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[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, I remember, um, it came from just people talking together who love the city and love the neighborhoods and just are always, I mean, Jim especially is always thinking about ways to help people and strengthen the city and strengthen neighborhoods. Um, and that communication and that, um, idea to just make it, smoother, like, I feel like the ambassadors are sort of a conduit between the people and City Hall. So, you know, as we get this program going, as the ambassadors just sort of really dig in more, And as people become more aware of it, I think it will just get stronger.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I just applied to be an ambassador, and then the mayor asked me if I would chair, which I was honored, as I was also honored to chair the charter committee, but it was a team effort, the charter, and I see the ambassadors also as a team effort, and that's one of the things that I'm most excited about, is creating a really solid team to do this.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, for me, one of the early goals is just to get the team going, as we talked about. I want the ambassadors to get to know each other and connect with each other and throw ideas off, you know, each other and get, and the other piece is to get the ambassadors familiar, I mean, they know their neighborhoods well, but there's so many resources at City Hall and there's so much there. And one of the things that the ambassadors will be doing over the coming weeks and months is just becoming really familiar with what's available there so that that can be shared with residents and also listening to residents and conveying what they're hearing to City Hall. sort of getting the pulse of what's happening on the ground, um, and sharing that with City Hall. So, you know, we're having, uh, uh, department heads or members of departments at City Hall come to our meetings and just talk to us about what's available. And out of that also, there might come ideas about, um, ways to collaborate. So, um, yeah, those- that's sort of early goals. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: And I would say another long-term goal is just to enhance and increase civic engagement and excitement and just empower residents, too, to realize, yeah, I really can have a relationship with City Hall. And I can be part of my community in really meaningful ways.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and as we get more established and we start to get to know the city staff and department heads, if a particular department is putting out a survey that's particular to a neighborhood, we can contact the ambassador and say, hey, just wanted you to know this, whatever help we can get to get the word out. I mean, there's a lot of ways. We have the emails and the contact information of every ambassador currently on the website.
[Milva McDonald]: So people can find them. And you know, people are starting to contact ambassadors through that. So that's one way. And you know, presence at events, as the mayor mentioned, is another way. You know, some of the ideas also people have talked about is, you know, block parties kind of getting just to get people more connected in their neighborhoods and coffee hours, bulletin boards. I mean, there's a lot of ideas.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'll say right now, I mean, we're still building the program, but it is active. So people right now can reach out to ambassadors, communicate with them, get help with issues. I mean, ambassadors can't solve your problem, but they can help you become aware of what resources might be available to address problems. We are meeting over the summer, as the mayor said. We are going to be at the farmers market on September 10th. So we'll be there with a table and hopefully meet a lot of people and let people know about the program. And one thing that's in the works, it's not completely scheduled yet, but The one idea that came out of our last gathering was an open house for ambassadors somewhere, maybe the library, in the fall. So people will be invited to come and meet their ambassadors. And then different ambassadors will be doing different things within their own neighborhoods. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, every ambassador is an individual, so yeah, and every neighborhood is different. So yeah, it won't be the same neighborhood to neighborhood.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and we're also keeping track of all the communications that the ambassadors get so that when we meet with city staff, we can say, okay, you know, we have these, this is what we're hearing from people and, you know, they can sort of sense, um, okay, that sounds like an issue we should be addressing or, you know, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: Not at the moment. We were very excited that we were asked to work on the library card drive. Of course, you know, the library is beloved by all, pretty much. And we welcome ideas for other collaborations. One of the things At our meeting in May, the health department came and spoke with us and they talked about their excitement about the program because some of the issues that they work on are very conducive to neighborhood cooperation. So they talked about, you know, if ambassadors can get groups together in the neighborhoods, if anybody's experiencing rodent issues, we would love to help, you know, so, so the ambassadors can kind of, um, help get things like that going. So, um, I think that there will be more and, um, they'll come from maybe whatever's happening in the neighborhoods or, and like the library card drive, you know, we were asked to help. So,
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. That is the main driver. Um, but I, but I also do think it will help city staff as well. Um, you know, and I'm hoping that city staff will eventually see the ambassadors as a resource. Um, and that residents will see the ambassadors as a resource. Um, and, uh, you know, all the things.
[Milva McDonald]: Mean I've done this kind of thing in my neighborhood, you know Like there were parking issues because I live near the commuter rail and you know calling meetings talking about that resolving that issue So I just I have a list from you know All of that and then when I know that there's an issue going on that I think residents want to hear about I email my list and say, hey, you know, FYI, there's a meeting at City Hall. And the more people we have doing that kind of thing, the more people are going to feel engaged, empowered, connected, and the more the city can do its job for the residents.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm the chair. I'm not assigned to a specific neighborhood, but my contact information is on the ambassador page, and I welcome anyone who has ideas, thoughts, questions, issues to contact me anytime, too.
[Milva McDonald]: He started SmartO.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, I remember it came from just people talking together who love the city and love the neighborhoods and just are always, I mean, Jim especially is always thinking about ways to help people and strengthen the city and strengthen neighborhoods. And that communication and that idea to just make it, smoother, like I feel like the ambassadors are sort of a conduit between the people and City Hall. So, you know, as we get this program going, as the ambassadors just sort of really dig in more, And as people become more aware of it, I think it will just get stronger. And it will be positive.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I just applied to be an ambassador, and then the mayor asked me if I would chair, which I was honored, as I was also honored to chair the charter committee. But, you know, it was a team effort, the charter, and I see the ambassadors also as a team effort. And that's one of the things that I'm most excited about, is creating a really solid team to do this.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, do you want to start us off? Well, I mean, for me, one of the early goals is just to get the team going, as we talked about. I want the ambassadors to get to know each other and connect with each other and throw ideas off, you know, each other and get, and the other piece is to get the ambassadors familiar, I mean, they know their neighborhoods well, but there's so many resources at City Hall and there's so much there. Right. And one of the things that the ambassadors will be doing over the coming weeks and months is just becoming really familiar with what's available there so that that can be shared with residents and also listening to residents and conveying what they're hearing to City Hall. sort of getting the pulse of what's happening on the ground, um, and sharing that with City Hall. So, you know, we're having, uh, uh, department heads or members of departments at City Hall come to our meetings and just talk to us about what's available. And out of that also, there might come ideas about, um, ways to collaborate. So, um, yeah, those- that's sort of early goals. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Figure out what will work for everybody and create that checklist All great stuff really yeah, and I would say like another long-term goal is just to enhance and increase civic engagement and excitement and just empower residents to to to realize yeah, I really can have a relationship with City Hall and and I can be part of my community in You know a really meaningful ways
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and you know, as we get more established and we start to get to know the city staff and department heads, if a particular department is putting out a survey that's particular to a neighborhood, we can contact the ambassador and say, hey, just wanted you to know this, you know, whatever help we can get to get the word out. I mean, there's a lot of ways. We have the emails and the contact information of every ambassador currently on the website. So people can find them and people are starting to contact ambassadors through that. So that's one way. And presence at events, as the mayor mentioned, is another way. You know, some of the ideas also people have talked about is, you know, block parties kind of getting just to get people more connected in their neighborhoods and coffee hours, bulletin boards. I mean, there's a lot of ideas.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'll say right now, I mean, we're still building the program, but it is active. So people right now can reach out to ambassadors, communicate with them, get, you know, help with issues. I mean, ambassadors can't solve your problem, but they can help you become aware of what resources might be available to address problems. We are meeting over the summer, as the mayor said. We are going to be at the farmers market on September 10th. So we'll be there with a table and hopefully meet a lot of people and let people know about the program. And one thing that's in the works, it's not completely scheduled yet, but The idea, one idea that came out of our last gathering was an open house for ambassadors somewhere, maybe the library in the fall. So people will be invited to come and meet their ambassadors. And then different ambassadors will be doing different things within their own neighborhoods.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, every ambassador is an individual, so yeah, and every neighborhood is different. So yeah, it won't be the same neighborhood to neighborhood.
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and we're also keeping track of all the communications that the ambassadors get so that when we meet with city staff, we can say, okay, you know, we have these, this is what we're hearing from people and, you know, they can sort of sense, um, okay, that sounds like an issue we should be addressing or, you know, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: Not at the moment. We were very excited that we were asked to work on the library card drive. Of course, you know, the library is beloved by all pretty much. And we welcome ideas for other collaborations. One of the things at our meeting in, May, the health department came and spoke with us and they talked about their excitement about the program because some of the issues that they work on are very conducive to neighborhood cooperation. So they talked about, you know, if ambassadors can get groups together in the neighborhoods, if anybody's experiencing rodent issues, we would love to help, you know, so, so the ambassadors can kind of, um, help get things like that going. So, um, I think that there will be more and, um, they'll come from maybe whatever's happening in the neighborhoods or, and like the library card drive, you know, we were asked to help. So,
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. That is the main driver. Um, but I, but I also do think it will help city staff as well. Um, you know, and I'm hoping that city staff will eventually see the ambassadors as a resource. Um, and that residents will see the ambassadors as a resource. Um, and, uh, you know, all the things.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I've done this kind of thing in my neighborhood, you know, like there were parking issues because I live near the commuter rail and, you know, calling meetings, talking about that, resolving that issue. So I have a list from, you know, all of that. And then when I know that there's an issue going on that I think residents want to hear about. I email my list and say, hey, you know, FYI, there's a meeting at City Hall. And the more people we have doing that kind of thing, the more people are going to feel engaged, empowered, connected, and the more the city can do its job for the residents.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I'm the chair. I'm not assigned to a specific neighborhood, but my contact information is on the ambassador page, and I welcome anyone who has ideas, thoughts, questions, issues to contact me anytime, too.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, thank you. I'm Milva McDonald at 61 Monument Street. First, I just want to thank everyone who's been working so hard on this for the last few years. Commissioner McGivern, Director Hunt, the Solid Waste Task Force, Garbage to Garden, and our Solid Waste Consultant. I think it's really impressive the way you've been able to come up with a plan that addresses our climate goals as well as the budget issues the city is going to be facing. I've read a little bit about pay-as-you-throw programs, and I believe I read that it's over 160 communities in Massachusetts that have them. And the statistic that I saw on the MassDEP website said that in pay-as-you-throw communities, households produce 32% less trash, and that's pretty considerable. So I'm really excited that we're moving towards this. I think that not all pay-as-you-throw communities are able to offer free composting, so that really, I think, gives Medford a chance to do maybe even better than that. And I am really proud to live in a city that's been a leader in terms of environmental issues. We composted for many years. I had four children at home, and I know it's hard to reduce trash, but even with my four kids at home, we never filled up our bin. And I'm excited that you're going to be giving programs that are going to help people sort of address some of the challenges of making less trash. I see this as very positive. I don't see it as a reduction in services because the free composting to me is a huge increase in services. And I think that we're going to see some issues, but it's clear that we can address problems as they arise. And I'm glad to see Citi listening and taking people's concerns seriously and working to address them. So thank you to everyone who's worked on this.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, thank you so much, Danielle. It's really great to be back on the podcast. I'm Milva McDonald, and my pronouns are she, her. And the restaurant question, I've been thinking about that, but you haven't asked it yet.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, well, it's hard to pick one favorite, and I've said different things last time. I said the farmer's market, which is still a great choice. I do like the Thai restaurant in Medford Square, Tom Young Kun. And I like, I mean, I like the Pad Thai. I like curry. I like the massaman curry.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Um, so where we are right now is we are at the final step, which is the voters. Um, and the, the charter was the mayor appointed a committee, which you and I were both on. We spent almost two years doing public engagement or review, reviewing the charter, going through an article by article, the mayor and the city council then, um, had a negotiation, they worked through it, they made some changes, they came to an agreement, and then it was sent to the State House as a home rule petition, which is basically a bill. So it has to go through the process of any bill. And so it went through the House, it went through the Senate. The Senate had a few very minor changes, nothing substantive, just details, but that meant it had to go back to the House. And then it went back to the Senate, and then the governor signed it in mid-September, and that means the next stop is the voters, the ballot. And the state reviews it just to ensure that it complies with state law, You know, it's in alignment with what should be in a charter in Massachusetts, et cetera. And now the voters get to decide. And the sample ballot is available on the website for the Charter's ballot question committee, which I know we're going to be talking about. And it's also on the city website. So people can actually see what their ballot looks like before they go vote, and they can read the question and the summary.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's a great question. So the city will be putting out some information on their webpage about the question, but we have a ballot question committee and there's a website and it's www.medfordcharternow.com. It has a link to the current charter, links to the proposed charter, Link to the ballot so you can see it and it and it has summaries of. You know, kind of what is a charter and what some of the proposed changes in the new charter are so, you know, I mean. Reading the chart, the propose the current our current charter is very short. It's about 2 pages. Um, but the proposed charter is much longer. Um. And it's comprehensive, whereas our current charter isn't so are the proposed charter is. 40 something pages. So there are summaries for people if they don't want to read the whole thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, absolutely. But to your point that you just made, I mean, you remember when the Collins Center for Public Management that we worked with on the committee, we were fortunate to have them advising us. They sort of, we have a memo from them about the complexity of Medford's Charter, which sounds strange because Medford's Charter is only two pages long, right? But the reason it's difficult is because there's almost nothing in it. So any questions that arise, you have to sort of find your way through state law, as you just said, and it can make things confusing. Yeah, exactly. So, as far as the major as the changes in the charter, the charter sets out sort of establishes Medford as a city, and it lays out our form of government. The form of government, which is mayor council will remain, but the changes to the mayor's office are a 4 year term. Which is trending in Massachusetts and it makes sense for reasons, including, you know, executive tasks are more long term. And so. Giving the mayor 4 years means less time campaigning more time spent working on what the city needs. The other thing to them with the mayor is a term limit of four terms, so no mayor will be able to serve longer than 16 years. And as far as the city council. Ward representation, which is something that people have talked about. I mean, I've lived in the city for 32 years, and for most of that time, people have been talking about why don't we have ward representation? We're one of the only cities left in the state that does not have it. So that's a pretty big change, and it means our current council of seven at-large members would change to a hybrid Council of 8 ward representatives 1 from each ward and 3 at large Councilors, which is also the standard size for. Cities like ours, our council is the smallest. um and that number because we wanted to have you don't have to be able to break a tie but also not just a single at large exactly right we did you remember because we did say well we could do nine but that would mean one at large and the point of hybrid is that you sort of have a mix of both so yeah yeah that's why um you know, like Malden has eight wards and they have eight ward Councilors, three at large. Somerville, I believe only has seven wards, but they still, they have 11, they have four at large. So they're still doing 11, but if we had had six wards, you know, then maybe we would have gone with nine, but it makes sense to do the 11 because of the hybrid. The school committee, will have localized representation, not ward, because that would have made the school committee much bigger. And, you know, we didn't really see a need to increase the size of the school committee. So, um, they'll still be 7 members. 4 of them will be from districts, so two wards will be combined to make a district, and then two at large and the mayor will remain on the school committee, but the school committee will elect its own chair, whereas currently our charter says the mayor is the chair. Under the new charter, the school committee will elect its own chair.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that was, that came up during the negotiations between the mayor and the city council. Um, the, um, yeah, it's, there's almost, I think there's maybe one, maybe two communities that don't have the mayor on the school committee. Um, but the mayor being chair is, you know, it's, it's not as common. It's, it's about half and half. Um, so, um, so that is, you know, that's one of the reasons that, um, It didn't, I mean, for many reasons, mayors are on school committees in Massachusetts because of the way schools are run in Massachusetts. And the budget is a huge part of, the school budget is a huge part of the city budget. So having the mayor present and part of that, that's kind of the idea. It also gives the school committee members the mayor's ear every week. It gives the public a chance to interact. But in other states, maybe where they have county systems, whatever, the mayor's not necessarily as involved just because of the way their systems work.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's the main reason, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, well, you know, the budget processes are, are outlined in state law. So there's certain things that, you know, we have to do because of state law says so, but one thing that is new and we, and we've also had some improvements to our budget process with the recent budget ordinance passed by the city council. So, um, so there's that also, but in the charter, there's a requirement that there's an annual budget meeting with the mayor and the school committee and the city council sort of very early in the process. I think, I think the date was no later than February 15th. So that, that the intention of that is for these sort of three bodies to just communicate, um, and talk about the financial state of the city and the needs of the city and, and sort of get some, some of that think tanking, um, before the budget process begins.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we see the council school committee. Um, there are citizen participation mechanisms that we don't have in our charter now. So. It there's, um. A group petition, it was sometimes called a free petition where, and in the current proposed charter, it would be 100 signatures that. To put a measure to get the city council to put something on their agenda and talk about it. you just need to get 100 signatures. Obviously, then people can do that now, they can contact city councilors, and then the city councilors will often bring those issues to the floor. This provision is meant to, if a resident doesn't get that response, then they have this option to get 100 people to sign a petition and get the city council to talk about their concern. It doesn't require that they do anything specific, but it means it has to be taken to the floor. There's also provisions to put a measure on the ballot. So if there's something that we want to pass in the city or that some resident or group of residents wants to pass and they do the work of collecting the number of signatures required, it can get put on the ballot. Also, If the city council passes an ordinance and people say, you know, we don't agree with this and they get the required number of signatures, which is, you know, a lot, then they can put that on the ballot to, um, to say no to this referent to, to this, uh, measure. Uh, there's also a provision to recall the mayor. So again, pretty big lift to recall the mayor. It can't be done frivolously, but if for some reason there's some, you know, big corruption happening or something that motivated a large enough group of residents to collect the signatures and vote the mayor out, that that is possible. Whereas it wasn't, it's not possible in our current charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. I mean, that was definitely the hope.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so that was something that people brought up as a question. And when we talked to the call center about it, they basically said, you know, that doesn't generally happen, but there are provisions in state law if it doesn't. I mean, there's the option of writing it. People can write in a candidate. But and then, you know, if that doesn't, yeah, usually that fixes it. But I mean, when we asked them about it, they I believe they said they didn't even know of a single case where that happened.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, because the other thing about ward representation is that it makes running for office a lot more accessible. Running in a ward of 7,000 to 8,000 people is hugely different from running in a city of 60,000. Mailings are going to be a lot less. You're going to need a lot less literature. Your ability to actually hit a significant number of voters' doors. So it's just more manageable. And even when we did the listening sessions around the city with groups of people, there was a couple of times where people said, oh, yeah, maybe I would consider running if there were ward representation. Yeah, so, um, so I think that the, the lowering the barriers to running for office, um. You know, could hopefully, um. Eliminate the problem of potential problem of not having candidates.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. And we, you know, we heard some of that when we did the listening sessions too. Um, you know, I, I mean, I, there I've talked to people who will say, You know, they've moved here from other cities and they're like, wait, Medford doesn't have order. There's no ward representative. That's weird. And it is weird, actually, in the context of a state.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, as you know, I'm sure you remember that this did come up. People on the committee were like, oh, well, will people worry about the cost? And one of the things that we kept coming back to on the committee was that our job was to determine what the best form of government for Medford would be. So, you know, better government is priceless maybe, I would say. And the other thing is, yeah, there would be four more salaries, but the charter doesn't say what any salaries are. The salaries get decided on by the council for the next mayor, the next school committee and the next city council. So the idea of a council giving itself a raise is not they give the next council a raise or not. Salaries can be changed in any direction, so it's not set in stone the amount of money that it will cost. That's something that will get worked out and fitting for more people up there will also have to get worked out. The city hall chambers, the entire building has to be maintained regardless of whether we have ward representation. So it's not as though there's a zero cost to doing nothing. So, you know, those are some of my thoughts about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, interestingly, there was a charter review in 1978. That was our last full review. Um, and. I have the report, and they actually did recommend district representation or more localized representation, but that charter didn't pass. The big issue that people cared about at that time was city manager versus mayor. Medford had a city manager, and that charter review commission did not recommend changing to mayor from city manager. We can't know for sure why that charter got voted down, but I think that's 1 of the reasons because that was the main issue. And then in 1986, it wasn't a full charter review, but the city switched to mayor. So. Yeah, so that's, um, so, yeah, that's the last time, but, you know, as I said, anecdotally, I know people talk about it a lot word representation and have been for a while. And, you know, it clearly from the survey and from talking to people when we did the committee, it was on people's minds.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And we did have a person on our committee who's in grad school and who's an expert in statistics. And, you know, he assured us that it was statistically significant, that it was a really good response.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, no, you did plenty, Danielle. You were a great, great member of the team. I'm glad you brought this up because, you know, I agree with you. I mean, one of the things about the sort of The thing that we sort of tried to keep focused on, which was that this is not about sort of the current situation now or who's in office now. And so we had to think about it that way and remind ourselves of that sometimes, but it was. It was inherently I feel that the process was inherently a political while we were doing it and I think that was really valuable and and especially in the current environment, you know, having a group of people be able to come together who don't. always see eye to eye on everything, but come together to work on something that's this important to the city in a positive way. Yeah, I felt really good about that. And so I'm glad that it worked out that way. And I think the balance was important overall. you know, for the city too.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So that's, and I'm glad you brought this up because this is actually one of the really most important things in the new charter. One of the most important things in the new charter is provisions for regular charter review. what the process that you just talked about, it's been on and off for about 15 years. There's a way that cities can do a charter review that involves collecting signatures from 15% of registered voters, which in Medford at this point would, well, you have to have a cushion too, just because some of the signatures will be rejected for various reasons. So you need about six to 7,000. There were residents, Michael Ruggiero, who used to live here, was a big proponent. Jim Silva, Neil Osborne, these people were working really hard just to get a charter review. And then we had a couple of home rule petitions to try to get the city council to agree to To review the charter and for various reasons that didn't work out. So, yeah, it was. It was years of trying to just get a look at the charter to review it. And then finally. We figured out that that we could just have an appointed committee and that's actually how most cities do it. And then once it's in the charter, then we will never have to worry about this again, because it will be reviewed every 10 years. The 1st review in our charter would would be required to happen within 5 years, which makes sense because it's been so long and we want to just make sure that sort of it's a check up on how things are working. Are these changes working? Etcetera. But then it will be reviewed every 10 years. So. As the city changes, as the needs of the city change, we can make sure that the city government reflects that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and the Charter defines what the next Charter Review Committee, how it will be chosen, and the way it's The way it's laid out in our charter is that the mayor will appoint it's 9 members. The mayor appoints 3, the council appoints 3 and the school committee appoints 3. So, um, so it will be appointees from those 3 bodies and. they will review the charter and, you know, it will be important to look at it and hopefully it won't be as big of a process as ours. Although maybe, I don't know. I mean, we were sort of like, okay. I remember when the Collins Center gave us that model charter and they gave us a document at the beginning of the process with a model charter that's a modern charter. And then they sort of put a little,
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and there's, you know, there's a regular review of ordinance required in the charter, which I think is also really important to the city. Just also procedures that don't exist in our current charter, like vacancies. We had a situation where a school committee member resigned a couple of years ago, and I think behind the scenes, it was a little complicated, and what do we do now? And they had to sort of try to figure it out. If that happened with the mayor, it would be probably a crisis for the city without knowing what do we do? The mayor can't serve. And there's literally nothing in our charter that says what would happen or what we should do. So passing this charter, you know, has, has that in it as well.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, just this, the city council also will get a little more, more power to confirm appointments to multi-member boards. So the mayor makes the appointments, but the city council can has 30 days to reject an appointment. So that gives them more, it's a more collaborative process than we have now. And You know, the other thing when you brought up the City Council, the, you know, the salaries or whatnot, the City Council will be able to hire staff, but subject to appropriation. And I think that's the piece that people, and also necessary expenses can be reimbursed, but it's all subject to appropriation. And those were provisions that, you know, are pretty common in other charters, but some people around town, I think, have been concerned about how much money that would cost. It's subject to appropriation, which means it has to go through the budget process. The City Council can't just say we're going to hire this person or I want expenses for this, that, and the other thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but the charter doesn't say that. It just says that they can hire staff subject to appropriation. So if there's a need and they can appropriate it in the budget and the money is there, then they can hire people. It's not uncommon for cities, city councils to have a staff person other. I mean, our city council has a city clerk. They traditionally had another position called the city messenger. So that is actually retained in the charter as an assistant. So they do have those positions, but. You know, as a body, it's not uncommon for a city council to need help with things. And so that option will be there if the money is there and if it's appropriated.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it is a time-consuming job. It is a public service, but there's plenty of public service jobs where people are compensated.
[Milva McDonald]: So, but, you know, the other you know, hopefully ward Councilors, a bigger council will also spread the work around and, and, and, you know, even if it costs the city more money, what we would get back. will make up for that and hopefully more than make up for it. Because the other constituent services can be improved with ward representation. You talked about the closer relationship that constituents can have with their ward Councilors. All those subcommittee work that has to get done, the work will be able to be spread around a little more.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. City councilors do have other jobs and need to. But and we, we can't know for sure who will run or how it will affect who is on our council, but we did, but it is well established in studies that word representation improves descriptive representation, meaning. you know, who is on the council. So more diversity, ethnically, racially, economically, what you mentioned. Because it just, it opens the door for more people to be able to do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it's just, You know, it's in Massachusetts to advocate for a ballot question or, you know, we wanted to get the word out with literature, with signs. And that is a, since it's on the ballot, you have to form a committee. It's not like a political action committee. It's just exclusively formed to advocate for this one question. And then that allowed us to raise money so that we could put out. So we have signs. If anybody wants to put up a Medford Charter Now lawn sign, you can just go to the website medfordcharternow.com or email info at medfordcharternow.com. We also have literature and we have a palm card with information about the charter because we just want to make sure that people know that this is going to be on the ballot and have information about it. So, uh, if if anybody wants to volunteer to do some lit dropping in their neighborhood, you can do that too. Just give us an email. Send us an email and, um, yeah, it's just. You know, I mean, a lot of people are busy. They're very busy. They don't always know what's going on before they, you know, get to the ballot box. So we're just, we want us to spread awareness and let people know that this is happening and that it's a big deal for the city. I mean, it's really huge. You know, it can be sort of not that exciting, I guess, to talk about the charter and it's a little wonky, you know. But it's a very big deal for the city and yeah, passing it means that we will have a modern charter, we will have provisions that are necessary that we don't have now, and it means that we'll be able to review it regularly and we won't have to go through this battle ever again of, come on, let's review the charter, which sometimes elected officials might resist because some of the changes are maybe a little concerning if you're an elected official, if they're going to change your term or put a term limit on or things like that. But we will have a review every 10 years and the first one in five if we pass this.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. I'm actually, the day after election day, I'm supposed to go and do childcare for my granddaughter in Montreal. So I'll be celebrating maybe with her. But maybe, I mean, how I will celebrate actually really is rest. You know, because it has been a lot, it's been a lot for the last few years. It's a lot of work. I want to see the work through and get it all the way to the finish line. This is a huge accomplishment for the city. Charter change is not easy. So getting, getting this through is, it's a huge step forward really. For the city, so, um, so, yeah, I'll celebrate by sort of relaxing.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and thank you, Daniel. And I just want to thank you for being on the committee and all the other committee members and every single person who responded to the survey or came to a listening session, or it takes the time to even to learn about this and vote on it. And all the city officials that we interviewed, it really was a It involved a lot of people around the city. And now I'm excited that the voters get a chance. So thank you to everybody for whatever your role was.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, sure. I'll take that question. Thank you. Um, so, uh, we currently have an all at large council of 7 members. And the proposed charter would switch that to hybrid ward representation. Since the city has 8 wards, that means we would have 8 ward Councilors, 1 from each ward. and three at-large Councilors. Hybrid ward representation is standard practice. We're actually one of the only cities in the state not to have it. And our council is also the smallest council in the state for a city of our size. So that switch to hybrid ward representation will bring the size and composition of our council in line with other councils in the state. Also, we looked at a lot of things when we had this discussion, but some wards of the city have been significantly underrepresented in recent decades. In fact, two wards, wards one and four, have had no Councilors come from them. And what's interesting is that voter turnout actually often correlates with the most highly represented wards. So ward representation will ensure that every ward has a representative, and hopefully open the door to more people running for office, because running for office at large is very difficult. And it's more manageable to really focus on a ward and focus on that number of people.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think the current city council voted for it. I mean, all the ones that are running for re-election voted yes. So I take that as a support.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, so the actual form of government, which is a mayor council form is not changing. So, but there are a couple of things that will shift. For example, right now, the mayor has sole authority to appoint members of Medford's boards and commissions. The boards and commissions that are mostly volunteer bodies, but they're really important for the vibrancy and the operation of many aspects of the city. The city council will have a chance to be involved in that process, and that will make that process a little more collaborative. That's one thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, you know, the way the budget, city budgets are created and decided upon is really outlined in state law. We can't really determine that in the charter, but There are some timelines that we can determine, and one of the things that we added that we hope will improve the budgeting process is that every year on or before February 15th, so right at the beginning or before the budgeting season gets going, the mayor will call a joint meeting of the city council and the school committee. Before the process gets going, Those three bodies, our elected bodies, will get together to review the financial condition of the city and share relevant information. So this hopefully is going to create a more collaborative budget process that will better reflect the needs of all areas of the city.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have a, we don't have, we have a whole section of the new charter, a whole article, article eight that's titled citizen participation mechanisms. And that's something that our current charter does not have. Um, so, uh, and there are different levels, um, of, of, um, actions that people can take under the, this proposed charter if it passes. Um, the first is, what's called in the charter a group petition, where if you want to put something on the agenda for the council, you can get signatures to have it put on the agenda. Obviously, probably the first thing that people would try is to contact their Councilors. But if that doesn't work, it might not always work, citizens will be able to get 100 signatures. And then the city council has to take up discussion of the measure. Yeah, yeah. Other things that people would be able to do is if if they get together and get the signatures, they can put a measure on the ballot. For residents to vote on, that's definitely a lot more signatures, but it's possible. Yeah, also overturning a measure passed by the city council. If there's enough opposition to it and residents can get the required signatures, they can put on the ballot and ask the voters whether they want to reject that. And the last one is a recall of the mayor. So again, it's not something that can be done frivolously. It takes a good bit of work to get the signatures. And then it would also go on the ballot. But it's something that residents will be able to try or have the option of doing, which we don't have now.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I would do you want to go 1st round or should I go?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, um, I, the 1 thing 1 thing I do just want to point out sort of. Generally speaking, our current charter is. It's two pages. There's many things that are not in it. When we first started our committee process, one of the memos that the Collins Center wrote up for us, and that's the Collins Center for Public Management. They help a lot of cities and towns with charter review, and we were really lucky to have them. They wrote up a memo on the complexity of Medford's charter that basically, because it doesn't cover things, you'd have to go through state law, figure out, oh, what do we do about this? And so it's also makes it inaccessible for residents to understand how our government works. So, for example, there are no vacancy provisions in our current charter for mayor or school committee, and there's a 1 for city council, but it's not it's incomplete. So, when we had a school committee member step down a couple of years ago. there was some confusion and it was figured out, but, um, there was a period where it was like, what do we, what do we do about this? Um, if we had that situation with the mayor where a mayor had to step down or a mayor couldn't serve, I feel, you know, that could be a crisis for the city. What do we do? Um, so we have vacancy provisions. That's just an example of one of the ways in which our current charter is lacking.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I add one more thing? Sure. So, I just wanted to add, you know, we've talked about ward representation and it makes sense that we're talking about it a lot because it's really been kind of the major issue even before we got this charter review going. I've been hearing it for years. I meet people who just moved here from other cities and they say, what's what's going on? Medford doesn't have wards. That's weird. But I do know also that there's some concerns about, well, what are we going to do? That's four more people. How are we going to pay for that? I just wanted to say that you can't put a price tag on better government. We're going to if we have more Councilors, we have more people to do work for the city. So we'll also get that back. We'll get it back with a better system of government. We'll get it back with more people actually working for the city. And as far as the salaries, the charter itself doesn't say what salaries are. There's nothing that says the salaries have to be the same or more or less. So these are all things that can be worked out. They're really like small potatoes in the big picture.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I just wanted to, you know, just Ron, you made me, you reminded me of something that there's been a little bit of confusion about in terms of the city council because the charter says that the city council can hire staff subject to appropriation and they might get necessary expenses. But the key phrase there is by appropriation and the reality is that it's exactly the same as the system we have now. They can't hire a staff member or get expenses unless it's appropriated in the budget. That's really not a change at all. It's just laid out there.
[Milva McDonald]: It's really not changed. They do have the clerk, which is already an employee of the city council. And there is an assistant, which the city council has always had a city messenger. So they just changed the title of that, that's all. So it's really pretty much, it's exactly the same. It's just, yeah. And I also just want to say we have lawn signs. If you want to support the charter with a lawn sign, you can go to the website or email us at info at medfordcharternow.com. And to get those lawn signs, and we have literature, we'll be dropping all over the city. If you want to get involved in doing some lit drops, you can contact us. And we have donation buttons on the website if you want to, you know, support us that way, because it all costs money.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you to the Medford Democratic City Committee, the Library, my fellow candidates, and everyone for coming and tuning in. I'm Milva McDonald, and the story of why I'm running for City Council starts a long time ago, as a kid growing up with an immigrant working-class mom who came to America from Italy in the 1950s. She was the hardest worker I've ever known and she passed her work ethic on to me. Whether working at the Boston Globe while raising my four kids, sitting on the board of non-profits, or helping launch the Mystic LGBTQ plus youth support network, I have always put in the hard work required to get things done. A few years ago, I decided charter review needed to get done in Medford. In 2021, I convened a group of residents to pursue options, and in late 2022, at our request, Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn formed the Medford Charter Study Committee and appointed me as chair. For two years, I led our 11-member committee in a comprehensive review of our city's foundational document. As a result, for the first time in 40 years, a new charter is projected to be on your municipal ballot this November. My experience chairing the committee inspired me to run for office. I want to bring the same level of research, outreach, and deep listening to the work of being your city councilor. My priorities include growing the city's tax base through zoning, reviewing fee structures, and fighting for a better pilot agreement with Tufts. Addressing the affordable housing crisis is a necessity. We must support the Affordable Housing Trust and the Community Land Trust. To ease the burden on taxpayers and renters, we should explore a residential exemption for owner-occupied homes and look further at the good landlord tax credit. We need to ensure that we are meeting the goals in the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, which continues to safeguard Medford for the future while improving life now. Medford has great cultural organizations, but I believe the arts need an anchor at City Hall, so I support the installation of a City Arts Coordinator. As councillor, I would also work to create a commission to promote visibility, equality, and empowerment of our LGBTQ plus community. I think it's also the job of municipal officials to support our dedicated city staff and those in need, like seniors on fixed incomes and immigrant communities. I love people, hearing their concerns and stories, and doing my best to help. As a second-generation Italian-American with working-class roots, I will always put in the time, effort, and research needed to get the job done, and I will make responsiveness and respect priorities in all my interactions. I'm excited to get to work to make our beloved city an even better place to live, and I ask for your vote in September and November. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, thank you. I'm Milva McDonald. I use she, her pronouns. I'm running for a seat on the city council. A little bit about me, I've lived in Medford for a pretty long time. I'd say maybe 32 years. I live in West Medford and I love it. I worked in journalism for a long time. I worked about 30 years at the Boston Globe in the calendar section, which some people might remember people of a certain age, I guess. And then I worked in the regional sections, Globe West and Northwest. eventually worked for Boston.com, and now I work for a publicist, a very niche publicist. We promote exclusively jazz musicians. I have four kids and three grandkids. I love music. I sing in a few choruses, and I also took up pottery a couple of years ago, and I really, really love that. And you can see me at craft fairs around town this fall.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I do have some things at the gift shop at the Arts Collaborative Medford, which is a great place.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, the charter, yes, definitely. We'll be talking about that tonight, I'm sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So that, you know, I thought about that and I'm like, well, you know, Goldilocks is always a good pick, but I know, but then I thought, well, you know, I think I said that last time and it's still, it's still up there. Um, but I thought maybe this time I would give a plug to the farmer's market. Um, because I love going to the farmer's market. Um, they, you can get empanadas, you can get samosas. you can get really delicious cupcakes. Um, these are all the things I like. I love the bread that you can get there. Um, and, and, you know, you can, you can just put, put together a dinner from these awesome vendors. Um, grab a nice loaf of bread, grab a nice hunk of cheese, get a nice fresh tomato and like have a picnic or something, you know? Yeah. And, and that's right. And they, um, They take snap too, so that's also a plus.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, sort of been a person, always been a hard worker. I kind of got my work ethic from my mom, who is an Italian immigrant. She came to the United States in the 1950s at the age of 27. And it was kind of a culture shock for her, because the first time she had experienced running water, electricity, and heat. So being raised by her and my Italian heritage and my experience as the daughter of a working class immigrant contributes to sort of who I am today and who I've sort of become and my views on the importance of tolerance and listening and empathy and kindness. I also like to get things done. And a few years ago, I decided that I'd been hearing about charter review in Medford for too long. And that it was time to get it done. So. In 2021, I sort of tried to rally people together, and we started this group, or we sort of continue to group. I mean, I was connecting with Jim Silva at that point. He had been very involved with charter review. Um, in previous iterations, or the attempts to get charter review to happen. Um, so we sort of revived the Medford charter review coalition, and we were pursuing different ways to get a charter review. And 1 of those was. To ask the mayor to form a committee, because what we learned was that most communities. Review their charters that way using. a special act, which is what Medford ended up doing. So the mayor said, yes, I will form a committee. And I was honored to be appointed as a co-chair initially. And then Laurel Siegel, the other co-chair, left and I became the sole chair. And we went from about 2022 to 2024, which you know, because you were on the committee. Thank you. And we, yeah, so we dove into all things charter. So, um, and I know we'll be talking probably about that more. But it was basically my experience on the committee learning about local government, listening and talking to residents. Um. All of it just was, you know, it was inspirational and inspired me to stay involved with the city council run. I'd like to just sort of continue that work and bring that level of research and depth and listening to work on the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, in the charter is the sort of foundational document for the city. And It involves sort of how people are represented. And what sort of, because it's a structure of the government and so representation was 1 of the big things that we talked about and Medford being 1 of the only cities left in the state. For a long time, it's been one of the only cities that doesn't have board representation for particularly city council. I feel like that addresses some of what you just talked about. Not only because it allows people a more localized representative, it also creates more accessibility for running for office. So, you know, the, the hope is that when this charter passes, which I'm very much hoping that it doesn't November by 2027, we will have that new structure in place. And that could open doors for a lot, a lot more people to run for office that maybe couldn't do it or wouldn't have considered it before. And we heard some of that, you know, we heard that from some people in the listening sessions we did around the city. Um, You know, some people said, oh, well, maybe if there was ward representation, I'd run for office.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And covering, I mean, there's about 60,000 people in the city, and the wards are about 7,000 to 8,000 people. That's a huge difference in terms of mailings, in terms of canvassing. I mean, all that sort of work of campaigning, and it's a pretty big difference. So that's one thing. Also, the other thing, when we looked at Article 8, the citizen participation mechanisms, would hopefully give people more opportunity to be involved in government respond to issues, um, maybe, um, have the opportunity to be able to get something on the ballot if they sort of tried to go through, um, the local government and they didn't and they couldn't do it. They have a mechanism to use where they can make that happen. Um, so those things, I think also, um, I mean, if you're talking specifically about sort of equity and representation and things like that.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I mean, you know, there's definitely people talked a lot about. how long the council meetings are, and I know that the council is aware of that, and I know it's something that they're already thinking about. But that's one thing in terms of just operations. There's so many issues. Zoning is what people are talking about right now quite a lot, and that's definitely something that we need to change. We need to redo the zoning for because we need more housing we need and we need to increase our tax base. So, I think that is definitely a change that. I think it's, I think it's going to happen so much work on it has already been done. And at this point, the good news is, I think that that people are really aware of it now more than they have been in the past. So it gives people an opportunity to. uh, offer really constructive, specific feedback and so that we can move forward with that. Um, cause I think that's important. Um, there's also a lot of really important work to be done, um, like with, uh, uh, funding the affordable housing trust. Um, the board just recently released a really great action plan. Um, and part of that is a community land trust, which is also something that I really support. And, um, you know, hope that that can evolve. That's where this community land trust sort of becomes a non-profit that holds land to benefit the public basically. And so it's affordable housing units that aren't going to go away. I think traffic calming is kind of something that I would like to see change. Um, and that's important, um, especially with the, um, you know, this eventual change in rezoning and things like that traffic is increasing anyway. Um, so I think, um, and I know that that's been worked on, like the street where I near where I live, they just put speed tables on and it's making a huge difference, but, um, bump outs, things like that. I think we need to look at all those things. Um, I think climate resiliency is really important and our city's done a really good job at that so far, but we need to just like, keep on that and make sure that the benchmarks in the climate action adaptation plan are being met. Um. But, you know, some of them I'd like to even see increase, like, I'd like to see even more people use the curbside composting program. Um. The community increase in the tree canopy. Um, and and there's a lot of really great ideas. I loved some of the ideas I've heard from fellow candidates. Like, when I listened to Miranda on your show, she was talking about more benches and shelters at teas. And I just, yeah, I think that's great. I love that idea. Um. Another thing that I would really like to see happen is I'd like to see an arts coordinator at City Hall. I've talked to people in the arts community and we have so many great arts organizations in the city, but we don't have, we have the Arts Council, but there's not really a central kind of unifying anchor at City Hall. And I think that would, I think that could be really good for the city. Yeah. So those are just some of the things.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, 1 of the 1 of the reasons was because I, I entered the race on the way side. So, you know, that was a practical reason. But I also, I tend, I feel like I just tend to be sort of an independent minded person. I do happen to align with a lot of the. Policy ideas, but I also. I, you know, I, yeah, I just, I consider myself independent. So, I mean, it wasn't like... Like I said, it wasn't so much of a tough decision because of the point at which I entered the race kind of made the decision for me anyway. So, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, one of the other things that I would really like to work on, um, if elected is the creation of an LGBTQ plus commission for the city. Um, I know that the council's working to overhaul the human rights commission, and I think that's great, but, um, you know, other cities have LGBTQ plus commissions, um, in Arlington it's called the rainbow commission and I'm a little partial to that. And I like that name, but, um, I think that that that would be an important step. In the city towards sort of promoting equality visibility for our LGBT plus community and empowerment. And I, I see that work as maybe separate from what. You know, or separate or enhancing and what might be done on the human rights commission. So I think. You know, there's different commissions in other cities. They do cool programming, obviously pride, but, you know, I think we don't have to limit things to just June. I think an LGBTQ plus commission would be a year round endeavor and. whatever the commission worked on, but the sort of, it would be focused around the mission statement, obviously, but they could look at policies, programs, advocacy, um, community conversations, community buildings, crosswalk painting. I mean, there's just so many, um, you know, so many options. So I, I would like to see that. I think that would be, um, a pretty great thing for the city.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, absolutely. I am having a couple of events with music, because I love music. I love to sing, but I love music, and I have musicians in my family. make sense for me to bring music into my campaign. So on, and they're both going to be at Mrs. Murphy's, which is an Irish pub on Salem Street. It's I believe 25 Salem Street. On August 29th, which is a Friday from six to eight, we're going to have Celtic music with Alistair White, who's a great fiddler and Eric McDonald on guitar. Alistair used to play in the Battlefield Band, which if anybody out there knows Celtic music knows that that's a pretty big name in Celtic music. And he's a, you know, he's a Scottish guy and he really knows the tradition. So that's going to be a really fun night of music and networking and etc. And on September 7th from 3 to 5 p.m. we'll have the Shereen Klezmer duo. And for people who aren't familiar with Klezmer music, it's really fun music. It's basically Eastern European Jewish folk music. Um, it's very, it's very fun. So, um, and both of those, uh, events, I will be there to meet people, talk to people about my platform, et cetera. Um, people will be able to order off the menu, um, and just have a great evening and afternoon and, uh, learn about the campaign. So those are the two events. Um, there's probably going to be other house parties too in the works, but those are the main things right now.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: No, just my website, if people want to sort of look more closely at my platform and there's information about the events and how you can get involved. It's www.milva4medford.com and Facebook and Instagram, it's the same handle. Uh, slash number for Medford. So, yeah, that's where you can find me. And if you want to. If it might the email is at for Medford dot com. If you want to shoot me a line, I'm happy to talk to anybody get together. have coffee. I really like, that was one of the things I loved about the Charter Study Commission committee was connecting with residents. So I'm happy to do that anytime. I love meeting people, talking to people and hearing about what they want for the city.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Thank you so much, Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, and thanks for inviting me. I'm excited to be here.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'm Milva McDonald, and I've lived in Medford for about 32 years. I've been in my current home in West Medford for about 25 years. I had several, three decades, I worked in journalism at the Boston Globe in the calendar section, if anybody remembers that.
[Milva McDonald]: That was a great section. LS. It was. It was great. I also worked in the Globe West and Northwest and then eventually Boston.com. Now I work for a publicist, a very niche publicist. We promote exclusively jazz musicians. I also do some teaching and tutoring. I have some students. I homeschooled all four of my kids. So, and during that time, I co-founded a secular nonprofit called Advocates for Home Education in Massachusetts, which is still thriving. And I'm also a writer. I've written a couple of books about homeschooling. I've written short stories that I've had published in various journals. I also love music. I sing in three choruses, one called the Holla Lisa Singers. And the director of that chorus lives right here in Medford also. And I just sang in the Harvard Summer Chorus. That was great fun. And another chorus called Mutamonia. I also am a potter. I took up pottery a couple of years ago, and I absolutely love it. So you can see me at craft fairs around Medford this fall.
[Milva McDonald]: And I also have a few things at the gift shop at Arts Collaborative Medford. Oh, okay, that's wonderful. That's a great background. A lot of experience. Yeah, and I said I have four kids. I also have three grandkids.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. Well, giving back to the community has always been important to me and I've always been a hard worker. I kind of got my work ethic from my mom. She was an Italian immigrant who came to the United States in the 1950s. at the age of 27. It was quite the culture shock for her. She had really never been 10 miles out of her village until that point and now she's in this country experiencing running water, electricity, heat for the very first time. So my Italian heritage and my experience as the daughter of a working class immigrant sort of contribute to who I am. And my views on the importance of listening, tolerance, empathy, things like that. So that's sort of a background. But I also really like to get things done. And a few years ago, I decided that I'd been hearing about charter review in the city for a very long time, and I thought, I really would like to see this get done. So in 2021, I kind of just rallied people and said, hey, I'm going to invite everybody over, talk about charter review. And some people that had been involved in the past, like Jim Silva and a couple of other people, we got together, we sort of brought, we created a group called the Medford Charter Review Coalition. And we were pursuing different ways to get charter review done. We said we're just going to try everything and we were collecting signatures. But we also learned that one of the ways and which is actually the most common way for charter review to get done in Massachusetts is for a city committee to be appointed. And then that committee would do the work of the review and then it would go through the city government and then to the state house and back to the voters. So we approached the mayor and said, would you please form a committee? And she did. And to my honor, I was appointed chair. Initially, I was co-chair with Laurel Siegel, but then she left to work in the city's planning department. And we spent, we started in about, I think it was like November or December of 2022. We finished up in late 2024, and I chaired the 11-member committee, and we dove into all things charter. We talked about Charters from around the state, we prioritize public engagement. So my experience chairing that committee, learning about local government and listening and talking to residents just really inspired me to stay involved with the city council run. I'd like to bring that same level of research and depth and listening to the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: It was, you know, before the committee was formed, you know, I was focused on we got to get this charter review done and then it was really a big shift. It was like, oh, okay, we got the review because there was just so, it was so long in Medford just to get the review to happen before anybody could really start talking about, okay, now what, you know, what about the actual charter? So it was a shift, but we did have help. We had the Collins Center for Public Management, which is a nonprofit out of UMass Boston that helps a lot of municipalities with this kind of thing. So that was very important to have that help. And, you know, with their guidance we started looking at charters from around the state. We had a template, a modern charter template that the Collins Center provided for us so we could sort of see, you know, what are the elements that are in a modern charter, which of course our current charter very much lacks. And it was very important to us to do a lot of public engagement. So we held three public information sessions at City Hall. We created a survey that we distributed in five languages. And we held over a dozen listening sessions around the city, which were great. We worked with different organizations like Housing Medford, the Chamber of Commerce, Medford Family Network. We went to the West Medford Community Center. We just tried to cover as much ground as we could. And we sort of collected all this feedback. And that was one of my favorite parts of the process was, you know, the listening sessions and talking to people and sort of listening to their thoughts and what they wanted to see. And once we had this gathered, we sort of dug in. And then we went through the charter article by article. It's a lot of work. Yeah. We did create subcommittees. So that was pretty helpful. So the subcommittee would like go in depth on a particular article and then bring it back to the whole committee. The Collins Center helped a lot with the drafting, but I think our committee was actually pretty ambitious and we did draft several of the sections on our own. And one of the important goals was getting it on the ballot this fall. So in order to make that, timeline we were working really hard at the end.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then once we finished our final report, yeah, once we sort of hashed everything out, incorporated the feedback, we looked at studies and things like that. Then we put it all together in a final report, submitted it to the mayor, and then she reviewed it and sent it to the council, and then it did get to the statehouse. And it is projected to be on the ballot, which I'm very excited about.
[Milva McDonald]: That was going to be my... Everything I hear is that it is going to be. It just had its... third reading with the House. It's gone through the, it's almost through the Senate, so it should be at the Governor's desk very, very soon. That's what I hear.
[Milva McDonald]: And I just want to, again, thank every member of the Charter Committee, because it was a lot of work, and people really donated their time, and we had a lot of fun, too.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, they proposed an alternate scheme of district representation which would have resulted in a majority at large council. I knew that they would look at it and there was an expectation that there would be changes made. That particular change, I was a bit surprised at because we didn't really have indication from many of the council members that that would be their view. Um, and the other thing that I was mostly concerned because if there was one thing that we heard over and over again in our public engagement piece, um, it was ward representation. please give the city ward representation. So it was very clear that that was what people wanted. And, you know, knowing through the process, we learned about charter reviews in other cities and, you know, charter review isn't always guaranteed to succeed. And often charter review will hinge on kind of like one major issue for the city. For instance, in Medford, there actually was a charter commission in 1978. that created a charter that got voted down. And the big issue then was mayor versus city manager. And that particular charter commission didn't recommend that and the voters said no thank you. And then in 1986 the voters did get the switch to the plan A mayor and replacing the city manager. So to my mind the big issue that I heard from most people in the city, was word representation and it didn't surprise me because before the committee even, it was something that I had been hearing about. So, you know, I felt like, Just look, I tried to speak to the council about our findings. Statistically, we are one of the only cities in Massachusetts to not have ward representation. Our council is the smallest in the state for a city of our size. It's 9 or 11 is the standard size. And with the new charter we would have 11, 8 ward and 3 at large. And I was also, in my mind was also the ultimate goal of success at the ballot box. And I felt like that was an important piece for that to happen. I think it resulted in a good public discussion where the merits and the challenges of ward representation were discussed. It was good to see people coming out to share their views communicate with the council and the mayor and I was just very glad that in the end that the council reached a compromise with the mayor that kept ward representation for council and I just want to reiterate that what you were actually doing was This is what the people want
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, and there was sort of, some people countered that with, well, we don't know what the people want. There's 60,000 people in Medford. And that is true, but we have to base it on what we were hearing from people.
[Milva McDonald]: And that's what we did.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it was great. I mean, there were some, like some people say, well, you didn't listen to the people on everything. For instance, the mayor being on school committee, which became, I mean, that in the end, that was part of the compromise made between the mayor and the council. And, you know, what we did as a committee was we did take that public engagement very seriously. But we also talked to, I mean, we talked to almost every sitting elected. We talked to prior electeds. We talked to prior mayors. We talked to city staff. And we looked at a lot of things. And the school committee subcommittee, which was chaired by Paulette Van der Kloot, looked very carefully chair, mayor being the chair, and you know, there were various reasons that the committee decided to recommend that. It was changed, that's fine. You know, term limits was another one, because term limits are very popular, but when we dug into the data, It just, it didn't make sense for various reasons to recommend it for council and school committee. We did recommend it for mayor. But I never heard the council complain about the fact that we didn't, well, there was one time actually, once they complained. But, you know, I mean, we did our best. We took the public engagement seriously, but we also had other information that we incorporated.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I hope everyone votes yes.
[Milva McDonald]: And I just want to say one of the really important things in the new charter, if everybody votes yes and it gets voted through, is that we will have regular charter review. So we will not go for decades with our charter languishing again.
[Milva McDonald]: We did our best.
[Milva McDonald]: So my position is that the city does need a zoning overhaul. There's not really a question and I don't think there's disagreement about that. I think that there's been a lot of work done and we have these sort of visionary documents that have been guiding the process like the comprehensive plan and the housing production plan. And we've had 18 months with an outside consultant. So a lot has been done. But based on my conversation with residents and watching the community development board meetings, I think that slowing things down, especially with the residential zoning, was the right call. The good news is that people are learning about it. They know about it now. For whatever reason that didn't happen, I prefer to look forward and look at the sort of the upside of that, which is that now we actually are hearing from people. And they will have a chance to share specifics about their neighborhoods. And I think that's important because, you know, the consultants have done their best, but they don't know every neighborhood in Medford. So, now that we have residents aware and on board, they can share specifics about their neighborhood with the community development board and the council, and that can help guide the process to a good final outcome. I think that... That kind of detailed attention is important. We also have to give that detailed attention to the squares and corridors. I know the Community Development Board is working really hard on everything that's been sent over to them, which is a lot.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it's a tremendous amount. And I think it's probably prudent to take the time that it needs and look at details. Like right now, I know one of the things they talked about at their last meeting was the boundaries of the squares, for instance. I mean, that was a question that I asked a month or two ago, because I noticed that in my neighborhood, the boundaries of the squares had been stretched so that some really beautiful old residential houses were potentially going to be zoned to mixed use. And so they're looking at those kinds of properties and those kinds of things and those details. And I think that that's important. So I'm glad that that's happening. One of the things that residents that I've talked to have been concerned about, several, is Teardowns in their neighborhood. Yes, and we have already seen yes, you know a house in South Medford That's slated to be torn down That's a beautiful perfectly wonderful house. So and and people are worried about things like that so those those are some of the concerns I've heard and and What I don't see disagreement on is I don't see disagreement on the need for new zoning and the need for new housing. We particularly need commercial zoning. So I think that the good news is that I think most everybody in the city agrees that this is important.
[Milva McDonald]: And that it needs to happen. I don't think that anybody's trying to stop rezoning. I think it's just let's make sure that we're listening to people and figuring out what's really the best for Medford. What is the right zoning for Medford?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, that's a that's an excellent question. And it's a very important question. It's also a tough question because we have limited options, right? Yes. I think what we were just talking about zoning, particularly in the commercial sectors, is is very important. I mean, that's maybe one of the biggest things we can do is to make Medford business friendly. with the zoning process, looking at permitting processes, incentives, things like that, so that we can grow our commercial tax base. We have a lot of potential for that, and it just needs to be realized. State aid and grants, identifying opportunities, I think the planning department works hard at that. But that's something that, you know, the council could conceivably work with them on, is identifying those kinds of opportunities and making them happen. We should be doing regular reviews of our fee schedules. Like, we just, parking fees were just looked at, and I know some people might not like that, but our parking fees are very low. You know, I personally will, you know, look and say, okay, well, will I get the same number of permits this year? You know, I don't know if I will. But I might. But, I mean, everybody will have to weigh that decision, but things like, you know, Permitting fees just every and also looking at our contracts like I mean even the shovel year, which is amazing It's also Been a great business opportunity and it's proven to be highly successful. So maybe renegotiating some of these contracts where we have now a proven track record and And also, I know that this is something that's being looked at, but linkage fees, developer fees, so basically looking at fees, looking at opportunities for state grants, beefing up our commercial sectors, and renegotiating the pilot program with Tufts, looking at, you know, where we can, so those are some of the ways I think. They're all good ones.
[Milva McDonald]: I am a proponent of affordable housing. Um, and I, I think that it's great that this, that we have an affordable housing trust now. Um, then we need to figure out how to fund it. And we have, uh, the affordable housing trust has a board that put out recently a great comprehensive report with ideas for that, including a community land trust, which I think would also be great. That would be, um, like sort of a city owned property that would be available to, Build affordable housing on so and that would stay affordable, right? No, it'd be nice a city-owned. Yeah, I mean that's So I think that's those are important. So and and also in the affordability issue I think looking at a residential exemption for taxpayers for homeowners would be a good thing to investigate Other cities have that Malden has it.
[Milva McDonald]: And that is basically where if you live in your property, then you are eligible to apply for an exemption to your tax bill. I think that climate resiliency is important, and we have a great climate action and adaptation plan, so I think keeping an eye on that and making sure we're meeting the benchmarks is great. I think a lot of great things have already happened. Expanding the tree canopy, and these things are great for climate resiliency, but they also improve people's quality of life. So the tree canopy is going to make a nicer city. The bike share program, I think, has been great for people. And I think safe streets are important, so infrastructure improvements, things like that. And I also am a big supporter of the arts. I would like to, as a Councilor, advocate for the installation of a city arts coordinator. One of the things that I hear from people is we have so many great arts organizations, and we do.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. Yeah, we do. But part of sort of what happens is we don't, you know, the people are picking up the slack, kind of. So a city arts coordinator could be kind of a unifying, an anchor, basically. Right, yeah. And support the arts council and sort of unify arts in the city So I and that's what I've heard from the arts community that that's something that they would like nice Um, and I also would like to advocate for an lgbtq plus commission Okay, which would be um, just a you know, one of another one of the city's volunteer commissions, right? um to sort of advocate for that community. So those are some of the things.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I have a couple of really fun ones coming up. I love music, I said that, and I have musicians in my family, and so there's a couple of events coming up at Mrs. Murphy's, which is the Irish pub on Salem Street. on August 29th, which is a Friday, from 6 to 8. We will be there with Celtic music, a great fiddler named Alistair White, and guitarist Eric McDonald. Alistair is Scottish, and he used to be in the Battlefield Band, which if anybody knows Celtic music, that's a very big name. So that's going to be really fun. We'll be there from 6 to 8. Come on over. Order off the menu. Chat with us. You know, talk to me about my platform. Get to know me. I would love to see you. There's another one at Mrs. Murphy's on September 7th, which is a Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. with the Shereem Klezmer duo. And Klezmer music is Eastern European Jewish folk music, and it's really fun.
[Milva McDonald]: That will be a clarinet player and an accordion player, both who live in Medford. Yeah, so I'm excited about those. Very nice, very nice.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's hard. Thinking of the least favorite thing is hard, because I'm like, oh, there's nothing I really don't like to do. But then I thought, oh, OK, driving. That's probably my least favorite, because the traffic, so many people use Medford as a cut through, which is something I would like to sit down and think about. Is there some way to discourage that? But anyway, so I would say that's probably my least favorite, driving. My most favorite? That's much easier, although hard to pick one. So I probably picked a few. You could pick a few, that's fine. The library is one of my favorite things, go to the library. Our second poet laureate Vijaya Sundaram runs a poetry club there and I love going to her poetry club. She also runs a poetry open mic at the Arts Collaborative Medford. So I love those things and I love the Arts Collaborative Medford. I also love the farmer's market. And the other thing I love to do in Medford is my husband and I have a tandem bike, which is like a bicycle built for two. So we like to ride that. Yeah, we ride it over to the Mystic Lakes and look for the eagles and the herons. And yeah, so that's definitely one of my favorite things.
[Milva McDonald]: I have a website, www.milva4medford.com. I'm also on Facebook with that handle, milva4medford, and Instagram, same handle, milva4medford. So I would invite everyone to check out the website, check out the social media, follow me. You can email me at milva4medford.com. I'd love to hear from people. Please contact me. Any questions or comments or if you just want to have coffee, I'm available.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you to the Medford Democratic City Committee, the Library, my fellow candidates, and everyone for coming and tuning in. I'm Milva McDonald, and the story of why I'm running for City Council starts a long time ago, as a kid growing up with an immigrant working-class mom who came to America from Italy in the 1950s. She was the hardest worker I've ever known, and she passed her work ethic on to me. Whether working at the Boston Globe while raising my four kids, sitting on the board of nonprofits, or helping launch the Mystic LGBTQ Plus Youth Support Network, I have always put in the hard work required to get things done. A few years ago, I decided charter review needed to get done in Medford. In 2021, I convened a group of residents to pursue options, and in late 2022, at our request, Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn formed the Medford Charter Study Committee and appointed me as chair. For two years, I led our 11-member committee in a comprehensive review of our city's foundational document. As a result, for the first time in 40 years, a new charter is projected to be on your municipal ballot this November. My experience chairing the committee inspired me to run for office. I want to bring the same level of research, outreach, and deep listening to the work of being your city councilor. My priorities include growing the city's tax base through zoning, reviewing fee structures, and fighting for a better pilot agreement with Tufts. Addressing the affordable housing crisis is a necessity. We must support the Affordable Housing Trust and the Community Land Trust. To ease the burden on taxpayers and renters, we should explore a residential exemption for owner-occupied homes and look further at the Good Landlord Tax Credit. We need to ensure that we are meeting the goals in the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, which continues to safeguard Medford for the future while improving life now. Medford has great cultural organizations, but I believe the arts need an anchor at City Hall, so I support the installation of a City Arts Coordinator. As Councilor, I would also work to create a commission to promote visibility, equality, and empowerment of our LGBTQ plus community. I think it's also the job of municipal officials to support our dedicated city staff and those in need, like seniors on fixed incomes and immigrant communities. I love people, hearing their concerns and stories, and doing my best to help. As a second-generation Italian-American with working-class roots, I will always put in the time, effort, and research needed to get the job done, and I will make responsiveness and respect priorities in all my interactions. I'm excited to get to work to make our beloved city an even better place to live, and I ask for your vote in September and November. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi. Thank you. Thanks for taking my question, and thank you for your work. My question is about, I live near West Medford Square, and When I look at the map, I'm just curious about how the boundaries of the square were determined and how you made the decision to make some residential properties mixed use. When you walk out from the square, when you walk down Harvard Ave, there's maybe a block to max of businesses and then the residential area starts. And it looks to me like the, It's being stretched now further so that, for instance, there's a gorgeous old house on the corner of Harvard and Boston Ave that is being zoned for mixed-use 2A, which I believe means it could go to seven stories. And then I think the house next to it is mixed-use 2A. And then some of the other properties around are urban residential, too. So I'm just curious what the thought process was around that and how you decided to make some residential properties mixed use and basically change an area that is currently residential to something else.
[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: I believe it's Yeah. I mean, I think the house next to it is also zoned as mixed use too.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, this one's not because I know who lives there and I've been in it many times.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Mildred McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I just have three quick questions and I'll be brief. One is about the interactive map. Thank you for making it. It's really awesome. My question about it is... dived in too heavily, but the nuances that were referred to earlier, will those be, will those show in the interactive map? If you're looking at the interactive map at a particular property, will you be able to tell some of the nuances that were mentioned earlier about, or will you just see, oh, they can go seven stories, but the nuances that might prevent that, will those show in the interactive map? That's one question. My other question is for the squares. Does this process at all look at some of the traffic issues or particular hairy intersections? I'm thinking in particular of the Route 60 and Playstead and Harvard Ave where the commuter rail crosses, where the train crosses, and it's pretty precarious right now. So I think there's some concern of residents that increased density could create safety issues and difficulties. And so how does this process incorporate that? And I know you don't know what's going to happen exactly as a result of the zoning. So I know that's part of it. But just wondering where along the line, maybe does that come in? And my third question is a little unrelated to the squares, but since private ways have come up. I could be wrong about this, but my understanding is that there's a process to change private ways to public ways, and that could potentially be initiated by the City Council. And since we have so many, and based on the map I looked at, sometimes they cover a whole neighborhood, like Lawrence Estates, for instance. Has the City Council ever considered trying to make some of those roads that really do function as public ways, public ways? So those are my questions.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, like what Zach earlier was saying how, you know, if you look and see, oh, nine stories can go up here. with the incentive and you live near it and you're freaked out about that, it might not necessarily be true because there's other factors that would prevent that from going up.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I think the map is awesome. Thank you so much.
[Milva McDonald]: So basically the map is great and it gives you good general information, but don't make assumptions about individual parcels based on the general information.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm not correcting you. You get credit for digging up those newspaper articles. Thank you. I just was able to disseminate them. But I believe also on the website is the legislative package from 1986, which I collected from the Mass Archives. So that's another piece of information that people can look at. and also the report from the 1978 Charter Study Commission in Medford, which created a whole charter that actually didn't make it. So there's a lot of charter history available on the Charter Study Committee website under resources, if anybody's interested. That's all, thanks. And thank you all. And sorry, Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street.
[Milva McDonald]: Milton McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I understand that this resolution is symbolic, but I think it's an important statement. So I thank you on a somewhat separate topic, but I believe it's related. There's also been an attack on DEI in this country. And I know that I personally have reached out to our DEI director to offer my support. And I don't know if the council has, and I don't, I'm not aware that any public statement has been made, but I would like you to consider offering support to our DEI director at this time as well. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I'm gonna try to be quick because I know I only have three minutes and it's late. There's been discussion about the formation of the committee. I just wanted to say that the mayor formed this committee because the Medford Charter Review Coalition requested it. It was part of our work. Despite the fact that we were the mayor's committee, we were independent. And I wanna just clarify that because I feel, I just wanna make sure that some remarks were not interpreted to make it seem as though the mayor was in charge of us. We were independent. We had our meetings independent of the mayor. She never influenced any decisions or discussions. We did consider balance of power. The, this, what we learned when we looked at other municipalities is that Medford's mayor is pretty much like all the other mayors in Massachusetts. We have a mayor council form of government. There was no will among the people. We interviewed all the Councilors, most of the Councilors here and many other elected officials. Nobody said they wanted to go to city manager. Um, We still considered balance of power, and I understand that it's an issue. Taking the mayor off the school committee would make Medford one of a very, very few communities that doesn't have the mayor on the school committee. Changing the charter committee to 333 would make Medford the only city in the state that gives the school committee that many appointees. The school committee has a very narrow focus. It focuses on the schools, not the entire city. The charter focuses on the entire city. The part of the charter that addresses the school committee is small. It addresses the composition. The operations of the school committee are defined in state law. Those are some of the reasons that we didn't make it equal. And if you look at other charters, the school committee almost never has an appointee, but we didn't want to do that. I'm just explaining this so it's understood because we weren't asked, but I feel like it's important. Anthony Wilson from the Collins Center is on tonight and I don't know if you'll have him next week. You might ask him about these changes before just deciding on them. We actually looked at best practices. We looked at the reasons why mayors are on school committee. So it's maybe something that you want to get a little more information about. I guess that's all I'm going to say right now. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I'm going to try to talk fast. There was a lot of things said about the committee, so I just want to address a few of those. I may have misunderstood, but I thought I heard someone say that the Charter Study Committee left information out of the survey that we didn't want to include. So if I misunderstood that, I would like, please correct me. But I would just want to say, if you have that impression, please come and talk to me. Because as far as I know, it is absolutely not true. I also just wanted to say, and this has been said before, district representation was not asked about because it does not happen in Massachusetts on city councils. And there have been references by Councilors to communities that have it. And I would love to hear the names of them other than Boston and Worcester. Boston is essentially not comparable. State law even separates it out from other municipalities. And Worcester is the second largest city in the state. So I am truly interested in hearing about the other communities that have it on city council. Ward representation has a definition that is understood. People know what it means. So when all of you ran on it, that's what they understood. When all of you have said for five years, 100% in favor of ward representation, when you said to us in interviews that you were in favor of ward representation, everybody knew what you meant. So the reason it wasn't asked was because it wasn't on our radar, because it's not really done. When the school committee subcommittee started digging in, they found that it is, there are a few school committees that have it. And I won't go into the, I've said it before, it's in the final report, why it was considered to school committee, but not city council. I also wanna say, this is not like the Senate. The problem with the Senate of our country is that you have senators who represent very small numbers of people and others who represent massive numbers of people who have the same power. each ward representative would represent the same number of people. So you may have a problem with the fact that some wards have low voter turnout and ward three that has high voter turnout has had a disproportionate number of representation. And I personally don't think that's an accident, but please don't say it's like the Senate because it's not. The demographic research that has been done is great, but the demographics will change. And this charter is going to be in place for, if it passes, for at least 12 years. If you're confident that the demographics are going to be exactly the same and the district method will serve, will fix whatever you think ward representation won't, That makes sense, but I don't think, okay. I don't think any of us think that demographics are gonna stay the same. The housing studies that have been mentioned, we also addressed that. If there are more, I want to see them. Please show them to me. There's one study that we were able to find. I've asked repeatedly, several people, no one has been able to produce anything but that one study, which is not very conclusive. So, and just one more thing. It has been said, no system is perfect. This isn't a moral issue. This isn't something, there's no perfect system. So a district system is not gonna be perfect either, but you're willing to ignore your constituents because on the idea that this is some moral issue, that it's right. And I don't understand that, because charter review is not easy. There are a lot more stops that this charter has to go to after you. The last one is the voters. And people have talked about word representation in the city for years. It was the biggest issue. When we talked to people, that is what they talked about. So, I don't understand why you would abandon that when you have all supported it in the past and your constituents are asking you for it. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't. Whatever the situation with the Collins Center is, that wasn't something that we negotiated, so I can't speak to it. But the members of the Charter Study Committee were all volunteers. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: We didn't have a budget. We didn't have a staff. Some charter committees actually have support staff. We did have a city liaison who was very helpful.
[Milva McDonald]: Frances Nwaje.
[Milva McDonald]: Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I don't really, I just wanted to, because I had asked the question about other communities that have district representation, but as has been pointed out, it is a semantic issue. What we're talking about is representation where two of the designated sections of the city, whether they're called wards or districts, are combined. Yes, Methuen and Amherst, they also have multi-member, but as we heard from the Collins Center, that probably wouldn't fly at the Statehouse. And they also said that one of those communities was changing their form of government. It's also notable that those communities have home rule charters, which means the Statehouse never saw those charters. Lowell says district on their website, but they are just it's their
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. And it looks to me like Amesbury is the same. So the only two that I could find outside of Worcester and Boston were those two, and also Worcester is also a home rule charter. So those are all home rule charters. So we really don't know if the state has seen a charter that does this for city council. I just wanted to make that point.
[Milva McDonald]: Donald 61 Monument Street. It's getting late. I'm very tired. So there, the committee, the language that Eunice just referred to was supposed to be in the draft charter. So technically, it should have been considered as part of it. But there was also language on residence requirement for multi-member boards that the committee crafted that got left off. We were very rushed at the end, as was previously mentioned. We had no staff. Um, we were trying to meet a deadline and and a couple of things fell off the radar But there is language that the committee created about a residency requirement from multi-member boards, which I sent Several weeks ago probably months uh to uh, councillor sang so I just want to say that thanks Yeah, and we had discussed it and then we said that counts I think we'll if we wherever we have that we'll run it by the collins center because there was also about to have the collins center draft it Maybe it just got lost in translation who had drafted it
[Milva McDonald]: There's a red. Yes, yeah, you're live. Milda McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I just wanted to make the point that because there's been discussion that the city council should mirror the school committee in its structure. And I just wanted to make the point that the two bodies are very different. Their jobs are very different. The city council legislates for the entire city, represents constituents across the city, and the school committee has a more narrow focus there. Addressing only the school. So that was one of the things that the committee considered. We did not consider them the same because they're not the same. Communities all across the state have different configurations for city council and school committee. In fact, I think it's probably less common for a city to have the exact same structure for both bodies, but the call-in center could maybe correct me if I'm wrong on that. There are plenty of communities that have ward councils and at-large school committees. So I just wanted to make that point. That was not something that the committee thought about because simply because they're different bodies. And as far as voters getting confused, voters would have their ballots and their candidates would be on their ballots. We have systems across the state and across the country where people living in the same community have different elected representatives. Right here in Medford, our state reps, depending on where you live, are different. So voters figure this kind of thing out all the time. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I just wanted to take a moment to shed some light on the committee's process for this particular section. First, I just want to say one of the overarching values of the committee was public participation, citizen participation, and that we've reflected that in the preamble. And that was the lens through which we explored this section. This, as we've heard from the Collins Center, this is not uncommon. It's in charters across the state. When we looked at it, we examined charters and we saw that the range was between about 25 and 150 signatures. because of the value of public participation and citizen participation, we erred on the low side, but that could be a number that's fluid. We also, in these discussions, while we held public participation and citizen participation as a high value, we were trying to balance that with what could possibly be a potential for abuse, which is why the provision is there that only Once it won a petition on once one subject can only be presented once a year So the same petition can't be submitted over and over again So I just wanted to sort of talk about that and just so that you all know kind of what informed our process I also just want to make a point that I feel is getting missed and This discussion about whether this adds value to the present system doesn't, the fact is that the system now is in your rules and your rules can be changed. They can be changed tomorrow, they can be changed next year by a new council or two years from now. The charter means that it can't be changed. So that there's an inherent difference in what is in the charter and when you're talking about, well, people already have the right to do this. As has been said by the Collins Center, the charter is for the future. So I feel like just sort of comparing it against what people can do now misses that point, and I just wanted to make that point. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: When the committee discussed Milton McDonald 61 Monument Street, when we discussed referendum, when we were discussing the timelines, we did see them as initiative and referendum as inherently different. And one of the things that we discussed was that a referendum pauses a measure that was passed by a duly elected body and that it didn't that that time frame, we didn't want it to be extended any more than it had to. So we wanted to give the citizens the right to do it while also making sure that the elected body that passed it wasn't, that the measure wasn't put, held at bay for too long. I just wanted to point that out.
[Milva McDonald]: Milford McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I just want to say that the language that the committee put into the charter regarding compensation is standard language that's in charters across the state. The compensation committee that Councilor Bears mentioned is not in the charter. That was something that we recommended that you consider creating in an ordinance to address some of the issues that have been talked about in the last several minutes. I just want to say that we looked at many charters and we didn't see anything remotely like this in any charter and And that because of that, the Collins Center might be, it might be a good idea to ask them their thoughts on it because we know that something that's really unusual in the charter could raise a flag at the State House. That's all I have to say.
[Milva McDonald]: Mildred McDonald, 61 Monument Street. Thank you for the question. Strong mayor, weak mayor is terms that get thrown around a lot, but we basically have a mayor council form of government. And we did look at balance of power, and we had also heard talk around town about Medford having an inordinately powerful mayor. So we asked the Collins Center for an analysis. and they provided an analysis, which is in the final report, and you can see that Medford's mayor is in line with other mayors in the state. Our mayor does not have more power than other mayors in the state. But we did talk about balance of power when we looked at a lot of different things, and we talked about it with the budget. It was a consideration.
[Milva McDonald]: Test one, two.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street. As part of the discussion, we looked at other charters and we talked about it and that seemed like a reasonable provision, so we included it.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean the process of creating the survey?
[Milva McDonald]: The feedback we got was that we wanted the survey to be accessible, so not too complicated. We asked about major questions that voters are most concerned about, which is the composition, term limits, things like that. The results are all in the final report. So, I mean, I can get them, but you all have them, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Whether, for council, you're talking about? Yes, for city council. Whether to remain all at large? to be ward-based, hybrid-based. I mean, we can't be all ward-based, because we only have eight exclusively ward-based, because we only have eight wards. So that's not really an option on the table. Anyway.
[Milva McDonald]: The combining of the wards? Oh yeah, combining of words or... No, that was something that came up in the discussions about the school committee to address the challenges of making school committee, applying word representation to the school committee, because that would have increased the body size. I see. And so that's how that came up.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it's. very common cities all over the state have a different composition for city council and school committee. So I think voters can figure it out. I mean, they do in most other cities or many other cities. You know, I think this is laid out in the final report, but I don't think we saw a call to increase the size of the school committee. But we also recognize that the community still wanted board representation for the school committee. I actually was not on the school committee subcommittee. And I think when you have that discussion, maybe Paulette Van der Kloot would participate. She chaired that subcommittee and they had extensive discussions. So I would actually prefer to let her speak more about that. I can tell you in general, because obviously they came back to the full committee. And we then discussed it, so I can tell you more in general, but if you want more specifics of how they reached that, she did give you a more detailed answer. But that was the gist of it, was trying to incorporate ward representation without necessarily increasing it to a body of 11, which we felt was appropriate for council, but not for school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. they don't collect that information. I do just want to say that the discussion about competitiveness, we didn't look at that. That's not, but what we did look at was representation of the wards. And we looked back to 2005 and found that two wards in the city had no Councilor from those wards. So they had zero representation and that two wards that those were words one and four and two words two and three had disproportionate representation. And in terms of the competitiveness, you know, like I said, we didn't look at that we didn't research it, but. I can say anecdotally that in my approximately 30 years living in Medford, I've never seen an incumbent city councilor lose an election, and I wouldn't call that competitive. So I just wanted to say that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, we did some of those, and they should be in the final report. Some of the graphics didn't transition well, and so there's actually a new version on the website, I think, with better graphics that you can check. But Jean Zotter worked on that a lot. So if you wanted more details on that, you could speak. I don't know if she's on Zoom, but she collected a lot of that information and presented it.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, if you don't mind, if I could just add that one of the reasons, as she mentioned, not everybody gave demographic information, but one of the reasons we chose to collect it was so that we could try to do outreach to populations that we didn't get as many responses from. And Jean was an amazing organizer of listening sessions around the city. And we tried to go and we, I mean, it's all in the final report. So you can sort of see, but I just wanted to add that.
[Milva McDonald]: We wanted the charter to succeed with the voters and at the state house. So we didn't necessarily look at alternatives that aren't used. Ranked choice voting did come up. That is something that we believed would see a hurdle at the state house, especially because Medford during the state question voted for ranked choice voting only with a small majority. So I think, you know, the success of the charter, the ultimate success of the charter was a consideration for us.
[Milva McDonald]: Could you just repeat? I'm not sure I cut that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, we had a spreadsheet of cities in Massachusetts. We didn't look at other states. We don't know what the interaction of municipal governments with state government is in those states. There's just so many other factors that could come into play. So we stuck to Massachusetts.
[Milva McDonald]: I believe not. You know, I don't have it in front of me, so I can't say 100%, but I don't think we did.
[Milva McDonald]: To be honest, I mean, just there is a graph in the final report that represents the number of Councilors who ran from each ward and then who won. So there is information about that in the final report.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think that would be my decision. So, I mean, I think that would have to be between you and the mayor. I don't, I mean, you know, We've officially finished our work, so I don't know. I just don't feel like I can answer that.
[Milva McDonald]: Possibly.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, are you referring to multi—I mean, the— Sorry, it's getting late. The options you talked about before.
[Milva McDonald]: So what are you talking about exactly?
[Milva McDonald]: Just simply district versus.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: But we explained why.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we wouldn't be the only city that has this configuration with a different configuration for school committee. Lowell, for instance, has an exact, you know, they have eight wards. They have 11 ward Councilors, one from each ward, three at large, and then their school committee is broke down with districts at large. And they have a seven-member school committee as well.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm just saying it's not unheard of.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, there are timelines also. So that's something to consider as well.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sorry, of what?
[Milva McDonald]: It's the census data.
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like that's a question for the Pollen Center, because they have more knowledge about that in general.
[Milva McDonald]: We did look at that and we asked, we looked for the research and we asked the Collins Center and we only found one study. If there are more, we didn't find them and we couldn't, the Collins Center didn't know of any either. And we also mentioned that in the final report that that was the finding that you quoted, but there were also caveats, which included that it was a, it was mostly looked at towns and that more study would be warranted for the kind of area, areas like Medford cities, and also that he didn't, the author didn't consider potential benefits of ward representation, including increased diversity. So it just didn't, it was one study, looked at one thing, and it wasn't a really broad, there wasn't much broad agreement on that. and the issues of representation and the potentiality for increased diversity, more accessibility to running for office were just more compelling to us.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Melvin McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I want to thank Anthony for speaking and sharing his thoughts. I do just want to say that we all on the committee have different perceptions and different experiences, but we did consider other numbers besides 11. I could bore you with the details of that, but I don't feel like I have to do that. I think it shows up in the minutes of our meetings. We did not simply only consider 11. Other than that, I think we did take a comprehensive look and I think our final report shows that. So I feel like it speaks for itself. The one thing that I did wanna point out because there's been talk about voter turnout and numbers were given about voter turnout in particular wards and the wards with low voter turnout correlate directly with the underrepresented wards. When candidates run for office, they naturally go where the voters are, so it becomes a, a cycle. And one of the hopes is that with representation. voter turnout could increase. So I just wanted to point that out, that the low voter turnout correlates with the underrepresented or zero represented in the last couple of decades' wards. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the October 3rd, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. And a couple more people. And then we'll get to our first order of business.
[Milva McDonald]: I think she just came in. I think she's just come in.
[Milva McDonald]: That's Phyllis, right? Phyllis Fong? I think that's Phyllis. All right, so the first order of business is the minutes from our last meeting. Did everyone have a chance to look at them? Are we good? Do we need any changes? Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, so I will get those minutes posted. Frances, thanks for the message. We'll keep an eye on the chat in case you have any comments. Okay. Thank you for the congratulations. So this is scheduled to be our final meeting. I want to thank everybody. It's been long, but it's been really positive and productive, and I really can't thank you all enough. I also want to thank the Collins Center, who is with us tonight, Anthony Wilson, and I believe Marilyn is also here. So the work we have to do tonight is we just have to vote on the final draft of the charter and the final report. So I guess the first thing I want to say, let's do the charter document first. And I just want to make an announcement. There was like a little clerical issue and section 919, because we had discussed putting the compensation committee in the charter, but then we voted to just recommend it as an ordinance. just based on some of the discussions, it ended up in the draft charter, so that's being removed. Just in case anybody noticed that, I'm just letting everybody know. Section 919 will be removed as we voted and it was mentioned in the final report as a recommendation. Now, I'll open the floor to see if anybody has any to bring up about the charter document. And then we'll do the final report after that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's great. I just want to hear what Eunice's comment was and then we'll do that motion.
[Milva McDonald]: So, Anthony or Marilyn, can you answer that?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I guess I think, Eunice, your question is, under this provision, if the mayor dismisses a city officer or department head, do they stay in the job for 30 days?
[Milva McDonald]: So, Anthony and Marilyn, does this mean that the person has to stay or gets to stay on the job for another month?
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, did you have a comment about this?
[Milva McDonald]: And this applies to a city officer or head of a city department appointed by the mayor, right? So I don't think it applies to anybody else.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anthony Wilson, did you have something to add?
[Milva McDonald]: That sounds like what we discussed. So, Eunice, do you feel like your question has been answered or is there anything? I think I get it now. So, thank you. Okay, great. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Phyllis has a question, but I'm... Ron, if I hear your question correctly... I have a question for Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it has to go through the Mayor, the City Council and the State House first, but providing when it gets to the ballot, that's your question.
[Milva McDonald]: Will people be able to vote on... I was in and out, so thank you. Okay, so Anthony or Marilyn, when these questions get on the ballot, what's usually the structure?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Ron, does that answer your question?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Ron. I think, I mean, I don't know if Anthony or Marilyn wants to speak to this, but I'm not sure that we have the, that's in our power. I mean, you know, our task was to review the charter and create a report and that's what we've done. But Anthony or Marilyn, is there any way we can look at some of what Ron is talking about?
[Milva McDonald]: We have to get back to Maury's motion and officially adopt a vote on this.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, thanks, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: So what I sent out about a week ago was the final report, which so when we submit, we will submit the draft charter will be part of that final report. So whatever was in the final report currently is what we would submit. So if you had something that you thought we should add, I mean, did you have a chance to look at it?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, did you want to say something about this?
[Milva McDonald]: I think maybe, Anthony, are you talking about certain things that our committee voted to include that the Collins Center said, well, this isn't in like, for instance, the ethics commission and the financial reporting or the school committee clerk. If you're talking about things like that, I guess I would ask Anthony or Marilyn, when committees write their final reports, is that the kind of information that they generally include?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um, okay. So Anthony, do you, do you have anything else you want to say?
[Milva McDonald]: So that would be, so what I would like to do is yes, the answer to that is yes for the charter, the draft charter portion. And then once we get that done, we'll look at the final report part and see if anybody has anything that they feel should be changed or added to that. Okay. So Maury and Eunice, did you have anything to say before we go ahead with that vote?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. All right. Thank you. Okay. Now we are going to go ahead with. Well, his motion, which anybody want to officially 2nd that. that we're gonna vote on the charter document. I second. Okay, so the question is, do we accept this draft charter as written to be put into our final report? Okay, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron. Yes. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean. Yes. Danielle. Yes. Maury. Yes. Anthony Andreottola.
[Milva McDonald]: And me, I'm yes. I think that's everybody who's here. Great. All right. Awesome. You're the confetti. Yeah. Right. OK. Now we're. Now we are going to go to the final report, which hopefully you all had a chance to read. Thanks, Francis, for the confidence.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, first, I just want to ask if anybody has any changes or additions they want to make. Who's that? Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Let me see if I can. So basically our meetings and subcommittee meetings, right?
[Milva McDonald]: We associate a total. So, I guess we did. So, when you. Yeah, you're suggesting including, even though those were just our meetings, they were all open to the public. So you're suggesting adding these to the public engagement section, making the point that this was part of the public outreach of the committee. Right. I mean, the fact that all our meetings were open to the public and we have the public attending.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so you want to basically. suggest that we add this to the charter? Does anybody have any thoughts about this? Does anybody have any? I make a motion to do so. Okay. Does anybody want to have any?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I didn't see who raised their hand first, so I'm just gonna go to the first person on my screen, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, go ahead, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Just for a minute, Anthony, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks for that, Anthony. Danielle, I think Maury was next, and then Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, let's just focus on the proposal.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: I just want to let Danielle make her comment.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a, that's a good point. Okay. I do want to vote on it. But can I put my editor hat on for a minute, Eunice? Are you okay with that? Sure. I mean, this was a draft. I mean, you can, you know, tweak it as needed. I'm just in the streamlined mindset, and I would like to go from various components of a charter to we held 30 subcommittee meetings, just because that other information is in other parts of the Well, the Collins Center is in other parts of the final report, and I don't necessarily think we need to say that they were the first Thursday of the month. That's just, and then it just tightens it up.
[Milva McDonald]: So, well, Jean just did it, so. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: It just tightens it up a little bit. Okay. Yeah, I'm good. Okay. So we're going to vote on whether to add this to this community engagement section of the final report. Okay. Eunice? Yes. Well, this is where I can't see everybody, so I'm going to try to remember everybody's name. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury? Yes. Anthony Andreadola? Yes. Jean? Yes. Did I get Phyllis? Yes. You did. You got it already. It's just me then. All right. I got Danielle, right? There's eight of us here. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you, Eunice. We will add that. Any other suggestions for changes or additions or any proposals? I move the motion. Okay, let's make sure. Eunice, do you have your hand raised again?
[Milva McDonald]: We could add that. I mean, how do people feel about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody? Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to vote no. OK. This is just one. I vote no. OK. So do we want to vote? So I guess we're going to vote on whether to add this little line. But Jamie, yeah. Put the I in utilize. Thank you. OK. Maury, let me just say. Are there any other no votes besides Maury? Does anybody else object to adding this to the final report?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I think that then we're just going to add it in. Good. Okay. Anybody else, any other changes? Eunice, did you have anything else? I mean, I'm clearly pissing people off, so I won't bother. No, you're not. It's okay, Eunice, if you have something else.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you for pointing that out.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, did that not get in there? I don't think so.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with that, but just because the superintendent is yeah. Current and former superintendents? I think Belson was interviewed too. Okay. The school committee subcommittee did that. Yeah. Yes. If they were included in the sixth, we should change that number, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, when you wrote this section, did you include them in the six? I don't remember, so I'll double check. Okay, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, Adam Hurtubise, Alicia Hunt, also Nina Nazarian.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we sort of interviewed her. We had an email exchange.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah, that's right. Is that the right spelling? Yes, that's right. Thank you, Eunice, for paying attention to this. I don't know how you spell that. You'll check that later, right? I'll check it, yeah. I think it's H-U-R-T-I-B-U. You're his neighbor, don't you? I know, he is my neighbor. Yeah, but that's okay. We can double check that later. We'll make sure that's right.
[Milva McDonald]: We didn't know that, but that's a good, I think that would be a worthwhile addition.
[Milva McDonald]: Proposed charter or something, so you're talking about under the sort of major recommendation sections. Yeah, I mean, we have articles.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, the reason they're not there is because we didn't, there weren't, you know, that section just sort of pulls out the major recommendations that we're making in the charter, but in those sections are, didn't have any really sort of recommendations of note. That's why we didn't do that. But the major recommendation is to add that section. To have a new modernized charter. Yeah, that's in that. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of how we would do that. So Eunice, can you just explain where are you suggesting we?
[Milva McDonald]: You know, so we would say you skipped over article 1, so we would say article 1 incorporation short title definitions. And just leave it blank. after that?
[Milva McDonald]: What do people think about that idea?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury, do you have?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, You mean, well, we did, we were the final report subcommittee put this together.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I know, but Eunice wasn't on that committee, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think what we have here is we just pulled out, highlighted some of our main major recommendations in the final report. And there's this thought that since we didn't pull out articles, we didn't mention articles 1, 5, or 10, right? Do we do 9? We might not have 9 in there either.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we have nine. Okay, good. So 1, 5, and 10, do we add them here just to sort of illustrate that they exist in this body, in this part of the final report to illustrate that they exist and indicate what they are? And they're all new to the, they would all be new to Medford because Medford hasn't had any of them in the past, right? So, So to my mind, there's two ways of doing it. We could, at the very beginning, say articles 1, 5, and 10, and then sort of list what they are and say, you know, to include just a sentence about these or these are included in the chart, or we could put them in order.
[Milva McDonald]: Put them in order.
[Milva McDonald]: The proposal is in the recommendation section to at least make reference in order to Articles 1, 5, and 10, name what they are, and come up with a sentence. That explains their existence in the charter. Does that. Does that sound right units?
[Milva McDonald]: That could go to every article, not just those.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, good point.
[Milva McDonald]: So, yeah. So, I guess we'll vote on whether to do that, but I guess what I want to say is if we vote on it and say that language will be crafted as discussed, is that okay?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. So does everyone understand what the addition we're talking about is? That we would put Article 1 before this legislative branch recommendations and then we would do the same for 5 and 10.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so right now, we have a summary of the major recommendations, and then we go into more detail, and we start with Article 2, because we didn't highlight anything from Article 1. But the concern is that when you look at that, you say to yourself, well, where's Article 1, and where's Article 5, and where's Article 10? Where's the concern from? Some of the people that have read it have read the report.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're going to, you know, the proposal on the table is that we add.
[Milva McDonald]: We're going to vote on it. We'll find out if there's more.
[Milva McDonald]: It's not going to change or add any information. It's just adding in those articles in this sort of outline of the charter and our recommendations to sort of show that they will exist in the charter. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks. OK, so let's vote on whether we wanted to. Does everyone understand what the proposal is? Yes. OK. All right, let's vote on whether to add it. Danielle? Yes. Jean? Yes, Eunice? Yes. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Andreadola?
[Milva McDonald]: Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's just me, right? Yeah. I'm okay with it. I'll say yes, even though I don't really think we have to, but I'm okay with doing it, so I'll say yes. Okay. Any other proposals for changes or additions?
[Milva McDonald]: So thanks, Anthony. And I appreciate you bringing that up. I mean, you know, these votes are about a report that that was read by the committee. And I so I mean, that's why I didn't ask for public input on it, because, you know, they didn't really read the report. And so it's not really decision making around the charter. But I definitely wanted to make. Yeah, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, we always ask for it at the end for sure. So and Bill, Bill Giglio would like to speak. So go ahead, Bill. You're muted, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay. And I do want to open the floor for any comments from anybody. But is there anybody on the committee that has any changes or additions to the final report?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, Frances gave us the spelling of, that was from before, Danielle, right? Yeah. And Jean, can you see that Frances put the spelling of Adam's name? Yeah. Thank you, Frances. Okay. Okay, so in that case, we're going to vote to accept this final report. And everybody looked at the appendix, you saw, you know, okay with everything that we included, anything else you think we should include? Great. All right. Final report. So this is, you're going to vote either yes or no to accept this final report with the additions that we made tonight and the changes we made tonight to be submitted to the mayor. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, sure. I made the motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Alright, awesome. Eunice? Yes. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean? Yes. Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Andriagala?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, you did about the charter. We got a final report and thank you to everybody now. Jean and I will put it all, make these changes, put it all together. I think we'll be able to get it to the mayor before the end of the, I mean, I'm saying by Monday, but I don't know. I can't promise, Jean. I'm going camping, I can't.
[Milva McDonald]: Friday's tomorrow.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. We'll check on that for a minute. But I do want to talk to you, Jean, because we'll talk about timeline. OK. Bill, Bill, is your hand still up? I have my hand up. OK. OK. I'll get to everybody whose hands are up. I promise. Bill, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you so much. Okay, Maury and then Danielle. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Thanks, Maureen.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. This has been in the works for years, you guys. And I do want to just speak briefly. Francis is putting a note, appreciation note as well. Nice job. I appreciate all the diverse thought perspectives that have led to the completion of this group. Thank you, Francis. I want to just talk, before we wrap up, I want to talk briefly about what happens next. But I also just, like I said, it's been a long time. People have been talking about charter review in the city for so many years. And regardless of what happens next, we, a citizen-led committee, did this work. We did a review. And that final report will exist. And no matter what happens, it's there and the work has been done. And I really thank all of you. And I also thank the Collins Center, whose help has been invaluable. And all the members of the public who came to our meetings and participated. Because we did have a good amount of public participation when you add up the listening sessions, surveys, and all our meetings. So thank you. So Jean and I will just coordinate. We will get this to the mayor. And after that, it's basically in the mayor's hands. And eventually, the city council will be involved. And we'll see what, I know Eunice did tell everyone about a city council meeting next week. Next Wednesday night, 7 p.m. And if people want to go to that, you know, it's not any, there's no official capacity for us to go to that meeting, but. Phyllis is laughing. Go to another meeting? No, no, no. You can read what's in the chat, Melva. Oh, I'm placing a barbecue for all of you. I'm sorry. Maury, I don't know Maury, there's a rumor going around. Do kind of you Maury, we appreciate it. Oh, really? What's the rumor? That you're going to host a barbecue for all of us. Oh, I'll do that any day of the week. You know that.
[Milva McDonald]: No, so I can bring that in, whatever you like. All right. Wait, somebody else had their hand up. Oh, I did. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, their meeting is scheduled. Their first meeting on this is scheduled for Wednesday. And I don't know that they'll have I don't know what material they'll have seen of ours before that. But Ron and then you know, show up.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. I mean, I don't think that there's anything official about it. I can tell you that this will be our last meeting. We don't have any other meetings scheduled and we will be submitting our final report. The mayor might ask us to participate in some meetings in the future. That's going to be up to her. I don't know, like, if there's an official dissolution, but we are, you know, we just voted to submit our final report, and that'll be, you know, our work is done.
[Milva McDonald]: I hear you, but we are still living with the reality that the council's governance committee is having a meeting on charter review on Wednesday. It's been publicized. So I hear you.
[Milva McDonald]: I know, or maybe not until the end of the week. Well, it depends on the timeline.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if you're correct or incorrect, Anthony. Let's ask Anthony or Marilyn, I mean, yeah, about that.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean charter review? Taken charter review on themselves? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks, Eunice. Maury, did you wanna say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: There was one meeting where those comments were made. Exactly, yes. I do think that they will look at our report and take it seriously. Well, we hope they will. I think they will. We'll see. So do I. Anthony Wilson, can I ask you a question?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so what I've heard from the mayor is that if committee members want to go to these meetings. It's. Since we are invested, we're so invested in it. So I guess what I would say is it's up to you. I mean, I hear Ron's point and I do think that it's legitimate. Because we do have this body of work and there is a process that's going to take place where it's going to go to the mayor and then the mayor presents it to the city council. And it's a little unclear to me what the council is doing at the next two meetings that they've scheduled. So I think it's okay if people want to attend. But, you know, The process that we were appointed for was to create this report for the mayor, which we have done. And then there will be a process that will be up to the mayor, what she does with what we've submitted. So if we do go to the council meetings, I don't think it would be in, I don't know if I would use the word official, but I think it's fine for people to go. And it's unclear, you know, what we would, I mean, even just to listen, it's fine for people to go. So I think it's up to people whether they want to. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I don't think anybody's pulling out a document but but uh, danielle your question, I mean All our meetings have been public. All our votes have been public. So I think it's fine if somebody says, well, what's going to happen with ward representation? I think it's fine to say, well, the committee voted. We can say what we voted on. That's all public.
[Milva McDonald]: And you mean if we, if, if some of us, but we wouldn't be meeting as the metric charter study committee.
[Milva McDonald]: So we're not calling any of it. Yeah. We're not calling any official meetings. Um, I mean, I mean, when we go to more barbecue, for instance, I don't think we'll violate open meeting. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's fine to let people know when the meetings are. Yeah. I think that a lot of this is going to become clearer as the process unfolds, it will become clearer.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll be in touch about the timeline.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. Yeah, like I said, it's unclear exactly and it will become clear as it unfolds. I think this is all I can really say. Exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Did you have something else you wanted to say, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, um, does anybody, does anybody else on the committee have anything that they want to address or.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, does anybody, any members of the public want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: You guys are all great.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Well, again, I want to just thank you all. It's been a great experience. Once we get the final report, just make those few changes, clean it up. I will let you-all know when it's submitted so you know that it's been submitted to the mayor. Okay? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Exactly. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: We could not have done it without the call and center. Absolutely. So okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I thank you again everyone around the city.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the meeting. The other two members of our subcommittee are going to try to come late. So, but first of all, did you all look over the minutes from our July 29th, I think it was? Yeah. Are we good? Great. All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So they were brief, and we're really coming to the end here, which is exciting. So I thought the minutes might be useful. We could sort of look at them and see if we completed our tasks from the last meeting, and then we can see what else we need to do. So the first thing was to include survey demographics. I checked with Danielle. David is putting together the pie charts, which hopefully he's going to actually also create pie charts for the demographics. Because last meeting we said we wanted to do that, right?
[Milva McDonald]: He did, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, that's good. OK. Do we care if we have pie charts?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So do you think we should just put the pie charts in the appendix? I think so. The survey report as part of the appendix?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I said I was going to add public comments to the issue sheets, which I did. You did?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I definitely added, so what I did was I went through all the survey, well I added whatever public comments that we hadn't added in, which there were a few, and then there were a bunch of comments on the survey. Okay. Because remember, in addition to completing the survey, people were invited to comment.
[Milva McDonald]: So, and I think that I, Where is that document? I think I reflected in the, I'm trying to find it so I can make sure that I did, but in the actual document that they were comments that were gotten from the survey. Here we go.
[Milva McDonald]: So on the issue sheet, I thought I had all the code. OK. I don't know. I don't know what I did, because it looks weird to me. But you look at it and see. Article two, yeah, I put the, okay, yeah, there we go. It's just the preamble that didn't look right. So if you look at it, you can see that there's, like on the left where it's got emails, June 8th public hearing emails, form, so the comments we got from the email form. Yeah, circle to square, right spawn, and then at the end there's survey, and there's quite a lot of comments there.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, you don't have to change it. But I don't think I'll change that. But we're going to include that in our final report, right? The issue sheets? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly. To the issue sheets.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that piece was done. What else did we do? Oh, you were going to revise Article 8 recommendations to separate out recall? I did that. Okay. I'm pretty sure I did. Let me double check. I don't think I have finalized all the footnotes. So that, I was just, I have to get the footnotes for the award representation, diversity. Yeah, I have to get a few more footnotes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. So that we need. So we still need to get footnotes. And I sent you that Mass General Law on the budget, right? You did.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. And there's a bunch of stuff in the appendix. Maybe we'll add more to it. Maybe ultimately we'll decide not to include some of it. I don't know. But there's a bunch of stuff in the appendix folder. We need to just put it together. So we also, the other thing I didn't do was ask, we were going to ask if anybody has photos. What do you think? Do we want to try to do? I mean, it might make a report look nice if we had pictures, but yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we definitely don't have a lot of pictures.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we care?
[Milva McDonald]: Then let's not worry about it. Because even if we did get pictures from events, we don't necessarily have permission from all the people in the pictures to use them. One thing we could do is, We do have a banner that we used at events. If I could somehow put that into a photo and make it a JPEG, we could maybe put that on the cover of the report. I mean, I don't know. It's just an idea. I'll try to see if I can capture the banner. So it would be sort of like using it as a logo.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, well, I don't know if that's going to work, but we'll see. So Gene, do you have any other thoughts on what else we need to do in terms of actual content?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if David is going to do that. He said he was going to do a survey report. He's making pie charts. I don't know if that there's going to be any text in it.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I was thinking about that, but in your community engagement, there is information about the survey. So I think that's probably sufficient. And that if we just put the graphics in, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: For the survey?
[Milva McDonald]: I have to get that from Danielle, see if I can pull that off. If they would just pull that off the Google survey. OK, we'll get that. I think what you put in the community engagement report about the survey is good. So probably enough in terms of just writing a little text about it. I mean, if Javid wants to write some sort of analysis, that's fine. But I don't know that he will. But I don't know. We'll see. And then, you know, I mean, the recommendations have been read through, right? I added the, I added one to the major recommendations. I added, because we, I put Institute of Financial Reporting Requirement for elected and other officials. And I need to see if I need to add to Article 9 too.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I felt like the only one that was big enough to put in the major recommendations was the financial disclosures. Okay. What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: I thought that was really the only one that we should have, like, sort of pulled out. The other ones are more sort of like, you know, I'm not saying they're minor, but, you know, um, They're more sort of standard business, you know, standard practice kind of things. Okay, so that I added. I don't think there's anything else we need to add since the main thing was the financial disclosures.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, it's very short. It just says requirement for annual financial disclosures. The committee recommends that elected officials and some city officials be required to submit an annual financial disclosure form to be generated and overseen by an ethics commission.
[Milva McDonald]: And then, you know, they can read the details in the draft chart. Okay, so adding the footnotes, other than adding the footnotes, I think we're good. I mean, I'll probably read it over. I was just reading over the introductory letter and making a little few changes, you know, changing some wording and stuff. I'm probably going to do that until the end. Did the full committee weigh it? Oh, no, we're going to send it to them once we put it all together. I mean, I sent them the draft versions, but nobody had anything to say. I don't think anybody read it. I think they were too busy working on their draft charter. So the idea is that the Collins Center is going to get the revised draft charter with the typos fixed and the things that we added since they sent us the draft charter and the changes that we made. I've asked them to get that to me within the next week to two weeks so that I'm going to proofread it one more time. Then if we can get this final report part together, we would just put it all in one package and send it to the committee and then we can at our meeting in October, which would be, which is our final meeting, we will just see if anybody has any, I mean, the same thing we did for the draft charter, I don't expect there to be any big, but you know, any big things that we're gonna, but maybe somebody will say, why didn't we say this in the recommendations or, you know, so we'll see. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: But I don't think it'll take more than one week.
[Milva McDonald]: As long as they're not trying to re-vote on the charter. Yeah. That part is done. It's just a question of whether anybody thinks that they don't like the wording in the final report or mostly I think it will be if somebody thinks there should be something else added to the recommendations or we should pull this out and emphasize it.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's what I was going to ask. And you have whatever your software you're going to use? I was just going to do Microsoft Word. Yeah, as long as it looks. I don't care as long as it looks decent.
[Milva McDonald]: So do you need any help? What do you need for that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Let me give myself a deadline. Let's see. Today's the 12th. Monday is the 17th. Let me do it by the 18th. Okay. And then possibly you could start putting some things together like the, you know, the, the beginning, if, if I can manage to get an image of the banner, otherwise you can probably do something graphic like with Microsoft word. Um, but there's, um, the members, you know, that little, well, we're going to put all the members at the beginning.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I put it in there. What I'm wondering is, yeah, no, I think it's better to put it at the front as opposed to at the end of the introductory letter. I think that makes more sense.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then I think major recommendations.
[Milva McDonald]: What about the appendix is until the end. Yeah. So then introductory major recommend, wait a minute. Introductory letter comes before major recommendations, right? Yeah. And then do you think the community engagement summary? No, maybe the community engagement summary should come before major recommendations.
[Milva McDonald]: What do you think? Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Because then after major recommendations, you want to go into the- Then you go into each article, which we don't have any for Article 1, which hopefully, you know, no one's going to be like, what's going on? But Article 1 is just definitions. Right. I mean, the only major recommendation we have for Article 1 is to include an article Because we don't have one in our current charter, but I don't think it's worth, yeah, we'll just leave that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. OK. I think, yeah. And I think the appendix goes at the very end. Yeah. So that's the table of contents materials, right? When we get to the appendix, you know, you can make, you can use your judgment in terms of how to arrange what's in the appendix. Okay. The thing, for footnotes, we are, we're just going to Footnote within the text that we're footnoting right those don't go at the end. No, I don't.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree. Let's see if I can remember. Oh, like in the introductory letter, there was reference to, like, we're including a couple of the, we're including the generic modern charter in the appendix that we used as a guide, and we're including the, some memos from the Collins Center, and they're, like, I can change it and take them out, but I made reference to them in the introductory letter, I put in parentheses appendix number x. But we could take out that if you think it's- No, I can even put a hyperlink so if people want to- Yeah, if you wanted to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All right. So that's all you need, just the actual content.
[Milva McDonald]: And if it would be helpful, I mean, maybe it's just easier for you to do it on your own. But if it would be helpful for us for me to do anything, or for me to be there and help you just let me know. Yeah, it's kind of a one person. Yeah, that's what I figured.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Awesome. OK. So I don't know. Can you think of anything else? I mean, I want to go at least another 15 minutes in case David jumps up. But I knew this would be quick. I mean, basically, we have most of it done. We've just got to wrap up the details and then put it together.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I that's right. It's planning at this point. We're not making any. So we're not making any decisions. Any decisions that are made about the final report that we put together will be made at the final public meeting of our committee. So
[Milva McDonald]: Easy.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Well, we've gone through our list. We've done our work. The work that needs to be done now is just work sitting at our desks, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. How long do you think you'll need?
[Milva McDonald]: Our next meeting, our committee meeting is, I think, October 3rd. So ideally, you know, if I could get it to the committee two weeks in advance, that would be nice because I can use them, but I don't even know when I'm going to get the charter from the call-in centers. I mean, I've tried to emphasize to them that I wanted it soon. So that's the 19th. Oh my gosh, that's really soon. Yeah, I'll try to do the footnotes this weekend. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we made a deadline at our last meeting, deadline for edited final report August 12th, but I guess, you know, it's summer.
[Milva McDonald]: That's right, yeah. And this we are because our final meeting is October 3rd. Okay, awesome. Maureen, made a motion to adjourn? I second. Great. See you all soon. Thanks, everybody.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the September 5th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. So our first agenda item is the minutes from the August 1st meeting. Did everyone have a chance to review them? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Move approval.
[Milva McDonald]: All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Any opposed? Okay. Great. All right, so our work for tonight is to, we got last time, we got through the first three articles of the draft charter. So our work tonight is to get through the rest of it. So I'm just going to open the floor and ask if anybody has any amendments that they want to propose. starting with Article 4. Anything in Article 4?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony or someone from the Collins Center, can you speak to that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so Eunice, do you want, are you making a proposal that we add that language so that the term of office for the school committee is consistent with the city council and the mayor?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the city council is also the first Monday in January.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and the school committee just says the first business day of January, not necessarily the first Monday, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I think that that's consistent with the language we have now. So I'm going to throw out and say, Eunice, tell me if this sounds like what you intend, that a motion to make the language in Article 4.1 under term of office consistent with the mayor and the city council, to make the eligibility language, I mean, the term of office language consistent. with all three elected bodies. Is that what you're going for? Yes. Yes. OK. All right. Seconded. OK, great. Everybody understands what we're voting on?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: So, and yeah, we can send that. I mean, I was thinking maybe the call-in center would just standardize it for us. Does that sound right, Anthony Wilson? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Okay. So all in favor, well, let's do a roll call. Anthony Andriado. Yes. Eunice. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the motion is that we'll just make the language consistent and leave it to the Collins Center to standardize for us.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. But this motion is that we're just standardizing it and the call-in center will use the best language. Okay. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Gene? Yes. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: David?
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm also yes. OK, great. So that passes. Does anybody have any other amendments or changes to Article 4?
[Milva McDonald]: There it is.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we should standardize that. Right. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, while we're, can I broaden this section? This district eligibility, because I noticed another issue that doesn't match up or that's not consistent where about the about moving, whether if the school committee member moves from Medford, then the office shall be immediately deemed vacant. Um, and in the city council, I believe we had if the if the if a ward Councilor moved from the ward and stayed in Medford, that Councilor could finish out their term. So I'm wondering if we want to add that in.
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, that's right. I guess I guess I'm just wondering whether the fact that it's not specified might raise questions for people. And it is specified in the city council section.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so Maybe we'll do them separately just to avoid confusion. So the first thing that we're going to vote on is whether the person has to reside in the district from one year prior to nomination papers or one year prior to inauguration. Can I ask the call-in center whether you have any comments on whether one of these is preferable?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay, so. Do you want to, David, since you are bringing that up and saying you preferred inauguration, do you want to make that motion?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Wilson, did you have a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: That issue is different than the one we were about to vote on. So let's stick with our motion and then we'll go and discuss the voter issue. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Wilson.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean the signatures?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. So I guess that we can't prevent everything in the world, but we can put language in to make it more streamlined and easier if such a thing does occur.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so next month is the final report. So we'll make note of that and we can talk about adding that next month if it didn't get in. Okay. Okay, so the motion is that under district eligibility in all, not just school committee, not just 401, but we make that consistent with city council and we use one year prior to inauguration.
[Milva McDonald]: We don't have the residency requirement with mayor. Oh, we don't? It's just with ward Councilors and school committee. Okay. I'll second it. Okay. All right. I'm going to do that thing again where I can't see everybody because I'm sharing screen, so I'm going to try to do it by memory. Eunice. Yes. David.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Gene. Yes. Phyllis? Yes. Anthony Andreottola?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'm yes. Did I get everybody? Okay, so the next issue that we had in section 4.1 was to standardize if someone moves out of, in this case, for the school committee, it's the district.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So let's be clear about what the motion is, that we're standardizing language.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, okay, so we don't have, yeah, and that's what the city council says. So the motion is that if a district school committee member moves out of the district during their term and stays within Medford, they're allowed to finish out their term. I'll second it. Okay, Daveed.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice. Yes. Morris, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm writing a word and talking. Anthony Andreottola. No. Okay. Phyllis. Yes. Gene. Yes. And I think I'm the last person left, and I'm a yes. OK, great. So that passes. OK. OK, now we did have something come up during this discussion. It was a question about the use of the word voter, which I believe we used in other sections as well. Does anybody, do people still feel comfortable with that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Then there's no proposal to change that. Great. Yeah. All right. Anybody have any other changes in article four?
[Milva McDonald]: Nobody does, so go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think the language was deleted, so I don't think it may be. I don't think it would. Yeah, well, Paulette didn't. contact me with any amendments, first of all. But I don't think we say anything about the handling of the bills or anything. I think that was deleted. I don't think it means that that system can't continue just because we took it out.
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: That's right. So does that change what you, do you still want to look at adding it back in, Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Wilson, do you remember? Let's see. Yeah. Go ahead, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but we're talking, we're talking about, um, that in the memo from the call-in center, they recommended mirroring the city council vacancy provision, which I think we're, we're, we agree is a good idea. And but the other part of it was suggesting that the committee consider allowing the school committee and city council to fill the vacancy joint. So that's, can you, Anthony Wilson, talk about maybe the reasoning behind that recommendation?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yeah, I mean, the typos and things will get to those. I, you know, we've actually already addressed.
[Milva McDonald]: Ah, I see.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So we've heard the reasons for potentially having the city council involved. I mean, I think the first level is that it's the next highest vote ever, right? The only time appointment is going to happen is if there's nobody to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, no, I think along the lines of the Collins Center argument, the threshold of, you know, those people didn't get a very high threshold of votes. And then the city council who did get the votes and represents the whole city. I mean, you could look at it that way. That's all I'm saying.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so now we have another idea on the table, which is to lower the threshold to 20%, not less than 20% of the total vote cast gene.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So we've had a discussion about this. Does anybody want to make a proposal on any of the issues we've been discussing? I want to, I would, uh, Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: I second that. Okay, Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we are voting on that a person after the 30% threshold and after, if the position still needs to be filled, that the school committee would fill the position.
[Milva McDonald]: So, basically, it's to leave the language the way it is. And 2, we're just reiterating that because.
[Milva McDonald]: We're going to vote on that. We're going to see.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, we're not talking about that right now. We're just talking about when a opening needs to be filled that can't be filled by someone who has run and met that 30% threshold currently, as it is, then the motion on the table is that we leave this as is and say that the city council will fill the vacancy, which is contrary to the recommendation of the policy. You mean the school committee? Did I misspeak? I'm sorry. The school committee fills the vacancies. If you vote yes, you're voting for the school committee to fill the vacancy and not the city council. Is that clear to everyone? David? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice. Yes. Jean. Yes. Anthony Andreadov.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. Yes. I'm a no. Unfortunately, we have a tie because we only have eight people here tonight. I think then that means the yes gets it.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're split on that. The eight people that are here now are split on that.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean to me this isn't the affairs of the school committee It's who's on the school committee. So that's not The affairs of the school committee are the job of the school committee. That's how I see it.
[Milva McDonald]: You're also talking about the mayor, because the mayor's on the school committee. So. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and actually, yeah, Danielle actually told me she would be here late, so. We're missing Danielle, we're missing Paulette, and we're missing- I know. We might get Danielle tonight, but okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the motion was that the language would stay the same, and it was tied. And if the motion falls, that means the language wouldn't stay the same. But we didn't vote on what to change the language to, although I think it's already. Everybody knows what the choices are. Just so far, I'm clear.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I don't.
[Milva McDonald]: I think Ron, what we're going to do is we're going to take this vote again when Danielle shows up. Because you're right, it's possible that at our next meeting we won't have the other three of us. So let's take the vote again.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, we can.
[Milva McDonald]: So we're going to revisit it when Danielle gets here. Right. OK. OK. There was some, does anybody, do we have anything else? It was discussion about lowering the threshold and then Jean pointed out that it's 30% with city council. So does somebody want to make a proposal to make a change?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. Anything else in article four? I'm good. Okay. Great. Article 5. Article 5, which is short. And it was pretty much boilerplate language, but does anybody have anything they want to change for that? Administrative procedures? Administrative organization? All right. What about Article 6 is financial procedures?
[Milva McDonald]: So your proposal is that whenever there's an incidence in the charter that says that something needs to be publicized in a local newspaper, that that language is changed to?
[Milva McDonald]: Meanwhile, Maury, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Collin Center, can you speak to this? Because this is obviously not, other communities deal with this decline of newspapers as well.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I guess my interpretation of newspaper is that it doesn't have to be a paper newspaper. It can be an electronic newspaper or some sort of newsletter or something. But anyway, that's just my interpretation. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: So you're saying we should change newspaper, Ron? I just want to be clear on what you're saying.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I just want to circle back for one second to Anthony's. I just want to, Anthony, can you address again that this language is a reflection of state law because this is state law still says newspaper?
[Milva McDonald]: But do you feel that because of that, that the charter should say that as well, or do you think it's fine to change it?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, Marilyn, did you want to add to that?
[Milva McDonald]: So, Marilyn, would you think that leaving newspaper and adding something else would be specific? Is that what you're? Okay. Yes, that's where I'm going. Okay. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Maury and Ron, did you want to say something? Maury, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Ron, did you have another point?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I just want to check in with David and see in light of this discussion, because you did have a proposal on the table. So I just want to check in with David about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I'm, um, I'm going to throw out a proposal and say that First of all, I'm going to propose that we leave newspaper and add city website. So we say newspaper and city website. And also just want to say in conjunction with that, that it doesn't mean that the city can't publicize things in other places. It's just the charter says this is what they have to do. It doesn't stop them from doing other things. So, and I guess, As I said before, to me, newspaper includes digital media.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we could, but I think that falls under Marilyn's comment about being vague. Because it's not defined. It's not defined. That's true. Yeah. If we say newspaper and city website, that's defined. It doesn't prevent the city from putting it out in other places, but it defines the minimum that they have to do. Would you agree with that, Anthony Wilson?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's my proposal that, you know, we keep newspaper in all the places where it says things have to be disseminated by newspaper, but we add that newspaper and city website.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: It could be, I mean.
