[Nate Merritt]: Hi, I'm Nate Merritt, and I'm asking for your vote to represent all of Medford as your next city councilor. And I swear I do own a tie. Sorry about not wearing that tonight. I'm running because I think we can get the city on a much better path than it is today. I'm an engineer. I fix things. I also help people. I was an EMT and a firefighter for many years. In fact, last month when I walked into Tanook and I found a child bleeding from the back of his head, I decided to step up and help, because that's what people do. And I did, and I'm willing to do it in a larger role. Why me? Why not these fine folks? Because I'm going to stay laser focused on Medford. Not national, not state issues, Medford. That's the job at hand. And maybe if we took all these meetings and this negative energy that's been going on to ODARC 30 in the morning, trying to relitigate international foreign conflicts and trade embargoes, instead focused it maybe on Riverside Ave and the Anheuser-Busch property, which now the MBTA picked up, then maybe we wouldn't be $600,000 in the hole. We just passed an override for $500,000 to fix our streets. So who's going to make it up? And the answer is all of us. That's not good. It's not a recipe for success. I want to try to capitalize on the things that the city of Medford has. We're not Cambridge. We have Interstate 93. We've got the Mystic River. We've got a lot of resources. Let's use it and not try to turn this into the next 15-minute city like the socialist playbook. Let's stop the nonsense of saying single-family homes are a thing of the past. They're not. The city of Lowell, which is twice the population of Medford, has plenty of single-family zoning, and I think we can, too. So, in fact, that's what draws people to Medford, including me and my family. Let's take a smart look at zoning. This isn't an emergency. I'm pretty qualified to tell that being a former firefighter and EMT. We can take our time like we did with the charter review. It's not emergency. Let's do it right the first time and not try to be like the Titanic going into an iceberg. I want places in Medford for kids to play. I've got two Bambinos, and especially in the wintertime, where do you bring them? We go somewhere else. You go to Jordan's, you go to Malden, you go everywhere else. I want people from Assembly Row to come here and bring their kids. Maybe a sky zone, bigger than that. Maybe a place to fly indoor drones. There's a lot of things we could do, but if our zoning, we take up every commercial spot and turn it into mixed-use residential, you're never gonna have a spot for that. I think the city needs some balance, and we need to restore some balance. Industrial and commercial's good, It helps pay for our roads, our public safety. And I think with your vote, we can move the city forward together. Let's make it happen. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. It's not going to be any surprise to any of you sitting behind the rail that I'm opposed to this. I have said it twice in the past. It's kind of funny how there was a meeting tonight, and we're once again talking about a very divisive issue. At the same time, literally from 5 to 8 p.m., there was a really nice event happening in the city that was unifying. It was the National Night Out. And a councillor can roll his eyes at me and I suppose it's a free country so we can do that. Thank you councillor Levin. Please direct your comments to the chair. Sure, enforce the rules for everyone. So that's an even handedly please. So I get my time and I can use it. You're dividing the community. Again, you had a wonderful event. It was a nice family event. I got to sit there and show my kids that, you know, police officers are people just like the rest of us. And none of them would ever want to discharge their weapon on someone unless they had to. Their job is to serve and protect. They can't do that with bubbles. I wish they could. Everyone wishes they could. There isn't a person in this room that wants to see anyone get hurt, especially the paramedic here. I think that's a fair statement. So the Councilor rolling his eyes, I wonder if he's gonna resign his commission because everything that he uses to defend this country, it's not the Department of War, it's the Department of Defense. They changed it in forties for a reason. You're gonna resign your commission, put your money where your mouth is? What about everyone else in this room? You're gonna sit there and get rid of your cell phones because they're made with plastic and oil. How about medical technology? We're just gonna sit there and go back to the stone age and we use only metal. We'll be back in the civil war era. It's a Pandora's box you've opened and there's no good answers for this. All it does is divide the community. And everyone at this point, everyone likes to eat in this country. Farming is used with fossil fuels. I wish it wasn't, but that's not the reality of today. So how many of you behind the rail are then gonna support the great reformation and 15 to 60 million people dying of starvation? Let's have it in this country today. Love it, let's do it. It's not realistic. This is virtue signaling, it's divisive, and it's not local in solving local Medford problems. Stop this. I've said it before. Other people agree, you pick this night because other people would be distracted with an event that was planned many months ago. And you could have done this on a different night in the council schedule. And you can laugh too, Councilor Bears, but it's true. That was scheduled well beforehand. So you picked this night intentionally hoping people would stay home and they have. So congratulations again on dividing the city.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. So this council in the last election, because it was a financial issue, made motions and actually made a put on the ballot, the overrides. If you think that because you've tied this financially to the city and the investments of the city, put it on the ballot. You don't think it's divisive. Let the people speak. You've heard the people in the room here. You've heard other people that have come in previous weeks. Put it on the ballot. