in front of me is a general framework that includes divesting from a number of different companies over a number of different reasons without mentioning any one in particular.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of presidents disagree on that.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of very often people will come into these chambers and make a judgment based on and project their own personal experiences onto the text that needs to be voted on.

[Matt Leming]: And I respect that.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, there's a few other things specifically.

[Matt Leming]: Like even though I'm

[Matt Leming]: member of the military.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I remember what Eisenhower said about the US going into the military-industrial complex, and I very much think the country has gone in that direction.

[Matt Leming]: Defense contractors get a lot of money.

[Matt Leming]: I do also appreciate Council President Bears's efforts to strengthen, to make more specific 2D as well.

[Matt Leming]: I think the specificity does help to add a framework to this ordinance, and I do a framework to that decision making that investors have to do.

[Matt Leming]: And I appreciate that.

[Matt Leming]: When it comes to folks saying things like, well, we need to delay, we need more time.

[Matt Leming]: I very often hear those excuses in this chamber.

[Matt Leming]: People say we need to slow down all the time if they just don't really support something.

[Matt Leming]: This has been in the works for months.

[Matt Leming]: And if the mayor or chief of staff sends an email a few hours before the meeting with this whole litany of concerns, that basically just means that they

[Matt Leming]: want to delay the vote.

[Matt Leming]: If that email were sent a week ago, I would have a lot more respect for it, but we frequently get these laundry lists of concerns just before a meeting, and it's a delay tactic.

[Matt Leming]: I think there were one or two things in it that are worth considering, but those can be considered more appropriately in between the first and third reading.

[Matt Leming]: just want folks to know that those are my thoughts on it because I haven't really spoken and I have been earnestly thinking about everything that everybody said here tonight and in the past two meetings before this and I thank you all for your time.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, the wisdom that I've gained on my one term thus far in city council, what I've learned is that pretty much everything about this position incentivizes you to do nothing because anytime you make a

[Matt Leming]: make a decision, it'll anger somebody.

[Matt Leming]: I was just at an event right before I came here, and a city councilor in another city said a quote, which I think I'm going to start using now, and I'm going to steal it from him.

[Matt Leming]: He said, the only thing people hate worse than a problem is a solution.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that that summed it up very well.

[Matt Leming]: Everything about this job incentivizes us to say nice things to residents, to tell them what they want to hear.

[Matt Leming]: Nothing about this job incentivizes us to actually make a decision.

[Matt Leming]: The overrides were a decision.

[Matt Leming]: It was our decision to put that on the ballot.

[Matt Leming]: It was the decision of the rest of the city to vote on it.

[Matt Leming]: people that many people who voted on it were on a fixed income, and it put an extra burden on them, but it ended up saving 40 teaching jobs and invested in a road crew that will end up repairing the streets at a faster rate.

[Matt Leming]: It is

[Matt Leming]: very hard to actually do something productive.

[Matt Leming]: It's very hard to build something.

[Matt Leming]: It's very easy to throw a wrench into the clockwork and try to stop everything.

[Matt Leming]: And it's easy to do that if you have the resources to make robo calls and send out emails to a wide portion of the city.

[Matt Leming]: It's much easier to do that than it is to actually

[Matt Leming]: build something.

[Matt Leming]: So another thing I'll say is that, you know, people, people in local elected office, we tend to just doing this stuff, you tend to learn, learn a lot of technical details, like the fact that we didn't just have one q&a session we had, there were like six, and they're like, five of them are on YouTube right now.

[Matt Leming]: Like the fact that during the when we adopted 11 out of 12 of the proposals from the Salem Street,

[Matt Leming]: a huge number of residents were literally asking us to do just that, that evening.

[Matt Leming]: So it's little technical details that most people don't know, but we're aware of that you could just sort of ignore when you're making a narrative.

[Matt Leming]: And it's very easy to just not actually be honest about those little details when you're telling people.

[Matt Leming]: what's going on.

[Matt Leming]: And what's happening.

[Matt Leming]: And you know, I'm, I mean, I, I live on Salem Street, I'm talking to a lot of my neighbors on Salem Street, a lot of them, a lot of them like the rezoning, a lot of them didn't.

[Matt Leming]: And

[Matt Leming]: A lot of them appreciate what I said during council meetings.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of them thought that I could have could have phrased it differently and I appreciate all of that.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sending out a press release, telling a legislative body to undo.

[Matt Leming]: things that have already been ordained as asinine, that is not an approach of somebody who is working in good faith.

[Matt Leming]: I don't appreciate that game of chicken.

[Matt Leming]: I understand that Council President Bears's speech that he gave out to the city, it was sort of a public way to, it was sort of like a public way for council to

[Matt Leming]: express what our path forward was.

[Matt Leming]: I think the response to that, especially if you read the whole thing, was not any sort of an olive branch.

[Matt Leming]: It was a middle finger in response to that.

[Matt Leming]: And the fact that it was done two days after nomination papers closed and the mayor knew she wouldn't have to run against anybody was like an extra cherry on top of that sundae.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, there's a lot that can be said about this process.

[Matt Leming]: I've heard the different narratives thrown around time and time again.

[Matt Leming]: It gets repetitive after a while, but I always appreciate talking to residents about what's happening with

[Matt Leming]: the rezoning, I understand that there's a lot more work that needs to be done in coming up with a vision that the highest number of people can agree on.

[Matt Leming]: And I look forward to engaging in that process in good faith.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you for everybody who's listening at 12 in the morning.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm gonna shut up now.

[Matt Leming]: I don't want to drag this on for too much longer.

[Matt Leming]: It's late.

[Matt Leming]: Another thing I'd like to point out with the Community Development Board is that, yes, a lot of them do have expertise, but they're not explicitly experts.

[Matt Leming]: To be clear, the Community Development Board in Medford, our version of the planning board, which is usually how it's referenced in Mass General Law, they're a group of people, could be just common residents appointed solely by the mayor, don't even get

[Matt Leming]: we don't, this council doesn't get to approve members of the Community Development Board because of a specific state law passed years ago.

[Matt Leming]: In most other municipalities, the Planning Board does have council approval, but the Community Development Board is not a group, is not necessarily a group of experts who have like a lot more, who have like a whole lot more knowledge in

[Matt Leming]: zoning than we do.

[Matt Leming]: The group of experts are the staff and the consultants that we specifically hire for their expertise.

[Matt Leming]: The Community Development Board is another group of appointed citizens.

[Matt Leming]: I just want to be clear that when the Community Development Board says something, it's not an edict from a higher power.

[Matt Leming]: It's another group of residents appointed by the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: Just really want to

[Matt Leming]: really want to clarify that there.

[Matt Leming]: And the only other requirement under MGL is that they hold public hearings on any proposed changes to zoning, much like Council does.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I think we're good to start.

[Matt Leming]: Everybody ready?

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Welcome everybody, here for a meeting of the Planning and Permitting Committee of Medford City Council.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: President Bears?

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Vice-Chair Lemond?

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Four present, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: The meeting is called to order.

[Matt Leming]: Today,

[Matt Leming]: byddwn yn siarad am y sefydliad sefydliadol Tufts.

[Matt Leming]: Byddwn yn cael gynhyrchiad o ein cymdeithaswyr.

[Matt Leming]: Nid ydyn ni'n mynd i siarad am parcio heddiw.

[Matt Leming]: Rwy'n deall bod rhai bobl yn meddwl bod hynny'n beth heddiw, ond mae'n mynd i fod yn sefydliad sefydliadol Tufts rydyn ni'n cael heddiw.

[Matt Leming]: Fodd bynnag, byddwn yn dechrau'r cyfarfod gan gael

[Matt Leming]: dweud ychydig o fywydau o'r, o'r cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cynghorwyr, cy

[Matt Leming]: Gadewch i mi ddweud wrthoch chi heddiw am siarad am ffordd gysylltiedig ar gyfer Medfyrdd, y prosiect i gynyddu argyfwng argyfwng Medfyrdd.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch yn fawr iawn am eich gyfraith, Cyngor Cyngor.

[Matt Leming]: Mae'n bwysig iawn.

[Matt Leming]: Unwaith eto, byddwn i'n mynd ymlaen gyda'r cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer y cyfarfodydd ar gyfer the camera so that it's facing back to the.

[Matt Leming]: Pan fyddwch chi'n barod, teimlo'n dda i ddweud ynghylch zon sefydliadol Tufts a'r holl wybodaeth y byddwch chi'n cael arno.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch yn fawr iawn.

[Matt Leming]: Felly, i gael gwirionedd ar y broses, beth sy'n mynd i ddigwydd, byddwn ni'n mynd i ymweld â'r sgwrs a'r sgwrs o weithwyr unigol, byddwn ni'n cael sgwrs yno, ac yna, pan fydd hynny'n digwydd, byddwn ni'n cael cyfle i ymweld â'r cyhoeddiadau cyhoeddus.

[Matt Leming]: Bydd y bobl yn cael tri muned i siarad y pryd

[Matt Leming]: y tro cyntaf, ac yna un munud ar ôl i'r adroddiadau.

[Matt Leming]: Yn gyntaf, rydyn ni'n mynd i fynd i'r cynghorau.

[Matt Leming]: Ar hyn o bryd, rwy'n gweld Cynllun Callaghan, ac yna Cynllun Prif Weinidog Collins, ac yna Cynllun Prif Weinidog Bares, ar ôl hynny.

[Matt Leming]: Cynllun Callaghan.

[Matt Leming]: roedd un o'r brifysgolion y byddai'n gallu cael eu llwyddo o'r amgylchedd Dover.

[Matt Leming]: Roedd hynny'n Brifysgol Harvard yn y 70au neu'r 80au, ond roedd y sefydliad ymddygiadol yno'n wahanol iawn, ac mae'n ymddygiadol anodd i gael hynny'n cael ei wneud heddiw.

[Matt Leming]: Felly, dim ond i bobl y tu ôl sy'n meddwl a yw hynny'n pwysleisiad, dim ond hynny.

[Matt Leming]: Cynhyrchwydd arweinwyr Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch yn fawr, Cyngor Ysgrifennydd Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Rydw i'n cael cwestiwn fawr.

[Matt Leming]: Yn un o'r cyfrifiadau rydych chi'n eu cynhyrchu, ac rwy'n diolch yn fawr eto ar gyfer yr ymchwil rydych chi wedi'i wneud ar y topeg hon,

[Matt Leming]: A yw'r pethau hynny ar gyfer beth mae'n edrych ar y district ymdrechol yn edrych mewn ffyrdd o gynnal ymddygiad a'i ymddygiad legal?

[Matt Leming]: Felly roedd yna nifer o ffyrdd yr ydych chi'n cynnig.

[Matt Leming]: Felly yr hyn rwy'n eisiau gwybod yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw

[Matt Leming]: er bod wedi'i wneud yn y ddinas arall.

[Matt Leming]: Yn ogystal â'r ysgrifennwyr hwnnw.

[Matt Leming]: Yn ogystal â'r ysgrifennwyr hwnnw.

[Matt Leming]: Iawn, nid ydyn ni'n gweld unrhyw beth.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, arweinydd, arweinydd Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch, arweinydd Leming, rwy'n gobeithio hynny.

[Matt Leming]: Rydw i'n mynd i gydnabod arweinwyr arbennig, Evans.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch yn fawr, Gweinidog arbennig Evans.

[Matt Leming]: Unrhyw un arall?

[Matt Leming]: Iawn, nid oes ymweliadau arall o'r staff, cymdeithaswyr, neu fy nghynghorwyr, rydyn ni'n mynd ymlaen a'n mynd ymlaen at goment cyhoeddus.

[Matt Leming]: Os ydych chi yma mewn person, teimlo'n ffyrdd i'w ysgrifennu ar y podiwm, ac os ydych chi ar Zoom, dywedwch eich dŵr ar Zoom, ac byddwn ni'n gweithredu.

[Matt Leming]: Ar hyn o bryd,

[Matt Leming]: Rydw i'n mynd i'n gyntaf i gydnabod'r gweithwyr mewn person rydyn ni ganddyn nhw yma ar y podiwm.

[Matt Leming]: Gadewch i chi ddatgan eich enw a'ch gysylltiad i'r record.

[Matt Leming]: Iawn, ymlaen i ddod i hyn.

[Matt Leming]: Ymlaen i ddod i hyn.

[Matt Leming]: Judith Weinstock ar Zoom, rydw i'n mynd i'w gofyn i'w anhygoelio yma.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer y record.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer y record.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer y record.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer y record.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer y record.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer y record.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer y record.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer y record.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer the record.

[Matt Leming]: Gwneud y gysylltiad ar gyfer the record.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch yn fawr iawn, Judith.

[Matt Leming]: Feel free to respond to those questions.

[Matt Leming]: One moment.

[Matt Leming]: A yw'r podiwm wedi'i gysylltu?

[Matt Leming]: Dydw i ddim yn gallu gweld, oherwydd mae'n llwyr.

[Matt Leming]: Yw

[Matt Leming]: Dwi'n meddwl, ie.

[Matt Leming]: Ie, iawn.

[Matt Leming]: Yn enw a'r adroddiad ar gyfer y record, os gwelwch, mae gennych tri munud yn dechrau nawr.

[Matt Leming]: Rydw i'n mynd i'r ôl i Zoom

[Matt Leming]: Dina, a allwch ddweud eich enw cyntaf a'ch adroddiad ar gyfer y record?

[Matt Leming]: Mae gennych tri munud.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch yn fawr.

[Matt Leming]: Rwy'n credu bod y cynllun corrwyr eraill yn dal ymlaen yn agenda Llywodraeth Y Ddinas.

[Matt Leming]: Nid ydym wedi'i ymddangos i'r Llywodraeth Gweithredu Cymdeithasol yn dilyn cwestiynau o'r Gweithredu, ond rydw i'n mynd i gydnabod arweinydd Llywodraeth, Colin.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, medfordma.org slash zoning.

[Matt Leming]: It's a wonderful resource to read about all the different parts of this somewhat technically complicated process.

[Matt Leming]: But yes, the Boston Avenue proposal is currently under the other corridors proposal along with a couple of other streets within the city.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not seeing anybody new.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Cassanetti, I can't, oh, oh yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Dwi ddim yn gwybod os ydych chi'n dod i mewn i goment cyhoeddus, Mr. Castanedi, ond rwy'n credu eich bod chi wedi...

[Matt Leming]: Elizabeth Bale, 34 Emery Street.

[Matt Leming]: mae'r broblem ymgeisio'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyflawni'r materion sy'n cyfla

[Matt Leming]: Yn ystod y cyfarfod hwnnw, rydyn nhw'n ymwneud â'r cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau y byddant yn y cynghorau

[Matt Leming]: y gwefan cyngor y ddinas, ac efallai y gwelwch y sefydliad yno.

[Matt Leming]: Felly, rwy'n gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich bod yn gwybod eich

[Matt Leming]: Felly, os yw'r pdf'n anhygoel, mae'n anhygoel, yna mae'r recordio hwn yn ystod y cyfle ar weithdai'r City of Medford.

[Matt Leming]: Yn ogystal â hyn, rydw i wedi cyflwyno cyngherddau Llywodraeth Cymdeithasol i'r weithdai hwnnw, felly mae'r cyngherddau hynny ar gael ar eu llawysgrifau eu hunain.

[Matt Leming]: Yn ogystal â'r sesiwn Q&A zonin, felly os ydych chi'n mynd i'r City of Medford,

[Matt Leming]: Massachusetts YouTube page and you go to the playlist section.

[Matt Leming]: There's five of those.

[Matt Leming]: There's like five of the recorded q&a sessions that we've previously.

[Matt Leming]: I just had my colleagues in the planning department and in as have previously done on different topics throughout the zoning process, including the Tufts institutional zoning.

[Matt Leming]: So all of that

[Matt Leming]: yw ar Youtube, ac eto rwy'n gwneud hefyd pan rwy'n gwneud ychydig i gyrraedd y chanel Youtube, felly rwy'n ceisio, felly, ychwanegu'r cyfrifiadau sylfaenol pan rwy'n ei wneud hynny.

[Matt Leming]: Yn ogystal â hyn, wrth gwrs, mae'r medfyrdd.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.org.

[Matt Leming]: ac rwy'n gobeithio fy mod i'n ymwneud â hynny.

[Matt Leming]: A oes unrhyw un arall sydd eisiau cyflawni a ddim wedi cyflawni ar hyn o bryd?

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Castanedi, nôl a'r adroddiad ar gyfer y record.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Cass, I understand I stopped the timer for you because there's a bit of a back and forth.

[Matt Leming]: I understand I stopped the timer for you because there's a bit of a back and forth there, but I'll give you an extra 30 seconds.

[Matt Leming]: Iawn.

[Matt Leming]: Kaitlyn on Zoom can ask you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Hi.

[Matt Leming]: Rydyn ni'n credu ein bod ni'n mynd i'r cyrraedd a'r cyfraniadau TDM ymlaen.

[Matt Leming]: Yn amlwg, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n cael, roedden nhw'n ca

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to go back to Judith Weinstock.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to ask you to unmute one minute.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch.

[Matt Leming]: Emily?

[Matt Leming]: Rwy'n meddwl y byddai'r cyfrifiadau'n ymwneud â'r cyfrifiadau.

[Matt Leming]: Rwy'n gweld Ysgrifennydd Callaghan, ond rydw i wedi... Judith, roeddech chi eisiau gwneud cysylltiad â hynny?

[Matt Leming]: Iawn.

[Matt Leming]: Rwy'n gweld Ysgrifennydd Callaghan.

[Matt Leming]: Felly, efallai yw'n anodd i ddefnyddio defnyddiadau arweinyddol, yn siŵr, pethau fel ymgeisyddiaeth.

[Matt Leming]: Diolch yn fawr iawn am dod allan yma unwaith eto, ac am gynhyrchu eich cynlluniau ar gyfer zon sefydliadol Tufts.

[Matt Leming]: Rwy'n edrych ymlaen i gysylltiadau fwyaf ym mhrosod hwn, ymgysylltu'r bywydau sy'n byw ymdrech, yn ogystal ag Ysgol Tufts ei hun, ac yn cael cymdeithas sy'n gweithio'n wahanol i'r proses o rezonio.

[Matt Leming]: Nid ydw i'n credu bod yna penderfyniadau sy'n mynd i'w wneud diwethaf yma.

[Matt Leming]: Roedd hwn yn ymgynghoriad gwybodaethol.

[Matt Leming]: Oes gennym unrhyw ddewisiadau ar y sgwrs?

[Matt Leming]: Nid ydw i'n credu bod yna penderfyniadau ar y sgwrs.

[Matt Leming]: Nid ydw i'n credu bod yna penderfyniadau ar y sgwrs.

[Matt Leming]: Yn ymwneud â chysylltiad â'r papur a'r cyngherdd yn ymwneud â'r cyngherdd, mae gennym ddau oedran.

[Matt Leming]: Ddau oedran gan Gweinidog Callaghan.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Llywodraeth, pan fyddwch chi'n barod, diolch yn fawr i'r rôl.

[Matt Leming]: Just a question about the line saying that two youth members between the ages of 15 and 22 shall be at the time of their appointments.

[Matt Leming]: Does the city currently have any mechanisms in place to reach out to high school students or college students in order to just make sure that those appointments get filled?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I do want to

[Matt Leming]: be able to have youth members on the committee, but I am thinking of just the situation where outreach is bad at a given year, so something to, if there's some way to adjust the language to make it so that that's strongly suggested, but wouldn't lead to two empty seats if youth did apply to it.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that

[Matt Leming]: you know, some way to adjust it so that that's not so strict would be useful.

[Matt Leming]: I do sympathize with my, with Councilor Scarpelli's comment about having Medford, only Medford residents on the committee.

[Matt Leming]: But it may be that, but I also do want people who have a demonstrated expertise in urban forestry on the committee.

[Matt Leming]: And maybe there could be a situation some years where you may not have that in a smaller pool.

[Matt Leming]: So if there's, there could be some language that says that if somebody is not,

[Matt Leming]: Now, I think that's something I'm still thinking about.

[Matt Leming]: Maybe some language that says if somebody is not a Medford resident, they don't necessarily get voting power on the committee, but they could be there sort of in an advisory capacity.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I do want expertise on the committee.

[Matt Leming]: And I am concerned about limiting the pool for that.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, I do.

[Matt Leming]: At the same time, I do understand where my colleague is coming from.

[Matt Leming]: So instead of not requiring residency for the youth members, I think it might be better to add in a line about

[Matt Leming]: basically if a member moves away and they have less than X number of months on their term, they're not automatically removed.

[Matt Leming]: They can serve out the remainder of their term remotely if they so choose.

[Matt Leming]: I think that kind of language would be a little bit more

[Matt Leming]: would cover the situation that Sarah described just now a little bit better.

[Matt Leming]: I personally just feel like not requiring residency for the youth members at all is a little bit, could be a little bit odd.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I would be fine saying Medford, like youth, the youth may be Medford residents or enrolled attendees of educational institutions based in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: I think that would capture the spirit of it.

[Matt Leming]: Let's see, maybe at the last sentence of 2A, the youth members, maybe just residency is not required for the youth members as long as they are enrolled in educational institutions based in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: I remember Mr. Hilliard,

[Matt Leming]: played at the Memorial Day Ceremony, the Patriots Day Ceremony.

[Matt Leming]: And this one, it kind of closed home for me because my dad, he's a professional trumpet player.

[Matt Leming]: And so anytime I see a trumpet player there representing the community, the musicians, I take note of them.

[Matt Leming]: Went up to Mr. Hilliard, had a conversation.

[Matt Leming]: I wanted to get to know him better.

[Matt Leming]: So when I saw that, when I saw he passed away, it was a shock.

[Matt Leming]: Every community needs its musicians.

[Matt Leming]: Every community needs people there to play taps.

[Matt Leming]: Every community needs music and without Mr. Hilliard, Medford's lost that.

[Matt Leming]: So my condolences to his family and thank you, Councilor Scarpelli for bringing this resolution.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I'd like to echo the sentiments that my colleagues just offered.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also just like to encourage you to follow up later so that we can do what we can do behind the scenes and at a council meeting to help out with the situation.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not pleased to hear about this, and thank you for coming out here and speaking.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I fully agree.

[Matt Leming]: I had conversations with the assessor about a year ago about potentially passing the new good landlord tax credit.

[Matt Leming]: And he basically said that it was a, well, he hinted that it wouldn't quite have the effect that we wanted because it would apply equally to landlords, like small local landlords who willingly kept their,

[Matt Leming]: kept their rents low, as well as larger properties that are usually owned by companies who are, in many cases, required to keep affordable housing rates.

[Matt Leming]: There's no sort of legal way to distinguish between the two under state law.

[Matt Leming]: But I think it would be worthwhile to have those discussions in public and have a bit more of a formal analysis.

[Matt Leming]: So I'd like to thank my colleagues for bringing this forward.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I'm gonna just repeat a lot of points, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: There's a lot of people here that are trying to talk about a couple of other papers we have, and I feel like we've gone over the civics lesson a few dozen times in council by now, but I'm just gonna repeat the point.

[Matt Leming]: Free cash is used for one-time expenses, capital projects, which is what is on this paper.

[Matt Leming]: The override,

[Matt Leming]: believe we're talking about question seven, which put $500,000 a year to the DPW that is used for ongoing expenses.

[Matt Leming]: You can't dip into free cash to pay staff because those are year to year costs.

[Matt Leming]: Now every city has usually between usually over budgets by about three to 5%.

[Matt Leming]: And then that is then put into free cash, which then can then collect over time so that we can then put

[Matt Leming]: that amount into things like sidewalks, HVAC systems, one-time capital projects.

[Matt Leming]: The override didn't go towards that.

[Matt Leming]: That's going towards hiring three in-house road repair crew members.

[Matt Leming]: I feel like there's probably a lot of folks in this room who haven't heard us have this same conversation literally dozens of times by now, but I just want to clarify that that's what's going on here.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I fully support this resolution.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to comment.

[Matt Leming]: Sometimes, as many folks here have been witnessing for the first hour and a half of this meeting, we discuss very dry topics that are nonetheless very important.

[Matt Leming]: to the to the city, transfer of funds, talk about zoning, but resolutions like these are also important because people want to know where their elected officials, where their city stands, and the morale of the city is important.

[Matt Leming]: Now having people feel safe is very important and so

[Matt Leming]: It is possible that sometimes you might be in a position where you can overdo symbolic gestures.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think that this is one of those cases.

[Matt Leming]: It is important for people to know what their government thinks, even in certain cases where they might not necessarily have direct power over those issues, because it does affect people's relationships with their government.

[Matt Leming]: So I would like to make that point.

[Matt Leming]: One thing I did just want to do with my with my time is that the arrest was actually recorded

[Matt Leming]: by one of the neighbors.

[Matt Leming]: And so I'm going to try to get a clip of this that doesn't get the guy's face too closely.

[Matt Leming]: But I do feel like these arrests are usually a little bit abstract, like people only just talk about them.

[Matt Leming]: And in this case, there was a couple of ICE agents who were arresting a pizza delivery driver, which I don't really think is that great of a

[Matt Leming]: use of anybody's time if they're trying to stop, they're trying to protect the community.

[Matt Leming]: But it's a little silly, but I do think that a picture is worth a thousand words.

[Matt Leming]: And this really scared the neighbors who were here earlier tonight, but had to leave when they wanted to talk about this.

[Matt Leming]: And I do just like to have people see a little bit of this

[Matt Leming]: see a little bit of the footage just so that it's not quite as abstract as it normally is when we're just talking about an arrest over the weekend.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you for listening.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm not going to, again, I'm not going to show the whole clip because I did realize that in some places it shows a close-up of his face and I decided I didn't really want to do that.

[Matt Leming]: I gave this speech to one of my colleagues to ask for his feedback and he said it was he said it was too long

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for coming out here today.

[Matt Leming]: You could have spent this very cloudy Saturday doing anything else, but you came out to listen to one of your local elected officials talk about what's going on in the city and listen to their vision for the future.

[Matt Leming]: So everyone here represents the most dedicated and involved residents in the city, and I'm grateful to be in this community with you.

[Matt Leming]: First of all, I'm just going to do the formality and recognize the elected officials that are with us.

[Matt Leming]: There is City Councilor Zach, what was your last name?

[Matt Leming]: City Council President Zach Baird, City Councilor Emily Lazzaro, School Committee, City Councilor Anna Callahan, School Committee Member Paul Russo, Jenny Graham, and John Intapa.

[Matt Leming]: Is anybody else in the crowd?

[Matt Leming]: Yep, I believe that's everybody.

[Matt Leming]: My name is Matt Leming, I've been a city council for one term and I'm running for a second.

[Matt Leming]: Two years ago, I promised transparency, I promised to address Medford's.

[Matt Leming]: I promise to invest in more affordable housing to address the housing crisis that this whole country is experiencing.

[Matt Leming]: So what have we done over the past two years?

[Matt Leming]: This past city council term has objectively been the most productive that Medford has seen in a generation.

[Matt Leming]: With the help of many parents and volunteers, many of whom are here today, we invested in our public school system.

[Matt Leming]: We joined the 94% of other Massachusetts cities that passed an override and in doing so we saved 40 teaching jobs and got the funding to hire a dedicated crew to patch up our roads and sidewalks.

[Matt Leming]: And we recognize that that can be a tax burden on many of us, which is why we're now completely rezoning the city for the first time in almost 40 years to bring in more commercial revenue, to let us build more affordable housing, to mandate greener building practices, while preserving the green spaces and historic buildings that characterize our city.

[Matt Leming]: All while being more transparent than any other council before us.

[Matt Leming]: Every single month, we meet in council to summarize our accomplishments in a newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: And not everybody has regular computer access, so every single month we go to the senior center just to listen to their concerns.

[Matt Leming]: We set up a trust to fund affordable housing projects and initiative, which I've been working painstakingly to fund.

[Matt Leming]: And I worked to institute a first of its kind program to house veteran renters.

[Matt Leming]: Because of our historic failure to build and welcome new businesses in Medford, we became one of the most underfunded cities per capita in the Commonwealth.

[Matt Leming]: But now we're one of the fastest growing cities, the budget is healthier and healthier, and at the local level, things are looking up and I have nothing but hope for the future.

[Matt Leming]: But we are living in a strange time where that's not the case nationally.

[Matt Leming]: The country isn't doing well as a whole because of so many people who feel left out and feel isolated, who felt so disconnected and contemptuous of the way things were going that they elected what we have today.

[Matt Leming]: We have a president who's throwing himself a birthday parade a week after sending their Marines in the National Guard to scare and agitate protesters.

[Matt Leming]: Around Boston, federal agents in masks have been abducting our neighbors off the streets and trying to sow fear in the community.

[Matt Leming]: And going off script a little bit,

[Matt Leming]: wrote this a few days ago and even since then we've had some troubling international developments as well as the recent assassination of a local elected official in the country.

[Matt Leming]: We've had destructive economic

[Matt Leming]: Destructive economic policies that only benefit a handful, or your person at the top who's dismantling the federal government as fast as humanly possible.

[Matt Leming]: So many of us have taken refuge in local government, and we're doing everything we can to push back.

[Matt Leming]: We're working with Luce to report the whereabouts of ICE agents.

[Matt Leming]: This past term, I worked to make Medford into a sanctuary city with the help of my colleagues so that the Medford Police Department doesn't work with ICE on non-criminal matters.

[Matt Leming]: With the Democratic City Committee, I spearheaded a campaign to teach migrant communities their rights to keep them safer, while others in City Hall have held sessions with local migrant communities to teach them their rights.

[Matt Leming]: But it wasn't me who distributed the red cards personally, it was the many non-profits who we gave them to so that they could hand them out to migrants.

[Matt Leming]: It wasn't City Council who campaigned and voted to invest in our roads and schools, it was the community who did that.

[Matt Leming]: And it's not City Council who's supporting the rezoning effort, it's the community who comes out and speaks about it at the many, many meetings we have on the topic.

[Matt Leming]: Councilors can only work because there are so many people in the city, so many of you who care enough to make a difference.

[Matt Leming]: Without your support, we cannot do anything.

[Matt Leming]: And I know that for a fact.

[Matt Leming]: When I first moved to Medford, I was an underpaid scientist in a very expensive place that nonetheless had a lot of job opportunities in my field.

[Matt Leming]: I got involved in affordable housing activism pretty quickly, lobbying the city council at the time to institute an affordable housing trust.

[Matt Leming]: Shortly thereafter, a few members of that council encouraged me to run for a seat.

[Matt Leming]: Back then, I think I was elected for three reasons.

[Matt Leming]: First, there were three open seats that year, which is quite a bit.

[Matt Leming]: Second, that's true.

[Matt Leming]: Second, I wasn't vague, and I didn't try to center myself on every issue.

[Matt Leming]: I didn't necessarily try to be friends with everybody just by telling them what they wanted to hear.

[Matt Leming]: But I made my policies and my ideals very clear and very specific.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that garnered trust, even among those who may have disagreed with me.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think everyone on this lawn agrees with every single one of my policies, but they know what they are because I've written about them on the internet every two weeks for the past two years.

[Matt Leming]: The third reason I was elected my first go-around and the most important is that I knocked on around 8,000 doors and I had a lot of conversations with a lot of different people.

[Matt Leming]: Now speaking to as many people as I did, I learned a few things about Medford.

[Matt Leming]: We're a city with a lot of young people and a lot of old people, a lot of renters and a lot of homeowners, a lot of multi-generational residents who can trace their lineage back to the Mayflower, and a lot of people who only arrived very recently.

[Matt Leming]: And we all call Medford home.

[Matt Leming]: And just to speak, people I spoke to came from so many different backgrounds.

[Matt Leming]: When people talked about city council, I got so many different responses.

[Matt Leming]: Some often knew the city councilors well, grew up with them, could talk about their high school years and knew their electives on a first name basis.

[Matt Leming]: But other times they talked about how they just felt excluded from local politics altogether.

[Matt Leming]: Some people moved here for school and they wanted to get involved in their city, but couldn't.

[Matt Leming]: People who lived here 20, 30 years raised families and were still called New Medford in a pejorative way.

[Matt Leming]: You couldn't get the time of day from local politicians unless they'd grown up with them.

[Matt Leming]: And I talked to all these people, I listened to all of them equally.

[Matt Leming]: And I did my best to bring them into the fold, even if they might have disagreed with some of my policies.

[Matt Leming]: And I know that my colleagues did the same.

[Matt Leming]: I think that's one of the reasons we've seen so many changes in the city over the past few years.

[Matt Leming]: Council used to be an old boys club, but then new candidates connected with so many people who felt left out.

[Matt Leming]: So we elected a city council and school committee that brought new blood and new ideas.

[Matt Leming]: We brought a mindset that didn't just recognize Medford's problems, talk about them, and stop there, but approached issues with curiosity and proposed specific, concrete policies to solve them.

[Matt Leming]: And because of this new energy, these past two years have been the most productive we've had in generations.

[Matt Leming]: Medford's future.

[Matt Leming]: And no, nothing is totally fixed.

[Matt Leming]: There are still potholes.

[Matt Leming]: We still lack after-school programs for young families.

[Matt Leming]: We still lack housing.

[Matt Leming]: We still lack options for many seniors who might want to downsize.

[Matt Leming]: It takes more than a few years to make up for the systemic underfunding of our infrastructure.

[Matt Leming]: Because for longer than I've been alive, we've been in a system that's focused not on the growth of our cities, not on investing in our workers, but on focusing wealth at the top, not on empowering the younger generations, but on putting us into debt, not on maintaining our infrastructure and investing in our education, but on short-term gains.

[Matt Leming]: We're not there yet, but make no mistake, this council, this local government has been busy laying the foundation.

[Matt Leming]: So there's a long road ahead.

[Matt Leming]: We need to build on that foundation.

[Matt Leming]: We need to address the historic housing shortage.

[Matt Leming]: We need to help the DBW fix our roads so that they don't fall into further disrepair.

[Matt Leming]: We need to make sure our rezoning is taken advantage of so that we have the funding to do all of that.

[Matt Leming]: This next term on council, we need to keep up the momentum.

[Matt Leming]: I'm almost done.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I'm almost done.

[Matt Leming]: First of all, we're doing well not because of me or my colleagues, but because of you.

[Matt Leming]: The people who have chosen to make their communities here, who have chosen to talk to their neighbors, and who have chosen to make Medford as welcoming as possible.

[Matt Leming]: In 1961, JFK said, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

[Matt Leming]: He said that because the more people contribute to their community, the more their community can give back.

[Matt Leming]: I'm hopeful for Medford's future because of all the people who do so much to give back.

[Matt Leming]: The many people who organize their neighbors.

[Matt Leming]: I'm hopeful because of the volunteers who chose to sink time into knocking doors and talk to their neighbors so that we can invest in the next generation.

[Matt Leming]: I'm hopeful because of the political organizers working to defend our neighbors from federal overreach.

[Matt Leming]: I'm hopeful because of every person who sunk their own free time into a board or commission or church or community activist group or political campaign without pay so that Medford can have a better future.

[Matt Leming]: It's because of you.

[Matt Leming]: City councillors like myself are only one small part of the equation.

[Matt Leming]: And as I conclude this speech, one paragraph.

[Matt Leming]: As I conclude this speech, I have an ask of you.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, you knew this was coming.

[Matt Leming]: Running a campaign is not cheap.

[Matt Leming]: One mailer to the voters of Medford costs around $7,000.

[Matt Leming]: Volunteers, website, cost, staff, all of this is needed for a campaign and the sum total usually goes to about $20,000.

[Matt Leming]: But a donation to a local political campaign is not an expense, it's an investment in your community.

[Matt Leming]: Now, not everybody's in a financial position to donate.

[Matt Leming]: I get that.

[Matt Leming]: But in your presence here today is really more than I could have asked for, and I'm grateful.

[Matt Leming]: But if you're able, I print out a few QR codes around here, which gives a link to the donation spot on my website.

[Matt Leming]: And I've set up a little box for checks if you'd like to donate that way.

[Matt Leming]: Additionally, I'd also like to say, be on the lookout for the other wonderful city council and school committee candidates as they come up in the near future as the campaign season gets rolling.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you so much for listening to me and thank you so much for coming out here today.

[Matt Leming]: I'm truly glad to have everybody out here.

[Matt Leming]: So can you clarify the bit on TDM being a midterm change?

[Matt Leming]: So I understand a study does need to be done for it, but in the research that you've done on it so far, what do you find is the relationship between the part of it that's incorporated into zoning and the part of it that the study needs to account for?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so you're mainly referring to

[Matt Leming]: developers being integrated into the lower Mystic TMA?

[Matt Leming]: We drafted our monthly newsletter and released it.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you to Councilor Lazzaro for putting the work into doing that.

[Matt Leming]: We discussed the results and feedback from some of the recent senior center listening sessions, which Councilor Lazzaro and Councilor Tseng attended.

[Matt Leming]: and we heard Councilor Tseng's presentation on the budget survey as well as the report that he prepared and voted to release that as well.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to approve.

[Matt Leming]: One, when the police are presenting the budget, I specifically asked them if they're capable of executing this ordinance, providing periodic reports.

[Matt Leming]: They said they're working towards that, but it was doable.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Two, saying that the input of the police chief is, well, using that as an excuse that you kind of go back to for not supporting these things, it's just something that

[Matt Leming]: We've heard time and time again.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, last time I heard a lack of support for this, for a surveillance report, because supposedly it wasn't, didn't get the approval of the police chief when it had actually been written by the police chief.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't think that that's a reason to not do this.

[Matt Leming]: Third, we've had the thoughts and prayers, like language coming out of

[Matt Leming]: local politicians for the longest time and I just don't think it's satisfactory.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, this is a very basic minimal response, but it is something, and people don't want to keep hearing.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, I'm very concerned I'm knitting my eyebrows for people in this community who are being abducted by ice and shipped off to El Salvador.

[Matt Leming]: but they have my thoughts and prayers, but I can't support the minimal legislation possible to actually do something about that or even make them feel more safe.

[Matt Leming]: So I just, it's an excuse.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, the welcoming city ordinance is something that's been passed by multiple other cities in the Commonwealth.

[Matt Leming]: It's been passed by many other states.

[Matt Leming]: It is the least that we can do.

[Matt Leming]: And this is,

[Matt Leming]: Another, like an after action report showing where ICE was in the community is also the least that we can do.

[Matt Leming]: People are feeling unsafe right now and they wanna know that the police department has their back, is there for them.

[Matt Leming]: And this ordinance or this resolution gives them a framework to let them know that they can do that.

[Matt Leming]: That's all I have to say.

[Matt Leming]: No, I was just going to say what I mean, meetings are every two weeks.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for the resolution, Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: One small point I'd like to make, and I'm not going to generally go into how horrifying this development is, but one thing I would like to point out about this situation is that the

[Matt Leming]: Marines that were sent in, 700 Marines, are not trained for crowd control.

[Matt Leming]: And that's an important thing for people to understand.

[Matt Leming]: The police department, when you have a local police force, they're trained to protect a group of people within a town or a city.

[Matt Leming]: Marines are trained to go into

[Matt Leming]: a hostile territory and they are trained to kill.

[Matt Leming]: That is what they are taught to do.

[Matt Leming]: They are not taught

[Matt Leming]: to do any sort of crowd control, quell protests, they are taught to kill.

[Matt Leming]: That is what they're used for.

[Matt Leming]: They are a military force that you send into a war zone.

[Matt Leming]: And when I read that 700 Marines were being sent into Los Angeles, that was

[Matt Leming]: That was particularly chilling.

[Matt Leming]: And that's not even saying anything about the national guardsmen that are there right now, standing there without orders, without a place to sleep, without a place to eat.

[Matt Leming]: That's not to mention the $134 million that this whole operation has costed.

[Matt Leming]: It's sad.

[Matt Leming]: It's not.

[Matt Leming]: The military should not be used against protesters.

[Matt Leming]: That's all I have to say.

[Matt Leming]: So at the beginning of this year, we had about $28 million in free cash, and we're seeing here the updated version was $22.12 million.

[Matt Leming]: So at the beginning of the year, Medford had, as a percentage of its operating budget,

[Matt Leming]: 48%.

[Matt Leming]: That amount of free cash is 14.48% of the operating budget.

[Matt Leming]: Now that it's 22.12, it's like 11.3%.

[Matt Leming]: The average across the Commonwealth is 9.4% across all of the 351 cities.

[Matt Leming]: So Medford in terms of

[Matt Leming]: At the beginning of the year, we ranked about number 44 in terms of cities that had free cash as a percentage of operating budget.

[Matt Leming]: So pretty high, but not like necessarily an outlier.

[Matt Leming]: Right now, considering the $22.12 million that we have remaining, we could spend about

[Matt Leming]: $3.7 million right off the bat and be right at the average of the other cities in the Commonwealth as of this year.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, $3.7 million could be spent immediately.

[Matt Leming]: And there are some parts of the operating budget I was noticing as well where you're sort of over budgeting for certain positions with the

[Matt Leming]: you know, idea that that would be with the with the idea that we should have that many positions.

[Matt Leming]: But for instance, the police department, they were saying that they had 90, I believe, just going off memory, it was 93.

[Matt Leming]: They currently have they said three, an extra three were in the pilot pipeline, we're budgeting for 107.

[Matt Leming]: And there were some other parts of the budget that were

[Matt Leming]: similar to that.

[Matt Leming]: So there's going to be more like, I assume that some of a lot of those unfilled positions are just going to be going into free cash.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, getting us down to that average, like an extra four or $5 million a year, it's not going to, I don't think it's necessarily going to solve every one of the city's problems.

[Matt Leming]: What I personally like to see it spent on is areas where we

[Matt Leming]: know that it will lead to some sort of growth in the city.

[Matt Leming]: I do appreciate what I see on the next paper, which is some of those funding for some of the studies that I mentioned, which would at least allow the city to put out like starting bids on some of those.

[Matt Leming]: But echoing what some of my colleagues have said, Medford does have a lot of needs right now.

[Matt Leming]: And I do appreciate any areas that you could identify where we could sort of like

[Matt Leming]: fund those, and that would lead to excessive growth in the future, which is kind of the parts that I've been trying to focus on during this term in terms of things like updating our linkage fees, which would lead to a lot more money in the future.

[Matt Leming]: Again, I keep talking about this TDM study, which is, I would say, partially funded on this next paper.

[Matt Leming]: Speaking as one Councilor, I do like to see areas where we're spending free cash, which do promise pretty substantial growth in the future.

[Matt Leming]: So those parts are very appreciated.

[Matt Leming]: That's all I have to say.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: mainly monetary growth.

[Matt Leming]: Like I do like to see the budget that we have be in a healthier state.

[Matt Leming]: So that was what I was referring to when I said that just now.

[Matt Leming]: I do appreciate what my colleague, Councilor Callahan was just saying about trying to also put the money towards those areas where if we don't,

[Matt Leming]: If we don't fix them now it'll just end up the cost will just end up skyrocketing to fix them in the future, which, in my mind, also relates to the monetary growth issue because patching up those areas will end up saving us money.

[Matt Leming]: like 10, 20 years down the line when it does end up getting torn up.

[Matt Leming]: So that's the way I'm thinking about this is where can we apply money now so that the overall picture will be better 20 years in the future and we're not spending even more money than we normally would like fixing up a ton of roads.

[Matt Leming]: So I do appreciate that distinction, but to me, it's sort of like they're one in the same in a lot of ways.

[Matt Leming]: Right, so we were, I mean we, we were one of the very few.

[Matt Leming]: municipalities that didn't already have some sort of a stabilization fund beforehand.

[Matt Leming]: So the data that I was referring to, I just took from the Massachusetts State website, and it offers a breakdown of free cash from other municipalities this past year.

[Matt Leming]: So it didn't

[Matt Leming]: specify the size of the various stabilization funds in those cities.

[Matt Leming]: But I'm also going with the assumption that those cities already had stabilization funds that Medford, for some reason, didn't for years and years beforehand.

[Matt Leming]: But you are correct that that data is

[Matt Leming]: available somewhere on the website, I would just have to pull it up and do some Excel macro magic to to get a get a better get a better picture of those of those percentages.

[Matt Leming]: like to echo my colleague's views on this.

[Matt Leming]: I am glad and I'm glad to see the funding for the Nexus studies that we've been asking for for a while.

[Matt Leming]: Just to clarify to anybody watching City Council meetings at 1024 in the evening, these studies are going to be used by the Planning Department to put out bids to

[Matt Leming]: outside firms who will determine the amount that we need to raise our linkage fees to the modern day.

[Matt Leming]: Now, the linkage fees are the amount of money that we charge developers as a city who might want to

[Matt Leming]: so that we can put funding towards our roads, our police and fire, our parks, and our water and sewer lines.

[Matt Leming]: And more recently, we have an ordinance going through to put linkage fees towards affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: Now these amounts have not been updated since the 1990s.

[Matt Leming]: So they've basically been eaten by inflation this whole time, even though it was the responsibility of the city to update these every three years.

[Matt Leming]: It's just, we got in the habit of not doing that ever since they were first instituted.

[Matt Leming]: So this is a area where the city is just hemorrhaging money.

[Matt Leming]: And this very small investment is a way to stop doing that.

[Matt Leming]: the they will allow us to figure out how much we should be charging these developers because so far we've been really we really haven't been doing that.

[Matt Leming]: The other the other part of this is the transportation demand management study.

[Matt Leming]: which will allow the city to essentially integrate with the Mystic Valley TMA to create incentives for local developers to put money towards things like buses to allow more local transportation within Medford, as well as a number of other benefits that being included in those regional developer networks will bring to the city.

[Matt Leming]: $100,000 may not necessarily be enough to fund all of these studies, but it will allow the planning office to start putting out bids in order to get that back.

[Matt Leming]: And so we might have to, we might be put in a position where we'll have to approve more funding for them in the future, depending on what prices they get back from consultants.

[Matt Leming]: But in any case, I'd like to thank the city for putting this in front of us.

[Matt Leming]: And that's all I have to say.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I'm here for my

[Matt Leming]: My own public comment now.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, sir, that I was sorry for being late.

[Matt Leming]: I was caught up in traffic.

[Matt Leming]: So and apologies if some of these if this question was already addressed earlier, Mr. Wrighty's comments.

[Matt Leming]: But even though you don't have a cost estimate for repairing all of the city owned facilities, is there

[Matt Leming]: Sort of a ballpark range that you have that we should be thinking about.

[Matt Leming]: I know I can ask you versions of this question before for other projects, but like, what order of magnitude should should the council.

[Matt Leming]: And the rest of the city be thinking about this and like, 1Million, 10Million, 100Million.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so we should be

[Matt Leming]: Oh, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: So we should be budgeting 3% of the assessed value of a given building towards maintenance or some other calculation.

[Matt Leming]: Has the city historically done that or have we not?

[Matt Leming]: Um, so I think, I think a good way to phrase this in terms of the, uh, which is another one of those questions that I don't expect to have the answer to right now, but maybe it's one thing to think about and get back later is what if we had put up that sort of a maintenance budget, would it have been able to sort of save some of the buildings in Medford that aren't doing so well right now?

[Matt Leming]: Nope, nope.

[Matt Leming]: I think

[Matt Leming]: I do think that to sort of like sell this to the public, it would help to say something, to say something like, oh, well, we, you know, wouldn't have had to close down the studio if that building had been better maintained, or we wouldn't have to spend this much money on our new HVAC systems if we just put this much money into it in previous years.

[Matt Leming]: just what I was kind of fishing for was individual stories where we could have done better as a justification for as a stronger justification for this plan when illustrating to the public in the future.

[Matt Leming]: But now that was unsatisfied.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm looking more at the areas along South Medford, like Harvard, Maine, Tufts Park.

[Matt Leming]: With the current zoning, am I right?

[Matt Leming]: It says, like, general residential and single family.

[Matt Leming]: Most of it is currently zoned that way, but with the exception of the small

[Matt Leming]: numbers of commercial one sort of along that Harvard main area, even though I'm pretty sure there are some like restaurants and other retail shops, particularly across from Tufts Park.

[Matt Leming]: So is there currently a like a one-story limit on pretty much all of the

[Matt Leming]: general residential areas there right now.

[Matt Leming]: So are they, would they be able to build, like it just doesn't show anything currently about the height limits for along the residential area and the key, along general residential and the key there.

[Matt Leming]: So every other place it says like six stories by right, two stories.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm just wondering what the stories by right are and the

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so probably my biggest, okay, so, and what you were saying earlier about the fact that the, I'm looking again at Harvard and Maine, it's just a very small sliver of it seems to be the commercial one, so four stories by right, but were you saying earlier that they're really not able to take advantage of it because it's such a small area?

[Matt Leming]: So you think it's more likely a developer will try to take advantage of the proposed zoning in that area since it is expanded than what they have currently?

[Matt Leming]: And for the little lot in front of Tufts Park.

[Matt Leming]: So that's kind of one of my pet peeves of the city.

[Matt Leming]: I think that's pretty much one of the biggest pieces of lost potential that we have.

[Matt Leming]: It's such a nice area, but it just seems to be very underutilized.

[Matt Leming]: Assuming the parking rules stay static, and given that there is a small parking lot right in front of that little lot there, how high would they be able to build under the proposed zoning, given the parking requirements that are there now and the amount of parking they currently have in front of the building?

[Matt Leming]: That was kind of a math problem, but... You have very few.

[Matt Leming]: What I'm getting is, I just really want that parcel to change.

[Matt Leming]: I just really want somebody to actually make something cool there and be super incentivized to do that.

[Matt Leming]: But I guess a lot of that will come up when we review the parking next month.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: It's just an interesting little area because it's just because of the mix of commercial uses and residential uses.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, no, that's all the questions I have on it for now.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I just like to say to express, I think it's a really cool idea.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to move forward on it, however feasibly we can do so.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, the idea of having a locally owned bakery in the middle of Lawrence Estates, which is kind of,

[Matt Leming]: far from, which is relatively far from other commercial areas, I think would be pretty cool.

[Matt Leming]: Would the ACU proposal sort of be its own package that in itself would go through the CDB and council as like its own thing, or would it be sort of attached to something else?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I personally would like to see it attached to something else just to simplify things.

[Matt Leming]: I feel like there's already a lot of packages that the CDB is sort of dealing with right now.

[Matt Leming]: So that's just my take, though.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President.

[Matt Leming]: So, folks may have noticed that I've been absent for the past two weeks from City Council meetings.

[Matt Leming]: I was over in Virginia on reserve orders and I was happy to come back to

[Matt Leming]: Medford's annual Memorial Day celebration in the Oak Grove Cemetery yesterday.

[Matt Leming]: And that is always one of my favorite events that I get to partake in in this job, because going there and seeing the folks who show up, it's not only the veterans who come, but it is the descendants of the veterans.

[Matt Leming]: It is the people who have veterans and their families.

[Matt Leming]: A lower portion of the population these days tends to serve in the military because we don't have as many large scale wars like World War II.

[Matt Leming]: But what I did see is, you know, a guy came up to me and he just told me a story about how his uncle and father both left their welding jobs to join the Marines in World War II.

[Matt Leming]: And it mattered a lot to him.

[Matt Leming]: He just talked to me about it for a couple of minutes.

[Matt Leming]: And after I spoke, another woman came up to me and she said that her grandfather had been responsible for a lot of the, sorry, no, her father had been responsible for a lot of the statues in the Oak Grove Cemetery.

[Matt Leming]: He was a sculptor and he was also a veteran as well.

[Matt Leming]: And it was clear just how much that history

[Matt Leming]: meant to all the folks in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: And it's, I had much better words for this yesterday, I feel like, but just speaking off the cuff about it, it's always an honor to partake in, to partake in those, in those events.

[Matt Leming]: And I always, I just always love to have opportunities to

[Matt Leming]: remember the history of the country and the way that we send masses off, many of whom don't make it back.

[Matt Leming]: But it's also an honor to remember the accomplishments that we've had on those masses.

[Matt Leming]: America gained its independence on the lives of service members.

[Matt Leming]: It was on the lives of service members that we ended slavery.

[Matt Leming]: was on those lives that we and many of our allied nations defeated the Axis powers during World War II.

[Matt Leming]: And they continue to serve.

[Matt Leming]: So I just like to take this opportunity to have this body do its own very small part in commemorating their lives and

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank everybody for, like to thank everybody for listening to me.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: This is something that, full disclosure, I already brought up to Nina before the meeting, but we have been working with a number of parents on this exact issue, so I would like to have some public discussion on it.

[Matt Leming]: I'll also acknowledge that I was absent from the meeting that

[Matt Leming]: this council had with Kevin Bailey.

[Matt Leming]: But so I do very much appreciate the addition of the office manager position part-time for 20, I believe 27,500 to the Medford rec department.

[Matt Leming]: The concern I had, especially working with the parents who really do want to see, who really do want to see afterschool programs for their kids.

[Matt Leming]: And I'd also like to

[Matt Leming]: Thank Councilor Scarpelli as well for his, for his work on on this is that we, the, the impression I got was that an additional full time therapeutic recreation specialist would really help out.

[Matt Leming]: in actually making these programs a reality just in the sense that they did need that is my impression that Kevin really did need more staffing in order to do that with the ambition being that it would that they would end up founding a more regional program and collaboration with.

[Matt Leming]: Malden and Somerville as well.

[Matt Leming]: And my fear is that although the office manager is a big addition because it takes a lot of work off of Kevin's hands that they might need more staffing to make that a reality.

[Matt Leming]: So I'd appreciate any conversation about that as well as just future plans for how those parents could be served in the future.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I live there.

[Matt Leming]: How noisy is it gonna be?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So this is a another request from our veteran services director who I think is doing a wonderful job supporting veterans in this community.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially, she wants to add a

[Matt Leming]: an option for residents to be able to donate if they choose to on their excise tax bills to a fund that would assist in need veterans.

[Matt Leming]: The requirement for doing so is that the city council vote to adopt this particular section of mass general law.

[Matt Leming]: I think it's a very worthwhile initiative.

[Matt Leming]: I don't want to belabor the point

[Matt Leming]: too much after all of our fine words about the veteran community earlier in the night and considering that we still have a lot to get to.

[Matt Leming]: But I think it's a very worthwhile resolution and I'd motion to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, thank you for coming out here.

[Matt Leming]: Very impressed by your presentation, very thorough.

[Matt Leming]: So just appreciate that whenever I see it.

[Matt Leming]: Mainly just, question was just due to the staff, was just around the staffing levels.

[Matt Leming]: So the 93 versus the 107 goal.

[Matt Leming]: Would you say that that's kind of more of a statewide or national issue?

[Matt Leming]: Like, is that just something Medford's running into or is other?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, no, I just, I just like to understand with these initiatives, how much like, cause you could come up with the best recruitment plan in the world, but you're still kind of fighting against, you know, a lot of outside influences, like what you just described.

[Matt Leming]: So just a lot of officers coming to retirement.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, background, we definitely look, we definitely like to hear that.

[Matt Leming]: If you had to sort of estimate a timeline, so it sounds like it's not necessarily gonna be solved by the next year, but do you think that this could be addressed in five years, 10 years?

[Matt Leming]: No, and these are selection processes, everything.

[Matt Leming]: I'd argue that I'd rather have a lower number of very quality officers than just trying to select everybody you can to fill the 107.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm glad to hear that y'all are doing that.

[Matt Leming]: But that was the only question I had.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for coming out here.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also like to repeat that as well.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you all very much for your service and I do appreciate that oftentimes y'all are between a rock and a hard place.

[Matt Leming]: There's been a couple of instances where I've seen something reported on the news, and then I'll have a conversation with the police chief and then he kind of

[Matt Leming]: will explain the logistics behind what actually happened and how it was misreported, just as you did during this meeting.

[Matt Leming]: So things like that happen cyclically and very often.

[Matt Leming]: My only question is, would it be any

[Matt Leming]: what do you think would be something you'd be able to do logistically to periodically report to the city or let the city know in an official form when those instances when you do have run-ins with ICE or when you are aware after the fact of their activity, you're explaining it to us publicly right now, so do you think it would be a possibility to put that into some kind of a periodic report just so that we don't have to keep asking y'all to

[Matt Leming]: come back here and let us know what happened and these sorts in these formats.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, I'm mainly asking because we, we have a resolution later on tonight's agenda about that explicitly and I just, while you're here I just want to know how, like I just want your thoughts on how well you're, you'd be able to carry that out or if you think that that would be

[Matt Leming]: um an issue logistically on your end like I don't think it would be too much trouble for you to say like hey we you know we saw ice break a window on this car this is you know this is what happened I understand there's some arrests that you can't speak as publicly about or which are I mean sometimes like we talked about the incident where you saw that the agent break the window um

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: That's all I wanted to know.

[Matt Leming]: Hey, Councilor Matt Leming here.

[Matt Leming]: I'm a scientist, I'm an affordable housing activist, I'm a military brat, and I'm proud to represent you on City Council.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm excited to announce that I'm going to be running for a second term.

[Matt Leming]: Two years ago, I promised transparency, I promised to address Medford's thinning budget, I promised to invest in more affordable housing, and I've kept those promises.

[Matt Leming]: This past City Council has been the most productive that Medford has seen in literally decades.

[Matt Leming]: We're investing in our public schools.

[Matt Leming]: We saved 40 teaching jobs.

[Matt Leming]: We hired a dedicated crew to repair our roads and sidewalks.

[Matt Leming]: We're reaching out to more residents with a newsletter, listening sessions, live streaming.

[Matt Leming]: City Council is now completely rezoning the city to build more affordable housing, mandate greener building practices, and bring in more commercial revenue.

[Matt Leming]: I worked with the city and local nonprofits to create programs dedicated to housing veteran renters, and I'm working with parents of youth with disabilities to create programming to support their kids.

[Matt Leming]: And together, we're going way further than that.

[Matt Leming]: Right now, the federal government is abducting our neighbors and trying to sow fear in the community, so local government is pushing back.

[Matt Leming]: I worked to make Medford into a sanctuary city, and I spearheaded a campaign to teach migrant communities their rights to keep them safer.

[Matt Leming]: Together, we need to keep fighting, we need to keep winning, we need to keep this upward trend going, we need to keep Medford inclusive.

[Matt Leming]: I'm so proud of the progress that we've made, and I'm so grateful that more and more people want to call Medford home.

[Matt Leming]: Come to my campaign kickoff on June 14th.

[Matt Leming]: I'd love to have you there.

[Matt Leming]: Hello, City Councilor Matt LeMing here.

[Matt Leming]: So what I am going to talk about today is the Red Card campaign.

[Matt Leming]: Bit of backstory.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, with some of the recent events in Medford, namely the abduction of Hermesa Ozturk and

[Matt Leming]: Other reports that I've been hearing from the community about ICE going around neighborhoods, detaining migrants in other municipalities in greater Boston.

[Matt Leming]: We've been hearing a lot of feedback from constituents where they want us to do something as local elected representatives.

[Matt Leming]: I've had people call me out personally for, you know, asking me, you know, do something to make us feel safe, just put out some sort of reply, take some kind of action on this topic.

[Matt Leming]: Back in January, Medford City Council decided to pass a Welcoming City Ordinance, which is sanctuary city legislation, and this was a week before the current administration came into office.

[Matt Leming]: So in some ways, as local elected officials, we kind of

[Matt Leming]: took action before the wave really started.

[Matt Leming]: But that wasn't quite as publicized as it could have been.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, you know, I wrote about it on my website.

[Matt Leming]: We passed it through.

[Matt Leming]: It had been on the dockets in city council for over a year before we did it.

[Matt Leming]: But even so, people weren't really paying attention until all of this stuff started to happen.

[Matt Leming]: So we so we and I say this because we actually have had people come to city council saying make Medford do a sanctuary city and I just say we already did that several months ago.

[Matt Leming]: So I am also involved in the executive committee of the of the

[Matt Leming]: Medford Democrat, so I'm secretary.

[Matt Leming]: There are two co-chairs, there are ward chairs for all of Medford's eight wards, and there's me, which is a secretary.

[Matt Leming]: I'm mainly in charge of communications and note-taking paperwork.

[Matt Leming]: There's also a treasurer and a diversity officer.

[Matt Leming]: And there were some discussions within the committee about, okay, what can we do to show that we're putting up some kind of response to all of this?

[Matt Leming]: So one member came up with the idea of buying these red cards.

[Matt Leming]: They look like this.

[Matt Leming]: They are simple ID-sized cards where on one side they just list your basic Fourth and Fifth Amendment constitutional rights, saying that you don't have to talk to police officers, you don't have to open a door if nobody gives you a

[Matt Leming]: if nobody has a warrant with your name on it and on the other side in different languages there's just instructions for how to use it focused on of course people who are migrants who may be wondering what they can do with these so there's instructions saying that you know you don't have to open a door if nobody has a warrant or they're not looking for you specifically you don't have to answer questions you can just hand this card

[Matt Leming]: to an officer who's trying to question you and that shows what your response will be.

[Matt Leming]: And so, to me, this is just a very basic question of telling people what their rights are and helping people who may be scared or feel unsafe just handle these situations in as healthy a way as possible.

[Matt Leming]: To me, it seemed like a very common sense move.

[Matt Leming]: So we had a special meeting on April 7th within the Democratic City Committee in which there were something like about a dozen a little more than a dozen people that were that were in attendance and we discussed it and voted to authorize the purchase of up to 8,000 of these cards which would

[Matt Leming]: be approximately $826.

[Matt Leming]: By the end of it, we purchased 4,000 cards in Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, and Haitian Creole, because Medford has community liaisons for each of those communities, so we figured it was a pretty representative set of foreign languages for the city.

[Matt Leming]: And then,

[Matt Leming]: we tried to find ways to distribute them.

[Matt Leming]: A caveat of all of this is that these were purchased by campaign funds.

[Matt Leming]: If you have campaign funds, then you either spend it on costs that are associated with the campaign, like mailers, paying staff, et cetera, or if, for instance, you're a candidate who lost, you don't wanna run for office again, but you still have money in your campaign account, you just can't put it in your personal account, you have to give it to charity.

[Matt Leming]: So the co-chair had a conversation with OCPF and they told him that these are campaign funds but we can effectively give them to charity and if we wanted to do that then we could purchase red cards but we would have to give them to non-profit organizations.

[Matt Leming]: So that's the route that we ended up going down.

[Matt Leming]: I ended up creating just a simple Google form and tried to solicit ideas from folks about which nonprofits we can give them to.

[Matt Leming]: So just churches, community organizations, things of that nature.

[Matt Leming]: you know, just try to advertise it.

[Matt Leming]: So I put a Reddit post about it.

[Matt Leming]: I put it onto a couple of Facebook groups.

[Matt Leming]: I'm gonna be putting it out onto my personal mailing list.

[Matt Leming]: And that's where things got a little bit surprising for me because I put out an advertisement for those red cards on Twitter.

[Matt Leming]: I think it was like April 28th, I think, so two days after I physically got some myself.

[Matt Leming]: And then I think it was later that night that somebody from WBZ Radio reached out to me and wanted to interview me about the red card issue, about just, you know, what the Democratic City Committee was doing.

[Matt Leming]: And, you know, I'm a politician entering campaign season, I'm not going to be refusing free media, so I end up interviewing with him.

[Matt Leming]: That interview happened at 9am, the story was posted before 12.

[Matt Leming]: And a few hours later, I got a call from Boston 25, and they were like, hey, we want to interview you about this too.

[Matt Leming]: So I interviewed them before a city council meeting, and they, you know, it took like 15 minutes, went inside, it aired that night.

[Matt Leming]: And then the next day, Boston.com

[Matt Leming]: NBC Telemundo, the Spanish language news and

[Matt Leming]: Fox News Digital all reached out to me.

[Matt Leming]: I interviewed with NBC Telemundo that next morning, interviewed over the phone with Boston.com, and answered some questions over email with Fox News.

[Matt Leming]: And that was posted, and then it was reposted by a couple of other sites, and so on.

[Matt Leming]: I was personally surprised that this got so much attention because one, it was still pretty early stages.

[Matt Leming]: Two, it just seemed like a pretty, you know, common sense thing to me.

[Matt Leming]: And three, it just seemed like a pretty low effort thing that we had done, whereas I feel like I've put a lot more effort into, for instance, the override campaigns, and we really struggled to get media attention around that throughout the campaign.

[Matt Leming]: And it just seemed like that whole media cycle just sort of took off.

[Matt Leming]: And that's really the first time that something like that has ever happened for me.

[Matt Leming]: But it did end up getting some more signups on the Google Sheets, so that was good.

[Matt Leming]: So concurrently, City Council also

[Matt Leming]: This was, so the Democratic City Committee meeting where we approved those happened on April 7th.

[Matt Leming]: On April 8th, the City Council also approved a Know Your Rights campaign in which we endorsed the release of Know Your Rights information, similar information to the community.

[Matt Leming]: And those things, that initiative

[Matt Leming]: is totally unrelated to what was happening with the Democratic City Committee.

[Matt Leming]: Usually with those kinds of resolutions that require action, often what it is, is it's the city council requesting the city, i.e.

[Matt Leming]: the mayor's office to do something.

[Matt Leming]: So we're endorsing an action and just requires the mayor to actually do something about it themselves.

[Matt Leming]: And oftentimes we could pass a resolution, it could be ignored, or it could pass a resolution.

[Matt Leming]: We just really have to push behind the scenes to make something happen.

[Matt Leming]: I think throughout this whole process, a lot of city council has been taking a different approach to this situation than the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: City Council, we're really taking more of an activist stance on it.

[Matt Leming]: We really want to.

[Matt Leming]: We know a lot of folks feel unsafe.

[Matt Leming]: We want to show people where we stand with what's happening at the national level right now.

[Matt Leming]: The mayor is concerned about the budget.

[Matt Leming]: She's afraid of losing federal funding.

[Matt Leming]: And so I think there's just a little bit of differences in points of view in terms of where folks land on this.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that

[Matt Leming]: You know, there are points to both sides, but I've made my decision in terms of where I want to go with that, particularly because I think that, you know, during the first Trump administration, they did attempt to, for instance, revoke federal funding from sanctuary cities and failed.

[Matt Leming]: So I just don't think that those efforts

[Matt Leming]: really like they didn't work in the past.

[Matt Leming]: So I think they're less likely to work in the in the future.

[Matt Leming]: But even if they do work this time, because obviously these two administrations are very different, then, you know, I do I do think that at some point you do have to put human rights above above municipal funds.

[Matt Leming]: So that's just that's just my two cents on it.

[Matt Leming]: That's that's my point of view.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, mainly, I'm also sharing this because people are quite afraid right now.

[Matt Leming]: We had a trans woman talk about how she felt unsafe at a recent city council meeting very late at night, and the city council spent a little bit of time assuring her that things were, that we were on her side, we were trying our best to do this.

[Matt Leming]: I was on the phone with a Haitian woman the other day just trying to get her to sign her church up on the Google form that I put out just so I could send over some of these red cards to her.

[Matt Leming]: And she was afraid of even putting anything on the internet, having any paper trail.

[Matt Leming]: thought that the government could get access to Google, which I didn't really think was quite as much of a concern as she thought.

[Matt Leming]: But the point was that the fear was still there.

[Matt Leming]: You know, when I other members of the Democratic City Committee, when the Fox News thing came out, they wanted their emails temporarily removed from the website because they're afraid of people reaching out to them.

[Matt Leming]: And, you know, I got some I got some messages when I was

[Matt Leming]: When I was put on the news from some people who were really unpleasant like it just just trolls like just sent like nasty messages onto my Facebook and Instagram and I'm not really

[Matt Leming]: afraid of that kind of thing.

[Matt Leming]: I just kind of see them as paper tigers.

[Matt Leming]: But I'm relating that because I think a lot of people, when they do start to get out there, that sort of draws this response from these crazy right-wingers who will try to intimidate folks who speak out.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm just saying that as a way to relate, it happens to everybody.

[Matt Leming]: These people are cowards.

[Matt Leming]: They're paper tigers.

[Matt Leming]: Just don't

[Matt Leming]: like you should feel free to speak up if you think that you're in a position to speak up or you won't be targeted by people who might actually put you in danger.

[Matt Leming]: But, you know, don't be afraid to speak up just because you might get some unpleasant messages from people who are just mentally unwell and happen to have a computer.

[Matt Leming]: So, so yeah, that's

[Matt Leming]: That's, that's just that.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, I'm just, I'm just putting out this, I'm just putting out this video blog just to, you know, talk about what happened from my perspective, just to, you know, relay an interesting story, um, about some media cycles and an initiative that I see as a very common sense, which, which I think everybody can get around, you know, um, I,

[Matt Leming]: When it comes to the red card situation, I honestly don't understand why it's controversial because nobody should be above the Constitution.

[Matt Leming]: All this does is list two amendments from the Bill of Rights and explains to people how they work.

[Matt Leming]: A question that Fox News asked me was it said, like this was one of the questions they emailed me, they said, some people think that these rights don't apply to non-citizens, which is not true.

[Matt Leming]: The Fourth and Fifth Amendment say people and persons, they don't say citizens, and this was reaffirmed in a 1993 Supreme Court case where Justice Scalia wrote that it's been well known that the Fifth Amendment applies in deportation cases for illegal aliens.

[Matt Leming]: So the idea that somehow

[Matt Leming]: the Constitution, constitutional rights don't apply to non-citizens.

[Matt Leming]: It's just, it's just a farce.

[Matt Leming]: Like I don't, I don't understand where that, where that sort of thinking is coming from.

[Matt Leming]: So, so yeah, like in, in summary, red cards definitely should be distributed to migrant communities.

[Matt Leming]: I personally find that it's,

[Matt Leming]: more important to try to find ways to reach out to communities who might be more vulnerable and kind of are generally are far away from city politics.

[Matt Leming]: I think that that's more important personally than

[Matt Leming]: Going to Then going to protests not not that you shouldn't go to protests but just like for my personal priorities like I just think the way that I can make the most impact is trying to find ways to reach those groups of people who will like actually be the most affected by this whereas You know, I don't think that migrants who are

[Matt Leming]: scared or unsure about what's going to happen or don't speak English are going to be going to a lot of these protests in like Boston Common.

[Matt Leming]: They're going to be going to community spaces that normally people in progressive and political circles don't interact with.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm really trying to find ways to break into that and, you know, tell people how they can be kept safe.

[Matt Leming]: So that's really my priority as a local politician when dealing with this stuff.

[Matt Leming]: Anyway.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, not much more to say about this.

[Matt Leming]: If you've watched this far, thank you very much for tuning in.

[Matt Leming]: And if you want to request any red cards, then feel free to fill out the form, which is linked in the blog and other places.

[Matt Leming]: If you don't list a legitimate 501c3, I'm not gonna be sending them to you.

[Matt Leming]: So there's a person who's a graduate of Harvard, for instance, who said that he represented Harvard as a 501c3.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sending him red cards, but if it's like a church where you've talked to the pastor or a community organization where you know somebody there, just feel free to request it.

[Matt Leming]: And if we have any left, I'll send them over.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, thank you very much for tuning in and feel free to come to city council meetings in the future.

[Matt Leming]: All right, thank you very much and yeah, have a wonderful day, bye.

[Matt Leming]: Check this.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't have to call for.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Kevin, we ready?

[Matt Leming]: All right, let's start.

[Matt Leming]: There will be a meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.

[Matt Leming]: The first item that we're going to discuss is a resolution to discuss modernization of the Human Rights Commission.

[Matt Leming]: And

[Matt Leming]: With that, I will hand it off to Councilor Tseng, who has a presentation on this topic.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: It's not?

[Matt Leming]: There's a little button on.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng's mic is not powered on.

[Matt Leming]: There's a little button.

[Matt Leming]: I only know this because I turned them all off last night, so I know where the power button is sort of hidden.

[Matt Leming]: And to think we just, we just approved the funding for Medford Community Media.

[Matt Leming]: Very recently and I don't know if you like.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Calhan, turning on your mic.

[Matt Leming]: So I feel like giving my personal thoughts, 10 still runs into the even number issue.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any possibility of doing a 443 setup with four city council, four mayor, three from the appointment list?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any members of the public Council is our answer.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, yeah, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: I was saying, Councils are.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any members of the public who'd like to speak about this?

[Matt Leming]: I see one member of the public on Zoom and one in the chambers in person.

[Matt Leming]: How do we put this?

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Seeing Barry Ingber on Zoom, I'm gonna ask you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: All right, well, I, I personally could, what?

[Matt Leming]: Whoopsie daisy.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry about that.

[Matt Leming]: I unmuted myself on Zoom while I have the microphone going.

[Matt Leming]: So that's a little bit of feedback there.

[Matt Leming]: Old habit.

[Matt Leming]: I personally, personally could support the 335 model that I'm interested to hear.

[Matt Leming]: what my colleagues, what my colleagues thoughts are.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, I'll Councilor Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Stein, can you clarify what the appointing bodies for the five would

[Matt Leming]: where they would come from.

[Matt Leming]: You said various institutions around the city, who would decide what those institutions are?

[Matt Leming]: And because we are adding an extra two, so I assume that that decision also need to be made at some point.

[Matt Leming]: But would it be the HRC itself who decides what specifically?

[Matt Leming]: They would take a vote.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I gotcha.

[Matt Leming]: That clarifies it.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to recognize Munir Jermanas on Zoom asking you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Please state your name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Mr. Germanus.

[Matt Leming]: So we have a motion from Councilor Tseng to adopt language to

[Matt Leming]: that motion.

[Matt Leming]: I move that we change the composition of the HR C. To three members adopt appointed by the mayor three by the City Council and three by the five by the community for a total of 11.

[Matt Leming]: Do I have a second on that motion?

[Matt Leming]: Second from Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: By the other members of the interest.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, you've got it.

[Matt Leming]: When you're ready, please call the role.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Chair Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Four yeses, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: I think we can just do voice votes.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that is a problem.

[Matt Leming]: That is a continuing problem with this new

[Matt Leming]: Mike system.

[Matt Leming]: In addition to, yeah, is the voice votes.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Just offer.

[Matt Leming]: So 12 50 across 11 people is a total of

[Matt Leming]: 13,750 across nine people.

[Matt Leming]: It was 11,250.

[Matt Leming]: So if it were reduced to 1,000, it would be less than the amount that they would have gotten with nine people.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sure if that sort of penny pinching would help with the conversations with the mayor, but that's just to offer some, just to offer some perspective.

[Matt Leming]: There, I agree with everybody that this is a,

[Matt Leming]: very small amount of money to be talking about.

[Matt Leming]: That being said, do we have any other motions or discussion points?

[Matt Leming]: Anybody from the public would like to speak, either come along to the podium or raise your hand on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, we actually do.

[Matt Leming]: Barry Ingber, I'll ask you to unmute, name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Well, it was green, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: Well, in that case, no motions.

[Matt Leming]: Well, I mean, it's already $1,250 in there in the current draft.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, anything else?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor?

[Matt Leming]: It says Scarpellion here.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor, did you really press your button this time?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, Councilor Calhan.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: So how many other points are there?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: How about we take this one up because it does seem kind of important, and then you just go through the rest of them.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, let's go through the rest of them.

[Matt Leming]: In one block.

[Matt Leming]: I could see two folks with their hands up.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to quickly say that personally, I'm very in favor of adding that, mainly because I think

[Matt Leming]: I have a feeling that where the mayor was coming from is the fact that one person on a committee that she appointed put out a death threat against an elected official, and I feel like in those situations, you would want the ability to withdraw a person that you yourself appointed, and I could sympathize with that particularly.

[Matt Leming]: That's just how I'm personally viewing that, but it does depend on the definition of good cause.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to very quickly go to

[Matt Leming]: Um, Munir Germanis on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: I just ask folks to try to keep their comments as brief as possible because we're trying to, yeah, we're trying to, we have two other items for this meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to ask you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Barry Ingber.

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Would you, do you think, what do you think of the amendment of a proposition to change it to the mayor may request the HRC?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I'd second that motion.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: The motion from, I actually do feel like, well,

[Matt Leming]: we it might be better to take a roll call because I. On this.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, on the on the motion from remove the their own appointees.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Um, on the motion from Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: And thank you.

[Matt Leming]: For the rest of them, just please go through them in one list, and then hopefully we can vote as a package.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Calham.

[Matt Leming]: Um,

[Matt Leming]: Okay, great.

[Matt Leming]: So do we have a motion to accept the edits and pass them to the regular meeting?

[Matt Leming]: On the motion of Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Now we're gonna move past this.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you so much, everybody, for attending, for all your work on this.

[Matt Leming]: This will now go to the regular meeting of the Medford City Council.

[Matt Leming]: And I apologize to those folks in the room for the seven o'clock meeting, but we still have two very brief agenda items to get to, which we will do in the next five minutes.

[Matt Leming]: Just nobody from the public speak and none of my colleagues speak.

[Matt Leming]: And as I say that, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: That is entirely my fault, and I apologize.

[Matt Leming]: One moment.

[Matt Leming]: All right, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: I just want to type it in here.

[Matt Leming]: Gender-affirming care and

[Matt Leming]: gender affirming gender affirming care and reproductive health care.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Ordinance for a first reading.

[Matt Leming]: And is that everything?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Calderon?

[Matt Leming]: That's a very good point.

[Matt Leming]: It saves so much time.

[Matt Leming]: It's already formatted.

[Matt Leming]: One moment.

[Matt Leming]: Um

[Matt Leming]: And of course, you can just remove the TBD because boom.

[Matt Leming]: And then I'll put the YouTube link in there later.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Oh.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any other corrections, edits, thoughts on the newsletter draft?

[Matt Leming]: Wonderful, do we have a motion on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: On the motion by Councilor Lazzaro to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, approve.

[Matt Leming]: Second and keep paper in committee.

[Matt Leming]: Second by Councilor Calhoun.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: And the final agenda item we're going to hear from Councilor Tseng on the results of the budget survey that we've seen thus far.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: When will we be collecting responses?

[Matt Leming]: So is there a deadline out there?

[Matt Leming]: So do we have a motion to keep the survey open and adjourn?

[Matt Leming]: So is that a motion to keep the survey open?

[Matt Leming]: Uh, share it with everybody on Council continue to work on distribution and continue to continue to work on distribution.

[Matt Leming]: And preparing a summary period.

[Matt Leming]: To have councillors saying prepare a summary for the council.

[Matt Leming]: So moved.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: On a motion to adjourn by Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favour?

[Matt Leming]: Opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And thank, I'd like to thank all of y'all for coming out here tonight and

[Matt Leming]: presenting the report and answering our questions.

[Matt Leming]: In the statistics section where it talks about the special reports, the special notifications forms that were submitted, looking at the month to month fail to activate ones, it's a pretty consistent amount there between nine and

[Matt Leming]: 15 from each month reported in 2024.

[Matt Leming]: I'm curious, is it

[Matt Leming]: Is it completely different officers who have these failed to activate reports submitted each time?

[Matt Leming]: Is it sort of a smaller subsection of officers?

[Matt Leming]: It says in the paragraph above that this is usually due to an officer being at the police station and then just forgetting to bring their body-worn camera when they're taken out in an emergency.

[Matt Leming]: So that does seem to be

[Matt Leming]: another human.

[Matt Leming]: error.

[Matt Leming]: Some of these are technical.

[Matt Leming]: It says they have to do with the Motorola failure on the technical end.

[Matt Leming]: But I'm curious if these cases of failure to activate are due to, if they're completely random across the department, or if you happen to know if it's smaller.

[Matt Leming]: You actually answered my other question right there in your response, which is how how is it?

[Matt Leming]: How is it reported?

[Matt Leming]: So it is the patrol division, as you said, but do

[Matt Leming]: But is it has like everybody in the patrol division kind of like made this like made this mistake sort of once or twice throughout the year.

[Matt Leming]: And that's just kind of like a random things that happens to everybody.

[Matt Leming]: Or do you see like a couple of like a couple that you see self-reported?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, okay.

[Matt Leming]: That answers the question.

[Matt Leming]: That was the only thing that I was

[Matt Leming]: That was the only thing that I was curious about in the report.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: see that it's like it was just just for context, this is, I believe it was, yeah, it was saying that it was a 2024, 224 of these special notifications forms were filed, of which 131 were failed to activate, and this seems to be out of

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, it's a 31,326 with 224 special notifications forms and it says here that's point 72%.

[Matt Leming]: So, yeah, just for just for anybody from the public watching what I was having questions about was

[Matt Leming]: an extremely low percentage of the overall cases.

[Matt Leming]: I was just curious about the overall trends within the department if these were completely random.

[Matt Leming]: But yes, the failure to activate is not something that happens often by any stretch of the imagination.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you for clarifying that.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I would also like to echo all the praise that my colleague just gave.

[Matt Leming]: This is a department that has far too many tasks and demand, and I feel like it just doesn't have the

[Matt Leming]: capacity to fulfill to fulfill all of that, which is which relates to my question.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, as a city councilors, we often get concerns about things like rats in the city, which is not uncommon with municipalities in greater Boston.

[Matt Leming]: We get concerns about like there's one resident who is messaging me about

[Matt Leming]: raccoons that are in a neighboring house that she can't seem to do anything about.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sure that you're aware of the case that I'm talking about.

[Matt Leming]: And, of course, we also hear a number of concerns about dog poop not being picked up, things like that.

[Matt Leming]: And I see

[Matt Leming]: that there is one animal control officer who I've heard is a one man department and himself so very much appreciated.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, my question first is how, given all of the, uh, given all the need around the city for the services that are offered by the department by the by the Board of Health.

[Matt Leming]: How many employees do you think you would need in a perfect world to fulfill all of that?

[Matt Leming]: So I don't think that the

[Matt Leming]: 11 personnel that we're seeing is necessarily enough.

[Matt Leming]: But just hypothetically, if the city did have more resources to handle, what would what would be your need?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So I was hearing about five different you probably need about five more people to plus additional funding for the programming in order to meet at least some of that need was was what I was.

[Matt Leming]: And for for all of the positions that that I'm seeing here.

[Matt Leming]: Would you say that the amount of the salaries listed is commensurate with what we see in other municipalities is a little bit more, a little bit less, what would, how would you put that?

[Matt Leming]: And a very specific question this just relates to a little bit of research I was doing in response to what one constituent was asking.

[Matt Leming]: The sanitarians.

[Matt Leming]: So I had a constituent who was saying that the sanitarians in Medford didn't have a state license, which I looked up sanitarians in other municipalities, and I found out that that was pretty common.

[Matt Leming]: So most of them didn't have a license under the state for the, I think it was like the Board of Health Sanitarian License.

[Matt Leming]: Can you just for my own benefit tell me about what

[Matt Leming]: that processes or what the benefit of that of having that is.

[Matt Leming]: No, I was just curious about that for my own knowledge.

[Matt Leming]: And finally,

[Matt Leming]: So we've been receiving some demand from constituents who really want backyard chickens.

[Matt Leming]: They want to have chickens in their backyard.

[Matt Leming]: It is something that I have been hearing from niche groups for a little bit now.

[Matt Leming]: But the Board of Health does not want to deal with backyard chickens.

[Matt Leming]: And I understand that there are good reasons for not wanting to deal with that.

[Matt Leming]: So could you just

[Matt Leming]: While I'm asking you questions, could you just talk a little bit about why, like what extra staffing hypothetically would be needed to deal with that in the future?

[Matt Leming]: Should we move in that direction?

[Matt Leming]: Just some of your concerns.

[Matt Leming]: Sure.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, I used to own chickens well my mom did so I'm a little bit biased in that direction but this is a conversation for another day.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I personally think it's a very interesting piece of information, but it would be the police department that could answer that.