[Milva McDonald]: You're saying is there a requirement in the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think there is in our current charter.
[Milva McDonald]: But we're talking about more than just city meetings. We're talking about other things because the charter references all kinds of stuff that has to be shared with the public, not just meetings. Danielle, welcome. Right now, there's a motion on the table that wherever the charter directs that something has to be publicized to the public in a newspaper, we're going to add city website so that there would be required by the charter to put it in a newspaper and on the city website. Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sorry. I thought you had... Okay. Let's go. I thought you had sort of let it go, but I'm sorry if I misunderstood.
[Milva McDonald]: All good. Then can you just state what you want your motion to be?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, and that language is in the chat.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. All right. So. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we're doing Daveed's first. We're doing Daveed's.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So we're doing Daveed's first. Um, Eunice? No. Uh, Anthony Andreottola?
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, Ron Giovino?
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Did I get you, Rory?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm also a no. So that doesn't pass. And now we'll vote on my motion, which is to where it to keep the word newspaper wherever the charter specifies it and add city website.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so Phyllis, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Daveed.
[Milva McDonald]: Gene. Yes. Eunice. Yes. Danielle. Yes. Who did I miss?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Anthony. And I'm also a yes. Okay. So that's good. We got that passed. All right, so before we start Article VI, I want to go back to the tie vote that we had so that we can retake that vote. Danielle, the pressure is on you. No. Danielle, we had a tie vote, so we would like to revisit it. And it was under filling vacancies on the school committee. The current draft says that If there's nobody, if there's a vacancy and a candidate and the next candidate who didn't get elected and who meets at least 30% of the vote isn't available, then the school committee chooses the replacement. That's what we currently have. And the Collins Center made a recommendation that the city council do it rather than the school committee because the city council The school committee's job is narrow and focused on running the school department, and the city council represents the whole city and the workings of the city, so that they recommend that the city council do it and that that's common practice in other cities. And I'm going to let Anthony Wilson.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Did everybody understand that the first time around? Okay. So let's retake that vote. So basically what we're going to vote on is that currently we have just the school committee doing it. Now we have the school committee and the city council doing it together. That's what we would be voting on. So if you vote yes, you want, this isn't exactly how we did the vote last time, but we'll do it this way. We'll simplify it this way. If you vote yes, you're saying yes, it should be the city council and the school committee together, and if you vote no, you're saying no, it should just be the school committee. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, let's see where the vote falls. So this is a vote to have the city council and the school committee involved in replacing a vacancy on the school committee. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? No. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Andreottola?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Maury, did I get you?
[Milva McDonald]: Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm a yes. So that motion carries. Great. So the call-in center will change that language. OK. So now we're on Article 6. Did anybody have any amendments that they wanted to propose to Article 6? I did. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you both have good points, but Gene makes a good point about the budget ordinance that specifies March 1st as a date for the city council to, can you say again, the city council is submitting their budget recommendations to the mayor on March 1st?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. It says on or before March 1st now.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Let's see what other people. Eunice, did you have a comment about this?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I can tell you they were concerned about being able to fulfill this. But that was one of the reasons that we generalized the language. Because people still wanted to keep it. committee members still wanted to keep it, but there was a concern.
[Milva McDonald]: David?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, currently it just says to review the financial condition of the city and share relevant information.
[Milva McDonald]: And one of the things that people expressed on this committee and in the public was that they wanted more collaboration and they wanted more interaction between the branches of government. And that was one of the other reasons for this.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I think, Jean, your original proposal, you said February 1st, right? I did. On or before February 1st, changing March 1st to February 1st. Okay. Thank you, Ron. Maury, did you want to speak? Maury, maybe he stepped up.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. All right, we're gonna, oh, Eunice, you have one more point?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, how do you feel about that? That's fine with me. Okay, so we'll vote on that. But before we do, I just want to ask if the Collins Center has anything to add to this discussion about an annual budget meeting and Yeah, there were a lot of dates as I understand it in the budget ordinance, and that was a concern, was conflicting with the ordinance. So I'm glad you brought that up, but I would like to know if Anthony Wilson or Marilyn have any thoughts about this.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, I guess I'm slightly concerned about February 15th because the people who would be doing this express concern about being able to get information together. But we also, I guess, conflicting with the budget ordinance. I mean, the charter would supersede the ordinance, although they're two different things. I think they would both exist, right, Anthony? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. OK. I mean, based on what we've heard and what I understand, I don't know how much information they're going to get in February anyway. But yeah. If we're doing this, people feel strongly about it. And so February 15th, we'll change it to February 15th. That's the proposal on the table. OK? I'll second it. So does everyone understand what they're voting on? A yes is we're changing from March 1st to February 15th. OK. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean. Yes. David.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle. Yes. Phyllis. No. Ron, did you vote?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Andriodala.
[Milva McDonald]: I missed one person. I met with Eunice. Yes. Okay. I'm going to vote no. So, all right. So that carries. So we'll change that. Great. Anybody else have anything in an article six?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury, do you want to speak to that? Want to repeat?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Maury. I mean, my recollection was that there was concern about doing it annually, but... Yeah, they had concerns about, you know, what works best for them, you know, and... I agree, right.
[Milva McDonald]: It's also was, you know, we're reporting as a communication secondhand and... I feel that since the Collins Center has strongly told us that this is standard practice and it's important, is that correct? Then I feel comfortable with it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Elections, Article 7. Anybody want to make any amendments there?
[Milva McDonald]: You don't remember what section it is? I'm just skimming.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Anything else in article 7? Okay, article 8. Anybody have any? Everybody okay? Article 8, anybody? I have one change to Article 8.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, my proposal is very simple. It's not complicated. 8-5, which is about recall. Let me find where the party. A recall petition may be initiated. I'm not going to find the language. Let me see. I'm looking for... Oh, here it is. It's down here. And there it is. It happens to be highlighted right now, where it says, from which removal is sought in the grounds of recall, as stated in the affidavit. So since the recalls that we're proposing are not for cause, I'm suggesting that we remove grounds of recall.
[Milva McDonald]: I thought that you that recall, you could just get the signatures to recall someone and you didn't have to say why.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That's not what my understanding was about recalls. Jean, do you remember when we discussed this?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what I remember is that we read some materials that indicated that in Massachusetts, and maybe what Marilyn is referring to is the fact that it's not in state law and it's just by charter, but that you could do recalls just with signatures for no particular cause, and said causes are not defined. But I think maybe what Marilyn is saying, and you can correct me, Marilyn, if I'm misunderstanding, is that it's going to come up at some point anyway. So it's best to include it.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what it says now. Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: No, well, in light of this discussion, I'm withdrawing because I think, you know, I understand now the distinction and the reason that it's there. If anybody else wants to bring it up, they can, but I'm good with it the way it is. Nobody else has anything in Article 8?
[Milva McDonald]: Is it? Oh, are you looking at the recommendation sheet, not the active?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. I'll second that. So what we're voting on is adding that every member of the committee received a copy of the solicitor's decision, and this is in reference to recalls, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm having trouble finding it right now, but let's just look at it on the screen and then we can. So, we believe that it is there.
[Milva McDonald]: So, we're good. Yeah. All right. I'm going to draw. Great. Thank you. All right, we're good on that one. Okay, so we're good with article eight? Now nine. Anybody have anything? I mean, we had a new section added to article nine about the financial statements.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, Anthony, do you want to address that?
[Milva McDonald]: You're saying you wanted similar requirements to apply to other sections?
[Milva McDonald]: The ordinance, it says that copies of any recommendation shall be made available to the public at a cost not to exceed the actual cost of the reproduction. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: My apologies. Anybody have anything else in article 9?
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like we did talk about it and we voted on it and we didn't vote.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that would have been in, what's that? Multi-member bodies are addressed in another article. Is that right? Am I imagining things?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not finding it right now. So that language, Eunice, can you read it again, please?
[Milva McDonald]: What I want to ask is what section would that go under? Would that go under the appointment section or would it go under the article 9?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I need to just make sure that that gets in there. First, I'm going to look back and just refresh myself on what meeting we discussed that and when we voted.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to look. Yeah, go ahead, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we didn't last meeting. Well, it wasn't last meeting, but we finished it up. That's why we got the draft charter with everything in it. But we did have something added to it, which was the financial statements.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know what we... Well, we may not... If nobody brought it up, we didn't discuss it. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I will pull up that language and make sure it gets added to the appropriate section.
[Milva McDonald]: So you wanna question that.
[Milva McDonald]: Marilyn and Anthony, can you just speak a little bit about sort of how this kind of thing works in practice? Is the city council involved generally or?
[Milva McDonald]: You asked about section 917, which I think to me, what I read is that it just says that the municipal employees have to comply with the state conflict of interest laws.
[Milva McDonald]: So, Ron, are you looking to propose that we just delete the waiver or that it be maybe have,
[Milva McDonald]: That to me is checks and balances. You wanted to say that this section may be waived by the mayor with approval of the city council?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And I just wanted to hear from Marilyn and Anthony whether, you know, I'm just only interested in standard practice and whether that's typical or whether there's a reason not to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I guess my thing is I always think if something is standard language, maybe sometimes there's no reason, but maybe sometimes there is a reason. So I was just trying to sort of discern whether there's a reason to keep this way. And I'm just thinking about it. I don't know, maybe there's a scenario where it makes sense to fill this position of employment, fill with two positions with the same person and
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So we start by, you want to propose that we add city council approval to the mayor's-
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, okay, um, would you be willing just to.
[Milva McDonald]: Again, I feel like if we vote yes on this, I think the Common Center will craft language that would cover those bases. Anthony, is that okay? Okay, so we're voting on adding city council approval to the mayor's waiver on no person being able to hold more than one city office or position. And the city council approval would be a simple majority.
[Milva McDonald]: 30 days. Within 30 days. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: We got it. We want to say with the same process that they would approve a multi-member board person. Is that what you're saying?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Andreottola.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle. Oh, yes, okay. Dean.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Daveed.
[Milva McDonald]: Who did I miss? Yourself. I'm voting no. Who did I miss? Did I get everybody? I feel like I missed one person. Okay. Paulette has joined us. Hi, Paulette. Hi, Paulette. Hi, Paulette. She's on mute. Okay. Okay. So that motion passes. So we will add that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you for that, Eunice. So that's all I got. The leading city clerk from 9-11. Okay. Anybody else have anything else for Article 9? Okay. Paulette, welcome. Thanks for joining us.
[Milva McDonald]: We've just finished up basically. Then we'll go back and ask you if you have any amendments to any section. But before we do that, I just want to check in and make sure everybody saw the language that was added about the financial statements and that the message that I sent you from the call center and see if anybody had any comments or.
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, everybody else good with that section.
[Milva McDonald]: No, not officially. Maury talked to some former elected officials. Correct, Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: It's just coming up because we just got the language. We haven't met since, so we wanted to make sure everybody was okay with the language and with the language came this note that I shared. I just wanted to check in and see if people had any thoughts or comments about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we're good. Okay, so now Paulette, is there something you wanted to revisit?
[Milva McDonald]: We don't. I don't think we have to vote on it unless
[Milva McDonald]: We voted to include it and the call and center created wrote it. We voted to include it, and then the Collins Center created the language. Just as the whole charter has partially been created by us and partially by the Collins Center, so the process tonight is to go through all that language and see if anybody has any proposals for changes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so you're proposing removing the- The language for the financial reporting. You want to remove that whole thing from the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I don't have the section number in front of me. I'm sorry. What is it? Off the top of their head. It's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay. So Anthony wants to vote on removing section 918 from the charter. Does everybody understand what that would be?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, he's proposing an amendment to the charter, which is to remove Section 9, which, you know, is so. OK, so does everyone understand what they'll be voting on?
[Milva McDonald]: Did someone say no?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Paulette, section 918 is the language that we bought that lays out the creation of an ethics commission to create a financial reporting form. So the amendment that's being proposed is to remove that entire section from the chart. Oh, okay. Okay, Danielle. No. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. No. Eunice. No. Phyllis. No. Jean. Yes. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Daveed.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Andreottola.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll vote yes too, but it stays. Okay, so now,
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, we didn't vote to change the language that's in the proposed chart. So I guess that means we went along with the recommendation because
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony or Marilyn, do you want to respond to that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I guess I don't see it as inaccurate because to me taking it doesn't mean that it can't, that the school committee can't still continue with that process if they want. But putting it in means that they can never change it until the charter is changed. That's how that's kind of how I see it.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, Jean, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So are you proposing, do you want to make a proposal that we add it back in?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. First, I just want to hear what Ron and Eunice and David have some comments. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So that's a different issue. But let's stick to this issue of the secretary's job description. Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Actually, I'm not sure I can do that because it's not in the draft charter. So I'm just going to read it. Right. So we're voting to add in this language. In addition, the secretary is responsible for overseeing and approving the bills of the school department unless the school committee votes to form a subcommittee expressly for reviewing the bills. That would be the section that we would add back in. Jean. I second. Okay. Thank you. Jean. Yes. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice. Yes. Paulette. Yes. Did I get Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Andreotila. Did I get Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And I think I'm the only one left.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so it gets added back in. Anything else?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette, did you have anything else? No.
[Milva McDonald]: Nobody's here.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Eunice. Yeah. The final report, it was sent to you all in draft form. There have been some changes made since then. We are going to have one more meeting next week so that we can send you a final draft. And then the next meeting will be our last meeting. What I would like to do is ask the call-in center. I'm going to send the call-in center all these changes. hopefully get a new draft of the entire charter and the final report, which I will send to you in advance of our October meeting so that we can just make those officials vote them and then we will submit that to the mayor. That's the plan.
[Milva McDonald]: I sent a draft, yeah, so that you guys could sort of take a look at it. But you'll get a more final draft.
[Milva McDonald]: You'll get a more final draft. And then we have one more meeting, and we'll be good to go.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, so we're good. Everybody, we managed to finish before 9.30.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Motion to adjourn. Thank you very much.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome to the August 7, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Ethics Reporting Subcommittee. First, did you look over the minutes from our last meeting? Yeah, move approval. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Great. Basically, What we have to do tonight, right? I mean, Eunice, I don't know if you have any thoughts, but we basically have to come up with, well, here's the question. Are we going to come up with the language? Because we also can just come up with the parameters and then let the call-in center do the language. We can do that too. We can give to the call-in center, okay, this is what we want, this is how we want it to work, etc., and then they'll write it.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, technically the committee voted just for the annual financial reporting. Okay. But we also in that discussion, there didn't seem to be a great desire to use the state form.
[Milva McDonald]: So, for the purpose of the charter, the only way to handle that. We have to task somebody with the creation of the form. So, it's either going to be an ethics commission or the city council. Because the city council is going to write the ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: No. What we can do in the charter if we want to create an ethics commission is lay out the parameters for the commission in the charter and say that the mayor will instruct the city council to create an ordinance to implement that. But we can say in the charter, ethics commission, the composition of that commission, the qualifications, how long they serve, who appoints, what their basic tasks are, and which at this point, it's just the annual financial reporting, right? So we can do that in the charter, right? Or, I mean, Framingham doesn't do that because they basically say, they don't say that they'll use the state form, but they say something substantially similar to the state form, so they're just using the state form. Right, exactly. But since we don't want to do that, we have to provide for the creation of a form.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I don't think we can dictate the content. We can't dictate the contents of the form. That's going to be up to either the city council or the ethics commission if we choose. We didn't technically vote on that with the whole committee, we have to have a vehicle for the creation of the form.
[Milva McDonald]: But city politics are all nonpartisan, like the elections have to be nonpartisan. So I don't know if we could put that in the charter. I mean, we'd have to ask if that's.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're saying that the election, so is the, I'm not, do you know how the Elections Commission is, is there an ordinance creating it or is it a state law? I'm not quite sure. Yeah, I don't know either. But you're saying that the Elections Commission is, specifies that members will be.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Wait, Maury, you're on mute.
[Milva McDonald]: They work with the elections department.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, you remember, anything we put in the charter is caught, it's set in stone. So if it doesn't work out, it can't be changed. So, you know, that's one of the reasons we want to be careful.
[Milva McDonald]: First of all, let's say, do we three or five? I feel like three is probably enough. I mean, Springfield has three. I think, um, I'm always a five, seven guy, but I mean, if you guys say three, okay, let's just say three or five. And then as we go, when we get to talking about what they're actually going to do and we can see, okay, does this really need five people? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: people okay let's say five and there have to be five volunteers you know they also have to find five volunteers that want to do it so um okay medford voter um any other qualification i mean in terms of their other qualifications
[Milva McDonald]: If they're a voter, they have to be a resident.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I mean, if they're a voter, they have to be a resident.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're saying you think you should be a resident, and whether they're registered to vote or not is immaterial.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. No city employees or relatives or elected officials will say that. That would be my next part. Or relatives of the same.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, I mean, let's say, like, we don't get paid, right? Or a lot of people who are on volunteer boards.
[Milva McDonald]: A lot of people who are on boards or commissions don't get paid, but I think they might still be considered city employees.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know though, because remember when we, even the members of the boards and the commissions have to take the ethics training and we talked about that. Oh yeah, but that doesn't, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, but I'm just saying, I think it could be ambiguous that there's certain, but you know, that just means that you can't, do both. But one question I have is, no city employees are elected officials or relatives of the same. That means that as soon as you're not an employee anymore, you can serve on this board. Or do we want a window of time?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. How long do we want them to serve?
[Milva McDonald]: It's three years too long. Well, people go, that's too long. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Let's say two years. Um, should we say two years with the option of, you know, and, uh, terms maybe for a second term, right.
[Milva McDonald]: Renewal one time only.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right, what about the appointing?
[Milva McDonald]: You don't think we should mix it up?
[Milva McDonald]: I did notice that some of the other cities that have ethics commissions have the school committee appointing one member.
[Milva McDonald]: That sounds fine to me.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. So we'll do 2-2-1 for now. We can always go back and revisit this. So what about the responsibilities?
[Milva McDonald]: Wait a minute. So let me find that. Springfield. Springfield.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But that's a manual. We're not creating a manual.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Well, so, you know, I mean, participating in or contributing to the political campaign of any candidate for public office, that's any candidate for public office means anybody.
[Milva McDonald]: Here, I'll put it up on the screen. I'm not going to read it.
[Milva McDonald]: That means if you give $25 to the president.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, let's see.
[Milva McDonald]: Hold or be a candidate for any other public office while a member or employee for or for one year thereafter. Do we want to leave the one year thereafter?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, like I said, this is not going to be changeable. And if it turns out they're not getting volunteers, I might regret that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, yeah, we'll see. Hold office in any political party or political committee, which
[Milva McDonald]: Well, like I said, when we start talking about what the Ethics Commission is going to do, then we'll see. Because if the Ethics Commission is just administering the form, and they don't, I mean, yeah, then I don't see that this is that important, but we'll talk about it. And the other one is the contribution, which we're not going to include. Yeah, we can fix that. Okay. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, my thought was I was gonna take what we came up with tonight, give it to the call-in center, ask them to write it up, and then give that to the committee. And we can talk to them about some of the other things too, but.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Okay, so that's composition, qualifications, appointing. Okay, what about what they're actually gonna do? Now, one of the things we know they're gonna do is, create the form because that's the whole point and that's what the committee voted on is to have an annual financial reporting requirement.
[Milva McDonald]: They're going to have to create the form and then they would be who the people who have to fill out the form submit the forms to. They're responsible for that, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so. But that's a pretty neutral job.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, ensure compliance with the requirement. So this section of the charter would also say that there's an annual reporting requirement. annual financial reporting requirements. Part of the problem with us doing it this way, I think, is they can put anything they want in that form. It can be anything. We have no control over it.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I don't think the form should go in the charter. All I'm saying is, unless we, like, that's why Framingham's charter says a form substantially similar to the state. So that says, that gives an idea. But if we're saying... I like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Let's just say if we do that, we don't necessarily need the ethics permission.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess. I like gloves. So instead of the city clerk, because that's what Framingham does.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: And the previous set of one, this is a framing him language and it basically gives it, it's pretty long. Actually. I don't think ours is going to be this long, but I don't know. Um, It basically just says that the city clerk is going to do it. See, we need to figure this out too. The next question is who's going to have to do this form?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, they're going to have to create the ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: But we're telling them what the ethics commission is going to be made up of, but we also have to give an idea of what this ethics commission is going to do. It is going to oversee the ethics reporting requirement, And if we do the line that Framingham uses.
[Milva McDonald]: No, if we do an ethics commission, we're leaving the city clerk out of it.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it's up to the commission.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I was just saying if we're just going to say that they're using the state form, then we don't have to have an ethics commission.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I don't know if we should dictate that.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if we should dictate that in the charter because again, then it has to be that way and it might not work out. If we have the Ethics Commission, then we just say the Ethics Commission shall do all this. This is what it says about the form in Framingham. It says, The statement of financial interests filed pursuant to the provisions of the section shall be on a form prescribed by the city clerk, and in our case, it would be by the Ethics Commission, that shall be substantially similar to that required by the State Ethics Commission.
[Milva McDonald]: We don't have to, but that means we have no control over what's in the form. We just say it's a... statement of financial interest. They can put whatever they want. They can do it however they see fit, which is fine. I'm just making the point that we're not creating the form.
[Milva McDonald]: It's right, it's right, hang on a minute, let me just find it, because I know, I know we have it.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it's just one. Right. But, you know, and you have to figure out what you're, you know, I mean, there's all this stuff about, in which case you don't have to include it. you know, transacting business in Cambridge.
[Milva McDonald]: But somebody, I think somebody at our meeting said something about, well, so if you own stock in AT&T, you have to report it. And so maybe you wouldn't have to on a Medford-centric form, but that doesn't mean that an outside, a business outside Medford wouldn't be doing business in Medford.
[Milva McDonald]: The form has to lay it all out clearly. I looked at this form and I was like, man, if I had to fill this out, I might hire somebody to help me figure it out, to figure out what I'm supposed to report and what I'm not supposed to report. Because some of it, it's hard to know.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. I think the committee wasn't interested in the state form either.
[Milva McDonald]: However, is the, is it really only the first ethics commission that has to create the form?
[Milva McDonald]: Create and maintain. Right the form so basically that's what they're doing. Are we putting any details about that? I don't know what details we could put in, but.
[Milva McDonald]: They're going to create and maintain a statement of financial disclosure, and we're going to require this annually? Mm-hmm. Who is filling it out?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, I'm fine with that. To me, if somebody really cared, they might want to know before they voted for somebody. But at the same time, you know, this form, people are gonna fill it out and it's just gonna be information that the public can see.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, but what is it being transparent of other than people's financial situation?
[Milva McDonald]: Right, but they're not, so they're supposed to, you know, they're supposed to follow the conflict of interest law and recuse themselves or report. So that, you know, this maybe is going to make them more likely to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: You're talking about the State Ethics Commission. Right. But our Ethics Commission is not going to have that power.
[Milva McDonald]: It's transparency in the sense that it's going to make people's financial situation visible to anybody in the city.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But as I said, what if you don't just close your AT&T stock and then all of a sudden AT&T is doing business in Medford and you didn't know that? I mean, figuring out. It's going to reveal information to people who want to look at it, basically. But what we're talking about is, while we were talking about the powers of the commission. So far, the only power of the commission that we have is to create and maintain the statement of financial disclosure and to ensure that it gets filled out every year by the people who are supposed to fill it.
[Milva McDonald]: That's all the Ethics Commission is going to do.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, let's just say that we're going to mention the form and any other such duties as may be prescribed by ordinance. Yeah. Okay. So electives. We don't want candidates.
[Milva McDonald]: There's a lot of department heads. Do we want all of them? I don't know. I'd want to see a list of department heads before we put department heads in. Because I feel like some of them, it's not really necessary. They're not voting. They're not voting on anything. Like the health department, does really the health department head have to fill this out? I think most of the others indicate department heads.
[Milva McDonald]: Framingham says superintendent, chief financial officer, chief procurement officer, chief operating officer, public works directors, or any other municipal officers as may from time to time be designated by ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: So let's look at Framingham. But I don't know what a chief procurement officer is. Do we have one?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. And chief operating officer?
[Milva McDonald]: All right, I'll leave that one out. Or when I give the list to the Collins. Okay. So, um, well, then maybe just filling it out every year. Is there just a particular time of year that we should, you know, we have to say when.
[Milva McDonald]: Framingham has it due on May 1st of each year.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. February 28th, we like that date. March 1st. March 1st, okay. I mean, okay, that's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's most of the questions that we needed to, what about the, and in terms of the actual information that's collected, the commission, Keeps the forms on file and makes them available to any member of the public or do we not want them to be made available to any member of the public?
[Milva McDonald]: And we're saying that the members of the Ethics Commission will receive no compensation, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so this is what we have. Five-member Ethics Commission, no compensation, Medford voter. I have Ringfield member, okay. I don't have it in front of me right now. But whatever Springfield said that we talked about, I haven't written down, but where I have to look for it. No city employees or elected officials. No current city employees or elected officials, and they have to wait a year before they can serve, and no relatives.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, that's good. That's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: They serve for two years. They can renew their term one time only. Two are appointed by the mayor, two by the city council, one by the school committee. They can't hold office with any political party or political committee Which again as we've discussed I don't really see that it makes a difference for this particular job because all they're doing is collecting the forms exactly But yeah, we could we could take that out Okay, I put a question mark there and I They have to create and maintain a statement of financial disclosure to be filled out by elected officials and the people that we just discussed.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, no, the Ethics Commission isn't filling it out. They're filling it out and submitting it to the Ethics Commission. The Ethics Commission is just making sure they do it every year. Then we'll say, and any other duties as may be prescribed by ordinance, the forms due on March 1st of each year, and the Elections Commission keeps the forms and makes them available to anyone who wants to see them on request. Because it might be, it might, what if somebody else, what if the mayor wants to see him? Or what if, you know, somebody in another department, I mean, it's anybody, right? It's not just, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So does that cover it? So, and then what I'll do is I'll write this all in the minutes, so you guys will be able to look at it and see if anything was left out. And then once I, hear from you if there needs to be any changes or if I don't hear from you I'll assume it's okay and then I'll give all this to the call-in center and then the call-in center will write it up and then um I I don't think we need another meeting I mean we'll they'll write it up and I'll send it to the whole committee and then if anybody has changes including us we can just bring it up at the next meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we'll have the language and then if Eunice wants to bring up an amendment to add, she can.
[Milva McDonald]: So right now, what I have is elected officials, superintendent, chief financial officer, chief procurement officer, public and public works director, and any other municipal officers as may from time to time be designated by ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, is there one in particular that you think should be there that's not there, Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: It's all right, but go ahead if you want to do it if you so units will have it this way and once that once it's written up if you want to propose an amendment and and then the committee can vote on it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So. So are we good with the review of what I, I mean, I'm going to give all this to the call center and ask them to write it up. If they say, well, March 1st isn't a good date because of blah, blah, blah, it should be whatever. I mean, I'll just say fine, change it and then we can. Because that was random anyway, right? Yeah. I don't know what else they'll say about what. They might say, well, you should answer this question as well, or yeah, they might have some comments. But they'll let us know just like they did with all the other stuff.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, I mean, it is, you know, I do think that it's tricky about the Statement of Financial Disclosure and how to frame that because it's not in any other charters. And the only one that has it specifically references the state form just to give, you know, because otherwise you're just saying Statement of Financial Disclosure and it could mean anything, right? It is a little tricky, but if we don't want to use the state form, then we just have to.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't remember if the Cambridge form said anything about relatives. Actually, I don't think it does. Yeah, it's funny because they have the elections commission overseeing the form, not the city clerk like Framingham. They say June 1st. Yeah, so maybe spring is a better time. I don't know why, because Framingham said May.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I know. But I just don't know if there's a reason, like with the sort of calendar.
[Milva McDonald]: They do say family members in Cambridge. Okay, so I will send this out to you guys before I send it to the call-in center so that, you know, if there's any detail that I got wrong in the minutes, I can correct it before I send it to them.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, do we need to cover anything else?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no. Well, the Collins Center is going to write it up, and it's going to be part of our discussion. And if people want to amend it, they can. And then we're going to be finishing in September. We're finishing the charter and then in October, we're going to make sure we finalize the final report.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I want October to be our last meeting, so October, whatever the first Thursday in October is.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it's kind of in the mayor's hands. And again, you know, we don't know what kind of role we're going to be asked to play in any of that.
[Milva McDonald]: We'll see. But once we submit it to the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: Once we submit it to the mayor. No, we're going to be finished at that October meeting, Maury. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: It may not. I'm pretty sure that our final report is going to be made public. I can't imagine that you sat on the parking.
[Milva McDonald]: Now, when we submit it- I mean, well, I think it probably is up to the mayor because we're just a, you know, we're the mayor's committee, we're submitting it to the mayor, but I can't imagine- Our committee report is public record.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Yeah, that's like all those final reports that we looked at from all those communities. I can't imagine people aren't going to be able to see that.
[Milva McDonald]: Go to the website. You can spend hours and hours watching all the meetings.
[Milva McDonald]: You'll be bored into oblivion.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: Awesome. I second. Yeah. Ditto.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, guys. Thank you. Good night. Take care. Bye.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the August 1st, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. We're welcoming the Collins Center tonight. We have Anthony, Frank, and Marilyn, which is great because we have a lot of material to go through. First, I just want to deal with the minutes from June 20th. Did anyone have a chance to look at them? Any issues? Melva?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Hang on. Let me check on that. OK, here we go. OK, you should be able to start it now. OK, yeah. And thanks for actually just reminding me that I need to record the meeting. Recording in progress. Anybody from the public? Not yet.
[Milva McDonald]: Frances had her hand raised. Frances. Yes. Did you want to say something? It was to remind you to record. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Okay, great. So the minutes, did everyone have a chance to look at them? Do we have any changes? Are we good with them? Yep, they're good.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay, so our first item is Eunice is going to give a report from the Financial Reporting Ethics Subcommittee. Eunice, it's all you.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Eunice. That was a great summary. I'm going to give this a bit of discussion, but it's going to be very short because we have a lot of material to get through before we just take the first vote. Does anybody have any questions? Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: It would be great to hear from the Collins Center on this.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. And what about Ron's question about mass general laws?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, any other questions? Then I want to take it to a vote, but first, I'm going to ask if there's any members of the public that would like to speak on this. Okay. We're going to start by just voting on whether this is something that we would want to include in the chart. So the vote is, do we put a provision in the charter that would require the city council to pass an ordinance that would require financial statements, annual financial statements from elected officials, candidates, and some city officials?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I'm sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: I was on mute. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I would like to just throw out a question to the Collins Center. The issues that were just being described about, say, an elected official pushing something because they had an interest in a development company or a liquor store or whatever, those are already prohibited by state law. Is that correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I just want that to be clear.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, David. I just wanted to clarify that.
[Milva McDonald]: Because they don't, they're prohibited by law from doing that, but they're not required, local officials are not required to submit annual financial reports, so maybe they could try to get away with it, I guess is the... And I'm going to have to apologize because I cut into Paulette's time.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. Paulette, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: You're on mute, Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: We would be putting a requirement that they pass an ordinance which could say that the state form is used. I believe that's what Framingham said. But it doesn't seem like we want to do that based on this discussion. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. All right, I want to move, I think we have David.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we're going to vote right now. Is there anybody in the public that wants to speak? I'll ask again. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak? Okay. J.M.N. made a comment, liquor store is a bad example. Thank you. Okay. So the vote is that should we put a provision in the charter that would require the city council to create an ordinance to require elected officials, candidates for elected offices, and some city officials to file annual financial statements? Oh, sorry, it looks like Jim wants to make a comment. Yeah, I think she may want to speak. And then we will know. Can you unmute now? Gene, can you unmute yourself? I'm not sure why she can't.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not sure why. I'm clicking ask to unmute, but I can't. I'm sorry. You should be able to unmute yourself. Are you not able to?
[Milva McDonald]: No, the security settings. I'm clicking and it won't let me. I'm not sure. All right. I will try one more thing.
[Milva McDonald]: I will try one more thing. Can you do it now?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I guess we can't get it done. If you're able to unmute, let us know, but the comments are currently this is self-regulated, and I assume that means that the electeds are self-regulating themselves in terms of complying with the state law, the conflict of interest law. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I want to go ahead with the vote. I just, Jean, JMN was unable to unmute, but she's making a point that this would create more transparency and that currently elected officials are in charge of, it's sort of an honor system. Okay, and this vote is simply whether we want to put a provision in the charter. We will not write the ordinance. The city council will write the ordinance. We can direct it to a certain extent, but we can't micromanage it. So this is to put a provision in the charter for the city council to pass an ordinance to require financial statements annually from candidates, elected officials, and some city officials. So if you vote yes, you're in favor of that. All right, Danielle. Yes. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean? No. Paulette? You're on mute, Paulette. You say yes, okay. Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: David? David, you're on mute. Oh, you can't unmute? You're yes? No, I'm unmuted. And you're yes? Okay, thank you. And I'm the last one, right? I'm just, I'm going to vote no, because I, I just think, I think it's a lot to put into the charter, but it passes. So, uh, cause we had five yes or no and one abstain. So, um, the next step we are going to, we're going to have to figure out the cats and we're going to ask the call center to help us with that. Um, The other question that we had is whether to create an ethics commission, whether the ordinance should create an ethics commission that would implement this. Anthony Wilson, you had a comment.
[Milva McDonald]: No, it was just voted to put it into the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I guess the details of it are gonna have to be decided. I think maybe what we'll, we're going to have to do is have a subcommittee meeting again and then bring back specific language recommendation. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: The vote in June was to form the subcommittee.
[Milva McDonald]: I know, but I as the chair, I decided to go ahead with it because I felt like there was enough interest in it. So, so that's what we're going to do. The subcommittee is going to come up with some text and we'll bring it back to the committee. It will not be a big piece of text to add to our draft charter, which we currently have. Okay. All right, so the next item on the agenda is, before we get into the meat of the text of the draft charter, there was a question about the Compensation Advisory Board and the Collins. Everybody read the draft charter and the memo from the Collins Center?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Okay. So I think we can just go ahead to a vote, which is do we, the drafted section 918, which was put in the memo, not in our draft charter, do we want to include that in our charter or do we want to, the question is, do we want to include that in our charter or do we just want to make a recommendation in the final report that the city council pass an ordinance to create a compensation advisory board? Does everybody understand what we're voting on?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so a yes vote. Go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, we did, but when the Collins Center put together a draft charter, they are pulling that out and making a recommendation that we consider not including it in the charter and rather recommending that the city council write an ordinance to do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Just to be clear, the citizen-led board can't determine salaries, they can just make recommendations. The elected officials will make the decisions.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Okay, so should we have any members of the public that want to speak on this before we vote? Okay. Go ahead, Paula.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. So we're going to vote. If you vote yes, it means you would like to include this in the charter. If you vote no, it means you don't want it in the charter. And we will recommend that the city council create an ordinance. Because we did discuss this in the past, and people did want to do this. So I think the issue And maybe the Collins Center can speak to this, but the Collins Center felt that it just didn't, it's not a standard charter item and it didn't rise to the level of the charter. Is that correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so on that, with that, let's vote, Danielle. Yes means you want to put it, you want to put the requirement that this board has created in the charter. No means we want it, but we're going to recommend that the city council pass an ordinance decree.
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody want to speak from the public? I don't see it. Okay. So do we understand what the yes and the no? Okay. Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Phyllis. No. Okay. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Gene? No. Paulette? Yes. Unis.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: David. Yes. I feel like I missed somebody.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, thank you. Ron says no. What does Milda say? I'm going to say no and we'll recommend the ordinance. Yeah. Okay. That will be put into the final report. Great. OK. Now we're going to move on to the draft charter. And I ask that you all read it and come with amendments. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. OK. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. All right. Okay, so does anybody, I have a few things, but I'll ask people first. Do you have any amendments that you want to make in this draft charter, Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yes. Thank you, Eunice. Yes. Let's do it article by article. That's what I meant to do. So thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that would be the language that would be added. Can the call-in center weigh in on, because you didn't suggest that in the draft, so can you speak to that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Frank or Marilyn, is there any thoughts about it or anything that there's no reason not to include it or is there a reason that it's generally not included?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Okay, so are the raised hands about this particular issue? No, OK. So, Paulette, can you just read the language that you want to add so I can get it down?
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, that's fine. It's very vague to me, but you know, because it doesn't mean anything. You just want them to be included.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So let's note now, the vote is to include language, to include an elected school committee will oversee Medford's public schools or similar language, because maybe the call-in center will help us tweak it a little bit, to section 1.3. So if you vote yes, then you want to add it. If not, If you vote no, you don't. Okay. David?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Danielle is yes. Morris? No. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. Yes. Eunice. Yes. Phyllis. Yes. One more person, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. No, just because I don't think it's necessary, but it's going to be editing. So that's great. That's one. Does anybody have any other amendments for Article 1?
[Milva McDonald]: Are you thinking, Jean, about the confirmation?
[Milva McDonald]: But the charter only addresses mayoral appointments, right? So would it cover whatever appointments are made by the mayor?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, awesome. Okay, so any other amendments to section one? Okay, how about section two? Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: It's section 210.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, while you're doing that, Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anthony or Frank or Marilyn, do charters generally define the difference between a vacancy and a temporary absence?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I believe we did for the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: The city council does.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, or do you do you have any thoughts on this? Anthony Wilson.
[Milva McDonald]: So we're looking at section 27, and you want to add language? that the clerk may be removed by a vote of the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: There's not any other, I mean, right now all we say about staff is that city council may hire staff subject to appropriation.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the thing is, we don't say how they're going to hire staff, but we don't say that they hire staff by a vote of the city council. Right. We just say they so. I don't know, I see I see a little bit of a difference, but I do too.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, Jean. What were you going to say?
[Milva McDonald]: You know what I'm saying? Well, I mean, they're hiring the staff, so we're not saying how they... Oh, you mean the clerk? Just the clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: Should we say two-thirds, because that's pretty much the standard? Or you want to say three-quarters?
[Milva McDonald]: Two-thirds. Two-thirds is the standard.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, um, so on the table is ab language. Um, the clerk may be removed for cause by a two thirds vote of the city council and then potentially adding something about provide, you know, that, that this provision will not conflict with state law.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's the vote. If you want to add that, yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's true.
[Milva McDonald]: You're right, but we should still look at it because if it does conflict, we might want to reconsider adding it. Okay, so yes means yes at it. Eunice? Yes. Paulette? Yes. Phyllis? Yes. Anthony? Yes. Gene? Yes. Danielle? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: David?
[Milva McDonald]: All right. I'll be the lone no vote, just because it's not in any charter. So OK, I will be added. Great. Any other? OK. Our hands up for section two.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that was mine, Paulette, too. Oh, that's a typo, and that's gonna be Dink Harrop.
[Milva McDonald]: Does that answer your question, Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, you got muted, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, but Paulette, your question is, it says no ordinance shall be passed finally, blah, blah, blah, except in the case of an emergency or in the case of the unanimous vote of the city council. So your question is, is the unanimous vote of the city council include ordinances that aren't emergency ordinances? Right. To me, it reads yes, that it does. But I don't know, maybe I'm reading it.
[Milva McDonald]: So that was your question, Paulette, so you're good with that?
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Your question is if the wards increase, then will the at-large Councilors decrease?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, Frank, or Marilyn?
[Milva McDonald]: Is that part of the city council or was it just- No, that wasn't part of the city council discussion.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if you want to propose that we've changed the language, you can. So let me see what we-
[Milva McDonald]: It's on page 13, which... It also, the school committee also has an extra role besides, it has vice president and secretary, I believe.
[Milva McDonald]: And I, you know, I think that the roles are different to me, but if you want to make it, if you want to make it, if you want to propose an amendment that we change that language in city, in the city council. Yeah. I'm just trying to find. Okay. While you look for that, is anybody else have a chance to have anything for article two? Okay, I have one. I would like to on Article Section 2.1 in Article 2, under eligibility, because we're requiring a residency requirement for ward school Councilors, I would like to add a ward candidate for city council shall at the time of election be a Medford voter and shall have resided in the ward for which they're seeking office for one year prior to inauguration. I said that. OK. OK. So let's vote on that. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: I add the language to section to one eligibility for City Council. A ward candidate for City Council shall at the time of election be a method voter and shall have resided in the ward for which they're seeking office for one year prior to inauguration. So that would be an addition. Um, okay, David. I'm not. No. Okay. Um, Maury. I don't know, he might be away, I'll get back to him. Gene? No.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. You're yes, Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? No.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: And Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, but whoever's talking, it's really. I think David, he's muted now. Phyllis? Yes. Yes. OK. And I'm yes. So we will add that language. Okay, great. Anything, Eunice, did you find what you wanted to propose? Yeah, I did.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That's what's on the table.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, are we ready to vote on this for the city council?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, and I actually agree with Ron. I feel, because there's also even outlined in the charter certain powers of the president of the city council, I just think it is a different role. But we will vote on adding language to the section 2-2 that the city council president and vice president will serve for one year and be rotating positions. It would be more elegant than that, but that's the gist of it. Okay. Eunice. Yes. Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Andrea.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle. Yes. Gene. No. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: David, no, and I'm also not. Okay. So we won't make that change.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean the vacancy?
[Milva McDonald]: Because the original seat does.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But you're talking about in the case of the city council needing to fill the vacancy, meaning that none of the people that ran are eligible to serve. Exactly. I don't see that it does specify that, but it is a temporary appointment.
[Milva McDonald]: You want to add that to section? I think it's section 10 under C. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So, you just want to add language that any person appointed to fill a ward Councilor's vacancy of a ward Councilor must reside in the ward. Right. Collin Center, does that make sense or is there any reason not to do that that we're not aware of?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I don't. I'm sorry, could you say that again?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. Let's see. Eligible and willing is under B. That's for the people who ran, I think. We're talking about adding it under C. This is only for when the city council has to appoint someone. So the amendment on the table is that we add language to section 210C that any vacancy that has to be filled by an appointment of the city council, any vacancy in a ward Councilor that has to be filled by an appointment of the city council must be a person who resides in that ward.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I have a question. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: That makes sense to me. Thank you for clarifying that.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. Maury, did you have a comment about this?
[Milva McDonald]: So can I just, Maury, I think what Maury is saying is we should say that there's a special election if there's a vacancy. Is that what you're saying?
[Milva McDonald]: So I want to first vote on the language that Eunice proposed about saying that we add language to section 210C that the appointed person reside in the ward. And then we'll get to the special election. Okay, so sound good.
[Milva McDonald]: I know they are. I know they are. But, um, Okay. I mean, the special election would be a whole addition. We don't have anything. We don't say that there's going to be special elections for city council right now. Right. So we would be changing quite a bit. But we'd still have section B, right, where the next vote getter would- So what the proposal, I think, would be is to get rid of C entirely and not have the city council appoint in the case where one of the people who ran can't take the seat. Okay, so is that, and maybe the Collins Center has some thoughts about special elections for vacant city council seats.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I think from what I understood what you just said that we do still have to vote on the language about because there could be a situation where there would be an appointment, even if we decided on a special election, because the special election would only happen during a particular timeframe.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. No, it makes sense. We did for mayor. So let's vote first on the language about the appointed person residing in the ward, and then we'll look at whether we want to add special election, okay? All right, so section 210C, add language that award vacancy appointed by the city council, the person must reside in the ward. Uh, Eunice? Yes. Uh, Anthony Andrea?
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, Paulette? No. Uh, Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean? No. Uh, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, Lori?
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, David?
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm going to vote no for the reasons that Daveed outlined. Okay, so we're not adding that. Now, in terms of the special election, we would have to come up with the language for it. Eunice, did you want to make the comment? Is your hand up for... Oh, no, sorry. We do have language for under the mayor section, but let's just vote on whether we want to add a special election into this. And then if the vote is no, then we don't have to worry about figuring out timelines. So we'll vote on, do we want to fill vacancies in the city council if there's nobody from the election who can take the seat? do we want to put a provision in the charter for a special election for city council?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I don't think so.
[Milva McDonald]: We're eliminating the city council potentially leaving that in depending on what timeline we would decide for the special election. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: So are you suggesting that only award Councilor get replaced with a special election?
[Milva McDonald]: But that's what we were talking about in the last vote. So do you mean only award Councilor? No, I'm open to either or. Or both. OK. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Right now, the seat is vacant. The person who got the next highest votes takes it down the line. If that fails, the city council appoints. The proposal on the table is that if that fails, if nobody who ran can take the seat, we have a special election.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, right now there's no special election written in, and right now the city council makes the appointment. Right, but my final question is- But you're saying if there's a special election and nobody runs, then what do we do?
[Milva McDonald]: That would be decided in, if we decide on a special election, we would then decide what timelines we would put in. So we would say in the charter, if it's X number of days or months before a regular city election, then we don't have a special.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're still putting your proposal for a special election out there, Maury? Yes. Okay. Ron and Gene, did you have comments?
[Milva McDonald]: I would like to just vote on whether we want to put in special elections for city council in the case of someone who ran not being able to take the seat before. Then if we say yes, we can decide the details. Is that okay? Does that sound okay?
[Milva McDonald]: No. Right now we have the city council appointing. Yeah. Okay. So special elections for city council under the circumstances we discussed. If you're in favor, yes. If not, no. Anthony, Andrea.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. Who? Paulette. No. Eunice. No. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean. No. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury. Yes. David.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to also be no, just for the reasons that have been laid out. Okay, so that's that. Anybody have anything else for section two?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're going to, I mean, we only have 15 minutes. We're probably not going to get to Section 8, so keep that for the next meeting. OK. Section 3, Article 3, I mean. Anybody have any changes they want or amendments that they want to propose for Article 3? Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so your proposal is to add that back in. I guess my question for the Collins Center is, when you made the recommendation, was there any legal reason for making that recommendation?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so the proposal on the table is to add back in department heads as possible replace, as possibilities for filling mayoral vacancies. Right? Does that sound right, David?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. So, yes means that you want to add that back in. No means you don't. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay. So I'm going to go just the way my Zoom boxes are.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So the vote is to add back in department heads as possibilities for filling a mayoral vacancy as acting mayor. Uh, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if you want to acknowledge them or... Um, do you want to say something? Do you want to say something? I want to finish the vote. Is this about the vote? Yeah. Okay. We'll hold the vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Are we clear on what we're voting on now? Okay, Maury, did you have a question about this?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So let's do the vote. We know what we're voting on. I'm going to restart the vote. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean. No. Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. No. Eunice. No. Paulette. No. Anthony. Andrea.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. I'll also vote no. Okay. So we will not add that back. Anybody have anything else on article three?
[Milva McDonald]: Holland Center, is that in transitional provisions?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Anybody else have anything for article three? One more question.
[Milva McDonald]: do you have an answer to that?
[Milva McDonald]: I think the veto was already in place.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think so.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's governed by state law.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yeah. This provision is related to ordinances, correct? It says order ordinance resolution. Yeah. Okay. So I think we got through articles one through three, which is awesome, but we have many more articles to go. Let's come to the next meeting, really think through your amendments and come with them and try to be succinct and we'll get through the rest hopefully at the next meeting. Because I'm not going to call another meeting between now and September, and hopefully we won't have to call two meetings in September. So let's look to get through the rest of it at the next meeting. We also wanted to give a brief report on the final report subcommittee. The final report is in pretty good shape and we are going to share it with you all so you can read it. It's in Pieces right now, it's in many Google Docs, but we'll share that with you so you can read it. And then if anybody has any comments about that, we can look at the next meeting. We would have huge numbers. Eventually, eventually, eventually it will. It doesn't yet, but it will eventually.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, I think it will eventually. Maury, did you have a question?
[Milva McDonald]: Is that what, the first Thursday in September?
[Milva McDonald]: How do people feel about September 5th? I'm good. It's the Thursday after Labor Day. September 12th would be better.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, we we sort of have a set schedule and we tell everyone, you know, where. I mean, we could change it if a lot of people who cannot come on September 5th.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we're going to keep it on September 5th.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Yeah, no. Thank you, Maury. OK, and the Ethics Subcommittee will meet, and we'll get language together. And then we'll have the Collins Center look at the language, and then we can vote on the addition of that language next time too. All right, does anybody have anything else before we close?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And thanks. Thanks to the call center. And it'd be great if you also could come back next time so that we can get through the rest of the, uh, get through the rest of the charter, which I think we're going to be able to do at the next meeting. Yeah. I'm confident. She says, love your confidence.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, motion to adjourn. Second. Did some, okay, all in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: See you all soon. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, welcome to the Medford Charter Study Final Report Subcommittee Meeting, July 29th, 2024. Did everyone have a chance to review the minutes?
[Milva McDonald]: Second. All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, basically, we're just, I mean, thank you, Gene, those recommendation sections and also for your comments. I went through some of the drafts that I had written and made changes, so that was really helpful. Sure. I think we're in good shape on that. Do you have any questions or comments about what you did, Gene or Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I need to figure out how to get in touch with David. I, you know, he said he was going to be around all summer, but he hasn't been responsive. So we'll have to try to get in touch with him. But we have like the, I mean, I can find them. Yeah. So you have the data. It's just a question. He was going to make a survey report.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah. No, that's good. So we should connect with Javid and see exactly what he's going to do. If David is unable to do the survey, he already created something for us that did not include the demographics that he shared at a meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, at the full meeting. That was a while back.
[Milva McDonald]: We'll look into that. Because we have the demographic pie charts, right, that the survey created? Oh, we do? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: He's Yeah, we have to check with them.
[Milva McDonald]: But there but Google, you know, Google surveys, did create pie charts. Is it in the survey folder? That's a good question. No, it might just be in the survey results. And it didn't get pulled. I can't. Oh, jeez. Is that really? This must be new. Sorry. I tried to minimize so I could look in the. They said I can't minimize Zoom while I'm recording. That's never happened to me before. It'd be a new thing. OK, so I'll look and see, because the other person, Danielle, created the survey. So there's a certain way you can look at the survey results. And whenever I would look at the results, I would see the pie charts. I assume it didn't go away.
[Milva McDonald]: The person who could see it is Danielle. Okay. But I should be able to see it because I think she gave me access to it, so I'm just trying to look for it right now.
[Milva McDonald]: So yeah, I see what's in the folder is just the Excel spreadsheet. Yeah. Yeah, so I know they exist because I saw them. So let me ask Danielle about that. There might be a special way that I can maybe dig up the link she gave me a long time ago to look at the survey results, but I'll ask her. OK. And the other important thing, to remember about that demographics info is that it include the percentage of people, I think it's in the pie chart, who said they didn't want to answer. Right. Yeah. Because some people, because remember, we had prefer not to answer as an option. Right. But I think that's in the pie chart. OK. Okay, so Jen, did you have any other questions about or thoughts about what you put together?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yeah. I mean, and that one in particular was sort of challenging because it had all those different parts.
[Milva McDonald]: So- I think, yeah, I think that's okay for that one. Okay. Because it is pretty, thick when you get into the- I mean, you could break it down and say, do different recommendations for each one, but I think it makes sense to group them together. I think it's fine. Okay. I mean, if we broke them up, it would be like the referendum, the free petition, citizen initiative measures, citizen referendum measures, and then recall. There would be like four, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe it's worth doing that since recall is going to be seen maybe as different than those things, but I don't know. What do you think, Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. No, I think that's a good point.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So I think we're in pretty good shape. What else? I've done a little bit, but I need to do more on putting all that public comment that we've collected with the survey and through emails into the issue sheets, that Google sheet, because we figured that that would be the easiest way to include it in the final report. Say that again, Milva?
[Milva McDonald]: We have a bunch of public comment. Like the survey also gave people the opportunity to write, right? So, um, and you know, I mean, they're all kind of hard to access because they're in that Excel spreadsheet. I was going to put them into the Google issue sheet under this under, you know, which, would represent a good amount of work, but it seemed like sort of the best way to give, to put that public comment into the final report was to have it consolidated into that issue sheets.
[Milva McDonald]: But maybe, do you think maybe if the public comments from the survey can be exported, Maybe we can just, I've never exported from, I don't know what the, it seems like there probably is a way to export them, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and that was the idea of the issue sheets. I was just thinking of a way to lighten the workload, because transferring all those.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. And, you know, there were a few comments that were sort of frivolous, and I don't know how we feel about, like, if we just make a judgment call, then I'll put those in the issue sheets.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Right. OK. That sounds good. So basically, the main things we have to do now are put together the append, just sort of do this little bit of revision on sections, put together the appendix, which I started a folder and put the materials in it. We'll have to figure out how to structure it. Oh, I keep forgetting that I can't minimize anymore. Did you all see the appendix holder? Let's see, what's in there now? And there's probably more that needs to go in there. So, we could just, I don't know, have you ever made an appendix, Gene? Do you know what style? We don't really have to follow any particular style.
[Milva McDonald]: We're going to have a table of contents for the whole report, but also a table of contents for the appendix because the appendix is going to be a lot of stuff in there.
[Milva McDonald]: So if you end up format, like doing formatting the whole thing and putting the table of contents in, will you do the appendix too? That means you would decide how to organize the appendix, which is fine. There aren't a lot of references to the appendix, but I did make a couple in the introductory letter, right, where I said I referenced a Collins Center memo and the generic modern charter, and then I just put appendix number or whatever. I don't know how. It's sort of like a footnote, but not exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So right now we'll just keep collecting. And then the footnotes is the other thing. The footnotes are going to be before, maybe at the very end after the appendix.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Oh, that's probably makes more, that, that makes more sense. Okay. Then I will footnote my recommendations too. Okay. And then we don't have to have footnotes at the end. That's good. I like that. Thank you. Okay. Is there anything else that we were, that I mean, that we're supposed to, the call-in center offered to read the final report too. So should we, should I just throw it together now in draft form and send it to them?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I told you that, right?
[Milva McDonald]: That's good that you put that in there. I asked Frances, but I haven't heard back yet about the translations. But I know I have a bunch of the handouts. There must be electronic versions of them. Frances would have those because I only ever, we only ever got the hard copies. I have the hard copies. I suppose I could scan one.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Do we want to put them in the appendix? What do you think? Like, because we, we talk, did we talk about, do we need to put our flyer in the appendix? You know?
[Milva McDonald]: I know, so maybe we just say that we did translation so we don't include all that stuff. The flyers and the glossary, we had a glossary that was translated also.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Like I said, I have them in the ad that I used to bring to all our events. They're downstairs. Okay. But yeah, we have flyers in different languages and then we have the glossary, which was just basic because remember we talked about how people wouldn't necessarily know even what a charter is or what word representation is and things like that. So it was just, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: They did create an ordinance and the ordinance has been passed, but I don't know that that annual meeting is part of it. But isn't okay, so I could I mean there's a bunch of there's Yeah, there's a whole timeline in the budget ordinance for Different things but a meeting an annual meeting with all the branches of government.
[Milva McDonald]: Sure. I used to know all these numbers off the top of my head, but I'll find it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that works. Yes, I would footnote it. That's the right way to go. I'll find it.
[Milva McDonald]: I think I can find it pretty easily. Okay. Okay, so that's good. And then Everything else is pretty, like I, did I have any questions? Introductory now, article two, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: We're voting. We're going to talk about it and vote on it on Thursday.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I was just reading over this the wardrobe is the article to when I was trying to I was thinking it would be good to put stats in about because I said It's the smallest in the state for a city of our size and if I could find exactly, you know, how many I think there's only two others And and you know the numbers on at-large versus Ward and then hybrid, I don't know, I was thinking maybe of trying to find the stats on those, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to find them. Cause you know, municipalities are sort of independent and I don't, the only organization I feel like that would keep those stats is the Massachusetts Municipal Association. And so I could look there, I'll look there.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Which is, yeah. I mean, it's weird because there's some places, because the city town thing, like Framingham just became a city, right? So there's some towns that are probably really cities, but they haven't decided to call themselves cities yet. But mostly we were trying to compare municipalities that were more like us as opposed to, because towns will have town meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I actually found that. It was prepared by problem. I don't know exactly who prepared it. I got it off the Somerville Charter Study website, their materials, and then I double-checked each one. But it's really hard actually because sometimes the websites aren't up to date and when you look online for a charter to check and make sure that the composition is what that chart said, sometimes the charters online aren't the most, so I did it to the best of my ability. But Somerville's committee had two part-time employees, so I'm guessing they put it together. I think that's probably who put it together.
[Milva McDonald]: Like I said, it's hard sometimes to keep it updated. When I was looking up, Because I wanted to double check everything. And there were some cities that said, or one or two, I think it was Brockton, that said four-year term for mayor. When I looked in their charter, it said two-year. And their charter hadn't been updated on the website or something. Because it was very recent that they switched to four year. And then I'm actually unclear on whether some places could switch to four year with that. I mean, there's so many processes that are involved.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. So. So so I think it's pretty accurate, but, you know. We maybe could include it with the caveat that that it was created in 20, you know. I don't know, when did I do it? Probably, yeah, we could put a date on it. I don't know. We could include it. I mean, I think it's mostly accurate. There might be a couple of things that are changed. But it still gives the sense of, it shows you kind of visually, oh, wow, look. We're only one of a few that don't have ward representation. It shows you the size of the councils. It shows you the size of the school committees. I think it was really helpful. Yeah. And even the ward representation, there's only a few cities that don't have it, and Cambridge is one of them, which this isn't in the chart, of course. But Cambridge has ranked choice voting, which, you know, So even though they have at large, they also have a process that kind of mitigates the potential issues. Because interestingly, in the Lowell lawsuit, in the settlement, one of the options for Lowell was to go to rank choice voting. They said either ward representation or rank choice voting. And they did the word representation. I thought that was interesting. Yeah. Okay, so maybe we'll put that in the appendix. I'll put it in there. I'll put it in the appendix folder.
[Milva McDonald]: It's an Excel file. If you're putting together the appendix, then can you just choose to put some of the things in as links and some of them as whatever?
[Milva McDonald]: Right?
[Milva McDonald]: And if I need, does the owner have to do that? Yeah. So if I need to do that, you can just let me know.
[Milva McDonald]: But I'll put it in the folder for now. And you know, If the time comes when we're making the appendix and we decide, you know what, we don't really need this in the appendix, we can just not include it. But right now, we'll just lean on putting things in the folder that we think we might include. Because we have a lot of materials. We do. I think we're pretty good. Is there anything else we need to do? Well, so. We have to decide when we're going to give it to the committee.
[Milva McDonald]: I would like, I'm going to give the Collins Center a draft version, and I was going to just throw it in a document for them, but that won't be the final document, whatever you, because you're going to figure out how to put it in, so you can format it right and stuff. But if you want to do that, because we, because the other thing we have to do is share it with the committee, with the wider committee. Right. So we can either, we can do that now, we can share the folder with them, and they can just look at it in pieces, or we can put it all together. What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. The only thing I would like, let's see. I'm just thinking about just the stuff that has to be little changes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like the stuff that's in highlighted, would you just keep the highlights or? Yeah. Yeah. And then we. And then we don't work in this anymore and we work in that document.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we can still do it this way. You mean some of the comments might not transfer?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'm just wondering, I mean, in one sense, it makes sense for you to do it now in case you have to sort of make changes and whatnot. But on the other hand, if we need to keep working on it, should we wait until we're done with the edits? I don't know. What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's okay to give the committee, you know, to tell them to just go into the folder and look at the different sections. I think that's okay. What do you think, Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, because if it's going to maybe create potential issues for our final editing and stuff to move it now, then maybe we should wait. OK. But what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. So we'll keep it the way it is. And, um. Maybe we'll wait until after this next meeting. I guess what. When should I just tell the committee, you know, feel free to look over the final report. We're not, it's not on the agenda for Thursday. We can tell them, maybe what we'll do is make it on the agenda. What we have, what's on the agenda is, yeah, what's on the agenda is for us to give a report to the committee so we can just tell the committee. you know, we have a pretty, we have a draft. I mean, we do, we have, you know, a completed draft of the final report and, um, that I will be sending them a link so that they can look at it and then give them a timeline to make any changes or comments or edits.
[Milva McDonald]: And then we'll, um, and then we'll, we'll sort of vote it through at the September meeting. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm just saying I will tell them at the meeting that this is going to be the process. Yeah. And then they'll have that time. And we're going to have to see how it goes on Thursday. I think we can do this. We can finish it at our October meeting without having to have an extra meeting. But we'll see. I mean, the whole committee. So as far as we are concerned, we pretty much have our tasks, right? I don't think we... I mean, we're done with the draft. There's just putting together, you know, the appendix materials and I have to add a few footnotes and... You're going to get the survey percent. Yeah, I'll talk to Danielle, try to get in touch with David. And I think we're good. What do you think? Yeah. OK. So I'm going to send it to the Collins Center if they have. I don't anticipate that they're going to say much about it. I'll just share their comments when they say if they have anything that makes us think we need to make big changes. But I don't think that will happen.
[Milva McDonald]: I know, right? I mean, we must have had pictures at Wright's Pond. There's a picture. I think there's one picture I can think of from Wright's Pond because it was taken by Matt when he was running it. Yeah, that one. But I feel like maybe Ron took pictures. I'm really bad at taking pictures. Maybe Danielle. Ron or Danielle might have taken pictures at Wright's Pond. We didn't take any that day at the farmer's market, right? No.
[Milva McDonald]: We needed a committee photographer.
[Milva McDonald]: But since we've never actually been in a room together, right, all of us. Well, we did actually. We were at City Hall. Maybe we can.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And if it's not a meeting and we don't talk at all about charter, we just going, getting together for a photo, I think it's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Because it's not, yeah. We're not going to, we're not going to have any discussions or any picture. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, you know, there's all, it's, Yeah, I don't know. We could get together for a social event, but I don't even know how coached that would be. I guess I'd have to ask someone. Or we could just post it publicly and say, public for a photo. As long as we post it, we're fine. But I don't know. I don't know how easy it would be to get everybody together. Last meeting in October could be in person. That sounds like a good idea. That might be what to do. Yeah. But we might not have everybody. Right. Photoshop, right? Photoshop people. Yeah. All right. Let's think about it.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I like the idea. I like the idea. All right. That's something to think about. In the meantime, we could put out a message to the committee and say, does anybody have any photos?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I think what would be great is if we had, if we had a photo of the whole committee, that would be good.
[Milva McDonald]: So maybe we can, you know, I mean, it would have been great if we had thought about doing a group photo at that first information section when we were all there. Yeah, Wright's Pond or the- That was not- No.
[Milva McDonald]: We could do that. Of course, that would have been John and I feel like there was somebody else who had to leave. Well, Laurel, right? Yeah. It would not have Phyllis and David.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Photoshop. Somebody with Photoshop skills.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, me neither. Well, that's something to think about. Maybe we can at some point, you know, take a committee photo. I'll bring it up at the meeting and see if, or I'll see what people think about having an in-person meeting in October. I don't know. Or I'll just ask on email. I don't know if I want to take up meeting time with that. Or maybe it'll be such an efficient meeting that we'll have plenty of time. I don't know, though. We have a lot to go through Thursday.
[Milva McDonald]: Don't hold your breath on that. Come on. All right. All right. I think we're good, then.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you for all this. It's great. This is going to be really exciting when we have the whole thing put together and we see it in all our work in this form. I think it's awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Thanks, guys.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the July 15th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Ethics Subcommittee. I haven't heard from David. Hopefully he'll join us. If not, we'll just move ahead. Great. Eunice, do you want to lead? Uh, sure. Um, so I've spent, uh, wait 1st, can we just accept the minutes from the last meeting? Oh, yeah. Um, motion to approve. I 2nd all in favor. Hi, thanks. Great. Now, I can, I can send them in and have them posted. Okay. Go ahead units.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Janice. No, that's a lot of information. More you were potentially going to talk to some people, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So, and I just, I didn't really talk in depth with the Collins Center about it, but they also felt that it would basically duplicate because state law, this is all, they felt it was covered in state law. Because there is the conflict of interest law that covers everything. I mean, I think what we're talking about gives sort of an extra layer of information available to the public. But I guess, I'm sorry, I'm losing my train of thought. It's too hot. So we have this information that we collected. We only found one charter that, and Framingham just, Does Framingham's charter just, I'm trying to remember if it just says that they have to create an ordinance or if it lays out the details.
[Milva McDonald]: One thing, so we see Framingham is the only one that has it in the charter, then we have Boston, Somerville, and Cambridge, and Springfield. And I think they're all bigger than Medford. I don't know. Let's see. Is Springfield? So that's something else to consider. They're all bigger. Definitely Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. Oh, yeah. Springfield's way bigger. So we also are seeing this in bigger cities. But it still seems like it's an unusual step to take. So we are charged with deciding what to present to the entire committee.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I mean, I feel like we have to put some, we have to say something about the purpose of such a commission, because as you say, Maury, it can mean anything.
[Milva McDonald]: So we should at least think about the purpose or, you know, I mean, if we just say that it's an ordinance to form an ethics commission, it doesn't mean they're going to do financial statements, which is what we started with.
[Milva McDonald]: They have an ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: Establishing the ordinance. Right. So I'm just looking at Springfield. No, no. I think Framingham's the only one that has it in the charter. I think the others are just ordinances, but it's not mentioned in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not suggesting anything. Right now, I'm looking up to see if I can find the, I just want to look at some of the ordinances so we can see.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I I don't. I I maybe the Springfield ordinance. Maybe it's in there, maybe. OK, Springfield. OK, I have questions. Yeah, go ahead. Keep talking while I look.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, there's Boston ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Let me just, I'm not going to the subcommittee folder. I'm just looking through stuff. That's my, uh, okay. Springfield ordinates. Okay. The ordinances are relatively detailed.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. This is the ordinance. I just want to see what they say about the, this just lays out the composition. How it's run, duties and powers. So it looks like, yeah, so this commission creates the forms. Make them available for public. So it looks like they handle, so this way you bypass the city clerk. Things are submitted to the ethics commission. So far from what I'm seeing, it's mostly the financial statements, but they also look at policy-making positions, so that's looking at the positions to decide who to send the form to, maybe.
[Milva McDonald]: It doesn't say really anything they do specifically other than the financial statements. I mean, I'm skimming it. But it looks to me like it's mostly to manage that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have already a provision that if someone's convicted of a felony, they're automatically, well, that's for electeds, they're automatically vacated from their office. Right. So in terms of criminal activity, I feel like, you know, this ethics commission can't really do anything about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I guess what I'm concerned about is, let's say an ethics commission gets created. I mean, I assume we're talking about appointed volunteers. that have to make these kinds of judgments about people. I don't know. It's, I feel like that's, you know, that's getting into some, you know, I mean, I mean, a financial statement is a financial statement. It's straightforward. You fill out the form. You know, if there's conflicts of interest, there's conflicts of interest or there isn't. If it doesn't fall under the state ethics law, I mean, the state conflict of interest law, then nobody can really do anything about it, but the information is available to the voters, basically. That's how I look at it. But I don't know, I feel like we're getting into, I feel like an ethics commission, I mean, even if we put it in the charter, the city council would be writing the ordinance and they would define the role of the ethics commission, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and again.
[Milva McDonald]: What is this ethics, I keep thinking, what is this ethics commission gonna do?
[Milva McDonald]: It can't be- They're reported already on campaign fans.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the idea of an ethics commission sounds really good, but I just feel like it's sort of like very amorphous. And I mean, you know, if we go back to what we started with was to discuss whether or not we were going to require these financial statements, I feel like that's... And the reason that we were considering it was transparency. So basically, you would just have financial statements that would be made available to the public if they wanted to see it, and whoever reviews them, whether it's a clerk or an ethics commission, if there's a violation of the State Conflict of Interest Law, they immediately have to report it to the AG. I don't think anybody's going to put a violation of the State Conflict of Interest Law on one of these statements, but... If somebody wants to hide something, they will. Yeah, but, you know, so really, to me, what we go back to, this would be just more information that we'd be making available to the public. I don't know if I feel, like, comfortable saying in the charter that they have to form an ethics commission without really saying what it is or what it's for, unless it's for this specific purpose and that's what it exists for.
[Milva McDonald]: It's cut and dry, except, so, Framingham put the whole thing in their charter, and that's probably why they use the state form, because What, you know, what are they going to do, create a form and put the form in the charter? You know, so they use, they said use this form because it's available. And then, but that doesn't work so well. For their purpose.
[Milva McDonald]: So they could have, yeah, so they could have changed it in the ordinance. I thought they had more details in their charter, but. I don't think so. So, you know, I mean, if it was going to just be the clerk, I don't think we could make the clerk create a form. No, no. We don't really know where Cambridge, how they originated their form.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think we need to bring something to the committee for August 1st, and let's see where the whole committee is. Because if the committee is going to vote it down, then there's no point in going further.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean more information? Okay. So what other information? I mean, we have to already, we have to consolidate something to bring to the whole committee. So what we can do is we can say we're making a recommendation. I mean, what you just said, Eunice, we can make a recommendation that The charter require that an ordinance be created to, that would, you know, that required, I mean, it's going to sound a little more eloquent than this, but to require annual statements of financial interest. The other option is the Ethics Commission to administer annual statements of financial interest. Requiring that be formed by ordinance. I mean, we don't really have any other options for the charter, right? Because we're not going to put the whole form in the charter and the whole process in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be just taking it out of the city clerk's hands.
[Milva McDonald]: He said, maybe, maybe not. They might use the state form. They might create like, a 1 pager that doesn't really give much information. Who knows what they would do.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you're right. And when we say not on the up-and-up, we might not even be talking, I mean, what are we talking about? Because something's not on the up-and-up, you're talking about something illegal, right? Illegal or just, you know, a little hinky. Well, right, because there are maybe certain things that are not illegal and that don't violate the state conflict of interest law, but that some people might say, well, look, he has a financial interest in that. I don't think that's cool. So that's what I keep going back to is that's all we would be doing. But again, the only people that are going to see these are people who go to City Hall to look at them.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, well, I guess what I think is we should just go to the committee on August 1st and, you know, talk a little bit, you know, like five minutes about the research that we did, say that these are the communities that have, that, you know, Framingham has it in their charter. And the only other, the only communities that we found, Avedon, Springfield, Boston, Framingham, and Somerville and Framingham is the only one that has it in their charter. And so if we did consider putting it in our charter, it would be in the form of a requirement that the city council create an ordinance to either create an ethics commission to oversee an annual financial state statement of financial interest or candidates, elected officials, and or department heads, or that they create an ordinance that creates an ethics commission to do that. And then just maybe ask the committee to vote on who would be in favor of that and to find out. And then if they vote in favor of it, then we'll sort of zero in. The Collins Center will be there and they'll be able to, I mean, If we did put it in the chart and we asked them to help us draft it, there's not standard language for it because it's not in charters, but they could probably come up with something. You did say that you talked briefly to them about it and what did they say? Well, we emailed about it and I asked them and they just said they think it would duplicate state law.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, when you talk to Mr. King, is that his name? Yeah, I didn't. Yeah. So I mean, since it's in bigger cities, like I'm guessing like in Boston or Cambridge, maybe that has something to do with it. There's like, could be more also people are, you know, it's less, I mean, when you look at even Somerville, like the bigger cities, I mean, these are actual, not to say that their elected officials have more power, but they're, you know, they're more high-powered positions. They're pulling big salaries. And there's a lot more commercial development in the cities. So it could be that maybe they feel like the potential for that is greater. I mean, here in Medford, you know, our elected officials they're part-time other than the mayor. They're part-time, they're not pulling a full-time salary. We have had questions about the developments and I feel like that's the biggest. When we look at this issue of financial statements, that's the biggest thing that we're wondering about. If somebody's pushing for development, is there a reason? Maybe they have a family member or something like that. I feel like that's really what we would be trying to get at with this. Although, if you look at the department heads, I don't know, the superintendent, what would be Maybe that the superintendent would have some stops and some testing company or something, you know, that they were pushing. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, we would just be looking at that kind of thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so you're saying the Ethics Commission, the reports could potentially include more than just, I mean, to me, if you're going to do it for electives, you do it for candidates. I mean, you know, because if, you know, if you're trying to decide who to vote for and this is a potential tool to help decide that, Once they're elected and they fill out their financial interest form, there's not really anything you can do about it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, in the 60s.
[Milva McDonald]: If we're at 60. That wasn't from the call-in center, by the way. That was something that I created that I pulled from something I found on the Somerville charter. They must have had one of their staff members put that together. I tried to update it as much as I could, but that's where I got it. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Cambridge has got to have more people than that. The closest in size is probably Framingham.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so, you know, they're probably the closest to us. But I feel like the others are, you know, pretty much, pretty, you know, significantly bigger. And also, they have more industry and business, you know, going on. I mean, Cambridge has that's why their taxes are so.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we'd have to, I don't know how much more congested we're going to get.
[Milva McDonald]: It wouldn't be. Yeah, it would be 2027, I think. Does this have to go on a single ballot or anything? Well, I'm saying with the, no, I take that back, not with the whole charter. I'm talking about the election, like any new charter would affect the election of 2020s. But other things that aren't election related, like the composition of elected bodies might get put in before that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That's why we said five years for the first charter review. Right. So Eunice, will you I mean, first of all, how do you feel, how do you all feel about this idea of just taking it to the committee on August 1st and saying. These are our options, which are really only 2, which is to. Put it, you know, just put in. a requirement that an ordinance be written to require annual or you would say annual statements of financial interest would be required, the administration of which will be detailed by ordinance or something like that, or an ethics commission will be created to administer this by ordinance. and just see where that is. I would say if people decide they want an ethics commission, then I would probably want to put a few more details in about it. Are you saying to bring both of those options to the committee? Yeah, because the only other option is not to do it. Right. No. Something has to go in the charter. Well, I mean, that's why we want to bring that to the committee and see, because if the committee votes no, we don't want to put that in the charter, then that's where we are.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and we have enough, I think we've collected enough information that if people have questions we'll have, you know, answers. Yeah. So, and I don't want to take up too much time with it, like I'm thinking I'm going to budget 20 minutes and then maybe we'll only use 30. No, I didn't say that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. You always make sure we are all heard. That's an important thing for everybody. Okay. So Eunice, will you do that? You know, just sort of present it to the committee in a nutshell, say. So, you know, you can think about like how, you know, how you want to spend no more than, I mean, actually three minutes doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually a lot of information you can relay in three minutes.
[Milva McDonald]: Just to sort of say that after research, this is what we discovered, you know, and, and maybe just say what the aim of the, you know, a financial statement would go above and beyond.
[Milva McDonald]: And these are, yeah. And it's just, there are two, there's two possibilities.
[Milva McDonald]: And then what people would be voting on then is, do we want to put such an ethics requirement in the charter? And then if they say yes, then we can work out VJs.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if, if, if it turns out that they want, that they want it, then maybe we could have another meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's fine. You know, I think what, I don't know. I think it's fine too. I agree. Yeah. Whatever you, whatever you say. Yeah. Because it's the whole committee is going to vote on it anyway. So.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. And just say that the subcommittee just wanted to take, you know, just take the question back to the whole committee that we didn't necessarily we didn't because we didn't vote on it. We're just saying, you know, we think that this is something that the whole committee should look at. And now we're presenting the information.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, do we want to say it that way, or do we want to just focus on the financial state? Well, like Maury said, ethics is a big word. Right. That's what I mean. It's also like it's vague and include anything, right? So that's why I feel like. It would be if, you know. That's why I feel like we should just focus on the thing that we started focusing on.
[Milva McDonald]: on file, you know, because if, if the committee finances, if the committee says, yeah, we want to do this annual financial statement and we think the ethics commission is the best way to do it. The charter can say something like, um, an ordinance to establish an ethics committee to administer, uh, the, you know, annual statements of financial interest and any such other issues that, you know,
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and the administering body would either be the city clerk or an ethics commission created by ordinance. And you said Springfield has an ethics commission. I mean, Somerville, do we know if they handle the forms? They must.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, you know, because we know that in Springfield Ethics Commission does it in Framingham, it's a city clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: So then it's part of the election. That's basically part of the election commissioner's job.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, honestly, if we did it, I don't think there would really be, I think an ethics commission would almost be required to create a form unless the city council creates a form. Because I think the state form, is onerous and also, as we've heard, it's not really appropriate for this particular, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, municipal websites are notorious for being not. Because to keep up with the technology and redo websites and all that requires time, it requires money. I think a lot of municipal websites just aren't necessarily up to speed. So that might be why.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, and that's, yeah. But I mean, that's what we would be concerned about, but it's also not just with Cambridge, but like with Medford, it's, Um, you know, because some of the developers that were worried about it might not be in Medford, you know, based in Medford.
[Milva McDonald]: Does Cambridge's form also include if you have an immediate family member that has an interest in that?
[Milva McDonald]: Because that would make a difference because otherwise, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it sounds like it's a little more useful for, because even if you had those state forms on file in the city clerk's office, they're not that easy to go through. It's very long. It's easier to reference a shorter form that's more specific and targeted anyway. It's easier for people to look at it. It's easier. It's better information for residents, which is what we're going for.
[Milva McDonald]: I would less put it with the elections because the elections is about, people already submit their, I mean, let's say you want to say you have a financial interest in a developer. That's not really elections. Is it? No, that's true. I mean, we already have the people submitting their campaign finance reports. And those are readily accessible to people.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And, you know, we can send think about, like, I mean, we have a lot of material where we're not going to send it people already have the charter that they're reading that and the call and center memo. But if you want to send out a couple of. you know, documents that you ask people to look at beforehand, like maybe the Cambridge form or maybe, you know, even the Springfield Ethics Commission document was pretty long too. But anyway, I'm just saying if you feel like that there's something that people should, you know, that would help people if they looked at it beforehand. just tell me and when I send an email about the mass meeting, I'll include it as an attachment as materials for the meeting. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I'm just anticipating people would be like, well, what's going to be in this form? What are they going to be asked? That kind of thing. So maybe this might be helpful. Not that people are going to have much time to look at it, but they might. So people who are actually curious might.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, for our purposes in the charter, we would basically just say the ethics commission would oversee the financial statements, right? But it would be created by ordinance. So theoretically, the ordinance could say, like I said, if the charter said to administer the annual financial statements and any such other issues, deemed relevant, you know, as instructed by ordinance or something. Then it could be broader if you did it that way. But I feel like we're mostly, for our purposes now, for this committee, we're mostly focusing on the financial statements. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this ethics commission can be formed without the charter, right, you know?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Exactly. We can just recommend it. I think that makes sense. Do you all agree? Yeah. Okay. Eunice, I'll send out minutes and you send me anything that you want the committee to get as materials. before the meeting on the first.
[Milva McDonald]: Sounds good. Sounds good. All right. Do we have to do a formal ending? Motion to adjourn.
[Milva McDonald]: It's mostly just business.
[Milva McDonald]: Good job.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome to the final report subcommittee of the Medford Charter Study Committee for July 15, 2024. I've been heard from Daveed. I think Gene might show up, I hope, but we do have a quorum, so we're going to go ahead. last time we just we we talked about the drafting and um gene is still drafting some parts and i drafted a bunch and i know phyllis made some comments and it looks like gene made a bunch of comments one thing that we didn't really i love the comments the comments are great We didn't talk about like how we're gonna, I guess, I don't know. I guess I'll just accept whatever I want to accept. I don't know. I'll accept some and then we can review them again. How's that? Good. Okay. That's great. So I will review comments and I guess one thing I was wondering for people who did look at it, the other thing I wanted people to do, and Jean may have done it, I haven't looked that much at her comments, but is to say if there's something that we should, I mean, obviously, everything is in our draft charter, right? But we're highlighting things in that sort of recommendations in the report part, sort of we want to highlight the, sort of big decisions, the changes, and the rationale. So if there's something that maybe wasn't included that should be in there, that would be good to know. And then the other thing that we need to do is the appendix. So I made a folder in our subcommittee folder. In addition to all those drafts of the different art, you know, the report itself, there's a folder that says appendix materials. So if, you know, I mean, the other thing we were talking about is how much do we put in the appendix? It's going to be long. I mean, the charter is long. And then, but, you know, we seem to think last time that it was important to include some of the materials we use. So right now what's in there is three memos from the Collins Center. The generic charter that we used as a framework, the comparison of mayor and manager forms of government that we used to help us decide to keep mayor, and the memo they gave us on the authority of Medford's mayor, which was one of the things we had asked for because of the impression that Medford's mayor has more power than other mayors in the state. And we found out that that's not the case.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then we're going to make footnotes of studies we looked at. We also are going to have to put the, I mean, I was hoping David would be here. I might ask him to, We need to put the survey in the report in a digestible way, right? You know, the results of the survey.
[Milva McDonald]: The entire, right. So, but you know, right. So, but I don't know, like, it has to be exported from Google surveys and put into some kind of form. That's what I mean.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to ask him to just sort of put the survey into some formatting that works. Yeah. Jean already created a report for the listening session. So we want to put that in there too. And she's also writing a little, a little, you know, we're going to put all, we're going to put the survey, the listening sessions report in the, in the actual appendix, but she's also writing a little section for the report about all the community engagement we did.
[Milva McDonald]: The other pieces we had, and then we had all the listening sessions, which Gene made a great report about. But we also had the three sessions at City Hall. We had Wright's Pond. We had the farmer's market. We had Circle the Square. And we also had a form on our website. So we also have this sort of also this collection of community feedback that doesn't easily fall into the listening sessions. So I'll work on trying to put that together, but somehow we have to figure out the best way to present it in the report.
[Milva McDonald]: So let's talk about that. What were you going to say about the community feedback, Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a public document for those.
[Milva McDonald]: Good point. So the other thing is then those comments that came in through the form. And the other question, and I'm writing interviews down because I want to talk about that next. Yeah. In the survey, we had the survey questions and then we have the results of that, but then there were comments, pages of comments. I don't, you know, so so we have like a lot of public comment that so maybe what we need to do is take those public comments and the things we got from our, you know, email and maybe put them into categories.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. We can put it all into Google and make a link that's publicly available. That's right.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I'll work on putting those together. Some of them, you know, some of the people who submitted forms and even their names are there, but I'm going to redact all that. Right. Okay. Now, the interview.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're going to talk about the interviews in one second. Hi, Gene. Hi, Gene. I just want to catch up, Gene. So basically, we're going to ask Daveed to just kind of put a survey result into whatever program he has that works, that we can actually put into the report. But we were talking about what to do with We have that Google sheet, that issues sheet that you created, so that has a good amount of public feedback. But then we also have a lot of comments that people made when they took the survey. Yeah. And we also have some emails that we got.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So go ahead, Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, Jean, what I'm thinking about is, I mean, because otherwise we will have the survey data and then we'll just have a long list of comments, right? And then we'll have a long list of comments from other places, but the Google sheets, the issue sheets you created, It would be labor intensive maybe to put all the comments in there, but that had categories where it said where the comments came from, right? So we had said this feedback was from the city hall session. This feedback was from, and then we could say these were comments from the survey. So we could also do that, right? Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, you have a report that you created for the listening chat sessions. And we'll put that right into the final report. Right. I'm just thinking of the actual comments that were written down by people. Sure. We could do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, gene is writing that right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I referenced it in the introductory letter, but just quickly. I saw that. Yeah. So, so, yeah, we're going to have that. The other, so all right, so I'll work on that with the issue sheets, and I'll at the very least put together all the comments that we've received, because some of them came in by email, and I had shared them when they came in, but the interviews. I feel like, so we had an interview form, but not everybody we interviewed filled out, right? We may have three or four of those that were actually filled out by the person we interviewed, And then we have the interview reports, which were sort of like notes from the interview. But I don't know, I guess I'm, I don't know about including those or making them public.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And we made those notes so that we could, you know, just the committee could use them. So, uh, so my feeling is that we should just say that we interviewed these people maybe, but not, what do you think Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Can we make it go really without naming names?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we could yeah. I'll put together just a list of the people that we interviewed. Jean, how about that? And I'll send it to you. Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: How about if we just said we conducted off-the-record interviews with X number of city councilors? The minute you use a word like off-the-record, people's heads shoot up.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's, I think that's right. I don't think we need to explain a lot.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Jean, just so you have the data of exactly like how many people we interviewed and who they were, I'll send you a list of the people. And also in there, there are some interview reports if you want to look at them to pull out general themes. But the only thing about pulling out general, I don't know, would it, would it be, does that take like a data analyst? I don't know. You know, like what if, Oh, three people said this, so we can call it a general theme. You know what I mean? Like, how do we determine what a general theme is?
[Milva McDonald]: And the other thing that I feel like a lot of people that we interviewed, like, you know, maybe they would say, well, I'm in favor of such and such, maybe under these circumstances or you know what I mean?
[Milva McDonald]: Or even just say why we interviewed them. Right. Because it was really almost for our own, so that we could understand more about their jobs and how certain things might affect their jobs or what their experience.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so those kinds of things. Okay, so that's good. The other thing we were discussing on gene before you got here was the appendix. So, a lot of the stuff that we've just been talking about. I'll make a link like for that public feedback, but we're definitely putting so far in the folder I created in our subcommittee folder, folder within a folder. There's three memos from the Collins Center. I also, I haven't put it in yet, but I have it. Your listening sessions report is going to go in there. Okay. And I guess what else do we need to attach? We're going to put that public feedback we just discussed in a link. And then we're also going to have some footnotes to studies. Those won't be in the appendix per se. They'll just be footnoted. Yeah. What else do you think we need in the appendix? Well, the survey, the actual survey will go on the appendix. Survey questions.
[Milva McDonald]: Will you put that in the appendix, Jane?
[Milva McDonald]: I have three in there.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, it's funny because some of the things we got from the Collins Center were kind of like official memos that were on Collins and stationary, but some of them were some of it was just sort of in more informal like, you know, so. So I put the memos in there that were, I felt like were relevant to our final report that were official. You know what I mean?
[Milva McDonald]: Should we put that in the appendix? Slide presentation.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Yeah, we're going to link to those. This final report is going to all be electronic, right? So maybe, Jean, when you make the, no, they'd have to be separate. I was going to say you could hyperlink. Let me think about how I've got to come up with, I've got to find the links to the, they were all on CCTV and we recorded the Zoom, we recorded the Zoom. That's the other thing is how do we, maybe we should just link to the TV recording because it's easier to watch than the Zoom recording, right? I was just thinking the slides. No, what we were saying was that the three City Hall events we did, we would just link to those recordings so people could watch them and then they would see the slides, right? So now that's another question, should we also pull out the slide presentation and include it in the appendix? But I was sort of going off on what links are we going to use for that?
[Milva McDonald]: I was thinking we could hyperlink them. Yeah, but then you'd have to have three. Yeah, you could. I don't know. You can think about that. We'll think about the best way to include those links.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly. Yeah. And like I said, we have Zoom recordings of them, but it might be better to find them on the CCTV, because those are easier to look. Right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, actually, maybe we should use the Zoom for that reason.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Did we have three or four at City Hall? We might have had, I said three in my letter, but now I'm thinking maybe we had four. Because we had one sort of general information section, then we have Ward 1, the one that we focused on ward representation, and then was there one or two after that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let me write that down. OK, so thanks for your comments, Jean. I'll look through them all and incorporate whatever. And same with Phyllis. And then just, I guess, be thinking about if we need to put other things in the appendix. And any other thoughts on this?
[Milva McDonald]: That's good, because I haven't looked at them. I haven't looked a lot at them, so that's good if you bring them up.
[Milva McDonald]: For the letter you said, should we say something about how we voted to adopt a full new charter instead of working on a few sections? And then I think I did that at, yeah, in the general recommendations, but do you think we should also mention it in the introductory letter?
[Milva McDonald]: So to emphasize it. No, that's good. I'll work on that. What was the other? That looks more or less like a writing thing, which I can look at. And let's see, Article 2, what did you do? A lot of this is writing, punctuation, links. Oh, OK. Did you have anything do you have anything you remember in there because I'm trying to find your email where the Well, I have you want me to pull it up I have it on the screen well Is it too much of a reveal before we're While it's still in draft form I mean we one time remember we We talked about the survey when we were partway through the survey, and we put it all up. And then there was all this discussion on social media about the results of our survey before it was even done. So I guess I'm a little. Yeah. I'm just trying to get into Google Drive. So under the general recommendations, you just had a writing suggestion. The other thing I guess I could ask is, under general recommendations, These were two overall. Are there any other overall big recommendations? Right now, it's draft a new and modernized charter and keep mayor council form of government. I'm thinking maybe- What about the wards? Well, that's under Article 2. Okay. Because that's city council. These were more sort of overall kind of, I mean, we could put under article three recommendation, we could put the keep mayor council form of government. I mean, maybe we don't need a general recommendations page.
[Milva McDonald]: Which, the new, which one?
[Milva McDonald]: Right, okay. So in that case, we should put more in it. Yeah. So keep draft a new, and then maybe I would call it major recommendations. Yeah, major. Instead of general, what do you think? Yeah. Yeah. So add to major recommendations. Ward representation is a major recommendation. Let me just look at article two. So does that mean we would move the ward representation?
[Milva McDonald]: So I will play around with that, but what else do we consider our major recommendations?
[Milva McDonald]: Terms. Just for mayor. Mayor's term. Term for mayor. Mayoral term. And which includes a term limit. With limit. Yeah. Right. Because we didn't change the terms for the others. Nope. So that's... Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Maybe what we do in the major recommendations when we put the board representation, we include that it's for both. Because we're going to keep in the Article 4 recommendations, we'll go into more detail, but we'll say in the major recommendations that we're recommending hybrid board representation for city council and school committee. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: We'll do that. And then we'll move the detail on the new and modernized charter to the introductory letter. I'll keep it in here. I just won't go into as much detail. Right. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So we're going to add word representation for CC and SC, term or mayor with term limit. Is there anything else about school committee? I don't think there's anything else major that we decided. We talked a lot about should the mayor be the chair, should this and that, but we did not change that. I mean, we could say keep mayor as chair of school committee, or we could just save that for the school committee section.
[Milva McDonald]: I know, but is it big enough to go under major recommendations? I think so. Maybe because a lot of people don't want the mayor to be the chair.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And let's see, I'm just going through that in my head. Six was, do we want to put, I'm just thinking of them in order of what they are in the charter. Was there anything about the, I mean, an annual budget meeting was probably the biggest change we put under the budget, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's in nine. So I'm just going in my head, six, we're on six now. Was there anything else about the budget? We recommended that they mean you're you're writing up you're writing that recommendation section right now this is just for the bullet bulleted.
[Milva McDonald]: It's got to be written down somewhere. But that would go in. When you write up the Article 6 recommendations, that would go in there, right?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I hear what you're saying. I'm just wondering if we should reserve that part for the more detailed. More detailed area, okay. Because we're really thinking bullets.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think we made any other big changes in there. And then in elections, the biggest change we made in elections was ballot position. Right. I mean, is that significant enough to put under major recommendations?
[Milva McDonald]: I consider it one of the important things we decided. I think that's a big change. All right, so. So ballot position, okay, now we're on eight. Now there's a lot of stuff in eight, so do we want to bullet point them separately or just say?
[Milva McDonald]: Including initiative petitions, referendum, and recall. Yeah. Was there something else besides? There was some other, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I thought that was the initiative petition. Then there was the Yeah, they were like there was another, but I can't remember what it was called. I'll look. I'll look. And then in nine, the regular charter review. But I was thinking for the bullet point, I might just put that in with the draft new and modernized charter. Well, maybe we should have regular and I was going to include it in that. But maybe regular charter review is yeah, I think it should go a couple times.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I know. I didn't know if I should put it with the With that or give it its own regular charter review. Okay, and The other thing in Article 9, there's still the outstanding question of the ethics reporting.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. We'll see about that. That's not going to go on the list yet. The compensation committee, we are going to have to discuss that. I don't know if you guys have gotten that far in the Collins Center materials yet. So we'll talk about that. I'll put it in, highlight it in creation of compensate, whatever we called it. I'll just put a compensation committee in my notes, but I won't put that. I'm trying to think if there was something else in that. There were a few that we talked a lot about a lot of stuff in Article 9.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, there we go. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Ordinance. So maybe we should put the Ordinance Review in there, too. Yeah. Periodic Ordinance Review. Then the public comment, which we talked about.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to put that under major recommendations?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if we, I mean, is it a major recommendation?
[Milva McDonald]: All right. So there's a lot of bullets on the major recommendations.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Well, we have the creative drafting new modernized charter, a complete charter, ward representation for city council and school committee, term length and limits for mayor. I won't necessarily say it that way, but that's right. Mayor as chair of school committee, annual budget meeting, ballot position, citizen participation mechanisms, including initiative petition, referendum, and recall provisions, regular charter review, regular ordinance review. I could use periodic instead of regular for both of them. Periodic, yeah. And creation in notes mode, creation of a compensation committee, because we're going to have to talk about that after seeing the call-in centers.
[Milva McDonald]: I was thinking about that.
[Milva McDonald]: They're separate.
[Milva McDonald]: And then, okay. Okay. So, I mean, obviously, so I'll change that general recommendations document to be a bullet point. I'll make the changes that we talked about to the introductory letter, and I'll look at some of the edits for the other sections, too. And then, Jean, you're working on the community engagement and six and... Do you feel like you're...
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, 22nd sounds fine. I mean, people are going to read the draft charter and the memo from the Collins Center for August 1st. And we're going to talk about, when we're going to pass this off to the whole committee too. I feel like we need to finalize more before we do that. Four? No, you're not working on four. You're working on six, eight, and community engagement. So it's just going to be pretty, you know, it's going to be a good body of work, I think. Is there anything else that we need to do? I mean, we're getting a sense of the shape of it now. Maybe Davida ultimately can create our table of contents and all that. Or maybe you can, Jane. I don't know, because you seem to have some software, too, that can do that. I know how to do that in Word, yeah. Yeah. Is that the best format when in the end when we finish it where I mean are we're submitting it to the mayor and then she will pass it to the city council or I don't know you know it's up to her kind of how she can deals with it after that but.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, and we can incorporate whatever visuals we might. I mean, in terms of however Daveed does the survey report, like he might have it in some other kind of program.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sure Francis can help us print, you know, copy it at City Hall and then deliver it. And when we deliver it, we can deliver it the same day as we deliver it electronically. Yes. Okay. And ultimately, we're going to have to merge the actual charter document that we finalize into the report too. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, you know, that's good. We could do it that way. I mean, when I noticed that the final, a lot of, most of the final reports that we looked at, they just had a table of contents and at some point in the table of contents was draft charter, you know, like on page 28 or something or whatever. Then that goes for 30 pages and then after that comes the appendix. Okay. Sure. We can do that too. Okay. Is there anything else we need to do? I guess what I feel like is we're doing pretty well. We can finalize this maybe in another meeting and then we can share it with the committee. do we, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Wait, so Steve Smarty is the communications guy.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So tell me again what we would be asking him to do.
[Milva McDonald]: So I'm going to ask. This is once we're finished, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I think that's not a bad idea. You know, I was just thinking of something else, and I don't, I don't know that we could, I mean, it's going to be a long document, but I don't know if translating that document, you know, is something. It's going to have to be translated. I mean, and which, which really, which I'm wondering if we have a bunch of materials that we got translated, do we want to put some of the translations in the appendix?
[Milva McDonald]: So and what I mean, we won't we we don't need to maybe put the all the translate the translated survey that the. because nobody can take it anymore anyway, but we also had just informational materials that we had translated.
[Milva McDonald]: An executive summary, so I'm going to send Jane translations. Okay, then we can figure out how to work that out. Okay. But yeah, that's, I mean, ideally the draft charter could get translated, but that would be, that would be a lot. Cause I feel, I feel like I should remember this because when we translated the survey, we talked about how, you know, how the, what the cost was and it might've gone by page. I can't quite remember.
[Milva McDonald]: The other problem with translating it is that, you know, we had that whole issue where it all has to be like at fourth grade level or below in order to kind of work. Yeah. And the charter won't be. Just won't be.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, for the ease of translation, just, you know, but we won't be able to because the charter has all that sort of almost archaic language, you know. And it can't, we can't, you know, it could be translated, it would just be, it would be a big deal. It's a lot of pages.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point. We don't, you're right. Yeah, but but we I'll talk to Francis about those two pieces. See what she says. I'm not sure, but we can try.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we thanked them all after we interviewed them and we thanked them in the introductory letter, not by name, but you need to reach out to them individually and share the final report with them.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah, that will all get announced. But we have an email list, because when we did the survey, we will we have it from events where people signed up for their email, and then a bunch of people signed up, we have a good, good number of people, I think a few hundred at least, that took the survey that left their email that, you know, they included their email, because we said, you know, if you'd like to know about our events or whatever, sign up, so we have a list. So we.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. Yeah. And I was going to say, we would want to coordinate it with whenever the city council is going to, you know, when they put it on their agenda, when it goes to the city council. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I do think that the final report will be public. I mean, most of them are, right? But that will be the mayor, right? The communications director will... And the mayor will put it up.
[Milva McDonald]: And they did press release when we were appointed. They did a press release about the survey. So there will be, I'm sure they will do something. I'm sure. I mean, I don't know 100% because I haven't talked to them, but I would predict strongly. Okay. So this is good. I guess the question now is do we... We're going to have a meeting on August 1st. So for the whole committee, our current scheduled meetings are August 1st, and then whatever the first Thursday in September is, and whatever the first Thursday in October is. So unless we schedule more meetings, that leaves us three meetings to finish everything. And we are pretty much done, but then again, you know, there could be details that might take a little time, right? So on August 1st, we're gonna address this ethics reporting issue that, but then we're also gonna just sort of, I haven't made an agenda yet, but we're gonna, We're going to look at the draft charter and spend some time sort of seeing if anybody has any issues with it. I think we don't have all eyes on it. Right. And then we would hopefully maybe finish that in September and maybe then in August, we send the committee the final report. And then we can start on the final report in September too. I'm hoping we don't have to schedule any more meetings.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what we'll do, but for us, for the final report, for us, we have not scheduled another meeting. We could.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'm wondering if we should maybe have one more meeting and say, OK, we're good to go. let's share this with the whole committee now so that they can read it for September. So should we do that? I think so. I'm good with that. So early August, and then maybe we'll get David.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm just in my head. That's two weeks from today. Yeah, two weeks. Is that OK, Gene? Can you?
[Milva McDonald]: What day of the week on a Thursday?
[Milva McDonald]: No, that's a Monday. Monday, July.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I like the morning.
[Milva McDonald]: So 10 a.m.? Sure, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'm not looking at my calendar, but I'm pretty sure I can...
[Milva McDonald]: I'll send minutes, and that'll have written down. Hopefully, I wrote down what everybody said they're going to do. But most people, except for Jean, you're writing stuff. And I'm going to fix a few things and send you a bunch of stuff. But so the big thing is to just read over what we have. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I still have it in my email. I've been holding. I don't remember. Okay. And. Hang on, here it is. Oh, it was a slide presentation. That's what I thought. Okay, I did a slide presentation. Okay. Can that go into the report as like a document?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I'm going to put it in the appendix right now, but we can get that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, and I mean, that would be in the appendix in addition to what you're writing for the community report. Sure. Okay. I mean, the community engagement section. Sounds good. I'm almost wondering if we need like a separate appendix. We'll see when we get the appendix all together if we want to put headings like, you know, make sections for the appendix. Community engagement, you know, study, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. This mostly just sort of organizing it and putting the pieces together.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then we'll just figure out how to put it together. And maybe whether it's you or Daveed that's going to do all the formatting, you guys just decide how to do that. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: I will send the minutes, and I will see you all on August 1st. No, July 29.
[Milva McDonald]: Bye. Thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: We are getting started on the Medford Charter Study Committee Ethics Subcommittee meeting on July 1st, 2024. It's just you and me today, Eunice. Our other two members were unable. We might see Maury, but do you want to get things going?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Springfield. I found Springfield.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I'm just trying to see what they say about the actual form.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, this is Framingham's. Yeah. Let me see. So it says, this form is prescribed by the city clerk, and it's similar to the state ethics. D, I think. Yeah. So basically, they give the authority to the city clerk, is what it looks like.
[Milva McDonald]: And then the mayor shall propose an ordinance to implement this section of the charter, which is unclear exactly what that means, because they do say who it has to be. They don't actually say, do they say that the clerk is actually reviewing it? They're just issuing receipt verification. And they don't say anything about making it public.
[Milva McDonald]: Right? This is a little more. Comprehensive, usually a core, you just have to. They just do it on you. You don't I mean, this form is pretty intense.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, in a way, I, I mean, I. I think that, well, if it's not going to be public, you're right. Part of the reason for asking for it from candidates is so that, I mean, if we're talking about transparency, which was what was mentioned during the meeting, you would think that these would be available to the public, but that's not necessarily what we're talking about, right? So if they're not going to be available to the public, then I guess candidates don't matter.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm just looking at Cambridge's ordinance. I mean, they don't maybe necessarily post the statements, but they do mention public access to the state.
[Milva McDonald]: And they do require candidates in Cambridge to do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think that in order to, I mean, we can, the Framingham Charter says that their form will be, you know, that the state form is the model. So that, I think, could be used. But I guess I would be interested in what Cambridge, Boston, and Springfield are using. Cambridge's ordinance is very long. Yeah. You know, and it's very, I should hope that the instructions they're giving to the people who have to fill out the form are a little bit easier to wade through than this ordinance. Assuming they have a form, they just outline in this ordinance what is required to be included in the report.
[Milva McDonald]: So they maybe don't have a form because they are very, it's outlined in a very detailed way what has to be reported. So I suppose, you know, if you went through the ordinance one by one and said, okay, identity of equity in a business to which the reported reporting person is associated, which has been transferred. So, I mean, uh, Equity and if you don't have any equity in a business, then okay, skip that one, et cetera. And then they say enforcement, they say the election commission shall determine whether any reporting person has failed to file a statement or has filed a deficient statement. And then the election commission notifies the delinquent if they determine that. And the election commission outlines the penalties for failure to file a correct statement, whatever those are. And a fine, they can get fined not more than $300 a day. That adds up. And the city may commence a civil action to collect the fine. And they report the failure to file to the Attorney General and the VA. And then they talk about the penalties for a false statement of interest and discipline, including suspension, termination, or censure, consistent with any requirements of the state civil service law and city charter and ordinances. Okay. You know, Cambridge's ordinance is pretty comprehensive. I imagine Boston's is as well. Yeah, it's probably a lot like Cambridge's. And then the thing that I found for Springfield was just this whole manual that they had, which talked about, they have a whole ethics commission, right? And then, oh wait, and they say their forms are in here. We could look at Springfield's forms.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay, so. You know, by ordinance. So, I feel like we have a couple of things we, we have, um, David suggestion, which I think is a good 1 and we probably should follow up on it too. talk to some people who could potentially be affected by this, elected candidates and employees, department heads or whatever, and see what their thoughts are. I mean, this is purely a transparency issue because the state laws govern the conflict of, oh, here's more. State laws govern conflict of interest. It's not like this would be to find, you know, theoretically that's covered under state law, right? So this would be more, maybe it would reveal some more subtle issues and it would be information for people to look at. So let's say if you want to decide, should I vote for this person? I'm going to look at their financial statement and see if I think they have any conflicts of interest.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I imagine, so it's not like, so if people filed these things, they're not going to be publicly posted, but somebody who really wanted to see them could, there's a way for them to access it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That was one of the concerns that was mentioned at the meeting is on a certain level, it's pretty intrusive.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. Like going outside in your underwear.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, because, or some of the forms even mention family, other family members.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. It's funny to me. Maury, just to review, the only charter that we could find or that Eunice found, because Eunice is doing the research, is Framingham that actually includes this in the charter. And then the only communities that we could find that have such an ethics reporting requirement were Boston, Cambridge, and Springfield, but they don't put it in the charter. Oh, Somerville has it as well? Yeah. Okay. Is Somerville also by ordinance?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So they all do it by ordinance and not in the charter. Now, as we've seen, sort of the advantage to ordinances is it can be changed more easily than some would say the advantage to charter is that it can't. And then David also had this, David couldn't come, but he suggested that we talk to some candidates, electives, department heads, or people who maybe could be candidates just to sort of get their sense of how this would affect their, I feel like it's a little bit hard to do that. I mean, it's a good idea, but would you say, yeah, yeah, sure, we should do that? I don't know. It's hard to, you know, I mean, the question that he was, that I think he was saying we would be seeking to answer is, would this discourage people from running for office? That's the question that we would be putting forth.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we could do that. I guess I just don't feel like it would be the most reliable information.
[Milva McDonald]: One of the things that we did notice is that Springfield has an ethics commission. So you could put it in the charter that an ethics commission would be created by established by ordinance and be somehow put in. I mean, that wouldn't require the ethics commission to institute a reporting requirement. So if that was something that the committee wanted to ensure that that would have to be included too.
[Milva McDonald]: So this is the. manual of the ethics commission. Let's see what they say. What is the role of the ethics commission?
[Milva McDonald]: You could say in the charter that it would not include elected officials. City clerk is the main point of contact for this ordinance. What is the purpose of the Ethics Ordinance? The Ethics Ordinance establishes a local ethics commission for Springfield and a standard of conduct for city officials and employees as well as candidates and municipal agents and lobbyists. It also establishes a requirement for the filing of a statement of financial interest. And these supplement the conflict of interest provisions of the state ethics law. So, you know, if this was something that we wanted to put in the charter, we would probably say that an ethics mission shall be established by ordinance that, you know, and maybe use some of this. But as I said, if we didn't specifically say that it would include an ethics reporting requirement, a financial statement, then they wouldn't necessarily do that. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah. Sorry. Down the bottom. Thank you. I'm like, I've done this a million times. How come I can't?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, I mean, did you take a look at the ethics form, Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: This is, it's 42 pages. Yeah. So this is the form that state, so in Framingham in the charter, they, or they, the Framingham also charter states that there should be an ordinance, right? Yeah. Yeah. And we haven't been able to get their form, but they say that it will be materially similar to the state form. And this is a state form, and it's 42 pages. It's pretty big.
[Milva McDonald]: This doesn't say that I'm elected. Are there any restrictions? Okay. Yeah. You can't be. Yeah. Good. Anyway, I guess the first question is, it seems like we like the ordinance route, but the idea of potentially putting it in the charter with the instruction that it will be administered by ordinance?
[Milva McDonald]: So, what I think would be helpful then is if one of us would call Springfield and maybe talk to one of the ethics commissioners about, because I think they did also refer to an, well, you know, Springfield doesn't have it in their charter, so it's completely by ordinance. So, they were created by ordinance. So, we can't really ask them about the charter, but we can ask them about how it works, you know, I mean, what do you think? Could also call somebody in Framingham.
[Milva McDonald]: So, would you be willing to do that?
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe Framingham first since they actually have it in their charter.
[Milva McDonald]: With Springfield, the only one that actually has a commission that I could find or that I found actually. Yeah. That makes Framingham and Springfield unique in their own ways.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, that would be awesome, because that will help a lot. And what about talking to people in Medford about how, I mean, it's not just people running for office. It's also people applying for a job, right? Or people like, you know, because this would also cover potentially department heads like this.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good idea. Oh, okay. Sorry. I felt like I had to sneeze. So you have a lot on your list already.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But I don't think the form would be in the charter. I mean, Framingham doesn't have the form in the charter. The charter, we would just have to sort of What we have to figure out what recommendation we're going to make to the whole committee about whether to include any of this. And if so, what and I don't think the form would actually go in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: But that's an easy thing to say. I mean, if you wanted it to be less, you know, what would you say if you wanted it to be not as comprehensive? It would be harder to phrase that, you know?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. All right. Well, let's start by talking. You're going to talk to the communities. I'm wondering if we should ask David if he'll talk to the HR director and maybe some of the other people that he had the idea to talk to.
[Milva McDonald]: I think he, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: He said, talk to some politicians and department heads about whether this would greatly affect their decision to run. Well, I think, yeah. And he also thinks leaving implementation to the city council, which would be, you know, having it, um, just say that it would be created by ordinance and it doesn't have to be like, so the ethics commission, I mean, if you want to, if your ethics commission is another layer on what, cause we were just talking about this ethics reporting requirement. So the ethics commission is another layer, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So I guess what I would be interested in is, I think just going through the Cambridge one, it looks like the clerk, I think it was the clerk that collects the financial statements. You know, the thing about the Ethics Commission is it gives you an appointed body that's kind of responsible for taking care of this as opposed to the city clerk. So, maybe find out when you talk to the municipalities, you know, how are the forms collected? Do you make them available to the public? Who reviews them? What's the feedback been? You know, just things like that, I guess. So I feel like since our scope here was very narrow, it was just to look at whether to institute this financial statement provision. In regard to that, the Ethics Commission would be basically, if we decided to recommend an Ethics Commission, it would be because that would be the body that would kind of be in charge of that. One other thing I'm curious about about the Springfield Ethics Commission is if it's a volunteer commission or if they're stipended. Most, I mean, most of our commissions aren't stipended and the ones that are pretty small. So, but it's something to think about. Oh, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have been compensated in any way, because even if they created an ordinance, we're ad hoc.
[Milva McDonald]: But I was just, yeah, we have that I, I counted all our meetings and all the, because I'm starting to work on the final report and I was like, wow, we've got a lot of meetings.
[Milva McDonald]: Are those people paid? Are those positions that people get hired for?
[Milva McDonald]: At the same time, it's very difficult to. make somebody who's basically doing a volunteer position jump through all those hoops, but which I mean we Beyond like what we did which was You know those trainings the open meeting law and the conflict of interest law.
[Milva McDonald]: See, and that's the thing is all this stuff, anything that this conflict, that this financial statement would potentially reveal is covered by the conflict of interest law, which theoretically every single person who would be required to fill out that financial statement would have been trained in the conflict of interest law and would have known that it applies to them, right? So this is not, this would be just, We just want the public to, we just want this information to be on file for the public, basically. Because it doesn't have to do with, you know, it's not creating any rules or, I mean, unless the Cambridge or ordinance, the Cambridge ordinance is pretty, pretty long. But I think it's just about reporting. It's not saying, what they can or can't have, that I think is defined in the conflict of interest law, or what they can, you know, what counts as a conflict of interest, what they have to recuse themselves from, et cetera. That's all defined in state law, right? So this would just be, as I think, and as David said, the transparency going out in your underwear, but it would create that. That would be the goal of it. That would be the, that's how I see it anyway.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, it's not common, right? We found, I mean, and the places that we found that do it are pretty big cities, right? Boston, Cambridge, Springfield, and Somerville. Yeah. Yeah. Right, they're definitely all bigger than us. If we looked at cities of our size, We can see if anybody, I mean, that would be like Maldon.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, I mean, we know that it's unusual, but it's not unheard of. It's definitely done in some communities. So, I think the plan of talking to these other communities, finding things out about maybe even how long they've been doing it, that's, you know, this might be something that's going to become more common. Who knows? And then what do you guys think if I just ask Naveed if he's willing to talk to the HR director and follow through with his, in whatever way he thinks he should follow through with his suggestion that he made on email?
[Milva McDonald]: I'll ask David to do that. Then the question is, and then we'll reconvene with all that data and material and we'll make a decision about what recommendation we want to make to the whole committee. So is there anything else that we want to do? I mean, maybe what I might do is just ask the Collins Center. Maybe, I mean, what do you think? Do we want to do that? Ask the Collins Center? You know, is this, because a lot of times they'll tell us, you know, it's not common, but newer charters are starting to do that, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: But did Somerville's charter actually get voted on? I thought they submitted their, the charter committee submitted their draft charter, and it was getting bogged down.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, really? I don't know if it's actually, So, I mean, it's in an ordinance in Somerville anyway. It's not in the charter, but as far as I know, their charter, the committee's product is not, has not been made official. Yeah. So they're still working with their like 1886 or something charter.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll ask David to talk to HR director and whoever else he thinks would be helpful. I will ask the Collins Center if they know of any other charters that have it. what their thoughts are, and then we can, is there anything else we should do before we reconvene one more time to make a decision about what recommendation we're going to make?
[Milva McDonald]: So. Well, we said we would, as I said, we started with a very narrow scope. The Ethics Commission adds another layer to it. But if we believe the Ethics Commission should be created to administrate the financial disclosures, then it's connected. But basically, it's whether we want to mandate financial disclosures in the charter. So that has to be, That question has to be answered first. Do we want to recommend to the committee that we mandate financial disclosures for candidates, electeds, and certain employees or any combination of those?
[Milva McDonald]: What do you think? I think that if we decided, so, again, this, So Maury, are you suggesting that we mandate an ethics commission be created by ordinance and then just let the ethics committee? I mean, the ethics commission has to have some sort of charge, like what are they doing? Right? Yeah, I suppose so. And just, so again, going back to this financial disclosures, which is what we, we got sidetracked on that because Springfield actually has an ethics commission to administrate their financial disclosures. So if we put in the charter that there would be an ethics commission would be formed by ordinance, which would, you know, have one person appointed by the mayor, one person by the school committee, one person by the city council, and could not include any current or former, I don't know, elected officials or employees of the city, and then say, and part of the tasks of the ethics commission would be to administrate a financial disclosure requirement. Details of which would be established by ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: And that's just for campaign finance.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, these particular financial disclosures that we're talking about would require them to reveal every business they're invested in. Basically, I hold stocks in this, I own property here. So, and like I said, the state conflict of interest law Guy applies to all of that anyway, and they will have been trained in that. So this would be just so that people could see, right? Because I don't know how effectively the conflict of interest law is enforced.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what I'm saying is that the law that has to be followed is the conflict of interest law. The requirement is just to disclose their finances. I mean, I had to look more carefully at the ordinance, but it doesn't say this is legal, this is not legal. It's really about transparency, right? And that's what we discussed at the meeting. This is about transparency and about people seeing. Because some things might not even fall under the conflict of interest law, but somebody might not like that. Oh, wait a minute, look at that city councilor has stock in this, even if it's an indirect relationship, you know, I don't, I mean, you know, it's, as I understand it, this is a matter of transparency.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't know. I don't know how much that applies to us really because we can't change state law. I mean, even if you look at the Cambridge Ordinance, all the enforcement is about enforcing the ordinance, and it's about the reporting requirement, right? It's not saying anything about what conflict a person can or can't have, because that's all in state law. So what we would be doing is we would be just laying out this reporting requirement and everybody would have to divulge. I could be understanding it wrong, but that's how I understand it. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Do we know of any communities that require basically volunteers to file a financial statement? That would be something else. Because that would be, again, You know, that's a lot to ask of a volunteer. But it would be interesting to see if any communities do it. All right, so it looks like we have a plan. Eunice is going to research what the other communities that have this in place. I mean, the other thing I would be interested in knowing from these communities is because the other thing I feel like we have to consider is what whether, I mean, creating the ethics commission takes the burden off the city clerk and the elections department, say, right? But we have to think about, but it still creates a burden to create the commission and all that. So what, you know, what are, what's the burden that we would be putting on the city to administer such a requirement? That's something else to consider. So if you can find out, you know, how they, how that works too, that would be good. Then I'm going to ask David if he's willing to talk to the HR director and potentially carry through the idea that he had about talking to other people. Then I will ask the call-in center and then we'll reconvene and decide if we want to make this recommendation to the whole committee, and if so, how? The other thing I could do is draft a couple of options that we can look at that we didn't put in the charter, which would include creating an ordinance. Because I think either way, no matter what we put in the charter, there has to be some ordinance to get into the details of it.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be great. And basically, you could just say, what would you think about the idea of requiring financial statements from?
[Milva McDonald]: I know. Well, and Donato does it for the state, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So he will know what you mean.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's great. All right, so that sounds like a plan. Now, in terms of another meeting, it would be, I mean, let's see. Should we just look at next week at the same time?
[Milva McDonald]: Or the 15th or the 22nd?
[Milva McDonald]: 22nd? I don't think we do. Do we? I, my God.
[Milva McDonald]: Let's see, do we have anything? The other committee that you guys are doing? The final report committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that the 22nd? I saw it on the city calendar for the 15th. That's it, 15th. Yeah. That sounds right. Yeah, because I'm going to be coming back to town on the 22nd. So I would have a hard time meeting on the morning of the 22nd. But I could do the evening.