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Mayor 373 Riverside Ave. One of the things that I've been hearing tonight is a fear of sunk cost. It's a common argument that happens in a lot of problems, right, especially long term projects. And we can't possibly, you know, not do something because of the sunk cost that's happened, whether it's time, money, both. Personally, I've heard more about zoning than I ever want to in my life, and probably the same as most of you. the way that some of the information has been presented along the way, and I've been to CDB meetings, I've been to city council meetings, some of the way that the maps were presented in the before and after was not as well done as maybe it could have been. I guess a question for the council is, besides Innis, are there other outfits that maybe could have done a better job? And now that there's an opportunity here to do a little reflection. If you had your wish, right, you want $150,000 to keep Innis going. Would it not also be worth considering, I want $200,000 to have a different company maybe that could communicate or perform better? I don't know. I would just say, consider that and maybe use this opportunity right, if there are better alternatives or other things you can consider, right, besides just worrying about the sunk costs specifically with a particular company. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Name Aaron, 373 Riverside Ave. I too am disappointed that you're actually not taking like actual comments for this tonight. I know this is public comment period, but it is kind of cowardly. So I'm gonna second that. This ordinance does not align to my values as a citizen for a number of reasons. So I'm sorry if that bores you all and you've heard it all before, but it's more than just subsection D. This is a trash ordinance. And again, you've divided the city. This whole thing should just be tossed out. You have a Councilor here who's in the Navy, and I don't understand why defense contractors that make defensive weapons are bad. Is it because the military who uses them? Is it the fact that we don't defend ourselves with bubbles? I don't understand. Do you not invest in DJI, which is a drone company, because those can be used as offensive weapons? There's a company called Raytheon that some of you may have heard of. They have offshoots in Cambridge, so that's kind of a local company, as well as North Andover. In fact, they pay for the schools there. Does everyone who works at Raytheon, are they a baby killer? Most of you weren't alive in the 70s when folks like my dad were coming home from Vietnam. He didn't want to go to that war, but he was spit on and called a baby killer. He was a medic. He saved lives. You don't know the consequences of what you're writing in here. And if your values are so hard up on that and it's because this government for whatever reason does anything offensive and not strictly defensive, I don't know. I mean, put your money where your mouth is. Maybe one of the councilors should resign his commission then if he really feels that strongly about this and that's his values. This whole thing is not the values of the city, just a subset, a select few of you that decided to take this up and divide the city. Congrats, it's still working.
[Nate Merritt]: State Mayor 373 Riverside Ave. Drop this whole resolution and instead maybe focus on something that brings everyone together. I guarantee you could get for all the time and energy spent on this and all the negative energy, you could have had one heck of a blood drive. And that would benefit people in your city. That would benefit people in your local area. Pretty sure the Red Cross would take people's blood and use it all over the world. Drop this, do something positive, maybe something like that. How many people here would donate blood? You know what, that's at least 10 pints more than you had. If you're gonna spend taxpayer dollars on something, do something positive for the world. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: There we go. All right. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. I'm down to two minutes instead of three from last time. Um, So I moved to Medford for single family house with my family. I have little kids. I know plenty of parents who want to do the same thing. So when I hear city council members and other people saying that the days of single family housing is over, that's a travesty. The city of Lowell has single family housing. It's the third biggest city in the state. So why is Medford so special? That said, it's also a travesty that in the last meeting, Director Hunt actually tried to suppress public comments here so you people couldn't be heard. Instead, the idea was floated or just send it an email. There's a lot of questions that haven't been communicated back, so I'm really glad that you all decided to have in-person comments. The maps here are confusing. This map shows not what is today, but I think people think this might be today's zoning and that's not. That's the plan that the City Council wants versus what the CDB wants. You're missing the one that is today so people can actually compare and contrast what is existing today before any plan. So some clarity could help. I don't see Lumiere Apartments. I don't see Station Landing. I don't see any color coding where we know there are already big complexes. I don't see anything on this map that says where there's a high rise that Director McGivern was talking about where it might be a concern. I look on this table here, same thing. The max is only three stories. There's nothing here that says anything above three stories. So what color is it on the maps? This needs to be communicated better to the people. Um, commercial mixed use, right? That's the promise. And maybe that's what's missing from there. I don't know. You have a large building on Middlesex where H Mart was supposed to go. Maybe there's some other problems in this city where businesses can't get it. You're going to have brand new buildings. What company is going to go in there if they can't get in for two years? H Mart pulled out and instead they got in and out of Davis sooner than they could in Medford. So that's all I got. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: You have three minutes. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. Question for you through the chair, just for clarification. The $22,000 for washers, dryers, and appurtenances and a stove, I heard a Councilor mention they were appliances, but are those for uniforms, or are those for gear washers and dryers, which are a completely different piece of equipment? You don't mix bloody clothes with turnout gear. So just for the public's knowledge.