[Matt Leming]: So I was just thinking about

[Matt Leming]: I'm wondering if this body would be amenable to a motion to just request that information from Chief Buckley.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Could you just if the charter does pass and we have to make seven seats into 11 I'm just looking for a guesstimate here.

[Matt Leming]: What like how much do you think that that would cost total?

[Matt Leming]: So what's the minimum that you think it could cost?

[Matt Leming]: And what's the most you think it could cost?

[Matt Leming]: So under $100,000.

[Matt Leming]: So you don't think it would be in the million dollar

[Matt Leming]: So why did the windows cost around?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: How much would it cost, and do you think it would be feasible to get one of those phishing simulation programs?

[Matt Leming]: So in my last job, we would periodically get phishing emails that were actually sent out by IT.

[Matt Leming]: I get a lot of I get a lot of emails from Zach asking me if I have time for a for a quick task.

[Matt Leming]: Well, well, the ones in my previous employer, the way it worked was if people actually did click on them or they, they didn't report them, then it would sort of mark those users being like less, um, able to work out that it was a phishing email of what you're supposed to do is just report it.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: No, well, are we going to, we're going to, when the new elections person is brought, the new elections manager is brought on, they're going to come before city council and we can talk to them, right?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I'll save my questions for then.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: First, just one question and then a bit more comment, but besides the money that we received from the federal government, how much just on average free cash have we generated as a result of unspent money from the yearly operating budget year to year?

[Matt Leming]: Well, what I mean by the question, and it's just a percentage.

[Matt Leming]: So the state recommends that it's between 3% to 5%.

[Matt Leming]: Um, every year.

[Matt Leming]: So I was just I just wanted to know if I didn't want to get into like a long discussion about it.

[Matt Leming]: But if you had it off the top of your head, like, I just want to know if there's sort of like an average number that the city has been putting into free cash as a result of unspent money from the operating budget every year.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: That's fine.

[Matt Leming]: I was just curious if you did, but you know, not everybody would necessarily have that off the top of your head, but to comment on a few points.

[Matt Leming]: So yes, taking two truths at one time is,

[Matt Leming]: is something that we ask people to do.

[Matt Leming]: I think saying that there's a million dollar deficit in a year when we successfully passed an override is understandable because we have been experiencing a very difficult economy.

[Matt Leming]: And the fact is that if the override had not passed, we would be in a far worse situation than otherwise.

[Matt Leming]: people continue to conflate the free cash with operating budgets.

[Matt Leming]: The fact of the matter is that it is bad practice to use free cash to pay for salaries.

[Matt Leming]: That's not something the state recommends doing.

[Matt Leming]: That affects our ability to get, that affects our bond ratings.

[Matt Leming]: It affects our ability to get loans in the future.

[Matt Leming]: It's just not good practice.

[Matt Leming]: And I think people,

[Matt Leming]: We'll continue to bring that up in the future.

[Matt Leming]: $26 million in free cash for 28 million is not a, it is a fairly normal amount of money to have in the reserves for a city with an operating budget of $218 million.

[Matt Leming]: So that's not unusual.

[Matt Leming]: In the history of Medford, where we used to operate with no free cash at all, it is a lot.

[Matt Leming]: but we should never have been in a position where we're operating with almost no free cash at all.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that a lot of residents are seeing this.

[Matt Leming]: They're like, why don't we spend that money when they're, when what they're thinking about is a history of poor financial practice that they took for granted.

[Matt Leming]: So I think what's going to happen with that is it's going to keep, it's going to keep coming up.

[Matt Leming]: I think there's a combination of people who genuinely misunderstand, um, the differences between free cash and operating budgets and people who will keep bringing it, bringing it up in,

[Matt Leming]: when they actually do understand that, but they just kind of want to use it for political purposes.

[Matt Leming]: So that's just a reality that we're looking at.

[Matt Leming]: What I'll say my personal frustrations are with it, though, is that I do see that we're expending a very significant amount of free cash on things that we do need.

[Matt Leming]: the HVAC systems we need.

[Matt Leming]: I am absolutely fine putting up $5 million for air conditioning for our school systems in addition to the $25 million loan.

[Matt Leming]: But there's also other studies that I really want to see happen that would cost a much smaller amount of money, like the NEXUS study to update our linkage fees or a new study to update the entirety of the capital improvements program, which would cost

[Matt Leming]: Under $200,000, I would like to see a transportation demand management study, which would really help development in the city.

[Matt Leming]: And those as I see them are very significant investments.

[Matt Leming]: But we're not spending it on those, even though the returns on those studies would be humongous.

[Matt Leming]: And I did put those in as asks to the administration.

[Matt Leming]: And I do understand that the mayor attempted to pay for that with the sale of McCormick Avenue, but this this council voted it down.

[Matt Leming]: We disagreed on selling off public land for that but even so with, you know, for me personally saying the $28 million that we have and then we're not willing to spend it on.

[Matt Leming]: what is a relatively small amount for studies that would pay hugely in the future, um, is something that I'm I'm a little bit frustrated with.

[Matt Leming]: So that's all I have to say.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think the argument that we have too much free cash is something I would disagree with.

[Matt Leming]: The argument that I disagree with, which was what was continuously brought up during the override, was that we should take staff salaries out of free cash and not have an override.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, that was, I mean, that's a change in narrative.

[Matt Leming]: Like, I think that everybody here would like to see the amount of free cash that we have spent on capital projects as it should be spent on, but the arguments that were being made

[Matt Leming]: During this override were again that if we did not have one, and we just put all our free cash towards teacher salaries and we would be completely tapped out in a few years.

[Matt Leming]: So that is the first time that I've heard my colleague say that, whereas before he was saying that we should be just paying for our staff shortfalls from the override.

[Matt Leming]: Now it's like, okay, no, we have too much free cash.

[Matt Leming]: We should have less because we need to spend it on things.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I agree with that.

[Matt Leming]: It's a different argument entirely from what was being brought up before.

[Matt Leming]: I do think that we need to spend the free cash that we have on capital projects.

[Matt Leming]: We can still have a

[Matt Leming]: $1 million deficit, because again, this is the difference between money that is used for capital expenses and money that is used for ongoing operating expenses.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, I mean, I was just wanting to make that point.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, and in terms of a future override, like the intent of prop two and a half was to have periodic overrides.

[Matt Leming]: Medford waited 40 years before we even had one override, which was far too long for a city of our size.

[Matt Leming]: Now, could the next override happen in another 40 years?

[Matt Leming]: maybe.

[Matt Leming]: But the point is that in a city's entire existence, I mean with the way that this is designed, you can't just have a single override and then expect that to be okay.

[Matt Leming]: If you look at the state databanks with other municipalities that have had

[Matt Leming]: It shows like the history of override of these other municipalities in the past.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, they have continued, like different municipalities have continuously had overrides.

[Matt Leming]: Normally, like sometimes every 10 years, sometimes every five years, sometimes they'll do one in like the year 2000 and then they'll do one in 2021.

[Matt Leming]: It just varies depending on the state of the economy and the needs of the budget.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, like trying to act like it's a boogeyman thing to say, oh, we might need another override in the future.

[Matt Leming]: That's just like, okay.

[Matt Leming]: yeah, we might, I hope it's not in the next 10 to 15 years, but you know, it could happen just depend it, it will likely need to happen at some time in the more distant future.

[Matt Leming]: So, so yeah, those are, that's, that's the points that, that I wanted to make.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I don't disagree with my colleague that we need less free, that we should have less free cash than we have.

[Matt Leming]: That's a frustration of mine, but that's not what, that's not the argument that was being made previously.

[Matt Leming]: I would get in a back and forth about this,

[Matt Leming]: I, I don't really think it's worth it at this point we, we had plenty of these conversations.

[Matt Leming]: During the override so I don't, I really don't feel like rehashing this at this point I mean everybody remembers what was said so yeah that's that.

[Matt Leming]: Hey, everybody.

[Matt Leming]: Okie dokie, looks like everyone is here right now.

[Matt Leming]: So we have a quorum anyway, not everybody, everybody on the committee.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, we can go ahead and get started.

[Matt Leming]: Clark, I always forget, when we're on Zoom, we have to call the roll or not, or can we just go?

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: We will have a meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: For present, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is called to order.

[Matt Leming]: The first thing we're going to do is try to knock out this newsletter, which was so graciously drafted by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much for

[Matt Leming]: pulling up all of those links.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to go.

[Matt Leming]: Well, yeah, especially during budget season.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: So basically the only edits that I made to this draft, and this is the formatted version where I added the Memorial Day resolution and yeah, tracking those suspended resolutions is always a little.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, yeah, no, that's I've done that multiple times before the resolutions under suspension are hard to keep track of.

[Matt Leming]: I added what we're doing today.

[Matt Leming]: So, assuming that we do get done with these two things might as well just throw that on retroactively.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I added yesterday's meeting, uh, saying we hosted facilities manager Paul right here to offer an update to the city council regarding the estimated costs of repairing and maintaining all city on facilities in the future.

[Matt Leming]: Um, and let's see, what else did I just a quick point of information chair looming.

[Matt Leming]: Shoot.

[Matt Leming]: Well,

[Matt Leming]: There aren't that many people in this meeting to catch my.

[Matt Leming]: So, but I'm sure that my pronunciation will be correct over text in this newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: And I also added just an extra link to the planning and permitting committee because this other corridors business was discussed on both May 14th and May 28th.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, um, you can go through your stuff first.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, um, well, I think I'm just trying, I'm just trying to look and remember, but I think I want to say that that was about it.

[Matt Leming]: Just those couple of those extra meetings.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Just a few details that were missed, but overall, yeah, this was a pretty, you know, it was, it was good job.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, feel free to bring up what you'd,

[Matt Leming]: uh, whatever was on your mind.

[Matt Leming]: On May 13th, after much review and committee, we approve for first reading the governing ordinance from Edwards Human Rights Commission to empower it to run more effectively and respond to new challenges.

[Matt Leming]: That's the right to stay open on May 10th of every year.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor is saying, oh, you put your hand down.

[Matt Leming]: My impression of this was that if we're like referring to the veteran's office, it's I mean, yeah, yeah, we, we can.

[Matt Leming]: That's we'd like, that's fine.

[Matt Leming]: Um, sure.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, we approved your request to amend the commons furthest that permitted

[Matt Leming]: The establishment to stay up until 1 am permits present probably.

[Matt Leming]: quit correcting my grammar law school boy.

[Matt Leming]: No, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, and while that discussion was happening, I also noticed that there was one item under general business that probably should have been under public health and community safety, the CCOPS.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: I wasn't sure where to put it.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: That's always kind of troublesome, because like it.

[Matt Leming]: That wasn't public health.

[Matt Leming]: I just feel like general business is too big and I like to write just for visuals.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: It's okay.

[Matt Leming]: So it's still obviously after like extract YouTube links, but other than that, is anybody, um, okay with what's with what's written here so far?

[Matt Leming]: Wait, Emily, did you second that?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro?

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion of Councilor Tseng to approve, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: For approved, one absent, we will publish the May newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Moving on, we have, let me just get back to my digital copy of the agenda.

[Matt Leming]: Resolution for a public engagement plan for the FY 26 budget.

[Matt Leming]: This is basically, if you recall at the last meeting, we permitted Councilor Tseng to

[Matt Leming]: keep the budget survey open for a little bit longer, and I just asked him to come up with like a description of the overall trends, asks, so on, that we've seen in the FY26 budget survey so far.

[Matt Leming]: So whenever you're ready, just kind of tell us what people are saying about, saying in the survey, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Can you repeat how many responses total we got?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro, feel free to ask your question.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, and that's an excellent point.

[Matt Leming]: It is what the majority of Medford we know for sure cares about.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor is saying it said 46 responses for both of them, like for each of those.

[Matt Leming]: And do you have any, I don't know if you noticed off the top of your head, but like, do you have an idea of like how many mentioned either one?

[Matt Leming]: Like, was it like 60 or 80?

[Matt Leming]: that mention either schools or roads or both?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: That was a very thorough summary.

[Matt Leming]: Much appreciated.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm also glad that it got written down in a document that can be distributed after the meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any questions from councillors?

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any comments from members of the public, if anybody would like to?

[Matt Leming]: ask any questions on Zoom, feel free to raise your hand.

[Matt Leming]: I see two members of the public there.

[Matt Leming]: This is one of the more informal committees, so.

[Matt Leming]: All right, well, seeing none, just like to, once again, express my appreciation for all the work that you clearly put into this, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: I'm also generally, you know, generally happy that the,

[Matt Leming]: Demographics seems to have gotten like a slightly less biased in terms of its demographics from last year.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that's good that progress is being made on that end of things.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: So do we need a motion to keep the paper in committee or a motion to release the survey report?

[Matt Leming]: Something like that.

[Matt Leming]: I do think at some point, we do kind of need to like, say, you know, the survey, this the survey at this point is done, let's distribute more of a final report.

[Matt Leming]: And then if we want to follow up on that, like you said, we could just do it on our own initiative doesn't necessarily have to be doesn't necessarily have to be a motion here.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, but I think a motion to distribute the full results of the survey to Councilors publicly distribute the report that you just presented and receive in place the paper on file would probably be an appropriate motion.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, we still have to review the actual listening sessions themselves.

[Matt Leming]: So I just want a small description from you and Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Yep, great.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, on the motion from Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: For affirmative, one absent, the motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: And the last, the very last is a update on our listening session.

[Matt Leming]: So I understand that councilors

[Matt Leming]: Lazzaro and Sang had a listening session recently at the Senior Center.

[Matt Leming]: So just an update on how that went, any interesting topics came up, how the vibe was, whichever of you would like to go.

[Matt Leming]: It's a good idea, especially for, yeah, I think serving people who don't have computer access quite to the same degree that most do is a

[Matt Leming]: definitely a good initiative.

[Matt Leming]: Out of curiosity was like, I noticed when I went to the listening session that some residents were, it was a little bit like a public meeting almost, and some residents were like afraid to speak up.

[Matt Leming]: So there is a thing, and I think Councilor Callahan went through this as well, where a few residents would like approach us after and sort of ask questions in private.

[Matt Leming]: Did the same thing sort of happen or was there more of a, were people more like,

[Matt Leming]: uh, willing to, yeah, I see the sunlight, uh, were people more sort of like willing to just like say what was on their mind openly.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Well, thank you all for the update.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any other questions from councillors or members of the public?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a motion to keep the paper in committee, or Councilor Callahan?

[Matt Leming]: Just, I was, yeah, I was- Oh yeah, motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion by Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Four yeses, one absent, the meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Thanks everybody.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I thought my mic was on, yes.

[Matt Leming]: Why do we all have to be speaking this late?

[Matt Leming]: Come on.

[Matt Leming]: Come on, guys.

[Matt Leming]: Now, thanks for staying, Veronica.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry that you had to stay this late.

[Matt Leming]: It's all good.

[Matt Leming]: two and a half hour meeting that we just had.

[Matt Leming]: I think you're doing a wonderful job.

[Matt Leming]: If you keep running into the problem, no uptakes on that renter program, then

[Matt Leming]: sure it's doable to just come back to us and we can bring up raising that $750 limit.

[Matt Leming]: I think given how under budget you seem to be, that's more than justifiable and I'd rather have it apply to like, you know, a smaller number of veterans and nobody at all.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, I understand that $750 a year might not be

[Matt Leming]: all that enough to make or break anybody but so yeah we could we could work on raising that we just need a recommendation for what you think would make a make a difference in that case so thank you again

[Matt Leming]: No, if you wanted to finish your

[Matt Leming]: Your point on that, I was just gonna ask Senior Planner Evans had mentioned at the last meeting on this, a report that had been written some years ago on the justifications for the traffic patterns through Medford Square.

[Matt Leming]: I was wondering if you ever managed to find that.

[Matt Leming]: I think it was the Iannis report.

[Matt Leming]: You had, I think, I believe you emailed me about it.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I tried doing some Googling on it, because it is something I'd like to read a bit more about, but I don't know if it's stored somewhere internally.

[Matt Leming]: I just think it would be some interesting context.

[Matt Leming]: Well, not to get too off topic from the current proposal, but are there any resources that you know of that could shed some light on that mystery?

[Matt Leming]: Because I've often wondered about the history behind these particular traffic patterns and why

[Matt Leming]: certain decisions were made.

[Matt Leming]: So I'd just be interested in any resource that you might know about that could offer a little bit of context for that.

[Matt Leming]: Um, otherwise now I am, um Speaking to the proposal itself.

[Matt Leming]: I am pleased with that.

[Matt Leming]: I'm Glad to see that little the plot by City Hall was updated to MX three.

[Matt Leming]: Um, which Pretty sure that I'm the person here who lives the nearest to that of anybody.

[Matt Leming]: So I think you'll create a very nice, uh, Very nice sound barrier.

[Matt Leming]: Um, generally

[Matt Leming]: Generally speaking, I know that Paolo last time talked about sort of the limitations of some of these plots of land.

[Matt Leming]: So you listed concerns that some of these are maybe too thin or too small to house certain story limitations.

[Matt Leming]: So I assume that you looked into that and you found that it was fine.

[Matt Leming]: Nope, nope.

[Matt Leming]: That's all for me.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I was going to ask about some of the incentives that you pointed out, the differences and how they were updated, so not directly.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just curious on MX3 being changed from 6 plus 6 to 8 plus 4.

[Matt Leming]: In practice, in other communities, how often are these incentives taken up?

[Matt Leming]: Because I really would like it that people take advantage of the green score.

[Matt Leming]: TDM, hopefully once we start discussing that in June, with these additional stories for buildings.

[Matt Leming]: But I'd just like to know, what I'm thinking is like a developer could just say, well, I already got eight stories, that's high enough.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't have to take advantage of the additional four stories.

[Matt Leming]: Whereas six plus six, they might not be thinking that as much.

[Matt Leming]: So how,

[Matt Leming]: How often in practice do you see people taking advantage of these height incentives and other places?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I know the buildings you're talking about they have been the subject of attention from both the city council and the planning department and particularly the economic development director for a good while now.

[Matt Leming]: The short answer is that those buildings are owned by somebody who has a lot of property and wants people and wants whoever is going to rent it out to put up like $120,000 in capital for repairs.

[Matt Leming]: And they're just willing to sit on it for however long they need to because they just don't care.

[Matt Leming]: And the city is basically the powers that the city has right now is to either do nothing or condemn it, which is like a nuclear option.

[Matt Leming]: So we submitted a vacant building ordinance that, you know, I mean,

[Matt Leming]: to be honest, we're probably not going to get to working on it before budget season is over, just because we're going to be slammed with work.

[Matt Leming]: But we, but Councilor Lazzaro and I did put that through and we're working with the Chamber of Commerce to give the city more sort of

[Matt Leming]: middle of the road tools to deal with situations like that.

[Matt Leming]: It's private property, so there's only so much we can do, but it does allow us to do things like tell them that they have to put up public artworks instead of just having those boards right there.

[Matt Leming]: And it says that they have to pay a yearly fee that's slightly higher than what they'd normally pay just to maintain that vacancy.

[Matt Leming]: Again, we want to

[Matt Leming]: get the Chamber of Commerce on board with everything we're going to write in that before we actually pass that.

[Matt Leming]: But that's definitely an ongoing thing that we've heard a good amount about.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to refer the Medford Square, West Medford and ADU rezoning proposals favorably to the regular council meeting for referral to the Community Development Board.

[Matt Leming]: And adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I look forward to this again, too.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also just like to thank Cindy for

[Matt Leming]: extending an invitation for all of us to attend the annual meeting of the Friends of the Chevalier.

[Matt Leming]: I had a wonderful time there this past year.

[Matt Leming]: I look forward to attending again this year.

[Matt Leming]: It's just nice to see folks come together in the community to support our local institutions.

[Matt Leming]: The only disappointment that I have is that I couldn't get tickets to see Ringo Starr or

[Matt Leming]: or weird Al Yankovic.

[Matt Leming]: But you know what?

[Matt Leming]: You know what?

[Matt Leming]: We all have to make sacrifices.

[Matt Leming]: So I look forward to I look forward to seeing this update.

[Matt Leming]: We approved a very nice budget survey.

[Matt Leming]: I was just gonna echo Council President Bears's sentiments and saying that thanking the residents for coming out here and advocating.

[Matt Leming]: on behalf of this clear case of noise and light pollution.

[Matt Leming]: I remember during the campaign when I was going around knocking doors, I spoke to a fellow on Circus Street, who's like right next to the commuter rail line, and he was talking about noise pollution, just keeping him up all the time.

[Matt Leming]: And I think the solution to that would have been installing a sound barrier, which could have been

[Matt Leming]: you know, very pricey but I

[Matt Leming]: hope that they'll be able to do that but I mean this case especially after looking at your photos just it just seems very addressable like turn down the noise at three in the morning and uh you know don't have don't don't have uh the lights as bright as they are at that time period and I think that's that's what's particularly frustrating to me is that this just doesn't seem like one of those problems that takes like a lot of money to solve it just really takes

[Matt Leming]: and a position of authority actually listening to you and acceding to these very reasonable requests.

[Matt Leming]: So I hope that we are able to get something out of this.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, this seems absurd.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to- This is vice chair or something, we all- I don't remember.

[Matt Leming]: Planning and permitting committee, vice chair that.

[Matt Leming]: But no, motion to suspend the rules and take 25-050 off the table.

[Matt Leming]: Well, Council President Bearst, I feel like this might not have been adequately explained before, but free cash is used for one-time expenses and the overrides were for ongoing expenses like salaries.

[Matt Leming]: So I know that

[Matt Leming]: You know, we here have not made that point sufficiently clear in the past, but the purpose of the overrides was to pay salaries, whereas this free cash is used for a one-time capital expense.

[Matt Leming]: So that's the distinction.

[Matt Leming]: And again, I understand that you may have not explained that just now, but I feel the need to say that myself.

[Matt Leming]: This is something that I support.

[Matt Leming]: Questions I had did relate to some of the, I do wish Lisa Davidson were still here to answer them, but I just wanted to ask if the Affordable Housing Trust had any

[Matt Leming]: plans to request any additional free cash appropriations to fund the affordable housing nexus studies, or if that's something that's sort of in the AHT's timeline or agendas in the near future?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I understand that previously we received a recommendation to sell off land on McCormick, which didn't pass through this body.

[Matt Leming]: But I would still like to see some communications or recommendations from the AHT on ways to fund that nexus study.

[Matt Leming]: And it does seem like it would cost something like $80,000.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't think that that's a whole lot.

[Matt Leming]: to ask out a free cash for something this important.

[Matt Leming]: Again, I know that this is outside of your purview.

[Matt Leming]: I do wish Lisa were still on, but that's what's on my mind when regards to the HT these days.

[Matt Leming]: But for the paper that we're actually discussing, I do support it.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for your work on this.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So just to repeat what other folks have said, you said we should make this into a sanctuary city.

[Matt Leming]: We did a week before Trump took office.

[Matt Leming]: We just called it a welcoming city ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: It's the same thing.

[Matt Leming]: So with regards to the mayor's response, I think there's sort of the two sides to this, which clearly I'm on one side, but is that

[Matt Leming]: I think that she doesn't want to be too public or out there about this because everybody's afraid of losing federal funding.

[Matt Leming]: I know that during Trump's first term, he attempted to revoke federal funding from sanctuary cities and it just got caught up in courts and ultimately failed.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not nearly as concerned about that.

[Matt Leming]: And I also just think that when you have, you know, federal government that's clearly turning into an autocracy, intimidation is a big part of it.

[Matt Leming]: And it is important to stand up and just show that

[Matt Leming]: You're not afraid.

[Matt Leming]: I know that's easier said for that's easier for some people to say than others.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't think that it's necessarily wise for every single person to speak out on it.

[Matt Leming]: But for those of us who are in a position where we can speak out on this and, you know,

[Matt Leming]: put our voices out there to let us know that, let everybody know that that's not okay.

[Matt Leming]: It's important to do that and not be intimidated.

[Matt Leming]: And for those folks who feel like they might be more targets, they might be more of a target for this sort of a thing.

[Matt Leming]: There are a lot of

[Matt Leming]: political organizing groups that are happening right now as a result of this.

[Matt Leming]: Ice watches are a thing that are forming around the community at the moment.

[Matt Leming]: So just people who are tracking the movements of ice officers.

[Matt Leming]: I was

[Matt Leming]: I got a little bit of attention from the news personally because I'm the Secretary of the Democratic City Committee and we recently voted to approve 8,000 Know Your Rights red cards that we're currently in the early stages of trying to distribute out to nonprofits, churches, folks who have access to these sorts of communities.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, I'm willing to appear on the news to show like what my opinions are as a local elected official because I don't think that I'm.

[Matt Leming]: quite at the same risk of being deported personally.

[Matt Leming]: Um, and it is, you know, it's important to do that.

[Matt Leming]: And, you know, I received an unpleasant message from a right-wing nut job after I was publicly saying that I wanted to distribute these cards.

[Matt Leming]: It's, it's important to understand these people are paper tigers.

[Matt Leming]: Most of the time, you don't need to be scared of them.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: It's important to, um,

[Matt Leming]: You know, it's important to be outspoken to show

[Matt Leming]: to show that you're not intimidated by what's happening and to organize against that.

[Matt Leming]: We are trying to do what we can at this level to stop that.

[Matt Leming]: My colleagues I know are involved in other efforts themselves around this, including resolutions that have been passed through these chambers.

[Matt Leming]: So, so yeah, but I'd just like to thank you for coming out here to speak tonight and

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think it's a very brave move on your part.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So I had this question on my mind for a few minutes now, but conversation may have shed some light on that.

[Matt Leming]: But still, I'm curious.

[Matt Leming]: In your head, what do you see as the biggest barrier to actually updating the financial software?

[Matt Leming]: The upfront cost, the actual troubleshooting with procuring and integrating the new system, or is it training staff to use something new?

[Matt Leming]: Because it seemed like those are the three things that you were talking about just now.

[Matt Leming]: Like, which of those do you kind of dread when you think about doing this?

[Matt Leming]: So in terms of timing of this, do you think that a better timeline would be maybe when there ends up being a lot of new people coming into your department who are more willing to learn new systems?

[Matt Leming]: Because I'm just trying to think when would the best time for this be if the biggest barrier is staff learning to do something new.

[Matt Leming]: Well, I think where I'm getting at is that I'm not getting the impression that there will ever be a particular period in time where that will not be a problem.

[Matt Leming]: So unless we plan to continue using the same system forever, if there were a case that doing it 10 years down the line would be an ideal time, would be a better time to actually make this switch, and that's one thing.

[Matt Leming]: But if you don't think that, but if switching over is always going to be a difficult process, even though we'll have long-term benefits,

[Matt Leming]: No, no, no question.

[Matt Leming]: I just would like to express my own appreciation for your organization, for your work particularly in helping us to establish the pilot program for

[Matt Leming]: veteran renters, um, as well as, uh, you know, personally working with, uh, some residents in Menford who were working with, uh, who were experiencing housing instability and needed the, uh, needed the mediation support when they were, uh, moving apartments to prevent them from being homeless.

[Matt Leming]: I understand that in these cases, the, uh,

[Matt Leming]: need is always greater than the capacity to serve the need, but I just would like to express my appreciation for your organization and organizations like yours.

[Matt Leming]: I do wish that we could provide more funding to in the future so that you can continue the work you do.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: This is just another shout of appreciation for you personally.

[Matt Leming]: You've been a wonderful partner to this Council, especially in getting the word out about different municipal happenings to

[Matt Leming]: the elderly population method as well as providing just a really great social center for a lot of seniors in the city.

[Matt Leming]: You're also just like a very nice person generally, which I appreciate as well.

[Matt Leming]: Once again,

[Matt Leming]: I do wish that we were able to give more funding to these programs.

[Matt Leming]: Having a social worker to support the senior residents in our city is definitely something that I do wish we had more of.

[Matt Leming]: But with funding coming in from the federal government, it's another story.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, no, no questions about this.

[Matt Leming]: But I just like to just like to thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: No, my question was related to Councilor Callahan's about the total amount going down and the reasoning for that, although I would like to, I was, I was giving shout outs to the organizations that I have worked with before and I didn't press my button in time to thank Terry Carter for his work with West Medford Community Center so shout out

[Matt Leming]: Shout out to you, Terry.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for putting in so much of your effort to helping to run the show down there.

[Matt Leming]: And I'd like to also thank the rest of the applicants for applying and for all the work you do in the community.

[Matt Leming]: Once again, I would like to see

[Matt Leming]: more funding go to non-profits and social services.

[Matt Leming]: But as Laurel was just saying, the bucket does seem to be going down every year.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you all once again.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I do realize that we have a few other things to discuss regarding this but I would like to bring up some very last minute edits that I don't believe were discussed previously to previously in the charter.

[Matt Leming]: I would like to make a motion to amend Article 3, Section 3.1 to delete the word consecutive, amend Section 4-1 to add subsection e to say no person shall be

[Matt Leming]: elected to the office of school committee member for more than eight terms and to elect section two and then section two dash one to add subsection D to say no person shall be elected the office of city councilor for more than eight terms.

[Matt Leming]: It was pointed out to me that the survey that was put out by the charter study committee, which we have discussed a lot here, but

[Matt Leming]: that I think they did have a skewed sample, but still a majority of respondents did say that they would like to see term limits for city councilors.

[Matt Leming]: We have term limits for the mayor in there, so I would like to motion to add in the eight term limits, so a total of 16.

[Matt Leming]: years in order to keep that consistent.

[Matt Leming]: And I would also like to delete the word consecutive just because I think that it is the case from, I did a bit of research on this.

[Matt Leming]: It is the case that in other municipalities, they do have a ban against

[Matt Leming]: multiple consecutive terms, but I, from what I've seen, it's mostly like other municipalities more commonly have 12 year limits on these sorts of positions.

[Matt Leming]: So there is, so you can have, serve for 12 years, be forced to take break and then continue serving.

[Matt Leming]: But in this case, we'll have 16 year limits.

[Matt Leming]: And so I think that I just, I just feel like having that

[Matt Leming]: having somebody serve for 16 years, take a break for two or four years and serve another 16.

[Matt Leming]: It doesn't really make sense to me.

[Matt Leming]: But anyway, that's my motion.

[Matt Leming]: Remove a consecutive from 3-1-C.

[Matt Leming]: It was, sorry, it was, I'll check just to make sure that I have my sections right, but it was essentially to, the intent of the motion is to make it so that currently the way it's written is, I believe it says, although I may, I believe I was looking at the latest version, but it says that the mayor can't serve

[Matt Leming]: Which is kind of a different discussion but the, the other part of the motion was essentially to add on term limits for school committee members and okay city councilors so is there a specific so you would amend to one.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, so section 2.1 add subsection D to say no person shall be elected to the office of city council for more than eight terms, which a total of 16 years in that case.

[Matt Leming]: And section 4.1 to add in subsection E to say no person shall be elected to the office of school committee member for more than eight terms.

[Matt Leming]: I can split into separate motions if we want to discuss it.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'll just briefly state my case about the Mayor on School Committee.

[Matt Leming]: I did write a pretty lengthy post to my website about the process of this charter review.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not going to summarize the whole thing here.

[Matt Leming]: It's nuanced.

[Matt Leming]: I've had a lot of thoughts about it that have

[Matt Leming]: that have changed over time, particularly since December.

[Matt Leming]: If you're interested in reading about that, just mattLeming.com.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think anybody's a bad guy here.

[Matt Leming]: I respect everybody on the charter study committee.

[Matt Leming]: I respect the mayor, school committee, my colleagues, but I did outline some of my issues with that process in that post.

[Matt Leming]: Again, not gonna try to summarize all of it right here, but this is just a case where

[Matt Leming]: people who want to do what they think is best for the city are disagreeing on what that is and the means of getting there.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that's where we're at right now.

[Matt Leming]: And that's how I see it.

[Matt Leming]: With the mayor and school committee issue, just the reasons I think are one, charter study committees on survey said it was the more popular decision with the respondents to keep the mayor off

[Matt Leming]: of school committee, it was pointed out to me that council term limits was also very popular.

[Matt Leming]: Just took a vote on that, didn't pass.

[Matt Leming]: So I do, but I do, after thinking about that argument, I do agree that we should have term limits.

[Matt Leming]: I also recognize that current and former school committee members, including my colleague here, as he's just expressed, do disagree on the mayor being on school committee issue.

[Matt Leming]: There are a lot of pros and cons against it.

[Matt Leming]: The ones who are against it have expressed to me the argument that Councilor Tseng just expressed in which they say that it can be very, it can lead to a lot of conflicts of interest behind the scenes, particularly in union negotiations.

[Matt Leming]: I also do have sympathy for the school committee members that I have spoken with who don't want to

[Matt Leming]: publicly or as publicly express their position that the mayor shouldn't be on school committee because I think it's very easy being on school committee to say that you want the mayor to be on school committee because then you are supporting the position of your colleague but saying that you don't want the mayor to be on school committee is a little bit more difficult because that that can end up burning bridges.

[Matt Leming]: So I

[Matt Leming]: I have taken current and former school committee members' views on this into account.

[Matt Leming]: I do think there needs to be a stronger balance between the mayor, the council, and the school committee.

[Matt Leming]: Currently, this charter, plan A strong mayor system, I think it does give the mayor a lot far too much power.

[Matt Leming]: And this kind of resets the balance there.

[Matt Leming]: Besides chairing the school committee,

[Matt Leming]: I don't think that the mayor, and this is just hearing from what other members have told me, I don't think the mayor has a whole lot of time to really dedicate to the day-to-day work of running the school system just because of time commitment issues.

[Matt Leming]: And so having the mayor off does give one extra person there.

[Matt Leming]: The other, and last, I know it's a trend to have the mayor on school committee in Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: It is the default setup under Massachusetts general law.

[Matt Leming]: To have that six school committee member with the mayor's chair setup.

[Matt Leming]: That's not the case in other states, and I think if other states have a setup like that, like can survive with different setups and I think, and I think Medford.

[Matt Leming]: can as well.

[Matt Leming]: Again, it's not it's not like no other state has the mayor on school committees just that this is not a uniform picture and so there are different systems in different localities.

[Matt Leming]: That's why I'll be voting to keep the mayor off school committee, and thank you everybody for listening.

[Matt Leming]: I just wanted to point out for those interested in the learning about the history of the last charter review the Charter Study Committee provided some wonderful newspaper clippings in their in their website which has

[Matt Leming]: just some descriptions of the last effort to have a Charter Review Commission, I believe in the 70s, and other newspaper articles from 86 that talk about the chart that passed.

[Matt Leming]: So if you want to read about a little bit of history, it's on the website.

[Matt Leming]: I did appreciate that in their notes.

[Matt Leming]: Check mic one, two, check mic one, two.

[Matt Leming]: Welcome, we'll now have a meeting of the resident services and public engagement committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: The sole topic that we will be discussing is amending and approving the budget survey, which will go out to guys guys, which will go out to collect feedback from residents on the budget process.

[Matt Leming]: We're.

[Matt Leming]: No, I will not accept disruptions from Council President Bears, who I remind everybody is not a member of this committee, but seems to be intruding on our affairs.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: So the only feedback that I found that I believe was sent in that I saw was a, and I will just go ahead and share.

[Matt Leming]: share my screen really quickly just so everybody knows what I'm looking at.

[Matt Leming]: The only piece of feedback that I saw was this very nice infographic from Councilor Callahan, which basically shows a breakdown of Medford's budget in a wonderful pie chart.

[Matt Leming]: Most of it's education, insurance, pensions.

[Matt Leming]: And I feel like that does a great job of clarifying to residents what kind of budget we have.

[Matt Leming]: Absolutely, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I will, one moment.

[Matt Leming]: How do I do this again?

[Matt Leming]: Right.

[Matt Leming]: Well, I personally think that's that an updated version of this would be very useful to residents along with probably just the total numbers in there as well just for instead of percentages if that's possible to add like.

[Matt Leming]: What?

[Matt Leming]: Uh I'll let Councilor Lazzaro go first.

[Matt Leming]: I'm seeing.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: And we have another who would like to speak, who is not a member of this committee, but I suppose we can let him speak anyway.

[Matt Leming]: I think, yeah, whatever you guys want.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: So I just, the notes I took were that to put the fixed costs in a pop out of the pie chart to clarify and separate the trash line item from the DPW since that's a fixed cost.

[Matt Leming]: Also just like put in a text explanation of the chart, but I think that's obvious.

[Matt Leming]: And to put in the actual dollar amounts.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so Council Gowan, do you think you'd be able to do that, do that on your own since.

[Matt Leming]: All right, cool.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: See the only other suggestions that I sort of had and I, I just, I essentially jotted down things that I would like to see from that I think are interesting pieces of information to have from residents

[Matt Leming]: But I'm not 100% sure if it's appropriate to put out in a municipal survey.

[Matt Leming]: But I would like to have a demographic question about household income in there, like household income brackets.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing is a question about

[Matt Leming]: And again, these can be phrased differently but the intent of the question is what one time city projects do you think what one time projects you think the city ought to fund the idea behind that being, you know that we have free cash and some idea of how the residents would like to spend things like that would be useful.

[Matt Leming]: And this is more just things that I'm interested in.

[Matt Leming]: I would like, I was thinking it would be interesting to have some questions about whether or not residents favored the tax override but again I'm not that that's one that I've kind of been like going back and forth on whether we would put that out just some sort of opinion on that.

[Matt Leming]: The last question that I was interested in knowing about from residents, there's this sort of idea that in cities you can have low taxes or you can have

[Matt Leming]: more and stable city services or you can build up the density of the city in order to increase commercial revenue.

[Matt Leming]: So those sort of three factors right there.

[Matt Leming]: And so I wanted some kind of a question that would rank residents preferences on that.

[Matt Leming]: So do they think that lower taxes are more important than keeping density?

[Matt Leming]: than keeping density low, or do they think that city service, they'd be willing to pay more taxes in order to have more city services.

[Matt Leming]: These are just things I would be interested in getting information on generally, but obviously, these are just items that we can discuss.

[Matt Leming]: a map of, like a map of Medford, just the borders, and then put the words Wellington, Glenwood, South Medford, just on the map, but not actually specify the borders.

[Matt Leming]: Did you put your mic on?

[Matt Leming]: I'm really up in arms about that one.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm just going to refresh this here.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I just don't think that household income is like that non-standard of a question.

[Matt Leming]: It's not a crazy question to ask.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, like it is.

[Matt Leming]: It is.

[Matt Leming]: It's good context, I guess.

[Matt Leming]: Do I hear any objections to

[Matt Leming]: speak now forever, hold your peace.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Maybe by like tax brackets.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, well, so the tax brackets are like zero to 11,000.

[Matt Leming]: 11,000, 47,000, 47, 100, 100 to 191, 191 to 243, 243 to 609, and then 609 or above.

[Matt Leming]: President Bears, I was just going to say for simplicity's sake, maybe zero to 50, 50 to 100.

[Matt Leming]: Oh yeah, you don't have to do like the full 47, 47 to 100, but yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, well, maybe like 0 to 15,000, 15,000 to 50,000, 50,000 to 100, 100 to 200, 200 to 600, then 600 plus.

[Matt Leming]: If y'all billion now.

[Matt Leming]: Michael Bloomberg, what do you think about the Medford budget?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, yeah, I'll leave it to your discretion whether to put the 600 plus in there or not, but I feel like those other brackets are fairly reasonable and they're at least based on some sort of a standard.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Well the first income bracket is zero to 11,600.

[Matt Leming]: So I just figured but we could we could round it to 25 if you think that would be more appropriate.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so people don't think about their.

[Matt Leming]: Not to get too technical.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So those numbers, whatever they were, sounded great to me.

[Matt Leming]: So I guess with the override thing and the ranking of density versus high versus low taxes versus city services, the intent of that question is to try to form some kind of an inquiry where we could figure out what residents prefer to.

[Matt Leming]: spend less in taxes, or would they prefer to get more services in the future because it is it is a trade off, and I earnest.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, no, no, this is one where this is what we're just discussing so this is one of my one of my submissions and I'm trying to think of a way to phrase the question in a way that doesn't sound like weird on a municipal survey.

[Matt Leming]: But I would like to, I would like to get an idea because I hear a lot of residents around the city, particularly during the override campaign we're saying, you know,

[Matt Leming]: We want to we want to pay more to invest in our schools than their other residents who are saying well we, you know, we're fixed income households and we don't want to pay extra pay extra taxes.

[Matt Leming]: And so, the intent of the question is to try to figure out from respondents, what their sort of rankings.

[Matt Leming]: like what their priorities are, so to speak.

[Matt Leming]: Well, yeah, I understand though that that is like, um, that could be a bit of an out of place question, but it was something I was personally curious about.

[Matt Leming]: So if we don't think that it's, it has a place in the survey, that's fine.

[Matt Leming]: Um,

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that was basically all I had.

[Matt Leming]: Does anybody else have any suggestions for this survey?

[Matt Leming]: Well, maybe once we have word-based Councilors, it'll be more of a personal relationship going on there.

[Matt Leming]: Also, just a note there, some of these are checkboxes when they should be radio buttons.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Option five.

[Matt Leming]: Also include URLs to these things Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I like that phrasing of it.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: I am all for using this survey, both to gather feedback and to essentially use it as an advertisement for the things that we do.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: So Councilor Tseng, what do you, with your schedule, what do you think is the, yeah, there's like a budget tab under.

[Matt Leming]: What do you think is the timeline you'll be able to get this out by?

[Matt Leming]: Pretty soon.

[Matt Leming]: All right, cool.

[Matt Leming]: And then just get all that and then start blasting it on social media.

[Matt Leming]: Maybe like, what is your favorite way of participating?

[Matt Leming]: Well, this is a radio.

[Matt Leming]: This could be like a checkbox, like which methods would you most likely.

[Matt Leming]: It should definitely be a checkbox thing, because I would rather read the city council newsletter than call my elected officials, since I only have to choose one.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng, I forgot, are you able to put URLs in the checkboxes?

[Matt Leming]: I'm pretty sure you can in the description.

[Matt Leming]: In the description, I think you can.

[Matt Leming]: If you go back to the first page.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, in the questions themselves.

[Matt Leming]: I know you can't because I just did it for something else, but I mean in the checkboxes, like the checkbox text itself.

[Matt Leming]: It would be good if you could have reading the city council's newsletter and then you have a link right there to the latest one.

[Matt Leming]: Wonderful.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, what a beautiful newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: I posted the latest newsletter to the website yet.

[Matt Leming]: Well, you could.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, it doesn't have to be like that.

[Matt Leming]: You could highlight it, then click put URL in there, and then just say click here or something.

[Matt Leming]: You don't have to include the full URL.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Oh.

[Matt Leming]: No, we could discuss this later if you share edit access with me.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I could do that particular part.

[Matt Leming]: Depends on how many responses we could get in that two-week time period.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any other recommendations from councillors?

[Matt Leming]: Justin, are you good?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Now we will have public participation.

[Matt Leming]: Use this.

[Matt Leming]: I've always dreamed of leaving my council chair and then participating in public.

[Matt Leming]: It would be the strangest sight ever, but we can do it.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second to that motion?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, motion to do we have a motion to approve and distribute and adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so the motion is to approve the survey as discussed here.

[Matt Leming]: Request that the city administration use their channels to distribute it and adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: No, I didn't make them.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, Councilors are seconded.

[Matt Leming]: Wonderful.

[Matt Leming]: Mr.

[Matt Leming]: What am I, what am I, it's it's late.

[Matt Leming]: We just had a lot of all those in favor.

[Matt Leming]: Opposed.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Council Vice President, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry for my tardiness.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I was used to the green thing coming up, but it just went straight to red, so I'm not sure.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sure what the system is.

[Matt Leming]: No, I just got to note that whole area, not only that triangle, but I think some of the houses along right next to the train tracks on

[Matt Leming]: like Tyler Avenue, it's a little bit of a weird area for a bunch of reasons.

[Matt Leming]: I'm thinking like, I mean, this is outside the scope of this, but even trying to make some ways so that that dead end isn't sort of a dead end, but actually like leads across the river, that would be a nice future construction project.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know about the feasibility of that, but I feel like that area would require

[Matt Leming]: particular focus.

[Matt Leming]: I know that even the residents along, yeah, I was just kind of thinking about this like weird little corridor along, this weird little street on Tyler Avenue because I know the residents there have like a lot of issues with train noise as well.

[Matt Leming]: So I was trying to think of ways to like maybe

[Matt Leming]: do something with like sound barriers, but I don't think that's like that just came up a lot, but I'm not 100% sure if that's something we could really solve with zoning.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, I do feel like just walking around this driving around this area tends to be a very strange experience.

[Matt Leming]: So any additional focus on it would be welcome.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: We discussed increased public outreach for the budget process and that involved a, we passed a motion to collect feedback for a budget survey, which will be meeting on to approve at the next Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee

[Matt Leming]: Uh, next week we had the human rights commission ordinance on the agenda, but decided to, uh, it needed more time for Councilor Tseng to work on it with the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: So, uh, put it off until the next, until next month.

[Matt Leming]: And we worked on and released, uh, the city council newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you to councilor Callahan for drafting that.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank you as well for putting this forward.

[Matt Leming]: Scary and disgraceful that we're having federal authorities pick up students from the street, plainclothes officers, deporting them out of state so that they don't have access to legal representation.

[Matt Leming]: And in many other cases, even just putting them out of the country and ignoring court orders.

[Matt Leming]: just because they can.

[Matt Leming]: Elections have consequences, and this is what we're seeing because of the election.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, in other parts of the country, it's not... Ramesa Ozturk was a case that received a lot of publicity.

[Matt Leming]: I worked for five years as a postdoc at Mass General.

[Matt Leming]: I attempted

[Matt Leming]: Keyword attempted, didn't succeed to unionize over there, but ended up creating some groups that had a lot of postdocs on them.

[Matt Leming]: And a lot of them are international.

[Matt Leming]: And so they're coming up with a report.

[Matt Leming]: And so they're sharing reports of people they know, their friends just being randomly abducted, detained in places like Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett.

[Matt Leming]: Maldon.

[Matt Leming]: Last night, the Democratic City Committee met and decided to put some of the committee's own funding into purchasing 8,000 red cards, which are cards that you can give out to immigrants who may be at risk of being detained in order for them to understand their legal rights and understand how they

[Matt Leming]: can interact when federal authorities try to illegally detain them.

[Matt Leming]: In many cases, there have also been reports of just US citizens being detained because they're brown.

[Matt Leming]: And then ICE will only figure that out later.

[Matt Leming]: when they go through their wallet and figure out that they were just randomly abducted.

[Matt Leming]: And what's going on here is that ICE is basically just taking in anybody that they can, trying to figure out if there was ever any lapse in Visa or anything that they might have done technically wrong on a piece of paper, and then using that as an excuse to deport them all while ignoring court orders

[Matt Leming]: to the contrary, and then publicizing the few cases where they actually do manage to deport a violent criminal, and then using those few cases as justification for this policy.

[Matt Leming]: So, it is important, I agree for city leaders to speak up vocally because intimidation is a big part of this intimidation is the name of the game here that is a huge reason why this is happening.

[Matt Leming]: Independence at different levels of government can help to stop this, but understand that being vocal and vocally saying this isn't right is the best tool that we have to stop an authoritarian regime.

[Matt Leming]: So again, I would just like to thank my colleague for putting this forward.

[Matt Leming]: and I look forward to voting in favor of it and hearing whatever public comment we have.

[Matt Leming]: So just with the with the citations question, I would repeat, you could Google it, I would advise that you go to a somewhat reputable news source for this.

[Matt Leming]: I personally released a blog, mattLeming.com slash blog.

[Matt Leming]: And if you there's my most recent post was called resisting ice.

[Matt Leming]: And I understand that

[Matt Leming]: I would like to thank all five people who actually read my blog, but I take pride.

[Matt Leming]: And I take pride in how many URLs I link to throughout the text there.

[Matt Leming]: And so there is plenty of cases that relate.

[Matt Leming]: There are plenty of articles linked there that relate to detaining Brown people,

[Matt Leming]: women describing detention centers as hell on earth, people dying, particularly the detention center in Miami.

[Matt Leming]: So it's out there.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, if you're only news sources like Fox News, then you're not gonna see it, but just kind of go outside of that a little bit and you'll get a lot more information.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'll second Councilor Collins motion if if it needs a second.

[Matt Leming]: So, I did write, I did, I wrote up a speech here or like just like more like listing out my thoughts on this whole process because I was, again, I was originally a member of the of the Charter Study Committee and

[Matt Leming]: When I started my campaign for city council, I was asked to step down.

[Matt Leming]: And you could read it.

[Matt Leming]: You could read it on my blog.

[Matt Leming]: I believe Mr. Gianvina here quoted my own blog at me during public comment when I sort of expressed blank check support for the work of the Charter Study Committee.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm going to talk about that a little bit because I feel like this is probably the forum to have a little bit of discussion about this process as a whole and sort of how I think my opinions about how things have played out.

[Matt Leming]: So two years ago, I was a member of the Medford Charter Review Coalition.

[Matt Leming]: This was an advocacy group that lobbied city council to pass a petition for a home rule charter.

[Matt Leming]: At the time, they were lobbying city council to pass this petition so that Medford could elect a charter review commission that would be elected directly by voters.

[Matt Leming]: And at the time, city council had four members that were in favor of charter review and three that were strongly against.

[Matt Leming]: And the petition was rejected.

[Matt Leming]: And then around the time that I joined the Medford Charter Review Coalition subsequently tried to collect the requisite signatures to initiate a homeroom petition process directly, building off of the many signatures that were collected by former school committee member Michael Ruggiero.

[Matt Leming]: But we failed to collect those signatures.

[Matt Leming]: And then after that,

[Matt Leming]: the mayor then formed the 11-member Charter Study Committee.

[Matt Leming]: And this is a group of Medford residents that the mayor appointed.

[Matt Leming]: They're appointed at her discretion.

[Matt Leming]: They didn't have, they weren't confirmed by city council, even though it was known throughout the process that council was the body that would eventually have to vote on the charter draft.

[Matt Leming]: Now, I know, I understand why

[Matt Leming]: like, if I had to guess, I'd say that the reason that they weren't confirmed by Council explicitly was because, again, at the time, about

[Matt Leming]: almost half of the council was very opposed to the very idea of charter review.

[Matt Leming]: But we had the 11-member study committee.

[Matt Leming]: I was one of the original members of the charter study committee.

[Matt Leming]: And I think the mayor's intent when forming this committee, which she has expressed more privately than others, was to have sort of an ideological balance, mixing progressives and conservatives.

[Matt Leming]: About 50-50 conservatives are outnumbered in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: But what she has said was that the idea was to have it

[Matt Leming]: have an ideological balance when composing the committee.

[Matt Leming]: I wasn't aware of that at the time when I was put on the COC.

[Matt Leming]: I was, I believe it was four members of the Charter Review Coalition that were appointed there and other community members and membership did circulate over time.

[Matt Leming]: So I stepped down.

[Matt Leming]: The other co-chair at the time stepped down.

[Matt Leming]: Other people have had to step down.

[Matt Leming]: Others were appointed to it.

[Matt Leming]: So the composition has changed.

[Matt Leming]: When I announced my campaign for city council, I was asked

[Matt Leming]: by the mayor, by others to step down from the Charter Study Committee because I was told involvement from the city council would be a conflict of interest.

[Matt Leming]: I disagreed with this, but when somebody that appointed you to a committee asks you to step down, you do it.

[Matt Leming]: I didn't want to create any controversy early on my campaign.

[Matt Leming]: And during my campaign, I expressed full support for the work of the Charter Study Committee.

[Matt Leming]: I think that a lot of that was to sort of bolster the public standing of the committee.

[Matt Leming]: I hadn't still had good relationships with people, and I had faith in the work that they do.

[Matt Leming]: And I really want to see a new charter pass.

[Matt Leming]: And again, when you have half the council hostile to the idea of charter review, it's really important to try to bolster up the committee that really wants it to pass.

[Matt Leming]: Hearing some of the feedback from the committee, like in this seat, on their justifications for some of the aspects of city council and school committee composition, I don't know if I've been always satisfied with what's been presented.

[Matt Leming]: I've been very pleased with most of the other work there, but I also thought that, like,

[Matt Leming]: the more drama that we have surrounding the study committee, which is not a negatively affect the chances of charter you to pass the ballot.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to talk a bit about conflicts of interest here, which was something that has come up in public comment so in changing a document as important as a charter.

[Matt Leming]: conflicts of interest are going to be part of it.

[Matt Leming]: So the draft of the charter before us, the one that the mayor just passed back to us has very minor edits that substantially put more power, more in favor of the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: um and takes it away from city council and balance of powers is important here and I think and I think it's and even the original draft that was handed to us had had small edits like the charter the periodic charter review committee having over half of those appointees be be mayoral appointees I think that having this is natural because you know you did have a study committee that was appointed with uh without council input I think that these conflicts uh are these sort of conflicts of interest with elected officials and

[Matt Leming]: groups that they appoint are why the state outlines a process for the Home Rule Commission of nine members to be elected directly.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, this is the cleanest way to not have elected officials involved in making decisions surrounding their own process.

[Matt Leming]: Again, Medford tried to do this twice and failed because initiating the Home Rule Charter position is

[Matt Leming]: very difficult in itself.

[Matt Leming]: You need to collect something like around 6,000 signatures, I think, and that's just hard to do.

[Matt Leming]: And when this cannot be done, approval of the charter by many groups of elected officials is the second best option, because elected officials, while they are

[Matt Leming]: making decisions about their own positions are at least chosen by the voters and so representative of the city at a whole.

[Matt Leming]: Our positions are more or less transparent to the city and we groups of elected officials have a pretty good understanding of city matters and ordinances that most members of the public aren't really as privy to.

[Matt Leming]: This is why changes to the Constitution of the United States require both congressional approval and ratification from state legislatures, you need many groups of people elected by the voters of the United States to approve that the President cannot himself just change the Constitution.

[Matt Leming]: With that in mind, and this is a part where I've really done my work in the past couple of weeks.

[Matt Leming]: And again, I understand the political context at the time the formation the formation of the charter study committee was pretty unusual.

[Matt Leming]: Most other municipalities have they varied in their exact methods for appointing a similar study committee or a charter review committee.

[Matt Leming]: It's almost universal that city council or the equivalent body is involved in the process.

[Matt Leming]: School committees often are as well.

[Matt Leming]: Many cities have had Councilors and school community members on their charter review committees.

[Matt Leming]: There are a few home rule charters where elected officials are explicitly banned from serving on this body.

[Matt Leming]: But in those cases, it's inevitably city council who appoints members of the review body because it is city council which will eventually have to approve that draft.

[Matt Leming]: Again, I know why the mayor made the decision to not have a CSC confirmed by this council, nearly half of them were hostile at the time the very idea of charter abuse some understanding of the particular decisions made a particular times, and I think that the Charter Study Committee has worked extremely hard.

[Matt Leming]: in in their job.

[Matt Leming]: I think that I personally think that especially after the 2024 elections when uh most like I think every member every member of the council right now is favorable to the idea of charter review um I think that

[Matt Leming]: we should have been more involved in the drafting of the process, again, in other municipalities.

[Matt Leming]: Sometimes Councilors are even on the Charter Study Committee itself.

[Matt Leming]: That, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: The mayor, so the mayor in the current draft nixed the council's proposal to change 38254, but the reason that I just seconded Councilor Collins' motion is that all along they decided to keep the mayor on the school committee.

[Matt Leming]: And this is something that bugs me because the charter study committee surveys showed that the public strongly disagreed with this choice.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think that this exactly would have been a decision if the committee had been elected directly by voters.

[Matt Leming]: Um, again, because it is clearly, according to their own surveys, the most popular decision have the mayor removed from the CSC entirely.

[Matt Leming]: But it was a committee that was appointed by the mayor, so it does make sense with that in mind.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I also think that the exclusion of council would have been more acceptable to me if the edits that we had made and approved six to zero

[Matt Leming]: would have been accepted.

[Matt Leming]: And with the fact that we only had three months to do this in mind, whereas the Mayor and Charter Study Committee had two years to do this.

[Matt Leming]: But I do disagree with this process that we are given a new draft of the charter

[Matt Leming]: one which we've made very relatively like I mean substantial but still like relatively minimal edits to with a very limited timeline and we're given it one week before uh we're supposed to approve it via press release and I only received red line edits to act to know which amendments actually were made uh when I saw the council agenda so

[Matt Leming]: I'm aware of the timeline that we're on.

[Matt Leming]: I would also really like to see it get on the ballot this November.

[Matt Leming]: So here's the thing.

[Matt Leming]: I would be willing to go, I think that when this council voted on the draft of the charter that we voted on six to zero, we were voting for what we believed is the best policy and a policy that we believe would also be accepted by the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: It does bug me that in the only part of the process where another elected body did make edits, we have other groups that are trying to just completely undo those edits.

[Matt Leming]: on this very limited timeline via press release.

[Matt Leming]: So, I would be more comfortable voting on a draft of the charter.

[Matt Leming]: I think that the amendments that were given that were given by Councilor Lazzaro and were also mentioned by Councilor Collins do satisfy some of the concerns that I had previously with the red line that's made by the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: I would be willing to support

[Matt Leming]: 3-8 if the mayor is also removed from the school committee because I think that shows some consistency.

[Matt Leming]: Again, that's what the public clearly said that they wanted and if we're going to go with policies that we think are the most popular with the voters, then I think that I see some head shaking there.

[Matt Leming]: It was in their survey that people said they wanted to remove the mayor from the school committee, correct?

[Matt Leming]: OK, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: So I think it does show some consistency in going with the most popular decisions if we went with that.

[Matt Leming]: So again, as you can see, I am

[Matt Leming]: I do commend the Charter Study Committee for all the work that they've put into this.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, from what you can hear, I do have some concerns with the way the process went down.

[Matt Leming]: And the timeline issue is something that I'm dissatisfied with.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, just on that point, I don't think that anything we could do in this charter would affect our normal ability to initiate a home rule commission, which for clarity would be a group of people that are elected directly by voters who then draft another

[Matt Leming]: original charter and then that is then sent to voters again.

[Matt Leming]: I think that there are, there are kind of two different, and the, and the special, and the, the once every 10-year committee that's in this current draft of the charter would be, it would do things like update the charter if state law changed and the charter needed to be consistent with it or if there were normal things that we needed to change in the charter to do that.

[Matt Leming]: Like, you know, turned out that something wasn't working and they can make normal edits.

[Matt Leming]: When it came to like when it comes to think when it comes to the Home Rule Commission, it is important to clarify that they do have generally have more authority.

[Matt Leming]: So, I don't think that the state legislature would normally approve something like

[Matt Leming]: rank choice voting, but if the Home Rule Commission put forth something that wasn't explicitly illegal, they could end up implementing that.

[Matt Leming]: So this doesn't take away the option explicitly.

[Matt Leming]: I think that there is an argument to be made as to whether or not having this continuing process would sap motivation for doing that.

[Matt Leming]: in the future, which there's kind of two different conversations to be had, but yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I completely agree with the point about timelines.

[Matt Leming]: The fact is, again, we got the draft of this about three months ago, three, four months ago, when it had been worked on for two years.

[Matt Leming]: And at that very limited timeline, we passed a version of this 6-0.

[Matt Leming]: And then a week ago, we got this version of the charter.

[Matt Leming]: A week is not enough time to go through this.

[Matt Leming]: And I personally do not care if this if we put it to the statehouse and it has to be delayed to the spring 2026 election.

[Matt Leming]: Because we the way I see it, we passed a charter, this body did our job, just like with the zoning, we put out a timeline beforehand, clarifying how that would play out.

[Matt Leming]: And

[Matt Leming]: In January, we also the governance committee put out a timeline for how that play out that would play out, and we met that timeline.

[Matt Leming]: So, I think, I think that.

[Matt Leming]: passing a charter to us one week beforehand, again, via press release, is a strategy to try to rush this body into accepting edits without due thought.

[Matt Leming]: And it's not a strategy that I want to fall for.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to support my colleagues if they want more time to think about this.

[Matt Leming]: I personally have had a pretty stressful week beyond this charter.

[Matt Leming]: beyond this charter business, and I can sympathize with the need for one more week to consider this.

[Matt Leming]: And, you know, it is what it is, again, if the getting a version of the charter to the State House were truly a high priority, you could have accepted the version of the charter that we pass six to zero.

[Matt Leming]: Please pause.

[Matt Leming]: You didn't you didn't mention anybody's name.

[Matt Leming]: It's obvious that you're talking about.

[Matt Leming]: It's obvious you're talking about me.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: At the time, At the time, the Charter Study Committee was an appointed by was a body

[Matt Leming]: At the time, I had good relationships with people on the committee.

[Matt Leming]: I'd previously worked with them.

[Matt Leming]: I really want to see Charter Review pass.

[Matt Leming]: And when I was asked to step down from the committee after starting my campaign, I offered public support to the committee.

[Matt Leming]: And no, I did not say that it was because I wanted to better my relations with people in the committee.

[Matt Leming]: No, it's because increasing the visibility, increasing the faith that the community has in the Charter Study Committee would make it more likely that future councils would be more supportive of the idea of charter review.

[Matt Leming]: And you know what?

[Matt Leming]: It worked.

[Matt Leming]: the Charter Study Committee is now very popular and the work that they've done is now very popular with the community.

[Matt Leming]: And when I was offering my comments just now, this is the reason that I've tried up till this point to say as little as possible that I could, because I am proud of the majority of work that the Charter Study Committee has done.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that

[Matt Leming]: They are a group that has worked extremely hard.

[Matt Leming]: But I got to say that during some of the presentations that I have seen, it did not satisfy me.

[Matt Leming]: I wish that the presentation specifically around

[Matt Leming]: council composition around the school committee that took place in these chambers could have been more substantive.

[Matt Leming]: I wish that there were concerns consistently that Councilors brought up and that school committee members for that matter brought up, which were not addressed.

[Matt Leming]: And when I was bringing up my own concerns, and this is both in public and in one-on-one conversations,

[Matt Leming]: I was, I consistently ran into this attitude of you shouldn't be considering that or you shouldn't be considering this.

[Matt Leming]: So, so yeah, and it's tricky.

[Matt Leming]: It is, it is, it's tricky for me because again, I did used to be part of that committee.

[Matt Leming]: And so I do, I appreciate the work that they've done, but

[Matt Leming]: I do need to have, but I would be remiss if I said that I didn't have criticism of their work in certain areas.

[Matt Leming]: So that's the only point I'm making.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I understand that it's easy to twist what I'm saying from the seat, but yeah, that's all.

[Matt Leming]: I do have like a bit of a longer point that I wanna make about charter committee compositions.

[Matt Leming]: We've talked for a while.

[Matt Leming]: I have done my homework on this, that's the point I wanna make.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: So if I said the committee as a body, I could go back on that.

[Matt Leming]: individual committee members have spoken to this committee in their capacity as either the committee chair or the chair of individual subcommittees, and they've discussed it.

[Matt Leming]: But you're right.

[Matt Leming]: I guess the committee technically disbanded after the recommendations were submitted, but individual committee members have discussed the process that they've gone through with us.

[Matt Leming]: But you're correct.

[Matt Leming]: During

[Matt Leming]: the process of drafting the charter, and I'm not a member of the governance committee, so I might have missed this.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, Paul, I probably should have clarified the wording there.

[Matt Leming]: But yes, I hope you

[Matt Leming]: people that were the chair of individual subcommittees that focused on different parts of the charter did speak to us about that.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to apologize ahead of time for subjecting everybody to this, but can I share my screen?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, yeah, so I actually kind of got into like, I was on a work trip a few weeks ago and I got into a research binge on this because, you know, I was kind of bored.

[Matt Leming]: So I just started looking up the composition of charter study committees in other municipalities, who appointed who.

[Matt Leming]: The real takeaway here is that there's not much of a pattern

[Matt Leming]: Um, to it, like, I think that.

[Matt Leming]: I was able to find three other instances in this list that a point where it was the executive of the town that appointed the charter study committee or the equivalent charter review committee themselves.

[Matt Leming]: And that was, that was like a town manager or a town council president, like positions that did have.

[Matt Leming]: The that did have the executive that were in what's the executive did have like a lot more checks over from the legislative body, but in other municipalities, like I don't yeah there's not a 333 between mayor.

[Matt Leming]: council and the school committee.

[Matt Leming]: There are some where the mayor gets more appointees.

[Matt Leming]: There are some where the council president and the councilors get and the mayor get equal appointees and the school committee doesn't appoint anybody.

[Matt Leming]: But there are also there are also others where

[Matt Leming]: like Mashpee, for instance, where each, the mayor, the council, and the school committee get equal appointees, and the appointees of other independent bodies are also there as well.

[Matt Leming]: In all cases that I could find, there was involvement from the city council.

[Matt Leming]: Either the city council appointed or confirmed the study committee, or they got their own independent appointees, which is outlined in the current draft of the charter, which we just amended back to 333.

[Matt Leming]: I do think that the school committee is affected by the charter.

[Matt Leming]: They are largely governed by state law, but it does talk about the composition of the school committee.

[Matt Leming]: So it is important for me personally to keep that balance of power.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, I just wanted

[Matt Leming]: I just wanted to have an excuse to finally share that spreadsheet with the public.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I was when I was apologies.

[Matt Leming]: But when I was making the spreadsheet, I was trying to I was trying to sort of like fit different towns of different types of government into into a format that sort of those sort of limiting for it.

[Matt Leming]: I attempted to note it when I didn't think that the strong mayor system was necessarily comparable to what you see in other municipalities.

[Matt Leming]: And again, this was more of a weekend project for me.

[Matt Leming]: So it's an imperfect piece of research, but I was doing a lot of reading about what I found in other areas.

[Matt Leming]: Wow, we still have more on this agenda.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, so this was an ordinance proposal that was a while and making.

[Matt Leming]: Lazar and I received a message from the Chamber of Commerce, they received a lot of feedback that they're dissatisfied with some of the vacant storefronts, the continuously vacant storefronts, particularly in the West Medford area.

[Matt Leming]: Currently it's being sat on by a fellow who owns it and is expecting whoever decides to rent it out to pay a large upfront capital cost to repair the whole thing, and there's just really not a whole lot of tools.

[Matt Leming]: that the city has to be able to do anything about that.

[Matt Leming]: What this ordinance allows is for the building commissioner to create first a registry of businesses in order to keep track of vacant businesses.

[Matt Leming]: It also has provisions in there to

[Matt Leming]: Enforcing long term vacancies to put up public art so that the storefronts are more visually appealing which would help the area pretty substantially.

[Matt Leming]: and it would allow the city to charge a fee for maintaining this database to longer term vacancies.

[Matt Leming]: This is designed to, this is modeled off of the version of the same ordinance that they came up with in East Hampton.

[Matt Leming]: So I included in this agenda current draft language

[Matt Leming]: I would further motion to send, just to expedite this, to send the draft language to legal for review to hear their feedback.

[Matt Leming]: I would also motion to send this, as you said, to admin and finance so that we can have more discussions about this with the economic development director, the building commissioner, and the Medford Chamber of Commerce so that we can hear any potential edits that they may have to this.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I'd like to thank you for bringing this forward.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of what I studied in grad school was autism.

[Matt Leming]: I was in the psychiatry department over there, so this was a subject of research of mine.

[Matt Leming]: It is early intervention.

[Matt Leming]: in cases where the first symptoms of autism are showing up is huge for quality of life later on.

[Matt Leming]: And I just want to express my appreciation for supporting proactive initiatives to get

[Matt Leming]: to get children with autism spectrum disorder off the wait list so that they can get treatment sooner because it will have substantial long-term effects.

[Matt Leming]: So I will happily support this.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I would just, I would just like to mention, I do understand the back and forth about sale of public land I would still like to support the recommendation of the affordable housing trust so that's, that's, that's my position but I respect the decisions made by my colleagues.

[Matt Leming]: Prepare for my 45 minutes speech.

[Matt Leming]: No, no I've spread.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, no, no, I just, no, I just, I just want to mention that if this, if this does fail, then I would strongly urge that we pay for the nexus study with free cash of which, as we have seen, we do have enough free cash for

[Matt Leming]: These relatively minor capital allocations.

[Matt Leming]: I still, I just want to be clear for my colleagues here that I, I do not think that it is appropriate to use free cash for operating expenses, but in the case of studies.

[Matt Leming]: It's perfectly in case of one time studies, it's perfectly fine.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, will you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: There's Councilor Tseng told me that he's stuck in traffic.

[Matt Leming]: So the first thing that will be working on tonight is the draft of the Medford City Council newsletter for the month of April.

[Matt Leming]: For the sake of editing, I'm just going to hold on a minute.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to share my screen real quickly.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, I just got a new computer, so there does seem to be a bit of an issue with the sharing at the moment.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, just opening settings.

[Matt Leming]: One moment, I'm just gonna have to quit and reopen Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Again, new computer, so I'm just trying to share my screen.

[Matt Leming]: All right, going back into Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: All right, here's to be good.

[Matt Leming]: All right, perfect.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: All right, so we have a version of the Medford City Council newsletter, which was

[Matt Leming]: passed, which was created by Councilor Callaghan.

[Matt Leming]: I'm seeing this paragraph here saying it was our first newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: So, oh wait, no, sorry, this is April 2024.

[Matt Leming]: No, sorry, this was the, my apologies, I had the April 2024, this is the March 2025 version open.

[Matt Leming]: bad window.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okie dokie.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm also just going to, for this one, I'm just going to note here that we need to put in the note about the underlying words being

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, we included, last time I know it, about the underlying words being linked to the previous newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Got some, I believe Councilor Lazzaro had some notes from Councilor Tseng, who's running a little, who's stuck in traffic at the moment, saying he had some edits to the current draft of the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: If you'd like to share those really quickly, and I could just do the edits here.

[Matt Leming]: I usually provide the hyperlinks during when I'm actually formatting.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sure if he meant from the note that he just wanted us to provide hyperlinks to those documents, or if he wanted us to actually outline what individual, oh, he just, Councilor Tseng is here now.

[Matt Leming]: Hello, we were, Councilor Tseng, we were just talking about one of your notes to link to individual councillor requests for this.

[Matt Leming]: Did you mean just throw in hyperlinks during formatting or actually out?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, all right.

[Matt Leming]: Well, I usually do that during the, I usually just do that during the formatting process.

[Matt Leming]: Make a quick explanation of what the Salem Street Corridor District in the green score is.

[Matt Leming]: Okie dokie.

[Matt Leming]: So, the Salem Street Corridor District in the city's green score coordinates.

[Matt Leming]: Maybe something like...

[Matt Leming]: Does that seem like a sufficient?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And since we're talking about budget, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: And then for budget outreach at the discussions included to do.

[Matt Leming]: One thing I also am wondering, so this is a slightly different formatting.

[Matt Leming]: Normally we would have like on March 4th and March 11th, blah, blah, blah happened, although the dates are noted here.

[Matt Leming]: So this is a little bit briefer, which is nice, but I'm wondering if the consistency of the format matters to anybody but me, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Sounds good to me.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: And then looking ahead in April, we'll bring more budget hearings, zoning proposals and resident engagement initiatives and encourage more residents.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: Any other comments?

[Matt Leming]: I thought it was only the three comments, but, oh, right.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I was going through the numbered list, but then they stopped being numbered after a while.

[Matt Leming]: No, no worries.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Okey dokey.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, the other one is the money for the lead pipes as well.

[Matt Leming]: Do you remember which meeting that was at?

[Matt Leming]: I can pull that up too.

[Matt Leming]: I actually did get a note about the last newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: The reason it's on my mind is because somebody sent a note about the fact that it was phrased as repair and not repair slash replace.

[Matt Leming]: And I was just kind of thinking like, OK, well, this phrasing does make sense.

[Matt Leming]: So thanks for remembering.

[Matt Leming]: Got it.

[Matt Leming]: So that's like celebrity repair statements, insurance,

[Matt Leming]: Oh, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: So, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, we need to include but that was the 1st of April.

[Matt Leming]: So what I've been doing for this is okay.

[Matt Leming]: The months aren't perfect.

[Matt Leming]: My my rule of thumb is just to cover every event that we've had since the last newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: So up to you.

[Matt Leming]: I also generally fuse committee of the whole with the regular meetings, but whichever.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor, Councilor Lazzaro, would you, are you on the document right now?

[Matt Leming]: Could you feel free to feel free to write out the language for that since you're the chair of the committee and driver behind the ordinance, I figure you'd probably.

[Matt Leming]: This is probably the most informal committee of all.

[Matt Leming]: This is probably the most informal committee of all the city council meetings.

[Matt Leming]: Y'all are just like eating bagels and just kind of palling around over there.

[Matt Leming]: This is a serious chamber with serious stuff going on.

[Matt Leming]: Y'all gotta be more serious.

[Matt Leming]: You're eating blackberries?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well.

[Matt Leming]: All right, Councilor Lazzaro, are you good with that?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng? President Bears?, you have the document on your computer, or do you want me to just like scroll through on this screen if you don't?

[Matt Leming]: No, I'm just wondering if like you, if you have a, if you're on the document or if you have a link.

[Matt Leming]: No, I think, I think we got, we got everything from your notes.

[Matt Leming]: I will say that during some of the formatting like this whole like bullet and sub bullet points could end up showing up weird on the latex when I'm doing two columns.

[Matt Leming]: So do whatever formatting.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Well I'll just, I'll just change that really some.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, that's actually

[Matt Leming]: Discussions.

[Matt Leming]: we could either be... Sorry, can you speak up?

[Matt Leming]: I think we should hold a roll call vote on this important issue.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Again, we can make this a midnight meeting.

[Matt Leming]: We can do that if we really need to.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: You know, nevermind, I'll just keep it this way.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, does anybody else have any other additional edits they'd like to see?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a motion to approve?

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: On the affirmative, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: The newsletter is approved.

[Matt Leming]: I'll be working on the formatting of this as soon as I can.

[Matt Leming]: Next item.

[Matt Leming]: So we had on here a resolution to discuss the modernization of the Human Rights Commission's enabling ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: This year was put on the agenda largely as a

[Matt Leming]: uh, preliminary measure in case, uh, Councilor Tseng, uh, had, uh, concluded his discussions with the mayor on this topic.

[Matt Leming]: Um, but it my understanding is that we probably need to wait another month before we could really move forward on this.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, great.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have to make a motion on that or?

[Matt Leming]: All right, cool.

[Matt Leming]: In that case, moving on resolution for the public engagement plan for the FY 26 budget.

[Matt Leming]: 25-041 be it resolved that the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee design and implement a public engagement plan for the upcoming FY 2026 budget.

[Matt Leming]: The purpose of this is basically to get a couple of ideas on the table to talk about engaging the public a little bit more in our budget process, increase transparency,

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Any comments from any of the councilors?

[Matt Leming]: I'm personally, um, excited about that.

[Matt Leming]: Is there a

[Matt Leming]: In previous years, when you did put out the survey, was it run entirely by individual Councilors or is there generally any city support for distributing the survey using the official city mailing lists or did Councilors just sort of put it out on their own social media channels?

[Matt Leming]: Josh Triplett Oh, seeing no other.

[Matt Leming]: So are you planning on drafting a version of that and then presenting it at the next meeting or Yeah, like sending out sending us informally.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, the end result I want to have is that we end up having something solid to like something workable to vote on at the next meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, personally, what I'd like to see out of any survey is pretty

[Matt Leming]: basically a thorough collection of the demographic aspects just so that we know how balanced or in balance the feedback is, because I think a problem in previous surveys that have been put out by the city is that they have been quite a skewed sample.

[Matt Leming]: So that does tend to be a systematic problem in municipal surveys.

[Matt Leming]: I would also generally like to, I'm not really too sure if we should have like

[Matt Leming]: like some kind of like a feedback section for like which departments people think should be funded or if it should just be sort of like general areas that they think should be emphasized.

[Matt Leming]: Like, do they think the school should be more funded?

[Matt Leming]: Do they think, you know, what is your ranking when you're comparing like the Department of Health versus like, you know, do you think we should put more money into the planning department?

[Matt Leming]: something like that, I guess a good starting point would really be just to see what, just if you have the previous survey on you.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, do you have like that on a screen that you could share?

[Matt Leming]: Let me, Councilor Lozada, I can see your hand raised.

[Matt Leming]: you send that to my email?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I think that some sort of a, instead of having this very nice photo right here, probably having a pie chart.

[Matt Leming]: It does have to be something that we guarantee people see though.

[Matt Leming]: It is true that I'm not thinking of too many like,

[Matt Leming]: too many ways to fully describe the city's budget and a Google dog banner, but it would be nice if that were achievable.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just kind of worried about the idea of having a separate document explaining the budget, or maybe it could be the first page of the survey.

[Matt Leming]: All right, hold on.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going through the survey, survey on my own.

[Matt Leming]: So it does look like the previous survey was collecting demographic information, but it did mainly rely on, I think a lot of it relied on short-form answers, particularly on the first page.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: No, that makes sense.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so to clarify the way that,

[Matt Leming]: So some of the specific suggestions for how to change it are to collect more, or to include more educational content within the survey itself, just about the nature of the budget, and be a little bit more detailed in the demographics that we're, demographic information we're collecting.

[Matt Leming]: You said you got like a hundred people last time.

[Matt Leming]: What were some of the main points of feedback then?

[Matt Leming]: Like any trends you noticed?

[Matt Leming]: I have Councilor Tseng is, seems like he's, does have, like, a lot of experience with, a little bit more experience than I do than,

[Matt Leming]: I would welcome him as the proposed co-sponsor as well.

[Matt Leming]: We could also discuss this offline since we're not, since, you know, we can.

[Matt Leming]: Just going to, I'm going to try to share that screen.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to try to do my best to share the screen and try to

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I understand the point that you're making earlier about having open-ended questions, but the part of me that likes to save time is just thinking to take some of these and put them as a bullet points in the next, like put them as check boxes or rankings in the next version of the survey.

[Matt Leming]: Um, that's just my kind of like, at a curiosity, how much time did it take you to go through the 135 short form responses and come up with this?

[Matt Leming]: I'm looking at this right here.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, yeah, it does remind me of the charter study committee survey, which was just like that sort of similar to that 80, 20 split, uh, between homeowner renter, which really 50, 50, uh, in the city.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I,

[Matt Leming]: can't think of a way, like if there are any ideas for reaching out to renters more.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I think we should have a rental registry.

[Matt Leming]: Honestly, if you go to South Medford and you knock on a door, there's a pretty good chance that some of the folks living there are renters.

[Matt Leming]: Part of the thing with handing it to the Medford Housing Authority is they

[Matt Leming]: A lot of the public housing that they're in charge of does represent a lot of renters, but I feel like a lot of, like a huge number of renters are also just people who are like renting from private landlords.

[Matt Leming]: And there's not a way, there's just not a good way I can think of to, you know, systematically reach out to that, to that demographic.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: And, you know, I, I do remember when the charter study committee, they, they put, they actually did put a lot of effort into trying to bump up the survey numbers, but they're, they still were not able to like kind of get rid of that skew between.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: It's just an inherent problem with polling in, in the city, I suppose.

[Matt Leming]: I think I read somewhere, well, I heard one time that it would cost like $7,000 to do a professional poll.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: So in terms of specific action items,

[Matt Leming]: either myself or Councilor Tseng is going to work with Councilor Callahan on a co-sponsorship.

[Matt Leming]: We are going to design or draft an additional survey which will contain some very high level overview of the nature of the budget and how it was allocated in previous years.

[Matt Leming]: and then do a lot of what Councilor Tseng did with the previous survey only take a lot more detailed demographics data as well.

[Matt Leming]: Is that about a summary of?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: And, uh, could that, could the request for feedback go to the whole council as well?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: on the motion by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: In terms of timeline, if you did figure out that we needed to do it, we needed to have everything in sooner,

[Matt Leming]: what would really be the option in terms of approval?

[Matt Leming]: So would we potentially have to do another RSP meeting in the middle of the month next month?

[Matt Leming]: So you think just another committee meeting in two weeks, I mean, would make sense.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So do you want to amend your motion to request the council president that we schedule a meeting two weeks from now?

[Matt Leming]: Wait, so.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Sounds good.

[Matt Leming]: So do you want to just do a roll call on the motion?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: We're in the affirmative.

[Matt Leming]: One absent, the motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Now I'm not seeing, I don't think anybody is here from the public.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any other points of discussion we want on this, we have on this particular item, or do you think we're good to go?

[Matt Leming]: Sounds good.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any other motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor, or sorry, Clerk, please call the roll when you're ready.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: For an affirmative, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: The meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Feel free to finish, but once you're done with the slide, I just had something I wanted to say.

[Matt Leming]: No, so the first one was, I was just, was looking at the plot, the mixed use to be directly to the right of city hall.

[Matt Leming]: I was just wondering if that could, if there would be any logic

[Matt Leming]: And updating that to mixed use three, because kind of thinking that, like, higher buildings there could act as a sound barrier to some of the traffic on on ninety three.

[Matt Leming]: So, yeah, I was just I was just like, what I was just wondering, first off, if you think that that could possibly be an idea that would work or what you're.

[Matt Leming]: what your thoughts would be on this.

[Matt Leming]: I also had questions relating to whether or not there could, this could just be a discussion point for later, but whether it would be possible to change the traffic patterns in

[Matt Leming]: or if the traffic patterns in Medford Square ever were changed, which I think could be something that, you know, we might see like 30 years in the future or something like that.

[Matt Leming]: But basically, I just don't like the traffic patterns that we see in Medford Square at the moment.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm wondering if the zoning changes could affect that, could affect that at all.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, sorry, that was phrased terribly.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to basically.

[Matt Leming]: I think that the traffic patterns in Medford square terrible.

[Matt Leming]: I would like at some point in the future to explore changing those traffic patterns.

[Matt Leming]: It's not up to it's that's not under the purview of zoning at all.

[Matt Leming]: Um, but I'm wondering if the, if the current zoning.

[Matt Leming]: Or if anybody from planning can generally comment on that, like, if we were to have, like, some change in the traffic pattern to Medford square with the zoning.

[Matt Leming]: Like, how would that interact with zoning?

[Matt Leming]: Like, would it would like it make would.

[Matt Leming]: Increased height there make it more difficult to change that in the future.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, would it be.

[Matt Leming]: Would it be necessary to change the traffic patterns if we're finding like, more cars coming through just just like some somebody that knows more than me talking about traffic patterns, I think would be would be helpful.

[Matt Leming]: Um, particularly like the high and main street intersection.

[Matt Leming]: So.

[Matt Leming]: Well, yeah, I mean, just on the, just on the, the concept of the view from the houses, just to the, uh, uh, just to the right of that, it, it doesn't really provide those houses don't really get much review anyway.

[Matt Leming]: Cause I mean, I lived there, we're mostly looking at the highway.

[Matt Leming]: So I just, just kind of put that thought out there that I don't think that that, uh, I don't think any mentioned those houses at all.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: But would it also be possible to, like, I only see that part of that is, is it possible to just take maybe the south part of that parcel and make it into MX3?

[Matt Leming]: Because one part does seem kind of narrow, but the other part seems a little bit more beefy.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I was just gonna say that I would side with Councilor Scarpelli on this one.

[Matt Leming]: I think that there is, it would be appropriate to get some

[Matt Leming]: legal review from the city side on this.

[Matt Leming]: I didn't hear if his motion had a second or not, because on Zoom, I don't hear anybody unless they turn their microphone on, but if there hasn't been a second, I'd like to second that.

[Matt Leming]: Well, if there's no other folks from the public looking to speak, I'd just like to add that supporting the full-time lecturers and Tufts is particularly important because I

[Matt Leming]: I spent most of my life in academia, last five years in a postdoc.