[Milva McDonald]: Was there another day of the week that was possible?
[Milva McDonald]: We could look at the 15th if I could remember what the heck time I set that other meeting for. What about the 15th? Do you think that's too soon?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: And whatever we scheduled for the other committee wouldn't have been in the morning, so.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's like in the afternoon.
[Milva McDonald]: So let's go to July 15th, 10 AM.
[Milva McDonald]: I won't post it until like, you know, three or four days before. And if it turns out, you know what, we're not going to be able to do that. We just won't, we'll just cancel.
[Milva McDonald]: It is going to be hard because it's a hard time of year. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it seems like- Maybe one person. It seems like the ordinances and the charter will tell you, like in Springfield, obviously, you could try to contact an ethics commissioner. There are three of them, right? And then in Framingham, was it the city clerk that would get the statement so that person might be good to contact in Framingham? And then I think in Cambridge, they said it was the elections, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so let's plan for the 15th. I'll send out minutes that list everything that everybody said they would do. I'll get those out within a day.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks a lot. Have a good one. Have a good fourth. Everybody, yeah, you too. Bye. Bye.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the Medford Chartered Study final report subcommittee meeting, June 26, 2024. We have two members absent, but hopefully one might show up and we'll, but our task today is basically just sort of make a plan for the final report. So I don't know if you all have. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, great. That's awesome. Okay, so I don't know if anybody has had a chance to look at the final reports. I mean, part of our final report is going to actually be the charter. So, you know, the one that was mentioned at our last meeting was Somerville. Somerville is not really comparable to us because they're so much bigger. But their final report, they did create a new charter from scratch the way we are. So it's similar in that way, where a lot of the other final reports just involved edits to the charter. So basically, just looking at a possible structure. The beginning is members. That's pretty easy. I mean, we can just list our members. Some of them included bios. I don't really necessarily think we need to do that. Then there's an introductory letter which just sort of gives acknowledgements and explains our process. I mean, there's different ways to do it. Some of the reports have the next section would be called at a glance. where you know you're sort of given sort of a summary but then the next section oh here's gene could be recommendations which um i think is maybe uh maybe slightly similar but and then The way Somerville did it, they had a community engagement summary next. But, and then they had the charter text and then an appendix. I feel like, you know, we have things, we're going to have hygiene. We're just talking, we're just getting started talking about like what kind, how do we want to structure this report? And I was just giving the example of the way Somerville did it. One thing I saw, I don't know, I mean, how, let's see, I did find, I, we don't have to do this kind of thing. Framing Sam Framingham's wasn't as long, but they did. They did this kind of thing where they had a, I don't know how visual we want to get, you know? Um, they had this chart where they talked about some of the changes that they did and why kind of in a chart. Um, I feel like it's nice to have the visual, but it's also a little bit You know, we could probably get into a deeper explanation with text. Any thoughts? I'd say, sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: It was, yeah, I could look it up. I mean, that, and I just randomly picked those. There's probably other final reports, too. Like, for instance, I just looked at Framingham's this morning, and that wasn't in that bunch. But Somerville's, you know, because Somerville wrote their, wrote a you know a whole charter like ours did some of the some of the charters as I was saying just had edits whereas Somerville's had the entire charter so obviously the charter the draft charter that we that the call center is working on and that we're going to finalize um soon is going to be in Yeah. See, they have, I mean, this is a long report, but basically, it's about 35 pages, and then they have the charter text, which is going to be several pages. And then whatever we choose to put in the appendix.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So the part then we would be responsible for writing and structuring is, you know, the beginning. The members is pretty straightforward. They wrote a whole thing about their process. I mean, we can do that to a certain extent. They had actually a pretty complex process in a way that they voted and whatnot. So, and then, you know, so we can, we can, and then they have this at a glance section.
[Milva McDonald]: And then they have recommendations. So they, I guess they save the sort of explanation part, you know, to explain what their decisions were based on for the recommendation section. And this part, hmm. Oh, this was just sort of, this is actually more saying what.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think it has it sort of in the recommendations.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, where they talked about, so, you know, the kind of their major decisions and how they, what they considered and. Yeah. So, I mean, so a lot of it is semantics, like what are you going to call what, you know? So I think that to open with members, you know, just say who the members are. In our case, there's going to be like a few former members, et cetera. And then the sort of introductory letter, which will sort of acknowledgements like, you know, I'd like to acknowledge all the people who answered our survey, the, you know, the elected officials and city officials who took their time to be interviewed, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly. So that would be, so that's, I guess, what I'm proposing is that we just list the members, and we have this introductory letter. And then from there, we have options. We can do this at a glance, which is, as we just noticed, is kind of a, it's almost like an educational page of, I mean, we could, you know, we could include that. What do people think?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. You mean put it at the end of the report?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. And then the big question is, how do we want to structure We want to sort of write out our major decisions and why we made them and what materials we used. The materials themselves, then how much of that do we include in the appendix, et cetera? Because I don't think we would include those in the recommendations, but we might want to include them in the appendix. Do we want to call that section major recommendations or, I don't know, what else? Let's see. What did they call them? They just, they just, no, they just made this chart. I mean, I'm comfortable with recommendations. I don't know how you guys feel about it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we would open with just members and intro letter. At a glance, which will fill in later. And recommendations, I think, then our major question is, what are we going to include? Because the charter is long, right? Um, and We can't include every single thing in the charter in that, because a lot of it is standard language. But we want to highlight what our system is.
[Milva McDonald]: Definitely.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I agree with you. Ward representation for council. I was just, I noticed that in Somerville's, they actually put as their first recommendation, which I think we could consider because we did the same thing. Where did it go? Oh, I had Somerville. Write a new and modernized charter to just. Yeah, because we could have chosen to just take the existing charter make modifications, which would have been hard in our case because it was just a very nutshell plan A charter. Somerville's, I believe, was from the late 1800s, and I guess that's another reason they put modernized there.
[Milva McDonald]: In terms of putting this in as a recommendation, maintain the mayor council form of government. I mean, that was a big decision that we undertook, but I don't think there was much, there wasn't much controversy about it in the city. I mean, there seemed to be just a general feeling that, you know, nobody wanted to switch from purchasing manager, but we could still include it in our recommendations or,
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I'm sure it's going to show up in the minutes. So let's leave that could be a possibility. So I guess, David, what I'm hearing you saying is, Maybe the best way to approach this is to review the minutes and pull up, maybe, I mean, I would maybe even just sort of look at what we voted on.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay, so that could be an approach that would make sense.
[Milva McDonald]: But part of our thinking, when we outline it, will, I think, inevitably include what we considered. And, you know, like, well, we weighed this, but ultimately, you know, because it's not like these issues are black and white, some of them. It's not like, oh, everything we looked at said to do this. Like, there could be, you know, there would be ups and downs to certain decisions. So we wanted to show that we considered it all.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. So and then the other thing I was, you know, so, so I guess so we have a couple of ideas before us, we have, well, we go through the minutes, we look at our votes, we decide what the recommendations are. Or we go through now because all of us know kind of what the big things are. And we make a list of what we want to include in the recommendations. And then we review the minutes anyway and see if there's anything we want to add. And the other piece I was just thinking is because the other question we're going to have to answer is, well, OK, how are we going to write this? We have some people who are willing to write. But if we want to, you know, I mean, we can. I mean, we want it to be consistent. We can do that in the editing, but maybe we should consider what's the format we want for these sections so that somebody doesn't just write two pages of text, and then somebody uses bullet points. I don't know. Does that make any sense?
[Milva McDonald]: We could, I mean, you know, they sort of, for every recommendation, they did policy considerations and community feedback, that's what they included. You know, they named the recommendation and then... I like that. Yeah. I mean, we don't... Yeah, so... You know, and then things like, for instance, for the ward representation for city council, we looked at so much data, right? We looked at, you know, the historical level of representation from the different wards and things like that. I feel that it would be important to include that, but then how do we include that in We have to try to keep it concise in this section and then maybe, I don't know. Yeah, that's the other thing we're going to have to decide. There's going to be a huge appendix if we're going to include, well, we're going to include this survey report, I thought, I think. We'll include your listening sessions wrap up. But so then the question is, do we want to include, some of the materials that we created for the word, you know, all those charts and graphs. Yeah. And, you know, I'm thinking we might also have like a, I don't know if we should footnote it. For instance, we looked at some studies, right? So if we're saying, well, we looked at these studies on word representation, like I, you know, and then footnote them. So I don't know how people, I don't see any of these final reports footnoted, but do you think that's a little over the top? What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. So we can propose right now to make a list of recommendations that we know we want to include in the final report and then review the minutes and the votes and see if we want to add anything. Does that make sense? So, so far we have the, just the recommendation for a new, that we decided to write a new charter as opposed to, I don't, I mean, how do we feel about that? Is that kind of like an obvious for Medford? So obvious that we don't have, I mean, it was our first decision that we had to make.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point. Then the other one we talked about that might come next would be to keep mayor council. Then there was the ward representation for city council. Is there any other, in terms of just that section of the charter that outlines the city council, did we make any other major changes in that? We didn't change the term. We may have made, we didn't change how they elect president and vice president. We may have ended up, We may have ended up putting in some details about certain authorities that the council president has, right? But maybe that doesn't need to be like in these recommendations in the nutshell, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, no, we said that they would have confirmation power from multi-member boards.
[Milva McDonald]: So if we under, like we could maybe do, the third recommendation could be just about the city council. So then we would have board representation, confirmation power from multi-member boards or confirmation power in general, and then we can discuss. And then I also think the other thing that we did that I think is significant is include align allowing the city council to hire staffs to appropriation. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, yeah, they did it by article. Yeah, so we could do that. So although they started with their first recommendation for, oh, they did it by article. Oh, that's why their number, so general. Okay. Writing the noon chart and maintain. So those are under general. And then they go into the articles. OK, yeah. OK, so that so that's what we so that's for legislative and I have asked a question about.
[Milva McDonald]: I think so too, but we didn't change the city council. I think the vacancy procedure for filling a city council, it's the same. I think we might have added something in case that layer didn't produce anyone, basically.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so after the legislative branch would be the mayor, the executive branch, and obviously the mayor, that was the four-year term, is probably the biggest change, right? And the term limit. And the term limit, exactly. Four-year term and four-term limit. We liked the fours there. We didn't do that on purpose. It's four terms, right? Four times four, 16. That's what we, I think that's what we decided.
[Milva McDonald]: So is there anything else major in the executive section that we remember? I can't recall.
[Milva McDonald]: Did we talk about what the process is now for filling a mayoral vacancy? We did do stuff, we did sort of say if the mayor's incapacitated, we did stuff like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe that was in the executive branch section. But I don't know how much we want to get into the vacancy thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. No, we can always, it's better to put everything on and we can always decide, okay, we won't include that in the recommendations. See, they.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to put down vacancy process question marks. Yeah. That could be. Okay, then school committee. School committee. This was a big one because we had the ward representation, but then with the combined wards. But we'll just call it, I mean, it's a change to ward representation. That's just the process for implementing it.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's probably the biggest change, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, see, they didn't switch to ward or they didn't recommend switching to ward. No, wait a minute. They must have had a ward base. That's why they kept it. OK, got it. Sorry. I was just reading this. Yeah, we have to address the chair issue, definitely. Other than changing the composition and addressing the chair issue, were there any other big changes in that section? I mean, maybe we should, like, for instance, talk about the terms, because we've talked about why we kept them at two years, maybe for both city council and So maybe that term should be under both of them. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we've got to bring that because we did make that.
[Milva McDonald]: And it's, yeah. Unless we end up putting it under the article that it's going to go under, which I, Not exactly sure what it is yet, because the call-in center is working in wherever it's supposed to go. It might be later in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, well, each article does say, you mean for how the people are, how they're compensated?
[Milva McDonald]: We have that too, because the compensation will still be decided by ordinance. However, we also made that recommendation to put in the charter that there would be an advisory committee formed to research the compensation.
[Milva McDonald]: But we, but maybe we, maybe, yeah, we'll have to figure out where to put compensation just as a, because it is a general topic and it was a hot topic that came up. So maybe that goes under general. That's a good point. Okay. So there wasn't, I don't think there was any other big thing that I can recall on the school committee. Article five was we were letting, Collins interdrafted, but interesting. The article six, that was a big one, right? Yeah. So, I mean, honestly, I don't know how much of the things that we put in Article 6 were changes to the process because we didn't really have, we didn't, there wasn't, the only timeline that's been used is kind of the state law timeline, right? I don't think it's been in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we wanted to make sure that nothing we put in the charter conflicted with that because that's important. But we did add an annual budget meeting. We did that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that could go under the under this particular section of the final report, yes. And. Just seeing how. So I get, I feel like for this one, for this particular section of the final report, we just, we sort of have to use the draft of article six that we created and basically just pull out the major parts of the timeline and put it in. Sure. Timeline. Article seven was elections and sort of, I feel like one of the main things we did there was the ballot position. Right?
[Milva McDonald]: No, no. For elections, we decided that the ballot position. Oh, OK.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Would no longer be automatically alphabetical order, basically, right? So ballot position was a big thing. And Maury, do you remember, because you were on this, did we make any other major decisions?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't think we did either. I mean, we didn't change any eligibility requirements to run for office. Did we change any signature requirements?
[Milva McDonald]: We'll just write maybe signature requirements because that was a big issue in it. I mean, we didn't put any big thing in here about changing who can vote or anything like that. Like Somerville tried to do. I don't actually know what status of this chart, this
[Milva McDonald]: They did, yeah. And I don't know if it's still with the city council. I don't know. I think it got very, I think it got stalled once they submitted this. Article 8, the big one is regular charter review. And we can talk about... No, that's...
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Maybe they didn't put that in the Somerville Charter. You're right. Thank you. Article eight was citizen participation mechanisms. We did a lot of stuff in that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That one, again, we probably have to use the actual text. I mean, the recall is going to be a big one to explain. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Just look at the text and pull out the main parts of it that we think we should highlight in this. Because it was a lot in it. That's what I'm saying.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, recalls for sure.
[Milva McDonald]: That was for multi-member boards.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, because we did the initiative petition. I mean, there was a lot in there.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this particular section, Article 8, was mostly about the voters, right? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Recall, referendums, ballot positions. OK. And then Article 9, we ended up doing a lot in Article 9. Which I think was general, now we're in general provisions. So periodic charter review we did. Well. I don't think we, I think we didn't have a periodic ordinance review. So that's, that was another thing that we decided on. We did not establish a periodic review of multiple member bodies, but we did put some other stuff in article nine. So maybe we have to just look that over in the minutes, look over minutes. And then, you know, this article, this transition provisions are pretty letter, boilerplate, and the Collins Center is going to do that for us. So, look, they, this is sort of what, similar to what we did, but they put it in just later. We actually, I think, we're going to put it in our charter, not just recommend. I don't know, I can't remember if we voted to put it in the charter or just recommend that the city council create an ordinance. That's something we'll have to look for minutes for. Yeah. Okay. So let's say we do the sections we talked about and then later we can decide what goes in the appendix and that will probably become more clear as we actually write the report so now the question is the actual drafting of it i mean we have go ahead we're putting in a community engagement section right i think yeah so in the if we do this introductory letter it will sort of talk about all the elements i mean we'll definitely include in the appendix You know, the survey report, the listening sessions, do we want to actually put, devote like a page or a certain section of the final report to community engagement? I think we should. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so just let's just go, let's just review the actual structure of what we're talking about now. First, we have, we're going to have members, then an introductory letter with, you know, just kind of acknowledge people or whatever, and etc. And we talked about at a glance, which is more like sort of informational, right, but that will And then we talked about the recommendations. And then we would have the draft charter and then the appendix. So where would we put the community engagement or the other section you were just talking about?
[Milva McDonald]: I was thinking about that. I was thinking about doing that in the introductory letter. But if we want to highlight community engagement, we could also do that. Because we did, we did, we did. I mean, it was pretty impressive. You know, the listening sessions were impressive. And so So it could be talked about and then we can have a sort of a... So if we put that after the introductory letter, then we would have members, introductory letter, community engagement, at a glance, which I feel should probably go before the recommendations because it's pretty much describing all the different sections of the charter. Then the recommendations by article. then the charter, then the appendix. And this is obviously not set in stone. If as we're working, something else makes more sense, we could do it. But does that sound reasonable? Yeah. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Or people who want to, you know, I mean, assuming that, who's interested in drafting?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. And Phyllis, I think I got the impression that Phyllis would. Did you? From the email when she said she couldn't come, but she said to give her a task. I guess it's not necessarily writing. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that if you, maybe you, I mean, I don't know. I'm going to throw out an idea. Maybe this is crazy. And I don't know if Gene is going to go for this. I say, what if me and Gene split the drafting and Maury, Phyllis, and Daveed edit? Unless you want to draft a section. Maybe you want to do a short one, Daveed. I don't know. It's up to you. You're good with that. How do you feel about that, Gene? Is that too much?
[Milva McDonald]: So I'll propose that I will do articles two and three Article four, article five, I don't even know what we're gonna say about it. We'll just leave that in question right now.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that would be under two and three, so.
[Milva McDonald]: So that leaves the school committee, the budget, financial procedures, elections, and then the general provisions, which sort of had a lot of stuff in it, but maybe not all stuff that we would highlight heavily in the recommendations.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll do that one too. That one's going to be short because it's, you know, it's mostly about the ballot position and Maybe signatures, we'll have to look at. Okay, so that actually gets us started. Article 9 will just sort of hold. Does that make sense? You've got the budget, Article 6 and 8. 8. So what about just the other thing, David, would you be interested in doing the minutes and slash votes review?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, and I'm pretty sure I'll have them all in a folder. You know, I'm going to have to look. I probably do. Every time they're approved, do they get posted on the website? Yeah, I send them to Emma, and I actually have never looked to see where she posts them, but they're posted somewhere on our website. So I don't know what kind of order they're in, you know, like if they're chronological or if they're just thrown into a folder, but let me just look right now. manfordmad.org slash charter study. And come on computer. If you scroll down, you see meeting minutes. And there are, there's a folder. Yeah. So yeah, they're not necessarily in, they're just in.
[Milva McDonald]: And they only get posted once they're approved. So like the last meeting we had won't be there. But if you see anything missing, I can send you whatever didn't get posted.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. So I guess the question is, when do we want to reconvene?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the Collins Center, hopefully as we speak, is working on the draft charter that they're going to get to us, and everyone's going to read that. But the final report, So in August, we're supposed to get together to just sort of finalize the draft charter. I feel like it would be good if we had the final report ready by, I would like to say September 1st. Does that seem unreasonable?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, no, I don't think we, I mean, because I'm thinking August 3rd, we're going to meet to talk, providing that we have it, which I think we will, we're going to meet to talk about the actual draft of the charter, right? And there's going to be questions on that. And, you know, maybe things that we have to tighten up or whatever. And the Collins Center will be with us for that. So, assuming that might take a couple of me, I mean, maybe September meeting. Hopefully we'll have enough time to finalize. The draft charter and then look at this final report. I mean, the ideal actually. You know what? Let's because I would, yeah, let let's say August. August. 12th. How about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Or no, I'm looking I'm saying I'm talking about August 12th as a deadline for the final report, because then we could give it to the committee. Because they're they're gonna have to vote on it. And the ideal situation is that we finish in October. I mean, that's, that's our That's Steve's date that I'm trying to get everybody towards. If we finish by August 12th, then that will give people a couple of weeks to read it for the September meeting. But you know what? If it's a week later than that, whatever.
[Milva McDonald]: So, and the other question, so yeah, so I would like to have these, let's see. It's right now, it's June 25th. June is July 15th, an unreasonable deadline to just finish those two, to finish those things.
[Milva McDonald]: No, that would be. Well, I guess I'm trying to connect this in my mind with the next time we're going to meet where hopefully then we would have like actual material that we that maybe David and Maury will have read and edited and fill us and. And then maybe at our next meeting, after everybody's read the drafts and we. can go through whatever edits we need, then we sort of can put it together and see what's left to do. And then we'll have about a month to do whatever's left to do. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's fine. And as I finish things, I'll create a folder like a Google, a folder. I mean, eventually this will all go into one document, but I'll create a folder and just create separate documents for like the different introductory letter or articles two and three, et cetera. And then we can do that so that they'll be available for people to read as they get finished.
[Milva McDonald]: So if we use Google Docs to work on it, would that interact with whatever you're going to be using to format it at the end?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I only suggested that because it just seemed it's the only way I know of really, other than Dropbox. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so this is awesome. We have a plan for putting together this, and I'll create the folder. We can put everything in it. I guess the next question is, do we want to have another meeting? I mean, if we're making July 22nd the deadline for getting everything written, should we look at the calendar in front of me? Let's see.
[Milva McDonald]: Or talk about sort of how things are going. Is this plan even working?
[Milva McDonald]: What day of the week? Do you have a calendar? What day of the week? This is so weird.
[Milva McDonald]: 15th is a Monday. Can people meet on a Monday?
[Milva McDonald]: How about that week? Week of the 15th, what works for people?
[Milva McDonald]: Is Monday at 3.30, July 15th?
[Milva McDonald]: Gene, does that work for you?
[Milva McDonald]: All right, July 15th, 3.30 is our next meeting. I'll send out minutes. I just want to see if any members of the public have any comments or questions or anything. No, okay. Thank you for being here. Hi, Marie. Okay, that's awesome. Well, we have work to do, but thank you, everybody, and we'll see you soon.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome to the Medford Charter Study Committee for June 20th, 2024. We are expecting a few more people, but we do have a quorum so we can get started. So first order of business is the minutes from last week. Does anyone have a chance to look at them?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, all in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. All right, so Basically, what we have left to do is to go through some issues in Article 9. And I'm just going to review the plan. I know I've already said it. And then once we go through those, we will be giving all our materials to the Collins Center, and we will not meet in July. And then we'll reconvene in August, by which time, hopefully, people will have been able to review the draft that we got from the Collins Center. And, you know, they may have questions for us. They're going to be, they'll be with us for those meetings. And then we'll finalize that and go ahead. But the final report committee will be meeting. And we'll talk about that a little bit at the end.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sorry, you would like to be great. So I'll check in with that I sent out a doodle poll and I'll send it to you too. Okay, so the first so we have, I think, maybe the easiest thing to do is to just share the document. Right. And the first item in Article 9 that we're going to look at is the possible addition of a section on public comment. So Eunice added something from the Fall River Charter, which actually is one of the charters that the Collins Center provided, because when I asked them about this. So I put the feedback from the Collins Center in brown and And the reason I left that part in blue, Eunice, is because the Collins Center sent us such examples from other charters, and they did send us Fall River, but they didn't, that part wasn't in what they sent us, so. Okay. So, whoops, sorry. Make it bigger, too, please. Yes, I will. So, have people had a chance to look at these and, and think about. So basically, the Collins Center said it's not common, but there are charters that do add something about this. And this is specifically about public comment from multi-member boards. And the Collins Center encourages us to allow multi-member boards to have flexibility around how and when they receive feedback from the public. So the examples are Fall River, Do people look at these? Then we had Amherst and Dedham. Do people have a chance to look at them? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Because like I said, that wasn't what the call-in center provided, but that was something that Eunice had. Was that in the Fall River chart? You broke up a little. Can anybody understand Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Thank you. Maury? Are you muted? Yeah, now you're on.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I just want to hear from Paulette first, and then we also have some other people that want to comment. Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: We're going to go to Ron and then David. Then when all the committee members have spoken, we'll turn to the member of the public, Ron and then David.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thank you. Maury and then Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I will read it. The city council, the school committee, and all multiple member bodies shall develop and adopt rules or a policy addressing public comment. The rules or policy shall require that public comment periods appear on meeting agendas for all regular and special meetings. Public comment shall not be limited to items on the agenda for any regular meeting, provided the issues or concerns raised are within the jurisdiction of the city council school committee or any multiple member body respectively. Public comment at any special meeting shall be limited to items on the meeting agenda. There is another paragraph, but Eunice, when you were breaking up, I didn't get the answer whether this blue part actually is from the Fall River Charter.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll just read that sentence again. Public comment should not be limited to items on the agenda for any regular meeting provided the issues or concerns raised are within the jurisdiction of the body. It has to be relevant to the body.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, David. So we have a bunch of committee members want to speak and I do want to make sure we hear from our member of the public as well. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Thank you. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: You're breaking up again a little bit.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay, more did you have a quick comment and then we're going to go to Matthew.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Maury. OK, Matthew.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. I just want to say my reading of this doesn't limit anything that the actual body talks about, but it limits, it's talking about public comment, but I see what you're saying that it could still be. lifted.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. So I want to just start to close that we've had a really good discussion, but I want to make sure that we get to everything else on the agenda. So I want to get final quick comments on this. And then Maury did make a motion to vote on it. So Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Matthew, did you have another comment? And I have seconded it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I will work that in, but I just want to just quickly make sure everybody look at the other two. This is definitely the Fall River one is the one that people want to vote on. Did everyone look at the other two examples? Yes. The other two examples don't mention city council and school committee. So, okay. So I don't hear any comments. So we're going to stick with this. The only thing I want to say, well, I want to say a couple of things. One thing I want to say is I think we, and I don't think this will be a big issue, but we just took us last week. And one thing I had talked to the call center about was to be careful about using specific language that could box us in. So city website, I think, but we talked about last week that they're going to change that language so that it's, adaptable to whatever potential form of communication might be around in eight years, say, before the next charter review. So I'm just going to suggest when we submit it to the Collins Center that they just make that consistent. The only other thing I'm going to throw out, and I don't think it's a big deal because I think the Collins Center will flag it if it really is a conflict, but I don't think it is. We did the initiative petition, which lets people put an item on the agenda, and it sort of limits their ability to put the same item on multiple times. So I don't think it's a conflict, but I'm also not going to worry about it because I think the Collins Center will tell us if it is. Okay, so the motion as I see it on the table is to accept the Fall River language with the addition of a clause ensuring that all comments comply with Mass General Law privacy and confidentiality guidelines. And again, you know, the call-in center will be responsible for adding that and they'll tell us if it's, you know, they'll have a comment about it if they think it's not needed or if whatever. Anyway, so that's the motion. We have a second, so we're going to vote. Rob.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice. Yes. Phyllis. Yes. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: David.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. No. I got Maury. I know. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Did I get everybody? Rob. I got Ron, I think. Did I get you, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, just me. I feel like I'm going to abstain because I feel like I got to think about it more, so I'm abstaining. I'm copping out. Come on, Milva. I'm sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: It does pass. The motion passes.
[Milva McDonald]: Now, the next item is an addition on conflict of interest. and a lot of other things. So when I spoke with the Collins Center, they pointed out that this particular section is usually limited to this very simple language. All city employees shall be considered municipal employees under Chapter 26, 268A of the general laws and shall comply with the state conflict of interest laws. So while that's standard, there are some communities that add another layer. The reason that most don't is because most of these things are covered in state law. And they recommend that if we do add another layer and extra provisions, that we should ensure that none of the provisions conflict with state law. So this is, again, from Fall River, right? And it's pretty long. Did everyone look at it? Actually, should we go part by part? The first part is the conflict of interest, David.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Anybody else?
[Milva McDonald]: One might be the, I think the financial statement, like right now, it's not, I don't think everybody's required to submit a financial statement, I believe. Are we talking about the ethics part? Yeah, that's ethics, I guess.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, just say that just because the Collins Center makes recommendations, but just because they work with the charter, it doesn't mean that they just help. Um, and they might've said, well, we recommend this. And then the municipality said, well, we're doing this anyway.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that's what we have to decide is how to deal. Should we just go one by one and start with the... The conflict of interest section, basically, just to be clear, that first section, the letter A section is standard language, and I think that would have just been put into the charter by the Collins Center. And the other part is in addition, but it's, I mean, you know, most of this is covered in state law. I wonder if some of that
[Milva McDonald]: There was a big mess there, definitely.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, let's start with the conflict of interest section. Ron, did you have a comment about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Okay, Matthew.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, David.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it was.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. And now I want to hear from Maury and then we're going to
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So I guess I think that, you know, the charter, we've talked about this in the past, it tends to We want it to be meaningful, but we also want to be careful about too many specifics because the charter is set in stone and it's hard to change. I guess I'm just going to make a motion that we adopt the language under A and not the rest of it under conflict of interest.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. If you want to include the rest of it, you vote no, basically. Okay. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. It just says there's conflicts, you know, there's conflict of interest law and you have to follow it basically. You follow state law.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So it would not include everything else, but we'll do it section by section. But this is under this. We're only including A. If you agree with that, you vote yes. OK. So Maury. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: David. Yes. Eunice. Yes. Paulette. Yes. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Did I get Phyllis? No, but yes for me. Okay. I'm yes. That's that. Now, we move on to we've got these other sections, prohibition against self-dealing, and then the ethics reporting requirement. I think that was, and there's another section.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but I'm just looking at the conflict of interest stuff. There's also this section about public contracts. So this is pretty much, it's included in the conflict of interest section. So these would be extra layers. We've had a discussion. Does anybody want to make a motion on any of these?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, this also includes, I think, even more division heads, but anyway, so that, so that's that. And that's a very specific requirement that that language is requiring electeds to file, regularly file a financial statement, a statement of financial interest.
[Milva McDonald]: City clerk. City clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. How does it? Um, yeah, go ahead. You know what? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: You did remind me of something that the Collins Center said that is that these issues are often covered in ordinances, so they could be covered in it. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, there definitely are, but I think, and that is what the Callen Center conveyed that most of this is covered in state law, but this financial statement, for instance, is another layer. That's not required in state law that every, you know, whatever elected or every department head or whatever fills out a financial state interest of, But yeah, you know what I'm saying? That's hot. Okay, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: So we have a couple of motions or ideas on the table. We have one, form a subcommittee to take a deep dive into this. Two, just not include any of this and just keep the section we have about state law. And three, include something that this would be decided by ordinance. So I guess if we do make a subcommittee, are we specifically talking about a subcommittee on the ethics reporting requirement, which is essentially the financial statement?
[Milva McDonald]: And it could be huge. And Daveed, like the analogy that you used about, you know, your underwear. I mean, it is definitely intrusive. There's no question about it.
[Milva McDonald]: It doesn't mean it's not a good idea, but it is. It's pretty big thing. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: With forming a subcommittee?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so just to be clear about, we're still going to go ahead with our plan, which is handing everything to the Collins Center, but we're just going to say that there's still some decisions to be made on ethics reporting requirement, and we'll add in whatever we decide later. So the motion on the floor is to form a subcommittee to research and ethics reporting requirement in the form of a financial statement. Can I just put it that way?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, that's the limit of the subcommittee, you know, but the language here is actually not limited to elected officials.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That would be, you know, the only people that would... you'd have any legitimate basis for asking for this information.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if we include it. Yeah, I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's fine. Sorry. So the motion is not to have this. It's to have a subcommittee to look at it. Okay, so Eunice. Yes. David.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony. No. Phyllis. No. Who didn't I get? Paulette. Paulette, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'm voting no, which means it's a tie. It's a tie and I think tie usually, what does a tie go to? I should know this.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that's fine. But given that there is interest, and there are people there, I assume, are willing to serve on this subcommittee? Yes. I mean, we don't, you know, we're not, we're an ad hoc committee. So we're not like required to follow Robert's rules.
[Milva McDonald]: This is what would happen on the subcommittee would meet and there would be a deadline of. Our August meeting and the subcommittee would then. make a recommendation that we would vote on. I think we would have to limit the discussion because our plan for August is to go through the final charter. This subcommittee would be extremely focused. It would be just about this. I would have them aim for a very succinct, Um, Recommendation that just covered the absolutely relevant points that we could then vote on. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: It's not, that's what I'm saying. It would be like maybe a 10 to 15 minute presentation slash vote at our August meeting. Can we do that? Yeah. Okay, who wants to be on the subcommittee?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we've got Maury, Eunice. Yep. Did I see Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: And did I see anybody else? Okay. I'll be on it because I'm on every subcommittee. I mean, yeah, I'll just like, you know, okay. So who, um, does anybody want to be in charge of setting up a meeting for that? I can do that. I can do that. Okay. So Eunice, you'll, Eunice will send out dates to set up a meeting. Okay. Okay. That's basically that section about financial interest. The last piece is, are you counting the WALFAM section as part of the?
[Milva McDonald]: That's part of state law. So far, just to be clear from this section, under the conflict of interest, we're including the standard language which just says that about municipal employees and that they're beholden to follow mass general laws. And then we are going to have a subcommittee look at the possible extra layer of financial statements. That's my understanding. Okay, good. Now, the property. Eunice, do you want to just give some background about what you're thinking about on this?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the school committee, you're saying comes from state law, right? I think so, Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: 100 percent is state law. My feeling about this is that this is the kind of thing that could be in an ordinance. In what? In an ordinance. But I don't know how others feel.
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody have any other thoughts about this naming of city property?
[Milva McDonald]: So do we, does anybody want to make a motion about this? Are we, I mean, we've had some discussion. Does anybody feel strongly about including it and they want to make a motion or.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So you want, okay, so you want to make a motion to exclude this section?
[Milva McDonald]: Somebody want to second? I'll second it. How's that? Okay. Okay. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis? Yes. Paulette? Yes. I think that's it and I'm voting.
[Milva McDonald]: Awesome. We're going to move on now to the purchase or taking of land. Do you want to talk about why you think this is a good idea for the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: One thing, I think this was the language that I gave to the Collins Center and they actually had an issue with it because of the language which is outlined in these comments. They also gave these examples. And one of the things that I thought is interesting to note is that we actually, it's in Mass General Law for Planned Parenthood, so we technically have this provision. And so I feel, you know, there's definitely Mass General Law about this. So. What about eminent domain? Does that apply here for anything? I think it does.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anybody else? I'm good with that.
[Milva McDonald]: So basically, the motion is that we do not include a section about taking of land by city. That's essentially it, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay, Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: David?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis? Yes. Paulette? Yes. And I'll go yes. Okay, awesome. Okay, so those were the outstanding issues on the list. Does anybody have any other outstanding issues that we need? I mean, we do have one, which is the financial statements, but does anybody have any other outstanding issues that we should look at before we are ready to hand things over to the call center?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not sure, I'm not, I mean, you know, we already went through that and we voted on that section. So whatever we got was brought up in a meeting. If it wasn't brought up in a meeting, we didn't get it. Maybe I'm just misremembering. But just remember, I mean, we are gonna get a draft charter from the Collins Center and we're all gonna have the opportunity to read it and then we're all gonna discuss it. So this is, you know, there's, there's going to be chances to discuss things that come up for you. That's all I'm saying. David?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, thanks, David. All right. Awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so I'm just going to take a moment to talk about the final report committee. It's Jean, Maury, me, Phyllis, potentially, and Daveed. So I did have a doodle poll, and I'll just tell you the three times that work for Phyllis and you. I'm basically checking with Phyllis and Daveed. June 25th, which is this Tuesday, or June 26th from 2.30 to 4.00. And I don't know if day ever works for you, Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. What about you, David? Are daytimes out for you?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I'm going to I'm actually going to schedule that I'll send out an agenda. I mean, our first meeting is going to basically be just to make a plan. About is that going to be Melba Wednesday from 230 to 4. so if you can't come. You think you can come? I'm going to try to make sure I don't have anything scheduled for them. The other date that was available was Sunday the 30th from 630 to 8. So, all right, so we'll do Wednesday the 26th from 234 and then we'll see where we go from there. I mean, basically, we're going to be making a plan. We're going to be. figuring out sort of how we're going to structure it. Maybe people will volunteer to write certain sections. I don't know. We'll figure it out. But that's what our meeting is going to be about. OK. And as I said, we're not meeting in July. And we will meet the first Thursday in August. I don't have the date handy, but it's our usual. And you will have. assuming the call-in center is turnaround is as quick as they told me it is, you will all have had some time with the draft charter. So that will be your July homework to read the draft charter and come prepared to go over it with the call-in center in August. And hopefully, we'll have a good start on a final report.
[Milva McDonald]: Sounds like a plan. The first Thursday in August is August 1st. It is. Okay. Thank you. Next meeting, August 1st, with the Collins Center. And if for some reason they can't come, I'll let you know, but I don't think that's gonna happen. All right, Matthew, you have comments?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, that is Article 8. And there's a lot in that article, initiative petitions, all kinds of things, recalls, et cetera. But yeah, I can send you what we have that we voted on. And again, so we have several articles that we have drafted. Those are all going to go to the Collins Center. So what the Collins Center will be doing is just sort of looking for consistency of language. We kept talking about when it says certain number of days, what does that mean? Well, there's going to be that whole definition section, so that'll be what they're going to do for us. Then they're going to actually draft Articles 5, 9, and 10, but we actually did vote on some of the language in Article 9, but they'll plug in whatever standard language. So they'll be looking for consistency of language. If they have questions about what we meant, they'll ask us. If they see something that they think will maybe cause an issue, they'll tell us. Like, for instance, we didn't end up voting on using that language from WALF-AM about the taking of land, but they felt that it could actually disadvantage the city, and we pointed that out. So if they see something like that, they'll point it out to us, and then it will be up to us whether we want to consider what they, you know,
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not sure the actual drafts are on the, in our committee materials on the website because they're, they're not, they're not our final draft. So, you know, how many do we want floating around say, but I'm perfectly comfortable sharing article eight with you if you just email me and I'll, and I will write very big letters on top that it's in draft form.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think I agree with David. I think you're all awesome. And this has been really a pleasure. And we're not done yet. So yeah, let's get you know, so close. But we're doing really well, yeah. I mean, you know, I feel like the final report is going to be kind of like writing a dissertation, but maybe not. Jean is on the committee, and she seems very, you know, she said she writes reports all the time for her work, so she's not intimidated by it at all. She's not deterred by it, yeah. But I think it'll be good.
[Milva McDonald]: We'll be including that. I envision that there will be appendixes. There will be that. There will be the survey results. Gene did an awesome report, the summary on all the listening sessions. So those will, I think, will be sort of addendums to the report, but we'll discuss that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, when the final report committee meets, if we feel like we need stuff, we'll just ask for it. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: So I will see some of you at various subcommittee meetings and the rest of you have a fantastic July. I guess we're supposed to vote, but I know everybody's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the June 13th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. Okay. So I want to try to get through everything tonight. So the first thing on our agenda is the minutes from June 6th. Did everyone have a chance to look at them? Are we good with those?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I never even thought about doing that.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks for that tip. I may do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Is there someone who can do that quickly and text it to Maury? I can do that, Milva. Thank you so much. The minutes. I'm abstaining, I wasn't there, but. Does someone want to move? Okay, second?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, so minutes are approved.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, so we have a lot of issues to go through. So we'll start, we'll just go through the agenda. Um, we'll go through that they're in the order that they are on the agenda. First was the residency requirement for multi-member bodies. So that was something that somebody, does someone want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: The, the article that you've got article nine and that we're not, that's not a draft that we were going to use for our charter. It's basically was just sort of an example draft of things that go in article nine so that we can make the decisions about it. And the Collins center will draft that and fix all that stuff. Um, so in terms of the residency requirement, so, um, What I did get a lot of notes from the call center this week on these questions and they said that it's not uncommon for there to be residency requirements. I know last week when we talked about it. There were certain concerns like what if somebody who needed to be on a body, wasn't a resident, like the chief of police, for instance, or the building commissioner. And Collins Center gave some example language that they felt would address those issues. Did anyone have a chance to look at it? They basically gave us an example from Fall River, an example from Northampton, and an example from Amesbury.
[Milva McDonald]: Did everybody look at them? Okay. I actually don't know if I have them to call up right now. If anybody, because I actually can't call up a Word doc on my laptop, but we won't get into that.
[Milva McDonald]: But everybody theoretically looked at these, right? Yes. So the one from Amesbury says that all appointed multi-member body members shall be residents of the city, but that that requirement can be waived by majority vote of the city council upon recommendation of the mayor. So let's say the mayor, who is the appointing authority anyway, wants to waive that requirement. the mayor has to go to the city council and they have to vote on it. The mayor sets out the reasons why the waiver is in the best interest of the city. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I just put it in the chat. There was the question of, do we want to put a residency requirement in? If we do, we have different examples, and it seems like the third example, the Amesbury example, is the one that people like. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, so the only boards that the mayor doesn't appoint are ones that are written into the ordinance or from mass journal law, right? I mean, because the mayor has the power to appoint. That's what the mayor has now, and that's what we have in our charter, in our draft charter.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I don't, I don't think so.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, there are, I think there might be some boards where like the city council appoints some people and the mayor appoints others, but those are the ones that are, um, created by ordinance or mass general law or something? I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Any other comments or discussion on this point?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. We can do that. I'm not, do people need to see it right now? Jean was just sharing in the chat what are the 2-9 section that we wrote, which gives the mayor the authority to appoint the multi-member bodies and gives the city council the confirmation, the power to reject, say. Do we want to move ahead with the Amesbury language, or what do people think?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. OK, let's do a roll call. Ron? Yes. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis? Are you not sure? Right. Okay. So Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. And I'm voting yes. Did I get everybody? I think I did. Okay, awesome. So that is what did you vote on? We voted on adding a residency requirement for multi member bodies. So what we just voted was to add a residency requirement, but put language in that includes a waiver so that it could be waived with the mayor can take a waiver request to the city council to waive the residency requirement. So it's not impossible that someone from outside the city could be on one of those boards, but there has to be a reason for it. Yeah, okay. I agree with that. Okay. OK, great. So Eunice, what was your question on the rules and regulations?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Then I will share a little bit from my conversation with the Collins Center about this. So their recommendation was not to be that specific because the public engagement changes. And so, you know, let's say a charter review every 10 years, the means for public engagement change. So they recommended just putting in language that was more general, like through all available means, or you could say through electronic means or something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, well, we were talking about basically any they were talking about any mention of. putting requirements in the charter to put materials on the city website or, you know, in specific areas on the city website, because the means for public engagement can change over the period between charter meetings.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so, and as I said, this is, you know, all I'm doing for Article 9 is telling the Holland Center what we want in it, and that they're going to put standard language in, and theoretically, they would use updated language, but we could say to them, we want this section to reflect the importance of materials being available to the public, you know, as specifically as possible, or something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's a different issue.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So we usually take public comment at the end, but I'm fine with taking it now. So is everyone? Yeah. Okay. I think Matthew wanted to speak. You have to unmute. Yeah, we can hear you. Wait, you're breaking up. Can you hear me? We can hear you, but you're breaking up.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. He's going to put it in the chat, I think he said. Okay, so do we have any more discussion on this? Do we have a resolution? Well, does anybody have one? I mean, what I was going to say was the move to ask the Collins Center to include language that ensures information is shared through all available means and just sort of stress the importance of that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I'm about to look at that. Anyway, so that was my suggestion. I don't know what he wants us to consider before the vote. We'll wait. So just to rephrase, I would move that we ask the call-in center to include language that ensures that information is shared through all available means with the public, shared with the public, all available means. Does anybody want to second that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I know.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Without request. Yeah. Okay. So if we were going to include that, we're moving to ask the Council to include language that ensures info is shared with the public through all available means.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Can we take that piece separately?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Frances, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, thank you for that. Ron and then Eunice, and then we're going to vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So the motion is, it's about rules and regulations, as Gene pointed out, and it's basically we're just asking the Collins Center when they draft this to make sure that they include language to ensure that the information is shared through, with the public through all available means, not, you know, and they will, I'm sure, I trust that they will phrase it appropriately. So, can we vote?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. We have the motion on the table and I will go around Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey. Yes. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean. Yes. Phyllis. Yes. Eunice. Yes. Danielle. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And I'm also yes. Okay, awesome so we want to address part 2 of that where I think it was the 5 day window units right that. Can you just read can you read that out again?
[Milva McDonald]: So you're saying you, I mean, do you want to make a motion for that?
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody want a second? Second. Okay. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that that's part of the definitions that the Collins Center will work through when they create our draft. They'll work on the A's problem. Okay. Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Aubrey? Yes. Maury, did I get you? Sorry, I've lost track of my windows.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Paulette, did I get you? Yes. You didn't get me and I'm a yes, Phyllis. Okay. Anthony, I don't think I got Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I feel like I missed one person. Did I? I got everybody? Okay, Maury voted. Okay, and I'll vote yes. Okay, awesome. What's next? Oh, the ordinances, periodic review of ordinances. So as you can see, the Collins Center said that ordinance reviews are, they're getting more common. It's becoming a standard feature of a modern charter. They're usually done every five years. And they gave us three examples. And the language is a little different in each one. So did people have a chance to look at them? I did. Let's see. Where are they? Let's see if I don't have them for the screen. I think that they all said five years, right? But, you know, the first one, the East Hampton one said the city council may provide. So that seemed like it sort of left it open. And they didn't all require the formation of a committee, right, East Hampton. had the review just conducted under the supervision of city attorney, or if the city council so directs by special counsel appointed for that purpose. But the other two, I think, had the formation of a special committee. Yeah, Winthrop and Northampton. Does anybody have any thoughts about the different versions or how you... Do you want me to try to share my screen, Melva?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thanks. Jean, I think we had actually language from the call-in center that had three different versions of it. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Any, let's see. Yeah, here we go. I agree with you, Ron. That was my pick, too, of the three. I liked the Northampton. Did anybody have any thoughts about the others? Here's the Northampton language. So not later than July 1st at five-year intervals, the mayor and city council shall provide for a review to be made of some or all of the ordinances of the city to prepare a proposed revision or break codification of them. It shall be made by a special committee to be established by ordinance. So this puts the particulars of the formation in the hands of the city government to establish by ordinance. but it does stipulate that they're all voters and it says a couple of other details. Dean.
[Milva McDonald]: And it also, you know, it gives flexibility because it says some or all of the ordinances because, you know, obviously a complete review of all the ordinances every five years would be.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So this, and, and this particular language leaves it sort of up to the city government, how to structure the committee. Um, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Like we did for the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Maury, did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Thank you. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Where we are is we've had several members like Northampton, but there's some question about the structure of the committee. Did I see, Ron, your hand up again? No. Maury's, no? Okay. So, I mean, does somebody want to move that we accept this language pretty much as is, or do we want to talk about changing the committee and putting more sort of specific guidelines on it in this section.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, go ahead. make a note to the call-in center, you know, just keep in mind when you're drafting this charter that we don't currently have a city solicitor. So, see, yeah, legal counsel. It could just say legal counsel.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, they had a charter amendment that they tried to pass, but we didn't put that in our draft charter. We just put that they could hire staff, but we didn't.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I mean, currently the way the North Hamilton language is written, it seems to me that it gives the mayor and the city council the leeway to decide which ordinances that they want to review, right? But you're saying can we say that, can we add that, let's say, providing that every ordinance is reviewed at least every X number of years.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point.
[Milva McDonald]: So, right, so you're saying if we decided to add a line saying that no ordinance should go longer than 10 years without being reviewed, and that, could that be burdensome? That's a big review every five years, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's true. Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Maury, did you have another comment?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thanks. Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we've talked a lot. First, I just want to say timekeeping-wise, we have one more hour left. If we can get through everything on the agenda, we won't have to meet next week, and I'm still hopeful. I just want to have that in everybody's mind. I feel like there's three parts to this. There's the timing of the review, which I haven't heard a lot of disagreement about every five years, as long as we use the language, some or all. The other piece is the composition of the committee, whether it should be just left to ordinance or whether we should specify. And the other piece is, should there be a line added that says every ordinance should be reviewed within at least every X number of years? So let's take them one by one. So for the five-year review, Do we want to vote on that and say, like, I'll just make a motion that we have an ordinance review every five years?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Second. OK. So all right. Eunice? Yes. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Is Phyllis out there? Yes, I second the motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Okay. I can't see everybody. I can't see the boxes now because of the screen share. So Phyllis, did you vote yes? Okay, and I'll vote yes. So awesome. We've got that piece done. What about the composition of the committee? I mean, I guess- I'll make a motion.
[Milva McDonald]: I just want to get it down right. When you say a city councilor or appointed by?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, and same with school committee?
[Milva McDonald]: And for voters, okay. Anthony, you had a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: So wait a minute, guys. It's no, it's not the charter, it's the ordinances. I actually, I agree with Anthony on this because I do feel like it's in the wheelhouse of the city council, but we're gonna vote. But first Paulette and then Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Wait a minute. So that means Maury would have to amend his motion, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Maury, did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks. Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I think that's a really good point. I think even the city council sometimes especially needs legal guidance when they're writing ordinances. It's their job to legislate, but they need guidance too. Did the motion get seconded? What is the motion? Well, Jean, can I just have Jean's comment and then I'll reread the motion as I have it recorded.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it would be instead of having the review committee established by ordinance, it would be The motion is that the review committee is made up of one member appointed from the mayor's office, one city councilor, one school committee member, and four voters.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point, Maury. It has to say who's appointing the voters.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Well, let's vote on it and see where it's at. And then if we have to finesse who appoints the four voters, we will. Okay. So Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice. Yes. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle. Yes. Gene. No. Aubrey. No. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette? Yes. And who didn't I get?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony's no. And I'm also no. The motion does not carry. So now we're back to still the question of how the committee would be, I mean, whether we want to say it's going to be established by ordinance or some other way.
[Milva McDonald]: Do you want to make a motion that we keep the Northampton language?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I hear you. I guess my view is that I see this particular review as actually almost like a support for the city council because the city council is the legislative body. They get elected by the people. The ordinances are their wheelhouse. And this is a sort of a way to support them in their work of managing the ordinances. That's just my interpretation of this.
[Milva McDonald]: I hear you. That makes sense. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, good point. Thank you. So, um, we want to, I want to hear from Eunice and Jean and Ron, but I just also want to just point out that, uh, if we really would be awesome, if, um, uh, we, uh, could finish our work tonight.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let's take that next, but to see, because that would be an addition. So right now we're just going to vote on whether we want to accept the language about the, um, from the North Hampton charter about this committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice. Yes. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. Yes. Aubrey. You're muted, Aubrey. Yes. Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. Yes. Uh, I'm missing one person. Yes. Okay. And I will also vote. Yes. Okay. Awesome. Um, so now, um, The third piece about adding language. So Danielle, do you want to make a motion about that, about adding language that every ordinance shall be, I would say like no ordinance shell.
[Milva McDonald]: How do you feel about that, Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? How do you feel about 15 years? OK, Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, can we split the difference and go 20?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So the motion on the floor is no ordinance shall go more than 20 years without being reviewed. Did we get a second?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle. Yes. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. Yes. Aubrey. No, but I like the spirit. Jean. Yes. Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: One person I'm missing. Me. Eunice. Eunice, thank you. Yes. Yes, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: It takes talent. Okay, we're going on. So we've done the ordinance review. Yay. Can I just add 1 thing?
[Milva McDonald]: Can we just say, tell the call-in center that we want this section to reflect- Electronic means, yeah. Okay. Same thing we're saying for the other one? Yes. Okay. Okay. We're in the 21st century. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Now, next on the agenda, but we may have already covered it. Was there anything about multi-member bodies other than the residency? Oh, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So we run into the same problem again. We don't know if Metro community media is going to exist for the next 10 years. You know, it might change. It might be something else. We don't know what new electronic things going to come down the pike that maybe a website isn't a thing anymore. And I think that's what So I guess what I'm going to ask about this is, can we do what we're doing with all the other sections and just let the call-in center use language that won't sort of tie us into something that might not exist during the tenure of the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So what I would like to do is just tell when we submit our draft charter and the parts of the charter that the Collins Center is going to write that we include, we want language in there to ensure that these meetings are publicized by all means available, and that they're broadcast by all means available, and that they're shared by all means available, and let them come up with the language? Does that sound? Yeah, I'm amenable to that. We're going to talk about it again because we're going to get the draft charter back from the call-in center. Then when we get it back from the call-in center, they're going to be with us for the last three meetings. So there'll be a chance to talk about it again.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm pretty sure, isn't that an open meeting? I mean, I thought that that was outside the charter requirement.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And they're not. Right. So that's, I don't think we can control that. Okay. But Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So let's let the call-in center put that language in. And as I said, Eunice, we'll be able to address it again with them present. And we can work through it if we need to. Does that make sense? Does that sound good?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Do people need to see the language before they vote on it? Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: It's possible, but I don't recall this in particular being there, but if you want to look, you can.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't see it. Oh, there we go. So that's what's on the table. And do we have a second?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, okay. Let's vote. Uh, Eunice? Uh, yes. Uh, Paulette? Yes. Uh, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury. Yes. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Who did I miss? I got Ron. Danielle. And somebody else different. Danielle says yes. And you didn't get me, Milva. And Phyllis? I'm abstaining. Okay. And Aubrey? Is still reading?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what it sounds like to me.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't see why they couldn't do that already. That's how I read it. It's just saying that they can send a notice to the mayor about this. It doesn't say anything is going to be done about it.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey's a no. Okay. So we have five yes, three no, two abstain, so the motion passes. Okay. That was all from multi-member bodies. Were we going to do anything about the periodic review of the need for multi-member bodies? Yeah, that would be another because you wanted to add that. I think there was a note from the Collins Center on that, and the Collins Center felt that they thought that you wouldn't necessarily need it if we were doing an ordinance review, but they also had a suggestion. which was not about putting something in the charter, right? Yeah, it was about, I think, bringing it to the city council. I can't seem to find in front of me their note, but I believe it was to make a recommendation that I couldn't get papers, that the city clerk, right? Put it in the chat. I put it in the chat. Thank you. Thank you, Jean. OK, so let's look at it. If I can scroll down to the last chat. Here we go. recommend that a city official like the city clerk produce an annual report to the city council regarding the need and operation of all currently existing multi-member bodies. So we could do something like that. Or if you want Eunice to make a motion about adding this section to the charter about having a review of the need for multi-member bodies, you can do that. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, do you have another comment?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, that's right.
[Milva McDonald]: Where do we want to go with this?
[Milva McDonald]: So I guess what we're talking about now is something put in the final report, not the actual draft charter. So if we're deciding that we don't want to put this in the charter and we'll enable something for the final report, then we don't have to go through the nitpicking of it right now. We can do that at another meeting. Does that make sense? If that's what we're deciding, that we're going to do that. We're going to put something, we're going to put a recommendation in the final report.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And then we'll finagle that, the details of it down the road. Okay. Um, is that it for multi-member bodies? Uh, yeah. Okay. Now you said had something in oaths or affirmations.
[Milva McDonald]: Again, I'll just say that this was just an example for us to see what's in this section. If this is mostly standard language and the call-in center will draft it, and the call-in center, one of the things that they're going to do when they draft the charter is make sure the language is all consistent. So when we get the actual complete lead a draft charter from the call and center. If there's still a conflict, then can we deal with it then? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, awesome. OK, the public comment.
[Milva McDonald]: You want to do that next? OK, so again, this is just an example charter that we used. And Ron had flagged this because he wanted to discuss this waiver option, which I am told by the call-in center is actually not common. So apparently Melrose does it, but it's not common. They theorize that one of the reasons for including the waiver would be just to not limit because it's hard sometimes to get people and this could maybe address that, but it is not a common provision. They probably would not have included it if we were just saying draft that with standard language. But now that we are actually looking at an example that has it in it, the question arises, do we want that in there or not? Ron does not want it, correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Does anybody see a reason to have the waiver?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it says one city office or position of employment. So it could be a city office, which I interpret to be an elected office or a position of employment. So the limitation on office holding is standard in the charter. What is not standard is a waiver, but we happen to be looking at a charter that includes it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, do we want to, um, does someone want to make a motion on this waiver?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, does somebody want a second?
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, okay. I have a question. Yep, go ahead, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. Yeah, that could be impacted.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I think that is what it implies. So I think the thing that Aubrey brings up is a good point, but how is it usual for somebody to work at two part-time jobs for the same city?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it says no person shall simultaneously hold more than one city office or position of employment. So to me, it says you can only hold one position of employment. Right? Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: You can be the- So how do you think the waiver should be implemented?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so this section may be waived by the mayor,
[Milva McDonald]: Francis also made a point that some of this would be governed by ethics laws and ethics.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe.
[Milva McDonald]: But it's limitation on office holding is the section.
[Milva McDonald]: No, but they said it's it's section 911 limitation on office holding. So that is the intent. So I think that's so you can't work for the DPW and gene the on the school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Like I said, I'm pretty sure they would just leave the first sentence. That's the standard because they said the waiver is unusual. I do think Paulette is right that the intent of this is just to say that there's a limitation on office holding that you can't. I think that the stuff that we're talking about wouldn't really apply. That's what I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So Ron, if we're talking only about office holding, do you still think that it's okay for there to be a waiver?
[Milva McDonald]: So I just want to go back to a motion that Paulette made not to give the mayor, not to include the waiver, the waiver power for the mayor, regardless of how it's applied. Are you still okay with that motion, Paula?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I'm going to hear from Maury and Aubrey and then we're going to vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Great. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: The motion on the table is to not give the mayor any waiver power on the limitation on office holding. Paulette? Yes. Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Jean? Yes. Danielle? Yes. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Who did I forget this time? Me. Eunice? No. No, I voted. Maury. Maury. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. I'm also yes. Awesome. All right. We have 10 minutes. I know we're not going to make it through. What I'm going to ask is, are people available to meet us next week?
[Milva McDonald]: Can I have a show of hands? Who's a yes for next week?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So if, so I think we'll have a quorum. So even if you're maybe, are you got, are the rest of you definites?
[Milva McDonald]: The rest of what we have to talk about is the addition of a section on public comment, the addition of a section on conflict of interest, ethics, etc, the addition of a section on property, And then just a little bit of a wrap up on talking about, I guess maybe I'll ask people now since most everybody's here. So far for the final report committee, it's me and Gene and maybe Phyllis. Does anybody else?
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. So what we would do is we would meet, I don't know how many times, we're just going to have to see In July and August, but my aim would be to try to finish the final report. By the end of August, and I don't, you know, I thought whoever we have that's working on it at the 1st meeting. We would talk about how we wanted to structure it. So, I mean, I'm. I'm fine with writing, maybe somebody else is. But I thought what first we would do is, you know, we have some examples of final reports, decide sort of what we're going to include in it and how we're going to do it. So I'm sorry I'm not giving you a very clear answer. But basically, I guess the short answer is whoever is involved is going to decide at the first meeting how to divvy up the work. But it's going to involve figuring out how to structure it and writing. So you could be involved in it and you may or may not do writing. If that's not something you want to do, you could do something else. But I don't know. I'm sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're saying if you were available, you would be willing to work?
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: The first thing I'm going to do when I know who's interested is send out a Google, a Google, a Doodle poll or just to try to see. Yeah. So, and then we'll meet and we'll talk about how we're going to put this together. And then when we finish, because we are going to finish, we're going to be ready in October, we're going to, we send it, we give this to the mayor. And then it's the mayor's job to figure out how we present it to the, how it's presented to the city council. But my assumption, I think there's a good chance she will include us in that process.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so what's going to happen is when we wrap this up, I'm going to take all the sections we've drafted and all the decisions that we've made and put them in a document and give them to the call-in center. And I'm probably going to ask for one person. I don't know, Aubrey, because you keep really good notes in the Google Docs. And would you be willing to look at the document that I put together Before I give it to the call-in center, just to say, oh, we talked about this or we voted on it. I'd be happy to approve. Thank you. I've told the call-in center that I would provide that for them by the end of the month and they said three weeks. Let's just say maybe they'll take a month. Theoretically, by the end of July, everybody, we would have a draft charter from the Collins Center. And then I would send that to everybody. And then our committee won't meet in July. But you will be given the draft charter to read and prepare. And then in August and September, we will meet with the Collins Center and go over what they have come up with. If we have any questions on sections, we'll be able to ask them about it. If they see anything in there that they think they should flag and say, well, is this what you meant to say here or whatever, we'll be able to work on that with them for two meetings and then Meanwhile, the final report is separate from that. So that'll be the draft charter, and then there'll be the final report. And that will be worked on by the final report committee. So the final report committee will be working on that while the Collins Center is completing the draft. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I would say our usual date, the first Thursday, or we could do a doodle poll, because I know people are, you know, and that might, if we met later in August, that might give people more, a little more time to read the draft charter too. Do people want to just say the first Thursday in August, or do we want to just do a doodle poll and
[Milva McDonald]: It's August 1st. OK. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to meet next week. We're going to wrap this. I'm going to create the document, send it to the Collins Center. Aubrey's going to proof it for me. And then Maury, Gene, me, and Phyllis, so far, are on the final report committee. And then I will send out a doodle poll to those people, and we'll get together and talk about creating the final report. I'll be in. And everybody will have a break in July. And then we'll have a push. We'll have a big push. We'll have a lot to do in August and September, but we're going to be done by October, so.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, that's a good question. Maybe.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't know if they're virtual. They're virtual, so yeah, it's going to be virtual ice cream. Ice cream in your freezer?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we could have a social, we could have an ice cream social, but we can't talk to our council.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't know, because that will be up to the mayor. You know, because we're submitting our final report and our draft charter to the mayor, and then it's kind of in the mayor's hands how, where to go from there. But I'm thinking it's going to, I mean, I'm assuming it will go. I mean, we're shooting for October. So, I mean, that's when we're going to give it to the mayor. And I don't think it would take much longer after that. That's my guess. All right. Does that sound good?
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Do we have public comment? Yeah, let's see if we have any public comment. Do we have any members of the public that would like to speak? Okay so Maury made a motion to adjourn. Second. Great and all in favor okay I will send you all an agenda for next week and we will wrap. Thank you. Good night everyone.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, welcome everyone to the method-started study committee meeting June 6, 2024. First order of business is to accept the minutes from May 16th. Did everyone have a chance to look at them? They're good.
[Milva McDonald]: I make a motion to approve. I agree. All in favor? Aye. Excellent. Okay, now we can go right into the composition of the school committee, which we had already decided, but we had the issue of combining wards, and I believe, Ron, you had some things to say about that.
[Milva McDonald]: So just, so what I, when I contacted the elections department about the numbers that they provided, what I found out was that they gave us numbers from the most recent census, but the wards are drawn every 10 years and they use the federal census. So those are the numbers that we would be looking at. And they will, and the wards will, they will redo that process in 2031. It was just done in 2020. Right, it's every 10 years. So as of now, any awards we combine, no matter which ones we combine, the numbers will work out okay because they were even when they were made. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: I could try to dig that up. But actually, my comment was going to be that I was going to vote for or sort of back option two, because when I looked at that map that you're referring to, Eunice, option two creates a situation where there's at least one school in each district. So I thought that that was a plus. The other reason that I liked option two was because when we discussed this before, there were comments about the demographic issues that we have a majority minority ward, which is ward, I believe it's ward seven. Let's see, I have that here. And combining Ward 7 with Ward 1, which I think Option 2 does? No. Right?
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe I'm wrong.
[Milva McDonald]: You're right. No, that doesn't make sense. I don't think it was 6.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, no, it's seven. See, because, so, and seven and one, combining seven with one, one is the other ward that has the most, the largest population of minority population next to ward seven. So by combining those, we keep, you know, we give that, We dilute that power less. That was my thought anyway. Okay, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, because they use the census, so.
[Milva McDonald]: not for drawing the wards, is my understanding.
[Milva McDonald]: We have no authority to draw any wards. That is done in conjunction with the state and the city council every 10 years.
[Milva McDonald]: But of the wards that they created in 2021, when we look at the demographics of those wards, we do have one majority-minority ward.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree with you. The only reason I brought it up is because it has been a concern. And I know that we have discussed as a whole committee and the subcommittee also talked about two communities, Lowell and Worcester, where lawsuits were brought against those cities for violations of the Voting Rights Act. And so they then implemented ward representation because of that. We are not dealing with that right now. But we did look at the demographics of each ward. We do have that information. So it's something that we can see. And so when we're combining wards, I feel that it's legitimate to consider it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, any other thoughts on these past these particular other thing I just wanted to say is, um, we can choose not to combine the wards and leave that up to the city council. It would be the city council that would do it if we don't do it. So
[Milva McDonald]: Can we give them like, this is plan one and plan two? Let Ron speak. He's going crazy. Oh, Eunice, I'm sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Aubrey and Anthony, do you still have your hand up?
[Milva McDonald]: I think Ron is in front of me. Aubrey and then Anthony. Ron, do you still have your?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, sorry. I can't. Oh, OK. So who's next then?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Anthony and then Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: So combined wards are not common. But Lowell does have combined wards for school committee and just straight ward representation for city council. So, so it is there is a precedent for it.
[Milva McDonald]: Like a year or two ago? Yeah, right. And Lowell, as we know, did that in response to the lawsuit. Okay. Oh, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we have a motion to
[Milva McDonald]: You mean for the text?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah and okay so but right now we're just I'm just going to say a motion to accept option two which I just want to write down so that's boards one seven two three uh four five and six eight am I right about that yeah thank you um a motion to accept that uh uh for the uh as districts for um for the school committee. I second the presentation. OK. OK, we're going to do roll call. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm also a yes. Great. All right. Congratulations.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we may end up voting on some other article items later. But the other one that we have on the agenda is that we started talking about last meeting, the composition of the body for regular charter review. So we decided last time to recommend charter review every first five years from the time that the new charter is ratified, and then after that, every 10 years. So but what we didn't have a chance to thoroughly discuss or agree on is the composition of that body. So have people had a chance to think about it?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the example charter we looked at had it as nine, I believe, nine members. Four appointed by the mayor, four by the city council, and one by the school committee chair. Well, four by the city council president. So I'll just put that text up.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we talked about some things, but we didn't come to any decisions and we were going to continue the discussion tonight. So Eunice and then Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks. So hold that proposal, and I just want to let other people speak, and then we'll come back to it. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. Phyllis and then Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So we have a couple, we have a little bit of discussion and a couple of potential proposals. I got my hand up again. Oh, Phyllis, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: So, okay, so the motion is that this body that we're talking about, the Charter Review Committee, be composed of nine people. Do you wanna be more specific about what you said with the nomination and a review process?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the motion right now on the table is basically just addressing the number of people on the committee. So we could start with that. Yeah, I mean that makes sense to break these things down. Okay, but we don't have a second yet but we also have a couple of comments so Eunice and then Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis, you're muted.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So before we look at the motion for a body of nine.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, go ahead, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So that is basically adding on to Phyllis's motion. Before we go ahead with that, Veron, did you have one more thing to say?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So before we go ahead with that, Anthony, did you have one more comment? He just didn't put his hand down. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we have, so if we just start with the number, we have one proposal on the table for nine and one for 11.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: If it's in the charter, it's going to be that way unless it gets changed. So it's pretty set in stone, I think. I think we should wait. So I don't know what the best way to go about this is, because we have nine or 11.
[Milva McDonald]: On the nine?
[Milva McDonald]: Second? Second. Okay. Aubrey? Yes. Phyllis? Yes. Eunice? Go back to me. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: I already got you Ron, right? Did I get you? No. Okay. Ron is a yes?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm a yes. Phil, Eunice? No. Okay. So we landed at nine. So now the next question is the composition of that or the, the appointments. So Aubrey had proposed three, three, three, three from the mayor, three from the city council president and three from the school committee vice chair.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that's why we said vice chair, right? So if we do it that way, we could, but then those bodies would have to spend time figuring that out. Whereas, you know, it's a quicker appointment process if it's one person, that's all. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: I just wanted to say, I understand the, inclination to make it even between the three bodies of government. But the school committee is so specialized and the school committee, in terms of what's in the charter on the school committee, it's pretty narrow because the school committee is really governed by state law, pretty much the composition of the school committee. is in the charter, and maybe some very general timelines about budget. Nothing really even that specific about budget. So, I don't know. I'm just, I wonder if we should make it equal due to that. Just throwing that out there.
[Milva McDonald]: So 4-3-2 is, I mean, 4-4-1 gives the mayor and the city council equal number of appointments and says to the school committee, we want you to have a representative basically. I mean, 432 says, well, the mayor gets more, I don't know. It's just, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: We got we got. So it's not stressful. Hi, Danielle. We're discussing the composition of the Charter Review Committee, which is going to be nine people. So we're discussing how they are appointed. And three from the mayor, three from the city council president, three from the school committee vice chair was proposed. And then I pointed out that the school committee's role, you know, the school committee is governed by state law. So the charter really only addresses the school committee composition. So my question is, should they have as much input in the pits?
[Milva McDonald]: I second that motion. Okay. All right. Let's vote then. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. Ellis says yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And I'm voting yes. Did I miss anybody? I don't think I did. Okay, so the only thing that we didn't talk about was, I mean, we touched on some of the issues that Eunice brought up in terms of, you know, requiring that they all be residents, requiring, you know, other things. So there was some discussion of that. Eunice, do you want to?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it could, yeah, it could be consistent or we could decide to make it different. I don't know, but I'd have to look back at what we said about multi-member boards. Does anybody remember?
[Milva McDonald]: It depends on whether we say voters. Just to pull up the example text that we looked at says voters. So if we said voters, that would put an age requirement on it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that would be an argument for saying residents instead of voters.
[Milva McDonald]: Does anybody remember what the language of multi-member boards? I'm looking it up here. I remember we, well, we did have a discussion about using that language of voters, but that might've been for running for office.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. We don't say anything about it in the current language we have. We just say that the mayor refers the names to the city council, and then the city council can confirm. or that they go in unless the city council rejects them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. No. I think the answer is we haven't discussed it yet. But we are discussing it now in relation to the charter review body. So, I mean, I guess we could just combine them and say we're going to decide whether we want it to be residents or voters for any multi-member body, which includes this body. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Well, anything in the charter regarding, you know, if there are certain bodies that are governed by state law that would apply. So the charter is really only talking about the bodies that aren't governed by law. So what do we do we think that's a good approach to make this decision for all multi member bodies? Voter or resident?
[Milva McDonald]: I think Collin Center will like, you know, catch that stuff for us.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we have the charter, we have the charter body, the charter review body, but I guess we're kind of morphing, moving into the overall Articles 5 and 9 issues that people might have questions about. So, which units, you said there's a section in there for... I think there
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if we decide we want the charter to say, you know, something about eligibility for serving on these bodies, we can just tell that to the Collins Center and they'll put it in the appropriate spot. Anthony, do you have your hand up? Sorry, I keep asking you. Okay, so. Do does somebody want to make a motion on this or. I mean, as it is right now, if we say nothing about it. I would imagine it's up to the appointing authority, you know, the appointing body. I think what about.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that sounds good. I just want to make one point, which is that I don't think that we are required to put anything about eligibility for these in the charter. We have the appointing authority for multi-member bodies, and if nothing is said, then the appointing authority makes a decision about who to appoint and doesn't have an eligibility requirement to deal with. And I think maybe in the example charter we looked at for the Charter Commission one, they've decided that they wanted that body to be voters, so they put that in that particular section. So I'm just throwing it out there that we can choose not to include it and leave it at the discretion of the appointing authority.
[Milva McDonald]: That I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Frances, I think, is on her phone.
[Milva McDonald]: Must be residents, not voters?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Did we lose Phyllis? Ah, maybe.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm actually going to vote no, because I actually think for this particular thing, they should be voters. But that's OK. So we'll save residents for this.
[Milva McDonald]: And that still passes. Okay. Great. So I think we're done with the unit. I mean, Aubrey, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with that too. But this particular, just to be clear, what we're looking at is just an example text. This isn't our draft necessarily. So what I wanted to do with this, because we didn't have subcommittees that were actually drafting these sections, is make pertinent decisions and then the Collins Center will draft it for us. And actually, I think that periodic review of ordinances was one that I wanted to look at. Because a lot of it is standard language, but this one we probably should decide about. So first of all, are we done with periodic review of charter? I think we are. I mean, there is a timeline here in this particular, I believe this is Melrose's. You know, that's probably standard language. It might be good to keep the timeline in there, but we can let the call-in center put that in for us. Are people okay with that? Yeah, it seems pretty reasonable. Okay, now what about periodic review of ordinances? Do we think every five years is good for that, or is that too often?
[Milva McDonald]: I believe there are. It's not in the charter, I don't think, but does somebody know?
[Milva McDonald]: So whatever the first review of ordinances, if this gets into the charter, will be probably more extensive then. I do notice that the language of this one says some or all of the ordinances of the city, which is interesting. And maybe that makes sense because I don't know, what do people think?
[Milva McDonald]: It's on its code on the city website. And I think it's pretty extensive.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, OK, so do people think that it's a given what Ron just pointed out? Is it necessary to have a periodic review of ordinances in the charter? Oh, yeah, well.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that it's not unusual for it to be in the charter and this wouldn't necessarily be, this is not the city council that's reviewing the ordinances, it's a special committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Eunice, do you have something you want to say?
[Milva McDonald]: So do we like, I mean, does somebody want to propose, do we like five-year intervals? That's pretty, does that seem like pretty often or?
[Milva McDonald]: If we have the charter every 10 years after the first
[Milva McDonald]: Sounds good. Just to be my own devil's advocate, I'll say given that this has some or all doing it every five years could maybe be more productive because you could Maybe, you know, I don't know. I'm just, you could cover what you didn't cover five years earlier. I don't, I mean, just throwing that out there. But I think 10 years is sufficient too.
[Milva McDonald]: At that five year interval, they'll do that. And then the next five years. Yeah. Okay. Um, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: And this particular text from this charter has this special committee established by ordinance. So It would be sort of handing over the responsibility of deciding how many people and all that to the ordinance. The only requirement I see in here is voters, backed voters.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, as opposed to. one that is created so you don't like the ordinance language?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. They would just be a one. I think I read this as an ad hoc committee. Once they do the review, they're done until five years later, and then it's a new committee.
[Milva McDonald]: That's true. So what do we want to do about this? Do we want to... Tell the call center we would like a periodic review of ordinances section or. I think I think I heard agreement on that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but the mayor, you know, is involved because. But the yeah. two-thirds vote they can so yeah it's do we know how long it takes to review ordinances no but i but we're but we're surmising that that's one of the reasons it says some or all because um because it would may be too big of a task to actually review all of them um do we know
[Milva McDonald]: I don't I don't really understand the process, you know, based on this particular text example that we're looking at. The committee is established by ordinance. They file a report with the city clerk at a date specified by the ordinance, which is basically just recommendations. But they are also under the supervision of the city solicitor. So they work with the city solicitor to make the recommendations. And then they present those recommendations just like we're doing. I mean, I don't think that they have any authority to change any ordinances because they're not legislators, but it's basically an advisory body.
[Milva McDonald]: Which would be the city solicitor based on the way this particular Melrose's section is written anyway. Do we have any motions on this or do we want to?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the Collins Center won't craft. They can craft this if we tell them what we want. They're not going to say you should have a periodic review. They'll just give us information, but they won't draft anything. I mean, they might give us a memo on how common is it. I mean, is that's what you're looking for? Like, how common is it for communities to have periodic reviews of ordinances? How does it usually work?
[Milva McDonald]: And that said, this, if we put this in the charter, this is an ordinance review by a body that's not the city council. So it's basically like another set of eyes on the city ordinances. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anybody want to second that?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice. Eunice says yes. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm also a no, because I'm also okay moving forward, but the motion carries. So that means, so that's leading me into the next, so we have about a half an hour left and there are some other, I know that there's some issues that people want to discuss in Articles 5, 9, and 10. Our next scheduled meeting would be 4th of July. We will not have a meeting then. My hope, well, was that we would finalize things tonight and the Collins Center said they will take a few weeks. Then within the next few weeks, I would get a draft charter to everybody on the committee from the Collins Center. Then we would reconvene in August and September to go over that draft with the Collins Center and finalize it. Since we're not going to finish tonight, I'm going to propose that we have another meeting in June.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have this. We have this that we just voted on getting more information on. And potentially whatever, I know that there are some, I was about to ask what other areas of those three articles that we haven't extensively gone through and drafted that people wanted to talk about. And I know that there are some issues. So we could look at that and possibly finish it in half an hour, but we definitely won't get the ordinance review taken care of because we just voted to ask for more information on it.
[Milva McDonald]: City clerk, I think we addressed in Article 2. I'm just talking about what I've seen.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I guess I think my preference would be to keep it minimal and general and not define the bodies in the charter, because we know that changing the charter is a pretty big deal.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think the con is that you can't change it easily when it's in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. I believe the three that they gave us don't. And I think that, so I think that they, that, you know, and when they gave us the example to sort of template, they called it the generic modern charter. So my understanding is that we're looking at, is that they're, they're giving us sort of the most, the most recent kind of modern charter, which is, maybe more broad so that it defines things, but it gives the electeds leeway to change those departments if they need to be changed or whatever. That's my understanding, but... No, I see your point. Yeah. Does anybody else have any thought about this particular section, which the example that we have, it is very short and it's pretty boilerplate language. Obviously, we would change Alderman, that was from another charter, but as opposed to the other option of defining different agencies within this section, which would require a good bit of work on our part to look at, you know, and which ones would we define? That's the other question, if we did that. Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, any other thoughts? Any, just any, I mean, Do we want to just say the call-in center, we're good with the boilerplate language of Article 5, or do we want to explore more deeply defining different agencies in this section?
[Milva McDonald]: So the motion, uh, tell me if we're on, if this represents your motion, um, to ask Colin century to draft article five using standard language.
[Milva McDonald]: That's right. We can add Article 1 to that, too. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Eunice? No. Danielle? Yes. I say yes. Okay, great. So that leaves us with Article 9. We've already looked at, I mean, this is all very boilerplate language, but I guess, We looked at the charter review body. We've already taken care of that. And so what I had asked people to do was to look this over and bring up any issues. So now's your time to bring them up.
[Milva McDonald]: Can you tell me what section? And I'll pull up the section.
[Milva McDonald]: So, can I propose something? Sure. So, we're going to have to have another meeting in June. Where we're going to look at the periodic review of ordinances. My proposal is that we use our next, say, 10 minutes to. get down on paper what sections in addition to the periodic review of ordinances that we want to look at, study, and learn about so that we can decide on them at the next meeting we're going to have in a couple of weeks. Does that make sense? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: How about you tell us which sections you want to look at so we can, so we have, we're going to, we're going to look at section nine, four. So that's ordinances.
[Milva McDonald]: Section 9-3, which is rules and regulations.
[Milva McDonald]: Section 9-6, which is proceed multi-member bodies.
[Milva McDonald]: So maybe we can cross one of those off the list right now if you want to. Like, for instance, computation of time is probably a quickie.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So one of the things the Collins Center does when they review our drafts and then draft the other articles is that they'll make sure they'll look for consistency of language and things like that. So I don't think we have to worry so much about that because we're so fortunate to have the Collins Center. basically being a good editor that way. Wait, can I just ask, does that mean we can cross that off the list? Oh, yeah. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So let's, I'm just trying to call that up. So it's a document in.
[Milva McDonald]: What is the name of the document? Oh, Article 1, 5, 9, 10. Okay. Oh, Phyllis is back. Hi, Phyllis. Okay, so what you've done here is you've put a bunch of examples of other charters. Right. Okay. Okay, so Right now, what I have is that we can all have access to that document. And we're going to have another meeting in June to discuss sections 9-3, 9-4, 9-6, and 9-9, and also a question of whether to add a section on public comment. And ethics.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I'm guessing that's, I think I agree with Aubrey that that's in state law. I'll do a little bit more digging on that. Okay. I don't know. Eunice, do you think your questions or issues on any of those are basic enough that we could do them in 5-10 minutes? Can we cross one of them off the list?
[Milva McDonald]: Right now, multi-member bodies is 9-6. So right now, I mean, this particular, Let me just call it up. The example that we have is Melrose. But the question for us is, what specific things do we want in that section? So this is pretty boilerplate, this section A. And so which section were you? I'm sorry, Eunice, can you repeat what you said you wanted to look at?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Or we just decide that if the committee decides they want to do that, then we can just tell the call center that we want to add that. So basically what you want is you want a residency requirement for multi-member bodies. Correct. Okay, so resident as opposed because we've had this discussion resident versus voter. Well, resident as in
[Milva McDonald]: You know, and I see a note from Frances in the chat, because she, remember, we had a question for her, and she heard her name, but she couldn't unmute, but now she maybe can unmute, and I think our question was related to this, right, for Frances?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Aubrey, did you have your hand up?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. For particular bodies, like for instance, yeah, so. So Eunice, I mean, did you want, so we've had a discussion about should we add the requirement that you're talking about in section 96, the uniform procedures governing multiple member bodies. Do you want to make a motion or?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Aubrey, did you want to?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Aubrey and then Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Aubrey. So Anthony, and then we got to wrap this up, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So we've had a good discussion. Eunice, do you want to make a motion or how do we want, do we want to?
[Milva McDonald]: And I think the intent is for these bodies to be filled with Medford residents. So in the case that it wouldn't happen, it would be rare. But yeah, so. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to vote on that?
[Milva McDonald]: Wherever possible is very vague. I don't, I mean, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: It sounds vague to me, but I don't know what it means. Like if I read that, I would be like, I don't know what that exactly means, but I mean.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sorry, I just, I really do it. We do have to end in two minutes. So let's keep this on the list and let's put it, let's finish this discussion at our next meeting. Okay, so let's schedule that. I would like to propose that today is June 6th. I would like to propose June 20th. How are people with that? 20th. To wrap everything up? That's a Thursday evening, right? Yeah, or next week. We could do June 13th.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, but not on Thursday, right? As far as I know, not on Thursday. Yeah, I'd go for the 13th. Okay. Do we have other people that can do the 13th? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I know. I know. I'm getting to that. So I will send out an agenda. We will wrap everything up next week. And then the other thing we have to talk about is we're going to skip July. Once we wrap up next week, you should have a draft charter to read, and then we'll reconvene in August. But I do want to form a subcommittee to work on the final report. So does anybody at the top of their head want to be involved on that subcommittee?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we'll we'll talk about it again next week. Just I just wanted to see if anybody knows they want to do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Awesome. Do we have any members of the public that would like to speak? No? Okay. All right. Thank you so much, and I will see you in a week, and we will wrap up these final questions. Second? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, welcome everyone to the May 16, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. Our first order of business is to accept or review the minutes from our last meeting, May 2nd. Did everyone have a chance to look those over?
[Milva McDonald]: I second. All in favor? Aye. Great. OK. Now, our first item is to look at Article 8. Let's do that. Let's do it. I know there is something from Article 4, the combined awards that we want to discuss, but let's wait until Aubrey gets here for that. OK. Did people have a chance to go? Here's Aubrey. Did people have a chance to look over Article 8? Mm-hmm.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. It basically is. I mean, most of the language, yes, was taken and adapted language that we've seen in other charters. So the main issues that the subcommittee wanted to look at with the whole committee were the timelines. Assuming, of course, that no 1 on the committee has an issue with, including any of these provisions that. The subcommittee thought would be a good idea to include such as free petition, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, I'm going to yeah. Um, so. For instance, for this first, and Eunice, thank you very much, Eunice, did a lot of research on comparing kind of what the thresholds and the timelines are for these processes and other charters. So for this particular, and the subcommittee, when we met, we found that this sort of goes through different levels, right? So this is like the first level. So it has the lowest threshold. It basically allows people to submit a petition to have something put on the agenda for one of the elected bodies. And so what's in blue are the timelines and the thresholds.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, yeah, of course, ideally, this wouldn't be needed. But if it were, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's a good point.
[Milva McDonald]: And even if you're going in June 1st, say, I mean, I think May would probably be a bigger problem. mid-August, no, mid-September, right?
[Milva McDonald]: May 1st would put you in mid-July, but there would be time before that. I see what you're saying.
[Milva McDonald]: Do you want to make a proposal to change that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, and then the number of signatures. Eunice, your note says other charters require as few as 25 and as many as 150. Right. I think we landed at 150. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So do you want to make a proposal to lower this 50 voter threshold? Yes, proposal to lower it to 25. Okay, but call it a motion.
[Milva McDonald]: It is low. I think it's probably pretty easy to get 25 signatures. Yeah, I mean. But this is, you know, this particular, this has the lowest threshold of anything in this article because it really, all it is is to get something basically on the agenda, to get it to have, to have it be discussed. So, I mean, there are much higher thresholds for other things, but if you want to, I guess, So if Eunice's, hang on, sorry, I just want to make Phyllis a co-host so she can.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, based on our review of other charters. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, we have no hearings shall be required on the same content more than one time a year.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, did you want to respond?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So we have, we had three sort of, uh, Eunice suggests, uh, made a motion for 25. Paulette countered and said, how about 40? And then, uh, Ron's suggestion was 50 city council, 25 school committee. So, um, can we just, shall we, I mean, none of those have been seconded or so, how do we want to handle this? Eunice, do you want to, I mean, does anybody want to second Eunice's motion? Then we vote or do we need more discussion on it?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So the motion is to change the number of signatures required for this particular mechanism, free petition from 50 to 25. Eunice? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And there's I'm sharing screen so I can't see everybody. What did I miss? You? Yeah, everybody but me. Yep. Okay. I'll vote yes. Okay, so. So that will be lowered to 25.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it has to capture addresses because that's what it says. Generally, the city clerk would verify the addresses. and verify that they were actually registered voters.
[Milva McDonald]: This is a question we can ask the Collins Center. I mean, it could be an official petition, but, you know, that wouldn't necessarily mean it would have, I mean, these particular issues, like let's say you were doing this one, you wouldn't have an official form unless there was a form that sort of left the part blank where you would write in what the petition was about.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, you're right.
[Milva McDonald]: But we can ask the call-in center about that.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think they would.
[Milva McDonald]: That's how we envision that this would be used. It doesn't specifically say that here, but that's what the intent is. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you, Graham. The next section is about citizen initiative measures. Here's Genia. We have certain thresholds and timelines in there and included in the comments is all the research that Eunice did on other communities so that people could get a sense of where the subcommittees landed in relationship to that, and also in case anybody thinks maybe there should be tweaking. So does anybody have any questions or comments or proposals for this part?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, and there is a process after the petition. There's a referral to the city solicitor to review it. The processes get more involved as you go. That's why I asked people to read this and see if you had any issues with that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so go ahead. Was that you, Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: As you can see from Eunice's notes of quite a few communities, there's a wide range. A few, they really only have three, Peabody, Malden, and Waltham, that's interesting. And then some, Newton is 50, and then some say a percentage of registered voters, which would be quite a bit. And some of the other things later in the article, the threshold just keeps getting higher. So for this particular threshold, this is just the first step.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And I do think that Aubrey is right that this would eventually, if it went through all the channels, would go on the ballot. This is basically a way to pass an ordinance without the city council, essentially. That's how I read it.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette, did you have your hand raised?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't see that this is going to the city council. This is an initiative measure. This is giving the citizens the ability to, the mechanism to pass an initiative. But, so the city, it will actually go to the city council. They can either pass it without change, pass a measure stated to be in lieu of the initiative measure or reject it. And Ron, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's section D. But then there's recourse if it's rejected. And that's the next level.
[Milva McDonald]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so Eunice, did you want to make a motion on that?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so, because it, um, it's represents that the signatures have to be from around the city. Go ahead, Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, yeah. I mean, ultimately, It would get voted on by the city council and if the city council rejects it, then the bar to actually get it on the ballot and basically override the city council is pretty high. But Milva, it couldn't go to the city council if it didn't have those numbers. Well, it could go to the city council with this initial threshold that we're talking about right now.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I think if they approve it, then it passes as an ordinance. And if they reject it, then the people who started it can try to get it passed again by using the next level of signatures and then a ballot on the ballot. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: I thought it was. I thought it was 50, but it might be 100. It might be 100. OK. OK, thank you. I think I don't think it's more than 50 or 100, though.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and we did that in the elections, Article 7. Ron, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, so Eunice made a motion. Did we have a second?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the motion on the table is to lower the threshold for commencement of an initiative petition to 200 voters, at least 20 from each ward. So, Eunice. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey. Yes. Danielle. Yes. Who am I missing? Phyllis. Yes. I will vote yes. I think that's everybody. Did I miss? No.
[Milva McDonald]: You got everyone. The next level is, Let's see, there was something in the 10%. I think, Eunice, you don't have any notes on this one, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know the exact number, but I think it's approximately 40,000. Does that sound right to anybody who? I think that's approximately the number of registered voters.
[Milva McDonald]: We don't have anything in the charter. It would have to be based on mass general laws.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I remember. OK, Danielle, did you have something you wanted to ask or say?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Eunice, are you wanting to lower the 10%?
[Milva McDonald]: Does anybody want to second that?
[Milva McDonald]: The commencement will require 200 signatures, then the city solicitor says yes or no, this is legal or okay. Then once the city solicitor says it's in a proper form, the clerk gives new forms to get signed by 10 percent, but the proposal is to lower it to five percent.
[Milva McDonald]: And then after that, and then they can be, there would be action on the petitions with the city council and the school committee. So just so, so it's, it's pretty high threshold to do this. Uh, Paula. Yeah. Could you just go back to the one, the paragraph before this, the commencement or the referral? No, no. The sec, the B. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so if the city solicitor says that this is okay, this is in proper form, then the signers go, or the people who are trying to get this to pass, go out and get 10% or Unisys proposing 5%. Right, right.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Someone else has their hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: No, first the city solicitor looks at it and determines whether it's legal.
[Milva McDonald]: Then you go to the next level of what we are talking about now, the 10 percent and the proposal on the table is to lower that to 5 percent. Then you have to get all those signatures before it goes to the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: As of now, it would be more like 4,200, but Eunice is proposing it be lowered to about 2,000.
[Milva McDonald]: It goes to the city council. They either vote it and then it becomes an ordinance or they vote it down. And then it's either it's over or the charter, as it's proposed, gives the option of collecting still more signatures to get it on the ballot. but that's the next level, so we haven't gotten there yet, and we have a lot to get through in this section, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, gotcha. So, Eunice made a motion to lower the thresholds for Section C of the initiative petition from 10% to 5%. Did somebody second? Second.
[Milva McDonald]: And then going to the- Well, we didn't see that in any of the other charters we looked at. And I, you know, I think if it were a problem, the call and tender will flag it, but we didn't see that. We didn't see that distinction. So.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, Okay, so now we're going to vote on lowering this from 10% to 5%. Eunice? Yes. Ron? No. Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Aubrey? Yes. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, I will also vote yes. So this is down to five. Okay. The next threshold, this is basically saying that if the petition, if the people get the signatures, then the city council and school committee have to act on it. And this next threshold is if they vote it down and it's rejected, then not more than 60 days later, there's an opportunity to do a supplementary petition. Paulette, did you have your hand raised?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so these numbers we probably do these and they were also sort of based on the number before, so they would have to get. Additional voters that are not five, that is not a number of additional voters, not less than 5% of the total number of voters as of the date of the most recent city election. And when you add up the signatures from C, which was 10, but is now five, and this, you get not less than 15%. So the total threshold is 15%, but that includes the signatures that have already been elected. So does this need to change to? Well, either it has to change to at least as little as 10, we just have to automatically change that because we changed the other by five. So we've already lowered this effectively with our last vote. So this would mean that in order to override a no vote, you would have to, your total number that you end up having to get would be at about 4,200.
[Milva McDonald]: It is significant, yes. I'm just trying to figure out if we need to lower the five too. I don't, I don't know. Because, you know, we want the numbers to. I think, I think the numbers will be okay. I think the reason that before we had 10% and then we have five and 15 maybe to give a little leeway. But, all right. And then what happens is if those signatures are collected, it would go on the ballot.
[Milva McDonald]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: This could, this is not, yes, in this case, Yes, but this is just for a municipal ordinance. And the city solicitor will have reviewed it to see if it's something that could do that. So I think, are we in agreement that we don't need to make any changes to this or does anybody wanna change these numbers?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that's a good question. And I don't really know. I mean, I think that probably it's very limited because schools are so, you know, they're very regulated, and there's a lot of laws about how they operate. So I think it's probably a limited power anyway.
[Milva McDonald]: Put it on the ballot, yes. It would still have to get voted on by all the people in the city.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we're putting a mechanism in the charter so that people can do that. It's a process. It's not easy.
[Milva McDonald]: But the majority of people would still have to vote on it. And I don't know, the city solicitor would have to have said, yes, this would be a legal ordinance or policy. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, yeah, and I think that would be the job of the city solicitor to ensure there's no conflicts, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Okay. So the next section is even more complex. And this is about citizen referendums. So this would basically allow you to protest an ordinance or a measure that was passed, right? Is that what you're recalling, Ron and Eunice? I think so.
[Milva McDonald]: So this section, if not more than 21 days following the date on which the city council and school committee votes to approve of a measure, a position signed by a number of voters amounting to not less than, as of now, 12% protest the measure.
[Milva McDonald]: These are high thresholds. We're already on the low end, very low end. Yeah. But 12% is... Probably getting up there to 5,000.
[Milva McDonald]: So what this is saying is that 5,000 signatures can temporarily suspend an ordinance, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Each section? No, that's number of days. Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry, wait, I don't see it here. Did you, maybe you didn't. Section, number of days for a petition to reconsider to be put forth. Okay, so we have not more than 21. So we're pretty much- You're on the money there. You're on the money there, but we don't know about the 12%, but 12% would come out to about, 6,000 is my math. I mean, my head is, 10% is 4,000.
[Milva McDonald]: It's about 4,500. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Even like, even making the clerk, that might be hard. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: We are saying that the people could, I don't know if, like I said, all of this would have to be eligible for that, right? So it could be that, but I think, I think the answer is yes, more or less. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: It would be temporarily suspended and then the body would reconsider its vote and choose to rescind it or not. And if they don't rescind it, then it goes to the voters at a special election. or at the next regular city election.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that what you want to make a motion on?
[Milva McDonald]: Does anybody second? I'll second it. Eunice? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette? No. Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony? No. Phyllis? No. And I'm missing one person. That's me.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle, thank you. Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I'm also going to be no on this one. Okay, so this one is going to stay at 12%. Okay, there's also a bunch of this whole section about ineligible measures. And which outlines things that this provision cannot be used for. Okay, now we come to the biggie recall. So, you know, the subcommittee had a pretty long discussions about recall, but there was agreements that we wanted to include recall provisions. So, does anybody have any proposals on this section or thoughts or questions? Eunice, is your hand up?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. I think there was one comment that Jean made.
[Milva McDonald]: That was a while ago. Do you remember if we discussed that in our subcommittee? I feel like we did.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we were, I think we, I think we resolved it anyway. Okay. So are we. Oh, that's this is another thing that's related to some of the things we've been talking about, but. For those initiative procedures that we talked about. they have to be at least 20% of the registered voters, which means that a small number of people, if they get something on a ballot, can't just all show up with only 1,000 people or whatever and pass something. So there's a required level of voter participation. So it's pretty, it's definitely a big lift. I mean, what we wanted was to give people these rights and these options, but it's not simple to overturn an ordinance or anything like that. So no questions and no changes on the recall section? None from me. Great. And... These were basically just boilerplate. All right. I think we've gone through this section. Motion to approve. Okay. Second?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Eunice? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette? Yes. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Dania?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. And Anthony. And I'm yes. Yay. All right. So there's eight.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. And four, except we do have the outstanding, which I think before we, we do have to go to six, but I want to just touch on that leftover issue from article four of the combined awards. Can we talk about four since it wasn't on the agenda? Um, Well, are we holding up from the next meeting?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I wasn't aware that that was going to happen.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll try to get more information from the Collins Center.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it's because we're writing a draft charter and it would be part of the charter, but
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, we're going to take that up at the next meeting and I'll try to get more information from the call center. Okay, so on so article 6, before we get into the text, I just wanted to say gene. As we had voted on, she did look into. moving the ability for the city council to move money in the budget, and the subcommittee briefly met on it, and Gene wanted to put this forth for inclusion in the final report, to include this as a recommendation in the final report, not in the charter, just in our final report. Basically, what she found was there are other states, notably Alabama and California, that allow most municipalities to have their city council, their municipal bodies move money in the budget, and then there were also a few cities like Seattle and Honolulu are the ones I remember so city. I think it's all like city. Yeah. So it's not unheard of. It is unheard of in Massachusetts and a large reason for that. could be because it's outlined, prohibited in Massachusetts general laws. So the recommendation is not to change, to try to put it into our draft charter, but to include this in the final report and recommend that.
[Milva McDonald]: that the next charter review include a more in-depth analysis of budgeting options for Medford, including a review of the status of budgeting under the new budget ordinance, ability to include participatory budgeting, and options for city council to increase or amend budget lines. So basically, we would be recommending, we would be saying that based on our research and our investigation and our discussion, we are not including that in this charter, but we are recommending that the next charter review look at it more deeply.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I'm going to make the motion on Jean's behalf because she wanted to propose that we include this in the final report.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Paulette. Yes. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette? Yes. Aubrey? Oh, I'm sorry, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we're actually going to be talking about in a couple of minutes in relation to something else in this chapter. In this article, I mean. Who did I miss? Me, Phyllis. Phyllis. Me too. And Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: And Phyllis is also a yes?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, and I'll be a yes too. Sorry, it's just... When I'm sharing screen. I can't see everybody. So that's why Don't worry about that. Okay. Okay, so now article six. The one thing that I wanted to bring up is that this first annual budget meeting. We saw this in Not all of the other chart. The three main charters we're looking at, not all of them have this, but two of them, I believe, did. Rose and Pittsfield did. Yeah. We wanted to include it. The other thing the subcommittee did was go talk to the administration just to make sure that the proposals here would be feasible. They expressed skepticism that they could accomplish this particular section here. especially given that there is a budget ordinance that is, I believe it's already passed, Eunice? Yes. It is. It's very detailed and it lays out a lot of requirements. I think that's where the concern comes from. Now, this charter would supersede anything in an ordinance. However, I think there's concern about Well, having to comply with the ordinance and this if there's a conflict. So when the subcommittee met, there was resistance to removing this from the charter. So one of the proposals was to maybe just take out that language in purple. Here, let me make this bigger. And maybe that would sort of help. So Eunice, you said you've done some more research.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, I guess I'm surprised that only five out of the 30 have this.
[Milva McDonald]: I would say so. Thank you, Eunice. Any other thoughts about this? Go ahead. So the keys here are that the administration is concerned about being able to meet this requirement and five out of 30 charters we looked at have it, but 25 don't. And there's a sort of a strong desire or a strong feeling that getting the three bodies of government together and to in this participatory way would be a good thing. Paula?
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's the time and it's also the other requirements because there's very specific requirements that the administration will have to comply with at laid out in the budget ordinance. And so it might, so there's also that.
[Milva McDonald]: There was a subcommittee meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Aubrey, did you have a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, so, um, thank you. Let's see. Somebody else has their hand up. And Ron, did you guys want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Paulette, did you have something you want to say?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to make a proposal that we adopt this and say to review the financial condition of the city and share relevant information. It's in the comment there.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it just says to review that the three bodies, yeah, to review the financial condition of the city and share relevant information. So that's my motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Eunice? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Danielle? Yes. Phyllis? Yes. And I'll vote yes. Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yes, I'm really sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So I thought I had counted eight, but I must have only counted seven. Okay, great. Sorry about that. Thank you for keeping me honest, everyone. Okay, so the next sections are, they're pretty boilerplate. It just has to do with the timeline of the submission of the budget. And, you know, did everyone have a chance to look at that?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, yes, that's true. This is a pretty, this is just a very basic timeline.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, they have to comply no matter what with the end of the fiscal, what was it, June 30th? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. So it's not like they can, you know, I mean, there are, so everything that we looked at was, you know, we considered that, we considered that. Basically, this is a very basic, Outline, but if you think it shouldn't be included. I mean, the other piece was the capital improvement. Which we recommended every 3 years.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that could be hard. But, you know, What's the alternative that we do it? I mean, we decided doing it more frequently would be sort of a hardship because it's a pretty big deal to put together, and it's not really necessary to do it every year, and maybe four years might be too long. I don't know. Unless you think differently, it would be good to hear.
[Milva McDonald]: every, so the third year of every mayoral term? Is that what you're saying?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, I guess no matter what, a new mayor still has to submit a budget even though they're a new mayor. The only thing that can happen is that their first budget happens to fall on the capital improvement year as well. That's the concern?
[Milva McDonald]: The proposal is that this language be changed to,
[Milva McDonald]: My feeling is that that complicates things unnecessarily, but if that's a proposal that you wanna make and we'll vote on it.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think there's a requirement. And there were some charters we looked at that did it every year, but definitely not all. And it doesn't seem necessary every year. So that's why we didn't put every year.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so are you making that motion, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Of the mayor's term or the mayoral term?
[Milva McDonald]: The mayor's current term, okay. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's the motion on the table. We got it seconded? I'll second it. Okay, great. Okay, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice. Yes. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey. Yes. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Danielle. No. I got Phyllis, right? Thank you, Paula. Yes. Okay, I'm voting no, but it passes. So we will change that. Within the first two years of the mayor's term.
[Milva McDonald]: Years of the mayor's term. Okay. Okay. Any other things that we want to revisit in this section, in this article, or that's pretty much the end of it?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm good. Okay. Are we ready to vote on this?
[Milva McDonald]: Second? Second. Okay. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: No, we voted just to put this in the final report. So it's not in the draft charter.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Eunice. Yes. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. Yes. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Aubrey? Yes. And I'll be yes.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we did one, no, two, three, four, six, seven, eight. I don't think we've done four yet. Didn't we do four? Or did we not? I don't know. No, I think- Or it's pending.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8. Okay, so we have not much time left, but I just want to clarify. So I sent that document out. I didn't do Article 1. Article 1 is definitions, and I think that the Collins Center is going to draft that for us. And the Collins Center is also going to draft 5, 9, and 10, but I just wanted to give examples of kind of what's in those to see what people want to, because what we're going to need to do is, we're going to need to tell the call-in center, please drop these sections for us, and this is, these are the key, you know, this is the key information that you need to include.
[Milva McDonald]: Did anybody have a chance to look at it? It's very common for the regular charter review to be outlined as every 10 years. I would like to make a proposal that we say that the charter is reviewed five years from the adoption of this charter and every 10 years thereafter. just because it's been so long? That was exactly what I was thinking too. Okay. Good. That means you're going to second it?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Do we want to have any discussion on that? I have a question.
[Milva McDonald]: It would probably look a lot like what we're doing now.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point. I mean, chances are, yeah, they won't have to, yeah, they will maybe be, it will be quicker because they won't be writing a whole new charter, hopefully.
[Milva McDonald]: So just to look at kind of the typical language for this section that we've seen in other charters. at 10 year intervals and each year ending in a five, the mayor city council and school committee shall provide for a review to be made of the city charter. So that's the one thing that we have to decide is the timing, but then there's also this language here about who does the review. And this particular language suggests that it's a, well, should we vote on the timing first and then vote on the other piece or discuss the other piece?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I'm sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Okay. Anthony, yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Okay. Paulette? Yes. Danielle? Yes. Phyllis? Yes. I'll vote yes. Now, this example language has a nine-member committee, all of whom shall be voters, four from the mayor, four from the city council, Is that what it says? Yeah. And one from the school committee by the school committee chair and the city council president. What do people think about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, that's a good point. So, what do people think in general? Go ahead, Anthony. I have a question.
[Milva McDonald]: That's only under Chapter 43B if signatures are collected.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, theoretically, maybe you could put it into the charter that this committee would be elected. I guess theoretically, that could be possible.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I don't, this, like I said, this, I just, I think this is Melrose and I just, You know, this is not anything that we discussed or decided on. It's just an example of how it could work.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, we can yeah, so 11. What about me? I just want to say one more thing that there's nothing restricting in this restricting the any of these bodies from appointing someone from the council or school committee to be on the committee, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Two plus cents. We have very little time, so I think what I'm going to say is, for the next meeting, please think about the composition of this particular body and what we want to decide about that, and we'll decide that at the next meeting. Were there any other parts of these sections that people want us to discuss and vote on?
[Milva McDonald]: What I want people to do is for the next meeting, think about the composition of this Charter Review Committee, any of the other sections of these outstanding articles that you want to discuss. bring proposals and we will discuss them. Whatever notes you made, turn them into actual proposals that we can discuss at the next meeting. Next meeting, we're going to wrap up Article 4, and hopefully we're going to wrap up these other articles by going through those points. If we do that, We will have enough material to hand over to the call and center and then we can talk about how we're going to structure creating the final report, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: If you want to do that, then bring the proposal about how you want to do it for next meeting. Sound good? Okay. Before we wrap up, are there any members of the public that would like to speak? Please raise your hand. Okay. I think we have four minutes. We can always use four minutes, but I think we have our work cut out for us for next meeting. And the other thing we'll do at the next meeting is determine whether we need extra meetings this summer. And if we are effective, I think we won't, so. That would be great.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. People got the example final reports I sent out, right? Yep. That just gives you an idea of the document we're going to have to come up with as a companion to the draft charter, which we're coming up with. Then we'll have to do a presentation to the city council. Once we wrap up next meeting, we will spend a few months getting that final report together and then we will hand our work off and hope that it flies.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we'll discuss that next. I mean, I think a lot of it is going to depend on, because I know people are busy in the summer and things, and I think a lot of it's going to depend on how we structure the work of creating the final report and how many people want to be involved in that and what roles people want to take. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay. Awesome. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. All in favor. Yes. Bye bye. Thanks everyone.
[Milva McDonald]: the meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee, Article 6, Financial Procedures Subcommittee. This doesn't have to be a long meeting. We basically have two items on the agenda. One is to look at Gene's research and the other is to just go over some of the feedback we got from the administration about the section of the article six about the annual budget meeting. So should we do that first? Because I think it's pretty quick. Yeah. So let's see. Let me just pull it up so that people can see exactly what section we're talking about. So one of the things that we had talked about when we put together this draft was to meet with the administration and just run it by them to see what the timelines, you know, if the timelines were feasible. So what I've heard from the chief of staff, Maury and I met with her and she said she wasn't sure. And she talked further with the mayor and the chief financial officer. And they think that this, they're worried about this section. And I think part of the reason is because they have this budget ordinance. And they're worried that there's a lot of detail in the budget ordinance and that this might be hard to do in conjunction with everything that they're going to have to do with the budget ordinance. So if we did keep this in, this would supersede the budget ordinance, however, and that could create a weird situation. So, I mean, we haven't on the agenda to talk about with the whole committee tomorrow night. So I guess, you know, I'll just put this forward when we talk about this article, but I just wanted us to sort of look it over and see if we think, what we think about it.
[Milva McDonald]: They didn't say, you know, what the recommendation is. They just said that this as written would not work. So, I mean, we This is in the three charters we looked at.
[Milva McDonald]: But I think that this particular annual budget meeting was only in Melrose, but we should look again. Do you remember it being in all three charters?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I could be wrong. I want to kind of look now.
[Milva McDonald]: Who'd let me just let me just take a look because I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure it was only Melrose of those three, but I could be wrong. Go ahead. Keep talking.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if we should mention the budget ordinance in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. The question is the reason for that. I think that the concern is, based on the requirements in the budget ordinance and the timeline of this and what it requires the administration to do. That's what they're worried about. I can't find that document right now, but I'll check for tomorrow night to find out if all three charters have this. I really think it was only Melrose that had this.
[Milva McDonald]: What I'm thinking is that maybe some of this language, like revenue and expenditure forecasts. Like, maybe if we just edited it to say. To review to review the financial condition of the city can mean a lot of things. And. We could just say end it there or take, I think the forecasts are a little like, oh, that implies that there has to be a lot of material put together that maybe there's a concern that it's not going to be available. What do you guys think about that?
[Milva McDonald]: It does, and I think that the concern was that this, even though it's just one annual budget meeting, that it could sort of interface weirdly with all those requirements in the ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, for all three branches?
[Milva McDonald]: So, so no earlier than 100 days before the beginning, no later than 60 days before the beginning of the fiscal year puts us in, uh,
[Milva McDonald]: And when do those preliminary budget meetings start? They start in April? From April 15th to May 15th is what the ordinance says. So this would come before that?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, what do you all think about my suggestion, just to change the language a bit? Just because I think that it's important to try to respond to the feedback we got. What's your proposal, Melvin? Just take out, it's in the comments there. I don't know if you can see it. It's basically to just take out to review revenue and expenditure forecast, which is the most specific thing in there, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So basically I think then as it would read, it would say that the three bodies would have a meeting to review the financial condition of the city and that the mayor could share whatever information the administration had in order to develop a coordinated budget. So it's sort of like a preview meeting, right?
[Milva McDonald]: That would be covered under review of the financial condition of the city.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I don't know. It's just an idea because that takes away. Are they twisting your arm, Milva? No. I just don't want to include something that they say is potentially not feasible. And I'm thinking that the meeting in and of itself, I think that the word about preparing, you know, like the revenue, to me, it's the line revenue and expenditure forecast, because that would require a lot of information and a lot of preparation and a lot of maybe information that they feel they don't have.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I think that that could happen. I mean, like I said, if we take out that particular, those really only four words, um, then it just leaves it much more open. I mean, it's still a budget meeting, so that's specific. And it still says that the financial condition of the city will be reviewed, but it's general and open-ended in terms of what information is going to be shared. But the goal of whatever is shared is to develop a coordinated budget, which as I read it, coordinated among the departments of the city and the school side, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I'm just going to what's already highlighted. So I'll put it in a different color. And then we'll, you know, we'll share this with the whole committee tomorrow. All right. There. That's not the best color. It's too dark. All right. Sorry. Need a lighter blue. Okay, so we can move on from this to the other item on our agenda. Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: I think sometimes it's hard. I think municipalities sometimes don't have the most updated websites. And I don't know. That might be why, too. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I just have an aside to that?
[Milva McDonald]: So Boston, when they got the permission to give City Council that power. I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. It was a ballot question and it passed, but also on the ballot question was the formation of a participatory budgeting office. So I thought it was interesting because you couldn't really, I mean, I think most people were probably voting for the participatory budget office for sure. Right. And I don't know how far they've gotten on it, because I think it was just to set aside a certain amount of money to start that office. So I don't know if they're actually, how far along they are on actually doing the participatory budgeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and then, I mean, the issue of the participatory budgeting is related, but separate, because Cambridge, they have participatory budgeting. Do you know how long they've been doing that? No, I did put their- Well, and, but they can't, but they still follow the rules of the Massachusetts General Laws, where the city council can only, so I wonder how that works, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So thank you for doing this, Jean. And do we want to have some discussion on it? Eunice and Maury, do you have any?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I just want to, you know, also just bring in the reminder that this would be basically if it were included in the charter and we tried to send it to the state house, it would, we would be asking for an exception to state law, basically. And as we've discussed, we wanna make the charter as successful as possible. And I have ambivalence about putting something in the charter that is in conflict with state law at this point.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Interestingly, the process that they were trying to use was a provision where there are certain amendments that can be made to the charter that they could send to the attorney general. as opposed to having to do it through a special act. So they considered this to be one of those because I believe the parameters are, if it's not a change to the elected bodies or whatever, terms of office, things like that. But I remember at one point having a meeting with the Collins Center, I think it was at one of our meetings, where the Collins Center, seem to think that that particular way of changing the charter would not apply to that change because it was too big of a change. So there's another opinion on the table. So there's a lot of open questions around the process that they were using, the legalities, all that. We have no idea what would happen if it was sent to the Attorney General or, yeah, no idea.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, thank you, Jeanne. And Jeanne, do you think that, whoops, do you think that When you mentioned saying, creating a recommendation that the next charter review, you know, do a deep dive into the budgeting process and potentially hire a consultant or make that a focus, is that a recommendation that we want to bring before the whole committee and put into the final report?
[Milva McDonald]: But most cities have mayors in Massachusetts. But in the cities that do have managers, yes. And in towns where they have managers, probably too.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, it's interesting because nobody seemed to have any appetite for changing to city manager, but it did seem like some of the things that certain people wanted would have been more in line with that form of government.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Do you mind just writing up a one-sentence proposal on that recommendation and making it more night and we'll vote on it in the committee?
[Milva McDonald]: No, just write it down just so you can be ready to say exactly what the proposal is so that people know what they're voting on. That's all. I like that suggestion a lot.
[Milva McDonald]: take another look at X. Yeah, and that's if the charter makes it through, which is still a big if. And still a long way. I mean, depending on when the city council finishes with it, and then if the mayor agrees, and then it goes to the state house, and then I have no idea how long they take with it. And I don't know. whether there's a way to sort of influence them to move faster. I mean, it will be a home rule petition, which is basically like a bill, right? Yeah. So it's like cell phone going in the... And there's so many home rule petitions that, you know, there's just so many of them. So I don't know how long it will take them, but hopefully not too long. When do we think that...
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: That's right. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: That's true, too. If the city council voted it through without a supermajority, then that would be different, too. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of unknowns. When might this go on the ballot? I have no idea. If all the stars and planets align. You mean for the Medford ballot? Yeah. Well, like I said, it depends how much time the city council takes with it. It depends whether the city council and the mayor reach agreement, how long that would take. Then it goes to the state house. And then, yeah, I have no idea.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if they ever have special elections for something like this. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it would be great if there's enough. momentum that sort of, you know, that make it.
[Milva McDonald]: We'll see. First, we've got to finish our job. And we're getting there. I think we're closer than it feels like we are.
[Milva McDonald]: Everybody has. Yeah. No, no, no.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. So tomorrow night, we have much work to do to get through a bunch of material. But I think, is there anything else? wrapped up the issues we needed to look at.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you so much.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Welcome, everyone, to the May 2nd, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. Our first order of business is to review and accept the minutes from April 18th. Did everyone have a chance to see them?
[Milva McDonald]: All in favor? Aye. Okay. Great. All right, then we can dive right in. Oh, OK, public participation. So Ron was unable to come, but I don't know if you all had a chance to look at. He was revising his proposal. And rather than proposing a committee to research the topic of including public participation, He is suggesting an addition to the preamble and you have a chance to look at it. I did. Okay, so we can open discussion on that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, executive session and things like that.
[Milva McDonald]: It does, I think that it does say public city meetings. So I, cause I thought of that as well. And it does say public city meetings. And I think by definition, those kinds of meetings are not public. So I think, but.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we're going to be looking at, hopefully we're going to be looking at article eight tonight, but we'll say, um, so just sort of a statement of intent in article eight, uh, possibly. Okay. Gene.
[Milva McDonald]: I actually had it on my, that was one of my proposals was to delete strongly. So I hear you.
[Milva McDonald]: Arne, I got everything ready to put up, and I think I didn't get that. But let me see. I should be able to. While I'm fetching it, Eunice, I think you had your hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I say something? Anthony, is that you?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Anthony, and then Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Phyllis. She's muted. Oh, sorry. Hang on, Phyllis. Wait a minute. You're muted. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I had muted you. I thought I had muted you, co-host. I'm really sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, I'm sorry, I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. You're saying you think that it already includes this, we include this in the preamble already with the language that's there. Okay. Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we're going to, okay, that's, and Anthony Seconds?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So a yes vote means that we do not want to include this in the preamble. And a no vote means that we may want to include it as is or edited. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So, that is a no vote in the way this motion is configured. Paula?
[Milva McDonald]: Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, that is correct. Yes. Okay, so that's a yes. I will also vote no. So this motion carries. So we voted not to include this in the preamble. There was talk of potentially including it somewhere else. If anybody wants to follow up on that and make a proposal at the next meeting, feel free. But right now, we're going to move on to our next agenda item, which is school committee. Article four. So because there's so much material in here, I thought it would be, you know, if we broke it up, it would make it a little easier. So I thought we could start by with the basic composition. Let me put it up on the screen. And have you all reviewed the document?
[Milva McDonald]: And also, we had some notes on it from the call-in center as well. OK. So the way that we're working this is to, if people have a specific proposal that they want to make on this text, the floor is open.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I do. I want to get to that. But I want to do composition first, because mayor's role is next. Sorry, David.
[Milva McDonald]: That's OK. That's OK. So I wanted to just see if everybody was in agreement about the composition. And then I have mayor's role, and then term of office, and then kind of the remaining text. Is that OK? Sure. OK. So composition, what's been suggested is what you see. Jean, you have a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: The only ones I know of that have done this are Lowell and Worcester, and they did both hire consultants to divide up the wards. They were both dealing with lawsuits, so they were considering that kind of thing, the composition of the wards, in addition to just the legal questions, which we would have to consider that they have to be contiguous and they have to be roughly equal in population.
[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you for that point. Paulette, did you want to say something because you were part of the process?