[Nate Merritt]: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying. Only in that just for general public who isn't in the fire service doesn't necessarily understand that, hey, these guys are just trying to wash their clothes. Why are we spending 22 grand? It's because of what the chief said. So my other question, and it relates to a different ask of the mayor, but to my predecessor's point, there's an ask to transfer $267,000 from the DPW and highway budget to other parts of the salary. But yet when you total up all the line items, but yet we're saying that we have shovel, you know, like needs now for DPW. So I guess I question like, what is going on that half the override ask is now asking to be transferred to different areas of the budget.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. I'm sorry I didn't accept the civics lesson. So I find your comments very condescending, and I'm just trying to understand because at face value, and I'm sure I'm not alone, The fact that there's a listing of $200 million in this paper for street and sidewalk backlog, yet a transfer of $267,000 from another paper, where if you take both them together you go, why am I shifting money from one budget if there's nothing to work on? But at the other side of the cheek, you say, well we have all this stuff to get work done. So that was my question. It wasn't specific to the override. It just happens to also coincide with half the cost of the override. But it's really because the fact that in a line item here in this paper is $200 million for street and sidewalk backlog. So that's why it was related to this one. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Oh, OK. There's no one on Zoom. Sorry. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. Congratulations, City of Medford. You've once again astounded the community in how you can bring a highly divisive and polarizing resolution to the floor to divide your community. Congrats. I have several issues with this paper. In terms of the environment, oh, and I should preface, by the way, I do not like war. I do not like killing people. As an EMT, I've probably seen more of other people's blood on my hands to help them than I challenge anybody in this room. So that said, unfortunately, bad things happen. And there are people sometimes that try to do not so nice things. So we can demonize defense companies, of which there are several where people in your city go to work, and they don't go to work to try to go kill people, but maybe also to defend some of our uniformed service members. You have a city Councilor here who's in the Navy. Who makes the ship if he serves on or any of the equipment? And therefore, do you think that that city Councilor is also a person who is a warmonger? I would say there are plenty of good people in this city that make equipment to defend people like him and others. I come from a military family. So demonizing companies like MIT, Draper, Hanscom Air Force Base, which employs a lot of people here, General Electric, the wording in this, where it says any company that does any weapons manufacturing, I hate to tell you folks, this is reality, this isn't utopia. Same with a local company, if they're scrubbing toilets in a jail, therefore they derive their revenue from that. You're demonizing potential janitors or building maintenance folks that are just trying to make a living. In terms of the environment, Electricity right now, for the most part, that heats our homes, lets our fire trucks go down the street. There's no electric fire truck, folks. It ain't going to happen anytime soon. If we stopped all fossil fuels today, society would fall apart. That's a sad fact. So NVIDIA is one of the richest companies, right? Anybody who follows the stock market knows that NVIDIA stock is triple. Great investment. How good do you think all the servers that are powered by NVIDIA chips is for the environment, the electrical consumption, the processes to make those chips. I think you've opened up a Pandora's box. And there are plenty of good people in this city that work for companies and aren't necessarily warmongers. But now you've made it this city unfriendly for several companies and industries. And it doesn't surprise me that General Electric picked up and left. Because they probably saw this one coming down the road. And if that's in Boston, where they said they were going to have their headquarters, well, guess what? They make any of their revenue from manufacturer sale of weapons of any kind. They also make a lot of very good products that help people, including in health care. So I urge you to reconsider the language of this and stop dividing the city. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Thanks for having me, John.
[Nate Merritt]: All right. Well, thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. So my name's Nate. I'm actually a systems engineer, bachelor's and master's out of UMass Amherst. I've been working as an engineer for 17 years. I was born and raised in Western Mass, so I am not from Medford. Oh, OK. Interesting. I moved out here in around 2009 and met my wife. And I actually knew her from college before, but we got together. And yeah, so my mom was a nurse. My dad was a fireman. And he was on the job for 30 years. And I grew up on a small tree farm. And it's something I still keep up today. So I myself went to the fire service, and it's funny, because my dad would say, son, don't go into the fire service. There's a lot of politics. Right. So, well, sorry, dad, because not once, now, but twice.
[Nate Merritt]: So I'm actually 25 years now as a MAS certified EMT. and I'm a private pilot, husband, I got two young boys, they're great, and I bought my home on Riverside Ave in 2014. About five months later, after first buying my home, my welcome to Medford was a car crashing through my front yard, taking out my whole front fence, and it hit the building next door.
[Nate Merritt]: And that's what brought me to the City Council my first time. There was something happening at the building next door. They were going to open a business and I was worried about the traffic flow because it's probably one of the strangest intersections. You can see where the stoplight is before the driveway. And so I just raised a concern because of the traffic flow. I didn't want to see anyone else get hurt. So that brought me to City Council and since then I've tried to offer practical solutions whenever I can, not just be a complainer, but try to offer some solutions. So for example, and I don't even remember when it was, but there was talk of needing money for, I don't know if it was the fire station, the library, so on and so forth. Instead of raising taxes, I said, hey, what if you gave people the option in their property tax bill to make a donation? And if you look in the upper right corner of your property tax bill, you'll see a spot to make a donation for the library, the police station, or the fire department. And that was an idea I came up with during public comments at a city council meeting. So obviously, someone heard me. They took your advice, it was a good idea. And there we go. Yeah, that's a good thing. I'm a person I believe in limited government. We're five miles from a group of people 250 years ago that maybe thought the same thing. So that said, government should work for the people. and not necessarily the other way around. And we should always be careful if we're infringing on individual liberties. That's what this country was founded on. But I also understand the need for government.
[Nate Merritt]: I'll be honest with you, John, I don't want the job. I'd much rather be at home playing with my kids and spending time at city council meetings even now and I've said that before. But I think unfortunately we can either complain about it or we can do something about it. So I'm at the point where it's time to try to do something. I think we need to give a voice back to the people. I think, unfortunately, the way things have been running for the past two years, for example, you look at recent meetings that have happened zoning, especially in Salem Street. And I was there and I saw people for hours sitting there making comments and concerns. And there was, you know, the Community Development Board had incorporated suggestions from, you know, the residents, and I watched a city councilor just say, yeah, I don't like that. Change it and just go their own way. And to me, that's not sad. I think that I can also start giving some critical thought to some issues. I think that people are maybe good intentioned, but I think we need to start weighing pros and cons of things, and especially always asking the question, how does it benefit the residents of Medford today?
[Nate Merritt]: Absolutely. So, honestly, I'm kind of tired of sitting back and watching the agenda removing the rights of our citizens. So we have rent control on the table. You've got a tree ordinance coming up. You've got zoning. I saw what happened with the charter. Right. And same thing where the voice of the people was lost. Correct. Unilaterally. Okay. I think our sense of community is deteriorating and there's an agenda and it's being plowed forward. They're plowing forward with it, John.