[Matt Leming]: It's a system that really relies on under-compensated labor from folks who have

[Matt Leming]: a lot of training.

[Matt Leming]: It's the full-time lecturers, the junior academics that run large institutions like Tufts, and it's really the passion for what they do that ends up being exploited by the academic system that keeps these institutions and most of higher education in the country running.

[Matt Leming]: We're going through a time right now where the academic system in the U.S.

[Matt Leming]: is being particularly strained by the federal government, so it's incredibly important to show these full-time lecturers our full support because it's going to be very important for

[Matt Leming]: uh, institutions like Tufts to offer more local support, uh, to, uh, to the junior academics that are in their institution.

[Matt Leming]: So I have my, this resolution has my full support and I'd like to thank all the folks, um, in the chambers tonight for coming out to speak.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I have my hand raised.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I'm, I do agree that.

[Matt Leming]: we should be using free cash for some of these one-time expenses.

[Matt Leming]: On the other hand, this is, I mean, this is an official communication from the Affordable Housing Trust where they're telling us that these parcels are individually undersized and they're saying they're not able to be developed.

[Matt Leming]: And I am disappointed

[Matt Leming]: and my colleagues for not supporting, indicating that they wouldn't support the recommendation of the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: I'm also disappointed in some of my colleagues for stepping off prior to this discussion.

[Matt Leming]: I would really like to see this

[Matt Leming]: Uh, this nexus study, uh, this nexus study actually funded.

[Matt Leming]: It was.

[Matt Leming]: In some of the budget recommendations that we put forward, and I would like to see this council.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, get in the pattern of supporting.

[Matt Leming]: the Affordable Housing Trust when it gives us a recommendation.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, if they're going to tell us that they can't use two parcels of land and so we should have a bit more of a longer term view when it comes to selling them off so that we can actually fund the nexus study, then I'm inclined to support them.

[Matt Leming]: So that's all I have to say.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I'm on the, I'm on the community land trust, which actually is looking at.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, it's, it's, it's still pretty early stages.

[Matt Leming]: We're working with some, with some consultants on forming a community land trust for the city and the McCormick Avenue parcels aren't even on the list of city owned land that we would be looking at to build up any sort of,

[Matt Leming]: Any any sort of affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: So there are parcels of land that the city owns that we would be seriously looking into for that purpose.

[Matt Leming]: But again, these are, I mean, these are too small.

[Matt Leming]: For for that purpose, um, and this clearly has been deliberated specifically at the.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, within the affordable housing trust, and we received an official communication recommending that.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, they'd be sold off for this purpose.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so I would 2nd, the motion to table that, um, I.

[Matt Leming]: I think that Vice President Collins did seem to be having some internet connectivity issues.

[Matt Leming]: So this could potentially be taken up at a later time.

[Matt Leming]: But given that, I would also like to hear what Ms.

[Matt Leming]: McGor thinks, Ms.

[Matt Leming]: McGor has to say as well.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: never mind then.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I thought he made a motion to table.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I understand that this could be outside the purview of the budget.

[Matt Leming]: It could be like tied up in grants and stuff like that.

[Matt Leming]: But Mr. Dinkinson, is there a way to get sort of a year by year number of the amount of money that the city receives from the federal government?

[Matt Leming]: Or are those statistics or trends handy anywhere?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Even, even just a ballpark estimate of previous years.

[Matt Leming]: And this year, if you have it I understand it could be irresponsible to offer that now but any information is appreciated.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: I have the, I believe the shortest submitted recommendation of anybody here.

[Matt Leming]: And my recommendation is also reflected in that of several other Councilors.

[Matt Leming]: It's just to allocate funding for a therapeutic recreation specialist and a office manager for Medford Recreation Department, which follows several meetings that this

[Matt Leming]: body had on the topic, the likely impact of that would be $125,000 a year, although that would likely be determined by the mayor and Kevin Bailey.

[Matt Leming]: I think the only other

[Matt Leming]: thing that the only other priority that I had that was particularly on my mind, but I'm not sure if this would be a budget request per se, so it wasn't included, was ensuring that enough capital earmarks are available to create either a nexus study for the new affordable housing

[Matt Leming]: linkage program or about $150,000 for a study to overhaul the entirety of the capital improvements program.

[Matt Leming]: So all of the linkage buckets that the city has.

[Matt Leming]: Again, I'm not sure if that would be a budget request or if a free cash earmark would go under that, but that's what I have.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I didn't catch it the second time.

[Matt Leming]: Were anything related to the studies for the capital improvements project or the nexus study in the six items?

[Matt Leming]: So it's, sorry, if I may, it's a little bit complicated.

[Matt Leming]: So the McCormick Avenue parcels, my understanding of that, and I'd have to go back through my email to check on the status of it.

[Matt Leming]: I didn't check it fully today.

[Matt Leming]: But the McCormick Avenue one, my understanding is that that would fund the one for the affordable housing bucket.

[Matt Leming]: only, and that would probably be around like $80,000.

[Matt Leming]: But in order to update all of the linkage buckets, the four that we have, as well as the new affordable housing trust, one that would cost around $150,000, which would have to come from free cash, and that wouldn't be under the DPW, that would probably be that would

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, probably be under planning.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I'm also again, not sure if this would be like a line item on the budget because this would be a 1 time thing, but I.

[Matt Leming]: would personally like to see it included on this list.

[Matt Leming]: One, just because it prioritizes that in the mayor's eyes.

[Matt Leming]: And two, because this is something where it's definitely an investment.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, that's $150,000 that once it's

[Matt Leming]: like once the studies are done and linkage fees are updated, that would end up bringing in a lot more money every year from developers, especially once the zoning is all done with, and they just have a lot more, there's like, they have a lot more options for building.

[Matt Leming]: So I do think it's important to get that done.

[Matt Leming]: Um, and I could, you know, I could talk with you a bit about this, but TDM is something that is

[Matt Leming]: something that probably would have to be its own study at a certain point.

[Matt Leming]: I'm really just trying to, you know, push for that as hard as I can during, like, just to be included in the ordinances during the planning, during the planning and permitting committee processes.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, just to kind of, just to kind of

[Matt Leming]: prioritize some things.

[Matt Leming]: I'm really only pushing for those at this point, but I do want to see what comes up with that.

[Matt Leming]: But my understanding is that TDMs previously have been like their own transportation specific studies in other communities.

[Matt Leming]: And the way it was explained to me by the planning department was that they

[Matt Leming]: are really trying, they're really trying to prioritize just the affordable housing nexus study just to get that revenue stream in.

[Matt Leming]: And they know that it's only an $80,000 study in order.

[Matt Leming]: They know that it's only an $80,000 study.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, they're kind of making that lower ask.

[Matt Leming]: But in order to update all of the linkage buckets, including the HT, they said that that would require a different sort of study, which would cost probably around $150,000, and they probably wouldn't like use that.

[Matt Leming]: money immediately because there are some complications with updating the other linkage buckets.

[Matt Leming]: But at this point, I am comfortable just making that ask so that if later in the year, you know, they do think it's beneficial to try to conduct a study to update all the linkage buckets, then they would

[Matt Leming]: they would be able to.

[Matt Leming]: So it is a little bit complicated, but I would, at the very least, like to emphasize the importance of just getting all of those linkage fees updated as soon as possible once the zoning is done.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: So I understand that there are some issues with uploading the agenda to the portal, and that's being resolved.

[Matt Leming]: But we did get the current agenda circulated on March 10th, but I'm noticing, Councilors did, not the public, unfortunately, but I'm noticing that

[Matt Leming]: The copy that Inez is showing has the explanations of what mixed use 1, 2, and 3 are, so I'd appreciate it if you could circulate the presentation to us, although that could just be a more updated copy.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, going back to that, could you, I did screenshot it, but could you zoom out and just show the explanations of mixed use 1, 2, and 3?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so, so yeah, it makes, so it makes use three to be, to be clear that could be up to 12 stories with the right incentives.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Um, and sorry, can you just, can you just show that, show the whole thing, the whole whole page?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I would generally agree with the idea that West Medford and Medford Square do need to be more densified.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think that's actually a word, but yes, densified, you get what I mean.

[Matt Leming]: So maybe upping that to mixed use two or even three.

[Matt Leming]: Out of curiosity, what was the original

[Matt Leming]: idea behind putting the very center of Medford Square at mixed-use 1, but the surrounding areas at 2 and 3, what was the, out of curiosity, what was kind of like the thinking behind that?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, what would the nature of that study be?

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, what kind of study would you would you need to undertake to figure out if you can build higher there?

[Matt Leming]: Is that the same situation with West Medford?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, yeah, I'd appreciate to see the results of those studies.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So a decision that we can make, and this is, sorry, there was a lot of text on those slides, and I'm also just trying to remember from the last time this was discussed.

[Matt Leming]: But one discussion that we can have is whether or not to allow ADUs by right in districts that do not have single family homes, correct?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I would personally favor

[Matt Leming]: having ADUs by right in those districts.

[Matt Leming]: That's just me personally, though.

[Matt Leming]: And it's not a thing to allow a second ADU by right.

[Matt Leming]: You always have to go through the special permitting process, which would be the CDB, the CD board here, correct?

[Matt Leming]: Does it have to be the CD board?

[Matt Leming]: Or could it be some other body?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, it should not be the city council like this should I would vote against this.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: So CD board.

[Matt Leming]: Sounds good.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, the other thing, and this is, I don't know if this was part of anything, but I do remember from the conversations over a year ago that there was some requirement that an ADU couldn't be more than some percentage of the overall property.

[Matt Leming]: Is that still in state law?

[Matt Leming]: It couldn't be bigger than the square footage of, like, 50% of the square footage of the property?

[Matt Leming]: Like I think that was in the old state law and I'm not sure if that continued over.

[Matt Leming]: OK, so that's still in state law, then?

[Matt Leming]: Wait, wait, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: OK, so.

[Matt Leming]: OK, so we can we can choose to make

[Matt Leming]: ADUs larger than with the stay law.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Got it.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, because there's this weird issue that some people run into where you can have a basement ADU if it's a two-story place, but you can't have a basement ADU if it's a one-story house.

[Matt Leming]: I think there are things like that where people were getting into, if I recall.

[Matt Leming]: So just anything to avoid cases like that would be good.

[Matt Leming]: Anyway, yeah, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So sorry, in summary, would like it if we could allow ADUs by right in districts that only have multifamily housing or no single family housing.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: What's progress been like on, or what do you think the ability would be to enforce any short-term rental bans in ADUs?

[Matt Leming]: And do you think that, because I have heard it's been kind of difficult

[Matt Leming]: past, so practically speaking.

[Matt Leming]: So following up, would any ordinances that could potentially help the city with enforcement be outside the scope of zoning?

[Matt Leming]: Like if we wanted to implement some kind of a fine structure like what you just said, would that have to be kind of its own separate thing?

[Matt Leming]: No, I'm just kind of thinking, because a lot of people can just sort of shirk or ignore the laws.

[Matt Leming]: And then once it gets enforced, then maybe after they've already had a short-term rental operating for like five years, they've still made a pretty hefty profit off of doing it.

[Matt Leming]: So what I'm thinking is, is there any possible way to say, to like,

[Matt Leming]: bring down the hammer in cases where people do that to disincentivize the behavior.

[Matt Leming]: So like, well, you've been renting this out for a year, so we're able to levy a larger fine against you because we can see that this has been on Airbnb this whole time.

[Matt Leming]: You must have made this amount of money.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just trying to think of ways to.

[Matt Leming]: I just wanted to briefly mention that even with the previous work on short-term rentals, I still would be interested to see if there were

[Matt Leming]: If there are any possible mechanisms that other communities have included in their zoning towards enforcement, we're just giving the ability of the building commissioner to better enforce that.

[Matt Leming]: So I would still be interested in seeing some of that work.

[Matt Leming]: But otherwise, I did want to hear about the review of upcoming zoning project topics until June.

[Matt Leming]: Well, it's on the agenda.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: This question, would some of these topics can end up sort of blend, some of the citywide topics can sort of end up blending in with each other.

[Matt Leming]: Would TDM and the parking requirements that kind of like, I feel like those are

[Matt Leming]: kind of end up being related.

[Matt Leming]: So would it be... I'd just like to plant the staff and consultants' opinion on potentially merging the two of those, or if they think it would be best to keep them as separate topics.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also just like some, I'd also just like information about when one of the internal planning meetings about TDM is going to take place, whenever those are scheduled out in the next month or so.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you at the President services and public engagement committee, we talked about current one second got quieter.

[Matt Leming]: But we discussed the current draft of the Human Rights Commission updated ordinance and ended up deciding to continue that on to the next meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank my colleague, Councilor Tseng for his work on that.

[Matt Leming]: We then discussed some of the recent listening sessions that Councilors have been holding at the Medford Senior Center, as well as just comparing notes on them and coming up with ways to improve these.

[Matt Leming]: And we worked on the February Medford City Council newsletter, which can now be found on the Medford City Council webpage if you're interested in reading it.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I just like to thank my colleagues for doing this as well as the staff consultants who put so much work into this and especially the residents who are pushing for any kind of new zoning to happen in the area for many years.

[Matt Leming]: This really does present the culmination of a lot of effort in this area.

[Matt Leming]: This is a response to the constant calls that we get about making businesses better in Medford, about welcoming in new businesses, about building up more affordable housing in the city.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm just, I'm

[Matt Leming]: very proud of my colleagues.

[Matt Leming]: I'm very proud of everybody who came together to make this happen.

[Matt Leming]: I'm really excited about the overwhelming wave of support that we've seen in our inboxes and in the community, particularly in the in the last week about this.

[Matt Leming]: This body has been talking about fixing the

[Matt Leming]: many issues that Medford has with our budget with with the affordable housing situation for a very long period of time and zoning is probably the most powerful lever that a local council can do to to change that.

[Matt Leming]: And this is the first time really in a

[Matt Leming]: generation or two that we've seen this body act to make some change happen.

[Matt Leming]: I understand that change is not something that everybody is necessarily

[Matt Leming]: that everybody necessarily likes.

[Matt Leming]: It's not always something that everybody can agree upon, but I think that the community does agree that doing nothing has been the answer for a very long period of time, and it simply hasn't worked.

[Matt Leming]: So, once again, I'd like to thank everybody for all the years of effort and advocacy put into this, as well as all of the work that was done.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Phrase that I've been thinking about a lot throughout the zoning process is think globally, act locally.

[Matt Leming]: Throughout this process, the consultants, the elected officials, city staff have had public meetings.

[Matt Leming]: They have taken feedback from residents.

[Matt Leming]: And when they can't implement that feedback, we've offered fact-based explanations repeatedly of why we may or may not be able to do something.

[Matt Leming]: This entire process was done not only with years worth of feedback from the entire community that was painstakingly collected, this is only the execution phase right now.

[Matt Leming]: It was

[Matt Leming]: point that I'm getting at is that if I did honestly believe that addressing some of the concerns that were brought up tonight, some of the changing concerns that have continued to hear over the past couple of months, then

[Matt Leming]: And I believe that that would get more folks on the side of rezoning, then I would then I would support that.

[Matt Leming]: But I think that if a traffic study were done it would be something else.

[Matt Leming]: And at the end of the day, you know, a lot of folks are just uncomfortable with, with the idea of change, and

[Matt Leming]: Anytime you have any sort of rezoning process that happens.

[Matt Leming]: This is not just a Medford thing, you can see that neighboring communities, you can see that anywhere you go.

[Matt Leming]: And what's interesting.

[Matt Leming]: What's what's always will strange to me is that anytime.

[Matt Leming]: residents talk, they speak about what they don't like about a neighborhood.

[Matt Leming]: They speak about, you know, things that they oppose, but it's rarely ever, what do I want to see happen instead?

[Matt Leming]: It's rarely ever an alternative solution.

[Matt Leming]: And, you know, we're not going to solve any of the problems, any of the many challenges that Medford faces by doing nothing, by more delays.

[Matt Leming]: This has been delayed for decades already.

[Matt Leming]: All right, and that's something that people really need to understand.

[Matt Leming]: This council is the first one that is really trying to do something for the benefit of the city instead of just offering rhetoric.

[Matt Leming]: So, frankly, I think that throughout this process, as was echoed by a lot of folks in the public comment process, we already did quite a bit to water down this proposal from what it was.

[Matt Leming]: Frankly, I think that if we did,

[Matt Leming]: the feasibility studies that many people have been asking, the engineers would say that we could build like 10 stories on Salem Street.

[Matt Leming]: All right, so it's already a fairly modest proposal, all things considered as is.

[Matt Leming]: So all that being said, because I do think it has been watered down, I'm gonna motion to revert the intersection between Salem and Park Street from MX1 back to MX2.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, just to clarify, would voting yes would be voting yes for the Community Development Board's amendment?

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Or would voting yes be supporting moving Park Street and Salem back from MX 1 to 2?

[Matt Leming]: It's just a bit of housekeeping.

[Matt Leming]: I think it's something we discussed in a

[Matt Leming]: governance committee meeting and then sort of forgot about in section 8-4 ineligible measures number 12.

[Matt Leming]: It still says a change in the title of a city agency or multiple member body.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to motion first to change that to a change in the title of a city agency or any body, department, division, office, or school of the Metro Public Schools.

[Matt Leming]: just because City agency does City agency does include multiple member bodies.

[Matt Leming]: So that's that's redundant, but it I don't believe I don't believe it includes the public school system.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah, I can.

[Matt Leming]: I can email that.

[Matt Leming]: Additionally, I just had also tack on to that just a motion to alphabetize the definition section because with the change to new initiative measure that now D alphabetizes the

[Matt Leming]: the definitions, and it's just kind of annoying me.

[Matt Leming]: So we should fix that.

[Matt Leming]: They need to be alphabetized.

[Matt Leming]: Sure, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So clearly everybody's here to watch the adventurous process of editing a newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: I think that's why we're all here today.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng just let us know when you're ready.

[Matt Leming]: Good.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Welcome to a meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting being held today solely on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: We have, Mr. Clerk, I keep forgetting, for Zoom only meetings, there's a roll call necessary.

[Matt Leming]: Zoom only committee meetings.

[Matt Leming]: Please call the roll when you're ready.

[Matt Leming]: Unmute.

[Matt Leming]: think you might need to make Councilor Lazzaro a co-host.

[Matt Leming]: She needs to be made a co-host.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present, four present, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: The meeting is called to order.

[Matt Leming]: We have three items on the agenda today.

[Matt Leming]: A resolution to discuss a modernization of the Human Rights Commission's enabling ordinance, which we'll do first.

[Matt Leming]: It will be followed by a resolution to discuss council listening sessions in which we'll

[Matt Leming]: offer updates, reports of some of the recent listening sessions, particularly at the Senior Center, and then we'll work on publishing the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: So we'll start with the Human Rights Commission's enabling ordinance, and I'll hand it off to Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Seeing none, oh, yep.

[Matt Leming]: That's my job too.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I just.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, are there any comments from councillors?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Any other councillors?

[Matt Leming]: I just like to thank Councilor Tseng as well as our wonderful community advocates for working on this.

[Matt Leming]: Feel free to go over the edits as you please, Councilor.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, one, uh, could he, could he go, could you, uh, present your screen again?

[Matt Leming]: It didn't say human rights problem issues.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so your hand is still raised.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I saw that.

[Matt Leming]: Barry's hand was raised to add a comment.

[Matt Leming]: So we'll move on to public participation.

[Matt Leming]: Barry, you've put your hand up and down once or twice.

[Matt Leming]: Do you still want to speak?

[Matt Leming]: All right, I've asked you done.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Go back to the thing about the legal counsel.

[Matt Leming]: So could you expand on

[Matt Leming]: Did the mayor, when you talked to her, provide any justification on the usual interpretation of that kind of language?

[Matt Leming]: Because I know that when lawyers suggest language, it's often the case that it's been used elsewhere in other contexts.

[Matt Leming]: So does this imply that in certain cases,

[Matt Leming]: HRC can retain its own legal counsel or what was kind of your or does it does it imply that if there's a city solicitor that's readily available, then they wouldn't be allowed to do that.

[Matt Leming]: Can you.

[Matt Leming]: Did those conversations offer any additional context around this writing?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Cotland?

[Matt Leming]: Is there any other members of the public who would like to speak?

[Matt Leming]: just if you would feel free to raise your hand on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Great, we will, David Harris, I'm gonna ask you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Munir Jermanes is next.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to ask you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Um,

[Matt Leming]: I'm also not sure if I was, I don't think I was asking folks to name an address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, I'm sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And Adam, did you get, did you get it for David?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Gotcha.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, very Ingber next can ask you to unmute name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: you, Barry.

[Matt Leming]: Jennifer Yanko.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to ask you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any other members of the public who would like to speak?

[Matt Leming]: Steve Schnapp can ask you to unmute, name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: So with the, I mean, I think this is what we,

[Matt Leming]: Well, this is what I asked about with that particular language that was written there, is that it doesn't really seem clear to me one way or the other, and that could be the intent whether or not the HRC would have access to independent legal counsel.

[Matt Leming]: And it looked like the original language specified that in the case that there wasn't a city solicitor,

[Matt Leming]: I think that must have been one draft of it that I saw in the edits, that they would get access to their own legal counsel, though that still doesn't quite account for the case where you have a city solicitor and you might want to have your own even with that person present.

[Matt Leming]: So I suppose I'm just wondering if there's any

[Matt Leming]: that you would have preferred the one that's currently in there, or do you think it should explicitly say so?

[Matt Leming]: David Harris?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng, do you, did this come up in your conversations with, on the city side?

[Matt Leming]: David, Harris asked you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I can personally see it flying both ways because on

[Matt Leming]: Like you could have one party insisting that that means only the city's legal counsel.

[Matt Leming]: You could have another party insisting that it, it would really just depend on what you're reading is, is it, what you're reading of it is at the time.

[Matt Leming]: But I also do agree that there's not really a need to belabor the point presently.

[Matt Leming]: Jennifer.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And Vanier?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Are there any other anything, anything else that Councilors would like to say, I'm, I'm just trying to think through this, just to.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to go to Barry and then yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So Councilor Tseng did you say that you wanted to get this done.

[Matt Leming]: Next month, or what was your what was your plan in terms of wanting to refer it to regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I'm in favor of striking it, but David Harris.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Good point.

[Matt Leming]: Any other comments from councillors?

[Matt Leming]: Well, I mean, it does sound like there is consensus.

[Matt Leming]: on the vast majority of this document, although I do think that there are some potential issues with that sentence.

[Matt Leming]: They're definitely not as many as the length of time we've spent discussing it would imply.

[Matt Leming]: So we did definitely belabor the point, but I do think that these are relatively minor issues at the end of the day.

[Matt Leming]: With that, do we have any motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I think.

[Matt Leming]: Personally, and Anna or Emily, feel free to raise your hand and jump in with your own suggestions.

[Matt Leming]: OK, Emily, yeah, you speak first.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Anna.

[Matt Leming]: I personally, I personally think that presenting this current language is fine, but I would like to.

[Matt Leming]: Float some of the suggestions that were presented by by members in this meeting to her to just see what.

[Matt Leming]: to see what you think about that.

[Matt Leming]: I do under, yep.

[Matt Leming]: Well, Anna.

[Matt Leming]: Your hands, sorry, it's your hands raised.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I feel like that goes into like what they're talking about, what we're talking about before, like potentially like putting in loopholes.

[Matt Leming]: I'll just get the mayor to say no.

[Matt Leming]: So I would be.

[Matt Leming]: I think I think it's it's.

[Matt Leming]: It's a good idea and there were suggestions to like more strongly imply it But I would I would just kind of try to float by her like some of the different suggestions.

[Matt Leming]: I would personally personally I would be more comfortable With a little bit more clarity here, but I'm also concerned about just the potential for saying no and like more delays and

[Matt Leming]: And so on.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, Matt, you're up.

[Matt Leming]: Could it be phrased a little bit more cleanly, like in the form of reports that are at least annual, like at minimum annual?

[Matt Leming]: It's not a big deal.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just... Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Never mind.

[Matt Leming]: That's fine.

[Matt Leming]: I'm being pedantic at this point.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Anyway, is there anything else that you want to go over in this?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second on the motion?

[Matt Leming]: Second by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: It's a motion to accept the edits and receive in place on file.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, this is a much more, this is more pleasant.

[Matt Leming]: But yes, I am tired from that.

[Matt Leming]: But anyway, yes.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, that's the motion.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Four in the affirmative.

[Matt Leming]: None opposed.

[Matt Leming]: The motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you all for coming out.

[Matt Leming]: We are now going to move on to the senior center listening session reports, which I'm sure that folks would love to hear about.

[Matt Leming]: But no, thank you all.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you all very much for coming out.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm looking forward to pushing this forward at the next meeting.

[Matt Leming]: And thank you all so much for your work on this.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, I just included this item on the agenda because there were previous initiatives to, there were previous requests to actually report back a few things that we heard about from some of the listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: We've had two listening sessions at the Senior Center.

[Matt Leming]: I've attended both of them.

[Matt Leming]: I was accompanied by Councilor Lazzaro the first time, and most recent one by Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Just for a very brief report, they went, I think, I personally think they went well.

[Matt Leming]: There, I mean, of course, there's a little bit of contention, like they're

[Matt Leming]: like there often is at these things, but a lot of it was just like residents just voicing concerns, particularly with the roads.

[Matt Leming]: I think probably half of what we heard about was potholes in the city and parking.

[Matt Leming]: There are general concerns about

[Matt Leming]: the pop-up park and the RFPs at the planning department.

[Matt Leming]: Concerns that that would remove parking spaces.

[Matt Leming]: I think that in both of the listening sessions, we were trying to clarify that the planning office didn't intend to remove any sort of parking, but intended to accept a proposal that would turn it into ground floor parking.

[Matt Leming]: then a lot of discussions about the override and discussions about the override and affordability as well.

[Matt Leming]: And then another thing that happened was, you know, I think that, you know, a couple of residents were just like kind of being, were kind of like, you know,

[Matt Leming]: taking up a lot of the sort of hour that we were there.

[Matt Leming]: And so afterwards, and this especially happened the most recent one, a lot of residents approached us individually and just asked Councilor Callaghan and I about sort of their own pet issues that they were concerned about, but they didn't really feel like asking in front of an audience.

[Matt Leming]: Like one fellow approached me and he asked if he could roll an auto pay in the city.

[Matt Leming]: And

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so so those were that's kind of like my own library report of how that went.

[Matt Leming]: I do think it went well.

[Matt Leming]: I think it's good to connect with residents that don't normally have computer access quite as consistently and just be there and try to explain how things are working in the city.

[Matt Leming]: I did email from the second session I did.

[Matt Leming]: I know Councilor Callahan and I, who I see your hand raised, did report back some of the concerns to the relevant departments in the city, just so they're aware of them.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, no, I feel like it was a good initiative.

[Matt Leming]: There was like 12 to 15 at each.

[Matt Leming]: I think even more at the last one.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, Councilor Callahan, feel free to go.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Calhan.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: My answer, well, first, I think that I just have different standards at this point in terms of angry crowds.

[Matt Leming]: So that's one part of this.

[Matt Leming]: But no, I mean, the reason that I liked it was, I mean, you know, I saw the exact same thing that you all saw.

[Matt Leming]: There was like one person there who had gone to

[Matt Leming]: You know all the Salem Street meetings and was constantly bringing that that the RFPs up.

[Matt Leming]: And then there was another fellow who, you know, was, I never met him before but he was talking about like, you know, potholes and stuff like that.

[Matt Leming]: The reason that the reason that I liked it so much, that was one, there were people that like I'd never seen before that were asking questions, kind of like figuring other things out, even with, you know, like the one or two more angry audience members to it was in a place which is like the lunches at the senior center where the city Councilors are in a place that, you know, they aren't normally necessarily going to.

[Matt Leming]: But like they're very physically like

[Matt Leming]: You know, they're, they're like, very physically present, like, people who don't normally know how to seek us out online can just kind of, like, wander in there and kind of see what's going on.

[Matt Leming]: And so that that's why I liked it.

[Matt Leming]: I think the other listening sessions, I think, were great, but it was, it was an organizational problem, kind of like, trying to.

[Matt Leming]: coordinate with community liaisons and gather everybody up for these sort of one time things.

[Matt Leming]: And I think like showing up to the senior center provides like a regular thing where people figure out that it's happening.

[Matt Leming]: And, you know, you know, I think that there there were some like it was a bit of a you know, the first ones were like, you know, a little bit bumpy, but I thought there were

[Matt Leming]: they're overall productive.

[Matt Leming]: And I think this is the kind of thing where, you know, you keep going there over time and you develop relationships there and it becomes kind of known that you can go to this, like go there at this time and kind of ask your local city councilor about something so that people know like a place to physically find you.

[Matt Leming]: And so that's what I appreciated about it because it's, it's reproducible.

[Matt Leming]: I think things calm down as you kind of like develop relationships with people and you kind of

[Matt Leming]: transition from like, somebody that somebody heard about the abstract to like a physical presence that there and you can get to know one on one.

[Matt Leming]: And that's, that's the component about it that I think that I, that I appreciated so much.

[Matt Leming]: That clarifies.

[Matt Leming]: So I think it's just, I also think it's good that like, we're kind of alternating and different Councilors can go on different ways.

[Matt Leming]: So I won't be able to go to the March one.

[Matt Leming]: But I think that I just have a very different approach from the way that

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro or Callahan will want to do theirs individually.

[Matt Leming]: And I look forward to, you know, hearing about how those different approaches are working or like what individuals think of those different approaches.

[Matt Leming]: That way we can like kind of compare notes and see what everybody else is sort of independently doing.

[Matt Leming]: Cause like, I'm gonna, I'll run mine my own way, but if I hear that Councilor Callahan's is going so much better than mine, I might just start adapting practices from that.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, that's my two cents.

[Matt Leming]: I think it's just kind of different views on the same event.

[Matt Leming]: But anyway, I don't see anybody in the audience.

[Matt Leming]: So to keep things running long, let's go to the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Let's go to the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: So I did send everybody here a copy of it.

[Matt Leming]: I pre formatted everything to save myself the stress of doing of doing that.

[Matt Leming]: So I apologize if moment if the edits are not as clear.

[Matt Leming]: and a Google Doc as they were before.

[Matt Leming]: This is the latest draft that I have.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially what I realized, two things.

[Matt Leming]: First, on the January, we didn't cover the January 28th regular meeting, the last one, so I included that in here.

[Matt Leming]: And there wasn't too much, I think the most substantive things that happened were the McCormick Avenue and the resolution to make

[Matt Leming]: The discussion on property tax bills and the red solution to make council meetings more business friendly, which I threw in there.

[Matt Leming]: I, yes, I included the I included under general business the outcome of yesterday's charter.

[Matt Leming]: the charter draft to a regular meeting, just noting that we voted on a few technical edits as well as a change to the start of charter studies committee's proposed new council composition of eight ward-based and three at-large to four district-based and five at-large Councilors.

[Matt Leming]: So just noting the outcome of that meeting.

[Matt Leming]: And also what we,

[Matt Leming]: just did just discuss an update to the human rights commission ordinance and just kind of threw the sentence in there because we just did that.

[Matt Leming]: So offer an update on this present meeting that we're currently in right at this moment.

[Matt Leming]: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so I'm just coming up with specific wording which I'm doing I'll just I'll just stop sharing and reach and share the actual window that I'm that I'm looking at so you can you can see How the sausage is made Good ol latex Okay, we passed

[Matt Leming]: an $8 million bond for the DPW to repair lit sewer pipes.

[Matt Leming]: This is to help private property owners what?

[Matt Leming]: So this is, so I think like this stuff right here, and I apologize for the lack of effectiveness, is, so this is just the stuff under the governance committee section.

[Matt Leming]: This just kind of shows like what parts we discussed.

[Matt Leming]: I feel like that could just generally be thrown out because it's,

[Matt Leming]: I mean, yeah, we discussed like multiple parts of the charter, but this is like kind of more substantively what we actually changed.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I do feel like like reporting the actual changes that were made.

[Matt Leming]: Anna's noted that her phone battery is about to die.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, we didn't meet on.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, oh yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Wait, hold on, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, because we just did the Committee of the Whole instead.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, yes, right.

[Matt Leming]: Wait, this is under general business.

[Matt Leming]: On March 4th, we loaded some draft of the, that's not under governance, but this is the other governance stuff here.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Is March 4th mentioned here?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: And there was, I had a placekeeper there and given the lack of sleep, I left it in there.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: No worries.

[Matt Leming]: Um, yeah, I, I don't normally edit them beforehand cause it does.

[Matt Leming]: format them beforehand because it does take a lot of time.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: And this time I just wanted to get it over with.

[Matt Leming]: Is there anything else?

[Matt Leming]: Coincidence?

[Matt Leming]: You decide.

[Matt Leming]: I said it.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, I'm going to do the charters on the compensation for elected officials, additionally removed recall provisions, etc, etc.

[Matt Leming]: And set this we

[Matt Leming]: I just, I feel like I cannot, there was so much context on all of this stuff.

[Matt Leming]: actually what I was thinking was to add a disclaimer in future newsletters because there are like the print versions of this and the text versions of this so maybe like something to say like note on the on the web-based version of this we have the underlined words are links to both to YouTube videos agendas and to like live live recordings

[Matt Leming]: online agendas and other relevant items.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so this is, this is what that looks, this is what the, note that the underlying words in this newsletter indicate

[Matt Leming]: Links to online agendas, live recordings, and other relevant resource.

[Matt Leming]: Anna, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: And adjourn?

[Matt Leming]: What?

[Matt Leming]: And adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Just going to do this.

[Matt Leming]: Just going to do this.

[Matt Leming]: He's not ready.

[Matt Leming]: Hold on.

[Matt Leming]: Note that underlined words in this newsletter indicate links to meeting agendas, live recordings, and other relevant resources.

[Matt Leming]: Document to subscribe to.

[Matt Leming]: Not technically.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: We're in the affirmative and one absent.

[Matt Leming]: The newsletter is approved.

[Matt Leming]: Send it to the clerk, Steve, immediately and the meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Apologies, I've been sitting here silently this whole time just listening to the discourse.

[Matt Leming]: So I just did feel the need to put my own thoughts out there.

[Matt Leming]: I've been kind of hesitant to do this.

[Matt Leming]: do this at previous meetings like at the Governance Committee mainly because I'm not a voting member on those and partially because I think that the more the more kind of drama that comes out of this process, I think the less likely it is that people be inclined to vote on it.

[Matt Leming]: So my

[Matt Leming]: A lot of my conversations have taken place with, you know, I've called up individual members of the Charter Study Committee to try to get, have a conversation with them about merits, the ins and out of different issues.

[Matt Leming]: And I've been very grateful in instances where, you know, we could

[Matt Leming]: talk about like the actual issues, like if I vote on a certain part of the charter, if I vote one way or the other, what will be the best outcome in practice?

[Matt Leming]: I can't have that same conversation with everybody, but for the folks who I can have reasonable disagreements with and good conversations about the issues, I'm very grateful.

[Matt Leming]: I was a member of the Medford Charter Review Coalition back in 2022, and I was one of the early members of the Charter Study Committee.

[Matt Leming]: I stepped down after a couple of months when I started my city council campaign.

[Matt Leming]: But the point is that seeing some form of charter review pass is very important to me personally.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that if you

[Matt Leming]: you know, if you don't actually want this to pass, uh, the voters, the key, what you do is you make this as dramatic as possible.

[Matt Leming]: And you, uh, just try to inflame tension so much that you come up with a pretense to go against it.

[Matt Leming]: And that's not something I want to do.

[Matt Leming]: I, I honestly think that the five, four system or the eight, three system, um, would be an improvement over what we have now.

[Matt Leming]: My view is that I,

[Matt Leming]: I think the more important thing than either of those systems is getting the component of the charter whereby it's reviewed once every 10 years, because that way, if we end up passing 5-4, for instance, and we find out that it doesn't work as well as folks thought or 8-3, then the charter's reviewed once every 10 years, you can come back with a recommendation and then you can end up passing something new.

[Matt Leming]: I do think it would be harder to go from 8-3 to 5-4 and cut two councillors off than it would be to expand from 9 to 11.

[Matt Leming]: So that is one part of my calculus.

[Matt Leming]: I also do actually agree that, you know, based on the conversations I've had that the

[Matt Leming]: 8.3 model is the most popular among the folks I've talked with.

[Matt Leming]: But I think that's also mainly because nothing else has really been presented as an option or kind of gone out into the public discourse.

[Matt Leming]: And I've had the experience multiple times where I've had folks who I've worked with in the past, they'll send me an email saying, please go for the 8.3 system, call them up, have a conversation with them.

[Matt Leming]: And then I bring up some of my concerns with it.

[Matt Leming]: And they'll say, OK, no, I see where you're coming from.

[Matt Leming]: It's just the fact that they, I think,

[Matt Leming]: At the end of the day there, they were saying that they really just want to get away from the seven at large system and go with something else.

[Matt Leming]: So the issues, I've been a bit disappointed with the conversations that we've had in these chambers mainly because it's just gotten so politicized like so many other issues that it's kind of impossible to actually talk about the issues themselves.

[Matt Leming]: I've also been,

[Matt Leming]: thinking very strongly about, you know, the potential of offending people that I used to work with burning bridges.

[Matt Leming]: And none of those are really, none of those are really considerations of like the central question of what will actually work out best for the city moving forward, like what practically will work out.

[Matt Leming]: With the 8-3 system, I think it's the most popular, it's the most intuitive.

[Matt Leming]: It's what folks have been emailing me about.

[Matt Leming]: My concern with it has to do mainly with turnout.

[Matt Leming]: So I have an Excel spreadsheet in front of me with the 2021 municipal elections turnout.

[Matt Leming]: There's like a

[Matt Leming]: there's like a 3.1 to one ratio between the turnout of voters in Ward three to the voters in Ward seven.

[Matt Leming]: And that reflects that Senate issue where like a Senator elected in California was elected with 36 million to represent 36 million voters, whereas one in Wyoming, like less than a million.

[Matt Leming]: With the district system, it's mitigated a little bit.

[Matt Leming]: So the Ward,

[Matt Leming]: I believe the, let's see, I have my, so the ratio between the highest average turnout district and the lowest average turnout district will be like 1.9 to one.

[Matt Leming]: So there is that issue there.

[Matt Leming]: So that's mainly what I'm thinking about.

[Matt Leming]: I think that,

[Matt Leming]: There are there were philosophical differences in the approach of the Charter Study Committee versus the approach that Council has in the sense that I think the Charter Study Committee was

[Matt Leming]: looking at what is kind of like theoretically the best model, like almost from a political science perspective, like what is, so, and I think that a lot of what Councilors are thinking about is what will practically happen, like what will be the outcome in effect.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that's where a lot of this discrepancy is coming from between sort of the two approaches.

[Matt Leming]: I think they're both legitimate.

[Matt Leming]: but there does tend to be a little bit of, does tend to be a little bit of not seeing eye to eye there.

[Matt Leming]: So now there's a bit of a rambling speech right there, but I just wanted to, you know, I just wanted to offer my thoughts.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, this, this is an issue that, that means a lot to me.

[Matt Leming]: And it's something that I've thought about a lot over the past two years.

[Matt Leming]: It's something I thought about a lot when campaigning.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, just because I've been keeping my mouth shut most of the time, it doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it a lot.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I mean, I did write a blog post during my campaign, which Mr. Giovino brought up.

[Matt Leming]: So again, a lot of my silence on this

[Matt Leming]: Like, I think most other Councilors, especially those on the governance committee have said a lot more about a lot of different issues.

[Matt Leming]: And I definitely said a lot of comments about Article 8, for instance, during the last governance committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: But otherwise, I've...

[Matt Leming]: tried to stay out of this for the most part.

[Matt Leming]: I was originally the person who suggested the 5-4 model, largely because I thought that keeping it, I didn't support the 7-3, and I thought it was a good compromise between the ward-based system and what Council President Bears proposed.

[Matt Leming]: So the way I viewed it was as a good compromise between the two systems.

[Matt Leming]: Two, I think that the Chair of the Charter Study Committee just now brought up a very good point, which is that the comparison to the Senate is a little more nuanced.

[Matt Leming]: It is a bit of an extreme example, mainly because the wards are

[Matt Leming]: do have approximately equal population, whereas Senate districts are very, very disproportionate.

[Matt Leming]: But the point about voter turnout was something that, come on, just, guys.

[Matt Leming]: So I think the point about voter turnout

[Matt Leming]: does need to be addressed because during, I mean, during my campaign, I was very, I was convinced that voter turnout was primarily due to engagement, self-fulfilling prophecies.

[Matt Leming]: And I do, I think that that's definitely true to an extent.

[Matt Leming]: I think that is a fact that is definitely a factor.

[Matt Leming]: Ward three has higher voter turnout because they feel a lot more connected to the high numbers of Councilors that have been elected out of there.

[Matt Leming]: And that's very true.

[Matt Leming]: And Ward 7, you know, so voter turnout does turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Matt Leming]: The thing is that I don't think that ward representation would actually solve the voter turnout issue, and that's because of the different institutions that are present in the different wards.

[Matt Leming]: Ward 4 has a lot of tough students who, a lot of them don't even register to vote locally.

[Matt Leming]: Ward 7 has a lot of high-rise apartment buildings that,

[Matt Leming]: city council candidates can't actually physically access.

[Matt Leming]: So the voter turnouts for single family homes is, I think it's just inherently biased to have more people who vote in municipal elections.

[Matt Leming]: One thing I will say with the Charter Study Committee is that I still have good relationships with most of the people on there personally.

[Matt Leming]: I worked with them, I respect them, I feel like I can have a conversation with them.

[Matt Leming]: And when I wrote the blog post saying I would support them,

[Matt Leming]: an effort to put some degree of faith in their work to, you know, to raise the status of what they were doing.

[Matt Leming]: Because I, you know, I did work with three of them on the Charter Review Coalition, and I knew that they just wanted to see, that they wanted to see it, some form of charter review pass.

[Matt Leming]: I've, there have been a,

[Matt Leming]: small number of members that have said things that I wish they did not, that I wish they didn't say in public.

[Matt Leming]: One member in particular put out a death threat against a sitting elected official and said that she hates most of council and 95% of our supporters.

[Matt Leming]: And so when she was saying those things, and I felt like I was trying, especially in the beginning of this term, to support the work of the Charter Study Committee, I just felt like that was a betrayal of that trust.

[Matt Leming]: And I just wish that had never happened.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that the vast majority of the work of the people on the committee has been

[Matt Leming]: very admirable.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, once again, I think I've been talking for a bit too long here.

[Matt Leming]: So I apologize for that.

[Matt Leming]: But I've had a lot of thoughts on the way that this whole process has gone down.

[Matt Leming]: And I have largely kept silent because I just think that more drama won't do it any favors.

[Matt Leming]: And I do want to see this pass.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I just wanted to quickly say I actually am kind of sympathetic to the timeline thing and the idea that this is a little bit rushed from City Council's perspective.

[Matt Leming]: I do think that the Charter Study Committee worked for a while on it, but I do wish that we had

[Matt Leming]: more time to flesh things out.

[Matt Leming]: I kind of wish that we'd gotten some more progress updates or that individual articles were presented at a given time throughout the process.

[Matt Leming]: But obviously, that's just not how things went down.

[Matt Leming]: But no, I actually am sympathetic to the idea that I wish council had more time to do this.

[Matt Leming]: I personally would rather see a good chart that we all agree on than necessarily prioritizing the November 2025 ballot.

[Matt Leming]: But I do understand that more people probably want to see it come onto this ballot instead of more delays.

[Matt Leming]: So that's just my two cents.

[Matt Leming]: Well, the signature process is an interesting thing to bring up.

[Matt Leming]: That was what the Medford Charter Review Coalition was trying to do for a very long time.

[Matt Leming]: I was actually looking through my email the other day to try to figure out how many signatures had been collected.

[Matt Leming]: And I think the number was about 2,600.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of them were by a former school committee member, Michael Ruggiero, who was a,

[Matt Leming]: like a machine when it came to doing that.

[Matt Leming]: And I believe the number that would have needed to be required to trigger a home rule petition would have been closer to 5,300.

[Matt Leming]: And especially in the COVID years, I thought it was 15% of 44,000.

[Matt Leming]: Well, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, that's true.

[Matt Leming]: So I think, I think we're shooting for like 7,500.

[Matt Leming]: Um, but strictly speaking, like 44,100, it would be about 5,300, um, would be, uh, would be about the number that you need.

[Matt Leming]: Um, and so that was, that was the effort for, that was the effort for a while.

[Matt Leming]: I think that if that had succeeded, this process would look

[Matt Leming]: very different.

[Matt Leming]: I think it would be better in some ways, although as Chair McDonald told me, we actually did have a successful petition, I think back in like the 70s or 80s, 1978, and it kind of fell apart because there were some dissenting members.

[Matt Leming]: But the point is that at some point in the charter review process, you do need some kind of an elected body.

[Matt Leming]: And under the Home Rule petition process, the nine members that comprise that themselves are elected.

[Matt Leming]: And that's why

[Matt Leming]: you can end up getting much more unique processes, like much more unique charters that are home rule charters.

[Matt Leming]: I believe that's how, I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that's how Cambridge got ranked choice voting.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, that was my impression.

[Matt Leming]: And again, like I'm,

[Matt Leming]: I've been very cognizant about that blog post and the context at the time when I wrote it, that was brought up.

[Matt Leming]: And a lot of me, like a lot of the reason that, again, I haven't been too, too,

[Matt Leming]: vocal about a lot of this stuff is because I do think that there were some issues with the way that the Charter Study Committee happened.

[Matt Leming]: And I don't think that they were actually the fault of most members of the committee.

[Matt Leming]: I think that I don't want to...

[Matt Leming]: One thing I think is that the charter study committee really should have been confirmed by a vote of the city council and I can understand the reason that it wasn't done at the time.

[Matt Leming]: I think that with three members who didn't want charter review to happen like the mayor just wanted to simplify the process at the time.

[Matt Leming]: and create a charter study committee that she just appointed.

[Matt Leming]: But I don't think that it's really done without any council involvement in pretty much any other context.

[Matt Leming]: And again, that's not the fault of the people on, that was the decision by the mayor, but I do think that this process would be going a lot more smoothly if there were integration from

[Matt Leming]: the body that would eventually be voting on that charter much earlier in the process.

[Matt Leming]: And that's why in the current draft of the charter, it is written that the City Council confirms the Charter Study Committee when it's when it's re-reviewed.

[Matt Leming]: So like every every 10 years.

[Matt Leming]: So again, I

[Matt Leming]: I do have a lot of thoughts on this.

[Matt Leming]: I thank the members of the Charter Study Committee that did try to address the concerns that I brought up.

[Matt Leming]: I think that that is reflective of what an expert body should try to do.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think that it should be

[Matt Leming]: trying to, you know, lobby or grandstand or, or anything like that to get their way.

[Matt Leming]: I think that if you're, if you're an expert body, you need to address the specific concerns that are being brought up by a body like this one, and have a calm conversation about that.

[Matt Leming]: And I do appreciate it when that happened.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, anyway, I'm sorry, I've

[Matt Leming]: been quite long winded tonight.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that we've been talking about this for far too long.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank everybody for their work on this.

[Matt Leming]: And I'd like to thank all the folks on Zoom, Charter Study Committee for all of their work and everybody for listening to this very long Committee of the Whole meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, this is a bit of a curveball point, but it's something that came up between the last governance committee meeting on Article 8 and now, and I figured we're in a committee the whole meeting about this, so I might as well bring it up, float it around as an idea.

[Matt Leming]: A resident brought up the proposal to me that the free petition in section, I believe, or Article 8, Section 1, should not just be limited to registered voters, since there are also potentially non-voters.

[Matt Leming]: It's just something that I thought seemed like a good idea when it was brought up.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: I can't hear.

[Matt Leming]: But yes.

[Matt Leming]: Got a bit of a cold, which is why I'm not there in person.

[Matt Leming]: And I hope that the audio in the chambers doesn't make me completely beyond comprehension.

[Matt Leming]: I understand it.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: So looking through these use tables and the proposed maps,

[Matt Leming]: What ADUs were allowed in accessory dwelling units was a little bit unclear to me.

[Matt Leming]: Are ADUs going to be discussed later?

[Matt Leming]: on and is there sort of like differences in where ADUs are allowed for each one of these different types of residential uses?

[Matt Leming]: Sort of, and is that kind of like its own separate table?

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I was just like looking through, I was trying to get some clarity on the ADUs situation and I wasn't really finding it.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much for the for the clarification.

[Matt Leming]: Um.

[Matt Leming]: I was I was seeing 80 you mentioned on some of the proposed residential zoning maps, like single unit dwelling plus 80 you under.

[Matt Leming]: 1, 2, 1, 2, and 3.

[Matt Leming]: And it was unclear to me if ADUs, from looking at that, if ADUs were allowed on two or three unit dwellings.

[Matt Leming]: But it sounds like those are still all on the table and will be discussed next week.

[Matt Leming]: So if that's going to be a topic of later discussion, I'm happy to just move on.

[Matt Leming]: So in NR1, is it only single-unit dwellings that can have ADUs?

[Matt Leming]: Or is a two-unit dwelling allowed to have an additional ADU as well?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, all right, that clarifies it.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, thank you very much.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, it does.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, from what they're explaining, if

[Matt Leming]: If a single unit dwelling is allowed in a given district, then any principal unit in that district also has to be able to have an ADU by right.

[Matt Leming]: I think that's what you're saying.

[Matt Leming]: But if it's in like an urban residential, which doesn't allow single family homes, then you're not necessarily required to allow ADUs.

[Matt Leming]: whether or not you get a second ADU would be up to the Community Development Board in any case.

[Matt Leming]: Is that an accurate summary?

[Matt Leming]: And is it, just for one further clarification,

[Matt Leming]: If you're allowed one ADU, like if the zoning says you're allowed one ADU, is there any place in the zoning where you can say, no, you're not allowed a second ADU, even with a special permit?

[Matt Leming]: Or if you allow one ADU, do you have to allow for the possibility of a second ADU?

[Matt Leming]: Is the permit granting body always the Community Development Board or can it be some other body within the city?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, could that be like the staff level?

[Matt Leming]: Apologies for the extended questioning.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to echo the point that a lot of the fundamental points that

[Matt Leming]: Council President Bears was just saying, except in more fundamental terms, which is that a lot of this is about trade-offs.

[Matt Leming]: You're not ever going to have a situation where you have a neighborhood consisting of a bunch of beautiful single-family homes that your nephew can afford.

[Matt Leming]: Unless your nephew is very rich.

[Matt Leming]: That's not that was the Situation in an economy from a few generations ago.

[Matt Leming]: It's not the case today.

[Matt Leming]: So you If you want to if you want to talk if you want to

[Matt Leming]: talk about issues with density, that's a conversation that can be had.

[Matt Leming]: If you want to talk about issues with affordability, that's a conversation that can be had.

[Matt Leming]: But if you're going to come up and talk about how you don't want density, but you also don't want your kids or grandkids to be pushed out of the community because they can't afford it, those are contradictory things because

[Matt Leming]: because of just basic supply and demand.

[Matt Leming]: So this is...

[Matt Leming]: not going to be a case where everybody can have everything they want.

[Matt Leming]: But the reason that rezoning is happening is because enough of the community over time came together and realized that keeping things at the status quo would be a worse state of affairs than changing them.

[Matt Leming]: So we are trying to change them into something that would be better.

[Matt Leming]: And as people have been saying, not everybody is going to agree on that.

[Matt Leming]: But I personally do want to do this to prioritize the affordability and supply issues that have been facing both this community and frankly, the rest of the nation for a long time.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sure if

[Matt Leming]: Any of my further colleagues would also want to speak further if there's any more public comment, but I'm not seeing any, so I'd just like to follow that up with a motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: I'll second that.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think she's on anymore.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Chair Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: I understand that I'm not a voting member of this committee, so I do appreciate being given the opportunity to speak.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also like to apologize to folks, because I'm not there in person.

[Matt Leming]: I'm a bit under the weather now.

[Matt Leming]: don't want to infect anybody with whatever cold I have.

[Matt Leming]: But so I just like to say first that to Tanya's point that, and I understand Patricia was present for a few of these, but a lot of the conversations about

[Matt Leming]: where this could be housed were had behind closed doors.

[Matt Leming]: So I think the first idea was the library, which did lead to the meeting with the folks at the library thinking that we could, like thinking we could request to have them budget for more positions there.

[Matt Leming]: Then they recommended to look into Francis's office.

[Matt Leming]: And I believe there was some conversation between the mayor

[Matt Leming]: Lisa Crowley, I believe, and Francis about where something about the best place something like this could be housed.

[Matt Leming]: And ultimately, I did speak to Lisa about this and she did recommend and she recommended she thought that the position in Medford rec made the most sense, which Kevin Bailey did seem to.

[Matt Leming]: did did seem to concur with like just in terms of what was being talked about at the time that just kind of seemed kind of seemed like it made the most sense so a lot of the Reason for choosing that is like I'm not necessarily married to the idea of this position being in Medford rec but it was the idea that at some point you do have to make a choice and that there's going to be Different benefits and drawbacks to housing this position in any particular place

[Matt Leming]: So if somebody does want to have those conversations with city staff again, and they come to a different conclusion that it's best housed in Francis's office, then that could be a better pressure point to have.

[Matt Leming]: But the conversations I had did seem to indicate that adding

[Matt Leming]: a that adding one or two positions to Kevin's office would be sort of the most conducive to what they're trying to do.

[Matt Leming]: I

[Matt Leming]: I think that I can definitely understand where the caution of some of the parents are coming from because, you know, obviously when you've been doing advocacy for as long as y'all have and you've been burned by like, you know, previous Councilors and previous city staff and like I could understand the skepticism.

[Matt Leming]: But I do think that the asks that we have for starting this do need to be clear.

[Matt Leming]: And this is also something where I do defer to Councilor Scarpelli's expertise, because I mean, this is something where he is

[Matt Leming]: uh a professional in this area like this is what he does for his day job like he does youth programming and he seems to be supportive of the idea of putting another position uh under medford rec to aid this um

[Matt Leming]: As Councilor Collins was saying, this doesn't necessarily have to be where something like this ends.

[Matt Leming]: So it could just be imagined at the beginning.

[Matt Leming]: And when we're beginning something, we're not necessarily going to solve every single problem or address every single need at one time.

[Matt Leming]: But I do think that this is a good place to put it.

[Matt Leming]: But obviously, I'd like to have more

[Matt Leming]: back and forth.

[Matt Leming]: I don't I welcome more back and forth on this.

[Matt Leming]: Can you turn the mic on?

[Matt Leming]: Are we just doing 8.1 or Section 8 as a?

[Matt Leming]: Oh, just 8.1.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So just for the folks watching, I already did publish a blog post about Section 8 on my website.

[Matt Leming]: So hopefully, none of the recommendations I'm going to make on this tonight come as a surprise.

[Matt Leming]: If you're interested in reading about it more, it's on my website, mattLeming.com.

[Matt Leming]: So with 8-1, my main issue with it is that I don't

[Matt Leming]: really see a benefit to keeping it over public participation that's already in the city council agendas.

[Matt Leming]: So what this does is it lets anybody who gets a petition that is signed by 25 voters to put essentially anything they want on a city council agenda or school committee agenda.

[Matt Leming]: And then folks are free to

[Matt Leming]: basically submit as many of those as I want.

[Matt Leming]: Either body has to hold a hearing on it.

[Matt Leming]: And then, yeah, but I mean, the thing that gets me about this is that

[Matt Leming]: people are already allowed at city council meetings to show up and say anything that they like people have done that before to speak about different issues, and they're still free to do that in the, in the future so

[Matt Leming]: My recommend so my recommendation.

[Matt Leming]: My first recommendation is just to strike the whole thing I do see I see it as something that could easily be abused, particularly because the signature count is so the threshold to get something on an agenda is so low.

[Matt Leming]: I did communicate with one member of the charter study committee about this and there, I think the justification for this was that previous in previous years advocates had such a hard time getting elected officials to respond to them.

[Matt Leming]: And so they just want a mechanism to sort of get elected officials to listen and respond, I think.

[Matt Leming]: In some of these, if there's a hearing on the agenda, I don't think that elected officials necessarily are put in a position where they have to respond to something.

[Matt Leming]: There is a mechanism for doing so in section 8-2.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, my personal view of this, and I can't make a motion because I'm not on this subcommittee, but if my colleagues

[Matt Leming]: my colleagues feel similarly, then I would recommend this be struck, or if not, then at least the threshold of 25 signatures be raised.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: My main thing with this is I don't see the material benefit of having this, given that we already have public participation, what I've seen happen in those public participations, where they often do take the form of a discussion regardless.

[Matt Leming]: One thing that's on my mind with this and the back and forth about the potential legal ramifications

[Matt Leming]: really do a whole lot to enforce my confidence in this measure.

[Matt Leming]: But one thing that I dislike is just the idea that having a free petition in their section in there could make it unclear to residents that they're perfectly free to come to a city council meeting anyway without a free petition and just say what they like.

[Matt Leming]: So there's that.

[Matt Leming]: I do see a way that, especially with the 25 signatures, I do see plenty of opportunity to abuse this.

[Matt Leming]: And I think from what I've heard, this whole subcommittee is generally in favor of at least raising that threshold.

[Matt Leming]: Just just a general comment just a little bit more broadly than this like I do notice that, you know, when making different arguments for and against different parts that go into this charter.

[Matt Leming]: People have like.

[Matt Leming]: I think people have been pretty selective about when they use public support for these different things in their favor and when they just want to ignore public support in favor of their own opinions or experiences.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, you know, I've heard folks from the Charter Study Committee say that they really want a certain part of the charter to pass or be changed because public feedback or comment supports that.

[Matt Leming]: But then there's other parts where

[Matt Leming]: If opinions happen to disagree with the public feedback that they've gotten, then you try to discount that.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that if we're going to have this argument, sorry, have these debates, then we should at least be consistent with how we treat survey data, for instance.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: And otherwise, I think that

[Matt Leming]: This particular section, again, I just don't see a whole lot of material benefit on it.

[Matt Leming]: I'm still open to having that be explained to me.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, no, that's my take on it.

[Matt Leming]: Well, so I did have questions I was hoping the Collins Center could address as to the relationship between this and 8-3, if that's acceptable.

[Matt Leming]: So I went over these two and thought about them in pretty big detail with

[Matt Leming]: So my understanding of both of these is that basically for 8-2, a citizen collects 250 signatures, and there's a committee that's formed, but I'm gonna mainly focus on the signature counts.

[Matt Leming]: Then they then collect signatures from 5% of voters, which for Medford would be about 2,200.

[Matt Leming]: My understanding is that that's registered voters, which would be the 44,000 number, correct?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: And then that forces the city council or school committee to vote on that particular issue.

[Matt Leming]: And if they vote no or they do something in lieu, then those citizens have an additional two months to collect an additional 5%, so 4,400 total.

[Matt Leming]: And then that initiative gets voted on the ballot.

[Matt Leming]: Is that inaccurate?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: And so with 8-3, it's a bit more stringent.

[Matt Leming]: It basically says if the city or council or school committee vote on something and a group of citizens disagree with it, they basically have three weeks to collect signatures from 12% of voters, which is about 5,300.

[Matt Leming]: which would temporarily stop that measure and then put it up for a special election.

[Matt Leming]: So I guess the only thing I, the only kind of twist here was I understand that the advantage of 8-3 would be that it stops the, it stops the measure temporarily to wait for the special election.

[Matt Leming]: But other than that, is there sort of like any substantive difference between an initiative and a referendum?

[Matt Leming]: So could somebody effectively use an initiative to accomplish what they would have done in 8-3 regardless, just with the lower signature count and more time to get those signatures?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: But okay, but what I'm saying is for an initiative measure, if the council or school committee does something, can the citizens just have an initiative measure to undo that?

[Matt Leming]: Or is that not allowed for some reason with the initiative rules?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so I guess what I guess, so I do understand the advantage here of having 8-3 be able to temporarily stop that.

[Matt Leming]: But I also see it as like three weeks to collect 5,300 signatures just seems like kind of an impossible standard for somebody.

[Matt Leming]: And it just seems a lot more likely to me that citizens that oppose a particular motion would just go with the 8-2 route.

[Matt Leming]: Or is there, I just want to sort of understand the logic, because I've kind of been thinking about these different situations.

[Matt Leming]: And I just don't understand why somebody would spend three weeks collecting 12% of signatures when they also have the option to basically collect 10% of signatures in, what is it, three, five months.

[Matt Leming]: OK, so the referendum never doesn't actually get placed on the ballot.

[Matt Leming]: OK, so there is no special election under 8-3.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just trying to understand why somebody would prefer a referendum, which gives them less time to collect more signatures when they could just go for an initiative.

[Matt Leming]: Oh.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Well, no.

[Matt Leming]: So I do understand that that is one

[Matt Leming]: The only advantage that I can see is the stopping it under the referendum so they get three so they do get three weeks to stop it, it just seems like that's a very.

[Matt Leming]: I just don't just when it comes to collecting 5300 signatures I just don't see why any group of citizens would prefer to.

[Matt Leming]: to go for the much higher standard instead of just going for the 10%, which they could just collect anyway.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that's the only advantage I can see.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I was a bit confused at the sudden promotion.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, I mean, I was actually just genuinely curious on the logic behind the two of those.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I think what you, to me what you did say about the justification for the timeframes and what Chairman McDonnell just said also do make sense.

[Matt Leming]: Are we not talking about recalls?

[Matt Leming]: Well, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So we brought up the percentages and keeping them all at 15%.

[Matt Leming]: And so with recalls, we're going to get into this conversation, because these are related.

[Matt Leming]: I do have a couple of concerns.

[Matt Leming]: One is the two-year terms.

[Matt Leming]: issue.

[Matt Leming]: So my reading of the Charter Study Committee's final report was that the recalls did seem to be targeted at the mayor having a four-year term.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, that's what was written there.

[Matt Leming]: Like they said, we do need recalls because we're proposing to extend it.

[Matt Leming]: But they apply to all elected officials.

[Matt Leming]: And having the

[Matt Leming]: having a recall on a two-year term, and I've received this feedback, it's actually in the, the Charter Study Committee collected like four comments about recalls, and three of them disfavored it.

[Matt Leming]: One of them just seemed to think it was only for, seemed to only favor for the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: But like one thing that we always hear is that, is that like basically the recall period for a two-year term is just the next election.

[Matt Leming]: So that is one criticism of that that I always hear.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing with the percentages in reference to a recall is for the proposed ward, district, et cetera positions, the standard seems to be very different for at-large positions versus ward positions.

[Matt Leming]: So 20%

[Matt Leming]: Right now, in this current draft, it says 20% of voters.

[Matt Leming]: You have 40 days to collect that.

[Matt Leming]: That's about 8,800 signatures for at-large Councilors, school committee members, and the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: That's about 1,000 for award Councilor.

[Matt Leming]: Or if we go with districts, it's about 2,200.

[Matt Leming]: So the standards for those just seem to be

[Matt Leming]: very different, and it seems that certain positions could be more subject to the, let's say it like, for lack of a better term, the threat of a recall, whereas others, it's just much harder to mobilize that number of people in that period of time.

[Matt Leming]: The other concern that I also have is just with 8-7, which says that the city council can just put a recall, like my reading of it anyways, that the city council can just put a recall on the ballot, which

[Matt Leming]: for any of these positions, which is another thing that makes me a little bit iffy about that, because that just seems like a lot of power for this body.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so 8-7 does not imply that the City Council can just do that, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, because this is another thing that I communicated.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so so that so that so that's that's a misconception on my part under this the City Council does not have that authority.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for thank you for clarifying that.

[Matt Leming]: Regardless, it did seem like a lot of the recall was to prevent a situation like the one in Fall River from happening.

[Matt Leming]: So that, I think, was the most egregious instance of the need for a recall and a constitutional crisis that happened there.

[Matt Leming]: But it also seems like this draft of the charter does kind of solve that, because it automatically throws out any elected official who is convicted of a felony.

[Matt Leming]: So that does seem like some of those extreme cases are addressed by that.

[Matt Leming]: area.

[Matt Leming]: So those are those are my kind of so okay.

[Matt Leming]: So those are my thoughts on the recall.

[Matt Leming]: And if my reading of 87 was incorrect, then I apologize.

[Matt Leming]: I'll update whatever it before on that.

[Matt Leming]: But but yeah, so that's just to put it out there for my colleagues.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: No, just want to reiterate the other point of recalls that I disfavor, but maybe we just want to emphasize it in this case.

[Matt Leming]: And I don't know how this is played out in other municipalities.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that the at-large positions have a much, much higher

[Matt Leming]: amount of effort required to initiate that recall than award Councilor, and everybody gets equal votes on this body.

[Matt Leming]: So in a situation where it takes 1 4th or 1 8th of the signatures to get one elected official on the ballot versus another, that's something where, like, have you seen that dynamic affect any other municipalities or can you comment on it?

[Matt Leming]: But for like a ward position, that just makes them more?

[Matt Leming]: Well, yeah, but that does make them, I mean, doesn't that, in effect, make them more vulnerable to potential threats of a recall?

[Matt Leming]: Well, it's a smaller pool, but the amount of manpower required to get those signatures is.

[Matt Leming]: Is there a lot for at-large Councilors in comparison?

[Matt Leming]: Why is that?

[Matt Leming]: I'm just curious, just actually.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing the other thing on my mind with like, and this only applies to out large positions really and like the mathematics of a recall is that for like let's like hypothetically let's say we did like a recall on like a member of this body, the actual threshold of votes to be able to get onto this body seems like for a lot of positions, it would be.

[Matt Leming]: It's a lower threshold to get on than it would be to keep your seat.

[Matt Leming]: So I received the least votes to get elected to city council out of anybody on this body.

[Matt Leming]: Actually, I think I believe four people received less than half the ballots cast.

[Matt Leming]: But in order to retain your seat in a recall, you need more than half the votes.

[Matt Leming]: So that's another thing that makes me iffy about this is that it's a different standard for keeping your seat in a recall versus actually getting on in the first place.

[Matt Leming]: And I understand that's a hypothetical, but just from a mathematical standpoint, that's the other thing making me iffy about applying recalls.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: No, that's all I got.

[Matt Leming]: That's all I got.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that was, so in another piece of the Charter Study Committee's review, there was, I believe it was in North Brookline, where two select men put on a, or like, I guess, put on a pride parade, and then people started collecting signatures for that recall to get them voted off because they put on a pride parade.

[Matt Leming]: I believe that was part of the Charter Study Committee's research.

[Matt Leming]: And that never even made it onto the ballot, but it made the news.

[Matt Leming]: which is kind of another thing that, like another component of this.

[Matt Leming]: So City City agency is defined under one seven.

[Matt Leming]: Um, my understanding it says any multiple member body, any department, division or office of the city of Medford.

[Matt Leming]: So my understanding is that would

[Matt Leming]: cover it?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So just some general requests for the consultants and city staff either to clarify what's currently

[Matt Leming]: in the zoning or what some of the options could be moving forward.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm currently working in a city group that is investigating the possibility of starting up a community land trust and we were looking at a couple of different potential city-owned parcels around the city and some of them were

[Matt Leming]: some of them were constrained by current zoning.

[Matt Leming]: So even if we were to decide to put a community land trust in some of these areas, it would be very little community owned affordable housing that could actually be built.

[Matt Leming]: So I would like to know just for a future meeting or

[Matt Leming]: what are the options for even an email?

[Matt Leming]: What some options for something like that would be like, um, what are the cities?

[Matt Leming]: Uh, there's a city.

[Matt Leming]: What are the cities are currently currently offer in terms of an inclusionary overlay?

[Matt Leming]: Um and is there a possibility of putting

[Matt Leming]: is infill zoning going to be a part of this?

[Matt Leming]: That's another thing that I would like to see just kind of mentioned or explored.

[Matt Leming]: I've also been pushing a lot for a transportation demand management program because, which I understand we're going to discuss in April, but Everett has implemented that very successfully, and I would

[Matt Leming]: like to see if some of the consultants would be able to reach out to some of the planners within Everett to understand some of the details of how they've implemented that and whether it's only applied to urban areas or whether something like that usually goes into residential areas.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially just a little bit more information on some of these

[Matt Leming]: not specifically the zoning maps, but some of the rules that could apply to residential areas.

[Matt Leming]: So, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So not to go down, not to explore various steps of the rabbit hole too much, but just to remind the planners and consultants, some of the folks at Housing Medford and I did work on a draft of an ADU ordinance a couple of months ago, which we

[Matt Leming]: discussed pretty extensively.

[Matt Leming]: So I just want to make sure that that draft is on your radar.

[Matt Leming]: And if it's sort of buried in layers of emails, then I can resend that to you.

[Matt Leming]: Um, as well.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I understand that some parts of it might have changed because the some of the recent like state laws been updated since then.

[Matt Leming]: So it's possible that, um, that that version of the ordinance parts of that version of the ordinance could be irrelevant.

[Matt Leming]: But a lot of the work on rethinking 80 years has been done by local housing advocates.

[Matt Leming]: Um, do y'all currently have that drafted?

[Matt Leming]: like sitting around somewhere.

[Matt Leming]: I know that Danielle, we had a meeting about that.

[Matt Leming]: I'd explored the topic specifically.

[Matt Leming]: Parts of it were, it was like,

[Matt Leming]: the owner occupancy requirement I think was the was kind of the biggest like area of disagreement.

[Matt Leming]: There were sort of good points on both sides about that and there is also like you know converting whether just like details of like converting a garage to an ADU versus like an attached ADU things like that but a lot of it should be in the draft of the the draft ordinance that we went over.

[Matt Leming]: Although I do understand that it was

[Matt Leming]: many moons ago at this point that we last discussed that.

[Matt Leming]: But it is coming up on the timeline to get to that part of the discussion.

[Matt Leming]: So I'll just re-share the documents, because I'm actually looking at a document in my Google Drive which has

[Matt Leming]: a lot of edits from the both of us from almost a year ago.

[Matt Leming]: So that probably is a good refresher, but it doesn't have to be re like we don't have to go and down the rabbit hole too much during the meeting.

[Matt Leming]: But thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Hello, thank you for the comment.

[Matt Leming]: So part of the very small comment that I made earlier, which I requested the consultants to look into, were different provisions to essentially incentivize or allow different forms of affordable housing in, in,

[Matt Leming]: residential areas.

[Matt Leming]: And so that's what I'm hoping to hear about at the next meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Two points about affordable housing, which is that generally the more housing that they're

[Matt Leming]: that there is in a given area, the more affordable it becomes.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, usually when they're making like an apartment building or construction, developers are strongly incentivized to make a certain percentage of the units there be affordable, which normally means that the income can't

[Matt Leming]: go above 80% area and area median income if you're going to live there.

[Matt Leming]: We can't just make it so that you have to have 100% affordable units for developers otherwise nobody would try to develop there and they wouldn't be able to

[Matt Leming]: make a profit.

[Matt Leming]: And that's just that's the reality.

[Matt Leming]: So when mandating affordable housing, there are parts of that under the zoning, which we'll get to later, which do which strongly

[Matt Leming]: incentivize that.

[Matt Leming]: So the TDM program that I've been pushing to for, um, in other communities, those actually do contain strong incentives for affordable units.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I have to look at the details of the green score.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sure if that's, if that's a part of that, but it, it could be, um, yeah, the just, I'm just kind of thinking, um,

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so, oh yeah, and so there are other instances in Medford where we do have 100% affordable units like in Wachling Court, but the thing about that is that it's usually a bunch of layered government grants to actually be able to build that.

[Matt Leming]: That's kind of something that goes outside of zoning itself.

[Matt Leming]: So the point is when making affordable housing, it's not like something where we can

[Matt Leming]: wave of magic wand to make it happen, but in creating this new zoning, there are very strong incentives that we can do to kind of make it so that when developers are making their spreadsheets, it would be the most profitable option for them to create a percentage of affordable units.

[Matt Leming]: And again, in general,

[Matt Leming]: the more units that you end up creating, the more new building that there is, the more affordable a community becomes in general.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you very much.

[Matt Leming]: I think that what you bring up is a wonderful point that is being experienced by many people in our generation.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, a lot of the reason we're doing this in the first place is to incentivize affordable housing in the city so to hear my colleagues say that this won't do anything to help affordable housing is wrong.

[Matt Leming]: I mean it's, it's just plain wrong I'm sure he's going to come up with a retort for that but we talked about.

[Matt Leming]: like we're talking about building more, we're talking about mandating a certain percentage of affordable units.

[Matt Leming]: That's all like, that's a lot of what I, that's a lot of what I campaigned on.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, my colleague yesterday was basically saying that when residents were coming up to him and asking him about zoning, like he couldn't explain it to them.

[Matt Leming]: And now he's coming here and saying that,

[Matt Leming]: Now he's coming here and saying that he can say definitively that it's not gonna help affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: No, I mean, it's politically convenient to demonize this whole zoning process.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know why, but like that is a huge reason behind doing this in the first place is to help out with Medford's affordability problem.

[Matt Leming]: So that's wrong.

[Matt Leming]: Like, I'm sorry.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know why you'd say that.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, most of this Council likes to engage in

[Matt Leming]: productive projects and facts, most of us.

[Matt Leming]: But, you know, these issues do become politicized and that's inevitable.

[Matt Leming]: One thing I would like to point out, because when I answered the question initially, I tried to focus on

[Matt Leming]: what the zoning is doing to help out with this.

[Matt Leming]: But the fact is that for a long period of time, this city council, not this current term, but this body in general didn't really care too much about affordable housing or just never really that high on anybody's to-do list.

[Matt Leming]: One of the projects outside of zoning that we've been engaging in is the

[Matt Leming]: implementing the Affordable Housing Trust, which is basically it's just a pile of money that the city can build up and then put towards affordable housing projects.

[Matt Leming]: I believe it was back in 1989 or so that cities were allowed to make them, and Somerville created their Affordable Housing Trust way back when.

[Matt Leming]: Medford, when it was initiating its linkage fee program, it could have created an Affordable Housing Trust,

[Matt Leming]: but it never did.

[Matt Leming]: It created trusts for water and sewers, parks.

[Matt Leming]: It created trust for the parks, never created an affordable housing trust until 2023.

[Matt Leming]: So in creating a lot of the infrastructure, the instruments of municipal governments that so many other communities took for granted when it comes to supporting affordable housing, Medford

[Matt Leming]: is really behind the curve when it comes out.

[Matt Leming]: We have a lot of catching up to do.

[Matt Leming]: And the city council, part of the reason that we've been so productive in so many different ways is because we have been busy implementing a lot of these things that so many other communities take for granted.

[Matt Leming]: One of those is the affordable housing trust one of those is trying to fund a nexus study to update our affordable housing linkage fees that we could actually put some money towards affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: And I hope that with all of our efforts, including the zoning including everything else that we're able to put a dent.

[Matt Leming]: in this problem.

[Matt Leming]: So, I mean, my colleague said, there's a lot of other factors that play into this.

[Matt Leming]: This is an issue that goes into the federal government.

[Matt Leming]: This is an issue that you can blame the federal government on, the state government.

[Matt Leming]: And yes, it is an issue that gets politicized.

[Matt Leming]: Zoning is gonna get politicized.

[Matt Leming]: It already has been in these chambers.

[Matt Leming]: But even so, we are going to push forward because

[Matt Leming]: I knocked on about 8,000 doors to get elected.

[Matt Leming]: And the thing that I kept hearing from the most people from the residents of Medford was, why hasn't anything changed significantly in like the last 50 years?

[Matt Leming]: And zoning is a really big part of that.

[Matt Leming]: So, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you all for listening and apologies for making this meeting go on for longer than it needed to.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: We met to draft a newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much to Councilor Lazzaro for doing that.

[Matt Leming]: And we also

[Matt Leming]: to discuss some preliminary questions regarding the open data policy and sent to the mayor and chief of staff a number of questions to send out to department heads to clarify what sort of internal data department heads have.

[Matt Leming]: I would move to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I'd like to thank my colleague for putting this forward.

[Matt Leming]: So to offer a little bit more insight into the background of this.

[Matt Leming]: So a lot of the parents who have been advocating for these programs have been doing so for years and years, and they haven't, I think at this point, a lot of them have just been advocating so long, they feel like they're talking to a brick wall.

[Matt Leming]: So part of the,

[Matt Leming]: purpose of this is to just make sure that everybody that the parents, Council, the city and Medford recreation are on the same page in terms of vision for what these programs look like and they're, it's, it's,

[Matt Leming]: a lot of details that like, well, I guess seem like details to the folks, to some folks, but a huge deal to the parents, like whether or not the programs are going to be designed for just kids or kids and teens, whether they're going to be sports based, what times are going to be.

[Matt Leming]: So I think the parents would just like some clarity with Medford recreation on what, on what that would look like.

[Matt Leming]: And it would be,

[Matt Leming]: productive to get these discussions on the public record.

[Matt Leming]: I also am excited to hear that my colleague is working with neighboring communities and implementing and starting up these sorts of after school programs.

[Matt Leming]: I think that's a wonderful initiative.

[Matt Leming]: Ready?

[Matt Leming]: We'll now have a meeting of the Medford City Council Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: One absent.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is in order.

[Matt Leming]: First thing we're going to do is work on and approve, potentially approve the monthly, the, sorry, monthly newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Just gonna really quickly share my screen.

[Matt Leming]: So I'd like to thank Councilor Lazzaro for drafting this month's newsletter and sending it out to folks.

[Matt Leming]: drafted a couple of changes to this, just a few minor changes to the, excuse me, just a few minor changes to the blurb, as well as some minor grammatical changes.

[Matt Leming]: Do y'all have access to?

[Matt Leming]: Oh, okay.

[Matt Leming]: I can put,

[Matt Leming]: Well, I'm just going to make sure that in terms of one moment, I can put the link to this one in the zoom chat if you're on zoom.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to share this.

[Matt Leming]: Zoom again.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Share.

[Matt Leming]: All right, now I'm just gonna paste the sharing link into the chat for this one.

[Matt Leming]: I just wanna look over the edits.

[Matt Leming]: And yeah, so basically it's just a, I think this is getting pretty routine right now, by now, which is great.

[Matt Leming]: I basically just clarified the only edits I made to Councilor Lazzaro's text, which she sent out to the committee yesterday was to,

[Matt Leming]: have the was to clarify the status of the Salem Street Corridor rezoning, um, its status and the Community Development Board, um, as well as on the Governance Committee.

[Matt Leming]: I just want to clarify that mainly what we talked about were changes, um, to City Council composition, since that was probably the most, uh,

[Matt Leming]: that we probably spent the most time discussing that particular topic.

[Matt Leming]: So I just figured for clarification purposes, I wanted to add that in there.

[Matt Leming]: Then that is, that's about it.

[Matt Leming]: I added a the in there, the calendar year 2025.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor, oh, I see Councilor Tseng put his,

[Matt Leming]: put his up first, I'm just going to turn his mic on.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Do you think we should also clarify exactly what was referred out of governance in that case?

[Matt Leming]: I mean, it's not for sure.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to say the committee referred

[Matt Leming]: Refer discussion of any potential edits.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, something along those lines.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I would, I would say, um,

[Matt Leming]: combined, it would probably make it a little bit cleaner to combine the points about CCOPS and the welcoming city ordinance from the January 14th meeting.

[Matt Leming]: So that's one way to sort of shorten it a little bit.

[Matt Leming]: We also so that that's yeah and then January passed a resolution for more activities.

[Matt Leming]: We approved.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know if that's a good way to describe it.

[Matt Leming]: Right.

[Matt Leming]: Hold on.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to unshare the screen to keep some emails private, but I'm not gonna

[Matt Leming]: I just added your emails to this.

[Matt Leming]: I mean we really did just do a lot of January 14 meeting.

[Matt Leming]: And i'm also just going to go and combine the two liquor licenses.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I think this is overall pretty good.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to wait on Councilor Tseng to finish his thoughts on the City Council composition.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think what you have right there is fine, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Did they, do you know if they pushed it off?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, I'll just put it a later date.

[Matt Leming]: We also, wait, so just from the commissioner,

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: January 29th meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: And we're developing an open data policy.

[Matt Leming]: I guess we don't need to get that specific.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think just just saying we began our work developing an open data policy or January 29 the meeting is sufficient.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, you should be really quick.

[Matt Leming]: bullet points.

[Matt Leming]: We also haven't actually had that discussion yet.

[Matt Leming]: So we have yet to, um, but no, I think that what we have now is we have now is fine.

[Matt Leming]: Any other comments from Councilors?

[Matt Leming]: January 28, we passed the resolution.

[Matt Leming]: Is it Lunar New Year or the Lunar New Year?

[Matt Leming]: Is it Lunar New Year or the third?

[Matt Leming]: Never mind.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Any other comments from councilors?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a motion on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion to approve

[Matt Leming]: the current draft of the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Including edits, right?

[Matt Leming]: Including edits by Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, will you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Wait, what?

[Matt Leming]: Sorry?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: The clerk is he's still he's still preparing the notes.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry about that.

[Matt Leming]: Your apology is accepted.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Affirmative.

[Matt Leming]: Negative.

[Matt Leming]: The motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Next thing we're going to discuss is the development of the open data policy.

[Matt Leming]: So we

[Matt Leming]: introduce this as something to refer to committee.

[Matt Leming]: Initially, Councilor Tseng and myself, and prior to the meeting, after Councilor Tseng and I did a bit of research on this, we distributed a sample ordinance from the city of Cambridge, as well as an executive order from the city of Boston, which gives sample language of other open data policies.

[Matt Leming]: Um, we also drafted a couple of questions to, uh, give out to, uh, department heads to just basically get some more information about what kind of data they're sitting on.

[Matt Leming]: As we, uh, uh, develop some of the parameters of this policy, uh, Councilor Tseng, is there anything you'd like to say?

[Matt Leming]: I can read them.

[Matt Leming]: So before I go to other Councilors, I'm not going to read through the entirety of the Cambridge and Boston sample ordinances.

[Matt Leming]: Given that Cambridge and Boston tend to be a lot more well-financed to support things like this, I developed a list of questions for some of the department heads that I think have relevant data sets, along with just inquiries about their

[Matt Leming]: staff capacity to implement these things.

[Matt Leming]: So the first question goes to the mayor, which is just what is the administration view as practical concerns to enacting an open data policy along the lines of Boston and Cambridge's policies?

[Matt Leming]: And this is because it is the mayor is the person in charge of department heads.

[Matt Leming]: So they will, they do have a lot of ability in overseeing this, even with the ordinance enacted.

[Matt Leming]: The general question for department heads, the general request for the mayor is to request that city departments report to the resident services and public engagement committee on what data or records are currently

[Matt Leming]: commonly requested them, what data or records they collect and what data or records they would feel open to sharing with the public and why or why not.

[Matt Leming]: I also thought of six or five other departments that I know I've specifically worked with or tried to work with their data in the past.

[Matt Leming]: So these are just kind of more targeted questions.

[Matt Leming]: First, the elections office.

[Matt Leming]: How far back does elections data historically go both in a digital format and paper archives?

[Matt Leming]: And do you have the staff capacity and resources to digitize Medford's election data from before 2005?

[Matt Leming]: So this one in particular is interesting because the elections website just kind of posts PDFs and sort of inconsistent formats.

[Matt Leming]: And the data only goes back to 2005.

[Matt Leming]: I do know that they have paper records in the basement that go back further, but

[Matt Leming]: I do need to respect the staff capacity of the elections office when it comes to their ability to go down there and write down all of those data points from previous generations.

