[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. Thanks, Danielle. I'm really excited to be here. My name's Mike Mastroboni. I am a father of two Medford Public Schools kids. I'm the budget director for our neighbor down south, Somerville. And I am a first-time candidate for school committee on November 4th.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure, he, him. Yes, thank you.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: So I live in Fulton Heights, so for breakfast for me, it's Jim's Market. I just learned that they have a Taylor Ham b-boy called the J-Boy. Strongly recommend that. Lunch, definitely Tenoch fish tacos. I love their fish tacos. Dinner for me, it's Nigea. I don't know how that place can do it so consistently. And then I will mention the ghost of Ebisuya, gone but not forgotten.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. Thanks for that. And it's a little bit of a long story, but my wife, Christina, and I moved to Medford in 2021. Our kids, my son, Lincoln, is seven. My daughter, Violet, is four. They're going to be in schools here until, I think, 2038 or 2039, right? We are rooted here. We are grounded here. We're so excited to be here. Our story is like a lot of folks who came to Boston for college, spent some time there, graduated into a recession, made their way around different neighborhoods of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville. We spent 10 years in Somerville before we moved here to Medford. We wanted to find a place where we could really lay our roots, get invested in, have our kids grow up in. The coolest part, I think, that I've found about your kids starting school is when my son started kindergarten, your community just totally explodes and you get surrounded by, um, new friends, um, you know, uh, your, your kid's friends. Um, and you start going to these, these new activities and start making new connections. And for me, uh, I want to give back to that community. I've been thinking about how best can I use my skillset to benefit Medford. Um, I've tried a couple things I'm currently on the water and sewer commission, which has been awesome. But for me, the next step is to. To get back to that community that's been so great for us. I've seen the really great strengths of Medford Public Schools so far. I've seen some opportunities, right? I've gone through the after school lottery. I've had my W's and L's there for sure. I've kind of struggled to find the right information or the right app or the right way to contact my teacher because we use 10 different systems. I volunteered at PTO events, you know, had a great time there. just really, I think, for me, in the time that we're in, my skill set can lend a lot to the school committee.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. So in my day job, I'm the budget director for Somerville. So what that means is I lead the team that develops and manages our $380 million a year operating budget. I help plan ahead through our financial forecast, our 10-year financial outlook, trying to make sure that the future looks bright for the community that I work for. And I also plan for and enable some of the really big capital projects, really big building projects, water and sewer projects, through my municipal finance training and background. A big part of my job is taking complicated financial issues and trying to explain them in plain language, whether that's to our subject matter experts, right, to a transportation expert or a public health expert, to elected officials. I've done trainings and spend a lot of time with our city council and school committee in Somerville. And then also to residents. So we try and do a lot of, you know, our budget division within finance tries to do a lot of outreach to residents to help them understand and engage with municipal finance because it's really complicated and it's really hard. And the more residents and colleagues and elected officials understand it, the better we can make good investments together.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Yes. So I work on the city side. So we have a whole finance team on the schools that handle the school's budget. But I coordinate across our 60 plus departments with department heads, with finance managers, with our CFO, with our decision team to make sure that you know, we're aligning our dollars with the outcomes that we want to see. So it's a really challenging, fun job. You're kind of at the epicenter of everything, which is what I think what's really cool about municipal finance is it's a skill set that helps everyone. And it's something you really want to make sure you have as part of your team.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: So a lot of things are going really great right now, absolutely. I'm really proud of the work that Jenny and Paul, who are both on the school committee, have done on labor negotiations. That's been really, really fantastic in terms of compensating our employees well. we've been able to get community support for two overrides. That's great. That's awesome. Like I said, a lot of things are going really well. But the things that the school committee is primarily responsible are They're nuts and bolts, they're executive type things. So I'm talking labor negotiations, I'm talking approving and developing a budget, hiring a superintendent, outlining the vision for the district, whether that's through strategic planning, thinking long term, or policy, thinking near term. So a lot of that work is the stuff that I do on a day-to-day basis. So I hope that By being on the school committee, by being able to be the biggest cheerleader of Medford public schools out there, I can help folks understand school budgets, that they're complex, and how state law, grants, contracts, program evaluation, how all that fits together so that we can again turn our resources into results for our kids and our families and our community. Because I think that's foundational. We have to really make sure that, before anything else, we're investing in our kids.