[Nate Merritt]: Well, I think something that could be done even today is, you know, sometimes these city council meetings go long and there's a lot of people that want to be heard. And I've been there till 12, 1 in the morning. And I've seen people that want to talk, and they go home because they have jobs in the morning or, you know, right? They just can't stay up that late. And I've seen sometimes where the agendas have been rejiggered. And we're talking about national issues that The city of Medford can impact, but we're sucking the oxygen out of the room instead of dealing with the local ones. And people wanna speak about the local issues, but that gets tabled until after 11, 12 p.m. So I think something we could do is if the meeting runs past 11 o'clock, we're done, shut it down, table the rest of the agenda to the next week. Everyone should be heard. And when it's running that late, that's not fair to anybody. And we shouldn't be making decisions literally in the dark of the night.
[Nate Merritt]: I think people are trying, but, John, if everything was hunky-dory, I wouldn't be running. Okay. I'll be honest with you. I think that the administration needs to really consider doing an audit of the city finances. We're talking $5 million that's missing from the school committee budget and then found and $34 million. We're making Enron and Arthur Anderson look good here.
[Nate Merritt]: I think that in terms of the sense of community, there's a lot of red tape. I'm gonna tell you a story real quick. So, I told you I got little guys. One of my favorite parks I like to go to is Logan Park. There, there's a little fire truck, like playground thing for kids to go play, little kids to play on. Right. And I had my son with me and I noticed the wooden boards were, they were in rough shape and I didn't want my kid to get splinters or any other kid. Yeah. So I called the mayor's office, wrote an email, said, Hey, listen, this is a couple boards. I get it. I'm willing to go fix it. I don't want to just go start ripping up, you know, pressure treated wood and putting bolts in. I'll have the cops down.
[Nate Merritt]: So I said, Hey, can I get some top cover and just let them know what I'm willing to do? And this is on my own nickel, my own time. This is sawing a couple boards and installing a couple carriage bolts and nuts. This isn't rocket science. I'm an engineer.
[Nate Merritt]: I hear you. It became a whole production and I talked with, you know, she put me in touch with some of the parks folks and nothing. And then a couple months later it got fixed. And meanwhile, I've got to watch my kid like a hawk and I'm working like for everybody. And this was initially something that was donated to the city by a resident. So it's not like the city wound up purchasing it or something originally either. So there are people willing to do you know, help out the community and not necessarily for any money. I mean, that's volunteerism and that's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think if we had a better sense of community and maybe we find a way to eliminate some of the red tape, you'll find people who are willing to pitch in.
[Nate Merritt]: I think that zoning is a huge concern overall, and I know there's a lot of chatter about it. I think my personal view is it's something we should look at, but it's like everything else, right? Extremes are not necessarily good in general, in any system, in any government, in any operation. So that said, I think right now what we're seeing is essentially it could be mass gentrification. There's a lot of rezoning happening all at once. I'll give you an example again. There's a talk of we need more affordable housing. I ask the question, what is affordable to you? I have two kids in daycare. I have a mortgage. And all the other expenses that go along with that. And I still somehow afford it, but we've had to make choices along the way. So more supply in the city of Medford, I don't think is gonna move the needle at all in terms of the cost of rent, the cost of mortgage. So we're going to go increase the supply. And I heard from a city councilor that said, well, I'm not going to go explain the details of supply and demand. I got it. But this is like attacking a tank with a toothpick. Because there are greater economic forces at play than anything the city of Medford can influence. So why are we addressing the zoning to begin with? Is it for the needs of the residents? And what's the benefit for the current residents of the city? So, my concern with the zoning really is more about the commercial and the industrial side.
[Nate Merritt]: A lot of people don't know this, but commercial and industrial pay twice the amount the residents do. And for every commercial business or industrial zone you lose, who picks up the tab? The other commercial businesses. Right.
[Nate Merritt]: I'm talking taxes, but also wear and tear on your services. Your fire, your police, your EMS, your roads, your schools. That's correct. All that has to be taken into consideration. My house is a single family house. That's why I came to Medford. I wanted a single family home, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Some people are meant for condos, and I'm not one of them. Right. That's fine. That's part of what attracted us to Medford. We know how that right now my house under the new plan will be zoned for three family So they will tear my house down. They'll buy it from me for whatever. Let's say we're 750 today Yeah, someone else could buy it for 750 000 and have their family And and and use a starter house. Yeah instead Contractor's gonna come buy it, tear it down, turn it into a triplex, and sell each unit for a million dollars.
[Nate Merritt]: I think the question isn't how do we get economic growth. The city is not a publicly traded Wall Street company. What's the metric? And I've asked that publicly before. It's not revenue dollars coming in and every year you want more revenue. There is no earnings ratio on the city. The metric in this case should be sustainment. That's what we should be looking at. And when you have industry leaving, that's a problem. We need to fix that. It's not growth, it's just keeping what we have at a minimum. Let's try to work that. Example, August Bush, down on Riverside Ave. Before the overrides came in, right, they probably read the tea leaves and they had a choice to make. Do they operate out of Quincy or do they operate out of Medford? They chose Quincy. OK. So now, the latest I heard, you tell me if you've heard any different. I know Market Basket was maybe considering it, but so was the MBTA. And the MBTA is the lead bidder. They're the highest bidder last I heard. Right. That's over 20 acres, and it's like 24 acres of property, commercial property. Yes, yeah. So if the MBTA winds up actually purchasing that property, that's 24 acres worth of commercial tax revenue gone. Because the MBTA, they'll pay the permits and fees to build their structures, but then they don't owe a dime for taxes afterwards. So that burden is going to shift to the remaining commercial industrial. And this just begins quicksand. It's a spiral. So I think, and there's plenty of vacant commercial buildings, it's not just in Medford, I've seen it actually in Malden too, near where the Aviva Trattoria is, near Exchange Street in Malden. Big sign, 300,000 square feet available. Across the street from my house, 400 Riverside Ave, 100,000 square feet available.