[Matt Leming]: even though I personally would be interested in seeing it.

[Matt Leming]: From the Finance Office, how far back does Medford digitized budgetary data go?

[Matt Leming]: Are there legal or ethical concerns with publishing the bulk data in an analyzable format?

[Matt Leming]: Do you have the staff capacity and resources to publish bulk budgetary data consistently for public use?

[Matt Leming]: The idea behind this one is that usually budget data is published in either different meeting records or in a big PDF that's released every year, and that's excellent, but it would be useful to have data in a

[Matt Leming]: kind of more of a spreadsheet format so that could be analyzed with software so that residents can track if they wanted two different uses of the budget over time and how that's evolved over the years, which I think would help inform the public conversation around this.

[Matt Leming]: From the assessor's office, how far back does Medford's historic assessor's data go?

[Matt Leming]: Are there legal or ethical concerns to publishing bulk property value assessment data in an analyzable format?

[Matt Leming]: And do you have the staff capacity and resource to publish bulk assessor's data consistently for public use?

[Matt Leming]: So the assessor's data right now publishes everything via the Vision Government Solutions website, which is actually, so all assessment data is available online.

[Matt Leming]: But again, if you wanted to analyze like the average assessment value of all Medford property or the all Medford property in like West Medford or something like that, it would be very difficult to do that via what's currently available.

[Matt Leming]: I do know that the assessor's office has internal data.

[Matt Leming]: that they use that they could just put online in spreadsheet format, so I don't think this is big ask.

[Matt Leming]: From the DPW, does the DPW use spreadsheet data internally to keep track of road repair streets and so on?

[Matt Leming]: How far back does this data historically go?

[Matt Leming]: Are there any legal or ethical concerns with publishing this data openly?

[Matt Leming]: Again, just residents want to see how what roads are being repaired and just being able to analyze that historically, so that's more of an open-end one.

[Matt Leming]: And from the building department, the same question about

[Matt Leming]: inspections, permitting requests, and so on that would be publishable as a database for the properties around Medford, legal, procedural, ethical concerns with publishing the data, how far back they decided to go historically, and the staff capacity question.

[Matt Leming]: So the motion on the floor would be to send these questions out to the mayor and the relevant department heads, but I'm also interested in hearing if my colleagues have any

[Matt Leming]: thoughts or anything that they would like to add.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan and then Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Um, would we be able to just, um,

[Matt Leming]: add that because in the second line, the general request, I think, um, covers a lot of what you mentioned.

[Matt Leming]: It's a request to the mayor and city departments to report to this committee anything that they think would be interesting.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: I could take that, but I see that Councilor is saying also, did you want to address that or do you have your own?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so

[Matt Leming]: This does come with the caveat in a lot of these questions about staff capacity.

[Matt Leming]: So we are asking that, and that is a concern, especially if, I mean, we can't just copy the open data policies of cities that have a much larger budget than ours wholeheartedly.

[Matt Leming]: But there are, the point of these questions is to sort of figure out if there are,

[Matt Leming]: low-hanging fruit, I hate that term, but it is used to describe the situation, that they could just easily post to their website.

[Matt Leming]: So I know, for instance, that that's the case with the assessor's office.

[Matt Leming]: They already work with spreadsheet data internally, and it really wouldn't be any skin off their back to just put it onto the website instead of the typical databases.

[Matt Leming]: And with the elections office, it's really not that much data.

[Matt Leming]: It's really just typing out the spreadsheets that they normally publish in PDF formats into something that's a little bit cleaner.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor?

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, that is a concern.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng?

[Matt Leming]: Did you?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan and then Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, we could add that as an additional boil point under General Councilor was our.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Missing the horse for the forest.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, missing the horse for the forest.

[Matt Leming]: Putting the cart before the trees, something like that.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, I'll address some of Councilor Lazzaro's points.

[Matt Leming]: So my thinking on this is like when residents are discussing a budget, oftentimes those discussions do get a little bit, let's say,

[Matt Leming]: misdirected because it is, unless you've dug through those giant PDFs before, it is a little bit difficult to find them, whereas if hypothetically a bunch of Excel sheets of budgetary data were available for multiple years,

[Matt Leming]: Then you could get like a few residents who are very interested in that to just like comb through those and like really be able to find out what the patterns are.

[Matt Leming]: I think the state does a very good job of providing that data at a very bird's eye view for the city.

[Matt Leming]: Now I think that

[Matt Leming]: staff capacity to support this would really come into play when like if we're like asking departments to develop these databases or APIs and stuff like that, which is mentioned in the Cambridge's open data policy.

[Matt Leming]: I just don't think that we have the software engineering capacity to do that, but if it's something as simple as asking the assessor's office to publish

[Matt Leming]: their PDFs, or sorry, their Excel spreadsheets of historical assessment data openly so that that can be combed through.

[Matt Leming]: I think that's a good place to start.

[Matt Leming]: That wouldn't have too much task capacity.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, no, I always appreciate good conversations here about staff capacity because we do need to be

[Matt Leming]: realistic about that, and that does tend to dominate a lot of conversations in this room, so it's always welcome.

[Matt Leming]: But in any case, Councilor Tseng, did you record in a master document all of the proposed edits that we've been speaking about so far?

[Matt Leming]: No, I think I think that was that was about it.

[Matt Leming]: There was requests.

[Matt Leming]: Um, that the mayor and city departments, I suppose, would capture Councilor Callahan's initial comment on that.

[Matt Leming]: That could be an additional one.

[Matt Leming]: But otherwise, I think that that's pretty much everything.

[Matt Leming]: Otherwise, I think that that's all the edits that we discussed so far.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: You going to email it to me?

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: On the

[Matt Leming]: Wait, oh, amen.

[Matt Leming]: One moment, I'm gonna, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Everybody's, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I'm like doing a, I'm doing a, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, for the amendment, just.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion by Councilor Tseng, I believe I actually heard Councilor Lazzaro second that one.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, yes, Councilor, I think, I feel like people who attend on Zoom often miss the valuable seconds.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm gonna say that it was Councilor Lazzaro who seconded it this time.

[Matt Leming]: With apologies to all.

[Matt Leming]: So.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Four in favor, one absent, motion passes, meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: I'll try to be brief as possible.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, I'm just putting in the chat right here a zoom chat spreadsheet that was literally I just copied and pasted it from the from something that the assessor gave me.

[Matt Leming]: So if folks are

[Matt Leming]: see their property tax bills and they're a bit confused about this, then this is a read-only spreadsheet.

[Matt Leming]: But if you go to File, Download, then you'll be able to download the spreadsheet and input your FY 25 and 24 assessed home values

[Matt Leming]: into under the green column and that should give a breakdown of the of your third and fourth quarter payments as well as the impact from the override and I hope that that can clarify.

[Matt Leming]: any confusion that residents might have had when they got their tax bills in January.

[Matt Leming]: But at the end of the day, if you add up the Q1 to Q4 tax bills, then it should just add up to that $8.80 per $1,000 of assessed property value instead of 837.

[Matt Leming]: But you do have to add up all of them in aggregate.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, I just wanted to share that resource for folks.

[Matt Leming]: I put it out over my own mailing list, and I'm just hoping it could be out there for people to look over and mess with to understand the numbers.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so just looking at the original text, and I just peeked at the B paper, I'm more inclined to support the text of the B paper.

[Matt Leming]: With the original text of this resolution, I have mixed feelings about it.

[Matt Leming]: Whereas the city did not educate or prepare our residents in their overwhelming tax bill, I do agree that

[Matt Leming]: better communication could have been done prior to the release of the third quarter tax bill just to explain to everybody what was happening.

[Matt Leming]: So I can get behind that.

[Matt Leming]: But the line here, whereas the increased taxes have negatively affected our homeowners, things like that.

[Matt Leming]: I worked with a lot of parents who are homeowners who worked very hard to see these passed.

[Matt Leming]: I was on Monday night in a meeting with some of the school committee of Melrose who just tried to have an override and it failed.

[Matt Leming]: And they had to lay off 17 teachers because of that.

[Matt Leming]: And in Medford, we didn't have to do that because of those parents who worked so hard to see these overrides passed.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't think it negatively affected homeowners because

[Matt Leming]: A lot of those homeowners had kids, and their kids are benefiting by teachers not being laid off.

[Matt Leming]: And the homeowners are going to benefit with extra staff in the DBW to repair a road.

[Matt Leming]: So again, I definitely think that there could have been more education around the calculation of the tax bills earlier on.

[Matt Leming]: and obviously any tax increase will have its upsides and downsides, but I don't see a need to budget inch when I say that we absolutely needed the override and it is doing a lot of good.

[Matt Leming]: We had a school committee meeting that involved a budget that was not depressing for the first time in ever.

[Matt Leming]: People actually got what they wanted because we actually had extra money to invest in our schools.

[Matt Leming]: So the overrides were a good thing.

[Matt Leming]: That's all I have to say.

[Matt Leming]: No, I was just gonna recommend that.

[Matt Leming]: No, I was just gonna recommend to go to admin finance.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, parking is part of the culture here.

[Matt Leming]: So to clarify the rule change, it was on the January 14th agenda, which I'm looking at now, the refer to committee for further discussion was put before the hearings section.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm not sure if that is necessarily supposed to be that way.

[Matt Leming]: But the point is that

[Matt Leming]: I think this body needs to start being honest with itself.

[Matt Leming]: We do talk a lot.

[Matt Leming]: And once we get going, it's kind of hard to stop.

[Matt Leming]: And once you start with the refer to committee for further discussion, which I'm sure I did two weeks ago, then that's like really when that meeting goes.

[Matt Leming]: So the point of the rule was to make it so that the hearings come directly after the reports of committees.

[Matt Leming]: And it's just meant to be one of those automatic,

[Matt Leming]: automatic things.

[Matt Leming]: And then we get to the refer.

[Matt Leming]: So it's a small change.

[Matt Leming]: But last time, we did have the folks from the establishment just kind of waiting here until 11 when we could have cleared them really quickly.

[Matt Leming]: But we kind of forgot about it and then decided to suspend the rules.

[Matt Leming]: And so this is just meant to, the idea behind this is that we

[Matt Leming]: usually get through the beginning of the meeting pretty automatically, reports of committees and so on.

[Matt Leming]: And then I just would like the hearings to come directly after that, to not become the culture that we suspend rules and start taking things out of order until the hearings are done.

[Matt Leming]: Well, in that case, it does sound like multiple Councilors have kind of different thoughts on how to address this.

[Matt Leming]: So I would motion to, I'm not sure whether to table it or to send this to committee so that it could be worked on a bit further pending Councilor Scarpelli's discussions.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, governance committee is pretty busy, but we'll find a time.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, and just to just be clear.

[Matt Leming]: So I do understand the intention behind the referred to committee for further discussion.

[Matt Leming]: I've just found that when Councilors get to talking about their own resolutions, they do kind of tend to go off.

[Matt Leming]: So

[Matt Leming]: uh, you know, talk a little bit more than maybe is intended.

[Matt Leming]: And so the intention is just to get the hearings out of the way before that process starts.

[Matt Leming]: But if, uh, but either way, I would motion to refer this to governance.

[Matt Leming]: So to support this, I've been in, I've had some conversations with the mayor about this particular project, because I've been generally advocating for her to fund an affordable housing nexus study, which would help us to, which would help the city to establish an affordable housing linkage fee program, which would end up

[Matt Leming]: getting a lot more money into affordable housing than that initial investment.

[Matt Leming]: And my understanding is that the revenues from this sale would be able to fund that.

[Matt Leming]: Now, I do share my colleagues' concerns about potentially changing the character of the neighborhood, but I think

[Matt Leming]: a lot of that would be addressed with zoning.

[Matt Leming]: So developers can't necessarily do whatever they want with it.

[Matt Leming]: I do sympathize with the need for right of first refusal, but as the attorney just explained, we can't legally do that.

[Matt Leming]: So given the options, I think it would be best to vote in favor of this.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, I'm on, I guess.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm on the community land trust working group.

[Matt Leming]: It's still very early in the process, but there are a number of city-owned parcels that we're currently investigating.

[Matt Leming]: This isn't one of them.

[Matt Leming]: There are just better options out there for other pieces of land that could be there.

[Matt Leming]: I don't wanna like name any particular parcels because we still need to like

[Matt Leming]: look into each one particularly like individually but this isn't this is just proposing to use the proceeds of that and one of them is to afford a nexus study which would then be used for for the purposes of actually developing a program that would then fund the affordable housing trust.

[Matt Leming]: So it is pretty

[Matt Leming]: needed to get that initial capital in order to fund the studies that would then put more money into the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: So I mean, I mean, I think that getting getting this through as soon as like, as soon as possible without any delays would be

[Matt Leming]: would be the appropriate move personally just because we have been talking about a nexus study since last year when we were updating the linkage fees and we can't really do any more with the linkage fees until we get that study underway.

[Matt Leming]: So I understand that selling off city-owned land is a pretty, can be a pretty sensitive topic, but if this land hasn't been used since 1950, then I really don't see much of a reason to delay much more on this personally.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Chair Sang, for letting me speak.

[Matt Leming]: Just

[Matt Leming]: To clarify for the folks at home, neither Councilor Callahan nor I are on this committee, which means that we can't vote or make motions, but we are at the invitation of the chair able to speak.

[Matt Leming]: The one concern that I had was eliminating the part that says the mayor and city council is that you likely would need some support from the executive branch when advertising for the positions that go

[Matt Leming]: that would go into that.

[Matt Leming]: So it would help to, you know, have the support from the executive branch to be able to put out feelers.

[Matt Leming]: I fully support having it be confirmed by having them be confirmed by a vote of the city council, though.

[Matt Leming]: So that's just that's just one thought as a potential consequence of removing the mayor and city council, keeping it just city councils that I think would be you do need some staff support for this kind of thing.

[Matt Leming]: I would imagine.

[Matt Leming]: Um And also the city solicitor would be Under under the mayor as well.

[Matt Leming]: So that's another concern I would have with removing that explicitly.

[Matt Leming]: I did have some questions about this for the call in center.

[Matt Leming]: If I'm if I'm able, um

[Matt Leming]: So this struck me as a, so two questions.

[Matt Leming]: One, is this something that is typically in ordinances in other cities?

[Matt Leming]: And if so, what usually results from that?

[Matt Leming]: So have there been, are there usually like pretty substantial changes that come out of this?

[Matt Leming]: committees, periodic reviews.

[Matt Leming]: Are there any specific instances you can think of where this might have affected policy in the past?

[Matt Leming]: I just feel like a little bit more historical context would help me out with this one.

[Matt Leming]: So the real point of this is to make sure that the ordinances are consistent with any updates to the charter.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also just suggest as a potential compromise here, and I understand that this option wasn't really investigated too much by the Charter Study Committee, but having a 5-4 system, five at large, four district based as a possible in between option.

[Matt Leming]: I can't make a motion for that, but I

[Matt Leming]: think it does.

[Matt Leming]: I think that that would address some of the concerns with some of the words being too small and also expand the council, which I hear which I think a lot of residents have really been asking for.

[Matt Leming]: I do agree with my colleagues on some of the

[Matt Leming]: issues with expanding the council, namely the length of meetings.

[Matt Leming]: So I would support a change to the council rules limiting individual councilor speaking times that would only go into effect after the expansion of the council, if that were the decision that this body ended up making.

[Matt Leming]: That would be

[Matt Leming]: that those rules wouldn't necessarily go into the charter itself.

[Matt Leming]: But I strongly believe that it would help to make meetings more efficient and keep a keep a cap on the time that these meetings end up going to.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Two minor questions.

[Matt Leming]: First, what do you think the timeline is going to be for hiring the three workers?

[Matt Leming]: Like how long do you think it'll be before we can see them working on potholes around the city?

[Matt Leming]: And two, can you give us a ballpark estimate of how much

[Matt Leming]: the city was spending on contracts per year to hire out outside crews to do spot repairs?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor...

[Matt Leming]: No questions, just like to say I'm very glad to see this get up and running.

[Matt Leming]: And I fully support the initial investment of the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Just looking at this, it says 98,285 on page 9, but I'm seeing 526 right below that on the construction.

[Matt Leming]: The 526 is for a playstead, so I apologize if there was an error.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So, yeah, I was thinking that that might have been a typo.

[Matt Leming]: So just want to make sure that that's caught before it's referred to.

[Matt Leming]: Would we need to add into that a motion to rescind

[Matt Leming]: the money given from the stabilization funds along with that?

[Matt Leming]: No questions again, but I just like to say, I'm glad to see this happening.

[Matt Leming]: Glad to see a space being made for a daycare and afterschool programs and welcome to city hall.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Liz.

[Matt Leming]: Wonderful presentation.

[Matt Leming]: I'm glad to see this.

[Matt Leming]: Glad to see this coming for the council.

[Matt Leming]: Actually, just if you could clarify, Council President Bears, since your comment earlier indicated you might know something about this.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm actually also a member of the EAU Church, just like Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Could you clarify sort of the

[Matt Leming]: ethics issues behind behind this, if any, or like you mentioned that we could still vote on this, because we're not personally benefiting by this even if we are members of the church.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, I... You were just gonna do the same thing.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, no, I was, well, I was just gonna say, like, I'm personally comfortable voting yes on it, but just to align with Councilor Lazzaro and keep consistency, I'm just gonna abstain.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to go on to the sermon.

[Matt Leming]: I understand that a lot of the sermons at UU lately have gotten kind of... Yeah, we've been having audio issues all morning.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of the sermons at UU lately have gotten political.

[Matt Leming]: I'm a local politician, so it's not going to get any better.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry about that.

[Matt Leming]: Hopefully we can get off this topic eventually.

[Matt Leming]: Hello.

[Matt Leming]: Just to introduce myself again, my name's Matt Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I've been a member of this congregation since 2022.

[Matt Leming]: I'm a researcher at Mass General, a reservist, and I serve on the City Council of Medford.

[Matt Leming]: I was asked to do a sermon here a few months ago, and I thought for a long time about what I should talk about.

[Matt Leming]: And I figured that I should talk about something that I think about a lot.

[Matt Leming]: In the past year that I've been on City Council, there are a few topics that I keep meditating on.

[Matt Leming]: Income inequality was pretty embedded in a political campaign recently in which people voted to raise their own property taxes to prevent mass layoffs on the Medford public school system and invest in maintaining our infrastructure.

[Matt Leming]: An older woman in this congregation

[Matt Leming]: increases, even though she was on a very limited fixed income, because she knew it was the right thing to do for the next generation.

[Matt Leming]: Another thing I think about is land use, housing, where people can live.

[Matt Leming]: City Council is working on a historic rezoning initiative at the moment, which is foundational for any new growth, building, and commerce in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: And I think about the future.

[Matt Leming]: Last week, we passed an ordinance to make Medford into a sanctuary city to protect undocumented immigrants from the incoming administration.

[Matt Leming]: And all of that is very important work that I'm proud of, but it's also a bit dry and impersonal and good policy probably isn't what everyone is thinking about at the moment.

[Matt Leming]: about my job is people.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm going to talk about that.

[Matt Leming]: Being in elected office, especially at the local level, people come to me with all their hopes and all their frustrations.

[Matt Leming]: And it's a literal impossibility to please everyone.

[Matt Leming]: I learned that early on.

[Matt Leming]: Medford is a community of both long-time homeowners and renters, of multi-generational residents and relative newcomers, of the elderly and those with new families and those who just came here for a job in Boston.

[Matt Leming]: Geographically, it's placed between blue-collar communities, historically black neighborhoods, renter-heavy areas in South Medford,

[Matt Leming]: and some of the more high-class suburbs in the north.

[Matt Leming]: Historically, the Medford City Council was a pretty stagnant body, and I think I was elected in part because a majority of the city was frustrated with this and wanted change.

[Matt Leming]: And the vast majority of the people are very supportive of this.

[Matt Leming]: Older residents have been waiting decades to see it, and younger residents just like to see positive investments in their future.

[Matt Leming]: And other residents come to me with legitimate complaints, which we can have a productive two-way dialogue about.

[Matt Leming]: But many others wouldn't be satisfied with any particular action, and they're not satisfied with inaction, either.

[Matt Leming]: There's nothing I can do.

[Matt Leming]: Some of them just want to feel heard.

[Matt Leming]: There's some who are scared, some who are rabble-rousers, and I sat through my share of six-hour city council meetings

[Matt Leming]: At some level, it's healthiest for a person in my position to just ignore that and do what the majority of voters voted me in to do.

[Matt Leming]: And I tried.

[Matt Leming]: But I can't ignore it completely, because I do have some level of sympathy for them.

[Matt Leming]: And at the most practical level, I can't ignore the fact that this is not an effort-specific issue.

[Matt Leming]: And our country just reelected an autocrat who will be taking office tomorrow.

[Matt Leming]: So, I think it represents a bigger issue.

[Matt Leming]: During the tax override campaign, I spoke with a political activist who was more experienced than me and gave me his thoughts on these chronic naysayers.

[Matt Leming]: His interpretation was that they were mostly people who were lonely.

[Matt Leming]: They have a lot of time to post to the internet, and they don't have much going on, so they spend their days complaining about politics.

[Matt Leming]: In high school, I read a book by the psychologist Carl Jung called Man and His Symbols.

[Matt Leming]: In it, Jung said that people have an innate need for

[Matt Leming]: He talked about the mind requiring a sense of importance, just as our bodies need air or water.

[Matt Leming]: Some people feel important through their occupation.

[Matt Leming]: Some people feel important by supporting their friends and their community.

[Matt Leming]: Some feel their importance through expertise on a particular topic, and some feel important by being good parents.

[Matt Leming]: of importance from something real, we'll seek it elsewhere.

[Matt Leming]: He told a story in the book of a woman who had been abused and belittled by her husband for years and years before she had a complete mental breakdown.

[Matt Leming]: This woman was committed to a mental hospital, and in the hospital she woke up every morning and said that she had just had a baby.

[Matt Leming]: Having a child, Youngstead does offer a sense of importance

[Matt Leming]: This woman was made to feel so insignificant that eventually she got her sense of importance from delusions.

[Matt Leming]: Thought about that story a lot over the years.

[Matt Leming]: The last eight years, just like everyone else, I've been thinking about why Trump was elected in the first place.

[Matt Leming]: And anytime I think about it, my mind naturally goes back to something that my mother told me back in 2016.

[Matt Leming]: She said, Matt, most people go to work, go home, listen to the radio, go to sleep, and that's their lives.

[Matt Leming]: At some point, you just want to throw a brick through the window.

[Matt Leming]: Historically, people got their sense of importance through their community.

[Matt Leming]: When you're in a community, you have influence, you have support, and this was often found through unions, rotary clubs, Masonic lodges, churches, and so on, all of which have had steadily declining memberships for decades.

[Matt Leming]: Today, many, many people in the United States and the world feel isolated.

[Matt Leming]: Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, a report from the Surgeon General said that about half of U.S.

[Matt Leming]: adults

[Matt Leming]: reported measurable levels of loneliness.

[Matt Leming]: One-person households have risen by 15% in the United States over the past 60 years.

[Matt Leming]: And back then, while 44% of people reported having dinner with their neighbors a few times a month, only 28% reported this in 2022.

[Matt Leming]: Unions used to provide a social fabric for blue-collar and rural communities, and union membership peaked in the United States in the 1940s and 50s before it saw a slow, decades-long decline.

[Matt Leming]: In 1983, when I assume they first started to record these statistics, 20% of U.S.

[Matt Leming]: workers were in a union, while only 10% were in in 2023.

[Matt Leming]: As community declines and individuals become increasingly isolated, many achieve their own sense of importance through outbursts, through anger, through conspiracy theories, ideas that make them believe they're the one with the real answers to life's problems.

[Matt Leming]: And it's very easy for bad actors to take advantage of this mindset, so we need to fight that.

[Matt Leming]: Been, uh, delayed with the audio all morning.

[Matt Leming]: During the, uh, tax overrun campaign that succeeded this past November, I helped coordinate a number of parents who wanted to see their children have better schools.

[Matt Leming]: I helped train them to talk to their neighbors, going door-to-door to meet others, and explain why these investments are so desperately needed.

[Matt Leming]: But I also saw the effects of, uh, disinformation

[Matt Leming]: A small group of developers and people with millions of dollars of property that they didn't want to pay more on.

[Matt Leming]: And older politicians who just don't like to see power mounted in this information campaign.

[Matt Leming]: And these weren't the people on a fixed income who I have a lot of sympathy for, but they did pretend to be.

[Matt Leming]: And this information had an effect on citing anger and division on the basis of nothing more than fabrications,

[Matt Leming]: But because of those parents who knocked on doors and contributed their time and effort, who talked in person to their neighbors, the measures passed.

[Matt Leming]: This isn't isolated to Medford, Asheville, North Carolina, the city where I lived and attended high school for six years.

[Matt Leming]: I was recently devastated by a hurricane.

[Matt Leming]: Dozens lost their lives and whole areas of the city were destroyed by flooding.

[Matt Leming]: My best friend's dad was nearly impaled by a tree that went through his living room wall.

[Matt Leming]: But when FEMA tried to send in aid workers, they were attacked by a few residents who had been told that these aid workers were part of a vast governmental conspiracy.

[Matt Leming]: On a personal level, I have nothing but empathy for people who feel isolated, outside, left behind, angry, lost, or just want someone to talk to.

[Matt Leming]: Growing up, I was a military brat, and I attended 13 schools in Virginia, California, Washington State, North Carolina.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think that I was mentally equipped at that age to be uprooted that often.

[Matt Leming]: I was the outsider.

[Matt Leming]: It doesn't feel good to be lonely, and being lonely makes one feel unimportant, and that can make a person act out.

[Matt Leming]: It was only later, through trial and error, that I learned how to build a community in new places and make friends, and that's why I value it so much today.

[Matt Leming]: When I first came to Medford, I didn't expect to stay for long with the economic situation my generation and coming generations face, we're always incentivized to uproot ourselves and move on, especially in a place as expensive as greater Boston.

[Matt Leming]: I became involved largely through this church in affordable housing work around Medford, and I learned just how many residents here wanted to make things better.

[Matt Leming]: This work brought me and a few other activists around to lobby the city council on affordable housing initiatives, and I quickly learned that while politicians can rarely make change happen by themselves, they can easily block it.

[Matt Leming]: So you do need good elected representatives sitting in those seats.

[Matt Leming]: Often, good people, even if they do have the time, energy, capacity, and mindset to run, are too busy doing other good things to run for public office, and that leaves a vacuum for the not-so-good people.

[Matt Leming]: So, even as a relative newcomer with very little money in the bank, I decided to try it out.

[Matt Leming]: Since that wrote, most of my job has been to battle the effects of misinformation.

[Matt Leming]: As a scientist, I try to reason with people who disagree with me, but what I've come to realize is that facts, logic, and data are not nearly as important for this as in-person social networks

[Matt Leming]: Most people form their views based on community, what their neighbors think, or these days, what they've read on whatever community they've been directed to on the internet.

[Matt Leming]: For all its historic problems in America, it used to be more social.

[Matt Leming]: And I don't want to make the mistake of looking at the past with rose-colored glasses.

[Matt Leming]: We're reminded tomorrow, in LK Day, that things used to be a lot worse for a lot of people than they are today.

[Matt Leming]: is verifiably true.

[Matt Leming]: And without this regular interaction, people can become isolated and vulnerable and easily taken advantage of by bad actors.

[Matt Leming]: If I had one critique of my generation, it's that we're a bit too picky about what we choose to be involved with.

[Matt Leming]: We're mistrustful of organizations in general these days.

[Matt Leming]: And I could be preaching to the choir here, telling this to the Unitarian Church, but don't be afraid to put your time into an organization, a church, volunteer group, social club, anything outside of work or the internet, even if it's imperfect.

[Matt Leming]: And if your neighbors are lonely or left out, bring them into the fold.

[Matt Leming]: They might accept the invitation, or they might not invite them.

[Matt Leming]: America is sharply divided right now.

[Matt Leming]: The next four years are not going to be a cakewalk.

[Matt Leming]: Everyone can do their part.

[Matt Leming]: Political activism, volunteering for an organization, or just talking to a neighbor if you need someone to talk to.

[Matt Leming]: Tomorrow, January 20th, will be the four-year, two-week anniversary of an insurrection in the U.S.

[Matt Leming]: Capitol.

[Matt Leming]: And what I like about it is, Justice Peter is the very man who incited that insurrection.

[Matt Leming]: But it will also celebrate the 96th year since the birth of the most important civil rights leader.

[Matt Leming]: And I'll conclude with a quote of his that I think fits this occasion.

[Matt Leming]: The line of progress is never straight.

[Matt Leming]: For a period, a movement may follow a straight line and encounters obstacles and paths bends.

[Matt Leming]: It's like curving around a mountain when you're approaching a city.

[Matt Leming]: Often it feels as though you're moving backwards and you lose sight of your goal, but in fact you are moving ahead, and soon you will see the city again closer by.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for listening.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Just for some, Council President Bears, just for some clarification, so you mentioned, I believe part of that motion was, for instance, making all NR2 into NR1.

[Matt Leming]: Just to clarify, is that a, I mean, would that mean that all of the current NR1s get updated to include two-unit dwellings and historical conversion of two to three units, or would that mean that all

[Matt Leming]: And our twos get that requirement for two-unit dwellings removed.

[Matt Leming]: Well, I'm sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know if I could support President Bears's motion.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I think you do need additional density, particularly around the T stops.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I personally don't see the need to sort of increase the

[Matt Leming]: the amounts of single unit dwellings quite that much.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, I personally like it as it is.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm a data scientist by trade.

[Matt Leming]: And whenever I communicate with residents and add an email, I usually like to run some numbers.

[Matt Leming]: I often look at historical housing prices and things like that that come from the state data bank.

[Matt Leming]: And whenever I try to bring any of that data

[Matt Leming]: Whenever I try to bring my eye over to the city, it's always a bit of a challenge.

[Matt Leming]: If you go on the elections website, for instance, they do release historic elections data, but it's all in kind of PDFs.

[Matt Leming]: It's occasionally a Google spreadsheet.

[Matt Leming]: It's all very inconsistent.

[Matt Leming]: If I try to look at historical data from the assessor's office, it is all available.

[Matt Leming]: In a website if you want to look up a particular address, but if you want to do bulk analysis of the trends find the average price find the average assessed price of a certain neighborhood, for instance, that state is very difficult to come by, even though it is available within the assessor's office.

[Matt Leming]: So this is a way to inform discussions among residents as well as department heads and city staff when they're making these sort of decisions.

[Matt Leming]: It's a way to make all of our decisions a lot more numbers driven by making data from different apartments accessible in a format that is easiest to analyze.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm personally very excited about this.

[Matt Leming]: I'm very excited to get into the weeds about this in committee and

[Matt Leming]: I look forward to the discussion in the coming months about it.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: Before I was in public office and about six months after, I was a mentor for a very wonderful charity called Partners for Youth with Disabilities.

[Matt Leming]: It's basically like a big brother, big sister kind of a program, except it's for youth who have a number of disabilities.

[Matt Leming]: I was working with a kid in Somerville who was on the spectrum, and it was also something that I studied a little bit more abstractly in grad school.

[Matt Leming]: Working with him, we met up usually once a week.

[Matt Leming]: I understood the challenges that not only these kids go through, but also their parents, as well as the amount of extra support that kids with disabilities need.

[Matt Leming]: And very recently, Councilor Callahan and I, as well as you, Council President Bears, were approached by a group of parents of

[Matt Leming]: kids and teenagers with disabilities who had been advocating for years for more city support for their kids.

[Matt Leming]: Oftentimes they just wanted to have a group that would let them meet up after school to play board games, or really do any kind of

[Matt Leming]: socialization to get them out of the house, any kind of support.

[Matt Leming]: And so the purpose of this resolution is to first give these parents, a number of whom are here tonight to speak about their experience, to give them a platform to talk and make public some of the challenges they've been through over the years, and also to prioritize some staff support

[Matt Leming]: for their kids during budget season.

[Matt Leming]: It could come through increased support to the Medford Recreation Department.

[Matt Leming]: It could come through other positions, but I'll stop talking because I'm looking forward to what they have to say.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: So, so I do I do agree with the idea of having an additional motion but there's a. So I've been talking to a lot of different city staff about where the appropriate budget request would be initially it was a part time position under Francis office, I spoke to Kevin Bailey I think that.

[Matt Leming]: The most concrete ask would probably be a therapeutic recreation specialist, as well as an office manager under the recreation department, which would give them enough staff to be able to support these programs and likely integrate into that collaborations with other towns surrounding cities.

[Matt Leming]: It could also come in the form of

[Matt Leming]: something this would cost the city less, but I think we should have more staff in the Recreation Department in addition to this.

[Matt Leming]: A community development block grant fund with a non-profit like Communitas.

[Matt Leming]: Patricia was partnering up with her church in order to find a space for that.

[Matt Leming]: Partnership with an organization such as that would also be another concrete ask.

[Matt Leming]: I would make the motion to

[Matt Leming]: request for the budget season additional staffing under Medford Recreation or another department that could support this kind of programming for the upcoming budget season.

[Matt Leming]: So preferably under Medford Recreation, but if there is flexibility there and it would be more appropriate to be in another department, that could fulfill that motion.

[Matt Leming]: That's that's not really in the I mean, that's a separate process.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that's that's kind of a separate process.

[Matt Leming]: I would just like to thank all of the advocates and all of the people who had lengthy discussions about this in the preceding months and years.

[Matt Leming]: As is often the case, it's us sitting here on City Council that are

[Matt Leming]: passing these ordinances, but it's really the residents of the city who make, lend us their expertise, make their voices heard, and convince us to support policies that make Medford as welcoming a city as possible.

[Matt Leming]: It's really them that deserve the credit for this.

[Matt Leming]: I think this is a

[Matt Leming]: an appropriate measure to pass given that we're going to see a change in administration in about a week.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm very proud of all the work that went into this.

[Matt Leming]: And I'd just like to thank the folks who are here today, particularly from Medford People Power and the ACLU who helped us out on this.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you very much.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I sent an email to both the chief of police as well as the school committee requesting feedback on the draft of the welcoming city ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: I invited the chief of police to come to the relevant committee meetings where we were going over this.

[Matt Leming]: Didn't hear back.

[Matt Leming]: I heard back from a couple of members of the school committee and incorporated their feedback into it.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank everybody who spoke out about the ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: Just one small point to address.

[Matt Leming]: So even if something like this were to affect federal funding, I would be fully in support of it anyway, because that doesn't factor into my calculus.

[Matt Leming]: But you do need to consider that we've already been through one Trump administration.

[Matt Leming]: PolitiFact, it does state that while he did issue executive order attempting to cut funding to sanctuary cities, to welcoming cities, those actually largely failed.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, they were held back by courts.

[Matt Leming]: Most of those ended up being struck down in court.

[Matt Leming]: So maybe it will succeed the next time, but it actually didn't succeed the first time.

[Matt Leming]: It was just well-publicized.

[Matt Leming]: So that's the only point I want to make about that.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President.

[Matt Leming]: So this is something that was originally introduced in May.

[Matt Leming]: And it was an idea of the veteran services director, Veronica Shaw.

[Matt Leming]: So I know that it's often beneficial for folks on city council to take credit for this, but really the credit for the idea and all the work for this goes to both Mrs. Shaw, as well as the very supportive staff at

[Matt Leming]: housing families who've agreed to initiate a pilot program around this.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially, the Veteran Services Office has a small amount of discretionary funds, which Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Shaw wanted to use as an incentive to landlords who choose to rent to veteran renters, which would help with some of the discrimination often faced by this country's veterans in attempting to find

[Matt Leming]: housing.

[Matt Leming]: So this a lot of the legwork behind this was informing that partnership with housing families.

[Matt Leming]: The amendment that we see here in, uh, in the city's ordinances, section 2765 housing incentives did come after very lengthy discussion with legal.

[Matt Leming]: Basically, the wording of it is to keep in is

[Matt Leming]: to keep in line with the fact that one, the city can't just give money directly to individual citizens.

[Matt Leming]: We need to partner with a nonprofit and the under state law, the only individual in the city who has the right to create a contract with a nonprofit is the city's mayor.

[Matt Leming]: So the wording of this is a little bit wonky, but it basically says that the,

[Matt Leming]: mayor in collaboration with the veteran services director can form a partnership with one of these nonprofits and that the funding would come from the veteran services office for this for this particular program.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm very excited about it.

[Matt Leming]: There's a lot of work that is

[Matt Leming]: already gone into forming this program.

[Matt Leming]: And because I basically see this as a very minor amendment to the duties of the city's ordinances of the veteran services director, I would motion to waive all three readings and pass this directly.

[Matt Leming]: Would the motion be to send it to regular meeting then?

[Matt Leming]: Kids need air conditioning, so I'm going to be supporting this and I'd move to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Sure.

[Matt Leming]: So

[Matt Leming]: Right now, they're the two moving parts that are first the homeworld petition going into the State House, which.

[Matt Leming]: I believe they should be hopefully submitted when they convene.

[Matt Leming]: And then if it gets approved, it will allow the city to do those regular updates.

[Matt Leming]: The other part of that is we were advised by the planning department that

[Matt Leming]: It would be best to finish the affordable housing nexus studies before we went forward with actually updating leakage fee ordinance to include a direct link to the affordable housing trust and as I explained there are some

[Matt Leming]: legal reasons behind that.

[Matt Leming]: So if the ordinance were passed before there was a study justifying it, then it could be struck down in court.

[Matt Leming]: So the draft language for that is all finished.

[Matt Leming]: It's all completed.

[Matt Leming]: I've been corresponding with the mayor and she's getting the money

[Matt Leming]: she's told me to actually fund this $80,000 Nexus study to put money from the Capital Improvements Program into the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: And then once that's underway, we could just officially pass the edits, which again, have already been discussed extensively in committee.

[Matt Leming]: Sure.

[Matt Leming]: So that whole project kind of split off into two things.

[Matt Leming]: So a couple of the things that I was working on initially ended up kind of being papers that I submitted to Inns Associates for the planning process.

[Matt Leming]: The commercial vacancy tax, um, I think it became clear during the 1 meeting that we had on it that it would require.

[Matt Leming]: probably meeting a few more meetings with building department and other parties to planning department to figure out the future of that, but I also submitted a request to the planning folks to include a building vacancy

[Matt Leming]: uh, tax, which is a building vacancy, I would say a fee, which is something that has been implemented in other cities without the need for a home rule petition.

[Matt Leming]: And it's not quite the level of a tax, but that's kind of like the other manifestation of that.

[Matt Leming]: Um, it would just come up later in the zoning process.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: We have a residence guide in English.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng, for making that.

[Matt Leming]: It needs to be made multilingual.

[Matt Leming]: We'll do that later.

[Matt Leming]: Modernizing city council communications has really been the major project of this.

[Matt Leming]: Um, we have basically every meeting we draft a newsletter, send it out.

[Matt Leming]: We also have YouTube streaming, which is pretty cool.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank all my colleagues for creating the listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: So far we've had three with the Arab community, the Portuguese speaking community and seniors.

[Matt Leming]: Um, it was found in practice that these were kind of difficult to like, it was difficult to like organize all of these in, um,

[Matt Leming]: Um.

[Matt Leming]: Practice and kind of like a one off fashion.

[Matt Leming]: So we're going to continue to do that.

[Matt Leming]: But Councilor Lazzaro and I have also decided to start scheduling regular listening sessions at the senior center.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, next year.

[Matt Leming]: Um, we.

[Matt Leming]: Past a and also, um, like to thank Councilor Cal and for work on the upcoming listening session at the West

[Matt Leming]: Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His): Have a welcoming ordinance like to thank Councilor Tseng for introducing that last year.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry for all the jumping around that you're doing.

[Matt Leming]: I just kind of made a text list so that I can do this quickly.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.:

[Matt Leming]: : A welcoming ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.:

[Matt Leming]: : Which was passed for first reading last night.

[Matt Leming]: And hopefully will be passed for a third reading on January 14.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know if this was in there, but if this is in the governing agenda, because it was kind of put on there as an ad hoc thing.

[Matt Leming]: as a result of the veteran services director efforts.

[Matt Leming]: But we're working right now on a veteran veteran rental assistant program, which is set to be discussed in council on the 14th and hopefully passed for a first reading them.

[Matt Leming]: But I still have to submit that paper.

[Matt Leming]: Um, Councilor Callahan and I, this is another one that's not on the agenda, but these things kind of crop up are also working with some, um,

[Matt Leming]: uh, mothers of kids with disabilities, uh, to, uh, create after school programs for them.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, there, a lot of the stuff mentioned here is some of the commission, uh, work that Councilor Tseng is working on.

[Matt Leming]: I know that there are, uh, he's doing a lot of behind the scenes work on a human rights commission ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I don't, I'm not always a hundred percent aware, um,

[Matt Leming]: what is going on behind the scenes.

[Matt Leming]: Some of these were introduced before I was on council, but whenever he does have progress, I make sure to make time in the committee so that we can move on those.

[Matt Leming]: I know that the, I believe that the data policies that are mentioned there haven't been worked on, worked on a whole lot, but that could be something that we start on the next year.

[Matt Leming]: And that is all that I have.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Withdrawn.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I find the records in order and move to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President.

[Matt Leming]: At the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee, we discussed and heard public comments in favor of the Welcoming City Ordinance, which we are discussing tonight.

[Matt Leming]: We also drafted a newsletter and briefly discussed some scheduling of the City Council's upcoming listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you, Council President.

[Matt Leming]: So I didn't do this earlier because I wanted to hear what the folks from the DBW in the room had to say during public comment.

[Matt Leming]: And it is a point that I have a lot of sympathy with considering that I work a job where I get

[Matt Leming]: uh, urinalysis testing in front of my colleagues at least three times a year.

[Matt Leming]: So, um, but there are, there are, uh, other issues with this resolution that I have mainly OML considerations, which has been discussed in this council before.

[Matt Leming]: And I want more information about the private investigator issue, uh, as well as, uh,

[Matt Leming]: the fact that I'm not sure about the city council stepping into strictly school committee issues.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm going to go and invoke rule 21 on this.

[Matt Leming]: We can move on.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: No, I'm keeping, I'm keeping my rule 21 invocation.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to share my screen really quickly to this Google document that I have.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Can everybody see that?

[Matt Leming]: Hello?

[Matt Leming]: All right, great.

[Matt Leming]: So we went over the text of this in the most recent meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Following that meeting, I had some lengthy discussions and feedback from the City's legal teams, as well as some lawyers that work with the ACLU who are involved with Medford People Power.

[Matt Leming]: And I was kind of doing a little bit of back and forth to figure out what sort of language both parties could agree upon.

[Matt Leming]: Before I get into it, I'll also quickly add that this version that I'm working with contains a slight change from what was forwarded to my colleagues earlier today, because just before the meeting, I believe it was Councilor Callaghan who noticed some misspellings under whistleblower protection.

[Matt Leming]: I ended up amending that in this current draft.

[Matt Leming]: But essentially, the reviews by the city's legal team

[Matt Leming]: clarified the relationship throughout a lot of this ordinance with respect to the city's working relationship with federal agents and federal law and sort of how that works out in practice.

[Matt Leming]: So there's a couple of points here.

[Matt Leming]: For instance, the use of local resources.

[Matt Leming]: What you can see here is in green, these are the edits that were provided.

[Matt Leming]: And these are sort of edits that

[Matt Leming]: This kind of covers situations where if someone is detained and they end up getting fingerprinted as a result of a criminal proceeding, then that biometric data would end up going into a sort of a centralized government database, which is just how criminal

[Matt Leming]: enforcement works, both on the federal and local level.

[Matt Leming]: But that doesn't really say, but that's kind of like separate from its potential relationship with ICE.

[Matt Leming]: And there's just a few, there's a few other things here that

[Matt Leming]: kind of that site-specific federal laws.

[Matt Leming]: One thing that came up that the ACLU lawyers pointed out was this phrase right here, an officer employee of Medford Police Department may participate or assist with an operation led by a federal immigration agency to detain persons for civil immigration enforcement purposes unless it is in direct response to a request for immediate response on a temporary basis for officer safety purposes.

[Matt Leming]: or assistance in the apprehension of an individual for whom there is an active arrest warrant issued by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: This officer safety phrase in quotes is actually fairly common to include in these sorts of ordinances.

[Matt Leming]: And there is a history of court decisions about the use of officer safety and asking for assistance.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm comfortable including that in there.

[Matt Leming]: Otherwise the most the biggest changes that Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, yes, it does.

[Matt Leming]: The main, so I'll get to that.

[Matt Leming]: So the main points that the city brought up was the complaints enforcement, et cetera, bits that were added in there at a point in the editing process where

[Matt Leming]: We originally had this complaints, this complaints procedure, but that actually that actually was redundant to the internal policies of the Medford Police Department.

[Matt Leming]: So we ended up deleting that and this other cause of action that there that ended up that turns out that that just replicates things that are already in involved in state and federal law.

[Matt Leming]: But otherwise, yeah, this replicates state and federal laws.

[Matt Leming]: But otherwise, these changes

[Matt Leming]: basically just make this ordinance consistent with, um, just clarifies the relationship of the ordinance with federal law.

[Matt Leming]: I'd be pleased to answer any specific questions from my colleagues about it.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so I just would like to reiterate that I did reach out to all members of the school committee as well as Chief Buckley and asked all of them to submit their feedback.

[Matt Leming]: I invited the chief over to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting with any concerns or feedback that he might have.

[Matt Leming]: I did not receive a reply.

[Matt Leming]: to that request and I did receive some from the from the school committee and their feedback was incorporated into it into this draft.

[Matt Leming]: The concern that I had, the concern that I ran into from the administration regarding the

[Matt Leming]: regarding the police mainly had to do with the enforcement clause, which I was told could interfere with police union negotiations.

[Matt Leming]: And in this current draft, that ended up being nixed.

[Matt Leming]: So I would like to point out that there were efforts to include that feedback into this draft.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing I'd like to point out is that there is a timeliness issue to this.

[Matt Leming]: The new administration takes office in late January, so I do think that more so than other ordinances, having a policy that protects our undocumented populations in early is essential to me.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I don't see I don't really see the need to try to weigh the three readings.

[Matt Leming]: That's unanimous.

[Matt Leming]: And, you know, obviously, my colleague is voiced his concern.

[Matt Leming]: So I would be fine with going for the with just approving the first reading tonight.

[Matt Leming]: I would ask that that motion be amended to specifically accept the edits that were that were proposed in this in this current draft because I didn't hear that.

[Matt Leming]: that that was explicitly said in the motion.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Otherwise, that's all I got.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: No, so I corresponded with the folks at both the folks at KP Law and Medford People Power, including Lauren Jean about this earlier today.

[Matt Leming]: So the, I believe it was Jean was talking about 5103C.

[Matt Leming]: Was that what she mentioned?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so I put into this current draft the one change that was proposed for that, that they proposed for that, which was that no Asian officer employee of the city in performance of official duties shall make any inquiry about citizenship, immigration, or residency status.

[Matt Leming]: And they specifically wanted to make it so that they couldn't

[Matt Leming]: ask about immigration status.

[Matt Leming]: But I am not 100% sure where else this would have weakened it.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, I did respond.

[Matt Leming]: I did respond.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So the deleted one was the struck through version was no officers or employees of the city of Medford may inquire about the immigration status of a victim, suspect, arrestee, 911 caller or other member of the public with whom they have contact except as required by state law or to provide a public benefit and the

[Matt Leming]: replacement was no agent, officer or employee of the city in the performance of official duties shall make any inquiry about the citizenship, immigration or residency status of any person seeking to enforce rights or obtain benefits or discriminate in the enforcement of rights or the granting

[Matt Leming]: of benefits on such basis, unless federal or Massachusetts law so requires for the termination of eligibility of benefits or as may otherwise be required by law or a court of competent jurisdiction.

[Matt Leming]: No police officer or any city employee shall inquire about the citizenship or immigration status of any victim or witness of domestic violence or any other crime except as required by law.

[Matt Leming]: That's it.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Present

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Can you going back to the timeline in the beginning and thinking about parking, is there

[Matt Leming]: Is transportation going to be included as a discussion topic in itself?

[Matt Leming]: And if so, what month is that planned for?

[Matt Leming]: No, I was just going to confirm.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I would like to point out this doesn't solve the issue of quite informing residents before things happen, but a good deal of effort is put into summarizing these meetings in the City Council newsletter in about as high level terms as possible, which I typically do include links to these

[Matt Leming]: plans in the planning and permitting descriptions of what happens.

[Matt Leming]: So it's not a perfect solution to all of the concerns that were brought up by my colleague, but that is one mechanism where we're trying to really simplify what is happening in this committee as it happens.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Vice President.

[Matt Leming]: Collins and everybody for all your work on this.

[Matt Leming]: I have been thinking for most of this meeting about the exact definition of bulk surveillance data.

[Matt Leming]: I would also ask that KP law in considering a definition of bulk surveillance data also include a provision to

[Matt Leming]: include data that is synthetically generated to be similar to bulk surveillance data.

[Matt Leming]: So in my day job, I'm actually a machine learning researcher and that is one loophole that could potentially be used to get around the acquisition of

[Matt Leming]: that sort of bulk data is you could actually train models that could generate data that's similar to bulk data without actually handing the data itself over to another entity.

[Matt Leming]: So in coming up with that definition, I would just ask that KP Law consider that.

[Matt Leming]: And I'd also be willing to talk to them myself about that.

[Matt Leming]: This actually is like an issue that legislatures are running into when they're trying to come up with the appropriate definitions for this technology.

[Matt Leming]: So, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: request guidance on language for... Yes, an amendment to that is to request legal guidance on the use of synthetically generated data in the definition of bulk surveillance data.

[Matt Leming]: Request legal opinion on the use of synthetically generated data in our definition of bulk surveillance data.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Justin.

[Matt Leming]: Justin.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng, come on.

[Matt Leming]: Is it in a mode where everybody can just turn on their own, or do I need to approve it?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Apparently not.

[Matt Leming]: I'm trying to figure out how to, okay, wait, what do I need to press before we start the meeting too?

[Matt Leming]: What?

[Matt Leming]: No, no.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Can you move it so that I can see if it's green?

[Matt Leming]: All right, and.

[Matt Leming]: All right, now it's on.

[Matt Leming]: pull up the agenda real quick.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: All right, I think we can get started.

[Matt Leming]: Welcome to the meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.

[Matt Leming]: I don't believe we need to take a roll call for attendance because nobody is on.

[Matt Leming]: Zoom right now.

[Matt Leming]: The first paper that we will be considering tonight is 23055, offered by Councilor Tseng, a resolution to consider the welcoming city ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: This was actually, this was an ordinance that was actually offered in one of the predecessor committees last year by my colleague, essentially,

[Matt Leming]: It is an ordinance that officially codifies a policy of non-cooperation with federal authorities, specifically ICE on non-criminal matters.

[Matt Leming]: Prior to this, I requested feedback from both the school committee, because it does contain some provisions relevant to the Medford public school system, as well as Chief Buckley.

[Matt Leming]: I did hear some

[Matt Leming]: Some pieces of feedback from members of the school committee.

[Matt Leming]: So there were some concerns with the bargaining sessions, the bargaining sections with the police, as well as the potential enforceability within the Medford public school system.

[Matt Leming]: But essentially, most members of the school committee did approve the current draft that

[Matt Leming]: as it was written.

[Matt Leming]: There is one issue with the ordinance, which is that the section numbers I outlined in this draft, and I'm just gonna share my screen really quickly to show everybody, were actually conflict with the CCOPS ordinance that will be considered tomorrow.

[Matt Leming]: So I have here a,

[Matt Leming]: version of it where I changed the section titles to fit into the municipal code a little bit better.

[Matt Leming]: But other than that, I don't really see too many issues with it.

[Matt Leming]: I will

[Matt Leming]: go ahead and let Councilor Tseng speak on this, then my colleagues, if they would like to add anything, and then we can move on to a public comment period, if folks have anything to offer on it.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng, I'm going to turn your microphone on.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you and I would also like to thank the many

[Matt Leming]: folks in the activist community who put pressure on the Medford City Council to get this in front of us today.

[Matt Leming]: I think it's a very particularly timely ordinance, much more so than we typically see in city council.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm excited to see it pass.

[Matt Leming]: We'll move on to public comment.

[Matt Leming]: So if you

[Matt Leming]: If anybody in the room has anything they'd like to say, either in person or on Zoom, please feel free to raise your hand on Zoom or line up at the podium.

[Matt Leming]: And we would love to hear you.

[Matt Leming]: Go ahead and press the thing.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Now I can.

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Hi.

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much for those

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much for your words.

[Matt Leming]: Wendy, I see one hand on zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Mister Matthew page Lieberman, I'm asking you to unmute please state your name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I see one more at the podium.

[Matt Leming]: Eileen, can you name and address for the record, please?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Seeing no one else at the podium, and oh, one more hand on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Penelope Taylor gonna ask you to unmute and please state your name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Seeing one additional hand on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Muneer Germanis, can I ask you to unmute and please state your name and address for the record, please?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: All right, looking for any other public comments.

[Matt Leming]: Going once, going twice, and oh, Mike Denton on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Please state you're asking you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Please state your name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Last few Zoom hands have been very last minute.

[Matt Leming]: So going once, going twice and public comment is closed.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Can you point out the word first that was misspelled?

[Matt Leming]: Oh, yep, yep, yep.

[Matt Leming]: I see it.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: I have my little copy right there.

[Matt Leming]: And for legal questions, I know we did bring Miss Rodolo.

[Matt Leming]: Is she still here?

[Matt Leming]: Just this is our representative from who works with the ACLU who agreed to come along to answer any of the more nitty gritty questions about the by the ordinance draft.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, can you can you repeat?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: My impression in speaking with folks at Medford People Power is that this is all fairly boilerplate language that has been replicated in other cities as well.

[Matt Leming]: Did you have anything?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think I think a report of

[Matt Leming]: There is no update is also fine as well.

[Matt Leming]: But noted.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So I could answer one part of that.

[Matt Leming]: I have been told nicer, and I did a little bit of research on similar ordinances that have been passed in other cities at this point.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, the language is fairly boilerplate.

[Matt Leming]: I did pass this by the mayor, who then referred it to KP Law.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that any and

[Matt Leming]: My impression with that is that any specific legalese or whichever could very likely and pretty easily be dealt with in a regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah.

[Matt Leming]: But in terms of the context for other cities, I would like to let Laura here speak about that.

[Matt Leming]: Go ahead and press the button.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sorry.

[Matt Leming]: It's a new system.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Does that answer all your?

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Any other comments?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a motion on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tang?

[Matt Leming]: Yes, as well as the edit so kindly pointed out by my colleague about the small typo.

[Matt Leming]: And that edit as well.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: There's always something.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion to refer this to regular council pending the section edits and the typo, all those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: No one's on the same, so we could just do it.

[Matt Leming]: It doesn't have to be rolled.

[Matt Leming]: It does not have to be rolled.

[Matt Leming]: All opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, everybody.

[Matt Leming]: So, this... So, we'll be taking this up at a future regular meeting of the City Council.

[Matt Leming]: We'll likely have more discussions there, but it's out of committee.

[Matt Leming]: Now, for the real reason everybody's here, we're gonna edit the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: I know that y'all been waiting so patiently.

[Matt Leming]: Come on, come on.

[Matt Leming]: We're gonna go out of order.

[Matt Leming]: I just wanna get this done.

[Matt Leming]: One moment, City Council newsletters.

[Matt Leming]: 2, 4, 3, 5, 4, the resolution to publish this city council newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank Councilor Tseng for drafting this particular issue of the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: We had, and do apologize that it was only sent out in the, wait,

[Matt Leming]: Why that's there.

[Matt Leming]: That was only sent out in the middle of the day, but essentially the only real difference between this newsletter and previous ones is that they're first there is some.

[Matt Leming]: There is some tentative language on it, which we did last time, like keeping the future tense as well as the past tense and just kind of letting me edit that later when we go into review.

[Matt Leming]: And there's also a nice little point by point breakdown because this is the end of year newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: the holiday edition of the most significant accomplishments of city council this year, which would be something nice to discuss as to whether we want to do that.

[Matt Leming]: Bye.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you all for showing.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So essentially, the first bullet point goes over the override

[Matt Leming]: The second discusses progress on zoning.

[Matt Leming]: The third bullet point talks about the establishment of the stabilization funds.

[Matt Leming]: Then the policies to fund the affordable housing trust as well as tax deferrals and the proposed rental assistance program for veterans, communications methods, wildlife feeding ordinance, and the solid waste ordinance, and the leaf blower ordinance, environmental, as well as the upcoming work on the charter committee.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan, if you can

[Matt Leming]: Yep, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I believe that's referring to the HERO Act one.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think I think I put it broadly because I think we re maximize it for seniors, and then we did the time for that that's, that's a really tricky one but I had an in depth discussion with the with Tim cost with Ted cost and about that.

[Matt Leming]: We so technically passing one of the provisions of the Hero Act that we did pass was actually redundant.

[Matt Leming]: And so it didn't like it didn't add up to.

[Matt Leming]: So if we hadn't already maximized deferrals for seniors, it would have maximized them itself.

[Matt Leming]: But because we already had done that, it's like it didn't really, he said that there was some utility and actually passing it because then we could go on like a list of cities that had passed it and

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, but he said, but the more important one was the fact that we tied it was the fact that we end up tying it to inflation to an inflation.

[Matt Leming]: So the deferrals would go up every year.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that's, that's, that's the important part.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I am also disinclined from like putting out a very detailed legislative explanation of consumer price indexes and whatnot.

[Matt Leming]: But I think it, I think it captures

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, it's it is it is a good thing that it was passed.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: And I guess my other thing is that some of these are sort of what we will do future work, the veterans rental assistance program is not technically passed yet.

[Matt Leming]: But I mean, I think it's fine.

[Matt Leming]: We have been working on these things.

[Matt Leming]: And I would say that these are the main bullet points.

[Matt Leming]: And then the

[Matt Leming]: normal, the kind of general business of what actually happened in December is here as well.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, pending the tenses here,

[Matt Leming]: Does anybody have any particular suggestions about things that should be changed?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just deleting these spaces after the periods of the document.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor, feel free to just keep your mics on.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, great.

[Matt Leming]: So wait.

[Matt Leming]: Or in our, maybe, was it November?

[Matt Leming]: Was it the November's newsletter?

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Anybody else have any suggestions?

[Matt Leming]: That would be too difficult.

[Matt Leming]: That'd be too difficult to format in LaTeX.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: No, it's really hard.

[Matt Leming]: motion to accept and publish the newsletter is motion to Publish the Proven publish the newsletter pending.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, the events of December 11th because I think there is one.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, December.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, two committee meetings pending the December 11th many meetings and to receive and place on

[Matt Leming]: On the motion by Councilor Bizarro, seconded by Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: All those approve?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: And finally, okay, so that won't be going out until tomorrow because we still have the future to consider

[Matt Leming]: those committee meetings haven't actually happened yet.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, lastly, 24073 offered by Councilors Callahan, Sangam, Lazzaro, resolution to establish a City Council listening session.

[Matt Leming]: So this is just a

[Matt Leming]: opportunity, if any of us have anything, to update folks about listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: City Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, just the rescheduled West Medford Community Center listening session.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Sounds good.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'll look into scheduling that and making sure folks are available for it.

[Matt Leming]: I know I personally won't be available on the 4th, but I'm sure that somebody will be.

[Matt Leming]: Any other updates?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Before, do we have anybody who wants to say anything publicly?

[Matt Leming]: Any public comment?

[Matt Leming]: Going once, going twice.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion to adjourn by Councilor Lazzaro, do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: started.

[Matt Leming]: Welcome to the meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.

[Matt Leming]: We have three items on the agenda tonight, and we're going to take them a little bit out of order and

[Matt Leming]: start by looking at the resolution to allow the director of veteran services to offer housing incentives to veteran renters.

[Matt Leming]: We're joined here today by Teresa DuPont and Veronica Shaw to offer a bit of a recap of where this was at.

[Matt Leming]: This was an idea that veteran services director Shaw had in which

[Matt Leming]: she would have the ability to use extra funds that were allocated to the veteran's office to essentially have a voucher program for veteran renters so that landlords could get an extra bonus if they choose to rent out to veterans.

[Matt Leming]: We passed this by legal.

[Matt Leming]: It was found that it would have complications.

[Matt Leming]: There are complications in

[Matt Leming]: letting the city distribute money directly to people to interested parties.

[Matt Leming]: We would have to and Council told us that we would have to first go to a nonprofit and that led to a partnership that was largely initiated by the city staff with housing families.

[Matt Leming]: We have a memo here

[Matt Leming]: that housing families pass to us, which describes the outline of this program.

[Matt Leming]: And because it was not, I don't believe we only got this memo yesterday, so it wasn't distributed in the official agenda packet.

[Matt Leming]: So it's fairly, so I'm just going to read it into the public record real quick, and then I'll let Teresa and Veronica speak about it and answer any questions that we might have.

[Matt Leming]: The memo from housing families as follows.

[Matt Leming]: As a longtime community resource partner of the city of Medford, housing families help support the Medford community by providing homelessness prevention and housing services to income eligible residents.

[Matt Leming]: Recently, housing families was approached by the city of Medford's veteran service director, Veronica Shaw, city councilor and city councilor Matt Leming to propose a new partnership and a pilot veterans housing assistance program.

[Matt Leming]: The program would provide a rebate incentive to property owners in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: who lease their units to residents identifying themselves as active or retired service people.

[Matt Leming]: This program aligns with both the City of Medford and Housing Families' missions of providing housing assistance to residents.

[Matt Leming]: The City of Medford has already identified a funding source through the Veterans Services Office's general operating budget.

[Matt Leming]: This funding is required to be dispersed through an intermediary organization.

[Matt Leming]: Housing Families is uniquely qualified to

[Matt Leming]: support this program as our organization currently supports several assistance programs for Medford in the greater Boston area and are located locally in Malden.

[Matt Leming]: The intended program eligibility guidelines will be as follows.

[Matt Leming]: One head of household must be an active or retired service member as defined by Mass General Law Chapter 115.

[Matt Leming]: Property must be owner occupied by resident of Medford.

[Matt Leming]: Three, proper documentation must be submitted to verify eligibility, including but not limited to an executed lease agreement, verification of address, copy of active service documentation, or certificate of discharge as allowable by Mass General Law, Chapter 115, Section 3A, and the completed W-9 from the recipient or property owner.

[Matt Leming]: Four, program payments will be distributed in the form of a paper check.

[Matt Leming]: Five,

[Matt Leming]: property owners must apply for annual recertification to qualify for subsequent payments.

[Matt Leming]: Six applications will be received on a first come, first served and rolling basis until program funds are extinguished.

[Matt Leming]: Seven, any remaining funds after the annual cycles will be rolled forward to provide funding for future applicants of this program.

[Matt Leming]: Uh we ask that the city council offer their support of this program.

[Matt Leming]: Best regards, Chief Executive Officer, Housing Families

[Matt Leming]: further questions from my colleagues, I'll go ahead and hand it over to Teresa Dupont and Veronica Shaw so that they can speak about this and answer any questions that we might have about it.

[Matt Leming]: I see, Councilor, hold on, I still need to get used to leave you.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, I don't think it's on the weird.

[Matt Leming]: I actually can't see your light.

[Matt Leming]: It's sort of blocked by the other light.

[Matt Leming]: No, I mean, literally, the lamp is blocking the red thing.

[Matt Leming]: So I can't

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: OK, go ahead and press it.

[Matt Leming]: Can you press it again?

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: What?

[Matt Leming]: This is weird.

[Matt Leming]: OK, now I'm seeing.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Aha.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, it was distributed by the clerk.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: It should be, I distributed it.

[Matt Leming]: News, hold on.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, it should have been.

[Matt Leming]: I am searching through my email.

[Matt Leming]: Documents for committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: It was sent to your Gmail.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I'm looking at it right now.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so the documents for committee meeting, it should have both a copy of the Google

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Pending any further questions, go ahead and press the button on that.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Try speaking.

[Matt Leming]: pressing the next on button.

[Matt Leming]: I think you're can you hear me?

[Matt Leming]: Actually, so I could, I could talk about that a little bit.

[Matt Leming]: So with regards to the

[Matt Leming]: ordinance change, the paper in front of you is the proposed language that originally was referred to this committee.

[Matt Leming]: And I was planning on talking about that a little bit after the presentation.

[Matt Leming]: So we would have to refer that to legal so that council can say what is the best way to frame this.

[Matt Leming]: I do have some proposed language and if they

[Matt Leming]: folks have any more input on sort of the maximum amount.

[Matt Leming]: That's also very, you know, we can be amenable to that at this stage as well.

[Matt Leming]: But what you have in front of you is just the previous paper version of this paper that was referred to committee that most definitely will have to be changed.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Any other comments?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan, wait.

[Matt Leming]: Next on, I keep pressing the next on, I'm not sure what, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Mic on.

[Matt Leming]: All right, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So with just a couple of logistical things related to this, I'm going to share my screen really quick here.

[Matt Leming]: All right, so in order to do this, what you have in front of you is an additional authority added under the Director of Veterans Services.

[Matt Leming]: The draft language was what I originally penned under the assumption that the veteran service director could do this independently.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, they cannot.

[Matt Leming]: And so what I would propose is to replace that language with the following, which says the director of veteran services shall at their discretion and his funds are available.

[Matt Leming]: have the authority to partner with a nonprofit organization which may offer cash incentives of up to $750 annually to landlords who offer rental housing to veterans.

[Matt Leming]: I think that the best way forward is to first discuss this language, pass it to legal counsel, and then simultaneously pass this package to the regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: to a regular council meeting, and then once we have feedback from legal, revise the language there in accordance with whatever the recommendations might be, if they have any better way to phrase this than what I came up with.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: We could potentially move it to the fee schedule.

[Matt Leming]: That could be a solution to it so that it is,

[Matt Leming]: updated automatically, that could be one solution.

[Matt Leming]: But I think that either way, this language is going to have to go by council.

[Matt Leming]: And so I am comfortable referring this to a regular council meeting and then doing

[Matt Leming]: a little bit more research and potentially revising this to go into the fee schedule, for instance, and then voting on it there.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: That being said, do we have a motion on the floor to refer this to regular council and legal?

[Matt Leming]: On the motion by Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you both very much for your work on this.

[Matt Leming]: And we will likely be looking at it at the next regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Moving on, the city council newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: I apologize for the last minute nature that we've been sending these things out at.

[Matt Leming]: We're sort of doing a rotating schedule whereby different councillors

[Matt Leming]: draft different portions of the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: But in that latest email, you should have a link to this Google Doc here, which contains the draft of Councilor Collins, as well as a couple of points that I added from late October, which events that occurred after our last meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Now,

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Collins version of the newsletter actually does contain a couple of

[Matt Leming]: points that we are going to discuss in the meeting literally right after this, which I don't think has been done in a newsletter previously.

[Matt Leming]: So I do think that news, personally, that newsletters should report things that have already happened.

[Matt Leming]: But one way to get around this is to

[Matt Leming]: potentially approve this language contingent on what happens in the next meeting.

[Matt Leming]: And then if we do, in fact, pass those, I could, with the permission of this committee, while formatting the newsletter, just change everything to the past tense.

[Matt Leming]: Because when we're reporting things out, I think I would rather have more current events happen instead of waiting a month before we tell people what happened in a committee meeting that's happening today.

[Matt Leming]: So that could be one way to write this, even though, technically, we're, as of this moment, the things discussed in this newsletter haven't happened yet.

[Matt Leming]: But that being said, Councilor Callahan, I can see that your mic is still on, so I'm not.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, cool.

[Matt Leming]: Um, do we have any other specific suggestions to the content of the newsletter as it stands in this this Google document?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng?

[Matt Leming]: That's very reasonable.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that's from my draft.

[Matt Leming]: So I just keep those there for consistency's sake, but those wouldn't be in the formatted version.

[Matt Leming]: I could even just delete those now for clarity.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any other comments?

[Matt Leming]: Give folks a moment to go through it before we take any motions on this.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: No, no.

[Matt Leming]: So I think I think in this case, the motion would be specifically to approve it contingent upon the what is voted on in the next meeting.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion by Councilor Lazzaro, seconded by

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: And the very last item on the agenda is just a brief update on what's going on with the City Council listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: So I know that there has been a little bit of behind the scenes activity, mainly because these listening sessions just require Councilors kind of running around and trying to coordinate with different groups, get something on the calendar.

[Matt Leming]: But I'm just going to go ahead and give the opportunity to Councilors Lazzaro and Callahan, who I know have been working on some of these initiatives as well.

[Matt Leming]: So whoever would like to go first, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Wonderful.

[Matt Leming]: Council call him.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Well, I am very, very glad to hear that these, these issues are happening and we are

[Matt Leming]: actively reaching out to members of the community that, again, like you're saying, normally do not come into these chambers.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm looking forward to the reports of the listening sessions that have happened and just a brief outline of some of the feedback that we've gotten there.

[Matt Leming]: Just, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you all very much for your wonderful work on this.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: it.

[Matt Leming]: All right, so the one for the Arab.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Great, I don't think we, do we necessarily have to take a vote on that one?

[Matt Leming]: No, yeah, okay, cool.

[Matt Leming]: All right, great, sounds good.

[Matt Leming]: Wonderful, all right, is there, all right, is there any public participation?

[Matt Leming]: I'm not seeing.

[Matt Leming]: Anybody bite on zoom or in the chambers, see that Teresa's knitting over there.

[Matt Leming]: So, oh, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I feel like accessing these groups is sometimes it's a matter of personal connections and trying to communicate with folks who you know might have those connections.

[Matt Leming]: I know a couple of parents who might be able to tap into their parental networks to figure that particular one out.

[Matt Leming]: So that could be one.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, that could be something to pursue in January.

[Matt Leming]: In terms of students, because that was another one on our list, my thoughts on that would be you'd really have to get more formal, sort of a more formal,

[Matt Leming]: lines for that, like probably reaching out to the principal of Medford High to see if they're okay with it, or reaching out to student government.

[Matt Leming]: So in that case, I would imagine that

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, in that case, you definitely need to have a slightly more formal.

[Matt Leming]: And then there's also just different community centers and social centers around the city, which is where the senior center idea comes from.

[Matt Leming]: I know I was thinking through reaching out to groups of veterans, in which case the VFW would be a good solution for that, a good way to address that.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, I also think that we did kind of have a bit of a lull in scheduling these listening sessions over the summer because when we were scheduling our ambitious schedule, we didn't understand that it was the summer.

[Matt Leming]: And nobody was really around.

[Matt Leming]: So that's just something that happens.

[Matt Leming]: But I'm glad to see that they're picking up now.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that, you know, when Councilor Lazzaro and I were brainstorming, we're like thinking of the regular sessions at the senior center.

[Matt Leming]: The logic behind that was that it is an easy kind of like it is an easy month by month thing where we can put as little brain power as possible into reaching out and scheduling to a new group.

[Matt Leming]: So that's just a way to sort of keep it going.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: On the motion to adjourn by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: That was Councilor Tseng, right?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, everybody.

[Matt Leming]: know if he's going to be attending in person.

[Matt Leming]: If they know if Scott's going to be attending building commissioner.

[Matt Leming]: My understanding was that he had some recommendations for changing some stuff about the green score to make it not conflict with the building code.

[Matt Leming]: But if we already have that written down somewhere so that it could be amended during the meeting, then that would be fine too.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, okay, just as long as you see what's happening.

[Matt Leming]: Adam, any word on when Councilor Scarpella is gonna show up?

[Matt Leming]: Or did he give you any indication of that?

[Matt Leming]: All right, let's do that.

[Matt Leming]: So welcome to the planning and permitting committee of November 13th, 2024.

[Matt Leming]: During this meeting, we're just going to we are going to go over mainly the proposed green zone.

[Matt Leming]: Green score zoning ordinance at the end of the meeting, we'll have a short presentation.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, very short on the Salem street corridor, which is going to be coming up the next regular.

[Matt Leming]: meeting of the City Council.

[Matt Leming]: Just as a reminder, if you would like to be recognized and speak, please raise your hand on Zoom first and I'll recognize you.

[Matt Leming]: But the goal of this meeting is to refer out the green score by the end of it for the regular City Council meeting next week.

[Matt Leming]: And with that being said, I will turn it over to Paola, unless any of my colleagues on city council have anything they'd like to say first, feel free to raise your hand really quickly.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, Adam.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, okay, sorry, I thought that.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, sorry, that was- That's okay, don't worry about it.

[Matt Leming]: Yep, yep.

[Matt Leming]: Don't worry about it.

[Matt Leming]: Go ahead, go ahead and take a roll.

[Matt Leming]: She is absent.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So do any of my colleagues on City Council have anything they'd like to say first?

[Matt Leming]: No?

[Matt Leming]: All right, in that case, Paola, take it away.

[Matt Leming]: Are you able to share?

[Matt Leming]: I think he's a reminder it's generally it's generally only acceptable if the chair recognizes folks from the floor, but go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, Councilor Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: that's on.

[Matt Leming]: We don't see the Excel.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, yep, now we do.

[Matt Leming]: I see it.

[Matt Leming]: If there are any questions, feel free to raise your hand on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Director Hunt.

[Matt Leming]: Any other questions?

[Matt Leming]: All right, continue.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Keep going.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Any other input from anybody else on the call?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Commissioner.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: I just ask you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Director Hunt?

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: I might have mistaken that pause as a... No, no, it's okay.

[Matt Leming]: Director Hunt?

[Matt Leming]: Go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: Personally, I'm thinking that a lot of these points can be, I mean, a lot of these do seem to be relatively minor changes at this point.

[Matt Leming]: And, sorry, I was looking at Zach to see if, and I think that,

[Matt Leming]: This is likely subject to the building commissioner's previous changes that he recommended.

[Matt Leming]: This is still likely able to be referred to regular council.

[Matt Leming]: And if the Planning Department and the building commissioner do come up with any recommendations over the next week, we could incorporate those during a regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: So with that, is there any further discussion?

[Matt Leming]: you know, I do think like these are important technical points, but they can also be done between the consultants and the staff and sort of hammered out during some of the, during some longer meetings between individuals and recommended to the council or the CD board later.

[Matt Leming]: With that, is there any other comments from

[Matt Leming]: staff or city councilors?

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: I'm aware of that.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'll get to that.

[Matt Leming]: I'll get to that.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to refer out to the regular meeting pending discussion.

[Matt Leming]: And I did.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second on that?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And with that, I do see that Mr. Fiore's hand is raised.

[Matt Leming]: So we will move to public comment.

[Matt Leming]: Just to check, because this was a little bit unclear, like it was kind of a last minute switch to Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: President Bears or Councilor Callahan, can you verify that there is, is there anybody physically in the audience at the hall right now?

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, in that case, we'll move on to public comment and I'm going to ask Mr. Fiore to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Fiore, if you'd be able to provide your name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: I was taking notes on what you just said.

[Matt Leming]: So you're wondering if the effects of irrigation on green roofs, zoning related to tree height and their ability to affect solar panels.

[Matt Leming]: And could you just rephrase your first question again?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so inclusion of cool, is there inclusion of cool roofs in the green score inclusion of the effects of irrigation on green roofs or anything about that zoning related to tall trees?

[Matt Leming]: I do know that there is some work being done with regards to the tree that there is some work being done on the tree ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: I think that was, that's primarily Councilor Collins and Councilor Callahan who are doing or

[Matt Leming]: spearheading a lot of the work on that.

[Matt Leming]: If Councilor Cowlin, if you have any information related to trees, feel free to raise your hand, but otherwise, otherwise, Paola, can you confirm whether or not there's anything related to cool roofs or anything related to irrigation on green roofs in the current draft?

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Paola.

[Matt Leming]: I think that.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I appreciate that.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: All right, and not seeing any other folks here for public comments.

[Matt Leming]: So Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: I also emailed it to Mr. Feuer during his public comment, so I feel like we just really rushed to get those documents all at the same time.

[Matt Leming]: So there is a, there's, Director Hunt?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: We have a motion on the floor.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Do you have the exact text of the motion, by the way?

[Matt Leming]: Yes or yes.

[Matt Leming]: One absent the motion passes the chair is referred out to regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: And the other item on the agenda is just a quick, very quick update on the Salem Street corridor.

[Matt Leming]: Is that, Paola, as well, you had that update?

[Matt Leming]: Wonderful, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: Well, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: We, we went over ground rules at the beginning, raise, raise hand.

[Matt Leming]: And then, uh, and then, and I saw that, uh, director hunt raised her hand.

[Matt Leming]: And so then I'll, uh, did you have, um, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli, director Hunt.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Director Hunt.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Scapelli.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Sure, yeah, let's go into public participation for this item.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Fiore?

[Matt Leming]: Well, the city does have a number of folks who volunteer in certain service that usually they're on boards or those sorts of volunteer positions.

[Matt Leming]: So I was on the CPA.

[Matt Leming]: So the city does utilize volunteers for a lot of different tasks.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know if we've utilized them for that one specifically, but Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, no, the community liaisons I think is a very good point.

[Matt Leming]: So those are folks that are probably most similar to what

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Fiora was just talking about, but you're right in terms of just strictly location-based.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sure if we have one of those.

[Matt Leming]: Paola.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Paula.

[Matt Leming]: So with that, unless someone else has entered the city hall physically, I'm not seeing it.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, not seeing any other folks who'd like to do public participation.

[Matt Leming]: So we'll close that.

[Matt Leming]: And with that, do we have any motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: We have a second.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion to adjourn by Council President Bears, seconded by Councilor Callahan, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Four in the affirmative, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: The meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much for coming out tonight, everybody.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also like to point out that people are confused about this because an organization that Councilor Scarpelli is in the leadership, I've sent people out an email saying that this was what was written in the ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: So if you send an email.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, you can't send an email out saying that this is what it's about.

[Matt Leming]: You're causing confusion and saying there's confusion in the community.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you, Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: The only amendment to this that council advised was to remove the up to and up to 100% in the very last paragraph of the resolution.

[Matt Leming]: but otherwise both council and the assessor thought that this was perfectly acceptable.

[Matt Leming]: So I would motion to amend this to remove the two words up to in the very last paragraph and pass it.

[Matt Leming]: No, I just wanted to clarify that in our correspondence that I had with Paul Raihee, he said that he did select the contractor already that will be doing this work, the same company that did historic renovations for Faneuil Hall in Boston.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't know the name of that company specifically, but I had a back and forth with him about with him and some members of the CPA about this.

[Matt Leming]: So that

[Matt Leming]: already is selected as my okay so he did that already Yeah, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President.

[Matt Leming]: At this committee meeting, we heard a brief update from Councilor Tseng on the progress of the Human Rights Commission updates, and we drafted a newsletter which was subsequently released, and that's what happened.

[Matt Leming]: I have a motion to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: I have a motion to suspend the rules and take public participation out of order.

[Matt Leming]: This is just a very brief comment.

[Matt Leming]: So I do definitely hear what Marianne is saying about during any construction phase, it's likely that parking would be unavailable during that time.

[Matt Leming]: But the RFP, just to really highlight this, the RFP does call for the construction of a parking garage in any developments that are created so long term.

[Matt Leming]: ideally going by what the RFP says, this wouldn't affect parking availability in the area.

[Matt Leming]: So that's the idea, but I just wanted to, again, I'm hearing what Marianne is saying about the temporary unavailability during construction, but I did want to highlight that for folks in the room.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President.

[Matt Leming]: So this is pretty much a cut and dry resolution which would adopt the two parts of the HERO Act that City Councils explicitly need to approve.

[Matt Leming]: I've talked to the Veteran Services Director and the assessor

[Matt Leming]: about this.

[Matt Leming]: So clause 22.

[Matt Leming]: that would allow for the city to go up to the full amount of exemptions for veterans, although we already do that in other parts of general laws, chapter 59.

[Matt Leming]: So it wouldn't necessarily add to that, but Ted tells me there's no harm in adopting it anyway, just for future purposes.

[Matt Leming]: The real effect of that would be

[Matt Leming]: The real important part here is clause 22 I, which would basically increase the amount of folks tax exemptions on a yearly basis according to increases in the consumer price index.

[Matt Leming]: So it's another mechanism to make these kind of dollar amount exemptions automatic without a city council or the state having to come in and

[Matt Leming]: do that explicitly.

[Matt Leming]: So that's one of the new things that the HERO Act allows.

[Matt Leming]: So I yeah, it's a you know, it's a fairly straightforward adoption of provisions of state law.

[Matt Leming]: And I would motion to send this to legal for review.

[Matt Leming]: I talked it over with head he recommended to send it to legal for review first.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, sure.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so this is, there's already, I mean, Ted's already seen the text of this and he approved everything, but I could add onto that motion just a request from the assessor for a memo, an additional memo to outline his approval for it in the public record if my colleagues think that that is appropriate.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Sounds good.

[Matt Leming]: So moved.

[Matt Leming]: Just to add to that, so this actually came up at an event at a small house party where we were talking about these measures.

[Matt Leming]: Somebody asked me, well, if you're proposing to put $500,000 towards the GDW for road repairs, I live on a private road, how would that affect me?

[Matt Leming]: I had no idea.

[Matt Leming]: So I ended up emailing Tim McGibbon, CC, the fellow who asked me, and what Tim said was that

[Matt Leming]: there is no, so just by the fact, by the nature of it being private, there's no legal obligation for him to actively repair these roads.

[Matt Leming]: But he said that they, if, when they have capacity, they will do it anyway, just to keep the city nice, and putting a permanent road repair crew into being going will just give them,

[Matt Leming]: more capacity to do that.

[Matt Leming]: So that was his perspective on that.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: That's correct.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Just like to really quickly request that when, at the meeting when TDM is discussed specifically, I would appreciate some forewarning on that because I think it would be appropriate to invite the Lower Mystic TMA to that meeting.

[Matt Leming]: They have been asking about it, so I'm not sure if there will be a specific meeting about that in itself or if it will just come up.

[Matt Leming]: as a topic in future meetings, but in any case, I'm forewarning that you'll appreciate it.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lueb, go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I do.

[Matt Leming]: There are some folks from there that have been speaking with me, and they even previously met with City staff, but I think it would be

[Matt Leming]: wise to invite them to the planning meetings.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I can't go to them because of, obviously because of open meeting law considerations, but I know that just on some emails, their contact information is available and they previously met with me and Laurel Siegel, but that was a while ago.

[Matt Leming]: So just having them be more included in the workflow, I think would be a good idea.

[Matt Leming]: There's no more public comment or input from staff.

[Matt Leming]: I wanted to make a motion to refer to a regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: All right, Justin, you on?

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: Ready?

[Matt Leming]: Do I have to do a roll call?

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: No, no.

[Matt Leming]: All right, welcome to the meeting of the Medford Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.

[Matt Leming]: This is the first meeting that I've been in where we are testing out our new AV system.

[Matt Leming]: So you might notice some technical difficulties going on with that.

[Matt Leming]: I believe what you do, Councilor Callahan-Lazzaro, is press the

[Matt Leming]: Yep, Kevin Harrington is kindly instructing.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, if you want to, the way that this works is you put yourself in the queue.

[Matt Leming]: And then when I put next on, that means that I can end up sort of choosing people in the order that they press their little mic button.

[Matt Leming]: So I could also try to make it so that we could all just talk at once, but I'm going to have to get used to these new controls here.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: The first thing that

[Matt Leming]: We are going to go over this session is the draft of the Medford City Council newsletter for October 2024.