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Absolutely. So the Medford High School project is going to be the biggest decision that we're going to make in this generation. It needs to serve kids of today, it needs to serve kids of the next generation, my seven-year-old and four-year-old, and it's going to have to serve their kids as well. We need to get this right, and it's something that we really can't compromise on. Thankfully, my entire career in Somerville has been working on some of these really big projects. Some of my first meetings in Somerville were planning meetings for the Somerville High School renovation project. It was a $290 million high school renovation in a challenging environment during COVID. And it was a really successful project. It's a school that we're really proud of. I want to use what I learned there to make sure that we get the best project for Medford. That's something that's going to be flexible for the future in a way that our current building is not, right? It's something that needs to be accessible and energy efficient in ways that weren't priorities when that original building was built. It's got to be right sized for the future, and it's got to be planned for the long term to protect taxpayers, because the challenge that we're going to face is to fund that. a debt exclusion. So I don't think there's any way around building a citywide school project in Massachusetts in 2025 without a debt exclusion. So we need school parents. We need non-school parents. We need every voter out there supporting this project. And it's got to be the right project for Medford. So that's, I think, really huge. And my experience having done that in the Somerville High School project, and my experience doing that right now in the Winter Hill High School project, in Somerville is going to be really important for the next couple of years.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. So something that really keeps me up at night is preservation of our progress. Everywhere you go right now, you listen to NPR, you listen to the radio, you listen to a podcast. These are uncertain times. We don't know what's going to happen next. That's not OK for education. That's not OK for our kids. I'm worried about federal or state cuts in aid. I'm worried about potential slow pace of development in Medford if we have some economic headwinds not in our control. Pair that with consistently increasing expectations of our schools. We need to do better every day. That's a recipe for risk. Part of what I do is trying to make sure that we mitigate those risks. I want to work with the public schools administration, the superintendent, the city council, and the mayor to get on the same page about how we're going to approach these risks together. I don't think that it's helpful for Medford residents If the school committee is holding the mayor or the city council is holding the mayor or someone is holding someone hostage, we need to work together because residents rely on what we do. I also want to work with city staff to make a sustainable multi-year plan to preserve services, including some kind of planning of what if we lose Grant A, what if we lose school lunch funding? What if the state drops our Chapter 70 resources for next year because the feds did something to the state? So those are the things that keep me up at night. We are also in a really, really important opportunity for this upcoming school committee, you know, who are going to be able to hire a superintendent that aligns with our values. We all know the superintendent is just so, so critical to the success of the district and we got to hire the right person and then we got to work with them to start thinking strategically about. What do we want Medford schools to look like? And what are the steps we got to take to get there? Um, I want to be thinking ahead. I want to be looking around corners and I want to make sure that at the end of the day, it's in service of maintaining the core function of what, what a city does, which is, um, funding school for our kids.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. You know, I consider myself a very, very strong progressive. I'm really psyched and fired up. to be running with some great new friends with Our Revolution Medford. I think we have a really important job to do over the next six or seven weeks here, which is talk to residents about the Medford that we want to see. right, which funds public schools, which fixes streets and sidewalks, which moves us towards more community safety and removes barriers to participation in government. The reason I wanted to run with those folks is because that vision of what Medford can be is really compelling to me. I think that We have work to do to make sure that the election goes the way we'd like, but I think in school committee, the way I picture it is think about the team that you want facing challenges that Medford schools are being presented with. I wanna make sure that you have folks with finance experience, folks with curriculum experience, folks with really, really close knit ties to the students, right? You're building a team that's gonna respond to these challenges. Think about how, you know, your vote, who you want on your team with your vote, what you wanna build as a group. And I think, you know, just because The challenge that I'm really focusing on is the high school and the sustainable investments. I'm really fired up to work on a lot of the other issues that we're seeing in the schools, including things like supporting the after-school ecosystem and taking an all-hands approach on figuring out how we build that out with our nonprofit partners, how we improve language access, how we try and get a single point of contact for families to tap into the system. All those kind of concrete things are really exciting as well. So I'm fired up to work with a team that has values, that has a vision for what they want Medford to look like. I'm not sure all the candidates are maybe brave enough to put that out there, what they want to see it look like. And that's why I want to run with these progressive folks who have put a lot of work into making Medford, to improving Medford and making it the place that we all want it to be.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: You know, when I talk about kind of what team do you want to build for the school committee, you want to kind of piece together skills. I think something that's important to always know is that we don't know what challenges we're going to face. But what are the core values of the people that you're putting in office who are going to take on the next challenge that we don't know? We can't even imagine what it might be. So what I want folks to know is that core values for me are having well-resourced classrooms in well-maintained buildings. I want fairly paid educators and staff. I want afterschool programs with capacity, and I want special education that allows Medford kids to stay here in district. I think we've made a lot of progress there, and I wanna keep that going. And I wanna bring my skills, my energy, my perspective as a parent as a public servant and hopefully in the future as a member of the school committee to help make that happen and help the community that has really embraced us. And I'm really looking forward to that. It's been so fun so far.