[Nate Merritt]: I think we really should be focusing on and talking with them, how do we get these buildings filled? In terms of the local area, You've got Wooburn. Wooburn's got a lot of industry. When people want to go build buildings here, they go to Wooburn to go get their heavy equipment, to get their building materials. They buy steel there. These aren't things that necessarily negatively impact the surrounding community. In fact, they've done a really good job. Malden. Malden's got the Panadosi Bakery. They make bread. You've got the New England Coffee. They have a lot. You've got National Grid. What are we making, Medford?
[Nate Merritt]: Sausage.
[Nate Merritt]: I love Bianco sausage, don't get me wrong.
[Nate Merritt]: But that's what we're making now, is sausage.
[Nate Merritt]: Absolutely, if you've never been to Bianco's, go.
[Nate Merritt]: We have vocational schools, we're one of the few in the area, we should be promoting that. Unit Man's the nearest one, that's up in Lexington, and a lot of people don't wanna drive that far. And we gotta use the river, We're unique. We've got a river, we've got interstate access, we've got major routes and highways, and we've got the T. We should be capitalizing on that and fostering it.
[Nate Merritt]: Anything that brings people from out of the city into the city to spend money and support the local economy.
[Nate Merritt]: I think the fact that we passed two overrides, and don't take my word for it, look at the video. You had the city council president and you had the mayor dancing. at the thought, not the thought, but at the fact that people now are only paying only $400 more a year in their taxes. How's that working out? That's my thought. I mean, spending is necessary. Sometimes tax increases are necessary, but nobody should ever be happy about it, and certainly nobody should ever be excited. I think that was the wrong attitude to have on that, and that was a little unprofessional. So that said, also, we've got a lot of lawsuits happening in the city. That needs to stop. That's not doing anybody any favors. And that's a waste of taxpayer money. And then there's other little gems, which I get it. You want to pay people. You want to have nice things. But when you go back to the well, now you've got to start really taking a hard look and understanding what are my needs versus my wants. I deal with this with my kids. We all do. And when I see that we're paying two grand a year for a poet laureate. Yep. But you asked for 500,000 for roads and streets. Right. I got to wonder what else is going on. And again, when you start seeing millions that are going missing and people refuse to do an audit, again, this is making Enron look good folks.
[Nate Merritt]: There's a few things in Medford, right? And you're correct. Normally, the things you would learn in school, I didn't have that opportunity, because I know about the things instead in Western Mass.
[Nate Merritt]: In my school, we learned about General Knox, and he went and captured a whole bunch of cannons from Fort Ticonderoga and brought a little caravan through the state of Massachusetts, including my hometown, what's now Route 20, and parked them on Dorchester Heights and liberated Boston. So that's one of the things that brought my hometown to fame. Medford built clipper ships. Medford had brickyards. Paul Revere rode through on the way to go warn about the British trying to interfere with some patriots over in Lexington and Concord. Apparently there's some rum. that Medford is known for.
[Nate Merritt]: So one of the ways I learned some of the history is from the Mystic River Bend Park. It's down behind the McGlynn schools and around the corner from where I live. And so I went and I took some pictures yesterday. I went out in the rain because I wanted to make sure my information was accurate. The signs look about the same rough shape that they did when I first saw them. Right. And it's sad because, I mean, we have community preservation funding. To me, this is literally preserving your community. It's in the name, Community Preservation Act. That's it. Some of those signs are unfortunately in such disrepair. There's graffiti on them. Right. And there's a lot of great info that talk about the river, how it used to be salt marshes and where throughout the years where it changed the ecology. Right. Now there's graffiti on them and they're barely readable. One of them looks like it was melted in the sun or something.
[Nate Merritt]: It's a shame. Right. I think we really should be taking care of our city better.
[Nate Merritt]: And little things like that go a long way. But it's probably been like that for almost 10 years.
[Nate Merritt]: But if you show that you care about your city, maybe you won't get trashed as easily.
[Nate Merritt]: I'm a father with young kids, so I don't get to go out as much as I want, as much as I used to. Usually, my fun things now involve them. I'll say, fresh donuts over at Donuts with a Difference. Because that's unique. Good choice. Remember, I grew up when Dunkin' Donuts used to make all the donuts in every store, and the old man was there, time to make the donuts. So it's a unique thing that we have, and I love their donuts. They're awesome. I bring them to work with me when I can. People love them. The various parks in the city, I'm involved using those. They're great. But that's what I spend a lot of my time doing. As far as things I don't like, Well, I'd be remiss if I said, you know, going to city council meetings, but I'll be honest with you, staying up until 12 o'clock at night, going to city council meetings.
[Nate Merritt]: I don't, I don't love that. I don't think anyone loves it. Yeah. Right. And, uh, driving down my street, I don't know what am I driving down roads in the city of Medford or am I in a, you know, looking at Germany, occupied France and world war II. Not sure.
[Nate Merritt]: A couple potholes. Not sure what happened here.
[Nate Merritt]: Maybe I like a little bit of history.
[Nate Merritt]: We eat the ice cream. We watch the train go by. My kid loves trains. We literally get to see the train. And we'll sit there and just watch the bell.
[Nate Merritt]: If there's a hot topic going on, you might find me at the podium at a city council meeting on a Wednesday night.