[Matt Leming]: I ended up, I was the one who drafted this.

[Matt Leming]: It essentially just goes over everything that we've covered in the past month.

[Matt Leming]: I would like

[Matt Leming]: You know, I sent the meeting out, I sent the document out to all my colleagues prior to this, and just invited everybody to offer their comments as some folks are doing right now in this at the moment, like, even as we speak.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng, I would like to also draw your attention just to the governance committee, as well as Councilors Lazar and Callahan to the committees that you chair, just to be sure that the descriptions that I wrote for those are accurate.

[Matt Leming]: So if you have any thoughts or questions or ways that you think things should be edited, feel free to let me know.

[Matt Leming]: Let's see.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Kevin, it says that her mic is on.

[Matt Leming]: Hold on.

[Matt Leming]: Here, but it's.

[Matt Leming]: We're going to, let's, I understand that we're just, I just want to do, finish editing the newsletter and then we will.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So, all right.

[Matt Leming]: So if councillors, that's reasonable enough.

[Matt Leming]: If councillors would like to spend a little bit of time editing it while we go through Councilor Tseng's presentation on the next agenda item, then feel free to do so.

[Matt Leming]: I understand that

[Matt Leming]: Due to some emails flying around, not everybody has been able to do so.

[Matt Leming]: But if Councilor Tseng would like to offer a brief presentation on the state, on the Human Rights Commission, then as he wants to, then he can go.

[Matt Leming]: Then feel free to take it away.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: So for the very brief update on the State of the Human Rights Commission, we will move on.

[Matt Leming]: Are there any other comments from Councilors?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, we'll move on to public comment.

[Matt Leming]: I see Steve Schnapp's hand raised on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just gonna ask him to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, go, go for it.

[Matt Leming]: Without that.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any other public comment?

[Matt Leming]: Anyone else who'd like to speak?

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Seeing none, do we have a motion on the floor regarding this paper?

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Motion by Councilor Lazzaro to keep the paper in committee, seconded by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, for an affirmative, none absent, the motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Would also like to note for the AV folks that there might need to be a better system for roll call in the future as well.

[Matt Leming]: So it's just kind of because it's good

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, it's better to be able to do it quickly instead of have everybody queue up each and every time.

[Matt Leming]: So there's kind of a note for the future with this new audio-visual system we have.

[Matt Leming]: But in any case, I'd like to thank everybody for attending for the brief update.

[Matt Leming]: And I hope that we'll be able to have something public as soon as we can on the Human Rights Commission.

[Matt Leming]: Moving back to the newsletter draft, which we can hopefully hammer out and set a record for pretty fast committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to share that once again to Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So it looks like we just have a couple of typos, which are entirely my fault.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm just going to go ahead and accept a few of these.

[Matt Leming]: Let's see.

[Matt Leming]: And if any Councilor has anything in particular that they'd like to point out in the newsletter or discuss, then just feel free to raise your hand.

[Matt Leming]: The Councilor is saying, I see that your hand is raised.

[Matt Leming]: Is that from before?

[Matt Leming]: That was from before.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, cool.

[Matt Leming]: The links I put there solely to

[Matt Leming]: The links I put there mainly to just help myself later when I go into latech and create it and format it myself.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm just going through this through and accepting Councilor Tseng's edits.

[Matt Leming]: It's clear that Harvard Law student is much better at editing texts than a very tired scientist.

[Matt Leming]: Unequally tired.

[Matt Leming]: A very tired Harvard Law student is clearly better with the English language.

[Matt Leming]: All right, that looks... Wait, Councilor Tseng, is this comment that I'm seeing here...

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: And I understand that I was trying to remember that meeting following the four hours and 42 minute Q&A session, which of the resolutions from the October 15th meeting we tabled.

[Matt Leming]: And I asked the clerk earlier, and he said that

[Matt Leming]: According to his memory, we did not table the commemoration of Sarah Bradley Fulton Day, but we did table the commemoration of the two DPW staff members who returned a lost wallet for the next regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Is that correct?

[Matt Leming]: Um, at the commemorations and acknowledgement section, uh, we, I put the, I put the two, uh, commemorations from the October 15th meeting in there, but we tabled a couple of stuff really, really quickly.

[Matt Leming]: And I was having trouble remembering exactly which ones we table and which ones we very quickly passed.

[Matt Leming]: So, um, I would, do you want me to run down and check?

[Matt Leming]: Can we just, how do we make these all just so that people can unmute themselves?

[Matt Leming]: How do we?

[Matt Leming]: No, no, I mean, this is just a regular time.

[Matt Leming]: So, in the, you know, in some of the earlier ones we might have accidentally left off.

[Matt Leming]: a couple of them or not put all of them on there especially because the initial one was covering a four-month period and it was pretty lengthy as it was but um I think I think moving forward it's probably it would just be nice to show people um who and all was commemorated at these these different meetings.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry?

[Matt Leming]: When was that passed?

[Matt Leming]: What date was Larry's passing?

[Matt Leming]: Really?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: It's hard for me to find the records of the ones I can get the date.

[Matt Leming]: Well, the date of the resolution would have been the 15th, but the date of his passing.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: October 14.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Does this seem like an appropriate addition?

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a motion on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Chairman.

[Matt Leming]: Was that a second Councilor Tseng?

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going through and looking at it and accepting.

[Matt Leming]: public vote in.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Motion by Councilor Callahan to approve and release.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, would you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Four in the affirmative, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: The motion passes and we have another newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any other motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by?

[Matt Leming]: On the motion to adjourn by Councilor Lazzaro, seconded by Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Clerk, when you're ready, would you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: For the affirmative one absent, the motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you everybody and have a wonderful evening.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Speaking of.

[Matt Leming]: As we were saying, we lost Councilor Collins.

[Matt Leming]: She walks in the door.

[Matt Leming]: Would we withdraw the motion so that we can allow for more discussion from the colleagues who just arrived?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: This is just to add on.

[Matt Leming]: I fully agree that the cost of these facilities needs to be determined.

[Matt Leming]: Probably also the very basic question of which parks and what would be an ideal number to shoot for across the city.

[Matt Leming]: How many of these facilities do we want to build?

[Matt Leming]: It's just a question for Councilor Tseng what resident when you're putting this forward, what resident complaints were you specifically responding to?

[Matt Leming]: Was it folks that were visiting certain parks who wanted this?

[Matt Leming]: What was, could you just talk a little bit about the feedback you were getting that led to this?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: On that, I would motion to request feedback on the cost, potential cost savings and need for these sanitary facilities in public spaces around Medford from Tim McGivern and Alicia Hunt.

[Matt Leming]: as well as their recommendation, as well as their long-term recommendations on this problem.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I was trying to think of a way to word it.

[Matt Leming]: But essentially, given the resources, the intent of it is given the resources the city has now, how much do they think that their resources should be prioritized to implementing this?

[Matt Leming]: I'm just unsure how that would be implemented.

[Matt Leming]: Would it be an email to all city staff and then request a general request for feedback?

[Matt Leming]: new wording of the motion could be, and feel free to feel free to jump in if any of my more experienced colleagues have recommendations to edit it, but a motion to request feedback from department heads on the

[Matt Leming]: idea of installing permanent sanitary facilities in public spaces, including our parks, with the invitation to have one-on-one meetings with council members if they feel the need to.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to try to respond to one thing there.

[Matt Leming]: I didn't hear a specific question, but you did say that Medford's not like our surrounding towns.

[Matt Leming]: No, I said Winchester.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, we're not like Winchester.

[Matt Leming]: 90% of cities in the state of Massachusetts have had an override.

[Matt Leming]: Medford has one of the lowest operating budgets per capita of any city.

[Matt Leming]: midsize city in the state of Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: And that is in large part because we are one of the 10% of cities that has never had an override.

[Matt Leming]: So you're right.

[Matt Leming]: We are not like our neighbors that have had overrides and we have less money for it.

[Matt Leming]: Saying that we can address the budgetary problems of the Medford public school system with free cash is like me saying the government gave me a $1,200 check from COVID.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't have to look for a job right now because that check is going to last me another

[Matt Leming]: another two weeks.

[Matt Leming]: It's the same thing.

[Matt Leming]: The government gave us, the government gave the city of Medford some money.

[Matt Leming]: It was a one-time thing from COVID and the proposal that we can plug ongoing costs from free cash.

[Matt Leming]: All that would do is drain our reserves and we'd be back at square one in five years.

[Matt Leming]: If these overrides don't pass straight up, there will be layoffs in the school system and the roads will continue to be in disrepair.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So adding on to what Councilor Callahan said, partially this is due to the lingering costs of COVID, which resulted in both decreased funding going to the school system, partially that was just because you have fewer students going into public schools, and partially because

[Matt Leming]: there was a lot of activity in the healthcare system from COVID.

[Matt Leming]: So there is a sort of a, so the cost of health insurance, which we have to pay ended up rising.

[Matt Leming]: Those are some of the more short term reasons why we need this now.

[Matt Leming]: Longer term,

[Matt Leming]: The way that Prop 2 NAP is designed is the total amount of money that the city can take in basically can't go up by more than 2.5% every year.

[Matt Leming]: While inflation has averaged for the past 44 years at 3.1% over time, that compounds.

[Matt Leming]: So the budget today

[Matt Leming]: is only a fraction, well, it's only about 78% as valuable today as it was back in 1980.

[Matt Leming]: So Prop 2.5 has this effect long-term on municipal budget where it squeezes resources.

[Matt Leming]: Most cities in Massachusetts have addressed this with the intended mechanism for overcoming this, which is periodic elections.

[Matt Leming]: This is just the first time we're doing that.

[Matt Leming]: That's part of the reason.

[Matt Leming]: the fact that we're so late to the game there is part of the reason that again we are 320 out of 351 cities in terms of our per capita budget and that is the reason why our schools could definitely be doing

[Matt Leming]: better.

[Matt Leming]: That is the reason why you see so many potholes.

[Matt Leming]: This is one step in addressing that situation.

[Matt Leming]: Once again, free cash, one time funding is not an actual longer term solution.

[Matt Leming]: If we just went with free cash, that would be drained in a couple of years, even shorter than the four to five year span I put, I said earlier, and then that's time.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sorry, just to go back on that 3 to 5% thing.

[Matt Leming]: It's not 3 to 5% in totality.

[Matt Leming]: It actually is recommended to generate 3 to 5% in free cash every year.

[Matt Leming]: So that is correct.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sure where you're getting.

[Matt Leming]: You can Google it.

[Matt Leming]: You can look it up.

[Matt Leming]: I encourage you to.

[Matt Leming]: But the point is, you generate three to 5% in free cash, and then it goes that can aggregate over time.

[Matt Leming]: And then that can go towards one time capital expenditures, like for instance, two new fire trucks for the fire department.

[Matt Leming]: That's how these big, that's how these sort of, I'd say, midsize expenses are accounted for.

[Matt Leming]: Again, if I have a savings account and I'm living above my means, then eventually the savings account would run out.

[Matt Leming]: So you're not supposed to plug the school budget every single year with free cash.

[Matt Leming]: because it would run out eventually.

[Matt Leming]: We did that with $1.75 million this past year with the understanding that we would then do an override to try to fix the problem in the long term.

[Matt Leming]: Free cash is not a long-term solution.

[Matt Leming]: That keeps getting repeated, and I really just want to drive the point home.

[Matt Leming]: It is not actually an answer to this problem.

[Matt Leming]: So in terms of how much free cash we actually have left, I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but I'm just remembering the expenditures off the top of my head.

[Matt Leming]: I believe after it was certified this past June, the number was 34 million, but I believe enough of that has been earmarked for various one-time expenditures at this point so that the actual number is, correct me if I'm wrong, would be about

[Matt Leming]: 10 to 11 million in reserves right now just because I see so much I can see someone shaking their head in the audience but I believe.

[Matt Leming]: So again, this is ballpark numbers because we did allocate free cash first for the stabilization funds, which recently went to things like those light posts that were falling over, that were, you know, rusted.

[Matt Leming]: They went to $3 million for the MSBA study.

[Matt Leming]: It went to pay for HVAC systems.

[Matt Leming]: It went to pay for, there was a,

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, there's a long list of items that were in some memos from a couple of months ago that I think some of my colleagues could help me out.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to really emphasize that if you're interested in learning more about the shortfalls in the school, in the Medford Public Schools budget, then the videos and the presentations that were given during the budget season at the Medford School Committee meetings, I believe around June, would be where you want to go.

[Matt Leming]: So those are on YouTube.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So for the size of the override, what I'll say is that we got, we went 44 years without an override, and this is the first time that we're asking the voters to do an override, which has become very commonplace in other communities.

[Matt Leming]: And so, yeah, if we, you know, there potentially is,

[Matt Leming]: a debt exclusion in the future for the high school as a capital project, but just in terms of level expenses, the overrides are a mechanism to undo, to overcome the effects of inflation long-term.

[Matt Leming]: So I will just point out that we've gone this long without an override, and this is the first time that we're asking for it.

[Matt Leming]: We've survived pretty long so far.

[Matt Leming]: And we're pretty late to the game, to be honest.

[Matt Leming]: Will another override be needed in another 44 years?

[Matt Leming]: Maybe, because inflation will keep going up.

[Matt Leming]: But right now, we know that we need this, or else, again, the roads will continue to be in the state that they're in, and we will have to have

[Matt Leming]: a lot of layoffs.

[Matt Leming]: That's not a scare tactic.

[Matt Leming]: That's just the truth.

[Matt Leming]: It's just math.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So I would like to point out that in asking for specifics for these things, there is a bit of a kind of a circular logic that goes in because if hypothetically we were to put forward to the voters the exact pay scale of each teacher in each line item, that's not really possible because union contracts haven't actually been negotiated, haven't been negotiated yet.

[Matt Leming]: So that would be premature.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, no, no.

[Matt Leming]: And so, I mean, it goes for a lot of things.

[Matt Leming]: It goes for the development of the plans for a fire station as well.

[Matt Leming]: So you don't have to have the plans completely finalized and approved, but you can have a estimate for the full cost of the station from the people that are developing the plans beforehand.

[Matt Leming]: Right now,

[Matt Leming]: estimate is $30 million.

[Matt Leming]: And it goes, I mean, it goes for the salaries as well.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, we are, we put in the ballot questions, the areas where it would go to, but we can't say it will go to 10 teachers.

[Matt Leming]: It will go to 15 parents, et cetera, because those need to be negotiated after the fact.

[Matt Leming]: On the other hand, if, on the other hand, if we do

[Matt Leming]: I've also heard people say, OK, how can you promise higher wages, for instance, if those contracts haven't been negotiated?

[Matt Leming]: So this becomes a bit of a chicken and egg problem when asking for specifics versus not being specific enough on these valid questions.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to make that general point, so thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Well, just to make the point that if you have a, you know, we, this is a request to pay slightly more property taxes, but it also goes along with the general point of, yeah, $37 a month.

[Matt Leming]: That's, that is slightly more, you know, with the, to go along with the general point of you get what you pay for,

[Matt Leming]: Again, we are a very underfunded city.

[Matt Leming]: And we would like that to not be the case.

[Matt Leming]: And this is a step in the right direction.

[Matt Leming]: That's all.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sorry, where is the woman who asked the question?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: No, I just wanted to point out.

[Matt Leming]: So there was, so I've seen this, um,

[Matt Leming]: error that people have been doing with the DLS calculator the past week or so, where they're taking the $7.5 million that comes from questions seven and eight combined, and then they're just adding that to the $30 million and then saying... I think she just added the $2 million for the estimated... Yeah, that is actually...

[Matt Leming]: So first, just to make the point that disagreeing doesn't mean it's a fear attack, it just means I disagree with you.

[Matt Leming]: Just want to put that out there.

[Matt Leming]: The actual answer to that is that the communities that haven't had to do Prop 2.5 overrides to keep a level budget are either the communities that have just much bigger budgets overall than we do, like Boston, or in cases like Cambridge, they invested in areas like Kendall Square years and years ago.

[Matt Leming]: Medford could have invested in that

[Matt Leming]: kind of development a long time ago.

[Matt Leming]: We just never did that.

[Matt Leming]: And smaller communities that don't really have the opportunity to do that sort of commercial development.

[Matt Leming]: Some towns are basically just residential properties and not a whole lot of commercial activity.

[Matt Leming]: They have to do these sorts of overrides regularly.

[Matt Leming]: So Medford kind of avoided this by just doing cuts and cuts and cuts until we became a very underfunded community.

[Matt Leming]: And now that we're at this point, there's really not much of a choice except for either kicking the can down the road more, which doesn't solve the problem, or doing one of these overrides like Our Neighbors, or we could get a time machine and do a lot more commercial development.

[Matt Leming]: But of course, that's not an option.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I think we've already gone over the free cash issue quite a bit.

[Matt Leming]: It wouldn't.

[Matt Leming]: That's the answer.

[Matt Leming]: We used $1.75 million in free cash to plug the budget with the understanding that we would have an override coming up on the ballot.

[Matt Leming]: I think what my colleague is saying is that we should do that

[Matt Leming]: another year and then do an override the next year or so.

[Matt Leming]: But it's, I'm honestly a bit confused why it keeps coming up as a solution to all of our problems.

[Matt Leming]: Cause it's not like you just can't use free cash year after year for salaries.

[Matt Leming]: That's not the way it works.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Let's move on.

[Matt Leming]: We still have a City Council meeting to go to.

[Matt Leming]: Now, Councilor Collins said a lot of points that I was going to make, which is to get the bird's eye view.

[Matt Leming]: Most of this council is pretty, is fairly new.

[Matt Leming]: About half of us are in our first term.

[Matt Leming]: And so we are trying to lay the foundations for the further growth and development of the city.

[Matt Leming]: The most important thing, the most important component of that is the zoning overhaul.

[Matt Leming]: a couple of meetings ago, I brought up a linkage fee proposal which would essentially raise the fees that developers pay for the first time to the city for their developments for the first time in 30 years that passed this council six to one.

[Matt Leming]: I think that you'll find that we are intensely focused on the financials so that we will have growth for the next 10 years, for the next 20 years.

[Matt Leming]: In general, this city,

[Matt Leming]: a lot of the political history of this city has been sort of attempting to kick the can down the road or just say, oh, or just come up with like vague ways to say, oh, we should all come together and find solutions, but not actually ever backing anything.

[Matt Leming]: This council is actually laying the foundations and passing actual ordinances and legislation so that we won't have to worry about that in the future.

[Matt Leming]: So yes, we are building a foundation that should have been built a very long time ago, and these overrides are really meant to address more short-term concerns.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So speaking a bit more of a bird's eye view of this, I do wish that things were better between the fire union and the mayor and that that process had gone better for both parties.

[Matt Leming]: And I am sorry at how that has evolved.

[Matt Leming]: My view of this is that

[Matt Leming]: even is that the debt exclusion is about funding and it's not, I don't see it as necessarily being tied to whatever plans come out.

[Matt Leming]: That's just how I view it.

[Matt Leming]: So that.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to try to give more of a personal perspective of that.

[Matt Leming]: It's a good question, one that hasn't been directly addressed in these chambers too much.

[Matt Leming]: I think, honestly, what we're seeing here is a bit of a generational divide.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that previous generations of politicians quite literally came from a different part of town.

[Matt Leming]: I've literally analyzed this myself.

[Matt Leming]: I put up a blog post about it.

[Matt Leming]: And so there's a lot of people in the city who are used to having this personal relationship with their elected officials, because they're literally the people that they grew up with.

[Matt Leming]: But over time, the demographics of Medford have shifted.

[Matt Leming]: You have a much younger generation of voters, a lot more people moving in.

[Matt Leming]: And so there's a,

[Matt Leming]: And so most, I mean, most of the city Councilors these days live in just literally a completely different geographical part of Medford.

[Matt Leming]: And so I've spoken to, you know, there's been a lot of angry meetings and there is like some folks who've come up and said, you know, very

[Matt Leming]: unpleasant things to me, who I've later had very good one-on-one conversations with, and they've said, well, Matt, people are scared.

[Matt Leming]: And I do think that in some cases that is the case, because they feel like they don't really know, at a personal level, some of the folks here, just because we do come

[Matt Leming]: we are like literally living in a different part of town.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so I think that, I think that these sorts of things will heal, um, will heal over time.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I think it's a matter of, I'm trying to figure out like who, uh, that comes to these meetings is willing to have a nice one-on-one conversation, develop those relationships.

[Matt Leming]: Not everybody is, but some people are, so it will heal with time is my take on that.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So, when I first in the time before, and I ran for council in the time that I was running one thing that I learned is that there are

[Matt Leming]: a lot of people in the city who hold politics above personal relationships.

[Matt Leming]: Because when I said that I'm running as a progressive, those are my ideals.

[Matt Leming]: And then you end up making a decision that maybe some person doesn't like, you kind of notice that there's a lot of folks in the city who will turn on you after that.

[Matt Leming]: And that's happened

[Matt Leming]: to me quite a few times with relationships that I've had with various folks around the city.

[Matt Leming]: I've noticed that Larry was one of the few people who truly did not matter to him.

[Matt Leming]: There's a few other people like that where you could tell it's just whatever happens politically, whatever happens in the chambers, it just doesn't

[Matt Leming]: matter to them.

[Matt Leming]: They'll always value their relationship.

[Matt Leming]: They'll always value who you are as a human being above all of that.

[Matt Leming]: They really know how to remain neutral and respect the person.

[Matt Leming]: And so it made me respect and miss him a lot more, even though I haven't known him as long as some of my colleagues had.

[Matt Leming]: gave him a phone call, gave him a phone call over the summer.

[Matt Leming]: And after he'd been hospitalized, talked for a little bit.

[Matt Leming]: Remember, I just asked him about the history of the, you know, Medford politics, because we're having some contentious meetings here.

[Matt Leming]: And he said to me, Matt, it's always been that way.

[Matt Leming]: So this was a guy who, he'd been around the block a few times, and he knew that at the end of the day, it's the person that matters.

[Matt Leming]: It's none of this, all of this is ephemeral.

[Matt Leming]: So I miss him.

[Matt Leming]: I had a question on Medford's current definition of dormitories.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm just trying to get an idea for myself of the practical cases where these different definitions would differ.

[Matt Leming]: Our current one is building designed for or occupied as a residence for students or staff owned by or under the supervision of an institution or an educational use which is not operated as a gainful business.

[Matt Leming]: With the wording for that, could that be understood as, could you like have an apartment complex or a house which is owned by an institution of some sort, even like a private equity firm, but ends up housing mostly students?

[Matt Leming]: Would that be reclassified as dormitory under our current ordinances?

[Matt Leming]: I think my other concern with this definition is specified building designed by or occupied as a residence for students or staff so it's that

[Matt Leming]: It's that or right there.

[Matt Leming]: So what I'm thinking is that one year it could be occupied by all renters who are working in Boston.

[Matt Leming]: They all move out and then a bunch of students move in there and suddenly it's reclassified as a dormitory automatically just because it might not have been designed for that purpose, but now they're occupied.

[Matt Leming]: It's now occupied by them that you see what I'm saying there.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I'm just trying to understand how... I'm just trying to go over the implications of the current definition, just add food for thought for changing it in the future.

[Matt Leming]: Well, I could make that as a motion, but I would like to bring up with the Cambridge definition.

[Matt Leming]: Director Hunt, what do you think of the idea of striking the phrase for persons whose permanent residence is elsewhere?

[Matt Leming]: So I guess I'll motion to adopt the Cambridge definition of a dormitory striking the words for persons whose permanent residence is elsewhere.

[Matt Leming]: And.

[Matt Leming]: And.

[Matt Leming]: So striking whose permanent residence is elsewhere and.

[Matt Leming]: Just whose permanent residence is elsewhere and.

[Matt Leming]: Rose, we had a we had a very short city council meeting, but sorry, I wanted to, I just wanted to add on to what Zach was saying about the long term financial plan of the city, which was a lot of what city council doing is right

[Matt Leming]: Right now, is establishing sort of the instruments of municipal finance and governance that other surrounding towns have sort of taken for granted for a very long time and I don't think that's always obvious to people who are looking in a good example is the stabilization funds.

[Matt Leming]: you know, we decided to create a couple of rainy day funds and allocate some cash into them.

[Matt Leming]: And that's something that the vast majority of cities in Massachusetts have had forever that this city council only recently actually instituted.

[Matt Leming]: Only last year we established an affordable housing trust so that we put some money towards affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: That was something that Somerville established like 30 years ago and it's been collecting money ever

[Matt Leming]: ever since.

[Matt Leming]: Our zoning really should have been overhauled a very long time ago.

[Matt Leming]: With regards to a lot of the HR issues that were just being discussed earlier, that's not just a case for getting retrograde, it's not just a case for the teachers union, it's a case for all

[Matt Leming]: pretty much all city staff.

[Matt Leming]: We asked HR that during a meeting a couple months ago, and they said they don't have the financial software to do those calculations.

[Matt Leming]: They literally have to calculate everything by hand on paper.

[Matt Leming]: That's not something that most other organizations have to do.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of our long-term financial planning, just to be clear, is establishing

[Matt Leming]: be, it's just getting things that other areas have taken for granted.

[Matt Leming]: So I just wanted to make that point.

[Matt Leming]: I'll get off the panel.

[Matt Leming]: I'll second that motion.

[Matt Leming]: Is that correct?

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, can you turn your microphone on, please?

[Matt Leming]: You may repeat.

[Matt Leming]: It's very quiet.

[Matt Leming]: I still can't quite.

[Matt Leming]: Just for the audio recording.

[Matt Leming]: I can hear you.

[Matt Leming]: It's just very quiet.

[Matt Leming]: I think it's through someone else's mic.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Summary's good for me.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I see these photos and they look horrifying.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you for putting in this request.

[Matt Leming]: Just only question, you said that these are 40 years old, are the new telephone poles that you plan to install, what is the expected shelf life for those?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, I'd just like to know, could this funding have come from the CPA and are there other Brooks Estate projects at the moment with active CPA funding?

[Matt Leming]: Got it, so this is an historic preservation.

[Matt Leming]: I think that clarified my question.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: No, I didn't entirely follow that.

[Matt Leming]: I would motion to approve and send this to regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to approve and send to committee.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I find the records in order and motion to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: At the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee meeting, we drafted and approved the summer newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank Councilor Callahan for drafting that.

[Matt Leming]: And we then discussed and edited the Residence Guide to City Council, which is in this current agenda.

[Matt Leming]: I would like to thank Councilor Tseng for drafting that as well.

[Matt Leming]: That's all.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to table for later in the meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I would like to make a an additional motion to make an additional amendment to the request for information from Mr. DeRocco, which is, I'd just like to know what is the, just what is the estimated value of the

[Matt Leming]: taxable, the property that would be taxable on the on the Medford side of the Tufts campus, thereby getting an estimate of how much they would pay in taxes if they weren't exempted from that.

[Matt Leming]: I will go to Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I was actually going to make a motion to invite the members of the school committee to come.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I'm ready.

[Matt Leming]: You didn't say please.

[Matt Leming]: It's please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Chair Callahan?

[Matt Leming]: Just a question about, so to be clear, this is the resolution, host a future discussion, invite MassDOT to it.

[Matt Leming]: What would be the logistics of that?

[Matt Leming]: Would that be another committee meeting that they and the Bicycle Commission are here?

[Matt Leming]: Would it be a public forum, open meeting?

[Matt Leming]: Can you clarify that a little bit?

[Matt Leming]: Just asking for clarification on that.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so

[Matt Leming]: Right now, sorry, just to, Council President Bears, just to clarify, was your suggestion to replace the Southwest parcel there that differs between A and B with mixed-use one?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, yeah, for I mean, yeah, for the for the stuff that's like right next to the mistook I could definitely see the argument for making that into mixed use one but for yeah for the rest of that area like I run around that kind of spot of that parcel land all the time and it.

[Matt Leming]: It's very underutilized.

[Matt Leming]: There's like two banks there.

[Matt Leming]: So I think it absolutely makes sense to build higher properties there.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah, no, no, that.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I thought I misheard.

[Matt Leming]: I thought you were suggesting to make that entire thing.

[Matt Leming]: No, excuse one.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Um,

[Matt Leming]: General question about this, because I'm kind of thinking about what that would look like between mixed use, between option A and B. Which of the mixed use three versus mixed use four would developers normally be inclined to go for?

[Matt Leming]: Is there a situation where we decide on one and then developers are like, well, I don't think it's worth it to do that, but they wouldn't do that for the other?

[Matt Leming]: What I'm thinking of is like when we do pass one of these, would there be any difference in sort of estimated uptake of that?

[Matt Leming]: So just sorry, just just to summarize, like, so in theory, it sounded like that was kind of an implicit endorsement of option A, which is, you know, has more of the mixed use mixed use for which is sort of denser, but not quite as high.

[Matt Leming]: But what you were just saying now is that developers were, they didn't in

[Matt Leming]: In practice, they didn't really seem to care about the specific heights as much as the sort of depth of affordability when they were building housing.

[Matt Leming]: When they were building housing.

[Matt Leming]: more.

[Matt Leming]: So follow up to that.

[Matt Leming]: So what all of the different rules and incentives that are, um, that make developers make these decisions?

[Matt Leming]: Would those be baked into the zoning at the ordinance level?

[Matt Leming]: Or would those be baked into rules that are sort of decided to staff level as a result of studies?

[Matt Leming]: kind of trying to avoid is that when, you know, all of this has passed, if we end up baking in some rules that end up being really difficult to change, it just end up not working, or that end up just discouraging development, and then would have to go back and sort of redo all this versus, you know, some of these incentive zoning programs that we're talking about that could potentially be changed, sort of more at the staff level after, you know, a consultant does a study on that.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, I'd like to hear more about this subject, but I don't have any more specific questions.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, Councilor, let me, sorry, just a real, um, personal idiot check question on my part here.

[Matt Leming]: So, I mean, with option with option,

[Matt Leming]: be like, we would need incentive zoning, correct, to implement the other programs that we're talking about as part of our, as part of the zoning overhaul.

[Matt Leming]: So, like, would, like, we would need this in, we would need kind of those incentives to build higher for, like, for implementing, like, a TDM program, for instance, or some kind of, some kind of green incentives.

[Matt Leming]: Is that,

[Matt Leming]: And so if we go with option A, that's just all out.

[Matt Leming]: Is that no?

[Matt Leming]: Well, on the next slide that we were just looking at.

[Matt Leming]: Listen, I'm a very simple person, you gotta.

[Matt Leming]: the Medford Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.

[Matt Leming]: We have two items on the agenda.

[Matt Leming]: One is the resolution to publish a City Council newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: The other is a resolution to create a residence guide to City Council procedures and processes.

[Matt Leming]: So I am just going to go ahead and

[Matt Leming]: share my screen as to the draft that we came up with.

[Matt Leming]: First, I apologize, I wasn't able to get this particular draft out during, wasn't able to get this particular draft out to folks before yesterday, but

[Matt Leming]: We do have a version here now.

[Matt Leming]: This was drafted by Anna and I also did some edits.

[Matt Leming]: This version of the newsletter is essentially meant to, I'm just gonna see if there's a cleaner way to sort of zoom in on this.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so this version of the newsletter covers the July to September 2024 period because we essentially skipped this over the summer because we only had two regular meetings during that month.

[Matt Leming]: And otherwise, this just sort of, this just covers the different pieces of committee work that were done.

[Matt Leming]: Throws in the commemorations as well.

[Matt Leming]: So if,

[Matt Leming]: So essentially, just going over very briefly, July 23rd, the condolences to the family of MPS teacher Robin Irving, September 10th, to family of Frank Zizzo, September 10th, recognized September's National Recovery Month, and then celebrate the importance of the Chevalier Theatre and Gene Mack Gym on the 17th.

[Matt Leming]: The general business goes over

[Matt Leming]: The newly created stabilization fund September 10th covers the whole petition to the.

[Matt Leming]: state house, as well as the approval of the wildlife feeding ordinances.

[Matt Leming]: A couple of other financial things that were also done on September 10th, the electrical vehicle charging revolving fund and the refunding loan order, essentially to get better rates on some city bonds.

[Matt Leming]: September 17th also,

[Matt Leming]: approved late night hours for Panda Express.

[Matt Leming]: And on July 23rd, this details how we chose to not move forward with a second independent audit of the city, since we already had an independent audit every year, as noted during the meeting in July.

[Matt Leming]: And just some of the individual committees are only just starting to meet again.

[Matt Leming]: So the governance committee, I noted here how

[Matt Leming]: It hasn't met, but it did receive a referral from a regular meeting to start considering charter reforms.

[Matt Leming]: The Charter Study Committee wraps up its work.

[Matt Leming]: So that's just a mechanism, essentially, to start discussing that process.

[Matt Leming]: Planning and permitting committee did meet over the summer and this just goes over some of the activity that we've been doing for INS Associates and the planning department and the public health and community safety committee worked on the wildlife feeding ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: Noticing a typo here just now.

[Matt Leming]: I do think, uh, Emily, uh, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Are you recommending to start off this whole paragraph by saying the city is working very hard to address the rodent problem?

[Matt Leming]: What about overgrowth ordinance?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, they were sort of mixed into that one committee meeting, but I don't know.

[Matt Leming]: There's a lot of traffic today.

[Matt Leming]: Can you look up the, wait, what was the date of this committee meeting again?

[Matt Leming]: That's Tuesday, September 17th.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I think we did work on both of that committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I believe if my memory serves right, so I could just say that.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, my memory is like...

[Matt Leming]: Okay, what was the, I'm just gonna go to another tab here.

[Matt Leming]: And I was 17.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: And then we have the one in August.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: That was, that was the August 13th.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, can you speak up?

[Matt Leming]: My brain's blinking a little bit here.

[Matt Leming]: What is a good way to summarize all the discussions on the overgrowth and rodent control ordinances?

[Matt Leming]: Those are, to be honest, those are kind of like mixing together at this point for me, between the wildlife feeding and the overgrowth and rodent control.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, the crossed out stuff isn't going to be...

[Matt Leming]: This actually... This will ensure that residents don't feed on wildlife and only allow the city to step in if there is news.

[Matt Leming]: In a sense, it will help us reduce our issues with rats and other unwanted animals.

[Matt Leming]: Additionally, I'm just going to say,

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: And then again, I'm going, once I actually format this, I'm just going to blow it up with links to the actual drafts of the ordinances themselves, which is half the purpose of this thing to begin with.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: It's a bit of a bit of a long paragraph, but it basically summarizes that the public health and community safety committee is trying to work on the rodent issue.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Justin, how close are you to City Hall?

[Matt Leming]: Trying to think of, I could just say mini constitution, but this is analogous to a constitution.

[Matt Leming]: Anna might have an idea.

[Matt Leming]: City Charters, the Charters.

[Matt Leming]: I should say finalizes.

[Matt Leming]: City Charters, the Governor.

[Matt Leming]: All right, Councilor Tseng has just entered the room.

[Matt Leming]: Alright, I like things in lists of three but I'm having trouble thinking of something besides this as an example of what the charter covers.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that this is, I mean, it was, I think, I think this is work on the charter is probably going to be covered pretty extensively in future newsletters.

[Matt Leming]: And this is really meant, I mean, really all that happened is that's fair.

[Matt Leming]: Now we

[Matt Leming]: there was a resolution that was referred directly to committee.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I was thinking maybe finalize this recommendations or finalize its drafts.

[Matt Leming]: Um, clarify Councilor, is Councilor Scarpelli here?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I'm going to go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: And, um, is there any other parts of the newsletter that folks would like to comment on?

[Matt Leming]: I think that we need to go over.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: In that case, is there any public, is there any public participation in this matter?

[Matt Leming]: There's nobody currently in the chamber, but there are some folks on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: So if you'd like to offer input onto this current draft of the

[Matt Leming]: under this current draft of the newsletter, feel free.

[Matt Leming]: In that case, do we have a motion on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Motion approves it for publication.

[Matt Leming]: I have a motion to approve for publication by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: I did see iPhone on Zoom, but I'm not seeing it anymore.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't think Councilor Scarpelli is on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: So we can just do a voice vote.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: We'll get this formatted and hold on.

[Matt Leming]: did have a note from Zoom reminding members to turn their mics on when they talk just so that it can be, just so that everybody can hear them that's listening in and for the recording.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Now, 24370 offered by Councilor Tseng, a resolution to create a residence guide to City Council's procedures and processes.

[Matt Leming]: So I have the draft that Councilor Tseng shared.

[Matt Leming]: And again, apologies that this is not, this was not in the initial agenda, but folks put in some work over the weekend.

[Matt Leming]: And if that is, all right, seems to be good.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Just one that comes to mind.

[Matt Leming]: It says that we pass

[Matt Leming]: resolutions right there.

[Matt Leming]: I think, or sorry, we pass ordinances right there.

[Matt Leming]: I think that some, the use of the word resolution is also, would also be good just to kind of include right there.

[Matt Leming]: Like we pass resolutions, then an explanation of what that is, ordinances, and zoning regulations.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Cownie.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: just to follow up on that, there always is a balance that needs to be struck with these kinds of things.

[Matt Leming]: And I don't think that we can write, I don't think we can write anything down on a piece of paper that will work for every single person.

[Matt Leming]: What I think would happen is,

[Matt Leming]: matter what we end up approving in this committee, it'll go out and then people, some people will really help out.

[Matt Leming]: I think overall do very good, but people will also start to come to us with like problems with like, I had no idea what I was talking about here.

[Matt Leming]: And over time, we'll get real world feedback from that.

[Matt Leming]: So it could be a process whereby we could go back and

[Matt Leming]: update it later.

[Matt Leming]: So that's a way to say that I completely agree with everything that Councilor Lazzaro said.

[Matt Leming]: I am not opposed to releasing an imperfect product because I don't think that, I think that any discussions we have here

[Matt Leming]: we'll just end up becoming theoretical and the best feedback we'll get is if we release something and then people use it and then bring that to us over time so we could release a version two, you know, after a while.

[Matt Leming]: That's my thoughts on that.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think this would need to be referred to, I think a good way to form that motion would be to,

[Matt Leming]: Um move this for approval to the regular council subject to the edits that we've given to Councilor Tseng this session.

[Matt Leming]: Before we do that, I just wanted to ask, is there any public participation?

[Matt Leming]: I see we have some folks on Zoom who might want to offer input on this.

[Matt Leming]: Alright, I'm not seeing any raised hands.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, no.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, we have Eileen

[Matt Leming]: Learner on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Hold on a minute.

[Matt Leming]: Yep, I have to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: So I think, I believe that Councilor Tseng, we saw your comment in the chat and I believe Councilor Tseng just said that he would add something to the participation rules about the fact that we will have a sign up sheet and typically do.

[Matt Leming]: It's just our, we don't have a city messenger at the moment.

[Matt Leming]: So that might've been why this particular draft

[Matt Leming]: didn't include that.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, yep.

[Matt Leming]: Justin just said that he

[Matt Leming]: Justin just said that he added it.

[Matt Leming]: So the version that we refer to the regular council meeting will have will tell people explicitly that they can sign up to participate and don't have to wait in line.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Eileen.

[Matt Leming]: We have a motion on the floor.

[Matt Leming]: That were recommended at this meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, do you have that written down?

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passed.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any other motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passed 3 to 1.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, everybody.

[Matt Leming]: Have a wonderful Tuesday.

[Matt Leming]: Ken, can you turn the mic on?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: And thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just say I'd be willing to support these hours as well.

[Matt Leming]: I understand the concerns with consistency, but kind of two reasons.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that part of the issue that we didn't want to approve the raising canes permit was just because of the, I think it was a little bit more visible from more houses.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I understand that there are residents across the street, but it's also not, I mean, Riverside Avenue is a fairly large road, and we did approve the special permit for Pinky's Pizza, which is a lot more of a closed-in neighborhood.

[Matt Leming]: So I just, yeah, I think 1 a.m.

[Matt Leming]: in this case does make sense, just given the location.

[Matt Leming]: That's my two cents.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you, and I'd be happy to second that motion, but I have one question for Marian O'Connor and I,

[Matt Leming]: I apologize if this already touched on during your initial, when you initially spoke about this just now, but can you talk specifically about the mechanisms for enforcing whatever the overgrowth ordinance is?

[Matt Leming]: What concerns day-to-day do you run into when somebody has a lot of stuff in their yard that is attracting rodents?

[Matt Leming]: And what would you be looking for in a new ordinance that would help you in your ability to do your job better when you do run into those situations?

[Matt Leming]: It does.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any other mechanisms that you've seen, you've heard about people using in other municipalities besides ticketing that just, that could work better?

[Matt Leming]: Because I often hear about enforcement of ordinances being an ongoing issue, especially with limited staffing capabilities.

[Matt Leming]: So if you've given any, if you've sort of heard about other instances of

[Matt Leming]: municipalities that are able to enforce what they do have, and would love to hear about that.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: and circulate those requirements.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for the presentation, Paola.

[Matt Leming]: So the question I have is that we have a couple of programs that are proposed on our wish list, which sort of relate to zoning incentives.

[Matt Leming]: So I've been pushing for the transportation demand management program to be implemented in

[Matt Leming]: some forms that we could get developers more involved in the regional TMAs.

[Matt Leming]: I've also, but there's also other aspects to this, like an inclusion, like affordable housing overlays and a few other programs that could affect, that could affect a developer's decision to build,

[Matt Leming]: to build housing, like the linkage program they were discussing last night.

[Matt Leming]: I guess my question is, in the other cities that you've been studying, do they normally have a bunch of different incentive programs overlaid with each other that are integrated, or is it normally better to keep it more or less simple?

[Matt Leming]: personally speaking, my end all be all is Medford does need more affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: So whatever our zoning can do to disincentivize developers from building luxury units and to integrate more affordable housing and to make that more profitable for them would be ideal and whatever the best mechanism to do that is, I would support.

[Matt Leming]: I would also, though, like programs that

[Matt Leming]: incentivize developers who come into Medford to sort of be more integrated into what's happening in the surrounding communities, just so that we're not so isolated.

[Matt Leming]: And that's why I'm pushing for the TDM to be an important part of the ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: So that's where I'm coming from.

[Matt Leming]: And then the third

[Matt Leming]: thing on my Christmas list is to make it so that it's not some, all of these rules put together are not some Byzantine kind of overly complex structure that developers can't really understand.

[Matt Leming]: So I understand that that could end up getting a little bit contradictory after a while, but it's sort of those three things are what's on my mind right now.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: So this is the result of a lot of discussions that I've been having with the Office of Community Development as we try to

[Matt Leming]: update the linkage program, the capital improvements program.

[Matt Leming]: So this is essentially when developers come in to the city, they need to pay fees into certain buckets, which will help to improve the city as a whole.

[Matt Leming]: What we're trying to do with this program is first to update the original amounts that were proposed in 1990 when this was established.

[Matt Leming]: and we're also trying to add a fifth bucket in addition to the ones already mentioned in the letter for affordable housing to provide a more constant source of revenue to the affordable housing trust.

[Matt Leming]: We previously discussed changes to the ordinance at earlier meetings.

[Matt Leming]: The issue is that

[Matt Leming]: some of the changes that we're proposing after legal review, it turns out you would need to go back to the state to actually update those in a couple of ways.

[Matt Leming]: So in order to actually do these updates every

[Matt Leming]: three years as is required by that ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: One study to do that could cost as much as $150,000.

[Matt Leming]: And so doing that every three years is too cost prohibitive.

[Matt Leming]: Just performing the nexus study to establish a new bucket entirely for the affordable housing trust would probably cost about $80,000.

[Matt Leming]: The planning department has been going around trying to find consultants who are willing to do that.

[Matt Leming]: Medford has a bit of a unique linkage program.

[Matt Leming]: you know, they are having trouble finding a consultant for a reasonable price that can do that.

[Matt Leming]: So what this would do first is it would just extend that to save the city a little bit of money because the full linkage program really wouldn't update that much within a three year period that you would actually need to do that study.

[Matt Leming]: 10 years is a more reasonable timeframe to do these.

[Matt Leming]: We've gone 34 years without doing one.

[Matt Leming]: So I think getting away from that three year mark is reasonable.

[Matt Leming]: And the second, which is very important, is literally just copied and pasted from a similar program that Watertown did in

[Matt Leming]: 2022, where instead of just having these linkage prices set and just consistently get undervalued by inflation at the same time, there will be automatic updates from year to year so that the city is not losing money over time.

[Matt Leming]: And, you know, the less that we do, if we happen to have, you know, staff or boards who just

[Matt Leming]: don't do what they're supposed to do and perform these studies every few years, we would just be losing money over time.

[Matt Leming]: So again, it's a fairly simple update, but it does need to go to the state for approval.

[Matt Leming]: So I would motion to approve this home rule petition and send it to the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: The linkage funds are for?

[Matt Leming]: No, the linkage funds don't go to the schools.

[Matt Leming]: It listed in the letter.

[Matt Leming]: So, okay, so this is- Water, sewer.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so it's the police department, parks and rec, roads and traffic, water and sewers.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, the authorizing legislation kind of gave a list of buckets that it could potentially go into, and affordable housing was one of them.

[Matt Leming]: But when they actually implemented it in 1990, they only chose those four.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, this would just allow for, this would just allow those automatic inflation based updates.

[Matt Leming]: And so it's a very specific, it's a very specific price index that's stated in the proposed change.

[Matt Leming]: And this was already done over in Watertown.

[Matt Leming]: So it is becoming standardized.

[Matt Leming]: neighboring cities, it would also save the city money by expanding the requirement to actually do these studies from three to 10 years, because these studies are pretty cost intensive.

[Matt Leming]: So moved.

[Matt Leming]: So when determining whether or not something will get through the state house, oftentimes you're reading the tea leaves.

[Matt Leming]: But in this case, it was solely because they had already approved similar language with that same price index for the city of Watertown.

[Matt Leming]: So they

[Matt Leming]: the state legislature would want consistency going on there.

[Matt Leming]: There wouldn't really be much of a reason for the city of Watertown to go for one price index and then Medford to just arbitrarily choose another.

[Matt Leming]: So that's the justification behind that particular choice right there.

[Matt Leming]: In terms of the Affordable Housing Trust, as Council President Bears said, that is independent of any votes that took place tonight.

[Matt Leming]: This was solely, the vote here was solely to ask the state to extend the period between these very expensive studies from three years to 10 years to save the city.

[Matt Leming]: a little bit of money, and also to allow for automatic adjustments to be applied for these, because right now, I think that when they instituted this, they assumed that the cities would just do these studies every three years, and Medford in practice just never did that.

[Matt Leming]: We're supposed to, we never did.

[Matt Leming]: So this just allows a mechanism to prevent that, those fees from being eaten up by inflation.

[Matt Leming]: Right now they're worth less than half of what they were in 1990.

[Matt Leming]: The affordable housing trust fund, sorry, the affordable housing trust linkage program.

[Matt Leming]: So that is, there is currently a draft that essentially establishes a fifth bucket in addition to the four that currently exist to go into the affordable housing trust.

[Matt Leming]: The affordable housing trust was already created by this council in the previous term.

[Matt Leming]: And the state, the language of the state ordinance also allows for

[Matt Leming]: also allows for affordable housing to be one of those buckets.

[Matt Leming]: So essentially all the ordinance would do is create a chain there that puts money into the bucket.

[Matt Leming]: The thing is that in order to do that, you do need another completely new study, which would cost about $80,000 in order to figure out what exactly the amount of money that you're charging developers to go into the Affordable Housing Trust would be in the first place.

[Matt Leming]: And right now, I've been working with the planning office to figure out how to fund that study, what the study would look like, and just generally corresponding with them.

[Matt Leming]: In all likelihood, we wouldn't actually pass the ordinance until the study were conducted.

[Matt Leming]: And so, you know, we would have a bit more of a basis for it, but I could talk for a while about the whole situation there.

[Matt Leming]: So the point of doing these studies is that this can be looked at holistically.

[Matt Leming]: The reason that we're not just

[Matt Leming]: The reason that you don't just kind of arbitrarily come up with a number is because those situations might occur in the first place.

[Matt Leming]: Right now, the planning office is trying to come up with funding to do a more comprehensive study on the other four buckets as well, just so that these situations don't actually happen, because you're right, you do need to account for a lot of other things, including what the city is already doing, the current costs of materials, labor,

[Matt Leming]: et cetera, et cetera.

[Matt Leming]: And so that is the purpose of doing one of these, uh, one of these studies in the first place.

[Matt Leming]: Again, the city hasn't done one in 34 years, so we really need to do one.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President Sell.

[Matt Leming]: Like my colleagues, I don't really like to hear a lot of the conspiratorial narratives, but I have a purely technical question about this that I hope that perhaps Councilor Scarpelli or somebody else could address.

[Matt Leming]: If this information is already out there, I'd just like to know, are there any particular

[Matt Leming]: papers or types of information that could be received with this resolution that could not be addressed with a simpler FOIA request.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, can you repeat that, a what request?

[Matt Leming]: FOIA, Freedom of Information Act request.

[Matt Leming]: So my question is, could somebody simply submit a Freedom of Information Act request to the mayor

[Matt Leming]: to the city to get the information requested in this resolution?

[Matt Leming]: Or is the resolution asking for information that could not be gotten through a Freedom of Information Act request?

[Matt Leming]: It's just a technical question that... I don't know.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: No, I just, I am just...

[Matt Leming]: I guess my point was first, I just wanted to know purely technically if there is any extra information that could be gotten from the council resolution that could not be obtained from a FOIA request.

[Matt Leming]: And also just submitting a simple FOIA request on your own and then publishing the results of that when it was received, which would effectively get a lot of information out there.

[Matt Leming]: It could be just as an effective means

[Matt Leming]: transparency.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, that wouldn't be the case if the answer to the first question was yes, there are certain documents that can be received.

[Matt Leming]: But that was that was what I was asking.

[Matt Leming]: Oh.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President Harris, for putting this forward.

[Matt Leming]: So I will be supporting the resolution, though one thing about it that I would like to point out is that there are sort of two...

[Matt Leming]: The advocacy for putting this particular one on this particular question on the ballot.

[Matt Leming]: There were two.

[Matt Leming]: There were two sort of groups of advocates that were trying to get it through one of them.

[Matt Leming]: One group was basically trying to make it so that anybody could grow these sorts of medicines for personal use and it would be less regulated.

[Matt Leming]: The other, which ended up being the question that we're seeing on the ballot with the sort of regulatory body is very similar to what is currently seen in Oregon, whereby you have a,

[Matt Leming]: body, an unelected commission that essentially does allow for people to use these medicines, but it generally puts a very high price on them.

[Matt Leming]: So it turns it into a for-profit, it turns it into a for-profit industry.

[Matt Leming]: So I will be supporting it.

[Matt Leming]: I think that any

[Matt Leming]: Any progress is good.

[Matt Leming]: Although I will be pointing out that it is slightly different from the same resolution that this body supported several months ago.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you once again for your efforts.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: So the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee has primarily met on the first, we had a committee meeting on the Human Rights Commission reform.

[Matt Leming]: which was the, which reflects the efforts of Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: We designed a social media policy.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of our efforts went into the modernizing City Council communication strategy.

[Matt Leming]: Social media policy was designed by, I believe it was Councilor Tseng and

[Matt Leming]: Lazzaro, a lot of our efforts in modernizing the communication strategy has just been in developing new routine habits to get information out to the public, namely the

[Matt Leming]: newsletter, which we're drafting and releasing every month.

[Matt Leming]: So there've been a couple of administrative challenges in terms of building a mailing list for that and working out the relationship between the administration and city council and releasing those to the public.

[Matt Leming]: But we, at this point, we're going to be drafting the third newsletter tonight.

[Matt Leming]: And I think we have a pretty smooth routine going.

[Matt Leming]: The other aspect of modernizing communication strategy is the fact that these meetings are now being live streamed to YouTube, which was kind of more of a something that I worked with the clerk's office behind the scenes on to

[Matt Leming]: to get that to happen, kind of like did a lot of chasing down of some of accounts and whatnot to figure out how to put that together.

[Matt Leming]: The other aspect of this that we have been working on is meeting with underrepresented groups, namely the listening sessions that were proposed by Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: We have had a subcommittee meeting on that in which we designated which councilors are going to be responsible for which underrepresented groups in the city.

[Matt Leming]: Thus far, we've had two listening sessions, one with

[Matt Leming]: the senior center, which was organized by Councilor Lazzaro, the other with the

[Matt Leming]: Portuguese liaisons, which I facilitated and which was attended by myself and Councilor Callahan last week.

[Matt Leming]: Those have gone very well in terms of just getting outside feedback from, you know, folks that are not usually engaging with City Council and City Hall as much as we'd like.

[Matt Leming]: Otherwise, the

[Matt Leming]: Something there's the project outside of this that we have that's gone through the committee has been a veterans housing initiative so that's not on the governing agenda, but it did come up in response to.

[Matt Leming]: the project the veteran services director wanted to spearhead.

[Matt Leming]: And so that's currently going through a legal process behind the scenes, kind of like figuring out how that interacts with public appropriations law.

[Matt Leming]: And

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, one of the one of the challenges of this committee is that it's more about it has a lot of ongoing projects so we're never going to stop streaming to YouTube hopefully we're never going to stop releasing a newsletter so it's just about creating more.

[Matt Leming]: transparency and engagement habits within city council.

[Matt Leming]: So we can't really check any one of these off, uh, in a project based fashion.

[Matt Leming]: It's just like a, there's just a lot of ongoing things that we're going to be doing in continuity.

[Matt Leming]: So that is, there is a bit of a capacity problem with like a capacity issue with this particular committee.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so thank you.

[Matt Leming]: That's all I got.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: And it just re-entered the room.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Go ahead and get started here.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting of the Medford City Council Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.

[Matt Leming]: Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Four present, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is called to order.

[Matt Leming]: First item that we're just, that we're going to discuss is

[Matt Leming]: 24-354, the resolution to publish a City Council newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: A draft of the newsletter was forwarded to everybody in the agenda packet.

[Matt Leming]: I also, earlier today, forwarded a copy, an updated

[Matt Leming]: Copy of the newsletter with some suggestions to reflect events from the meeting last night.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan, you have a?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, yep, yep.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to share my screen really quickly, one moment.

[Matt Leming]: Okey dokey.

[Matt Leming]: So this newsletter, as per the.

[Matt Leming]: As per the schedule that we voted on earlier, was drafted by Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: I submitted, I forwarded the link to everybody here, made a couple of suggestions, and then Councilor Bears earlier today also edited those to provide his own suggestions.

[Matt Leming]: So if folks have anything that they'd like to add to the newsletter,

[Matt Leming]: feel free.

[Matt Leming]: I'll start with Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I'm trying to find exactly where.

[Matt Leming]: I just, you said elected with voted, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Well, yeah, okay, so it looks like that was our in the latest updates from Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: It looks like he already struck that out and replaced it with.

[Matt Leming]: And are you seeing the changes that I made?

[Matt Leming]: Is this fine with you?

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Anyone else have any suggestions for the current draft of the newsletter?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, with the final PDF, why it would end up being formatted, I'm not 100% sure about that.

[Matt Leming]: But I do agree, this generally does make it more readable.

[Matt Leming]: This is helpful.

[Matt Leming]: What date was that?

[Matt Leming]: OK, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: And I do remember what exactly the date was that we met with the.

[Matt Leming]: It could be a good idea to just briefly summarize what was discussed or just state that we did it.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, okay.

[Matt Leming]: I always write things in a very boring way, so let me know if-

[Matt Leming]: like these two are, you know, sufficiently descriptive.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I was actually, and and I were kind of talking about how to present how to present that so I was, I mean, we like I did take notes from them, I was kind of thinking that maybe.

[Matt Leming]: some kind of a quarterly report on it, but we were sort of thinking like, okay, you know, do residents see these listening sessions as being semi-confidential?

[Matt Leming]: Like, do they not want notes of what they talked about to be public record?

[Matt Leming]: So I think that those things would need to be discussed.

[Matt Leming]: It would definitely be a good agenda item to bring up formally for the next resident services meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sure if we would have time or be able to discuss it extensively

[Matt Leming]: this particular meeting because it's not on the agenda, but maybe we could.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Calderon.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, no, I mean this, it is it is definitely something and I was also kind of thinking like that this would actually come up in the next agenda item because some of the stuff that we did here at the listening sessions would be relevant to the city guide that we're talking about, but I do agree that having it.

[Matt Leming]: be discussed and sort of like the ideas like sort of codified and shared with the rest of the council is definitely gets to the spirit of those listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: To the

[Matt Leming]: newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any other, and again, I apologize for some of the last minute updates, but the goal with these is to summarize the most recent events leading up to the current meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any other feedback that individual, that Councilors have about the current draft of the newsletter that you'd like to see?

[Matt Leming]: Really, oh, oh.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that's why we've been kind of.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, okay, okay, I did not, sorry, I didn't know that, okay, so.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I was so to be clear about the process for doing this.

[Matt Leming]: I have Google documents that I share with the individual Councilors who need to who are drafting that current one.

[Matt Leming]: I did not know that people who just view these things don't actually see the current edits Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Wait, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Suffering from.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: And I'll also just kind of scroll through this and very slowly to give everybody, I will fix, I will address this issue the next time so that, I'm just gonna start from the top, okay?

[Matt Leming]: And just, again, apologies that I didn't know that it was invisible to people who just had view access to this.

[Matt Leming]: So, sort of summarizing the updates, Council President Bears has added the resolutions commemorating individuals at the last meeting, Sylvia Janis, Don Alasky, as well as Tom Lincoln, and the passing of former Medford Police Department Detective Lauren Kane.

[Matt Leming]: So we added those to commemorations and acknowledgements.

[Matt Leming]: There was the acknowledgement of the Stop the Stigma campaign from a June 11th meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I added in...

[Matt Leming]: The appointments from the June 25th meeting to the Affordable Housing Trust, the Community Preservation Committee, and the free cash allocation to the study for the new Medford High School.

[Matt Leming]: Council President Bears has added details about the stabilization funds that we also allocated free cash to right here.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, just kind of detailing what happened later on last night in the meeting.

[Matt Leming]: And we approved the new South Street historic district ordinance for its first reading.

[Matt Leming]: Again, just summarizing what happened yesterday.

[Matt Leming]: Some edits to the Public Works and Facilities Committee, which recognize the fact that

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro's resolution to host a discussion of MassDOT plans for the Medford Square Main Street intersection.

[Matt Leming]: Planning and Permitting Committee, the zoning related recommendations of both Medford's comprehensive climate plan and how they can best be incorporated into the zoning update project.

[Matt Leming]: And at the May 28th regular meeting, first round of zoning updates from the zoning update project.

[Matt Leming]: June 12th committee meetings, zoning up the project, council's priorities, policies and plan recommendations implement, and a draft timeline of what elements of the project should be started first.

[Matt Leming]: Then, the licensing of the methadone clinic that we referred to committee yesterday, as well as the planning, the,

[Matt Leming]: zoning update projects, timeline, and maps from the planning and permitting committee.

[Matt Leming]: Those, yep.

[Matt Leming]: features.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: 25th point.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so that's about all.

[Matt Leming]: Does do any Councilors have any suggestions for further edits to this draft?

[Matt Leming]: And once again, my apologies for the fact that most most people here couldn't see the updates until just now.

[Matt Leming]: Move.

[Matt Leming]: We have a motion on the floor on the motion by Councilor Tseng seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: 4 in the affirmative, 1 absent.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Moving on.

[Matt Leming]: 24-370 offered by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Resolution to create a residence guide to City Council's procedures and processes.

[Matt Leming]: be it resolved that the Resident Services Public Engagement Committee create and publish a short guide in English and commonly spoken non-English languages to the City Council for residents to understand the City Council's procedures and processes.

[Matt Leming]: I imagine this could just be a general discussion of our ideas of what this should contain.

[Matt Leming]: Are there any comments on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: So to summarize what I've heard, people generally like the idea of having a short one page for people to go through, but with the possibility of having supplementary documents that explain in more detail what the different rules and processes are, the having something just right at the top for people who've literally never been to city council meetings before, and just like very quick,

[Matt Leming]: like quick and dirty sort of points like, you know, when we take a vote, why there's not necessarily public participation there, as well as basic info about what the city council is in charge of and what falls under purview of other departments.

[Matt Leming]: In terms of format, I mean, I, I think it would be a good idea to have a one pager and like you see that little plastic thing right there where they have agendas out.

[Matt Leming]: So just have something like that sitting out there.

[Matt Leming]: So it would be a good idea since this will be printed to have everything in black and white.

[Matt Leming]: So try to not like, and this is just my initial take, try not like indulge too much in like super colorful graphics, but just kind of keep like a very

[Matt Leming]: basic presentation.

[Matt Leming]: The important thing would be to have it done in multiple languages.

[Matt Leming]: Not that we don't have to have graphics or anything, but just make it so that it looks reasonable when you print it off on a laser printer.

[Matt Leming]: That's the other piece of feedback I have.

[Matt Leming]: But I do agree that a nice one pager for people who come in here have never attended a meeting before and can just kind of like take that as something to hold would be

[Matt Leming]: very, would be a very nice thing.

[Matt Leming]: Leading up to this meeting, I actually was thinking that having a nice, colorful graphics-based thing would be a really cool product to show people.

[Matt Leming]: But I'm also thinking about practicality.

[Matt Leming]: When people come to a city council meeting, it's often in person.

[Matt Leming]: And I've heard a lot of people say, this is my first city council meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I have no idea what's going on.

[Matt Leming]: And when we get these agenda packets,

[Matt Leming]: very often, and this is something that I even mentioned last night, the PDFs are sort of like very nice looking, very presentable, very colorful.

[Matt Leming]: But when they're printed, and again, this is just like a super practical issue, it just doesn't translate well into black and white.

[Matt Leming]: And that will be the reality of residents that are actually holding this guide.

[Matt Leming]: So I think simplicity is

[Matt Leming]: There's a movie that I saw a clip of one time as well, where it discussed the process of designing a new type of tank within the Pentagon.

[Matt Leming]: And throughout the design process, different generals kept on giving their different pieces of input to the design of this thing.

[Matt Leming]: And the end product was something that had been completely designed by committee and was like, like totally impractical.

[Matt Leming]: So I do think that

[Matt Leming]: there is that element of that in making this as well.

[Matt Leming]: My point in saying that is that we are giving these suggestions and I have my own opinions on this, but you know, you know, you're the, you're the artist, so.

[Matt Leming]: You know, I think it's important.

[Matt Leming]: That is true.

[Matt Leming]: We're discussing what's essentially an artistic project and we don't have the one artist on city council on this committee.

[Matt Leming]: So there, I could see some issues with that.

[Matt Leming]: But no, that is to say we are making these suggestions, but it is important to filter through what is the most essential information for someone who has no idea what's going on, try to put that front and center.

[Matt Leming]: The goal of this is that if somebody's entering these chambers,

[Matt Leming]: They don't know anything.

[Matt Leming]: They can read this piece of paper and get the 411 and oftentimes having too much information in one place could end up not being beneficial for that.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Is there a color printer in this building?

[Matt Leming]: So I do, with Anna's suggestion,

[Matt Leming]: I am inclined to think so having, starting out with like a city council guide that looks clean, smooth, one pager would be great.

[Matt Leming]: And then probably expanding to having something out front for that, you know, if we have like a nice city council one, we could also then do a general city hall one, which may be, okay, this is your first time in city hall, if you are a,

[Matt Leming]: small business owner, go to this department on this floor, you can talk to this person and something like that.

[Matt Leming]: But I, so there should be room to be able to scale it to other departments, but the initial model, just to keep the project simple, I feel like, you know,

[Matt Leming]: don't, you know, we just started out by knowing what our scope is and just getting the first guide right.

[Matt Leming]: And then after that, after that, expanding to that, that's my opinion.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, makes sense.

[Matt Leming]: So,

[Matt Leming]: Personally, with the survey, I think having a draft first, I think it would be more effective to have a draft and then put that out and ask for feedback on it.

[Matt Leming]: This is just kind of my initial thoughts on it.

[Matt Leming]: And then say, is this helpful to you?

[Matt Leming]: Please give us feedback.

[Matt Leming]: And then update it from there just so that people sort of have an idea of what you're talking about.

[Matt Leming]: That's just my thinking on that though.

[Matt Leming]: So it would, again, you're the artist.

[Matt Leming]: So don't let me, I'm not gonna tell Van Gogh what shade of yellow to use in the process.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callaghan, tell us your thoughts right now.

[Matt Leming]: Everybody in this packed room is waiting for your thoughts.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I was too busy making jokes.

[Matt Leming]: On the best way to get feedback for the guide from residents, the discussion was... No, that's cool.

[Matt Leming]: I feel like if we're kind of looking at, I don't think that there would be much of an issue with

[Matt Leming]: you as an individual, as you're coming up with like an initial draft for this, posting this to one of your accounts just to get some feedback from folks and then bringing it to the body, which, and I'm mainly saying that just because that possibly would be a way to

[Matt Leming]: speed up the process and not have to like, you know, vote a vote, a draft of something out of a meeting and then get approval from the general body.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm just trying to think of ways to kind of simplify the process of drafting a one pager here.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, cool.

[Matt Leming]: In terms of future directions, we did receive a, I mean, just because we said we were going to talk about this on the last agenda item, we did receive some feedback from some folks that are listening sessions who are saying that, you know, they go into city hall, they don't know

[Matt Leming]: like where to go from there.

[Matt Leming]: So I know that we're talking about solely a city council, one pager guide for residents, but scaling, like moving forward, it would be good to have, it would be good to, you know, at least start thinking about, you know, if somebody literally enters the building and they wanna talk to someone about getting a license, then having something right there for them to,

[Matt Leming]: look at maybe having a greeter if that's a thing that City Hall has capacity for like I don't know the equivalent of a receptionist just right in the middle of City Hall would be a nice nice thing to have as soon as we

[Matt Leming]: get the funding for something like that.

[Matt Leming]: But anyway, those are just some informal notes from our listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any further discussion on this agenda item?

[Matt Leming]: Yep, on the one pager.

[Matt Leming]: It's very, very controversial motion Councilor Tseng, do we have a, do we have a second on that?

[Matt Leming]: We have two.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Well, before we vote, do we have any public participation?

[Matt Leming]: Anybody interested in public participation?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, seeing none in the chambers and none on Zoom, we'll go ahead and call the vote.

[Matt Leming]: Roll call.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Four present, wait, four in favor, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: The motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion to adjourn, seconded by Councilor, was that a second, Councilor Callahan?

[Matt Leming]: Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Four present, four affirmative, one absent.

[Matt Leming]: The motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Just like to say that

[Matt Leming]: When I was a member of the CPA, Tom Lincoln, he was one of our frequent customers.

[Matt Leming]: He just brought in application after application to repair the Brooks Estate, and he's the driving force behind the upkeep of that property today.

[Matt Leming]: This is just a case of an

[Matt Leming]: ordinary citizen of Medford, seeing something that they wanted preserved, seeing a project that they could really get behind, and putting their time and energy into it.

[Matt Leming]: And it's really paid off.

[Matt Leming]: I look forward to telling Mr. Lincoln how much I admire him when he does come to the next city council meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Congratulations, Mr. Lincoln.

[Matt Leming]: You're a great citizen.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Just keep mine short and I'll say Sylvia, we love you.

[Matt Leming]: We'll miss you.

[Matt Leming]: We'll miss your humor and your presence in the clerk's office.

[Matt Leming]: I don't think that

[Matt Leming]: The clerks often get enough credit for all the work that they do behind the scenes and all the institutional knowledge that they bring to City Council and City Hall and the help either just with purely procedural stuff or just with moral support when we've had a rough evening.

[Matt Leming]: And Sylvia will be dearly missed.

[Matt Leming]: That being said, enjoy retirement.

[Matt Leming]: Have a good time.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to say, it looks like you've assembled a real dream team here.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much for... No, I'm serious.

[Matt Leming]: I looked through the descriptions of everybody.

[Matt Leming]: I know that I spent a lot of time just focusing on, you know, trying to find good people for the board.

[Matt Leming]: It looks like everybody here is far, far more qualified than

[Matt Leming]: when it comes to anything related to affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: And thank you so much for your efforts in assembling these six people.

[Matt Leming]: I know that they'll do fantastic work.

[Matt Leming]: I look forward to recommendations from these folks when it comes to both any affordable housing policy ideas and ways to get money into the trust fund.

[Matt Leming]: So just,

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for your efforts and that's all I got.

[Matt Leming]: Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Just wanted to say, I remember back when I was getting my appointment to the CPA,

[Matt Leming]: I remember I waited in this room until about one, one o'clock in the morning, watching a very good meeting.

[Matt Leming]: It was a great meeting, but also just say that when I saw at his name on the, on the agenda, I was kind of thinking like, you know, I really don't want to have somebody else go through that.

[Matt Leming]: That's, that's not, not always the,

[Matt Leming]: most pleasant thing to go through.

[Matt Leming]: So I was kind of behind the scenes asking folks to do that, to move this paper out of order just so that she didn't also have to wait till one in the morning to get appointed.

[Matt Leming]: But just wanted to say right over your resume, I think it's wonderful to have a social worker with heights of the community on the CPA and I know you'll do good work there.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, that's all I got.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I would just like to thank you for figures two and three, which very clearly show the amount that has been matched by the state every year since 2018.

[Matt Leming]: Um, as well as figure three, which very clearly shows that historically they're 29% of CPA funds have gone towards affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: I would recommend modestly that maybe the color coding is could be updated because we get these in

[Matt Leming]: It looks beautiful in the PDF.

[Matt Leming]: It looks absolutely wonderful, very clear in the online PDF.

[Matt Leming]: But I will say that just in the printed version, it's not quite clear that the state matching has been very consistent year to year, in spite of what has often been said in these chambers.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you very much for that.

[Matt Leming]: So just two questions.

[Matt Leming]: So to clarify, if somebody wanted to build an ADU on their house and they lived in a historic district, then you would require that the ADU be built with materials similar to the one that are used to currently construct the house?

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: The other one, and I've kind of been curious about this ever since I first saw this map a couple of months ago.

[Matt Leming]: Could you talk about the houses between, I believe it's 84 and 102, or are they just like newer buildings?

[Matt Leming]: Oh, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Use your arrow keys.

[Matt Leming]: You can go back with the arrow key.

[Matt Leming]: I just have one question for the members of the Historic District Commission.

[Matt Leming]: When you were deciding which district to choose for those, what other areas were you sort of considering?

[Matt Leming]: And can you just delve a little bit more into the specific rationale for choosing South Street?

[Matt Leming]: I feel like we need a bit more of an extensive presentation.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I don't want to meditate too much on this, but I would like to clarify because I said that I talked to the administration about free cash.

[Matt Leming]: And I want to clarify what I mean when I say that I talked to the administration is I Googled Bob Dickinson, the finance director's phone number, left him a voicemail, and then he got back to me and we talked for like, you know, half an hour about

[Matt Leming]: free cash, because when I saw, you know, $9 million, I was kind of like, what's going on here?

[Matt Leming]: And so then, you know, the finance director has been working in this area for years, and me, who, as an elected official, doesn't suddenly mean that I know everything about finance, I talked to him about it, I asked my questions.

[Matt Leming]: And he explained, you know, what the situation was, it's not a simple issue.

[Matt Leming]: Cities are kind of on a one year delay.

[Matt Leming]: So in many ways, we're dealing now with what was budgeted last year, and we are

[Matt Leming]: going to be in our budget, and we're trying to predict what the budget will be next year.

[Matt Leming]: They always come up with conservative estimates.

[Matt Leming]: Part of the free cash comes from the fact that the police department couldn't hire 10 police officers, so that's $800,000 extra in free cash.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, if we want to be able to fill those positions, that is not revenue that we can expect to come in.

[Matt Leming]: next year.

[Matt Leming]: Part of it just came from poor, inaccurate estimations in previous years of what healthcare costs would be.

[Matt Leming]: Those things are always hard to predict.

[Matt Leming]: And part of this is the fact that we

[Matt Leming]: implement, you know, we have these one time very big studies to try to invest in our city.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, we're debating many of those tonight costs like 15 million bucks to replace the HVAC systems for the middle school.

[Matt Leming]: So we need to, we need to spend, we need to

[Matt Leming]: fix that.

[Matt Leming]: And we can't just say, Oh, here's $9 million.

[Matt Leming]: Well, we should use that on salaries, continuing costs, which will just sink, which will just like eat up all of that money in a couple of years.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, in order to appropriately finance the city, it's not

[Matt Leming]: It's not an easy thing to explain, but at the end of the day, free cash goes to one-time costs.

[Matt Leming]: You cannot count on it as an ongoing source of revenue, especially to handle salaries.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing to note is that being an elected official doesn't mean that people will suddenly make an effort to call me

[Matt Leming]: to give me information and include me in on things.

[Matt Leming]: It's my job to go out and seek that information and try to educate myself on things that happen, you know, just because, you know, being elected basically means that I get to sit in the seat and talk for however long I can.

[Matt Leming]: I'm allowed to, and vote on ordinances.

[Matt Leming]: If I was not involved in the financial task force in order to figure out how things work, any city councilor can do this.

[Matt Leming]: You call up somebody, you seek out that information, you build up those relationships, and if you choose not to do that, then you won't be included.

[Matt Leming]: That's just how it works.

[Matt Leming]: So I'd just like to clarify that.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Part of this that gives me pause is the fact that Medford, the mayor's chair of the school committee and so I mean I know that that's two different positions but by two legally different positions.

[Matt Leming]: I, yeah, I, I know but the.

[Matt Leming]: it could change if the charter changes, but effectively the person who is occupying both the position as mayor and the position as head of the school committee in Medford are the same person.

[Matt Leming]: And so the chair of the school committee did get a raise already.

[Matt Leming]: And so that's,

[Matt Leming]: That's I'd say that I'd say that that's the part that that's that's the one part of this that does give me that does give me some pause the logic of having not received an increase in the past.

[Matt Leming]: 10 years, that does make sense.

[Matt Leming]: But the person who is essentially doing the job that they have done that whole time has received a raise that we approved.

[Matt Leming]: So that's the only part of this that I'm questioning right now.

[Matt Leming]: Hello, City Councilor Matt Leming here.

[Matt Leming]: I just got back from a run so my face is a little bit redder than usual, but in this recap I'm going to go over a couple of very important events that just happened at the past City Council meeting and sort of get into some initial thoughts, nitty gritties on that and

[Matt Leming]: try to answer a couple of the more common questions that I hear about these issues.

[Matt Leming]: So at the last city council meeting, the work of a lot of colleagues of mine really came to fruition when we voted on three ballot measures that will appear on the ballot this November.

[Matt Leming]: The first of these is a $3.5 million Prop 2.0 override, which would, if passed, give $3 million to level fund the Medford Public Schools and basically make it so that they can continue operating at capacity.

[Matt Leming]: as well as $500,000 to the Department of Public Works, which would go towards road and sidewalk improvements, let them hire inside more staff members to more actively maintain and repair the roads and sidewalks in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: The second is a $4 million Prop 2.0 override, which would invest in Medford Public Schools, in particular into their arts and vocational programs, and let them address salary issues with teachers and paraprofessionals.

[Matt Leming]: So the first one just would make it so that the Medford Public Schools can just stop treading water.

[Matt Leming]: And the second lets us really invest in our kids' education.

[Matt Leming]: and the third is a debt exclusion which is a temporary tax increase to build a new firefighter headquarters on 120 Main Street.

[Matt Leming]: So there's a lot that can be said about

[Matt Leming]: about these overrides.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to try to use this video to just offer some answers to a lot of questions and sentiments that I hear a lot about these measures.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of this is just going to be information that I've already gone over in previous posts.

[Matt Leming]: on my website, but I'm trying to make this kind of a go-to simple page for some of the most obvious top-level stuff to be answered for people who are just trying to learn more information about this.

[Matt Leming]: So, first off, Proposition 2.5.

[Matt Leming]: That is a 1980 ballot measure.

[Matt Leming]: that essentially prevents cities from increasing the amount of money they take from property taxes by 2.5% in any given year, barring new growth.

[Matt Leming]: So, in other words, if you took in $100 million from property taxes one year, you're not allowed to take in more than $102.5 million in property taxes the next year.

[Matt Leming]: The problem with that is that inflation between 1980 and today averaged out to 3.08%, so that means that effectively the

[Matt Leming]: budget of a given city goes down, the value of it goes down over time.

[Matt Leming]: And what that means is that cities can do basically one of three things.

[Matt Leming]: The first is they do an override, which over 300 of the 350 municipalities in Massachusetts have done so far.

[Matt Leming]: of the cities, I think Medford is one of like three or four that haven't so far.

[Matt Leming]: Or if you're like Cambridge or Somerville, you can invest in these massive commercial projects, which end up growing your commercial tax base a massive amount over a 20 year period.

[Matt Leming]: The third option is to do nothing and continue to cut costs and just sort of watch the infrastructure of a city.

[Matt Leming]: city deteriorate, which in many ways is kind of what Medford's done over the last couple of decades, which is sort of what's led us here.

[Matt Leming]: So the Prop 2.5 override is a ballot measure that allows us to, for one year, ignore that 2.5% rule and raise the amount that we're allowed to take in more than 2.5% in a given year.

[Matt Leming]: A debt exclusion is the same thing, except it's temporary.

[Matt Leming]: It's typically used for one-time capital projects.

[Matt Leming]: After that capital project is paid off, then it goes down.

[Matt Leming]: So that's what that is.

[Matt Leming]: The school budget, as we've seen this past year, there's really not enough money to go around.

[Matt Leming]: Some people were saying why can't we just pay for it out of something like free cash.

[Matt Leming]: This year we are taking money out of ARPA in order to meet some of the costs for that, but of course that can't sustain us over a long period of time because then we just run out of free cash.

[Matt Leming]: So we really need to have a permanent way to sustain continuing costs of our school system, given the fact that the way Prop 2.5 is set up and the fact that Medford hasn't had any of these substantial development projects over the past 20 years, it's really necessary to do that at this point.

[Matt Leming]: If we don't pass the 2.5 override, we will be basically at the same point next year,

[Matt Leming]: as we are right now and we'll have to just have massive layoffs in the schools.

[Matt Leming]: It won't be good.

[Matt Leming]: I've heard people talk about different points of opposition to this.

[Matt Leming]: People are trying to ask are there any alternatives to doing this.

[Matt Leming]: Some folks have said, have brought up, you know, okay, well, why can't Medford do more to develop businesses?

[Matt Leming]: City Council is working on that very actively right now.

[Matt Leming]: We are essentially laying the foundation so that Medford will be much more business friendly in the future.

[Matt Leming]: The most important thing that we're doing right now is the zoning overhaul, which we've had many very boring meetings about.

[Matt Leming]: And this will make it a lot easier and a lot clearer for businesses to know where they can open and the process for doing that in the future.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that that can't get us money over a 2-3 year period that we would need to fund our schools.

[Matt Leming]: That can get us money over the next 5-10 years.

[Matt Leming]: and that's just where we're at.

[Matt Leming]: If we had had this override 20 years ago, we'd be in a much better position today, but my job is to focus on where we're at right now.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing that I frequently hear in response to this is, well, why can't Medford do more with less?

[Matt Leming]: Why can't we cut more costs than we have before?

[Matt Leming]: And the answer to that, of course, is that we are already very much at the bone in terms of

[Matt Leming]: money, so in this blog post that I'm pairing this video with, I lay out some comparative statistics.

[Matt Leming]: There's a lot of ways that you can throw around different comparisons of Medford's property tax rates, our operating budget.

[Matt Leming]: Our total budget, our total spending for this year, according to the budget that we approved at this past meeting, is $218,000.

[Matt Leming]: million dollars which is attached in a memo that we approved and in this blog post I also just give a very top-level overview of the line items of that budget as well which is literally just copy and pasted from the agenda.

[Matt Leming]: There's a lot of things there like Medford Public Schools is of course the biggest line item there.

[Matt Leming]: The second biggest is insurance which

[Matt Leming]: The city has to pay off, you know and different there's a lot of complications behind all these things So for instance health insurance rates spiked pretty substantially due to lingering after-effects of kovat which Took up more of the city's budget than usual, which is one of the many reasons that we're facing this shortfall with the schools today But you know, this is I frequently hear people say well I pay my taxes.

[Matt Leming]: Where does my money go?

[Matt Leming]: and

[Matt Leming]: This budget right here that we approved is where, you know, where your money went.

[Matt Leming]: There's also many meetings, which we've uploaded to YouTube, which shows all of the individual meetings we've had with the individual departments over these different budget line items, in which each department head specifies why they need what they need in very great detail.

[Matt Leming]: We're really at the point where if we try to cut any more than we already have it will be detrimental financially in the future and this man if like At some like if there's a huge Administrative bloat then that's one thing and you could you know make things more efficient that way but eventually the system becomes brittle if you just keep doing that and it breaks apart very easily there is a instance where

[Matt Leming]: that made the news last week where City of Arlington lost $445,000 to a phishing scam because they refused to put any sort of investment into their IT department.

[Matt Leming]: So pennies smart, dollars stupid, it's important to avoid that.

[Matt Leming]: My colleague

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callaghan, the Chair of the Public Works Committee, she gave a very nice spiel at the last City Council meeting that detailed how if we keep letting our roads in Medford get worse than they are today,

[Matt Leming]: then it will be exponentially more costly to repair them than if we did this debt exclusion for $500,000 right now.

[Matt Leming]: So people say, you know, our taxes, our property taxes are very high, and of course, you know, they are, but they are lower than the vast majority of municipalities in Massachusetts, even accounting for the very high property

[Matt Leming]: assessed prices in this city.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, our $8.65 per $1,000 of assessed value is lower than 7 out of every 8 cities in the Commonwealth.

[Matt Leming]: when you're accounting for cities with a population above 20,000, then Medford is in, which there's like 96 cities, 96 municipalities in the Commonwealth with a population above that.

[Matt Leming]: Then in terms of per capita operating budget, I think Medford is in, usually it's like the bottom five cities.

[Matt Leming]: So the point of this being that when there's people that are saying, oh, we need to save money, we need to, you know, et cetera, et cetera,

[Matt Leming]: Um, there's really not a whole lot more we can save in the few, uh, suggestions I have heard around that, you know, some, I, somebody was saying like, oh, we should fire the superintendent.

[Matt Leming]: Like that, that's literally illegal.

[Matt Leming]: Like you can't do things like that under state law.

[Matt Leming]: Um, no, we're, we're about like, there's no $2.7 million that's being spent elsewhere.

[Matt Leming]: There's no $6 million line item that we can just cut without having massive consequences.

[Matt Leming]: So this is all a way of saying that, uh, this override is,

[Matt Leming]: very necessary at this point.

[Matt Leming]: It's essentially the only choice we have.

[Matt Leming]: The work that City Council is doing right now in the zoning overall is going to have more substantial effects in Medford's long-term development.

[Matt Leming]: That will really allow

[Matt Leming]: more businesses to come in.

[Matt Leming]: It'll make the process a lot clearer and easier for outside parties to set up shop here.

[Matt Leming]: It's just we're not, it's just this is where we are now and we're trying to get the firefighters a station that they've been promised for

[Matt Leming]: over a decade now.

[Matt Leming]: We're trying to get the DDPW internal staff so that they can actually repair the massive backlog of roads that we have.

[Matt Leming]: And we're trying to make it so that the teachers in the Medford public school system will not have to be laid off next year.

[Matt Leming]: And there's actually, we can actually promise them that they'll be able to keep their jobs.

[Matt Leming]: And we are trying to

[Matt Leming]: invest in arts and vocational programs so that the kids who are right now being educated in the Medford public school system will have a good and enriching education because they don't have another 10 to 12 years to wait.