[Milva McDonald]: I think what they're saying is that what, so we're, you know, one of the decisions we made was to create a draft charter and any, if this were to be implemented, the awards would have to be defined in the charter. And since we're creating a draft charter, I think that's what they mean. It is possible that we could leave it blank and leave an addendum and say somebody else will have to figure this out, but... Well, it also might change over time. Yeah, but they have to be defined, and I think they do have to be defined in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, then the number of wards changed. And then that would have to change, I imagine, that section of the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that's why Worcester and Lowell hired consultants, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think that will align with law. I don't think it would.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know i'm not sure that would fly either because um making that that would be A change the kind of change to the charter that I don't think could be done that way I think it would it would have to follow a more strict uh process um
[Milva McDonald]: Well, Ideally, it would be part of the draft that we would submit if we're, you know, I mean, we could, I mean, we can talk to the call-in center about this, and we could submit it as a recommendation and then leave it in the hands of somebody else to decide, possibly, and just say this is what we recommend, but we, But we feel that it should be decided by somebody who has the knowledge. Because the other question I would like to ask the Collins Center is, we know that there are cities that have done this. We know of two. I think there might be three. But I don't know, you know, at the Statehouse how they will receive it. Like what, so I would like to find out, you know, is the Statehouse going to want to see, okay, we want to see documentation that you combine these wards in alignment with the law, for example. That's something, you know, that we would, but we can look at that down the road. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I wanna hear from Aubrey and then I think it might be a good time to just sort of take a vote on the committee to see where we stand on this particular configuration, this composition. Go ahead, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so I want us to see where we're at with this. Hi, Danielle, Danielle just arrived. We're about to, I mean, first of all, let me just say, is there anybody who wants to propose an alternate composition for the school committee? David.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, um, So since nobody has proposed an alternate composition, I think that I don't necessarily, I think we're going to end up sort of voting on the whole text. I don't think we need to actually vote because there's no changes that anybody is proposing. I think in terms of, how to write this into the charter when we do the drafting. The Collins Center can help us with that. And maybe we can talk to the Collins Center about if there are resources that can help us figure out how to combine the awards or whether it's better to leave them, sort of just leave this as a recommendation. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: They would have to be that the question of how they would be combined is still up there, but they would have to be contiguous and they would have to be equal, roughly equal in population. That's all we know for sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep. Okay, so the next is the mayor's role on the school committee. Does anybody have any comments about that section of the document?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, Gene.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll let Aminous take it away.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Phyllis. Aubrey, did you want to share as well?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, David, you have another comment?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So maybe what I, I, there may have been someone else who had their hand up and was it Jane? Um,
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette, you did reach out to more school committee members. Was it something?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thank you. So Anthony made a motion. Do you want to reiterate that, Anthony? Can you restate it?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, okay, I mean, right now we're just on the mayor as chair questions. So unless somebody has a proposal that they want to change what's in here, then we can move on to- That's what I guess my motion is to move on. So does anybody have, does anybody, David?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So we're going to vote on this particular section. So the motion is to keep mayor on school committee, but not as chair. Is that correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, if you vote yes, then you are taking the mayor, making the mayor not be chair. A yes vote is- I'm gonna vote no.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, sorry. Somebody wanna second it?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, okay. Paulette votes no. Aubrey? No. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: No means mayor stays as chair. Yes means mayor stays on the committee, but not chair.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Paulette, you voted to keep the mayor as chair. Okay. And Danielle, you're voting to have the mayor not be chair.
[Milva McDonald]: David.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. No. Eunice. No. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm also going to vote no. So the language will stay as it is for that particular issue.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So the other chunk that I wanted to pull out, because these are sort of fundamental to this article, was the term of office. Right now, the way it's written, the term is a two-year term, which is no change, basically. David?
[Milva McDonald]: So does anybody, Paula, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Does anybody have any comment on this or are there any proposals on the table to change this? particular aspect, the term of office, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I think we would have also considered three years for the city council if three-year elections were practical and feasible, but they're not because of the way elections are run and because under Massachusetts law, municipal elections and state and federal elections have to be on different ballots. So if they were at the same time, it would just present huge difficulties to the elections department. So I don't hear anybody looking to make, to change, to offer a proposal, so that's great. So let's move on now to the rest of the text. And I know, David, you had something you wanted to say.
[Milva McDonald]: Let's see.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette, did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: So I don't know if that would interact with any existing laws about running for office, but that is interesting. In the other example charters that we looked at, did they say resident or voter? Do we remember?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So we can change it back to voter and people are OK with that? Yes. Any other comments? Everybody looked at what the Collins Center had written.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think we had this. David, do you remember? I don't think we had this as a condition for eligibility.
[Milva McDonald]: So David, I mean, David, sorry. You're proposing that we remove for one year prior.
[Milva McDonald]: I wish there was a...
[Milva McDonald]: What if we just say shall reside in the ward they wish to represent? Do we have to put the other part in?
[Milva McDonald]: I, to me, shall reside in the ward they wish to represent. That's what that says. And I think we could end it there, personally. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, and we'd have to go back and check that.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, that's actually even more streamlined. Because you can't be a voter there if you don't live there, right? That's good. So Aubrey, you're still making notes. Can you just make a note to mirror city council language? And then you can fix that later.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so do we need any more discussion on this eligibility section? We've discussed having this mirror the language that's in the city council section.
[Milva McDonald]: That sounds like a plan. OK. Okay, any other, there were a couple of other comments, I think that the Collins Center had.
[Milva McDonald]: So my take on that was that maybe it doesn't need to be in the charter, because once it's in the charter, I think, Paulette, you just said, well, somebody can vote to change it, but they can't if it's in the charter. So maybe it's one of those things that doesn't need to be in the charter. It's just a way, it's one of the things that the school committee can decide when they decide their own operating rules.
[Milva McDonald]: Do you think that if the school committee had a document that sort of outlined their rules and how they operate, that could have been equally as helpful?
[Milva McDonald]: What do people think about this? this particular, I guess it's really just the last sentence there that's now in purple. Thank you, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Because the charter is not something that can be changed or modified, and it's the kind of situation where they might want to change or modify some of those responsibilities, I think. But I think the other thing was that the Collins Center had the question from this language maybe whether the secretary was approving the expenditure or approving that the bill be paid.
[Milva McDonald]: So just the fact that there's other sign-offs to me means that this can't go in like this because it implies that the secretary has that responsibility exclusively, I think, but... Okay, well, except that you could add a clause saying, along with the designated members of the school department. Right. We could.
[Milva McDonald]: But then are we getting more complicated than we need to be in the charter? Did somebody...
[Milva McDonald]: what we're doing right now. There's other ways as well, but there's no simple way to change the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, when we eventually get to that section of the charter, yeah, we'll determine what period of time we want to put in, but that still leaves a long period of time. And just because it's reviewed every 10 years, that's not the same as changing it. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, let's see who else has their hand up. I do. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I suggest that we move this responsibility from being the secretary's responsibility to being the committee's responsibility and Is that which so I think So you're to be you're suggesting changing it from the second secretary to the committee is responsible for correct.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess we can look at that. I'm inclined to simply remove that sentence.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to vote on whether we want to remove it or are we? No, just remove it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, just call it secretary or clerk. I think that makes sense.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Aubrey, do you mind making those changes as well? Okay. Any other sections of this? I mean, I think that the other, let's see. The Collins Center also sort of had some questions about the powers and duties section. No.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, any other thoughts about that aspect of this?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Eunice, did you have your hand up also?
[Milva McDonald]: Did we just lose Paula?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. David?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, you know, I mean, going back to the ideas about sort of what should, you know, putting Anything in the charter that can be, that is policy that maybe we want to leave open the option of changing that policy or anything like that, you probably shouldn't put in the charter, right?
[Milva McDonald]: A. Oh, here we go.
[Milva McDonald]: It makes sense to me. Yeah, me too.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's critical. I think it's understood.
[Milva McDonald]: What is the concern?
[Milva McDonald]: Can you give an example? Because what can they do outside of a meeting where they're deciding on things? I'm not sure what that means.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think that the charter can police the speech of school committee members, do you?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think that was less of the concern. The concern is... We speak with one voice. Well, it was more about, you know, open meeting law and things like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I understand. I guess I also feel that it's a little vague. I, you know, empowered to act. I don't know how, you know, what does that mean exactly? Does anybody else find it vague?
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's cleaner.
[Milva McDonald]: Is there anything else that people want to look at in this article? Or do we feel like we want to, we're ready to vote and say this is ready to go into our pile of approved drafts. I mean, they're all still drafts.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so let's just look at this filling of vacancies and then if you want to clean it up based on or do the edits that we discussed, then we can vote another time. But let's look at the, so the question was in number three, which is in the event, which basically has, leaves the option for an at-large. school committee member to take the open ward seat, right? If they live in that ward.
[Milva McDonald]: I think the Collins Center had brought up an issue that they said maybe because the voters are voting on an at-large, an award, so that means you would basically be saying, OK, you voted on this, but now this person is not going to do that. I guess they thought that voters might not like it.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that is covered in subsection B. Okay. I don't know. David, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so this is just if there is nobody who ran that's available, right? I mean, to my mind, subsection B covers it.
[Milva McDonald]: How do people feel about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. So this would, I mean, this subsection B would maybe never happen, but it's there if it needs to happen.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, awesome. So I think we made it through, and I think it's in great shape. Do you, Paulette, do you feel more comfortable if you just kind of incorporate what was discussed and then we bring it back? Well,
[Milva McDonald]: I think we decided that we were good with that. We have more questions on it that we're going to try to get answered, but people like the idea, you know, people think that that's a good way to compose the school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, basically, it means yes, we're voting this draft as an approved draft. Ultimately, the Collins Center is going to take all our drafts and look at them and they'll, you know, they'll make notes and tell us, you know, if something doesn't seem right or, you know, we suggest that you add more detail here or whatever. But so it's still in draft form, you know, so it's... Yeah, that's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, and that is something we need to get answered. We need to get an answer to that question for sure.
[Milva McDonald]: I second it. I can second. Okay. All in favor. Do we want to roll call? I think we're unanimous. Excellent.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Paulette. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you to the committee. All right. We don't have a lot of time, but Article 7 isn't long. Did everybody look at it?
[Milva McDonald]: Are there any, there was one question that I tried to head off about the elections commission, and I did, it was right before the meeting, so many of you may not have had a chance to look at it. because there had been the question, should we define the Elections Commission, right?
[Milva McDonald]: And basically, the Collins Center said it is defined in state law, and they gave us example language from a few charters that do have sections about it, but also said that these sections essentially mirror state law. So if we did choose to add that, we would basically just be kind of adding the details of state law into the charter. I'm good.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, because that's how it's referred to in Medford. Is that right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, because that's probably language from another charter. But it would be more consistent with what we say in Medford if we change it to elections office, right? That's officially what it's called in Medford, the elections office.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And I also don't know if registrar of voters is kind of like an official term that, um, is how the state sees it, no matter what we call it, for instance. You know, I'm not sure about that. That's something, again, that the Collins Center would flag if we change it to elections office, and it should change back to let us know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So we want to change registrar of voters to elections office. just to be consistent with terminology, Medford's terminology. Anybody, everybody's good with that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yep. And yeah, we will have to, since we did talk about ward representation for school committee, that language will have to be altered, right? That's a simple addition, so. I'll just make a note of that. Any other?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm about to look. Elections Commission. OK. All right. So we'll change that to Elections Commission, and if- Thanks, Frances. Issue that, yeah. You're welcome. And there was the question of wards, Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we did get a memo on the call-in center about wards. I'll have to dig it up and just redistribute it so we can look at it. But I do think, Jean, that if there's any weird language about wards, the Collins Center will catch it. They'll catch it. Okay, that's all. I think so. Okay. So this is a pretty straight ahead. I mean, this subcommittee, you know, this was a quickie. It's a pretty straight ahead section. I mostly approve. Okay, the only thing we did look at was number of signatures, but nobody has any issues with the number of signatures we picked.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's why we put that for ballot position, which would definitely be a change. It seems like a small change, but it's probably a pretty big one, actually, for elections.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Okay. I'll do a roll call. Paulette. Paulette, did you hear me?
[Milva McDonald]: Are you voting yes or no to accept Article 7, the draft? Yes. Okay. Aubrey? Yes. Jean? Yes. Danielle? Yes. David?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm yes. Yay, another unanimous vote. Awesome. Congrats. David, did you raise your hand, sir?
[Milva McDonald]: Can you, what were the questions? Cause I thought we voted that through the draft.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, we voted that through. OK, great.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I can go through and resolve them all. I just have to resolve them. OK, awesome. And we only have a couple of minutes, and so we won't have really time to talk about it. But I just want to put it up on the screen and say, because next meeting, we are going to do this Article 8. We're also going to look at Article 6, which is the budget financial procedures. And then we don't have subcommittees for Articles 1, 5, 9, and 10. A lot of it is a boilerplate. But what I'd like to do is go through those articles and pick out things that I think that we need to decide on, like, for instance, regular charter review, things like that. So that's one of the things I'm going to maybe ask people to do for the next meeting is review Article 8, review Article 6, and look at those other pieces. I'll send this all to you in an email. and see if there's anything in particular that you want to raise. So those we will not draft like we've drafted the other articles, but we will do is we'll make the decisions and then the call-in center will review the drafts we've created and then they will draft those other articles for us and then we will have a draft charter. Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: I will send them around. Yes. Thank you. And basically, you know, hopefully some of you have taken a look at this, but when, when the subcommittee met sort of some of the main questions that we had that. We did put numbers in, but we also felt that we wanted the whole committee to look at some of these numbers as well, these timelines on the signatures and the signatures and timelines. And Eunice did this great research, and you can see it all in the margin where where she outlined sort of the differences in how communities handle these things. So basically, I think the subcommittee was in agreement that we wanted these mechanisms to be available to the public, but there's a pretty wide range in timelines and thresholds, and we wanted to give the whole committee a chance to look at that and try to make some of those decisions. So for next time, If you could carefully look at that and come up with proposals, and we'll try to get those timelines and thresholds nailed down. And then we'll have Article 8, and then we'll have the budget discussion or the financial procedures discussion. And I think in June, we're going to pretty much have a draft charter. And then we'll be looking at creating a final report and a presentation for the fall.
[Milva McDonald]: So this is what I envision is that our next meeting we're going to get. Articles 8 and 6 done over the over the next meeting in 2 weeks and the 1st meeting in June, we're going to get those 2 articles done and we're going to. lay out the decisions. We're going to have the decisions made on those other articles. Some of them, like Article 1, is just definitions. It's not really anything we need to even decide on. It's more, you know, something that we need to include in the document. So, and then there will be, we'll see how people feel, who wants to be involved in writing the final report, for instance. In June, we would, if all goes as planned, we will hand over our draft and our decisions to the Collins Center. So they'll spend whatever time they need to spend going through that. And then maybe in August, say at that meeting, we would be looking at their notes and seeing if there's any changes we need to make. But over the summer, there will be a committee or whoever wants to be involved in creating the final report. And I don't know how many people are interested in that. It will involve writing, basically.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep. I can put together some final reports and share them and see what people think. But, I mean, I'm going to be working on it, so we'll make a subcommittee. And so I guess, Eunice, the question about what the time commitment is, is it depends on whether you want to be involved in writing a final report.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I wouldn't say we're disengaged, but if we did anything this summer in terms of a public event, it would be to sort of talk about what our work is. Because we'll have pretty much put together the draft charter by that time.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, Anthony, if you if you have any ideas for an event like that. Um. Think, you know, and you want to present some of those ideas at our next meeting. We can do that. Okay. But it's 8.30, so we need to wrap up. But I hope that answered your question, Eunice, and I hope that other people have an idea.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I will be sending the material for the next meeting and the agenda soon because it's in two weeks. Really, really good work tonight. Thank you so much to everybody.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome to the April 18th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Chartered Study Committee. The first order of business is the minutes from April 4th. Did everyone have a chance to look at them? I move approval.
[Milva McDonald]: All in favor? Aye. Okay. Excellent. Okay. So, Now, our next item is a short one, and I'm going to let Jean speak because we already voted on this item, but there was a question about it. So I'm going to let Jean speak, and then we'll vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Let me just say the City Council is, Pat, they've been working with the administration on a budget on an ordinance that is, I think, pretty far along in the process. This particular question is specifically about the City Council being able to move money in the budget. So it's a very narrow question that we would be looking at.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what I'd like to know. We've already discussed it and we already voted on it. Right now, the question is, would we like to do more research on it and then revisit it? So that's really the only question on the table that we're going to vote on is, do we want to reopen it so that Gene can do more research? And the research would really be about State about state and federal because and maybe Boston because there's no other city in Massachusetts that can do this because it's. because state law says that city councils can't. So that's the question.
[Milva McDonald]: Hamstrung I guess in what they can do with the budget so it continues to come up They're not hamstrung any more than any other city council in the state So to say they're hamstrung. I'm just I just want to say they're not hamstrung because They don't get to do that um, so
[Milva McDonald]: I know. I just want to clarify because Hamstrong gives the impression that they have less power than others.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Ron, I'm going to let you speak and then we're going to vote.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, there were the three budget amendments that the city council proposed. I'm not going to get the date right, but it was a while back. And she said, there's currently a charter study committee, and they will look at these issues along with the whole charter. That's what I understand, anyway. And so this was one of them. So the question is, do we want to reopen this so that Dean can do research on it? It wouldn't mean that you're voting to allow, you know, to say that we want to put in the charter that the city council can move money. The question is, do we want to reopen the question so we can get more information?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's what's on the table right now, and let's vote. Oh, sorry, Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we had the discussion and the vote, I think, a few meetings ago, where we talked about the state law. I mean, I don't have it handy right now, but it's pretty specific where it says it accepts Boston, but it says in communities other than Boston, and it pretty specifically says that the city council can't move money. So this, you know, If the committee, if the research were done and the committee decided to put it in the charter, it would be bucking state law. So, you know, it would, I mean, special, theoretically, a special act could make it, but it would be bucking. So, we brought up the state law. We talked a little bit about Boston and what was going on in Boston.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So let's vote then. So the vote is, the proposal is for Jean to do research and bring the research back to the budget subcommittee.
[Milva McDonald]: I believe, Gene, you said it would be on state, why state and federal governments or bodies can move money and budgets and local governments can't?
[Milva McDonald]: So Anthony, you can vote what you can vote yes or no on whether to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: So do we want to do a roll call? Do we want to do a roll call vote? Sure. Okay, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Gene would be doing the research and bringing it back to the budget subcommittee.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, eventually, it depends. If the budget subcommittee wanted to bring it to the whole group, they would, but only if they were going to recommend something regarding what Gene found. Eunice? No. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean? Yes. Aubrey? Yes. Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: And I am no. Okay, so Jean, you have a job.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Ron? We are on a public participation question.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so does anybody have any comments before we vote on whether to form such a subcommittee? You're muted, Gene.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, any other comments? Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Daniel, did you want to?
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, it's not. And that's why I'm just going to say my only comment I'm going to make is I will vote against this because it's not a charter issue to me. The city councils and school committees make their own rules in terms of how they conduct their meetings, and that's standard. And I don't think it should be in the charter. I've been sort of looking at the list of sort of checklists that I sent you all from the National Civic League about what belongs in a charter and what doesn't, and some of the questions whether it can be solved by an ordinance, whether it's policy versus charter. And to me, this is not a charter issue. That's just how I feel about it. Frances.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Francis. That could be helpful if the committee decides to go ahead with this. So does anybody else have any other comments before we vote? Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, Anthony. All right, I want to go ahead and vote, but Ron, did you have one more thing you wanted to say?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. I want to go ahead and vote on this. Paulette, do you have one more comment?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the vote that we're about to take is on whether should we form a subcommittee to look into how public participation is handled at public meetings. Is that accurate, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Eunice. Yes. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. Yes. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm voting no. So we actually, since we only have eight members here, we now have a tie. And I'm not exactly sure. I guess we're going to have to bring it to the next meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know exactly how it works. Is that how it works?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I feel like we already heard from the Collins Center that there's nothing prohibiting putting it in the charter. They don't advise it because it's not really a charter issue.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. I mean, we can bring it when we have three members that aren't here. So let's table it and we'll see. I believe a couple of members might show up later. We'll table it for now. Okay. Do you mean table it for later in the same meeting? I'm sorry? Do you mean table it for later in the same meeting? We'll table it until the next meeting. How's that? Motion to table it. All in favor? Aye. Okay. It's tabled until the next meeting. Now, we're on. articles two and three, which we've spent a good amount of time talking about last meeting. And so what I asked is for people to, because we have to get through this material. So I asked if people have specific proposals that they want to make regarding this text, bring them and I'll bring it up.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it says each ward shall have a single ward Councilor.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, so this language, you know, when the call and center reviews this language, they might say you need to say this to make it clear. I mean, we pretty much we voted on. eight ward and three at large, because we currently have eight wards, and the subcommittee was concerned about wards. So I feel confident that when the call-in center looks at this, they're going to be able to tweak the language to have it say what it needs to say based on what we decided. Does that make sense? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, I understand. Okay, Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's what I would like the Collins Center to do is to read it because there may be some language in here that, you know, maybe says something that we didn't want to say or that they'll say, well, you know, flag this or clarify this or whatever. And then that's the plan. Okay, so do we have any specific proposals on this text? Or... Where did we leave off? Well, we left... I don't know exactly where we left off, but my request was for everybody to review the document and come with a specific proposal, and then we will vote on those proposals, if any, and then we will vote on the text. Okay. So does anybody have any specific proposals?
[Milva McDonald]: Are you talking about this section right here? So are you just doing two? Oh, that's council president, sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. I was doing 2-10. Right. Or 2-10-9. Are you talking about letter C?
[Milva McDonald]: You know, I feel like there might be some confusing language here that the Collins Center is going to help us with because you're talking about where it says a person elected by the city council to fill a vacancy shall serve until the next regular election at which time the vacancy shall be filled by the voters and the person who chose to fill the vacancy shall
[Milva McDonald]: And- Because, but only, this would only apply to a person who is basically appointed by the city council and not elected.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, do you want to say that that it should be different? I mean, we can look at that. I mean, this particular situation we're talking about is a situation where there is not a person who ran who is taking a seat. This is a person who was appointed by the city council because there were no candidates that ran that could fill the vacancy.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, basically, I think it's saying, okay, now that we have a person who was elected, they're gonna go right in.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that right? Yeah. And instead of waiting, it means they would go in right in November instead of waiting till January. The thing that is odd to me, though, is how do you know which person who won? What if there's two open seats? I don't know. how do you know which person is gonna take over right away for the person who was appointed? Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: When people are appointed, it doesn't specify they can choose.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. They would have to have the regular eligibility. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the ward is in letter B. But I think... No, it's in C2. Yeah. You mean, could they appoint someone who doesn't live in the ward? Is that what you're saying?
[Milva McDonald]: I would imagine they would pick somebody who lived in the ward. I mean, otherwise it wouldn't be a ward representative.
[Milva McDonald]: no one available in the ward period, well, then they would, yeah, they would have to find somebody to serve.
[Milva McDonald]: You're saying they just leave the seat open?
[Milva McDonald]: So they don't leave the seat open.
[Milva McDonald]: If you have references, I would like to see those.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it sounds to me, so I haven't heard any sort of specific proposals for how to change this, so I'm going to just put it in Highlighter so that It's a section that we might want to revisit and get some help with from the Collins Center. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. I had two points, two seven. What did I say there? I wanted to align. Oh, I wanted to add. Under staff where the council may establish additional council support positions and consultants by ordinance. I wanted to add subject to appropriation. Does anybody? So we vote on that?
[Milva McDonald]: I just want to add to this.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, this part right here, staff. I think you could just put it at the beginning and just say subject to appropriation, the council may establish additional council support positions and consultants by ordinance as a council, or we could say by ordinance and subject to appropriation. It could go either way. Basically, this gives the city council the ability to hire staff, but I think we should say subject to appropriation because because it involves money?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that would be the appropriation part.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I can't, who's, anybody second? I'll second. Okay, so the motion is that we add to this section on staff, add the words subject to appropriation. Okay, so let's see. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette? Yes. Eunice? Yep. I can't see everyone anymore because I'm sharing my screen. Who am I missing? Great, yes. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: And then me. Yes. Okay, great. So we'll just add that in. What happened? Here we go. The only other question I had I don't know why this isn't. There we go. Was 3-7. Let's see. 3-7. When the part about acting mayor, where it said the city council by the affirmative vote of eight members may determine whether the mayor is unable to perform the duties of the office. That just sounded, I felt like that should be deleted because it sounds a little explosive. Although, I can't tell whether it's referring to the acting mayor. or not, and that's, I guess I'm confused by it. So, that's why I thought maybe take it out.
[Milva McDonald]: So are we talking about after, so this is sentence is talking about after the 60 days, then the city council decides whether to keep that person.
[Milva McDonald]: Where it says the president of the city council shall appoint an acting mayor from among the city council or department heads to hold that role for no more than 60 days.
[Milva McDonald]: So I'm just, it feels, it doesn't feel clear to me.
[Milva McDonald]: Probably. Or department heads.
[Milva McDonald]: No, this gives the President of the City Council the power to do it during a temporary absence. There's also the section about vacancy, which is different.
[Milva McDonald]: To me, since it doesn't say they can't, they can, but if you think it should be added in. Because they're from among the city council, right?
[Milva McDonald]: from among the city council or department heads? What are we saying exactly?
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's clear that it could include the president. What I find unclear is the next sentence. So I guess I would like to hear how other people are reading that, if it's just me that finds it unclear.
[Milva McDonald]: So first, whenever, by reason of sickness or other cause, the mayor is unable to perform the duties of the office, the president of the city council shall appoint an acting mayor from among the city council or department heads to hold that role for no more than 60 days. The city council, by the affirmative vote of eight members, may determine whether the mayor is unable to perform the duties of the office.
[Milva McDonald]: The mayor may, of their own authority, declare themselves temporarily unable to perform the duties of the office, notwithstanding any general or special law. To the contrary, the vote shall be taken in public session by a roll call vote. The mayor may at any point declare themselves able to perform the duties of office, ending the role of acting mayor. So that So Paulette, you're saying the city council, and what about then the sentence, the mayor may have their own authority to declare themselves town brewery-enabled?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it says by reason of sickness or other cause, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's the sentence that I'm suggesting we take out.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I think that was the intention.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but you know, now that I look at it, when it says the mayor can declare themselves able to perform the duties, that sort of makes it, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, right. And if the mayor says they are fit, then they are. Yeah. Okay. So now that I'm really reading it again, I, I, I change, I'm, I'm okay with it. I'm, uh, I take back my proposal. Sorry. Okay, does anybody have any other proposals on this text?
[Milva McDonald]: What do you think should be added?
[Milva McDonald]: I would think that that's... Well, they can't make a permanent appointment or removal from city service.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, are you making that proposal?
[Milva McDonald]: So do you want to propose that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: And then they'd have to come up with a new one. I mean, to me, then they have to agree on a person to even vote on.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're proposing that we add, take out the president of the city council and say the city council by a simple majority shall appoint an acting mayor?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, and then, so the president of the city council shall appoint an acting mayor from among the city council or department heads to hold that role.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's the proposal on the table?
[Milva McDonald]: So yeah, I mean, we're going to vote on it. But my thought is, you know, this would be an emergency situation. This would be very temporary. And the acting mayor has limited powers anyway. So I'm OK with it the way it's written. But let's vote on it. Okay, so we're voting on whether to have the city council confirm by a simple majority the person appointed to acting mayor by the city council president. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, he's part of the, he or she is part of the council, so, or they.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, we can make sure that's part of it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, does everybody understand what we're voting on?
[Milva McDonald]: Is that clear?
[Milva McDonald]: It's clear it says from among the city council or department heads.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Eunice? Yes. Danielle? Yes. Dean. Yes. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey. No. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm missing one person. Who am I missing? Paulette, thank you. Yes. Phyllis is here now. She voted yes. I'm voting no. So that passes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, that will go in another section because what we will be doing is putting something in the charter that says that the city council will by ordinance form, if I'm understanding it correctly, that they will There will be a recommendation to form a compensation committee to review salaries, but that committee won't have any decision-making power on salaries. The city council would still have to pass the salaries by ordinance. Okay. But it would be an advisory body. Thank you. That would do the work. But it goes in another section. I believe it will go in Article 5. I mean, that's something again that we have already voted on and I, and we have all the notes on and the column center will write it up for us.
[Milva McDonald]: So, this. This was, where's that blue, this part was, I think Daveed's not here, but I believe he had a question about that. And I think, if I'm recalling correctly, he said that he thought it was okay to leave it in. So.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this is the time to make any proposals. Okay, then can we go back to section 2-6? Okay, this was a question about the school committee salary. Okay, 2-6, access to information.
[Milva McDonald]: To me, it does, but I don't.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have city officer, member of a city agency or city employee. To me, that includes those people.
[Milva McDonald]: Are we still on 2-6?
[Milva McDonald]: So you're proposing that we shorten the 10 days?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. And I think we've determined is that it'll be defined when we make our definitions. so that we don't have to say it every time. I'm not sure which it would be, to be honest.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Ron, you have your hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Why don't they create different names? Oh, you're saying because it says notice to any person.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, it says earlier that it may require any city officer or member of a city agency or city employee. So, I mean, They can't just call anybody. It's someone who is one of those people. That's how I read it.
[Milva McDonald]: So do you want to put a time less than 10 days on the table?
[Milva McDonald]: It would have to be on the agenda, I would imagine. But this is just about giving notice. This just says that they have to give the person at least 10 days notice.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think they have to. The agenda has to be posted, I think, 48 hours in advance of the meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that there were provisions for emergencies in here.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, so Eunice, go back to you. Do you want to make that proposal or do you want to be okay? Are you okay with leaving it at 10 days?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't, it says, for whom no other method of appointment or selection is provided, well, by this charter. But I don't, there's got to be something that, I don't know, I can't see it in there. I don't think that the charter can override something that's in law. So tell me exactly what you think this should include. that it doesn't?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks. Francis.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I don't think this charter would take any positions out of civil service that are in civil service.
[Milva McDonald]: And so, you know, perhaps... So you're proposing that somewhere we put in... Think about where you want to put that. And while you're doing that, Frances is raising her hand.
[Milva McDonald]: So then do you want to propose that we put that that can't be, I mean, this person would only be serving for no more than 180 days. So that's a half a year.
[Milva McDonald]: True. OK. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Anthony. Phyllis, I'm sorry if I. Oh, no, that's OK. I'm just looking at the yellow. I'm looking at the yellow hands. So go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so, Eunice, do you want to bring it up to a vote?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Great. All right. Do we have any other proposals on this text? Can we vote to accept it? Obviously, the Collins Center is going to look at it and give us clarification on highlighted parts and flag anything maybe that we should re-look at. But can we vote to say this is ready to send in draft form to the Collins Center?
[Milva McDonald]: I second. Okay. Okay, let's vote. Anthony? Yes. Phyllis? Yes. Jean? Yes. Aubrey? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Who haven't I gotten? Paulette? Yes. Danielle? Yes. And I'm yes. Is that everybody? Are we 10 now? I thought we were nine. Yep. Yes. Yes. Okay. So that's awesome. Congratulations. Yay. All right. Now, I want to move on and hand it over to the school committee subcommittee.
[Milva McDonald]: So tell me if that allows you to share. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: I just want to make one comment about that. I don't know if you saw the feedback from the call center that came in today.
[Milva McDonald]: We'll have to say in the charter how the wards, which wards are combined. Can't just say four combined wards.
[Milva McDonald]: But I'm just saying we will have to decide on that or figure that out as part of it if the committee just agrees to go ahead and do it.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so in this case.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, maybe... I thought they would. I don't know that they would, I don't know that they would validate the numbers. I don't know. I know that in Lowell and in Worcester, they hired a consultant to combine the wards, but they also had the concern of the lawsuits alleging that they were violating the Voting Rights Act, that they were considered as well as population.
[Milva McDonald]: They're saying if the whole committee says, yeah, we want to do this, we will have to decide how the wards are going to be broken up. Got it. Or combined.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. I thought you guys would give a presentation and then people would sort of study it. And then at the next meeting, we would vote on things.
[Milva McDonald]: So, To me, it's more a question of accuracy, because they haven't been elected, so they can't be re-elected.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so let's, I'm sorry to cut you off, but we have three minutes and I want to have time for public participation. So thank you. This is awesome. And what I would like to do is, I mean, we still, we didn't get to articles seven, eight, and six. So we're going to look at those at the next meeting, but we may do the school committee piece first. What I would like to do is, I don't know if the subcommittee is planning to meet again, but what I would do is maybe send this document and maybe share what the Collins Center said, and then we can do the same process where people can study that and make proposals, and then we can try to agree on things. Does that sound reasonable?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's why I didn't know if you guys were going to meet again and consider that and then submit a new document, but it's up to you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we're not sure yet. So we do have a meeting in two weeks. So, you know, just if you could decide within like, you know, seven or eight days, then we can, you know, give the committee time, whatever, whatever document they're going to get to have to look at, we'll give them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Then ultimately, we'll send that and the document to the committee. Aubrey, what were you going to say?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what we've been doing, I mean, we could do that. We could go through section by section, or we could just say that if anybody, what I've been doing, which is if you have a proposal, bring it. So if somebody doesn't want to do the composition, for instance, that you guys recommended, they would say, I propose that we have an all at large school committee, and then we would discuss that and vote on it. But if nobody has an issue with it and they're fine with it, then nobody's going to bring up a proposal. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Before the next meeting, everybody will get the Article 4 in the call-in center's comments.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what I would like you guys to do is share the Google Doc of Article 4, and then I'll send the Collins Center.
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't know, because I didn't create it, so I don't know if I can share it with everybody. But I think I can, since it was shared with me, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I'll do that now. Okay, do we have any members of the public that would like to speak? Okay, so we have two meetings in May and we have a lot to get through, but once we get through article four, I am hoping the other articles won't take as long, but we'll see. All right, does anyone want to make a motion to adjourn?
[Milva McDonald]: Second.
[Milva McDonald]: Did you want to say something, Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: We tabled that for next meeting, so we'll revisit it. All right. Good night, everybody.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I don't recall if this provision is under city council or mayor, but we'd have to look.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this must be standard language, because it's in all three of these charters, and I'm guessing it would be in others too. So I don't, you know, I don't think that the mass general law conflict is going to be a big issue, but.
[Milva McDonald]: I think this reflects what it says for city council and the committee would not set the salaries. They would just be a research and advisory committee so that they would still need to be set by ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: I haven't seen any place where that happens.
[Milva McDonald]: But I think I think being careful about putting details specifics like that is because what if that conference changed and then it wasn't, you know, and the chart is a charter is it's very difficult to change. It's not I think it's it's intended to be general.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, first it says subject to appropriation. So there has to be an appropriation. And then prior, that's how I read it anyway.
[Milva McDonald]: It is. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I think the only other difference I noticed was the Melrose had the line about the health and life insurance. Oh.
[Milva McDonald]: There must be some reason they put that in there.
[Milva McDonald]: I've been told that the city council gets a pension after 10 years. That's what I've been told.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I haven't seen mention of pensions in any charters that we've looked at.
[Milva McDonald]: Obviously, Melrose did a deep dive in finding that out, but... Well, they did say notwithstanding any general or special law, to the contrary, so...
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Welcome to the April 4th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. Our first item on the agenda is to look at the minutes from our March 7th meeting. Anyone have a chance to look at them over?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Everything looks good. Move approval.
[Milva McDonald]: All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. Okay, great. So the minutes are accepted. Let me just take care of Gene here before we get going. Okay. So our first item on the agenda is, well, after the minutes, is Articles 2 and 3. So did everyone have a chance to look over the draft? I know there were some questions on the draft. Do we just want to dive into our questions and comments on that section? Because I know the first ones I noticed were about eligibility.
[Milva McDonald]: Here we are, and I will make them bigger. Okay. So is that big enough? Should I make it a little bigger? A little bigger. Okay. So your first question was here under eligibility, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Your first comments, whatever.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to move my rail over. Okay, do you want to just open up? So talk about what you.
[Milva McDonald]: Should we focus on that one and then move on? What do you think? Yeah, probably. I mean, just so we can get through them. Take them one at a time. Okay, does anybody have comments about the... Okay, Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Let's let Anthony Wilson answer, and then Anthony, we'll hear your question, okay? Anthony and Andrea, so Anthony Wilson, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Anthony Andrea, you had a question or a comment.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Dean.
[Milva McDonald]: A different section of the charter. Yes. I think it's like the last section.
[Milva McDonald]: So. So, we are looking at recall provisions, which I think would.
[Milva McDonald]: Address what you're talking about. So, I want to hear from Maury, but first I just wanted to quickly ask Anthony or Marilyn, what section of the charter, the provision for an elected official to be vacated if they are convicted of a felony while in office, where does that go in the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Um, Maury. He's muted. Oh, Maury. I'm sorry. You're muted.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Maury. Okay, I don't see any more hands right now. How do we want to wrap this part of this because we have a lot to move on to. Does anybody have any other comment? Do we want to try to make any motions on any of these points?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we could vote to put that in the charter and then just add it to the appropriate section later. So if that's something that people want to look at tonight, we could.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So you're saying you want to wait until we look at that section.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that was discussed in the subcommittee. And I think the decision was that it made sense for the person to, if they moved out of their ward and still resided in Medford, that they could finish out their term, which currently is a two-year term. So it would be less than two years unless they moved the day after they were elected.
[Milva McDonald]: If that's something that people want to
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Anthony or Marilyn, do you have any comments on that?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. Marilyn, did you want to add to that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. Anthony or Marilyn, have you ever seen anything like that in a charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. Do we want to decide on this issue one way or the other?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Ron and then Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Later in this section, the vacancies provisions are addressed, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, yeah, Anthony, it sounds like you have a comment and Danielle Danielle has a comment in the chat. Did you want to speak Danielle? I don't know. Maybe she can't because. So it's too loud where she is. Okay. So Danielle says, I think it matters how long they lived in that ward, in the ward that they were elected in before moving. So that's another potential detail that we could look at. Ron and then Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, if you want to make a motion, hold that thought. And I just want to hear from Frances because Frances has her hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Frances. Okay, Ron, did you want to make a motion?
[Milva McDonald]: So you want to keep the language about regarding ward Councilors moving in the middle, during their term.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And let's see. Eunice. You're asking me a question or you're asking me? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's a roll call vote. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean. Yes. Maureen.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle. I don't know if Danielle can vote in the chat. We'll watch the chat. And I can't see everyone because I'm sharing screens, so sorry. I just want to make sure I get everybody. I'm voting yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I got Gene.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Okay, so that's that question is been dealt with, we will keep that language. Eunice, were there any other eligibility issues that you wanted to bring to the table?
[Milva McDonald]: No, it's not in the draft we have. So, but it would go under eligibility if it were.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not that far off from it. So, and I see you also have homeowner versus renter. Should a renter be eligible to serve on the city council? And I guess what I would like to first do is ask the Collins Center if there are any laws that, you know, that would affect the ability to put these into the charter. That would you know that that maybe that certain that you can't prove you can't prohibit people from running for office. That's what I'm wondering.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. And Francis pointed out in the chat that age is actually a protected category. So I do think that some of these could open up legal questions that we don't have the answers to right now. That's just my thought.
[Milva McDonald]: Does anybody have any other comments on this or thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: What do you want to vote on?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Can you articulate the motion? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if we want to do that many votes.
[Milva McDonald]: We could potentially just... make motion, you know, vote on whether we want to pursue the eligibility, any of the eligibility issues that were just, you know, the list of eligibility, the length of residency, age for running, home ownership. We can just vote on whether we wanted to look further at those. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Lori?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Frances?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Eunice. Anthony Wilson, do you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Um... Ron, is that you?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Okay. Can we move on or are we okay with this eligibility section as it is?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we're gonna get to that. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that was, yeah, okay. Thank you, though. Those are good. There may very well be details that are a little off, so. Okay. So hopefully maybe you can note those and we can look at them later. The next section is powers and duties.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's because we haven't done section 10 yet. Okay, good point. That's why the question marks are there. Make sure we don't, you know, miss it later. But I and we were using language from other charters. So I don't I don't know. Yeah. We'll look at that too. You know, there's probably definitely some cleaning up that will have to be done. Powers and duties. Do we have questions on this section?
[Milva McDonald]: So the idea would be for the council to elect a president and vice president annually instead of? Correct.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that what we did in the school committee?
[Milva McDonald]: I remember you talking about the positions rotating. Having a required rotation so that the same person can't.
[Milva McDonald]: And the secretary.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Go ahead, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Don't they do it every two years after the election?
[Milva McDonald]: They do do it every year. Okay. Phyllis, can you Can you unmute?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So right now, let's see. So I'm just trying to find where it says the appointment. Oh, here we go. So right now it says that they do it just after every, you know, after the election. So it would be two years instead of one. And it sounds like there's some thoughts that maybe we should change it to annually.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anthony or Marilyn from the Collins Center, do you have any feedback on other communities that maybe do that or how well it might work or anything like that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Well, right now, the draft we have has it working that way. And if there's any appetite to change that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I think we probably don't- I'll second that. Okay. So I'll do a roll call vote. Eunice. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if Danielle is here. She's going to vote. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm voting no.
[Milva McDonald]: That's five yes, two no, one abstain, so the motion carries. We will change that language. Okay, was there any other issue in this section that people wanted to raise?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, you mean the free petition where they petition to get something?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think that would affect this.
[Milva McDonald]: Got it. So Eunice or anybody else had, are there any other questions or issues that you want to raise now?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Anthony or Marilyn, do you have any thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: What would you want to put in? They're elected. Yeah. They're elected.
[Milva McDonald]: Hey, Maury, did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: I thought we said both.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what I wrote down.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony or Marilyn? That's how I read. That the president could who appoints. The council president who appoints members of all committees could also withdraw that appointment and appoint somebody else. Is that true?
[Milva McDonald]: So, so, so are you saying that this isn't even necessary in the charter where it says the council president shall appoint all members of all committees of the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's something that we should probably add. Just a general statement about establishing the rules
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't think it's here, so we should. Maybe, oh, maybe it's on, maybe it's here.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, we do have that. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Okay, so it's coming later. But so just before we move on to that, just looking at what you were talking about, Eunice, in terms of you raised two issues, addressing conduct during meetings and addressing absences. Is there any further discussion we want to have on that or any action we want to try to take on that?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so can we move on to the next section? Do we have any other? OK. I don't think there were any questions on this section, the prohibitions. Although, maybe there was one.
[Milva McDonald]: So, you're talking about the section where it says interference with administration? Right. Okay. And you are suggesting that we change that language?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, we'll be getting to that shortly. There were, well, the compensation language units that we, what we, if I, I'm going to phrase it correctly. What we voted on was to say that the city council would pass an ordinance to create a committee, an advisory committee about salaries. The actual compensation would still have to be set by ordinance. This committee would not be able to set salaries. So that would go laid, that would go elsewhere in the charter, but I believe that it wouldn't negate the need for this. Okay. Does that, does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, Anthony and member Anthony Wilson, we had, We had talked on email about it and then the committee had a meeting that you were not outvoted to recommend the formation of a committee by ordinance to review salaries. What section of the charter would that go in?
[Milva McDonald]: I'll have to pull that up, I thought I... No, it was just elected officials, not all municipal salaries.
[Milva McDonald]: You did, and I'm sorry, so I probably have that somewhere. I can look for now. Yeah, but the vote, but this would be a committee that wouldn't actually set the salaries, right? The city council still does that.
[Milva McDonald]: So we still need this. Okay. That other language will just have to find the appropriate place for it. I knew we had a big long discussion about it. Yeah. This is the part now where we get into the meetings and the rules.
[Milva McDonald]: When you say all that stuff, you mean the comments you had about frequency of meetings and times of meetings, et cetera?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, it would be if it's about city council meetings, and when the council would meet, I think that it would go here. This does already address meetings where it says regular meetings of the city council be held at a time and place, fixed by ordinance, etc.
[Milva McDonald]: Any other thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Phyllis. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: That's not in accounting committees.
[Milva McDonald]: Can we, can I ask Anthony Wilson or Marilyn if what your thoughts are on this or there's.
[Milva McDonald]: What about the suggestion of a meeting saying that the city council shall meet, well, weekly? I mean, you'd have to give them a vacation. You can't just say weekly, I guess. I don't, I mean, because I feel that's one of the things that I heard.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't know about that. I don't know how long it's been set, but it's been set for a long time.
[Milva McDonald]: What I'm asking Anthony and Marilyn is, is that a level of specificity that, you know, is, to say weekly.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Okay. So we've heard discussion on this. Right now, the language is what it is. Do people feel, do people want to make any other suggestions or?
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, Anton.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Anthony, Phyllis, and then Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I mean, they're elected, so. Yes, I know they're elected. They don't have the boss that I'm aware of.
[Milva McDonald]: No. I mean, unless if we get a recall provision into the charter, then
[Milva McDonald]: I better shut up. Thank you, Anthony. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So we've discussed this, and we can talk about finding ways to add language, something along the lines of what Marilyn suggested, but specific requirements maybe are not advisable. So do we, are we okay with this? And maybe we can decide to look at some sort of general language that we would, you know, that would sort of reflect the point of view that we would like the city council to take when they set their rules and their meeting times. But beyond, does any, is there anything else that we want to cover beyond that?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, rules for public participation, I think would go under rules of procedure. So I think we're sort of in that.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, which, so I mean, I, I think that there are some state laws surrounding that. So maybe Marilyn and or Anthony Wilson can talk about that to a public participation and whether it's reflected in state law or.
[Milva McDonald]: something that could be in the charter, can you maybe be a little more specific about what type of language would be expected or typical?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Thoughts? Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: So I guess my, I mean, we've, we've been talking in this meeting about sort of the general advisability of not getting specific in the charter. So, and I, what I'm hearing is, um, um, a sub, a subcommittee to sort of come up with recommendations for specific, rules about a time limit for public participation and, you know, number of meetings and things like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: So, um, be the, I put it together. So I just want to get a little more clarity on, cause the different things have been suggested for this subcommittee. Um, So Ron initially just suggested it to look into the issue of public participation. And I guess I'm not, I mean, we have a lot we have, we have, we have a lot to do before we finish this. And I guess I'm not entirely convinced we would need a subcommittee. I mean, I think we could continue to discuss it further. But I don't personally see the need for a subcommittee.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, Anthony. I know we have Ron and Eunice that want to speak. We have four minutes left, and I want to have time to see if there's anyone from the public that wants to speak. So, and I know we didn't get through very much of our agenda, unfortunately, but I think we had productive discussion. Ron, do you want to quickly say what you were going to say?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks, Anthony. Eunice, 30 seconds.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'm just unclear on exactly what the investigation would entail, so I would like to, we'll put it on the agenda for the next meeting, and we'll continue to discuss that. Phyllis? Oh, you can't unmute, sorry. Here. Okay, now you can unmute, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with that. We'll put it on the agenda for the next meeting. And in the meantime, if any individual member wants to gather information that they think would be helpful to the discussion, that would be fine. Okay. I would like to see if any members of the public would like to speak. Okay, so it's 830. And I have to end on time because I have something else at 830. So thank you, everybody. Motion to adjourn. All in favor. Aye. All right. Thanks. See you in a couple weeks.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the April 3rd, 2024 meeting of the Chartered Study Committee, Article 6 Subcommittee, i.e. the section on financial procedures. Maury may be joining us. Hopefully he will, but he wasn't sure he had another meeting. So the first item on the agenda is the minutes.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. I don't know if I can second.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. We can probably table them until next time. All right. We'll table them until next time or until Maury gets here. How's that? OK. Okay, I forgot to bring the agenda down. I'm really sorry, guys. I think we were going to talk about the issue of the budget ordinance. I mean, amendment.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the ordinance is still not officially passed, but it's being finalized, as I understand it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, the charter amendment, which we talked about at our full committee meeting last time and voted to not accept. And then you had wanted to re-raise it, so that's-
[Milva McDonald]: I think it was one no. I feel that initially it was unanimous and then it turned 6-1. Is that what you recall, Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: For these amendments, they were unanimous, and then Adam Knight changed and ultimately voted no. That's what I remember.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, so I hear you and thank you for offering to do the research. I feel, and we can't do it tomorrow night because I didn't put it on the agenda, but we are still meeting on April 18th. I feel like we have to go back to the whole committee before we pay that step? I saw that in the minutes, yeah. Yeah, just because, you know, because the committee already voted. So, you know, and we did look at this when we talked about it at the committee meeting, which is the state law, which may be one of the main reasons cities don't do it because it's, says state law says they can't, but doesn't mean a special act couldn't get by. And as you can see, it exempts Boston in any city other than Boston. And where's the part that says, the city council may by majority vote make appropriations for the purposes recommended and may reduce or reject any amount recommended in the annual budget It shall not increase any amount in or the total of the annual budget nor add there to any amount for a purpose not included there and except on recommendation of the mayor. Then there's a little bit of a different procedure for the school committee or there could be as I understand it. But I feel like this is pretty clear. And I thought that the reasoning was that we, that putting something in the charter that could potentially be, it could be rejected by the state because they could say it's in conflict with the state. So, you know, obviously, I mean, it's a special act, so theoretically the state could say, okay. But the advisability of including something in the charter that's clear, I mean, it's pretty clear, that statute. So that I thought, to me, that was the reasoning why we didn't do it. But if you feel strongly, we can go back to the committee and see if they want to keep looking into it. So would you look at Boston?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, when I read about it, some of the arguments that people made were there was concern about sort of like kind of hordes trading, you know, that the, well, OK, you know, between the city councilors, it just makes a much messier process.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, they just they were just advising us about the state law mostly. I mean, you know, I don't know that they would, I don't know, maybe they would be willing to say whether they think it's a good idea. They usually kind of, I mean, they might. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: What would we ask him?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I don't know how long the law, let's see, can you tell in the, do they indicate in the MDL how long, you know, when they passed? I don't know how old the law is.
[Milva McDonald]: All I'm saying is, depending on when the law was passed, he may not actually know. Right. He wasn't around when it was passed. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: My feeling is that we did, but if there's ambivalence, or we can look back at it. And Jean, if you're willing to look into it more. I mean, how the process went in Boston is probably going to also be subjective, just because I know there was one member who talked about even how it went in Boston this year and felt that it was messy. So there's different. thoughts that people will have about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, to me, there's an inherent difference between the state house, which is the legislative bodies in the state house represent communities all over the state, whereas when you have an individual city, there's just everybody's in the same city. So it's not like you're bringing different viewpoints from across the state. It's one city. You know, and the other thing is the way the ordinance is written, if I understand it correctly, and I think I'm correct on this is that so right now, if. the city council doesn't really have power to reject the mayor's budget because there's this one, then they do a one 12 budget and then within a certain amount of time, the mayor's budget is in place. So, and I know that that upsets them. So that's the other thing is, I mean, this was put forth by the city council and it's about giving them more power. So I feel like there's a certain bias in the creation of it, but, But the ordinance, I mean, the amendment would basically make it so that they could move the money, they could change it. The only thing they can't do is they can't increase the overall amount. But then they send it to the mayor and if the mayor sends it back, they can just overrule that with a two-thirds vote. So to me, that just takes a lot away from the executive, which, you know, and I know that people talk about balance of power and that they think the balance of power needs to change, but at the same time, people want a mayor council form of government. So this is what a mayor council form of government is. In every community in Massachusetts that has a mayor council government, the balance of power is the way it is in Medford, because that's what a mayor council government is. So if we want that form of government, then that's sort of where we are. Unless we want to try to buck state law and see if it makes it through.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, a lot of that is going in the budget ordinance, but I think that I feel like is shifting our discussion to our actual draft document. And I think it's fine if we do that. I just want to wrap up this particular topic. So and understand the conclusion, which is that we're going to bring it back to the whole committee and see and just talk about and say that Jean is willing to research it so that we can have more information Right. I mean, and are we saying that we want to reopen it for another future vote or that we're just collecting more information? Hi, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, maybe we don't have to say that. Maybe we can just see if the committee is willing to reopen it for more information. And then let when the information is received, there can be a decision on whether people want to.
[Milva McDonald]: So this is, so Maury and I went to talk to the chief financial officer and the chief of staff, and it was a good meeting. So the first item, Jean, is something similar to what you were saying, although it's not in January. Oh, sorry. For the blind among us. There is that good. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: So, so, you know, basically what we had done was we had a bunch of, we had timelines that we thought seemed reasonable, but we wanted to make sure that they were. that they were actually doable and talk to people who actually do the job so that we knew for sure that we weren't proposing something that wasn't feasible. So this annual budget meeting is along the lines of what we've been talking about. It requires a joint meeting of all the branches of government before the commencement of the budget process to review the financial condition of the city, revenue and expenditure forecasts, and other relevant information. And what we had, well, we had talked about the window, right? So no later, it's, you have to like, July 1st is the beginning of the fiscal year, so. So no later than 60 days is, yeah, so it's between March and May. And I believe it was, one of the things that we heard when we talked to Nina and the CFO is, that there's a date in the budget ordinance, which is not finalized yet, but it's in the works, to supply numbers to the school committee and that this date could sort of run into that. Like, for instance, they were saying, well, so the two potential ways to fix that potential problem is to just make it no later than 60 days before the beginning of the fiscal year or making the no earlier than a little later. I mean, yeah, a little later. So changing that to 100 days.
[Milva McDonald]: So what are people's thoughts? I'd like to give them a window, so. I mean, you know, They can have it as early as they want if we say no later than, but so, you know, it's not like it doesn't preclude them from having it earlier if they wanted to or if they were able to.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, and one of the I my thought is that another reason that the window came up is because there has been so much talk about, you know, starting the budget process earlier. And one of the things that we've learned is that that you can't really have it much before March because there's just not, you know, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be useful because there's really not information, you know, there's not reliable information. So that, so I feel like that, that putting in the window was kind of a response to that. But I mean, the charter is the charter and it's, It's not, it's enshrined, right? Theoretically, we're gonna put a regular charter review in, but leaving it general and putting in flexibility, there's something to be said for that. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think that this would preclude any meetings. I feel like this only says that the mayor has to call an annual budget meeting in this window or before. Okay. I don't know. That's my reading of it. It doesn't say that they can't call other meetings. That doesn't say that to me, but Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: But when you say talking, when you're talking about these regular required meetings, you're talking about them in relationship to the budget.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think, I believe that in, we're going to look at articles two and three tomorrow, but I believe there were some things in there about the city council and the mayor being able to you know, compel attendance at meetings.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so we'll look at that. But beyond the budget, I guess I can't think of any reason why the city council and the school committee have to meet. Because that's the only... The city council approves the budget, but they don't really have anything else to do with the business of the school committee. Right? Am I missing something?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, hopefully this annual budget meeting would be in that direction. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: But like orderly reports.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know, but I haven't studied carefully the budget ordinance, but I do believe there was something in there about orderly reports. Yes, Eunice, you've looked at it probably more carefully than I.
[Milva McDonald]: And the difference between whatever ordinance gets passed and the charter is that the, you know, a charter by nature should be more general because it's a lot harder to change and it doesn't tend to, charters don't tend to go into those kinds of details.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I mean, you know, Because whatever process is outlined in the charter, it's there until you change the charter again.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and what we heard from the CFO and the chief of staff is that, you know, they're both. I mean, it's an example of the I feel is the collaboration that we've been talking about that they've worked with the city council to come up with. to agree on this ordinance and that they're, even though they don't, it's not passed yet, they're actually trying to do it this year anyway, just because they actually, you know, they want to see if it works well also. So I think that...
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and they haven't, I don't think they have this annual budget meeting that we're proposing, and this wasn't actually in all the, well, I mean, of the three charters that we got from the Collins Center, I think this was only in Melrose. Is that what you remember? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, but, you know, I think it's a good idea. And do we remember what the timeframe was in Melrose? I think it was, they didn't have a window, they just said no later than. Yeah, they just said no later than. Yeah, and the reason for making it May was just because it's the charter and it's, you know, so enshrined. And if there happened to be a year where just for whatever reason, it was just difficult to get the budget process going before that, I don't know, like maybe a pandemic or something, I don't know. But that we just wanted to, that flexibility, wanted to build in that flexibility.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, this is all going to get run by the whole committee too. And we can keep these timeframes in yellow because when we send it to the committee, I mean, those are the parts that we want them to pay special attention to are the timeframes. So we can keep them in yellow and then people can ask, well, why did you pick those numbers? And we'll be able to tell them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I think the reason they. They said, I believe they said the date for providing some sort of. financial information to the school committee was like March 1st, something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, exactly. Yeah, that's right. So they thought that, you know, if Keeping this particular meeting sort of after the time when the school committee would get those numbers would be more useful.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's why we started the window.
[Milva McDonald]: No, Maury was participant. Okay. So we're good. We're comfortable with this. And like I said, you know, I mean, there may be other things that people, other members of the committee think of when we talk about it, but I'll just leave it in yellow. I think it makes sense.
[Milva McDonald]: No, they wouldn't do their own budget stuff in article four. The school committee budget process is probably one of those, another one, I mean, so much of what the school committee does is outlined in state law, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the budget, this is talking about the city budget of which the school committee is budget is a part, right? So, I mean, Yes, there's separate it is a it is a quote unquote separate budget, but it's it's a it's one part of the city budget and this is about the city, but.
[Milva McDonald]: specifically so as we move through I think I just want to keep that in mind that you know this says it shall include this this it does actually you know when this mayor submits the budget it shall include the school department so it does it does it does have that specificity in it okay so that's excuse me as you know last night was another late night um
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And this says it shall be submitted by June 1st? Yeah. So, you know, it could be submitted earlier, but June 1st is the deadline.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so it's one day different. Yeah. Are we okay? And I didn't put, Jean, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I'm sorry, Jean. So you'll be seeing this again with the whole committee. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Take care.
[Milva McDonald]: We're still all okay with the 30 days. Should I put this in yellow too? Since it's... No, it's in 30 days before the beginning of the... If we're putting all the timelines in yellow to sort of highlight them to the whole committee? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I'll just... Okay, and then do we get, basically, this was another, you know, I feel like we could take this out of yellow because, well, you know, we did talk to Nina and the CFO about this a little bit, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That counts as a local news publication.
[Milva McDonald]: Because, Eunice? Did Eunice just get cut off?
[Milva McDonald]: We stopped hearing you after you said, that's the reason I went to the city clerk today.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, if they're doing it because they have to, it's gotta be state law, because it's not in our current charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. But at least we know that it's not a problem. They can deal with this one way or another. So that's good anyway. Maury, on this section, I wrote, we still have questions on this. Can you say what you understood about this when we talked about Nina?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we were trying to, we were trying to, so if the deadline for submitting the budget, I mean, yeah, for submitting the budget is June 1st, then 45 days later would be July 15th, which is after the deadline, right, the deadline of June 30th. So Yeah, so we weren't really sure what to do about this. And this number came from another charter, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I want to, I actually want to kind of look back and see if all three of the charters had the same language, the same language. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Melrose says 45. Oh, thank you, Eunice. You're looking.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, they all do, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I feel like, you know, we're going to have to ask, I mean, there's got to be a reason that people are saying 45 is.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what they're saying. And we should maybe, maybe the Collins Center can help us understand that.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the other thing that I don't understand about this language, though, it doesn't, it says adoption of the budget.
[Milva McDonald]: So if the mayor submits it on June 1st.
[Milva McDonald]: here at July 15th, which is after June 30th.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So what I'm wondering is whether this is, I mean, you know, there's, if the city council doesn't vote on the budget or doesn't accept the budget and they can't agree on the budget, then they go into that 112, is that what it is, 112 budget? Yeah, 112, it almost happened a few years ago. And I don't remember what state law says about how many days that it has to be before the mayor's budget is automatically adopted, right? But I'm just wondering if this is about that and if this changes the window of time that there can be a 1 to 12 budget.
[Milva McDonald]: But I don't know what, I can't remember, I think it might be longer than 45 days in state law. I think it might be more like nine.
[Milva McDonald]: And what, yeah, so I'm just wondering if that's what this is about and if this actually shortens the window for that. So, I mean, that's the only thing I can think of, but we'll ask that.
[Milva McDonald]: And if that is right, Does that mean that this is desirable because because it would be less time for the 1-12 budget. The 1-12 budget is not a good thing for the city.
[Milva McDonald]: No, definitely not.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to ask them about section 6-4. I mean, they're coming to our meeting tomorrow and our following meeting in April. So if we're productive enough tomorrow, we'll be talking about this at our full committee meeting in April. I'm hoping we get there. Section 6-4, the adoption of budget. Okay. So I guess what we'll just do is leave it there for now in yellow. Does that sound right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. More clarity. And then this stuff we didn't, this is just a posting required availability of the operating budget. There was nothing really. The capital improvement program, I remember our question was, does every year make, you know, Does every year make sense? Because some cities had every year and some had every three years. I think we may have looked at one that had five years.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: They said it's a lot of work to put it together.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the rest there was not much, but you had a question on the independent audit units, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I didn't stay for the whole thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't know who does the audit now.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, there definitely has an audit has been done every year. I'm sure of that.
[Milva McDonald]: I thought there was an outside audit done every year.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, anyway, so Maury, I agree with Maury. I think that, I think it's, this is something that city council, that, you know, could be under the purview of the city council. And we also have a line in here that says, at least every three years, the city council should conduct a competitive procurement process to retain these auditing services, which I think, could potentially prevent them from just automatically using the same firm every year. It doesn't mean they can't use the same firm, but they're gonna have to sort of analyze that.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Which, you know, which I think is it makes sense.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, definitely.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I think that this is in pretty good shape and I feel like, you know, we do have that. Is it okay if I resolve this comment, Eunice? Do you feel like we resolved it?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Yes, boss. We still have that one, we're leaving 45 days in, but we still, we just have that one question, which we're going to get answered just to find out if maybe we're understanding it correctly. And I'll send out, we can resolve this, I think. I'll send out minutes and then we'll bring the budget amendment issue to the April 18th meeting. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's great.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, everybody. I want to see if there's any members of the public that want to share, have comments. want to speak on any of these issues? Okay. So, while we're ahead of schedule, but... I'll take it. So tomorrow night we are doing what? We're doing two and three? That's what's on the agenda. Articles two and three and seven. And the Collins Center is hopefully going to, they were putting together a memo and I don't know. Anyway, they're going to be there.
[Milva McDonald]: They don't have everything. They do have articles two and three, but I don't know how much, I don't know how much time they take. I mean, in the end, they're going to look at the document and some of it, maybe they'll even draft, we don't know yet. You know, so the sections we haven't looked at yet. But they'll look at it and they'll, you know, I mean, I feel like they're pretty helpful, even on the preamble, just little things like changing, you know, the state of Massachusetts to the Commonwealth, just little things like that, that, like making sure we use the right language and things like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, this is six. What we haven't worked on is one, five, nine, and 10, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we'll see what kind of availability people have for any more subcommittees tomorrow.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Thank you. We're in good shape. All right. Take care. Someone move to adjourn?
[Milva McDonald]: Second. Great. All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, wait. You know what? I feel bad because we made this motion, but we didn't accept the minutes, Maury, because Gene couldn't vote on them. I mean, she didn't want to make the motion because she missed the last meeting. So before we adjourn, can we look at the minutes from last?
[Milva McDonald]: Second. All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. So that means I can send them to the city and have them posted. Yes. Okay. Awesome. And we already made the motion to adjourn, so we're good on that. So I will see you all tomorrow.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the Charter Study Committee Article 8 Subcommittee. Article 8 is Citizen Participation Mechanisms. So the first item on the agenda is to review and accept the minutes from the last meeting. Has anyone had a chance to look at them? I think it was March 13, was that right? Yes. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Great. So the minutes are accepted. Awesome. Now, um, I think what I'll do is I'm just going to share the screen so we can just dive right into article eight. So, um, I, okay, hang on. I did, here, let me make it bigger because I know some people like it bigger. Yeah, you were correct in, I put, I was supposed to find examples for free petition and then I put initiative petitions under free petitions, so I moved those down, but I did find a few other examples, Lawrence, Fall River, and Framingham. I feel that they were relatively similar to what we have. The difference that I noticed was that they, a couple of them put in a distinction between individual petitions and group petitions.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And I didn't feel a great need to do that, but I don't know how you guys feel. I don't either. What's the purpose? Right, exactly. It's basically, yeah, exactly. That's how I feel about it. I guess what it's saying is that if there's a petition that's signed by one or more voters, then it's up to their discretion whether they respond to them. But I feel like, why do you need to say that in the charter? you know, the important part is to say what they do need to respond to, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, and we've already, I think we've already agreed that we think recommending a free petition is a good idea. It's just a question of the language. And we wanted to look at how it is in a few other charters, which is why I came up with these other examples.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know how much leverage the charter will even have to dictate the roles of the school committee. I think that that's probably not really part of the charter's purview, but this is more about This is about what citizen partition mechanisms would be available to the citizenry in all branches of government, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Right now we have them both mentioned. But Gene, did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that's how I feel because I feel like people could already do this. They could write to a city council or the city council and the school committee. pick 10 neighbors and have 10 neighbors sign it. And then the city council, it's just the way it is now. The city council, it's up to their discretion what they do about it, right? So why would we need to put that in the charter? I feel like the important part is to say, these are the circumstances under which the citizenry can petition the bodies of government and be guaranteed a response.
[Milva McDonald]: So the question is, are we, I mean, we wanted to look at the petition. They can't they have to take it up. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: So we wanted to look at examples from other charters. And I think I haven't heard a big argument for trying to include this distinction between, or to include the discretionary action. But looking under the group petitions, 150, Lawrence gives a threshold of 150, Newton gives, what does noon give, 50, and Fall River gives 100. And we had settled on 50. So, you know, do we still feel okay?
[Milva McDonald]: That's right.
[Milva McDonald]: It does, I think, and that does make sense. I guess one thing I'm just thinking is let's approach, so what we want to do with this last sentence of this section is we want to make sure that this provision is not used by somebody to just clog things up and you know we don't want it to be used frivolously. So maybe if we just think about and I think we all agree on that so how do we how do we do that without you know, maybe creating a situation where people can't be heard on things they want to be heard on. One thing I was just looking at, you know, this is where you have to be really careful with language, right? Right now it says no hearing shall be required on any one subject. So just taking the crosswalks again, maybe crosswalks is discussed and then a crosswalk in another neighborhood happens six weeks later and it's considered to be the same subject so they don't have to address it. I'm not saying I think this would happen, but I'm thinking maybe we should make it a little more specific than any one subject. Do you see what I'm saying?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm not saying that would happen, but I'm saying that subject is general. So I'm looking at the same petition, but that doesn't really work either because then you just make a new petition. Do you see what this, is this point coming through?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but I'm just trying to be more specific with the language. What about content of any particular petition?
[Milva McDonald]: It's already gone through process one. It might also be used when somebody wants to show that their issue isn't just with them, that it's weighty enough that 50 people signed this to get it on the agenda. So it could be used for that too.
[Milva McDonald]: Is this okay? No hearing shall be required on the same specific content more than one time a year? That's fine. Or maybe I just... We can't drop that down to once every six months? Or the same content. But that's... Eunice, hang on a minute. I'm just thinking. I think that's better than the same subject because content is more specific to, you know, material that was in the petition.
[Milva McDonald]: So we don't maybe don't have to say specific. What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. All right. Now that we fixed that word that was bothering me, and Eunice, you said you would prefer to drop it down to more than twice a year? No. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I personally, I agree with the points that Ron and Jean made earlier that, you know, one year is good enough because it's not like there are, it's not, there are other avenues that a person can pursue. So if they don't like the way they, the response they got, they can go to the next level. So I, I don't think we need to do that. But if it's something that we want to put in blue and run it by the whole committee, we can do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this doesn't say that you can't put another petition in. It just says that they're not required to have a hearing on the petition more than one time, right? Let's see what the whole group does.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. Let's keep that in our minds as we go down. So I feel like we can get rid of this stuff because it served its purpose. But there were, I did want to just make sure we look at those questions in the margin. Yeah. Can you make it a little bit bigger again? I apologize. I can't. It's okay. Is there, are there, Do we want to, those questions in the margins, is there anything we need to review?
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to tighten this up? I don't remember what this was. We said that the action shall be taken not later than six weeks after the petition was filed.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, by the next regular meeting could be like two days later, right? Theoretically. I mean, the way I look at it is they meet as a body at the entire, well, the school committee meets every week, right? But the city council is every other week. But it can also be a subcommittee. It can also be a subcommittee. So I feel like six weeks is reasonable because they probably have,
[Milva McDonald]: So Jean, you said that the other example said nine weeks or three months. So six weeks is on the short end of other charters.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, given the summer, this charter would mean that the school committee, if they got a petition at the end of June, would have to regroup in August.
[Milva McDonald]: So three months? So, well, yeah, I think we'd have to do nine weeks.
[Milva McDonald]: Do they take three months off or two months?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, all they have to do is have a hearing on it. You know, I mean, it's... Move it.
[Milva McDonald]: What do we think about 10? That seems good to me.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that's not tightening it up, Eunice, the way you were talking about.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, so are you saying you think it should be less than 10 weeks?
[Milva McDonald]: I think we're going to put this in blue as well because we have to move on to the other sections. But we'll, maybe we can just see what the rest of the committee thinks about this too. Does that sound okay? So, and what, and are we good with the rest of the content of this particular section? There were some questions. I mean, are we, do we feel satisfied or do we want to address any other questions on this section?
[Milva McDonald]: This just says the action that has to be taken is they have a hearing.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe we need to just take out and act, because it's vague. We don't know what it means. We just want to say they're just going to hold a public hearing, right?
[Milva McDonald]: What do you think, Gene? Do you think it adds anything?
[Milva McDonald]: Awesome. All right. Now we come to the next level, which is the citizen initiative measures.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it does say that this is the petition filed with the city clerk or the school committee. I'm okay with that being general because it means that, you know, depending on the school committee, maybe it would be the secretary. You know, maybe that's who would receive it on behalf of the school committee. But I don't feel a need to specify it, but I don't know. Do others?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All right. So next level citizen initiative measures, um, So this one is much more meaty. And I don't know, I'm just going down because there's all these other examples. Did anybody have time to compare how our current text looks compared to these others?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm moving my little boxes. Yes. So we started by saying the things that we had to decide were the thresholds, right? And the initiative petitions are for the passage of a particular measure. So this is actually asking a policy or a measure, like an ordinance to be passed, right? So we put 250 and not less than 25 from each ward. And let's see. That's exactly the same as Everett. Wait, Malden is not just three. Malden is three? No.
[Milva McDonald]: I believe it was. Well, I can tell you that. I have Malden down here. Let's see what it says. That's hard to believe. Yeah, you're right. It is three.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. So Malden and Waltham are out. And Peabody are, well, there are a few that have three.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it doesn't seem like enough, right? I mean. No, it just seems like everybody. I mean, Everett, Fall River, Taunton, and Weymouth are exactly where we are talking. Framingham is more with 500. Newton is less with 50. And then we have the percentages, which I believe is even more. I'm comfortable with where we're at. I feel like it's not that hard to get 250 signatures, I don't think.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but it does represent some work, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. Okay. I was a bit stunned. Are you okay with the numbers units or do we want to? I think 250 is fine. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and we have the not less than 25 from each board. Right. Yeah. Okay. I'm just looking at the comments about Oh, that was for the public. Okay. So the next question we had was, wait, is this, I can take this. Was this in the highlighted? Oh, no, that's just from the comment. Okay. The next threshold is the time. And right now we are, you know what, they're all 15, right?
[Milva McDonald]: What does that mean? Not applicable? Does that mean they don't have an initiative petition process in their charter?
[Milva McDonald]: What I'm guessing is because this initiative petition is in mass general law. So I think if we're in line with other charters, we're probably okay. But probably checking it against the, because we don't want to put anything that conflicts. And I wouldn't be surprised if the 15 business spaces, in the Mass General Law, which I should just find it right now. And I had it. Let's see. I don't want to go poking around all over my desktop while I'm on the share screen, but we could call it up and just look. But did the others say 15 business days or 15 days years? Do you remember?
[Milva McDonald]: All right, I'm going to leave this in blue because it's possible that it's extraneous and we don't need it.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, no. It says here within five days after the filing of a petition, the registrars of voters shall determine by what number of voters the petition has been signed and the percentage that number is of the total number of voters. Yeah, I don't think it's three. I agree with you.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that this language is actually from math general law.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: See, here's where we go. It's 20 percent of the total number of voters.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what it is. It's not three.
[Milva McDonald]: I think if this is from mass general law, what this says is that if you get an initiative petition signed by at least 20% of the total number of voters, they pass the measure without alteration within 20 days or call a special election to put it on the ballot.
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't know that we should repeat it either.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Jean, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let's just take a let's let's take a look. You couldn't be right. And we're gonna look right here at the but I thought it was in our charter. We're gonna look right. It's not in our charter.
[Milva McDonald]: And this is the this I mean, this says the papers constituting a petition shall be filed in the office of the city clerk. And the city clerk shall transmit to the city council or school committee. Sometimes you look at these laws. I mean, I've read laws before, and then I've been told, oh, no, that doesn't apply. So I don't know. But this does sound like it's...
[Milva McDonald]: It's describing... I'm confused.
[Milva McDonald]: A policy, a school policy, maybe.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know, but... Yeah, I don't know because... The school committee is like a legislative body, technically, right? They make policy.
[Milva McDonald]: I think, Jean, did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: We have it as applying to the school committee, yes. Yeah, it said. Yeah. So we're okay with our 15 days because we see that that's pretty standard. In the next session, we're going to 60 or 90 days, and then we have the percentage of voters. So 60 or 90, I don't know why, why do 60 or 90 was because we didn't decide which one we wanted. Right. That's why we have both there.
[Milva McDonald]: Basically, this is the amount of days that the petition shall be returned and filed with the city clerk. This is how much time you have to get your whatever percentage we put in to the city clerk. We thought 30 seemed pretty quick. Right. Although plenty of communities have 30.
[Milva McDonald]: So... Well, if you look at, let's say, Everett is 10% and they give people 30 days. Newton is 10% and they give people 180 days. Newton, I don't know if it's bigger than Everett or not, population-wise. Waltham, well... Yeah, Newton is way bigger than Everett.
[Milva McDonald]: about 40,000.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a lot. That's why we thought 5%.
[Milva McDonald]: And they're the only ones that say 5%. Yeah, but their 5% is 8,000 people. Yeah, I'm looking. I'm trying to remember. I think Weymouth is about the same size as we are. Taunton is probably comparable. And they are 10%. And Fall River might be bigger, actually.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'm just thinking about just, you know, the one time, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: You have to have a lot of people getting signatures. It's not that easy.
[Milva McDonald]: We didn't really even get it going that we used the signatures that had been collected and people were doing that for years and they never got over 3,000. Okay. Yeah, several efforts. But, you know, I mean, if most charters say 10%, I mean, 10%.
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't even know how you could figure that out. That would be really hard.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, the elections office knows how many people voted. I know, but, oh, you're saying the number, not the individuals. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we're going to do 10% because it seems 5% is too much of an outlier.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, and if you knew you needed 4,000, I mean, I think it's actually a little more than 40,000 now and the population's increased, so maybe it's going to be up to 45, but well, let's say you thought you needed 4,500, you would collect at least 5,000 just because you would, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, not make it, yeah, okay. So, I think we're good.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, no, seriously though, it's just, it either is five, 10, 15, 20, I mean, I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: So it's bigger than us, yeah. I'm just saying it's curious, nobody does 8%, for instance.
[Milva McDonald]: It just seems like people like the round numbers.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess the way I would do it is I would go, okay, 1% is 420 and then multiply it by 8. That's how I would figure it out.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we're just going to put this in blue and when we present this to the whole committee, we'll just tell them that we settled on 10 because, We didn't find any communities except for one that were less than 10, but we also talked about how many signatures that is and just see what people think. Does that sound good?
[Milva McDonald]: Good for me. We don't have any numbers in this section that are in
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so, and I don't see any questions in the margins here, which is kind of awesome. And then this, so we don't need this anymore. We don't need all this. There's a lot of it here. Okay, so what's after this section?
[Milva McDonald]: Action on petitions not more than 30 days, the city council shall act by passing, so this is what is pretty much from mass general law that we saw, right? Passing without change, passing a measure stated to be in lieu of the initiative measure or rejecting it. Now, this is actually different than what we saw in the law. The passage of a measure in lieu shall be a rejection of the initiative measure.
[Milva McDonald]: And then a supplemental initiative petition may be filed. And then you have to get more signatures.
[Milva McDonald]: Now we're down to 5%. Additional. That's the other thing. It seems like we have to, whatever we put, I should put this in Bluetooth because this has to be less than, like, let's say people said, yeah, let's make it 8%. We would make this 4%.
[Milva McDonald]: But let's, because there's another number down here. The signatures on the initial petition filed and the signatures on the supplemental shall contain the signatures of not, yeah. So this number has to equal, this number has to equal, so this right now has to equal 15, because we have five.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Yeah. But I think the point of this section is to say that it can't be the same people who signed, right?
[Milva McDonald]: But again, which is like a bear to keep track. If you have to go and do it again, then you have to trust people to remember whether they signed it or the major process.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a bear.
[Milva McDonald]: And then it's no, that was just for the beginning.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. I feel like I saw the special election thing in the Mass General Lobb, but yeah, see, that's where it talks about it.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. That's true. It depends on how... Wait a minute. This does say, provided that if another city election is to be held not more than 120 days after the petition is certified, then the city council doesn't have to call a special election. So maybe what we want to do is look at 120 days. Do we want to make that... 180. Longer, right? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And it has to be a city election. Right. Right. Okay. I think so. Are you okay with 180 days, Eunice? Yeah. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm just also just looking again at this So if you are gonna try to redo it, then you have to get your other 5% and it has to equal, because we have 10 and five and this number has to equal those two, that's why it's 15 now. And we're giving people 60 days to get that. We gave them 90 days to get the 10%, right? Now they have 60 days to get 5% more.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. To me, the biggest problem if you're going to go this far is trying to figure out how to get 5% of people that didn't already sign. That's going to be hard.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm guessing that it's not very often. I mean, we'll see what they say. It would be interesting. But my guess is it would not be very often.
[Milva McDonald]: And they would have to be to get this level of, to do this kind of campaign, I would say.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. So this is a news publication that we talked about. You know, the difficulty is that we don't have a news publication, technically. I mean, a patch would count now, I would think. Right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, the Medford, that Somerville paper that's theoretically part of the Somerville journal.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know how they do that because they can't force newspapers to go into business, but. Okay, we don't have the paper anymore. Yeah, they might have to, yeah, I don't know. I mean, they might have to take it out, make the requirement different or something. Okay, so citizen referendum procedures. Now, this, just to get clear on what this is, how it's different from the initiative, this is to basically kind of try to overturn an ordinance, right? Right. Is that? Yes. That's what we thought. So, if not more than 21 days, and Eunice, you, these are the numbers that you saw, and they're all 20 to 30 days. Hey, there's some 21 days, yeah, three weeks, but. Yes, we're right where we need to be. But it gets away from the round number, but okay. So, 21 is in the ballpark. Is that calendar days? Well, that's what we're talking about, that we're going to try to address the days issue in the definitions. Or it's possible that days means something in a document like this already without us having to specify it.
[Milva McDonald]: The days thing is a good question for the Collins Center. Okay, so we have this number here as, you know, highlighted because we were not sure. And it looks like 12 is pretty common. So what we're saying is the threshold for overturning an ordinance is gonna be higher than trying to pass one, right? Because we said for that one, 10%, and now we're saying 12. I mean, and maybe that's how we want it. Or we can just stick with 10. I don't know. I mean, the only ones that have 10 are Methuen and Framingham. And Framingham, I think, is bigger. It makes sense to me that it would be a little higher for this.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and you know, if you want to sort of overturn something that your elected officials have passed, I think it should have a higher threshold. You agree, Gene? I mean, the question is, do we want to go to 15 or keep it at 12? 12 seems pretty... Okay, so we're going to keep it at 12. Do we also want to put that in blue just because we're going to put everything? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: We're going to just put the... put the thresholds just to draw attention, committee's attention to the thresholds issue. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, and. I think that was it for this. So this actually says you can, you're protesting the measure or any part of it. Oh, does not necessarily the whole thing. And then it can either be rescinded or submitted to the voters.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I'm pretty sure, I know the initiative The petition made reference to the city solicitor and it's probably in here too, right?
[Milva McDonald]: That's because it's a home rule petition, a special act. I mean, it could be that you could do all this work and then the city solicitor will say this has to be a special act, right? It can't be an initiative.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm guessing. That's why you'd want to really do your homework on that one before you went to get all the signatures.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So this certain initiative position provisions is basically just a section that says it refers back to 8-2 and all those steps, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, ineligible measures, well, I forgot to take out Melrose, but this, I think that we determined this was pretty standard language, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And now we come to recall.
[Milva McDonald]: So, as I recall, last meeting, there was agreement that a recall provision would be, you know, something that we would seriously consider including, but we were talking about some of the details, right? So, any thoughts or questions on the issue of recall since we've just met?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, personally, I would take that out.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, there are some states that do recalls for cause. And so we could consider that. What I was told at a call-in center is that in Massachusetts, the trend, communities, municipalities are trending towards including recalls, but they're not really doing them for cause. It's just you get the signatures and that's, you know, you don't have to, it's not for cause. So it doesn't mean we can't do that, but Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: I imagine if you're going out and getting signatures for a recall, you're going to have to tell a person why, you know, why they should sign, right? Right.
[Milva McDonald]: However, there are other sections of the charter, I know in articles two and three, that address a vacancy in the office of the mayor of the city council. So I would imagine that this would count as a vacancy, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. Let's see if it says anything here.
[Milva McDonald]: The person here, the vacancy created thereby shall be filled under Articles 2, 3, 4, and 5 of this Charter for Fulfilling Vacancies. Interesting. So it will be. So what it means is that when we review Articles 2 and 3 and when we get to 4, Five, I think would not apply for us. So I'm gonna put that in yellow because I'm pretty sure five is like for communities that elect like the city clerk and things like that. I think I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that, yeah, in which case we would just, yeah. So we might be taking out five because it, yeah. Because we're only talking about, we're only talking about, actually, I think we really can take him out, because we're only talking about city council, mayor, or school committee. Those are the only people we elect.
[Milva McDonald]: Sure, I suppose, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it would depend on what the charter, what Because this would be a new charter, right? So Article 4 might say that there's a different process to replace a school committee member. I don't know. Jeanne?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to somewhere find it here. I'm just going to search for it. Two and three. Just look, let's just see what we put in. I was on this, so I should remember. That was a long time ago. I know. I do vaguely remember the discussion of vacancies, but. just to see what filling of vacancies. So right, so this is what's been proposed. I mean, the committee still has to vote on it, but if a vacancy shall occur, the vacancy shall be filled. Oh, so it's a saying in descending order of votes received. So that's keeping things in the same as we have it now, right? But it says they have to receive not less than 40% of the total votes cast for the highest vote getter. And then if, okay, then same with the ward. And then if a vacancy shall occur and there is no available candidate, the remaining members of the city council shall elect a person to fill the vacancy.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so. I mean, we just saw, well, the text we're working on right now says that the vacancy, if a person is recalled, the vacancy is filled in this way. So this is how the vacancy would be filled.
[Milva McDonald]: That means when we talk about Articles 2 and 3, you're going to say, I think we should add a provision in the case of recall.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it makes sense to put it under filling of vacancies. Gene.
[Milva McDonald]: For the mayor, if I remember correctly, the city council president, Let's see. Yeah, if a vacancy occurs during the first three years, the city council shall, oh yeah, because we hadn't done the election section yet, so we're going to have to look back at this, order a special election to be held within 90 days following the date the vacancy is created.
[Milva McDonald]: No person who has been recalled shall be appointed to any city office within two years after such recall. I mean, that's OK? So they can run again after two years?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but that's the election to decide whether to recall the person or not. Okay, so going back to, I think we decided to take out this grounds, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, now, Everett. Wow. The threat these thresholds are low in my opinion, but. I mean, I just I don't I personally don't think it should be easier to recall to get a recall going and then to get a. ordinance, but whatever, that sort of seems how it is.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I mean, 500 is the top threshold, but are we okay with it?
[Milva McDonald]: This is to initiate a recall petition. So you have to get this number of signatures to start the process.
[Milva McDonald]: to get the city clerk to generate the recall petition, right?
[Milva McDonald]: It just went away. I'm sorry, I made it go away. Here, let me do my... I'll try it one more time so I can do this. Yeah. Okay, there it is.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Well, then there's the days and then there's the percentages, which is anywhere from 5 to 25. So starting with... 50. Oh, Methuen. Oh my gosh.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to keep 500? Do we want to keep 500 for this, or do we want to lower it?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm good with 500 too. OK. What about the, oh, that's for mayor or Councilor at large, and then the school committee members and ward would be 300.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it says that the signatures have to be from the ward. So if you want to recall a ward Councilor, you have to get signatures from people who are living in the ward.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So we have 500 and 300. Are you saying you think it should be lower, Eunice? In the ward, maybe, yeah. Well, maybe we need to put these in blue, just like we're doing all the numbers, right?
[Milva McDonald]: We're gonna have so I know but let's Yeah. I know, every time I retype one of these numbers, Eunice's notes go away. And it would be good if we had them for the.
[Milva McDonald]: . Okay. So when we send this and when we talk about it with the whole committee, it might be good to show them. But I like it in the margin, though. That's actually really helpful.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sitting inside here. I can see it. It doesn't help. I know, but every time I, like we, we decide, okay, we're good with this number and I take it out of yellow, then the comment, the comment goes away. That's what I'm realizing.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know how to do the track changes stuff. Well, all the rest of them have disappeared so far. You know what? Eunice, if you just send me your notes, I'll just add them in as comments before the meeting that we're going to do. That's all. Okay. I'll make sure everyone's not 50 percent. Thanks. So right now, if we are talking about the numbers, so we're talking about 20% of the voters, which is pretty much right in there, and 28 days to get those. So 20% would be at least between 4,000 and 4,500.
[Milva McDonald]: So we think 20 is okay, because we said 10 for the initiative petition.
[Milva McDonald]: It is 15. You're right.
[Milva McDonald]: So 20 makes. Yeah, let's do it.
[Milva McDonald]: In my opinion, I don't think it needs to be that high. But do we want to make it less for warrants?
[Milva McDonald]: It's a smaller group, you're right, so it makes sense. Is 28 days enough or do we want to give them more?
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Now, the next numbers, I wanted to put all these in blue, though. Okay. While I put these in blue, you guys look at the next numbers.
[Milva McDonald]: Recall election?
[Milva McDonald]: And the Thuin is a little bit shorter.
[Milva McDonald]: I think giving the city more time to have this election is probably 64. So we're good with 64, not less than 64 and not more than 90. Why is it 64? Yeah, I don't know why it's 64. Everett is 64. Maybe it's because Everett is 60. Lawrence is 65 to 90.
[Milva McDonald]: So we're going 60. Okay. And then this 120, we are not. Yeah, that's if there's another election. Okay, so then this just says that they're going to continue to perform their duties until the recall election. If recalled, the office shall be deemed vacant, and then we have the vacancies, which, you know, we're going to have to look at those procedures pretty carefully. We just looked at what we have in Articles 2 and 3, and they look okay to me. And oh, does this conflict with what we had at the bottom? Should the person be a candidate in the subsequent election, that person will not be allowed to have candidate for re-election appear on the ballot at such election. And then we have no person can be appointed to any city office within two years. So I suppose this could happen to a mayor, because a mayor could get recalled, let's say, after a year and a half, and then they could run for mayor next time, but they could not say candidate for re-election.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, but then they wouldn't be in the subsequent election, right?
[Milva McDonald]: But it doesn't necessarily conflict because we'll have a four-year term for mayors. I think we're okay. Then there's a number in yellow. This just means someone would try to recall somebody twice?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, I agree. And 270 is Everett and Taunton and Lawrence is the last.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then this we already looked at. Okay. Now, this was the other. Equal to the turnout of the last local election.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, because like, for instance, if a thousand people show up to vote, they can get rid of an ordinance, right? That's what we want to avoid, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, this says at least 20%, which is actually... So that's actually 8,000, right? So is that our turnout?
[Milva McDonald]: So this says that if this many people don't vote on this referendum, it's just automatically failed, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this isn't about recall. This is about not just recall.
[Milva McDonald]: And it would actually be closer to 8,500. Yeah, I mean, how many do we get turnout in the municipal election? It's more than that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what's going to be interesting is if we do go to four-year terms for mayor and we still have two-year terms for council and school committee is to see what the turnout, you know, how the turnout is different.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't, I feel like that gets a little, I feel like it's just cleaner if we just keep it the same, you know, the voters act of the most recent regular city election.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, it's not.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, then we've run into, it kind of does have to be. Because in Massachusetts, cities have elections on off years. Because by Massachusetts law, the municipal candidates and state and national candidates can't be on the same ballot.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So if you did try to have them at the same year, then you would have- Maximize the voters? Well, you would also, the elections department would have a big job of trying to, and they'd have to decide how to handle it, whether they would send people out, And they would say, here's your federal and state ballot, and you have to come back for your municipal ballot, or that's why it's not.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm just trying to maximize the... What do other communities do? They have municipal elections on off years. I mean, if anybody finds a community that doesn't do that, we could talk to them, but I haven't been able to find one.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so the 20% would Right now, 20% is about between 8,000 and 8,500, which is less than the turnout at the last municipal election. And remember, too, the vote's going to be 5,000 to 4,000. That's 9,000 votes. So it's not unlikely that it can happen. Right. But do we want to make the threshold higher than that? What about 25%? So 25% would be about... 10,000. Thank you. So now we're getting closer to the turnout. So this could theoretically be a special election, right? And so you would expect less turnout, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Right, but we're talking initiatives and recalls. Right. Unless we want to differentiate, we could differentiate and take 20% for initiative or referendum and 25 or 30 for recall.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Let me see how to. Let me see. Yeah. And 30, did we take 30% or 25? 25 is what we said. I don't know. The voters.
[Milva McDonald]: You would just get it on the ballot if we had it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, are we okay with this then? I put them in blue because, you know, that's what we've been doing with 20% for initiative or referendum and 25% for recall question.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I don't think so.
[Milva McDonald]: At least 20% of the voters must vote at an election that includes on the ballot submission to the voters of one or more initiative or referendum questions. Wait a minute.
[Milva McDonald]: must vote at an election that includes on the ballot submission to the voters of a recall list.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I'm up here when we talked about voters as of the last, I'm trying to remember if we had registered, 20% of the voters of the city. So that's not, that doesn't meant in the last election, so it's more clear.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. And the next, Submission of Other Matters, that was just a standard language thing that we saw, and then Conflict Encouragement. So those are pretty standard. So it's 8.29, and I think we finished.
[Milva McDonald]: So what I'm going to do is I will share this with the whole committee, Next week, we're going to do two and three and seven, but if we have time, we'll do this too. I will send it out and put it on the agenda. If we have to table it, following meeting, we'll table it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we can put those values in the preamble, which says, but I guess the thing, Eunice, if you could like look at the different sections of the charter and see where you think something like that would fit. Because, you know, the charter is. It's more of a general document. It doesn't tend to go into that level of specificity. But maybe there's a way that it can. If you want to try to think about it and propose it, then that's OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Eunice, I would encourage you to think about what is it that you would want the charter or some other document, if not the charter, to say that might address what you're worried about.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Let me just get that.
[Milva McDonald]: So just looking at this kind of thing, first of all, I think requiring an annual state of the schools address from the superintendent would probably, if it were in the charter, would go under article four. I don't think that the school committee is in charge of the superintendent. So I don't know. I mean, it's interesting to think about. I'm not sure that the charter could, I don't know, unless it said require the school committee to require any, you know what I'm saying? I don't know. It's hard to think about though. And a state of the city address by the mayor, don't we get that?
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like there was things in Article 2 and 3 that might be similar to that. But like I said, it's been a while. I don't think we can write time and place of meetings into the charter. place could be different, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I would really hesitate to put something like a schedule into the charter because The charter is, I mean, we've seen how it's not an easy document to change. This is like minutiae and I feel like minutiae shouldn't be in the charter, but I don't know. I could see this in an ordinance for sure.
[Milva McDonald]: The other thing that I would suggest, I mean, the call-in center is very busy and they don't always get back that quickly, but I can give this document. to the call-in center or maybe next time I talk to the call-in center, which I don't know when that will be, I can share this document and just get their feedback on where these things might fit in the local government.
[Milva McDonald]: So I want to wrap up, but I'm going to share that document with the call-in center units and get their thoughts on it. And I think I made a note to put in the minutes that some of these concepts could conceivably be added to the preamble, like the statement that you just read, Jean, a few minutes ago, or so that's something else we can think about. So we can add some, you know, we can propose to the committee that we add something to the preamble about public engagement. Does that sound like? Yeah. Then we'll also look into some of those specifics and see what the feedback we get from the call-in center on that.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, everybody.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, 2, 3, and 7, and I'm going to send 8, and I don't know that we'll get to it, but it'll be on the agenda anyway, just in case. But I'm guessing we'll maybe do that at the following meeting, although we're going to maybe do school committee at the following meeting. So we have two meetings in April and two in May. So we'll get through all of those by the end of May, one way or another.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, everybody. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Welcome to the March 21st, 2024 meeting of the Charter Study Committee, Article VI Subcommittee, which is on financial procedures. This is our first subcommittee meeting, and we have one other member, Jean, who was unable to join us. So the first item on the agenda is regarding I just thought we would review the budget discussion because we did discuss with the whole committee some of these matters at the March 7th meeting. We did discuss the city council budget amendment, but it's been re-raised. I'm just throwing that out and we can open the discussion with that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So there has been some confusion because there is the charter amendment that was proposed and then there's also this ordinance which they're working on or they've been working on for a while with the administration.
[Milva McDonald]: So I don't know if that's standard for ordinances, but yeah, it is. really for them to go through that many?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that doesn't really pertain to us. Although, definitely some of the issues I think that ordinance addresses like the timeline we would be looking at the, the amendment, the really the main content of the amendment that is at issue is. the ability for the city council to move money in the budget. We discussed it at the March 7th meeting, and we voted unanimously to not put that into our draft charter. But we have a member who wants to re-raise it. I feel like we should probably wait for her to hear what she has to say. But I just wanted to talk to the subcommittee about it because If we've been charged with looking at Article 6, the decision for us is do we investigate it because Gene did offer to do research and whatnot. But, or my feeling is that even if our subcommittee feels like we want it, that that's a good idea, I feel like we need to go back to the committee, the whole committee first, because the whole committee voted no on it. So my feeling is we can't really raise it, we can't open it up again without having the whole committee say, yeah, sure, let's learn more about it. But I wanted to just see how you all felt about it because Gene brought it to our subcommittee.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, in mayor council governments, there is no city in Massachusetts that allows the city council this power other than Boston, and it's very new in Boston. So, and as we talked about in chapter 44, section 32, specifically says the city council can't do this. So, We are trying to get a special act charter and it's not unheard of that the state might say, well, you know, it for this special act will allow it. But besides all the reasons you just mentioned, Maury, putting something in the charter that is actually state, that state law states is not allowed to me is also a really good reason not to do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I don't know what that deep dive is going to look like, and I think that's one thing Jean is going to have to tell us. What kind of research did she have in mind? I mean, she's going to have to go look at other states to see if, or she could look at Boston, or look at other states because it's not done in Massachusetts, so you couldn't really find out or look at the federal, you know, the states, you know, federal or state or state government. So it sounds like we're maybe a little divided on whether we should reopen this. So what I think, what I'm going to propose is that we ask Jean what she has in mind in terms of specifically where she wants to research. But before she does that, I do think we need to ask the whole committee, since the whole committee voted no, I think the committee has to say yes or no to reopening it. I don't know how you guys feel about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So let's, um, I, I mean, our, our next full committee meeting is the first Thursday in April. I don't know if we are going to meet before that, but if we do, we can talk to Gene about it then. But even if we don't, um, I think we'll just, uh, like I said, I don't feel like we can go ahead and pursue this without asking the committee since the committee did vote on it.
[Milva McDonald]: So, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, okay, so that sounds like a good plan for that particular issue. Now, just looking at, so this is our article six. I mean, the thing that we have to sort of decide is how are we going to tackle it? We also, we're going to review, I mean, just looking at this, You know, it just lays out in state law the submission of city budget to city council procedure for approval, rejection, or alteration. And it pretty much lays out what happens in Medford and pretty much every other city in the state. So, you know, this we can just review on our own. It's just good to know. Because we want to think about whatever we put in the charter, we want to make sure that it We want to probably make sure that it doesn't contradict anything in this, right? Right. And allowing the city council to move money would contradict this. Where does it say it? They can't originate appropriations. They can't increase the full amount of the budget. They can reduce appropriations, but they can't increase them, basically. So those are the sort of the basic rules. So in terms of, you know, what a lot of other subcommittees have done is kind of use these drafts and create a draft of the charter. And then ultimately, when we get that draft finished, the Collins Center will look at it and hopefully tell us if there's anything in it that's like, you know, could cause problems or et cetera. This is a complex article. We can, as a subcommittee, decide. We're just going to kind of recommend. We're going to make decisions and make recommendations on kind of the main issues, and then we're going to let the call-in center tell the call-in center, okay, here's what we decided, and then let them draft it. We could do that.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that would have applied to probably most sections of the charter too.
[Milva McDonald]: So an ordinance is a piece of legislation. It's like the constitution and laws. The charter is the constitution, the ordinance is the laws. So an ordinance can be changed, you know, by the legislative body, the charter, can't be changed so easily. And ordinances are like policy, they can go, they tend to go into more detail. But what we've seen, and of course, Medford doesn't have this section in its charter now, we're just going by state law. But what we have seen is that we can, you know, there can be things in the charter that will lay out a timeline, right? I don't know. And when the call-in center said maybe not get too detailed, maybe they were talking about like a level of detail that the ordinance goes into wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for the charter. Maybe that's... But, you know, we can look at that ordinance and use it as a guide, or we can just say, you know, our process is our process, and we are going to research what a reasonable timeline is and make our own decisions and recommend that. So, you know, there's a lot of ways we can go about this. I mean, we can see just from this, this first section is pretty standard. Yeah, pretty standard. I don't think we need to spend a lot of time on that.
[Milva McDonald]: These are just differently phrased. I think this one looks good to me. The only difference between this one and Pittsfield is that this one says the last day of June and it doesn't say June 30th. So we'll just say that. So I just put that in black. We're moving right along. We're almost done. We got six what? Finished in five minutes. Now this one annual budget meeting establishes the timeframe for budget meetings and any required participants. So it looks like, unless I'm mystic and I could have made mistakes when I put the document together, Weymouth doesn't have this. So this is not like a requirement, but I think, you know, I don't know, we'll have to discuss. Is it a good idea to have an annual budget meeting? And as the Cotton Center said, this is more, it's not really about next year's budget, right? This particular meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: So this particular meeting that would be before the process of actually, it would basically be sort of like, let's all get together, review, the current financial situation in the city and look at forecasts. And it's sort of just like getting everybody together to talk about that. So to me, what this does is it helps the communication between the branches of government.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, right. So do we agree that we think it's a good idea to put this in?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we could look at some other cities to see what they say for this, but interestingly we have Melrose, which doesn't, it just says the mayor shall call a joint meeting before the commencement of the budget process. It doesn't have a timeline or anything, it just says before. Pittsfield says at least 60 days before the beginning of the fiscal year, which I'm trying to figure that out because isn't the fiscal year July 1st?
[Milva McDonald]: So this is probably, this is, I mean, the state law, I mean, if we looked at the state law, the budget, you know, I mean, people in Medford want to talk about wanting to move the budget process earlier, but I believe it's pretty much June, Sometime in June that it's due, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So 60 days puts it at what, May 1st, we said?
[Milva McDonald]: Which is probably later than, you know, that would be, I mean, it's reasonable if you consider that the budget should be done by the end of June. But doing what Melrose does leaves it sort of open. It could just be before. Or. Should it be like, what's 90 days would put it at April, beginning of April?
[Milva McDonald]: So you think 90 days? I mean, should we say at least?
[Milva McDonald]: I guess saying at least a certain amount basically just gives a deadline. It means that it can happen earlier, right?
[Milva McDonald]: But it can't happen after. So do we need to put the window or should we just say, just give them the deadline?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, you have a point. The mayor makes the budget. And the mayor has to hear from all the departments, right? and all that. So I guess my feeling is if we're going to use this language to review the financial condition of the city, that could maybe be done in January. But revenue and expenditure forecasts and other relevant information in order to develop a coordinated budget, I don't think that that would be available in January.
[Milva McDonald]: So it could happen in January. It wouldn't be this purpose. OK. I see your point. And so if we talked to me, if we were going to do one for this purpose, we need to make it later. But if we talked about doing one in January, it would maybe be another section. for a different purpose. But if Article 6 is about financial procedures, I feel like what we would be talking about in January is just informational. It wouldn't really be about creating the following year's budget.
[Milva McDonald]: You're saying that there should be a requirement that all the bodies have to meet? But I feel like we have to put a purpose in.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't know. The thing about the school committee, the city council has no relationship with the school committee, other than approving the budget. Correct.
[Milva McDonald]: So that would be something that- I just don't know what the city council could do about any information that they receive. I mean, part of the reason that the school committee issues come up at the city council is because the city council has public meetings and some people go there, but the city council doesn't really have power to address those issues. they could maybe put some kind of pressure on, you know, and make statements about it. But in terms of the actual working of the government, what would the city council be able to do about any of those issues?
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm wondering what that means. Like, if they knew about, you know, some of the issues that were happening in the schools with the fights, what would they have been able to, like, what could they have done? I don't know what that means. Like, and I don't know if there's anything that we could put in the charter that would you know, that would address that. But I don't know. Let's, I mean, in terms of the, what we know that the city council has power over in terms of relating to the schools is the budget, because they vote on the budget. They don't appropriate, they can't create appropriations. But we, so we are, we are talking about right now, an annual meeting of the three bodies. So that is hopefully going to make it through at least in this section. And then for the other sections, we can talk about it more, we can look into that more. Because collaboration is definitely it's one of the issues that we've heard people say they want to, you know, that they want to see. So the timeline Maury's suggesting the window. Do we want to create the window or we just want to create the deadline?
[Milva McDonald]: In a way, you could say the deadline gives them more flexibility because- Yeah. Because with the deadline, they have to do it no later than this date, but they can do it any time before that. And with the window, they have to do it within that window, right? See what I'm saying? Yeah. So if the charter says they have to have the meeting, they have to have the meeting. And if we say at least X days, that's the deadline. They can do it any time before that. But if it's, so. Yeah, putting the window saying no earlier than this time.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep. So that's an argument for putting that, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: If we picked 90, let's see, June 1st would be.
[Milva McDonald]: This would be April 1st.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Do we want to make it so that they can hold it in March if they want to? Mid-March, is that? I mean, I don't need, you know, again, probably any of these, we probably, once we say what we think would be good, we probably have to talk to the financial office about all of it.
[Milva McDonald]: This basically says they can't do it before April 1st and they can't do it after May 1st?
[Milva McDonald]: Right now, we have April 1st and May 1st. For this particular meeting, I think no later than 60 days is probably good for this particular meeting. Because, you know, as you say, Eunice, the budget process is kind of starting up already in mid-April.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So you wouldn't want to do this after May 1st. I mean, unless we want to push it back to 75 days and make it no later than April 15th.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, what do you think, Maury, about April 15th, making it no later than April 15th? Do you want to? I mean, what if there was some year that things were just sort of happening so that it was harder to do it earlier, right? I guess that's why I feel like 60 days is more reasonable. But what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: All right, so right now we have no earlier than 90 days before and no later than, no earlier than 90 days and, let's see, and no later than 60 days, wait, before the beginning of the fiscal year, right?
[Milva McDonald]: The mayor shall call a joint meeting of the city council and school committee before the commencement of the budget. This is an annual meeting that's before the commencement of the budget process. If we have it April 1st and they want to start in March, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Or prior to the beginning.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we can say prior to instead of before.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. Well, the beginning of the fiscal year just means July 1st, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So no earlier than 120 days and no later than 60 days before the beginning of the fiscal year. If we put a comma, that will help people too. The mayor shall call a joint meeting of the City Council and School Committee before the commencement of the budget process to review the financial condition of the city, revenue and expenditure forecasts, and other relevant information prepared by the mayor in order to develop a coordinated budget. I think it's good. And we're going to check all these dates and, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: So, yeah. And once the subcommittee picks these numbers, I mean, I think we should probably go to the financial department. And once the financial department says those are, yeah, that can be done, then we can bring it to the whole committee.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, this is basically giving them flexibility. Yeah. So that if there's a particular year where, wow, something happens and we can't start till, you know, and, but it's, I don't know, that's, it's no later than, but they definitely can start earlier.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, I think it's reasonable, you know, Melrose gave no timeline, they just said before. That gives the most flexibility, right? It just says there has to be an annual budget meeting before, before, you know, the process is started. I mean, you know, that's an option, but we were kind of saying we like to put the deadlines in. So we'll check the numbers with the financial department and see what they said. All right. Submission of the operating budget and budget message. Establishes process for budget development and time frame for budget submission. So this is a big one.
[Milva McDonald]: That's because I know what you're talking about, the school committee thing? Yeah, the public hearing. That was in Pittsfield. I'm thinking that I somehow, when I made the document, I put it in the wrong place. Because it doesn't seem like it should have gone where it was. So what I did was I moved it down to, it was Weymouth. Yeah, it was purple, so yeah, it was Weymouth. I moved it down here because I don't see that it could go in those two other sections. As far as I could tell, it was the only one that had a whole separate section on that.
[Milva McDonald]: So, yeah. I didn't see Melrose or Pittsfield having that separate section. Right. And the other thing that has is budget message. I don't see the others having budget message. Which is, so I mean, maybe what we should, let's look at the first two first since they're shorter. So Melrose, not less than 45 days before the beginning of the fiscal year, which would be, let's just, May 15th, is that right?
[Milva McDonald]: Not less than 45 days before the beginning of the fiscal year. Yeah. So that would be May 15th. Okay. So that means by May 15th, the mayor shall submit to the city council a proposed. So that's, that's actually, um, earlier than it has been done in Medford in the past, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, and okay, the budget message piece is in this section for Melrose. The budget message shall explain the operating budget in fiscal terms and in terms of work programs for all city agencies. It shall outline the proposed fiscal policies of the city for the ensuing fiscal year, describe important features of the proposed operating budget, and indicate any major variations from the current operating budget fiscal policies and reasons for the changes. Complete fiscal plan of all city funds shall be in the form the mayor deems desirable. And here's where they have the school budget. The school budget as adopted by the school committee shall be submitted to the mayor within a reasonable time before the submission of the proposed operating budget for the city council. So the school committee that says has to submit it before It doesn't give them a deadline, but it just says a reasonable time before May 15th. And the mayor shall notify the school committee of the date by which the budget of the school committee shall be submitted to the mayor. Okay, so it gives the mayor the ability to tell the school committee, you need to get it to me by X date, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Right, and they shall coordinate the dates and times of the school committee's budget process under the general laws. That seems pretty good, but let's see what Pittsfield says, at least 30 days. So they say, Melrose says May 15th. Um, Pittsfield says basically June 1st, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So for us, We're looking at one community that says May 15th, another one that says May 31st. This looks like it's pretty much the same as Melrose, except Pittsfield does give some more specific numbers for the school committee. The school budget shall be submitted at least 30 days. So this basically says that the school budget has to be submitted to the mayor on May 1st. But it also says the mayor shall notify the school committee of the date by which the proposed budget.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, right, right. I think that's what it means. Yeah. Okay, so those two. And then Weymouth says not later than 75. Ooh, wow. That's... Wait, before that's.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, women is maybe smaller. Maybe it's not as complicated. I don't know. Don't they work off a town meeting. Well, it does say town council, so they might. Yeah, I think they're different. So that could be why that seems too early, right? And then the other thing is they say that the mayor shall provide for publication in a local newspaper of notice and a general summary of the proposed budget.
[Milva McDonald]: No. No, they just say the budget message submitted by the mayor shall explain the operating budget. I don't know that Mass General Law said that. Let's see. Oh, yeah, so the 175 days, looks like it comes from within 175 days after the annual organization. Oh, wait, that's... That's within 175 days after. So that would be January, right? Within 175 days from January. So that's like about six months.
[Milva McDonald]: No. I was just going to see if they said anything about. No. Okay. So let's look back. Oh, my rail just changed. It's not in your way, right? OK, there we go. OK, so Weymouth, as we've talked about, is maybe a little different. And they also have, so they just put it in different sections. The other two included budget messaging and school, It just did it within the same paragraph. And this is pretty much the same thing that the other said. This is pretty much, this looks like maybe it's a little more detailed, but it's, yeah, I don't think property tax levies were mentioned in the other ones, were they? No. No. Then there's this whole school committee budget. This also has the thing about putting things in the local newspaper.
[Milva McDonald]: My feeling is that the more simple one is probably better, but I don't know how you guys feel, like using either Melrose or Pittsfield as a model.
[Milva McDonald]: This particular section is just about submission of the budget and the budget message. I mean, when we get to the next section, it's going to address other action on the operating budget, sort of what you're talking about. What I was saying was I personally think for this section, the Melrose or the Pittsfield, which is more sort of streamlined, I like their text models better than the Weymouth one. But I don't know how you guys feel. And Melrose and Pittsfield are pretty much exactly the same except for the timeline. So if we agree that we like the Melrose and Pittsfield text, we can keep that and then just decide what we think we should include as the timeline. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. So I'll just use the Melrose. I'll get rid of Weymouth. So the first question is the, well, unless we don't like 30 or 45 days and we want to put something else, but I don't know what else we could put. So 30 or 45 days, right? I mean, yeah, 30. Melrose has 45, which means that the mayor would have to have the budget submitted by mid-May.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So if we're actually allowing May 1st as a potential annual budget meeting date, it would be pretty hard to do the budget in two weeks, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I guess so. I feel like 30 days is reasonable because, again, it's not less than. It doesn't mean it can't be submitted earlier. but if there's some reason that some year it's going to be really hard to get the budget in by mid, you know, done by mid-May, you know, I feel like the 30 days, I would go for the 30 days, but I don't know what you guys think.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. The only other question is, Pittsfield gives a school budget deadline, at least 30 days. Melrose just lets the school committee and the mayor work it out. What do we think about that? I think we should have Paulette. The school budget has to be submitted before the mayor submits, obviously, the proposed operating budget to the city council. This one just says a reasonable time. I like that because the school committee is not going to fail to submit the budget in time. They know they have until a certain date because that's been already outlined. How important is it to then, within that, say, well, the school committee has to be by X date? I don't know. What do you think, Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: What about you, Eunice? Do you agree?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, this gives the school committee the most flexibility. So the only thing I can imagine her saying is like, well, gee, a deadline would have really helped. Maybe that's what she would say. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. OK. So section 6.4 establishes the protocols for adopting the budget, including holding of public hearings, ability to modify and reject, and time frame for adoption and posting requirements. So that's what 6-4 does. So each of these Melrose, it's broken down into public hearing, adoption of budget, same with Pittsfield. Pittsfield has an additional section, which we'll look at and Weymouth, Again, you know, Weymouth is a little different. I feel like we should just take Weymouth out because it's so different. It's town.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Let's just get rid of Weymouth.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, maybe. All right. So Melrose has for the public, let's go one by one. So public hearings. The city council shall publish in at least one local news publication of general circulation in the city, a notice of the proposed operating budget as submitted by the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, the notice shall state the times and places where copies of the entire proposed operating budget are available for inspection and the date, time, and place not less than 14 days after its publication when a public hearing will be held. So let's see what Pittsfield says. pretty much the same thing, right? Exact same thing, actually. So for us, it's a question of do we want to keep it in there? And it might even be that this is part of state law, and that's why it's in there.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead. When they shut down Medford Transcript, they did supposedly merge it with that Somerville paper, right? So theoretically, there's Medford News in there.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, so in this day and age, does putting something like this in the charter create a potential problem if there's no local news publication of general circulation?
[Milva McDonald]: That's, but that's circulation. And yeah, general circulation, I don't know. I don't know. I feel like this is something, I mean, we're going to leave this in, I think, right? But what I'm going to do is, I mean, do you agree that we should leave this in?
[Milva McDonald]: But I think- This is what we want to find out more about because- But I mean, state law supersedes anything in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I think we should decide to leave that there and just maybe I put that in yellow so we could ask a question about it. Maybe there's a way, You know, maybe there's a way to change it so that it's not, it doesn't seem so connected to print media. I don't know. We'll look into that. All right. So, adoption of the budget. Let's see how these two compare. First one was exactly the same between Melrose and Fitzfields. For this one, we thought, The city council shall adopt the operating budget with or without amendments not more than 45 days following the date the budget is filed. I believe Pittsfield did say what we decided on, which was 30 days. That would mean the budget would be submitted no later than May 31st. That doesn't make any sense because That must not be, because that's past June 30th, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Melrose has it being submitted earlier, but here's Pittsfield, it also says 45 days. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, if the budget doesn't get submitted until 30 days before the beginning of the fiscal year, which would be like... June 1st, right? June 1st, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, I know. Okay, this does say not more than 45 days.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm assuming that the date the budget is filed with the city clerk is the same as the date that it's submitted, right? What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Do you think that it's a different date than, I don't think, than the date the mayor submits it to the city council?
[Milva McDonald]: Because it doesn't say not more than 45 days following the date the mayor submits it to the city council. It says not more than 45 days following the date the budget is filed with the city clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if he'll say the same thing you said about the- Or maybe Nina would be able to tell us. Yeah, Nina would probably. I mean, this is a simple question. What we want to know is, is the date the budget is filed with the city clerk same as the date budget is submitted to city council, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So because this submission of budget says when it has to be submitted to the city council, and the dates of that do seem a little bit different than this adoption. But 45 days, we can look at other charters, but the two charters from cities we have here both say 45 days. So that does seem pretty standard. So other than that, I think that the language is completely the same. So we can just get rid of one of these. Because they're the same.
[Milva McDonald]: Pittsfield has an extra thing, which we'll look at in a second. But let me do this, and then I'm going to put, because we want to know what this means, I don't know that we're going to put this in yellow. Just so we can understand what that means.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Now, it didn't become yellow. Why didn't it become yellow? I did something wrong.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. All right. So that's good. So we sort of want to, I mean, likely we're going to keep it this way because it seems standard, but we do want to understand what we're recommending, right? So we want to know about that. And this was only in Pittsfield. Oh, this just is about availability of the operating budget. In addition to any other posting requirements under the law, immediately after submission of the proposed budget to the city council, the mayor shall pause the entire budget document to be posted on the city's website. I do too. Said proposed budget document shall remain posted during the city council review process contained in this article. After the enactment of the budget, it shall be posted on the city's website and shall remain there throughout the fiscal year. I think that this maybe already happens, but I think it's good to put it in here.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's good. I agree with that. So that's a good thing to keep. Excellent. All right. Capital Improvement Program. Ooh. Establishes the protocols for creating and adopting the capital budget. Okay. So I can't say that I'm not a money person, but we'll see.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So this is interesting because Melrose says every three years, right? Right.
[Milva McDonald]: It still says every year? Yep. Okay, so in terms of- Scroll down a little more right there.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so this capital improvement program is submitted every year, but it's- I believe it has been.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So that Medford's current process is more like Pittsfield. Let's just look at what Melrose is doing. Yeah. Every three years, And also a list of capital improvements proposed to be undertaken during the next ensuing five years.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, except in Melrose, the capital improvement program is only submitted every three years. And in Pittsfield, it's every year. That's a pretty big difference. Don't you think? Oh, yeah. I don't know what I think about this. I don't feel like I have enough knowledge to really, I feel like I would want to talk to the financial department, maybe. What do you guys think?