[Nate Merritt]: And I do have an email address that people can reach me at.
[Nate Merritt]: It's meritformedford at gmail.com. Okay. So, two R's, two T's. And it's F-O-R, not the number four, but that's all right. And I got a website that I'm working on, but it's not up yet. So I don't have an apparatus working my campaign. This is a grassroots, you know, thing, so.
[Nate Merritt]: So in the meantime, the email's good, or come for me at a city council meeting. Thanks, John.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. Just a question for you, sir, because I know there were a lot of motions, I'm sorry, amendments that were part of this. Was there an amendment made to get rid of the one-year I'll call it residency requirement for a ward Councilor that was proposed by the mayor.
[Nate Merritt]: Okay. So, that and the rationale for that, I didn't I've been here the whole time. So, I was paying attention. I don't know if it was necessarily clear why the
[Nate Merritt]: So, if it was applied to every office, that's something you all would consider if it was applied evenly and the reason why I'm poking at this particular one is because I'm sorry, I'm not putting words in your mouth. The reason why I'm poking at this is because it's been discussed, you know, by a number of people. This is the city, right? These representation, especially in like a ward style, probably, you know, it's good to have someone that knows the ward. I don't know how you establish really knowing it. If say you moved in like six months before said election and decided to run for that ward, how much do you really know that ward kind of defeats the purpose. So I guess that to me is a big deal that just changed between what was presented to you tonight versus now it's gonna go back to the mayor. But I see that this is one of those important things that really should be thought through. And if it's not just for city councilor, great. If it's for school committee or mayor, wonderful. But I think the people should be electing people from the city that know the city and not necessarily just, you know, I'll use the term of Johnny come lately. If there's a chance to codify that, right, at least be around for a year, know your city, and especially if it's to establish that, knowing the ward, and that's the whole point, maybe a period of residency beforehand isn't a bad idea. It's not saying homeowner versus renter, it's just saying you have to, I don't know if it's right, is it residency versus being a voter? I don't know how that, it's registered voter. But in essence, to be a registered voter in that ward, you'd be a resident, correct? Yeah. So, so it's it's semantics but but that to me is something y'all should really consider before striking because that I'm a big fan of that. I think a lot of the members of the city would be too.
[Nate Merritt]: Not a tit for tat, I promise.
[Nate Merritt]: You have a minute. Yeah, okay. So if this doesn't get onto the November ballot,
[Nate Merritt]: But that could happen in November. It doesn't necessarily have to happen in the spring.
[Nate Merritt]: I guess my only thing to consider is that this is a big deal that I don't know how turnout necessarily is for voters in spring elections versus November.
[Nate Merritt]: So I would think that this is probably one of those things you don't want to have in a special election if it's in the spring versus, and everyone knows, go out on the first Tuesday of the month in November, right?
[Nate Merritt]: Ebisu is closing. That really sucks. Yes. So, you know, I got the email from, you know, because I'm one of the members and whatnot. And I can tell you that, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I first found Medford when I was living, you know, before being resident of Medford would come to the Japanese market. There used to be one on near Porter Square, and that building that the Japanese market was in there, I think it was called Miso Market, I think at the time, wound up getting torn down, turned into a department complex. So this one really seemed out of the blue to me. In fact, there aren't many Japanese markets in the whole region. Ebisu is the only one in 20 square miles. Kevin, the owner, is one of the most upstanding shop owners you could ever want. I don't know if there's anything that the city can do to help him, and it's kind of weird right because it's, you know, oh my god one business, but that business is a grocery store in Medford Square, I mean you all, Clark Kirby's, I'm not going to put you on the spot but I mean if you want to go grab a bite to eat, it's a place where you can go buy something to eat. There aren't many of the, there's plenty of restaurants, but not a store or shop there's a handful of them, let alone. you know, Japanese. It's just there's a lot of Chinese Korean shops, but not Japanese. So I think it will be a hit to the community is something that made Medford unique. The closest place now is to go to Arlington. So it's one of those economic drivers where you were bringing people in especially Asian community from Malden from other places into Medford that now you won't have that draw. So if there are vacant buildings, that maybe you're looking for a small store I don't know if anyone's reached out to that business but any commercial business is a good thing in the city so just want to mention that to have some answers I think Councilor Tseng has some answers.
[Nate Merritt]: It's a business decision, you know, but hopefully they know that there's a lot of us in the community that would hate to see them go, that that's a big hit, even though it's such a small store.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Mara, 373 Riverside Ave. So I know we had a speaker who was from the Midwest. I'm not from that far out west. I'm just from Western Mass. But some people here might think it's the Midwest. And that's OK. I'm all right with people laughing at that. That said, there's plenty of housing out and availability for housing in Western Mass. The issue of affordable housing is not just a Medford issue, it's a statewide issue. So it's a tough nut to crack. There's a lot of merit on all sides for trying to handle that. But part of that is we wanna make sure what's good for the city, right? There's people that live here and call this place home. I was in emergency management myself at one point, I'm an EMT still, anyone's ever taken an airplane, it's the first thing they do when they say, when they do the emergency procedures. right? You put your mask on first before you go help out your neighbor. We need to make sure that the city and the residents are taken care of here first. Then we can help out other people. That's just common sense. So that said, my concern with Salem Street and especially biting the apple really big the way you are, you can call me an NB, but you've already developed my area before any of you were on the council, right? They did the 61 Locust Street project. It was not handled properly to procedure. In fact, the city violated open meeting laws for all sorts of, the city council got their own attorney to sue the city. Oh yeah, you should look into this. So when they say, don't worry, the process is in place. There's a history in this city where the processes don't always work out for the people that live there. So I do have some concerns in that and what's happening on Salem Street affects the whole city. Medford has roads. Medford has an interstate highway, 93. You know what you don't have in Cambridge? Interstate 93 and easy access. So I love commercial business because it offsets the residential taxes, two to one. We want commercial business to thrive. Salem Street's a great place for that. I don't think you're gonna get that with this particular plan. I'd love to see maybe a portion of it taken on. Affordable housing, I can barely afford what I got. I got two kids. Daycare $3,000 a month. Rent, mortgage, whatever you want to call it, $2,500 a month. You start talking, you need $200,000 a year just to afford that. That's affordable.