[Matt Leming]: So this is all just a kind of a high-level initial overview of what this is all about, why this is, you know, our only option

[Matt Leming]: At the moment and why I would strongly encourage everybody to talk to your neighbors about why they need to vote on this

[Matt Leming]: on all three of these ballot measures, why that's just really what the city needs right now.

[Matt Leming]: And I'd like to thank you so much for listening.

[Matt Leming]: If there's any other questions that you do have about the overrides, I would encourage you to email me on the contact form on my website.

[Matt Leming]: I generally only like to talk about the things where I have a clear, definite answer.

[Matt Leming]: I will try to be

[Matt Leming]: So I can't promise you the timeliness of all of those responses.

[Matt Leming]: But I will be trying to update this page, this blog post on my website with common questions as I hear them.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you very much for listening.

[Matt Leming]: And have a wonderful summer.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Paola.

[Matt Leming]: I do appreciate the energy that has clearly been put into breaking down a very

[Matt Leming]: complicated set of topics down and simplifying it for us.

[Matt Leming]: I would personally be of the mind that I do want to engage in the rating exercise, but I fully agree that it can be done offline.

[Matt Leming]: And perhaps there could be a motion to do that before the next meeting, before this has ended.

[Matt Leming]: What I would like to ask you is in terms of these

[Matt Leming]: general topics that you've seen from the comprehensive plan and the cap plan.

[Matt Leming]: And I do understand that there are certain things that are very broad and there's certain things, like you said, the heating that were very specific.

[Matt Leming]: What

[Matt Leming]: very, and it's going to be very difficult for y'all to come up with something that can integrate all of the themes from both of these into one comprehensive zoning plan.

[Matt Leming]: What, from your impressions,

[Matt Leming]: could there really be, do you really see there being like contradictions when you're actually trying to implement these things?

[Matt Leming]: So if, you know, there is, could be, you know, there could be a need for better transportation, there could be a need for more affordable housing, there could be a need to

[Matt Leming]: make buildings more energy efficient.

[Matt Leming]: Do you see any of these things in a single zoning plan strongly contradicting each other when you really get down to the nitty gritty?

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to hear your general thoughts on that.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so when we're rating things, it's not like we're saying you should do this instead of this.

[Matt Leming]: Well, so I asked to be recognized before the chair made the proposal, but I was actually going to make a motion to just have this emailed to Councilors after the meeting so that we could submit our feedback.

[Matt Leming]: And then outside the meeting, maybe

[Matt Leming]: have Paola forward the sticky note page to us and then move on because I don't, given the fact that we all do tend to talk quite a bit, I do it too, I'm doing it right now.

[Matt Leming]: I think it would take more time than what we have left.

[Matt Leming]: Affordable housing and transportation.

[Matt Leming]: Well, maybe I just won't second then.

[Matt Leming]: Maybe I just won't second.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, no, second.

[Matt Leming]: I second.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, oh, oh, really?

[Matt Leming]: Really?

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I found them in order and motion to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, council president.

[Matt Leming]: It is so much easier to criticize action than it is inaction.

[Matt Leming]: And unfortunately for decades, this city

[Matt Leming]: has really not done a whole lot to address the structural underfunding that has led up to this fiscal cliff.

[Matt Leming]: I want to be extremely clear that if this override doesn't pass, as the mayor said, we will be here next year.

[Matt Leming]: We will have to lay a lot of people off.

[Matt Leming]: The roads will continue to be in the state they're in.

[Matt Leming]: And as my colleague said, they will continue to get worse.

[Matt Leming]: The fire department will not get its headquarters.

[Matt Leming]: We need this.

[Matt Leming]: as Council Vice President Collins said, this is the most important vote that is coming before this Council tonight, that has come before this Council so far this term.

[Matt Leming]: Now, I don't know what it means to

[Matt Leming]: do an override right.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sure that they've had, that they've done it differently in other cities.

[Matt Leming]: And I know that my colleagues on council, my colleagues on school committee and the mayor may have slightly different views on this.

[Matt Leming]: They announced the financial task force months ago via press release.

[Matt Leming]: It was never a secret committee and they had to work out a compromise to bring what we're seeing today.

[Matt Leming]: Okay?

[Matt Leming]: And I'm not going to sit here and criticize people who are trying to address the issues that people have been talking about in this city for decades.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm sure that a lot of people will come around and say, you know, we need more development.

[Matt Leming]: We need to work, do more with less, whatever that means.

[Matt Leming]: We need to

[Matt Leming]: I mean, we're already down to the bone, okay?

[Matt Leming]: I've been to the school committee budget meetings.

[Matt Leming]: They've already stripped the school budget down as far as it can possibly go.

[Matt Leming]: If this doesn't pass, we don't know what we'll do next year, okay?

[Matt Leming]: So I just wanna make the point that this is, I think, any kind of action, any kind of action

[Matt Leming]: any kind of choice that the voters have, that we can give the voters is praiseworthy.

[Matt Leming]: I commend my colleagues for doing this.

[Matt Leming]: This is going to be historic in this city.

[Matt Leming]: This is what we need right now.

[Matt Leming]: And big picture, I just want to really drive that point home.

[Matt Leming]: You know, unity is not doing what

[Matt Leming]: the loudest people in the room say we should do.

[Matt Leming]: Unity is fixing the problems that the vast majority of the city have told us about, even if our solutions aren't perfect.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you very much.

[Matt Leming]: I heard a, I heard a groan in the audience when council, when the council president listed the large amount of speakers that, uh, that still had to go.

[Matt Leming]: And so I think everybody wants to get to public comment period.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm going to leave it at that and thank all those who've spoken so far.

[Matt Leming]: And I look forward to hearing what folks have to say.

[Matt Leming]: No, this is just a quick one.

[Matt Leming]: So Councilor Scarpelli brought up twice or several times the fact that his

[Matt Leming]: previous paper was a rule 21.

[Matt Leming]: I just want to be clear about that.

[Matt Leming]: So first off, if anybody would like to look at the May 28th meeting, the city council meetings are now on YouTube.

[Matt Leming]: So you're free to look up how that particular debate went.

[Matt Leming]: But I rule 21'ed it because it was a

[Matt Leming]: vague resolution.

[Matt Leming]: It was just to generally discuss options for the school budget.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli had previously submitted a similar resolution several meetings before, and he was asked by the council president to make his resolutions more specific so that people would know what he specifically intended to bring to the table.

[Matt Leming]: The last one was a resolution to discuss subcommittee processes, and it ended up in

[Matt Leming]: Um, it ended up veering into a letter that my colleagues had signed.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so it just generally got off topic.

[Matt Leming]: So I just wanted to clarify that I wanted the resolutions of themselves to be specific so that we will know what is being talked about.

[Matt Leming]: We could have talked about that resolution today, but my colleague decided to withdraw it, um, at the beginning of the meeting.

[Matt Leming]: So we never did.

[Matt Leming]: That's all.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: I can't see it.

[Matt Leming]: Can you share your screen?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, what part would you want me to scroll to?

[Matt Leming]: She's on Zoom right now, so she can share the screen.

[Matt Leming]: I'll second that.

[Matt Leming]: Nothing in particular to add.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Chair.

[Matt Leming]: So my thoughts on the feral stray cat issue is, one, I'm concerned that somebody could use that as an excuse to just keep putting food out for wildlife, and it would be very hard to disprove any sort of, to disprove intention.

[Matt Leming]: there.

[Matt Leming]: That's the first thought that comes to my mind.

[Matt Leming]: The second is, how often do people who engage in spay-capture-neuter-release programs end up catching stray cats with food versus other means?

[Matt Leming]: Oftentimes,

[Matt Leming]: get a stray cat, like some of them are friendly, you could pick them up off the ground.

[Matt Leming]: I would be interested to hear staff opinion on some of these issues, but those are just the problems with that that are coming to mind.

[Matt Leming]: My mom does the capture and release quite a bit.

[Matt Leming]: So a lot of this is just coming from what I'm thinking about she does,

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I did.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So the resident services and public engagement subcommittee consisted of myself, Councilor Callahan and Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Met, we basically just discussed procedures for these listening sessions and divided the different groups that each subcommittee member would schedule.

[Matt Leming]: listening sessions with over the next year or so.

[Matt Leming]: And then we, that was pretty much it.

[Matt Leming]: It was a pretty informal meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: We drafted and approved the second newsletter of the Medford City Council, which is now available on the City Council web page.

[Matt Leming]: If anybody is interested in checking out the final version, we also met to discuss the

[Matt Leming]: proposed ordinance change to allow the veteran services director to offer an incentive to landlords that are willing to rent out to qualified veterans and address the veterans homelessness issue.

[Matt Leming]: There was a motion to send that to legal for review.

[Matt Leming]: And that was, those were the items that were discussed.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also like to add that in addition to my colleagues' efforts on this.

[Matt Leming]: So I talked to legal about what options city council has in helping the tenants.

[Matt Leming]: And honestly, as we've been hinting, there isn't really a whole lot that we can do given the current tools that we have.

[Matt Leming]: There's a lot that we could have done if different choices were made 30 years ago, if the city had decided to plant that tree 30 years ago.

[Matt Leming]: We could have put up the money to do that, but we can't right now.

[Matt Leming]: But right now, this city council is asking, trying to ask the state to give us the tools to prevent that.

[Matt Leming]: And not only are we seeing these real estate management companies not respond to their own tenants, not sit down to negotiate, but we're also seeing them actively fight tooth and nail to prevent cities from having those tools in the first place because they're making so much money from this.

[Matt Leming]: What they're spending their time doing, and I'm sure that a lot of people in this room have received those mailers, is put out information, mass text robocalls that are scaring average homeowners, average residents into thinking that these initiatives that this city council is pursuing is going to hurt them.

[Matt Leming]: It's not.

[Matt Leming]: It is going to prevent your neighbors from being driven out of the city.

[Matt Leming]: Okay? That's what we're seeing, is a very small number of bad actors put out propaganda to prevent the city from having even the minimum amount of tools necessary to prevent this from happening in the future.

[Matt Leming]: So I know that, you know, people come here and they don't like to see it when their neighbors get kicked out because right now these problems have a face to them.

[Matt Leming]: They have the face of your neighbor saying that we're going to have to leave because a big company is telling us to leave.

[Matt Leming]: And then it feels bad.

[Matt Leming]: But when people say, Oh, you know, somebody should have done something about this 30 years ago, somebody should have done something about this before.

[Matt Leming]: That's because everytime anybody's tried to do anything about it,

[Matt Leming]: big money interest will come in and prevent it from happening through these sorts of opposition campaigns, which we're seeing in Medford right now.

[Matt Leming]: So I'd like to point that out, that that's an important piece of context.

[Matt Leming]: The Charles Gate Realty Group is not giving silence.

[Matt Leming]: What they're doing is giving large donations to state senators, state representatives, telling them to nix these initiatives at the state level.

[Matt Leming]: That's what's happening right now.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also like to just, the CPA seems to come up a lot here, but something like $2.4 million is already going to affordable housing initiatives to rebuild Walkling Court.

[Matt Leming]: Please do not interrupt. Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Scarpelli,

[Matt Leming]: I sat on the CPA prior to being elected to this council.

[Matt Leming]: Now, affordable housing projects that involve building do come along less frequently than open space and historic preservation projects.

[Matt Leming]: And so typically a larger portion of funding needs to be dedicated to those.

[Matt Leming]: One project, because the CPA has not really been around all that long.

[Matt Leming]: Now, funding,

[Matt Leming]: a mediator, I suppose, is not a solution to these problems.

[Matt Leming]: They're trying... Councilor Scarpelli, they're trying to find mediation.

[Matt Leming]: They've said that they're trying to find mediation.

[Matt Leming]: So putting more money towards somebody else that's also trying to find mediation is not a long-term sustainable solution to this

[Matt Leming]: to this problem.

[Matt Leming]: Now, I agree with what Vice President Collins just said.

[Matt Leming]: This has gotten off topic, but I hear so much misinformation about the CPA being thrown around these chambers that I did feel like addressing that.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I just stopped the video

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I would motion to table this until the next regular meeting, because I would, like, that wasn't in the text that I received at all, and I would like to actually read over what Councilor Scarpelli just said in order to study it and process it a little bit more.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to recess.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: President Bears, I'd like to, because the amendment made it very clear this is a financial paper, I'd like to invoke Rule 21.

[Matt Leming]: So I believe that Councilor Tseng is going to be joining us from in just a little bit.

[Matt Leming]: But we do have quorum now, so I think we can get a request permission to record on this computer.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, go ahead and do the roll call.

[Matt Leming]: My pleasure.

[Matt Leming]: I believe he's absent.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, just for full clarifications for the record, this meeting is starting half an hour late because the previous planning and permitting committee meeting went over.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sorry to say that because of open meeting law.

[Matt Leming]: I'm streaming this meeting from the clerk's office because we're trying to troubleshoot a YouTube live stream, which is not on so well so far, but it's a work in progress.

[Matt Leming]: And we are, and Councilor Tseng is also right up here as well.

[Matt Leming]: So we are going to start by discussing paper 24-351, resolution to allow the director of veteran services to offer housing incentives to veteran renters.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially, this would edit the division

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, this would edit the city's ordinances to give the director of veteran services additional authority to offer a cash incentive to landlords to.

[Matt Leming]: rent out to qualified veterans.

[Matt Leming]: It's a program that she approached the city council with and I understand that some of my fellow Councilors have questions about it.

[Matt Leming]: So I'll leave it to Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Shaw who's present right now to go ahead and explain the idea behind the program and the problems that it is addressing and then hear from my, hear any questions from my fellow Councilors.

[Matt Leming]: I can't hear you.

[Matt Leming]: Well, I'm not saying that she's muted.

[Matt Leming]: It could be an audio input situation.

[Matt Leming]: If you could check your speaker in there.

[Matt Leming]: Francis?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Any questions from my fellow Councilors?

[Matt Leming]: I can speak to that a little bit.

[Matt Leming]: Sure.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah For the interruption.

[Matt Leming]: So I've had some communications of legal about this nothing.

[Matt Leming]: Um, nothing normal, but they um, uh, it was attorney austin.

[Matt Leming]: I have any email from her where she says she can

[Matt Leming]: in order to review the legal authority, in order to establish legal authority for this, you would have to, she could review the public purpose, municipal finance limitations under state law.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that what would need to come from this committee tonight is a motion to request that legal, essentially review these documents in order, and just get us a memo to say that, you know, this is okay under the public, under public purpose limitations.

[Matt Leming]: I looked at other parts of the municipal code, and I just I think that putting this squarely in the veteran services office just every all things considered is the most appropriate.

[Matt Leming]: The other 4 do seem to be just taken straight out of state law, but again.

[Matt Leming]: Like there's there's literally four authorities that are directly granted in there, but I really don't see think that there'll be much of an issue with just putting this and there is an additional one on the city side.

[Matt Leming]: I did have some discussions with.

[Matt Leming]: the city's chief of staff in this area and just over, you know, I think that her concerns were, you know, just operationalizing it, having it, you know, having these funds recur year to year.

[Matt Leming]: But I also think that those parts of it could probably be figured out sort of at the implementation level, whereas this is just mainly

[Matt Leming]: explicitly saying that the Director of Veterans Services has the authority to implement this sort of a program.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't think that every single bit of this would necessarily need to be defined in the ordinance other than this very small paragraph.

[Matt Leming]: So I hope that lends some clarity there.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan, did I see your hand raised?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, on the motion of Councilor Lazzaro to send this to legal counsel to, I guess the specific wording should be to determine the, what would be a good word is, to send this to legal for review, probably the best way to phrase it, and keep the paper in committee, seconded by Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any further discussion?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Is it says network bandwidth is low.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: You record Shaw.

[Matt Leming]: very much for attending.

[Matt Leming]: Now we are going to move on to 24354 resolution to publish the City Council newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: The draft of the current newsletter, which was so kindly prepared by

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro, that should be in everybody's agenda packet.

[Matt Leming]: I am just going to pull up the draft of it just so that we can prepare for any edits that may be necessary.

[Matt Leming]: Hold on.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, good.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: There was 1 suggestion that.

[Matt Leming]: Was taken that I took in just in the.

[Matt Leming]: Few days in between, so I think that there's still a little bit of.

[Matt Leming]: still a little bit of few details that need to be worked out in terms of who's distributing it.

[Matt Leming]: I know that the city clerk received an influx of emails after his email was put directly on the last newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that discussions about distribution by the city would still need to be discussed.

[Matt Leming]: But in the meantime, I put,

[Matt Leming]: hear a Bitly link, Bitly Medford City Council newsletter, which links to a Google form that both have access to.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially, this is just a very simple thing that

[Matt Leming]: people would be able to come up with people potentially would be able to just look at on their on their websites.

[Matt Leming]: It's just a suggestion by myself.

[Matt Leming]: But otherwise, if anybody else has any discussion on that or any suggestions, I'd be pleased to hear it.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Calderon.

[Matt Leming]: Thanks.

[Matt Leming]: So, uh, Councilor Nazaro.

[Matt Leming]: Right.

[Matt Leming]: So I would, being a scientist and in favor of impartial, neutral language, I would also, now that I'm kind of saying it, and I should, full disclosure, just say that I have already reviewed this, but looking at it, it's kind of with eyes, like a big set of eyes.

[Matt Leming]: I would also favor just kind of getting, removing this part.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, my internet connection is unstable, so I thought that you were finished when it was just a lag.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng, do you have anything further?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I think that's fine.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing here is, and this is a bit of Cher's editorial review, but when I'm formatting this, I'll include links to all of these, which is only accessible in the digital version, but still.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, I did want to address.

[Matt Leming]: So, if Councilor.

[Matt Leming]: Was Zara's point about.

[Matt Leming]: This being the individual so.

[Matt Leming]: I do feel like when we're starting out with this newsletter, it is best to err on the side of caution and humor could perhaps come in at a later time when it's sort of a more established thing.

[Matt Leming]: And I do think that having a positive spin on things is not a bad thing, especially when we're giving $250,000 to all these organizations in the community.

[Matt Leming]: having like phrasing that in a positive in a positive light is not a bad thing but when starting out it I think it is it is best to just kind of like present things as they're as they happen and then when we sort of see what this becomes we'll kind of like be more familiar like what we're able to and not able to do with it

[Matt Leming]: I don't know if that was a great perspective on that, but I don't, we don't necessarily have to like avoid any sort of humor whatsoever, but I do understand the reaction that we're starting at.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: So, okay, so actually I do remember that we did talk about that and the recent subcommittee.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, would you be able to comment on is that acceptable under open meeting law because listening sessions is not technically on this agenda.

[Matt Leming]: I know that was discussed, but this could be an oversight on my end.

[Matt Leming]: So I'd like to.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So I think we hopefully we can get this done.

[Matt Leming]: deadline.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, no, no.

[Matt Leming]: That's that's okay.

[Matt Leming]: So do we have a motion on the floor to approve?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, sure, we could do that motion as well.

[Matt Leming]: I would second that.

[Matt Leming]: And can we add to that motion to approve the newsletter?

[Matt Leming]: And to keep the paper.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: And keep the paper in committee.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, will you spell the roll?

[Matt Leming]: And I'll be ready.

[Matt Leming]: Chair Leming?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion is passed.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any other motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Are you ready?

[Matt Leming]: Yes, meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Just like everybody watching this, to understand just a couple of basic things about the city's financial situation.

[Matt Leming]: So first off, this is a very long time coming, and it would be easy to sit here and talk about this or that decision, complain about everything

[Matt Leming]: under the sun about why we're here right now.

[Matt Leming]: But at the end of the day, the problem is systemic.

[Matt Leming]: So Proposition 2.5 prevents the city from increasing its total tax levy, the total amount of money we take in from property taxes, by 2.5% every year.

[Matt Leming]: The average inflation from 1980 till today

[Matt Leming]: 1980 was when Prop 2.5 was passed.

[Matt Leming]: That average rate has been 3.08%.

[Matt Leming]: So that means that the value of the budget in 1980 adding up would be about three quarters as

[Matt Leming]: The modern budget would be about three quarters as valuable as it was back then.

[Matt Leming]: This is somewhat offset by growth.

[Matt Leming]: Cities that have had a lot of development in the past 44 years, Cambridge over with Kendall Square, Somerville with Assembly Row have not had to pass an override.

[Matt Leming]: But Medford hasn't seen that development just in the longer term.

[Matt Leming]: There are a variety of reasons for that.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so I think that this is not a panel of judges criticizing others decisions.

[Matt Leming]: It is our job to come up with solutions.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not going to sit here and either be administrators or the school committee.

[Matt Leming]: five loaves of bread and two fishes and tell you that you need to feed 5,000 people.

[Matt Leming]: That's just not how this works.

[Matt Leming]: I think that we need to get real about the budgetary situation and say that we do need an override of some sort just because the system that we're in inherently leaves us with a broken budget.

[Matt Leming]: The problem is that

[Matt Leming]: passing it to if we were to pass it to if we were to pass an override that money would not be available from now till the next fiscal year so there's the matter of bridging that gap it is not in the city council's authority to set to raise any of these line items it is

[Matt Leming]: not in the authority of the City Council to say, hey, we need to take, you know, $6 million or $2.7 million from free cash and use that to fund the school systems in the interim.

[Matt Leming]: That is up to the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: The City Council is working on a lot of other things, a lot of other initiatives which will address this fiscal shortfall in the long term.

[Matt Leming]: Not all of our solutions are perfect.

[Matt Leming]: We just got done with a committee meeting where

[Matt Leming]: I was proposing a commercial vacancy tax to help to address the vacant storefront problems in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: It's not a perfect solution, no solution is, but I'm trying to bring solutions forward to help address our problems instead of just complaining about the decisions that are made by other people and acting like I have no power in this situation.

[Matt Leming]: So that is, so that being said,

[Matt Leming]: That is what I personally think should be done about this situation.

[Matt Leming]: I understand that there are arguments against taking free cash out of reserves.

[Matt Leming]: We're looking to fund a new high school.

[Matt Leming]: Having an amount of free cash is important in order to get a good interest rate for the loan for that new high school.

[Matt Leming]: So in that way, spending that money now could end up just affecting the city's bottom line 10 years from now.

[Matt Leming]: the mayor's proposal.

[Matt Leming]: But I do think that in this situation it is more necessary.

[Matt Leming]: It is necessary to make that that decision.

[Matt Leming]: I look forward to seeing, um, what the mayor's proposal is.

[Matt Leming]: Um if she doesn't if she doesn't want to do that, or if she finds cuts in other areas.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, I wish that other decisions have been made beforehand.

[Matt Leming]: I think that an override should have been passed a lot earlier so that we wouldn't be dealing with this right at the edge of that fiscal cliff, but it is what it is.

[Matt Leming]: People aren't looking for people sitting behind, sitting in these chairs to come up with complaints about a budget situation that obviously nobody likes.

[Matt Leming]: People are coming here to find proposed solutions to these problems, even if these are not ideal.

[Matt Leming]: I thank you for going through a budget that is just not enough money to go around at the end of the day and coming to us with what you can.

[Matt Leming]: and that's all I have to say about that.

[Matt Leming]: This council really can't make a whole lot of decisions about this realistically until we get another number from the mayor around what her proposal is, but we'll be able to come up with more definite answers after that, so thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So this here is a draft of a home rule petition which would allow us the authority to, which would allow the city of Medford the authority to actually impose the commercial vacancy tax on landlords that own vacant commercial storefront properties.

[Matt Leming]: businesses or businesses that are effectively closed all the time.

[Matt Leming]: When I was going door-to-door campaigning, I ran into people who talked about the fact that in West Medford and South Medford, there are a lot of businesses that don't, that are just a lot of buildings that are owned by landlords who just never

[Matt Leming]: rent them out to businesses.

[Matt Leming]: There was one woman who was trying to get in contact with the owner of the dry cleaner that was closed at the time in West Medford for about a year and a half.

[Matt Leming]: She said that this person wouldn't even pick up the phone to talk to her.

[Matt Leming]: She wanted to open up a gym there, but that's obviously difficult to do if you can't even talk to the person who owns the building.

[Matt Leming]: So there's, I did research on this.

[Matt Leming]: There's not a whole lot of default authorities that cities have to leverage this sort of attacks.

[Matt Leming]: So what I've been doing is two different things.

[Matt Leming]: The first is the home rule petition draft that is in this agenda packet.

[Matt Leming]: And this would just give us the very basic legal authority to be able to enact attacks such that it would

[Matt Leming]: B, it would effectively disincentivize property owners from doing this.

[Matt Leming]: And there are a few specifics in here.

[Matt Leming]: First off, it says that the proceeds from the tax will be put into a special fund that will help to aid in the repair upkeep of these properties, as well as funding local mechanisms to incurrent tenant occupancies, such as advertising for these properties and so on and so forth.

[Matt Leming]: Sometimes, and this gets into the fact that sometimes these properties are vacant for reasons that are outside of the property owner's control.

[Matt Leming]: Maybe the building is not in good enough shape to attract a tenant at all, so they would need extra funds to repair the building.

[Matt Leming]: and such.

[Matt Leming]: There's also another clause in here that specifically would enable landlords who own the property to terminate the tenancy of any business that currently has a lease with them but it's just not doing anything with that and this was because a specific

[Matt Leming]: scenario is brought to my attention where the tax would be the tax in this place would be placed on the owner of the property but sometimes they may have a lease in which the person who they may have a lease with a business owner who

[Matt Leming]: it's really in their authority to make sure that they're actually running a business day-to-day in that case.

[Matt Leming]: What I've also been doing, so this here is just meant to ask the state to give Medford permission to be able to enact this vacancy tax.

[Matt Leming]: This obviously isn't the entire ordinance, so we just give the basic legal authority to do so.

[Matt Leming]: If and when the state

[Matt Leming]: does give permission to Medford to enact such a tax, there would obviously be other rules that are put in place.

[Matt Leming]: For instance, a tax wouldn't be applied immediately after vacancy starts, there would be a grace period, there would just be other

[Matt Leming]: that are put in place to make sure that these scenarios I've heard about where, you know, you're not just unfairly penalizing people who may be in a situation where tenants are just not, where tenants are just not trying to rent out good businesses and their properties and so on.

[Matt Leming]: But this, again, this is just about giving the city the basic legal authority to do that simultaneously.

[Matt Leming]: And this is,

[Matt Leming]: Um.

[Matt Leming]: Relate this is related to this initiative, but I figured it would be it would best go into zoning.

[Matt Leming]: Um I've also put in work around a vacant building ordinance, which is something that the city currently does have the authority to do.

[Matt Leming]: Um there's it's similar.

[Matt Leming]: They have had similar initiatives over in East Hampton and some other

[Matt Leming]: The city doesn't have the authority to levy a tax for profit, but we do have the authority to levy a fee in order to make something cost neutral.

[Matt Leming]: So the vacant building ordinance that East Hampton implemented basically

[Matt Leming]: would charge the owners of vacant buildings, something like $1,000 a year to as long as long as the buildings are buildings are vacant to maintain a public vacant building database which would be maintained by staff members and so.

[Matt Leming]: You'd only be allowed to charge enough for that to pay for the staff cost of maintaining that.

[Matt Leming]: So, again, that is one initiative that we're looking into, and that would likely create the foundation to enact commercial vacancy tax.

[Matt Leming]: in Medford, if and when this particular petition is approved, if this council does end up passing it.

[Matt Leming]: But overall, this is my effort to address a problem that I heard about from residents time and time again, which is they don't like to see so many closed down storefronts in

[Matt Leming]: Medford.

[Matt Leming]: They think that the issue is sometimes, not in all cases, but sometimes landlords that just for whatever reason either don't want to or don't have the funds to be able to rent out their storefronts that they own to

[Matt Leming]: businesses and so this is an effort to help give them to help build up the funds to either help advertise for tenants or repair their properties as it may be.

[Matt Leming]: So the only change I would

[Matt Leming]: I personally suggest the text the clerk pointed out that typically homeworld petitions don't have the word resolved.

[Matt Leming]: They have the word enacted there so I would motion to change that.

[Matt Leming]: After we hear comment from both the economic development director who I can.

[Matt Leming]: see us on Zoom, as well as any members of the public who are interested in seeing this.

[Matt Leming]: I would personally like to refer it to the regular council meeting, but I also look forward to hearing what my colleagues have to say about it as well.

[Matt Leming]: So, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So I do respect the sentiment that things like this can have unintended consequences.

[Matt Leming]: Again, like I said, the Home Rule petition itself would only give the city the very basic legal authority to be able to rent, to be able to enact this tax to begin with.

[Matt Leming]: It says nothing about timelines post vacancy to

[Matt Leming]: uh after which the tax would apply um so the idea behind this would be if the state does grant us the authority to do this it would be just one uh it it would

[Matt Leming]: Hopefully the ordinance would be able to be crafted so that it makes it so that these negative consequences would be very practically disincentivized in the actual implementation.

[Matt Leming]: Some other concerns that I did have though is that I went to a meeting very recently where a developer just outright told me that keeping some of the properties that he owned

[Matt Leming]: vacant was actually profitable for him because it would make a tax, it would make, he could just write off, write it off as a loss in his taxes.

[Matt Leming]: So sometimes it is beneficial to landlords, it is in their best interest to keep these properties vacant and that is

[Matt Leming]: really that is really one factor that this is meant to disincentivize.

[Matt Leming]: I do look forward to seeing how that grant application goes.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously there is no one tool that the city has that will be able to fix the problem that we've been experiencing for a long time, which is vacant storefronts, but

[Matt Leming]: a combination of carrots and sticks are needed to be able to address this problem.

[Matt Leming]: And like I also said, the idea behind this is that the funds would go, is that the revenue from this tax would go into a fund specifically meant to help out those vacant storefronts when they do, if they are in a state in which they can't be rented out.

[Matt Leming]: Again, like, like, 11 thing that some members of the Chamber of Commerce told me about that dry cleaner over in West Medford is that there's very significant repairs that need to be made to it to be before it can be rented out on the tune of.

[Matt Leming]: I think 70, don't hold me to it, but I think it said something like $70,000 worth of repairs at the time needed to be made.

[Matt Leming]: And I don't know where that money would come from.

[Matt Leming]: So the idea behind this is to be able to collect some fund, which is specifically meant to address those issues.

[Matt Leming]: But I do respect the views and the efforts of our economic development director, but it is my belief that

[Matt Leming]: multiple tools and initiatives are needed to help to address this problem.

[Matt Leming]: Absolutely.

[Matt Leming]: So, often homeworld petitions are written in very simple, short, plain language.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially, this would just give the city permission in the 1st place to be able to then implement an ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: So my view, my view on this is.

[Matt Leming]: we will go to the state, ask them for permission to be able to just have the right to do this in the first place.

[Matt Leming]: This text obviously is not detailed enough to act as an ordinance or a set of rules in itself, but it would grant the legal authority to then be able to implement that.

[Matt Leming]: As I said, there are initiatives in other cities right now.

[Matt Leming]: They've basically been doing the same thing.

[Matt Leming]: In East Hampton, they've implemented a vacant building ordinance, which effectively lets them tax owners of vacant buildings at certain very small rates just to maintain a database.

[Matt Leming]: Again, my concern with that is that that's not really enough to justify

[Matt Leming]: to justify a tax write-off.

[Matt Leming]: So I think what would happen if we did that is that it would incentivize some owners of these properties to, if we just had a vacant building ordinance, it would incentivize some owners of these properties to rent out, but other owners, it would just, you know,

[Matt Leming]: it would basically just be another number on a spreadsheet that they could account for.

[Matt Leming]: So this essentially would allow us to levy a tax that would be enough to disincentivize them from doing that.

[Matt Leming]: So, to address a couple of the points first off the city does not have a good handle on the number of vacant storefronts I talked to the building commissioner he had a part part of this just has to do with capacity and this was our conversations about the vacant bill about the vacant building ordinance that I also passed to zoning.

[Matt Leming]: They had a spreadsheet that had been last updated, I think, in 2015, but I don't think that they actually had the capacity to be able to figure it out and therefore get a handle on the problem.

[Matt Leming]: Another pattern in this

[Matt Leming]: in this conversation is, so I understand that there are unintended consequences, but there are things that I think would be more appropriate to solve using other means, like as Councilor Tseng was saying, I think it is more appropriate to worry about, to handle the idea of store of businesses that we don't want being in places we don't want with zoning rather than something like this.

[Matt Leming]: This really is meant to address the,

[Matt Leming]: the small number of bad apples in the city.

[Matt Leming]: The tax incentive comment actually came from a developer that I was in a meeting with where the conversation was something like, I was talking about this initiative more at a high level way.

[Matt Leming]: I said, listen, there's a lot of vacant properties.

[Matt Leming]: I'm developing a commercial vacancy tax initiative around that.

[Matt Leming]: And the response from the developer was something like, Oh, well, I actually want to keep a few of my properties vacant because then I could just write that off as a loss on my taxes.

[Matt Leming]: And it's more beneficial for me.

[Matt Leming]: You don't really understand how this works.

[Matt Leming]: And it was sort of phrase like that.

[Matt Leming]: So that was and saying that saying something like that to a public official where

[Matt Leming]: It's not in the public interest at all to have someone that owns these properties deliberately try to keep them empty.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that we could definitely look into the specific tax rules that enable this to happen.

[Matt Leming]: But in regards to all the details of implementation and so on that we've been talking about, again, Home Rule petition step of this, if it is approved, would just allow the city to have the basic tools it needs.

[Matt Leming]: to be able to craft an ordinance like this in the first place.

[Matt Leming]: So when we're at the, as Councilor Lazzaro was saying, we do not need to have every single detail of this figured out at this stage.

[Matt Leming]: Hypothetically, I'm not saying we should do this, we could

[Matt Leming]: we could we could even submit a home rule petition it gets approved we find out it's really not what the city needs maybe the uh grant that the economic development director uh submitting goes through and you know we find out that that really does address the problem and then down the line we find out we don't need it but at the same time we could also run into a situation where the grant doesn't go through or it just

[Matt Leming]: doesn't work and we actually do really need this tool in the toolbox if we're going to do something about that.

[Matt Leming]: And in that case, it really would be useful to have a home rule petition submitted sooner rather than later so that several years from now we could potentially have something like this in our toolbox.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, I don't want with something like this, I do understand that there is, as Council Vice President Collins was hinting at, there is a

[Matt Leming]: There definitely is an optic situation where submitting something like this can send a message to business owners and property owners through the city.

[Matt Leming]: But I also, at the same time, I don't want to get into analysis paralysis when this is really just the step 1 in the process.

[Matt Leming]: Hello everybody, happy Sunday.

[Matt Leming]: So something that I'm going to talk about today is property taxes and Proposition 2.5.

[Matt Leming]: Now Proposition 2.5 is a subject that comes up a lot in city council work, particularly because it

[Matt Leming]: is the law that dictates how much property taxes can increase year by year, and it's also something that city councils will frequently hear about from residents when it comes to both discussions about

[Matt Leming]: how much people pay in taxes, as well as discussions about the overall city budget.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that a lot of people will tend to be confused on exactly how these numbers are calculated and how the amount that they're spending on property taxes year to year relate to the overall city budget and the fiscal situation we're in.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm just going to spend a little bit of time talking about this in this current video recap.

[Matt Leming]: For some background, Proposition 2.5 was a law that was passed in Massachusetts in 1980.

[Matt Leming]: The important part of the law is that it says that the total amount of money that municipalities can take in from property taxes cannot increase by more than 2.5% from one year to the next, barring new growth.

[Matt Leming]: So if a city

[Matt Leming]: builds nothing in a given year, and they take in $100 million from property taxes in that same year, then they're not allowed to take in more than $102.5 million in property taxes the next year.

[Matt Leming]: If somehow they double their stock of housing from one year to the next, then they're allowed to take in $200 million in property taxes

[Matt Leming]: that next year, but overall this means that cities are incentivized to grow their own tax base and they can't just keep increasing taxes arbitrarily.

[Matt Leming]: The trouble with Prop 2.5 is that typically inflation is more than 2.5%.

[Matt Leming]: So the average inflation from 1980 to today at a given year has been 3.07%.

[Matt Leming]: So that's about a 0.6% difference between what Prop 2 1⁄2 allows and what inflation actually is.

[Matt Leming]: So there was a Reddit post a few weeks ago where somebody was asking about this and I just did the very basic calculations that shows how that can sort of add up over time.

[Matt Leming]: So, hypothetically, if a city doesn't grow or doesn't build anything and it just keeps the same housing stock, the same businesses from one year to the next over a 44-year period from 1980 till today, and they applied the maximum increases allowed under Proposition 2.5, then because of the

[Matt Leming]: because of the nature of inflation.

[Matt Leming]: If you end up just slowly increasing the amount of money you take in while inflation rises even higher, then you would only have about 78% of the budget in 2024 as you would have in 1980.

[Matt Leming]: And that's just in terms of value.

[Matt Leming]: So the amount of money that you're taking in from property taxes would, of course, increase, but because the value of that money decreases over time even though

[Matt Leming]: the amount that you're taking from property taxes goes up, it's not keeping up inflation, so therefore the value would only be 70%.

[Matt Leming]: And that is in the hypothetical scenario where a city ends up applying the maximum property tax increase from one year to another.

[Matt Leming]: The trouble with that also is that if a city ends up refusing to increase property taxes over a given number of years, then that means that that city is permanently left behind, so you can't make up for that in a given year.

[Matt Leming]: So if a city, if for one given year, a mayor decides to not increase property taxes at all to get reelected, then they can't

[Matt Leming]: just decide to bump property taxes up by 5% the next year to make up for that.

[Matt Leming]: You can still only increase by 2.5% in a given year.

[Matt Leming]: So that means, in terms of the value of the budget over time, is that if you have a 44-year period from 1980 till 2024,

[Matt Leming]: and then you end up only increasing property taxes 34 of those 44 years, so there's like a 10 year period where they just decide to not increase property taxes at all, then the budget becomes even more eaten up by inflation over time, so in that case you'd only have 61%

[Matt Leming]: of the budget in 2024 as you had in 1980.

[Matt Leming]: And again, all of these are hypotheticals.

[Matt Leming]: So they don't account for new growth.

[Matt Leming]: They don't account for cities adding new housing stock, adding new businesses, new buildings.

[Matt Leming]: And so cities that have built up their commercial tax base over the preceding decades aren't really doing that badly.

[Matt Leming]: So Cambridge, they,

[Matt Leming]: they ended up investing in Kendall Square, so that really increases their own commercial tax base.

[Matt Leming]: Somerville ended up investing in Assembly Row, which also substantially increased their tax base.

[Matt Leming]: Medford really hasn't done anything else like that.

[Matt Leming]: Other municipalities to account for this ended up having what's called a Prop 2.5 override.

[Matt Leming]: And that's where in one given year,

[Matt Leming]: a municipality can increase their taxes by more than 2.5% if the voters decide to do so on the ballot.

[Matt Leming]: Now, this is something that about 300 of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts have done at some point, at least once since 1980.

[Matt Leming]: So not every city has done it, but the majority have, and they've usually done this to account for the underfunding that is a natural mathematical consequence of Proposition 2 1⁄2.

[Matt Leming]: Medford recently had a presentation by the school committee of a shortfall in their budget of about,

[Matt Leming]: $6 million, which is a result of this sort of long-term underfunding.

[Matt Leming]: And during that school committee meeting, the mayor said that we'll very likely need a Proposition 2.5 override at some point in the very near future to account for these fiscal shortfalls.

[Matt Leming]: And that'll be the first time, if it does happen, that Medford's ever had a Proposition 2.5 override.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, it's necessary because inflation is never more than 2.5%.

[Matt Leming]: Now, a lot of people, when talking about this, they say, well, my property taxes go up every year.

[Matt Leming]: Why am I not seeing new city services as a result of that?

[Matt Leming]: What gives?

[Matt Leming]: The answer to that question is, first of all, your property taxes would increase every year to keep up with inflation.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that they don't increase enough to match the rate of inflation.

[Matt Leming]: And that's especially true in very high inflation years like we've seen.

[Matt Leming]: like we've seen during COVID.

[Matt Leming]: So if inflation is like 9% in a given year and 3.4% in the next year, then those two years, as usual, inflation is still higher than 2.5%.

[Matt Leming]: So the budget is still permanently behind.

[Matt Leming]: We can't make up for that.

[Matt Leming]: You need an override.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing to understand about Proposition 2.5, and I

[Matt Leming]: feel like this is something that when a lot of property owners see their tax bills go up and they also see, you know, they also think, okay, well, you know, my property taxes have definitely gone up more than 2.5% some years.

[Matt Leming]: That's true because what you got to understand about the 2.5% number

[Matt Leming]: is that that applies to the amount overall that the city takes in as a whole, and you're only allowed to tax a certain percentage of the property's assessed value.

[Matt Leming]: So Medford's residential property tax rate is, I believe,

[Matt Leming]: $65 per $1,000 of assessed value.

[Matt Leming]: And that is a rate that has to be set across all properties, so you can't just charge certain people more, charge certain people less, it's a set amount.

[Matt Leming]: And that amount is set such that the overall amount that is taken in from property taxes in a given year will not be more than 2.5% in a previous year.

[Matt Leming]: Now what happens to individuals is that

[Matt Leming]: the assessed value of their home could change from one year to another, depending on whether or not the assessor's office got to it that year.

[Matt Leming]: So I believe the assessor's office tries to reassess individual properties once every 10 years.

[Matt Leming]: And if a person has a property that was assessed at like $500,000 in the year 2000, and then suddenly given fluctuations of the housing market, the assessor's office gets back to in 2010,

[Matt Leming]: and they found out that in 2010 it's now a million dollars they basically just they say okay well this property is now double what it was before and as a result a person's taxes are going to double in a given year if everything else remains constant and so that is very and so when a person

[Matt Leming]: When a property owner sees, okay, my tax rates have just suddenly jumped very drastically from last year to this year, that's what happened.

[Matt Leming]: Nothing about prop two and a half change, nothing about the overall percentage change, but the assessor's office is making its rounds on individual houses and updating the individual tax rates.

[Matt Leming]: And then as a result of that, an individual's property value might've increased.

[Matt Leming]: The assessor updated it and then boom.

[Matt Leming]: So this has a couple, so this has a few consequences.

[Matt Leming]: What this means is that certain people could end up paying more over time, but that's largely as a result of fluctuations in the market, like how much the assessor values houses in the city overall.

[Matt Leming]: So if the assessors, if everybody's house increases by a set rate,

[Matt Leming]: then nobody's property taxes would increase by more than 2.5% in a given year.

[Matt Leming]: But if houses in a certain part of town ended up increasing at a much higher rate than everybody else's, what that would mean is that they would end up paying more property tax, but people in another part of town, and that would end up offsetting

[Matt Leming]: the tax rates from people in another part of town that maybe their houses decreased in value or they just didn't go up as high of a rate.

[Matt Leming]: Their values just didn't go up as drastically.

[Matt Leming]: So that's what Prop 2.5 and property tax increases look like on both the

[Matt Leming]: citywide level and to the individual.

[Matt Leming]: And I feel like people, when they hear about Prop 2.5, they might think like, okay, well, my property taxes shouldn't increase by 2.5% in any given year.

[Matt Leming]: That's not necessarily the case.

[Matt Leming]: It just applies to the amount of money that the city takes in overall.

[Matt Leming]: So what that means for an override is this.

[Matt Leming]: Typically, there's a bit of, you know, when you're

[Matt Leming]: when you're asking, okay, how much are my property taxes gonna go up as a result of an override?

[Matt Leming]: It's difficult to calculate the exact number.

[Matt Leming]: What I usually do is I say, how much money does Medford need to address its fiscal shortfall?

[Matt Leming]: And then you would divide that number by 25,000, which is approximately the number of households in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: And that is approximately the amount that property taxes would go up in a given year.

[Matt Leming]: And again, these numbers are completely hypothetical, but if an override for a value of $5 million were proposed, and so you'd have maybe on the ballot it would say,

[Matt Leming]: Okay, we need like three million dollars for the schools.

[Matt Leming]: We need, you know, two other buckets of a million dollars for these things.

[Matt Leming]: So that's a total of five million dollars that the city needs extra next year to account for this.

[Matt Leming]: Then you would end up dividing that number by 25,000 and so that would be on average the amount that extra households would have to pay.

[Matt Leming]: So, which would work out to about, in that case, $5,000,000 divided by $25,000 would be $200 extra person.

[Matt Leming]: Some people would be paying less depending on if the value of their property were less than the average in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: Some people would be paying slightly more than that if their property value were higher.

[Matt Leming]: that's kind of what we're, those are like just some very approximate ballparkish numbers that we're looking at when it comes to just the increases in property taxes, how that ends up affecting the individual and how it sort of affects the overall state of the town.

[Matt Leming]: The consequence of this is that, I mean, a lot of people will end up saying, you know, I'm paying more in property taxes, but I'm not necessarily seeing, um,

[Matt Leming]: any increases in city service, and the truth is that those people are right.

[Matt Leming]: They're not, but the property taxes usually have to increase because the overall cost of living and the cost of just maintaining the services that the city has just gets more expensive over time.

[Matt Leming]: One thing that

[Matt Leming]: the city's dealing with in the budget right now is the fact that largely as a result of offset cost of COVID, health insurance rates just spiked from 2023 to 2024.

[Matt Leming]: And the city has no choice but to pay for those.

[Matt Leming]: And so that's a couple of extra million dollars out of the city's budget going to health insurance companies.

[Matt Leming]: And as a result, we need to, that's money that we can no longer use to pay teachers.

[Matt Leming]: That's money that we can no longer use to pay city staff.

[Matt Leming]: So another thing that's happening right now, which we saw as a result, which we saw from a recent meeting that the DPW gave to city council when it was presenting to us, was the fact that roads in Medford, they're not in a very good state, but what our engineers were telling us was that

[Matt Leming]: maintaining roads in the modern day is a lot more expensive than it was 20 years ago, largely as a result of global warming.

[Matt Leming]: So it used to be that Massachusetts would have a winter and it would be super cold and everything would just freeze up one time, and then as the winter ended, it would get out of that.

[Matt Leming]: These days what's happening is our winters are a lot more gets cold, gets hot, gets cold, gets hot, and that ends up tearing up the concrete.

[Matt Leming]: So

[Matt Leming]: that means that it just takes a lot more money to maintain the roads, and because we're not putting more money towards that, the roads end up getting worse.

[Matt Leming]: And this is also affected by a whole lot of other things in the economy, like the shortage of labor, just fewer people going into construction, fewer people that work construction can afford to live nearby, so on and so forth.

[Matt Leming]: So a lot of what we're seeing is like a lot of the

[Matt Leming]: The fiscal shortfalls we're seeing today are the result of a lot of other factors that are going on in the global economy at the moment.

[Matt Leming]: We're just seeing those costs offset to ourselves in other ways.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, this is just, you know, I'm just like releasing these videos just in hopes to make a little bit more sense of these rules and regulations and like what's happening fiscally to the population as a whole.

[Matt Leming]: And I hope that it's, I hope it's helpful in helping folks understand what's happening at the city level.

[Matt Leming]: In any case, thank you very much for tuning in and happy Sunday.

[Matt Leming]: This is just related to the free cash and getting the fire trucks.

[Matt Leming]: Just questions on the logistics of that.

[Matt Leming]: You said we're probably not going to get those trucks till 2026.

[Matt Leming]: When would they exactly be paid for?

[Matt Leming]: Do we give them the money now and then we get the trucks in 2026 or how would that exchange work?

[Matt Leming]: Um, I didn't bring the entire contract with me, but, uh, the, just to the question that I'm getting at is if we don't get the fire truck, uh, within the fist, the fiscal year that it's ordered, would that, could we just end up paying for that in a later fiscal year at a free cash or,

[Matt Leming]: I'm just wondering when that money would actually go to the company.

[Matt Leming]: I just had a question because Chief Buckley mentioned that the maintenance services are being cut and I'm seeing the line item here for motor services going from 75 to 65 and motor repair supplies going from 120 to 100, but it looks like the actuals for the motor services is about 5,000.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, it was about 5000 this year.

[Matt Leming]: And the actuals for the motor repair supplies is about 36,000.

[Matt Leming]: So is that is that it's kind of like typical utilization of that line item?

[Matt Leming]: Year to year?

[Matt Leming]: Is this just uniquely?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: My apologies.

[Matt Leming]: My apologies.

[Matt Leming]: It was a slip.

[Matt Leming]: And that was recorded too.

[Matt Leming]: So, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, man.

[Matt Leming]: It's going to be a long night.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I was focusing on the motor services expenses.

[Matt Leming]: It says that the actuals so far this year were about $5,000 out of a $75,000 allocation.

[Matt Leming]: That is as of December 31.

[Matt Leming]: Well, even so, the actuals are typically a little bit over 50%, but that just seems very low given the amount.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't know if this is just a unique year where we haven't had a whole lot of repair problems.

[Matt Leming]: Would you say that that's typical?

[Matt Leming]: I guess the nature of the question is do you typically go under your allocated repair budget?

[Matt Leming]: Are there some years where it's higher, some years where it's really low?

[Matt Leming]: What does that usually look like?

[Matt Leming]: Cool, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Just generally speaking, it would be useful, although I realize it could be a lot more effort for first-year Councilors to kind of see how

[Matt Leming]: these budgets have progressed over the years, just for context.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: This is just more of a general engineering staffing question, but I figured while I have you all here, I might as well ask it.

[Matt Leming]: We're doing the zoning overhaul, and I think I've talked to Owen about this, but just something I'd like to get a bit more understanding on.

[Matt Leming]: Part of it, which I've been having a lot of meetings on, is implementing

[Matt Leming]: transportation, demand management, zoning, ordinance, and I've been kind of shopping around different departments, begging people to fund and put somebody on a TDM study in the future, which would be required at the staff level.

[Matt Leming]: Just from my understanding, how much staff time does it usually take to coordinate that, even once you've found a firm that's able to get something like that off the ground?

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, one of the on-calls?

[Matt Leming]: Does that make sense?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so you would reach out to an on-call consultant who would then find the firm to actually do this?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so it wouldn't actually take any staff time for the people that are being budgeted here?

[Matt Leming]: You just kind of ask for them to do that?

[Matt Leming]: And about, I understand that your staff are a capacity, but about how much time does that usually take to check in?

[Matt Leming]: The words are pretty similar to be fair.

[Matt Leming]: Just like to say, we're very grateful to have you here.

[Matt Leming]: Welcome to the city of Medford.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm sure that everybody here is an elected official can tell you our own stories about how chaotic the November elections were and how.

[Matt Leming]: personally stressful it was I would just encourage you if you see anything in the elections office that you think could be fixed in terms of making things more efficient or you know just anything you see then please feel free to bring it to council's attention or to fix it

[Matt Leming]: fix it yourself.

[Matt Leming]: So I went to the, you know, I chatted with some of the elections workers a couple of weeks ago and just kind of saw how they were doing manual data entry on what looked like very outdated software, just spending a lot of time entering the voter registration cards prior to the March elections.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not an expert on things like that, but it did seem like there was some room for improvement, either in terms of whatever software they're using, um, or just.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not I'm not really sure if you would have any ideas on that, but if there is a way that council can help support that in the future and make the elections department more.

[Matt Leming]: Scalable or efficient or less prone to having these kind of mistakes that we've seen in previous years, we're all ears.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, it was a lot of the clerks there just taking in these handwritten cards and just typing in names, and it seemed like it was taking them five minutes.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, and I was just kind of looking at it like, okay, I hope that this can be done better, but obviously it's a state-run system then.

[Matt Leming]: This is my favorite presentation so far.

[Matt Leming]: What are their names?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: It's clear that you've been busy since you started here, and we're very grateful to have you.

[Matt Leming]: Is it two questions?

[Matt Leming]: First, is it logistically possible either technically or administratively to connect to get the school system as well onto the same Internet connection, potentially for more savings?

[Matt Leming]: You mentioned their Medford City Hall,

[Matt Leming]: library and some other place that wasn't the public schools.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Second question.

[Matt Leming]: What was the $131 spent on a part-time employee?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So hypothetically, if we did have a city solicitor, how much do you think it would decrease the line some of the line items here as well?

[Matt Leming]: So how much would so.

[Matt Leming]: KB law, it sounds like from what you're saying would be necessary, even in the case that we did have a city solicitor for more specialized services, how much of the services that.

[Matt Leming]: They're providing now, and an approximate dollar amount, do you think could be done by by in house legal?

[Matt Leming]: Something that rewards institutional knowledge, which would be acquired over a period of time.

[Matt Leming]: So I would guess initially they'd be relying on KP law a good amount.

[Matt Leming]: But it also sounds like from what you're saying, FOIA requests and whatnot, you're personally handling a lot of the tasks that would otherwise fall on in-house legal counsel.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sorry, I misheard that.

[Matt Leming]: This is a subcommittee meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee dedicated to scheduling and hashing out listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: So I guess the purpose of this is just to spend a little bit of time trying to figure out what groups we are specifically going to reach out to, when, what the best times would be.

[Matt Leming]: So if any of my fellow subcommittee members have any ideas, feel free to take it away.

[Matt Leming]: So sure.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So is there kind of a gist that you might have for that?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So I think feel free to send that to all of the council when you have that figured out.

[Matt Leming]: And also, this is only three of us, so we don't need to have the chair recognize some of this.

[Matt Leming]: So, okay, so go ahead and send around that.

[Matt Leming]: That sheet, but so, I guess, in terms of.

[Matt Leming]: How that work, how that works out sort of in practice, I'm just kind of thinking of the upcoming 1 on the.

[Matt Leming]: 31st that Councilor was are on our schedule to go to.

[Matt Leming]: I think that that's sort of just in the context of like a.

[Matt Leming]: senior center's regular coffee hour.

[Matt Leming]: What I'm thinking about right now is just in terms of organizing the listening sessions and what they'll actually look like when we're going to them.

[Matt Leming]: For certain groups, if it's like a super organized listening session, like people were brought together for that specific purpose, I imagine that could work out.

[Matt Leming]: But if it's two city councilors who are showing up to a regularly scheduled coffee hour,

[Matt Leming]: go into like a chitchat sort of a thing as well, which, yeah, go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so what I'm, okay, I'm just, I'm just sort of thinking about the logistics that we'll be going through when we actually schedule these things.

[Matt Leming]: So there's, so we definitely need a, you know, a point person in the communities, which obviously we have five community liaisons.

[Matt Leming]: agreed to discuss seniors, vets, and then high school and tough students as well.

[Matt Leming]: I'm thinking that probably the flow of these things is going to be, we scheduled the next one, which May 31st in this case.

[Matt Leming]: The Councilors that go there take notes, they report back at the next resident services and public engagement committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: what they discussed, just try to offer as succinctly as possible, maybe 10 minutes during a session, what was talked about, what people were telling them, and then schedule the next one.

[Matt Leming]: and then just kind of keep doing that for about, you know, the rest of the term, so.

[Matt Leming]: Can you just, is it okay to just pass it around, like email to everybody in this meeting and just include it in the minutes as a, uh, if I send it to you right now, can you send it to us to look at right now?

[Matt Leming]: Or just share it on your screen, or yeah, just share it with me.

[Matt Leming]: I could put it on the screen in Zoom or something.

[Matt Leming]: That's helpful.

[Matt Leming]: Whichever.

[Matt Leming]: Should be myself and Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: So at the last resident services meeting, it was agreed that

[Matt Leming]: Basically, the chair would just check in with everybody and figure out who's available for what it becomes.

[Matt Leming]: And then we 2 Councilors would be sent to each of these sessions.

[Matt Leming]: It becomes a little bit of a. Problem and set theory to not violate open meeting law with 2 Councilors because.

[Matt Leming]: Basically, only 1 person from this subcommittee can actually attend those while the subcommittee still exists.

[Matt Leming]: Then.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro or Councilor can just attend.

[Matt Leming]: I think they have a little bit more flexibility not being on the subcommittee.

[Matt Leming]: And then.

[Matt Leming]: then Council President Bears and then Council Vice President Collins are also even have even more freedom to go to any of the listening sessions, just not being on the resident services meeting.

[Matt Leming]: It becomes a little bit more constrained with us three being on this subcommittee because no two of us can attend.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: So Councilor Callahan, once you email the document when you're ready, but in the meantime, is there any other business other than figuring out who specifically is going to reach out to which groups?

[Matt Leming]: It's seniors, seniors, vets, high school and tough students, and then the five reps, the five community liaisons.

[Matt Leming]: So which is Portuguese, Haitian, Arabic, Spanish, and I forget what the fifth group.

[Matt Leming]: I didn't, okay, so you just sent it, so I'll wait a little bit for the email once it does come through.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I apologize.

[Matt Leming]: I was recording some of that, but I started looking through the document that you sent, which I just received just now.

[Matt Leming]: So I would appreciate if Councilor Tseng would forgive my lapse in attention.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, so I have 10 groups total because Justin, Councilor Tseng just added Asian American communities to the list.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, ICCM.

[Matt Leming]: Asian.

[Matt Leming]: I actually do have a graphic that shows where historically city council has been represented in the past.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: So do you think it would be productive to try to figure out what the next couple of listening sessions we're going to try to schedule over the next couple of months after the senior center and who's going to take charge of them would be?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so in terms of assigning who's going to handle which, I think there are a few obvious ones that I can think of.

[Matt Leming]: So I would handle vets.

[Matt Leming]: I think Justin would handle high school.

[Matt Leming]: Tufts would be handled by our esteemed counsel, Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, yeah, okay.

[Matt Leming]: I was just thinking about Tufts because she's an alum and I can't think of anybody else.

[Matt Leming]: You would do Tufts?

[Matt Leming]: I could do Tufts, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, just a few of the... I was just trying to think of the more obvious.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I'm just, I'm just writing them down for my own.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just like trying to.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So Justin, oh wait, so sorry, Justin, you said the Asian speaking community liaison addition to high school students and tough students.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Arabic.

[Matt Leming]: Wait, but you said, is there an Asian American liaison?

[Matt Leming]: But that adds to number 10.

[Matt Leming]: So would you?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so that leaves the Haitian community liaison, I believe.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so I'll leave Anna with Haitian because Justin already has three.

[Matt Leming]: So right now the divisions I have between the nine original groups that were assigned were, Emily has already scheduled something with the seniors.

[Matt Leming]: Justin has high school students, tough students, and the Arabic community liaisons.

[Matt Leming]: I have vets, veterans, and the Portuguese community liaison.

[Matt Leming]: And Anna has Spanish speaking, African American,

[Matt Leming]: Haitian and the West Medford Community Center community liaisons.

[Matt Leming]: Well, that leaves Justin with four, me with two.

[Matt Leming]: Let's see if we're trying to divide it equally among the groups.

[Matt Leming]: That makes sense.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So the final listing, Anna has Spanish speaking, African-American, uh, the West Medford community center, ICCM.

[Matt Leming]: I have the vets, Portuguese community liaison and Haitian community liaison, Justin high school students, tough students, Arabic speaking community liaisons.

[Matt Leming]: And obviously council is already scheduled something with the seniors.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Awesome.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: That appears to be that.

[Matt Leming]: So is there any other order of business in the seven minutes between now and the start of the Committee of the Whole meeting?

[Matt Leming]: Yes, sure.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, Continuous Town Halls.

[Matt Leming]: This does seem to be kind of getting into more like campaign strategy in certain parts of the document.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Would it be possible to have what, to get like an edited version of the document where you kind of just take in the listening session stuff and then leave out the.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: So do we need to turn any thing that was discussed so far in this committee into an official motion?

[Matt Leming]: Or are we?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So, so otherwise, yeah, I have, I wrote down who's assigned to what and yeah, do we have any motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Motion.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Nay.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Present

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President.

[Matt Leming]: So we discussed three items at the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.

[Matt Leming]: The first, we approved the social media policy, which was drafted by Councilor Tseng and Councilor Lazzaro, passed, reported favorably as a paper to the regular committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: We also established the first public listening session, which will

[Matt Leming]: occur at the Medford Senior Center, 10 a.m.

[Matt Leming]: on May 31st, and we also scheduled the first subcommittee meeting to sort of hash out the rules and procedures for these listening sessions, the first

[Matt Leming]: the first meeting of that subcommittee will be tomorrow at 5 15 between myself, Councilor Tseng Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: And finally, we approved the first draft of the human of the new Human Rights Commission ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much to Councilor Tseng for all the work you put into that.

[Matt Leming]: And it was

[Matt Leming]: referred favorably to, okay, okay, sorry, it was kept in committee.

[Matt Leming]: Apologies for that.

[Matt Leming]: And yeah, that's what happened.

[Matt Leming]: So I would motion to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: I would like to refer to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee mainly because that primarily covers Veterans Affairs.

[Matt Leming]: I've also invited over the Veterans Services Director, Veronica Shaw, for this, but essentially this is a paper that would allow the Veterans Services Director to establish a program

[Matt Leming]: under which she may offer monetary incentives to landlords who choose to rent out to qualified veterans.

[Matt Leming]: I've been asking KP Law for legal advice around this, as well as talking with the city's chief of staff around this issue.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, I would motion to refer to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee.

[Matt Leming]: I have Google Maps open right now.

[Matt Leming]: I could share.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I was trying to pull it up.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think that's so.

[Matt Leming]: Director Hahn, just for clarification, what board would grant the special permit?

[Matt Leming]: Would it be this one or the Community Development Board?

[Matt Leming]: Or where would they get that?

[Matt Leming]: Council President, I also have an additional question.

[Matt Leming]: Just to clarify on a point that was brought up by Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: So he stated that if there's room that's taken up to display cars, the four cars that you intend to sell, there will be less

[Matt Leming]: space that would be used to repair the cars or to work on them.

[Matt Leming]: What are your thoughts on this?

[Matt Leming]: Are you just not using that space within your shop right now to fix cars or what's the space currently being used for?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so you don't use the space that you're proposing to use to display cars for anything, correct?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, just to clarify that part.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I would also just like to say, I go to Pinky's a good amount here and there.

[Matt Leming]: What I do like about it is the fact that they do have a temporary parking spot just off Summer Street that's right in front of the store.

[Matt Leming]: So just the idea that drivers would just come there really quickly, get pizza, and then go back with very little fuss makes a lot of sense to me visually.

[Matt Leming]: So I could see that, but obviously,

[Matt Leming]: hear from the neighbors and the houses directly surrounding there, but you know, y'all make very good pizza.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli, so I, I do I do support this, this resolution, I did some googling on this prior to the meeting you know there were stories of homeowners falling behind on property tax payments the city seizing an entire house worth, you know, 400,000 plus dollars to pay off $150,000 debt just

[Matt Leming]: keeping the difference.

[Matt Leming]: So my question has to do more with, so I couldn't find online, and this could just be a failure of Googling on my part, Senate docket number 2129, or the relevant bills in the state house that were supporting this.

[Matt Leming]: And I also would like to see a

[Matt Leming]: It mentions here to send a letter to support our state legislators.

[Matt Leming]: I would like to see a draft of that letter personally, or just some idea of the specific legislation in the state House and Senate, if there is any.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: This is basically a resolution to address some of the concerns brought up at the last council meeting.

[Matt Leming]: The idea behind this is pretty simple.

[Matt Leming]: We've discussed the newsletter very extensively and

[Matt Leming]: regular council so far and the resident services public engagement committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: The idea behind this is basically just to have it as an agenda item during those meetings in which we plan to draft and finalize and release the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: So I would motion to send this to the resident services and public to reverse to the resident services and public engagement committee.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, this is just a general question, and this could be addressed by either Danielle or Alicia.

[Matt Leming]: I just have a general question about the importance of really getting the definitions right, because it has been mentioned a few times.

[Matt Leming]: So what is some of the complications and the consequence of having unclear definitions that you all have seen in the past that mean that we need to

[Matt Leming]: really focusing on this right now and I'm asking that mainly just to get a just to get a better understanding myself of the process.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, absolutely.

[Matt Leming]: Just, you know, I was, I mean, having consistency across all of our zoning in terms of definitions is definitely something I understand, but I was just curious about what the real world consequences of having unclear definitions have been in the past.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Canine daycare perhaps.

[Matt Leming]: Canine care facility.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to change it to doggy daycare.

[Matt Leming]: Don't wanna have you all repeat what you just said, but just kind of a basic question about this.

[Matt Leming]: I think it was one of you might've told me about that landlord in Somerville who just kind of kept on renting, like stuffing tenants into the same place and then charging them a thousand a month for it.

[Matt Leming]: And that just kept adding up.

[Matt Leming]: So the two questions are, how often do you see things like that happening?

[Matt Leming]: just in your positions and what can this definition do practically to help you prevent that from happening in the future?

[Matt Leming]: That's infill zoning, right?

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: That's gonna be part of this?

[Matt Leming]: just a technical thing.

[Matt Leming]: So I think at the end of this is going to say that we're going to start talking about ADUs pretty like pretty soon after this.

[Matt Leming]: So I so will it and I'm not I'm not sure if the will the definition of tiny home necessarily be settled by the time we actually get to the ADU discussion because tiny homes are as it says here a part of they can be an ADU.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, Matt Leming here.

[Matt Leming]: This is the first video slash blog post that I'm doing post-election.

[Matt Leming]: So we just had a local election in which ballot questions six, seven, and eight were on the ballot.

[Matt Leming]: To recap, this was a question to

[Matt Leming]: fund the building of a new fire headquarters, which is question six.

[Matt Leming]: Question seven was to put three million dollars towards the Medford public school system to level fund it, and five hundred thousand dollars to the Department of Public Works to let them hire a permanent road repair crew.

[Matt Leming]: And question eight was to put an additional four million dollars towards the Medford public school system to invest in things like arts and vocational programs and additional money for

[Matt Leming]: teacher salaries, basically things to keep it competitive and improve and invest in the future of the Medford public school system.

[Matt Leming]: So the results of the elections came in.

[Matt Leming]: Questions 7 and 8 passed and question 6 failed.

[Matt Leming]: The margins were pretty narrow.

[Matt Leming]: So question 7 passed with, this is the unofficial tally, it's not the official certified tally, but with the unofficial tally it was 14,847 for and 13,304 votes against.

[Matt Leming]: Question 8 passed with 14,664 and 13,518 against.

[Matt Leming]: And question 6 failed with 13,458 for and 13,965 against.

[Matt Leming]: So the ballot questions 7 and 8 passed with about 52% of the vote and question 6 failed about 49 to 51.

[Matt Leming]: So obviously I would have liked to see question 6 pass.

[Matt Leming]: The fact that the leadership of the firefighter union came out against it was most certainly what killed it.

[Matt Leming]: I think that there was probably a corpus of about a thousand voters or so who supported the ballot measures level funding the schools, but decided to go with the leadership of the fire union and kill the

[Matt Leming]: funding for the fire headquarters.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm not really sure what the future of that project will be.

[Matt Leming]: I think that personally, I think that the next ballot, the next debt exclusion that we'll need to see is about is going to be for the new high school.

[Matt Leming]: That's coming.

[Matt Leming]: That's coming in the future, probably in the next couple of years.

[Matt Leming]: And that's really going to need to be the priority.

[Matt Leming]: It's a very expensive project.

[Matt Leming]: The Massachusetts School Building Authority will likely put a good chunk of funding for it, but the remainder will need to be paid for by the city.

[Matt Leming]: And the way that you do that is with a debt exclusion.

[Matt Leming]: So these results are pretty unusual, just in the sense that typically it's overrides that fail.

[Matt Leming]: You know, I did a lot of combing through the data, combing through the previous override votes that have gone through different municipalities since 1980.

[Matt Leming]: They have about a 41% passage rate overall, and during presidential election years, in the November general election, they have about a 35% passage rate.

[Matt Leming]: So this was pretty unusual, all things considered.

[Matt Leming]: It was really stacked against it, especially since this is Medford's first time having an override.

[Matt Leming]: Debt exclusions actually have closer to an 89% passage rate.

[Matt Leming]: And that's interesting, I don't actually know why that is.

[Matt Leming]: I think it's because when voters are looking at something on the ballot, like a building is something that you can physically imagine is going to be there, and debt exclusions are also temporary, so that's slightly more appealing.

[Matt Leming]: Typically, whereas with

[Matt Leming]: overrides, you know, when you're talking about things like teacher, teacher salaries, staff salaries, operating budgets, it's less tangible, it's something people can't really see.

[Matt Leming]: We were getting a lot of people commenting saying, you know, oh, you should be able to balance the budget, you should be able to, you know, work creatively with less, things like that.

[Matt Leming]: That's not really something that we can't, you can do after a certain point.

[Matt Leming]: If a budget's just

[Matt Leming]: shrinking and shrinking over time, especially when it's as small as Medford's, that's something that's really not feasible after a while.

[Matt Leming]: The override campaign, the team that was for the overrides passing really made this clear, and I think the messaging was very much like, our tax rates are extremely low, our operating budget is very small,

[Matt Leming]: After a certain point if someone is starving, you can't just tell them to stop starving and then give them less food You need to actually give them food in order for them to survive and get better and that's something that That's really the situation that Medford was in Obviously, you know, obviously the votes were the vote was closer than I think most of us were expecting We didn't see

[Matt Leming]: You know, I don't think any pollster really was able to effectively account for, you know, the sort of red wave that swept across a nation.

[Matt Leming]: Donald Trump was elected to a second term and he won all the swing states.

[Matt Leming]: And I think we were also seeing that kind of shift happen within the very local elections.

[Matt Leming]: Which, going into it, I had a good feeling that these would pass.

[Matt Leming]: I was kind of thinking that it would be more like 60 40.

[Matt Leming]: Um, just given what I was seeing, given what folks were telling me at the doors, um, the fact that it was closer to like 52 48 did make me a little bit nervous, but it's also, I think it's, I think it's also, uh, just is really a Testament to the strength of the organizing team.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, the fact that we were able to, um, you know, the fact that,

[Matt Leming]: There were so many parents and so many people who wanted to see an investment in their children's future, who were willing to put in so much of their time into this, and just really come up with a more positive message than what we were seeing otherwise.

[Matt Leming]: Talking about

[Matt Leming]: The opposition is a little bit tricky because I didn't want to do that so much during the campaign.

[Matt Leming]: Just kind of giving air to the opposition's platform was usually just not good practice.

[Matt Leming]: I feel like now that everything is passed and we know what the vote totals are, I have a little bit more leeway to do that.

[Matt Leming]: But it was something that we were dealing with pretty consistently, so

[Matt Leming]: Like, I think what the opposition was going for was just a very targeted misinformation campaign.

[Matt Leming]: You know, and this was that

[Matt Leming]: ended up undercutting them in the long term, because it worked with some of the population, like some of the electorate, but others just ended up realizing that they were being lied to very consistently.

[Matt Leming]: And I think there's a lot of smaller instances of this happening.

[Matt Leming]: For instance, their mailer said that it was a $37.5 million tax increase, which

[Matt Leming]: It is, if you use crazy math, the actual increase would have been about $9.5 million a year.

[Matt Leming]: The $37.5 million number is not anything that actually exists in reality.

[Matt Leming]: There's also the whole free cash thing that they just kept repeating, which is basically they're saying that we don't actually have to have this tax increase, we could just pay for an override increase through our savings account, which is, again, that's not a thing.

[Matt Leming]: You can't just perpetually take money from your savings account, because then you just spend down your savings, and then you're left with zero dollars in the bank, and that's just not a good way to run a city.

[Matt Leming]: And this was explained dozens and dozens of times throughout the campaign.

[Matt Leming]: We did it in city council meetings.

[Matt Leming]: We did it in, uh, you know, I did it in letters to the editor, but it was just something that they just kept repeating, which is, it's a messaging strategy.

[Matt Leming]: You know, if you just keep repeating a simple lie, eventually people will believe it.

[Matt Leming]: It's propaganda.

[Matt Leming]: So I understood, I understood what they were going for.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, and I also think that there are legit, there are legitimate reasons to,

[Matt Leming]: the override.

[Matt Leming]: If you're a senior on fixed income, that is definitely

[Matt Leming]: That's definitely a concern.

[Matt Leming]: The City Council, we're doing what we can to help people in that situation.

[Matt Leming]: So we're passing the maximum exemptions we can.

[Matt Leming]: I'm working on a program to give a housing incentive for veterans with a non-profit.

[Matt Leming]: But at a certain point, you just can't

[Matt Leming]: work with a budget that continuously shrinks due to inflation.

[Matt Leming]: It's just eventually every city will need an override and Medford was one of the last to do it so that's just that's just the situation we're in.

[Matt Leming]: The opposition campaign, I know something about the leadership of them, just because I pay attention to this.

[Matt Leming]: I think they kind of tried to make it an anonymous thing as much as possible, but I was kind of aware of some of the people who were involved in that.

[Matt Leming]: It's mainly a combination of former

[Matt Leming]: like old guard politicians and former political candidates who just really do not like to see a progressive majority on city council and so they're just kind of this doing everything you possibly can to oppose that because you know obviously they're gonna try to run their own

[Matt Leming]: Candidates and they want to weaken the current The people who are currently in office and just kind of make a ruckus around that as much as possible So that's obviously going on and then other people that were also involved in the leadership were of the of the opposition campaign were really just a couple of out-of-town developers and real estate agents who own literally millions of dollars in property like, you know, I looked it up on a

[Matt Leming]: I looked it up online a lot of the people like a few of the people that are Listed as being on leadership of the override campaign on literally millions of dollars in property.

[Matt Leming]: They just don't want to see it taxed.

[Matt Leming]: So There's I there was lip service kind of being paid to you know, some of the fixed income folk that were that are going to be affected by this but the people that were designing the messaging I don't think I

[Matt Leming]: I don't think they honestly cared about that.

[Matt Leming]: I think that they really just want to, they're really just trying to find a pretense to oppose the people who are currently in office at all costs.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, my opinions on that are a little bit...

[Matt Leming]: are a little bit complicated because I do have like I do understand that anytime you come up with a tax increase it's not going to be It's not going to be kind of an ideal Sort of trade-off like you know you are people are going to be affected by it But on the other hand long term you just can't have a city budget that keeps shrinking And you can't just lay off 40 teachers and allow cuts to keep happening to our educational system.

[Matt Leming]: That's not a

[Matt Leming]: that's not a way to run a city, and nobody else was actually proposing a clear solution to this that we didn't refute 2,400 times.

[Matt Leming]: And so yeah, I think that

[Matt Leming]: Basically the messaging of the pro campaign was just a lot better We were Generally working a lot harder We were more successful at fundraising And the odds just statistically the odds are really stacked against this happening, you know again, you had a huge red wave go across like coming across the country and And

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that generally means that when that happens, that there will be more people that are opposed to any tax increases happening.

[Matt Leming]: But I'm personally relieved that this happened, just because it means that we won't have to lay off a lot of teachers next year, and we actually will be able to see more investment in the public school system.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, moving, so moving forward, what I also learned was that, you know, just running these local campaigns can be, can be a very stressful thing.

[Matt Leming]: Like I was just putting a lot of my personal time into that.

[Matt Leming]: I hope that the next time that I have to do this, it won't be quite so,

[Matt Leming]: quite as much of an intensive process.

[Matt Leming]: I guess the first time we would ever try to pass these ballot measures, you know, you're trying something new, it would be, it'll be difficult.

[Matt Leming]: But again, we are likely going to have to have a debt exclusion for the high school in the future.

[Matt Leming]: The people currently in office and who are working on coming up with the plans for that high school made that very clear.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, so other things happening.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, obviously, um, the red wave happened, uh, about something.

[Matt Leming]: I'd have to look at the exact number.

[Matt Leming]: I think something like 20, 25% of Medford, um, voted for, uh, voted for Donald Trump.

[Matt Leming]: Massachusetts is like the, uh, the second bluest state only to Vermont.

[Matt Leming]: Um,

[Matt Leming]: in the country.

[Matt Leming]: And just like every other progressive politician, I've been thinking about that.

[Matt Leming]: So I consider myself a progressive.

[Matt Leming]: I'm also probably more in the moderate category than a lot of other politicians.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm the secretary of the Medford Democratic City and Ward Committees as well.

[Matt Leming]: Longer term, so, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Everybody's trying to come up with their own take on sort of the on sort of the election I think the pollsters were saying that it was 50-50, but you know what we actually saw was again Trump really take everything like take all of the take most of the battleground states.

[Matt Leming]: I mean I'm more convinced that this was a Just a

[Matt Leming]: an effect of a very bad post-COVID economy that affected most incumbent administrations.

[Matt Leming]: So there's a YouTuber who I linked to in my blog post who talked about the best and worst post-election takes, and I tended to agree with him.

[Matt Leming]: He came up with two post-election takes on what happened that I thought were

[Matt Leming]: reasonable.

[Matt Leming]: The first was just that pretty much every incumbent government globally lost re-election this past year.

[Matt Leming]: The UK saw the Labour Party oust the Tory government for the first time since Tony Blair.

[Matt Leming]: Meanwhile, every other incumbent government, whether or not they're left or right, has also been kind of following the same pattern.

[Matt Leming]: So I tend to take that view on things, which is just that this was a bad time for anybody in office to be kind of holding the ball while inflation was as high as it was.

[Matt Leming]: I also think that

[Matt Leming]: Given that, you know, Trump's in office again, we're probably going to see a lot of progressive organizing happening.

[Matt Leming]: I think there will be a heightened interest in that.

[Matt Leming]: From 2016 to 2020, we just saw a ton of

[Matt Leming]: that happening, a lot of people started to take an interest in local politics, got really involved in their community, and whenever you have someone who comes in, like, whenever, you know, your party has an office, you get pretty complacent.

[Matt Leming]: I think that

[Matt Leming]: The progressives on council did see this happening during our terms.

[Matt Leming]: I think that when you have progressives have 6 out of 7 seats, then you do tend to get a little bit

[Matt Leming]: Then we we have been seeing Folks get a little bit complacent about it.

[Matt Leming]: I think that the sort of Contention in this past the local elections that we just saw definitely mobilized a lot of people because they saw like, okay You know, you got folks elected.

[Matt Leming]: You can't just kind of Leave them there You need to you know, continue it like show continuing support for the folks that you elect while they're trying to govern and

[Matt Leming]: Um, so I, so, you know, I think that it's.

[Matt Leming]: You know, again, I'm a Democrat, so I don't really have that much of a positive outlook on where things are gonna be going, but I do think that it will really get people to pay a lot more attention to local politics, and it will get people to pay, to really be encouraged to get involved, and kind of like not be,

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, that's my take on what's sort of been happening in Medford over the past couple of months, as well as

[Matt Leming]: nationally.

[Matt Leming]: I'm probably not able to offer as much insight on the national stuff as some other folks, but I am very proud of the fact that we were able to get these passed.

[Matt Leming]: I do, you know, understand that it's a pretty slim margin, so I think that probably reaching out to

[Matt Leming]: other folks in the community, especially those without as much computer access in different crowds that we have been engaging would be wise for the future.

[Matt Leming]: Seniors, especially, tend to not look at their computers as much.

[Matt Leming]: They get more information by word of mouth.

[Matt Leming]: So really engaging with that community going forward will be pretty essential.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, so that is my post-election take.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you all very much for your continuing support and have a wonderful day.

[Matt Leming]: President services and public engagement committee meeting of Medford City Council clerk, please call the role.

[Matt Leming]: Resolution 24015 offered by Councilor Tseng, resolution to discuss modernizing City Council communication and outreach strategy.

[Matt Leming]: I believe the only point on this was the discussion of the

[Matt Leming]: we have a motion to approve.

[Matt Leming]: Social media policy.

[Matt Leming]: Draft which was drafted, which was submitted by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Um, Councilor, do you have a. Take it away.

[Matt Leming]: If you have anything to present.

[Matt Leming]: Any other Councilors?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Any comments from any of the councilors?

[Matt Leming]: Any comments from members of the public on this particular agenda item?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, seeing none, do we, I don't particularly have any comments on this.

[Matt Leming]: The draft looks good.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank Councilor Lazzaro for her work on this.

[Matt Leming]: Just a question of procedure.

[Matt Leming]: So would we want, Councilor Lazzaro, it sounds like you had some recommended edits for it.

[Matt Leming]: So would- Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Any other councilors?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan?

[Matt Leming]: And refer it favorably out of committee.

[Matt Leming]: Good.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, a motion from Councilor Callahan to

[Matt Leming]: approve the paper favorably out of committee, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion on the affirmative, one no, motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just gonna stop sharing my screen.

[Matt Leming]: Resolution 24-069, resolution to discuss a modernization of the Human Rights Commission's enabling ordinance offered by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Do we, Councilor Tseng, take it away.

[Matt Leming]: Council.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: And an electronic copy of this document should be available in the meeting minutes of this, so that will be submitted.

[Matt Leming]: Any other discussion from councilors?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second on the motions made by Councilor Tseng?

[Matt Leming]: Motions made by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any?

[Matt Leming]: Before we vote on that, I'm gonna open it up to public participation.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, they're on the end of Councilor Tseng's slide right there.

[Matt Leming]: you.

[Matt Leming]: Uh yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Good clerk.

[Matt Leming]: Would you be able to read them out?

[Matt Leming]: All right, if anybody would like to speak publicly on this matter, feel free to raise your hand on Zoom or step up to the podium if you're here in person.

[Matt Leming]: Just say your name and address for the record, please.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Anybody on Zoom seeing a hand from Lunier Germanus, I'm going to ask you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Please say your name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: And yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: David Harris can ask you to unmute and please state your name and address for the record once you're unmuted.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Harris, you're on mute.

[Matt Leming]: I'm asking you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: There's a button on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Mr. Harris.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have anybody else from public?

[Matt Leming]: Matthew Page Lieberman, seeing your hand raised on Zoom, please, I'm gonna ask you to unmute and please state your name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any other comments from either councillors or members of the public?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Matthew, I could see your hand is still raised on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Did you have something else you wanted to add?

[Matt Leming]: Or sorry, you seem to have muted kind of suddenly, so I wasn't sure.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, so seeing no further discussion, Clerk, would you be able to read off the motions by Councilor Tseng and then we'll take a vote on it?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, Clerk, can you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: City Council.

[Matt Leming]: 24073 offered by Councilors, Callahan saying and Lazzaro resolution to establish City Council.

[Matt Leming]: Listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: I understand that there are.

[Matt Leming]: A few updates on this particular, um, uh, Councilor

[Matt Leming]: wanted to have some further discussions about just hashing out what exactly those listening sessions would look like.

[Matt Leming]: So do we have any, do we have any councillors who want to talk about this?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: And I thought that was a good place to begin and I fully agree with the sentiment that you know, it's important with a

[Matt Leming]: public outreach and public engagement to get things moving, you know, as soon as we can earlier.

[Matt Leming]: So one thing that I have kind of been wondering just about the logistics of open meeting law is that do you think that if there's

[Matt Leming]: say, like two Councilors on one side of the room and just depending on the layout of the room, like one Councilor in another room talking to a different group of people with that.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan and then Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion of, well, first off, do we have a second on the motion of Councilor Callahan to disband the subcommittee that we established last meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan and then Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpella, do you have a, whatever comes to mind?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Motion withdrawn.

[Matt Leming]: What is your, what is the new motion.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, motion from Councilor Callahan to let the chair of the resident service, sorry, was that the chair of resident service?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, the chair of the resident services and public engagement committee appoint councillors to attend these listening sessions based on one or two of them based on their availability.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second on that motion?

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Any further discussion on the motion?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: For in the affirmative one opposing motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: So, let's see.

[Matt Leming]: Are there any other.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Um, let's see.