[Milva McDonald]: So maybe by that time they will be able to do things, but you know, well, I mean, I think that that ordinance is going to go into way more detail than the charter in general. But, um, so I don't, uh, anything we put in the charter, I think needs to be able to be implemented, implemented at any time. Um, I don't know whether there's any stuff about capital improvement in the budget ordinance. I'm guessing there is. But I feel like I just need to know more to know whether I think Every year is a good idea. It seems like the five-year window in terms of, you know, sort of laying out the capital improvements is, that's in both, right? They talk about, but the difference is every year, every three years. Maybe there's some cities that do it every two years. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: But the mayor doesn't have to submit that to the city council every year. under Melrose, then the mayor has to like be responsible and kind of keep track of all the capital improvements. Right. But it doesn't have to submit the right to the city. Yeah. So I don't know which is better. At this point. I just feel like I need to know more.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I can start by I guess I can make a list of these questions that we have and ask, you know, submit them to the chief of staff and the chief financial officer and ask, just ask questions about that. And then if we feel like we need more than that, we can invite them to a meeting. Okay. So I feel like... Unless one of you feels like you know about this and we should do one or the other, I feel like I've got to leave these here until we know more. Yeah. So I'm leaving that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, yeah. And Weymouth says every year too, but we're going to take out Weymouth because we decided we're... We can also look at other cities as we're going. Okay, independent audit. This is, you know, just an annual independent audit, which we do now, but... Wow.
[Milva McDonald]: I think you're right. So these are exactly the same, but I do see one difference, which is Pittsfield says, at least every five years, the city council shall conduct a competitive procurement process to retain these auditing services. So that's kind of interesting. I guess what that means is... The City Council will hire the auditor.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what it sounds like, although let's see. The City Council, yes. And that every five years they have to... So that basically what it seems like is they can't just use the same firm every year without...
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, they all say that, but Pittsfield adds that they will do a competitive procurement process, which is, I'm gonna actually just look it up because I know what I think it is, but, um,
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think it's OK for them. If they've got a firm that's working well and all that, then do you think they should do it more often, Laurie?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've heard that it's getting to be more common for cities to contract out for legal services, but.
[Milva McDonald]: Guess what, you guys, we have 10 minutes left, but this is the last section.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. That's very vague to me. We'd have to really think about what that would mean because ties, you know what I mean? You have to, it has to be defined if we're going to do something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: And I also, I mean, would conflict of interest laws prevent, theoretically prevent this kind of problem?
[Milva McDonald]: I would think so too.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. City employees have to, I don't know if contractors do, I don't know. But I put in the notes, look into conflict of interest prevention. We can try to find out if that's something that we should look into. OK, this is a restatement of prohibition of expenditures beyond appropriation. So it looks like these two are the same, exactly the same. Yeah. Weymouth has some other stuff, as usual. Wow. Gotta love Weymouth. So this is her personal liability. Wow. I don't know. I think the less complicated is probably better. I agree with you.
[Milva McDonald]: So, since Melrose and Pittsfield are the same, and they do reference Mass General Law.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I'm just wondering if some of the stuff that's spelled out here, town officials, shall submit an allotment schedule of the appropriations of all personnel categories. Wow.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I think I need to read that one a little bit more. You can read it more and bring it up if you want next time. I think I'll pass on that one. So we're good.
[Milva McDonald]: We have a draft here. We just have one section, the capital improvement program that we have questions on. So we don't know exactly what we should do yet. Although I think we could probably do this, I think. Because the language is the same, it's just the timeline that's different. So we could do this and then.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Every three years and not less than 120 days. Okay. So, we'll do this yellow this and say, and then this, let's see. And then I'm just going to do this, because this one says at least 60 days before the start, so I will. I'm going to do, what did I just do? What did I just do? Every three years and not less than 190 days, what did it say? for every year? Okay. Oh, don't go back. Where's my, where's my, sorry guys. Okay. I just want to see what they're laying, what did Pittsfield say? Not, I can't remember what they said. All right, so that way we still, we have it, we just don't know, we just have to fill out. All right, so we have a draft with questions in yellow. I will share, I will write minutes, I will share this, and I will, and Gene.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean can take a look at it. And then, and I will contact, I'll ask the questions that we have of the chief of staff and we'll see where we get. And maybe we'll have more questions or maybe not. I guess our question now is, do we want to have another meeting just to finalize this before we send it on to the whole committee?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. I mean, we could. We could we could make an appointment with Nina or I was going to just write right to her.
[Milva McDonald]: So I mean, I'm happy that it feels right as well. Okay, I'll contact I'll contact Nina and see what she says. Okay. Because it might be nice to go in and talk, because then if questions come up.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. No, that's good. So what are we talking? Let's see. Today is March 21st. How about Today, I don't know if Jean is usually available on Thursdays or not.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, why don't I just do, I will do, how about I do a doodle poll? Yeah, I can't do next Thursday. Can you do a doodle poll, Lori, if I send out a link to a doodle poll? Have you ever done a doodle poll?
[Milva McDonald]: All right, how about I will, I won't do a doodle poll, I'll just send out, I'll send out an email with possible dates. Okay, yeah, there's not that many of us, so I have a comment from the public to that.
[Milva McDonald]: What is that called?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Is that software, or is that just a?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I didn't Google it, but. I mean, I don't know that we could put a specific kind of software in the.
[Milva McDonald]: in the charter, but yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, it's a software system, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so what he's advocating is not just, he's saying that there should be, that the actual sort of tools that are used should be linked. I think that's what this would do. It would make the business of branches of government linked technologically, you know, the rules of information, etc.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. I get that. I don't know if it's right for government. I would have to learn more about it. But the branches of government are supposed to be independent. I mean, they're supposed to work together, but they're also supposed to have independence. Because that's how their checks and balances, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not saying that it wouldn't be, but I don't know if it would be a good idea to have it for the different branches of government. Like I could see, I mean, the mayor's office has a ton of departments that it has to oversee and all that. Yeah, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, that's, They're separate branches of government. You know, that's how the governments work, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we can look at it, but I don't think we can recommend a specific software in the charter. Do you? I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. We definitely can put things in the charter that encourage, you know, the branches of government to interact more.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I think we, you know, that's why we put the annual budget meeting in there. Are they having something like that this year?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I am. Well, it's a big job every year, no matter what. So anything that can be done to improve the process is good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think, I think we made a lot of progress.
[Milva McDonald]: I know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that's good. Um, We're doing really well, actually. We're getting close. Okay, so I will send the minutes. I will send out a schedule or suggestions for another meeting date. And I will contact Nina to see if she's open to meeting with us to answer some of these questions.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, a pretty good working draft of the whole charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Then the summer is going to be writing the final report.
[Milva McDonald]: That may be, yeah, I mean, you guys are going to are going to present in April 18th. The question is going to be, you know, is it going to mean we have to go back to city council, but we'll see. And then 6 is almost done 6 and then the, the, that sort of. Administrative one, five, we'll have to look at that. That might just be mostly standard language. We'll look at that and see if there's anything in there that we want to look at more closely. And then we have the one definitions and whatnot, which is again, mostly standard language.
[Milva McDonald]: There was, yeah, there was one that was the thing about.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, you're right. We have to do that too. But but it was mostly basic.
[Milva McDonald]: I think so too. So very exciting. Thank you so much for your all your participation. And this is Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, my pottery. Yeah. You got to do that. Keep me sane. Something's got to. All right. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. Take care guys. Bye.
[Milva McDonald]: And clearly, sorry, I was gonna say just for reference, I put language from the Worcester charter in the chat. I was also trying to look up Lowell because we know Lowell, Worcester and Springfield are the communities that we know of that do this with their school committee. And this is how they word it, six district members and two members elected at large. I imagine somewhere else in the charter, they might define district, but I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think it has to. Lowell does this, and they have eight wards, same as we do, and they have four, district, you know, with the combined wards, two at large and the mayor for their school.
[Milva McDonald]: No, they, what they've done is combined two wards to make those districts.
[Milva McDonald]: And their city council is eight, eight ward members, three at large. They don't, they don't do it for city council. They do it for school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: And Springfield and Worcester, I can't remember which is which, but one of them does do it for both city council and school committee, but the other one also does it only for school committee and not city council. So I don't think, you know, in this regard, it doesn't have to be the same. Because when people go to the polls, they'll just get the ballot with their candidates on it.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, did I hear that you were going to call the Secretary of State to ask about this?
[Milva McDonald]: So I know that when I spoke with the city clerk in Lowell, I was told that in order to do it in Lowell, they hired a consultant. And then I noticed that on that Worcester newsletter, they said that they hired the same consultant Lowell did. So one of the reasons that I was told they needed to hire a consultant was because you have to make sure that your combinations of wards
[Milva McDonald]: But they also had issues, both Worcester and Lowell were responding to lawsuits. So they also, so I don't know how much of the expertise of the consultant was needed for the combination of the wards or making sure that the representation would be, you know, with the different groups was covered.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, there's definitely been more turnover in the past few years.
[Milva McDonald]: Milford, do you agree with that? I don't, but that does sound, I mean, we would have to check it, but that does sound.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think that. I think that's new. That would be new, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, then you can do it again in 2026 and maybe your vice chair in between.
[Milva McDonald]: You could lose your secretary because of an election that way, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Can you just clarify, when you say Collins document, do you mean the generic modern charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So that's technically not language from the Collins Center. It's language from those charters.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, they gave us the generic frame and then I put in the language from each of the charters just so we can see it.
[Milva McDonald]: I think Aubrey makes a good point. And I guess I would just wonder whether... It's like, have we seen other charters that have this level of detail?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, you can look at them. And did you say that it was on the MASC website? There was a section with charters?
[Milva McDonald]: I can't, I don't think you can do that. I don't think you can. I mean, the charter has to be like the,
[Milva McDonald]: I believe we have full committee meetings on the 4th and the 18th, so.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, welcome to the March 7th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. Our first order of business is to talk about and accept the minutes. Did everyone have a chance to look at the minutes from our last meeting?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Great. Okay, so our next agenda item is we need to move on to talking about Article 6, which is financial procedures and budget. And I have the Collins Center here, Anthony and Frank. Did you two prepare a presentation or do you just want to take questions? How do we want to do it?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the main things. Well, I've sent you guys all you've seen the template of what article six entails. So we want to just sort of If you have any questions about that or any particular issues that you want to talk about related to that, we also have on the table the budget amendment that the city council presented last year, which we should probably discuss and decide one way or the other whether we think we should recommend it as is or something else.
[Milva McDonald]: The city council. Oh, David, that was before you joined the committee. So I don't know if you've actually seen the text and I should have sent it out. So I apologize. My bad. Everybody else knows what I'm talking about, right? You're talking about the budget ordinance? Not the ordinance. There was an amendment to the charter that the city council proposed. Oh, right.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Then it essentially, does somebody who's familiar with it want to say what it, I mean, I will share the whole text with you, but
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That would be great. Let me give you that.
[Milva McDonald]: It didn't involve the timeline. The timeline is something we have to discuss.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So this is it. So now everybody can see it. And Jean, you did just sort of say what the main aspect of it. It does involve timeline issues, which is definitely something that we're going to talk about, because that is included in Article 6. But the main part of it was the power to move move money, right, basically, from one appropriation to another.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So does anybody have any questions about it for the Collins Center?
[Milva McDonald]: For the budget.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And Paulette, you, let's see, I see Paulette has a question, so.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't believe. Isn't the school committee budget separate or maybe?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony or Frank, do you know?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, only if we're going to include it in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, wait a minute. I want it. David has a stand up, so I want to hear from him. But Phyllis, what this is, is it's an amendment that the city council proposed and asked the mayor to approve it, at which point it would have gone to the Attorney General. But she didn't do that, and it was sort of thrown back to us because we are reviewing the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, well, City Council specifically talked about, I'm not gonna remember the number, the provision off the top of my head, but they specifically talked about a process for making an amendment that would that it would go to the Attorney General. So they could have been wrong, but that is definitely what they talked about.
[Milva McDonald]: There's a process for making charter amendments, and that's what they were going to use. That would have not had it go through the State House.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that's interesting because the city council, when they proposed it, specifically because it didn't affect the composition of the local government or anything like that, specifically felt that it could fall under one of those types of amendments that could go to the attorney general. But that aside, David, I'd like to hear from you now.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to let the Collins Center answer the main question. I'll just quickly say that we have not formed a subcommittee for this, and if we feel that we need one, we will. But I just wanted the whole committee to have a chance to talk about it first.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks. Now, Anthony, did you have your hand raised?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay, great. Gene?
[Milva McDonald]: You are right. That is true. But for us, we're looking at the question of what do we want to codify in the charter regarding the process. So, you know, it may, and I think as I sent out article six and timeline is covered in there. So I think it is something we can look at. Do you agree, Anthony and Frank?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thank you. Do you, is that, do you feel like you got an answer, Jean, or do you wanna? No, that's good. Okay. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Are you talking about the ordinance?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And we can look at it. My sense is that it has a lot more detail than we might include in the charter, but it definitely does include some things that we would be looking at. Like, you know, the time.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. We'll take a look at it. Eunice, and then Aubrey, and then Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony or Frank, do you want to try to answer?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think if anybody wants to see it, they can look at it. I think that, as Anthony pointed out, ultimately the charter will supersede any ordinance. So I also, I quickly looked at the ordinance and I do think there's probably more in it than, I mean, there's more in it, for instance, than in the example, the article six examples that we've been looking at. I think our job is to look at Article 6 and find out, you know, think about best practices and just try to craft an Article 6 that we think makes the most sense and is the best for the city. I think that's pretty much what our task is. That's how I see it anyway. And Anthony? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I mean, that's maybe something that Anthony and Frank can say if that's common. I mean, I think in the Article 6 charter, the examples that we've looked at, the example of charters, they have, you know, they have delineated timelines and dates without saying that there needs to be an ordinance to confirm them. So, but I don't know, Anthony or Frank, what you think.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Aubrey has been waiting.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and then the ordinance that we're talking about will certainly be passed before the charter. And so that is a reason, I guess, to look at the ordinance, but I still think that our task remains the same, which is to craft a charter that we think is best for the city.
[Milva McDonald]: So, thanks for that. I mean, the reason is because 1 of it was sort of. It was thrown to us as the Charter Study Committee after the city council laid these out and the mayor said, well, the Charter Study Committee is going to study them. And the city council also has recently referred to them. So I don't think they've forgotten about them, but that's why we're discussing it anyway.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I shared it. I don't understand why Google sharing sometimes makes people ask for permission after I share it, but I will. Yeah, it's the same problem.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Okay, David? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. We definitely need to decide all those things. And I hear you, and maybe we will form a subcommittee. I see some hands. I see Ron has a hand. And Anthony and Aubrey, are your hands up? Okay. Anthony, is your hand up again?
[Milva McDonald]: So, Ron? Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Ron. I just want to clarify, when you say calendar, you're referring to the ordinance that's under discussion right now.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but that's not okay. So you weren't talking about the timing.
[Milva McDonald]: So it remains to be seen exactly what they'll do this spring. But regardless of that, our job, it doesn't really change our job. So I mean, I guess we just it maybe gives us a little more impetus to just stay focused and and keep on task and get our final report done by by the target date of October. So that's
[Milva McDonald]: And again, when you say calendar, you're talking about the dates that are laid out in the budget ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: And that's one of the things that we need to look at is what are best practices around those kinds of dates and those kinds of gatherings. Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: What we can put in the charter is how often a charter review will take place, but I don't think we can change how the charter is amended or changed. That's pretty set out, right?
[Milva McDonald]: But that option is available whether or not we put that in the charter, correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, regular charter review, for instance, is one of the things that we'll consider putting up. Okay. Gene and Anthony, and then I just want to get back and just see where everybody stands on the topic that we started with. Gene.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that they will look at our report seriously. But I think that they are aware that they have the ability to change it. But I also think they will take our report seriously. That is my impression. Okay, just to go back to what we started with, I just wanted, because it was sort of we were asked to look at the amendments, I just want to go back to the initial amendment. We've talked about a lot of things in relationship to the amendment, but what do people, where are people at in terms of the giving the city council the power to move money in the budget, which is what essentially the core of that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks, Anthony. Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I think when we look at those, we'll have to sort of maybe do it in collaboration with what other cities do and maybe how realistic they are in terms of what, you know, what the finance department can provide when, but for sure. Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Eunice. Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you. That's really important information. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: So, can I ask, um, I know Anthony and Frank, I see in article six, a couple of the charters that you gave us have something called an annual budget meeting, um, which, which included the city council mayor and school committee and, um, That wasn't maybe necessarily not public, but I suppose it could be public. What is Melrose specified only before the commencement of the budget process? Pittsfield said at least 60 days before the start of the fiscal year. I mean, do cities, are there cities that start this kind of thing in January? Is that a reasonable?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Anthony Wilson, can I ask? The charters that you mentioned that you had helped craft specifically addressing some of these budget needs, we have from you Weymouth, Pittsfield, and Melrose. Do you include those in that? And if not, can we all be referred to the charters that you mentioned?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, sorry, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: The fiscal year starts July 1st, is that? That's right.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay, so I think, Anthony, did you, does your, Anthony Andreottola, is your hand up?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so it seems like maybe just to explore, there's, what I hear anyway is that we have a strong interest in being able to craft a timeline that addresses transparency, collaboration, but we also want to make sure that it falls into best practices and that it's actually doable and reasonable. I also hear interest in forming a subcommittee to do that. I want to go ahead and do that, but before that, I want to just see if we want to continue to consider the amendment that would allow the city council to move money. So far, I haven't heard people speaking in favor of it? Do we want to just focus on what's in article six and say, you know, we don't feel comfortable including that in the charter for the various reasons that have been expressed? Or do we, I haven't heard any motions, for instance.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I second it. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Should we do a roll call?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anthony Andreadola. Voting yes means that we are giving the city council power to move money in the budget.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Eunice. Yes. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. You're on mute, Paulette. Yes. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle was here, but it looks like she must have dropped off. All right. Yeah. I will also vote yes. Okay. Thank you. That's taken care of. Now, in terms of the subcommittee, are there people who want to be on this article six subcommittee? Nope. Maury, yes?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anybody else? I'll do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So we have Maury, Jean, Eunice, and I will also do it. So that's four of us. So what we will do is we will start meeting and we will I mean, I think we have pretty good guidelines with the charters we have. And we can sort of look at the timelines and we'll bring something back. And if there's, if anybody, I'm going to assume, and Anthony and Frank, you can say if this doesn't seem right, I'm going to assume that what's contained in those charters you gave us are reasonable practices in terms of, let's say, if we pick a timeline that's outlined in one of those charters, that that's probably going to be workable. But is that, or would that vary from city to city?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so one of the things that we would maybe, would you recommend that the subcommittee, if we say, okay, this is the timeline that we want to propose for an annual budget meeting, for submission of budget, that it would be wise to check with the financial department? Or would, I mean, how would you recommend handling making sure that what we recommend is consistent with what is doable in Medford?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. That sounds good. Okay, great. Um, Eunice, did you have another comment?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think we'll maybe talk about that when we get in subcommittee, see what we come up with if. You know, and I think the chief of staff has always been with the chief financial officer when they've pretty much meetings. So maybe it would be just something that we could run by the chief of staff, who I think would be aware of, you know, whether this was something that, you know, they that they looked at. So but we can we can figure that out. We can talk about it. Okay. Um, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so for that Article 6 document is, yeah, where I included the text from each of those towns' charters under each section, and they are color-coded in that way, yes. Okay, great. We also were going to talk about the draft of Articles 2 and 3. Did people have a chance to look at it? Are there any concerns or questions? Some of it we've already voted on, and those parts are in green, but are there any concerns or questions about the rest, anything else?
[Milva McDonald]: Is that your hand or is that an old hand, Eunice? No, it's a new hand.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, actually, I thought we got rid of all the blue that last meeting. Is there still blue there?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I thought we looked at the blue last meeting and put it in black.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe that'll be I think I have to give you the Oh, I see it. I see the prohibitions. Yeah. Okay, let's just take a look at that. I have it up here.
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Well, we want to hear those questions. Yeah. But first, let's look at this blue part and we can try to remember why it's still in blue. The mayor shall hold no other city office or city employment for which a salary or other emolument is payable from the city treasury. I think that that's something like that. It's in our current charter. No former mayor shall hold any compensated appointed city office or city employment until one year following the date on which his former mayor's city service is terminated. Do you remember why it's in blue, David? Yeah, that's why I think it's in blue because of the... That's why it's blue. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: What's that? I'm sorry. Well, because if the mayor is chair of the school committee, Does that count as other employment?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So Anthony and Frank, I'm sure that this text came out, came from charter language that exists. Is this, how do, would this just be something that a city that had the mayor as chair of the school committee not have in their charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, beyond the fact that I think this says that the mayor can't be on the school committee, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Anthony and Frank, would this clause preclude a mayor being on the school committee? No.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, gotcha. Yep.
[Milva McDonald]: And that would be in the charter that would say the mayor would be on the school committee if that's what we decide. Yes. Okay. So then I think that this clause would not be a problem, except maybe it would interfere with the salary issue at all?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we are clear that we can keep this clause in and it's not going to interfere with the mayor being on the school committee. At least we know that. So we have that question answered.
[Milva McDonald]: So we can put that in. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. Maury, you had a call.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we'll look into that, but and the salaries come in another part of the charter and we did discuss compensation last meeting, but we didn't specifically discuss because we don't know yet if we're going to, we don't know yet what the recommendation is going to be about the mayor and the school committee. So we'll revisit it when we know. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: That goes in a different that goes in a different section of the chart. Yeah, a different article.
[Milva McDonald]: That's under Article 8, and we're talking, you know, the Article 8 subcommittee is talking about that, so we will get to that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so Paulette and Eunice have their hands up. So what we want- No, not me. Sorry. Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it wasn't all 650, but you're right, it was a big majority.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's right. We did talk about this at our, you know, at not the last meeting. It was the meeting before where we decided not to have the term limits for city council. And I don't, you know, if we want to reopen the discussion, we can, but as I recall, some of the rationale was, um, we looked at some of the research and there was research specific to legislative bodies that showed that term limits reduce the effectiveness of legislative bodies. That was one of the reasons I remember that we decided against it. I mean, are you saying you want to reopen that discussion?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I understand. Does anybody have any thoughts about that, that they want to add?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's exactly right. And Eunice, I mean, I do think that the final report will be probably longer than most people will read, but maybe what we'll also try to do is, you know, we'll have a bullet point section in the beginning where we'll try to summarize things as succinctly as possible. Maybe like, I don't know what people would call it, the Cliff Notes version, I don't know. But, you know, we'll try to make it accessible.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we'll try to make it as accessible as possible so that people can see.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, I understand. And it's, and you know, I do think we have to think through it very carefully, especially in light of that.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Ron. You'll make them sit in the deck. Okay. So back to this Article 2 and 3 draft. So I think, you know, exactly what Naveed said earlier, the hope is that committee members can read this, review it, and then we can vote on it. So that's why I was asking if there are any particular questions or concerns with any of this text.
[Milva McDonald]: Before 825, because we have a couple of other items.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. What is it? Which section?
[Milva McDonald]: The mayor may call a special meeting of the city council for any purpose. Noting notice of meeting shall, except in an emergency which shall be designated by the mayor, be delivered at least 48 weekday hours in advance of the time set and shall specify the date, time, and location of the meeting and the purpose for which the meeting is to be held. A copy of the notice shall be posted immediately or as required by the general laws relative to such a posting. So basically it just allows the mayor to call a special meeting of the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. And if I remember correctly, Daveed, I mean, we gave city council the ability to call a special meeting, right? So we, and we talked about how well there's, you know, there may actually be occasion And we talked about the regularity of the city council meeting anyway, but they do now meet every other week, twice a month, so we felt like this was reasonable.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, well, we can move to turn that into green and vote on that specifically, but I guess first I want to ask, does everybody feel like they've had enough time to look at this text of these articles?
[Milva McDonald]: And do we have any other specific concerns or questions about any aspect of it or objections?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if there's a specific aspect that you want to discuss, Eunice, we definitely want to discuss it, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, Anthony or Frank, do you have any comments about this?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Paulette, were you going to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, David?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks. I know we have Gene and Ron, but we haven't heard from Maury much, and I see Maury's hand, so can we hear from Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Ron and then Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Can you just clarify the model charter? Do you mean the generic modern charter that the Common Center provided?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, Jean, what section nine is what, what is the heading of that section?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a distinction for sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thank you. All right. We have we have like maybe one or one more minute on this. But Anthony and Phyllis want to speak.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, that is right. So I think what I want to do is I feel like we have some questions about eligibility and we're going to, I think we're going to have more discussion on that at our next meeting. So think it over and. I will put the eligibility sections in blue in Articles 2 and 3. We will discuss that more. Please carefully read Articles 2 and 3, and we will try to resolve all the issues, and we will provisionally vote on it at the next meeting. Does that sound like a plan? Thank you for giving it more time. I appreciate it. Okay, so we only have a few minutes, and we were going to just quickly have subcommittee reports. I can say I did, next meeting we'll also look at Article 7, which I shared with you. Article 7 has a draft, so hopefully we can get that taken care of. Any other subcommittees want to chime in?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Yeah, that sounds right.
[Milva McDonald]: And this is for the school committee? Yes. Okay, that's great. And Article 8, we're also working, and we have a lot of questions and a lot of research to do, but we're working. Anthony, Andrea, did you have your hand up?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I think if you email them, we can just sort of prepare that to think about them, and then we would be prepared for the next meeting, but we just can't have discussion about them. But I am not an expert, and I'm not a lawyer, so. Can you just put them in the minutes?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. So if you send them to me, Eunice, I'll put them in the agenda. How's that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Before we end, two minutes, I just want to ask if there's any members of the public that have any comments or questions or things that they want to share. Okay. So, jeez, we're going to end two minutes early. Oh, my God. We can keep talking. All right. Thanks, everyone. I'll move to adjourn. Oh, wait a minute. Aubrey, did you have a question?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Our next full committee meeting is April 4th. And we must have an article eight.
[Milva McDonald]: And I will contact the Article 6 people and we'll schedule a meeting. Okay? Do we have Article 8 meeting? Yes. Did we set a date? I can't. I don't think we did. Oh, geez. That fell off my radar then. I will do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, and Anthony Wilson, I think I sent you some questions about article eight and that must have been what I was waiting for. So I'll send I'll resend them to you. They have to do with recalls and things like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Now, where's that motion to adjourn? I move that the meeting come to an end. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Sure, the three-year terms present, they could present difficulties for the elections department because you would inevitably have to have local elections on years when the state and the federal government had elections. they can't be on the same ballot. So you would have voters, you would have the elections department having to figure out how to navigate that, basically, how to navigate having two ballots, having some people coming to the polls who were going to vote in both elections, some people only voting in one election. They would have to figure out how to navigate that. And it's just not, there are not really many cities that try to do that because of that. And towns will have elections maybe on off years or on years, same year as the state or federal, but they have elections, they can have elections in the spring and cities don't do that, so. Doesn't mean it's impossible. It's just, it's not easy.
[Milva McDonald]: It is interesting. I just want to throw out whenever there's a new mayor, then you have the same situation. That's all.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I just make a comment? Yeah. I think if you're seriously considering three years, I would suggest finding a city that has three-year terms and seeing how they work it with November elections. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: They were not able to provide one. I couldn't find one. There may be one, but the only one that may, you know, Taunton may, maybe look like they might do it, but I'm not sure if their elections are in November or not. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: While you guys are looking at that, can I just make a suggestion?
[Milva McDonald]: So the articles two and three subcommittee did go through the draft, but before we even started meeting, there was the subcommittee that researched the ward representation for city council. So we had that material. So these issues about composition of the school committee and term lengths, well, particularly composition or, you know, it's hard to create a draft until we know where we're going to land as a whole committee on those issues. So you could consider bringing sort of the main issues to the whole committee, getting consensus on those, and then you would have an easier time maybe plugging in the language. Would that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, you could bring the recommendations to the committee and say, you know, we've decided we recommend award representation and then sort of present the rationale and all that. I'm just saying, get the decisions and then plug in the line and then you can, you know, have an easier time creating the draft language. Okay. Does that make sense? Bring the recommendations, but not necessarily, you don't have to bring the recommendations in the form of Article 4. Because a lot of Article 4, you can draft it, but, you know, that issue of the composition of school committee is such a big issue. you'll have to rewrite it if it gets changed.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and then because the language is pretty, you know, we have the language from other charters, you can sort of Right, you really just. Exactly right.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm saying you don't have to bring a draft of Article 4. You just have to bring a presentation and recommendations. And then you can create the draft once the... Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Collaborating on budget or other things, Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I guess I would need to know what they were coming together to do because the city council is not the school committee and the city council doesn't. The only relationship, as I understand it, to the schools is they vote on the budget. Is that right?
[Milva McDonald]: And that would be in Article 8, under the budget process. It is 8.29, and we said we'd end at 8.30. And I know Phyllis has to sign off.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I imagine that's a matter of interpretation, and I'm not going to pretend that I can interpret it.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, but your subcommittee is a quorum in and of itself, so.
[Milva McDonald]: It's just doodle poll, and it's easy to make one, but I can make, if you, you just, yeah. I mean, do you want to try to figure out how to do it, Rob? Otherwise, somebody can just tell me the open dates. Like, Paulette, if you send me, if you say these are the dates and times that I think are possibilities, I can make the poll and send it to everybody.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we have two in April and two in May scheduled, but we only have one in March.
[Milva McDonald]: It would be the first Thursday and probably the third Thursday.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Welcome to the March 4th, 2024 meeting of the Article 7 Subcommittee for the Medford Charter Study Committee. First order of business is to accept the minutes. Did you both have a chance to look at the minutes?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay, so what we need to do is sort of wrap up what we started on last time. Unfortunately, I did not. I did not hear back on our questions. Hopefully, we'll be able to. The call-in center is coming to our meeting on Thursday, so we can just ask them then. But I thought we could just look through the blue parts, and those are the parts that... Oh, this I just put in blue. not because we had talked about changing it, but just because we're not sure how school committee is going to end up yet. So I just put that in blue to show that it's tentative, because we haven't decided on the composition of the school committee yet. So this was one of the things that we were talking about, the timeline, which I didn't get any information from City Hall. So I think we should just put in something we think is reasonable. And all of this is going to get reviewed by the whole committee. It's going to get reviewed by the call-in center. It's going to help us with drafting. So if they see something egregious, they'll let us know. And of course, it's going to be reviewed by the city council and the mayor eventually. I have one question. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean, can you be more specific? They? You mean the?
[Milva McDonald]: No, there's an elections department. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not sure because I don't know what gene I don't know. I haven't looked at in detail at what they did. So I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not sure because I'm not familiar with that. But what I do know is that what we have here is the, you know, pretty much standard material that goes into a charter or Article 7 and anything that the charter would trump any ordinance. So I don't know that we need to worry about it with what we're doing.
[Milva McDonald]: When you say they, you're talking about some sort of commission?
[Milva McDonald]: It wasn't members of the elections department?
[Milva McDonald]: So there is an elections commission responsible for managing and supervising elections, the annual census, and registering voters in the city of Medford while ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local election laws, policies, and guidelines established by Mass General Law and the municipal code. It looks to me that this is pretty much the same, what we call the elections department, but I don't know. So that's, yeah, the elections manager position is currently vacant. So the election commission in Medford is just the elections, what we were referring to as the elections department.
[Milva McDonald]: I think, yeah, no. Well, this body that I see on the city website, I don't think is a new body, so that may not be what you're talking about. Yeah, I was just trying to see if I could find reference to it.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, maybe looking on the city council agenda is, if you think that it's the city council's body, but I don't know. That's definitely not a new body. That's, you know, the elections commission. So, so I don't think it's probably, it's probably called something different if it is a new body. And I'm just wondering, the only thing I'm aware of is that there was, that there was some, there were some discussions on things that happened during the recent election, and that they were sort of trying to investigate that. But that's all I'm aware of. And so the responsibility for elections for the city council comes under their governance committee. And I don't know if they have anything on their agenda for the governance committee. That's, you know, I don't know if part of their agenda is looking at, I don't know what they're doing about elections. But again, You know, I think we can cover Article 7 here. I mean, the question I think, Anthony, you have is if they did create some sort of a body, should it be mentioned in the chart? Is that what you're asking?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know and I don't know if we really need to know that to do the section of the charter. I, I guess, in terms of whether to enshrine something, whatever body we might be discussing in the charter, I, I think that. you know, that we probably couldn't put details in it anyway, just like when we talked about the compensation body. The only thing we can do is say that such a committee shall be formed and then the city council has to handle it with an ordinance. So I, you know, I don't think it's really the purview of the charter to put a body like that in, but I don't know. So, I mean, we didn't see it in any of the other charters we looked at, so.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know that the mayor has control over the election, but the mayor hires the department heads, and that's a department that's under the mayor. Does that make sense? I think that's the case.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't know. I'd have to find out about that. Like I said, the Elections Commission is not a new body. So you could be talking about something else that I'm not familiar with. But we can, you know, I think we can proceed with what we're doing. And then maybe, you know, we can put that on our list to look into that. And like I said, this isn't final. I mean, this has to go through the larger committee. And so we can sort of put it in the notes to research recent efforts to address election. So the timelines, this text in blue here, I put it in blue in case we have to change it depending on what gets decided about the school committee composition, but it also has some dates in there for the signatures, right? We have the forms, signatures of votes shall be made on a form. that's made available not earlier than April 2nd in each preliminary election year. So that's the, I guess, that's the earliest that people can start. That seems like a reasonable date to me for those forms to be available. What do you guys think?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, because a lot of people don't declare. Some people, May is, I think, considered pretty early to declare, right? So that gives plenty of time for candidates. And then for certification on or before the 14th day preceding the date fixed for submission to the city clerk, the form shall be submitted. You know, this is what I'm wondering is whether the forms In Medford would be submitted to the city clerk or the elections department. But I think it's the clerk because I think- It is the clerks right now. Right. Because the clerk certifies the signatures, right?
[Milva McDonald]: That's why they go to the clerk. Yeah. Okay. And the clerk didn't express any opinion on the date. You know, so I guess we just decide what we think is reasonable at this point. 45th day prior to the, so this would be that the, this is for the preliminary. We're going to get to the general later, but this is, this would be.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so we'll leave that. And that means I'm going to take this part out of blue. All right, where's the next blue? Oh, and this is ballot, this is another timing thing. This is when the names get drawn for the, and this would be new.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But that only gives the clerk five days to certify the signatures.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. I don't know. I mean, is that enough time?
[Milva McDonald]: And we know that this is the timeline that's used in other cities. So it's not, you know, it works in other places.
[Milva McDonald]: My only concern that I can think of with the five-day window for the clerk is that the clerk in Medford doesn't really have a staff, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, you know, is that would that be burdensome to him? But I don't know how quickly they process the signatures now.
[Milva McDonald]: Not a Medford candidate.
[Milva McDonald]: State, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. So let's leave it at that. And then also, they know it's coming. They can plan for it. They know that they have to do it in that window if that makes sense. Okay. So let's see. What else did we have in blue? This was another date thing. Okay, this is when the drawing would be held for the, this is a regular city election, not later than seven days after the certification of the preliminary election results. I mean, this is not, this is not a time-consuming issue, right, drawing the... Oh, that's bang, bang, bang, you would think.
[Milva McDonald]: It has to be open to the public, but nothing in the charter says that it has to be advertised. So I don't know. Okay, so seven days sounds good. We'll take that. And then in the event that there is no preliminary election, the drawing shall be conducted on the fourth Tuesday in September prior to the regular city election. So what we were talking about last time where candidates might want to get their materials out with, you know, whatever number X on the ballot. If the drawing was, that's pretty close to the election, right?
[Milva McDonald]: On which date?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, which we just looked at.
[Milva McDonald]: If there's no preliminary election... At least 40... Well, what we have is at least 40 days before the preliminary election, so it's not a specific date. What if we said at least 40 days before the general election?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah, that's what you're saying. Okay. So where was it? Shelby conducted at, what did we say, at least 40 days? Is that what we said?
[Milva McDonald]: yeah i don't know because i mean they have to get stuff printed etc right right so you think we should be do you think it should be 60 days because because the stuff that they're going to have they're going to pass that out closer to the
[Milva McDonald]: Well, 40 days is a lot more generous than some of the other charters we looked at. So why don't we keep it at 40 for now? OK, that sounds good. And then in the event, oh, wait a minute. Oh, a special, this is for a special election. In the event that there's no preliminary election in advance of a special city election, the drawing shall be conducted. So interesting, this is on the 6th Tuesday. Why the 6th Tuesday? Really interesting. Prior to the special city election. That's just... Yeah, I guess a special election doesn't have to be on a Tuesday. So that, I mean, assuming a special election might, it might involve a candidate, it might involve an issue, right? This is six weeks. That's actually about the same as 40 days.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Should we leave it as is, or should we just say 40 days before the special city election to make it?
[Milva McDonald]: What's interesting is, though, we have at least 40 days, so it's not specific. It's just basically a deadline. And you'd have it before 40 days. This is so specific on the sixth Tuesday prior to the special city election. So we could just keep it and say at least 40 days. I just don't know if there's a reason for a special election that they would have wanted to make it that specific. I can't think of one. Can you?
[Milva McDonald]: So we're keeping it the same? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That's good. What else? Oh, this part. I don't know. We talked about it last week, and we said, oh, we'll just keep what's in the charter now. And then I thought about it afterwards, and I thought, you know, why not simplify, right? What was in the other charters we looked at said, all elections for city offices shall be nonpartisan and election ballots shall be printed without any party mark, emblem, or other political designation. Oh, no. That's different. OK, that's lower down, sorry. This is wards. We're eight wards, aren't we, Nova? We're not seven. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, that's what we needed to talk to the Collins Center about. This is for nonpartisan. I was talking about nonpartisan elections, which is not in blue. So I just felt like that language from the other charters was just simpler, right? This has a lot of extra words, like annual, biannual, or You know, instead, the simpler language just says all elections for city offices. So I just felt like the language was simpler. And if we could simplify it, why not?
[Milva McDonald]: What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So I'll just replace this more simplified language with there. And then the wards was one of the things that we had a question for the Collins Center about, right? This language might have just come from another charter and that's why it says seven. But the main question we had was why is this in this section? Because what we're trying to understand was the city council's role in this because most of what we've been told is that the state draws the wards. So, but clearly the city council has some role because it's in this charter and also our city council, I think it was about two years ago, what was it? That there was some discussion of adding another ward in Medford.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But what we don't understand, what I'm failing to understand is what is the city council's role if the state is the one who draws the wards and comes up with the wards? How does that interact with the city council?
[Milva McDonald]: So that's what we need to know. I mean, this looks like standard language. We could say, oh, we're just going to leave it in there and then we can ask the call-in center about it later and just change seven to eight. I'll just do that right now and leave it in blue and then just say this is in blue because we need to talk, we need to understand more what the city council's role is in wards. How about that, we'll just leave it in blue. And then we can ask the city council, I mean, we can ask the call-in center when we get them. Okay, so, and then I will later, I will, I could do it now, but let's see, here's the simpler language. And then we, put the A in the front. Okay, look, it came out gray instead of black. What do you know? Okay, so that's pretty good. I think we went through it. We did it. We only have that one question about Section 7-6, wards. And other than that, we've got a good, and if we have to change, depending on what happens with the school committee, we might have to change that, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if one person is running, you wouldn't have to have a preliminary, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, exactly. So if there's three at large and there's seven people running for those at large seats, there's going to be a preliminary, right? But if there's six, there won't be. Because it's usually, right? And if there's three people running for a ward seat, there would be a primary. But if there's one or two, there won't. Isn't that how it works?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I think it's, I think it would be because, like, for now, there's seven seats and there's only a primary if there's more than 14.
[Milva McDonald]: Right? So that's like, they're looking at it as two, as there's at least one person compete, you know, competing against somebody for every seat. So it's sort of double the number, which, you know, and that's one of the things that can get, can be difficult. I think for people voting in Medford is because you got a list of 14 candidates.
[Milva McDonald]: I wasn't aware that there was a tug of war going on.
[Milva McDonald]: Because the charter only specifies what happens for an open city council seat.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think our current charter says it, but only for city council. Because our current charter says nothing about city council. So they have to look at mass. Yeah, about school committee. That's what I meant. They have to look at whatever the mass general laws are for such an occasion. So I didn't know that they were.
[Milva McDonald]: Wow, that's crazy. Well, that's just another reason why we need the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: So, but that leads me to a question, well, that comes in, it'll come in Article 4, I think, because about the school committee, and that's the article of the charter that's for the school committee that will say what happens if there's a vacancy. Yeah, okay, well, yeah, that's not in this part of the charter anyway, the vacancy issue. Okay, so I'm going to send you guys minutes, but I don't think we need to have another meeting. I think that I can, I feel like, let's see if you guys agree that the document that we just created, we can share with the whole committee at this point?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, awesome. So I will send you guys minutes and which we technically aren't going to have another meeting, so we won't technically have to accept them, but I don't know. I'll send them out anyway and we'll post them. And I will share that document with the whole committee. And probably in April, we'll probably get around to voting it, making it official. And that'll be a whole nother article of the charter that we've got a draft done. So awesome. Good work.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree. All right. Should we officially adjourn?
[Milva McDonald]: All right, all in favor? Aye. All right, thanks. See you Thursday.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome, everyone, to the meeting, February 28th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee, Article 8 Subcommittee. So this is our first meeting, and I know some of you have had a chance to look at the, when I did in that document, which I'm hoping will become a working, sort of a draft document that we can work on. It's basically the section eight of the generic modern charter with the language from the three communities we've been looking at. Obviously, we can look at other communities and we maybe should. And we should probably look at some things beyond other charters as well. I'm sure as if you've gone through it, you've seen that there's a lot of pretty important stuff in there. So What I was hoping we could do tonight is kind of maybe just discuss how we're going to approach the material, figure out what we need more information on, and make a plan to sort of get that information. Does that make sense? Also, I'm open to ideas from anybody about how we should.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let's see, I have it, I can share it so we can sort of start looking at it. Well, first of all, wait, before I do that, let me just ask if anybody had any sort of broad ideas about how to approach this section or, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, yeah, I'm sure that whatever the process is supposed to default to state law, and this is one of the issues that we discussed when we first were meeting and realized that we needed to create a new charter because accessing the mass general laws and potentially special acts that there might be is just, it seems like it should be a simple thing, but it can be tricky. Yeah, so because it works that way, I mean, I don't know, do we know of any petitions that residents have tried to put forth?
[Milva McDonald]: So they were told by city hall or like who told them that they had to get the mayor's approval?
[Milva McDonald]: Who knows? I mean, you know, it's easy to be told misinformation. You know, I feel like when you're making phone calls to different offices. Well, I think it could be good to figure out what the current process is or what state law allows, but... I really don't have a recall.
[Milva McDonald]: That's from Mass General Law Chapter 43B that says 15%. I'm not an expert, so I'm not This is not definitive, but I think that there might be different state laws that apply to different processes. Like, for instance, the CPA has its own state law, right, that outlined a pro- because there were signatures collected for that, to get that on the ballot. The CPA, right? I guess. I guess. Community Preservation Act. But that is in line with a specific state law. So, I'm guessing the process is sort of different across the board, and that even if we put a process in the charter, let's say something like a Community Preservation Act would have its own process that, you know, anyway, that our charter would not overrule any state law.
[Milva McDonald]: So let's just take a look at the first potential section is free petition. And one thing I noticed was I, again, I'm not, I did this document. It doesn't mean I didn't make a mistake, but I was fairly careful when I did it. We looked at three charters, but only Melrose had this particular provision. So, it's not a requirement that we put this in the charter, and it's different from citizen initiative measures, right? So, which all, which I believe all three of them had, and very involved sections. So, you know, we're going to eventually have to go through these and say, well, do we want to put a free petition provision in? This particular section is just to compel a response from the city government.
[Milva McDonald]: This is the charter which theoretically stands regardless of what any current climate is at City Hall or what any future climate might be. So we have to, I feel like we have to just look at it as separate from like, you know, considering what's happening right now at City Hall or, I mean, I'm not saying that doesn't come into it, but it really needs to go beyond that, right? So do we think that it's a good idea to put something like this in, in the first place? And as far as I can tell, this is just, I guess, theoretically, let's say you have an issue and you want to talk about bike lanes. I think that's the example they gave here. And you write to the city council or you write to the mayor or whatever, and they just don't respond. This would give you the opportunity to collect signatures to compel them to address it, right? Is that what, I mean...
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, absolutely. That's a good way to describe it, Ron, to get something on the agenda. It's different. I don't know. I think in general, I feel like the government considers issues that are of concern to the community. This would mean anybody could collect 150 signatures to get something addressed.
[Milva McDonald]: So it sounds like you would be in favor of something like this.
[Milva McDonald]: And Jean, if you have a concern, I want to hear what your concern is.
[Milva McDonald]: This is kind of like... Jean, you were talking more about residents slowing down the business of the... Yes, yes. Right. I agree.
[Milva McDonald]: Wait, and did you see that in this Melrose section or is that something that you saw somewhere else? No, it's right here where I highlighted- Oh, there. Okay. So that text there was- the notes in the generic modern charter explaining what each of these things are. That would have been from the Collins Center. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I don't think 150.
[Milva McDonald]: I think 150 is reasonable. Look at, I mean, okay, so what, I mean, we don't have to go into those details right now, but let's say number of signatures is something that we're going to want to address in the language and also guardrails, you know, or whatever. I don't know what, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: You could say, well, if the government body just doesn't want to deal with it, they can just have their hearing, talk about it, be done, and say, OK, we did it, and not really. But again, you shouldn't be able to submit the same petition over and over again.
[Milva McDonald]: You would.
[Milva McDonald]: So do we all agree that we want to stick with 150 signatures?
[Milva McDonald]: Or 100 in between 50 and 150? Yeah, 100. Let's put 100 and let's say six months. In the meantime, we can maybe look at some other charters around the state that might have this particular section and compare.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, this isn't interesting because if you pull papers to get signatures, when we were collecting signatures to try to get charter review, an elected commission, you know, they were specific sort of official petition sheets that had to be used. You couldn't just use a piece of paper, you know, that then you then hand those in to the city. So for something like this, I don't know, how, you know, what kind of guidelines you would, yeah, well, could you just take a piece of paper out of a notebook and just collect people's names and addresses?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so maybe what we need to do is a question we need to ask is, are such our petition forms, general petition forms available from the city?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Because like I said, I'm pretty sure the ones for running for office are like specific to that purpose.
[Milva McDonald]: That probably comes down from the state. I don't know if the city ones do.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And we can maybe ask other cities that do it. If you have a free petition process, how do people, you know, do you provide forms for the signatures or what?
[Milva McDonald]: So we can look into that. Okay. Okay, so my takeaway from this is that we agree that this is a good idea, but we want to make sure that there's a limit on how many hearings on any one subject can be required, and we have some questions about signature collecting, and we're landing right now at 100 signatures, but after we do some research, it may or may not change, right? Okay. So this section is different. It's a little maybe a little more weighty in terms of it's not just putting something on an agenda, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, charter review, the signatures for that fall under a state law. It's outlined in state law process. This wouldn't be. Like I said, CPA is also a state law, right? So if you want to get CPA passed, you're going by the state law, the process outlined in that. So this would be more... This is strictly city and... Go ahead. I'm just reading and talking at the same time.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't think it would go. I'm not sure it would go to the state. A home rule petition goes to the state.
[Milva McDonald]: This is at the local level.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, so it looks like.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it looks like it has to go through the city solicitor to make sure it's not breaking any laws. That's right.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but it's in. And then if it's good with them, it goes to the clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not so sure is going to I don't understand this at all.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we're going to have to look into this more carefully.
[Milva McDonald]: So we need to study this and we need to like, it looks like Weymouth also has a process. And every one of these three processes looks pretty much the same, right?
[Milva McDonald]: This is what I think is happening. This section outlines the process. That first number of signatures, which is a lower threshold, sends it to the city council or school committee to consider, say. If it's rejected and they don't pass the ordinance or they reject it, Then in these sections, and we could include it if we chose, then there's a process to get it onto the ballot. And to get it onto the ballot, then you have the higher threshold of 10% or whatever. So this gives an opportunity, it gives a way for people to have the city council vote on an issue, an ordinance, and it also gives a process for trying to have the people decide on it if that doesn't work.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. Let's look at it.
[Milva McDonald]: What I don't, yeah, I don't know how this differs from the, say the citizen, because this prior section also outlined putting it on the ballot, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Form of question. Yeah. This says process for requesting that the legislative body reconsider action on a measure.
[Milva McDonald]: Wait a minute. This is if they pass it. Yes. Yes. So this is if they pass an ordinance and you don't like it, then you can go around and collect these signatures and. And do what another group just did. That's what it looks like. What it looks like.
[Milva McDonald]: No, but it also says if the measure is not rescinded, the city council shall provide for the submission of the question for determination by the voters at a special election. Oh, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, hopefully it wouldn't. I mean, 10% is a lot of signatures.
[Milva McDonald]: So there's several levels of... Well, I don't know about hiring or firing personnel because that wouldn't happen through an ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, and because what's interesting is that all the three charters we've looked at do include this. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Really, you think getting 4,000 signatures is easy?
[Milva McDonald]: I know, but I think the number of registered voters is about 40,000. I was thinking 10%.
[Milva McDonald]: That's not what they go by. They go by, you know, the percentage of registered voters.
[Milva McDonald]: Not not easy, but OK, so I'm a little unclear because I thought OK, so we have the citizen and so the first section we looked at free petition. Is pretty, you know, it's basically just to get something. So we're pretty OK with that. We just need right to get a little more information. These two eight section 8283 one which allows. It allows the citizens to get the legislative bodies to consider a measure, and if they reject it, it gives citizens a way to get it on the ballot. A three gives residents a way to basically protest an ordinance that's been passed and potentially overturn it on the ballot, right? So those are pretty different things, I think. So what more do we want to know?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm guessing it's not used with frequency.
[Milva McDonald]: It sounds like that, but I mean, I need more information too, but on the surface, I like these ideas, because it sounds like that, but These are not easy lifts. Getting thousands of signatures and getting something through a ballot is not an easy thing to do. So it's not like people would be able to frivolously say, oh, well, we're going to go and we're going to get this. We're going to make you guys vote on this again. And if you vote no, we're going to let the citizens vote on it and overturn it. I don't think it could be done frivolously. But that said, I do agree that it's a good idea to sort of look into, you know, how this has played out in communities that have it. And even if you find one example of it, that wouldn't necessarily negate, you know, any positive effect that it would have. You know what I mean? One bad example. So I don't know. I mean, if people talk about checks and balances in the city, and mostly we've talked about the balance of power between the mayor and the city council, our elected bodies, but this is a pretty strong check on the city government.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, let's see.
[Milva McDonald]: I get it. I mean, Melrose had 12%, which in Medford would be more than 4,000. Yeah, 15% is what we would have needed to get the elected Charter Commission, and that was going to be between 6,000 and 7,000 signatures.
[Milva McDonald]: Signatures, you mean?
[Milva McDonald]: Personally, I don't really think that's a danger.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I don't think so.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, so we need more information. The other thing that we could potentially do is if anybody wants to I mean, we can look at research and we can see like, has it been done in another city? We can talk to people in other cities too. We can call the clerk in one of these communities and say, you know, we see that in your charter, you have a citizen referendum procedure and you have a citizen initiative petition process. How does that work? Have you experienced people using it or whatever? So we can do that too.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thanks. And we'll find out. We'll first check Malden's charter and see if they have it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so this, we can't really make a decision on whether we think we should recommend this until we have more information.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and they seem, they're also pretty good at if you're going to include something, like, for instance, Melrose didn't have that, you know, no more than once a year on any one issue, and they kind of put it in there. So they're pretty good at saying, well, if you do something like this, you know, think about adding such and such, because they're good at knowing kind of like where the pitfalls might be.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So you have to find the right number. Right. This would be an important section if we did decide to recommend citizen. Yeah. So this would be important. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But this section says what would not be, like, so even if you were mad about the school committee budget, you can't put it on the, you know, so there's, so it would be important to include these, I think. And it looks like they're pretty much the same in, you know, but we can look carefully at if there are differences between these communities.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Now, recall. This is, you know, potentially controversial and we should talk about it and see what we think.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that true?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I'm not sure about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Would it be for municipal elected officials or just state?
[Milva McDonald]: One of them has got to be the protection of the citizens to recall somebody who is... Okay, so whether or not there is an ability to do it now under state law, which we don't know the answer to the question, it sounds like, Ron, you would be in favor of putting a recall petition into the chart. What about you, Eunice and Jean? What do you think? Absolutely.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, theoretically, if they got voted in, it would be kind of hard to vote them out with a recall.
[Milva McDonald]: That's well, yeah, it depends on what we would put in the charter. Like just looking at Weymouth, it doesn't just skimming through. I don't see any anything about the reasons that somebody would be recalled. Weymouth does say that the affidavit should say what the grounds for recall are.
[Milva McDonald]: But it would still count.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we can't recall our state or federal elected official.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we can't recall the president. I'm pretty sure we would have maybe seen a recall.
[Milva McDonald]: So maybe California allows it, but I don't think we can.
[Milva McDonald]: What are we specifically asking them? How common are recalls? What are we asking them?
[Milva McDonald]: Does a recall happen? Well, these charters don't differ in, they don't say only the mayor. I don't think it would be right to say only the mayor personally.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, these charters say no person recalled shall be eligible to be a candidate to fill any vacancy created by the Senate.
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't know why these charters don't prohibit that. There might be laws about, you know, people being able to run for office.
[Milva McDonald]: 20% is a lot. 20% is a lot because in Medford, 20% is between 6,000 and 7,000. We don't get that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, maybe 20% is a good idea. I don't know. I'm just saying that would definitely be a lot.
[Milva McDonald]: So my other question about recall is, If it really is possible right now under state law, do we need it in the charter? Could the charter just say elected officials may be recalled as under a procedure outlined in Massachusetts in state law? And that way people would know that it exists.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I do agree with you. I'm just thinking for this particular issue, because it is controversial. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm thinking maybe the Secretary of State is a good, they have an elections division or, but see, they don't deal with, they wouldn't deal with a local, I don't know. I don't know what department to call. I would bet you you would have to have them involved in some kind of a... So maybe somebody could call the Secretary of State or I don't know if the AG has a particular branch in the AG's office that might be able to answer. Didn't that call-in center tell us if there's? Oh yeah, we can ask the call-in center too.
[Milva McDonald]: Just finding out what the, you know, what the statutory reference and the process.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, they might reflect there are some differences.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'll ask them about that.
[Milva McDonald]: So if we, so this Section 86 required voter participation would, if we included it, which it looks like only Pittsfield has done so, would apply to, or could apply to a recall provision if we chose to include it, and an initiative procedures if we chose, you know, if we included them. And then that, I'm thinking, you know, that, I mean, do we agree that it should be for initiative procedures as well as recalls?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, for Pinsfield, they say for any measure to be effective.
[Milva McDonald]: We'd have to look back and see. We could put special election, but.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, how many actual voters voted at our last municipal election? Do we know?
[Milva McDonald]: And now the number is sticking in my mind that it's about between 30 and 35 percent turnout.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So 20 percent, you know, maybe is reasonable. That would be about 8,000. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it is accurate. It's the number of people who are registered voters.
[Milva McDonald]: What do you mean?
[Milva McDonald]: They all say as of the last recent regular city election.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but those are... I mean, I think that there is eventually, but I don't think those numbers would be big enough to significantly, you know... No.
[Milva McDonald]: Like 5,000, you know. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Question on number. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Submission of other matters. And now, and I don't ability of city. Oh, okay. So this, this is the ability of the city council in the school committee to submit a voter referendum provision. That's interesting.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not sure because, well, the interesting thing about this is, like you would say, well, why wouldn't they just pass an ordinance, right?
[Milva McDonald]: That's non-binding.
[Milva McDonald]: That's not what this is saying. It's not about non-binding. So that would be different. OK. And I don't know if that's something, I'll make a note, so, about non-binding questions. And, okay. I mean, the only thing I would say about that is, I don't know what kind of effort and expense it, it is to submit questions to the voters.
[Milva McDonald]: Does this mean that?
[Milva McDonald]: It says that it, I mean, the school committee's, so, I don't know what ordinance the school committee could create that, you know, they don't really operate that way.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, 2 1⁄2, it's state law, so I haven't read the law, so I'm not that familiar with it, but I don't think we could say- Plus this new 2% rule.
[Milva McDonald]: But what are you talking about, 2% rule?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, you mean the real estate transfer tax they're talking about.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't know. I'm not sure. But what we kind of want to know about this is, what is the purpose of this?
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe, maybe. I'll see what the call center says. School committee can't pass ordinances.
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't think they could put, this is, and they can't, this is just not letting them put something on the ballot themselves. They have to go through the city council, right?
[Milva McDonald]: No, it says they shall at the request of the school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: If the measure pertains to school committee affairs that are under the jurisdiction of the school committee. So it doesn't sound like they have to approve it. All right. I don't think. That's what shall means to me.
[Milva McDonald]: And this language is the same in every charter, right? So.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. So we have. Clear as mud. Yeah, we have questions about that. Oh, wow. Inflicting provisions.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, no, I think what this is envisioning is if one group of citizens did the work and got all the signatures and got this measure on the ballot, say to vote affirmative for bike lanes and another separate group of citizens got a question on the ballot and says vote no on bike lanes so there's two questions on the and then more i think more if i could just i i think more is and they would put on the ballot i want bike lanes without helmets i want bike lanes with helmets
[Milva McDonald]: No, they could be. I believe they can be. What this is saying is they can be on the ballot, but if they both succeed, then you have to say which one actually takes effect, because they can't both take effect, right? Right. If they conflict.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if it's a yes or no question, whichever, you know, like if you get more- Largest number. I mean, theoretically- So it's the largest number?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, theoretically, this is highly unlikely, right? Because if something is, you would think if the same number of people are voting, they're gonna vote yes on one,
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's it, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I think this is highly unlikely, but it's people thinking about potential problems, which is good.
[Milva McDonald]: Because if such a thing happened, you'd want to know what to do, right? Yeah. Okay. So if we adopt, if we decide to put, you know, some of the initiative petitions, we probably would want to include this too, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And that's the last one.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm virtually positive that that would be in conflict with state law, but we can check.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm pretty sure that this isn't gonna be allowed, but I will look at, we'll check it.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm just saying put the- We never got the, that wasn't any signatures to change the charter. That was signatures to ask the people if they wanted to review the charter and put candidates for an elected commission on the ballot. Okay, so what I'm saying to you is make any changes.
[Milva McDonald]: You can't. A resident can't change the charter. You can try to get a charter review to happen, which is what we did and which is what we're doing right now. And there's those two ways to do it. You either override the city and state government by having an elected commission, which then you have the heavy lift of 7,000 signatures, or you do what we're doing and you go for a special act charter, which is customary. It's not in the law, but it's customary to have a committee, an appointed committee, do the charter review just as we are doing, but ultimately the city council and the mayor then have to submit the homegrown petition to the state.
[Milva McDonald]: However, I mean, one of the things we are going to be looking at, including in the charter, is a regular charter review. So if there's a regular charter review, then you don't need to know how to do it. The reason, because it's going to get reviewed, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, we can look into that. I mean, it's complicated, you know, because if you start, you know, it's not that easy to understand how you get charter review to happen or how you change the charter. And then you can say, if you look it up, you see these two paths, because you're either, the only thing you can end up with is a home rule charter, which is using Chapter 43B, or a special act charter, which is what we are aiming for. But then Medford had Home Rule petitions, which did this weird hybrid thing. And it said, well, we'll take Chapter 43B, and we'll put it in our Home Rule petition. So we would have had an elected commission, but we would have ended up with a Special Act charter. Although I'm still not exactly sure, to be honest, what they would have done. Because the Home Rule petition kind of said that it would follow Chapter 43B. except for a few details. So that makes me think it would be a home rule petition, but it's moved because the home rule petition never made it through. I don't even know the answer to that. So all I'm saying is it can get complicated. You can say, well, there's only two paths to charter review and then, but actually Medford tried this other thing, you know, which was sort of not exactly sure what it would have been.
[Milva McDonald]: In 1986, because it wasn't reviewed in 1986, it was changed through a special act. Right. When it was changed to plan it.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I know what you're talking about. When you look in our charter, there's a bunch of special acts.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know how much they actually changed, like I think the mayor's salary is a bunch of those special acts. There's certain things that you can't, I mean, you know, I don't think the state would allow any substantive changes without putting it to the voters.
[Milva McDonald]: I know. All I'm saying is I'm pretty sure that there's going to be a discussion about whether we're going to recommend including a regular charter review in our charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So if we do that, then these other I mean, we would have a special act charter, and I suppose there's nothing that would prevent somebody from collecting 7,000 signatures and trying to get a home rule charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. So we have a pretty long list of questions for the call and center and Ron, you're going to call Malden. And so how do we want to proceed from here? with these because we, I mean, nearly, you know, the first section seemed relatively simple and we thought, okay, we can agree on that, but then everything else was like pretty complex. They're very important things to think about, but they're not simple.
[Milva McDonald]: But I mean, I. Well, what I'm wondering is, do we want to do anything besides ask? I mean, you're calling Malden, but and besides asking the Palmer Center, do we want to try to. do some of our own research. Do we want to, like for instance, does somebody want to talk to Fall River about their experience with a recall? I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: The Excel spreadsheet that I sent out has links to, those are all not all 350, but they're mostly cities and the cities are the ones that we should be looking at. because all the other charters are going to have town meeting and things like that. So that has links, which should take you to the charters. Caveat, you know, the thing about the internet is it's not always easy to tell if you're looking at a current document. You know what I mean?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I can't remember there was one thing I was looking at. I can't remember what it was when I was researching something and I was like, what's going on with this? How come, you know, and I asked the call center and they're like, Oh, yeah, that's from, you know, 2020, you have to look at this one. But, you know, so it's not always It's not always easy to tell if you're looking at an active document. So, if you really want to find it, you go through each community's website, you know, the city website, and you get it that way. But you can check, you know, they are all linked in that Excel spreadsheet I sent out. Or you can check, you know, go to the City of Malden website and look under charter and it should take you to their charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, the other thing is, you know, you don't always know the age of the charter you're looking at. And what we do know is that these three charters that the Collins Center provided us with are, you know, pretty recently updated. So, and to me, it's sort of telling that each community had most of these provisions.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I don't know if that means. Well, maybe, but that's one thing the Collins Center will be able to tell us. Well, you know, it's, yeah, it's, um, people are really starting to put recalls into their charters or whatever. It doesn't mean we should do it, but it would be interesting information.
[Milva McDonald]: And if sometimes, so that's good to find out sort of news and things like that. But if I'm looking for research, sometimes I go to Google Scholar. Yeah, I was thinking more like news articles. Yeah, yeah. But if you're looking for both, Google Scholar, sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not any better. Never heard of that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Eunice, if you're ever looking for studies, you just Google Google Scholar, and it'll give you a search engine. And then you just put the topic of the research you're looking for. And you can filter it and find studies on it in the last 10 years or whatever.
[Milva McDonald]: So some of that is covered. Yeah. Isn't that some of that covered by open meeting law in terms of the postings, when they have to be posted and things like that?
[Milva McDonald]: Have you done research about where each municipality decides what their requirements are going to be for this?
[Milva McDonald]: When you say a variety of places online, what do you mean?
[Milva McDonald]: How do you envision that that would be included in the chart?
[Milva McDonald]: And did you see things like that in the National Civic League's model charter?
[Milva McDonald]: What section of the charter in the National Civic League, do they have this under citizen participation?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. In our generic model charter, Article 7 is elections. So it sounds like article eight is the comparable section. I'm really sorry. I have to go. That's OK, Jean. Thanks. I'll just email to set up another meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. Bye, Jean. Eunice, would you just copy that language that's specific to what we're talking about in this subcommittee and share it and we'll look at it at our next meeting. Okay. Because from what you're describing, it sounds like it's more aspirational language because we can't go into the specifics of this physical location, this online group or whatever. But that's what you just were reading out sounds sort of like a more aspirational kind of like this is the culture that we want to create in the city.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And I'm not sure that's the role of the charter, but I don't know. I am interested in looking at that language from the National Civic League, what they recommend.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think public engagement does mean more, but it's not necessarily like the charter is the charter. It's not responsible for all the public engagement in the city. So, you know, so I don't know. So I don't know. You know, I feel like it just because it's not in the charter doesn't mean that you don't have it. And then what kind of language do you want to put in the charter that isn't, like, when you say get into the weeds, you're talking about, like, saying things like, you know, meeting notices have to be posted at least 10 locations in the city.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, which is now they posted on the city calendar.
[Milva McDonald]: I hear what you're saying, but I just think- Well, that's why I'm interested, Eunice. I think we should start with you just circulating that language from the model charter, the National Civic League's model charter, just so we can look at it. Because just from what you read, it sounds like it's not that type of thing, what you just said, Ron. It's more sort of like, this is the goal.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so definitely send that language around just so that we have an idea and we can start thinking about it. Okay, and I'll put it on the list. And so I will send around an email to see when we can have our next meeting. But what we don't know is how long it's going to take us to get any answers.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I'm going to make a note for myself. I'll put two weeks from today, look into scheduling another Article 8 meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but we do have an October deadline, so. It's going to be an interesting summer. I think I'm not going to be seeing my place at the Cape that much. Well, I mean, if we're really going to be submitting a final report in October, by the time summer rolls around, we'll be writing the final report.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. I mean, the big thing is going to be whether the committee thinks that these ideas are good to put into the charter, how the committee feels about recall, et cetera. Yeah. I agree.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. We'll see. We don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, so that sounds like a plan, and I will send out the minutes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, it will.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the meeting of the Medford Charter Study Article 7 subcommittee meeting. Since we don't, this is our first meeting of the subcommittee, so we don't have any minutes to approve or anything like that. So we'll just get started. So, Maury and Anthony, I don't know, did you have a chance to look over the Google Doc I sent, which, you know, why don't you share it on screen?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, I don't know. I mean, what's the best way to go about this? Should we share screen and go through it that way or just talk through each section? Do you guys find the visual helpful?
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right, of course. Okay, so as you can see, Article 7 basically doesn't exist in Medford's charter, so this is going to be a new thing that, I mean, obviously we follow certain procedures, state laws regarding elections and things like that. But we have the opportunity here to put this in the charter so that residents can actually sort of have an easy way to see how things work and maybe add some details particular to Medford that we would like to include. The first section was the preliminary elections. I mean, if we're looking at our example charter language, it's all similar, right? Any thoughts on that?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I think it's, I don't know what reason we would change it. And the reason it says odd-numbered year, and as, it's a good point that you make about the three-year terms, Anthony. But, you know, realistically speaking, municipalities in Massachusetts, cities in Massachusetts don't have elections on even-numbered years because of the, complication with the state elections and the federal elections and they're needing to be two ballots, et cetera. That's why it says odd numbered year and each of the three communities that we're looking at says that. And I'm guessing most other city charters in the state say it as well. So you do make a good point, but I feel like maybe we should just, I mean, all these sections interact. So if we just sort of make our recommendations and if they have to be revisited because of a decision that the whole committee makes, I think that's okay. Do you agree? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Instead of the first Tuesday.
[Milva McDonald]: The first Tuesday following the first Monday.
[Milva McDonald]: So keep second to, I mean, and, you know, keeping, that might be a good idea to keep that, unless we can think of a compelling reason to change it, just because these other cities do it this way. It might be better to keep it the way Medford has done it, because that's what people are familiar with. we wouldn't want the preliminary election to go by, and people say, oh, wait, it's the first Tuesday now, not the second?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, that's the regular election. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Mark. I was confused because this section is preliminary. So I was, I was. That's general first and then it dovetails into the preliminary. So they have it as the third Tuesday in September. And you're saying we have it in the second.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, um, and does each of these have it on the third?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I think my, you know, so third Tuesday. So let's say we would, do you agree, Anthony, that we could keep second Tuesday for preliminary elections because that's what people are used to?
[Milva McDonald]: And these are newer charters, and they also don't mention.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that, yeah, Anthony, I think we would just continue to follow the state laws on that. This would just, these charters anyway, just set the dates for the actual preliminary election and the general election. Not set the dates, but you know what I mean, just say when they are. So I don't know if it would be a good idea to add things about mail-in or early voting.
[Milva McDonald]: No, not from municipal, you're right. Right, so... Yeah, I think we probably, I think the elections department probably would have to handle that. And the question of whether we could even have that for a municipal election, I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: We didn't even have it for mayor this past time, I don't remember.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we did.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I didn't remember that we only had two candidates for mayor this time. Well, I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: That's right Okay, so the question is do we want to look into whether adding information about early voting or mail-in voting makes sense or do we think that um
[Milva McDonald]: I will ask the Collins Center if municipalities are starting to add information about early and mail-in voting to their charters. How's that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So that will be good. And as far as what I thought we could do, hang on, I just got to write this down, is kind of create a draft article seven. So these are all very similar. Is there one that anybody liked better than another?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we have to take out city clerk. Sorry, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we definitely are going to, that is definitely something we're going to talk about. I just want to get through this part first. Okay. I took city clerk out because we don't elect our city clerk and we have not made any decisions that we should and we have not heard from anybody that we should, so I'm taking city clerk out. And did we want to keep, did we want us to keep second Tuesday?
[Milva McDonald]: Yep. Councilor-at-Large, Mayor, Councilor-at-Large, Ward City Councilor, and School Committee members.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I think that's it, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so and then there's the details about the special elections for vacancies. Yeah, so I think these are pretty standard. Do we have any?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. But this just says if a special election is to be held, which could theoretically happen. So maybe we could just leave this the way it is, or 28 days before the date established for the special election, a preliminary election.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. OK. So we're good with this text. And obviously, we can review all this later. But so the next section is preliminary election procedures. So this establishes number of certified. Okay, so this is an interesting question. Establishing the number of certified signatures required for each office. It looked to me like these other charters make people get more signatures than that.
[Milva McDonald]: So what do you think about it, Marty?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Having been a person who has collected signatures for various things, right now it's 50 for everyone in Medford, correct, Maury? I think that's right.
[Milva McDonald]: So 50 is pretty easy. What some of these charters had, which I believe was 300 for mayor. I mean, it's not like that would be terribly hard, but I feel like it's probably too many. just because this is just for getting your name on the ballot, right? Remember, that's all it is.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I think that sounds reasonable. That's still an increase for at-large Councilors and mayor. But what do you think, Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and you could make that argument for 300, right? I guess my concern would be, you know, especially for like, look, we didn't even have enough candidates to have a preliminary election last time. Yeah, I mean, we just we don't, I don't know, I think we didn't want to like, change things too terribly much in terms in regards. So that makes sense. 150 million or 100. at-large Councilors, 50 ward and 50 school committee. Okay, was there anything? Okay, now we have also ballot position. So, right, so right now, just, I have it up here. Right now, Medford is following this mass general law, this right here, section 42 of chapter, what section we are, 54. So this is just describes what we do and it says except unless the charter otherwise provides, right? But since our charter doesn't otherwise provide, this is what we do and it just describes what we do, which is alphabetical or incumbents first in alphabetical order and then challengers in alphabetical order. Anthony, I would love to see the study that you mentioned.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it's funny. This one doesn't. But yeah, the I think it was does. Right. It says at least 40 days before. And this is for preliminary election.
[Milva McDonald]: At least 40 days before the preliminary. I mean, And then I was just looking for where they talk about the general election. Hmm, okay. I think that would be down here, ballot position for regular city election.
[Milva McDonald]: And then let's see, Pittsburgh, Pittsfield, not Pittsburgh. This drawing shall be conducted on the 4th, Tuesday, and September prior to the regular city election. So that's comparable to 30 days. And then Weymouth just doesn't give that. It just says it will be a drawing. So.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm in full agreement. I think we all are, so that's great. Do we want, and do we think, you know, putting the, you know, at least X number of days before the election, or?
[Milva McDonald]: Do you think 40 days? It's the simplest.
[Milva McDonald]: Wait, do they have to re-certify? They don't have to re-certify after the preliminary.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're saying ask the clerk. I mean, that's something I, is that, did we see that in the charter? I feel like, you know, also if you look at Pittsfield's is way more comprehensive. Actually, Weymouth's is a little longer, but Melrose's section here is very short, right? So, you know, do we want to go with something more like more comprehensive. I mean, there's pluses and minuses to putting more detail in, you know, in the charter, right? This gives the date of when they have to have their signatures in, right? So we can put that in the charter. And you're saying, Roy, we should just keep it the same as it is now and kind of earn the city clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I'll contact the clerk and I'll just find that information out just so that because we're in we're in agreement that we want to do this. We just want it to make we want it to work.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. So I'll find out, I'll get that information. So we talked about ballot position. What else was in this section? Number of certified signatures required. All right, date forms are available. We'll have to, that's also information we can get from the clerk, although that might be the elections department. We'll figure that out. Position names appear on the ballot and we're not differentiating between the incumbents and the challengers in the drawing, correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Correct. And resolution of ties and defining conditions under which no preliminary election is required. So there's language of that kind of thing here. It also looks pretty boilerplate, right? All right. So we can, you know, you guys look this over. Was there anything you thought that we should do different than these charters are doing?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks. So this next section is one that it's not in the Medford Charter under section seven, because we don't have section seven, but we do have something in our charter about nonpartisan elections, which is basically restating that local elections are nonpartisan. Interestingly, even though we have a short charter, ours is longer than the other charters. So, I mean, we could probably just keep this the way it is, although I would fix the pronouns and just say, the candidates instead of his.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. And what do you guys think? Is there any, is there, um, that says it all right there.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, like I said, these other charters are, are, are shorter, but you know, since, since it's been in there, we can keep that. All right. So, I'll take that out and put that in. Okay. So, and any candidate or anything showing the candidate taking out?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay, so we can leave that. The next section is about war. Now this is interesting. because we've heard, so this section establishes number of wards and time frame for review of wards, process of establishing the ward boundaries is defined outside of the charter, right, which is what we've been told is that the state establishes the ward boundaries. Maybe we need to do, I just don't, I need more information because I, I don't know how you guys feel about this, but I feel like we've been told clearly that the state determines the wards, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't know if we're talking semantics there or what, but, you know, based sort of what, whether they're called, because I think I've heard that some people call them wards, they can also be called districts. So I don't know if they're the same thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're talking about Boston? In Boston, yeah, there was just a big kind of
[Milva McDonald]: I think that um what I understand is that combining wards you can run into problems with the state because, I mean, I know that it's very uncommon for cities to combine wards. I'll have to look into Boston. And by the way, Boston is often exempted from state laws. They'll say in cities other than Boston. But when Lowell, for instance, combined wards for their school committee because they had to have ward representation as part of the settlement of the lawsuit that they were facing, They, I talked to the clerk there and he said that they had to hire a consultant because they had to make sure that they didn't run afoul of the state laws because wards are drawn in particular ways and they have to be, if you combine them, they have to be contiguous and the population numbers are an issue, et cetera. So I think that it's complicated, but I don't know that that's what this section of the charter is talking about. It's not talking about combining wards.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. And you're right. This is pretty much, I mean, I think Melrose is, well, Pittsfields is slightly shorter, but they're very similar. This is pretty boilerplate language. My question is more sort of what does it mean for the city council to review the wards if the state defines the wards anyway? I'm curious about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I don't know. So let's, what if we just say, well, we're probably gonna go with the boilerplate language, but we have more questions about this section and what it means in conjunction with the state's responsibility to draw the wards. Because they also say the wards, the precincts are established under the general law. So there's a state law that probably dictates how the precincts can be drawn as well. I'll ask Collins about that too. And then this section is pretty boilerplate too. I mean, it might be actually word for word.
[Milva McDonald]: We just went through section seven. And we have some questions just to review.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to do that. I just want to review first what we discussed and what we're going to follow up on. I'm going to ask the Collins Center if charters, if newer charters are incorporating mail-in and early voting. I'm going to ask the city clerk about dates so that we can sort of keep them same and keep them reasonable. Date signatures are due and a time frame for the drawing for ballot position. And I'm going to ask the Collins Center about the practical function of the wards section of this Article 7. Did I miss any follow-ups?
[Milva McDonald]: So the other thing I said, I'm suggesting is that I will take what we talked about and turn it take this document and just like I started with the 1st section that we just finished. and turn it into sort of a draft that we can present and share with the whole committee. And I'll incorporate what we decided. And then at our next meeting, we can look through, we can, hopefully we'll have answers to the questions and we can look through our draft document and see if we think it looks good and we are ready to share it with the whole committee. Sound good?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All right. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak? Hi John, how you doing? He may not be able to hear you.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Thank you, John.
[Milva McDonald]: Appreciate you coming and sharing that. All right. So I mean, this was very efficient. That's how we like it, Melva. I know. I will also look up that study because we will use it in our final report. as part of why we've made the decision about the ballot positions.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be great. Thank you. Do we want to set another meeting before we are ready to pass this on to the whole committee, just to wrap up?
[Milva McDonald]: March 7th.
[Milva McDonald]: What about next week, Monday, same time, which is Monday?
[Milva McDonald]: So 2 PM, whatever that is, Monday, March, whatever it is. I'll look it up.
[Milva McDonald]: March 4th, okay. It's hard when you're at the end of the month. And it's a weird month because there's an extra date.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. All right, Monday, March 4th at 2 p.m. And I'll follow up, and I will create the document we talked about, share it with you, and hopefully after next week, we'll be able to pass it on to the whole committee.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. All right.
[Milva McDonald]: Bye.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, everyone. This is a February 15th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. Our first order of business is to review the minutes from the February 1st meeting. Has everyone had a chance to look at them?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, excellent. Okay. Next, our survey is closed. Oh good, Aubrey's here. Let me just let Aubrey in. And David, do you have a presentation on our survey results?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, David. Did you do any analysis of the responses broken down by age?
[Milva McDonald]: It's not an issue. I was just wondering because there has been some comment about under-representation of certain age groups.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that is, you know, our largest chunk. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody else have any other questions?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the idea was to try to get an understanding of what people's top issues are, what they cared about the most. But I think there were also some limitations trying to structure that within this particular format.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I think it's fine that you didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure that out. I also really encourage people to read the comments because there were quite a few comments. I mean that what you see there on the screen is a small fraction of the comments that people left.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. I have one more question. There's been some thoughts about the level of response we got. Do you have any, using your knowledge, do you have any thoughts on whether this is a good response? It looks like we got 666.
[Milva McDonald]: It's hard to know. I did reach out to the Tufts Young Republicans and the Tufts Young whatever they're, you know, the counter the Democrats group on campus and sent a link to both of those groups. But we maybe could have done more outreach to Tufts. It's, um, I just figured, you know, those groups might have people that would actually fill out the survey. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: We've also, you know, had other forms of public comment, the listening sessions are, you know, public information sessions. So we've had, you know, we've had other public comment too. And it all seems to pretty much agree with, I think, the survey in the most part. Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Danielle. Thanks for pointing that out. Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: For City Council.
[Milva McDonald]: No, it did.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. We can share the link. Danielle, the link that you... I think it's in the... Drive, right? Is it in the drive? I think so. Okay, I'll find the link and I will share it with the committee. I'll share it in an email. I think it is in the drive too. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I think it would be great if everybody could read all the public comments.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and the public comments get a little more specifically into some of the issues. Like, for instance, you know, if I'm recalling correctly, and I think I am, there's one person who said they're in favor of term limits, but they think they should be long. So things like that, they're a little more granular. Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: When we do our final report, we will create that to present to the city council, but I think it will also become public and we will definitely include these.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think so.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Any other questions or comments about the survey results?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Thank you so much, Davida. That was really valuable. And we're really lucky that we have you and your abilities to help us with that. So thank you. Yeah. Okay. So, our next item agenda is compensation, which has recently, well, I mean, compensation, in terms of the charter, the charter doesn't decide how much compensation should be for elected officials, but it does, it can lay out the mechanism for how compensation is decided. That's something that we were looking at anyway, and it's recently become more of an issue in the city. So did anyone have a chance to look at the materials I sent? We also had some feedback from the Collins Center, who threw out the idea of the committee, a compensation committee, or a compensation advisory board, which would get a little, which we would only lay out the existence of it in the charter, not the details of it. Anthony, is that you raising your hand? Okay, wait a minute. Maybe Anthony can't unmute. Sorry, I thought, no, you should be able to unmute yourself. I don't know why you can't. Are you able to unmute yourself, Anthony? Hmm. Um, all right, David, why don't you speak while we're trying to figure out what's going on with Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and yeah, so that's in there and also the there's language about the city council too and I just want to point out that. It's pretty standard. I mean, as you can, you know, the mass general law that's quoted, it's standard for city councils to decide these salaries by ordinance. Anthony, are you able to unmute yourself? I know you have your hand raised. I don't know why he can't unmute himself.
[Milva McDonald]: I've done that.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to figure out how. I'm going to let you chat, Anthony. So maybe if you're having a problem, you can let us know in the chat. In the chat, yeah. OK. So I guess. So we do have the language that the subcommittee proposed. And we also, so first, can we just look at this idea of creating a, or recommending the creation of a Municipal Compensation Advisory Board? Can we sort of take the pulse of what people feel about it?
[Milva McDonald]: Hi.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. Do you want to do you want to ask your comment as your question or make your comment?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: That's OK. Yeah, so there were the examples that the Collins Center gave us had a fundamental difference. And Eunice has just expressed that she prefers the model that only would address elected officials. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we did talk about it in the Articles 2 and 3 subcommittee because generally this comes in Articles 2, 3, and 4. Articles 2 addresses the city council compensation, Article 3 addresses the mayor, and Article 4 addresses the school committee. And this particular committee that we're talking about potentially recommending, I'm pretty sure would probably go in the administrative functions. I'm not positive, but I think. Because all the charter would do is recommend the formation of this committee and say that it should be formed by ordinance. So, Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: And just to be clear, it would be an advisory committee. This committee would not have the force of law. It could not decide salaries. It would be an advisory committee, just like ours. Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: So I don't know, I'm not sure that it needs to go to subcommittee, to be honest, because this is a pretty boilerplate issue. It's outlined in mass general laws. The way that compensation for elected officials is decided is pretty standard across the board. So I don't know that we could do anything that much different. This idea of recommending and putting in the charter that such a, you know, that a municipal compensation advisory board would be formed is different, but the actual mechanism of deciding the salaries would be the same, which is that the city council decides them by ordinance. So I just don't think we can get around, you know, that there's really a different way to go. Does anybody have any,
[Milva McDonald]: So one thing that I do think is different is the idea that the Articles 2 and 3 subcommittee had, which would be requiring the city council to review the salary of the mayor. And, Daveed, do you want to talk a little bit about the thinking behind that?
[Milva McDonald]: And I will just say that I believe that Medford has set the mayor's salary through a special act, which is very strange. Because in our charter, it doesn't say, it doesn't have the boilerplate language about being set by ordinance, which pretty much is from mass general law. I mean, that's in mass general law. So by putting it in the charter, it will eliminate that confusion or that and my recollection is that the reason that one of the reasons we talked about the salary review would just be because it's standard for people to get raises to have their salaries reviewed. And without that happening, it just, you know, it's just a costly living.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I mean, I don't know the last time the mayor had a raise. I don't know. I haven't, you know, and I 35. And we know just from recent discussions that the city council has had more raises than school committee. So, yeah. Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know about that. I thought that the Mass General Law said that that couldn't happen. But I could be wrong.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have suggested that for the mayor. We didn't actually put that language into the city council section. Right, David?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so it could go in because each articles 2, 3, and 4 each has a little section about compensation for those positions. So it could go in school committee. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think it is. I just think that that's why.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it has been done by special act, which even the Collins Center was sort of perplexed by, I think. I don't want to misrepresent them.
[Milva McDonald]: The last time the mayor... I don't know if it's always been done by special act, if it's ever been done by ordinance, but I believe that ordinance is the way that it's generally done. in most municipalities. I mean, a special act is just, you know, a special act has to go through a home rule petition, it has to go through the state house, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, you're probably right. That is why, probably why it's been done by special act because of that specific language in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: That makes sense. Olette, were you going to ask a question?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that's true. And I don't know if that is something that the committee wants to talk about. Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we say that the salaries are set by ordinance. In general, most communities don't give any specific guidance on that. I did include an example from Worcester, And to quickly, it said that the city council... I'm sorry, I have to find it. I just don't want to misquote it. Members of the school committee other than the mayor shall receive as other than the mayor, so they say other than the mayor, shall receive as compensation for their services a salary equal to 50% of the salary established for members of the city council. You know, that is possible. And, you know, Paulette, you're right. The mayor does receive the amount, you know, the salary for being on the school committee. So the charter could say that the mayor doesn't. So we can do things like that. And if we put in the regular salary reviews, then hopefully you avoid a situation where, what, how many years went by without the school committee getting a raise? It was something like 20?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, good.
[Milva McDonald]: That's Anthony, I believe.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, Paulette, you're right. And as the Mass General Law starts out by saying that school committee members won't be compensated, you know, unless the city council votes to compensate them. And I think that traditionally, there's it's a school committees were uncompensated. And then I think, you know, the job just got bigger, and people started realizing that they need to be compensated. So, So Eunice, you have a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: We can't put any, we're not going to put anything in the charter that's going to give, that's going to outline any numbers. I mean, you know, that's not going to happen. So, um, I don't know. What did Ron have in mind? Um, Ron, did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so you are, you are. Suggesting that we put this municipal advisory board. I mean, if we do put it in, I'm just gonna try to find what the call-in center said, because we can't write the ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so we could only briefly describe the committee's purpose and structure in the charter, and we could have specific details on membership and responsibilities. No, that would be outlined in subsequent ordinances.
[Milva McDonald]: David, you had something to say.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, can I like to. Okay, and I want to hear from Anthony and then Danielle and then we'll go back to the motion Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, so. Ron just I just I'm going to have to record this motion accurately so and I just want to go back first to What I understand is what we can do in the charter is describe the committee's purpose and structure, but details on the membership and the responsibilities get outlined in the ordinance. So I'm wondering if it would be helpful to look at the Northampton language as, well, that's an ordinance. I don't even know if we can say in the charter how often it meets.
[Milva McDonald]: So let's, I just want to get the motion recorded accurately. I have a motion to create, a motion to recommend or to create language, charter language, form a municipal compensation advisory board. What other detail, can you just please reiterate these details?
[Milva McDonald]: to gather every two years to review compensation of the mayor, city council and school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Can we say review compensation and create recommendation reports every two years? sure and and they're making these reports to the city council you don't have to report because the city council is the one who is the only one that can do it right the only one with the power so yes you would make their presentation of the city council to see okay i'm going to read this motion um which was made um okay wait let me read david's message
[Milva McDonald]: So what I have right now is the motion is a motion to create charter language to form a municipal compensation advisory board to review annual salaries of mayor, city council, and school committee. Said committee will consist of seven members, three appointed by the mayor, two by the city council, and two by the school committee to review compensation and create recommendation reports to the city council. It's just a motion. It's not the actual language. You know, it's just the motion.
[Milva McDonald]: No, it doesn't.
[Milva McDonald]: That's very broad, but it's also- Can we just start? Okay, so seven members, none of whom are- None of whom should be. None of whom are, what did we just say? Municipal employees? Mm-hmm.
[Milva McDonald]: What about family?
[Milva McDonald]: The language will have to be drafted. But right now, we're just voting on whether we want to do that. Okay. So we have the motion and it's been seconded. I'm going to do a roll call. Yutz. Yes. David.
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle. Yes. Paula. Yes. Aubrey. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis. Yes. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'll vote yes too.
[Milva McDonald]: Those are ordinances, but we'll look into it. David?
[Milva McDonald]: Where did you see that? Oh, I know where you saw it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, David, your motion, basically... So, that actually sort of goes along with what's going to be next on our agenda, but do we need to vote on removing... I mean, the language... Did you see all these messages in the chat?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Um, the, you know, the intent behind putting the salary review for the mayor in the, um, section two or section three of the charter is, doesn't exist anymore. I mean, because now that we've decided to do this, so, um, do we need to vote on it or everybody, can everybody agree that we're going to take that out? Okay. So, um, Before we dive into the Articles 2 and 3, I just want to say, I feel like now that we've voted on this and made this motion, we need to just, I don't know, we need to create language on it. But maybe we can just do that later down the road. We've got the decision, so we're good on that. So Articles 2 and 3. So basically, did everyone have a chance to look at it? So you see what the color code means. And right now, we just talked about deleting. Oh, that's for the city council. So we talked about deleting. No, that's not it. Taking out this, right? Boom.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, let's see. I can probably, well. In the top left, there's 100%. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I have to move my, um, I don't know. I'm sorry. I'll do it like this for the moment. There. So no, that's not the right spot. Where did it go?
[Milva McDonald]: But the whole compensation section we need. We still need the compensation section in there, don't we? Because we have to say that it's set by ordinance, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this is the... Because we're not... The committee that we're suggesting be formed can't decide the compensation.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep. Okay, so this would be the section now for compensation. And it's basically just pretty much language that's in the law. It says the city council sets it by ordinance and that no increase can be effective two-thirds vote and it can't be effective until the next, right? So are we getting rid of that or are we keeping it? No, we are keeping, well, we would have to keep, we still have to keep this. I'm looking at D. Does that mean the mayor wouldn't get the school committee salary?
[Milva McDonald]: That wasn't my understanding, but. Because I didn't think we had decided that but.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I'm not sure. This prohibitions language is this sort of like boilerplate language?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I just want to understand the ramifications of that section. So what I want to do is leave it in blue until we can talk to the call and center about it. Are we good putting compensation? I mean, well, I guess what I want to say is, right now, the only parts that are in green, this is technically not something we voted on, so I'll take it out of green, are parts that we voted on. So right now, I want to just say, Everybody has had a chance to look on it, look at it. And I would like to be able to accept it unless there's questions, concerns, and we can put those in blue. So does anybody have any parts that we want that jumped out at you that you had questions about, concerns, et cetera?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm saying are there parts that eventually that's what we'll do, but are there parts of it that people want to flag right now that we need to talk about more? Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: That would not, I don't think that would be in, I think that would be in a whole different section of the charter. I think that that would be in maybe administrative or it would be later, it wouldn't be in, this article two is city council, city council, article three is mayor, article four is school committee. So each of those sections will have a section about the city council, the compensation being passed by ordinance, but then later in the, and maybe, I'm guessing administrative organization, but I'm not sure, we'll have to ask the council.
[Milva McDonald]: In Articles 2 and 3?
[Milva McDonald]: Ordinances and others?
[Milva McDonald]: Is that it? I don't know. This is mayors.
[Milva McDonald]: It will definitely come later and we'll find out from the Collins Center which article it should go in. But for these two, was there anything that we want to flag in blue other than this part that we just looked at? Anybody have any things that jumped out at them?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, this is a draft of Articles 2 and 3.
[Milva McDonald]: The only things that we left that we had questions about were in blue. So there's that one section in blue. There may have been, I think there was one other section in blue, right, Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: The only thing that I see that doesn't have to do with the transition is... The special meetings of the city council, that was... Do you remember why that was in blue, Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: So does anybody, I mean, so we've, I mean, we could vote on whether we want to take it out of blue or we can just leave it there. And when it's time to vote on everything, we can just say, including the blue. Those are the only things that the committee flag, the subcommittee. But if full committee members have any other questions or, I mean, have you all had time to look at it?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I'd like a little bit more time as well. Let's say we're going to I mean, is March, our March meeting is in just a couple of weeks. Would we, do we want to push it until, and we're only having one meeting in March. Shall we say we're going to vote on this at the April, the first April meeting?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, that's awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah, I think so. I think for sure once it all comes together and let me just say that. The Collins Center is available to help draft. The Articles 2 and 3 subcommittee just sort of, by using boilerplate language, looking at other charters, we basically drafted an entire Section 2 and 3. That is it. So let's say this, for example, school committee subcommittee can do that if you want. Or you can just say, these are the things that need to be in, you know, this is what we recommend and we vote on it. And then we tell the call-in center and they draft it for us. You can go with that too, either way. But because a lot of the language in the charter is boilerplate. So I'm just saying you don't have to draft Section 4 if you don't want to. But feel free to if you want to. But yes, in answer to your question, we will look at it all at the end.
[Milva McDonald]: So it sounds like, and of course, all our votes are provisional in the sense that if at any point we feel like we need to revisit something, we will. So we will vote on articles two and three in March. Awesome. We only have like 10 minutes or a little bit. So we talked about other subcommittees. The two sections of the charter that I felt maybe would warrant subcommittees were elections and citizen participation mechanisms. Elections, you know, have there's stuff like ballot position and things like that. And citizen participation mechanisms is going to include referendum procedures, recall, if we want to put recall provisions in, et cetera. So there... Budget? Well, what I want to do about budget is tackle that as a whole committee. And in fact, the Collins Center is going to come to our March meeting, and we're going to hope to start that in March. It just felt like it was something that, you know, just felt that important. I felt like that would be the way to go with that. So how do people feel about, I know Jean said she was interested in article eight. That's the public engagement.
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody else interested in being on that subcommittee? I'm interested. Okay. That's and I'll be on that. So that's four. That's fine. But if anybody else wants to join, what about elections?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't think it will be that big of a deal. I think we could do it pretty quickly. But like, I mean, stuff like ballot position, things like that, we might want to... And number of signatures and how that's decided and dates and times.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, well, that's true. I've seen other charters that designate ballot positions, so I think we can't do that. Okay, anybody else want to talk about elections? Okay, so I'll set up... I'll set up a meeting with Anthony and we can talk about elections and how we're going to.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. And so for that one, we have Gene, Eunice, me, David, and Ron. Does somebody want to organize the meetings for that meeting for that? Or I'm happy to do it, but if somebody wants to. Okay, I will send out messages to set those up. Okay, so our next meeting is in March, and we're going to start the budget, and we're going to vote on articles two and three, and full committee, subcommittee, we talked about you presenting in March. It sounds like we're going to be pretty busy. Do you want to, what's your,
[Milva McDonald]: So we'll look forward to you reporting in April. I did just want to say, and I know that the three-year terms have came up, and I did call the Secretary of State's office to see if I could get information, and they said, all the Massachusetts Municipal Association, and I contacted them, and they said, contact the Secretary of State. The one thing that is for certain is that If three-year terms, if we recommended three-year terms, there would be elections on, there would be some elections that would coincide with state and federal elections. They would have to be separate ballots. The election staff would have to tabulate them separately, record them separately. And they would have to figure out how they were going to handle that, whether they were going to say to a voter, you've got to come back after you vote for a federal and say, I come back and get your municipal ballot, et cetera. So I just want to- So that's a no? Well, what I don't know is, you know, I mean, towns have their elections in the spring. I don't know that we are able to change to have elections in the spring. So the towns that have three-year terms have elections in the spring. So they don't run into that. That's right. But anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there.
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, there's a reason that cities don't do it because just because of the practicality.
[Milva McDonald]: That I don't know. And if you want to do some research on that and see if you can find something out about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Westfield does too, I think. Yeah, Arlington is a town.
[Milva McDonald]: No, that's a good point when you think about the budget season. That's, yeah, it's a good point. Okay, I just wanted to just share that information. So before we adjourn, I would like to ask if there's any members of the public that want to make any comments. If you do, just raise your hand. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, so we, whatever the first Thursday in March is, it's our next meeting. I will send up minutes and do we have a motion to adjourn? Five minutes early? Are we allowed to do that? Four, four minutes.
[Milva McDonald]: I second it. All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: It's me. Sorry. I just wanted to say that I, I was unable to be at your last meeting, but I watched it and There was a woman who spoke in favor of ward representation who made, I thought, a lot of points that maybe, and I won't necessarily be able to reiterate them as articulately as she did, but does any, do you all remember?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, maybe some of her points could be included in here, that's all.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. And also, I guess, would you say even if you don't have a school in your district, in your ward, say, because there's not a school in every single ward, right? Your kids are still going to a school. So there's still people in every ward who have kids in the schools. So, you know, I don't know how that exactly fits into it, but.
[Milva McDonald]: That's OK. I just want to say, regarding combining boards, It's very uncommon, but an example to look at would be Lowell. It's the only one I actually know of. There may be others, but the only one I know of that does combine wards, and I think we've discussed in past meetings that Lowell switched to ward representation for both city council and school committee based on a Voting Rights Act lawsuit as part of a settlement. They landed with eight ward city councilors and three at large, but their school committee has seven members. What they did for their school committee was they combined wards. So they have four ward representatives, each ward representative covers two wards, and they have two at large and one and the seventh is the mayor. So that's a model that is something that you all could look at if you're seriously considering the combining wards. Lowell would be where to look. The only other thing I would say about the combining wards is I spoke to the city clerk in Lowell, and combining wards is not a simple process, and they actually hired a consultant. Of course, they had to do this as their settlement for their lawsuit. In order to not increase the size of the school committee, as you guys are discussing, they combined the wards, but they hired a consultant because they had to make sure that the ward, because of all the laws about wards, they couldn't just decide, oh, we're going to combine these two and these two and these two. They had to make sure that the parameters were within state law. They have to be contiguous. There's population issues, et cetera. So that's another thing to consider in the mix when you're considering combining wards. You want to see those things.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean to the whole committee?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And if the committee decided to ultimately recommend it, we would say in our final report that part of our recommendation would be that the city hire, you know, that the city hire a consultant to make sure that the wards are combined legally, because if you're going to run it by the state house, then they're going to have to know that that's kosher.
[Milva McDonald]: Just to be clear, Lowell did not combine wards for city council. They only combined wards for school committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, not if you did the combined wards. Yeah, that's right.
[Milva McDonald]: Combining wards is a complicated matter that, you know, complicated and it brings in legal questions. Complicated issue, yeah. And it could also incur an expense because if the city has to hire consultants.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm just throwing, I'm just thinking out loud, and I don't even know if this would be a con, but for the elections department, the combining wards because they have to make ballots for, so they would have to make ballots for every ward. If the city council was not combined wards, then they would, yeah, I mean, I guess it wouldn't be that hard because then the school, just two each, like, let's say, theoretically, if one and two were combined, then both of those ballots would just have the same candidates for school committee, I guess. Yeah, I guess that's not that big of a deal now that I think about it.
[Milva McDonald]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: No point. But, you know, when we interviewed the city clerk who used to work in the elections department, practicality issues, you know, were on his mind. So something like this, yeah. This might not be that big of an issue. I mean, he was more, you know, talking about the three-year terms and the staggered terms.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, just in general gives voters more agency, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: What do you mean? Long-term projects? You're talking about like long-term projects?
[Milva McDonald]: I totally understand, and I get the sweet spot. The only problem is it's not the sweet spot, or it's basically a nightmare for the elections department. I mean. Well, that's the other thing. That's a con. Oh, yeah, I know. But I mean, and it's a big one. It's a huge one.
[Milva McDonald]: I totally get it.
[Milva McDonald]: I totally get it. But you've got to think about it basically means... I have. I mean, would we be having elections? Because if you have a four-year mayoral term, when are these elections going to be? And we would have to have elections on off years.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay, so you would propose that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, off year elections would still be an issue, so.
[Milva McDonald]: I think what you've got to do is you've got to find another city that does it and maybe talk to them. I haven't been successful in doing that. There are some towns that do it. They have elections in the spring. But they don't conflict with state and federal elections.
[Milva McDonald]: But if you guys find a city and or talk to our elections department or some other elections official and find out exactly how it would work, that would be great.
[Milva McDonald]: There are some communities that have three-year terms. I believe, you know, that they're towns. So, you know, but it doesn't mean there isn't one. I'll have to go back again. I'm pretty sure the Collins Center wasn't able to provide a city that had it, but I'll double check my message from them about three-year terms while you guys are talking. Keep going. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I tried to put something in the chat and it said it was too long. Keep going. Sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: I just put into the chat. Oh, sorry. I just want to say that the information we got from the call-in center when I asked them about three-year terms and staggered terms, I just put it in the chat.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess I would wonder also about the pool of candidates. You know, you would need to know that there would be enough people that would step up and run. I don't think it's been a problem in the past, and it wasn't a problem in this past election, although there was murmurings that it might be.
[Milva McDonald]: I thought Superintendent Belson's comments on this were extremely helpful.
[Milva McDonald]: I get that and I've heard that, but I guess for me, it would be helpful if we could actually be more specific about what that means. What is this specific power that is a concern?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not saying that. I agree. I just feel like for us, it could be helpful to sort of have understand what what is this too much power? What what what exactly would we be trying to counter if we if we were trying to counter that?
[Milva McDonald]: Is there a thing that says ask to unmute? Yeah. That's what you have to click.
[Milva McDonald]: It's on her square, maybe, on that little three-dot menu. Probably up in the upper right-hand corner.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette, that point you just made though, is a very interesting one. that, you know, the chair is less of a participant in discussion and more of an overseer, and that, I think that could be a plus for keeping the mayor as chairperson. But I don't know, because this perception of power, like, what is the power of the chair to run the meetings, right? I mean...
[Milva McDonald]: We have a full committee meeting on Thursday if you're interested in coming again. But you probably have enough to fulfill your assignment.
[Milva McDonald]: Same length, same length, 630 to eight.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, welcome to the February 1st, 2024 meeting of the Method Charter Study Committee. Hopefully we will have some other committee members join us as in the next few minutes, but we do have a quorum, so we're going to get started. Let's start with the reviewing and accepting the minutes from the January meeting. Has everyone had a chance to look at those?
[Milva McDonald]: That was in the January minutes. Yep, I think it was the one brought up last time. Okay. So, and can you just explain why you're questioning, I mean, are you questioning that it should be in the minutes or what's your question?
[Milva McDonald]: We can talk about that as part of next meetings.
[Milva McDonald]: All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. Great. OK. All right. So that's good. I really would like more people here before we start on the next topic, but let's start on it anyway. There is an announcement I need to make, but I want more people here before I make the announcement.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Nobody told me they're not coming, and at least one person told me he is coming, so I'm assuming he's just late. But nobody has told me they're not coming, so I expect that people will be here.
[Milva McDonald]: No.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And the link is not different or anything. So hopefully, hopefully we will get some people. Okay, so last meeting, we approve the language that you see here in green. We approved that language. The issue of whether the city council should also have the ability to confirm department ads was thrown back to the subcommittee.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let me see what's going on with that. That's very odd.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I am going to try to figure out how to fix that. I unlocked it.
[Milva McDonald]: We should start seeing the waiting room fill ups. I apologize. I mean, I think maybe just accidentally hovering over a menu item can sometimes do that. OK, here comes David. Sorry for jumping in there. Oh, no, I have to wait a minute. No, no. Thank you for jumping in. Now I have to make a post. Here we go. And hopefully we'll get a couple other people. Oh, here we go. Here comes Francis. Sorry about this. The meeting got locked accidentally. I apologize to the people who But thank you for making contact so we could figure out the problem and let you all in. All right. Okay, welcome, everybody. I think everybody's able to speak now. I think everyone's been given the proper permissions. I'll do it for Jean. And we're good to go. Okay. So Just to give everybody an update who just arrived, we did start the meeting and all we've done so far is accept the minutes. So hopefully, because we did have a quorum and we were able to do that piece of business. I did want to make an announcement before we move on to the next agenda item. And that is that John has had to step down from the committee because of family and work responsibilities. But fortunately, we have an alternate need. And so we're good to go. Okay. Everybody's muted by choice, right? I've given everybody the ability to speak, right? Okay. All right. So our next, so we were about to dive into the, here, I'm going to share this screen again. The question of confirmation authority for department heads. Last meeting, the text that you see in green was approved by the committee and The question of whether department heads should be added to this confirmation power was thrown back to the subcommittee and the subcommittee was basically split on that. And so we're just bringing it back to the whole committee to determine whether, as you can see, there's only three words in red added, but it would add, it would give the city council the power to confirm department heads as well as members of multiple member bodies, committees and commissions. So I will just open the floor for discussion. I have a question.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that's a good question. In this case, I don't think, I mean, they wouldn't vote. They would just have the power to reject the appointment by two-thirds vote. But it's 30 days. But I hear your point.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're not making, yeah, we're making, we're not, we haven't made the decision. We're discussing it right now and tonight, hopefully we're gonna make the decision one way or the other.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thank you, Anthony. I think I want to hear from Eunice and Jean and Maury, but Maury and David were in part of the conversation. So Maury, I'll let you speak and then we'll hear from David.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. David?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Thank you, David.
[Milva McDonald]: We have had input we have had input in some interviews, um on The topic we've heard from some department we've heard from we interviewed some department heads and so it's not like we've had no input And are we going to share that It's all in the it's all in the it's all in the interviews folder, but there it it was in line with the concerns about similar to the concerns Paulette was raising, that it could discourage people from applying. That was a concern that we heard from one department head.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, thank you. Eunice, Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Jean. Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you, Paula. Maury. You're muted, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so you're going to make a motion. Okay, before you make the motion, I just want to check and see if anybody else has anything to say because we had decided we were going to invite members of the public to speak after the agenda items. So I want to just see if there's any member of the public that wants to speak on this. Okay, so if you want to make a motion, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're making a motion to not include department heads.
[Milva McDonald]: Hang on, let me just get in. I don't have the exact section number there, but do not include department heads in language about city council confirmation power.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I'd like to amend the motion if Maury would like to just
[Milva McDonald]: Well, okay, so we have a motion on the floor and the motion is to not include department heads in the language about city council confirmation power. And then we, I think Anthony, you're less of an amendment as a request to.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey, does anybody have a second to Aubrey's amendment, which is- I'll second that as well. Okay, thank you. So right now the motion on the floor is to include department heads in the language about city council confirmation and confirmation power. And I think, Anthony, we can, I think it was already been pointed out that You know, we can change our minds at a later date if we get more information, but I want to go ahead with the vote and that will also give us a sense of kind of where the committee is at on this.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the motion is to include department heads in language about city council confirmation power, which means that if you vote yes, you want to give the city council the ability to confirm or deny appointment heads.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this is the same motion, it's just a different, it's just, it's a little easier to- No, no, no, it's not, really, no. Well, you're just voting yes or no the other direction.
[Milva McDonald]: When I say all in favor, it means that you want the city council to have the power to confirm department heads.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So if you are in favor of giving City Council the confirmation power, say aye or raise your hand.
[Milva McDonald]: Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: They would have the option to deny. If they did nothing, nothing would happen. I mean, the department head would just take the job. This only would give them the ability to, within 30 days, say, you know what, we're denying this. Thank you. All right, so a yes vote. A vote in favor right now means you want to give the city council the ability to do that. So all in favor.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Danielle. Yes. Eunice. No. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey. Paulette. No. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Is to give the city council the ability to deny the vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: And I am also vote no. So I didn't miss anybody, right? There's only nine of us here tonight. So that's no, three in favor and six opposed, so we will strike that.
[Milva McDonald]: I know, so that's what I'm trying to say. I think you missed Aubrey's.
[Milva McDonald]: I know there were only three yeses. Oh, I see what I did. I put the line through five little marks instead of five. I mean, four, you know what I mean.
[Milva McDonald]: So, seven, again, opposed and three in favor. So, we will take out those three words and we'll move on to the next agenda item, which is term links for mayor and city council. So, I sent out a bunch of material, which included the current charter language, charter language from other charters, the public feedback we've received, have people had a chance to look at that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And also just sort of some, well, I didn't call them pro-cons, but just, I guess, what you might call them pros and cons.
[Milva McDonald]: thoughts, and we're discussing mayor and city council tonight, so we could break it down and do mayor first. What are we talking? Term lengths or term limits? Term lengths. David?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, yeah. And that was the other piece that the subcommittee thought that four years for the three at large and two years for the wards would make sense, although it is not commonly done, but we did find at least one community that does it, which is Framingham. So it is, there is a precedent for it.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, Anthony, and then Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, I think you had your hand and then we'll go to Eunice. Go ahead, Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, we Yes, that I think there was one example, language from one charter, and it was also mentioned in the memo from the call and center. And they gave the example of Melrose school committee, half of its members elected at each election. So But I don't think it's common because it presents complexities.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I think when we talked about it with the city clerk, who had been the elections manager in the past, you know, there was just comments about how complicated it could make the elections process. So, okay, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think you are correct that it's a relatively new charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thanks. Just in terms of, you know, the school, this concern with the school committee. I, I don't, I can't really speak to it that knowledgeably. But I, I think if we look at what the job of city council is, which is to approve to vote on the budget and to write ordinances. I don't know that they would have the same zoning right. I don't know that they have the same sort of long-term project. type of work that other bodies have, but I could be wrong about that. It's just that's my gut, but okay. Maury and then Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks, Maury. And I just wanted to throw out that maybe in some sense that creates a feel of staggered terms as well.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you for that. Phyllis, did you want to say something else?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Thank you. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, was that you?
[Milva McDonald]: No, and we have actually heard that from some people. Thank you for bringing that up. Okay, Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. All right. Thank you. Maury and then Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And the thing that would make it overlap with state elections is if we were looking at three-year terms, which we have not so far done.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, if we went with this model and it came to pass. That is right. Okay, Eunice, and then Ron, and then Paula.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, agreed. Okay, Maury, did you have something else you wanted to say? No, no, I'm sorry, I'm all set. That's okay. Okay, so I just wanted to just, this was on our sheet, but I just wanted to throw out, you know, based on our survey, a majority, more people thought that we should not increase city council terms to four years. But I mean, it was 54.5% said no, and 32% said yes, and about 11% weren't sure, and three had no opinion. So just throwing that out there. So it's not a huge majority, but definitely a majority.
[Milva McDonald]: That was a few days ago. When we have our meeting on the 15th, we're going to have a whole, a report on the survey results. We'll get the final numbers then. Okay, so I want to just maybe shift gears and start throwing in discussion of the mayor's term. We've talked about, it sounds, my sense is that there's some interest in doing four years.
[Milva McDonald]: You want you want to?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, well, some people are interested in the interaction, but I'm fine if you want to make a motion to vote.
[Milva McDonald]: So we'll need a second, but I also see- I'd like to amend that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So I guess we'll keep. First, I just want to hear what Aubrey has to say before we finish the motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay, so Aubrey would like to bring term limits into this term length discussion about the city council, but we do have a motion to keep the terms of all- I'm going to second that motion. And David is seconding it. So I think we're just going to have to go ahead and vote on that. The motion is to keep city council terms at two years. All 11 city councilors. So I'm going to do a roll call vote. Danielle? Yes. Eunice? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette? Yes. Jean? Yes. Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Daveed.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'll also vote yes. So that's nine in favor, two opposed. So the motion to keep two-year terms for city councilors carries.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. But right now, I will open it up to public comment. Because remembering that every decision we make, you know, this is a process. So we're making decisions that can be revisited. Does any member of the public have any comments? Okay. Okay, so there was an interest expressed in doing the term limits discussion before we moved to the mayor. Should we open up the term limits for city council? Because we also had a lot of material.
[Milva McDonald]: Do it.
[Milva McDonald]: How do people feel about term limits for city council based on, I mean, I tried to pull together. There's not a lot of research on municipal term limits. There's a good bit of research on, state and federal term limits, and term limits are very uncommon but not unheard of in the state for municipal elections.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So you're throwing out the idea of 12 years.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's a language thing. It's true. And I think what it means is that you're limited to 12 years, but they don't have to be. Well, we could do whatever we want.
[Milva McDonald]: But if you did two terms first and then stopped and then ran again, does then it, for city council.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're suggesting 12 consecutive years. Exactly. Is the limit. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Colette.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So they could conceivably serve 24 years on the council, 12 as a ward, and 12 as at-large.
[Milva McDonald]: I want to hear from David.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, David. And I will just point out in relation to that, more than one of the studies that I cited and that I found specifically mentioned legislative bodies as suffering more from term limits because of the learning curve. Um, so, uh, so that was an issue. That was what that was a finding in some of the research that the, um, just what you were talking about, uh, became a problem. Okay. Oh, Danielle and then Anthony and then Eunice. Go ahead, Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Eunice and then Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. Thank you, Ron. Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, Anthony, I'm sorry. I think you were. Yeah, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks, Paula. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Jean. I see Daveed. Oh, wait, Daveed. OK. Paulette, did you remember what you wanted to say?
[Milva McDonald]: No, we're just talking city council right now. Thank you though. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so. It would depend on how we decided to structure the term limits. But I think probably maybe the best step is to kind of see where we're at on term limits before we go into those details. I just want to point out that Our survey shows that term limits are very popular with the public and that is consistent with, in general, term limits are very popular with the public. So we have a lot of voters who want term limits. I guess having looked now at the research on term limits and seeing that most of the things, most of the reasons that people want term limits don't, aren't realized with term limits. Makes me feel better about voting against them, which I, you know, I'm sort of leaning towards right now. The other, David pointed out one issue with, the competency of legislators. There was another issue that I just wanted to bring up, another thing that the studies pointed out, is that when term limits are in place, rather than focusing on the current job, the legislator is often looking to the next, or the elected official, not necessarily legislator, is often looking to the next job. So they know, okay, I can only be in here for a couple of terms. So I'm going to put my focus on, you know, a state job, for instance, or the next job in politics. So that's another downside. Oh, okay. Thank you for letting me know that in the chat. Okay, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Ron and then David.
[Milva McDonald]: uh thought to go without uh making it a formal thank you and that's definitely something we're gonna we'll be looking at thank you uh david i'm gonna move that we vote to not include uh term limits in the charter you mean for c right now we're talking about city council for city council yes so there's a motion um to not impose term limits for city council I'll second that. Maury seconds. Okay, before we do the roll call vote, I want to just ask if there's any members of the public that want to speak. Okay. So the motion is to not impose term limits for City Council. Daveed? Yeah. Danielle? Yes. Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: You're muted. Sorry. Yes. Okay. Gene. Yes. Phyllis. Yes. Aubrey. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: And I will also vote yes. So we have 10 in favor, one abstain, two not impose term limits on city council. Great. David, is your hand up from before or is that new?
[Milva McDonald]: No, we go until 8.30.
[Milva McDonald]: I was going to second that, David. So we have time to at least start the discussion.
[Milva McDonald]: That's on the 15. If I did that, then I was wrong.
[Milva McDonald]: The agenda says 8.30, yeah. But the 15th, it is till 8, because I figured I wouldn't make you guys do two-hour meetings twice a month. Yeah. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, sure. So the mayor, now we made some excellent progress on city council. So we have the issue, we can discuss them together, the mayor's term and term limits. thoughts? I think we should go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Do you want to say something, Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I agree. Okay, Jean and then Maury and Daniela. Go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, great. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: So we have a motion on the floor, but I wanted Danielle had her hand up and so did Eunice. So I just want to, do you guys want to say something quickly before we vote?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So right now the motion is just about the term length. Okay, so the motion on the floor is that the mayor mayoral term should be extended for years. Nova, did you want to ask? Yeah. And do many members of the public want to weigh in before we vote? Okay, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: The motion is that the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: We're not on the limits. We're just on the limits. Okay. Yes. Okay. Eunice? Yes. Danielle? Yes. Paula? Yes. Phyllis? Yes. Aubrey? Yes. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Daveed? Yes. Okay. You didn't ask me. Oh, sorry, Gene. I'm yes too.
[Milva McDonald]: Gene's a yes too. Okay, so that's 11 yes, None opposed, so that motion passes unanimously.
[Milva McDonald]: There was a lot of agreement on this in the survey and the interviews and so.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. So let's, um, what about term limits for mayor? Uh, Eunice, is that what you were going to speak to?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, our Medford unique history makes this a, um,
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. Maury, is that your hand?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All right. Thank you. Anthony, were you going to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thank you. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we just voted on four-year term links, but oh, you mean four terms as the limit?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so 16 years. Okay, great.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm good. Okay. I thought I took it down. Any other thoughts? make a motion to uh move to four consecutive terms of four years each for the mayor so the motion is to speak i know i know i'm gonna get to that um we're gonna the motion is to put a term limit of four terms on the mayor which would be okay so that's a motion on the floor before we vote i want to hear from uh we have a member of the public who wants to speak bill You should be able to unmute now.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point, thank you. Anything else?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, thank you for that, that's a good point. Yeah. Okay, so before we vote, I think Daveed put his hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I hear you.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. And I think that the Collins Center will be able to help us with that language. If we voted for the term limits, I think the Collins Center would. OK. Okay, Daveed, got it. I think the Collins Center would be able, would help us, you know, they would say, okay, you have to create transitional language and they would help us with that. I think that that would be addressed with their help, but we would need to address it. So thank you. Gene and then Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay, Aubrey and then Paulette, and then we're going to vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Thank you. Paulette and then Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: I see what you're saying, yeah. So you're saying with a consecutive, then somebody could serve for four years, not serve, and then run again and serve for four consecutive terms, which would end up being a total of 20 years.