[Nate Merritt]: So versus just having luxury housing, which I have behind my house. I'm sure people like it. We fought for having them to have parking, and they use it. So I guess I'd say, please consider maybe scaling this back, and I know this is the gateway, and then you're gonna do it for the rest of the city. I wanna see Medford thrive also, economically, not just by a number of people in there. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: State Mayor, 373 Riverside Ave. Just a comment in terms of the benefits that this might bring. Yeah, we've heard that before. When they built what's now Windsor Place on the 61 Locust Street project, right? And Wegmans and all that, there was gonna be linkage. There was all these terms thrown around. It's gonna improve the area. My street still sucks. You drive down Riverside Ave, it's pothole city and it still sucks. So just, Be careful. It sounds good. Unintended consequences happen. Just consider this. Maybe take a little more time. Thanks.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. I'm sure everyone's aware that, you know, the members of the city residents are maybe a little nervous concern you know upcoming tax hikes and all that, want to make sure that our dollars are spent. most efficiently possible. Was there a course of action given for just say replacement of the existing systems that, you know, replacement parts versus upgrades and it's not clear from the paper, what's an upgrade? Is it, you know, is the roof currently leaking now or is the roof upgrade because of the solar panel installation that's also planned and is that an upgrade versus replacing the parts that are broken for the system? And was there a cost associated with that, like a spectrum? Option A, $5 million. Option B, $15 million. Option C is what we have here, which is what, $25 million?
[Nate Merritt]: Thank you. And to that, that's great. And I think, you know, please don't misunderstand. I want schools to, right, but just saying form fit replacement versus the solar panels that weren't there, that's an upgrade. Is there a dollar cost? How many dollars is that, right? Are there other upgrades? If they make sense, that's great. Just hoping that that cost breakdown for those options has been presented so people can understand the rationale. And if it makes sense to buy, buy. Thank you. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. Just a point of information for you all. There's a number of reasons why needles can be used for very legitimate purposes. Some people use them to administer fertility treatments on themselves. Diabetes. There's another number of legitimate medical concerns. Maybe it's something that y'all could maybe get more specifics on the needle that was found and perhaps if it had a potential alternate use for something non-nefarious.
[Nate Merritt]: You have three minutes. Just something that came up with this last ordinance, I guess, is zoning change. Drive-thrus. So I live on Riverside Ave, literally down the street from a new drive-thru that opened. Some of you may know it. Raising Canes. They haven't been yet? I haven't. I don't know. I have. Is it good? I'm sure people assumed. Is it good?
[Nate Merritt]: Yeah, the sauce is pretty good. So they put it in my neighborhood, which is fine.
[Nate Merritt]: What, do you not like the sauce?
[Nate Merritt]: Chair, do you not like the sauce? So that said, it's in my neighborhood, and I don't think my neighborhood is necessarily any less safe or any more safe because of it. And my neighborhood has had a lot of development over the past few years since I've moved in here. So now you have a major corridor on Mystic Ave, and we say, you can't have a drive-through at all? I mean, what if Chick-fil-A opened up, which, by the way, is a gold mine. And if you like King's Chicken, Chick-fil-A is awesome. just my opinion. And rightfully so, in Woburn, a lot of other people think so, and they get off the highway, and they go to Chick-fil-A, and they pick up their food, and they leave, and they're very prompt. And considering commercial business is part of the lifeblood of this city, I think that restricting, you know, because of this particular issue, right, with drive-thrus, might not be a wise choice given our fiscal situation. So maybe I don't know if that's something that can be amended or not to reconsider that particular part of this. You might wanna reconsider it. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. I guess I'm a little confused at this, where, first off, is this a sanctuary city policy or not?
[Nate Merritt]: No, no, no. Is it a sanctuary city policy or not? You can call it whatever you want. Is it a sanctuary city policy?
[Nate Merritt]: No, it was a question. You have three minutes. So you won't answer yes or no. Two minutes and 30 seconds you have, Mr. Merritt. It's been 15. OK. So how you do something is just as important as what you do. I come from a family of immigrants. My wife is an immigrant. She was not born in this country. My in-laws were not born in this country. They are not in fear of anything. They're not in fear of getting, my wife gets, you know, she has had a car accident, never got hauled away. You have a city Councilor who's held to a higher standard to serve and protect this country, right? And he comes under a whole different set of rules, federal rules, Uniform Code of Military Justice. What are we saying if we say we're going to choose to enforce some rules that we like and not the others? I have to teach my kids this. And there are laws for a reason. I think it's a slippery slope when this city chooses to get involved in certain things that they like with a current administration and then others that they won't stand with because the administration is going to change. Why not just stay out of it, in a sense, and let the federal government and things at the federal level work? the way they're going to work. There's federal laws. If we don't like them, elect new people. That's been said tonight over and over. This council won't pass a resolution to say, don't drug test people in a line, right?