[Matt Leming]: Is there so I guess that would be you me or Councilor Tseng, uh, I could let's see.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just trying to think of which ones that I have the contact information for.

[Matt Leming]: I could reach out to some of the community liaisons, but obviously, if other folks would like to do that as well, you know, it'd be perfectly free to.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so we'll set up a subcommittee to figure that out.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm not 100% sure, but do you think that we need to vote officially on saying this is the listening session at this time at the Senior Center?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, we should.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, motion by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Callahan to establish a listening session, May 31st at 10 a.m.

[Matt Leming]: at the Senior Centre.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, will you please call the roll when you're ready?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Four in the affirmative, one opposing.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any public participation?

[Matt Leming]: Any members of the public would like to speak?

[Matt Leming]: Just kind of looking at Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Matthew Page Lieberman asking you to unmute.

[Matt Leming]: Please state your name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so I apologize that that wasn't included in the agenda itself.

[Matt Leming]: There were just some late submissions, but I did verify with the clerk that we could still hold the meeting as long as it's in the meeting minutes.

[Matt Leming]: So the- That's fine.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, the meeting minutes are posted on the civic clerk website, right, with the agenda packets?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, yeah, they should be they should be posted on the civic clerk website along with the agenda materials after approval by the council.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, yes, you're more than free to send in comments.

[Matt Leming]: We didn't actually vote on anything related to that tonight.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And it looks like all the public comments that we have.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any, any motions on the floor.

[Matt Leming]: Council, Councilor Callahan motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second.

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, will you please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Five to zero.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: I am so sorry.

[Matt Leming]: I'm so sorry about that.

[Matt Leming]: So that was, that was a yes.

[Matt Leming]: Correct.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng I, yes, that was the yes.

[Matt Leming]: Five zero motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So not to open this can of worms again, but I just like to kind of, well, I just like to, to understand, um, some, uh, some parts of the HR and, uh, back pay process.

[Matt Leming]: So when, so there, there are complaints about, um, employees receiving retroactive pay.

[Matt Leming]: Could you just, um, just talk about like the reasoning behind some of those delays, like, you know, I've heard outdated systems.

[Matt Leming]: And so sort of what happened.

[Matt Leming]: from your perspective there?

[Matt Leming]: And would a more updated software system be able to help with that?

[Matt Leming]: Because it sounds like you were doing everything by hand.

[Matt Leming]: Everything was by hand.

[Matt Leming]: Wow.

[Matt Leming]: That makes sense.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Is it, this is just a question coming from a councilor going through his first budget process, but is it typical in other cities to have between 10 to 15% of the city's budget going towards health and or life insurance?

[Matt Leming]: Like, is that it?

[Matt Leming]: That's the biggest ticket items.

[Matt Leming]: That's typical, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So I know we've talked about this a little bit just over the phone, but I'd like to, one thing that I'm personally concerned with is just the amount of vacant buildings around Medford, vacant storefronts and whatnot.

[Matt Leming]: So, and I've been looking into

[Matt Leming]: that would allow the city to hopefully get a slightly better grasp on that problem.

[Matt Leming]: Can you talk a little bit about what extra technology or staff capacity the building commission would need in order to keep better track of the vacant buildings in the city and, you know, who owns them and what could possibly be done about that?

[Matt Leming]: And is there capacity to have a public interface of the vacant of vacant properties and people who may be interested in reaching out to the owners of them for.

[Matt Leming]: business opportunities could get in contact with them directly.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, no.

[Matt Leming]: Most of my questions were answered in the succeeding conversation.

[Matt Leming]: a lot of this is in the fee schedule and appendix A, I also did.

[Matt Leming]: There's also a motion to request that legal advice as to whether the fee schedule could just be automatically updated in later years based on some index of inflation.

[Matt Leming]: I think that we have a lot of legal questions coming out of council these days, so I was following up.

[Matt Leming]: with the city's legal advisors and trying to get a specific answer to that question.

[Matt Leming]: The turnaround time is always a little bit long for those, but it is in the works.

[Matt Leming]: Did you ever receive the request from this council?

[Matt Leming]: I did.

[Matt Leming]: And to your knowledge, were there fees that hadn't been collected in the past?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: ballpark and it's totally fine if you don't have this number, but like how much revenue do you think was lost by those practices annually, if you can even provide?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So at the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee, we first discussed the first April newsletter of the Medford City Council.

[Matt Leming]: So I sent copies around of that or drafts around that to all of my fellow council members and flagged down potential edits to those, as well as a schedule that Councilors would go by month to month to draft the newsletter prior to submitting it.

[Matt Leming]: to the committee.

[Matt Leming]: Most of the committee session was dedicated to editing the newsletter, so it was a bit of a bit of a Word document session as I took in edits and suggestions in real time and tried to correct my own draft language there.

[Matt Leming]: Following that, there was a

[Matt Leming]: motion to send the newsletter to regular session, but that motion didn't receive a second, so we decided to, so we ended up voting on a motion to approve the newsletter entirely and send it out.

[Matt Leming]: So it was, so the first draft of it is currently on the Medford City Council page.

[Matt Leming]: We're currently discussing

[Matt Leming]: methods of circulating that around the community with the communications director and the clerk.

[Matt Leming]: Additionally, we voted to establish listening sessions, ended up voting to establish the subcommittee consisting of myself, Councilor Callahan and Councilor Tseng to

[Matt Leming]: organize those in order to establish monthly listening sessions in which a few City Council members would meet up with the community of seniors, the community of tough students, veterans, as well as the five community liaisons in Medford in order to have City Council do active outreach to different members of the community.

[Matt Leming]: And, yeah, that was pretty much all we discussed.

[Matt Leming]: How much does business differ from Monday to Thursday versus the weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, like how much to share your figures, but yeah, just yeah, just just ballpark, like how much more people you see on the weekends versus the weekdays.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So the Friday and Saturday hours would be the ones that would help that business the most?

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Any further questions for the petitioner?

[Matt Leming]: and just to say a couple things about the CPA.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm not sure where the 25% number came from.

[Matt Leming]: I believe on the CPA, the minimum is 10% for open spaces, historic preservation, and affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: Now I understand that Cambridge requires 80% to go to affordable housing, but I believe that the reason that they do that is because they have money coming from other sources for historic preservation and open spaces.

[Matt Leming]: So their operating budget is about

[Matt Leming]: five times the size of Medford, they do have more money to throw around for, you know, building a playground or repairing a church or something like that.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that the use of CPA money within Medford is a little bit different from the use of CPA money within other communities, especially Cambridge, which, again, has a lot more funds.

[Matt Leming]: And the same really goes with Harvard and Tufts.

[Matt Leming]: So Harvard's endowment, like you were saying, is above $50 billion.

[Matt Leming]: Tufts is $2.4 billion.

[Matt Leming]: So when we're talking about money here, it's like Cambridge.

[Matt Leming]: And I do admire a lot of what Cambridge has done with affordable housing, but we're really talking about another order of magnitude in terms of funding.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I would like to emphasize the point that there was a motion that Councilor Tseng was absent.

[Matt Leming]: He was on vacation at the moment.

[Matt Leming]: So there are four people of the five committee members of the most recent Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee Councilors Scarpelli through the chair.

[Matt Leming]: You let your objections to the newsletter be known, which were you consistently let everybody on this body note since we've been discussing the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: Um.

[Matt Leming]: But then at 8 34 PM, you then left the meeting without notifying anybody.

[Matt Leming]: And because of that, like I was chair, so I didn't think it was appropriate to second motion from the chair.

[Matt Leming]: And obviously, Councilor Callahan disagreed with the motion to send it to the regular, um, to the floor because there was the opinion that the perfect cannot, uh,

[Matt Leming]: be good, can't be the enemy of the perfect, whichever way that goes, and that we needed to get a newsletter out in a timely way.

[Matt Leming]: If you had decided to stay at the meeting and attend these meetings consistently, we would be debating this at the floor.

[Matt Leming]: Apologies.

[Matt Leming]: If Councilor Scriabelli had decided to stay at the meeting and hear the rest of the discussion, then we would be voting on the newsletter on the floor right now, and I hope that in the future, resident services and public engagement committees

[Matt Leming]: We can do that second.

[Matt Leming]: I know that it just in response to some of the discussion about public fear and outrage in response to some of these, I would like to point out that a lot of the more recent

[Matt Leming]: concerns and emails that we've been seeing were the result of a text sent around to many other, to most residents in the city, or a huge number of them from the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, which has obviously consistently opposed these measures in other cities.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that that should be noted.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also just like to point out a few things about the process, since this is a resolution to discuss City Council subcommittee processes.

[Matt Leming]: So what we're doing in the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee is we have a continuing resolution, which is a resolution to innovate in the City Council's communication processes.

[Matt Leming]: And so that basically means that we come up with

[Matt Leming]: a number of ideas, one of which is the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: And so in earlier committee meetings, we had motioned and agreed to, as a committee, come up with a schedule by which people draft the newsletter, and then every month have a different city councilor, not necessarily somebody on the committee, if they want to volunteer and have the time to put forward a draft of the newsletter, which would then be edited at a committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: So if there are concerns, I mean, I think that the,

[Matt Leming]: Vagueness of resolutions or the specificity with which individual papers say that we're going to, you know, do X, Y or Z in committee is a continuing concern.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, that's been a concern with this with this very agenda.

[Matt Leming]: But if it does make, I mean, we obviously can bring forth a another.

[Matt Leming]: resolution that more specifically states that we're going to put out a newsletter every month via committee for consideration at the regular meetings.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that with communications it is necessary to be timely and get something out there every month because events happen every month and we need to be consistent in our communications and

[Matt Leming]: we get criticized for being intransparent.

[Matt Leming]: And the newsletter is a way to address that.

[Matt Leming]: So it's important to be timely.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you very much.

[Matt Leming]: And that's all I have.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I said no.

[Matt Leming]: There's another item.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to point out that I second the motion because we still have to get to 24097, which actually discusses the home rule petitions.

[Matt Leming]: We were still on the subcommittee processes and we hadn't been really discussing that, so that's all I have to say.

[Matt Leming]: No, when I've chaired meetings before, I've definitely like not noticed like which side of my or you just picked the hand that went up last.

[Matt Leming]: No, so just to be a bit more clear about the practicalities of this.

[Matt Leming]: So if the Affordable Homes Act does end up including a provision for us to implement a local option for a real estate transfer fee, the home rule petition proposal in Medford would be moot.

[Matt Leming]: There just wouldn't really be any point in filing that because we would then have, we would then have it by default what the state gives us.

[Matt Leming]: So we would likely have to file

[Matt Leming]: another resolution into a regular meeting in that case and just drop the Home Rule petition if we do get it from the Affordable Homes Act.

[Matt Leming]: So hopefully that just clarifies sort of what the process looks like because

[Matt Leming]: The 18 Home Rule petitions that have been filed, if you actually go and read them, and they're all on the State House website, they're all kind of slightly different and they're a little bit, they just have very different provisions depending on what individual city councils discussed at any given time.

[Matt Leming]: And so if the Affordable Homes Act is passed, all of those would probably just be rejected.

[Matt Leming]: outright officially because then, you know, everybody would have what the state gave them.

[Matt Leming]: That being said, just to, again, repeat what my colleagues have already stated, there is a definite point in filing these.

[Matt Leming]: The fact that 18 other communities all filed Home Rule petitions very likely is telling the State House that affordable housing is an issue, and all of that effort by local legislators then led up

[Matt Leming]: to what Governor Healey's proposing with the Affordable Homes Act.

[Matt Leming]: So the relationship between local and state politics is often a bit of a black box, but yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Justin, can you try saying something?

[Matt Leming]: Can you hear me?

[Matt Leming]: Martha, you could also try to click on the little arrow next to the microphone button.

[Matt Leming]: It could be that your input is wrong.

[Matt Leming]: So sometimes Zoom selects a different input than what's the default on your computer.

[Matt Leming]: So that could be the issue.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So just two questions.

[Matt Leming]: So on average, do you think that roads are on average deteriorating a bit faster these days than they did maybe 10, 20 years ago?

[Matt Leming]: The question is mainly coming from a resident that I spoke with a few months ago who said that with the increase in electric vehicles, which on average tend to

[Matt Leming]: weigh a lot more because of their batteries than gas-powered vehicles that those would end up having.

[Matt Leming]: To be clear, I'm supportive of the electrification of vehicles.

[Matt Leming]: That's not the angle I'm coming at this from.

[Matt Leming]: So I just want to be clear about that.

[Matt Leming]: The motion is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Two questions.

[Matt Leming]: First, so I noticed the change of definition from the SPGA, Special Permit Granting Authority, to just the Community Development Board.

[Matt Leming]: I was just wondering what is the, what are sort of the consequences behind that change?

[Matt Leming]: So could you just explain a little bit to me about changing from one term to the next?

[Matt Leming]: Because I did notice that when I was going through the ADU ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And the second question, which is sort of related.

[Matt Leming]: So I noticed the distinction between approval of a project by the community development board and sort of lower threshold for approval by just the planning department, the administrative review.

[Matt Leming]: And one proposed change that I'm trying to make to the AD ordinances to sort of reduce that, just for instance, from a community development board

[Matt Leming]: review in all cases to just administrate a review by the planning department.

[Matt Leming]: I guess, are there other sort of, in your analysis of our ordinances so far, do you sort of notice other cases where something that normally would have a, would need a permit by the community development board would better be suited to just be reviewed at the staff level?

[Matt Leming]: I'm just kind of thinking like smaller projects, maybe.

[Matt Leming]: What's your sort of informal take on that so far?

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: We have, we recently instituted an affordable housing trust fund last year, which is about 30 years too late to be fair, but is there any, what are the usual sources of income for affordable housing trust funds that you know about so far?

[Matt Leming]: We've identified a few potentially, if the transfer fee goes through, that could be one, also CPA funds, and we were working on linkage fees.

[Matt Leming]: Are there any other common sources of funding that you can think about?

[Matt Leming]: Many- Sorry, what?

[Matt Leming]: Cell towers?

[Matt Leming]: Cell towers.

[Matt Leming]: You said rental fees?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, short-term rental fees.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, Airbnbs.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so that's something that we're legally able to do is charge Airbnbs like 50% to put into the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: But we already charge fees.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, yes, so question, so I saw I saw some of this happen when I was on the CPA and we're funding the walk link court redevelopment.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, the CPA funds were a necessary requisite to get state and federal funding is there, but.

[Matt Leming]: Part of my concern with funding affordable housing this way is it does sort of mean that somebody trying to put together a funding package is just putting up a lot of overhead, keeping up with these different applications and the requirement of all these applications.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any way, just at the local level, like possibly dispersing funds from an affordable housing trust that you can

[Matt Leming]: feasibly and without breaking the system, reduce the burden for people that are trying to apply for all these different grants just to fund the project.

[Matt Leming]: Just your thoughts on that in general, I'd appreciate.

[Matt Leming]: No, no, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Why are insurance costs going up?

[Matt Leming]: Two questions.

[Matt Leming]: The first, what are recommendations that you would have for both making projects more predictable for developers, which is something you've touched on a few times in the presentation, and second, to decrease timelines, which is these delays can oftentimes disincentivize development completely.

[Matt Leming]: So I'd love to hear your thoughts on those two items.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Second question, this is a little bit more big picture, but I would be interested to hear the thoughts of experts on it.

[Matt Leming]: So I did read the Boston Globe Spotlight series on the fact that in greater Boston, one unit of housing costs between $500,000 and $600,000 to build.

[Matt Leming]: I have a blog, and I ended up quoting that article on that, and it was, you know, the reasons, of course, were very complicated.

[Matt Leming]: Fewer people are going into construction.

[Matt Leming]: The overseas cost of copper goes up.

[Matt Leming]: Zoning is too restrictive on the local level.

[Matt Leming]: And in general, the picture it seemed to be painting was that more and more developers are just having trouble making the equations work, which you sort of touched on here, I guess.

[Matt Leming]: What is just your picture on how that's going to evolve?

[Matt Leming]: Do you think that it's going to hit the point where it's not going to be feasible at all to sort of

[Matt Leming]: build any sort of affordable housing on the private market?

[Matt Leming]: What factors do you see that could potentially improve that?

[Matt Leming]: I know you mentioned greater, like the federal government taking this a bit more seriously than they have in the last 20 years, but just your thoughts on the feasibility of it.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to hear.

[Matt Leming]: So the fact that a lot of companies have kind of made, put manufacturing overseas, which just makes things harder to help.

[Matt Leming]: What areas has that been the most successful in the United States?

[Matt Leming]: Every so often I'll read about like 3D printed apartments and whatnot on the news.

[Matt Leming]: I think that's probably a bit more of an extreme example of what you're talking about, but things like that I haven't seen quite as much around in the greater Boston area.

[Matt Leming]: And one final question.

[Matt Leming]: I think one issue that we've been seeing in Medford, I know, but also pretty much like a lot of other areas of the United States is a large amount of investor capital going into the housing market and generally speaking, private

[Matt Leming]: private equity seeing real estate as a return on investment more than anything else.

[Matt Leming]: And one thing that I would like as a local politician as a way to sort of distinguish between people who actually live in their houses and even people who maybe live locally and own as opposed to a company out of New York that's making like a shell

[Matt Leming]: that's the company buying up a bunch of apartments and kicking out all the tenants, flipping them and jacking up the rents, which is something that is happening more and more regularly in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: Do you know of any strategies that other communities have had this kind of like

[Matt Leming]: fight that general problem or any strategies of distinguishing between one kind of buyer that actually does plan to live in the home or at least will have a face-to-face relationship with the people that live in their homes as opposed to those who mainly just see it as an investment.

[Matt Leming]: There's short term rentals are a big part of the problem, but it's also generally an investment, even in longer term luxury housing, as opposed to focus on affordable housing, mainly because luxury housing is seen as being more profitable.

[Matt Leming]: So is there?

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn?

[Matt Leming]: Present

[Matt Leming]: This is more just a curiosity question, but with the health insurance, is there any possibility or is it feasible at all to switch health insurance providers or is that just a non-starter?

[Matt Leming]: Correct.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: resident services and public engagement committee, April 23rd, 2024.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, would you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so.

[Matt Leming]: First paper on the agenda to 4015 resolution to discuss modernizing council communications and outreach strategy.

[Matt Leming]: So.

[Matt Leming]: The so on the current agenda packet, um, pursuant to the motions that were

[Matt Leming]: I. Asked Councilors if they be willing to draft or if they were willing to get on a schedule to draft a, um.

[Matt Leming]: ended up creating a schedule of those who had who replied if there are any proposed changes tonight that any Councilors would like to make more than willing to hear them.

[Matt Leming]: We also, I also submitted a draft of the Medford City Council newsletter, which once it is approved in committee, we will be able to then circulate it around.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor, Council Vice President Collins submitted some recommendations to me after the release of the agenda, which I placed in

[Matt Leming]: this year and this year draft of the document essentially just asking for some more consistent language as well as links to the website for some of the for some of the ordinances projects that were mentioned in the draft as well as

[Matt Leming]: just smaller things like use of the word committee, to be clear, and use of, and the addition of dates to each of the items that were worked on.

[Matt Leming]: If any councillors have recommendations or anything that they would like to add to the newsletter, I would be more than willing to hear it.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: So just, okay.

[Matt Leming]: And the other two you had mentioned, I'm writing this down.

[Matt Leming]: We're take out the second mention of leaf flower ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: Planning and permitting, page 12.

[Matt Leming]: Discussion on disability notification.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, I think, yeah, so that was removed.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, okay.

[Matt Leming]: So how an initial meeting about, okay, let me just, just kind of thinking here, um, send a paper to committee.

[Matt Leming]: Let's see.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: My thoughts on that are, I mean, we would call it

[Matt Leming]: So this first newsletter, first up, is going to be a bit odd because it is the first one, but I'm sort of trying to mention the key points that we've done since the beginning of the term.

[Matt Leming]: Future newsletters, I wouldn't really imagine, would have

[Matt Leming]: quite as much as this they would just cover the last month but I don't I don't I also don't really think that we would need to necessarily stick to the calendar month that we're going it would like my in my perception would just be like what have we done since the last newsletter so we would be like writing it in that month but it would be for like since the last newsletter these are the things that happened yeah I mean that's that's just kind of my initial thinking I mean we could

[Matt Leming]: you know, be strict as to only covering the events that happened in April or May and so on.

[Matt Leming]: But, I mean, I also don't really see why we can't be a little bit more flexible about it.

[Matt Leming]: And I see a hand raised.

[Matt Leming]: Is that, is the iPhone Councilor Scarpelli?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: So a lot of this was discussed at the last resident services and public engagement committee, which you were not present at, so.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, there's the other again that there is a standard set of city listservs that would go out to We could investigate other Potential listservs that go out to so we're talking with the senior center about theirs.

[Matt Leming]: I mean the you know, the point is that we do we do need to have a product to send to different outlets if we are going to Communicate what City Council is doing.

[Matt Leming]: So any other questions?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: This is a newsletter that City Council is trying to circulate through the community.

[Matt Leming]: That's what this is.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor, sorry, Councilor Bears.

[Matt Leming]: I am prone to make

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: in the process of updating and vetting our zoning ordinances with the city's zoning consultant and associates, which has worked with the city of Metro previously, including on our comprehensive plan, could be linked to.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: just stop share for a moment so I can check my email without it being broadcast.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, and I'm seeing also additional in my email, additional recommendations from Council Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Council Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm looking at what you just emailed me, and I just copied and pasted that into my draft document.

[Matt Leming]: So is everything you just mentioned in that email, or could you forward the recommendations to me?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Cause cause yeah, I, I don't want to use like all the meeting time while everybody watches me edit.

[Matt Leming]: So I just do one, but that's a great idea.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Um, but I did just like copy and paste.

[Matt Leming]: I did just copy and paste those in there.

[Matt Leming]: In the meantime, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so I think that we don't have to have the exact draft 100% figured out, like the exact formatting 100% figured out for the first one.

[Matt Leming]: So what I just like to focus on timeliness for this particular draft, just to make sure that we have something out.

[Matt Leming]: And then in future ones, as we kind of get into the swing of things, we can come up with a more standardized format as we see what people like.

[Matt Leming]: So I do agree that that is,

[Matt Leming]: I do agree that having upcoming projects in there would be great.

[Matt Leming]: I also heard another recommendation from Council Vice President Collins, for instance, that we include the paper numbers in there just so that people can cross-reference it.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that I got a lot of very last-minute input here, so researching all the paper numbers personally takes a bit of time.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro?

[Matt Leming]: So on the draft schedule, you're assigned to do the next one.

[Matt Leming]: I look forward to your draft.

[Matt Leming]: I look forward to it.

[Matt Leming]: I do want to emphasize, this is the first newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: We really don't need to overthink it.

[Matt Leming]: I know I, but it's like you said, perfect can't be the enemy of of good in this case.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm hearing.

[Matt Leming]: So, I think that there's a reasonable amount of work I could I could do on this draft prior to going to the to the regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: But I think a good part of having it rotated and again, we did have I.

[Matt Leming]: Send an invitation for all Councilors to, uh, who wanted to volunteer to draft a newsletter for a given month and have it be edited by everyone else.

[Matt Leming]: And those who volunteer are currently on the schedule.

[Matt Leming]: So it is a opportunity for people to kind of, like, put their own practices into it.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: It should be in the agenda.

[Matt Leming]: You're the only other person here that can second one.

[Matt Leming]: So it's up to you.

[Matt Leming]: So

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so do we have any other.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so the first off there was, there are some additional edits as you can see on the screen from Councilor Collins.

[Matt Leming]: So, I, again, I don't want to use this entire time to just to just do that considering also we have another item on the agenda to get to.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so she sent me some edits earlier and this is just some different phrasing of, and I could also, you know, but yeah, yeah, this is just some different phrasing that she wanted when I incorporated her edits earlier.

[Matt Leming]: So it's just, it's just wording issues.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so a link to upcoming meetings.

[Matt Leming]: So, I think what I'm going to do is if this is motion to be approved out of this committee directly to be sent out, then I'll just incorporate these edits on my own time and then send it out in addition to the other edits, obviously, that are in the suggestions right here.

[Matt Leming]: So meetings is one.

[Matt Leming]: OK, so just like email for the clerk something, whatever, whatever is, you know.

[Matt Leming]: So my understanding is that the links to the upcoming meetings for Zoom, and the clerk could correct me on this, is that they're basically only generated a week beforehand, and there are technical reasons for this.

[Matt Leming]: So if this is a monthly newsletter, I don't know if we'd be able to put all of the links.

[Matt Leming]: So I think for the initial one, probably the best we could do is just like, here's the clerk's email if you would like to opt in.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, OK.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: OK, cool.

[Matt Leming]: Any further discussion?

[Matt Leming]: Any?

[Matt Leming]: So by approving it, you'd mean send it, yeah, send it.

[Matt Leming]: With the edit as amended.

[Matt Leming]: What is that?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so we have a motion, two motions on the floor.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Wait, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: So on the motion, Councilor Lazzaro, to approve the drafting schedule and approve the newsletter to be sent out,

[Matt Leming]: as edited during this meeting.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion by Councilor Lazzaro to get feedback from DPI.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Okie dokie.

[Matt Leming]: These late night meetings with three people.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: And that is that 24-073 offered by Councilors Callahan, Councilor Tseng and Councilor Lazzaro resolution to establish city council listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: Any discussion on the floor regarding this one?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second on those?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: I have a motion by Councilor Calhan to form a subcommittee to establish listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any discussion from Councilors?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, there are three person.

[Matt Leming]: There are three people subcommittees with only three voting members.

[Matt Leming]: But I think any is pretty much as long as long as it's an open meeting that anybody can attend.

[Matt Leming]: Exactly.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Sure.

[Matt Leming]: Do you want to vote on your motion first?

[Matt Leming]: On the motion by Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so what are the groups you'd like to reach out to?

[Matt Leming]: Who are the, what are the five community liaisons?

[Matt Leming]: I know that, do you know them off the top of your head?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, I guess the other question I had is just open meeting considerations with the listening sessions.

[Matt Leming]: So the listening sessions, would they be here or would they be?

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Cool.

[Matt Leming]: Any further discussion?

[Matt Leming]: Is there any public participation?

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Any public participation?

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Seeing none, do we have any other motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Hello everybody, this is City Councilor Matt Leming just offering another update on one of my projects that I've been working on behind the scenes.

[Matt Leming]: It's a term that I've been throwing around a bit in some of my blog updates and communications.

[Matt Leming]: It's called the Transportation Demand Management Program.

[Matt Leming]: For this video, I'm just going to spend a little bit of time explaining what it is, the purpose behind it, and why I think it's important for the City Council's zoning recodification that we're currently undergoing.

[Matt Leming]: So, I was at the West Medford Community Center last week, just talking to folks there and just trying to understand more of my constituents' concerns, and something that they brought up, which, you know, you very frequently hear about, is the City Council's traffic.

[Matt Leming]: Greater Boston has too many cars.

[Matt Leming]: This can be dangerous sometimes.

[Matt Leming]: This can lead to congestion.

[Matt Leming]: People really don't like to wait for long periods of time when they're on the road, and they don't like to see so many cars on the road during rush hour, which is just a problem that's getting worse and worse over the years.

[Matt Leming]: Now, one thing that they were bringing up specifically at the West Medford Community Center was traffic going through West Medford.

[Matt Leming]: Now, a lot of that is due to the fact that we have a ramp that goes right off I-93 and sort of drives traffic

[Matt Leming]: through Medford Square and from there into West Medford, so the traffic patterns are really not that great.

[Matt Leming]: And the other issue behind that is the fact that in Greater Boston we just have too many cars on the road, period.

[Matt Leming]: And this is related to the fact that our MBTA is really not

[Matt Leming]: uh the best um there's a youtube video there's a youtube channel that i'm a really big fan of called wendover productions which went into the problems with the boston's subway system specifically it's kind of a radial design so if you're commuting into downtown boston um it's great

[Matt Leming]: But if you're trying to get from one part of Greater Boston, so the suburbs Outside of downtown Boston and you're trying to get from one area to another You basically have to go into downtown Boston then go out of there to the another part of Greater Boston So oftentimes people just opt to drive instead of use the subway so I'm pretty aware of the nature of a lot of these problems.

[Matt Leming]: The issue is that as a city councillor, there's only

[Matt Leming]: so many levers that I really have to work with, you know, I don't really have power to

[Matt Leming]: reduce the number of cars on the road immediately, and trying to find another, trying to redesign the interstate highway system so that we can get an alternative ramp off of I-93 is just a state and possibly federal project that would take years and years of advocacy and work on both my part and the part of our state and federal delegation.

[Matt Leming]: So those are issues which could come up in the future when there's sort of a political window for it, but for now what I'm trying to do is focus on the things that I can focus on, and that's where transportation demand management would come into play.

[Matt Leming]: What the heck is this?

[Matt Leming]: A TDM program is something that city planners often learn about during their master's degree, so it's a bit of a policy-want kind of a thing that is a little bit tricky to sell to the public and to get them to

[Matt Leming]: and to get everybody to understand, but basically it is a method to account for demands in traffic in any sort of new building that comes into Medford.

[Matt Leming]: In other words, if

[Matt Leming]: somebody wants to come into Medford to build a very large residential building that'll bring in a hundred new people, then there's going to be presumably demands on the traffic patterns going through the area that that building brings along.

[Matt Leming]: So you can imagine a hundred new people could bring in, you know, 50 new cars to the area, which will obviously just congest the roads more.

[Matt Leming]: And so a transportation demand management program is a way to get developers who are impacting traffic in this way to come up with concessions as well to offset the presumed demand that their new developments would bring onto the area.

[Matt Leming]: This is a program that they've implemented pretty successfully in the city of Everett and in some of our neighboring communities.

[Matt Leming]: And the way that it looks is if, for instance, you wanna build a casino in the area, then the people that are designing the casino and developing that, they could decide to either say, you know, this is a normal development, we're gonna go through the normal routes to do this, or they could opt to say, no, this is a transportation demand management development.

[Matt Leming]: and if it's a TDM development then they would do then they would perform a study that would anticipate how many new cars and how many new like basically just and how many new roads would be required by the new casino and if they find out that if they find out as a result of the study that this casino would you know put

[Matt Leming]: 100 new cars on the road during weekend hours, then they could offset that by paying for a shuttle that would presumably be able to encourage some people to take a bus instead of going in their cars all the time.

[Matt Leming]: Now, these sorts of concessions, these sorts of demands, they can take a number of different forms.

[Matt Leming]: You can measure demands on traffic and transportation in terms of the parking that a building requires.

[Matt Leming]: You can measure it in terms of the number of bike racks that a building has by it.

[Matt Leming]: You can measure it

[Matt Leming]: in terms of where its location is on the road, and therefore how much its location will affect the timing of the time it takes certain cars to get around it.

[Matt Leming]: So there's a lot of different ways that new developments can impact transportation.

[Matt Leming]: So these sort of things get complicated in the actual implementation of it, and that's why it ends up being a little bit difficult to explain to the public exactly what goes into these programs.

[Matt Leming]: From my perspective, I see the benefit of TDM as being 1.

[Matt Leming]: It gives developers a way to predict exactly what variances they would need in zoning.

[Matt Leming]: And they tend to like that.

[Matt Leming]: TDM programs are implemented in a sort of credits and debit system.

[Matt Leming]: So in other words, if they come in and they say, okay, we know that we will have this kind of negative impact on the traffic, therefore we're going to offset that by

[Matt Leming]: you know, offering a number of credits.

[Matt Leming]: And so maybe we're going to offer, you know, a hundred MBTA passes to all of our residents that are in our new building.

[Matt Leming]: Or maybe we're going to put X number of bike racks next to our building in order to support the bike infrastructure and thereby take the, reduce the number of cars that are on the road.

[Matt Leming]: And this credit and debit system is, uh,

[Matt Leming]: made very clear from the outset.

[Matt Leming]: So by putting x number of buy cracks, you can incur one credit, which would offset a debit that is incurred by having 100 extra units in a particular area.

[Matt Leming]: The benefit for a developer is that there's sort of like this automated way of dealing with zoning variances, which otherwise they would have to account for by going through the Zoning Board of Appeals.

[Matt Leming]: So the Zoning Board of Appeals basically means that if a developer wants to, for instance,

[Matt Leming]: reduce parking minimums that are required by the building, which would be a debit because that would mean that those cars would need to go somewhere else.

[Matt Leming]: They would normally have to go through the Zoning Board of Appeals, which is a board that meets monthly and it can be a little bit subjective and it could really draw out the timeline that these projects take.

[Matt Leming]: With a TDM program, all of that is handled, all of those variances are handled at the staff level.

[Matt Leming]: So you end up having a very predictable system for developers that ends up shortening the timeline it takes to get variances in zoning that they require, and therefore it helps them to predict how long it's going to take for a development to get off the ground, and then saves them money, and that really incentivizes them to build in the area.

[Matt Leming]: I met recently with a group called the Lower Mystic Transportation Management Association, which is a group of developers that supports each other and sort of allows them to collaborate on different TDM initiatives.

[Matt Leming]: Now, they're mostly active sort of in the

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, backing up a little bit.

[Matt Leming]: The TMA is a method for developers to contribute and get credits in this TDM system.

[Matt Leming]: So, in other words, if you want to offset your traffic impact, one way to do that is to pay for a shuttle.

[Matt Leming]: Paying for a shuttle completely on your own tends to be very expensive, but if you have three different developers that collaborate through a TMA, then all of them could just contribute a fraction of the cost to the same shuttle and therefore offset

[Matt Leming]: their development impact in that way.

[Matt Leming]: So it's sort of a system that allows collaboration in that way.

[Matt Leming]: And the Lower Mystic TMA has been pretty active and successful in the Everett area, so they've been able to encourage a lot of development over there.

[Matt Leming]: But they haven't really

[Matt Leming]: been able to expand very successfully over to Medford.

[Matt Leming]: And that has some pretty definite consequences for Medford.

[Matt Leming]: So they have currently an on-course shuttle, for instance, that runs mainly between Everett and Charlestown, because those are two areas that are contributing actively to the TMA.

[Matt Leming]: But Medford, even though it sort of contains the most land area of the Lower Mystic,

[Matt Leming]: TMA jurisdiction, it really doesn't get any shuttles coming regularly into our area because we don't have a lot of developers that are sort of actively contributing to that.

[Matt Leming]: So what is actually required to get a TDM into Medford?

[Matt Leming]: And this is what I'm currently dealing with right now.

[Matt Leming]: From a city council perspective, they're sort of like the high level

[Matt Leming]: encoding of the, they're sort of like the high-level writing of the TDM into our ordinances.

[Matt Leming]: And this is what would require these automated zoning variances that TDMs typically allow.

[Matt Leming]: And so that's what I'm working on right now as part of our zoning recodification plan.

[Matt Leming]: We had a planning and permitting committee last week where we're just sort of going over some of the parts of the, some of the zoning recodification

[Matt Leming]: projects that would happen over the next year, year and a half, and TDM was one of them.

[Matt Leming]: And so just writing, writing it explicitly into the ordinances that TDM is a method for, is a legitimate method for zoning variances by which we could get around the Zoning Board of Appeals for those applicable projects is what is necessary at the City Council level.

[Matt Leming]: Concurrently,

[Matt Leming]: The details of our specific credits or debit system, what this actually looks like in practice, most of that is implemented at the staff level.

[Matt Leming]: So it would be sort of a project between Medford's Transportation Department and our Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability to conduct a study

[Matt Leming]: that would sort of get into what specific credits and debits would be most beneficial for the city of Medford, as well as sort of getting into the practice of encouraging developers to join the Lower Mystic Valley TMA.

[Matt Leming]: So that's kind of where we're at right now.

[Matt Leming]: I think the practical issue that I'm kind of running into this is that

[Matt Leming]: These studies tend to be pretty cost-heavy, they tend to incur a lot of staff time, and Medford has a very low number of staff compared to other cities as it is.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm currently trying to encourage the staff of PDS, for instance, to do some nexus and linkage fee studies, which will be very beneficial for bringing in revenue in the future.

[Matt Leming]: but it also is costing a lot of staff time and a lot of money to do that.

[Matt Leming]: So part of what I'm doing is touching base with the lower Mystic Valley TMA,

[Matt Leming]: Trying to sell this idea to the public Explained explain it to explain to staff how this program has benefited our neighboring communities And why I think it's applicable applicable as well and would bring similar benefits to developers in Medford while also balancing that with the realities of being a city that has relatively low

[Matt Leming]: staff to implement these projects because we have pretty low revenue per capita compared to a lot of these neighboring municipalities that are able to support these programs.

[Matt Leming]: So this is just one project that we're

[Matt Leming]: getting into and that we will be pursuing over the complete zoning recodification process that City Council is pursuing over the next year to year and a half.

[Matt Leming]: There will be plenty of planning and permitting committee meetings about it that are all open to the public, plenty of room for public input, public feedback.

[Matt Leming]: and plenty of room to allow other folks to offer their ideas, to get input from residents, staff, developers, other interested parties.

[Matt Leming]: And yeah, no, that's about all I have.

[Matt Leming]: For this update.

[Matt Leming]: I hope that this helped to explain the one of this like very wonky sort of programs and Have a great two weeks Later bye

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Levee.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'd also like to echo my disappointment that I didn't do better in the bingo game.

[Matt Leming]: Connie is 104th birthday, but I really enjoyed the cake and the company.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, just a quick, just a brief question.

[Matt Leming]: If you just give us an idea of this.

[Matt Leming]: So you mentioned that you had a goal of increasing engagement among the senior community.

[Matt Leming]: in Medford, about a little over 12,000 people, you said.

[Matt Leming]: Can you give us an idea of how many more you think you'd be able to get involved in the next five, 10 years, and what do you think it would look like?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Saint, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Just a real brief question.

[Matt Leming]: So, virtual access as a virtual access being covered by open meeting laws had to expire in Massachusetts March of next year, which may or may not go through, depending on whether or not the governor.

[Matt Leming]: puts another extension to it.

[Matt Leming]: But my question is, if that does go through, and this may not even necessarily affect this budget season, but if it does go through, would that affect your job at all?

[Matt Leming]: Or just the technologies you're using, the workflows and so on?

[Matt Leming]: March 31st, 2025 is when it's set to expire.

[Matt Leming]: I believe they've already extended it once.

[Matt Leming]: They could extend it again,

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much.

[Matt Leming]: We're very pleased to have you on Medford.

[Matt Leming]: Just in your time here, what have been some of the more common concerns that veterans have been bringing to you?

[Matt Leming]: We're starting to have Council Vice President Collins bring us food.

[Matt Leming]: To pick it out?

[Matt Leming]: That's it?

[Matt Leming]: I'm a fan of Indian food.

[Matt Leming]: Hello.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I switched from one Zoom source to another.

[Matt Leming]: So I undid my co-host status here.

[Matt Leming]: So I can't unmute myself.

[Matt Leming]: But the only question I had that came to mind was, for each of these different sections presented, how many additional studies

[Matt Leming]: would need to would need to take place.

[Matt Leming]: I'm asking that because my to sort of because some of my areas of interest namely the transportation demand management would require an extra study.

[Matt Leming]: So I'm just wondering if another consultant would need to be hired for any other part of this presentation to to be possible.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: My initial question was related to the inclusionary zoning and whether it could be lumped in with the nexus study for the linkage fees, but I believe that Alicia just answered that.

[Matt Leming]: My other question was related to the TDM study, which is more of a hypothetical at this point because I don't think any

[Matt Leming]: any like solid movement has been made on staff to get that through.

[Matt Leming]: But does that necessarily, does the TDM study necessarily need to be done before the ordinance itself is put in place?

[Matt Leming]: Because my impression is that just from reading over the TDM ordinances and other municipalities, as well as the staff level implementation of the program, that the ordinances not

[Matt Leming]: quite as heavily dependent on the contents of the study itself as the as inclusionary zoning might be.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: With TDM, my impression, and I should say that I'm perfectly aware that I've been asking your office to do a lot of different things.

[Matt Leming]: I was talking to Todd about TDM as well.

[Matt Leming]: My impression with the ordinance is that it's needed to specifically allow exceptions zoning variances without going through the ZBA and that's something because TDM does allow applicable projects to do that.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that.

[Matt Leming]: In order to sort of get past the ZBA, you would need it to say so in the ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: But the lower level staff implementation of this is actually where you start getting into the point system trade-off that's really the meat of any TDM program.

[Matt Leming]: And I will also say that I have spoken, we are talking with

[Matt Leming]: the lower Mystic Transportation Management Association.

[Matt Leming]: They are very interested in expanding to Medford, but they also have been aware since previous efforts in this have flopped that the ordinance part of the TDM program is very important to making it work in a particular area.

[Matt Leming]: I can also say that I added most people to this, to the draft ordinance, if you're interested in looking over it.

[Matt Leming]: Yep, so I would like to motion to have the committee chair send around the request for input from members of the council on any policy items combined with a request to get an update from the Department of Planning, Development and Sustainability by the end of June on the status of funding and procurement for these studies discussed, though.

[Matt Leming]: There was a previous motion that was passed that essentially asked for an update from them by May for the linkage fee study.

[Matt Leming]: So just wanted to point that out for the second one.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: And I will amend that to May.

[Matt Leming]: Although if Alicia doesn't think that that's feasible, I'm perfectly willing to hear feedback on that from her.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, that sounds good.

[Matt Leming]: So the appropriate motion instead be to add the appropriate studies to the memo?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so motion to have the committee chair send the request for input from members of the council on any policy items and to get in to add the appropriate studies with their own section to the memo of and associates.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: just a question for Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: So it says here the building department, the office and the PBS.

[Matt Leming]: Do you have a good idea of where this project once it is implemented would primarily be maintained?

[Matt Leming]: Would it be the building department or PBS?

[Matt Leming]: And what's do you have?

[Matt Leming]: Can you just, like, give us an idea of the amount of staff time that it would take to get this off the ground and maintain a longer term?

[Matt Leming]: If

[Matt Leming]: Just on another one of the points that was sort of brought up and some of the public discussion I would like to point out.

[Matt Leming]: We'll just talk a little bit about the back end of some of this stuff I have.

[Matt Leming]: I know that people do tend to send a lot of emails to council members sometimes they're not.

[Matt Leming]: Sometimes I'm not able to reply to all of them, especially if they're on some of these

[Matt Leming]: hot button issues.

[Matt Leming]: Some of them slipped through the cracks.

[Matt Leming]: I apologize.

[Matt Leming]: I've, excuse me, I've had, I had one experience recently in an email where a woman sent us an email about the transfer fee, and I asked if she wanted to talk on the phone about it.

[Matt Leming]: You know, just I've never met her before.

[Matt Leming]: I didn't even know what she looked like, but I wanted to talk with her on the phone about it.

[Matt Leming]: And she refused.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know how to build bridges in a community when people refuse to even talk to me.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So my reason for co sponsoring this is really just I mean, it's pretty simple.

[Matt Leming]: We've had a couple of meetings that have gone on till very late this term, it seems to be a pattern.

[Matt Leming]: Last time on March 12, a lot of people who came up for public comment were saying rightfully so that they didn't want to have to wait so long to offer their public comment.

[Matt Leming]: Even now, it's

[Matt Leming]: and a half hours into the meeting that we're that we're discussing this, and I would personally favor, um.

[Matt Leming]: More efficient meetings to accommodate these agendas.

[Matt Leming]: So.

[Matt Leming]: And I look forward to continue to listen to continue

[Matt Leming]: just would like to say that I do sympathize with the inaccessibility of the email list at the resident services and public engagement committee we are working on proposals to update the website so I

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I personally just look on the City Council page when I when I want to get the when I want to get the agendas myself, so I but we.

[Matt Leming]: We are trying to increase transparency on the technological front.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Just a point of clarification from Councilor Scarpelli, through the chair, the resolution doesn't specify, is the intention to come before a regular meeting, a committee of the whole, private meeting?

[Matt Leming]: Just wanted to hear your thoughts on that.

[Matt Leming]: So well, so is the is the current intention behind this to if we pass this, that they'll meet with us and receive a place on file.

[Matt Leming]: Just going on some of my thoughts from the linkage fee updates.

[Matt Leming]: Is it possible to tie, is it possible or legal to tie these to any sort of consumer price index just to make them sort of

[Matt Leming]: automatically go up with inflation every year so that future updates aren't quite as necessary?

[Matt Leming]: Or does anybody see any problems with potentially implementing it that way?

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know the legalese on that either, but I would be interested to know about the opinion of KP Law in doing that.

[Matt Leming]: So I'd like to motion to request the legal opinion of KP Law on tying the city's fee schedule in Appendix A to the Consumer Price Index.

[Matt Leming]: Could be a CPI increase.

[Matt Leming]: Also, what you said earlier about just a concrete, about a set percentage increase every year, just their legal opinion on doing that.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: No.

[Matt Leming]: Sure, I just, just to be clear, I'm not a voting member of this committee, so I don't think that my, I didn't want to prioritize my comments, but while we have a pause here, I'd just like to point out that I think when we say under-resource and under-staffing, I would just like to say that it's not just about the number of staff there, just backing up the conversations that we had about the finance department.

[Matt Leming]: This is also partially an issue of software.

[Matt Leming]: A few weeks ago, I went to the, you know, there was like a had like an hour to go before a city council meeting.

[Matt Leming]: So, some of the people working the elections there decided to show me what their day to day was like, and they showed me the software that they're using to enter.

[Matt Leming]: Voter information into their computers and it was a ridiculously slow process given the resources that they had and this was something that absolutely necessarily had to be done.

[Matt Leming]: So that's so

[Matt Leming]: be able to invest not just in more staff members, but in an updated infrastructure that would allow the existing staff members to do their jobs more efficiently would also be very critical for this.

[Matt Leming]: I would also like to echo what my colleague Councilor Scarpelli was saying about the idea that the 42,000 voters that the city

[Matt Leming]: currently has on its registered voter list is very likely not up to date.

[Matt Leming]: I looked at it myself.

[Matt Leming]: There were former roommates that I'd had that moved out of the city years ago on it.

[Matt Leming]: But again, I think that we should be

[Matt Leming]: we shouldn't necessarily be blaming the elections department for not doing um uh for deprioritizing tasks that aren't uh aren't necessary for the for the next election but i do i fully agree that there are a lot of things that need to be updated in terms of data so thank you yes just on this question of inactive voters and the size of the voter registration list i just think it's important to note that one

[Matt Leming]: Mainly I'd like to just know what, how the search for a new election manager is going.

[Matt Leming]: Next President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: What's he saying?

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: President Fares.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just joining on zoom at the moment.

[Matt Leming]: It would be, uh, good to have a copy of this shared on screen if that's that's possible.

[Matt Leming]: Um but generally so generally speaking, the 1st 2 4056, which just brings the linkage fees, um, in compliance with the state acts.

[Matt Leming]: It has a couple of, um.

[Matt Leming]: It has a couple of changes that sort of range from sort of basic housekeeping stuff.

[Matt Leming]: For instance, I believe it was 90.

[Matt Leming]: It was, hold on, just scrolling down to the exact places where I saw these.

[Matt Leming]: It was 94-10-1.

[Matt Leming]: 2.2 and the 94-10-3-2 and 94-10-4-2.

[Matt Leming]: There's like some very basic errors in the linkage fee ordinance where it says provide a fund for police and fire facility capital improvements through a linkage grant too.

[Matt Leming]: And then all of those all the linkage fee ordinances for police and fire and sewer

[Matt Leming]: All of them said to donate it to the Parks and Recreational Facilities Trust.

[Matt Leming]: That's just a basic copy and paste error that's present in our linkage fee ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: So I offered corrections to that.

[Matt Leming]: I also offered corrections in, and these sections all repeat, by the way, like essentially these four language fee ordinances are basically the four language fee buckets that are specified in chapter 94-10 are all sort of copied and pasted from one another.

[Matt Leming]: So I just, there's a lot of repeating changes, but in 94-10-1-2-3-4.4, if you'll

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so if you just scroll down to like 9410.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sorry, just kind of like going on my own one of them.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, this would be the page that I'm specifically looking at looking at at the moment is page 4.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, yes, right there.

[Matt Leming]: So it says, so in this it says calculations of linkage fees may be based on the methodology established by previous studies that outline methods for an escalating linkage fee formula.

[Matt Leming]: So the purpose of this is to explicitly allow a mechanism to let future updates of linkage fees be tied to something like a consumer index fund because the Office of

[Matt Leming]: Planning development and sustainability tells me that the study to actually recommend raises to these linkage fees, which we another resolution that went through the regular council meeting, ask them to conduct another 1 of those studies.

[Matt Leming]: Those are very expensive.

[Matt Leming]: So this is a mechanism to just sort of let them rely on 1 study.

[Matt Leming]: and then update it based on a predictable formula from year to year.

[Matt Leming]: This basically explicitly allows the Office of Community Development to explicitly update the linkage fees without having to do another expensive study every three years.

[Matt Leming]: Other changes to this basically take the explicit power to change linkage fees away from the Community Development Board while still letting the Community Development Board have power to

[Matt Leming]: to.

[Matt Leming]: Offer regulations around the linkage fees themselves and the authority to conduct public hearings while giving explicit authority to update linkage fees to the mayor and the Office of Community

[Matt Leming]: Um, and that's the special act.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So, to be clear, the special act that was written in 1989 has no mention whatsoever of the community of the community development board.

[Matt Leming]: Um, it only gives authority to update linkage fees to the mayor and the office of community development.

[Matt Leming]: So I tried to look, like, parse through this as carefully as I could and just tried to find language that where it said the Community Development Board has the power to update linkage fees.

[Matt Leming]: And I shifted that back to the Mayor and the Office of Community Development.

[Matt Leming]: There is still language in here saying that the Community Development Board gets to set certain regulations and also conduct public hearings.

[Matt Leming]: But for the most part, it's a shift of power back to staff because, again,

[Matt Leming]: One, the Community Development Board never was given authority by the state in the first place to update linkage fees, and two, they never did it.

[Matt Leming]: And that's another thing that's made more clear here is if you'll go to page, to the top of page five,

[Matt Leming]: Yep, right there.

[Matt Leming]: This kind of just changes the language from no more than three years, which is a little bit unclear, to at least every three years that it requires the linkage fees to be updated.

[Matt Leming]: Again, this is exactly what it says in the States Act.

[Matt Leming]: It says that

[Matt Leming]: every three years linkage fees need to be updated which the community development board which was given this authority previously never did and according to the states act they never had the authority to actually do so this just this really just tries to bring it in more in compliance but it does give the community development board the authority to give public notice and public hearing so that the linkage fees can still have public input

[Matt Leming]: which I think is reasonable.

[Matt Leming]: It just doesn't give them explicit authority to actually update them itself.

[Matt Leming]: Let's see.

[Matt Leming]: Then I believe those are all the updates that are strictly related to 24-056.

[Matt Leming]: The related to 24-057, which starts on page 11.

[Matt Leming]: It's just, it's basically, a lot of it is besides like some slight change to the language behind 94.10.5.1 around the purpose of it.

[Matt Leming]: It's like basically all these linkage fee sections are just copied and pasted.

[Matt Leming]: So this is really just a copy and paste section around adding a fifth linkage structure to the, sorry, adding a fifth linkage bucket to the,

[Matt Leming]: existing linkage fee structures.

[Matt Leming]: And so this gives explicit authority for the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability to put linkage fees into the Affordable Housing Trust, which needs sources of revenue.

[Matt Leming]: And so there's really not a whole lot to this section that's different from the previous four sections.

[Matt Leming]: It's really cookie cutter language.

[Matt Leming]: So, yeah, I think the

[Matt Leming]: The more important thing about this is actually the implementation of it.

[Matt Leming]: So, once we put this language in here, and we pass it all explicitly, just let the affordable housing trust be funded by linkage fees, which again is explicitly allowed by the state.

[Matt Leming]: as was reviewed by KP Law, then it would be up to the Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability, which I've been in correspondence with them about, to conduct a linkage fee study that would, one, update the normal linkage fees, two, figure out what the linkage fees ought to be for the Affordable Housing Trust, and three, come up with a reasonable formula for

[Matt Leming]: updating these linkage fees every three years so that another study doesn't explicitly have to be done.

[Matt Leming]: That's about all I have to present these changes, and I look forward to hearing from my colleagues as to what they think of this.

[Matt Leming]: Well, the absolute next step is, so I just noticed some very basic housekeeping stuff in this draft that I submitted, which is, and so I'd like to, so I was just going through it right now, and I noticed that I, in rewriting, in writing the affordable housing bucket 94-10.5, could you, Councilor Bears, could you scroll to page 14, please?

[Matt Leming]: Where am I screening it?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I might have, just really quickly, I might have left some references there into 94.10.4, oh, sorry, 94.10.1, when they should be changed to 94.10.5 in the fifth one.

[Matt Leming]: So there's just a lot of repeating text here that... I see one here, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So 10, five, six, uh, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: So just, uh, I guess, motion to correct the references to, uh, in 94, 10, five to 94, 10, one where appropriate.

[Matt Leming]: Cause again, it's just some very basic drafting drafting errors.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: I think I counted.

[Matt Leming]: I counted three.

[Matt Leming]: But could I just motion to have them all sort of?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: But other other than that, like, again, at the ordinance level, I don't think that there's really the the only the only sort of thing that I can think of is potentially some the relate likes, whatever.

[Matt Leming]: If somebody has any strong opinions about the relationship between the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability and the Community Development Board, I know that I shifted around a few of the, in this draft here, a few of the powers from one to the other, again, giving the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability the explicit authority to update the linkage fees themselves.

[Matt Leming]: So if there are any recommendations from PDS to change those, then I would be amenable to that.

[Matt Leming]: But otherwise, I think that other than that, and those are very minor,

[Matt Leming]: Errors that I just pointed out.

[Matt Leming]: I can't think of a whole lot else that would really need to be done with the ordinance itself.

[Matt Leming]: Most of the important steps, once this is passed, would be at the implementation phase.

[Matt Leming]: So I would love to hear from PDS about this, if they have any thoughts themselves.

[Matt Leming]: second um just my understanding of keeping in committee for what reason sorry what would it be sorry if we're going to report it favorably out um what would we report it back to regular to a regular session or would how would this be included in the zoning like what motion would be yeah so favorably not favorable we just reported that doesn't we don't really do that but we would just report it out

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Levee.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I think, and I need you to clarify this, but I think that that would be part of the process that Council President Bears was talking about.

[Matt Leming]: Hello everybody, City Councilor Matt Leming here.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just going to provide another video update to accompany my blog post.

[Matt Leming]: I'm mainly going to be talking about the very recent March 12th meeting that we went through this past two weeks and just really getting, just kind of sharing my thoughts on some of the broader political changes in Medford, where I think we're going and just have my own feelings about some of this stuff.

[Matt Leming]: So to provide a bit of a recap,

[Matt Leming]: At the February 20th City Council meeting, I put forward a resolution to discuss the formulation of a real estate transfer fee.

[Matt Leming]: Now, this is a fee that typically has a lot of exemptions.

[Matt Leming]: It's not designed to target the average homeowner, but on certain real estate transactions, you would get to charge up to 2% of that, 1% to the buyer and seller.

[Matt Leming]: between 0.5 and 2%, which would then go into the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: Some versions of this exclude owner-occupied properties.

[Matt Leming]: Some versions of this only apply to properties above a certain threshold, like a million dollars.

[Matt Leming]: There are different forms of being discussed at the state level.

[Matt Leming]: 18 other communities have

[Matt Leming]: already passed it.

[Matt Leming]: It's only one of the ways that City Council is proposing to fund the Affordable Housing Trust, which is something that we really desperately need to do.

[Matt Leming]: So this was originally meant to be discussed at the February 12th meeting, or sorry, the February 20th meeting, and at that meeting they sort of got overtaken because

[Matt Leming]: We had we were dealing we ended up dealing with the mayor's proposal to remove the fire chief from civil service.

[Matt Leming]: So a lot of people actually showed up to the February 20 meeting.

[Matt Leming]: hoping to talk about the real estate transfer fee, but we ended up spending the entire meeting hearing about the fire chief issue.

[Matt Leming]: So that ended up getting tabled until the March 12th meeting, and normally it wouldn't have sat for so long on the agenda, but we had an election in the meantime, and so basically there was three weeks in between

[Matt Leming]: meetings where this very important issue which was again at the time just four lines of text just ended up sitting on the agenda for a very long period of time with no discussion and even the city councilors couldn't really say you know what it was what their own thoughts on it were discussing with their colleagues because it's meant to be discussed in city council.

[Matt Leming]: And so this meant that there's a lot of time for a lot of misinformation to circulate in the community.

[Matt Leming]: Some people

[Matt Leming]: I think a lot of people thought that we were going to, at the March 12th meeting, pass a 2% tax that would just apply straight up to any real estate transaction in Medford, which was not true.

[Matt Leming]: That wasn't what we were doing at all.

[Matt Leming]: It was a very preliminary tax to, or it was a very preliminary discussion to

[Matt Leming]: pursue one potential avenue of funding the affordable housing trust, which, again, we really need to fund, which would only apply to certain real estate transactions and definitely not be targeted at the average homeowner.

[Matt Leming]: And so I think a lot of people showed up to that meeting kind of hearing from their neighbors that, you know, this and that was what city council is going to do.

[Matt Leming]: So they showed up in opposition to it.

[Matt Leming]: And then a lot of people showed up just

[Matt Leming]: you know, having thought about what they're going to say for several weeks anyway, um, more or less understanding the policy and just being opposed to it regardless, which, you know, I can take, I can take opposition to policies that I propose.

[Matt Leming]: I think it's fine.

[Matt Leming]: I just want people to have correct information when they do it.

[Matt Leming]: And so this all, this all is kind of coming into the, in like there's, there's a lot of sort of context that's happening.

[Matt Leming]: That's happening around Medford as well.

[Matt Leming]: So earlier that day in the March 12th meeting, um, just at,

[Matt Leming]: at 12 p.m.

[Matt Leming]: I received an email.

[Matt Leming]: Again, this is several hours before the March 12th meeting, which everybody on City Council really knows is going to be a rough night.

[Matt Leming]: I received a letter, which was signed by 21 tenants at 208 Main Street in Brooks Park Estates, where they are basically being kicked out or asked to evict their apartments because

[Matt Leming]: their apartments had recently been purchased by a realty company.

[Matt Leming]: And the realty company, you know, wanted to flip the apartments, make them

[Matt Leming]: make them presumably jack up the rents and just tell them, you know, leave.

[Matt Leming]: The realty group told us that the tenants would have the option to return to the apartments after the renovations were done, but they didn't do anything to provide local housing in the meantime.

[Matt Leming]: They just told them to leave.

[Matt Leming]: And they didn't provide any promises to provide those apartments at the same rents they were before.

[Matt Leming]: And I pressed them on this over email.

[Matt Leming]: Now, previously, when the previous owner was selling off Brooks Park and 208 Main Street, others had attempted to make it so that that sale would be made to an affordable housing non-profit, which didn't have as much money to give.

[Matt Leming]: and not to this realty company that it ended up going to.

[Matt Leming]: Medford would have preferred the former case but we just didn't have any money to actually put towards that because we didn't have a funded affordable housing trust at the time.

[Matt Leming]: Other communities have had affordable housing trusts that they've been funding for decades and decades and so therefore they can

[Matt Leming]: pay for a lot of these cool housing projects around town, like community land trusts, co-ops, and really just address minor things, not minor things, but more transactional issues like this one, where if you're gonna sell off an apartment complex, does it go to a group that's a non-profit, or does it go to a group that really just wants to make money off of it and doesn't really care about the tenants and the property?

[Matt Leming]: And so I was going to this meeting perfectly aware that if a policy like this had been instituted 30 years before, we wouldn't have to be dealing with this.

[Matt Leming]: And I was also perfectly aware that this policy relied on that will future, like preventing future evictions from happening down the line would rely on this policy passing.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: And I think this, due to the way that Medford's distributed, people aren't always kind of aware of like the full, the full picture of what's happening.

[Matt Leming]: And this is another thing that I wrote about in the blog post, because, you know, there's a lot of talk about like the new composition of this city council, you know, people saying it's, it's, it's all renters.

[Matt Leming]: It's not homeowners.

[Matt Leming]: Um, so you don't really understand what we're going through.

[Matt Leming]: That was like a lot of the rhetoric that we were hearing in the meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Um, what, and,

[Matt Leming]: if you sort of look at the, if you sort of look at the geography of Medford, you kind of see how the, like how housing is distributed and how the representation of city council has kind of shifted this, particularly in this, particularly in this past election to, uh, people that live in just in a completely different area.

[Matt Leming]: So typically it's sort of like most city Councilors have kind of come from

[Matt Leming]: uh, the northern part of the city, um, kind of like the North Northwest part where there's like a lot of suburbs, a lot of like kind of spread out, um, homeowners.

[Matt Leming]: And there's been maybe one person previously who's come from South Medford and one person who's come from Wellington, um, just over, just over the, just over the years, at least since 2005.

[Matt Leming]: Now,

[Matt Leming]: Four city councilors are renters in South Medford, four out of seven, which is huge.

[Matt Leming]: And the one city councilor who now does live sort of in the suburb areas,

[Matt Leming]: she runs the homeless shelter over in Malden.

[Matt Leming]: So she's very intimately aware of some of these housing issues.

[Matt Leming]: So the point is that the new city council really cares about housing issues.

[Matt Leming]: We're really intimately aware that the affordability, that the housing market is crazy right now and affordability needs to be addressed.

[Matt Leming]: And this

[Matt Leming]: The real estate transfer fee issue, in my mind, it's something that's important.

[Matt Leming]: It's something that needs to be passed in a form that's acceptable to most of the city, because it really would benefit all of us.

[Matt Leming]: It's also not the only avenue that we're pursuing at the moment to fund the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: I think that some of the linkage fee proposals that I'm going to be discussing on Tuesday in committee will do a lot more in the near term to fund the Affordable Housing Trust,

[Matt Leming]: but I'm going to pursue every possible avenue that I can.

[Matt Leming]: Just in general, I mean, I think if people wanted to, they could, you know, see the meeting itself, how it went.

[Matt Leming]: It was very contentious.

[Matt Leming]: I really like to, I really prefer to keep these discussions on the merits of the issues themselves.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, that's not what happened at a lot of the meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I think that you know, it's more of a cultural and a generational Divide that's happening at the moment I'm trying my best to bridge that however, I can obviously a lot of people from You know a lot of people don't necessarily like this policy, but it's also something that

[Matt Leming]: I think would be beneficial to the city as a whole, because Medford's also done very little to fund affordable housing in the past.

[Matt Leming]: We had a 15-minute recess, you know, in the middle of it.

[Matt Leming]: In the middle of the meeting, I ended up taking a break.

[Matt Leming]: During that, I ended up putting myself just physically inside of the crowd that

[Matt Leming]: I would say most of whom showed up, the people who showed up in person were opposed to this, and I just tried to engage with the issues with them as best I could, you know, at the very least.

[Matt Leming]: just wanted to have correct information as well as context about other projects that City Council is working on at the moment to get this through.

[Matt Leming]: Whatever the reasons, I don't like to see people alienated or feeling alienated from City Council, and I don't like it when people are coming in with wrong information about policies that we're pushing forward.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm going to try to do what I can to bridge the various, very obvious political and generational divides that have happened in the city.

[Matt Leming]: At the same time, my bottom line is that there's a lot of people in the city who are very real, who are in reality very disempowered.

[Matt Leming]: So those 21 tenants and protecting their rights to stay in their homes is the absolute bottom line for me.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to be doing

[Matt Leming]: whatever I can to fight for them and to make it so that we have the resources to deal with that in the future, make it so that Medford isn't so hamstrung in affordable housing issues that we can't take more steps to prevent

[Matt Leming]: other groups from being evicted, because this is already happening around the area.

[Matt Leming]: It's not just 208 Main Street.

[Matt Leming]: This happened two years ago with Bradley Road.

[Matt Leming]: If you just Google forum posts, you can see large real estate

[Matt Leming]: management companies just jacking rents up like 500 a month and effectively pushing people out of their out of their apartments and It's and those people that have to go through that Oftentimes aren't empowered oftentimes aren't knowledgeable enough about city politics to show up and make themselves heard at a City Council meeting so those are the people that a policy like this would Would really would really benefit So

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, dealing with meetings like that, it's not the easiest thing in the world.

[Matt Leming]: We're perfectly aware that a lot of people don't, that a lot of people showing up.

[Matt Leming]: Most people who show up to a city council meeting don't show up to voice support for what we're doing.

[Matt Leming]: We really, really appreciate it when people do show up to support the initiatives that are being passed.

[Matt Leming]: But the negative motivator in these things can obviously be a lot more powerful.

[Matt Leming]: when we're dealing with those sorts of meetings, most city councilors, and I know this from conversations, end up losing sleep over it.

[Matt Leming]: Just kind of being, you know, just engaging like that with the public can be a stressful thing, but it's also necessary to have conversations like these.

[Matt Leming]: moving forward, it's necessary to really listen to people when they're talking in order to try our best to help those people not feel as alienated as they are right now.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: There's a lot more that can be said about this topic.

[Matt Leming]: And yeah, I hope that everybody tunes in for future city council meetings and can come along to show, to tell us what you think about not just the development of the real estate transfer fee, but also other policies that we're working on in the future.

[Matt Leming]: You know, there's a lot of things that are happening in terms of zoning, linkage fees.

[Matt Leming]: I'm personally working on making development easier around the city through a transportation demand management program.

[Matt Leming]: I've been reaching out to other residents who are affected by airplane noise, which is a thing that I've really been hearing about a lot.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah, no, I think that hopefully things will sort of calm down from here and we can have more productive conversations moving forward.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, in any case, thank you all very much for your continued engagement and support.

[Matt Leming]: And yeah, have a wonderful week.

[Matt Leming]: I found them favorable.

[Matt Leming]: I found the records in order and move to approve them.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: We discussed Councilor Tseng's paper to develop a

[Matt Leming]: more comprehensive communication strategy for City Council.

[Matt Leming]: In particular, we decided to adopt a monthly newsletter and that motion, we passed a motion to do so.

[Matt Leming]: So the way that that is going to

[Matt Leming]: work is councillors will be on an alternating schedule, taking turns drafting the newsletter, after which it will be approved at the monthly Resident Services and Public Engagement meeting, and we will then meet to approve it, amend it as necessary, and then send it out to

[Matt Leming]: the appropriate avenues as well.

[Matt Leming]: Steve Smearty was there, so we talked with him as well about developing this newsletter and general communication strategy.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro also agreed to develop some social media, to draft some social media

[Matt Leming]: to bring to the next to the public engagement meeting next month as well.

[Matt Leming]: So I sent out a request to my colleagues to develop the calendar that we will then be relying on to

[Matt Leming]: to rotate responsibilities for drafting the newsletter.

[Matt Leming]: I decided to draft the first one to provide an example of the formatting, which will then be discussed at next month's meeting.

[Matt Leming]: And I would like to thank my colleagues who have responded thus far that they are willing and able to draft newsletters in the coming term.

[Matt Leming]: And I would also encourage those who have not found time to

[Matt Leming]: do so to, if they're willing and able to, to do that as well.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: This is just a question of accident, kind of wondering this, and I would like to know the answer.

[Matt Leming]: I've been wondering it for a while.

[Matt Leming]: So if a firefighter is sick, why could, is it an option to get like a doctor's note, some form of documentation?

[Matt Leming]: Could that be?

[Matt Leming]: That is so that's that's everything for that's that's 24 hours.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Absolutely.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: So this is the first of a three part series of linkage fee resolutions that I'm bringing to the table.

[Matt Leming]: Basically, this is a fairly simple one.

[Matt Leming]: Linkage fees are fees that developers pay to the city, um, in order so that we can benefit the police and fire department, um, parts of facilities, um,

[Matt Leming]: or sorry, roads and traffic facilities, parks and recreation.

[Matt Leming]: So Medford has four linkage fee buckets at the moment.

[Matt Leming]: These were established via an act that was passed by the state in 1989 and implemented in Medford in 1990.

[Matt Leming]: By ordinance, we're required to update these fees every three years.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, in our ordinances, it requires the Community Development Board to do that every three years.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that

[Matt Leming]: the community development board has never done that so this is this act is really just kind of asking politely for the community development board and in conjunction with the office of planning development and sustainability which used to be the office of community development to please conduct a study to update those linkage fees so that they can be um

[Matt Leming]: you know, raised for the first time in about 34 years and potentially add a lot of new revenue to the city from developers.

[Matt Leming]: Strictly speaking, the Medford City Council under our own ordinances and the State Act does not have the authority to update the linkage fees ourselves.

[Matt Leming]: So this is really just a request to other boards and offices of the city to do so.

[Matt Leming]: The other aspect of this is that I believe a reason that they haven't done that is because it takes the studies to actually, in order to update the linkage fees, you need to hire someone to conduct a study to do that.

[Matt Leming]: Those studies are oftentimes pretty expensive to do.

[Matt Leming]: So, I can imagine, but that's a very small cost compared to what we would end up gaining in the long term by actually updating our linkage fees.

[Matt Leming]: So, this also requests that any new study conducted also

[Matt Leming]: have some kind of an escalating formula so that they can be updated every three years without having a new expensive study.

[Matt Leming]: Other cities like I believe Watertown have done the same thing by connecting their linkage fees to the consumer price index.

[Matt Leming]: I've had meetings with KP Law about sort of what

[Matt Leming]: other municipalities have done around this.

[Matt Leming]: I've attached a memo regarding that in this package itself, which addresses not just this resolution, but also the other two resolutions in this package as well.

[Matt Leming]: That's my presentation of the first of the three resolutions, and I would motion to pass this.

[Matt Leming]: So, I have been discussing this pretty extensively with the office of planning, development and sustainability and what folks there believe is that the reason I mean, the reason it hasn't been updated is because.

[Matt Leming]: Medford what they believe in the office and I've also passed this by KP law is that Medford has a kind of a unique linkage fee structure.

[Matt Leming]: And so finding a consultant who's actually who's qualified to undergo the study that's necessary in order to raise

[Matt Leming]: the linkage fees an appropriate amount because the issue with just raising it on our own is that a developer could say they don't like that, just challenge it.

[Matt Leming]: Exactly.

[Matt Leming]: So that's another reason that I've also requested that the City Council make sure that we include that in

[Matt Leming]: That in our upcoming budget money for such a study to to take place.

[Matt Leming]: I think I think it's more to do with just capacity in the office to pursue only so many different projects at once.

[Matt Leming]: than it is anything else.

[Matt Leming]: And this is going to be the subject of an upcoming resolution.

[Matt Leming]: But there's also a bit of confusion, I think, about whose authority it actually is.

[Matt Leming]: So the state act says that it's the Office of Community Development, which is now the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability, and the mayor to update the linkage fees.

[Matt Leming]: But our ordinances include the Community Development Board,

[Matt Leming]: Um, so they don't.

[Matt Leming]: So the state act that's a lot that gives us the right to have linkage in the first place never mentions any community development board in there, but it's kind of split in our ordinances.

[Matt Leming]: But that that's that that is something that will come up in the next.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: And I would like to second Councilor Scarpelli's motion.

[Matt Leming]: I think that the, I think I originally motioned to pass it.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: And I can't, I don't, it was seconded.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, and from my conversations with the folks in the Office of Planning Development and Sustainability, they said that it does fund a substantial number of projects with the roads and whatnot.

[Matt Leming]: What Alicia Hunt told me is that, and this is what makes her think that the linkage fees right now are too low, whenever she does talk with the developer and she presents the linkage fee to them, like how much they'll have to pay, they never give her any pushback.

[Matt Leming]: You know it's a good sign.

[Matt Leming]: Good sign.

[Matt Leming]: So she thinks that they're compared to like a lot of other cities are probably far too low and we're missing, missing a lot of potential revenue.

[Matt Leming]: Not a precise one.

[Matt Leming]: But I've heard speculation from people who have kind of done work with linkage fees in the past, and people have said it could increase three to four times just informally, like when I was talking to KP Law.

[Matt Leming]: The guy that I was talking with, he worked with linkage fees and other communities.

[Matt Leming]: He was like, yeah, you haven't updated this since 1990.

[Matt Leming]: You go up like 10, 15 times.

[Matt Leming]: I'm not sure.

[Matt Leming]: So it'll be some kind of an order of magnitude just considering how long it's been since we've actually updated it.

[Matt Leming]: But that's what the study is for.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, just just to clarify some of the issues that were brought up between the between the title.

[Matt Leming]: So it's a bit of a weird thing because the state act specifies the office of community development, which Medford used to have until they were merged.

[Matt Leming]: So.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, in order to so there's a in the letter from KP law, which is also the agenda packet.

[Matt Leming]: There is a recommendation that we change the, like, in order to, like, truly be in compliance with the state act, we need to request that the state act be changed to specify the office of planning development and sustainability instead of the office of community development changing.

[Matt Leming]: Changing requesting a home repetition to change a state act is.

[Matt Leming]: It may be necessary that we have to do that to change the wording of the state act, but I'm going to try to see if we could do that at the council level and get things done a little bit more quickly.

[Matt Leming]: There's also the question of the escalating fee aspect as well, though.

[Matt Leming]: So if we have to amend the State Act in order to allow for that, which we may or may not have to do, but might as well submit other changes to the titles in the State Act as well.

[Matt Leming]: Give me one second.

[Matt Leming]: It's on page 13.

[Matt Leming]: There's a bit of a mix up in the agenda.

[Matt Leming]: Page 13 of 27 on our current document.

[Matt Leming]: The text of this resolution is under the 24-0471, so it's kind of like it's... Got it.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, so this was, so,

[Matt Leming]: This was in response to the fact that the Community Development Board has not actually never did update the linkage fees every three years since it was established in 1990.

[Matt Leming]: I noticed that the State Act specified that these recalculations need to happen at least every three years.

[Matt Leming]: The Medford's municipal codes states that they need to happen no more than every three years, which is kind of like a confusing wording thing.

[Matt Leming]: As I was looking through the linkage fee, or sorry, the other part that is a little bit strange is that the state act only specifies the mayor and the office of community development.

[Matt Leming]: As having the authority to update linkage fees, not the community development board.

[Matt Leming]: So, I think that the community development board probably should have some.

[Matt Leming]: Role to play in terms of public hearings, especially, but it seems to give authority to the community development board to actually do that.

[Matt Leming]: Instead of the office of community development, I couldn't really figure out specifically.

[Matt Leming]: why that was, but also just in looking over the linkage fee ordinances, there were just like a lot of other things that did need to be updated.

[Matt Leming]: So there's a, there's a typo in there because we have four different trusts.

[Matt Leming]: They all specify, like you have like a lot of texts that sort of copied and pasted four different times in chapter 9410.

[Matt Leming]: It turns out that they all specify technically that we have to put linkage fees into the parks and recreation trust.

[Matt Leming]: All like, so that's, it's just parks and recreation is copied and pasted four times under the, you know, police and fire, water and sewer, et cetera, et cetera.

[Matt Leming]: So, which I think is just, and I noticed that when I was going over the linkage fee ordinances with the fine tooth comb.

[Matt Leming]: So there's kind of a lot that has to be updated there to really get the specifics.

[Matt Leming]: Which section is that in?

[Matt Leming]: that I believe, it's not the one that's quoted here, but it's, I had like a Google Drive, like I had a Google Drive folder at another time that I could go to to find it.

[Matt Leming]: One moment.

[Matt Leming]: It's, hold on, I'm looking for,

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, it was... I'm just looking.

[Matt Leming]: I believe it was repeated in... Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I didn't expect to have to do this in real time.

[Matt Leming]: You don't have to.

[Matt Leming]: You can come back later.

[Matt Leming]: Point is I was just going through it with a fine tooth comb.

[Matt Leming]: I think that it does need to be looked over in order to just kind of like get some of the different authorities right and get the wording right.

[Matt Leming]: So I would motion that this paper be sent to the admin administration and finance committee.

[Matt Leming]: So I ran it by the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability.

[Matt Leming]: Alicia told me that she, Alicia Hunt, Planning Director, told me that she would hand it to the head of the Community Development Board.

[Matt Leming]: I never heard any response from them specifically.

[Matt Leming]: The third in the three-part series of linkage resolutions.

[Matt Leming]: This one is a very straightforward one.

[Matt Leming]: This was another part of my discussion with KP Law.

[Matt Leming]: They said that

[Matt Leming]: based on their reading of the State Act, we are able to have a fifth linkage bucket for affordable housing, which is commonly done in many other communities in order to fund affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: We just established an affordable housing trust last year, which is currently being set up.

[Matt Leming]: So this is a very

[Matt Leming]: straightforward resolution to add a fifth linkage bucket as well to Medford's ordinances in order to add another revenue stream for the affordable housing trust.

[Matt Leming]: I would motion that this be sent as well to the

[Matt Leming]: and finance committee.

[Matt Leming]: I would also motion to request that the, uh, study we requested the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability earlier that that study also include.

[Matt Leming]: Um uh, additional, uh, an additional study about the addition of of affordable housing to the linkage

[Matt Leming]: The other concern there, I do respect the idea that this could potentially be taking revenue streams away from other sources.

[Matt Leming]: But if linkage fees are going to be updated for the first time in 34 years, and they could potentially be raised by an order of magnitude, I think that overall, this would be adding enough revenue not only to the affordable housing trust, but to the other four currently existing linkage buckets as well.

[Matt Leming]: pulling revenue away from these other sources in any case.

[Matt Leming]: But thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I just want to say that I do sympathize with a lot of the comments that were made by Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Murphy.

[Matt Leming]: We are working on a good landlord tax credit proposal, which would incentivize landlords who willingly keep lower rents.

[Matt Leming]: And I also sympathize with a lot of the issues that this country tends to see with Section 8 housing.

[Matt Leming]: The state of affordable housing is not, it's not simple.

[Matt Leming]: And there's no one silver bullet that can be done to fix it.

[Matt Leming]: I think a lot of the conversation that we do have here is, you're doing one thing, why don't you do something else?

[Matt Leming]: We do need to do multiple things in parallel to even make a dent in this problem.

[Matt Leming]: Trying to do that with a few resources that we have at this level.

[Matt Leming]: Another point that was made by Mr. Castagnetti about the supply and demand problem.

[Matt Leming]: Another issue with that is that real estate is one issue where the supply can be uniquely constrained just because you can't make

[Matt Leming]: you can't manufacture more land.

[Matt Leming]: If there are demand for iPhones, for instance, you just be able to make more iPhones and just create as much of them as you want.

[Matt Leming]: There's only a very limited supply of land and given a lot of things like zoning, different regulations, there's only so much you can build on that land, whereas

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, so the supply is constrained, whereas demand can just keep going up and up and up.

[Matt Leming]: And that's a lot of what we're seeing these days, especially with different changes in the economy and an increasing population.

[Matt Leming]: I would also recommend looking at the Boston Globe's spotlight series on the rising costs of development of housing.

[Matt Leming]: Again, they said it costs between $500,000 and $600,000 to build one unit of housing in Greater Boston these days.

[Matt Leming]: The reasons are, again, not simple.

[Matt Leming]: Some of it's local, some of it has to do with the state of the global economy, but this is just one small part of the many issues that people have brought up tonight.

[Matt Leming]: I just wanted to offer my general sympathies on people trying to stay informed on city council and city government just in general.

[Matt Leming]: As Councilor Tseng said, we are working on several initiatives at the moment to keep people informed a bit more of a comprehensive manner, but I think a lot of people also discover that to really.

[Matt Leming]: Unfortunately, the state of things is that without any local news to really understand what's going on, it kind of has to become like a hobby or part of your.

[Matt Leming]: Social life so you have to like know, you know Which subreddits which Facebook groups to go to which YouTube channels to look on to find which pieces of information and a lot and I

[Matt Leming]: I don't like it.

[Matt Leming]: That's kind of like the state of affairs.

[Matt Leming]: But realistically, a lot of people that are super involved in the city do have a number of these different sources and people they talk to to sort of figure out how these things work.

[Matt Leming]: So yeah.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Chancellor Leibnig.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: This is just just asking if anybody knows this information.

[Matt Leming]: So I remember when I was asking about a couple of these positions a few months ago, specifically the salary increases response that I got was that they need to do a study to figure out what the salary increases ought to be.

[Matt Leming]: And I know that.

[Matt Leming]: that was being brought up for the economic development director specifically, but that position did end up being hired.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just curious, is there any of these positions still under any study to figure out what exactly the salary increase should be, like the city solicitor in particular, or is that floating around at the staff level at this point?

[Matt Leming]: Welcome to the meeting of the Planning and Permitting Committee, March 13th, 2024.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, can you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: The only

[Matt Leming]: item on our agenda today is paper 24033 offered by President, Council President Bearss and Council Vice President Kit Collins, zoning ordinance updates with the, and his associates team.

[Matt Leming]: I'm gonna go ahead and recognize the chair, Kit Collins, who I am chairing this meeting in lieu of today.

[Matt Leming]: Kit, take it away.

[Matt Leming]: Absolutely recognize Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have Councilor Callahan?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Council Vice President.

[Matt Leming]: Did Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Ennis want to respond to that?

[Matt Leming]: Council Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Any more comment from members of the council?

[Matt Leming]: Any comment from members of the public?

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Any questions, comments from my fellow, Councilor Callahan?

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I do have one question, which could either be answered by Scott or Alicia, or perhaps, and his associates.

[Matt Leming]: What do you think would be, how would sort of the projects that individual Councilors brought forward be incorporated into this?

[Matt Leming]: So for instance, I have some ADU things I'm working on, as well as the Transportation Demand Management Program in committee.

[Matt Leming]: Do you,

[Matt Leming]: how would you see that sort of being incorporated into this overall process?

[Matt Leming]: Are there some things that could be done independently or should it be sort of integrated into these meetings?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And I see that Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Inez had her hand up prior, put it down and then has her hand up again.

[Matt Leming]: So would you feel free to, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli, did you wanna speak?

[Matt Leming]: I didn't see your hand up, but you were saying something earlier.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any motions from the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Council President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, do we have any motions from floor just if I could?

[Matt Leming]: So is that all in one motion?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: And while the clerk is typing that out, I see that we have, I'd like recognizing, I see that we have a paddy kaya on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Is that our hand up for a while?

[Matt Leming]: So just

[Matt Leming]: I'll just go ahead and recognize her name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Kaya.

[Matt Leming]: I fully agree transparency in this process is

[Matt Leming]: very important.

[Matt Leming]: We've been, this council has been trying to work on that for the entirety of the term.

[Matt Leming]: It's obviously imperfect, but point taken.

[Matt Leming]: Council Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second for that motion?

[Matt Leming]: I'm very sorry, Council Vice President.

[Matt Leming]: That second was already taken by Councilor Callahan here.

[Matt Leming]: My deepest apologies.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any more motions on the floor?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, was that a third motion?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: All right.

[Matt Leming]: Well, we still have two motions to be voted on.

[Matt Leming]: So, uh, or can you, uh, read up the first one and then we'll take roll call vote.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Would you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: All right, do we have any further input from members of the public?

[Matt Leming]: All right, seeing none, Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion of Vice President Collins to keep the paper in committee and adjourn, seconded by Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, when you're ready, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you everyone for coming out tonight.

[Matt Leming]: All right, welcome everybody to the... Welcome everybody to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee of March 13th, 2024.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, can you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: I don't see him on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Yep, Councilor Scarpelli was at the previous meeting, but might be, oh, Justin Singh is, yep.

[Matt Leming]: All right, so we'll wait a little bit for Councilor Scarpelli, but I know he was at the previous meeting, so he should be here momentarily.