[Milva McDonald]: So I can't even remember. whoever made the initial motion maybe wants to amend it, but we'll see. I'm going to let, Phyllis was going to speak, right?
[Milva McDonald]: right voted that just in yeah and i'm okay so we're doing school committee later thank you that's all okay so right now the motion is that the mayor would be limited to serving four consecutive terms of office or 16 years and that was seconded so unless there's an amendment we're going to vote on that um or 16 years except
[Milva McDonald]: I think, didn't Jean, you said something like it said whichever is greater? No.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, all right, I understand. Okay, so that's the motion on the floor. Okay, I'm gonna do a roll call vote. Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Can you just say what we're voting? Yes, the motion is that the mayor shall serve no more than four consecutive, shall be limited to serving four consecutive terms of office or 16 years, whichever is greater. Yes. Okay. Uh, Eunice. Yes. Paulette. Yes. Jean. Yes. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Uh, Aubrey. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I'll count you as a yes. And I will vote yes. So that's nine in favor to oppose. I think you counted David. David voted before he dropped out. Okay. Great. Okay. Well, guess what? We pretty much made it through those agenda items. That's fantastic. We have just a few minutes and I just wanted to basically thank Jean for her amazing work on the listening sessions. They were really, really important. And I think we all had some excellent conversations with people. We got a lot of great feedback. So thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: This is beautiful.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it was wonderful.
[Milva McDonald]: I just want to say our survey closed. We're around 600 and around 650 respondents and David who has expertise in information collection and statistics and all kinds of stuff like that is going to put together a report so we'll have that on the 15th and we'll be able to really look at it and see and we also
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not sure that the technology differentiated to that level, but maybe. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it was not intended to be a scientific survey. It was intended to get a sense of where people are at. And mostly we included the demographics so that we would sort of know if we had certain groups that we wanted to try to get more feedback from, I think. But I think if that capability exists in the data, I'm pretty sure David will
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, well, I'll check in with him and see, you know, what he's planning. Paula.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, changing it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, because our next meeting is on the 15th from 6.30 to 8. And you'll all be getting an agenda soon. And we do have to end right now, but we didn't uh, talk about identifying any new subcommittees, but, um, we'll wait and see if we need to do that on the 15th. Um, what we are going to, we're going to look at the survey results on the 15th, and we are going to talk about compensation, which has come up as an issue in the city, um, and maybe something else. I'm not sure. That's what's coming. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, everybody. Nice to see you all. Nobody made a motion to adjourn, but I promise I'm behind you.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming to our public information session. This is the Charter Study Committee. I'm going to just, I'm Milva McDonald. I'm the chair of the committee, and I'm going to introduce the committee members that are here, and then I'm going to hand the mic over to Ron Giovino. who is one of our committee members. We also have Phyllis Morrison, Eunice Brown, Paulette Van der Kloot, Anthony Andriodala, and Jean Zotter. Ron's gonna talk a little bit about the committee, what we've been doing, and I'm gonna hand it over.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Ron. Yeah, and to echo what Ron said, we are sort of at a turning point in our process. We're going to start, we have provisionally voted on several important issues, but we're really going to be buckling down and doing a lot of votes, making our final decisions on recommendations and drafting a new charter. And that's going to be happening in the coming months. So we'd love to see you at our meetings. And right now we want to just open it up to see if anybody has any questions. or comments. If you're on Zoom, you can raise your hand, or if you're in the hall, just come up to the mic. So we don't have any questions. Okay, so this is going to probably be pretty short since our main objective here was to try to listen to folks. But before we wrap up, I will just say some of the provisional decisions we've made so far, and this has been based on our own conversations, our research, our looking at historical data on representation in the city, our survey results, public feedback, and larger pieces of that we're going to be doing a lot of research. Uh there we are. We've decided not to keep a mayor form of government, a mayor council form of government. And the committee has provisionally voted to recommend hybrid ward representation. With eight. So Medford has eight wards. That The school committee is something that we're still diving into research on, so decisions have not been made on that yet, but we have. And we're also looking at the balance of power because that has been some of the main concerns that we've heard from people are and the balance of power between the mayor and the City Council. So we're looking at that. We have voted to give the City Council, to incorporate in our draft charter, the power for the City Council to confirm mayoral appointments to multi-member boards. At our next meeting, we're gonna be looking at term lengths. which is a trickier question than you would think because there's a lot of moving parts with that in terms of when elections are held, etc. We're also going to be looking at the question of term limits. Then we will be looking at the issue of Our current charter does not have anything in it about how compensation for election officials is decided. So we will be looking at putting a process for that into the charter or recommending a process for that, putting it into our draft charter. And we also are going to be looking at the budget timeline. So these are some of, and very exciting also, we will be looking at, our current charter has no section on citizen participation mechanisms. So right now, whatever a group of citizens can do in terms of trying to initiate change within Medford through ballot questions or whatever has to come from state law. So we can look at that and try to put something in the charter that would allow for citizens to do more of that sort of participatory change in the city. So those are sort of the main highlights of what we have left. There's also a lot of you know, administrative practices and kind of standard pieces that have to be done as well. So we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we've done a lot already and we hope you'll get in touch with us and tell us what you think. And thanks everybody for tuning in. Yes, our survey is closing on January 31st. So if you go to www.medfordma.org slash charter study, it will take you to the survey. Please take the survey if you haven't already. Also there you will find all our materials, the recordings of every meeting we've had, minutes, materials that were presented at the meeting. For instance, all the historical data on representation of city councilors in the city that we collected as part of our process to decide on whether to recommend ward representation, all that can be found on that page. So we hope you'll take a look and thank you all for tuning in.
[Milva McDonald]: If you are on Zoom, you can raise your hand or come up to the mic. If there are no questions or comments, we will adjourn. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: We do have a quorum, so we will go ahead and start the meeting. Our first order of business is to review and accept the minutes from the December meeting. Has everyone had a chance to look at them? Motion to accept.
[Milva McDonald]: All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. OK. Okay, hang on. Oh, did you just let in Phyllis? Okay, great. So our next item is to look at the preamble, which I will put up on the screen right now. I mean, I'm assuming everybody had a chance to look at it, but I will share it just in case. That is not, no, that is not what I wanted to share. Hang on for a minute. Wrong screen. OK, here we go. Okay, so we talked about this at the last meeting and I sent it to you all so that you'd have a chance to look at it. So I guess I'll just open up the floor and see if there are any comments, if there are any suggestions for changes, if it's good to go, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Any other thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Let's see. Hang on. Why can't I find that? It should be right in front of me.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Okay. So here we have a potential suggestion to switch to adopt, to adopt and adhere to. That's, I mean, I will just make the change and if anybody objects to it, they can say so.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. The word important in the last paragraph has been raised as maybe an unusual word for the context.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's a possibility.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so here, so let's say we've got valuable and significant rather than important. Anybody have a preference or both?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. That's another option. Yeah, I think that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it does then later say, hope to continue to build the city that learns from that past.
[Milva McDonald]: I think if somebody wants to make a motion to change that word, we can do that.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so I'm going to have to get that out of the chat and paste it in so we can look at it.
[Milva McDonald]: I've got it. I've got it right here.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so this would basically be We hope to continue to build. Okay, so you're talking about replacing the last sentence, Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so then this would go in the middle. That's right, yep.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, did I not get it all?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay. That's considerably short. Well, a little shorter.
[Milva McDonald]: Resolve.
[Milva McDonald]: Ordain. I don't know. Resolve. So we can put resolve in both of these.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep.
[Milva McDonald]: Do people like the first option or the shortened option?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Does anybody have any other comments?
[Milva McDonald]: Can people see the whole thing now? No, I cannot.
[Milva McDonald]: Interesting.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Do you have another word you think would work? We resolve to further develop, I don't know. I mean, operate comes to mind, but that's a little weird. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: How about we just say we resolve to continue to learn from that past. Cultivate, says Francis.
[Milva McDonald]: Where would you put that answer?
[Milva McDonald]: We strive to continue to cultivate or do we want to get rid of it?
[Milva McDonald]: We will strive as opposed to resolve.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So we'll look at that, but I think, Frances, were you about to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. I agree. So I think resolve makes more sense in this context.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I feel like we've wordsmithed it and obviously, you can do that forever, but I think it's pretty strong. If anybody wants to make a motion.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we don't. We don't. So if somebody wants to make a motion, they can make a motion to accept it with the top or the bottom last paragraph.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All in favor? Aye. Should we do a roll call?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Eunice? Aye. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette? Yes. Phyllis? Yes. Aubrey? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we're nine of us. And Paulette made that motion and Phyllis seconded, did I remember that right?
[Milva McDonald]: Other way around, okay, thank you. Okay, congratulations. We have a preamble. Yay, well done team. One thing done. Okay, so let me just make sure I get this in so I have the actual hobby that we voted on. Okay, so next is a continuation of our discussion on City Council confirmation of certain appointments and there was some language sent out so we can we can discuss the issue in general or before we start on the actual look at the actual language or we can look at the language. I have a couple of comments before we start. I believe that the subcommittee that worked on this was actually talking about confirmation powers for multi-member boards and not department heads. So I think I think that that is a separate issue and that probably should be taken out if everyone agrees. The other thing I just wanted to point out was the Collins Center couldn't join us tonight, but I shared the language with them and they had some thoughts as well. Well, they only had one thought about the certain language. that made it sound like, I can say that the subcommittee's intent when the subcommittee said, appointments made by the mayor shall become effective on the 30th day after the date on which the notice of the proposed appointment was filed with the city clerk, unless approved or rejected. The intent was that appointments would become valid within 30 days unless the city council rejected the appointment. And the addition of the approval intent was so that the city council could choose to approve before that and therefore make the appointment active sooner if they chose. However, the call-in center felt that the language made it sound like the city council was required to approve or reject. And so they suggested either removing the approved language or or lowering the threshold of a two-thirds vote because it was too high for all of those functions. So I just wanted to put that out there. And now we can talk about it.
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: No, you did. I just didn't know if you were raising your hand.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we didn't actually have language at last meeting. We were mostly just talking about the issue. Although we did, there was, there was a lot, there was discussion about giving the city council some powers to reject. So we did have some, and this is, this is different. This is new. The subcommittee met again and reworked it.
[Milva McDonald]: The subcommittee voted to take it out, which doesn't mean that if someone wanted to raise it again, they could and we could vote on it.
[Milva McDonald]: Not much, except for the part about the department heads, because we didn't talk about department heads. But essentially, the rest of it is pretty much the same.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that was another question. So as we as the, we are actually an ad hoc committee. So I don't believe that this would apply. But I can't say 100% for sure. But I don't think so. There was a question of the Collins Center explained to us that there's boards that are created by ordinance or committees and commissions that are created by ordinance, which are governed by the ordinance and then there's some that are governed by state law and we don't actually have a list of which is which. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: I can tell you that was the intent and this idea of this subcommittee was to give them a chance to do it sooner if they want. But clearly, it's problematic because people are reading it differently. people are reading it as though this means that the City Council has to do one or the other before 30 days, and that wasn't the intent. Ron, you are reading it correctly. I think if somebody wants to make a motion to remove those two words, then we can do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron? A motion to approve the language, quote, approved or. I second. Okay. Okay, we're gonna do a roll call.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so we'll vote on this language and then we'll see if there's any other changes that should be made and then we can vote on the actual, the whole thing. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: I want to address that. But I want to just, so I just want to do vote on the motion first, and then we'll talk about that. So I'm just going to do a roll call. And this is a motion to remove the language approved or. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: I would assume that the mayor would have to nominate to another 30 day process and then another 30 day process. I would imagine, yeah. So let's go, let's do the motion first.
[Milva McDonald]: We're voting on The motion is to remove the language approved or from the proposed text. And where is that? What paragraph is that in? I will share it so people can see it. It's in the first paragraph so it would say unless rejected by rather than approved.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Did that also happen for the Let's see, yes, and it would be, it would be removed in both of those sections. Yeah, we would just so there's two places.
[Milva McDonald]: So this is what we would be removing. And then we will talk about the other issues once we finish this vote. Okay, so Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Another removed or, I mean approved or.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we would take out approval. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this particular part applies to if the mayor decides to remove a member of a multiple member board. So... I think that the city council wouldn't necessarily, I mean, this is something we can talk about, but the idea would be that the city council would be able to overturn a removal, but they wouldn't have to approve of it. Does that make sense? So we're taking out all the approval. I mean, that's what we're voting on. So, so we have Phyllis said yes. Aubrey, did you? Yes. Okay. Paulette? We'll come back. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. And I vote yes. So the motion carries with eight yes and one abstain. Okay, so those yellow parts are now taken out. So now we can go back to Paulette's question. One thing I can say is that Um, you know, the initially the subcommittee put two weeks or and what we heard from the call and center was that just, I mean, it's just not enough time because the city council doesn't. necessarily meet, you know, they would have to, it would just, it just, it's very quick. So, and many charters that do grant city council this power say 45 days, so 30 days was actually a middle ground. And I, you know, and I know that it is a concern, but If this committee decides to grant this authority to the city council, there does have to be a timeframe. And two weeks is too short. We could try 21 days if somebody feels like that's... But anyway, that's just the background on that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. So Anthony also raised a question earlier about whether we wanted to give this power to the city council and that is part of the discussion we're having. And this particular, subcommittee felt that that giving this power to the city council would be something that that would be reasonable so that's why it's written this way but there's certainly this is this would be the time to raise any concerns about that well can i start just just not knowing what committees or what
[Milva McDonald]: So one thing I can tell you is that most of the multi-member boards are volunteer. There are probably some stipends for some of them, but the way this proposal or this suggested language is written, nobody would go before the city council. It's written so that the person is automatically approved unless the city council votes against their confirmation. So it wouldn't be an issue where somebody would know before and then the city council would vote on their candidacy. So just wanted to clarify that.
[Milva McDonald]: They would be automatically on the committee or commission unless the city council voted to reject that appointment.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what do you mean by process? I mean, it says the mayor has to refer to the city council and file with the city clerk the names of all the appointments. And then they become effective 30 days after that, unless city council rejects the appointment with a two-thirds vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And this is standard language that appears in charters all over the state. So there's nothing unusual about it.
[Milva McDonald]: What happened was the Collins Center thought that there were some of those groups that were listed there were actually governed by state law.
[Milva McDonald]: So I guess where I'm coming from is I feel like, like I said, this is standard language that appears in charters all over the state. There's gonna be certain, if state law exempts something from it, then that's just the way it is. I don't feel like I need to know the specific committees and commissions in order to vote on this. but if other people do, then we can talk about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Ron. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Francis, do you know, you're speaking just about that one group, that one body?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that is how our charter is currently written, that the mayor appoints the, makes the appointments without confirmation. So that is currently how our charter is written.
[Milva McDonald]: Milford, did you ask me a question? Well, Anthony had asked a question about, but I think maybe we, I think we answered it. If you want to ask Francis something specific, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, they're still forwarding it to the mayor because the mayor would still be making the appointments. the city council would have the power to reject if they chose. So the mayor would still be making the appointments.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: And none of that would change with this language also. Okay, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's basically what Ron just said earlier, that it's a balance of power issue.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks, Maury. I mean, that is an interesting idea, but it's not, my guess is we're gonna come up against some issues with that, it's not done that way in general in most cities, and there may be other factors in play that make it so that we can't just sort of give the city council, like, say, you know, 20% of the appointments and the mayor 80%. That's what you're suggesting. Is that right, Maureen?
[Milva McDonald]: Am I correct? I think there's one or two and I believe that there are ordinances about those. I think the Liquor Commission is one of them.
[Milva McDonald]: So and that can be done by ordinance. Because obviously, because our current charter says that the mayor makes all appointments without city council confirmation, so. OK, Aubrey. you've had your hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm glad you raised that because that is definitely an issue. And I think. I think we can talk about whether. I mean, the subcommittee decided not to give the city council the power to initiate a removal, which is something that the Collins Center talked to us about last meeting. But this does give them some authority in the removal process. So we should talk about whether we want to keep that. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. And Aubrey's point is that if someone's being removed, they're being removed or suspended for a reason. Oh, I see. Okay, I thought. Then they would have to wait 30, you know, it would give the city council 30 days to disagree with the mayor basically on that. So my feeling is that you know, that we could take that out, but I don't know how other people feel.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I like that.
[Milva McDonald]: So we would say be effective immediately.
[Milva McDonald]: And then the city council would have up to 30 days to reinstate. So I guess, Do we, I mean, this is all standard language and these are powers that other city councils have, but the removal power is less common or the power to have a say over the removal?
[Milva McDonald]: Right, there would be for this, though. I mean, in this case, the City Council could do it if they wanted to.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, because the City Council, because there needs to be time for the City Council to act on things.
[Milva McDonald]: Every other week.
[Milva McDonald]: Like I said, it's 45 days is actually pretty common in a lot of charters. We could, somebody could suggest lowering it to three weeks, 21 days.
[Milva McDonald]: As you pointed out, Paula, this language isn't fine.
[Milva McDonald]: So, um, which, and if there's some reason that they're not meeting right away, or, I mean, I think, I think it would, I think the chart, I think it's pretty standard for the charter to give a time timeframe.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Ron, do you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, Ron. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, that could be added.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Ron, you expressed an intention. But before we do that, I just want to go back to the removal language and we also need to address if we're going to remove the department heads. Because mostly we haven't really been talking about department heads. We're talking about multiple member boards. So, just back to the removal question, are people comfortable with giving the city council the ability to overturn a suspension or a removal?
[Milva McDonald]: Or removal, which obviously would not happen, it would be probably extraordinary circumstances anyway.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what this would say, unless we decide we don't think that should happen.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, and that was what I think that's part of what Aubrey raised, which is why we changed the language to say that it would be effective immediately, but that then the city council would have up to 30 days to overturn them.
[Milva McDonald]: That is the question we're discussing. And if somebody thinks that that should be removed, they can make a motion and we'll take those two paragraphs out.
[Milva McDonald]: I think removal then an appeal process, but... I'm pretty sure that the person would have a right to an appeal no matter what. But I mean, that was one of the things that the Collins Center talked about last month with the option of giving the city council the power to initiate a removal was that there could be legal legalities involved. And the fact that even if the city council is approving or rejecting the appointments, the mayor is the appointing authority. So if we gave the city council any power to remove, we would basically be letting someone remove that didn't make the appointment.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I heard a motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah. OK, let's do a roll call. So this is a motion to remove the sections that give the City Council authority to overturn mayoral removals or suspensions. Yep. Maury seconded. OK, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury. Yes. Paulette. Yes. Phyllis. Yes. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, my box is moved, so I don't know, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: You said no, you vote not to remove it?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I missed one person, who did I miss?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: And I vote yes. Okay, so the motion carries seven yes, one abstain and one no. So just the removal power, the power over removals we're taking out. The only other question is that we have been, like I said, we've been talking about multi-member boards, but we have department heads in the current language.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm in agreement with you. I think that department heads are part of the mayor's administration. But if we want to take that out, somebody needs to make a motion. I make a motion. Okay. Are we going to consider it, but just not now?
[Milva McDonald]: We're voting to take department heads out, which doesn't mean that we've made a decision on it. It just means we're taking it out right now.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So the motion, Eunice made a motion to remove language on department heads, and Ron amended it to say, Send that back, send back to subcommittee. Do we have a second?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury and Anthony. Okay, so that's the motion. Eunice? Yes. Yes. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey? Yes. Jean? Yes. Paulette? Yes. Ron? Yes, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point, and I'm not sure. They might be management. Okay, so I'm just going to share what it is. Frances has her hand up. Frances, Frances, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, Francis. So that will, you know, that will definitely be something to put in the discussion pod for when we address that. But right now, this is how the language stands. We took out department heads, we took out the language approval or, and we took out powers over to reject overturned removals or suspensions by the mayor. So this is what we got. And I think, do people want to look it over quickly? Because I think, Ron, you said you might want to do something, right?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So the motion is to approve this revised language. Do we have a 2nd?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think that's addressed in a different section. This is just about the appointments.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we can take that out. What we had talked about was, We took out the language giving the city council power to overturn, but this just says that the mayor has to notify them. I personally think that's reasonable. Can you keep sharing your screen, Melva, please? Yes. Right now, it does say that the mayor has to notify the city council. If people, so right now, Ron made a motion and I didn't hear a second.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes Okay I think I can live with that Yeah, so and and as far as the you know Nitty-gritty of the language. I mean, this is all Even if we vote on this, it's provisional. The Collins Center is going to help us with the final draft. And they're very familiar with charter language. And if there's something in here that is an issue, they'll tell us. OK. So Ron made the motion. Jean seconded. And so Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Maury? Yes. Okay. Sorry. Aubrey? Yes. Okay. I can't see on my boxes, so I'm doing this by memory. Phyllis? Yes. Okay. And I'm missing one person. Paulette. Paulette, thank you. Paulette? Yes. Great. So the motion carries.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I would have to... I can read it to you.
[Milva McDonald]: Can you put it in the chat, Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: So basically this... Anthony is making a motion to add language
[Milva McDonald]: Right, but we just vote to add this language?
[Milva McDonald]: No, that's the department heads.
[Milva McDonald]: We are not going to be able to vote on every single section of the charter. We'll be here forever. A lot of the sections of the charter are going to be standard language. This is pretty standard language. It's just a little extra piece.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sorry, Paula.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Not to be unreasonably, I'm just, I just added it, so. show you this here. So this is what it looks like now. It looks exactly the same except at the end of the first paragraph it says, the question on rejection of any appointment made by the mayor should not be said, no, that's not where it goes, sorry. That's just about, okay. Unless rejected, so with no one here. With approval, I mean, I feel like we took the word approval out and the city council is not approving. They're just, so we, I don't think we can use this language. We would have to be.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I mean, these are all very subjective.
[Milva McDonald]: Anyway, this is the language in question right here. We changed it because we didn't have approval. So Anthony made this motion. And did somebody second it? I did. Was that Paulette? Was that you?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, sorry. Okay, so Anthony, sorry, I just gotta write this down. Okay, let's vote. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Aubrey. Yes. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. Gene? Yes. And I'll vote yes, sure. Okay, so we have provisional language and we have made a decision. And great, thank you everyone.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Okay, so I hope that we could, I don't think we have, I don't know, I don't know if we have time to. Is there was there was the other piece that we were maybe going to look at was. Where did it go? We have 35 minutes left, Melville.
[Milva McDonald]: That's why I'm not sure we should start in on the... Well, let's just take 10 or 15 minutes to... It's not 10 or 15 minutes. I know. So, but we're going to take... I'm not saying we'll finish this discussion, but we can start it. So, we voted. We did provisional vote on... hybrid ward representation, but what we didn't decide was the number. So the subcommittee talked about it and thought 11, eight, and three basically was a good number. And the other piece that we didn't talk about was term lengths. So we can start by talking about the number of city councilors.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, no, not the board representation, but the articles two and three, sorry. Oh, okay. Because, because the composite, because it's all in article two. Okay. I just thought that we could maybe finalize the number that we wanted to include in our draft charter. Any thoughts? Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. The wards question is, I feel like we need to maybe talk to the Collins Center about this again. When I raised this with them, I believe that the city could add another ward or the state draws the wards and the state can just change the boundary. I mean, we don't know and we don't really have control over that. I don't, you know, I don't think we can base our decision on it because we just don't have control over that. I mean, the subcommittee put in extra language about that there would be either two or three Councilors at large, even if the wards changed. But we can talk about that too. I don't even know if that language, I don't know. I mean, again, the call-in center, when they look at that language might, they will often say things that we didn't think of. So, but thinking, but deciding on the number, right, is something that we do need to do. So, Dean.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Ron and I think Paulette also.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's a motion. Paulette, did you have your hand up just before we?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Ron made a motion. Does anybody like this?
[Milva McDonald]: I think there might be one city that does that. I don't think a lot of cities do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, we did, we did talk about it a little bit and what we, um, you know, there were, there's potential legal issues with combining wards. There were, there were some reasons why we didn't pursue it. Um, so, but, um, I just want to go back because I know Ron made a motion.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. All right, so the motion is to have 11 city councilors, eight ward representatives, three at large. Eunice? Yes. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis? Phyllis? Oh, sorry, you're on mute. I see your yes, though. Aubrey? I muted myself. That's okay. Aubrey? I'm yes. Yes, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So the motion carries. Wow, that's great. That's another piece of business that we took care of. We do have some other things on the agenda. The only other piece of that section was the term links. I don't know, we can spend five minutes maybe talking about term links. I don't know if we'll vote on that tonight, but.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. So we can start and have a brief discussion on the term lengths just to sort of see where people are at or if there's some ideas that people want to throw out for other committee members to think about. And then we can save that for another meeting. Does anybody have any thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Paulette, were you going to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, all right, so we'll save that one, and now we'll, oh, next is the school committee subcommittee check. There you go.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's the next state for the subcommittee? Great, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that was, she was pretty flexible on everything, but that was her one thing that she express a strong opinion on.
[Milva McDonald]: So when we address term lengths, You know, we can, I mean, we can address term lengths for all the different branches of government. And I think that makes sense because it will affect, they're interrelated because of the way elections run. So we'll definitely look at that soon.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Okay, listening sessions. Do we have a quick listening session update?
[Milva McDonald]: I think you'll be able to. Can you? I think so. Yeah, because you're a co-host. I think you can.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, well, Dean, I just want to say thank you again for spearheading this and being sort of the organizer, because these have been really valuable, despite the fact that there have been a few where people didn't show up. Overall, they've been incredibly valuable. So thank you. Thanks. Okay, so we do have our last public information session at City Hall before our survey closes on January 31st, and that is on January 25th. If anybody wants to join me in planning for that event, let me know. Any takers?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's a public information session at City Hall.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't have a plan yet. So I'm saying, does somebody want to get together with me and plan it? Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Do you want to be a planner for that?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that's what we need to hear.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll get in touch with you to set up a planning meeting. Okay. Sorry. The other thing I just wanted to touch base on was our work plan. I just wanted sort of our target date for presenting our revised, our charter is September. So, you know, we, so in light of that, in light of all the decisions we have to make, I wanted to throw out a possibility.
[Milva McDonald]: whether there's any availability for additional meetings starting in February? And we can keep them on Thursdays or we can, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So if I put out a doodle poll for people to see if we can add in just for maybe from February for at least a few months while we hash out some of these. I mean, we've done really well. We've got a lot of stuff done, but we have a lot to hash out. So if I do a doodle poll, are people open to meeting more often? OK. Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, you had your hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Ron, for bringing that up. And next meeting, I think identifying the major issues is a good idea. I mean, we've already addressed a lot of them, but budget procedures I think is obviously a big one in the city, term limits. And we can talk about that and form subcommittees, decide what we want to, you know, what we want to form subcommittees for. Some things are going to be sort of like administrative procedures, things like that. We'll probably be using a lot of standard language for, but identifying sort of our major issues that we want to really delve into is a good idea. So thank you. Gene.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Yeah, I think that we will do that. And maybe we'll combine it with term lengths. Okay, so our next meeting is on February 1st, and I just want to open up the floor for public participation. Do any members of the public want to speak? I don't see any hands. Okay. In that case, I think we had a really productive meeting. So thank you all. Can I just add one thing?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you, Eunice. Paul, I think you should be able to speak. There you go. Yes, for the record, please.
[Milva McDonald]: Not necessarily. That's a separate piece that we'll be looking at separately.
[Milva McDonald]: has voted to keep a mayor, but all our votes right now are provisional, so I wouldn't say it's completely off the table. We do have a survey, and we have a lot of public feedback, and if we see a huge outcry for that, we could revisit it.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Thank you. All right. Does somebody want to make a motion to adjourn? I'll make a motion to adjourn.
[Milva McDonald]: All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, everyone. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
[Milva McDonald]: Good night.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the meeting of the Metro Charter Study Committee's Subcommittee on Articles 2 and 3. So first order of business is to accept the minutes from November 30th. Did everyone look at those? Okay. Do we have a motion to accept?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. John, are you able to unmute? Second.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Great. Minutes accepted. Awesome. Okay. So we, we had a couple of questions left over from our last meeting, and then we also had some things come up from the full committee meeting. So, um, I mean, we can go in the order of the agenda or we can sort of check in because David, you were going to, um, you were going to work on creating a document, right? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, one of the things I thought we should do after the full committee meeting was review the recommendations for removals. So I don't know if, David, you had a chance to look at the minutes or to sort of see what some of the discussion points were. But, John, you were there. So do we just want to sort of re-look at that based on the feedback from that?
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, that's okay. David, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, I think there were, so there was definitely the concern, John, that you mentioned about limiting the executive's power, but I feel like there was also concerns raised about legality issues, right? Because, you know, to have the power to remove given to a body that didn't make the appointment, kind of, could be a potential issue.
[Milva McDonald]: And the Collins Center said there might be some case law, but I don't know. They didn't give us a specific reference.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Yeah. And I think, my understanding was they were talking about, because the city council wouldn't be the appointing body, that then giving that body the power to remove could present issues. But I could be misinterpreting or misunderstanding, but that's why.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. They were definitely vague on it. They kind of implied that it could be there, but there was some vagueness to it. I feel like I've seen some charters that, I haven't seen any that give council removal authority, but I have seen some sections that give the person who's being removed the right to a hearing, which usually then I think happens before the council.
[Milva McDonald]: They didn't say that directly, but they raised the question about it. But we also had some committee members who raised strong objections to it. So, I mean, obviously, this is, you know, one of the things that I want to do tonight is figure out how we're going to present this issue for a vote because, There's different components of this section regarding multi-member boards. I'm guessing that committee members might want to vote on some of them separately. This piece might not go along with it, but it might go along with the rest. That's all.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. John, did you have a thought?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I think they should be. It should be up.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're talking about language just from whatever section this is to dash 10, whatever it is. Okay. So we can do that. I would like to be able to send it to the committee this week for our next meeting, just this particular section. And maybe another one if we can decide on something that we think is ready.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, and these are two very important weighty sections of the charter. And I don't know that we're going to go through every, I mean, some of the sections we may just sort of, as a committee, decide, okay, this we're going to use standard language. And the Collins Center is available to do the draft, do some of the drafting for us too. But if this is fine to go to approach these two sections this way. So I guess I just want to circle back to the removal procedure because we did hear at least two committee members raised strong objections to it. And so the question is, do we want to, and given the concerns that were raised, do we want to take that out in the draft that we are going to give the committee?
[Milva McDonald]: I guess I'm feeling after hearing, you know, some of the concerns that the Collins Center raised, I would probably vote to take it out. But if we want to see what the whole committee thinks, that's, you know, I think that's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: Can you say how you think they were being conflated?
[Milva McDonald]: You're talking about the piece, there was the unanimous, the ability for the city council to initiate a removal with a unanimous vote, and then also the power to reject a removal with a majority.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we have, right. I guess I feel like when it comes to a vote, I will probably vote not to give the removal powers to the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: But that doesn't mean if other people will agree with me, so.
[Milva McDonald]: And when you say, are you saying to take out both removal precisions or powers or one removal power?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. So the motion is to remove the provision from suggested draft, which gives council power to initiate a removal with a unanimous vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Does anybody second that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So all in favor of removal? Aye. Yeah. I'll vote to remove it.
[Milva McDonald]: And John?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. OK, so the motion passes 2 to 1 in favor. And then the other piece was the ability to overturn a removal. And that one, we have not talked about whether to leave that in or take it out. Any thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, there's definitely, I've seen, you know, I think notice is standard language in general. Some of these are not very searchable.
[Milva McDonald]: That could be.
[Milva McDonald]: And just.
[Milva McDonald]: Hang on, I just want to, I'm sorry, I was just going to share one thing that's pertinent here. I believe, let's see, did I just click on this is Gardner and this is an example of. This is under. This is, no. The mayor may, with the approval of a majority of the members of the city council, remove any head of a department or member of a board before the expiration of term. That members of the school committee, right. Officers elected by the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, no, I think that is what we suggested. Well, no, no, actually, the mayor, this says the mayor has to get approval. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, what we suggested was that the council could override the removal, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, this is where you get the right to the hearing, et cetera. Yeah. OK. So that's just one charter, but we could look at others. But we can see that it's not unprecedented.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Are we good with that or leaving that in or do we want to?
[Milva McDonald]: So I think 45 was the number we had in there, right? So we can, we can specify calendar or business. I don't see a problem with that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, since we're talking, since we're talking about the number of days. I mean, we settled on 45, but there were a couple of comments at the meeting that concern again about discouraging volunteerism came up. And I think we talked about, we had talked about a shorter period of time could just be too hard, right? I mean, but I think initially we had talked about two weeks or three weeks or something, but I guess I'm just throwing out, do we want to reduce it to 30? I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I thought we said 45. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I could be wrong. I could be wrong. What do you remember, John?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Well, then it's probably 30, and I don't remember it. OK, then I think that's reasonable.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I think that's fine. I just wanted the memo that the Collins Center gave us had example language from the Somerville draft charter, which has 45. And it basically, though, kind of says what we independently came up with, which just the mayor shall refer to the city council and file with the city clerk the name of each person the mayor desires to appoint. City Council, this says 45 days to vote to approve or reject. With approval, okay. Actually, yeah, no, maybe that actually says they have to vote, so it's a little different than what we said. Okay. The other thing that the Collins Center gave us, which I wonder if we want to think over, is the language from the Fall River Charter about Recruitment efforts. Do you remember that? We didn't include this, but they it's just. Basically, I don't think we included it. I hope I remember mine. The mayor shall annually post on the city's website in February a list of all vacancies on multi-member bodies. Such listings shall include guidance on applying to serve on a multiple-member body. The mayor may also notify any civic, business, neighborhood, or service organizations in the city of multi-member body vacancies, members of multi-member bodies, and appointments. made by the mayor to other committees as established by the charter and ordinances must be city residents. That's another piece that came up should we require that people be city residents. if a member resigns, removes from the city, or is otherwise unable to complete the term, the mayor shall fill such resulting vacancy. So that actually doesn't require the mayor, but it kind of encourages the mayor to make sure that the mayor gets the word out, right? So it just speaks to an intention that recruitment efforts be made, you know, significant recruitment efforts be made. And I know that that's sort of come up, I think, in the city in general. So I just want to just throw out, do we want to include some language like that?
[Milva McDonald]: This says residents, but
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that must be, I mean, you could say registered voters, but I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, and this also says that the person has to stay living in the city. So if the person moves, they can't serve on the multiple member body.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what we can do is we can say that you have to be a resident to be appointed. And then, I mean, these positions tend to have terms, right? Ours doesn't because it's an ad hoc committee. But like, so if you moved six months before your term was up, this provision as written would require you to leave the body. But if we left out that part, the person would have to be a member to be appointed, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that they couldn't finish out their term. Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think maybe that gets into what John was mentioning, that like there's certain things that maybe aren't charter material, because we can't like, I mean, I mean, John, you make a good point, even saying that this little recruitment paragraph might even be a little bit, you know, more like policy. So I feel like those are more policy issues. And it's hard, I think it's hard when we're doing this to sort of sometimes think, you know, because, you know, putting too much in the charter almost could not be a good thing to, you know. So, I don't know. But, and even the boards you named, I mean, one thing that's unclear, and this came up at the full committee meeting is, which boards are going to actually be governed by this provision of the charter. Because I don't necessarily think we need to know exactly which ones are in order to write this provision of the charter, because some of them are formed by state law and some of them aren't. So, but I don't know if the ones you mentioned, you know, they could even be governed by state law.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so this came up as it came up at our full committee meeting, but it also came up again as part of the language from the fall river charter, but also included the recruitment materials. So. David, you said you thought it would be nice to include the recruitment stuff. John, you said, well, that's more policy. And I kind of, now that I, even though I thought it would be a great idea, I'm sort of maybe agreeing with John now. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so David, can you add, you have this memo that we got, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I'll resend it. I'll resend it to you. So, and you'll have this language. So the parts then that would stay just so we're all clear are the mayor shall annually post on the city's website. Well, this even says in February. That's the other thing is though, I'm not sure exactly what Medford's process is and maybe that date doesn't work for Medford. You know what I mean?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And then it says such listing shall include guidance on applying to serve on a multiple member body. And then the rest of it is about notifying civic businesses is a may, not a shall. So those are the only shells. And then it says members of multiple member bodies and appointments made by the mayor to other committees as established by the charter and ordinances must be city residents.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe, maybe. I don't recall specifically. But I think that's the part that is not, you know, even in this fall river language, it's a may, not a shall. So it doesn't even require the mayor to do it. It's kind of more like a suggestion, right? And I think, you know, that John made a really good point about it being sort of policy.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and even the first one where it says the mayor shall annually post in February, even if you leave off February, what if we just said the mayor shall post on the city's website a list, all vacancies on multi-member bodies? And that just means that the mayor has to post when there's a vacancy. And it doesn't, okay. I will make sure you get that, and then you can add in, but specifically adding in the piece about the residency requirements. Great. OK, so the other piece was we had discussed auditors, right? So I looked around. There are several cities that have them. I think that in order to decide whether we want to do that, I feel like I need more knowledge. You know, one thing I believe that it would be an added position. I don't think that it would replace the CFO and it would not necessarily even replace the annual independent audit. So it would be an added position. And so I feel like that's one question. Do we want to add another position at this point? And And, you know, it would be the council's person. This would be the city council's person. That's how it seems to work when there's an auditor. So I sent out some, you know, some examples of charters I found that had, did anybody have a chance to look at any of them?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let's just, I have that right here, so let's get it.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I, I did. Um, I got, I asked for job descriptions of clerk and, uh, CFO and I heard right away and they said, we'll get them to you next. And then I never got them and I haven't followed up. Sorry about that. I can get a response. I just didn't get the descriptions yet.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, Yeah. John, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, you're not.
[Milva McDonald]: So, David, you had some specific ideas about what kind of oversight you thought, and maybe there was some other way besides an auditor to do it, but if you want to restate that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, let's look at that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the analyst is kind of, yeah, this is a person that would specifically help them with ordinance writing and things like that, which is, I think, one of the things that they've expressed a desire to have.
[Milva McDonald]: too much in the charter or this staff part, just the council may hire staff by ordinance as the council deems necessary, blah, blah, blah. And then because that also has the line, all officials of the city shall cooperate with employees and consultants of the city council on the performance of their oversight functions. And then it would be, you know, wouldn't necessarily specify I don't know. It does the same thing, right? It just doesn't have all the rest of it. Do you agree?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that's a good question because a lot of things, a lot of charters that I've seen say the council may hire staff subject to appropriation. Whatever that means.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think they, I think if it were in the charter, that couldn't happen, but I don't. John, do you have thoughts on this?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I kind of agree with that. What do you think, David? that would be basically sort of borrowing from, we wouldn't call it additional staff, because it would just be staff. You know, the question to me is that question of that phrase that I have seen in several other charters, subject to appropriation. You know?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't know. That's right. So I think what you're saying is even in the charters that don't say subject to appropriation, there still has to be an appropriation, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this language says that the council can establish support positions by ordinance. So that means that I don't know if then that requires the mayor to budget for those positions.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And maybe that phrase, subject to appropriation, is what maybe that's what sort of controls the amount. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think it is. Okay, so David, are you going to add that language too?
[Milva McDonald]: I think we're just talking, we're just going with staff. Does that sound right? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, I agree with that.
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like we just said just it wouldn't be called additional, obviously.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: The clerk of the council?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we're not getting rid of the city clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: So you're saying they don't have to? I'm trying to see where their city clerk section is in here. Is there a city clerk?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, this is from the charter, right, David? The city council shall elect a city clerk to serve for a term of three years.
[Milva McDonald]: So we made a list of it. Okay. They do select an appointment. Keeper of vital statistics of the city. Custodian of the city seal. All records. Administer oath of office. That is what the city clerk does now. Issue licenses and permits as may be provided by law. Powers and duties permit. Yeah. He performs weddings. Okay. So we left the clerk of the council in.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. And the clerk of the council, right now, those duties are done by the city clerk.
[Milva McDonald]: Pretty much.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree with that. And and and then the staff is just, you know, it gives them more flexibility. Okay. All right. Okay, so that's good. What other questions did we have that were outstanding? Let's see. We talked about removal, qualifications, we made resident and that's... And what did we have? Term limits, that was the other thing, term. That is a huge one and I feel like In some ways, I feel like maybe the term limits question should be taken up just with the whole committee. What do you guys think?
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, go ahead. I feel like the term limits discussion, maybe we should just have that as a deliberation topic in a meeting with the whole committee, because there's a lot of... My experience is that people have strong feelings about it one way or the other. I don't know. So I feel like we should just have that discussion with the committee. What do you think, John?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what I was thinking. Yeah. And I might try to get some materials together. I mean, you know, the studies, I looked for studies, and a lot of them are on state government and national government. There aren't a lot on municipal government.
[Milva McDonald]: I did find that paper that was written by an NYU professor for a charter revision committee in New York City. And so I was going to read through that and see if there was any... And he put a lot of references in that paper and see if there was any materials that... And so that's what I thought. I'll just put some materials together, send them to the committee, and then maybe we can have that discussion as a committee because...
[Milva McDonald]: That's at Tufts. I thought, aren't they more international? Policy, am I wrong about that?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the little research, I mean, a lot of what I found echoes what you said at our last meeting, John, which is kind of like term limits tend to be really popular conceptually with voters, but the results that they think they're going to get from term limits don't usually. aren't really realized by term. So I'll try to come up with some information and share that. And we'll just talk about that as a whole. The other questions we had. Well, we have that question about the, I feel like what we've come up with is actually given the city council president a good deal of power in terms of acting mayor, et cetera. But it was, you know, how much power should the council president have in terms of behavior of Councilors, attendance of Councilors? That came up.
[Milva McDonald]: I think they can do that.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with you. And I feel like they can censure even without it being in the charter, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. I mean, the council makes its own rules in terms of how often they meet, et cetera, right? So that's not, yeah. I guess I see the issue, but I feel like it's really hard to address this because the reality of the situation is that the city councilors don't have a boss. I mean, unless you call the voters their boss. And so even the council president is only really presiding over meetings and doing other maybe tasks. They're not the boss of the Councilors, right? I mean, it's not like an employment situation where... So I feel like it would just be really hard to address it in the charter. I don't know. What do you think, John?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree. I mean, as unfortunate as it is, I don't think we can manage that in the charter. Although, if you do hear back from Nicole, and because you asked her a specific question, President Morell. Yeah. If she has a specific response, then it would be, you know, of course, we would be interested in hearing what her suggestions. One thing that you reminded me of David, that now I can't find what is the information access is access to information. Were we including this? Had we already decided to include a section like this?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, this is a city with a city manager. Obviously, we wouldn't do that. But this addresses some of the concerns we've heard about, you know, the mayor not having to show up at city council meetings, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: Because I think there's other charters too where it's a whole section, right? It has to be 2-6 because that must have been in the generic charter too. Let me see.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it's just a word in this context, right? It's semantics, but it does give a certain feeling. Yeah. Because they're not a legal body that's doing a legal subpoena.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, that's basically what this section says. It doesn't say, you know, so-and-so has to show up at the city council meetings every month or every six months or whatever. It just says the city council can say, you gotta come before us, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, yeah, you know, I mean, hopefully the council wouldn't abuse the power and call the mayor at every single meeting and say, you have to tell us this and this and this. But, I mean, right now they do do this, except it's a request, right? Whereas this makes it, It just gives them that much more authority to say, you know, to require it. And this specifically says the mayor, and the mayor doesn't specifically have to show up now.
[Milva McDonald]: Even the subpoena witnesses administer oaths and require the production of evidence part? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So will I need to send this link to you, David? OK.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So I have that you're going to modify that section, the access to information section. We were just talking a little bit about rules, right? There is a section that does address, but it's very vague. It just says the council can adopt their rules. And it says they have to have regular meetings, right? Is that how you read that? It doesn't say how often, it just says they have to be regular.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, a four o'clock meeting, you're saying? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree and I just think we have to be careful about micromanaging. The other thing about this section here, like what I've noticed is some of these sections that I look at and I see them in charters and then I see them, some sections of the charters are lifted straight from state law and they're just sort of reiterated in the charter. And I don't know if this is one of them,
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I mean, it's not just, it says subpoena witnesses administer oaths and require the production evidence. So I don't know. I mean, that's a good thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we can let's let's leave it and see what everybody else says too. Okay, so the only other piece was we talked about term. I just wanted to throw out, we were talking about term lengths and we said we were going to suggest four years for mayor and leaving city council at two. But we did talk about potentially, I think the only city I found that has the split terms for city councilors was Framingham. And they have four years for at-large and two for ward. And that was a possibility that people had mentioned. But I only found one city that does it. You sure Melrose doesn't? It's possible, and because, you know, things like this tend to change, so maybe I didn't see that. It's possible.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, um. So. I was going to say, we're talking about the term lengths. One of the things to think about, too, with the term lengths, and it's hard to really know the answers to these questions, but is the effect of term lengths on, well, there's budget issues with elections, but now we have elections every two years anyway, so that's, we wouldn't be putting another burden on the city, like with staggered terms, for instance, might do that. But it's also the voter turnout and things like that, that an off-year election that doesn't have the mayor, say, would definitely change the outlook for people. No, that's a real concern.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree with you. City Council, it just, four years does kind of feel long, but then they're at, you know, the election turnout issue, then you, you know, but interestingly, and I know this is going to be, it's in the, I filed the interview report in our interviews folder, but Paulette and I, interviewed the superintendent, and she was very flexible on everything, but the one thing she probably said made the strongest statement on was that she thought that the school committee member should have four-year terms. Okay, David, thanks for letting us know about that. Because from her point of view, I mean, what you're talking about with this running the city as the mayor, I think she was feeling the same way about the school, the schools, you know, that they would get, you know, you get things going and you're working on them and then, and then you have a, you know, and then people have to leave or, you know, they're, or they're running for reelection. So, and, and the other sort of interesting thing about that was I was sort of looking over the Excel spreadsheet I had, which talked about term links and actually is, It's uncommon for city councilors to have four-year terms, really, in almost any city. That Framingham is an exception, and it's only at large. But there actually are some cities that give school committee members four-year terms, but not councilors. So maybe they've experienced that. The operations of the school is maybe more like the operation of the city, the two-year term is limiting.
[Milva McDonald]: It will be ultimately, but yeah. Okay, so we'll leave that at two and four. Okay, so did we cover everything, all the outstanding issues? I feel like we kind of did.
[Milva McDonald]: So the one thing that I want to be able to do is to finalize. I'll pull out the sections on the multi-member bodies so that we can finalize a vote on that. And I can't remember what exact number that is, two dash whatever, but. Two ten, okay. So I'm going to say two ten. Is there another section that we feel is ready for prime time that we can take to the committee for a vote? I mean, one thing that we haven't decided on as a whole committee is the number of city councilors.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it might, usually when the president isn't there to run the meeting, the vice president runs the meeting, right? That's, yeah. And if the president had to assume the mayor, for instance, then the vice president would become the president. I guess that's how I see it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I just was hoping to get through a couple of sections of it. Like maybe the parts that required more discussion and that we could sort of say, okay, those are done at the next meeting. So we could either, I mean, maybe we should talk about the access to information section or. or maybe we should just go back to the composition because we, like I said, we decided ward representation to recommend ward representation, but not the number.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we'll try to nail that down at the next meeting. All right, that'll be the goal for the... I'll put that in the agenda for our January meeting. So, do we feel like we are a wrap as a committee?
[Milva McDonald]: See based on what you mean, what you're going to complete?
[Milva McDonald]: So next meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if we can do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Not yet.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we can't make it.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, as soon as David is done with it, which I'm not sure when.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I will definitely share with the whole committee because we'll have to decide whether we're going to, you know, adopt it or what parts of it we want to change. So at the very least, even if you're not done by like a few days from now, I'm going to lift to 210. So and send that to the committee. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you. Second. All in favor? Aye. All right.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you all. That was great. Good night. Night. Happy New Year.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome, everyone, to the meeting of the Method Carter Study Committee. Our first item on the agenda is the November minutes. Has everyone had a chance to look at the November minutes?
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. Great. Minutes approved. Okay, so I'm just going to let, oops, they've been let in. Anthony and Frank, do you know if this phone number is Marilyn?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so our first item on the agenda is a report by the preamble committee subcommittee and the preamble subcommittee has created a preamble for us to look at. Does anyone from the subcommittee want to speak on it? I have it and I can share it, but is there anybody on the subcommittee who wants to talk about the preamble that we're not gonna look at.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Danielle, do you want to share anything?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Then let me share it so we can look at it. This is the proposed preamble. Danielle, do you want to read it?
[Milva McDonald]: Do you remember me? Okay. Any thoughts? I'm sorry, I'm going to try to figure out where that noise might be coming from.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Then I can go back to the screen. Okay, so let's open discussion on the preamble, on the proposed preamble.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so I see ethical is in there twice. Does any that's.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Does anybody from the call-in center have any thoughts? Because you guys have seen way more preambles than we have.
[Milva McDonald]: So, okay. So let's see. Um,
[Milva McDonald]: Would you capitalize that? Probably, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Any other thoughts? I think it looks good. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to vote? I'm sorry, Aubrey, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: So do you want to make a suggestion about how we can change that? Or how we might?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yeah, that might be hard right now. I mean, I was hoping we could maybe vote on this tonight, but... I'm okay to vote. Okay. If there's no more comments from the committee, I want to just see if there's any comments on this from members of the public. So, does anyone from the public have any comments on this aspect, on this agenda item?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Moral principles or moral standards can be used to replace one of the ethics. Let's take a look at that. Oh, Phyllis, I'm sorry. You should be able to, can you not unmute? Let's see, I don't know why Phyllis can't unmute herself. Try it now. I think that, are you there?
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. We can hear you. Great, thank you. Okay, so let's take a look back. Well, do we want to change one of the ethicals to just principled? Does that word work for people?
[Milva McDonald]: How do people feel about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That's what I was thinking of changing it to down here.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So this would, well, then we lose ethical, uh, completely, but, um, does this work for people? Or do we want moral in here? I mean, personally, I like ethical better than moral, but.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, so I feel like the people are pretty happy with this as it is right now. Do we agree?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So this, um, we did make a couple of changes. Um, I will share the, new version with everyone, and we'll vote on it next meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All right. That's great. We can vote on it at the next meeting. Thank you. Sure. Okay. Jean was going to do a brief report on the listening sessions.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I was just going to remind that we're These, we're gonna wrap these up by the end of January.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony. Wait a minute, wait a minute.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: There, I mean, there have been so that we were doing a lot of these. So, you know, I don't, I don't, it's, I don't know how feasible would be for the city to robocall everyone. But, but, you know, there, so I am notifying the city, we're putting it out on social media. I mean, I can do something on patch. Once we have them all scheduled, I can try to do one patch post with all of them.
[Milva McDonald]: But anyway, well, we may try again. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Sure. I would do it. It just depends on what day. Okay. Time. Wednesday is the most free day I have. All right. But Monday and Tuesday or Thursday are possibilities depending on the time.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you so much, Jean. Okay, so we're now going to move on to the Collins Center. They're going to give us a short presentation on multi-member bodies before we get into a discussion of what the Article 2 and 3 subcommittee has come up with. So, Collin Center, I'll hand it over to you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know what that was, but I can hear you fine now, so.
[Milva McDonald]: And just sorry go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: So we, I think we'll get into that when, because when John, who's on our committee, is going to do a little presentation, and I think that will be, that will come up then. But yeah, we would love to hear what you have to say about that. Before we do that, does anyone on the committee have any questions for the call-in center about anything that came up in this memo?
[Milva McDonald]: So in general, for the charter, we're talking about type three, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Okay. If no one else has any questions, then I think we can move to John. And we're also going to be very interested, Anthony, Frank, and Marilyn, in having your thoughts on this as well. So it's all you, John.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, if I had a copy of it, I would say I would share it. Well, I might have a copy of it. Let me see.
[Milva McDonald]: I have it if you can't pull it up.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I will pull it up for you.
[Milva McDonald]: The screen didn't become small, did you have to share screen? No, for some reason it won't share this one. And now my computer won't let me close it. Sorry. It's going to take me a second.
[Milva McDonald]: You can. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to pull. I'm going to do it right here. In the middle of my email, but that's okay. There you go. Okay, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, see Anthony Wilson has his hand raised, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, it looks like we have some committee members that have comments, but I just wanted to check back with Frank first, because you had brought up the question of the council's ability to remove members of multi-member boards, and now that you've seen what the idea is, I wondered if you have any thoughts on it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Okay, so I'm just going to go in the order that I see the hands because I don't know who's hand was first, but Eunice is the first one I see, so go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks, Eunice. I would love to hear thoughts on that from the Collins Center, but maybe we'll go through the, there's a few more committee members and then we'll see if there are any thoughts from the Collins Center on those issues. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Now I'm going to change course and let the call, cause I feel like there's a lot of questions coming. So let's let the call and center address the questions we've had, and then we'll go to the next, the other committee members. So, Yeah, Anthony do you want to chime in.
[Milva McDonald]: And just to be clear, you're talking about the I think you're saying that potentially giving the city council more power over removals can create those restrictions, but are you also, because there was also the question of defining the criteria for removal in the charter. Are you also speaking to that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And yeah, if you could point us to the case law or tell, you know, give an idea where we should look for it, that would be great. But we don't have to do that right now. Okay, Ron, you wanted to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Ron. Anthony, Andrea Attila. Wait a minute, you're on mute, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Let's see. Hopefully, you'll be able to unmute and then we can hear from you. Ron, when you were speaking, were you speaking specifically about the, okay, here's Anthony, go ahead, and then I'll ask you, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we've been talking a lot about the proposed removal powers and one was for the city council to be able to remove a member of a multi-member board with a unanimous vote and the other was related, John, make sure I'm getting this right. It was related to the city's council ability to overturn a mayor's removal with a two-thirds vote. Is that right?
[Milva McDonald]: But I was thinking specifically, wasn't there something in there about the, if the mayor removed?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, So let's, I mean, I'm just, there's a lot of pieces to this. There's the appointment, there's the power to confirm the appointments, or, you know, maybe that's the wrong word, since that's not specifically the power to deny the appointments, let's say, and then there's the removals. So, and since we've been talking a lot about the removals, can we maybe, take the I'm going to hear from Phyllis and then we'll look at whether how the committee overall whether we want to keep the provision to give the city council power to remove Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Right now you mean or in the proposed? What we're proposing.
[Milva McDonald]: Stop calling Mrs. Morrison. Okay. Thank you. And I see Frank has his hand up and he may have, may want to address what you're asking, Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I ask a call center question? Is removal of members of multi-member boards generally covered in charters?
[Milva McDonald]: But that would be in a different section of the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony Wilson, were you going to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Um, Eunice and then more units if you want to say something.
[Milva McDonald]: Do you have an answer to the question about compensation, Anthony, or Frank, or Marilyn?
[Milva McDonald]: I believe the question is whether the charter specifies whether a member of a multi-member board would receive a stipend or a compensation.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. Okay, thank you. Okay, so it sounds like we need to do a little revisiting of the whole issue of removal and it's based on this discussion. It sounds to me like. There is a section of the charter outside of just the section about the multi-member boards and commissions that can address these provisions in general that could also apply to members of multi-member boards. So I think that maybe the subcommittee will revisit that, I think, because there's a lot of questions about it and concerns is what I'm hearing. But I wanted to just get, we haven't talked much about the confirmation, the appointment, the suggestion was for the mayor to keep appointment power and that the city council would have the power to reject an appointment within 30 days. So I just wanted to get a sense of what the committee thinks about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, I just want to, you know, we have, and we've heard that concern expressed in interviews also. Just recalling the memo that we got, because this is a balance of power issue, and that's been something that's been raised quite a lot in our survey. It's been raised in all the public information sessions we've had. And when we got the memo on mayoral authority from the Collins Center, if I recall correctly, we're not You know, I mean, we're, it's not uncommon for the mayor to have sole appointment authority, but I believe it was 27%. So it is, I think the majority of communities does give the city council some appointment authority. So we know that it's done and that it works in other communities. I just wanted to sort of throw those statistics out there. Did I get that? Am I remembering that right, Anthony Wilson? I think I am.
[Milva McDonald]: I think maybe what we need to do also for the next meeting is have a list of the bodies that would be covered by the charter, this charter provision, because people seem to have questions about that.
[Milva McDonald]: I actually have one question for the Collins Center. Our charter says that the mayor makes all the appointments without city council confirmation. However, I believe at least a couple of these boards require some city council approval. Eunice, you're nodding your head. Is that your understanding as well?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. John, do you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: So I'm very sorry about that. Okay. Okay. You can probably stop sharing this gene since Okay, so we still haven't really gotten into how the committee feels about, we haven't gotten about giving the city council some power in the confirmation process. We've had concerns about volunteerism, But in general, our people, as we know, balance of power is an issue, and this is one of the things that falls under that category. Gene?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Aubrey, you wanted to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. Yeah. They wouldn't be required to vote on it in a meeting, but they would have the power to overturn an appointment if they so chose. Do you have another question, Aubrey? Or a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And then John and then Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Ron, you had another comment?
[Milva McDonald]: So just to clarify, I think we're going to have to wind up this section of the meeting, and this is, I think, Maury, you want to have you have one more comment. Go ahead, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. So I think what we're gonna do is we have a lot of great feedback. The subcommittee will meet again and take that all into consideration, particularly on the removals, because it sounds like we can maybe address that in another section of the charter anyway. And we'll distribute materials to the committee before the next meeting, and maybe what we'll do is we'll break it down so that we can sort of vote on each provision. But we'll revisit this next month, and we'll hopefully I think we're going to have to vote on it in pieces because there's different parts. So. OK, great. Now we just we're going to get a short committee, a check in by the school committee subcommittee.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess I think that since we've had so much trouble with getting agreement for the whole committee on a meeting time, I think it would be good to keep our first Thursday as our whole committee meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: January 25th? We had talked about having one more final citywide information session, and that would be the night of our city hall.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so Paulette, I think Phyllis agrees that we should just accommodate the times that the superintendent is available. Uh-huh. So if you want to just send a message to the committee, I mean, I, depending on what the time and the date is, I could potentially be one of the people, but I'm also happy to, it sounds like Aubrey might be available. When is Tuesday?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I think I think this is we should do this on email. So maybe tonight, you can just send that out. And maybe then Aubrey can respond. And then we can set it up. That would be great. Thank you for doing that. That's great.
[Milva McDonald]: know, yeah, there's no listening session. So that's good.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Paulette. And as as was mentioned, January 25 is going to be our final listening session at City Hall. So we will talk more about that. But that's going to be posted on the city website. So as many as many committee members as can come, it will be on zoom the same as we've done it the last two times. Okay, now I'm going to ask if any members of the public have any comments that they'd like to make. I don't see any, so Eunice, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay. Great. So. Thank you very much. it's going to be posted. I can't remember if I sent it to the city or not. I think I did, but I will be if I didn't. I'll be sending it soon. We'll get the materials out that we need before the January 4th so we can address the issues that we talked about tonight efficiently, and hopefully, some other things that we also have to address.
[Milva McDonald]: You too. Shall we adjourn?
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the Medford Charter Study Subcommittee on Articles Two and Three. Okay, our first order of business is to accept the minutes or look at the minutes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. John, you said you maybe didn't have a change order?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's fine. They're not, I mean, you should be able to look at them.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Do we want to accept them?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Great, okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay, great. Okay, so basically our agenda is to just keep going through our list, right? David, do you have it handy? I do. So we can see where we left off?
[Milva McDonald]: Let's have you share your screen. Let me see if you can do that right now. You should, well, let's see. You know what? I'm gonna decide if I should make you a co-host or, yeah, I think I'll do that. You should be able to, I think that gives you the ability to share screen. All right. Yes, does it?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, was someone's was going to do research on audit on auditor, right?
[Milva McDonald]: We can then in turn share that with the larger committee. That's great. Thank you for doing that.
[Milva McDonald]: You did something. Okay. So basically what we know now is that the auditor is basically the CFO and the auditor is hired slash appointed by the mayor. We do have, I mean, what I, I believe an independent, an annual independent audit is in a lot of charters, and it sounds like we have that anyway, but it might be something that should be in the charter anyway.
[Milva McDonald]: Is this role that you're describing a role in addition to what the CFO does or combined?
[Milva McDonald]: communities around here have that? Yeah. When a charter describes auditor and says there's an auditor, is it comparable to what our CFO is? I guess. Go ahead, John.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So it sounds like we also are going to need more information before. Can I see what that third one was again, so I can write that down for this investigation? Okay, and John, do you have the Weymouth language on the auditor handy that you can share with us right now?
[Milva McDonald]: Just to get an idea of what they say about auditor.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, what's interesting here too is that it, maybe it seems like the auditor does what the independent audit does in Medford, partly.
[Milva McDonald]: So then that raises the question of, is it important to have an outside auditor?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think, it seems like this person would do something different.
[Milva McDonald]: this person would do the kind, well, it says financial and performance audits. So Daveed, that sort of speaks to that third piece.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so do we feel like we still want more information before we, I mean, we can seek more information to make a recommendation, we can seek more information just to present to the whole committee as part of a larger discussion on this, but it seems like either way, we kinda wanna find out more about how a council, and most of the, in the other charters, Pittsfield and Melrose have auditors. I mean, I know there's probably others that do, but just in the three charters that we're looking at, was Weymouth the only one that had an appointed?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So we can look at other communities because there are certainly some that have them. I was just wondering if of the three charters that we've been sort of looking at if any of the other two have them.
[Milva McDonald]: Dawn, when you sort of did your research, I was under the impression from what you said was that the CFO doesn't do the auditing. The outside firm does the auditing.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, let's find out because then, you know, it also opens the question of, so if in communities where they have this town auditor in addition, and it seems as though it would be in addition to the CFO. Do they also then do the independent audit, you know, the annual independent audit? I feel like that's an interesting question too.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I think so. I think it would make sense.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the other thing is it seems like maybe this auditor would have certain powers or certain access to information as you described it, David, that some of the budget procedures that are trying to be put in place, and I'm not saying they wouldn't be necessary, but they might be sort of, it might, this kind of thing could maybe balance it out because this person would, would be able to, you know, get information and share information and things like that. So it does seem like it would be something that we should look at. Yeah, that's a great point. Okay, so one thing we want to do is we want to, this is for the action list, we want to get the CFO's job description.
[Milva McDonald]: City Clerk. Yeah. I'll look into that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. I'll put myself down for that. And we also want to sort of look more at other communities that have these auditors and So I'll see if I'll ask the Collins Center and maybe we can do some research on that. You know, and I'm just wondering, too, I mean, this is a separate section than the budget section of the charter, but we are going to be diving into budget over the next couple of months, and it seems like it could be related. So. Is there anything else that we want to wait? We're going to get these job descriptions. We're going to research, get more information with the Collins Center and try to get more information on how the auditor works in other communities that have a council-appointed auditor. Is there anything else we want to follow up on with this?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: The only other piece I would think about is the independent audit when it's codified in the charter, the annual audit, I don't think goes in articles two and three. So I guess it's really, it goes later. So we'll just leave that to the side. Okay, great. That sounds like an action list on that topic.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so. State of the city report is that this is this is called communications to the town council. So.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's what okay, but as I read this it it does seem to reflect some of the um things that I That the council is asking for in terms of communications and that they're trying to codify in ordinances Or put into ordinances. So, um So again, related to the budget, but not in the budget section. So how do we feel about this? Does this communications to the town council look like something that we wanna include?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. John, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: right once a year centered around uh the previous fiscal year successes challenges i really like that idea so if we want to say we want to recommend that um that we have a state of the city report that the mayor be required uh to submit this um well if the collins center is going to be helping us with drafting the language but we would need to communicate What we want this to say, what do we want to be in this report?
[Milva McDonald]: I like, I don't- Yeah, you like the Weymouth communique. So we'll just say we, I mean, and we can pick this apart with the whole committee and see if people want to change it. Okay, communications. There was another thing though in that section that I feel like we didn't Special meetings the mayor may at any time call a special meeting of the council. Did we did we talk about that? We didn't talk about it Is that something that we want to talk about?
[Milva McDonald]: Um
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. You're right. And, you know, when the mayor usually needs to do that, you know, she sends a communication and there's, I mean, this would be like in case of an emergency, right? But even still, it has, you know, there has to be 48 hours notice according to that. So I don't know. I think you make a good point, Dom. Is it necessary because there are regular meetings? They're every other week now, right?
[Milva McDonald]: You're talking about the council itself?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. No, no, that's a good point. And could it be something that could sort of, I don't know. I mean, what do you think David?
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to just leave it on the list when we report back? It's going to take us more than, I mean, the reporting back to the larger committee, we're going to probably discuss these so we won't do it all at one meeting, but should we put it in there and just say that we looked at that and our opinion is that it's not necessary?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so, and this is special, it's special sections or it's the mayor's power to compel a meeting of the city council that we're talking about, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so let's, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. That's good.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I just be, did we talk about compelling mayoral attendance of meetings?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I see. Okay, good.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Yeah, we can move to vacancies.
[Milva McDonald]: Is it mass general law, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like we found, we saw it.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, let's say there was, um, a illness that required like six weeks recovery or something. Is that what you're thinking of something like that?
[Milva McDonald]: Do they define what a temporary mayoral absence is?
[Milva McDonald]: And does that mean that any time the mayor took a vacation, the city council president would be mayor?
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what I'm wondering. And how are we going to describe vacation? Like, what if you go to New Hampshire for a weekend? Or like, you know what I mean?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's what that's what I that's the only my concern about this is because it sounds good and it sounds reasonable but then what is What is you know, how are we defining sickness and vacation?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and that's a case where there's actually, you know, a person, the Lieutenant Governor who is, you know, that's part of the role, right? We don't have that person really here. I mean, we are maybe going to make the President of the City Council that person. That's what we're talking about, right? But again, like you say, John, if the mayor's out of the state or the city in this case, we're not doing that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, definitely not. Yeah, if they go see a play in boston, yeah The city council president gets to do whatever they want the only reason I brought that up was because of what you said about the Governor, you know because the governor's the governor of the state, but if she leaves the state But that's not true of the president if the president leaves the country He's still the president.
[Milva McDonald]: So So, I don't know. I guess I just I guess i'm just concerned about definition. That's all you know, what do these things mean?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what I think is, can we make it so that the mayor, I don't know, maybe this isn't a good idea, but that the mayor, in the case of a temporary absence, the mayor decides whether to call, whether to empower the president of the city council. So if the mayor decides, okay, somebody needs to be acting mayor for a period of time, then the mayor decides that. That doesn't work if the mayor is unconscious, I guess.
[Milva McDonald]: The mayor, if capable. That's...
[Milva McDonald]: Then it's a president of the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay, what's next?
[Milva McDonald]: Because was that in Article 2 or 3? It definitely is, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And I think the compensation piece is just about how the compensation is decided. It's not what the compensation is, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So should we, should we go compensate composition first?
[Milva McDonald]: So the good news is that we, the committee already made the provisional vote to do the hybrid ward, to recommend a hybrid ward system. So the question is the number, right? And what are our thoughts on that?
[Milva McDonald]: I think you're right. I don't think anybody wants to do nine because that would make one at large. Yeah. And there was talk about five at large because there was concern about, you know, whether the ward Councilor, you know, the ward Councilor having too much influence in their wards, and maybe if there were more at large Councilors that could counteract that, but we don't really have evidence of that. And five would put us to 13, which would be a really big change from what we have now. It would almost double. So, I agree that 11 makes sense.
[Milva McDonald]: David, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I guess in the other charters, do they specifically say the exact numbers or do they sort of have a system in there so that, so that it could be applied even if the number of wards changed. And our mail rule specifies 11 members, four of whom shall be...
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, that's not true. In fact, I believe we almost recently got nine. I don't really understand it because my understanding is the state determines the wards every 10 years, right? That's what we've been told.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. There was also some city council vote in recent years about whether to increase to nine wards. I don't understand that whole process, but we did almost get nine wards, that I know.
[Milva McDonald]: So maybe that was the discussion on the city council was whether to, like, they wouldn't have the final decision on whether to add another ward, but yeah, maybe that's what it was about.
[Milva McDonald]: We haven't, yeah, maybe, maybe not.
[Milva McDonald]: So I guess I yeah, I see this as the question for the call-in center because is because from what we've seen the charter tends other communities charters tend to specifically state the number of city councilors and that's based on their number of wards. So what would happen if the ward if you know if this community got another ward, what would happen to that section of the charter? So we can ask the Collins Center that. And we can also ask if there's a way to do what David is talking about, which is to not really explicitly state the number of Councilors, just say one Councilor per ward, either two or three at-large Councilors total, yeah. So let's say, so that means if we did get another ward with this, we would still keep this council at 11, but there would only be two at large, right?
[Milva McDonald]: And do we think that's good? Or do we think if we had another ward, we should go to 12? I mean, we should go to, well, we'd have to go to 13. 13, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's big. Yeah. Yeah, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so we can throw this out there and they'll tell us if there's a reason not to do this.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So that's good. Okay. Next. Next is a biggie.
[Milva McDonald]: I totally agree. I think that's the easier one to talk about because I think there's a lot of general agreement that that's a good idea. Do you agree, John?
[Milva McDonald]: We also hear that from the community loud and clear.
[Milva McDonald]: I think Melrose does the same. That actually was suggested at the listening session we did at the library by a member of the public. I think it's seen as sort of a compromise because people are like, well, four years is too long for the city council, but two years is kind of short. And so maybe they see this as a compromise that the three at large would be four year terms and the rest. you know, the ward would be two years.
[Milva McDonald]: So John, when you brought that up as an example, you seem to maybe not think it was the best idea.
[Milva McDonald]: So yeah I mean three years would be the compromise but for a number of practical reasons three years I mean do we want to consider three years?
[Milva McDonald]: And the other thing that people have talked about is the staggered terms, which again, sounds really great, but then has all these practical implications in terms of the cost to the city and the issue of turnout, because there's elections at different times every year, pretty much. So are we crossing three-year terms and staggered terms off the list, or do we want to discuss those further?
[Milva McDonald]: But would you be comfortable saying that we recommend that ward Councilors be two years?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. No, I just was unclear on whether we thought that the two-year terms made sense for the, you know, in general, are we saying maybe that the whole committee would decide that the entire council, including the ward ones, should have four-year terms?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we want to specifically bring the idea of two years for Ward, four years for At-Large. Do we want to do any sort of further research on this or like research how many communities do it that way, look at maybe how it's been working?
[Milva McDonald]: especially because we're giving the city council president the vacancy power to be acting mayor and whatnot. So what do you think, John?
[Milva McDonald]: That's true, but I... But the point of the powers, the extra powers that we're giving the president, that we've discussed giving the president, such as the power to be acting mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: Or be or appoint acting mayor, right. What do you, I mean, that does seem like maybe it makes sense for that to not be a ward council.
[Milva McDonald]: It doesn't seem like a good enough reason though, right? It's not like one reason and there's other maybe too many, like if you had a scale and you put the reasons to do and the reasons not to do it, the reasons not to do it would be greater, I think, right?
[Milva McDonald]: No, it's good, because we have to consider all this.
[Milva McDonald]: So should we keep it on the list for when we bring it to the group?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I'm going to also ask the call-in center about this split term lengths on the council and see if they have any ideas and maybe try to connect with a community that does it and see if we can get some research on that. I think that even the communities that do do it, there probably aren't that many, it's probably pretty new. But we'll look into that and try to get some more information about that too.
[Milva McDonald]: Compensation. Is this one of those things that has pretty standard language in charters? In general?
[Milva McDonald]: And how is that different? Let's see. Pittsfield looks like it has more text.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And is that for the council? Because we also have to look at the mayor too. And then this one, Weymouth also says something about expenses.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if it's set by ordinance, that could be taken care of in an ordinance, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, I mean, I feel like we can't the charter shouldn't go I'm singing ordinance. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't I agree but As it is we're weren't we told that the mayor's salary is set by a special act So if we lay out that it's set by ordinance, then that's how it's done.
[Milva McDonald]: So this is basically saying that the city council, I don't even know how the city council's salary is decided right now. But this means that they can decide their own compensation because they write the ordinances, right?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if that's different from what happens now. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, based on what the Collins Center told us, every city in Massachusetts gives the mayor veto power. Oh, I was just, I wholeheartedly agree. We would be rebels if we didn't do that, but yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, let's do the city council, then we'll move to mayor. I don't see any city council in here. Yeah, there's nothing about city council in there. Yeah. And I just, I was curious. I don't know how it's decided now. So we like Weymouth and the only thing that Pittsfield adds is the two thirds majority, right?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, that's great. So now we ready for mayor?
[Milva McDonald]: So Eunice, what you were starting to read, I believe that our current charter actually means a salary.
[Milva McDonald]: No, it's not. So what I think has happened is that since then, which that must have been the 1986 salary.
[Milva McDonald]: Wow.
[Milva McDonald]: I thought it was one 35, but I don't know, but I have it somewhere else. Anyway, what we need to do is not have the mayor salary be set by a special act. Right. I think that's right.
[Milva McDonald]: And none of these, they don't have cost of living increases written into the raise. So the mayor has to wait. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: It does seem to be done though, all these three charters do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how the special act works right now. Who, what, maybe the, you know, who sends a special act through the council. Yeah. So, and the way this is written, it's sort of just an obligation. It's part of the city council's job to do this, right. They just do it periodically as it's described in the charter. and it's part of their routine job, right?
[Milva McDonald]: But that, I mean, okay, I mean, I feel like it should at least be reviewed, that they should have, I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So we like parts of these, but there's not one of them that we like completely. Is that what I'm getting?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, do we know of an alternative model for setting the mayor's salary?
[Milva McDonald]: Or these three. I mean, we could, we could maybe, if we, if we wanted to, or if we thought it was important, we could look at some other charters.
[Milva McDonald]: Part of their job that they, you know, they review the mayor's salary and at which time they could.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. No, that's, um, and outside of that piece that we wanted to potentially add, um, That's a good question, too. What does review mean? Was there, which, Weymouth or Melrose, was there one that we want to say, okay, we like this one?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All right. So, and then in terms of the, and I love that you're asking these questions, because definition is important. What, what does review mean?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, I don't know, do we feel like we want to make them produce a report?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah. I mean, well, they do have they have open meetings. So I guess you know that whatever they discuss would be reported on in the minutes. I was just me saying that they have to review it, they have to address it, they can't just let it sit and never never decide to give the mayor a raise. I guess that's what I'm thinking. But maybe report is the right way to go.
[Milva McDonald]: Salary for the next term Yeah, so so what you're saying is they have to do an ordinance no matter whether they're right, you know That's going to address the mayor's salary one way or another one way or the other um And and did we are we is this every two years? Yeah, how how often two years in the first six months of each session is what I wrote Of each council session.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. No, that makes sense. Okay, that's great Yeah, I like it
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, well, you know, we'll see when the call-in center comes on, you know, you never know, they're going to be like, wait a minute, you can't do that because whatever, but that's why that's good. That's why we have that because they've seen it all. And they'll know if it's actually not a good or maybe it's not original and it's not in the charters because there's a reason. And if there is, we'll find out. Okay. What's next?
[Milva McDonald]: And I feel like that's not in articles two and three, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I don't think we need to address that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I feel like when we were looking at one of the charters, I saw something about that. Prohibitions, it was right under compensation.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, is that what you're talking about, David?
[Milva McDonald]: It seems pretty standard, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So we want to include standard language about mayoral prohibitions, right?
[Milva McDonald]: No, she doesn't get paid to be chair. It's just part of her job, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, as opposed to ex officio meaning you're not a voting member? Is that what?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But it's because the charter puts her there. Right. You're right. Again, that's going to be part of what the school committee section looks at. The other pieces that you were talking about, David, are pretty much addressed in the prohibitions paragraph, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Do we want to look in more detail at that paragraph? or are we just gonna take them? I think it's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. So that goes blue now?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, the ordinances veto power. So, On this ordinances section, the veto part is in the mayoral in the section two, and then other pieces about the creation of ordinances, et cetera, is in the legislative branch section, which is three, right? Unless I got it backwards.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Which one are we going to look at first?
[Milva McDonald]: Ordinances, veto, veto power. Well, that would be the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah, that looks pretty much the same in every one of those charters.
[Milva McDonald]: Is there any reason to think about that?
[Milva McDonald]: And does the standard language all gives the city council two-thirds override? Is that right?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm pretty sure that's the case, that that is currently what the city council has. Is that right? Can the city council override? I think so.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Eunice, do you know off the top of your head the city council can override a veto with a two-thirds vote?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think there is, but well, maybe there is. But all of these have the two-thirds override. We'll just put standard language.
[Milva McDonald]: No. Okay. I mean, they, you know, we'd probably have to go dig into the plan a mass general, but we're, but no need, I don't think because we're okay with this standard language here. Right. Now are we looking at the city, the legislative side of the ordinances? Yep.
[Milva McDonald]: In that, yeah. Yeah, there you go. That's good.
[Milva McDonald]: That means any Councilor can do that?
[Milva McDonald]: That makes more sense to me than the other one.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So do you think even saying no ordinance shall be passed on the date it's introduced is too much ordinance management in the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: And so and what is Pittsfield says that one person can stop the vote? So can you say, I was just gonna say, can you say why you like that? Because john and I both sort of had a negative reaction to it. So I would like to hear I would like to hear what's the upside is.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's just for the day it's introduced? I thought it was in general.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. We don't like it in general, but if it's just the date it's introduced, it's a subtle difference between the others and this one for just the date that it's introduced.
[Milva McDonald]: That does say on the first occasion though.
[Milva McDonald]: It's different words. What is the adoption of a measure? What does that mean?
[Milva McDonald]: But then what is the vote? Because the person is objecting to the taking of the vote, what would they be voting on?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but if the adoption of the measure on the first occasion that the adoption of the measure, so on the first occasion that an ordinance is put to the council. So that's, I think it's the same It's the same concept.
[Milva McDonald]: I I would not support that that I would I agree with you don I wouldn't support that but I would support it for the day.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we can't do that. Are the other charters, do they call it a charter objection?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, OK, but they do have the thing about the first day.
[Milva McDonald]: They don't call it a charter objection. Yeah. So when the call-in center described what this section contains, can you go up a little bit, David DeVito? How ordinances are established, requirement of mayor approval, veto emergency measures, and raising a charter objection to voting on a measure. So that does seem to be a separate thing that of these three charters only Pittsfield has.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh yeah, I just saw that. Hope she hasn't been waiting long.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh good. Well, do we need, do we want to, I mean John and I have not, we're very wary of the charger objection, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: But do we want to find out more about it?
[Milva McDonald]: Ah, there you go.
[Milva McDonald]: I know. I am too. So, um, so limits of ordinances, copy Melrose, add unanimity. Okay. Do we have any curiosity whatsoever about the charter objection? I mean, I guess the fact that the Collins Center put it in the description of what that section could include actually makes me a little curious.
[Milva McDonald]: You're right. I don't like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, so charter objection is not something. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with you. I just started to be curious about it because on the face of it, to me, it seems like kind of a no way thing, you know, no way, but then I'm thinking, but maybe there's something I don't, you know, I'm not seeing.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, also when the, if the call centers there, they can, you know, they can address. Okay. Great. Um, so what's our next, um, what's our next piece.
[Milva McDonald]: Don't need, um, didn't you make this list or did I, I didn't, did I make this list?
[Milva McDonald]: Do you think you might have put that in, John?
[Milva McDonald]: You saw something in Melrose about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, Weymouth, okay. Oh, there we go. That gives a council president, but that's kind of what the council president does now, pretty much, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Do you think that it would be helpful when we put this document together and sort of try to when the committee makes all you know. when we present it to the committee, when the committee decides that we put sections under all these topics, or?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, okay. I mean, you know, the Collins Center should be available to do the drafting, but if we give them a head start, that's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I was just thinking that ultimately we'll want to break it down.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean this just next week we're with the whole committee. We're going to look at the um appointments uh, confirmation powers of city council for multi-member bodies. Um, so- and that's only one piece of this, so- Yeah, I have some notes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and some of this is going to go a lot is going to go fast. I mean, then there's certain like the confirmation power is more maybe going to require more discussion. Some of these will go pretty fast, I think, with the whole committee.
[Milva McDonald]: So they're just saying they're because I mean The president is the one who's given special powers in the charter, right exactly So it makes sense to me that they would you know, I I feel like the charter should only include stuff that's Really essential. Yeah, um And I think it's I think it's fine for the city council to decide themselves about the vice president stuff, but I don't know What do you guys think?
[Milva McDonald]: It's not much of a difference, but.
[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you, John. That was a, that was a big, that's a big one.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we only have 25 more minutes to get through this whole thing. I mean, we can have another meeting, but we thought we were going to wrap it up on this one.
[Milva McDonald]: This is a really tough one because my experience has been that people are really very much for it or very much against it. But what we have heard from all our public feedback is a pretty strong support of term limits. I think that comes directly from the history of Medford. But so I don't know where to go with, like if, you know, what we're gonna have to decide is how much are we gonna weigh that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: for the council for sure. The other thing about the council is if you have a, you know, if you, it's a council and there's, well, there's seven people on it now and there could be more potentially. So even if one or two of them stay on for 30 years, you know, there's gonna be some turnover no matter what. But I think there is a concern about the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: It would be 20 years.
[Milva McDonald]: If the if the term goes up to four. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: John, what do you think about the mayor piece?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I mean, I guess my feeling like I guess my feeling on this is that We have heard, you know, we have strong public feedback in favor of them. And you made the point, John, that that's typical, right? But I feel like this is going to be one that maybe the whole committee is going to have to chew on. And I do think, though, that it could be good to collect some of the data and the research that you were referencing, John. You know, because I think we're going to need that.
[Milva McDonald]: No telling.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that what we need to do is get, I mean, John, if you can look up some of that research, I'll try to see what I can get my hands on. And I will also ask the Collins Center for stats, because I mean, What I know is that term limits are uncommon in municipal government, but maybe we can get some stats from the Collins Center.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, I guess my feeling is that this is not really charter material. I feel like it's more like, maybe the rules of the council. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what would that, I mean, censure meaning that they could, I mean, you know, what would that, what should they be able to do?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, they can't do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Yeah, that's what I don't think there's really any because these aren't hired because, you know, it's not like a job where they have a boss. I mean, your boss is the public that elected you.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That's not their boss. The council president's not their boss. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: um Or the city council as a whole the ability to to initiate a recall election um But beyond that So yeah, and maybe so this is something maybe that should should be in the discussion of section eight so when we do go to section eight and we talk about Because as you say david, what else what is there is no other than what units you described the city council president already did there's no sort of tangible recourse, um, other than what you described and that's addressed in section eight. So, uh, so I mean, it is a concern for sure. And I've heard residents talk about these concerns too.
[Milva McDonald]: So, um, But so we'll we'll address it in section eight. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: But I also see your point where, you know, it's something we can also, you know, yeah, we can, we can look and see if other city how other cities have dealt with it.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we have to define, is that just a definition? Is that what we're talking about, or?
[Milva McDonald]: Let's go to that and see. Oh, wait, can we just look how authority is exercised? What constitutes a quorum? Rules, okay. So this is a lot of rules. Rules stuff.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, that's the standard definition of a forum anyway, right? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, because special meetings. Yeah, there's some procedural stuff.
[Milva McDonald]: I know, I agree, I agree. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, is that and do other is that in the sections two articles two and three and the other charters?
[Milva McDonald]: So can we just look a little more at that last section? I just wanna look at it a little more carefully, the standard stuff that we talked about.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that what the city, that's basically what this says. Yeah, that the city council's, yeah, that makes sense.
[Milva McDonald]: Regular meetings held at, yeah, that's pretty much how it works now. Yeah, special. Yeah, this does look all pretty standard. And are they all pretty much the same, the other communities? Yeah. Looks like, yeah, that looks pretty much the same. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: The special meetings. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: For the special meeting? I think three is fine, personally.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, if there's three that think there's a reason for a special meeting, then yeah, the rest of them should come along. Awesome. I was about to open for public comment, but I think our two members of the public got hired and went to bed. This is great. So just for our last five minutes, I guess what I wanted to ask is if David, if you or John want to, so what we're gonna have at the next meeting is the City Council, I mean, the City Council, the Collins Center is going to do a little presentation on multi-member bodies, such as we asked for, right? About the creation of the bodies and a little more basic information. And then I was hoping one of you would sort of introduce what we had come up with as recommendations for multi-member bodies and open the discussion. And then if all goes well, we can have a vote on it. Do either of you want to volunteer to do that?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, that would be awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, yeah, basically what we decided as a recommendation for the multi-member bodies, the confirmation hours.
[Milva McDonald]: And then we'll be able to have that discussion with a little more knowledge after the If I, you know, the call-in center tends to send their presentations at the last minute, but I'll get it to you as soon as they send it in case it will inform, you know, in case it will inform what you put together. But basically, it's going to be just this material right here, right, that we decided.
[Milva McDonald]: If you would, are you volunteering to do that, Vivi? Yeah, sure. I'm not sure that I'll have it done for the meeting next week, but- No, you don't have to, because like I said, for next week, John is going to talk about the appointments of multi-member boards and commissions, and that's pretty much, because that's just a bigger piece You know, and so we'll cover that. And then in future meetings, we'll probably do it in chunks just because of the, yeah, probably do it in chunks. But that would be great. So John is going to present December 7th, and David is going to put together, okay, document.
[Milva McDonald]: And that's up to date in terms of the edits. Awesome. Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. Is there anything else that we need to bring up?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the creation of multi-member boards and commissions should be, we'll get information on that because that's going to be part of the call-in center presentation. Term limits is just one of those big thorny ones that, and so in the minutes in the action list, I will, you know, I'm going to try to get a little more information on cities that have auditors and how that works. And we're going to try to collect some research and some on term limits and some statistics on how prevalent they are in Massachusetts.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, we don't need that for next week. No, that's, I mean, as it is, we're not going to schedule another meeting, right? So, I mean, we can schedule another meeting just to sort of revisit those things, like maybe a month from now. How do people, well actually a month from now, I don't know, how do people feel about late December? If we want to just push it to January is fine.
[Milva McDonald]: But is 28th OK with people?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, see, everybody's busy. I just have my relatives from out of town that are going to be here, and I just don't want to do that on the 21st.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it doesn't have to be a Thursday night.
[Milva McDonald]: What are you going away after Christmas Don is that why you couldn't do the 28th I have concert tickets, okay Yeah, I can do that, okay, so let's just say tentative meeting on 1227 with the agenda of Auditor and term limits. Did I forget one thing? I don't think so.
[Milva McDonald]: That's great. That's perfect. Okay, I will put that in the minutes and we can check in in mid-December and see Are we doing, you know, how do we feel? Are we ready to do this 27th meeting? And then we can try to cover those pieces. The term limits will be a big discussion, so it will be really good to have some actual, you know, material data and facts and materials to support that discussion when we have it open.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Does somebody want to? Somebody wants to? Great. All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thanks, everybody. See you next week.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, welcome, everyone. So first thing I want to do is some business, the minutes. Did anyone have a chance to look at the minutes?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, all in favor? Yes. OK, great. Okay, so do we want to review what we talked about last time?
[Milva McDonald]: Sure, let me give you the ability to do that. Oh, okay. You should be able to do it now. Great.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, definitely the whole committee will talk about that, but the school committee subcommittee will also have a lot to say too, I'm sure.
[Milva McDonald]: It's in our folder, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so, and we, last week we had some ideas about the committee, committee and multi member body appointments, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, can you can you refresh on that?
[Milva McDonald]: Do you have thoughts on that, John?
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. I don't I don't wouldn't want to put it in the charter either. And as far as the public record, I mean, I don't know about like, I mean, so the requiring a response is one thing. And then there's the, requirement to make public the applicants. They are available. Anybody can make a public records request and see. So I'm pretty sure of that. I can double check that. John, do you know if that's correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So in a way that already exists, but you do have to ask for it.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So the one thing we, I mean, if you want to vote, we can officially vote, but it looks like we're, and then the other thing we figure it already exists in some form. I also just wanted to say that we're going to discuss, we're going to bring this to the full committee in December, and we'll have a bigger discussion, and the Collins Center will be there. But I briefly talked to the Collins Center, and, you know, they felt like 21 days was too short. Because, I mean, it is true, the city council, a lot of city councils, including Medford's now, only meet every other week. And 45 days is more standard. I thought I was thinking maybe we could put 30 as a compromise. I don't know what you guys think.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it does to me too. But what do you think, John?
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, it's okay. Right now we're only talking about the committees and commissions.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, yeah. I mean, we're going to get to department heads, right? And I feel like it could be different. I don't see why they would have to be the same.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we were specifically talking about the multi-member boards and that sort of standard time for confirmation is 45 days. So it's different from hires, city hires.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, so we could just say, well, let's do 45 days or I mean, I just threw out 30 cause I thought, well, it's in the middle, but I'm fine with 30. Um, if we want to suggest 30, I mean, and if the call-in center has something to say about that, they'll speak at the meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, 30 days with language to allow confirmation or to allow sooner. I mean, I guess the sort of maybe complication with that is that the process that we talked about doesn't really involve a public confirmation. It involves sort of like passive confirmation. Isn't that what we talked about? So they're not actually voting. They're only objecting.
[Milva McDonald]: So how would that work with that process?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. That sounds good.
[Milva McDonald]: Well,
[Milva McDonald]: What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: I think two-thirds for the rejection. For the approval, we can keep it the same. We can keep it the same. I mean, the approval only happens if they all agree and they go, well, you know what, if we just get, if we publicly say we all agree, then these people can get in sooner, right? Into their position. What do you think to me?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, okay. I also wanted to bring up another issue when we talked about the. Giving the city council power to remove. already appointed officials with unanimous vote. The call center was, they said that's really uncommon and that, I don't know, they had some concerns about it. So we can leave it in there and hear what they say at the meeting. Okay, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, I'll let them speak to what the concern, what the, you know, what the potential hazards might be. I'll let them, we'll let them speak to that. Okay, that sounds good. Okay, so does that pretty much cover the committee, the sort of opening of the discussion for committees and commissions? I think so yeah it's it's interesting because I took a look at that document that the call and center gave us on the mayoral authority with the appendix where it's sort of so I was looking at the language other other charters with the city council confirmation process and. I mean, they say more complicated things, but I did find, I think it was Newton that was sort of what, I was trying to find one that described what we had talked about. And I did finally find, it was Newton, I think it was, yeah. Oh, and Newburyport. So I thought, okay, we're on the right track. Other cities have to do this, but most of them said things like creating standing committees and whatnot. And the way we're doing it, it gives the city council the ability to make their own decision about how they handle it, which I think makes sense.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, sort of state.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, what, I mean, are they generally created by ordinance?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so let's let's let some. Let's maybe we can, we can ask that question up in the, at the December meeting and they can talk about it. I mean, um. You know, like, for instance, this, this committee is an ad hoc committee that was created by the mayor. So even what we're, even these guidelines that we're putting, if they, if they do make it to the charter, I don't think they would apply to our committee because it's an ad hoc committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Do you agree with that, John?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay, so should we look, do we need to talk any more about this or are we pretty? Pretty good.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I have it down. It'll be in the minutes and hope and we can bring it up at the meeting in December.
[Milva McDonald]: is helpful. Hopefully we will have a substantive discussion on this with the whole committee in December. Let's see. I'm trying to look at my agenda. Here it is. Basically, the agenda is working through. Actually, we do have ad hoc commission appointments and powers on this list. I don't know. I don't know if the charter, what do you think, John, about, and David, about the?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think we don't mean ad hoc there. I think we just mean commission appointments and powers, right? Committee, I mean,
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. We are definitely an ad hoc committee.
[Milva McDonald]: I think, I feel like what we've been, that we're, this is just the minutes. Let's go back to your documents. That's, uh, that actually is showing us more sort of where we are. Whoops. Um, do you want to share screen to be because you, I think you have it handy. Okay. Um, go ahead, John. What were you saying?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So that is next on the list. Um, and I, I guess what I'm not sure about is whether that's in the purview of the charter, like ad hoc by nature is. ad hoc, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, Charity, the mayor has it, and I believe the city council does too, right? They can create an ad hoc committee, an advisory committee. I mean, you know, such a committee has limited powers. That's why our only power, we're just, you know, we're just advisory.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, it does say advisory.
[Milva McDonald]: But this is in definitions of whatever Green is. I think it was Pittsfield, right? They do have it in the definitions, which is interesting.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And this is just definitions, right? So, so this doesn't actually give any powers. It's just definitions. A multiple member body is included. So whatever they say, multiple member body, that's what they mean. Um, I don't know, this is a good question.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, there's the answer, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. Okay. So yeah, and the city council is not included in the school committee or an advisory committee appointment by the mayor, but it doesn't say city council. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know if, City councils generally do that. I mean, a city council is kind of a, you know, it's a council as opposed to one. I mean, the mayor has staff, but council is more of a discussion body. That's all I'm thinking. And then they have all their subcommittees. So maybe they don't, maybe they don't generally form advisory committees. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, you're absolutely right. And I actually think that we should all ask them to do that as sort of an entree into our discussion.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I will definitely do that. Okay, department heads. Has anybody done any research about that? I don't remember what the other charters tend to say. Oh, thank you, David. Okay, there we go. No, that's not, that's something different. I think it would be in the mayor. I think it would be in article three with the executive power. That's what I'm guessing, but.
[Milva McDonald]: And this is Melrose, okay. So yeah, because that's what we're, when we're looking at this for city council, we're trying to determine whether we want to put into the charter that the city council has some role in the department head hiring.
[Milva McDonald]: So that they could, so that the person wouldn't, so this is, I think what you were talking about before John, where if we do it the same and it's, I mean, they can't start their job for 30 days, right? Because these are actual jobs as opposed to, volunteer position. I mean, volunteer positions are jobs, too. These are paid jobs.
[Milva McDonald]: That's exactly what we said.
[Milva McDonald]: That's awesome. Um, so, so was that, did that apply to department heads, what you just read, John?
[Milva McDonald]: All city officers and department heads and the members of Melrose, so that's- They're just combined. Yeah. So, all appointments to a Muslim member of Adi shall be in accordance with section 5-2 of, oh my goodness. Mayor shall fill a vacancy.
[Milva McDonald]: Subject to the consent of the mayor, appoint, promote, and Oh, that that just that's giving department heads authority, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Right, right. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know enough about how. City Hall operates to know. I mean, I feel like I need to know more before I can say whether I think that's a good idea or not, but.
[Milva McDonald]: So, That's pretty much probably just standard language. I think the big question for us is, does the city council get to confirm department heads as well as members of multi-member boards and commissions?
[Milva McDonald]: You mean for the council? You can't imagine that on the part of the council?
[Milva McDonald]: But we did say, but we said the mayor could, the council could override a mayor's removal with two thirds majority, right? Is that what we said?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't, I agree. I don't, I don't think, I think it should be up to the mayor. They work for the mayor. I think it should be up for the mayor, up to the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think city council should be able to remove them. And I'm not even sure that I'm gonna have to see what the Collins Center says about the city council being able to remove the- Multimember boards? Yeah. I feel like, you know, especially with the department heads, they really do work directly with the mayor. They really are under the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: I wouldn't wanna micromanage that too much. And does that also mean that we wouldn't recommend that the city council have to be able to reject if the mayor decides to remove a department head? City Council, there's no City Council involvement in removals. Is that, is that what we're saying?
[Milva McDonald]: So, and I'm still, I have to say, I mean, I'm fine with putting in you know, that the department heads, the confirmation process should be the same as the multi-member boards, but I want to hear more on, I want to learn more about that actually. Um, and, and, and we are all going to learn more about it before we have a final vote anyway. So.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't know that the charter covers all of that. I think it, cause it doesn't cover like every employee in the city hall. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah, so we probably, yeah, that's right. Okay, so we already have the city council appointing the city clerk, and I don't see any reason to change that, do you?
[Milva McDonald]: I guess I haven't carefully looked at the section of the charter that covered city clerk, and there might be a change, there might be something else that we want to add to it, And John, you were gonna look into that clerk of the committees, right?
[Milva McDonald]: City clerk is the clerk of, so they're both one and the same?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but I don't think we want to do that, do you?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I feel like it works well in Medford to, you know, the relationship with the city clerk and the council.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, let's see. What does it say? Does it have what it says in our charter now? Because it should be in here. I mean, there's... I don't see it anywhere. So it's probably not in our charter, which means I don't know where the procedure comes from.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe, but... I don't, I thought it was, I thought it was in the article too about, you know, that the city council would.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, city clerk is gonna be in here a lot, because the city clerk does a lot of stuff, right?
[Milva McDonald]: But you think that in practice, that's often the same person?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Does that give them the option to actually have another person if they want to, but they don't have to? Yeah. I mean, so that theoretically could be something that we could add, right?
[Milva McDonald]: And the clerk of the council is probably just somebody who helps the city clerk. right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, which is what our city clerk does now.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so So we want to, so for City Clerk, we want to leave as is in terms of, you know, appointment.
[Milva McDonald]: That I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: And it doesn't say anything about the vote. It doesn't say. I mean, I guess if it says something like it in the charter and it doesn't specify a two-thirds vote, is the default just a majority vote?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. No, it's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and that mentions the clerk of the committee, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Clerk of council, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I do like it because it gives them the option of putting that in or not, right?
[Milva McDonald]: And we'll have to say city too.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, so the, these kind of came from two different charters, but notice that the city clerk says three and the clerk of the council says two years. And if they, if they're the same person, then, um,
[Milva McDonald]: But if we were going to put in the provision that the clerk of the council could be the same person as the city clerk, then would we want to make them the same?
[Milva McDonald]: I know, but I, but I'm saying, should we make the same term for the clerk of the council? If we're going to add the provision that the clerk of the council may be the same person as the city clerk?
[Milva McDonald]: So are we going to suggest that we want the provision and that it can be the same? Because it doesn't say there that can, oh wait, it does say who may be the town clerk, but we want to put city clerk. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: There might be a blanket section on removal that we're going to have to put in the charter, right?
[Milva McDonald]: And then will we, and maybe the call-in center is going to help us with this, but then will the language have to say, may be removed as provided in section X. Oh, here we have.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, the personnel? Okay, that says by the same as those contained in the personnel ordinance for the... I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, let's see what this one says. Actually, is this one Medford's? No, because I thought Medford was red. Yeah, this is Medford.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Written statement with the city clerk. OK. So that's basically what we said written down, right? So we would keep. So I'll say keep section 54.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we could keep slash update. Okay. So, um, but that doesn't, that's, that wouldn't apply to the city clerk because the mayor can't, you know, so, um, either we have to put in something else or, um, I think we could just do something similar by the city council may be removed by the city council pursuant to the process and the personnel ordinance or So I'm just going to say, make sure to include a removal provision.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Now, are we good with clerk?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Auditor. We don't, city council, our city, I mean, I think some cities, the city council appoints the auditor, right? Is that right? I don't, right now, right now it's a hired person. We don't, we don't elect the auditor.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, let's look and let's see. Let's see what our sources say.
[Milva McDonald]: I know. I'm embarrassed to say, I'm not sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Let's look at it.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'm not sure we do. Because what comes up for you? Assessor comes up, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So, and I guess, so we don't have 1. so do we need 1, I guess, is a question because I feel like there's another portion of the charter where you can. Require periodic independent audits of the city. Maybe the maybe that's different things. Maybe an audit. Maybe a city auditor would do something else.
[Milva McDonald]: And so having that be done by someone who works for the city or is appointed or elected by, I mean, elected is different, but it's different to me than having the periodic independent audits.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, would you need both?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I think, I do think we need more information. I think we need to research what Menford does now, you know, when are there audits, how often, who does them, and then think about whether adding an auditor is a good idea.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I also would like to know how many cities have them. you know, or how many, or, you know, how many cities have city auditors versus just having independent audits? Um, do we, do the other charters say any, is this the only one we found, David, that has, um, It's, um, yeah, the Weymouth is the only one that mentions it, at least that's in this list. Um, can you just search for audit? It would come up, right. Even with auditor. see an independent audit that's that's what i was so that's in another section but um yeah just just to compare so yeah so this is so this is another option right um an annual independent audit yeah i'd be interested to hear
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So does somebody want to volunteer to research Medford's current audit procedures?
[Milva McDonald]: Frances. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Do you want to just contact her directly? Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And then we can... Yeah, because if we decide on the auditor, that goes in article two. If we decide on the independent auditor, it goes in another. And I will send it to you.
[Milva McDonald]: We can't say we're done with this. I think we need more information, right, on the auditor question.
[Milva McDonald]: So, oh, I don't know about staffers.
[Milva McDonald]: I get it. I get it. But I'm like, okay, maybe staff, but I don't think I don't think individual, I don't think they should have individual staff personally.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I feel like when we looked at this last week, did we see that there wasn't much mentioned, but there was, I think it was, I can't remember if it was Pithfield, but there was one of them that I felt like had pretty ideal language. And it was just very general. But it was the subject to appropriation thing, right? Do you remember that part where it said city council may, subject to appropriation, the city council may hire staff?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Now, I don't know exactly how subject to appropriation works. That probably means they have to get an appropriation from the mayor, right?
[Milva McDonald]: So that's different than just saying that they may hire staff as deemed necessary. That's saying two specific positions.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I think that putting in subject to, you know, exactly what it says in Pittsfield is, I think it was Pittsfield, makes sense.
[Milva McDonald]: Because, you know, because it's in the charter then and, you know, yes, it has to be appropriation, but, um, But I can't imagine that it would be turned down without a good reason.
[Milva McDonald]: Was it Pittsfield, John?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think they would ever.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, they, yeah, they have the city manager too.
[Milva McDonald]: And they have probably more money.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I mean, you know, we're going to go through all this with the whole committee and other points will be made and but But I think that makes sense. So removal. Oh, oh my goodness. Is that an article. I mean, that's removal of all three of those things, I feel like, because article two is legislative and article three is executive. So this is gonna be in that more wherever the general section about removal is. But removal of city council members and mayor would be, well, that would be more like the recall, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and that's a whole section of the charter, a different section of the charter. But vacancies is part of what we're doing, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: There is a provision in our charter currently for city council vacancies. Um, it just says that, uh, the next, um, the next highest vote getter takes a slot.
[Milva McDonald]: We don't have a provision for the mayoral vacancy, but that's our, that's article three.
[Milva McDonald]: So city council vacancies keep us. I don't either.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a question that, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Should, do we want to keep it the way it is now? I mean, we can look at the language quickly if you want. Basically just, yeah. It just says, yeah, there it is. There's Medford's.
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: So add something in case nobody is eligible and willing to serve.
[Milva McDonald]: So if we say, if no one is eligible and willing to serve, council may appoint.
[Milva McDonald]: It's only going to be for, you know, a short period of time. Yeah. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: 60, that's good.
[Milva McDonald]: No, do you think longer?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, there could be only, you know, nine months left in the, Yeah, at least.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, we aren't, we just say must appoint, we're not laying out the process.
[Milva McDonald]: Permutations you end up being like okay, then the mayor gets to a point somebody Well, the other thing that's good is the call-in center, you know, we'll give all this to the call-in center when we make the final Decisions and they will draft it and if there's language that's gonna create a problem.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that it for the city council? We're done with article two? No.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. And do we want to, I mean, technically the vacancies for mayor will go under article three, but we can, we can do them together if you want.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I think there's absolutely nothing in our charter right now to deal with a vacancy in the mayor's office. So, I mean, do we, do the other charters say anything about it?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, maybe do singular since it's only one person for this one. What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: vacancy there it is 39. Okay. This section addresses protocols for handling.
[Milva McDonald]: Wait a minute, so that, because this is the same, this is Melrose, so they say, okay, so special election, if it's during the first two years, but if the vacancy occurs in the third or fourth year of the term, I mean, they must already have a four-year term, then the president of the city council acts as mayor. And then you give them all the powers. And Pittsfield says special election. John, did you see, is that basically what the state law says? Are these just sort of reiterating the state law?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but these these charters have a four year term and we are going to be discussing that. So we would modify it. So if it were a four year term, so basically, They're just taking the state law. I mean, I think it's a good idea to put it in the charter because then people know, you know, if they, it's, they don't have to look up mass general laws.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But it looks pretty much the same as what we've seen in these charters.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, I don't know how long it takes the elections department to get a special election.
[Milva McDonald]: But for a special election in this case, would you have to get, you wouldn't have to get signatures, right? Um, the candidates have to get signatures.
[Milva McDonald]: And they add that if a regular town election is going to be held within 120 days, then no special election.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and then it just stays president of city council until the election.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, they will. And do we have, yeah, and they'll know what needs to be said.
[Milva McDonald]: from among the council.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, because they have more experience with the, I mean, president of city council kind of gives a clear line of succession, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't know. I mean, can we look back and see what the, cause if the president of the city council becomes the acting mayor, then they're not the president of the city council anymore, right? And then we have a, I mean, do they do both?
[Milva McDonald]: It was down.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Well, this is section three, so.
[Milva McDonald]: City council. So this one says president shall become mayor, president of city council.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, so we probably don't want to say that the president of the city council immediately becomes acting mayor because then we create a vacancy on the city council, right?
[Milva McDonald]: But it's unclear what happens between the time that there's a vacancy and the time of the special election. Is there just no mayor?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I don't like that. Because they're supposed to be two different branches, right?
[Milva McDonald]: We would have to delineate that, I guess.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. That the acting mayor didn't have the same powers.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, good.
[Milva McDonald]: I just wrote down delineate powers of acting mayor. Yeah. So that we can just know that that has to be looked at.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, we're getting close to the end of article two, right?
[Milva McDonald]: This is just a list.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know, not tonight. We only have 10 minutes left.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, okay. I thought you meant tonight.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So what have we seen? Is there an oversight section in the other charters?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if I would put it as the city council can force the mayor, but we have heard feedback from members of the public that the mayor should have to attend, well, some people think every city council meeting or periodic meetings.
[Milva McDonald]: So is, oh, here's the access to information section. Okay, so in Melrose, any city officer? Yeah, so I mean, this usually happens. I mean, you know, they usually ask, this just sort of says that the department head can't, I don't think they usually get turned down, but, or the, or the employee, but, but that's, that's reasonable. And the mayor, This does, yeah, this one does say may require the mayor to appear. So, okay. So this says the mayor can bring someone else, but like now I think sometimes the chief of staff will go to meetings, right? But not the mayor. And if this were in the charter, the mayor would have to go.
[Milva McDonald]: So this is different than what we were, you know, what has been proposed by some people saying that the mayor should be specifically required to go periodically, like once a month or, I mean, I feel like this makes more sense because.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, the mayor just goes, if there's not really a reason to be there or, I mean, not that there isn't a reason. I mean, being at the meetings, I guess is, um, its own reward. Right. But, um, but I feel like this is, this is a better use of time.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. And the, I think the The impetus behind the comment that the mayor should be required to go to the meetings comes from this desire to have the mayor and the city council have a less contentious relationship and, you know, um, and, and sort of making them really work together kind of. I mean, that's what we've heard from people. So, um, so that's kind of, that's the goal of, of that ask.
[Milva McDonald]: I exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, well, um, I don't know. I mean, I like Melrose. I think the way Melrose's is written is pretty good. And the question is, do we want to add the multi-member bodies?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. I mean, So the city council meets every other week. So, you know, if there's that, it has to fit into one of those meetings, unless they can also compel people to come to subcommittee meetings. I mean, I'm assuming they could, right. It's any meeting. So it could happen at any time because those meetings happen and committees as a whole.
[Milva McDonald]: But you're right. It could run into a situation where the person is, you know, like as a trip to France plan, but nobody's going to be unreasonable.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it doesn't say what the consequences to the person are. Right. Um, Well, I mean if you can subpoena... But if the person doesn't come with a good reason, it's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: People are reasonable.
[Milva McDonald]: It was more than mayoral attendance. It was city employees too, right?
[Milva McDonald]: And not school committee, not putting that in there. I mean, the other ones don't have school school committee is very regulated. It's more regulated by the state than other bodies. So, but I don't know why it wouldn't be okay. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the city council doesn't really have anything to do with the schools other than approving the budget. So maybe it's not appropriate.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like the mayor does that, right? But do we want to put it in the chart? I would say we have two minutes left, so I think we should wind up. I think we did pretty well here.
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like it happens with the budget. Is that right? I feel like there's, in the budget report, there's a lot of information about the city, demographics, population, I mean, all kinds of stuff. Am I wrong about that? I know I've seen it.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm saying we could require it. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think that, no, no, I think, yeah, yeah, that's good. Let's do, let's, I mean, we can start there next time. So when speaking of next time, let's see, we don't want to meet next week. next week people are going to be on holiday, right? The week after that is the week before the December meeting. I don't know how you guys feel if you think we should have another meeting before the December meeting. I feel that we could. There's enough for us to go through several meetings with whole committee with just what we've done, but it's also possible that in one more meeting, we could sort of get through the list, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, I mean, do you guys want to meet next? I feel like no next week.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so now we're talking about the week of November 27th, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Is there a particular, we're looking at evenings, right? Is there any?
[Milva McDonald]: Wednesday is usually my only free night, but we could do 8.30 again on Thursday. Is that okay? You have a calendar, what date is that?
[Milva McDonald]: 30th. November 30th, 8.30, same time, same channel. Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I'm giving John Francis's email, right. And he's going to look into auditor and, um, and we're going to ask the Collins center. I'm going to ask Collins center to do a short presentation on, um, just a primer kind of a review. What is, you know, what, um, Because I mean, we should make that clear because, for instance, there's certain groups like our committee that this won't apply to. And then I think it also wouldn't apply to the committees created by ordinance, or they have their own rules. I don't know. We'll find out.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I guess what I'm thinking, I'm thinking that there's certain commissions in the city where the city council actually does appoint like one or two members. And that's, you know, and that's because it says, I, you know, I need to, I need to research more before I say, but I am pretty sure that there are at least one or two commissions where the city council gets to. Yes, to appoint a member or two.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And that we will hopefully get, uh, I will write to them tomorrow morning and cool. Yeah. All right.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to officially adjourn?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. All right. Have a great night, everyone.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street. Um, thank you for bringing this ordinance, um, forward. I, I personally don't, I don't like the noise. Um, but I just want to focus on an issue that has been touched on, but I feel like it hasn't really been delved into, and that's the environmental impact of leaf blowers, which, I mean, we can talk about the slippery slope, but right now leaf blowers are on the table, and what we do know is that gas-powered leaf blowers are highly polluting. One statistic I just read said that one hour of leaf blower use is equivalent to driving 1,100 miles in a car. I do think that gas-powered leaf blowers are in another class, and I would like to just see that brought out a little more. And I understand the difficulties of the enforcement, the noise issues. Even though I am concerned about them, I work at home, and I do find it difficult. That said, the most important aspect to me of this ordinance is the phase-out. Many of you ran on a commitment to addressing climate change and environmental issues, so I really urge you to follow through on that and follow through with the phase-out of gas-powered leaf blowers.
[Milva McDonald]: So welcome, everyone. We're talking about Articles 2 and 3 of the Medford Charter. And this is our initial meeting. So I'm just going to open the floor for ideas about creating a work plan, approaches, et cetera.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we should create a folder. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And just, you know, you can put it in. I don't think there's a folder for our committee in there. You know, in the subcommittees folder.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's great. Then you put that in there and I can actually I should put the agenda from this meeting in there as well. And I'll put all our minutes in there, etc. So, so thank you for doing that.
[Milva McDonald]: That's right. Otherwise known as executive and legislative branches. Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's definitely in here. Appointments is part of articles two and three. So that's, that is one of the big, um, So, and I assume you're talking about appointments of multi-member boards and commissions, because there's also, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Department heads. Yeah, so what I'm so like, so let's making a list of questions. One question is appointment authority for multi member boards and committees, department heads authority. The other thing is, as I'm looking at it, it's the powers, but it also covers the composition. And we've already at least covered the ward representation piece of it. But what we didn't determine is how many. So that's something we could look at as part of, because that's in article two. And also the term lengths and whether there's term limits are also in this article.
[Milva McDonald]: The other thing I would say about this is, you know, we don't have to go back and say this is what we think or we don't have to vote and say we voted to have term limits or whatever. What we could do is say that term limits, you know, we gathered information on term limits and because that's covered in Article 2 and then at least what we would be doing is giving the committee sort of material that they could base their discussion on, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, David, what do you think about that? Where we wouldn't necessarily be saying we recommend term limits, but we would be saying, you know, term limits. These are the issues that, um, this is the information we collected. And then that would be the basis for the discussion of the whole committee.
[Milva McDonald]: That's fine and that's good because what I think we are going to be discussing balance of power with the whole committee and potentially as early as the December meeting. So if we did prioritize that, then we could bring that information to the December meeting. So that sounds like that's one potential plan, prioritize that.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, it's basically just what it is, is the generic modern charter that was provided by the call center with the language of, I mean, and met there's many, many sections that have no language from Medford because Medford charter is.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I will send it to you. But right now, this is section one is definitions. We kind of skipped over that. But the good thing about this charter is the actual sort of writing of it is that the calling center will draft it for us. So really, our job is to make the decisions as a committee. OK, so there was composition, term of office, eligibility. You know, I'll just put that on our list, but we don't have to prioritize it. And then, oh yeah, this is also, you know, the kind of thing that we don't have to prioritize this either, but how the president and vice president are chosen, the powers of the president and vice president. Prohibitions, yeah, there's a lot of stuff in here. Compensation, which doesn't mean that we would determine what their pay is. It's more how the compensation is decided. And I think it's generally done by ordinance. So then we come to this general powers, which is, I think, pretty much canned language that just says they have these general powers that are outlined in state law. that stuff about quorums and whatnot. I mean, there's so many details, right? This one I thought was kind of interesting because it speaks to how the city council gets access to city information. And I mean, that's something that they've complained about, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So I don't know, you know, let's put it on our list and I don't know. Yeah. So that, that may be one that's, I mean, I think what we'll do is look at all these and then sort of decide how we want to focus. Does that sound right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And when I send this to you, you'll see kind of what the other, what the other charters, what these other charters say about, um, about like this one, for instance, says things that the mayor has to do regarding information. And then this is the appointment section, which, oh, and this is what I, this isn't necessarily about the multi-member boards and commissions, which is what we were talking about. This is about actually the city clerk, um, It's funny because I didn't pull, Medford doesn't have language in our charter in that little two-pager about the city clerk, so it must come from state law. As in Medford, I believe the city clerk is the only person that the city council hires, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but you can see in others like in Weymouth, there's town auditor, town clerk, clerk of the council. You know, I don't, I think probably we'll keep city clerk, but we'll probably just want to move that into the charter so that it's not, you know, it's not like you have to go digging in state law to find out about how Medford handles that. And I don't, You know, I don't know that people want to add any. I mean, the other part that's in here, this is the confirmation that we were talking about. So this would be the section, section 210. So let's, I'll write that down. Section 210 is going to be one thing we're going to focus on. And filling of vacancies, that's another, you know, so many. There's just so many. I mean, I guess maybe we could figure out the bigger decisions that we're going to make, but ultimately there's all these details as well. Now we're in executive branch. I feel like there was another section that I may have gone over that is also an issue in Medford, which is the hiring of staff. Because the city council really wants to be able to hire staff. I feel like that was in Article 2.
[Milva McDonald]: Are you talking about the legal council?
[Milva McDonald]: Let me, it was section two eight. So I'm going to look back and see what, what these other places say. Uh, it was under appointments seems, um, whether the city council is allowed to appoint staff. So in, so it would be in that section. Um, And in this, I'm just looking and see what Melrose just... So Melrose has the city clerk, a clerk of committees. I don't know what that's. And a town auditor in Weymouth, town clerk, clerk of the council. Hmm, I don't know what I don't know the difference between those positions.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, yeah. The city clerk in Medford does run, is sort of responsible for the minutes and distributing the agendas and all that, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So I don't see, anything specifically in these other charters that allow the councils to hire their own staff, but I think some charters have it.