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Best way to reach me is MikeMastroboni.com, M-I-K-E, and then Mastroboni is M-A-S-T-R-O-B-U-O-N-I. Also on Instagram at Mike4Medford, F-O-R Medford. So those are the best places to reach me. My email is also Mike4Medford at gmail.com. I've learned so much canvassing. I didn't realize that our community was so full of teachers with so much great experience and so many great ideas. They've all been willing to chat with me about stuff. So if you've got questions or you want to talk about something, just shoot me an email and hope I can earn your vote on November 4th.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thanks so much, Janet. I really appreciate you. And thanks to the volunteers, everybody who's out there, everybody who's voting. You know, Medford politics is so much fun.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Good evening, good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, Mike Mastrobone, 73 Fulton Spring Road. I'm a parent, I'm also a municipal finance professional, and I strongly support the proposed zoning updates, primarily because they align with previously stated goals of our community. First, increasing density and mixed use projects near transit and squares means young families, downsizing seniors, and first-time homeowners, as examples, can have access to opportunities to live here in Medford. Right now in our schools, we have 62 McKinney-Vento students. These are neighbors that couldn't continue living here, and we pay to transport them back to Medford from where they're living now after becoming homeless. This is a symptom of housing affordability, in my opinion. Full stop. Second, like it or not, Proposition 2.5 in Massachusetts is a restrictive limit that we need to take very seriously. If Medford is not saying yes to investment, we are falling behind. We're falling behind in revenue to fund our basic city services. We're falling behind in revenue to fund investments in infrastructure. And we're also falling behind in our ability to fully fund our schools. These are non-negotiables as far as I'm concerned. Third, the amendments to zoning before you are essential to translate our comprehensive plan that already exists into reality. The action items from that plan are littered with recommendations made in the updated zoning that's before this board. To name a few, creating accessible 12 and 18 hour communities, ensuring affordable housing for all, and achieving our sustainability goals, as well as encouraging balanced growth. So tonight I want to make it clear I support the recommendations made in the zoning reform package. I urge you to move forward at the time that you see fit. I appreciate it. Thank you.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Good evening, Council. Mike Mastroboni, 73 Fulton Spring Road. I'll be brief. I think either proposal moving to ward or district-based representation is a positive move. I think for a couple of reasons, one, lowering the barrier to entry for people trying to campaign in terms of cost, in terms of effort. I think secondly, having a representative That you can go to on a local basis, I think, for me pushes me towards the. eight individual board Councilors approach. I respect the immense amount of work that the Charter Review Committee did over a number of years, the level of effort they did in reaching out to as many residents as possible. And the last thing I'll say, this isn't really my area of expertise, but I think looking retrospectively at turnout numbers and voting numbers, I think it's a bit of a red herring, you know, when people are able to when people running for office are able to focus on individual wards, you know, different wards have different ways of outreach. and people be able to meet people where they are in a way that makes sense, whether it's tough students or folks in apartments. We're gonna be having a lot more big apartment buildings coming in the city, hopefully. That's a challenge that everybody will have to face. So I think for that reason, I support word-based city councilors, and I look forward to hearing the rest of the conversation. I appreciate the work everyone's done on this. Thank you.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Melvin, Laurel, there's a bunch of, there's like an iPhone user, a cell phone user. Let me know what you want me to just submit everyone.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Here's John, I just let him in.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: So it looks like then everybody else is. Okay, go ahead.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you, uh, no, but thank you, Anthony, Michael, and Marilyn for your time. Um, we really appreciate it. I think I speak for everyone. I say that, um, I'm the, uh, by day I'm the budget director in Somerville. So this is a process, um, uh, about which I am a little bit familiar. I've been involved in the charter review, especially with respect to the, the CIP and the sort of the role of finance and things like that. Um, I'm relatively, you know, compared to the rest of the group, probably I'm very new to Medford. So what's important to me as a newer resident here, at least in this process, specifically kind of like, you know, what extent do we want to hear from the mayor, from the council? Can we hear from the mayor and the council? or are we simply negotiating with ourselves to find out sort of what can or cannot pass? I think I come at this from obviously like an administrative good governance bias, right? Just because of my day job. And I wanna find out what relevant comparisons in terms of size, scope of government there are between like Medford and the surrounding communities I'm not interested in. In reinventing the wheel here, there's best practices. We're not the first ones to do this. So trying to figure out what's worked in other places and what have been pain points. And then really trying to strike the middle ground between flexibility and creating strong guardrails. I think at the end of the day, well, I'll leave it there.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Yeah, just just really briefly, I'm wondering what our ongoing engagement with the call center looks like? Is there we are we going to have presentations on specific topics from them on our regular meetings? Or are they going to be advising us answering questions that we have? Like, what does that look like?