[Matt Leming]: The only discussion item on the agenda for tonight is 24-015 offered by Councilor Tseng, resolution to discuss modernizing council communications and outreach strategy.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have any presentations on the floor, Councilor Tseng?

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to say there is a

[Matt Leming]: motion in the previous meeting, which was passed for Council members to submit their ideas for modernizing City Council communications.

[Matt Leming]: Nobody submitted anything in the meantime, so just provide an update on that.

[Matt Leming]: In any case, feel free to go on with the presentation.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sorry, one moment.

[Matt Leming]: We had Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Kaya said the sound is not working for the public in the chat on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: Apologies.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Apologies continue.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng sorry for the interruption.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, on the motion of Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second for that motion first?

[Matt Leming]: All right, thank you, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Absolutely, Mr. Smierti.

[Matt Leming]: Can you be unmuted?

[Matt Leming]: We only have one person raising their hand at the moment, so Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Kaya, would you prefer to speak?

[Matt Leming]: And then Councilor Bizarro.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Smearty.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, sorry, there's two at the moment, but Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Kea, did you have a follow-up that you wanted to add to that?

[Matt Leming]: You raised your hand again.

[Matt Leming]: Not sure if that clarified the question for you.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I was going to help answer.

[Matt Leming]: I know that Councilor Lazzaro was

[Matt Leming]: first, but Councilor Tseng if you could answer if you want to provide an answer to the question, I would like to answer.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: I guess just to offer my own point of view on the question, as part of my campaign website and whatnot, I maintain a blog and a newsletter myself, and that's just

[Matt Leming]: pretty much the form where I say whatever's on my mind is directly as informal as possible.

[Matt Leming]: But there is a distinction between that and something coming out of an official government body, in my view.

[Matt Leming]: I personally would see the newsletter as just straight up facts about what is actually being discussed in City Council, what we're doing, what we're voting on, what we have voted on.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that if

[Matt Leming]: if we were voting on something that were coming out of my personal campaign website that there would obviously be a lot of disagreements on that.

[Matt Leming]: But if we're as a city council voting on something that is just supposed to be very fact based, then that's everybody can agree on, you know what we're discussing and what we're doing.

[Matt Leming]: So it's really just the goal would really just to be keeping keeping people informed of current activities.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Leming]: A motion of Councilor Callahan to have Justin Tseng read all the motions.

[Matt Leming]: I personally think newsletter is the best, the best description for that kind of thing.

[Matt Leming]: Cause well, I feel like people that are more like certain generations would understand a newsletter is like an email older generations might understand the newsletter and it's more original, like physical things.

[Matt Leming]: It could be.

[Matt Leming]: I think that's pretty much the clearest word we're going to get out of this multi platform.

[Matt Leming]: I get what you're saying.

[Matt Leming]: I definitely understand what you're saying.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that it's one of those things where I feel like attempts to come up with another word would just make it a bit more muddled.

[Matt Leming]: That's just me, though, personally.

[Matt Leming]: Did you get the original email?

[Matt Leming]: I got the original.

[Matt Leming]: I think at this point... I just had a question.

[Matt Leming]: This could be something that Steve can answer, but in terms of getting the email list, what would... Is there any... I understand we just talked about opt-in laws.

[Matt Leming]: Maybe this was covered earlier on in the meeting, but where would we get the emails from?

[Matt Leming]: Would we be like... Yeah, Councilor Callahan, the clerk.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I just saw that Steve had his hand raised on Zoom.

[Matt Leming]: the social media accounts would all be maintained through the clerks up as I imagine.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I do like just just kind of something that's on my mind while we're talking about that.

[Matt Leming]: I do feel like we do need to treat each social media platform as sort of an environment in itself.

[Matt Leming]: So there's plenty of precedent for having city council type pages on like Facebook, for instance, but I feel like.

[Matt Leming]: reddit is kind of a different environment for that sort of a thing it's where a lot of people get their information but like an official reddit posting it yeah it is definitely like the specific policy is definitely up for discussion uh councillor i thought you were first okay councillor callahan um if we really want for this to get to as many people as possible um i suspect that we need to

[Matt Leming]: I definitely agree with that.

[Matt Leming]: I just with with each platform, I think that it would be good to have a specific strategy in mind to look at what other folks have done for that, because with what's that we would need a way to get lots of different phone numbers for that, which may not have a moment.

[Matt Leming]: That is pretty that could be a very intensive process.

[Matt Leming]: But I definitely hear your point about different communities and, um, what?

[Matt Leming]: Not using these different social media platforms.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Smearty.

[Matt Leming]: I feel like a survey would be kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion, do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Seconded by Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: The motion of Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: We don't have to do a roll call, by the way.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, we can just move to join and approve.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: On the motion by Councilor Callahan to join and approve the other five motions.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: That's right.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, I literally just looked up.

[Matt Leming]: I just wanted to move the question on the, because we, we, we motioned to join them.

[Matt Leming]: We didn't actually vote on them.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, nevermind.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know.

[Matt Leming]: I don't know.

[Matt Leming]: It was something.

[Matt Leming]: Anyway, I would like to recognize my esteemed colleague, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I can work with you.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: And do we have any further comment from members of the public?

[Matt Leming]: Seeing none, do we, Councilor Callahan?

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, on the motion by Councilor Callaghan, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro to adjourn.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favour?

[Matt Leming]: All those opposed?

[Matt Leming]: Nay.

[Matt Leming]: The motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Have a good night.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to move the question.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, and I'd like to thank everybody for waiting so long across two meetings.

[Matt Leming]: It's unfortunate that we did have to.

[Matt Leming]: Can everybody hear me okay?

[Matt Leming]: OK, so what I'm going to talk about is what we're actually voting on tonight, why there is a housing need in Medford, Massachusetts, and how this helps that, and why this particular policy is unlikely to affect seniors, average homeowners.

[Matt Leming]: It's really more targeted at high-end real estate deals.

[Matt Leming]: Hey, excuse me.

[Matt Leming]: Excuse me.

[Matt Leming]: Excuse me.

[Matt Leming]: So at the state level, Governor Healy and many of our neighboring communities have proposed different forms of a real estate transfer fee.

[Matt Leming]: This is because Massachusetts is in a housing crisis right now.

[Matt Leming]: Medford in particular needs to build 671 more units in order to even meet a minimum 10% affordable housing requirement mandated by the state of Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: Each of those units cost between $500,000 and $600,000.

[Matt Leming]: to fund and to build and it was only last year that we even instituted an affordable housing trust which would be able to dedicate revenue towards putting towards addressing that problem.

[Matt Leming]: I have right here a letter

[Matt Leming]: from 21 residents of 208 Main Street, in which they say that they are being evicted right now because a major real estate company bought up their apartment complexes and told them they have to get up by next month if Medford had been serious about funding, any form of affordable housing 10 years ago, they, this would not be the case for them.

[Matt Leming]: So,

[Matt Leming]: Currently we have the Community Preservation Act funds.

[Matt Leming]: Before I was elected, I sat on the Community Preservation Act, or sorry, on the Community Preservation Committee, and we were able to dedicate maybe $800,000 a year to fund

[Matt Leming]: to fund affordable housing developments.

[Matt Leming]: We ended up dedicating about $2.4 million to walk link or but we only pay 2% of the price tag for that.

[Matt Leming]: So we need more revenue streams in order to put any sort in order to build up any sort of corpus of money that can be dedicated to affordable housing residents are being priced out of the city, and we need to more actively engage that now.

[Matt Leming]: What is what is being voted on tonight?

[Matt Leming]: What is being voted on tonight?

[Matt Leming]: Many residents, I believe, came here tonight under the belief that we were voting to pass a 2% tax on all real estate transactions in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: That is most definitely not the case.

[Matt Leming]: That is not the case.

[Matt Leming]: Because what this is, is a resolution to discuss the transfer fee to develop it.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: And there's different forms that these transfer fees can take at the state level what Governor Healy is pushing for.

[Matt Leming]: is is a transfer fee that wouldn't tax any price below $1 million.

[Matt Leming]: So if you sold $1 million property, you'd pay zero if you sold a $1.2 million property $4,000 split equally between the buyer and the seller.

[Matt Leming]: That is one example of a transfer fee policy.

[Matt Leming]: neighboring communities have submitted transfer fee policies that

[Matt Leming]: exclude seniors transactions between family members and owner occupied residences completely.

[Matt Leming]: So in other words, under these different examples of a transfer fee policy, if you lived in a home and you were selling it to somebody else who also intended to live in that home,

[Matt Leming]: it wouldn't it would not apply to you.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, this is really meant to address the situation like the one being experienced by the residents of 208 Main Street.

[Matt Leming]: Now, the trouble that we've gone through with this is the fact that

[Matt Leming]: This was originally on the February 20 agenda.

[Matt Leming]: And it was because there was a lot going on in that meeting it was tabled until today so that allowed three weeks for it to sit on the city council agenda, and a lot of misinformation

[Matt Leming]: was, I believe, spread around the community.

[Matt Leming]: It's an unfortunate timing issue.

[Matt Leming]: Something this important should not be sitting on an agenda without any discussion for this long.

[Matt Leming]: And so I know what my personal ideas about what a real estate transfer-free policy should look like, but because of a meeting law, I don't know what my colleagues as of yet think.

[Matt Leming]: We haven't been able to discuss it amongst ourselves.

[Matt Leming]: Okay?

[Matt Leming]: Now,

[Matt Leming]: The point is that even if the vote on this is successful tonight, we're not passing real estate transfer fee policy, we are passing a resolution to discuss and develop it.

[Matt Leming]: And this will then contain a number of exclusions, etc, etc.

[Matt Leming]: Now, even if we were to develop one, we were to pass it,

[Matt Leming]: It's and so on.

[Matt Leming]: This is a home rule petition.

[Matt Leming]: It does not mean that Medford would then have a real estate transfer fee.

[Matt Leming]: What it means is that we would ask the state to pass it and the state may or may not choose to do that.

[Matt Leming]: And if the state.

[Matt Leming]: No, listen.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, they may or may not choose to pass it.

[Matt Leming]: If they do, we still don't have a real estate transfer fee.

[Matt Leming]: We get the option to then develop our own.

[Matt Leming]: Now 18 other communities have requested a real estate transfer fee from the state.

[Matt Leming]: None of them have even been debated yet.

[Matt Leming]: The version that Governor Healey is trying to push in the Affordable Homes Act may or may not give us the option by default.

[Matt Leming]: So that is what is happening tonight.

[Matt Leming]: We're not discussing anything like rent control or any of the other home rule petitions that people have brought up.

[Matt Leming]: This is a resolution to find out, do we want a real estate transfer fee?

[Matt Leming]: What exclusions would be in it?

[Matt Leming]: Because at the end of the day, Medford really needs to be serious about addressing the affordable housing situation.

[Matt Leming]: People come to us a lot and they talk about the roads.

[Matt Leming]: They talk about improving the schools and

[Matt Leming]: and a lot of other things.

[Matt Leming]: The fact of the matter is that Medford increasingly is pricing out the working class, and those are the people that repair our roads.

[Matt Leming]: Those are people that improve our infrastructure.

[Matt Leming]: They can't afford to live here anymore.

[Matt Leming]: Okay?

[Matt Leming]: So that's what this is.

[Matt Leming]: Now, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much.

[Matt Leming]: They're currently interviewing people.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, I wouldn't say it's impossible that the state would approve it.

[Matt Leming]: But even having having the home rule petitions like this come to the state house from multiple communities does really emphasize to, um, the state government that this is something that communities really need help on.

[Matt Leming]: I just like to touch on to, um, two other points because I was conversing

[Matt Leming]: this is a particular item that I think that I think has received a lot of outsized attention compared to a lot of other things City Council is doing when it comes to affording the to funding the affordable housing to us.

[Matt Leming]: We're not definitely not putting all of our eggs in this basket.

[Matt Leming]: Later on in the agenda, I have three resolutions to update linkage fees, which haven't been updated since the 1990s.

[Matt Leming]: There's other things that are going through committee right now related to shortening the

[Matt Leming]: that there is a window that developers have to sit on property, which would therefore shorten the overall development time.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that this particular resolution, I think, just due to some unfortunate, um, timing and obviously poor optics.

[Matt Leming]: What was the three weeks in between meetings has just received, um, a lot of

[Matt Leming]: Any answers?

[Matt Leming]: Go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: The basis for a lot of these programs is often money.

[Matt Leming]: So Somerville has a community land trust.

[Matt Leming]: It's just that they've had an affordable housing trust since like the 90s.

[Matt Leming]: So it's been accumulating money for years so that they could actually do that.

[Matt Leming]: I hear a lot of,

[Matt Leming]: programs like that that could address the housing crisis, the basis of it is always money, which we again we literally just instituted an affordable housing trust last year and this is one of the revenue streams we're investigating for it.

[Matt Leming]: Go to Councilor Leming then we'll go back to public participation Councilor Leming know I was just saying that we should move on to the next.

[Matt Leming]: It was just a minor point.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: But again, we haven't actually discussed the details of what this would look like.

[Matt Leming]: I'd have to go to the committee to do that.

[Matt Leming]: But in other transfer fee proposals, transfers between family members where usually no cash is actually exchanged or it's pretty standard to exclude those from consideration.

[Matt Leming]: you know, and if you gave a, you know, million dollar home to your child, like they're not giving you a million dollars for it.

[Matt Leming]: So there's no cash sort of tax.

[Matt Leming]: So that would, I just want to put that out there that typically in these proposals, those are exempt.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'm glad someone reads them.

[Matt Leming]: What a, what an evening it's been.

[Matt Leming]: So, so I just would like to address some of the just sort of reiterate what I said earlier in my initial comments which is to say that the.

[Matt Leming]: The way that this got broken to the public was really not ideal, and I do wanna recognize that.

[Matt Leming]: Normally something like this would be put on the agenda, discussed at a council meeting, and then a lot more public information would come out then, and then something a little bit more solid would be developed in committee.

[Matt Leming]: What happened was our February 20 meeting, we ended up, you know, addressing the fire for the firefighter issues and of course that just ended up pushing the whole meeting to past midnight.

[Matt Leming]: So this was tabled.

[Matt Leming]: And then we also had the election on March 5 so that

[Matt Leming]: was another delay and basically just it meant that there was three weeks where again, this was on the agenda with zero details to the public.

[Matt Leming]: And Councilors here were also a little bit hamstrung in terms of what we could promise the details would look like because again, we hadn't actually discussed it yet.

[Matt Leming]: I was trying to

[Matt Leming]: I was trying to write on my website about what different RETF policies could look like, what the process was, and just generally try to clarify things there.

[Matt Leming]: But again, it was difficult because I can't promise anything because the proposal itself hasn't been developed.

[Matt Leming]: I do wanna, I would like to recognize that and acknowledge that the way that this was broken to the public, especially in this instance, wasn't ideal.

[Matt Leming]: And we do have a lot of improving to do in that space.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, what's that piece of paper?

[Matt Leming]: I've been curious all evening.

[Matt Leming]: I gotcha.

[Matt Leming]: This is only like the first resolution on the agenda.

[Matt Leming]: I am so sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so basically this is, this is sort of supposed to be three resolutions but I think it was, it was now I'm just getting emotion table until the next meeting table to the meeting on March 19 Councilor living seconded by Councilor gala.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I submitted a brief list of budget recommendations.

[Matt Leming]: I wanted to make it a little bit more of a focused a couple of focused items because I.

[Matt Leming]: You know, I didn't want it to be too redundant to some of the issues and very important issues that my colleagues brought up concerning the staff concerning the budget for the schools, for instance, but these, but I just like to make sure with these relatively modest requests that we have money set aside for three studies that I believe will be.

[Matt Leming]: for the long term financial health of the city, a linkage study, which should be coming into, which should be brought up at the council meeting next week in order to update the linkage fees in the city, a nexus study, which will determine how much to charge the developers to put into

[Matt Leming]: affordable housing and a transportation demand management study, which would also be carried out by the planning office in order to implement at the staff level the transportation demand management program, which is currently in the planning and permitting committee.

[Matt Leming]: The rest is just really repeating what was said before about the need for more and permanent election staff.

[Matt Leming]: which I think the last, the previous election and the fact that we've had a lot of loss in that department has really shown the importance of.

[Matt Leming]: A permanent salary for one community social worker who has been on a sort of a revolving set of funds for a while now, it's a very important position.

[Matt Leming]: And I had a conversation about having increased salary for the part-time library workers.

[Matt Leming]: That is a position that I haven't seen a whole lot of advocacy for or mention of just previously in other city conversations.

[Matt Leming]: So I thought it would be useful to represent them in some of these budgetary priorities.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I just like to thank the, I just like to riff off what my colleagues were saying.

[Matt Leming]: The problem that we're facing is not misallocations of funds.

[Matt Leming]: It's the fact that Medford doesn't have enough funding to begin with.

[Matt Leming]: We have one of the lowest operating budgets for any major city of our size in the state of Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: And so we are not going to get everything that we discussed and wanted to tonight.

[Matt Leming]: One point that I would like to make is that there are a few

[Matt Leming]: There are a few items that were discussed that I think would substantially help with growth and getting more revenues in the future.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that it would be.

[Matt Leming]: Good to prioritize those those particular items.

[Matt Leming]: So, for instance, I'm going to.

[Matt Leming]: I think this will be more of a discussion point next week, but I'm going to strongly insist on having the money for these studies, the linkage fee study, for instance, that we could update those because that's something that in particular will help us get more revenues into the future and hopefully get us out of this.

[Matt Leming]: get us out of this problem.

[Matt Leming]: And a lot of the financial software that was discussed, I think falls into the same category.

[Matt Leming]: So when it comes to priorities, we should be looking at things that long-term will help with more revenue and more growth in the future.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I don't know.

[Matt Leming]: Anyone have anything else they want to chat about?

[Matt Leming]: You did make the motion to raise our salaries to $89,000.

[Matt Leming]: So it was seconded.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Just a quick point of information from Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Could you repeat the section of the Mass General Law that you mentioned earlier?

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that a rental registry would be be an excellent idea.

[Matt Leming]: The two things that I just like to get some information on which I believe Council President Bears touched on a little bit here is first of all, how much would it what would be estimated cost and effort be to send out the notification every

[Matt Leming]: Property owner in the city and what would be the capacity of your office?

[Matt Leming]: Do you estimate to design and upkeep a rental registry?

[Matt Leming]: At this time.

[Matt Leming]: Hello, my name is Matt Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I'm one of your city councilors here in Medford, Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: For this recap, I'm going to be talking about a couple of the housing proposals, specifically home rule petitions, that were discussed at recent city council meetings and which will be discussed in the future.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to discuss what these policies are,

[Matt Leming]: Why they're practically needed in Medford and why many of them at this point are state level debates Just as much as they are local.

[Matt Leming]: So to recap at the February 14th planning and permitting committee We discussed a home rule petition for rent Stabilization.

[Matt Leming]: This is was something that was put forward two years ago by councillor Collins and councillor bears which

[Matt Leming]: which is basically asking the state for permission to implement rent stabilization, a softer form of rent control.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially, it prevents landlords from raising rents by more than 5% in a given year.

[Matt Leming]: At the February 20th meeting, we were supposed to discuss a Home Rule petition for a real estate transfer fee that was tabled until March 12th, because by the time we actually got to that point on the agenda, it was midnight.

[Matt Leming]: And that will be coming up as a point of discussion next month.

[Matt Leming]: Real estate transfer fee, that was brought forward by myself and Council Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: It is essentially a tax for buying and selling homes.

[Matt Leming]: Now, there will be a lot of exemptions into this, but essentially,

[Matt Leming]: It means that if you decide to sell a home, you put 2% of that into the Affordable Housing Trust, which was only instituted in Medford last year and currently doesn't have any substantial revenue streams.

[Matt Leming]: Real estate transfer fee almost definitely will have exemptions included in it, including for vulnerable seniors.

[Matt Leming]: So if you're a vulnerable senior and you are trying to sell your home to pay for, for instance, a nursing home, you will not have to put any money into the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: you are giving the home to a family member, a transfer of convenience, and there's no actual cash transfer going on there, so if you're giving it to your

[Matt Leming]: child for instance, you do not have to put money into the Affordable Housing Trust because again, if there's no cash, then you're not just gonna put $24,000 and you don't have $24,000 in your bank account, but you want to give a home that is worth $1.2 million to a family member, then you don't suddenly have to come up with that money.

[Matt Leming]: And it almost definitely will

[Matt Leming]: apply to only homes above a certain price.

[Matt Leming]: So the normal threshold that is typically thrown around is homes that are above a million dollars will be subject to a real estate transfer fee.

[Matt Leming]: Anything's cheaper than that, no.

[Matt Leming]: So the

[Matt Leming]: Real estate transfer fee is a proposed tax.

[Matt Leming]: If the Home Rule petition passes city council and is then signed by the mayor and passed to the state, that does not mean that Medford will get a real estate transfer fee, and the same is true

[Matt Leming]: for any of these home rule petitions.

[Matt Leming]: What they mean is that the state would then give us permission potentially to implement it, our own real estate transfer fee in the future.

[Matt Leming]: So to offer some context here, 18 other communities have put forward their own home rule petitions for real estate transfer fee.

[Matt Leming]: If this makes it through, Medford would be number 19.

[Matt Leming]: Currently, none of them have passed yet.

[Matt Leming]: What's happening at the state level is the governor and leadership in the state house are working on the Affordable Homes Act.

[Matt Leming]: This is a very big piece of legislation that is meant to address the housing crisis in the state of Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: One piece of that legislation could be a real estate transfer fee option.

[Matt Leming]: It may not look like

[Matt Leming]: everything that I've just talked about.

[Matt Leming]: Again, it could be a 2% tax, it could be a 0.5% tax, it could come in a different form, but if the Affordable Homes Act does end up including that in its final form,

[Matt Leming]: then all of these Home Rule petitions would essentially be moot.

[Matt Leming]: This Home Rule petition would have a practical effect if the Affordable Homes Act didn't include the local option for a real estate transfer fee, but the state decided to just pass all of the Home Rule petitions that communities have brought forward to them in one slate.

[Matt Leming]: My personal opinion is that this practically offers our state delegation evidence that towns and communities and cities around Massachusetts really want the real estate transfer fee.

[Matt Leming]: They really need mechanisms to fund affordable housing in the city.

[Matt Leming]: If you go around Medford, the absolute bare minimum that you can find for any house in the city is $600,000.

[Matt Leming]: Currently, we have

[Matt Leming]: almost no money going to affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: The city council approved on February 20th the final zoning approval for the Loughlin Court redevelopment.

[Matt Leming]: That is a project that cost over a hundred million dollars and only about two percent of that is being paid for by the city.

[Matt Leming]: The rest is state and federal grants.

[Matt Leming]: The city's putting forth about $2.4 million from our Community Preservation Act funding, which is a fund that also goes towards historic preservation and open space projects around the city as well.

[Matt Leming]: And again, we're only putting 2% towards that.

[Matt Leming]: Other communities like Somerville, they're able to fund things like a community land trust, which is where the city buys a bit of property and is able to put affordable housing on that because they've had their own affordable housing trust since the 80s or 90s, I think, and they were able to just fork out millions of dollars from that to fund these affordable housing developments within the city.

[Matt Leming]: Medford never did anything like that.

[Matt Leming]: What would I like to see for the city, you know, bigger picture in terms of funding the Affordable Housing Trust?

[Matt Leming]: Again, we instituted the AHT, I should say the previous city council instituted the AHT in the last term, it's still being set up, we're still looking for applicants to actually sit on the board of it, and we need funding

[Matt Leming]: We need revenue streams in order to actually build up money over time in the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: The real estate transfer fee is one potential mechanism of doing so.

[Matt Leming]: And frankly, it's not entirely clear right now that the state will approve that, and it's not entirely clear that if they do approve it, sort of what the policy will look like in the future.

[Matt Leming]: Almost definitely Community Preservation Act funds will go to the Affordable Housing Trust so that it can accumulate over time.

[Matt Leming]: One other mechanism that I am looking to implement, which I'm preparing a resolution for the March 12th meeting related to this as well, are linkage fees.

[Matt Leming]: Medford has linkage, which is basically money that developers have to pay whenever they build anything in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: Right now it goes towards things like water and sewage and roads.

[Matt Leming]: It does not go towards affordable housing at all.

[Matt Leming]: This is because, again, Medford didn't even have an affordable housing trust until last year.

[Matt Leming]: So something else I'm going to be doing is asking Medford, sorry, the Community Development Board specifically to update its linkage fees, which haven't been updated since the 1990s.

[Matt Leming]: So that's very relatively little money coming in.

[Matt Leming]: from those and I'm going to be asking them and I'm going to be working on an ordinance which would make it so that some of those linkage fees, some of the money from developers, will also go into the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: So that is what's going on with a lot of these Home Rule petitions right now.

[Matt Leming]: My personal opinion about some of the state-level debates is I think that

[Matt Leming]: I think that the real estate transfer fee would pass through the state before rent stabilization does.

[Matt Leming]: And it is unclear to me whether either of them will, but the scenario where the state ends up saying, okay, Medford, you can implement rent stabilization, but we're not going to prove the transfer fee is very unlikely in my mind.

[Matt Leming]: What I'm also looking at right now is sort of the likelihood of this real estate transfer fee being passed in the first place.

[Matt Leming]: I'm trying to talk to people that sort of know about this to keep up with it and just trying to really see what we end up being allowed to do in the first place.

[Matt Leming]: My intention behind putting out this Home Rule petition is to give the state delegation in Medford tools to show the leadership in Beacon Hill that, yes, communities really need to put more money towards affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: And that is something that Medford has completely failed to do in the past.

[Matt Leming]: So that's where I'm coming from here.

[Matt Leming]: You know, to be totally honest, that's about all I have to say about this.

[Matt Leming]: I'm looking forward to what people bring to the meeting on March 12th when we actually do get to discussing this.

[Matt Leming]: Apologize to folks that sat for a long period of time at the February 20th meeting But didn't actually get to talk about any of these homeworld petitions And it should be brought up pretty early in the meeting on March 12.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you very much Thank you for listening and have a have a wonderful week

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, and I also ask that I'm just gonna... That's fine.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just gonna talk, and I'm going to...

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So I got messages from about 30 people opposed to this, including three or four from firefighters.

[Matt Leming]: I ended up having long conversations, you know, with two of those firefighters.

[Matt Leming]: I had dinner with another one on.

[Matt Leming]: Friday, Thursday, and I even went to the South Medford fire station and rang their doorbell and tried to start a conversation with the fellow there who obviously wasn't expecting to talk to a city councilor but the point that I'm getting at is that

[Matt Leming]: City Council, just like the rest of, like many other people in Medford, has been in a bit of an information vacuum about the nature of what's been happening with union negotiations between the mayor and the leadership and the firefighters union.

[Matt Leming]: And so what I'm trying to say is that

[Matt Leming]: We didn't really know too much about what was going on behind closed doors compared to the rest of the public until last Thursday when this came onto the agenda and suddenly became in the interest of both parties to put as much information about what's been happening behind closed doors for months.

[Matt Leming]: as possible.

[Matt Leming]: So I did talk to the I did talk to the mayor, I tried to talk to different firefighters, I tried to get past a lot of the spin.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of you know, obviously, during the union negotiations, union contract negotiations, relationships fell apart.

[Matt Leming]: And there's a lot of there's a lot of bad blood that's going around.

[Matt Leming]: And I heard a lot of that.

[Matt Leming]: And so what I'm going to say is,

[Matt Leming]: What I'm going to try to do is make my thinking about this as transparent as I possibly can, and so I'm going to say the points that appeal to me most for voting down, and then I'm going to say the points that I see in favor of this, and then I want to listen to public comment after that, and I'm not going to say anything else.

[Matt Leming]: The point in opposition to this that meant the most to me was the morale in the fire department.

[Matt Leming]: There are promotional issues.

[Matt Leming]: If you bring in somebody from the outside, firefighters cannot advance in the normal routes.

[Matt Leming]: I hear that loud and clear that so I received an email from a firefighter.

[Matt Leming]: Dan Craven, and I think he phrased it best.

[Matt Leming]: He said, four promotions normally happen in this scenario.

[Matt Leming]: Firefighter, Lieutenant, Captain, Deputy Chief each get promoted to fill the vacancies created by the Fire Chief's retirement.

[Matt Leming]: There are already established promotional lists for Deputy Chief, Captain, and Lieutenant.

[Matt Leming]: The Mayor has instead called upon your Honorable Body to remove the Chief's position from civil service law so that she can hire him outside the Medford Fire Department.

[Matt Leming]: which would in turn effectively nullify the normal promotions.

[Matt Leming]: I take that very seriously.

[Matt Leming]: He then goes on to talk about all of the studying that's required for these tests, why they're so difficult to do.

[Matt Leming]: And I've also heard about the behavior that from the mayor personally, which obviously didn't appeal to a lot of people during this.

[Matt Leming]: What I'm going to say that I need, if I am going to vote against this, I absolutely need to be convinced of a few things.

[Matt Leming]: First,

[Matt Leming]: the sick time situation as my colleagues have both brought up.

[Matt Leming]: Now, I have tried to ask as many firefighters about this as possible.

[Matt Leming]: I have been told that they actually were sick and I'll be perfectly honest, 21 out of 23 people call in in a day and then they come in later, I don't believe it.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just gonna say that I do not believe it.

[Matt Leming]: I have, otherwise when I try to ask about that, I think that there's some ongoing, you know, potential litigation.

[Matt Leming]: So people have been advised to not talk to me about what's happening behind closed doors.

[Matt Leming]: And one in my position in this is that we absolutely cannot have, we cannot have the fire department making the five o'clock news about these issues, okay?

[Matt Leming]: That is my bottom line.

[Matt Leming]: I understand morale issues.

[Matt Leming]: I understand everything else.

[Matt Leming]: I do not want to see the Medford Fire Department with a culture that encourages these kinds of issues like sick time and whatnot.

[Matt Leming]: And if

[Matt Leming]: If an outsider can fix the culture that encouraged that, then I would vote for an outsider.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing that, the other thing, and this was a fact that was confirmed by both sides, I specifically asked this of both the fire department and of the mayor.

[Matt Leming]: Now, one issue is that the civil service

[Matt Leming]: test is fair, it allows for promotions.

[Matt Leming]: I was told about, you know, a situation in 1999, where two people took the promotional exam to go from deputy to fire chief, one of them was less popular, but scored higher, that person became fire chief.

[Matt Leming]: This past time, three to four people signed up to take the exam, only one of them actually took it.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so if you're telling me that it is a competitive process to be fire chief, then that is not something that given that fact that I believe now I have heard I've heard that fact has been confirmed to me by both sides.

[Matt Leming]: What I have heard from

[Matt Leming]: why that was from the mayor was that folks wanted to select their friends.

[Matt Leming]: What I've heard that that was from the fire department is that it is a big decision.

[Matt Leming]: People need to talk to their families about whether or not they want to take the advancement exam and so on.

[Matt Leming]: I even talked to one of the deputy chiefs that signed up for that but did not take it.

[Matt Leming]: But the point is that

[Matt Leming]: It did not convince me that it was a competitive process.

[Matt Leming]: So that being said, the morale issue is something that I do take very seriously.

[Matt Leming]: I don't expect what I just said to appeal to everybody in this room, but my goal here is to make my thinking on this as transparent as possible.

[Matt Leming]: That's where I'm at with that.

[Matt Leming]: I've tried to talk to as many firefighters as I can.

[Matt Leming]: I hope once all of this blows over, I can hang out with you all some more, maybe do a Q&A session, just try to make City Council a bit more accessible and transparent.

[Matt Leming]: But that's my thinking.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And I look forward to listening to members of the public.

[Matt Leming]: The two things that I brought up were first off the issue of the sick time abuse that occurred in early February.

[Matt Leming]: The point that I was bringing up was that I

[Matt Leming]: need to be convinced that whatever future leader that is hired, is appointed, does not lead the fire department to a position where they're making the five o'clock news in the future.

[Matt Leming]: That to me is the bottom line behind, like even beyond a lot of the morale issues that have been brought up.

[Matt Leming]: My perspective is that,

[Matt Leming]: doing this would lead to people thinking that they could never make it to the top, which obviously affects motivation.

[Matt Leming]: But at the same time, if you bring an outside officer to lead a new unit, that is more effective at inducing culture change than having somebody that has spent their entire career in that particular body.

[Matt Leming]: So I have not seen anything that can convince me that the current civil service process will effectively address any sick time abuse issues that are currently happening.

[Matt Leming]: That's where I'm at right now.

[Matt Leming]: And I don't think this was another point that I brought up.

[Matt Leming]: It wasn't necessarily a question, but it was kind of supporting that point was the fact that there was one person who actually took the exam this past time to go from deputy to higher chief.

[Matt Leming]: And so I don't want to speculate as to the reasons for that.

[Matt Leming]: Four people signed up, one person took it.

[Matt Leming]: That is a fact that has been established by both sides.

[Matt Leming]: But to me, that is evidence against

[Matt Leming]: the idea that the civil service position, when applied every single promotional round, would actually hire competitive leadership.

[Matt Leming]: Those were the specific points that I brought up.

[Matt Leming]: Now, to my colleague's point about, you know, potential litigation here, I do respect that.

[Matt Leming]: I do respect that this is not something that firefighters of the union can necessarily speak directly to.

[Matt Leming]: Again, I have asked folks that I can find, and they typically have referred me to either representatives from the union or union lawyers, which that's the response that I've gotten.

[Matt Leming]: Those are my thoughts.

[Matt Leming]: That is the result of where... That's the result.

[Matt Leming]: Basically, to summarize, if an outside leader can keep the fire department from making the news with corruption allegations in the future, then I will be voting for an outside leader.

[Matt Leming]: That's a fair point.

[Matt Leming]: So I think the nature of the point of who went to the news is like, okay, so it was the mayor that presented the news release there.

[Matt Leming]: And I thought about that too, like clearly the idea here is the mayor, like, there's the sick time issue that happened, the mayor brought that to the news.

[Matt Leming]: And so, this absolutely is a situation where

[Matt Leming]: The mayor brings something to the news.

[Matt Leming]: It is public points against the fire department.

[Matt Leming]: There's totally political maneuvering here.

[Matt Leming]: Here's the thing, if the fire department is gonna do that, you can't put yourselves in a position where somebody can give your actions to a local news source and it's worth reporting.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, does that make sense?

[Matt Leming]: I'm only an ensign.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you, Chair.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Newton.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry Feedback there.

[Matt Leming]: Yes we met.

[Matt Leming]: We heard a proposal by or we heard a, um.

[Matt Leming]: Presentation by

[Matt Leming]: you know, City Council's activities, what we're doing.

[Matt Leming]: There was some discussion as to potential avenues, like ways to advertise sort of what we're doing.

[Matt Leming]: that we were concerned about.

[Matt Leming]: As well as concerns that we could be there could be, you know too many messages coming out of city City Hall.

[Matt Leming]: We, um and we ended up passing a motion by Councilor Tseng to give to requesting all the members of the committee to offer.

[Matt Leming]: Feedback for their specific ideas about what

[Matt Leming]: And we, for the next one, we intend to invite over several folks from City Hall who can, like Steve Smriti, Kevin Harrington, and so on, who can offer other contacts for different outlets.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Part of this is not so much to ask questions, but I previously was on the CPC, so I just felt like adding a little bit more context about the nature of the potential relationship between the CPC and the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: Typically, affordable housing projects that come before the CPC are just

[Matt Leming]: you'll get like a big project once every couple of years.

[Matt Leming]: So the Walkling Court development was, I mean, I think that that would, the final price tag for that would be over 100 million, of which the CBC is donating $800,000 this year.

[Matt Leming]: And the trouble with the CBC, and please correct me if any of this is inaccurate, but it's just, you know,

[Matt Leming]: is that they have to spend a certain amount from taxes every year.

[Matt Leming]: The benefit of the Affordable Housing Trust in this case is that it allows money to be collected over time so that when one of those projects does come along, you could end up then putting towards a greater amount of capital towards that project.

[Matt Leming]: There was a bit of trouble with multi-year funding towards the Walkland Court redevelopment that the CPC was running into during my time there.

[Matt Leming]: I think that

[Matt Leming]: I think that the issue that we're sort of seeing with the Affordable Housing Trust and potential revenue streams into it is volume.

[Matt Leming]: So the CBC will be a very important feeder into it.

[Matt Leming]: It is, however, like I said, the walk-in core, just for an example, I believe, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's something over $100 million the CBC takes in

[Matt Leming]: Again, just ballpark here around $2 million-ish a year, of which a third of that can go to affordable housing.

[Matt Leming]: So if we are going to be able to fund affordable housing developments like that, the CPC could be an important source of funds.

[Matt Leming]: However, it is necessary to have that coming from

[Matt Leming]: different areas.

[Matt Leming]: So this will come up in the regular meeting, so I don't want to just sort of clarify the CBC and the Affordable Housing Trust.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Any other questions from members of the Council?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, apologize for the technical issues, everybody, but I believe we are good right now to start.

[Matt Leming]: This is the meeting of the Planning and Permitting Committee, Medford City Council.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, can you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Wait.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: And I am going to be chairing this committee at the request of

[Matt Leming]: Vice President Collins, who's normally the chair of this committee, leave the first item.

[Matt Leming]: The first and only item on the agenda is paper 22-310, offered by President Bears and Vice President Collins, housing home rule petitions.

[Matt Leming]: And I will leave this to any

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, just gonna go ahead and leave this to any individual Councilors that, oh, yes.

[Matt Leming]: Just gonna leave this to any individual Councilors that would like to speak.

[Matt Leming]: Mr. Chair, if I can.

[Matt Leming]: Absolutely, yep.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: And I would like to pass this off to Vice President Collins as the sponsor of this paper.

[Matt Leming]: So feel free to feel free to take it away.

[Matt Leming]: Go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: Absolutely, Councilor Collins or Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Are there comments from any other councilors before Vice President Collins continues with her presentation?

[Matt Leming]: Seeing none, go ahead, Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan, then back to Councilor Collins.

[Matt Leming]: And I would like, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: All right, oh, sorry, yep.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli, was that a motion to table?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Seeing no, seeing no second for that, for the motion to table.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to move on to Councilor Callaghan and then Councilor Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Collins, or Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to go back to Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: And then after that, we're going to let some of our speakers talk and then open it up for public comments.

[Matt Leming]: So Vice President Collins and then the speakers.

[Matt Leming]: We are now going to open it up to members of the public.

[Matt Leming]: I'd first like to recognize some of our invited speakers.

[Matt Leming]: Katie McCann, and Eduardo Palacios from City Light, Fever, and Bona.

[Matt Leming]: If you'd like to say anything, go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: Eduardo, could you also state your name and address for record?

[Matt Leming]: Apologies that I forgot to ask you that explicitly.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, just just say your name and address.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you guys.

[Matt Leming]: Katie, name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: Good.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to open it up to members of the public.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have anyone that would like to comment on this?

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: just notifying you you have 30 seconds.

[Matt Leming]: and I did see that Councilor Callahan had her hand raised twice, but I would like to finish up the public comments period before moving on.

[Matt Leming]: Are there any other members of the public that would like to speak?

[Matt Leming]: Name and address for the record.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Any other members of the public?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, seeing none, the chambers are on zoom going to close the public comments period.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, Councilor Callahan was there.

[Matt Leming]: Is there anything that you'd like to like, just like to speak to.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, we have a motion from Vice President Collins, second from Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Let's do it.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, would you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: Vice President Collins made a motion, seconded by Councilor Cal, and President Bears amended the motion.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, that was a parliamentary procedure for doing that.

[Matt Leming]: Do I have to get Vice President Collins' permission to amend the motion, or is that too different?

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, do you have the text for that clerk?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, in that case, could you please call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Yes, motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: All right, we are right at 7 p.m.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any further comment?

[Matt Leming]: Vice President Collins.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: All right, motion from Vice President Collins to keep the paper in committee.

[Matt Leming]: Second from Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: So two birds, one stone.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you for coming.

[Matt Leming]: Can you talk a little bit about the land situation?

[Matt Leming]: Who owns the land or the building for the Malden Learning Center?

[Matt Leming]: Is it rented out?

[Matt Leming]: Is it donated?

[Matt Leming]: You said the budget was $130,000 a year.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, no, absolutely.

[Matt Leming]: And where does the $130,000 come from the city or donations?

[Matt Leming]: And apologies, Chair, I just have one more question, though I don't, I'm not, I don't know, this is a Medford specific thing, so this is just like for later in the meeting of somebody else.

[Matt Leming]: What would the candidate locations for Medford be if it were a learning center?

[Matt Leming]: like what locations.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So two questions, just about what Marianne said.

[Matt Leming]: So with the regional funding issue, I mean, does that, sorry if I misunderstood sort of what you were saying there.

[Matt Leming]: Would that imply that if warming centers were like band together and apply for like a block grant in that model, they'd be more likely to get funding?

[Matt Leming]: So that's just like my first question, like try to understand that situation.

[Matt Leming]: And the second is, I mean, is it possible that Medford has less of a homeless situation than some of the surrounding communities because we just lack resources compared to those communities for the homeless?

[Matt Leming]: So we're sort of just like,

[Matt Leming]: putting the problem off to our neighbors.

[Matt Leming]: I guess I was just asking if there's a future possibility with that in mind, or if this is already a thing, like having all the warming centers and greater Boston sort of apply as a group and split the funding, or is that not a thing?

[Matt Leming]: I remember I had a conversation with Nisha over a year ago where she was talking about some of these regional funding issues.

[Matt Leming]: But it's interesting to see how it evolves over time.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, just a minor part.

[Matt Leming]: Are the requirements for a daycare and a warming center in terms of the physical space similar?

[Matt Leming]: So if something's eligible to be a daycare, is it basically eligible to be a potential warming center?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, well, I'm just asking because, I mean, potentially if, like, you know, if Alicia's office approached a church at one time and just found that they couldn't be a daycare for some reason, then potentially you could go back, you could, like, circle back to them and be like, hey, would you maybe want to be a warming center?

[Matt Leming]: Anyway, that's just a thought popped into my head.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, where are the communities that were using illegal, where physically were they, that were using illegal heating systems?

[Matt Leming]: I was just asking Alicia where physically the communities that were using illegal eating systems were that refused to go into shelters.

[Matt Leming]: 2nd.

[Matt Leming]: I was just asking if we could, Chair, if we'd be able to screen share the governing agenda, if one of us has it.

[Matt Leming]: Well, it bugs me because it's not an ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: The resolution.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: But I did submit that as an ordinance.

[Matt Leming]: So that is my language.

[Matt Leming]: I'll make sure that it's updated.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: OK.

[Matt Leming]: So I just want to put that out there.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Would that require knowing what the budget is?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I'm thinking this is important.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so this is the, I guess we can go ahead and start.

[Matt Leming]: So this is the first meeting of the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee of the Medford City Council.

[Matt Leming]: I can't quite remember from the last time if it's procedure to say the Pledge of Allegiance for a committee meeting

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, no, no.

[Matt Leming]: I was just wondering for my own.

[Matt Leming]: Anyway, clerk, can you call the roll?

[Matt Leming]: Yep.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: So the first thing, the first discussion item is

[Matt Leming]: 24-006, a resolution that each council committee review the 2024 to 2025 council governing agenda as amended at the January 24th, 2024 committee of the full meeting.

[Matt Leming]: So let's see, but I know that right now we have

[Matt Leming]: You have a bit of limited.

[Matt Leming]: time and I'm not seeing not seeing a Councilor bears here at the moment to discuss that.

[Matt Leming]: So I would propose and again, if this isn't procedurally right, just feel free to correct me.

[Matt Leming]: So I just propose that we go to go straight to 24-015 the resolution to discuss modernizing council communications and outreach strategy.

[Matt Leming]: Um,

[Matt Leming]: which yeah, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, yep, then we'll just go to 24-006, Councilor Callahan, see you have your hand raised.

[Matt Leming]: Is that a, so is that a motion to?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so motion to suspend the regular rules and move 2406 to the end and go straight to the 24015.

[Matt Leming]: Thanks.

[Matt Leming]: Do I hear a second?

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Second from?

[Matt Leming]: Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Yep, Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, all those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion is

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: All right, 24 dash, well, thank you clerk.

[Matt Leming]: And again, learning experience for all of us.

[Matt Leming]: 24-015 resolution to discuss modernizing council communications and outreach strategy.

[Matt Leming]: We have any discussion items on that?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Saw a hand from Councilor Callahan earlier, but she put it down.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro, you were next, and then Councilor Scarpelli after, and then Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Calhoun.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarbell, I wasn't sure if you had another comment to raise your hand.

[Matt Leming]: And thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I would, I see two more hands.

[Matt Leming]: I would like to let Councilor Tseng finish his presentation because this, I think there, I believe there are a few more slides and leave enough time because we have, we have another, just another half an hour before we have a very strict cutoff to this meeting prior to that.

[Matt Leming]: And also get enough time.

[Matt Leming]: And a second from Councilor Scarapelli.

[Matt Leming]: All those in favor?

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Uh, we have to do a roll call.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, roll call.

[Matt Leming]: Like I said, this is a learning experience.

[Matt Leming]: Some of these votes are roll call, some of these- Listen, I've been doing this, I've been doing this 16 years, I still butcher it.

[Matt Leming]: So I have- I'm ready whenever you are.

[Matt Leming]: Ready.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes and let's go to Councilor Lazzaro and then let Councilor Tseng finish his presentation.

[Matt Leming]: And yeah, Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Just a thought.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng, how fast can you

[Matt Leming]: I'll stop.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any answer saying is there any, any other presentation you'd like to make on this.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Scarpelli.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any further discussions or motions on the topic?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, I suppose since we have about, technically about, well, 19 minutes left, I'd like to open this up for, is there any public comment?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, I don't see anybody.

[Matt Leming]: They're hand raised, so let's move on to 24-022 offered by Councilor Lazzaro resolution on biannual training on diversity, equity and inclusion.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any discussion on this topic?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: I have a question, actually.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, great.

[Matt Leming]: So, I mean, do you think that these trainings would involve people talking at the Councilors or would involve more in-depth discussions?

[Matt Leming]: Because, I mean, my understanding is that it's essentially an informational session.

[Matt Leming]: What would the format look like in that sense?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I just wanted to kind of get a sense of how much interaction, just like inner discussion among the councillors there would be, or if it's more of an information sort of thing.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, sorry, I didn't see the cameras.

[Matt Leming]: No worries.

[Matt Leming]: Oh, I'm so sorry.

[Matt Leming]: The little leaves in the corner were camouflaging your hand.

[Matt Leming]: Is there a second?

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Okay.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Second the motion.

[Matt Leming]: I was, I was pointing out the pun.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Motion passes.

[Matt Leming]: Once again, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any public comment?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, seeing none, motion to, oh, I freeze this.

[Matt Leming]: reinstate the rules of order and go back to 24-006.

[Matt Leming]: You don't need to vote on that because it's a committee meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Do I?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, well, it's my first meeting, everybody.

[Matt Leming]: You're doing great.

[Matt Leming]: I'm asking for your flexibility here as I try to wrap everything up in about,

[Matt Leming]: about eight more minutes.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so is there, okay, 24-006 resolution that each council committee review the 2024 to 2025 council governing agenda as amended at the January 24th, 2024 committee of the full meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Is there any discussion on this?

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan and Clerk, I know this is a, is it possible to get the relevant part of the governing agenda up on the screen, have it handy in a digital form?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, go ahead.

[Matt Leming]: And Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so you mentioned the cheapest apps, the point person for the data equity and open data laws.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, is it... I mean, do you think it would be appropriate to go, like, you know, do another request for sort of information about this?

[Matt Leming]: I'm not even sure how that would be phrased.

[Matt Leming]: Do you think it would be good if those discussions are done one-on-one, or can we just ask Francis about that the next time?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, that's all right.

[Matt Leming]: That's everything.

[Matt Leming]: I have a and we are right at 659.

[Matt Leming]: Do I have a motion to adjourn?

[Matt Leming]: We have second.

[Matt Leming]: I got second.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, second from Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, is this a roll call?

[Matt Leming]: Okay, yeah, okay.

[Matt Leming]: Clerk, please call the roll.

[Matt Leming]: Do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, second from Councilor was our Oh, please.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: So do we want to discuss the governing agenda?

[Matt Leming]: I feel like the governing agenda is something that we might want to take.

[Matt Leming]: I'm sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Are we still allowed to look at it in future resident services and public engagement meetings?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, sorry.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just, I'm just not, I'm just not, I'm still like, sorry, I'm still like not, not, not a hundred percent clear.

[Matt Leming]: I like what the consequences of totally, totally cool.

[Matt Leming]: You can't say, no, I said, do we have a second?

[Matt Leming]: Sorry.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Meeting is adjourned.

[Matt Leming]: Great job.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Hello, this is Matt Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I'm a city councilor in Medford, Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: I'm just trying some of these YouTube recaps to offer another way to do outreach for my constituents over in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: And I'm going to try this a few times, see how it works out, see if people generally like these sort of recaps, and then see how it goes from there.

[Matt Leming]: So this past City Council meeting on February 6th, there is probably enough material to go through that to occupy several different videos, several different blog posts on my website.

[Matt Leming]: But what I want to cover now is the first resolution that I proposed at a Medford City Council meeting, which is the resolution to decriminalize plant medicine.

[Matt Leming]: Now this is a pretty simple resolution.

[Matt Leming]: It basically says that entheogenic plants such as psilocybin, ayahuasca, ibogaine, mescaline-containing cacti, things like that should be decriminalized by law enforcement officials in Middlesex County and Medford.

[Matt Leming]: This is not a strict ordinance that will outright

[Matt Leming]: I shouldn't say, it's not a strict ordinance that will outright require them to decriminalize that.

[Matt Leming]: City Council doesn't have the authority to do that, but it does officially ask them to make it the lowest priority.

[Matt Leming]: So, you know, don't dedicate resources to arrest people who are growing these things on their own.

[Matt Leming]: That's not the same thing for people who are attempting to sell them for financial gain, but strictly it decriminalizes just growing it on your own for your own use.

[Matt Leming]: Now, this is part of a wider thing.

[Matt Leming]: It's meant to support a state-level initiative, so Medford is the eighth town to pass this.

[Matt Leming]: Somerville, Cambridge, Northampton, Eastampton, Amherst, Salem, and Provincetown also passed very similar resolutions.

[Matt Leming]: Senator Jalen has a bill going through the

[Matt Leming]: Massachusetts State Senate right now, which would outright decriminalize the use of these different entheogenic plants.

[Matt Leming]: You know, it doesn't legalize selling it for a financial gain, but it just it just decriminalizes growing it on your own.

[Matt Leming]: And so that's the bill that would outright make that legal at the state level.

[Matt Leming]: What's going on right now, and the reason that this bill is so timely, is because there is a

[Matt Leming]: And there's an effort on the part of an organization called Baystaters, which is trying to really push Beacon Hill to pass this.

[Matt Leming]: And there is another group which is attempting to legalize these sorts of plant medicines through similar means.

[Matt Leming]: through a completely different mechanism, similar decriminalization, but legalize them through a totally different mechanism, which is by collecting signatures from individuals around the state of Massachusetts to make it into a ballot initiative.

[Matt Leming]: Now, the difference between the two of these is that passing it through the state house would just make it so that anybody's able to grow their own versions of these plant medicines.

[Matt Leming]: The ballot initiative,

[Matt Leming]: would make it so that people that go through a course are able to prescribe and go through therapeutic sessions with these sorts of medicines, but it wouldn't outright decriminalize them.

[Matt Leming]: Now, the reason that this is not favorable is because it's been tried before in Oregon, and the effect of having this sort of

[Matt Leming]: convoluted system where only certain individuals are able to give out these kinds of medicines is that the price of these

[Matt Leming]: things like psilocybin, psilocybin, ayahuasca, ends up skyrocketing.

[Matt Leming]: So right now in Oregon, if you want to take psilocybin or other kinds of entheogenic medicines for something like PTSD, addiction, and recent studies are showing that these are some of the most effective treatments for these, if you want to take that in the state of Oregon, it would cost you upwards of $3,500.

[Matt Leming]: Now, it doesn't take anywhere close to that to actually produce.

[Matt Leming]: and grow these things on your own.

[Matt Leming]: But because they're regulated in a certain way and because state lawmakers can't get rid of something that was passed by a ballot measure, now Oregon is kind of stuck with this system where it's regulated by an unelected commission that was put there through a direct vote.

[Matt Leming]: And right now a similar initiative is currently underway in Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: So this resolution, I'm very glad that it passed.

[Matt Leming]: It is a way to show support to just making it so that people can grow these things on their own without having any kind of an

[Matt Leming]: an unelected commission or weird regulations happening around it.

[Matt Leming]: And I really think that's the best way forward.

[Matt Leming]: More generally speaking, this is a way to advocate for more nuanced drug policy in Medford and the state of Massachusetts generally.

[Matt Leming]: So for a long time,

[Matt Leming]: drugs have been regulated out of a sense of fear, and basically all forms of illegal drugs, from marijuana to the harder stuff like narcotics, were pretty much put into the same category.

[Matt Leming]: I think this was done due to a lack of public education, this was due to fear, this was due to a hard-on-crime kind of an attitude, but it was not

[Matt Leming]: done out of any kind of nuanced science-backed policy.

[Matt Leming]: So what's really needed when enforcing different kinds of regulations on drugs these days is to have policies

[Matt Leming]: that are based in science, that are based in very contextualized studies of the individual drugs that are being regulated.

[Matt Leming]: We've started to do that in recent years with marijuana.

[Matt Leming]: So just this past week, I went to the ribbon cutting for Theory Wellness, the Theory Wellness dispensary on Mystic Avenue in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: And this came after decades and decades of marijuana being criminalized and people being thrown in prison for it.

[Matt Leming]: Now this also comes on the wake of the fentanyl epidemic that America is currently going through, which went on the heels of the opioid crisis that we also went through that was caused by Purdue Pharma.

[Matt Leming]: So, I've read about these issues extensively, I've read Empire of Pain by Patrick Roddick Keefe, great book, and I've seen comments from people who say, okay, you're decriminalizing certain kinds of drugs now, is that a slippery slope?

[Matt Leming]: And I really don't think it is.

[Matt Leming]: you know, these different, these other kinds of plant medicines, as they're called in the resolution, you know, ayahuasca, mescaline-containing cacti, psilocybin.

[Matt Leming]: I think that they are at a level above marijuana.

[Matt Leming]: But they are not the kinds of things that cause public health epidemics in the same way that narcotics do.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't think that they should be criminalized in exactly the same way.

[Matt Leming]: When we're dealing with different kinds of drugs, we need different kinds of policies behind them.

[Matt Leming]: And that is an important thing to keep in mind when crafting any sort of legislation.

[Matt Leming]: More generally, this past Tuesday was interesting for me because this was my first resolution of any kind that I tried to pass, and I did a couple of things wrong, which is why anybody that tuned into the meeting might have been a little bit confused by how things went.

[Matt Leming]: This is a non-binding resolution, it's more of a request to the Middlesex County District Attorney and the Chief of Police asking them to deprioritize something.

[Matt Leming]: And so when it was introduced, what happened was I gave a speech on it, I said why I think it should be passed by the city council, and then I just kind of did nothing.

[Matt Leming]: And so then a colleague of mine who wanted feedback from the chief of police, he made a motion to send it to committee.

[Matt Leming]: Now, I know that this is a very timely resolution and sending it to committee could delay it for months, so I didn't really like that turn of events, but I had also made the mistake of not immediately pushing the question on it, of not immediately trying to pass making a motion to pass the resolution itself.

[Matt Leming]: So that was on me.

[Matt Leming]: Initially, it was sent to Committee 5-2 with me being one of the dissenting votes on it.

[Matt Leming]: But after, at the end of the meeting, one of my colleagues, Councilor Collins, who ended up seeing that I was not happy with how that

[Matt Leming]: came about, who saw that this was just, you know, a first time Councilor who wasn't, you know, who, you know, didn't realize that I should have, you know, pushed forward, made a motion to pass the resolution immediately.

[Matt Leming]: She ended up invoking something called Rule 28, which says that if you voted yes on something earlier in the meeting, you could call it back to a vote again if you want to change your vote on that.

[Matt Leming]: So she had voted yes on to send it to committee so that she then brought it back.

[Matt Leming]: And we ended up passing the resolution six to one with the only amendment to the resolution being that it would come with an official request for feedback from the chief of police.

[Matt Leming]: So it ended up working out.

[Matt Leming]: It was a little bit bumpy, but I was very proud that I got one resolution passed.

[Matt Leming]: It was for an initiative that's very complicated, but which I really, really believe in.

[Matt Leming]: And yeah,

[Matt Leming]: I'm a new city councilor and I'm learning a lot.

[Matt Leming]: So I hope that this video provides some insight into the background of these things.

[Matt Leming]: I'd really be interested to know if y'all like this kind of in-person

[Matt Leming]: in-person recap instead of just having it written in a blog post.

[Matt Leming]: So just let me know what you think, either via personal email or something like that.

[Matt Leming]: And yeah, I'm looking forward to the committee meetings next week and the next regular meeting on the 20th.

[Matt Leming]: So have a great week, guys.

[Matt Leming]: Later.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, thank you.

[Matt Leming]: So this is, I'd like to thank the council for considering this very long text.

[Matt Leming]: Essentially, this is just a resolution to decriminalize plant-based medicine.

[Matt Leming]: You know, these are not the same as opioids that cause a public health crisis.

[Matt Leming]: They are non-addictive.

[Matt Leming]: They have been shown to be able to treat things like PTSD and addiction.

[Matt Leming]: This has already been done, as it said, by seven other Massachusetts communities, so we would be the eighth.

[Matt Leming]: This is meant to first encourage local law enforcement to deprioritize this issue.

[Matt Leming]: I don't believe that this council has the authority to outright

[Matt Leming]: to decriminalize it, and it is meant to support the state-level initiative to do just that, which is currently being sponsored in the Massachusetts Senate by Senator Jalen.

[Matt Leming]: Just to clarify one part of this and offer a little bit of context is in the part of the reading that was waived.

[Matt Leming]: This resolution calls that the Bedford City Council, sorry,

[Matt Leming]: to do well so okay so basically there are there's just for a little bit of context there are a couple of different ways to decriminalize this one of them and another avenue that is currently being pursued is a signature collection method which would basically create a an unelected commission that would add its own that if passed in massachusetts would add its own regulation to these plant medicines this has already been passed in

[Matt Leming]: Oregon, and long story short, it's made the price of these plant medicines go between $1,000 and $3,000.

[Matt Leming]: So doing things this way through elected representatives would just help to decriminalize it and not create this sort of artificial price.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that this is a very important step forward to creating a nuanced and science-backed drug policy in the state of Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: And I'd like to thank this council for considering it.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I just want to clarify that.

[Matt Leming]: So the US military is regulated federally.

[Matt Leming]: So I am personally subject to urinalysis several times a year.

[Matt Leming]: So I haven't personally tried these things.

[Matt Leming]: But in my day job, I'm also a neuroscientist.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't study plant medicine directly.

[Matt Leming]: So my colleagues have.

[Matt Leming]: And I've talked with experts who have also

[Matt Leming]: uh specialize in this themselves so I would so I think that if you know if this were to go to committee for further discussion we like um I guess I guess my I guess my

[Matt Leming]: My concern with that is that this is more of a statewide issue.

[Matt Leming]: And so it's really trying to support it at that level.

[Matt Leming]: I would assume that if seven other Massachusetts towns have also passed similar resolutions, then they're

[Matt Leming]: their law enforcement is not so uniquely different from Medford that Medford has some unique public health considerations specific to this city.

[Matt Leming]: So I and you know, if it were all if it were referred to committee, I would also encourage us to speak not only to law enforcement, but to also, um,

[Matt Leming]: public health experts, people who specifically study this, people who specifically study this, and other stakeholders as well.

[Matt Leming]: I personally would like it to be voted on tonight, but obviously if that isn't the will of this council, then it would go to committee.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to say that many members of this community, people I consider to be very close friends have encouraged me to vote in favor of this resolution.

[Matt Leming]: What I will say is that

[Matt Leming]: I'm an officer in the U.S.

[Matt Leming]: military.

[Matt Leming]: The Hatch Act does technically allow reservists to comment on these sorts of matters when not on active duty.

[Matt Leming]: It is my belief, however, that even though I do commend my colleague for writing a

[Matt Leming]: very thorough and very well said resolution that voting on this resolution would adversely impact my ability to do my job.

[Matt Leming]: So I just want to put that out there, and I will be abstaining from this.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, so is it sorry?

[Matt Leming]: So I didn't do this with my last motion is appropriate.

[Matt Leming]: Just start by motioning to refer to admin finance motion to refer to admin finance on the motion of Council.

[Matt Leming]: So, this is a so basically going going around Medford, I think it's pretty clear that we have a bit of an issue with vacant storefront properties not only storefront properties like in West Medford that have been

[Matt Leming]: unoccupied for a year and a half, going on two years, but also storefront properties that are effective, that are just not open consistently or often.

[Matt Leming]: This was a policy proposal that I brought up door-to-door continuously when people kept talking about the fact that stores are just not occupied and generally found

[Matt Leming]: I couldn't find a single person who actually opposed it when I was going door to door.

[Matt Leming]: Now, I'm going to be the first to say that this is a nuanced issue.

[Matt Leming]: The reason that people choose to create or choose to leave property unoccupied is

[Matt Leming]: there could be a lot of different reasons for that.

[Matt Leming]: And so I hope that in committee we're able to craft a policy that can incentivize businesses to open up shop to, or sorry, incentivize landlords to open up shop to good businesses around town and thereby boost the revenue in the city.

[Matt Leming]: What we would like to avoid is

[Matt Leming]: you know, businesses just deciding to rent it out to like, you know, a random, a random pawn shop or something so that we just have those springing up left and right around town or just, you know, another another kind of business that I don't want to insult by just bringing up an example.

[Matt Leming]: But the point but the point is, like, I don't want to insult pawn shop owners.

[Matt Leming]: I shouldn't I shouldn't have said that.

[Matt Leming]: You know, but but but yeah, I hope that my point I hope that my never going away.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I hope I hope that my my point is heard there.

[Matt Leming]: But, uh, you know, uh, in any case, uh, I would just I just think that this is an issue that Medford City Council really needs to, uh, really needs to address and be active about at this point.

[Matt Leming]: So I welcome any discussion on motion.

[Matt Leming]: I apologize to any and all.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, and I do wish my colleague were still sitting here so that I could respond to some of the points that he brought up, but he seems to have had to step out temporarily.

[Matt Leming]: But just to clarify the intent of this, I knocked on someone's door in West Medford, and this person was a business owner, owned some gyms in a couple of other areas, and she told me

[Matt Leming]: that she was trying to open up a gym in West Medford, and she had attempted to contact the landlord several different times, and the landlord wouldn't even return her phone calls.

[Matt Leming]: Okay, so speculative squatting, waiting for somebody to give a good price on property, et cetera, is a strategy that landlords do.

[Matt Leming]: this now if the commercial vacancy tax were implemented successfully, it would be applied very rarely.

[Matt Leming]: The intention of something like this would be to get landlords to come to the table and work and work with the economic development director, work with different parties.

[Matt Leming]: We do need carrots.

[Matt Leming]: We also need sticks so that people so that people don't just

[Matt Leming]: own properties and get too complacent with them, but they're incentivized in different ways to own commercial storefront property, not just for their own personal gain, but also to beautify the town.

[Matt Leming]: So the intention of this, and I hope that we can hammer out something in committee that works full

[Matt Leming]: that we're trying to do, and I think that's what we're trying to do in both parties is to get something that just gets landlords to the table and understanding that, yes, they do need to rent out something.

[Matt Leming]: Suitable in the properties that they own.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to, not that I'm responding, but I'm addressing.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, tell me, what's the chair?

[Matt Leming]: What do you think?

[Matt Leming]: In a completely unrelated, completely unrelated.

[Matt Leming]: What do you feel?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, just just just totally unrelated to anything happening on this side of the room.

[Matt Leming]: I don't.

[Matt Leming]: I don't really understand it.

[Matt Leming]: But so the intent of this is to only apply to the commercial storefront property.

[Matt Leming]: It's just a thought that came to think.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, that's a that's a question that I had.

[Matt Leming]: So I was going to motion to refer this to the committee on planning and permitting.

[Matt Leming]: Perfect.

[Matt Leming]: So would the, wait, so to be clear,

[Matt Leming]: we would pass it and then the police chief would come back with his recommendations.

[Matt Leming]: Sure, that's fine.

[Matt Leming]: Aye.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: President Bears.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Keohokalole.

[Matt Leming]: Justin, from what you can remember in previous terms on council, do you know the, would you be able to offer the reason that some of these were left in committee so long?

[Matt Leming]: So if there's anything that, if there's anything specific comes to mind just to offer the historic context for that or a reason it just kind of dwindled.

[Matt Leming]: Is there anything that you know about personally?

[Matt Leming]: I was just going to comment that the city's had a couple of new hires even ever since January for a number of positions that I thought they were waiting to hear back on that compensation study before they move forward with hiring them.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, is it possible that some portion of it was already complete?

[Matt Leming]: There are just a lot of new hires for senior level positions and just across City Hall that we've been informed about.

[Matt Leming]: recently, so clearly some compensation, some agreement about compensation must have been reached with or without the study.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to request an update on the classification and compensation study.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, just it just seems like in general with a lot of a lot of the larger projects, those are those can be a little bit more difficult to pass forward in themselves without because, like, they're affected by outside factors.

[Matt Leming]: But for some of the some of the smaller things on this that are going to be pushed ahead by.

[Matt Leming]: uh individual Councilors so i know it was Councilor collins that proposed the good landlord tax credit the last meeting and i submitted uh for consideration at the upcoming meeting a resolution on the commercial vacancy tax um those seem like they can be pushed ahead sort of whenever uh there is time to do so at the admin and at these meetings um

[Matt Leming]: Barring progress on some of the, uh, some of the need to do, um.

[Matt Leming]: Things like the annual budget process and revenue generation property to an F planning.

[Matt Leming]: So, I'm talking to with regards to the.

[Matt Leming]: Vacancy tax specifically, um, I'm talking to some folks at the planning office about sort of best practices for doing that.

[Matt Leming]: But of course, that also does need that would also need to be voted on at the next regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: Should, uh, should it pass there?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, just to just add a question coming from a very new Councilor.

[Matt Leming]: So, how long what would you I know that I'm seeing the timelines on this on the, uh, the actual calendar there, but.

[Matt Leming]: So how long just taking the commercial vacancy tax, the landlord tax credit, which are two very new proposals, would you estimate it takes from going to that first resolution to somebody potentially paying that tax or receiving a tax benefit from that on the ground in real life and actually putting that into the budget?

[Matt Leming]: With the commercial vacancy tax, I don't think it would be, if it were implemented, it would specifically apply to vacant or effectively closed storefronts.

[Matt Leming]: the number of businesses that that would apply to would be very, very small compared to the number that would be applied to the good landlord tax credit, which could be hundreds of people around town.

[Matt Leming]: It would be much more targeted and it wouldn't be enough to significantly affect the total tax levy.

[Matt Leming]: It's more of an incentive and not a revenue generating mechanism.

[Matt Leming]: Great.

[Matt Leming]: So, although I'm not sure how much we're able to discuss something that hasn't been referred to committee, so if there's a... just, yeah, just pointing that out.

[Matt Leming]: Motion to adjourn?

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: Present.

[Matt Leming]: And I will go to just just a question for reduced for introducing these ordinances.

[Matt Leming]: So, the commercial vacancy tax could potentially.

[Matt Leming]: be worked on in both planning and permitting committee, as noted in here, as well as admin and finance.

[Matt Leming]: So what would the process for something being developed simultaneously in two different committees look like?

[Matt Leming]: This is just specifically regarding the plant medicine decriminalization ordinance, just to state.

[Matt Leming]: The goals of that may have already been addressed by the resolution that was submitted for the next regular meeting.

[Matt Leming]: I think that

[Matt Leming]: There is some work that needs to be done at the state level before that could be implemented as an ordinance locally.

[Matt Leming]: So I don't necessarily want a motion to strike it now before I do a little bit more research, but it may be an update to the governing agenda in the future.

[Matt Leming]: Um, well, there's just a small point about this, but this particular section, so I do very much appreciate my, my colleague Councilor Tsengs, uh, capacity for, for work, but he is listed as the lead Councilor on 11 of the 12 projects.

[Matt Leming]: And so I don't have specific recommendations at this time for who should lead which project, but I.

[Matt Leming]: I am of the opinion that perhaps we should spread the work out a little bit more among the committee when designating lead councillors.

[Matt Leming]: I'm also not wholly clear how much we're really committing to the lead councillor for some of the unproposed or some of the ones that have yet to be proposed as well.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Are you going to Councilor Tseng?

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank everybody who has come forward to speak so far.

[Matt Leming]: And I appreciate Pete and I appreciate that everybody sees this as a place where they can

[Matt Leming]: to express their thoughts.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to bring up one point that's been coming up in a couple of different public comment periods, which has been the safety issue specifically.

[Matt Leming]: Safety concerns can stem from several different things when it comes to

[Matt Leming]: violent crime specifically, which I think was a sentiment in a few public comments.

[Matt Leming]: I did some reading this past week, which is influencing my own thinking about this.

[Matt Leming]: I'd just like to share it, which was a paper that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020 comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas.

[Matt Leming]: So it's one study, but I think it's pretty relevant to this, which

[Matt Leming]: You can go through the whole thing online if you'd like, but the significant section says, despite its centrality to public and political discourse, we lack even basic information on fundamental questions regarding undocumented immigrants and crime.

[Matt Leming]: This stems largely from data constraints going beyond existing research.

[Matt Leming]: The authors in this study utilize data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which checks and records the immigration status of all arrestees throughout the state.

[Matt Leming]: Contrary to public perception, we observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born U.S.

[Matt Leming]: citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years.

[Matt Leming]: Our findings help us understand why the most aggressive

[Matt Leming]: immigrant removal programs have not delivered on their crime reduction promises and are unlikely to do so in the future.

[Matt Leming]: While the news does report on unequal rates about crimes that happen in immigrant communities versus everywhere else, I think it is important to keep in mind what the scientific research says.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng.

[Matt Leming]: Councilor Leming.

[Matt Leming]: We appreciate that there's not enough staff working in the elections department and that the folks on the commissions are

[Matt Leming]: I'm a member of the community.

[Matt Leming]: I'm largely there as volunteers of the community.

[Matt Leming]: So that is that is an issue, and I have sympathy for the, uh, lack of capacity to complete the work required for all the elections that you need to manage.

[Matt Leming]: Um.

[Matt Leming]: I do sympathize with what Councilor Callahan said about the expectations for the report in order to

[Matt Leming]: If I were a person that knew nothing about the election and I read this report, I don't think I would be able to recount events and all the issues that happened.

[Matt Leming]: My idea with what a complete detail-oriented report would be is if I could have that being somebody who knew nothing.

[Matt Leming]: In order to know everything that happened on the election, you would have to have

[Matt Leming]: This report, you'd have to have a number of different posts on the Internet, and you'd have to talk to a number of different people to find all the details, notwithstanding things that have already been mentioned by my colleagues here.

[Matt Leming]: So.

[Matt Leming]: That is what I was expecting and that is what I would like to see because it's important to know in details all of the issues that you experienced and all of the ways that you are potentially lacking support, which may have caused these issues to come up to begin with so that we can then try to fix them.

[Matt Leming]: So that is...

[Matt Leming]: That's all I'd like to say.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much for coming out here tonight.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank my colleague for his words.

[Matt Leming]: I would tend to agree with him that the optics on this are terrible when teachers that are underpaid see the headline, politicians are looking to increase other politicians salaries.

[Matt Leming]: morale is a real issue there.

[Matt Leming]: That and that is something that is really on my mind in this process.

[Matt Leming]: Um, I personally would be more amenable to one of the, uh, to either, uh, the raised to something around 24 21,000.

[Matt Leming]: Sorry, we're getting the wrong numbers on the, um,

[Matt Leming]: basically the equivalent of cost of living adjustments over since fiscal year 2020 of 2 to 2.5%, which would be, I think that would be a little bit more reasonable and putting that adjustment over a period of several years in order to not strain the budget immediately.

[Matt Leming]: But that being said, so,

[Matt Leming]: The city council, the city council salaries are something that are make or break for a lot of us.

[Matt Leming]: The city council right now is a majority is majority renter.

[Matt Leming]: And so having that having

[Matt Leming]: the salary to be able to justify 20 plus hours of work that we put into this every week, I think, is fair.

[Matt Leming]: When it comes to the school committee members, if they're putting in 20 plus hours a week, I think that in order to improve the school system, I think that a similar

[Matt Leming]: to be able to justify.

[Matt Leming]: Similar compensation is fair.

[Matt Leming]: We had a candidate this past time who was put it who was putting in shift work during a lot of the campaign working as a server and so having the having the salary to be able to justify the time that they put into that if we're going to expect them to put in.

[Matt Leming]: There have been a lot of people, there are a lot of people in the city that Medford relies on who are volunteers.

[Matt Leming]: We are, and Medford, they are the foundation of the city in a lot of ways.

[Matt Leming]: Volunteerism is incredibly helpful for running the city.

[Matt Leming]: It is foundational to Medford's functions.

[Matt Leming]: But we,

[Matt Leming]: We can't expect to run essential functions on the back of volunteers.

[Matt Leming]: There are people who would make great school committee members who would be willing to do it for free.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of those people have been

[Matt Leming]: cornerstones of the community.

[Matt Leming]: A lot of them have come up against these raises, and there are a lot of people who would make great school committee members who would be completely unwilling to work for the current stipend.

[Matt Leming]: And I think that being able to

[Matt Leming]: being able to raise the salaries by a certain amount would allow us to have more people at our disposal when it comes to running the school system.

[Matt Leming]: Just first off, I would like to thank MTA President Gehan for bringing up the issue about the paraprofessional receiving disciplinary action.

[Matt Leming]: I know that Ms.

[Matt Leming]: Cherry also commented on it, but any information that you're free to email about that to me, I would very much appreciate just to

[Matt Leming]: learn more about that particular situation.

[Matt Leming]: This is just a broader point that echoes a lot of what's been said.

[Matt Leming]: For a long time Medford's been penny smart and dollar stupid.

[Matt Leming]: So we're talking about

[Matt Leming]: the, when we're talking about the total operating budget of Medford, it's just above about $200 million.

[Matt Leming]: Somerville's is between seven and 800 million.

[Matt Leming]: Cambridge's is about a billion.

[Matt Leming]: If you're considering the sort of per capita operating budget, so the amount of money spent per person in a municipality, Medford's is one of the lowest for a substantially sized city in the state of Massachusetts.

[Matt Leming]: Basically,

[Matt Leming]: We have been trying to cut costs here and there for a very long period of time, and that's the reason that right now we can't pay teachers what they deserve to be paid when we're talking about when we're talking about exchanging.

[Matt Leming]: in the grand scheme of things, relatively small amounts of money here and there when we're talking about cutting staff costs, that can save money in a given fiscal year.

[Matt Leming]: It does not save money in the long term.

[Matt Leming]: We need to start thinking about fiscal responsibility in terms of investing in ourselves in the long term, not saving money in the very short term.

[Matt Leming]: I would, but yes, I,

[Matt Leming]: Once again, I very much sympathize with the teacher's views on this.

[Matt Leming]: The optics are terrible, and I appreciate your presence here tonight.

[Matt Leming]: Thank you very much for your time.

[Matt Leming]: Zachary.

[Matt Leming]: Second.

[Matt Leming]: start of your audio visual troubles.

[Matt Leming]: It's, it's inevitable.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, just, Sunday hours are listed twice here on this resolution, so just for clarification, are you proposing to open until 12.30 or 12 on Sunday?

[Matt Leming]: It's just listed twice.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, just a question as a new Councilor.

[Matt Leming]: Does the lower requirement for quorum affect open meeting law?

[Matt Leming]: So are fewer Councilors allowed to meet outside to discuss committee-specific work?

[Matt Leming]: Just a question for Councilor Lazzaro.

[Matt Leming]: In your years working with and running the Malden Warming Shelter, could you just give us an idea of how many people that came into the shelter were evicted during the winter months, just to offer an idea of how many this resolution would likely affect?

[Matt Leming]: Yeah, I mean, it seems like a pretty common sense thing.

[Matt Leming]: If you got evicted in the winter, that could potentially be lethal.

[Matt Leming]: So just having rules in place to prevent that from happening definitely seems worth this body's time.

[Matt Leming]: I'd like to thank Vice President Collins for bringing this forward.

[Matt Leming]: I knocked on a lot of doors this past campaign and a lot of people that I spoke to are small landlords that oftentimes rent below market rates who are

[Matt Leming]: who were sometimes comparing themselves to other landlords that lived a few towns over and never maintained their properties, essentially see land in Medford as something which they can extract as much money from as possible.

[Matt Leming]: And I very much sympathize with what Councilor Callaghan was saying, that it is oftentimes difficult when digging through state code to try to find ways of distinguishing between one type of landlord and the other type of landlord.

[Matt Leming]: And this is a very

[Matt Leming]: it's a good tool for doing that.

[Matt Leming]: The other thing I'd like to point out is beyond incentivizing lower rents, which is a city council now that I believe has a majority of renters on it.

[Matt Leming]: If that was counting correctly, it also can be used to incentivize landlords who actively maintain their properties,

[Matt Leming]: who choose to do repairs on time, who really take care of their tenants in that way too.

[Matt Leming]: So I think that this is something that potentially a lot more people could get behind because it will incentivize basically upkeep in Medford if it's implemented correctly.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you very much.

[Matt Leming]: I'm going to go to council.

[Matt Leming]: I mean, first off, I'd like to thank you for coming out here tonight and.

[Matt Leming]: presenting the case.

[Matt Leming]: Just a few resources I'd like to point out.

[Matt Leming]: So I served on the Community Preservation Committee, which was actually just meeting across the hall from us.

[Matt Leming]: They allocated about $206,000 to repair the Tufts basketball court, which should give kind of an order of magnitude for how much a project like this would cost.

[Matt Leming]: They also allocated part of the funding for the new McGlynn Playground.

[Matt Leming]: project that just broke ground I believe a few days ago and that was being pushed both by one of the assistant superintendents of the school as well as a community member with no official involvement but who just really wanted to push that project through so that so I think that an avenue

[Matt Leming]: really this body, we have the power to approve funding once a project comes forward, and there is a construction company, sufficient planning that has been made for that, but we don't really have the power to just point a magic wand and say that this will be done.

[Matt Leming]: So I also spoke this morning with one of the community

[Matt Leming]: development block grant manager, which is another similar pool of funding.

[Matt Leming]: And she was actually just asking about trying to flag down more projects exactly like the one you were just talking about right now.

[Matt Leming]: So I would be pleased to meet up with you afterwards or just email you later and just give you the contact information for some of these folks.

[Matt Leming]: Because I think the money is there.

[Matt Leming]: With these sorts of projects, there's always sort of like weird

[Matt Leming]: kind of like eligibility issues.

[Matt Leming]: So like maybe the, you know, if it's like an indoor track, it's only used by students, not the general public, there could be like something going on there.

[Matt Leming]: But generally speaking, this is like for these kind of projects where they take like, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars and they could be done in like a short enough timeframe.

[Matt Leming]: I think that there's definitely money sitting there for this.

[Matt Leming]: It's just a matter of getting a proposal into the right committees, advocating for them can't be done in three weeks is probably like,

[Matt Leming]: a year-long timeline just because of the clock that these sort of things are on.

[Matt Leming]: But yes, there are options that you have if you are really interested in repaving the inward track.

[Matt Leming]: So thank you for bringing it to our attention.

[Matt Leming]: The Medford Charter Study Committee meetings are open to the public, and we do allow public comment at the end of each one of our meetings.

[Matt Leming]: So anybody is free to attend those.

[Matt Leming]: They're virtual if they want to.

[Matt Leming]: It should it should be on the Medford public website website.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Yes.

[Matt Leming]: Sure.

[Matt Leming]: Just for the meeting minutes, which I'm taking right now, and I'm a person that doesn't have the most experience in the world as secretary, but are the meeting minutes supposed to be like more like a transcript, so everything everybody says, or is it supposed to be just like a summary of the key points that were said during a meeting and that's acceptable?

[Matt Leming]: Also, if we already finished the state ethics training for something else, we have to take it again.

[Matt Leming]: Yes, I'm not sure if I was supposed to wait till the end, but this seems like a good slide to ask my question.

[Matt Leming]: So you mentioned the city council reviewing these charter changes.

[Matt Leming]: Can you talk about

[Matt Leming]: the tendency of the city council and these other towns to approve the recommended changes of the charter study committee and if there has been trouble in that how much

[Matt Leming]: it came into discussions as to like the likelihood of the city council to approve whatever changes we gave.

[Matt Leming]: I'm Matt Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I'm a postdoc over at Massachusetts General Hospital where I work in deep learning for neuroimaging diagnostics.

[Matt Leming]: I was involved in the same group as Melvin, Laurel, and a few other people on this committee as well.

[Matt Leming]: That was a citizen's advocacy group for charter review.

[Matt Leming]: I'm interested in charter review because it's the political foundation of this entire city.

[Matt Leming]: And I would like to see a lot of changes happen in this city.

[Matt Leming]: And the charter review seems like the most fundamental one.

[Matt Leming]: So I do have an interest in seeing that happen.

[Matt Leming]: And this committee seems like the best hope of getting that done.

[Matt Leming]: What's on my mind is sort of,

[Matt Leming]: Going off of the question that I asked earlier and what Maury just said, I do know that some city councilors are nervous, just about the idea of this and I would say, you know,

[Matt Leming]: perhaps needlessly so.

[Matt Leming]: But what I would be interested in hearing is just a little bit more about the experiences of doing this in other towns, specifically, which issues brought contention from the city councilors and the mayors that later approved it.

[Matt Leming]: I heard you say that the

[Matt Leming]: Mayor term limits were rejected.

[Matt Leming]: And that makes sense why, you know, they wouldn't want that kind of a change.

[Matt Leming]: But what I'm thinking is like what other issues were sort of hot button things that brought contention from the city council in the past, as well as some strategies for combating those.

[Matt Leming]: And you already said some strategies like the public forum with mayor and councilors invited, that was great.

[Matt Leming]: But yeah, that's what's on my mind right now.

[Matt Leming]: We do- Sorry, when is the next meeting set for again?

[Matt Leming]: And should we, sorry, should we clarify as well that it's a three minute time limit?

[Matt Leming]: I don't know, Joan or Matthew, if you, all right, we'll go.

[Matt Leming]: Hello, my name is Matt Leming.

[Matt Leming]: I live at 112 Willis Avenue.

[Matt Leming]: I'm a 29-year-old renter here.

[Matt Leming]: I do a lot of work in housing Medford as well as housing advocacy through the Unitarian Church in Medford.

[Matt Leming]: I work as a scientist down at Mass General Brigham.

[Matt Leming]: Yeah.

[Matt Leming]: Well, the, the three areas, the CBC focuses on is open areas and recreation historical preservation as well as housing obviously my chief area of interest is housing.

[Matt Leming]: I mean I'm a.

[Matt Leming]: I'm a renter here, I'm a postdoc, I make like $53,000 a year.

[Matt Leming]: I would like to stay in Medford long-term.

[Matt Leming]: Obviously, a part of doing that is being able to afford to live here, so I'm very personally invested in housing affordability in this city.

[Matt Leming]: I've, so just, sorry, I'm a little bit,