[Milva McDonald]: I will ask them that. And the other question is, even if it's possible for them to maybe have a part-time person to help with stuff, is that something that needs to be in the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, I think you're right, yes. So something like that. I think I moved into the ordinances, yeah. The Pittsfield was up here. Yeah, subject to appropriation. That's pretty simple. The city council may employ staff as it deems necessary.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so that's another, and you know, the issue, the question of whether it can hire its own legal counsel, I think is the controversial piece, right?
[Milva McDonald]: It's not, I mean, when the Collins Center has said that they're not aware of any charter that gives the city council their own legal counsel and they're not sure that the state would let it happen because of the issue that you're talking about.
[Milva McDonald]: No, that's an interesting point because that is one of the, you know, that's one of the points that was brought up as kind of a legitimate reason why the city council would need legal counsel because they would maybe want help drafting ordinances.
[Milva McDonald]: So if the committee decided that that was, you know, because we know that the council put, they put forth an amendment saying that the city council would have its own legal council. If our committee decides on that, I think the important piece is the language. It has to be very specific of what that legal council could, you know, would be doing.
[Milva McDonald]: It's not something that's in other charters, for sure, that we know for sure. So, okay, so that's... So then we move into... Those are the main... Those are sort of the main issues from Article 2, and there's also many details, as we saw. And then Article 3 is the mayor. Is there anything from that article that we feel like we want to prioritize? Once again, term lengths and limits are in there. And let me just see, what does it say about the powers in there? This is the beginning is all the concert term lengths and limits and qualifications, all those things.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Executive powers enforcement of ordinances. This is a lot. So this is how they work together, right? Because this section also covers the multi-member bodies and the department heads and whatnot. So it basically kind of covers the same thing, right? So if we talk about, if we focus on the appointments issue, we're doing it for both sections.
[Milva McDonald]: And I think the language on the committees and commissions, it only, it sort of applies to the ones that I mean, I think there's certain, just for instance, there are a couple of committees or boards in Medford that the city council does approve, right? I believe so. I can't, I don't know off the top of my head which ones they are. So even though our charter specifically states that the mayor, without approval of the city council, does that. There are a couple that the city council is involved in, and it's because some of them are created outside of the, right, like this committee, for instance. Even if the council had authority to confirm appointments, it probably wouldn't count for this committee because we're just an ad hoc committee. Right? Is that right? Do you think that's?
[Milva McDonald]: And is it that whatever we put in the charter whatever authority we put in about these committees and commissions, it's for the ones that are sort of created by ordinance?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so that's what I was going to say next, is how are we going to collect our information to discuss this issue? And we all agree that we're going to start, we're going to focus on the appointments to start with?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Um, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh yeah. Let me send it to you right now.
[Milva McDonald]: Budget is later in the, I mean, it's later in the charter. It's not in articles two and three.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we are going to be discussing budget. It's going to be a huge, it's going to be a huge topic. But technically it's not in articles two and three. And I think it's a separate one. And I think there's probably, yeah. So maybe we should take that off this particular list.
[Milva McDonald]: I think those are later too.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the recall in Section 8, there is a recall section, but it's actually under the citizen participation. So, it's different from what you're talking about, David. Maybe what you're talking about would be in Section 2 and 3, because it's under the powers of, you know, it's not a citizen recall.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, the other thing that we've been hearing from some people at the listening sessions and other public feedback is they want the mayor to be required to go to city council meetings. So I think that kind of falls under the information section.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. So I think that would fall under that. and that would be in this article.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sending it right now. Sorry, because I realize I only had five. I think I just sent it to you. I only have your email in the charter study. So I now I now have it in my personal email, and that's what I sent it to her. Okay, so let's see. We were looking at the list. And we're basically looking at this now to decide what we kind of want to keep on the list for our committee, right? Should we put some sort of subcommittees under ability to compel information access? No, we don't have to, we can appointment.
[Milva McDonald]: Charter amendment process, you mean for the city council or the mayor? Sure.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think. Yeah, I don't think we could. I also don't think that that would align with state law. What do you think, John?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And also the citizen ordinances comes later in, um, cause there's a whole section, section eight is about citizen participation mechanisms.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's going to be under section eight, but vacancies definitely. And veto power, definitely. Um, um, state of the city report. That's interesting. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, did you get that David? Can we make those buckets on this document?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. Awesome. Because I'm also trying to write some notes here. Appointments oversight is a bucket. Excellent. Okay, and are you, those last things on the bottom, are you trying to just, are we going to put those in the buckets? In their respective buckets? Is that what you were thinking, John?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so we can put those in their respective buckets. That's awesome. Even though we're not going to prioritize it, technically, it's in Article 2 and 3, so should we add the bucket about the composition and the- Oh, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Compensation, composition, and what about the term lengths and term limits?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point because I think that it was actually pretty recent history that Medford almost went to nine wards. I believe there was a lot. There was some. I'm a little unclear, but I know the state every 10 years determines the wards, but I heard a lot of talk that there was city council vote on adding another ward. So I don't really, I don't understand all the legal ramifications, but I know that there was a, even when we were meeting in the subcommittee, there was a certain amount of confusion over whether Medford had nine wards or not, because somebody, one of the committee members had gotten some material that said Medford had nine wards. And it came from this. relatively recent discussion about whether Minnesota is going to have nine wards. So it could happen very soon. And we know our population is increasing quickly. So that's a good point. So what we're talking about is how many at large in addition to the eight ward, and then making sure that we have a provision that would either take away an at-large or add an at-large if the wards change.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I do. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. I think the basic question would be in that case, would you add an at-large or take away an at-large? That's what that would be. And that might depend on how many at large the committee decides. One, three, or five, right?
[Milva McDonald]: 11 is a common number. You don't want to get like Newton, which is, well, they have like over 20, I think. 24.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, they have a weird system, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, because they did a charter review, right? And they voted down the new charter. See, that's one of the things that I think that maybe change is hard, and a huge overhaul might be hard for people to swallow.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK, so we have a pretty good list here of things. This is a lot of work over time. going back to what we decided to focus on, right? To start with appointments. Do we still feel that way?
[Milva McDonald]: Sounds good. So how do we want to approach it? What kind of information do we need to have a meaningful discussion or be able to have a meaningful opinion?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I just, first I just want to say, I mean, what your comments make me think is that maybe what, maybe one thing we could start with is getting really full information on how appointments are done. Because, I mean, this committee is an ad hoc committee. It's, I don't know, there might be a different process for the committees that are created by ordinance or, what do you think, John?
[Milva McDonald]: So, I mean, when both of you talk about the ability to remove or reject or with a certain vote, I guess, reject makes me go back to the issue of the confirmation, because that was one of the amendments that the city council put forth. One thing I think I should do at this point is gather the public feedback we've gotten and the interview feedback that we got about this issue. One thing that we heard from, and I can look back at all of it, but I specifically remember one of the department heads that we interviewed who, express concern about a confirmation process, specifically the confirmation process that was outlined in the Charter Amendment, because, you know, most of these positions are volunteer positions, and a lengthy confirmation process, I think they gave themselves 30 days, it could extend it, it would be harder to get volunteers, also knowing that you would have to be just sort of put forth in a public arena, right? That, oh, I got appointed, but now I have to get publicly approved by the city council might discourage people. And that could potentially affect the operations of the city. So that was a concern that was expressed. And yet we have seen, it's certainly not, uncommon for mayors to have this authority, but in the document that we just got from the Collins Center, I believe it's only 27% of cities where the mayor has the sole authority without the city council being able to confirm the appointments. So I guess we've heard these concerns about it, but maybe what we need to do is find out in cities where the city council has this authority, how does it work? You know, how did they, you know, what is the process that avoids some of these pitfalls that have been expressed? What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: And it would mean that the city council would have to sort of go out of their way. Right. Yeah. It wouldn't be just that, I'm sorry, I'm looking for something while we're talking. No, I think that's an interesting way to approach it. I'm just trying to find the other charters just to see what they say so we can access to information. Melrose, that's the city clerk. Do you remember whether the other charters, John, Pat, gave the city council that?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So this is, I just found them. So this is what Melrose says. The mayor shall submit the name of each person the mayor desires to appoint to any city office. Oh, this says as a department head as well, or as a member of a multiple member body provided that this provision shall not apply to appointments. City council shall refer each name to a standing committee of the board that shall review. Okay, so this is the kind of longer process that we were talking about. This gives them 45 days. The committee may require any... Okay, so these people don't necessarily have to go before the city council, it sounds like. But it does extend the process potentially by 45 days, which is even longer than the amendment that was proposed by our city council. And Pittsfield, And this is also goes to sort of the information because there, I don't know right now if the mayor has to notify the city council about who they're appointing as department heads before they do it. Okay, so this Pittsfield, it looks to me, it's like more like what you were talking about. It's that the, the people that the mayor appoints will automatically be appointed unless the council rejects them within 45 days, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. The other thing I wish that I had in front of us right now is the actual amendment that was under consideration by the, you know, the city council wrote. Just because I mean, I'm interested to see right now how different here it is. Wait a minute. I think I have it right here. Well, no, this isn't the actual document. This is just a document that says what they want to do. Anyway, I think that's something that would be good for us to look at. We just have to find it.
[Milva McDonald]: Let me see if I can find it in my email somewhere. So, if you. I'm also sort of trying to take notes here, but I feel like we've come to a pretty, I think what we're talking about is allows the city council to have some power over committees and commissions, but maybe avoids the concern that some of the concerns that we heard expressed.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Yeah, so that's.
[Milva McDonald]: Here they are. I found it. I knew I'd find it. All right, we'll just take a look at this. And then I don't want to. everybody too much longer after we said we were going to end. So there's the budget one. This is the hiring staff that we're going to be talking about. This might not be the most recent draft that they were working on, but at least it will give us pretty much the. So this is So this is different than the charter language that we just looked at in those three charters, because it says immediately subject to confirmation by the city council by majority vote, and it seems like that would be a simple majority.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the mayor can do it, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we get to decide what we're putting in the draft, yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, you know, This actually, when I look at the second paragraph, it is similar to what we've been looking at. It doesn't look like they're saying that these people have to go before the council. They basically just have 45 days to It's confusing to me though, because it does in the first sentence say that the appointments are subject to confirmation. So can you explain this to me, John?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. I guess the part I don't understand is it says the first sentence says the mayor shall appoint subject to confirmation by the city council by majority vote, which sounds to me like the city council will vote, which has to be public.
[Milva McDonald]: Right?
[Milva McDonald]: That's what I'm wondering. You're the lawyer, so that's how it looks to me, but I think, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: The thing that threw me was just the subject of confirmation.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm and I think based on what we've looked at with the other charters, we're pretty much looking at the 2nd paragraph. Right. Right. So, what we. And what we're talking about doesn't require a vote by the city council in order for these committee and commission members to be appointed. But what it does allow is for the city council to reject one if they choose, they have to take that action. Am I getting this? Is that what we're talking about?
[Milva McDonald]: And, but David, I feel like what you were saying was that the committee members could start their jobs that they just, you know, might not, they might get ousted. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: What do you think about that timeframe, John, 21 days? I mean, we're looking at the charters that give them 45. I think that's a lot.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we say 20?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, is 14 too short?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'm just trying to envision how this process would actually work in practice. The mayor submits the names to the city council, and then the city council has 21 days to say yay or nay. That means they do have to discuss it at a meet. I'm just trying to understand the public aspect.
[Milva McDonald]: And if they do nothing after 21 days, the board is.
[Milva McDonald]: So, so what it comes down to is any individual city Councilor would could potentially say at a meeting I would like to just, you know. I would like this candidate not to be appointed. They would have to name particular individual names. Most likely, no people would be mentioned at a city council meeting unless they really wanted them on right away or they really didn't want them on.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I think that You know, one thing that I've noticed about our committee is they really like to know how you made that decision. And we basically made this by discussion and we looked at other charters and did we need to do, do we want to do more research than that? Or I feel pretty comfortable with this. I think it's reasonable.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with you in my understanding in this discussion that we were talking about multi-member boards and commissions and not department heads. Do you agree with that, Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So this is really good. Um, and I think we need to close and I guess the question is, do we, do we want to just say, I'm going to send out an email about setting up another meeting, but do we want to at least decide what we want to tackle next?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, you even put in what we decided. That's awesome. Um, but we do have a question. City council can remove by. Do you mean, uh, is that removing someone who's already on a committee or a commission?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Um, so maybe we have a vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I do too. So I just want to draw a line. Can we do, maybe we can do a color. Put the things in color so we know that we've already worked, we've already settled that. And then we, right? And then the next, here, I'll just put them in.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, that's not what I wanted to do. I didn't want to highlight. I wanted the text.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so there we, so we know where we're at. So is there any, any information that we want to gather before we move on to the next or. I guess people can just make their own judgment about that. You know, this is, we're going to go down this list in order. And if there's any information that you want to gather, you think you need, we have the charters to refer to. I believe it was one, at least one question I was going to ask the center.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I will, I will, I will get that document. Let me write that down for myself.
[Milva McDonald]: So I can do that and add draft amendments to folder. Okay. Awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Go ahead, John.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I will also pull out, you know, one thing I'm going to do is go through all the interviews and all the public feedback and pull out the information we've gotten, but the department head that I'm thinking of also felt that it would really be useful for the efficiency of the government if city council could hire their staff. The big question is the legal council. That's another, you know, that's kind of separate, but.
[Milva McDonald]: That makes sense, yeah, because what this person was saying is that it gets really sort of weird and confusing because the clerk is the only person that the city council hires, basically. So the clerk is under the city council, but so when the clerk needs, because the clerk's job is a big job, and when the clerk needs help, they have to go to people that were hired by, you know, that are under a different, you know, so it just,
[Milva McDonald]: That would be awesome, John. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be great. OK. Do you want me to just send out an email to try to schedule? There's only four of us. Or should we try to schedule now and see what more we can do?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, um, and that is that November 18th, November 18th.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I teach until 8.30 on Thursday. I don't know how you feel about 8.30. That's fine with me.
[Milva McDonald]: I have just a couple of students, and we do writing, literature, and a little history. Very cool. I mean, they're, yeah, so. It's more like tutoring, but not really exactly that either. So OK, let's say Thursday, which is November 16. Yes. Yep. at 830. Awesome. And then, you know, we're gonna have, I mean, this is great. December meeting is going to be big. Yeah, we're gonna have a lot to report. And you guys, thank you for the work you did on the preamble. I really am completely delighted with it. So we'll see what everybody else thinks. And great. Thanks for the work. And John, thanks for looking into that. I think that's going to be important for our next.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you so much.
[Milva McDonald]: Bye.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone and thank you for coming to the Medford Charter Study Committee public information session. We're delighted that you're here. We are hoping to have a very engaging discussion about the charter. We're gonna begin by introducing ourselves and then we're gonna launch into our presentation on word representation and then we're gonna open it up to questions from you. My name is Melvin McDonald. I'm the chair of the Medford Charter Study Committee. We've been doing this since last December about, so almost a year. I just, I do want to say that I'm about to hand over the mic to the other committee members, but we have a few committee members that were unable to be here. Maury Carroll, Phyllis Morrison, Paulette van der Kloot, and John Moreshi. But right now I'm going to pass the mic and so you can meet the rest of our committee members that are here.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. I didn't say what my favorite restaurant was. I'm going to give a plug to Colette Bakery. And I also wanted to also give a shout out to David Zabner, who is our wonderful alternate on the committee. He was also unable to be here, but he's an integral part of our work. All right.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. So I'm going to hand it over to Ron to start our presentation. But first, I just wanted to say that this is a long process, and it's an involved process. We're looking at various aspects of our city government. executive branch, legislative branch, school committee, as well as budget processes, citizen participation mechanisms, and other areas as well. But recently, we've really done a deep dive into the question of ward representation for city council, and that's what we're gonna share with you tonight. So I'm gonna hand it over to Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, one of the things that the subcommittee looked at as we looked at this question was the case of Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell, Massachusetts, like Medford, has eight wards. And in 2017, a lawsuit was filed against the city alleging that their at-large system violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. by denying Asian American and Hispanic and Latino voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. In 2019, without conceding a violation of the Voting Rights Act, the city settled. So right now, Lowell currently has hybrid ward representation for city council and school committee. And we were interested in this as we looked at Medford's demographics. And when we learned that Medford has at least has one majority minority ward and a population that is continually becoming more diverse, this was an interesting case for us to look at. Because it's also research has also shown that ward representation increases diversity in elected officials. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Micah?
[Milva McDonald]: We have talked about term limits a little bit, but we haven't dived deeply into that yet. It is a question on our survey, which by the way, we have a survey. Hopefully all of you who are tuned in have taken it. If not, it's on our website at medfordmed.org slash charter study. There is a section in the charter called transitional provisions that once we make decisions on what recommendations we'll make and draft a charter. There will be a section drafted called transitional provisions that will cover any transitional issues that might be relevant. But we haven't discussed those specifically yet because we're still in the process of deciding on what our recommendations might be. Does that answer your question?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, all the presentations from all our meetings are on the webpage on the city website medfordmed.org slash charter study. You'll find this presentation and any other presentation that we've had at our meetings. So you can see, you can look through the history of our meetings. There's other great information on there as well. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree. I think Jean said that well. It also, as also was pointed out in the slide, it makes running for office more accessible because it's financially more accessible and there's less ground to cover in a ward. The other piece is that, as we saw in the Lowell case, It's also the voters, when you have a majority minority ward, if there's ward representation, then that ward has an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. And that's what we saw in the Lowell case. And that was one of the reasons that that case came to the fore and was settled the way it was. The only other, oh, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, we are this week, I believe the first meeting of this school committee subcommittee will happen, actually it's next week. And they will be digging into that topic and looking at maybe some of the similar things we looked at, but also different things because it's a school committee has different issues. So yes, we are definitely going to be doing that.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Our target date is about a year from now, the fall of 2024. That could change, but that's what we're aiming for. And what we will be doing is presenting first to the City Council, and then the City Council will make a presentation. We'll create a final report. The City Council will look at the recommendations, vote on them, and then it goes to the mayor. And if it clears those hurdles, then it goes to the state house. And at that point, if it clears the state house hurdle, then it goes to the voters.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, as Ron said, that's not under our umbrella, but in the scheme of the city budget, I don't think that four councilors will explode the city budget. But, you know, that's... We're looking at what's best for the governance of the city. And that's so that's not really part of our wheelhouse that we're looking at.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks for the question. Our survey is open until December 1st. So at that time, we'll be releasing, we'll be able to talk about the results. But the question of the mayor being on the school committee is definitely on people's minds. And this subcommittee is gonna look into this more extensively, but, just generally what we know is that it's not it's very uncommon for a mayor not to be on a school committee but it's in terms of the mayor being the chair it's about 50 50. There's plenty of communities where the mayor is on the school committee but not the chair but it's quite uncommon for the mayor not to be on the school committee. So
[Milva McDonald]: I don't feel like I know enough at this point to answer that question. We do have quite an expert on our committee, Paulette Van der Kloot, and I'm sure she will have some well-informed answers to that question. But as the subcommittee starts meeting, they'll be looking at just those issues. I can say that the fact that the mayor is on almost all the school committees in the state leads me to believe that there's a good reason for that. Um, so that that I will say, thank you, Madam Chairperson.
[Milva McDonald]: I would also add that the charter can outline budget processes, but there are also state laws that we can't, we have to make our, whatever we come up with conform to state law. So we will be looking at the budget process and there is room to do that, but we also have to make sure that it aligns with state law.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't, but it's going to be soon. It's going to be soon. I would say maybe December.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a great question. I'm going to look that up and we have not looked at that specifically so I don't, I'm not aware of studies but I there's, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look into it. Thanks for bringing that up. One thing that we did try to do was get information on. voter turnout within each ward in the city and we've been unsuccessful at that because we hoped to be able to see if the wards that had candidates from their wards had higher voter turnout. We were curious about that. And the other piece is that candidates will naturally look, they know, will naturally look at where voters turned out and focus on those wards. So that was another thing that we wanted to look at, but we haven't been able to get specific information about voter turnouts in individual wards. It's related to what you asked, but not exactly what you asked, but it is a great question and we will look into it, thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: Do you have more questions? OK, well, I think that If there are no more questions, I think we will close. Do any of the committee members want to say any final words?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks, Eunice. And Eunice alluded to the decision that we made relatively early on to create a new charter as opposed to revising the current charter. And if you look in our old meeting materials, you'll see the reason for that. Medford's current charter is pretty bare bones. It comes directly from Mass General Law. It's a plan charter, plan A, and very few communities in Massachusetts still use a charter like that. So that's one of the reasons. But there are other reasons as well. I did want to correct. We were trying to recall the date of the listening session at the library and it's Wednesday, November 8. So that will be at 7pm and we hope to see you there. Our regular meetings, as Eunice said, are the first Thursday of the month and those are on Zoom at 7pm, so the next one is November 2nd. think that's the that's just take our survey and as you said, please spread the word so we can get as much feedback as possible during this process. And we thank you again for coming. And we hope to see you at another event soon. Good night.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome, everyone, to the meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. The first item on the agenda is to look at the minutes from our last meeting. Did everyone have a chance to look at those? Yes. Okay. Motion to approve.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Aye. Okay. Um, our next item is the city council's, uh, composition, but here comes another committee member, the subcommittee report. Um, let me just let Aubrey in. Okay. All right. So I am going to, uh, the subcommittee has been meeting and has some materials to share with the larger committee as, uh, we discussed. So I'm going to hand it over to Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, I think it might be useful just to go take a peek back at it now that.
[Milva McDonald]: But most people, that's where, Ward 6-3, there have been actually three Councilors that have resided in Ward 6? Is that what this means?
[Milva McDonald]: One of the things that we had known, we knew that Lowell, switched from an at-large to a war system relatively recently, and we just wanted to look at their process, and it involved a lawsuit actually in 2017, a lawsuit that alleged that their at-large voting system violated the Voting Rights Act by denying Asian American and Hispanic Latino voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. Two years later, the city settled, And Lowell now has a hybrid ward representation system for the city council and the school committee. And certainly our demographics are different from Lowell's, but Medford does have one majority minority ward and our population is continually becoming more diverse. And there have been concerns on from the public and on our committee about diversity of our elected officials. So we just felt like this was an important case to look at. And that's really all I have to say about it.
[Milva McDonald]: Because the minority populations were not having an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that was. Thank you for that explanation.
[Milva McDonald]: I think only in a primary, I think in the general election, there wouldn't be.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we can work on the particulars of this.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, there have been studies that have shown this.
[Milva McDonald]: Which doesn't necessarily make it fact, but it also doesn't make it opinion, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and Anthony from the Kahn Center suggested citing the study on the slide, and we can do that.
[Milva McDonald]: It's pretty, um, it's, it's, um, Okay, Anthony, can you give us predominant? Thank you, that is definitely a better word, predominant.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: We do have the call-in center here tonight, so they may have some insight into this.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it was an interview that Gene and Unistud, is that correct?
[Milva McDonald]: But I don't think I was at the interview. That's all.
[Milva McDonald]: That sounds right for now, yeah. Do we have an idea?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and then I, go ahead. And then I think, was that Aubrey that I heard? Yeah. Okay, so Anthony, and go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Eight.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll just say one thing about that, Anthony. When I was looking at Lowell, as their settlement, they actually have eight wards as well, and they now have eight ward Councilors and three at large, but for school committee, they have the same size school committee as we do, but they, I'm just gonna get this right, four are ward and two are at large, and the four that are ward, one city school committee member is from a combined two combined wards. And I think that's what you're asking about. But I also will say that when I did have a conversation with the Lowell city clerk, and he told me they had to hire a specialist because if you're gonna start combining wards, you have to make sure that what you do follows state law.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, yes. So I think it can be done, but it's not generally done. And if you do it, you have to, make sure you're following the law and somebody with more knowledge than us would have to figure it out.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. I think, Ron, you can move on to the next slide, but I think Aubrey had a question.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's worth saying, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I thought it did. Not from anybody I interviewed.
[Milva McDonald]: But yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony from the Collins Center also wanted to make a comment.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thanks. That's a great comment. Thank you. And thank you, Francis, for the comment that you gave as well.
[Milva McDonald]: This goes back to not having as many people to vote for.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: The only thing I would add is that we can share that with the committee. And the only other thing I would add is that the study reached those conclusions, but I believe the study authors also qualified them with various. So they reached those conclusions, but there were also qualifiers. And we can share that with the committee if people are interested in looking at that.
[Milva McDonald]: How many more slides are there?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So first, I just want to see if anybody else on the committee has any other comments. And Ron, if I take what you just said, I think you made a motion to table a vote and take a tentative vote in November. But let's hold that for a minute. David, do you have a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: So Anthony or Frank from the Collins Center, can you speak to the issue of ward bosses, maybe even to define that, what that might mean and how that might, how possible is that?
[Milva McDonald]: Even speaking from a definition standpoint, because I'm not sure I exactly know what is meant by ward boss. Do you know what is meant by that term?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. Okay, Ron, do you mind stopping the share for a minute? Just easier for me to see everybody. Yeah. Is anybody else on the committee or do we, I guess first I'm going to ask if anybody else has any comments or questions and then we can go back to Ron's motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. And then you want to hold your motion until after that? OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Is there any member of the public that wants to speak on this topic of ward representation for Medford? Okay, seeing none, Ron, you did restate.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so the motion is that we will vote on whether the committee will tentatively decide on ward representation or not at the next meeting. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Opposed? Okay. So in November, so that will give people time to think and we'll also share the studies that were mentioned. So people can look those over as well.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Okay. So, um, the next item on the agenda, I think I actually want to move it because I'm worried about time and I don't want to give it short shrift. And I want to make sure that, um, is that okay with people? If I, if we, if, uh, Gene, you go next and talk about the, um, listening sessions. Sure, make sure you have time for that.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, yeah. So I think first, Jane, thank you for putting together all those materials. Cause it really lays a roadmap out for, um, people to actually be able to realistically do this. Um, I think that January, I think February 1st is when we really want to start turning to the decision making and drafting process. So the question I think for the committee is, are people available to volunteer to organize these listening sessions?
[Milva McDonald]: I think Maury has his hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Francis, I think, wanted to say something.
[Milva McDonald]: I think, Maury, did you have your hand up again? You're muted. There you go.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I just want to be I know that a lot of a lot of people on this committee are, you know, have jobs and are really busy. And so I don't know, I just want to think about if we're going to do this project, and we need to do 10 to 12 listening sessions, how do we determine whether we actually have the labor available on the committee to do that. So can we just maybe make a plan for that? I mean, I think Paula just volunteered to contact West Medford Community Center and maybe do a session there.
[Milva McDonald]: So the suggestion is to actually contact the locations, set up a date and time, and then look for the volunteers?
[Milva McDonald]: So people, so Jean's signup sheet can be used. You can look at Jean's signup sheet and sign up for one of those locations and then contact the location and see what the, what details there might be about setting up a date.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. So I think, um, we're once again, going to table our, um, preamble discussion. Uh, so that just gives us even more time to think about that. Um, just as a check-in on interviews, there were, there were just still a few inter people on left on the list that we haven't interviewed. And I don't know if anybody wanted to give a status report on anybody who's working on. I know there's a couple of city Councilors we haven't gotten through to.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So I also just want to say, I think that there have been some interviews that have been completed. So, um, if people who have done interviews and haven't written up a report and put it into our interviews folder, just a reminder on that. That would be great. Um, October 19th is coming up very soon. Uh, we have a, um, event at city hall. Um, Danielle, do you want to talk a little bit about that? Cause we have discussed it. Um, but first I see David's David's hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Is he? Yeah. He should be able to unmute, I think. I think he went out and came back in. Maybe he stepped away. Yeah. OK, Danielle, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, do you know our main folder on our Google Drive? I'll send it to you.
[Milva McDonald]: Sure. Okay, Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, the only other thing that we said we would start with like a general committee introductions and just general information about the committee. And then we will do the presentation, which will be improved based on the suggestions tonight. And then we will have open discussion and we'll also have the survey QR code and we'll have hard copy surveys in all the five languages that we have the survey translated into, as well as the glossaries, et cetera. And, you know, we'll probably bring the Jeopardy game just for fun. Um, so, you know, that's, that's what we plan. I don't know if anybody, um, how many people are going to be, are, are not going to be able to come on October 19th. Okay. Okay. Okay. So that'd be great. I mean, last time we had a pretty good showing of the committee and, um, uh, so that's, that's great.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, go ahead, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, yeah, I don't know. What do people think about that? Gene, let's see. Ron, you have your hand. I don't know who's responding to Anthony and who has a separate comment, so. I had a separate question. Ron was, I think, wanting to respond to Anthony, so let's do that, and then we'll hear Gene.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury, did you have a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be great if you want to share that. as we, we're very close, we're less than two weeks, well, two weeks away. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, and I need to, yeah, we need to contact Kevin Harrington. Yeah, we need to contact him. Yeah, there's a lot that has to be done pretty much right away. And do you want to contact Kevin?
[Milva McDonald]: That would be great, Gina. Thank you. I can contact Kevin Melva. Thank you, Eunice. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: The question was, should we send them invitations?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I want to be mindful because we have three minutes left. So, Francis.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks. Okay, the only other items on here were, we talked about survey outreach on election day, that maybe we could hold signs with the QR code at polling locations, but I don't know if we have the bandwidth for that. So that is, if anybody is interested in that, contact me and we'll see if we can make it happen. But our survey is open until December 1st. and we have about 400 responses right now. Okay, any other comments on these last items from the committee? Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak? I think everybody left. I don't know, maybe not. Yeah, I don't think there's anybody there. Okay. I mentioned- Yeah, our next meeting is November 2nd, but I will see most of you in a couple of weeks at City Hall. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
[Milva McDonald]: Good night. Wait, did somebody make the motion? Make a motion to adjourn?
[Milva McDonald]: Everybody's in favor.
[Milva McDonald]: He needed the link. We have a quorum, so we can do the minutes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, do you have it handy?
[Milva McDonald]: That's good.
[Milva McDonald]: I think I added that one in there.
[Milva McDonald]: Because when you, if in a ward system, you would only be voting for four people as opposed to seven right now, seven.
[Milva McDonald]: And I actually, somebody, you know, in our comment stream in from, in our, we've been trying to get public comment and this was actually one of the comments by a member of the public. That's why, because it was, it's not, it's, it didn't come from me.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: you don't vote for as many people. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: I think you would too. I think you would too. You do have a primary unless there's more than two.
[Milva McDonald]: Some primary- Last year there was a primary for mayor and there wasn't a primary for city council two years ago, I mean.
[Milva McDonald]: That's what I think, but I don't know for sure. I think we need to find that out. Is it pertinent to our- It's more logistics.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I was just thinking of one of the interviews we did with the department head who actually specifically said that this person thought that ward representation would make City Hall, it would make their voters' communication with City Hall easier because their ward representative would be able to deal go to know how to move through City Hall in a more effective way.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's the right, it is kind of accessibility. Yeah. Cause the, I mean, it, it improves it. It makes your Councilor is more accessible to you and responsive responsiveness. I mean,
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it's almost like, you know, the relationship can be more direct.
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: A point of contact within their ward.
[Milva McDonald]: I think Jean had the beginning changed, right? Residents would have a point of contact within their ward. That's pretty succinct, though. If we just said residents would have a point of contact within their ward?
[Milva McDonald]: I would put could, because we don't, because that's.
[Milva McDonald]: I know, but we don't know for sure that that would happen, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, we could maybe play with that a little bit later. Yeah. It's hard to like edit within a group.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I just, I mean, what if we just said eliminates duplication of work? Yeah, I don't know. I think just in the idea of making them as succinct as possible.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, it's self-explanatory, right?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Yeah, exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, I do think, I just don't know if generally thought makes it, I mean, it's true that- You want to just say- You could be able- I mean, there's research that has shown that that's true. Generally.
[Milva McDonald]: How about often?
[Milva McDonald]: That's good. Often increases.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So are we taking out generally?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: That's good. I think that's good.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think we could take out the more subcommittee, just leave it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I know. But I think we could, then that could be one of the things that we could talk about when we talk about it. And I would also just put could, just because I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe we just say still exists in a hybrid system because that's what we're talking about. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that a, is that a redundant from one? What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: The only reason I would maybe stay away from represented is because when we talk a lot about representation in this issue and- People don't like that. No, we're talking about representation in a particular way. And even though the word can be used in this way, I'm not very articulate tonight. We're talking about something different.
[Milva McDonald]: But the neighborhoods in the ward, because the wards have... Say the needs of neighborhoods in the wards. In each ward.
[Milva McDonald]: In a ward, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Certainly, but to Gene's question was, is it a pro? Should it be listed as a pro?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, you would assume that it works or it would have been changed. That's a good point.
[Milva McDonald]: I would say that the hybrid ward representation is the preferred.
[Milva McDonald]: It is more than the most common. I mean, it's almost every other city.
[Milva McDonald]: And Cambridge is one of the other cities that doesn't have Ward, but you can't really count them because they have ranked choice voting. So there's like maybe three, I mean, there's very few.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, David, Daveed, and Phyllis did.
[Milva McDonald]: They haven't submitted a report, but I asked them to send the views on word representation, and I summarized them last week.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: We don't have that information. The demographics aren't broken down question by question. That would be interesting. Just for the whole survey. Right now, it's a pretty large majority that thinks that the council should switch toward representation. And most of them think the hybrids, yeah. It's really large, actually.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we can talk about that. I mean, I think that we can keep track of the number of responses and kind of the general responses. I don't know. I think maybe we should just wait and discuss it when it's finished. Because we don't know what's going to happen with the survey in the next month or two.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree, but I think we have it in there twice, so.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, their choices are, they have fewer choices.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Voting for fewer candidates reduced, you know, means less, I don't know. Right, but is it basically what we say in the next one?
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's what it's, I think that's what the beef is, right? That's the point that that's why. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I think so. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And basically when it comes down to it is that voters can't choose all their city councilor.
[Milva McDonald]: That's actually, I like that. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Voters can't choose who all the, you know, who all the city councilors are.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's just sort of what we would elaborate on about that. But we could just say something like, it's hard to read that blue. Voters cannot vote for or against, they can't vote for or against Councilors outside their ward.
[Milva McDonald]: Or against. I guess that's right.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, present both sides. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's pretty well expressed.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I thought they were pretty even. They're pretty even.
[Milva McDonald]: And depending on what's in the wards, some, you know, it could be like, if you have Medford Square in your ward, you know, you're gonna maybe be busier. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Ward differences. Ward size differences? I would just say differences. It might not even be size, right?
[Milva McDonald]: It could be like what's in your ward or-
[Milva McDonald]: No, I think that's good.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't agree that this is, that this should be on here.
[Milva McDonald]: The way you want it, you know, and yeah, any any elected office.
[Milva McDonald]: So it's not a con specifically of ward representation.
[Milva McDonald]: So this is like the person knows that you didn't vote for them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I just all I'm saying is, I think it applies to any elected office.
[Milva McDonald]: You're saying is because it's this small neighborhood thing, you're getting into hyperlocal intensifies, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I get it, but.
[Milva McDonald]: It just makes little sense to me, that's all.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, if we're talking about this, it's not just if you don't vote for them, it's if they don't like you.
[Milva McDonald]: For some reason, right? Right. It's like, your house is ruining the neighborhood because you don't mow your lawn enough or something.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That's fine. If you guys want to leave it, it's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: People know who's holding signs.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think so.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, I don't, I don't know. I don't get that one. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I also don't see how it, because we have an at-large system now, and you know, a lot of people would say that the more qualified candidates didn't get in last time.
[Milva McDonald]: If we say- I feel like this is a problem for the candidates, not the- Well, I mean, the candidates could be a con.
[Milva McDonald]: Candidate options, shouldn't it be candidate, not candidates? Because we're not talking about their, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, so we want to say we're talking about the options of candidates as opposed to candidate options for the voters?
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like just say candidate.
[Milva McDonald]: No, candidate options. That's what we just talked about, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Just candidate options, meaning the options of candidates.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, the candidate options are going to be limited in terms of Everything we just said, I guess. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: And that is the reason why you would- I mean, we said it would make it easier for them to run for office. Now we're even saying it's limiting their options.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: The possessive, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah possessive, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I made this all very confusing.
[Milva McDonald]: However, there's other pros that we outlined. That's not the only reason for ward representation. So like, to me, if you're going to have that one there, you should just say the purpose of the city council should be to represent the whole city and end it there.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I would just take out, divide the city. I don't understand, why into its different parts?
[Milva McDonald]: I would say, you know, just take out into its different parts.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that?
[Milva McDonald]: You don't think representation can divide the city says that?
[Milva McDonald]: Can't, either one.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, I just want to say. I think Jean's understanding is right. The same way that we, the committee decided that we would keep the mayor unless the public, unless we had some reason to change course, which has not happened yet. I also think that, you know, I do think it's okay to do our presentation next week before the whole committee and just give them the information. And then, cause the committee is going to vote. hopefully next week. So we don't have to make this vote and we don't have to go to the whole committee and say, well, we voted and this is what we think. We could just make our presentation and then let the committee discuss it and vote with the whole committee.
[Milva McDonald]: And maybe that is the way to go.
[Milva McDonald]: What do you guys think? I mean, if this is, these are, you know, we put together these pros and cons, give them the data about, you know, the representation of the historical representation of wards for the past 20 years that we collected. just, you know, all the stuff that we collected, just tell them. And then, and it will open a discussion, and then there will be a discussion, and then at the end of that discussion, we'll have a vote.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, we haven't made any rules for this subcommittee.
[Milva McDonald]: I still think we're fine going and just giving our presentation, having a whole committee discussion, and then having the committee vote.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we can say, um, our thoughts during the presentation, we can say, you know, but I, but, um, I don't know. I don't think it's a necessity.
[Milva McDonald]: But if that's not- I'm okay with that, too. And if we did do that, we already know what it is because we've already taken, you know- Yeah, I don't think anybody's changed their mind.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I do know there was at least one committee member who talked about wanting to be, understand the differences between a hybrid system and what would the benefit of that be over just enlarging that large city council?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, you know, and so we haven't talked about that option really very much. What if we just made the at-large council larger?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I know that the person who, or the committee member who was wondering about that was very concerned with diversity. And I think that it's pretty clear that the research and the data is clear that ward representation increases, you know, increases diversity.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm okay with that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, the committee's gonna vote, so, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: And then we're gonna vote again with the committee, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Depending on what If the word demographics come through, then there may be something else to say, but.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And again, we did discuss them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think that's important to try to make our, be as succinct as possible because the committee's gonna wanna.
[Milva McDonald]: We'll just look at it, not discuss it.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's... And then we'll develop the PowerPoint.
[Milva McDonald]: So we have one minute. Sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, can you hear me?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a question we'll have to look into.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we don't, we don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know that our committee does either.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, are you going to take minutes for this meeting?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think Gene originated it, but that's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, wait a minute. Did she get muted? Yeah, I think she did. OK. Sorry, Jean. Wait a minute. Did that not work?
[Milva McDonald]: No, you can, it's just, yeah, that was my solution to being able to, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Honestly, that, I mean, I've been, I've had a lot going on recently, so I haven't really, and Danielle and I are going to work on that planning and we haven't yet.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but knowing that this could be part of that evening will help us with the planning.
[Milva McDonald]: So should I stop sharing at this point?
[Milva McDonald]: So- The other piece that I don't understand is that McCollin Center told us that the state sets the wards.
[Milva McDonald]: And you just made me think of something. Maybe the information that Danielle is using is related to state rep.
[Milva McDonald]: This is great. Is there a way to break down that 73% into
[Milva McDonald]: Well, especially if I recall correctly, the majority of the city councilors in the last 20 years have come from wards two and three.
[Milva McDonald]: The thing that I thought would be, you know, would be really interesting is to look at the demographics in relationship to the data that Eunice had collected. And like I said, just looking at this now, we see that, you know, most of the Councilors, if I'm remembering correctly, we can check it in a minute, come from wards two and three, which are the most white wards, but we don't really know. We can't really. We can't rely on this.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think one and four, we could use both of those, right? Did we see three, Jean? It looks like a map.
[Milva McDonald]: If we had nine wards, you mean?
[Milva McDonald]: But they can't be. That's part of the law.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And if we do have eight wards, which I'm convinced we do. I would like to get the numbers for that because it's relevant to what I looked at with the question of the Lowell case. The allegation was that the Voting Rights Act was being violated And if somehow we had a wards we and we had a majority minority district, then that could apply to Medford as well right now it doesn't look like we do, but we don't really know how. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I agree with you. Yeah. But it's just somewhat relevant to what I, you know, evaluating the significance of the Lowell case in relationship.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I, you mean. Yeah, we'll have to look at other charters and see, like, I don't know if there's provisions for if the wards, if the number of wards increase or decrease. I know that Lowell's ward, Lowell used to have 11 wards and they now have eight. So they decreased significantly.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, yeah, when we get to the section of the charter where we decide, you know, if We want to put in a regular charter review and how often that should be. That would be, you know, then we'll see what happens, but I think it's a good question for the call and center when the state does the, you know, evaluation if the ward. make up changes, how does the, how do cities account for that in the chart?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I. Nice to resolve that.
[Milva McDonald]: It's really hard because when you look for a map on the internet, there's just many different maps. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so. They have to, because they're campaigning.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree with you. Yeah. And the best one, there is one floating around that's all those different colors. I think it was like posted on Reddit or something. But we just don't know how recent it is. Right. And I would think that the city maybe would have it on their website or we could get it from I mean, it does actions, right? Yeah, it seems like it should be on the Oh, here's more. Seems like it.
[Milva McDonald]: Can I share, please?
[Milva McDonald]: You should be able to.
[Milva McDonald]: So when you click share screen, you'll see a bunch of little screens and then you pick one.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that will help. Let me try that.
[Milva McDonald]: Just wave your hand at me if you want to unmute because it's set where people can unmute themselves for security reasons.
[Milva McDonald]: So one thing I agree with you, Ron, but I just wanted to make a suggestion for the I think the the information that you talked about for about over X number of elections in 2001. I was thinking maybe a graph, because the pie chart, there's actually two wards that are absolutely zero. So they're not even going to have a piece of pie, you know what I mean? So I almost think visually a graph would look better, because you could see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think one of the things that we've talked about is that the possibility of board representation increasing voter engagement. So if we look historically and we see that voter turnout is consistently higher in the wards that actually have people from their wards elected, then maybe, maybe that's what I, that's to me, that's what we would look at. We would look at that for that reason.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Maury wanted to say something.
[Milva McDonald]: So the other thing I think is important about the voter turnout, and to me, a graph showing each ward and what the voter turnout is, not the literal number, but say the percentage. Like we have a much higher percentage of voters coming from this ward and this ward. Another reason that that's significant is that every candidate is looking at this data that we are looking at. So they're covering the whole city, but when they're campaigning, they're going to focus their energies where the voters are. And that means that if there's a ward that doesn't have a big turnout, for whatever reason, they're not going to get as much attention from the at-large candidates during campaigning. And that could carry over.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, am I doing that presentation?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, wards one and four, we know, have had no representative. Yeah. And even other wards have only had one.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I don't think we need to use any names. I think we just need the graphs.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we have this data. Anybody on the committee can say, we can request it. You know what I mean?
[Milva McDonald]: One picture. Was the average of the voter turnout over the period that we, we looked from 2001 to now and saw where the, actual elected representatives, what wards the elected city councilors have come from, and then look at the average of the turnout over that time. I don't see what, I don't know, I guess what I'm trying to say is what's the goal of looking at isolated years and isolated candidates in terms of this discussion? Because what we need to decide is, Is ward representation the right move for the city in terms of putting, you know, recommending that for the chart? So that's the only, we just need to take all this data and crystallize it into whatever point we need to take from it to lead us in the right direction for that decision, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, one thing I know more he wants to speak so I just I don't want to die does like I said it's a lot of background music.
[Milva McDonald]: One thing I'm wondering that might be a question, we're going to have a graph showing since 2001, what war, you know, what words have been represented in terms of actual elected city councilors. And we may get the question, well, what about, um, how, you know, how, how many candidates have come from ward one? You know, were there any candidates from ward one? Maybe that's why there's no city councilors from ward one. So maybe what we should do is also, um, have a graph showing this is how many candidates over the past 20, since 2001 have come from Ward 1, this is how many candidates have come from Ward 2. Because somebody could say, well, how do we know that even anybody ran from those wards?
[Milva McDonald]: And we can just say that this breakdown of candidates and where they're from in terms of the wards applies to the general election. Right, yeah, it doesn't work.
[Milva McDonald]: I think those are really... I think that's right. I think that's the most important.
[Milva McDonald]: When you say percentages, Ron, what do you mean?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Voter turnout.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. the percentages so that we can see if where the voter turnout is the heaviest.
[Milva McDonald]: And, and I think the main, you know, the main point about the voter turnout is that, you know, one of the concerns is that the fact that voter turnout that there's this discrepancy in voter turnout, and that we see that most of the elected officials come from the wards with the high turnout, There's a concern that other wards are not getting the same level of attention, certainly during campaign season, and potentially, you know, because both of the voters are coming from particular wards.
[Milva McDonald]: So yeah, the challenge always has been with this is getting it distilled into the visual points that we are most important.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't want to call it a case study because that sounds like I did like high levels of research. I mean, I did look into it and I found information out, but case study sounds like you're going to write a book or something.
[Milva McDonald]: All right. And it would be very short. I mean, all I have to say is what happened. Why, you know, what were the things that caused the move to get to ward representation? And like I said, if genes demographic information changes, and we find out that there's a majority minority ward, then it's much more relevant. But even without that, I think the main point is that It's not whether Medford has a violation of the Voting Rights Act. It's that- Correct. The point is that they moved toward representation because ward representation is more representative and it increases diversity on city councils.
[Milva McDonald]: That's pretty much accepted.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so me, I'm going to be like, you know, two minutes.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't think, I think we need to wait. I think the survey, I think the only point to make about the survey is that as of now, the survey shows that a strong majority is in favor of ward representation. And we've also gotten, you know, very significant feedback at our public events. And we've had, we don't know what the final, I mean, I, You know, I doubt it would, it will change so drastically as to go in the other direction, but the survey is open until December 1st, so. But I do think we can say that right now we have 365 respondents, something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: I sent the interview, you know, I pulled the relevant pieces of the interviews out because I thought it would be interesting for us in our discussion.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it is mixed. You're right. It's not all.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, you know, I think when we look at the interviews, you know, there was, I mean, most of the ward representatives, I mean, all our interviews aren't in there because we didn't talk to school committee members about ward representation on city council.
[Milva McDonald]: but of the people that we talked to, the city councilors and a couple of department heads and people who work in the city. Let's see, I think we, what did we have? Four city councilors so far? No, five. We've talked to five. Rick, Justin, Zach, Nicole. We haven't talked to Councilor Scarpelli and Councilor Knight.
[Milva McDonald]: I think you're right. Maybe for the public, presentation that we're talking about for the committee? I don't know that.
[Milva McDonald]: Did they, um, I don't know that we have actual numbers across the state. We do have that Excel spreadsheet that sort of includes 59 cities. I mean, there's also a lot of towns that might have mayors and that might. So we have the 59 cities. I'll ask them if we can get those, because that actually, I think that is significant. I know that Medford is one of the very few cities that doesn't have ward representation.
[Milva McDonald]: You can work on it. And you can read it. I also, I know David and Phyllis interviewed Patricia Brady-Doherty, and there are some other that I, so I just got those, so I'll put those into the document.
[Milva McDonald]: So, and we should and we could maybe try to put these into more validity, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, I mean, I can just, I just read, I can just add, I don't, well, let's see.
[Milva McDonald]: I can, I'll add some of the things from that.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. If only. So I think the concerns that have been, I think that we're going to see in that interview report include an increase in politicization. I don't know exactly what ward bosses are, but a concern about, and maybe that's that concern about a ward councilor having sort of undue influence over what happens in their ward. And one ward representative would mean fewer city council members would be interested in fixing hyper-local problems.
[Milva McDonald]: yeah and and that may not be the like i think in maybe the other way we've heard that concern expressed is that you know maybe other Councilors might just defer to the ward Councilor right yeah and that's the article you sent the journal article right that happens or
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: We can do that, but I guess my question is, how does this piece of this history inform our decision-making process now?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, I know, I'm just saying, I'm not, you know, I love this stuff and I find it fascinating and I wanna know about it, but I don't know how much it needs to, like, I don't know what's the argument.
[Milva McDonald]: There's one thing I can tell you is, you know, in 1986, there was not a charter review. It was just a switch from plan E to plan A, straight switch from plan E to plan A with one exception, keeping the city council at seven members. In 1978, when there was a charter review and Bob Penta was on that elected charter review commission, The proposed charter did have ward representation in it, but the public voted it down. Failed. Right. And the general consensus about why it failed is that it kept to the city manager. Right. So we can talk to Bob Penta and he can talk to us about 1986 and the switch to plan A, but he was also on the commission that said, yes, let's switch to ward representation. But the main driver at that point in history, as I understand it, was the executive branch. And they failed with the charter review and the charter commission, so they went this other route.
[Milva McDonald]: So, but I mean, like I said, I'm fascinated by it. I love looking at it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So it's good to have the history of the information, but I don't know if we're using it to make an argument about why or why not to switch toward representation.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, and we're definitely going to interview Bob Penton.
[Milva McDonald]: I was just going to say, I think that the what happens if someone doesn't run an award. Do you think that's a question that we save in case it gets asked?
[Milva McDonald]: And then I also just want to say, I think, you know, the pros and cons are important. I think that Our sort of charge or our job as a subcommittee was to go come back to the committee of the whole with recommendations. Yes. So I feel like we should think about, we should, you know, think about that and see where we're at again.
[Milva McDonald]: And that part of the pros and cons is kind of like, well, we weighed them, but we still, you know, we still felt that, whichever decision we made was, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, absolutely. And the whole committee has to vote also. And they need the pros and cons in order to do that. And they may have lots of questions. You know, after we do our brief presentation, they may have lots of questions. And we'll have, hopefully, the information to answer them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And we're just making a recommendation. I mean, you know, and then on October 5, the whole committee will make a decision. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, and before, so I'm gonna, I'll look at the pros and cons since you thought I would do that anyway. So I'll look at that for sure. Um, should we, before we open it up, should we just do another straw poll just to see where, whether any of, you know, we're collecting new information all the time. So, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm still in favor of hybrid ward representation, because I feel that it's just going to give greater representation to people in the city. And it will, you know, basically for all the pros, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Laurie. That was so eloquent.
[Milva McDonald]: I think he should be able to unmute.
[Milva McDonald]: Right now, as of today, we're at about 366. Okay. I was just curious. Yeah, we're hoping to get significantly more than that.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, everybody.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome, everyone, to the September meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. I know that we met the new members last month, but I wanted to just, this is, I think, Aubrey's first official meeting, so I just wanted to acknowledge that and say hi, and we're excited to have you. And we also have our alternate here, David Zabner, who's gonna participate in all the work of the committee as a non-voting member, and then if, If anybody has to step down for any reason, he will be well-prepared to step in. So thank you so much for that interest and for being here to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, you want to go around to do introductions? Is that what you're saying?
[Milva McDonald]: Would you like Aubrey and David? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, go ahead, guys. Aubrey, you want to go first?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. David, can we hear from you?
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Welcome. Okay, so our first order of business is to review and accept the meetings from the August 3rd, I mean the minutes from the August 3rd meeting. Did anyone have a chance to look at them? Yes. Move approval.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. Okay, so that's done. Um, the next thing I wanted to do was, um, I sent around the updated work plan and I want, and I just wanted to check in and, um, see if everybody had a chance to look at it and it's revised quite a bit. And I would like this target date to actually be the one that we, that we consider, um, a work plan that we're gonna aspire to. I know the last work plan was very aspirational. I feel like this one is more realistic. So what are people's thoughts about it?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know how people feel about that. I know what my thoughts are, but what are people's thoughts about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. My feeling was that we would keep doing the outreach that we have been doing since we started meeting in the form of the survey, the focus groups, the public meetings, and then that we would wrap those up and sort of turn towards focusing in on the decision-making and the drafting starting in January or February. So I think we should have maybe at least one more in January, and then just focus in on, it doesn't mean that we won't take any public feedback after that. It just means that our focus would shift to taking all the data that we have collected and applying it to decisions and drafting. Because what I've heard from the call-in center is that the drafting stage takes about eight to 10 months. If we start that in January or February and October is our target date for our presentation to the city officials, that gives us about that much time.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I mean, based on the work plan, we would have 10, 10 or no nine subcommittees. So we already have one. And I think that this subcommittee we have currently for a city council that's focusing on researching ward representation can morph into the legislative branch subcommittee. And that doesn't mean that other people can't join it. If there's anybody interested in that, they can join that subcommittee. In terms of what Eunice brought up about the public meetings, do we feel like October and January is, I mean, we could conceivably plan another public meeting like later in the spring, just to like let people know kind of where, what our status is and share information. But in terms of the information gathering from the public, October and January, that would give us three full public meetings before we start focusing in on the subcommittees and the drafting. Does that sound?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we need to keep talking about that. For sure, but thank you. David, you had a comment.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. And that we sort of already have a start with the city council subcommittee. Tonight, we're going to talk about forming the school committee subcommittee. So I think what we will try to form these, I mean, based on the work plan, we're going to try to form the subcommittees over the next, you know, in the fall over the next few months. So after tonight, we'll have two formed and we already have the city council subcommittee is already getting some good work done and the school committee one will start and, um, I think we're going to talk about the preamble tonight to determine whether we want a preamble, whether we even want, that is an optional section of the charter. So hopefully we're going to have these subcommittees assigned and working over the next few months. Does that sound right to everybody or does that sound doable?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, based on the work plan, basically what I was proposing is creating subcommittees based on the different sections or articles of the charter that we're going to create. So one subcommittee is preamble and article one. So the preamble we're going to discuss tonight, whether we're going to choose to create a preamble, Um, and article one is just basic definitions stuff. It's, it's not, you know, uh, it has to be done, but I would say, depending on what we decide about the preamble that that subcommittee could be formed later or sooner. Cause if we decide we want to preamble, we might want to form that one sooner. Then we have legislative branch, which is basically the city council subcommittee executive branch will focus on. Mayor, and we already did make one tentative decision about Mayor City Manager that we would stick with Mayor barring any response from the public that shows us that they would like to switch. And so far, we're gonna hear about the survey later, but so far the survey doesn't show that. So that subcommittee, there's still a lot to look at with the executive branch regardless. Then we have school committee as a subcommittee. for that section of the charter. And then the other sections of the charter are things that we haven't talked so much about, but they're really important parts of the charter. There's the administrative organization, which is Article 5. Financial procedures, which is Article 6. And I think that that's one that's going to be important to talk about, important to people. Elections, Article 7. Citizen participation mechanisms is Article 8. And then articles nine and 10 would be together in one subcommittee, and that's just general provisions and transition provisions. So that was my vision, was that we would have subcommittees based on the different articles of the charter. And if anybody thinks there's a better way to organize it, I'm happy to hear it. Right now, I know Eunice has had her hand raised.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So what I would think I, what I, I mean, what I hear, um, when you're speaking is, If you could maybe, or Ron, whoever is noticing these things and has these ideas, if we can create a running list, you just mentioned two, we can research where they would go in the charter. Also, we can run them by the call-in center to determine whether I'm pretty sure that I've seen charters that create parameters around the mayor meeting with the city council, you know, requirements, things like that. But I think the first thing we could do is we could find out if these are things that would actually be in the purview of the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I have the list that you've given and I will contact the call-in center about all those things and find out where they might fall in the charter if they're in the purview. So I want to hear what you have to say, Anthony, but Phyllis has had her hand up for a little while. So let's hear from Phyllis and then Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's a good.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you for this. Yeah. Anthony, did you? Oh, and yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Anthony. David.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's a good point. And I think that that's a good suggestion, actually. And especially since we've done, we've already sort of pretty much decided on the executive branch in terms of mayor versus city manager. So thank you for that, David.
[Milva McDonald]: So the subcommittee that's currently meeting is focused on ward representation because the committee hasn't made a decision about that at this point. So right now the plan is for that subcommittee to present to the whole committee at the October meeting And then we will deliberate on that and have a discussion and perhaps a decision based on our, I mean, our survey is open until December 1st, but so we can maybe have a tentative decision or we can at least know a direction. And then after that, perhaps Ron's suggestion of combining legislative branch and executive branch into a subcommittee makes sense because then the balance of power issues, I think that you're referring to. would be looked at also by that subcommittee. And of course, all the subcommittee work comes before the whole committee. No decisions will be made without the whole committee. The value of the subcommittee is, you know, there's so much information and data that the smaller groups can collect and then bring back to the larger committee. And then once decisions are made, then the subcommittees will also work on the drafting of the language. And then that would also be brought back to the larger committee. Okay, that's great. I love these are great suggestions. And I think the combining makes sense. Thank you, Ron and David for that. Does everyone agree with that? Okay. So are there any members of the public that want to weigh in on the subject of the work plan and what we've just discussed here? Great, okay. So the next item, is there any committee members that need, do we need to say anything else?
[Milva McDonald]: So, like I said, I think next month after the City Council Ward Representation Subcommittee presents, we can then talk about morphing that committee and see if anybody else wants to join it, or if anybody says, I don't want to do that, I want to do something else, who's already on the committee. Tonight, we're going to form a school committee subcommittee, and maybe, like I said, we're going to see what happens with preamble, and then I think next month we'll, well, I think that will actually cover sort of the main things. But we could, you know, we could possibly jump ahead to the, I know that financial procedures is important to a lot of people. So we could form that one maybe next month or the month after. But I think by the end of the year, we'll maybe have about half of them form. And then maybe starting January, February, we'll have the rest formed. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Well, I think the first thing that the, I mean, the subcommittee would have to maybe figure out how they would get good data and information. to help the rest of the committee make the kinds of decisions that we have to make in that section. We have that particular section, since there was a charter amendment on the budget proposed by the city council, I think that subcommittee will probably have to look into that and look into some of the issues surrounding that and whether there are recommendations related to that that we want to make. So yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of research involved and maybe a subcommittee will find just like with, with the ward representation subcommittee, we are, you know, we're finding different people to check in with that know more about this stuff than we do in terms of the demographics that we need to discover to help, um, I don't know. I don't know how to create recommendations or present to the committee so that, that, you know, that that information there. So I think that that will be part of the job of the subcommittee. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the next item is. Interview reports and status. And by the way, all the people who have been interviewed in the main folder for the committee, there are interview reports from all the people that have been interviewed and for the committee to look through and read. I was charged with contacting several former city officials and I was unsuccessful in getting contact information for many. But I did reach Patricia Brady Doherty, and she's available September 12th to be interviewed. Does anybody want to interview Patricia Brady Doherty on September 12th? And no time has been set yet. That will have to be worked out with her.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, and it doesn't have to be if we don't have anybody available on September 12th. I guess the first question should be, Does anybody want to volunteer to do that interview? David, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, we're talking about the interviews and Patricia Brady Doherty is a former city official who has agreed to be interviewed and she's available September 12th. So we're looking to see if anybody's available too. Okay, so David and Phyllis. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so and phone calls. Okay, well, that's good to know.
[Milva McDonald]: So I'm going to write back to Patricia and Cece, Phyllis, and David, and you guys can set that up. Great. The other person they contacted, and there's not a specific date that's been mentioned, but Paul Camuso is available and is happy to be interviewed. Anybody want to volunteer to do that interview?
[Milva McDonald]: Was that you, Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Anybody want to join, Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I will write to Paul and Cece, Anthony and Aubrey, and you guys can set that up. Great. So now in terms of, I've already heard, we've already started to hear about the superintendents. Yeah, Phyllis and somebody else was gonna try to contact her, Anthony. So you guys haven't had success yet.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I know it's hard. I've had the same issue. I've been trying to set up an interview with the CFO and I haven't been able to get involved.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it's possible. I mean, the elections manager has declined to be interviewed in person, but said she would answer. So she has now questions for me and Jean. So we're going to hopefully get answers, basically, in interview and write. So it's possible. That's one possibility. Or it's just, I mean, there's no requirement for these people to be interviewed by us. It's just we're asking them to, you know, take time and talk to us if they are willing or if they can, but it's not a requirement. So if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But it's good to keep trying. So thank you for doing that. Oh, I will. Yeah. Was that you, Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. I will send that to you. I would be happy to go. I'm just not in town right now.
[Milva McDonald]: It would be great if somebody could join. But I don't see Maury here tonight. Maury's pretty available. So you might email him tonight. He might be able to. Or when I send you the questionnaire, I'll CC Maury. So maybe he'll pop into it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, okay. Now, uh, the other, let's see, we we've interviewed several city Councilors, George Scarpelli. Somebody was trying to get in touch with George Scarpelli.
[Milva McDonald]: And have you had any success?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Um, and what about Adam Knight? Has anybody gotten in touch with Adam?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, And as far as school committee members, at least we're getting Paul, and we've interviewed Jenny Graham, Sharon Hayes, Paulette, and Maury, we're gonna do that. Neither of them are here right now. And Eunice, were you gonna contact Kathy Christ?
[Milva McDonald]: And Melanie McLaughlin, I have Paulette and Maury, and you are also going to do Mia. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. And then Paulette was going to contact Michael McGlynn and Stephanie Burke. I could not find contact information for Michael Marks. I think Maury is in conversation with Bob Penta. I would like to interview Michael Marks because I know that he was a big part of the talks to try to get charter review to happen when he was a city councilor. So I think it would be great to interview him.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's- You wanna put it in the chat? Yeah, let me see if I can find it first. Were you going to say something, Aubrey?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, OK. Thank you. I will fix that. OK. All right. So and of course, if there's anybody that, if you have any ideas for other people that we can interview. What about Bob Scarry? Yeah, he's on the list, but I couldn't, the only people that I successfully was able to contact was Patricia and Paul Camuso, but I tried to find contact info for the other people, but I couldn't. So if anybody can, please go for it.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Oh, I tried that one, Eunice. It didn't work. Um, hmm. So I might just, I might actually, I might try a different route other than email. Okay, so next is survey status and, oh David, do you want to speak first?
[Milva McDonald]: I talked with the mayor of Malden and the mayor of Malden's chief of staff, but we haven't actually officially set any of those up. But I think that that's, what do people think? Do we wanna start interviewing people from other municipalities too? I think we should finish our own house first.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think that's actually, I think that makes sense. So, and there might be a particular community that let's say if you're on the finance the subcommittee that's looking at the budget procedures and the finance procedures and there's a particular community that has something in place that we want to look at and find out about then that would be a really, I think, a good thing to do. Does that sound right? Does that sound okay to everybody, that we would handle the speaking with people from other communities in that way? That if there's a particular practice in place that we want to find out about, then we go out of our way to find that out. Like, for instance... Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. There's an issue in Lowell right now that's come up as part of our subcommittee that I'm interested in finding out about. So maybe I'll contact somebody in Lowell to ask them about that. David, does that sound, does that, okay, great. Okay, so survey, Danielle is doing the survey report and unfortunately she's not here yet. I think she's gonna be here very shortly. Um, so we could push that. Actually, let's push that ahead and switch it with focus groups because the problem with the focus groups report is that Jean is, uh, was unable to come tonight and she's spearheading that. But, um, what I do know is that we're still, we're still trying to organize, um, some assistance from the city in getting those going. And we're still planning to try to do them this fall. So, and as Jean mentioned, that people on the committee will volunteer for trainings to facilitate focus groups. The list of topics, right, or focus groups right now is, we had talked about older adults here. I have the list right here, so I'm just going to say what it is. All right, we have somebody has suggested candidates for office who were not elected. And there's a question of whether that should be a focus group or whether we could just interview them. Not sure about that. But youth is one, a potential focus group. Non-English speakers, older adults. people with disabilities, people who live in public and affordable housing, and I think the Collins Center had suggested business community. That's a lot of focus, that's probably as many focus groups as we can handle if we do all those. Is there a group that people think that we really need that has not mentioned? David.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that part of the issue with the group that's organizing the focus groups was to deter, you know, was how to, it wouldn't just be a bunch of non-English speakers. We might have more than one focus group of non-English speakers. And one could be what you mentioned. So there might be different ones, but yeah, that could certainly be one of them. So thank you for that. Okay, so hopefully, Jean will have more of a report on that next meeting, and we might actually be contacting people to start organizing trainings and such. Danielle, I'm trying to decide if we should just, I should just wait for, we should move on. I'll wait for Danielle because I would like her to do the survey report. So the school committee subcommittee. I know that Paulette Van der Kloot is interested in it. This particular subcommittee, I think what we need is we need a group that's gonna really like dig into discussions and data and research on the composition of the subcommittee. We will have survey results on how people feel about ward representation on the school committee, how people feel about the mayor being chair. So, and I know that's a big question, whether the mayor should be even on the subcommittee. So this subcommittee would be looking at all these questions and maybe reaching out to other communities, anybody that, you know, and finding information and that they can bring back to the full committee. Does anybody? Does anybody have interest in being part of this?
[Milva McDonald]: And OK, so Paulette, Phyllis, Aubrey, Eunice, Ron, and David. I just noticed that I maybe have pronounced your name wrong, and I apologize. So that's six.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, because that is a core, yeah. It might not be too many people, but if you don't, that's five. I mean, and when we form these subcommittees, they become their own entity. So that means that, you have to follow all the open meeting laws. It just means you have to post the agenda and the meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so you're welcome to come to all the meetings and- As is everybody. Yeah, of course, that's right. Um, so officially, yeah, that would be a subcommittee Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: I will look into that. I will research it. I had envisioned the alternate as basically a non-voting member, unless an opening happened on the committee, but the point you make, Eunice, if there's If there's an even number of people because there's absences, I will look into that.
[Milva McDonald]: Ah, OK. Yeah. I will look into it, though. Thank you. Um, okay. So I think this is really good. We, so this, so Paulette, Phyllis, Aubrey, Eunice, and Ron will be the official school committee subcommittee. Um, I mean, we, we, Ron is, we don't have a, we didn't like officially decide on the chair of the city council subcommittee, but Ron has been kind of the organizer. So, um, it would, somebody will have to volunteer to organize a meeting. etc. Anybody want to feel like they can be the leader of the school committee subcommittee?
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. Basically though, what I'm saying now is asking just for somebody who's gonna take the initiative to contact all the committee members, find a date, organize a meeting. And then that person can talk to Paulette and ask if she wants to chair the meeting, that's fine. But does somebody wanna, does one of the subcommittee members that volunteered want to be the organizer of finding a date and a time, and then that person will also have to, I mean, the first meeting's agenda will probably be very simple, but it still needs to be sent to the city. And I can give you access to the charter study Zoom, and you'll have to send the date and time and the Zoom link, unless you decide to meet in person. That will be part of the work. No, okay, how about, I was gonna say I would join the committee and do that, but that would make six and that's, I'll just do it and I'll probably come to the meeting anyway, but I'll be just a participant, I'll be there. I won't necessarily be a voter. It doesn't really matter. The subcommittees are gonna bring the issues back to the larger committee anyway. So I'll do that, okay. I will send out dates and organize this first subcommittee of the school. Okay. Um, David.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, that's a good question. We actually had a pretty specific task for the city council subcommittee. Um, and in terms of this subcommittee, um, I think it would, they can bring back recommendations or just information, but there won't be any decisions made without the whole subcommittee. I mean, without the whole committee. So, um, Francis. Oh, I think Francis had her hand up. Maybe she stepped away for a moment.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thank you for that, Francis, because I was a little unclear because my understanding was that once you form a subcommittee, then it's its own committee. And then, like, for instance, the school committee subcommittee, two of you can't meet because you wouldn't be a quorum, right? So because there's five of you and you need at least three to have a meeting. Is that right? Is that your understanding, Francis?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thank you. That makes sense. And that means for safety's sake, because we're all sort of not really serious experts on open meeting law. We shouldn't have any subcommittees more than five people.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I mean, no, it's fine. I think it's fine for you. I, I might even drop off the, you know, I might, I'm not going to be a member of the school committee subcommittee. If, if Paulette steps up to organize the meetings, then yeah. In fact, I might not even go to the meeting. I'm just going to organize it. But if I do, I will make the distinction that Francis.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. David and Eunice, you guys have your hands raised? David, you want to go and then Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you for that. Eunice, do you want to say what you need to say? And then we'll talk.
[Milva McDonald]: I will ask her before I send out anything to organize a meeting, I'll ask her first.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. But in terms of David's comments about deliverables, what do we want? Hi, Danielle, by the way. We're talking, we just formed a subcommittee to look into the school committee and be kind of, the subcommittee that looks into the options for the school committee and eventually drafts A section. Aha. Look, Paulette's here right now. This is awesome. Oh, well, there we go. That solves the problem. So, yeah, well, I'll wait till she gets on and then I'll restate what we're talking about right now. Paulette, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Great, Paula. So we've just formed a subcommittee to delve into the school committee and you're on it. So one question is, do you want to wrangle that subcommittee, send out an email, set up a first meeting and sort of be kind of a leader of that subcommittee?
[Milva McDonald]: an email after about the people who are on the subcommittee, and then you can just start organizing that, you can organize it, you can send out a meeting, a message tonight, and you can get that organized. The thing that will have to be done is the, when it's organized, the city will have to be notified at least 48 hours in advance, and- Oh boy, okay, that's tight, yep. Yeah, so we'll see, I think it is 48 hours, right? So, and- Yeah, what else do you think is hours? So that's an issue as well.
[Milva McDonald]: I can help you set up a Zoom meeting. And if all the members of the subcommittee want to meet in person, I just don't know. I think maybe there's a room at City Hall or something. I think because of it, it's a public meeting, it would be open to the public. You would have to have a location that might have to be at a city location. So if people wanted to, I think you could explore that.
[Milva McDonald]: No, they can be whenever people are available.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: But to David's point, and we did this with the city council subcommittee where we did actually create directives. And we asked, we had a timeframe for when we wanted those, that information presented to the committee. So we could do that because we're not necessarily at the point, although it's not out of the question that subcommittee would use a drafting as a means to achieve the directives, but we're not necessarily at the point where we're asking the subcommittee to do that. So let's just try to create the directives that we want for this subcommittee. Okay. So one thing I think that is the composition of subcommittee of the school committee. Right. Do people agree with that?
[Milva McDonald]: So. The everything is in the folder in terms of the interviews that have been done. So anybody that's any city officials that we've talked about that have mentioned school committee composition or the school committee at all, you can refer to that. We also have a spreadsheet in that folder of public comment from our events and things like that. And the committee will, the subcommittee will also have access to the survey. So those are materials that subcommittee can use in addition to whatever else. to investigate that. So what do we want specifically? We want the school committee subcommittee to investigate ideal composition of the school committee in terms of numbers, right? And the size of the school committee and the issue of ward representation or not. We agree that that those are things that we want. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: And you're talking about the mayor.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, the role of the mayor. Yeah, the role of the mayor in terms of chair, member or not at all. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Danielle, did you have your hand up? Sorry. That's okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, good. Okay, so right now we have the directives that we want the subcommittee to look at the ideal composition of the school committee in terms of size, ward representation, role of the mayor. What about term lengths and term limits? Oh, yes. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Was that you, Paulette? Were you gonna say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That's a good question, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess that's my question. No, I don't know. Well, I guess, what are the other issues that you're thinking about?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, I mean, as we, we also know that there are certain things that the charter can't, I mean. Yes, I get it. The role, the charter's role is limited, I think, with the school committee powers, but maybe that could be part of what this committee does is sort of look at what, what does, what is within the purview of the charter in relationship to the school committee other than composition and etc. Um, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I feel like it would be good right now that we're going to sort of decide on the deliverables and we're going to ask for a date for them to be delivered. That doesn't mean that that subcommittee won't continue on and look at and address other issues related to the school committee after it, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Daveed?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so right now I have the directives as The school committee subcommittee will research and come back with data and possibly recommendations on the composition of the school committee, meaning both the size, whether there would be ward representation, and if so, how that ward representation would be structured, role of the mayor on the school committee, term lengths and term limits, and Any, and whether there are, you know, what is the purview of the charter in relationship to the school committee? In other words, what other issues should a school committee subcommittee be researching? Is there anything else other than what these things that I've just outlined that the charter would cover? So do people have thoughts about a date that we want the committee to report back to the whole committee on these topics?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I do. And the subcommittees are designed to bring back sort of a report to the larger committee, which can include recommendations, but part of the recommendations would be sort of an explanation of the reason for those recommendations. And it could also, which would also mean that they would say, well, we looked at this, we looked at this, we looked at this, and these are the pros, you know, this is what we see as the pros and cons of this. I think that the subcommittee would be doing enough in-depth work that they could report back. They would come back with a report that would essentially include more than the option that they're just recommend. Does that make sense?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yes. Okay. Um, I guess if nobody has any thoughts about, uh, a date that we, that we want to ask the subcommittee to report back by.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, December's been thrown out. David, is that, what were you gonna say?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Um, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, so I think that, um, I think Phyllis's suggestion of December is a good suggestion. Um, I mean, we will, the subcommittees will present to the whole committee and we maybe will potentially make decisions, but we're mostly making tentative decisions. we're making open decisions so that if something comes up, like let's say in the last, I mean, the survey's closing December 1st, but let's say at the public meeting or we, something comes to our attention that says, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait, there's all these people that in the public that have this other idea, then we can then factor that in. So we're not really necessarily setting in stone, But if we get the presentation in December, it gives the entire committee sort of the benefit of hearing the wisdom that the subcommittee has gained from their discussions and research. Does that make sense? Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Not, I mean, you mean for the public meeting? We don't know because we haven't planned that yet. Okay, all right. Okay, so if I can just say one thing.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Aubrey.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Thank you. So I just wanted, you had a question in there and your question is for the subcommittee's role in
[Milva McDonald]: So theoretically by March, there will be sort of decisions made about, let's say what we're gonna propose as the composition, if we're recommending any changes to the composition, any changes to the role of the mayor or whatever, but actually there is no section in the charter right now that even there's no section for the school committee. So the role at that point would be, okay, committee knows what we want to recommend, and this subcommittee is going to draft the language. The Collins Center has had a lot of experience with helping committees draft the language, so that will be a big resource that we'll have. And obviously, we have the three Charters that the Collins Center provided us with, and any city's charter can be accessed. So we have models that we can look at, too. So I guess what I think is that we've already outlined and sort of discussed the directives for the subcommittee, and I think maybe we can ask for a report in December. It doesn't mean that the subcommittee's gonna have everything they need, you know, but they'll present the whole committee with a report. Does that make sense? We can present what we've accomplished to date.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Awesome. Okay, Danielle, it's all you, survey time.
[Milva McDonald]: I actually have the, do you want me to share the screen? Sure. The survey because I think I have it right here. Okay, and then I can scroll as you would like me to refresh in case like somebody filled it out in the last half hours. Okay. No, 288. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I just wanted to give everybody an idea.
[Milva McDonald]: It still gives us this information about how people feel about word representation.
[Milva McDonald]: So we need to sort of look at how to evaluate this ranking question more.
[Milva McDonald]: We also have a lot of comments that we'll have to, I think I'm going to, or somebody will need to take some time to take all the, well, we also have demographics. Do we wanna look at the demographics?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let's look at the demographics first, and then we'll look at the comments. And wait, before we do that, I see Daveed's hand up, and I can only, I can't see everybody's hands, because the screen is being shared, but Daveed, do you wanna speak?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. I mean, it was intended to just give us an idea of the ranking of issues. It was intended to just give us an idea of if there was some issue that was really overwhelmingly important to people that we wanted to make sure we prioritized it. And it doesn't look like there are any surprises.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: No, thank you. That's a good idea. Okay. So Danielle, do you want to talk about the demographics now?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks. So the young people, we're hearing less from young people, I would say. And also, what do we have for the 65 and up?
[Milva McDonald]: That's right. Okay, so this is, this I feel like we have to put this together if people really want to see how long have you lived in Medford. We also had a lot of comments about this question, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't see them here. But yeah, see, a lot of people were like, didn't like the question.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, they were welcome to say, prefer not to answer. Residential status, this is really interesting to me that, I mean, we're not reaching the renting population, but we're not reaching very many renters.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So that's something to consider maybe. I don't know how we might in a focus group or something, but I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if they looked at our survey results, but we know it because we're looking at our survey. In our survey, we're not reaching renters. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, one of the things I wanna talk about, and we don't have a lot of time left, and there's still stuff on the agenda, but I wanna talk about ideas for, we have this survey open until December 1st, to getting it to as many people as possible and getting more responses. The city has put it out in their newsletter and in robocalls, but if there's anything we can think about to do that, that would be great too. And here is the last demographics question, and that's pretty self-explanatory.
[Milva McDonald]: And that was one of the reasons we asked about the demographics, so we could figure out which groups we want to try to reach. And so at the end here is, oh, we also have a mailing list now, so that's awesome. Actually, I don't want to show this on.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, sorry. There's also many comments. And so I'm going to try to create, we have that Google spreadsheet of feedback comments. So I'm going to try to add those in there so everybody can see those as well. But I did want to talk about ideas for getting it out and getting even more responses and potentially trying to get some of the groups that we know we have not had represented in the survey response, as we discussed, maybe renters and the other groups. So does anybody have any thoughts or ideas about how we might make that happen?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, no, I agree. Thank you. David, and then Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we can maybe, I'm sure David can tell us, but I'm just getting a little worried about time right now. So I think those are great ideas, Eunice. The issue is that we have, the survey closes on December 1st. So that's the amount of time we have to push it out. I like the idea of what I was thinking of when we saw that we didn't really get many renters. I don't know if there's like a renters organization in Medford, but something, you know, just organizations, I think if we can just get the word out to different groups and organizations in the city. I know Frances was at the West Medford Community Center and she let me know that she had talked about the survey there. And so that's just what I think we need to try to make happen in the next couple of months. Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good idea. Does anybody want to ask Kit if she knows a good way to? I can do that. OK. Danielle's going to ask Kit if there's a way that we can send out the link to that population.
[Milva McDonald]: In terms, ask them if they would send it out, send out the link.
[Milva McDonald]: So we have an option here. We can try to assign some people to do outreach on this survey. We can all individually commit to sending it out to whatever channels we are a part of. I mean, I know everybody is busy. You know, adding more tasks on at this point might be hard. We are getting, you know, the city is putting it out through their channels. So it's not like, you know, it's not like it's not reaching anybody. What do people think about how much work we wanna do on trying to, you know, get this thing to- I have a suggestion.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we have to be a number of feet away, right, I think, legally.
[Milva McDonald]: We have a QR code. Um, yeah. So let's, um, let's put it on the agenda for the next meeting to talk about that. At the very least, we can make sure that we have signs with a QR code. Okay. Awesome. Um, okay. Um, you know, we don't technically have 10 more minutes and I apologize because I don't know, maybe it's because I'm out of town. I feel like I let this meeting get away and we haven't gotten to deliberating about should Medford's charter have a preamble and I don't want to give that short shrift. So I think I'm going to move that we table it until the next meeting. Okay. Does anybody want to second that motion?
[Milva McDonald]: All in favor? Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and then I know Francis wants to speak.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay, Francis.
[Milva McDonald]: Is anybody planning to go to Brazilian Flag Day? I am going to be in the car all day. So I know I'm not. Because that would be a great opportunity to redo. We have glossaries. We have translated materials. OK. So in terms of events, that's the next on the agenda. Ice Cream Social, does anybody, I mean, I thought it was very successful. We talked to a lot of people. That was when we sort of brought out the survey. The farmers market was also, you know, we had a table there. We talked to, I think, about 35 people. We made a little bump in the survey after each of these events. The only other event that we have on our schedule that people talked about doing was the Oktoberfest on September 30th. But in order to do these events, we need somebody to be at a table. So does anybody want to be at a table at Oktoberfest? We already crossed off the Mystic River celebration because we didn't have anybody. Okay, so Maury might, I know it's Maury's kind of, you know, he's in the, it's a Chamber of Commerce event, so maybe he'll be willing to do it, or we'll find somebody to do it, but as of now, maybe we won't have a table at Oktoberfest. We do have the October 19th City Hall events, though, and we do have to plan that. So we have one meeting left before that event, last time we had a subcommittee that sort of, cause we had, we planned, you know, we planned the whole presentation, et cetera. So we might need to do that again, Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Well, um, I don't know about the mystic river celebration. I don't know. I think, I mean, to do that one, we, we would have had to have paid for a table anyway, and I don't know. I will ask Laura Brereton about that. And we can ask Maury about Oktoberfest. And possibly the thing about the Brazilian flag day, somebody would have to provide the materials. They might be willing to put them out on a table, but somebody has to provide them.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Yeah. I mean, and people do have a, I mean, just having done this at Circle the Square and the farmers market and people definitely have a lot of questions when they see the materials. So that's a good point. Thank you, Frances. So in terms, we know we are having an event on October 19th at city hall. Does anybody want to, does anybody want to be on a subcommittee to plan that event? Danielle, okay. And this is a planning committee. So it's not, I don't, I think we can just have, have the committee meetings. We don't have to post agendas and whatnot because it's not, it's just planning. It's not, um, yeah, it's, it's, uh, I think that we, we, that whoever's on that subcommittee would be able to do that. So, um, Danielle, you, you and I will plan it. Okay. Well, we'll do is we'll get together and then we will, um, talk to everybody about it in October, but... Frances.
[Milva McDonald]: That's right. Yes. That's... Okay. Thank you. Linguistically, that's right. That's what we're doing. So, we will get together, and if anybody else is interested, just contact me. I think...
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks, Eunice. That's good suggestion. Okay, I think that's our agenda at this point. Our next meeting will be on October 5th.
[Milva McDonald]: So what I think, we do have the motion for guidance and the motion lists some particular topics, but it also says they're not limited to that. So I think if we are pursuing some of the data and the information on ward representation or anything related to that to present to the committee in a month or two, if there's some other topic that we that comes up that we think is relevant to it, then we include it. Hi, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. I really like that idea, Ron. And because one of the things that we're going to be doing in the coming months is moving into actually sort of drafting, because we want to, you know, look at the pieces of the charter and When we actually start drafting language, it doesn't necessarily mean we're making that decision, but it actually can open the door to help us discuss, you know, the real meat that we need to discuss. So maybe what we can do that's in line with what you're suggesting is look at our charter and maybe the other sample charters we've, you know, the other three communities we've been using and see the specifically the composition of city council section, because that's what we're talking about. And we can sort of, So maybe we can look at those and then we can sort of, you know, start from there. The other thing I just wanted to say is I think, you know, there was definitely some committee members who also specifically wanted us to explore, you know, the ramifications of hybrid ward representation and versus increasing, simply increasing the size of that large council.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, well, I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And that's what my sense was that that committee wants that data in order to make that decision. 100%. So part of that data, I think, was the demographics.
[Milva McDonald]: And I know that Jean has been working on that, and I assume she'll continue to. And I know that Henry Malorin just wrote to her, because I would see seed on it, and gave her some good guidance about who to contact at the census office to get that data. So we should have that soon.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry, John. We have that Excel spreadsheet that has 59, you know, cities, comparable communities. So we will be able to see. And you're right. It is less common for city councilors to have four years.
[Milva McDonald]: And even in our interviews with the sitting city councilors, You know, I didn't hear them jumping and saying we, we have to have four year terms. They all agreed that the mayor should be four years but they didn't necessarily feel the council should. But, you know, so, but I think the term lengths because it's in that section is something to talk about.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, well, definitely one of the things that they do is help communities with the drafting of the charter and so that I think, I think that that's our most. effective use of their time of our time with them right now is, is that. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Also, make it make sense to Morgan it's right next to Medford it's. I guess one of the things that maybe I, I'm sure you're going to talk to them about a lot of things but one of the things that I know that we had specific committee members specifically concerned about was the question of, you know, we've had this issue of lack of diversity on the council and One of the things that was asked at the meeting is, will ward representation, I mean, I don't really see a way that we can guarantee that any system would, because we can't control who decides to run and who doesn't. But what we can do maybe is look at the opportunity. Can we open the door to more opportunity? And so when you're talking to the,
[Milva McDonald]: I would also be interested in how long they've had ward representation and if there was any sort of difference.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, in, in, in addressing the diversity piece, I, I mean, I just wonder how we know that, that there are some community, well, there's at least one community Lowell. That got word representation through a court case that because they, you know, they want a case saying that they had certain. groups in the city that were being denied representation. So I'm wondering if, as part of our research, because that is a specific concern of certain committee members or of some committee members and maybe all committee members, that if we maybe research a little about Lowell and because the question of, well, will ward representation create that and say, well, we can at least say what a court of law said in Lowell about that issue. Because they granted ward representation for that reason. So maybe, I mean, I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll see if I can get any information about that.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Oh, sorry.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, that's a good, that's what we're going to find out when we get the demographics.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I just don't. I heard stirrings from more than one person that maybe Medford could get word representation that way. And I think some other communities thought well maybe a court case is the way to go. But we'll find out what the demographics when we can see the demographics.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Are there wards? I mean, we know historically that Ward 6 would have been an African, you know, would have been heavily African American, but that's changed over the last few decades.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, so, so we'll see what the demographics say now, if there's a particular ward that has, you know, a majority population of any particular Um, ethnicity or, or group that has been underrepresented it underrepresented. And if that would make a difference. I mean, I had another, I don't know if this makes sense, but I was thinking, um, you know, we're looking at, um, You know, Eunice has done this amazing research where we see, okay, these wards have had, you know, some representatives, these two boards, one and four have had none, you know, um, would it. make so what we're going to get the demographics but would it make sense to look at how those wards voted like for instance if ward four we know and ward one have had zero there's been not a single Councilor from those wards if we looked at how they voted and saw that not only has there been no Councilor from those wards that the people that they were voting for also didn't get elected would that would that show that you know would that give us really any basis for thinking that they're even less represented than, you know, it also it. We don't know how they would vote. If there were it how they would have voted if there were candidates that were actually from their wards so it so in some ways it's not maybe it's not valid information I just thought, well, is that information that would be interesting. I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe if you know Eunice has done all this, this ahead of you hang on one second, because I do know that like candidates for instance in Medford for council that are at large will look at how different wards voted for them. and that might inform how they campaign in the future. You know, like, okay, I know that I do really well in this ward, so I gotta make sure, you know, et cetera. So I think even though we don't have ward representation, it does, it still informs how the city council candidates, you know, conduct their campaigns and sort of look at their strategies for reelection.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly. Right. So I guess it does make a difference how each ward votes for each candidate. So maybe we should collect that information. I don't know. What do you guys think?
[Milva McDonald]: You guys keep talking. Are you burned out on this or do you want to, do you want to go one level deeper and get this data as well?
[Milva McDonald]: I think because they have the things in the charter that he would like. But I thought the center told us that district and award were interchangeable.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, okay, so I thought the state set them every 10 years. But if we like that option that was proposed, or that was thrown out as the more innovative option, right, of having combining two wards, And then having them be sort of like having two to three Councilors from this say wards one and two and then words three and four. And if, and that would get into a lot of complexity I mean I asked the call and center about that and they're not aware of anybody who does that but they maybe would check. One thing that it would present is a lot of complexity for us because of those laws. Because even if we group two wards together, all this contiguous and the number of populations, so we would have to determine whether we could even do it legally based on that. I guess I feel like unless we know that there's a strong interest in that on the part of the community and or the committee that that kind of figuring out isn't necessary, but I don't know. Do people feel like part of our work as a subcommittee is to look into that option.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. PB, David Ensign — He-Him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him, he-him,
[Milva McDonald]: She was she's going to look at the population demographics so like see ward, ward for, you know, x number of, you know, cocky you know white people, whatever, whatever the ethnic demographics I don't know. how else the census breaks down data. I don't know if, I don't know that, you know, I don't know what other categories, whatever categories the census has.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: This is, I think exactly because it, it's sort of like, just let's take the example of Nicole, but she's first. So one, one, these first three are all war. No, the first two are ward one. They're just different precincts. Is that right?
[Milva McDonald]: And that is actually, That is Ward 4.
[Milva McDonald]: This is extremely interesting.
[Milva McDonald]: Because that is one of the wards that doesn't have anybody. Right. Hasn't had anybody.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. Yeah, but if we Well, they would say could if there was a if they had word representation, they would have somebody because they both people would be voting on that person. But now, but I guess what's interesting to me is if we see that the turnout is much higher in the words that tend to have Councilors from their wards, then that's, I think that's interesting. That shows that they're more motivated to vote.
[Milva McDonald]: A lot of the students might not even be registered because a lot of college students stay registered in their home states.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And what it also shows me is that, I mean, it makes sense that candidates would be using those calculuses because they have to figure out how to win. But what it shows is that even though we don't have, even though they're at large, they're still focusing on particular areas of the city. And that means other areas are not going to be focused on. I mean, that's what it shows to me.
[Milva McDonald]: One thing, can I just add something to that? I know, Eunice, that I don't remember if you got a response, but I think for the presenting of the information, people just really like graphics and visuals.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Hopefully it's all going to be fine. It has to do with whether there's a question of her job and how it will come.
[Milva McDonald]: No, it's just, um, she works. We all do. She works for Dease. So, um, there's questions, you know, there's just the conflict reality or conflict of interest or something.
[Milva McDonald]: That's not like Emma, Emma Toombley in the communications office. Twombly, I don't know how you say her last name, but she, she made some graphics for the survey. She's, and she's, she's very responsive and quick. And I think she could probably, if you just told her what you wanted, I think she could do it pretty quickly.
[Milva McDonald]: And what I think would be awesome is whatever sort of the, like I said, if you make a pie chart then, or something to, Based on what the points are that we want to make. Um, and in relationship to, cause what we're looking at is, is basically council composition and, um, and so, you know, with, with the wards. I mean, I guess, you know, my feeling is, um, you know, this shows that even though the Councilors represent the entire city. they're inevitably going to be focusing on certain areas, at least in campaigning. Now, maybe when they serve, but what does human nature tell us?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and when we get the demographic information, we can sort of see how that information interacts with this.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, but you're the overseer of this.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, yeah, and what I'm also interested in, and what were the arguments that were presented to the court that they agreed with and said, yeah, this is not fair representation here.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we all have a good we definitely do, but I was just want we have we talked a lot about like addressing the diversity concerns. In terms of the other topics that were sort of in the motion, and I don't have in front of me and I should. But does anybody remember what else we were, we were specifically asked to research, and you share your screen.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And I'm actually, you know, I guess maybe what I think I should start with is I'll just ask the Collins Center about this, because it was raised by in one of the interviews by a sitting Councilor, and I had never heard of it before. And my assumption was that everybody's vote on the council would be would be an equal vote. Yeah, even if we had Ward representation, And I don't even know if it's done in very many other communities where they actually give the ward Councilor, you know, some kind of veto power.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't even know if it's that common. So why don't I just, it's a question I'll put to the call-in center. What is your sense of this? Are there communities that even do this? In fact, I'm wondering if it even, it seems like it's questionable legally to me, but, you know, because if you have a council and then, and it seems like it would just create huge amounts of confusion. What if there's something that overlaps, you know, one word and another, and then how many, you know, I mean,
[Milva McDonald]: I think there have been concerns that like maybe, I mean all the votes being equal that Councilors might think that they had to defer to a ward Councilor if there was something in their ward just because that's politics kind of thing, you know what I mean. So, and I don't know how much that happens but I mean, maybe that's something, you know, I don't even know how we would delve into kind of figuring that kind of stuff out.
[Milva McDonald]: That's really good. So you do a US Malden and I'll ask Colin center.
[Milva McDonald]: I know and I still am, I, you know, because everything's falling apart this week I haven't, I have to seek out their contact info but the other thing that I was thinking about.
[Milva McDonald]: I know Bob Penta was on the 1978 elected Charter Commission and their charter didn't make it through the voters, but it did include district representation. So if we talk to some people who were on that commission, and maybe we could talk to them about what you know what was your rationale, why did the commission at that point, decide on that. Why did you think that that would have been good for the city.
[Milva McDonald]: So let me talk to him and kind of... Well, Maury, if you could set, if you want to set up an interview, that would be awesome. I'll do it with you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah. No, I think we should do an interview so that we have notes.
[Milva McDonald]: The Tibetan?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I like the idea of doing that because then we can sort of create the notes and they go into the record and the committee gets to see them.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And when I, I'll get the minutes out to you guys as soon as possible, and it will include an action list.
[Milva McDonald]: Let's keep the next one at least. I have August 24th at 10.
[Milva McDonald]: We are going to present this to the whole committee, you know, in an evening meeting too.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I'm really sorry, but I have to go. You guys want to keep going?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, we'll say tentatively and then we can try, you know, we can do a doodle poll.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Fantastic. Thank you all.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, welcome everyone to our meeting of the Medford Charter Study Committee. First thing I'd like to do is we have new members, so I would like to welcome our new members, very excited about that. I thought we could all go around and introduce ourselves just briefly.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry, this is my bad. I changed the settings, so I need to... No wonder everybody was so quiet.
[Milva McDonald]: I intended to change some settings, but I may have gone overboard. But now I think everybody is. Because we usually have our videos on, so. Oh, yeah, yeah. That I didn't mean to do. Oh, that's what.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, now it should be fixed. Okay, now everybody can speak and everybody can be seen, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so welcome everybody. And as I was saying, we have new members, which is very exciting. So I thought we could briefly go around and just quickly introduce ourselves. And then after we introduce ourselves, maybe the new members can introduce themselves. So Danielle, I see your hand up. Did you want to say something? But you can be also the first one to introduce yourself.
[Milva McDonald]: You're still muted. Sorry. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: That's great. Thank you. Ron, you want to go next?
[Milva McDonald]: I thought I clicked everybody. There, now you're good.
[Milva McDonald]: Perfect. Um, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thanks. Jean, how come when I, there you go, you're good.
[Milva McDonald]: Awesome, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Let's see, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. And I'm Melvin McDonald, she, her pronouns. I'm the chair and I'm really excited to welcome Aubrey, Paulette and Phyllis. Phyllis, do you want to introduce yourself?
[Milva McDonald]: Yep.
[Milva McDonald]: Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Fantastic. Welcome. Aubrey, I know we're still working out some red tape with Aubrey, but Aubrey, do you want to introduce yourself?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Oh, okay. So, um, the minutes, um, has everyone reviewed the minutes from July 6th?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor. Great. Okay. Thank you. Um, Okay. Um, now the next item on the agenda is the survey status. And I know we, uh, the survey status is going very well. Um, We should be, I think we should be done. We're definitely, I think, going to have it ready for our next event on August 14th at Wright's pond. Um, I'm working with Penny from the health department and Francis and Emma from the communications department to take the content that we all agreed on and put it into a format that's as accessible as possible. And Danielle is also going to help put it into Google. And we have some graphics that Emma created and it'll be ready for rollout very soon. So I just wanted to report that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think I shared, it should be in the main folder that I shared with you all, but I will share, within the next few days, I will share the sort of updated version with the graphics and everything. I'll share it with you all.
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, okay. So interviews are going pretty well. I think we've interviewed several people and all the interview reports are in the, in our main folder, which hopefully you can all access. Um, does anybody have any interviews set up that currently we have? Wait, uh, was that Eugene?
[Milva McDonald]: Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. And Rick, can I ask a question? Yeah, sure.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. So the remaining city council members that we have not interviewed include Adam Knight and George Starpelli, but Ron, were you in touch with them?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So if Phyllis, if you're interested in maybe, maybe Ron, you can communicate with Phyllis and you two can do those interviews.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And then we actually have only interviewed one school committee member. So, and, and the only other, let's see, I have Anthony, you were going to contact Paul Rousseau. Is that right?
[Milva McDonald]: He's away right now. He's away for, for a couple of weeks. Okay. So hopefully we'll get him eventually. Um, and then, um, Eunice, you were going to contact Mia and Kathy Kreatz?
[Milva McDonald]: I'll get to that next week. Um, so Sharon Hayes and Melanie McLaughlin, nobody, you know, they're, they're open if any. I could do those four. Okay. Paulette, do you and Phyllis want to do those together? Sure. So Paulette and Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm sorry. Can you repeat that, Maureen?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. I mean, it's OK if three people go. Oh, that's OK. That's fine. They can go together.
[Milva McDonald]: So all right. I have Paulette for those. We also, we've interviewed some department heads. Anthony, you were still trying to get in touch with the superintendent?
[Milva McDonald]: Does any, do any of the new people want to join Anthony with the superintendent?
[Milva McDonald]: So and just just so everybody knows, I mean, we've some people, the interviews can be done on Zoom or in person. It's, you know, however it works for the people involved. The other people I have contact, but I haven't heard back, but I think they're important people to interview are the elections manager and the CFO. So I'm still working on that. The communication.
[Milva McDonald]: I can never get through to them. I'm going to. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I will, I put you down for that. And then we also have we, we also had talked about interviewing past city officials. And so there's a lot of people open on that. Let's see, you guys are meeting with Donato, which is great. And. Ron and Maury, you were going to contact John Falco?
[Milva McDonald]: So the other people on the list, in case these spark an interest in any of the new members, is Michael McGlynn, Stephanie Burke, Michael Marx, Robert Penta, Bob Miyako, Patricia Brady-Doherty, Paul Camuso, and Bob Skerry. And there may be other people. You know, happy to add other people to the list if you think they're relevant.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry for jumping.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And any, anybody who wants to conduct an interview who doesn't have a buddy, I will, you can count on me to be a buddy, but if you have a buddy, that's great.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That sounds good. Before I do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette, you wanted to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we did have you on the list, but I wasn't sure whether you, you know, we could, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we have a sort of a very general questionnaire that, you know, can be used as a starting off point, but obviously different departments and different people will, you know, speak to certain aspects of the charter, depending on what their position was.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we're going to be done before that.
[Milva McDonald]: That's okay. It just doesn't feel like 10 years once we're done. Yeah, probably. So are there any thoughts of any other people that we should interview that I didn't put on my list? Anthony mentioned a couple. OK, so what I'm going to do is, in the minutes, I will write down who volunteered for who, and then I will leave. I will write the list of people that no one's volunteered for and I will write the email from the committee to those people. Does that sound like what we, yeah. Okay, great. Awesome. Okay, now. Um, public. Okay. So last meeting, we reviewed public participation procedures, and now we decided we, we kind of had a tie, I think, um, in the end. And so we decided to table it. Um, and now we have more members. So, uh, uh, just to. In case the new members don't know what we had voted on initially was to hold public participation until the end of the meeting. And it's been proposed that we change that policy and have public participation after not every agenda item, but the substantive agenda items that involve discussion of actual charter. And rather than holding it until the end of the meeting. Does that make sense? Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good, that's a good suggestion. Anybody have any other discussion on this topic?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's, I'm happy to, but I want, I also want to just give committee members an opportunity to maybe be part of that, so it's not just me laying it out. And Danielle, thank you for that suggestion. Any other thoughts? Paulette?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I think there wasn't an issue it was it was sort of voted on, and I think the arguments were that saving public participation at the end would just create more efficiency in the meetings is that people's understanding.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thanks. Okay. So I'm going to go Maury and then being Jean, and then Danielle, and then Phyllis, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you, Maury. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks for pointing that out, because that was important information. Danielle and then Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thank you. Phyllis and then Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep.
[Milva McDonald]: Phyllis?
[Milva McDonald]: We had a couple. We had a couple of Zoom administrators, but that's sort of, yeah, that's fallen by the wayside. I would have to find new ones at this point.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we could do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony and then Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's all I got to say.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. OK. Thank you. Um, do we feel, call it, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Are we ready to take another vote and maybe not end up with a tie this time?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Jean and then Danielle, and then I'll restate the motion as I heard it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I see Danielle and Phyllis both want to make a comment and why don't you two do that and then I'll restate the motion and go from there.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Frances. And I want to hear from Phyllis, but first I just want to say, I'm hearing a little background noise. I don't know if other people are hearing it. And if anybody, I don't know where it's coming from, but okay, that's awesome. It stopped. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Okay, so this is the way I hear the motion on the table now. Motion on the table to disable the chat and open discussion after charter-related topics and at the end on any agenda topic.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean for the public? Yes. I think since we had already decided three minutes, I think we would keep it, that would apply to both.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that, is that, Ron, you didn't, did you intend to change that in the motion?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Danielle, what was your comment?
[Milva McDonald]: That's what it sounds like.
[Milva McDonald]: If that's what we vote, absolutely. Maury. Wait, you're muted, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Ron. Do you want me to restate the motion? Or do you, after this little bit of discussion, do you want to modify it at all?
[Milva McDonald]: So just so I'm clear, Ron, are we changing the motion to open discussion after every agenda topic for two minutes? Okay, so the motion on the table is disable the chat and open public participation after each agenda item for two minutes per person. And I don't, we don't necessarily need public participation at the end if we do that, correct?
[Milva McDonald]: So we'll keep public participation at the end.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So the motion is disable the chat, open discussion, public participation after each agenda topic for two minutes, and have a public participation session at the end for three minutes per person.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Good. Okay. So is there a second? Second.
[Milva McDonald]: Roll call vote. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Norm. No.
[Milva McDonald]: And I am no. And I believe that's six yeses and three noes. Yes? Did I count right? OK. Okay. So we now have public participation after every agenda item. So I suppose we start that immediately. And that means I will ask if any members of the public would like to speak on this topic of public participation. Okay, then we move to the next agenda item, which is deliberation on the city council composition. There will certainly be many other things that we will be discussing regarding the city council, but this is just to talk about, we've heard a lot from the public, from people we've interviewed about city council composition, and we've heard from the call-in center, Has anyone had a chance to look at the materials in the handout? Okay. So the deliberation topic and question is, does Medford want to move to a hybrid system of ward-based and at-large city Councilors? And I know that you've looked at the materials I sent, and we also have Eunice, who I would like to ask to speak first because she has been doing some research on Medford. On where city councilors have come from.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, let's see. I have to be logged into the, this is just gonna take a little minute. I have to log into the charter study. I'm logged into my personal email and I don't think I have access through that, but maybe I do. Let me just check. It was in Google, it was a Google sheet, correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Probably not. Unless you shared it, but I can work on it here. I have it right here. So. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: There we go.
[Milva McDonald]: And we have from ward six, we have three. And ward seven, only one. And ward eight, two.
[Milva McDonald]: So well, thank you so much for doing this. It's really valuable. I see Danielle has her hand up, Danielle. My eyes are sufficiently glazed over.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm definitely going to put this in the committee folder. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna stop sharing. You're gonna all get this document. Um, basically what I, what it's, what I just sort of jotted down is based on 2005 to 2021, in terms of actual elected Councilor, we've actually had zero representatives from ward one and ward four. Um, ward three has had the most with six, then ward two with four, and then ward five, two, ward six, three, ward seven, only one, and ward eight, two. So. And for our next council, there are no Councilors from wards one, four, and six. And I believe we're losing our ward six Councilor, Rick Caraviello. So that means ward six would also be, am I right about that? probably yeah I'd have to go back and look at it but he's not running for city right I know but I didn't know if there was anybody else from Ward six and I don't think so yeah so nobody running from six so that's at least three wards that will not be represented in our next Council for sure. Um, so that's also something to think about. So based on this data that Eunice has put forward, um, based on, um, Some of the other materials that I sent you. Um, the other issue that when we talk about city council composition for Medford to know, um, The chart that I sent that spreadsheet that sort of outlines, uh, 59 Massachusetts communities. Um, There's how they elect the city councils, the school committee, the term limits, et cetera. Based on that, you can see that Palmer and East Longmeadow are the only other two cities that have seven member councils, and both of those cities are significantly smaller than Medford. Every other city has at least nine and often nine to 11 seem like the most common. And also very few cities have all-at-large councils. I believe there were only 10 out of 59, including Medford, that have all-at-large. And 48 have hybrid systems of at-large and ward. So it also seems very uncommon to have a completely ward system, which we don't have the option for in Medford anyway, because we have eight wards. So, and the other thing I just wanted to point out the other piece information I put on here was the information from our community engagement efforts. Just pulling up summary points based on the feedback up to now, it looks like there's overwhelming support from residents for ward representation and the survey results will show if this holds. Diversity on the city council is a strong concern and ward representation is seen as a possible solution. And representation of all neighbors is a concern that could also be addressed by ward representation. We also had other points. So I just wanted to throw out sort of a little summary. So let's, I want to open for discussion. And Anthony, was that you? Go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, Jean is working on it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we definitely would get that information at some point, but the other piece, which I believe Maury has mentioned tonight. people have brought up and members of the public have also brought up is that ward representation in general can make it more accessible to run because you don't need as many resources to run in a ward as you need to run in.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, you don't need as many resources to run in a ward.
[Milva McDonald]: As you do for an at large.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Danielle and Maury, do you still have your hands up? Or are they old hands?
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Thanks Danielle. You know, your comments bring up, um, you know, the intention was to have this sort of straightforward deliberation question, but nothing, everything's linked in the charter. And so your comments kind of bring that to light that, you know, that your ideas about ward representation are connected to term lengths and possibly term limits. So yeah, Ron, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Ron, because that is our next step that we're moving towards is forming subcommittees. So if we find out tonight that there's enough support on the committee for a potential hybrid system, then maybe we can move towards a subcommittee. Thank you. Paulette and then Maury. I think Maury was first actually. Oh, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Yeah, that's true. And I also have learned in these interviews that city Councilors who serve for 10 years get a pension, which I didn't know either. And I think they get insurance, too. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Okay, thank you, Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, the staggered terms. Yeah, he thought it was a great idea, but really difficult to implement, possibly, yeah. Okay, Anthony, you want to speak and then we'll go Eunice and then Jean and then Danielle. Go ahead, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks, Anthony. I think if we decide that we are committed enough or that we are supportive enough of the system to dig in and form a subcommittee, I would say that could be one of the tasks of the subcommittee, is to research that kind of what you're talking about. I don't know whose hand was up first, so. I think I was next.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. But if you, but the issue that you brought up, which is the institutional knowledge piece, is there a way that you see that connected to the, you know, potential changing of a, to award a hybrid system or is it?
[Milva McDonald]: Speak again. I think, say that again. I'm sorry, Gina.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's what I understood him to say that you could we instead of having eight boards, we would have four areas of right words each and then you would have two Councilors or three Councilors from each of those areas.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I think I asked the call and center last time we have them, and I don't I think they didn't know of anyone but I feel like framing him was doing something that was out of the box and I can't remember what it was, but we should look up framing.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. And now we also, Maury and then Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Maury. OK, Danielle. Oh, and then Paulette.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Thank you, Danielle. Colette and then Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we don't get to do that. That's done by the state. And they I believe it it's every 10 years, right, that they. That they did, I believe, based on the census. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Did they determine it by population? I think so.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Jean. And then Ron, and then, um, I want to, cause we still have some other agenda agenda items. So I want to think Ron was first run you want to go ahead, thank you gene.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury, and then I'm going to move and open it up for public comment. Go ahead, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. So I know we might have a motion on the table, but I want to open it up to see if any members of the public want to speak on this topic. Okay, so it looks like, I think, Ron, did you mention that you wanted to make a motion?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I guess I just, so we're gonna, you're moving to establish a subcommittee to research aspects of ward representation, but you said something else in there that something about in favor of right.
[Milva McDonald]: That's my mind.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And I think based on this conversation and based on the public feedback we've gotten so far and based on our interviews, there is a strong interest in ward representation. So having a subcommittee, we would not be committing to it by creating the subcommittee. We would be committing to the fact that we have a strong interest in it and we want to know more. Is that right, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm going to restate the motion in a minute. But we have Eunice, Maury, and Paulette who want to say something. And then I'm going to restate the motion. Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Maury and then Paulette, and then I'm going to restate the motion as I heard it.
[Milva McDonald]: And we are, we are going to open it up it is in the survey and we are going to work and we're having those focus groups and I really want to get to that on the agenda. So, that's a good point. Paulette and then Phyllis, and then we're going to go to the motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Phyllis.
[Milva McDonald]: I do want to thank you. I'm going to restate the motion but before that I just want to say, we have gathered some good information on this, the information from Eunice was really valuable to see that we actually have had some words that have actually had zero representation in the last 20 years. We also have collected, we had our event and we've had interviews with people and we have had some people email the committee and fill out our feedback form. And based on the people that have taken the time to contact us, this isn't an issue that people are really concerned about. So I do think that I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. and possibly, or increasing the size of the council, topics to include authority of ward Councilors, demographics of wards, innovative approaches to ward representation, interaction of ward representation with term links, process if no one runs, potential downsides and upsides. And that doesn't limit the committee to the topics, but I just listed those because that's what I heard in our discussion.
[Milva McDonald]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman. Okay, let's say October or November.
[Milva McDonald]: So I make an amendment to that.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, would you say that your motion includes a possibility of keeping it at large council?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Does someone want to second the motion?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. All in favor. Do we need a roll call?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Paulette. Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Depending on how the research goes, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Phyllis. Yes. Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, it's looking at hybrid, but it's also including sort of the pros and cons. So part of that would be the committee could say, yes, if we go to a larger council and kept at large. I mean, it will inevitably be part of the process. Wouldn't you agree, Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: So, so Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Okay, great. And I'm a yes too. So that's unanimous. Okay. So we really, I really want to move on to our next item, but we need to form the sub committee. Are there, is there anybody who's dying to be on the sub committee?
[Milva McDonald]: Since I have some of the data too. And I would be happy to do it. And we can only have, well, no, because I think subcommittees within themselves create a forum, right? So we're okay if we, cause we'll, we'll have to post all our meetings and, but you know, have to follow open meeting law, just like our regular meetings. So, so it can be Jean, Maury, Eunice and Milva. Anybody else?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Of those people. Does anybody want to be the organizer or chair of the subcommittee?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Can we just decide who's going to schedule it and contact the members.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I will send you the information you need to schedule the first meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we'll just have to post the agenda, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Yeah, Jean focus groups report. So I'm a little worried we don't have a lot of time.
[Milva McDonald]: First, how many can people stay an extra 15 minutes. Okay, go ahead, June.
[Milva McDonald]: You should be able to, I think I just gave you the ability to. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you so much for that gene. Go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I also know an ASL interpreter that if you wanted me, I don't know. I mean, Frances, if you know someone that's fine, but I could put her name in the hat or I could contact her and ask her. if she has thoughts.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, she's a wonderful person and she's been an interpreter for many, many years. So I will have her contact you.
[Milva McDonald]: Maury, I want to hear people's answer to that question, but Maury, do you have a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: So any other thoughts about groups that we want to reach.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Sorry, Anthony. These would be done at different locations, potentially, the focus groups?
[Milva McDonald]: feel free to propose another subcommittee. Because, yeah, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So, Jean, is there anything else you need to, you feel like is important to check on?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle, did you have your hand up?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's true.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, open-ended questions.
[Milva McDonald]: And that is true. The survey results might sort of help you focus the focus groups.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good question. We haven't really thought about that yet. I mean, I think it should be open for a while, you know, maybe at least a month, but you know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Yeah. The survey will be out before our next meeting and then at our next meeting we can talk about we can look at what sample we have so far and we can talk about how long we want to keep it going. Okay. Jean, do you feel like you need more?
[Milva McDonald]: And I'm happy to help too. So pull me in if you need anything. and thank you so much for doing this. It's really valuable.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Thank you, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, guys. Yay, okay. So do any members of the public want to speak on this topic? Frances. Is your hand up, Frances?
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like when I tried to use it, I had to have like an account or I didn't, maybe it's free and I didn't figure that out, but, but maybe... Yes, it's free.
[Milva McDonald]: So it's pretty easy to find, Jean. It's called the Hemingway app and it'll tell you what grade level and any materials you create are.
[Milva McDonald]: That's fine. I don't think you need it for that then. But maybe for the questions. Yeah. OK, awesome. Thank you so much, Jean. So okay, we're just we're going to go very quickly through the events. We have an ice cream social on August 14 and it is now no pass required. So we are anticipating a large turnout. Danielle, did you want to say something about it?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, so it's, I guess my question is, is anybody planning to come to Wright's pond on August 14th? Can I see? So one, two, three, four, we can't have, um, because it's technically not, uh, it's, it's advertised to the public, but it's not a formal meeting. So we can't really have a quorum at any one time. And I'm happy not to be there the whole time. And I don't know, because it's three hours. And I assume you guys aren't all going to come for three hours. I mean, maybe Danielle and Ron, because you guys have been organizing. So we'll just play it by ear. So yeah, that's awesome. And Danielle's creating interactive materials. Thank you so much for doing that, Danielle. I'm going to be really excited to see what they are. We are going to have a survey by then. We'll have flyers, we'll have ice cream and we'll, what I think we do need is we need, I mean, I can do this, but maybe Ron, I'll talk to you and Danielle about it. We need somebody to kind of keep track of, I don't want the feedback to get lost. So when we talk to people, I wanna make sure we have a way of recording what we hear from people.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have popsicle, we have bomb pops, we have ice cream bars. It's individual servings. Yeah, just individual servings. Will you need people to give them out? Sure, if you're there, that would be awesome. Yeah. No, it'd be great to see people there and hopefully it'll be a nice night. So it's four to seven, August 14th at Wright's Pond. We also have a table at the farmer's market on August 31st. Is anybody interested in spending an hour, two, three, four at the farmer's market?
[Milva McDonald]: That's perfect. Anybody else? have any interest in going to the farmer's market on the 31st? Can't think about it. Paulette, what's your hand up? No.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. OK. The other thing that I wanted to bring up is some people had talked about the Mystic River Celebration. Wait, before I go on, Danielle, I'll be able to use the materials you created at the farmer's market, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh yeah, Ron got a banner. Oh, and we have a suggestion box.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, she did came in. I'm picking it up on Monday. Awesome. And we're borrowing the tent from you on the 14th.
[Milva McDonald]: Do we want to get a table? A table at the Mystic River Celebration costs $25. It's on September 23rd. Are there people who want to go hang out at the Mystic River Celebration at a table and talk to people about the charter? Because otherwise I won't buy a table.
[Milva McDonald]: I can't. Okay, so it sounds like maybe we're not going to do that one. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: So, Maury, I'll get in touch with you and ask you about details on that.
[Milva McDonald]: And are there tables there?
[Milva McDonald]: So can I say that at the next meeting, you'll give us a report on the possibilities for Run Medford and Octoberfest?
[Milva McDonald]: The only other thing I was going to talk about is we want to do another listening session in October. Francis is looking into dates at City Hall. Frances, what about the high school? I can't remember what we said about the high school. Frances?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so How do people feel? Do we want to just go ahead and book City Hall for Thursday in October for our next listening session?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Is there a Thursday in October that anybody is completely opposed to?
[Milva McDonald]: Hold on. I don't want to book yet. Will they book up in a month? Frances, what do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: So I think if we could pick a date and reserve it, it would be great. But I understand people might not be able to do that right now. How about, can we book the third Thursday in October, and then at our next meeting, if people come and say, absolutely not, then we'll look at other dates?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you so much, Francis. And we'll double check that date at our next meetings. So everybody will check and we'll double check it and we'll see. Okay. And our next actual meeting is going to be September 7th. Right. And okay. And I will send out minutes and the call-in center is going to be rejoining us either at our next meeting or in October. So, um, okay. Does anybody have any final comments that they want to make?
[Milva McDonald]: I just want to check and see if there's any members of the public that want to speak.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. And then go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Okay. I'm Maury made a motion to adjourn. Second, second. All in favor. Okay, thank you all you get minutes was great meeting and I will we will see you again in a month. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
[Milva McDonald]: We still have a couple of committee members that haven't arrived, but I'm sure they will get here. Welcome to the Medford Charter Study Committee meeting. We have a pretty big agenda, so let's dive right in. First item is new member status, and I don't really have anything on that. I was hoping to, but I'm sure we will know soon. And I know you all know that the mayor has put out a call for applications, so we should have a few new members, hopefully, sooner rather than later, by our next meeting, I would think. And I sent around the minutes from the last meeting. Did everybody get those? How do they seem? Good. Okay. Does someone want to move to accept them?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor?
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. The next item is to revisit public participation procedures. When we had early on in the process, we had voted to save public participation until the end of meetings. And it's been suggested that we change, that we consider changing that to have public participation after each agenda discussion item. Any discussion on that?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it came from a couple of members.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Okay. Sounds like we've had a good discussion. Does anybody wanna... HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Moderator, the COB.: : Add anything or does somebody want to HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Moderator, the COB.: : Make a motion.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. So most people have weighed in. Do we want to table this? Do we want to make a motion to make a decision? Do we want to keep talking about it? What do we want to do?
[Milva McDonald]: I would like to, okay, I would first like to throw out a suggested amendment that we, that it's for topics not related to planning. For instance, this current topic, I would say is related to planning. So, cause we have a lot of topics on the agenda and opening up the floor after everyone. And most people are maybe not gonna be that, interested in talking about our planning. So maybe modify it slightly that way. And was that you, Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: That's thanks for that feedback and I just want to make sure that we stay aware that Eunice made a motion and um right now we're discussing that's you know we're discussing the motion so if um and we could change you could ask to amend it but Danielle you wanted to say something.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks. So I just want to get clear on how this motion has been modified. Does someone want to restate what they, someone want to, I just thought I saw a hand. Cause there was some, Ron, I think offered an amendment and then there was a little more discussion. So.
[Milva McDonald]: during the meeting. Okay, so the current motion is to modify public participation. Sorry, I'm writing while I do this. To allow public comment of one to two minutes each after agenda topics other than planning, and then we keep the public participation at the end with three minutes. Is that what I'm hearing?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So Eunice, you made the initial motion. Are you comfortable with the way it's been modified?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, go ahead, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so shall I read the motion as it stands? Yeah, please. Motion to modify public participation policy to allow public comment of one to two minute per person after agenda topics other than planning topics. And the three minutes per person at the end of the meeting remains. And the chair to enforce keeping on topic and time.
[Milva McDonald]: So did someone second it?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So all in favor? Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, never done that before. I just, I'll just say each of your names, right? Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: Eunice? Yes. John?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Danielle? Yes. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: All right. And I think I'm going to vote no too. All right.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were a yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Can we do that one more time? This is a little bit of a problem with our, um, missing members because we're an even number.
[Milva McDonald]: Wait, say again.
[Milva McDonald]: No. Yes. No. Yes. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: I guess I said no and I shouldn't change my vote. So that is a tie, so. I don't know what happens in a tie.
[Milva McDonald]: Motion tabled. So motion tabled, okay. Okay. Thank you, everyone. Okay, so the next item is, okay, so I sent around a draft work plan. I call it aspirational. Did everyone take a look at it? I just think it's important for us to have a goal and it doesn't have to be set in stone, but I just wanna open it up for discussion and I know there may be some members who had some thoughts about process, so. Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: No, they're taking the summer off. They'll be rejoining us in the fall.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Eunice and then John. Yeah, thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: Dawn.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, John. So I just wanna just to summarize kind of what the vision is or what my vision was when I made the work plan. just want to point out, if we were an elected commission, we would have 18 months. And currently the target end date is about 15 to 16 months. So, you know, we maybe will need to extend it somewhat, but my hope was that while we don't have the call-in center for the summer, they're going to rejoin us in the fall, that we would take time and hash out sort of the sort of overarching issues. That's why we're going to do executive branch tonight. Um, next month, um, well, we can address city council and not necessarily the details, but just kind of the overarching. And then if we make tentative decisions, then, uh, the kinds of meetings John was talking about that when we have our next public engagement sessions, listening sessions, um, we can choose to focus them or not, depending on where we're at. Um, so even, you know, we will talk about these things. We'll maybe take the pulse of where the committee is at, but it doesn't mean we're making hard and fast decisions. But we'll, we'll make, we'll get enough of a sense of where we're at to get things to, to, to start at, start, um, assigning the subcommittees. And then those subcommittees can hash out language and then we can then dig into the details. And if it turns out that we need to change course at that point, we can. Um, Ron, um, the issue of the, um, The, uh, including, uh, creating a process. I mean, that is, that can, that will be addressed in the charter. I mean, I think in general, that's addressed by P by whether or not you want to add periodic charter review into the charter. Um, but if you have other ideas, we can definitely talk about that when we get to that section. Um, So, um, Ron, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I don't believe that as a body we can put a ballot question on, but as a group, I mean, there is a way for a group of citizens, I believe, to do that. I could be wrong. If somebody wants to research this, they can, but as a body, I don't think we can.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, John. Gene, you have something to say?
[Milva McDonald]: and the draft, whatever draft charter we submit, yeah. It will go before the city council and the city council and the mayor would both have to approve it and then it would go to the state house as a home rule petition. And then if passed, it would go to the voters. And if it all went through, it would be known as a special acts charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't, that wouldn't be for this November anyway, cause we don't have a draft charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I think that's right. That's my understanding.
[Milva McDonald]: That's right.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. And when we submit it and we write a final report, it will include all the arguments and the rationale for the decisions that we made and the way we laid it out. And much of that will be based on public feedback, but I imagine it will be based on other things as well. Okay, thanks everyone. We don't really have a decision to make on the work plan. I think we got a lot of good feedback and And I think, I didn't hear any big opposition to the sort of general process laid out in it. Okay, so moving from, on the subject of public participation, the survey, we definitely, we shortened it by quite a bit, which I think was probably the right thing to do. And we, based on last meeting's discussion, we added the ranked issues section. So, does anybody want me to, has everyone looked at it or? Okay, so where do people think we're at now with the survey?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're just, my understanding is we're just asking them, the ranking question is just a list of issues and they're ranking what's most important to them. So if they're very concerned with balance of power, they would put that as maybe one top I don't know. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't
[Milva McDonald]: Um, I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it I don't think that we can in a survey, I don't personally think we can in the survey get into pros and cons and it would be really hard to do it in a neutral way, I think, but I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know. I would think it would be awesome if some high school students filled it out. But actually, just to speak to the demographic section, I'm hoping to ask the Board of Health to help with the survey. And I think they have done surveys before. And so my hope is that I can take whatever demographic sections they've used in surveys before. I should have written that into the draft and I apologize. So that was my thought about demographics because I realized kind of halfway through that I didn't really know enough to create a demographic section for a survey myself.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you, Gene and then Danielle, and then Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Thanks, Jean. Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good point. I'm guessing, maybe not, but I don't know. We are gonna use whatever the city uses to distribute surveys and gather the results. So I, yeah, I don't really know.
[Milva McDonald]: You wanna go ahead, Anthony, and then we'll hear.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I want to hear more about how you would define clean, but first I want Maury to speak because he says hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, great. So I want to just sort of go through what I've heard about the sort of specific issues that we might want to tweak in the survey. But before we do that, I feel like there's a bigger sort of more overarching concern that Anthony expressed about the whole approach of the survey. So I just want to hear more about why you think it's not clean and what you think would make it more clean.
[Milva McDonald]: So if I hear you, you're talking specifically about the demographics section?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, okay. So you'd rather have yes or no?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Jean.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I'd like to just wrap up this survey section. I wanna just move forward and be able to put out the survey after this meeting. So the issues that came up were in terms of the ranking list. Someone wanted to add an item on recall provisions for elected officials. And there was a question about whether we should remove balance of power from that list. So, Um, I'm fine with adding the recall provision if there's any. I mean, we don't, unless somebody has an objection, um, to just add that to the list and see how it gets ranked as an issue. Um, okay. And, and I, and in terms of balance of power, do people feel like that needs to be on there? I feel like it's an issue that we've been hearing about a lot. So I feel like it's.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, okay. And the demographics, um, we're going to, there was a suggestion to include prefer not to say, which I think is a good one, but as I said, I'm hoping, um, I can get more guidance on that from the health department. Danielle's suggestion about the, um, focus groups. We can maybe do it in an anonymous way that Ron suggested. If you'd like to participate in a focus group, email us at blah, blah, blah. Um, Okay, so beyond, did I forget anything that's important that we need to change in the survey or include in the survey? Okay, so can we, should we vote on moving forward with the survey?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, the health department is gonna help. And so I'm sure if they see something that's like, oh, this is never gonna work, they'll tell me. Okay. So I'll move forward with the health department then. Great. Thanks everybody. Okay. Now, The next is our deliberation on the executive branch. I think that's next. Yeah. So I sent around some materials. One was the chart that we had, it was just sort of revisiting what we had gotten from the Collins Center. And the other was, A sheet that came from a nonprofit organization out of Washington state that helps municipalities with issues and I and I thought it was just an interesting layout of pros and cons. Um, and then the other, I don't, I think I left the national civic league modern charter in there. It didn't necessarily, um, they, they actually, I don't know, has anybody ever looked at that before the national civic leagues model charter? So they actually recommend city manager and there was a whole argument in there for why they do. And that was why I put that there. Um, and also just for historical reference, the articles from, um, the Medford Mercury in 1986 when Medford switched from city manager to mayor. So those are the materials that I thought would be pertinent to the discussion and I'll just open up the floor. Oh, let me just also say, I also put in the deliberation planning handout what our current charter says. And, um, as far as community engagement reference information so far, all we've heard is a preference for keeping the mayor, but it's a very limited amount of data at this point. And so far in the interviews, nobody has expressed a desire to switch to city manager. So, um, So, and let's open it up to thoughts. What are people's thoughts on this?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. John and then Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. Eunice?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. Anybody else? Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe somebody does, but Ron, let me hear from you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks. So we've heard from a lot of people, and I'm hearing sort of an overwhelming sense in the committee right now that mayor is the way to stay. I just wanted to reflect back on a point that John made that I think is really important, not just for this discussion, but for all the discussions we'll be having, which is that, you know, we, the reason we decided to create a new charter is because the charter is almost non-existent. It's a two pages and it interacts with all these state laws and special acts, but at the same time, Um, having a ton of change might, might be hard, might be hard for, um, for us to get, get through. So, and this is just kind of the first example of, um, a major issue that we faced that if, if, if there was, um, a feeling among the committee that, oh, maybe we should switch to city manager, that would be a major change. Um, I'm not hearing it. So, um, I think. I don't know, I mean, I think if we do vote tonight, I mean, I think it would, it will just need to be a tentative vote. I'm also hearing that there's a lot of pieces that are gonna interact with this decision while there's a strong preference to maybe stay with mayor. There's also a lot of details around that, like balance of power, like avoiding an entrenched situation that would be addressed down the line for sure. in our future discussions. So, and we also clearly, if we did a survey and we found out that like a thousand people answered the survey and 90% of them said city manager, then we can always come back and revisit it. But not sure that that will happen, but we can leave ourselves open to that. So if we did vote, I think I would suggest that it would be a sort of a tentative decision, but it would be a good step in the right direction of, being able to get into some of those other issues that have come up in this discussion.
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, was that you?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. So, um, that, thank you for that motion. Um, I just want to hear from Maury before we get, look for it.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thanks. Okay, so I just wanna say what I understand the motion to be by Anthony, that we continue deliberations on mayor as executive branch and table discussion of city manager unless public data steers us back to it. Does somebody?
[Milva McDonald]: And are we all in favor? Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. Great work, so we made a big step forward, I think.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so interviews. Have I shared the folder with everybody? I feel like Anthony, you can't access the Google folder necessarily, right? So I'm trying to send them to you. I'm sending them to you individually, but has everyone been able to access the Google folder? And that's where we're dropping all the sort of reports from the interviews. Um, and so far we've done Nina Nazarian, Zach bears, the mayor, uh, Jenny Graham, Jenny Graham. Thank you. And Alicia hunt, but I haven't finished that report yet. It'll be in the folder soon. Um, so what I guess I'm, so I just, I wanted to sort of touch base on that. Um, make sure everybody has access to those that ask if there's any questions on any of the reports. And then I also just wanted to see how the scheduling of the interviews is going. And if anybody's heard back from anybody, Maureen and I are gonna be talking with the city clerk soon. That's the only one right now that I have currently on the books. Um, how, how, and Nicole hopefully is going to get back to Danielle soon. Hopefully. Um, Ron, have you heard from any of the other city councilors?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And have you heard from Adam Knight and not yet?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So Mia and Kathy, you're doing right. Okay. Great. And Anthony was going to, at some point, get in touch with Paul Rousseau, I believe.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, because I'm going to join you for that one? Yeah. If anybody doesn't have a buddy for the interview, I'm happy to be that person. Anthony, I also had you down as superintendent.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And I've reached out to the CFO a couple of times on email, and I think I'm going to actually pick up the phone because I actually think the CFO is very important to talk to other people. I mean, so what we don't have anybody signed up to talk with a couple of school committee members. I mean, we could talk to every school committee member if we have the bandwidth to do it. I don't know. Um, if anybody is interested, the people that we don't have scheduled are Sharon Hayes and Melanie McLaughlin. Um, and then the other positions that. I mean, elections manager is probably an important person to talk to. There is an election section in the charter. We haven't gotten to it yet, but once we get to it, I think it would be really valuable to have feedback from the elections manager. Um, so, but you know, Maybe that can wait till fall. Okay, I think, and the other group of people that we haven't really gotten a lot of people to volunteer for is the former elected officials. Paul Donato is kind of both, but he is taken. but we had a bunch of people on the list. Wait, Ron and Maura, you were gonna get in touch with John Falco, correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we have Michael McGlynn, Stephanie Burke, Michael Marks, Bob Penta, Bob Miyako, Patricia Brady-Doherty, Paul Camuso, Paulette van der Kloet and Bob Scarry are also on the list and nobody has signed up for them. Is there any, anybody want to tackle any of those or we'll just
[Milva McDonald]: OK, just know that they're there. And if anybody wants to talk to those people and set up interviews, just sign up on the sign-up sheet or let me know.
[Milva McDonald]: That's true, yeah. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: We've done, I've only done them in person, but it could be done via Zoom. Different people have different, I mean, the question, I always send the questionnaire out beforehand. In general, people don't fill it out because they're busy, but then we can use it as a basis to sort of start asking questions. But generally with these interviews, the person that you're talking to has sort of a specific area of the charter that they sort of connect with or interact with. So what I have found is that people generally get talking and they nobody that I've interviewed so far has been at a loss for words. They've all been really eager to share their thoughts and their experiences in city government and their ideas. But the questionnaire is always there if you need it. And in Nina Nazarian's case, I mean, she's still intends, I believe, to fill it out and send it to us. So we might also have that, in addition to the report from the interview, we'll also have the questionnaire that she filled out herself. So people are, and that's the other thing we can do. If we don't have the people power or the time to interview everybody individually, we can ask them to fill out the questionnaire. So that's another option.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I'm not the best with Google Drive, but what I can do maybe is make one folder and then put all the folders in the folder.
[Milva McDonald]: And I'll share that folder.
[Milva McDonald]: I can. I can do that. Yeah, that shouldn't be too hard and and you know that's way easier than sharing everything individually. Because as soon as I put it in a folder that's been shared it's automatically shared right. Okay. Yeah, awesome. Thank you. Great. Okay, so focus groups. We have the suggestion at our public information meeting to do focus groups. Jean kindly volunteered to sort of help with that. So maybe, Jean, you can talk about that. And then we also have the Google tracking. But if you want to start with the focus groups, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. I'm not sure if talking to city commissions, if they're subject to open meeting law, we might just maybe not have to talk to the whole commission or do it at an open meeting. We can work that out probably pretty easily. Any other thoughts on this?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks for that units and also thanks for gathering that information on that spreadsheet on locations. I think it will be helpful in deciding where we're going to do focus groups and what groups we might reach out to.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I'm gonna put, I'm gonna say we'll put this on the agenda again for next month and we'll try to organize the trainings for September and we can start scheduling them for October and discussion will continue on where and with whom. Great. Now, in terms of the, oh, Maury, go ahead, Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. So the other thing that Jean did was make this awesome Google track.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, wait a minute. That was me pressing the wrong button. Hang on.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry about that. Jean, should I share it?
[Milva McDonald]: This is what it looks like. And we'll put this in the folder for everybody. This, basically it takes every section of the model charter and plugs feedback from different sources. So the first is the June 8th public hearing and then emails. And what happened to my, did the form not get in there? I thought I did the form. Oh, maybe there's no, maybe there's no form feedback on those topics. I think it's in the other article. Yeah. Okay. That's what it is. So, so anybody can sort of go through this and see what public input. So when we, when we start deliberating more on these issues, and of course, division of powers is there, but the executive branch, if we see there's very, there's a lot of, there's, well, I mean, comparatively with the amount of feedback we've gotten, a lot of it falls under city council, but, and then with mayor, we have a lot of, we have a lot of talk about term limits and term lengths. So, Ideally, Jean, you didn't wanna be the only person that was gonna fill this out, say, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, like for instance, I put a couple of things under the wrong category. Jean, when you pointed it out to me, I put all the term limits under the same. Yeah, I think that's what it was. Anyway.
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, we're going to share it. I'm going to put this in a folder so it can be shared with everyone. And, you know, at this point, I mean, maybe the survey data will be easier just kept separately. It might be hard to put it into this form. I don't know. We'll see. But, you know, we're hopefully we might get more emails. We might get more answers to our public form. And and we're gonna have more public meetings. Focus group information might go in here too. And it will just sort of hopefully be a pretty easy way for people to go, oh, what's our public feedback when we, let's say, when we discuss the school committee? You know, what's our public feedback so far? This is what we have. Not much, but we'll get more.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that was, that was sort of just to so that we could each look at how those three other communities. the charters in those three other communities, but this is more, these are all the sections and the articles and the sections in the generic modern charter, which will be the basis of the charter that we create. And this is giving us what the public has said in relationship to all those things.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so thank you for doing it, Gene, and we'll build on it for sure. But I just wanted you to see that and it'll be shared out with you soon. Okay, so events. We have an event set up at Wright's Pond. Is that August 14th, Danielle? Is that what day it is? I think it is. I think so, it's a Monday. So yeah, and you know, it's not, it's just, we're just gonna give people ice cream, maybe have a couple of activities and hand out flyers and basically make people aware. Although one thing I didn't do was the Circle the Square report. So that was, basically I sat at Circle the Square. I talked to about 44 people. A few people had opinions, but most people didn't know anything about it. So it was a way to, and get the word out to some people that this is happening. So Danielle and I are going to maybe get together soon and talk about it. But if anybody else is interested in organizing the Rights Pond event, hanging out at the Rights Pond event on August 14 in the evening, just show of hands, is there anybody that wants to do that? Ron, awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody who wants to make that, that's fine. I'm not just, I'm not doing it.
[Milva McDonald]: If anybody wants to research making a banner and finding out what the cost is, I'm fine with that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So we can figure that out, but we also have the farmer's market on August 31st. And I'll bring that up at our next meeting because see if anybody wants to spend any time sitting at that table.
[Milva McDonald]: The survey will definitely be ready by then. Okay, awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: You did. Thank you, Jean. And did you say you were also interested in a rights bond?
[Milva McDonald]: I'll keep you in the loop. I'll keep you in the loop. And the other thing, we probably should at some point set a date for the kind of event we had in June, maybe have one in the fall. Does anybody have any thoughts about what month we should go for? Maybe not September?
[Milva McDonald]: We don't have to do it at City Hall. The issue with doing it outside City Hall is the hybrid aspect. So I don't know. I mean, it's not that it couldn't be done. It just means we have to somehow get the equipment.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the Metro Community Media goes to West Metro Community Center. The library has all the equipment, so we could do the library. You know, people have raised issues about parking at the library, but I don't know. I think, should we try the library this time?
[Milva McDonald]: High school as well? Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I will, I will look into dates available dates for October at the library or the high school.
[Milva McDonald]: Go for it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, kind of like Circle the Square was. Maury, did you want to say something?
[Milva McDonald]: That's good to know. Okay. Now we just have to set up. I mean, at this point, because it's summer, I mean, we do have a lot to do, but I, I'm not going to suggest trying to have another meeting before August because it's summer. And, you know, does that sound right to everybody? So that means our next meeting will be August 3rd. Okay. Awesome. Now, believe it or not, we may be to the end. So wait, is your hand still raised Maury or. Okay, great. So we're gonna do public participation. Any Medford resident may speak for up to three minutes. If all members of the public who wish to speak have spoken and time allows, members of the public may speak for an additional three minutes. Speakers are asked to provide their full name and address for the record and to address only matters related to the city's charter. The committee's values support a welcoming community of mutual respect for all, and we value your perspective. As you share your perspective, please uphold these values. And it looks like we have Matt, right? MP, yeah. Great.
[Milva McDonald]: No, you can keep speaking.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. If you want to just make your final point, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you so much for your feedback. And we hope you return. Okay, any final details? I think we're ready to close up where it's exactly 8.30. The meeting was actually, we lengthened the meeting to two hours this time. So we actually are right on the dot, which I'm very impressed by.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Mark.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, all in favor. Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Hello, I just finished my dinner, so I will be able to be more on camera now. My name is Leah Grodstein. I don't have any kids. I'm 26. And I work as a transportation engineer for MassDOT. So I'm going to try really hard to not have conflicts of interest and just take myself out of any discussions of state infrastructure, but I've found the local infrastructure in Medford bad enough that here I am. A fun fact about me is that I really hated biking as a kid. I grew up in Arlington Heights, a block from the water tower, which meant that every time I went somewhere, I had to go back up a giant hill to get home. And I didn't understand why anyone would wanna do that. but I went to the Netherlands to study abroad and that kind of won me over. Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Oh yeah. Another fun fact about me is I like refuse to change gears. I'm not a good bicycle rider. I have 21 of them, but I am only in one gear ever.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I really hate driving.
[Milva McDonald]: When you said like a Sunday ride, Um, I thought you were going to talk about ice cream and like start a ride at CB scoops and go for a little loop and end at Colleen's. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So it's nice to have an incentive.
[Milva McDonald]: I also I know this is perfect timing for it on July 5th, but I always thought a 4th of July ride would be really cool like when people can put you know red white and blue decorations on their bikes and like have a little parade. I don't know how to get help with like know, it would be really awesome if there was a fire truck there and we closed the street off. I don't know how to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think the benefit of holidays is that hopefully people weren't planning on driving anywhere super, super important. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I think this will be something safe to say, hopefully. It's not, you know, it's my own opinion, but I think Emily, you're right at getting at one of the ways to use this map, which is that, you know, when projects come up that connect to this, it's a way to say, well, look, this isn't in the middle of nowhere, like this is the plan and this is where it will go to. And then on the other hand, using this network of what's going to be there eventually to say, OK, what connections become really important with the knowledge that this will be here, like Harvard Street, and advocating for a project on Harvard Street because of this map?
[Milva McDonald]: I also heard that some of Riverside Ave is getting Is that correct?
[Milva McDonald]: All right, welcome everyone. We have a pretty packed agenda and hopefully we're gonna get through it all. We should have one more committee member also arriving a little late. So the first order of business, did everyone have a chance to look at the minutes from our last meeting? Yep. Any issues or any comments?
[Milva McDonald]: Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we have one person and I've let everybody in so far. Okay, great. Okay, so first is to review our June 8th event. Um, I made some notes and, um, we want to, um, we have a recording of the event and, um, once we go through the notes and approve them, I'm going to send the recording, the PowerPoint and the notes to the city so they can be posted on our website. So, um, people's thoughts about the event, about the notes, about anything.
[Milva McDonald]: No, Francis, is that what you were gonna say?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. No, that's great. And any other thoughts? Are we okay with the notes or do we want to add anything, change anything wrong?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Ron. I just want to say a couple of things. First, I just want to say, Phyllis, thank you for being here. And our process is that we have public participation at the end after we talk. So we look forward to hearing from you. I also agree that I think it went really well. And while it is a big task, I also think I would like us to be mindful of the time because, We are charged with this job, and that's one of the reasons I created a work plan, which we're gonna look at either tonight or at the next meeting, because I just would like us to set a goal. It doesn't mean that it can't be flexible goal, but I just want us to have that in sight. Some of the things I think that you brought up, Ron, I think are, part of the charter and some of them I don't think are so I'm we're going to learn more about that as we go. But that's part of the process. Um, I, one of the things I wanted to look at was just the, what I had written down in the notes was suggestions that we got from the people. So, and Ron, you brought up one of them, the qualifications. So I had actually thought about this earlier, but I just won't, um, but, uh, the comment at our meeting made me think we should maybe follow up on it. Uh, that maybe we could each write a little bio for ourselves and put it on the website. So that way people, um, anybody going to visit our page can at least see something about who we are. So, um, I'll, I'll send out a message to the committee and just ask everybody to do that. Cause that's one simple thing we could do. Um, the other thing that, I mean, there were a lot of suggestions, but, um, Jean had written to me, somebody had suggested focus groups. That was Phyllis. And Jean's daughter, who couldn't come tonight, wrote to me with the points that she wanted to make, had she been able to come. And one of them was that she said she would volunteer to work on that, because she has some experience with that anyway. And so if that's, do we feel good about that? Do we feel like we would like to go ahead with that? I mean, focus groups means, You have to decide who's going to be in the focus groups and what kind of groups you're going to focus on, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So I think I will ask Jean to maybe come with a little presentation and talk to us at our next meeting in a couple of weeks about what her plan would be to oversee the focus groups. Um, we can also maybe start putting together a list of the locations that we want to have two or three of us go to and talk to people like the senior center, like the community centers. Does somebody want to take that on?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thanks for taking that on. Okay, so within the document, that we created about this event. There is a sort of a summary of the public feedback that we got there. We also have a working document because we have a form that people can fill out. And we've also gotten a couple of emails that people have emailed us. So is everyone aware of that? Has everyone had a chance to look at it and sort of keep apprised of it? No, John, you're shaking your head. It's in a Google Doc that you should have access to. It looks like this. And so I'll make sure that it's shared with you. The other thing, one of the other things that Jean offered to do was create tracking sheets with themes, sort of the themes that came up. And we heard some of the big themes that came up were representation, balance of power, things like that. So Jean said she has experience doing this kind of thing in her work and that she would create tracking sheets separated out by issues. And maybe she plans to use these in conjunction with the focus groups. But I just wanted to throw that out there. And I think, how do people feel about creating some of those resources just to help us keep into a container the public feedback so that we can access it effectively?
[Milva McDonald]: I think we're ready to go on to the survey. So let's pick it apart. My hope is that we can finalize it. Hello, can everyone hear me? Yes, Anthony. I'm sorry, but I couldn't see you very well. Were you trying to raise your hand? I'm sorry if I missed you. Did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm really sorry about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, definitely can hear you.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely.
[Milva McDonald]: So if you... If we hear you again, well, hopefully you can finish that thought or you can repeat it so we can all hear it. But I did hear you mention questions and we do have questions in the survey. So one of the pieces of feedback was that people thought the survey is too long, correct?
[Milva McDonald]: The template, the draft that we have is taken from materials that they had and from surveys that other committees have used. So that's what we're working with. So I guess the question is with Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: So that, I think that that's a good point. We don't have to do only one survey. Oh, wait, Anthony's coming back. We'll be better now. What do people think about the idea of creating kind of one, survey that addresses broad issues across the board or focusing in on different issues and different surveys?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Danielle, did you wanna say something else?
[Milva McDonald]: Would it be helpful to just look at the survey now, go through it and see what people, where we think we can cut? Because since I think there's, seems to be general agreement that it's long, right?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, do we want to revisit our public participation policy? And I mean, I think we would have to
[Milva McDonald]: And then you can revisit that later because this is you know yeah yeah thanks and I didn't notice that you asked about rank choice, and I assume you mean rank choice voting. Currently in the draft of the survey we have now it's not in there, but we can talk about whether we want to add it or not. So I just want to check with Danielle is your hand up again or is that from before.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, no worries. So if we want to trim, I think somebody had suggested that we don't need this information in the beginning. I mean, asking people about this has been in some other surveys, but asking people how they know about the charter, have they read it, where they found it. How do people feel? Is that a place where we can trim?
[Milva McDonald]: Or we could start it here. Right? This has a little tiny bit of information about Medford's charter lays out the functions of the government. How do we feel about these sort of general ratings? These are sort of bigger issues about responsiveness of the government, transparency, accessibility, representation. This is sort of the lead into the more specific questions. Is it important to keep these general values questions or issues questions in?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. I mean, that's fine.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm glad. I want everybody's opinion. Just to present, I think the thinking behind including something like this would be if everybody says that the accessibility is terrible, then that could potentially be addressed in the charter by creating Um, by say, okay, we want to focus on public participation, section, um, citizen participation mechanisms, or if people say, well, representation is an issue, then we know that that's something that they care about. And we should look at that because that's something that charter can influence. That would be the basis for including these.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so that would be a different way to phrase it. I see Francis.
[Milva McDonald]: So, Anthony, did I hear you? Did you want to speak?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Anthony. So what I'm hearing is we could probably dispense with the first, like that little introductory section of the survey could all go and possibly we could start right here at this page. Um, I do want to just say one thing about ideally we would put in a survey everything that we plan to address, but it would be a lot longer than 15 minutes because there's, um, There's the sections on capital improvements, citizen participation mechanisms, things like that, that we probably will look at. And that may be where we start with one survey, where we look at sort of these big questions about form of government, term limits, et cetera. And then once we zero in on get those questions answered and look at that, then maybe we could address those other pieces in a different survey. OK. How many sections in the survey? Well, I don't know if we have a specific number, but let's look at it. So Anthony, this is the kind of questions you're talking about, I believe, right? These are the more specific.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I agree. I mean, I think we still don't know what what's gonna happen with those questions. So, but we could put those in. I mean, there is, let's look at what's in here and then we'll talk about what we need to add in.
[Milva McDonald]: So do we feel like this page is pretty clear in terms of, Um, each in and the way it's written, there's, uh, minimal amounts of explanation so that, um, people have a little bit of background in, um, in, in, um, in answering the question. For instance, mayor council, um, and city manager. Do we want to give people that kind of background, or do we just want to ask them a yes or no question without giving them background?
[Milva McDonald]: Right. So at least, because some people might not know what a city manager is, so are we OK with this brief explanation here? Is that enough for people to answer the question? Is it too much? Is it going to be easily translated?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. So that's sort of the first basic question. Then we do the links, the term links, which again has a little bit of explanation.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. The option of other is there in case somebody thinks it should be a different term. And then comes the representation question, ward representation. Should the council remain exclusively at large? Should there be a combination of ward and at large? Uh, based on what we learned from the call and center, we remove or I removed the question of exclusively ward because we realized we can't really have an exclusively ward council because we have an even number of boards. Make sense.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Then comes the school committee. So, um, I wanted to just, um, Anthony had brought up a question about including an option for an appointed school committee. And I did a little bit of research on that and to the best information, I asked the call center, the best information they have is that they don't think that that's a possibility because state law refers to school committees being elected. Boston does have an appointed school committee, but Boston sort of operates outside Boston can, Boston is not, Boston is like a different animal. They do in fact, you know, the state law that specifically talks about how certain aspects of municipal government operate and the state laws say in every city other than Boston. So I don't think that we can, I don't think we can even do it. So, has anybody, does anybody have any knowledge other than that, or?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so we won't know, and we don't know what the mayor is going to do. We know that they're basically on her desk, and we also don't know if she did put them forward. We don't know whether the AG would allow them to go through because there's, we don't know if they would, I mean, the Collins Center has told us that there's an open question about whether the attorney general would approve at least the budget amendment and even the legal counsel amendment. So there's a lot of things we don't know about that. In terms of putting them into the survey, I mean, we're talking about the survey right now. So we're gonna have to talk about, do we want to include those questions in the survey? And it seems as though we probably should because the city council is actually asking for them. On the other hand, I feel like part of our guidance that we've been getting from the Collins Center is that putting things into the draft charter that are controversial in the eyes of the state may sort of hang it up. You may hit a snag with those kinds of things because you'll hit a snag at the state. we haven't made a decision about whether we want to put, whether, and I suppose maybe asking the people, if the people feel strongly that they want it, then we should put it in there. But knowing what we know from the Collins Center, which is that these are not common practice, the amendments that are being proposed by the council are not common practice. And the state, may look on them skeptically, because it's our responsibility to create a charter that is sturdy, that can hold up. So those are questions that we're going to have to address. We can't really address them right now, but we need to make a decision about whether we're going to put them in the survey. So be thinking about that as we move through.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not saying that we wouldn't want the public's input. I'm saying that we, when in deciding whether we want to put them into the survey, I mean, they're not our idea, they're the city council's idea. The information that we've gotten from the knowledgeable Collins Center is that they're not common practice. And so we would only be putting them in the survey because the city council has come up with them, not because we have. And we can do that, but I just wanna throw that out there, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Ron. Also, I just want to throw out there that since I'm sharing screen, I can't see everybody's box. So if you raised your hand and I'm not calling on you, just throw in your voice. The reason I might not have called on you is because I don't see your box. I think if you press raise hand, it pops up, but in case it doesn't, I just want to throw that out there. Yeah, I think the survey would be just sort of one piece of what we're doing to give us sort of a broad idea. I think, ideally, the survey would be the biggest response that we would, I mean, the survey has the potential to reach probably more people than we can maybe with focus groups and even events. So, But it doesn't mean that it's not like a ballot, that when we look at what the survey says that we have to do what it says. It's a piece of the whole picture that we're putting together, because we are also going to hear from people in other arenas. So let's keep
[Milva McDonald]: We'll talk about how long we want to keep the survey open. That's another thing we're going to talk about.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: Let's finish going through the survey and then we'll talk about whether we want, whether or when we wanna move forward with it. So we had a, basically these are sort of foundational questions, right? mayor, you know, the form of government, mayor, city manager, term of the mayor, composition of the city council. This is about composition of the school committee. The, you know, the little bit of information is that Medford is, while Medford City Council is not in step with the rest of the state in terms of not having ward representation and being so small, the school committee is actually, is in step with the rest of the state. So because state trends, most school committees are at large, and seven is a pretty common size. So the question here is, should they remain at large? Should there be a combination of ward and at large? it does occur to me that we could actually have all at ward. I mean, all ward with the school committee because the mayor being the ninth member.
[Milva McDonald]: We do need to, but I have to double check this, but I think it's in state law. Whether the mayor is chair of the school committee, I could be wrong about that, but we should look into that.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm positive that they didn't say you can't, but it is definitely not, it's not the way ward representation is common on city councils. It's not common on school committees, but there are school committees that have ward representation. So it is possible. Whether the mayor has to be on the school committee, we should look at that. I think it's state law, but I don't want to say for sure. So research that, It's definitely not required that the mayor be chair of the school committee. Okay, this is about term length for city councilors, and this is about term length for school committee members. And then there's a question about the chair of school committee of the mayor. In comparable Massachusetts cities, I think it's about 50-50 with the mayor being the chair of the school committee. And in other scenarios, the mayor is a member of the school committee, but the committee can elect their own chair. So that's what these questions reflect. Should the mayor remain as chair of the school committee?
[Milva McDonald]: It's something that I think we should ask about. And then there's questions about the term limit, also city council, also school committee, and then comes balance of power.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so just, so we could revise these questions to- And then they trim things for us? So for the term limits.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, for a term limit, yeah, go ahead. So that would take out this question here.
[Milva McDonald]: I agree. I think a yes or no on the term limits, we could probably cut those other questions out. I mean, balance of power was definitely one of the issues that came up as a big issue at our meeting last week. So this is basically, so this first question, for instance, is one of the non-specific questions that there's been some discussion about in terms of the effectiveness of those questions. Um, basically it's just a broad question asking us, you know, getting, trying to get people's perceptions of whether they think the mayor has too much power or the city council has too much power or, or what do, can we do away with that question? I mean, you know, it also is followed up. by if you answered A or B, please indicate your ideas on balancing Medford's governmental power. So I mean, this survey also at the end, we'll have chances for people to give longer input and hopefully we'll get some of that. But I guess in the interest of trimming, do we wanna just take out the sort of broad question about people's perceptions about the balance of power in the city?
[Milva McDonald]: So then we go to the specific question department heads. And then there's the another question about board committees and commissions.
[Milva McDonald]: they address balance of power.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, one of these questions speaks directly to one of the amendments that City Council is currently proposing. So we had earlier talked about, do we want to include those questions and this would be including one of them. The one about approving appointments to boards, committees and commissions. So I just wanna throw that out there.
[Milva McDonald]: Uh, exactly. So, I mean, my feeling is that this is as neutral as you can get. It's state the fact and then it asks a yes or no question. But, um, but even if we got this back and we and what we heard, what we got from the survey and what we heard from our focus groups and all that is because we did hear a lot of people last week saying that they feel that the city council needs more power. Um, Even if we got this back and it felt like overwhelmingly people wanted the city council to have the power to approve appointments, it would still be our job to look at the details of that if we decided to go ahead with it.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay. I mean, I, I thought I heard balance of power as a concern and, um, we've, it's also in the, um, document we have of the, uh, feedback on the feedback form and emails, it's been an issue in almost every single one that we've gotten, so.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know how many surveys we're going to be putting out. I don't know that we can, I mean, we can definitely do more than one, but I don't know that we should try to do a bunch. These questions are going to have to be answered by our committee, whether or not we put them in the survey. So I just want to put that out there.
[Milva McDonald]: Can you be more specific and like just sort of say what kinds of, say a couple of the questions you're thinking of.
[Milva McDonald]: So we have that in there.
[Milva McDonald]: And then- So you would just ask them to check boxes.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, gotcha. So just to finish going through what we currently have, these are directly related to the amendments on the table and they're in there because the amendments are on the table. This one about the budget is, what they're asking for in their budget amendment to increase dollar amount of line items, as well as reducing and rejecting. Hiring its own staff is also another. So I think what I'm hearing from people is take out those questions. Now, earlier, I believe it was Anthony felt that we should have those questions in there because they exist out in the community.
[Milva McDonald]: In a survey and when you say all of this stuff, you mean all the issues on the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: We're going to look at those at the next meeting. We still have other items on our agenda and we're running out of time. I do want to wrap up, we can't we just came to the end of what we have for a survey, a lot of it was cut because there was a length question and so the end is just demographics. Um, so basically what my notes say at this point are, cut the beginning, go straight to the specific questions, um, and then cut specific questions about term links. Um, cut the questions about, uh, basically the balance of power, the whole balance of power section.
[Milva McDonald]: We might get help from that from, this would be distributed through the city and they might even have a demographic section that we can reuse. You know, the reason to ask these questions would be for us to say, okay, we haven't reached, you know, let's reach out to the senior community. We haven't heard a lot from them or, it just sort of gives us an idea of maybe what other groups we need to reach out to.
[Milva McDonald]: Possibly, we'll look at that. So to wrap this up, the hope was that we could finalize the survey and start distributing it so that we could have a more robust body of public feedback and we currently have, because we're gonna start deliberating on these questions, some of the main questions in the next month or two. We've heard a lot tonight about, I mean, we had Ron's suggestion that we just send out a survey that lists topics and ask people what they want us to focus on. I mean, The current survey that we have, I feel like we've shortened it. It's pretty compact now, and it basically just asks really just big questions about form of government, composition, and term length and limits.
[Milva McDonald]: Wait a minute. She's muted.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, thanks. All right, so we need to wrap up the survey, and we need to make a decision about how we're going to move forward with it. I think there was consensus on how we could shorten it. And so now we just need to decide, are we gonna go make those changes and go forward with it? So we can get sort of this basic big picture information. We could use the questions we have and add um, a question such as Ron suggested, where we list the issues and ask people to rank their most important issues.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I'll make the adjustments. We'll vote on it at the next meeting. We're also going to be deliberating on mayor and city manager at next meeting. So just so we know that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so interviews. Thank you, Anthony, for interviewing the mayor. That's our first completed interview. Did you get it? Did you send it to the Medford Charter Study email?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm sure it's there, but we'll definitely, next meeting on the agenda is gonna be reviewing the completed interviews. Uh, Maury and I have one set up with Denny Graham and, um, Gina and I have one set up with Zach Bears. Danielle and I are almost have one set up with Nicole Morell. Um, and how, how, how's everyone else doing on scheduling? Are there any other scheduled?
[Milva McDonald]: If not, I'll join you.
[Milva McDonald]: They can be Zoom or in person and you can use whatever Zoom works.
[Milva McDonald]: So if you need to use the charter study one just to make the meeting longer, that's fine. Just check in with me and we'll make sure that happens.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep, I can facilitate that. Okay. Ron, you would have contacted city councilors and haven't been able to set any up, is that correct?
[Milva McDonald]: So you're going to check back in with them? Yeah. OK. And you heard back from Kit Collins and Dustin Sang. What about George and George Scarpelli?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, OK. That's great. But John Falco, but you didn't set it up with them.
[Milva McDonald]: And who's joining you for that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So another question that was raised was about budget issues in terms of if we make any change to the charter that would affect the budget, how does that work? And that's something that I'm sure we'll discuss over time, but it led to the issue of interviewing the chief financial officer, which is one of the people on our list. Does anybody, does anybody, I mean, we have city clerk, elections manager, chief financial officer, planning development and sustainability, superintendent, communications director, and nobody has signed up yet for these folks.
[Milva McDonald]: Mm-hmm.
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody, consider me. If you can't find anybody else, just consider me. I will talk to all of the people on the list. I'll be the second for anybody, okay?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, they're not all absolutely necessary. I mean, um, you know, I think some of the city officials, it would be good to talk to the CFO. It would be good to talk to planning, development and sustainability. Some of these positions have City clerk, they sort of have more interaction with issues in the charter than others. Also talking to the former city officials, I think could be helpful so we have a long list of those and so far john Falco is the only one that. people have volunteered for. So we could talk to Michael McGlynn, Stephanie Muccini-Burke, Michael Marks, Bob Penta, Bob Maiocco. These are the people on our list. Patricia Brady-Doherty, Paul Donato, Paul Camuso, Paulette Vanderkloot, Aaron DiBenedetto, and Bob Skerry. So we don't have anybody signed up for those. And we don't have to talk to everybody. The other possibility is we could potentially ask people to fill out the questionnaire, even if we can't personally interview them. How do people feel about that?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the elections manager is on our list to talk to, so. Right. And because there are issues. She may run too. Well, I mean, this isn't inherently political. It's about, I mean, it would potentially could help their office run more smoothly if we made changes to the charter, you know? So, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So it looks, I think we have some interviews set up. We can eat, we can, hopefully people will schedule more and we'll have at least a report at our next meeting from about the interview with the mayor and probably some others as well.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, it's a different kind of thing. having people come and speak publicly in a committee public meeting is different than the kind of information we get from the informal interviews. And I think, you know, from what I've gathered from the call-in center that the most committees do this, do the informal interviews. So, but we can consider. Okay, so just to wrap up events and planning circle the squares this weekend, I'll be there with a table flyers etc.
[Milva McDonald]: No, not I mean Medford Square.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be fantastic. I'll know where it's going to be when I check in.
[Milva McDonald]: If you want to email your phone number, then I can text you where the location is once they sign. Okay. Um, we have farmer's market on August 31st, and then, um, we're trying to plan this ice cream social event, which I think we could do at city hall, like on the lawn outside. Um, Danielle and I are going to meet tomorrow morning to talk about planning that. And Francis, you, um, I've talked about it a little bit with you too. I don't know what you're probably busy tomorrow morning, but. If you wanna just throw out the ideas that you shared with me, that would be great.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. So we're going to try to look at that. And you were suggesting, I think, a Wednesday evening. Is that what you suggested?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, we'll be discussing that more and we'll have more details in the August meeting. A Facebook page has been created. Oh, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: That's fine. We've gone over anyway, so.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be great. I'll send an email to the whole group. But yeah, I'm going to just ask everybody to send a brief bio. And then I will ask the city communications director to put them up on the website. web page. So the Facebook page is there. I know Maury found it because he's the only follower. I picked up a free picture of City Hall. There's no pictures. There's nothing. It's only to be used for announcements and sort of Maybe education. It's not really we can't discuss issues on it. But I guess if any, if you all look it up on Facebook and start following it. If somebody wants to be a administrator. Talk to me and We'll figure we have to start getting people to follow it I mean because we could announce we can announce our events on there we can announce our meetings on there, etc. Okay, I just wanted to throw that out there.
[Milva McDonald]: The, you know, I'm not really that good with settings. It's not comments have not been turned off, it could be turned off, they're not turned off right now. I think the thing we can't do is we can't really, we can't have discussions. on there so people can make comments we just can't respond which which is okay we can answer questions basic questions um you know the admin would have to review the questions yeah yeah um what is the name what is the name of the site medford charter study committee just what you would think so see if you can find it um We can talk more about that. I did post to this meeting on there, even though there's no fault. There's just Maury. Maury somehow found it. I don't know how, because I didn't tell him about it. Can we share it with us? Yes, yes. Yeah, we need to start getting followers. I mean, it could have better graphics. But I didn't have any photos or anything.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so I want to just offer public participation if any members of the public want to speak, address any of the issues. We've heard a little bit, but anything, any other thoughts, questions, or comments from members of the public?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So our next meeting is July 6th. I will send minutes out to folks, but we have a small action list, but I'll send the minutes out and you'll be getting an agenda, et cetera. Anybody want to? Go ahead, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be fantastic. That's going to be hugely helpful. I'm hoping to do that deliberation on the ward issue, ward representation issues in August. So you have time. But it would be great to have a report on your progress at the next meeting. So that's great.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, so just, uh, are we ready to adjourn motion to adjourn? Thank you. All in favor. All right. I will see you. See you all in July six.
[Milva McDonald]: Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. We're really excited to have you here. Just bear with us. We're working on all this technology because we're hybrid on Zoom as well. And Kevin, thank you so much for helping us get all that going. OK. for charter study committee, we are going to do a very short presentation because we want most of the evening to be devoted to hearing you. So I wanted to alert you to in the back there's a materials table it just has our flyers on it. It has a copy of the generic modern charter that we've been looking at that was provided to us by the Collins Center at UMass Boston. And you'll hear a little bit more about them in a bit. So you can peruse that if you're interested. There's also a suggestion box. So you can write down ideas and drop them in the box. There's index cards back there. There will also be many other ways for you to share your thoughts. We're going to be distributing a survey soon. We also have a feedback form on our website. And you'll be hearing more about that again as well. So first I just want to introduce the committee. I am at Milva McDonald. The other committee members that are here are Anthony Andrea Tola, Danielle Balaka, Janice Brown, Jean Zotter, Ron Giovino, John Moreshi, and Maury Carroll. We also have Mike Mastro Buoni, who isn't here tonight. We are all Medford residents that were appointed by Mayor Brianna Lungo-Cohn to comprehensively study the city charter. Our city liaison who helps us with logistics and whatnot is Frances Nwaje. We're very grateful to her as well. So we can start the slideshow. We have a little slideshow, but. So we are appointed to comprehensively study Medford's current charter. We are gathering input from the community. We are looking at charters of similar communities, looking at best practices trends. Ultimately, the goal is to propose recommendations on changes to the charter and content to the city council and the mayor. Helping us with this process is UMass Boston's Collis Center for Public Management. They're a nonprofit that was established by the state legislature in 2008. They've worked with more than two-thirds of the state's 351 municipalities on more than 800 projects, including many charter reviews. So they're extremely knowledgeable and their help has been really invaluable. Materials, all of the materials they provided us with can be found on our website, our page on the city website, www.medfordnad.org slash charter study. And if you look, there's, if you look under presentations, you'll find all the materials they provided us, including the generic modern charter, which is on the table back there. Okay, we'll go to the next. So the first question that a lot of people ask when they hear about charter review is what is a city charter? It's often referred to as the constitution of a city. It creates the city of Medford as a legal entity, it establishes the city's powers, and it outlines the broad fundamentals of the city government. So it's a very important document. So why review? This is another question that people ask. Well, there's a lot of reasons. One is to keep up with the modern understanding of best practices. Medford's charter hasn't been reviewed in decades. It was reviewed in the 1970s. It was changed, the last change was in the 1980s. So it's been a long time since it's been looked at and a lot has changed since then. Another reason is to respond to the needs and preferences of residents and maintain consistency with state and federal law. Because of the nature of our charter, it works in conjunction with state law and it hasn't been looked at in a long time. There could be conflicts with state law and updating it, looking at it periodically helps maintain consistency with state and federal law. Also remaining consistent with community values and cultural changes. Our city has changed a lot in the decades since the charter was last reviewed. So that's something that's important to look at as well. Also, clarifying text that is confusing or disputed because of the particular structure of Medford's charter, which we'll be getting into. Some of it can be open to interpretation and we would want our charter to be as clear and understandable and accessible as possible so that any resident who's looking to see how our city government operates can go to the charter and they can understand it. Currently, that's challenging because of the nature of Medford's charter. And that also provides transparency on how our city government operates. Okay, so the process, our process, the process for this committee. As I said, we're going to research and review the current charter. We want to gather lots of public input. Tonight is the beginning of that and we're hoping to hear from many, many people in the city about what they want to see in their government. We're looking at the charter as a whole, not just in pieces. We're looking at the entire document. Once we complete our work, we'll submit a final report to the mayor and the city council, and then it's in their hands. They look at it. If they approve it, it's submitted to the state legislature. If the state legislature gives it the green light, then it goes to the residents to be voted on. So nothing that we propose, nothing that we do can be codified until the voters say so. So this is really in the hands of the voters. Okay, Medford's current charter. So many people who look at Medford's charter or maybe know that it's what we call a plan, what is a plan A charter. It was adopted in 1986. Before that, we had a plan E charter, which means we had a city manager as opposed to a mayor. We moved to a mayor form of government in 1986. All these plan governments are outlined in Massachusetts general laws. And only a few communities left in the state are still using a plan form of government. They're considered to be antiquated at this point and Medford is one of the few that are still using a plan form as opposed to creating a more modern charter like the one that's on the table that's right here. You'll be able to take a look at if you like. And as I said, that's also available on our website. The other thing that we've learned about Medford's Charter is that it doesn't exist in a single document. So if anybody, if any of you have tried to learn about Medford's Charter and you go click on Medford's charter from the city website, you'll see a very short couple pages, very short. The reason for that is because it is a plan a charter. So it's described in Massachusetts general laws, and it works in conjunction with other state statutes and special acts, which are laws that were that are specific to Medford. So in order to really understand Medford's charter, you have to track down all these different sources. And that can be difficult. Some of the statutes and special acts go back decades, if not more. So that's one of our goals is to create an accessible charter that people can look at that's in one document. So for instance, if you want to know, if you look at the charter on our website, it doesn't say anything about how the school committee operates. In order to find that, you have to go to Mass General Laws about school committees, and then you have to find whatever special acts passed that apply to Medford in that regard. A new charter, comprehensive, would supersede all that, and it would exist in one document so that any resident could look at it and understand how the city government works. Um, okay, so I'm going to hand this over to Ron and then he's going to talk about some other things.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, first, I just want to remind everyone to give your name and address for the record because we have to, we have to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Okay, so my first question is, how is a ward determined? That's determined by the state. And I believe every 10 years, is that what we were just told? Because we just actually, and if you go on our website, we just had a presentation on that from the Collins Center at our last meeting. And so there's a little more specific information about it. But what we were informed is that every 10 years, the state reviews that.
[Milva McDonald]: Whether it was reviewed at that point as another map.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you for your time. First, I just want to say, any thoughts you have about publicity, check with me later. I would love your ideas. I will. Just to quickly address also your question about research, we are interviewing current city officials, and we also are going to check in with past city officials just to hear their thoughts. And so that might address some of the things that you were wondering about. And we're also looking at charters in other cities and all that. Right. Well, I know you know already there are two types of research.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm Milva McDonald. I've lived here for almost 30 years. I have four children. I have three grandchildren. I've been hearing about Charter Review for many years and sort of worked with a citizen group to try to get Charter Review to happen. So I was quite interested in getting into, in being part of this committee when it was announced. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I believe it would go to the council first. And I believe, yes, that they can look at different pieces and maybe say, yeah, well, we're OK with this, but not this. So there is a certain amount of hashing out at that point, as I understand it. But once the committee is done with our job, it's sort of in their hands.
[Milva McDonald]: We don't have a deadline. Since we are an appointed committee, there is no deadline. In general, 18 months is considered A reasonable amount of time to do this if, if we had gone through the other avenue to charter review and had an elected commission, they would have a deadline and it would be 18 months. So we're currently at about six months, so we don't have a deadline but. You know, we're hoping I mean I think 18 months is a good window, but if we need more time will take more time. And whether you know when it goes on the ballot that's all going to depend on when we finish our work, how long the city council and the mayor sit with it, how long it sits in the legislature, and all that. It would either go on a municipal ballot. If there's a state election, it would have to be a separate ballot because currently the Secretary of State won't allow municipal issues to go on a state ballot on the same ballot. And the other option would be a special election. But of course, those are always problematic for turnout. So all that
[Milva McDonald]: Any more comments, questions? Our meetings are generally the first Thursday of every month. We have an extra meeting this month. Our next meeting is June 15th, and then we'll also be meeting on July 6th. Those are our upcoming meetings. Everything is housed at medfordmap.org slash charter study. You can watch every single meeting we've had. You can look at all the materials that have been provided to us from the call-in center. We have handouts on mayor versus city manager. We have the ward precinct information that was referenced earlier. Comparisons of the composition of Medford City Council to surrounding communities, other things as well. Also a whole little memo on the complexity of Medford's charter that I found pretty interesting in case anybody wants to check that out. that explains some of the issues of why Medford's Charter is so inaccessible right now. Yeah, and we will be having more public meetings. We will have a table at Circle the Square on June 17th. We will be at the Farmer's Market, and we'll be looking at other events. We will be interviewing current and former city officials, and we'll also hope to go out to, groups in the city like the senior center, the West Metro Community Center. So we'll be looking at all those those things as well. Um, and would love to hear any ideas that people have about reaching out about anything about the charter, etcetera. Question. Yes, we do. So if you come to our meetings, at the end of every meeting, there's time for public participation. We also have, well, you can email us anytime with comments, and we also have a form on the website, a feedback form that you can fill out to give us feedback. We're in the process of finalizing a survey, and I hope that it will be circulating by the end of the month. Maybe that's a little optimistic, but that's what we're shooting for. It's in the works. Thank you. Um, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Was your question about what's accepted by the city government or what's the discussion among the committee? Was that your question?
[Milva McDonald]: So I think that should be an open and transparent process. When we complete our final report, we will submit whatever revised charter that we ultimately come up with, along with a written report detailing the process that we used to come to those decisions. And we will make a presentation to the city council, and that will be public. And any deliberation the city council, uses to address it will be public, and anything they vote on will be public. So that should all be very public.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, and it's out of our hands, too, at that point. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and hopefully at that time, there will be turnout at those meetings and the charter will be, we will do everything in our power to make sure that the draft charter is widely circulated so that people in the city can see it as well and they'll know what's being discussed and what's being voted on so that if residents have thoughts about it, they can connect with the elected officials and let them know. how they want them to respond to it.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Do we have anyone else on Zoom? Do we have any final questions or thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: Any other thoughts or questions? Oh, great.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. When we heard from the Collins Center on city councils, we did learn that Medford is really in the very small minority, not having ward representation. And the hybrid model that Erica just referenced is by far the norm of a ward. Ward Councilors and a few at large is the most common situation. So that's what we've learned so far about that. Any other questions or thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we are really the only, there are only, I believe, two other communities that have seven member councils and they're significantly smaller than Medford. So we really are an outlier in that regard as well. Yes. That's right, yes, we have eight wards. So we would have to enlarge the council and actually exclusively ward representation is probably not an option for Medford because we have an even number of wards. So you would be looking at a council of nine or 11 probably to go to ward.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, the state does set the wards and there's also state, you know, I, I mean one question we asked at our last meeting was whether any, whether having sort of a Councilor having word representation where you have four ward Councilors and each Councilor takes two wards and that's not really done. So that. You know, the question of that's not something that's done. And one of the things, when we talked about the state approving the charter, I mean, they're mostly looking at it to ensure that it complies with state law. That's the main reason they're looking at it. But when you put something in the charter that's unusual, they could question it.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. We're going to zoom. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So rank choice voting doesn't, it can be addressed in the charter, it doesn't have to be addressed in the charter. From what I have, from the information I have gathered, one of the issues about including it in our charter is that it's not done very much. It's not been instituted in very many communities in the state. And it's one of the issues that the state might flag. And we did have a state ballot question on it. And since Medford, Medford voted in favor. When you look at the breakdown of how Medford voted on rank choice voting, there was a majority, but it wasn't a large majority. And so we don't really know how the state would respond if that were put into the charter, but it has been raised here by more than one or two people. So it's definitely something we will look at.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. OK, do any committee members have any sort of final thoughts that they'd like to share? Anybody? Yes. Yes, thank you so much for coming. Yes, and please be in touch with us. Come to more of our meetings. And thanks again. Good night.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street. Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. I'm the chair of the Medford Charter Study Committee. As you know, charter review has been discussed in Medford for many years, and we are at an exciting moment right now with volunteer residents undertaking the task. As we work with the Collins Center for Public Management, a nonprofit entity out of UMass Boston that has guided many communities through the process of charter review. We are examining the charter as a whole and learning, among other things, about how pieces interact with each other, best practices, and trends. The goal is to propose a sturdy, fair, transparent charter that provides a strong framework for our city government in the long term. This holistic look at the charter is especially important in Medford because of how much time has passed since the last review. As the blueprint for how our city government operates, the charter is a vitally important document that affects every person who lives in our city. Now, for the first time in decades, we are finally giving it a checkup, looking at our form of government, the balance of powers, the composition of our elected bodies, length and limits of terms for elected officials, budget procedures, mechanisms for citizen participation, and more. I have heard this council reiterate many times that charter review should come from the people, and that is exactly what is happening. We are all residents who volunteered for this task because we care about our city. Our process prioritizes community engagement and input. We will use the public feedback we collect to draft a proposal that must make its way through several portals, including this council, before ever becoming official. The final step is at the ballot box with the voters. The voters, the people, will have the final say. Our webpage at www.medfordmad.org slash charter study has a wealth of information, including a form inviting public feedback. You will find us at Circle the Square in June, the Farmer's Market in August, and other events around the city. We will also be circulating a survey very soon. But the main reason I'm here is to extend an invitation. We are especially excited about our first public information and listening session this Thursday, June 8th at 7 p.m. right here in City Hall Chambers. All are welcome and encouraged to join us. It's going to be fun. regardless of which are events or meetings you can or cannot attend. Your voice is important, and we want to hear from you, the residents of our city and the leaders of our city about your thoughts, hopes and dreams for our municipal government. We hope to see you on Thursday evening right here. Thank you. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Second.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, welcome everyone to our meeting. I'm gonna start as usual with the minutes. Did everybody have a chance to look at the main minutes? Move approval. Great, anybody second? Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we've accepted the minutes, great. All right, so we're going to move right into the presentation from the Collins Center. Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Are you taking care of that, John?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I just enabled screen sharing. So I think that is that going to work?
[Milva McDonald]: Why don't you start with that? Ron, were you going to say something? Go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Eight, eight.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: So Eunice and Jean, Eunice, you wanna ask your question first? Sure, thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks, Jean. Danielle, did I see your hand? No.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I have a couple of questions. One is, do any cities, or is it even a possibility, to combine wards, have ward representation and say, you know, to have one count, like say we have eight wards, you would have four ward Councilors and each would take two wards. Is that something that any municipality does? Is it even possible?
[Milva McDonald]: So generally it's one Councilor per ward that's... Okay, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: It's possible in theory, but it's not really done or it hasn't really been done thus far.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. John, you have a question?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, so one of the things that you're, the materials you put together, um, there was a sort of looking at sort of comparable cities and how they work their city council. Um, so, you know, I, I just wonder if we can circle back and look at that and, um, see if maybe we can, um, get some discussion around that. And because most of the, um, most of the examples you gave us, I think have ward representation. So I'm just trying to get a sense of how, statewide, what's the most common situation? Do most cities have at-large?
[Milva McDonald]: So that's pretty big majority of the 33 out of 54, right? Yes. Okay. That's good to know. Thank you. In terms of exploring this. Do you think it would be helpful at all if we sort of looked historically at the representation on Medford's Council, let's say in the last decade or so, just looking at where the council comes from and see sort of What that looks like, is that something that a committee like this would do just to determine? Okay, so that could be useful just for us to look at just to determine whether there's certain areas of the city that just haven't, I mean, theoretically, they've all been represented because we have that large Councilors, but that haven't had.
[Milva McDonald]: I think, okay, I think, Jean, did I see your hand?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, so um. Do we do we have any? Oh Danielle, I see your hand.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. There would be more candidates, but we would actually, people would be voting for fewer people because now you can vote for up to seven because we have seven. And would each ballot in each ward, wouldn't necessarily list all, but they only just have their ward, the at-large candidates and their ward. So you wouldn't see the other ward. candidates on your ballot, right? No. Okay. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: So Marilyn, can I just add on that? When you say a lot of them were nine in chapter 40, I mean, I know most.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. And I'm just wondering whether I know that plan A says nine and Medford doesn't have nine because they made they passed an exception in a special act. But I think that's part of the reason why nine tends to be a common number.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron. No, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: This is, I guess, a similar question, but do any municipalities ever face a situation where they have, let's say, eight or nine ward Councilors or whatever, and that there's not anybody who steps up to run in a particular ward? I have never heard of this. Okay. Yeah, I don't know that it would be likely. I just wonder.
[Milva McDonald]: Any other questions? Can we just maybe focus a little more on the size of council? Here, sorry. You talked about 11-13 is common, 9, Medford if we move- 9 is probably a good runner-up. Right. But in Medford, if we move toward representation, nine wouldn't really work for us, right? We'd have to do probably 11. And if we decided, say, if we decided not to do ward and we're just talking about size of council, Medford seems to have a smaller council than most cities, and I know that that was something that- All except one.
[Milva McDonald]: And are they at large as well, do you know?
[Milva McDonald]: OK. So they must be smaller if they only have four wards or districts.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Jean, you had a question.
[Milva McDonald]: How common are staggered terms on the city councils?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks Eunice. You're about to ask a question.
[Milva McDonald]: One thing I think with all ward, one could imagine a scenario in which a resident didn't feel satisfied or whatever with their ward Councilor, and then they wanted, or they wanted to have more representation. So that's why when you have three at large Councilors, I don't know, I could see that maybe being something that just as a voter, well, you have more than one Councilor. Exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: And, and our, our ward in general, our ward Councilors, do they tend to be as responsive to all citizens, even if the citizens aren't from their ward or the voters?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Ron, did you have a question or did you just forget to put your hand down?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm interested in what you said about the sort of the four year term looking sort of daunting for city council because I mean, we are city councillors in Medford tend to stay in office for quite a long time. Is there an average? Is that common for city councillors to kind of stick around for 10 plus close to 20 years?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, and is that something that we commonly see, or is that.
[Milva McDonald]: But in a community like ours where there do tend to be the majority of elected officials stay in office for a long time, it's maybe something to look at, for us to look at, maybe.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: In terms of the issue of salaries, the charter does address salaries, but doesn't necessarily set them.
[Milva McDonald]: but could the charter sort of outline a mechanism for setting salaries and say, you know, say that it would be by ordinance or, you know, what does the charter do in terms of that?
[Milva McDonald]: Any other questions on city council ward representation? Any comments?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. We saw how ward representation, combination of ward and at-large is by far the most common Um, situation for city council, but that is adult school committees.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, any other final thoughts. I'm wondering, one of the things that came up in this discussion was sort of trying to look at. I mean, we didn't determine a timeframe, but I don't know, 20 years, maybe that's too much, 15 years, or sort of the composition of our council, just to see what kind of representation we have been getting on the council. Does anybody wanna, is anybody interested in doing that research? Just looking at what wards the Councilors have come from for, I don't know, it's 20 years too far back, or? What do you think?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, you said you would do that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we can do it together if you want. Eunice and Jean? Okay. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I guess, I don't know, the clerk, we could, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And then you can report on that at the next meeting. That would be awesome.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that would be great. And now find some of it online. Yeah, and that would just help us sort of see how well, or in terms of representation, how well the current system has been working. Awesome. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you so much for that presentation. That was a really helpful information. Okay, and what do we have next? Oh, meeting with city officials.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's what the research will be done, is finding out what wards they're all from. Great, thank you. Okay, so are we ready to move to the next agenda item? Okay, so I was sharing a signup sheet, but Google was doing weird things and would only let me share it with some people because I don't really understand why. But I thought maybe we could just discuss it right now and sort of see who wants to volunteer and maybe we could, people could sign up right now. Did everybody have a chance to look at the list? Ron, you have a question?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I understand. I just don't know how that interacts with open meeting laws if we have the entire body there. Anthony or Marilyn, do you know?
[Milva McDonald]: Maury, did you have your hand up?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So this is a pretty long list. I guess my first question is, does anybody think that there's somebody that we really should talk to that's not on the list?
[Milva McDonald]: So yeah, so our whole committee then couldn't meet with one school committee member either, right?
[Milva McDonald]: No, no, go ahead. Yeah. Go ahead.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. You mean the state reps?
[Milva McDonald]: So like Christine Barber, Sean Garvely, people like that?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think it goes through a commit to a committee first. I'm not, does it have to clear a committee before it goes to the full legislature? Is that right? In terms of the special act?
[Milva McDonald]: Is that something that these kinds of committees or groups usually do, is also talk to state representatives or do they tend to focus on the city or town?
[Milva McDonald]: They both were on school committee and city council.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we have a we have a long list of people. We have the current. We have the executive branch with the mayor and her chief of staff. We have the city council school committee, um, certain city officials like superintendent, elections manager, etcetera. And then we have a list of former, um, elected officials. So I, there's nine of us. I don't know what kind of energy people have to talk to everybody on this list, but I think we should at least cover the mayor and the president and vice president of the city council and school committee and probably some of the city officials. So, and I think if we could do that soon, that would be awesome. So Ron, you have a question?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, I mean, I think one of the questions is, are we going to, um, we, we can't have a quorum interview, do the interviews, but do we want to have two committee members or should we just say, well, if one, you know, one committee member can want, you know, just interview one official and, um, Oh, could we do a couple of us with a couple of them so that we can, you know, and I guess,
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. No, I think that's a good idea. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: So what I was hoping was that we could just go through the list and we could get maybe two committee members to say, you know, volunteer for each person or however many as we can. to accommodate and then those two committee members can just deal with contacting the official and setting up the interview and then just report back to us at the next meeting. So going on that model, does anybody have a particular desire to interview the mayor?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, one thing that I sent you was, this is something that we don't have to use, we can use it. I did see that some communities used a thing that they called the pre-interview questionnaire, which just, did everybody look at that? That just gives pretty broad questions. And I don't know, I mean, we're gonna talk about the survey next, but we don't necessarily have a list of, questions for every person we're going to interview. If we want to look at that pre-interview questionnaire, let me just see.
[Milva McDonald]: So would I. Yeah, so this was something that I had thought about we could potentially use, but you can see these questions are pretty broad. Um, and they're just meant to get, uh, generate discussion because we're really just sort of, um, getting their thoughts, listening. We're going to be mostly listening. Um, and if they have any questions, um, so, um, okay. So, um, I think I heard Maury and Anthony. Is that what I heard?
[Milva McDonald]: And Anthony, did I hear you say that you would as well?
[Milva McDonald]: So I'm going to leave it up to the, you know, you and Maury can connect with each other and set up however you want to do it.
[Milva McDonald]: Can we record these? I mean, you know, that's something that I, we could ask Marilyn and Anthony, is it common for people, for committees to get recordings of these interviews? I mean, I think we could ask, but I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: So, Marilyn and Anthony, is that common with other committees where they would do these kinds of pretty much informal interviews and then make reports and those would be public record?
[Milva McDonald]: The notes? Yes. OK. Got it. Jean, and then Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, well, how do people feel about that questionnaire? I mean, you know, it's, it's designed, those questions, I think, are designed to be very sort of broad and open. But How do people feel about that?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, Do you know we could ask them. I mean, I feel like we would get a sense of what they would be likely to support in the course of the conversation, but we could ask that direct question. But, you know, if we're going to try to have a questionnaire that we use for everybody that kind of question wouldn't apply to the city officials or the former elected officials so
[Milva McDonald]: OK. Ron, you're going to?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Questions. Yes, I am. I just want to be mindful of time because we still actually have quite a few agenda items. We have an open-ended, we have a questionnaire with some open-ended questions. Do we wanna, and if we, do we wanna vote and say, okay, we're comfortable going ahead with interviewing, starting these interviews, using this questionnaire with pretty open-ended questions to sort of, you know, get the conversation going, or do we feel like we need to wait? How do people feel?
[Milva McDonald]: Jean, how do you feel?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, so you didn't see the questionnaire? No. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, basically it just says what aspects allows or allowed you or your office to work well. Do you have concerns or issues regarding government structure that you would like to see addressed? Aspects of government operation that you think function well or need improvement? Do you have questions regarding the process? Anything you would like to share that is relevant to the charter review process? So those, again, they're pretty open-ended. And so do we, Does anybody want to make a motion that we should move ahead with the interviews using this questionnaire or not? Or we can just agree.
[Milva McDonald]: Yep, absolutely. Okay, so I really want, I want to move to the next agenda item. So, so far, I have Maury and Anthony that are willing to interview the mayor. And I think, Jean, you signed up for Zach. I can join you in that. And maybe what we should do is you all have a list Does anybody want to say right now? Yeah, I want to talk to Nina Nazarian, or I want to interview Nicole, or is there anyone? I'll do Kathy Kreatz and Mia. OK, so Eunice is going to do. OK.
[Milva McDonald]: OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, there's plenty. There's a lot of different people here. So we talked about at least covering president and vice president. So does anybody want to join Danielle to talk to Nicole? I could do that too, but if anybody wants to. I'll do it with you, Danielle. And what about Jenny is president of the school committee, Jenny Graham and Paul Rousseau. Okay, is Paul Russo the chair?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, right, right, because the mayor is the chair, yes. Jenny's the vice chair, Paul is the secretary. Thank you. Who said they would do Paul Russo?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Maury is gonna talk to Jenny. Was that you, Anthony?
[Milva McDonald]: And you said Paul?
[Milva McDonald]: Does anybody wanna join Maury and Anthony in those conversations? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: You'll take the whole city?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Anybody else wanna talk to city councilors? I can do those with you too. Oh wait, who's Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, what about the city officials? Um, city clerk, elections manager, budget manager. I mean, we don't have to fill these all in tonight, but it would be nice if we could at least get started with, uh, That's what we've already had. All right, people, think about who else you might want to interview. OK, so now the next thing on the agenda is a survey. We have the survey. Did everybody look at it? I'll put it up here. So Jean made a couple of comments, and I did incorporate those comments. Any thoughts on the surveying? Was this adapted from another city? Pretty much. I mean, yeah, it's pieces. I put it together from other surveys that I found.
[Milva McDonald]: So that's a good point. Is it too long? Do we need to make it shorter?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you know, and yet it doesn't cover probably nearly everything in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Is it, because it looks like a lot of texts, like, so how many, it's like- Well, there's, you know, I mean, it's just, maybe it's 14 pages because of the way it's spread out in the Word document. I mean, I don't know how many questions it would be. A lot, probably a lot. There's a lot of questions in here.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, there's always, there's usually always in either don't know or not sure option. So, you know, I guess that's a way that people could just sort of. How are we sending this out? I don't know. First we have to decide on the survey and then we'll talk about that. But I just wanted to see if we feel okay about this survey, if we think it'd be shorter, longer, different.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's a good idea because I do sometimes see surveys where they'll say at the beginning, you know, this survey should take, you know, takes 10 minutes or something like that. 10 to 15 minutes or something.
[Milva McDonald]: First, I saw somebody's hand. Did I see someone's hand? Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know that we'll have it available. I don't know. I mean, I would like to have it circulating by the end of the month, but we have to agree on the content first.
[Milva McDonald]: That's great. Um, so yeah, that's awesome. And as far as the content, Jean had a couple of comments, but why don't we do, why don't we take that step then? Danielle is going to. put it in a Google Doc, I mean, a Google whatever. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: And I don't know how much different it would be than the WordDoc that you already have, Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. But although there is, I can, you know, I should send you a new one because it's slightly different based on the comments Gene made. So. Daniel, I can send Anthony the updated Word doc.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, the one that's it, the Google doc that has the pages. Thank you for doing that. Um, okay. So, um, let's see. June 8th, we have an event coming up. Um, that's next week. Ron, there's been a few people working on it. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Ron. Is there anybody who isn't going to be able to come next week? That'd be great if we're there in force. And any questions about the event? I mean, I think I would, I would encourage everybody to talk it up as much as you can. Um, I know that we were on the robo call from the mayor this past week. Um, but we really need to get as much mobility as we can out there.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, the other, I, you know, we're out of time, but I wanted to also talk about some, we have events coming up this summer, but, um, We had a small committee that worked on the planning of this event. Do those people or some of those people or any new people want to form a small subcommittee to just plan? We have circle the square where you talked about planning and ice cream social. We have the farmer's market. Anybody interested in having a small subcommittee that because it's just planning, it's my understanding is it's not subject to open meeting law. We're not deliberating or anything. We're just planning events. Is there anybody who's on board for that kind of planning events this summer?
[Milva McDonald]: July, I'm kind of... Well, we have Circular Square is June 17th.
[Milva McDonald]: And Farmer's Market, I believe we have on August 31st. And I was hoping to do an Ice Cream Circle in July. But Danielle, I'll get in touch with you. Okay. I don't know if I'll be at some of those events, but I'm happy to help.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Okay. I also wanted to run by a draft work plan that I shared with you earlier today, but I guess we'll leave it at that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I agree with you. And I think it's probably important to address it. Um, because you know, it's important to make sure that people understand the difference. Yeah. So. Yeah, I agree with that. Okay. The other, you know, everything else will table, but I wanted to talk about the next meeting because it would be July 7th. And there's been a suggestion to not have it on July 7th and have it on June 29th instead, given, you know, the holiday week and all that. Any thoughts about that?
[Milva McDonald]: June 29th? Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: How do people feel about July 7th? Does that feel like no way or? You mean 6th? July 6th? Or 6th? Is that what it is? 6th? Sorry. 7th is Friday. Okay, then it's 6th.
[Milva McDonald]: So do we want to, so would you want to just keep our regular July 6th meeting? I mean, our first Thursday meeting? Yes. Okay. That works for people. Okay. So and as far as the survey, Danielle, you're going to make a copy of it. I mean, my hope was that we could start circulating it before the end, you know, mid June, mid to late June. But.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Um, we need to open up the floor for public participation. Do we have, um, anybody who wants to speak tonight?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Oh, wow. We managed to only go over by six minutes. Um, okay. Are we adjourning? Cause it looks like we're adjourning. Anybody want to adjourn? Great. Thank you. Great. All in favor. All right. Great. Thank you everybody. We've got a lot done tonight.
[Milva McDonald]: I have a question. When you outlined the budget in these three communities, you said the council could decrease the budget. What about- State law provides. What about amending the budget? Amend by decreasing or eliminating- Or changing items, moving them around, moving money around.
[Milva McDonald]: So is, are there any, is that a standard practice in any communities, or are these three pretty much the norm?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Okay. We have a public information session coming up on June 8th. Oh, wait, before we get into that, we wanted to mention that we are gonna try to set up meetings with city officials in the coming weeks. We're in the process of creating materials, just guidance, questions, things like that. Other than elected officials, if anybody has any thoughts on city officials that might be important for us to talk with, we'd love to hear ideas on that. If anybody has thoughts, can think about it. Or if you have any ideas now, that would be great. Ron?
[Milva McDonald]: No, we're talking about meeting just a couple, two or three committee members with individual city officials to get their, mostly to listen and ask questions and listen to what their thoughts are. have to, we would not make it with the whole council. Matt?
[Milva McDonald]: Possibly, if you have thoughts of anybody in particular, let us know. We'll start compiling a list. Gene?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. In terms of conducting these interviews, We'll be sort of trying to gauge interest on the part of the committee members. We'll probably create some sort of sheets for that, but just throwing it out. Is there interest on the part of committee members to conduct the interviews? How many do we have that are interested in that? Great, okay. So we'll be putting that together very soon. You'll be hearing more about that.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. June 8th, our first public information session. We have a subcommittee that's planning and we're meeting on Monday. And if anybody else wants to jump in on that, you're welcome. I guess we have a draft slide presentation we're preparing. First, I'd like to just ask how many committee members are planning to be there on June 8th? Okay, great. Does anybody have interest in participating in the presentation? We're gonna sort of take turns presenting some of the slides and the material. Okay, um, we will we might need volunteers to run tech we're still looking into how that's going to work because we need to run zoom and hopefully we're going to also be on metric community media. We want to create some interactive materials that people can sort of engage with. So if anybody has ideas on that or is willing to volunteer to help with that, anybody available?
[Milva McDonald]: It's at 2 in the afternoon, but it could be changed if you wanted to come and we could wiggle that time. Thank you. Okay. Okay, so I guess after we have the planning meeting on Monday, we may be coming up with a more specific list of tasks and we can put it out and see if anybody is available for those. We also are going to maybe need some help with publicity because we want to get as big of a turnout as we can. Something else to think about. We have newsletter blurbs written and We have the flyers as well.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Okay, so we also have other community events that we are trying to participate in. present at the farmers market, other city events. And has anybody taken a look at the Google signup sheets for those?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. It would be great if more people could look at that. And we may also be planning other events. For instance, we want to do an ice cream social, just very informal, maybe in July, we'll see. maybe in Medford Square in a park and just invite people to come and eat ice cream and we'll have materials and things like that. And we'll also be getting a survey up and running soon too, so. We also have the flyers and we have some, we have about 200 copies now, Laurel, is that right?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so if any people that can help with that, that would be awesome. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, I'll contact you about getting some flyers to you. Thank you. We also have a digital flyer too, so we can share things that way. But we want to get the paper flyers out to as many locations as we can. as well.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, the statement was hopefully gonna play a role in that, but we're just putting out our materials and having our event and it doesn't have anything to do with what the city council is doing. And we just have to reiterate that. If anybody asks, say we're separate. We're a separate process. But I agree with you that there could be some confusion, and we'll just have to weather it, I think. Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we're definitely going to have to try to draw that line as clearly as possible. Danielle?
[Milva McDonald]: Um, that's good idea.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be great. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Sure. That's also a good idea. Thank you. Maury?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thank you. Okay, any other thoughts or questions, Jean?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, we tried, but it seems it was very difficult to get a date that everyone could do. And people seemed reluctant or ambivalent about meeting twice a month. So we're gonna keep meeting once a month, but we will be, It will be subcommittees that might meet more often than that. And we may go that route.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean another public information session?
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know, that would probably be a lot of, that would be a lot of events, but maybe, or, you know, we will definitely have more public information sessions, and I think one in the fall is probably a good idea, and maybe after the June session, and after our summer meetings, and by that time, we'll certainly have some survey information, and we can sort of assess what the best way to go about that is at that time.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, uh, public participation, um, Nova prior to that.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, Laurel. Congratulations on the job and we'll definitely miss your presence here, but.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, we can open it up to public participation now. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak or ask a question, make a comment?
[Milva McDonald]: I guess we can, does anybody want to make a motion to adjourn?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. All in favor. Recording stopped. All right. Thank you, everyone.
[Milva McDonald]: Hello.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I live at 30 Revere Beach Parkway and I'm in favor of the proposal with the fully buffered bike lanes. especially want to commend the people who designed this for the roundabout and the improved geometry in the roundabout. And want to request that if we use flex posts anywhere, that it be in that roundabout to enforce that new geometry. I think with the grade of the roundabout, that's pretty much like the worst part of Winthrop Street for me when I bike. And also to consider using maybe the same treatment that Somerville did powderhouse circle that like tan road covering, I don't know what to call it. And then finally, I'll say that I'm not really in favor of door zone bike lanes, they kind of scare me. But if that's what we have to go with, I would love to see the parking and bike lane flipped, even though the widths are a little substandard, I'd rather be in the door zone only when there's a passenger in the car. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. So before we get into the presentation from the Collins Center, we wanted to just hear from the committee members about your thoughts about areas of the model charter to prioritize for study and review. So we've seen the model charter now and we've seen how Medford's charter compares to it. And we've also been able to sort of compare three other communities and how they look. So hopefully with those materials, we can get some feedback on what you all think about prioritizing this discussion. Does anybody want to start? Okay, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you, Ron.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. Thank you. Anybody else have thoughts? Okay, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Eunice. I want to hear from Matt, but I just wonder if the Collins Center has any thoughts about what you've heard so far, because there were some questions that came up. OK, if not, I just.
[Milva McDonald]: It's OK.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't thank you for pointing that out. Anthony.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks. Okay, Matt, do you wanna share your thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Matt. Does anybody else want to share thoughts about prioritizing discussion before we move on to the Collins Center presentation? OK, so with that, I'm going to turn it over to the Collins Center. They're going to talk to us about the executive options for executive branch.
[Milva McDonald]: Are you able to pull that up, Laurel?
[Milva McDonald]: Frank, you can get started and I'll, I mean, unless you need to wait for me to find this.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. I think since we've had these materials and had a chance to look at them, maybe we could go to questions. And it looks like Ron has a question.
[Milva McDonald]: Right.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Don, you had a question?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Um, Eunice.
[Milva McDonald]: Frank or Marilyn, do you have any thoughts about that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Thank you. Ron, you had another question?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Anthony, you had your hand raised.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, thank you. I have a question about, we have a strong mayor now, and I believe the three charters that we've been sort of looking at also had strong mayors. Would you say that that's more common than weak mayor? And can you just sort of speak to maybe sort of the advantages and disadvantages or the differences. And why if it is more, if strong mayor is more popular, is there any, do you have any thoughts about why? Well, I, yes, I do.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you, that's really interesting. Okay, does anybody else have any other questions? And if you if I don't see you because I only can you know because I'm sharing my screen. I only have one strip of people showing just speak up if you have a question.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes. Oh, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, great. I want to thank did I miss anybody who had another question. Okay, I want to thank the call and center and I know we're not we're not going to make any decisions about this issue tonight. This was sort of an introductory discussion and we have public forums and things like that, that we have to do. But if anybody wants to kind of share where your head is at on it, that's fine. If anybody feels moved to do that.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to discuss public engagement strategies. I'm going to hand it over to Laurel.
[Milva McDonald]: My only thought is that June 8th is the date of our regular meeting. So this would, if we didn't on June 8th.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we did not have success finding another time when all the committee members could meet for a sec if we were going to up our meetings to twice a month as opposed to once a month. So the only other potential option for that is to explore Monday, because we didn't explore Monday, but we don't even have everybody here tonight. But just from the people here, is there anybody who couldn't make Monday? Ideally, the third Monday, since we're meeting on the first Thursday.
[Milva McDonald]: We'll go back and check with the committee members who aren't here. So we could possibly do twice a month, first Thursday and third Monday. But if that doesn't work out, the other option we have is to just keep our monthly meeting and form subcommittees to move ahead. We would likely form subcommittees regardless, but does anybody have any thoughts about either those options, twice a month, if it's possible, plus subcommittees or just stick with the once a month and add subcommittees. Anybody have thoughts?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that will be our next step.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. That makes sense. Ron, how do you feel about it?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So yeah, that is another possibility that some months we meet twice, um, as a full committee, depending on the agenda. Okay. All right, so I don't think we can, I think we're definitely set for the first Thursday in May, and at that point, at that meeting, maybe we'll talk about adding additional meetings through subcommittees or otherwise. Does that sound good, everybody?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so Laurel, back to you.
[Milva McDonald]: I think we'll start. There's a couple more.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Laurel. Okay. Welcome to our meeting. We have a full agenda and we're going to start by reviewing and voting on the minutes from our last meeting. Has everyone had a chance to look them over?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, all in favor? Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. OK, awesome. Then we're going to move right on to the call and center presentation. So I'm going to hand it over to Laurel.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you, everyone, and thanks again to the call and center for your great information and guidance. It's time for public participation and I just want to share some guidelines. Any Medford resident may speak for up to three minutes, if all members of the public who wish to speak have spoken and time allows. Members of the public may speak for an additional three minutes. Speakers are asked to provide their full name and address for the record and to address only matters related to the city's charter. The committee's values support a welcoming community of mutual respect for all, and we value your perspective. As you share your perspective, please uphold these values. Okay, it looks like Bill Giglio would like to speak.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Then I think it's time to adjourn. Do we have a motion?
[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor? Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Great.
[Milva McDonald]: Good night. See you at our next meeting. Recording stopped.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, well, welcome everyone. We're gonna get started. Recording in progress.
[Milva McDonald]: We're gonna get started with our agenda. Our first agenda item is to accept the minutes. Did everyone have a chance? Did committee members, did you all have a chance to look at the minutes? Does anybody have anything to bring up about that? Okay, so we just need a motion to accept the minutes then.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. All in favor? Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Aye. Great. I think we have a unanimous ayes. Okay. With that, we're going to get right to our call-in center presentation. So I'm going to hand things over to Anthony Wilson and he's going to get us going.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you, Anthony. So does anybody have any questions?
[Milva McDonald]: OK, I'm sorry. Jean, go ahead, and then we'll go.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, Anthony, you had a question, and then we'll go to Matt.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thanks. Okay, Ron, you had a question?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that it's up to us. That's my, that what we choose to put forth in our recommendations could include just a set of recommendations or reworking and written sections. That's my understanding. Laurel, do you agree?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, thanks, Jean. I think if we can increase the number of meetings if we feel a need, and we also aren't bound by a year. That's my understanding.
[Milva McDonald]: Definitely. Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Matt, did you have another question?
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Matt. Ron, do you have another question? Or Okay, john.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. I have a question. Frank, what you were just talking about with amendments, do amendments have to go as separate home rule petitions? Yes.
[Milva McDonald]: Can we just get some clarity on what would qualify as an amendment versus a revision so that we understand that?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so we're just talking semantics, pretty much.
[Milva McDonald]: I also just want to know, in Medford, there's a big awareness that we have a plan A form of government. So when we're looking at the charter, there's discussion of, well, do we keep plan A or do we switch to another plan? So I just want to maybe get a little bit on the plans and the concept of going outside the plans. Because my understanding is we don't have to have a plan. And even if we decide, and if we don't keep plan A as it's written, it doesn't mean that we would change our entire form of government. Is that correct?
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thanks. And it would just mean that we would have written a different charter, our own charter, as opposed to sort of borrowing it from Chapter 43.
[Milva McDonald]: Anybody have any other questions or thoughts? All right, well, I thank you. You gave us a lot of information and a lot to think about and talk about. And I'm going to hand it over to Laurel now so we can discuss one of the issues that has already come up in this discussion.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, I think John is the last committee member we're waiting for.
[Milva McDonald]: And thank you to Mike for being the Zoom administrator tonight, and Matt for taking minutes. We also, we have Janelle Austin from KP Law, Anthony Wilson from Collins Center, and we'll also have, I think, a couple more Collins Center people, and we'll be hearing from them over the course of the meeting. But we wanted to start by reviewing, or has anyone had a chance to review the minutes from our December 12th meeting? Yes. do we feel like we need to review them here or can we just go ahead and vote on accepting them or not? Move approval. I'm sorry, Eunice. Move approval.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Eunice, did you make the motion?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so all in favor of approving the minutes as per Eunice's motion?
[Milva McDonald]: Aye.
[Milva McDonald]: Any opposed? Okay, great.
[Milva McDonald]: So the minutes have been accepted. That's great. Now we're going to move into the business of the meeting and Laurel is going to take over.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, now we are very excited and grateful to be working with the Collins Center during this process. We have Anthony Wilson from the Collins Center, Michael Ward, and was Marilyn also coming? She, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. So I'm going to hand over the program to you. And I know that you all are interested in connecting with the committee members and you can start your presentation. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Does anybody do you want us to just sort of introduce ourselves to start with?
[Milva McDonald]: Awesome. Okay. I'll start and then I'll call each committee member and invite you to introduce yourself and comment on some of the things Michael mentioned. I'm Melva McDonald. I'm one of the co-chairs. I've been hearing about charter review in Medford for several years and started to get involved in trying to get a review to happen. uh, about a year ago and it's taken, it's taken a while just to get this committee up and going. So I'm really excited about it. Um, I think for me, the fundamental issue is what Michael and Anthony and others have alluded to about the charter sort of being the core document that guides the city. Um, and that's my main reason for being interested, um, in, in looking at it and updating it and. seeing what would work best for Medford. So, and Laurel, do you wanna go next?
[Milva McDonald]: Anthony, do you wanna go next?
[Milva McDonald]: Mike, do you want to go next?
[Milva McDonald]: Matt, do you want to go?
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you so much for this presentation. I think we have a lot to look at. I have a question. When you talked in your slides, there was the option of a complete rewrite or revisions. And given that we currently have a planned government, if the committee decides we, Does that mean we have to decide not to keep the plan and just write a charter that's separate from the plan government? Would that qualify as writing a new charter? Or if we just want revisions, does that mean we can keep plan A and make revisions to it? How would that work, given that we already have a plan government? So you could- Go ahead, Mary.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so welcome everyone to the first meeting of the Medford charter study committee. Thank you all so much for being here and undertaking this endeavor, we're going to spend a lot of time working on this and Um, I'm pretty excited about it. Um, we wanted to start, this is a, this is just a sort of an introductory business meeting. We're not going to really talk about issues of substance tonight. We're going to try to just do some housekeeping. And so that we can hit the ground running in the new year. So what we first want to do is just sort of meet each other. Some of us have met each other. Some of us know each other, but, um, not everybody does. So, um, I'll I'm I'll start and, uh, and then I'll, let people know when to introduce yourself. Basically, just say your name, your neighborhood in Medford, maybe what your interest in charter review is, and if there's anything else you want to share about yourself, feel free. My name is Milva McDonald. I live in West Medford, and I'm really excited about being on this committee. I'm really excited to learn a lot. And Laurel Siegel is the other co-chair, and she's going to introduce herself now.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thanks. The next person I'm going to introduce and I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to mention your name and then you introduce yourself. And please, if I mispronounce your name, please don't be afraid to tell me. So now you just want to, the city liaison is Francis Nwaje. Is that right, Francis? very, very close.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, and you could if you wanted to say a few words and introduce yourself, that would be great.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Um, okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Sorry. By the way, I just remembered to do that. We are recording this meeting, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thanks Maury.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thanks, Maureen. Hi, Ron. We're just going around introducing ourselves.
[Milva McDonald]: That's OK. John.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thank you. Mike.
[Milva McDonald]: Great, thank you. Danielle.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Thanks. So, um, we do have one other member, uh, Jean's daughter, and, um, maybe she'll pop in at some point, but I don't see her here. So, um, I'm going to hand the meeting over now to, uh, Laurel, who's going to talk a little bit about. Some of the laws that we have to follow in the committee, um, and our meeting today with the call-in center. Um, the call-in center is going to help us a lot.
[Milva McDonald]: So now we felt like it was important to just agree on a code of conduct. And most of this stuff that we're gonna look at, it's pretty straightforward. And we just wanted to lay it out and all agree on this. So I've shared it. And we'll just go over it. Medford Charter Study Committee Code of Conduct, treat others with respect and kindness. Whether you agree or disagree with a fellow member's viewpoint or ideas, respond respectfully and constructively. Approach tough conversations and conflicting points of view with kindness, curiosity, and an open mind. And I think the open-mindedness is kind of the key there. stay accountable and present, come to meetings without distractions, ready to devote your attention to the agenda, actively listen and participate in the discussion, come prepared, review agendas, we'll always send out an agenda and meeting materials in advance so our meeting time is as efficient and productive as possible. Stay open to learning and ask questions. Our committee work will involve delving into complex topics around issues of municipal government, asking questions and waiting to form opinions until we've learned about the subject at hand will help us make informed decisions. Follow open meeting law. In all your communications around committee business, make sure you are complying with the guidelines set forth in the open meeting law. And no harassment or bullying and no disrupting or interrupting others who are speaking. Um, so how do people, do people feel like we can all agree on this? Yeah. Okay. Well, great. We will post this, um, and make sure you all have a copy of it. Um, and we just want to sort of set the parameters before we dive into discussions. And now the other thing that we have to do is set a schedule for meetings, which will probably be a lot harder, but Laurel.
[Milva McDonald]: What date is the 1st, Thursday? It's January 1st.
[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. What would work for you for January?
[Milva McDonald]: And the meeting will, it'll be recorded, Danielle, so Uh, you know, you'll be able to watch it and hopefully. I mean, Colin center should be doing a presentation and KP law. So you'll be able to watch those. Okay, great. So. The next piece of business we need to take care of is. We need a secretary right now. I'm taking minutes, but, um. It's very distracting for me to take minutes. So we would like somebody to be the secretary and be willing to take the minutes and submit the minutes. The minutes will have to be submitted to the group and then we will approve them. And then once they get approved, they'll be submitted to the city clerk. Is there anybody who is really interested in taking the minutes and being the secretary?
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Well, um, let me, let me also say that the other position that we need is we need someone to volunteer to be the zoom administrator, which means, um, we'll set up the meetings, but, um, that person would be made the host and then, um,
[Milva McDonald]: And making sure it's recorded, etc.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're still actually working on, right. This is not, um, On the city zoom account right now, and we're still working on, um, Connecting and on that. So, but we so far have not. We don't have anybody from the city to do this at this point. Frances, I see your hand up.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. So, and that would be great, but it would still, we still need somebody to do the Zoom business. Does anybody feel like they want to be in charge? Thank you so much.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. So, so I have both. Oh, wait, here's Jean. This is, this is the job of this was okay, great. Hi, Jean. Oh, she's connecting. Hi, Jean. Hello. Welcome. Just to give you a recap, we've we've done introductions and we've went over a code of conduct, which I'll be sharing so you can see that. And we set up our next meeting, which is going to be January 5th. And right now we're, we just had John and Mike volunteer to be Zoom administrators. And we're looking for a secretary to take minutes of our meetings. But do you want to introduce yourselves before we get back to that? I know it's hard for you because we've all introduced ourselves.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Well, like I said, we're happier here and, um, And I said this at the beginning of the meeting, but we're just sort of doing housekeeping at this meeting. And so back to the question of secretary.
[Milva McDonald]: And, and, you know, maybe as we move along somebody, you know, if it gets to be, if you don't want to do it at every meeting or we can, we can, some other people will step up or we can pass the job around a little if necessary.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes, for sure. The other thing that we wanted to talk about was public participation procedures. Laurel, do you want to lead that?
[Milva McDonald]: Can I just make one more comment first? I'm sorry. I just thought of one more thing that And we won't have the call-in center at every meeting, but we will have the call-in center at many meetings. And if the call-in center is at the meeting, then would the concern that Mike raised about breaking up the flow be more relevant than if they weren't at our meeting?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, definitely. I just wanted to throw that out there as another piece of the puzzle, that it's not always going to be just, you know, that we are going to have a call-in center at many of our meetings. Um, they'll go ahead. You can go back. Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: Go ahead, Milva. I just, I think that that's a good point. It's important that people be able to speak. And if they have things that might take longer than three minutes, but I feel like these guidelines that we're creating now are, as we said, they can be flexible, but they're to apply to our committee meetings. And we are hopefully gonna have other forms of public participation. So as we go along, we'll be talking about maybe having other meetings that will be all about public participation, and those might have different guidelines. And we'll also be talking about investigating other ways like surveys and things like that. So I don't think that the end time at the end of our meetings will be the only opportunity for public participation. So I don't know if that makes a difference.
[Milva McDonald]: um I don't think right I don't think so right now um. Does anybody does anybody have anything that they wanted to bring up that we haven't brought up tonight.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. And I'll be sending out meeting minutes and for, and to the committee. And once, once they get approved at our next meeting, I'll, I'll send them to the clerk. But the main points I think were the meeting, which is January 5th, six 30 to eight. We all agreed on a code of conduct. Matt is volunteered to be secretary, at least for the next meeting. And John and Mike are going to work on, be the Zoom administrators. And we discussed the public participation. I'll put it all in the minutes and send it out.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Great. I think it's the Collins Center presentation, I think will be really enlightening and helpful and sort of help us figure out, lay out our plan and our goal and what our approach is going to be and what we're going to be shooting for. Mike?
[Milva McDonald]: No, I love that idea. And what do you think about that, Laurel?
[Milva McDonald]: So, I think we're at the end of our agenda. Um, so on January 5th, we look forward to seeing almost everybody. Um, and we will record that meeting. Um, and, and, uh, you know, it, it will be available and hopefully we'll have presentations from KP law and the column center. Um, and we'll be able to dive in. So to you all soon.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks everyone.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't, this is like, you know, kind of a question, but I'm a total zoning newbie. And I know you guys have kind of limited resources, but for me, the thing that would best help me understand like how the zoning is, is if there was like a map, like you showed, but it had the picture of like a building that would be allowed and a building that would not be allowed in each area. like on GIS or something? Is that even remotely possible?
[Milva McDonald]: Don't get your hopes up.
[Milva McDonald]: You only exchanged 15 emails.
[Milva McDonald]: On it.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't know if you'll take a walk in right now.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, I, I lead a convoy of one from Wellington on Mondays and Fridays, uh, to downtown Boston as part of like Boston bike unions convoy thing. And, uh, I have no clue how to publicize it, but I'd like some company, I mean, from anyone, but preferably like from people who don't.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm just doing my normal route, but yeah, maybe if like Medford like advisory commission could help share that on their social media. That'd be cool.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it's on Boston Bike Unions that they made a website about it. I can have Peter. Oh, that's great. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, there's someone named Jack leading Tuesday, Wednesday. There's technically no one leading Thursday, but if, you know, if someone wants it on Thursday, all they have to do is come find me.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's the idea that it's only during the orange line shutdown. I have not committed to Mondays and Fridays for the rest of my life.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, and I know there must be like some people from Medford who commute from Wellington or take a bus to commute from Wellington, but it's, you know, it's mostly not everyone, right? Because there's plenty of people in Medford who live nowhere near it and plenty of people who don't work downtown. So it's very hard to find the few people who actually might need that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. But in general, people in our, our area are not necessarily on like the Medford Facebook groups.
[Milva McDonald]: That's my two cents. Bye, everyone.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, let's let's do like a, you know, after party kind of situation here. I think that'll work a little bit better than a convoy.
[Milva McDonald]: I'm here too.
[Milva McDonald]: Let me scoot you into frame here.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. I've posted a very haphazardly on everything is free Medford, looking for volunteers a couple of weeks ago, asking if people who, you know, cycle regularly in Medford would be able to lead some rides from their area of town to the farmer's market. So that maybe people who don't usually ride because they're not sure how to get there safely. would be more okay with doing it in a group. So got some people together. Emily put us on an email thread. We've got a ride in Wellington area that Peter and I are doing, one from South Medford and one that starts in Fulton Heights and goes around to West Medford. So covering like the four corners. with Medford. I'm trying my very best with social media, but I'm not that good at it. So if anyone has any friends they know who might be interested or any Facebook groups they can post the event in, please do so. I just want some people to show up.
[Milva McDonald]: I was busy typing my comments in the chat, but I'll say it out loud. It's probably faster. Hi, I'm Leah, not on the bike commission. I'm joining from the public. And just wanted to make a note that a lot of the infrastructure in Boston and the surrounding municipalities that we have now, I feel like we have because of bike advocates pushing the city in the right direction for a number of years before you know these things were able to be implemented and just noting that like it's you know as someone on the outside it's somewhat disappointing to hear like the bike commission talk about like oh it might be tough to do something because of parking and I want to encourage people to not I'm not going to throw out those ideas right away, because if the city doesn't hear it from us, they're probably not going to hear it from anyone, and they're not going to be able to move in that direction that we want them to. So that's all I had to say. Thanks.
[Milva McDonald]: Great. Hi, Danielle. I'm really excited to talk with you today. My name's Milva McDonald. I've lived in Medford for almost three decades now. Raised my kids here and Lately, I've been working on charter review, which has been talked about for many of the years that I've lived here. And a group of residents and I are trying to get it to happen.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, thanks. It's she her.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think I'm going to give a shout out to a couple of bakeries. Colette. I really like Colette. I like their pastries and Goldilocks bagels.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, charter review. So the charter of a city or town is often people will compare it to the Constitution of the city or town, it just sort of lays out the form of government. So we have a form of government in Medford called Plan A, and it was adopted in 1986. And it's known as strong mayor. So it means that we have a mayor and a city council. And So the charter just sort of lays that out how many city Councilors we have the terms of office, what to do if one of them resigns or can't serve anymore. Just a lot of things like that and also the school committee. the composition of the school committee. So just sort of the basic form of government, how it operates, whether there are term limits, things like that. The mayor is the head of the school committee. All those things are laid out in the charter.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely, yeah. Whether we don't have board representation, which is actually unusual for a city of our size. So, you know, that's something that could be looked at in a charter review.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly. So there's eight wards and, um, if let's, let's say the, the. Charter got reviewed and ward representation was implemented for the city council. It could mean that you'd have eight. Ward representatives and then a certain number of at-large or maybe the wards would be maybe a council would run for two wards. I mean, these are all things that a charter review committee or commission would closely look at to determine, you know, what might work best for Medford. The thing about at large, one of the things about at large is that it makes it harder for people to run for office in some ways, because it takes a lot more resources. You know, you have to come up with the money and the time to campaign all over the city. And the other issue is that some people feel underrepresented because they don't have a Councilor that's from their ward, even though all the Councilors are at large and they represent the entire city. There's maybe certain awards that have had much less representation over the years. So I think that that is definitely an issue that people are interested in exploring.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I mean, it could, or maybe not. I mean, and the other thing with the charter review is, We don't, I mean, it would be looked at, but we don't know. That's not, it doesn't guarantee that we would have board representation. It's definitely one of the pieces that would be looked at. And, you know, and whatever group does review the charter is gonna look at other communities, you know, actual data and just, you know, information that will really help them determine what's best for Medford.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, well, it was specifically mentioned at one of the recently the mayor put forth a home rule petition to ask the city council to vote on putting electing a charter commission to review the charter charter review the commission and be voted for three. but that's probably not enough to get it over the hurdle at the state house so our group is looking for other ways now. But during those meetings there was ward representation was specifically mentioned by one of the Councilors as a concern and part of the reason for that was because a different Councilor had asked for ward representation to be part of the elected charter review commission that the mayor was trying to get going. So yeah. And, and, uh, you know, there were, there weren't big discussions about it, but yeah, there definitely was one Councilor who expressed concern about it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, it's the whole it. It is. I mean, it's definitely complex and right now, our group. I've learned a lot myself in the last few months we've only been meeting for a few months and we're all learning as we go. right now we're just in the process of trying to get the charter review to happen and there's a certain level of frustration that it's so difficult to do that because it seems you know it seems sort of like a given um gee yeah let's look at it let's review it the the review process however it unfolds is going to take Time and then, and the voters will be involved and no changes, you know, any changes that that are proposed will not happen quickly so it's not like a radical or, you know, rushed idea to. to have voted on this home rule petition or to get it going. I mean, it's going to take a lot of time. So the fact that it's taking so much time just to get to the review is kind of a little frustrating. But we're really committed and we're going to make it happen one way or the other. There's two ways to do it. The way that Medford has tried to do it is kind of a different way from the, like, if you look at sort of, if you Google charter review in Massachusetts, you'll find documents that say, well, there's two routes to charter change. And the route that Medford took was actually sort of a hybrid of those two. So one is outlined in Massachusetts general law, chapter 43B, and it involves collecting signatures from 15% of registered voters in the city. And then the question of once that's done the question of whether to review the charter and candidates for an elected commission bow on the ballot. And at the next municipal election, which in our case would be 2023 and then that commission works for 18 months. the changes they propose, if any, then go to the voters. So that's, you know, we're talking at that, with this process, assuming that we collected all the signatures, we would have a new, potentially have a charter changes on the ballot in 2025. So the other way is to do it through, it's called the special act, and that kind of charter is called a home rule charter. A special act charter, basically just goes through the city council as a home rule petition. So most cities in town to do that, they form a committee, the committee reviews the charter, takes as long as they need to. And there's many cities and towns, most of them probably do it this way because the burden of collecting the signatures is pretty high. So this committee takes however long they need to take. example of a community community that's doing that right now is Somerville, and they have, you know, clearly, it's a process that can involve a lot of public participation in there in their case, there's tons of public participation. They're constantly communicating they're constantly trying to get people involved to hear what What kinds of things, you know the community wants, and then when they propose their changes they go through mayor and the city council and then they go through the state house, and then most likely to go on the ballot so. So what Medford did with that home real petition was took. portion of Chapter 43B and made it into a Home Rule petition. So it was kind of a mix. It was like, we're going to try to elect the commission without collecting the signatures and doing it through a Home Rule petition instead. But it hasn't worked. So we're pursuing these other avenues now.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, they, the, basically it goes to the city council as sort of amendments to the charter. And, um, and then that. And then it sort of becomes, it's a home rule petition and then it goes and becomes a piece of legislation so a home rule petition becomes a piece of legislation at the State House. You know, I mean, part of what I've done in trying to understand all this is I'll go to the Massachusetts legislature website and just search charter review. And you can see there's any number of bills from different communities. And they all have different things in them, but like amendments, you know, it's the language of whatever they want their new charter to be. And so they have gone through the process of however they came up with those amendments, whether they had a committee of residents doing it, or then it's gone through the city government and then it goes to the state house and then they vote on it. And it's not in the law that it has to go back to the voters of the community, but when there's significant changes, generally the state wants the people of the community to vote on it. So any significant changes most often either whether whether you use the signature route or the special act route, go back to the voters to vote on.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Or as my husband keeps saying, well, you need a flow chart. And, uh, I said, yeah, we do need a flow chart. I mean, the, one of the issues in Medford is that we, we still don't exactly know which route we're taking. Um, we don't know, you know, our group is like, we say we're, um, we're doing parallel tracks. We're working on, we're laying the groundwork to collect those signatures if we need to do it. Um, but we're also trying to work with the mayor's office to see if we can get a committee going. So we're kind of doing both. Um, so that, uh, cause, cause we were gonna, we're gonna get this one way or the other. Um, but, uh, But yeah, once we know which route we're taking, it will be much easier to talk about it, because then we'll just sort of be ready to go. Right now, we're just trying to get it going.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, absolutely.
[Milva McDonald]: It does. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, COB.: : Think there is no I mean our group, you know, I mean I HAB-Charlotte Pitts, COB.: : There are people from all over the city. It's not, you know, I mean, it's, it's actually kind of awesome, you know, to to get together with other residents and get to know neighbors and I've worked on and off in different groups in Medford, but this group, it's really, and everybody's kind of there for the same reason. We're like, we really want charter review to happen. That's what we're working on. That's the sole agenda. And yeah, it's great.
[Milva McDonald]: I think that's three times the council has voted that same way. This current council has voted that way twice. And the council before this council also was 4-3. And, you know, that was also particularly frustrating for us because one of the first things our group did, because we knew that homeowner petition existed, was we reached out to all the city councilors and we tried to have meetings with the councilors who had voted no last time. And we were able to meet with two of them. One of them just didn't respond to us. And they were both really supportive. And in fact, the ward, one of them said, I really want word representation on this commission. And so we contacted the mayor, we got that into the home rule petition. And we felt really, really positive about those conversations and about the support that the Councilors, I mean, we, our intention going into those meetings was let's hear what their concerns are. And what we heard was that their concerns were about representation and then we were able to address them, which felt great. And they both expressed support and then they changed their minds. So it was tough, it's hard, but we're moving forward.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we're the Medford Charter Review Coalition, and we do have a website, medfordcharterreview.org. I mean, I consider us to be sort of an ad hoc group that we've come, I mean, this particular group has come together, I think it was like December or January, January, I think, but I don't wanna take away from the fact that people have been working on charter review in Medford for many years. Jim Silva, a big part of the group now. He has been working on it for a long time. Michael Ruggiero, who actually has since moved out of the city, but he worked on it for a long time and they undertook the Herculean task of the signature collecting and actually got close to 5,000. So, you know, I mean, right now our estimate is that we'd have to get about 7,000 signatures. It's just, 15% is just under that, but you kind of need a pad. So, and, you know, so they came and it would have been fewer when they were doing it, because they were, you know, it's probably the, there were fewer registered voters, but they came really close. And so, you know, that just sort of is a testament to how many people want it and the amount of work that people have put into it.
[Milva McDonald]: I feel like it's fundamental. I mean, and I've felt this way for a while because I, you know, I hear so many people talking about issues that they're concerned about. And I always think, you know, charter review could make a difference with that. I mean, in particular representation, people are concerned about representation. Charter review could make a big difference with that. You know, I hear people talking about I mean, there's, you know, I, I don't have an opinion on this because I haven't looked at the details or I haven't really looked at it closely but some people say well the mayor. You know, if the mayor wasn't the head of the school committee, then it would be better for the school committee. It would be better for the mayor. I, like I said, I don't know, cause I haven't looked at it, but that's an issue that would have to be looked at through charter review. I hear people saying, you know, what about term limits? I mean, we had a mayor in office, I think for, was it 28 years or something like that? We have Councilors in there for decades. I mean, I don't, again, I don't know, because I haven't really looked, I don't have an opinion really on, a strong opinion on any of these issues because I haven't looked at them closely enough. But I do think, I do have enough of an opinion to say, yeah, that's definitely something we should look at. And the only way to look at those really and to make a change is through a charter review.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I've heard that many times over the years. And that's, again, comes back to charter review.
[Milva McDonald]: That's absolutely that. And many other communities have provisions in their charter that say the charter will be reviewed every 10 years or every eight years or whatever. And that's definitely something that people are interested in doing so that every decade or whatever is decided when the committee or commission looks at the data. So this doesn't have to happen again. We don't have to go and try to fight to review our city government. I mean, because it's starting to feel like, yeah, we have to fight for this, which, astonishes me.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, yeah, I yeah. Definitely. I agree with that.
[Milva McDonald]: We meet once a month, and we will sometimes have smaller groups or meeting. I mean, there's subcommittees, but everybody is invited to them kind of every two weeks, in the middle of the month, we might do that. If we have something, like recently, while we were making brochures, things like that, getting the website up and running, I'm trying to get plan out the game plan for the signature drive if we ultimately have to do that, talk about you know how we're going to approach the mayor. So, so if we have something pressing then we'll, we'll add an extra meeting.
[Milva McDonald]: definitely check out the website, because the website sort of it's it talks about the group, but there's also a resources section where people can look at. I mean, I think looking at what other communities have done and are doing is really helpful. And, you know, if anybody sort of interested in, you know, I mean, the details about how charter review works or how it happens, we have resources on our website. So I would say just learning about charter review is a great way to get involved. And the meetings are open to anybody in Medford, so come to a meeting. And if we collect signatures, we'll be looking for volunteers for that. And the more people that get educated and get involved the more they can interact with the committee or commission and perhaps even decide to be on or to try to apply to be on a committee or to run for the commission. Because we do need, I mean, we do need representation on whatever committee or commission that's up and running. So yeah, so those are some ways.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a question that has been asked and I haven't been able to get the definitive answer, but the answer that most people I've asked seem to think that it's not, limited that anybody can run for those positions, even people who are already elected to office. I don't know that they would, but you know, it would be a process of running for office. It would mean that the people would have to collect signatures to get on the ballot, you know, nomination papers, and I mean, I don't know how many people ever run for officer know what's involved, but you have to get you have to get signatures, get on the ballot, and then you get on the ballot, and then you have to campaign, you have to get your name out somehow. And, and this is, you know, completely volunteer position. So, again, there's a huge burden in collecting the signatures is a huge amount of work. And then once those signatures are collected, people have to run, and then whoever chooses to run has to put in the work to get on the ballot campaign, and then put in the 18-month term of learning about the charter, coming up with those recommendations, and it's all volunteer. So it's a big ask. So from that point of view, appointing a committee of people, they're still volunteers, it's taking away some of the burden that, you know, maybe somebody who really wanted to be involved in charter review might be willing to do it, but if they found out they had to run for office, which is a considerable amount of work.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. It is cost if you want, create literature. You want to, you know, do a mailings are very expensive. So yeah, there's that.
[Milva McDonald]: Exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I don't think so. I mean, I just, I really hope that people just continue to get involved in Charter Review. I know, you know, we started, like I said, meeting, I think our first meeting was in January. And it was pretty good turnout for first meeting. I just put it out like on the, you know, Medford politics groups on Facebook and And there were about 30 people. And since then, we have over 100 people on our list now. And one of the things that we talk about is outreach. We really wanna find ways to reach out to just different groups in the city, go to like the West Metro Community Center, the Senior Center, the churches, the Chamber of Commerce, just as many places as we can to reach different populations that hopefully will get involved in this and either learn about it. We really want people to learn about it. Either maybe they'll be interested in actually trying to serve on a committee or commission or just communicate with whoever does that so that this review is truly a community voice, you know, we want the voice of people in the community to be involved in this because it's our city government and it makes a difference in everything, in our lives, in our daily lives.
[Milva McDonald]: Absolutely. I mean, that's another group that we want to reach out to. Well, there's the CCSR. I think that's the right acronym at the high school that gets involved in a lot of civic issues in the city. But yeah, absolutely. I mean, getting young people involved is very important to me. I'm glad you brought that up.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, that's right.
[Milva McDonald]: It is complicated. I think the complicated part is understanding the roots to charter review, and that's where we are right now, because we haven't been able to actually, once the charter review is initiated, then we'll just be talking about charter review. Right now we're talking about getting the charter review to happen. So, and, and we don't know which route we're taking, but we're, you know, like I said, we're, we're preparing the signature drive if we need to go that route, but we're also communicating with the mayor, and to see if we can get an appointed committee. And once that happens, we'll be more focused on actually talking about the things that matter to people. Right now we're just like, hey, we want this to happen.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks. I mean, it feels really good. It just feels like, I have no doubt that it is going to happen. We are going to have a charter review one way or another, and that feels really exciting. And so it just feels good. It feels good to work on something that I know is going to be successful.
[Milva McDonald]: Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street. Every city has the right to charter review. You've heard it before and you'll hear it again. The charter, the instrument that dictates how our city government is structured and implemented is a living document. Wisdom and smart governance would dictate periodic review. Yet Medford's charter has not been looked at for more than three decades. That means the last review happened before my 29 years as a resident and has been pointed out here before more than one member of this council was even born. Charter review has been attempted several times, for at least two of those times, the barrier has come from you, the city council, and you are the body that today will determine the fate of another home rule petition to initiate charter review. I started joining some of my fellow residents a few months ago to organize around the issue. We contacted each of you to hear your thoughts. To those of you who met and talked with us, thank you for the productive discussions and the chance to listen to your concerns. Some of you felt the elected charter review commission outlined in this paper might not be representative of all the neighborhoods in our city. We responded to your specific asks and we got word representation applied to this petition. Now, some of you who expressed support have flip-flopped for reasons ranging from complaints about social media comments to declarations that charter review should come from the people. First, I would like to say, councillors, you are the people. You are our elected officials, and we have spoken to you on this. I have here a letter, which I ask to be entered into the record, endorsed by 227 residents, urging you to vote yes on this paper. In recent years, nearly 5,000 people have signed a petition to get a Charter Review Commission on the ballot. That's well over 50% of the entire number of votes each of you received in the last election, and in many cases, it's closer to 100%. In addition, this paper will put candidates from each ward, as some of you requested, on the ballot to be elected by the people to a charter review commission that will engage the community in its 18 month process. Recommendations for modifications to the charter, if any, would go on the ballot before they could be implemented. In light of all this, how can you argue that this process would not come from the people? I ask that you honor the support you expressed to us and vote in favor of this paper. While it is not the only route to charter review, it is the most expeditious in the current moment. And it offers you a chance to respond to your constituents and show that you value their concerns and you value their civic engagement. For what better way to promote civic engagement than inviting every resident of this city to join in reviewing how their city government works. We are determined to partake of that opportunity, indeed of that right. Collecting signatures is not the only other alternative available. We are exploring all of them. And if this petition fails, we will pursue them as swiftly and as transparently as possible. Every city has the right to a review, and we will have ours. It is up to you to decide whether you will help to honor that right in this moment or choose to delay it. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: Hi, I'm Milva McDonald, 61 Monument Street, West Medford. First, I'd just like to thank the council for considering this. I'm also strongly in favor. And I'd like to thank the council members who took the time to speak with me and a group of other residents that really has been working to try to get this to happen. Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli and Councilor Caraviello. As others have said, I would just be repeating, it's been a very long time since the charter has been reviewed, and this petition is just to elect a commission to look at the charter, and it will be a long, transparent process that will get the residents involved in thinking about Our charter is basically the roadmap. It's like the constitution of our city and it really needs to be reviewed. And I thank you for taking the time and attention to look at it. And I hope to continue to be involved. And there's a group of people who really support this and want this. So thank you.