[Nate Merritt]: No, I don't think they said not to. I don't think that was the resolution. It was to find out the financial impacts, but not to actually do it as a policy. And it certainly didn't pass when it says don't follow people around or private investigators when they're using their civil liberties, your own citizens. Definitely citizens, because I don't believe that the city can employ people who are not legal citizens. Is that true?
[Nate Merritt]: Can they employ foreign nationals?
[Nate Merritt]: I don't know. Absolutely. But legal documented foreign nationals. Can they employ undocumented people? Because that's what this is talking about.
[Nate Merritt]: So if you're not willing to go to bat for your own employees, why are we doing this? And literally, what's on the table is to pass a law to potentially ignore some law. This doesn't make sense. I get the intent. but it doesn't make fundamental sense. We're a nation of laws or we're not. We're a community of laws or not. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. I'm a parent of two. My little guys are at home and I'm here instead with you. So for anyone on the home gamers attacking me, well, I'm a white guy with Asian kids. Let's play identity politics. So, Councilor Leming, unsaid. Go look it up. Is that what you would report to someone if someone offered you a contract and said, this is how much it's gonna cost me.
[Nate Merritt]: Sure, through the chair, unsat, because that's not what a contractor would do. Can I have 10 seconds back for yours? Thanks. No. Wonderful. So that said, question six is about the fire station. $30 million, I think is the estimate. There's a lot of unclarity and we could publish the facts in your assumptions, interest rate, bond, period. Cambridge overran three times. Their fire station was 25 million in 2019, it's now 77. You're gonna knock down this firehouse, then what? What's your contingency plan when the costs go up? How many times are you gonna go back to the well? And what are you gonna do in the meantime when there's no firehouse?
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. I do want to just do a shout out for someone I saw some you know, bad blood going on between here. Some spirited discussion. It's my kid's first birthday today. I was at home actually, you know, having cake and ice cream. And my wife went out to go get a balloon for him earlier today at Wegmans and the wind took the balloon away. And a really wonderful, I don't know where she's from, but this woman saw my toddler actually crying his head off and went inside and bought a replacement balloon to make my toddler happy, my three-year-old happy. So I thought that was actually really cool. I know it has nothing to do with, you know, the topic at hand. But at the same time, you know, there are good people out there. And I just had to acknowledge that, you know, that was really, really awesome. That person did not have to do that at all. So hopefully a little more levity here. That said, I know we are talking about some serious things. I think people need to understand that Proposition 2.5 overrides don't just affect homeowners, it affects all property owners. Is that correct? Commercial as well as residential?
[Nate Merritt]: All taxable property. Another thing that is, as far as I know is true, is it's not just property taxes that you don't pay, like if you don't pay them right and there are plans. If I don't pay my water bill, can the city put a lien on my property?
[Nate Merritt]: And they can own my property. If you don't pay your bills, what happens? They can put a lien on your property and then they sell it and they keep the entire property in some cases.
[Nate Merritt]: But right now, the state of the law is that they can take the entire property, not just the amount that they owe to the city.
[Nate Merritt]: Okay, so just this misnomer that number one, you have commercial businesses here. And I think one of the things I've seen over the years, we live around the corner from the Locust Street project, right? And everyone was hot to trot, we're gonna build, build, build, build more residential properties. Okay, great. So you have a giant megaplex, I'm sure people there are happy. Where do they go to work? It's a danger, right? We need more, we need more places for people to live, but where do they go to work? people don't live in the city and work in the city anymore, right? That that model's kind of changed. I work in New Hampshire, I got to drive back and forth to New Hampshire to go to work now. And that's how I can afford to pay my bills. You know, and I sit back and I hear that, you know, there's this It's kind of this bad blood of people demonizing people who are fortunate to own property. I gave my pennies a lot. I bought a tiny little house in Medford. This was not my first choice of places to live 10 years ago. Since I moved in, I had someone drive through my front yard, take out my house, the fence on my property. Councilor Scarpelli, you were here for that. That was my first appearance at a city council saying, what the crap? And since then, my street is still a disaster, and nothing has happened, right? Riverside is an abomination. And the city hasn't been able to afford to pay back for a decade to actually fix that road. And I don't see a good plan. So if we sit there long term, right, we're gonna go develop Mystic Ave, we're just gonna develop, make everything residential, get rid of it, make it all residential, make it all affordable housing. Who's gonna pay? Who came in and built the locus street project? That was a real estate developer. And this city government, not you specifically on the council, you guys weren't here. You were here. And actually the city council tried to fight that because there was a whole debacle of how that went down. There was open meeting law violations. The city council couldn't actually use the city solicitor because the mayor, Mayor Burke at the time, had the city solicitor working for the city to actually push that project through. But how does the city make money? The city makes money off of permits and fees. And every time there's a building built, they want people to pay, developers to pay. So the city wants these big buildings. But now you're saying, I don't want big buildings. I don't want big companies to come in. Well, what are they going to build? Are they going to build another 10, 56 square foot house like mine? You think any developer is going to come in and pay all the fees and the fines that this city levies on to build anything? You think it's worth their time? I just got a quote for new siding on my house, cedar siding. Okay. Just the materials alone for white cedar, not even the good cedar. Okay. Good cedar, Western red cedar is $2,500 for a hundred square feet. The crappy stuff is $1,700. And that's what I'm looking at to fix my house. And there are things I'd rather be doing. I'd rather buy my kids toys. I'd rather be spending time with them than being here. But I have to make tough choices. And the city's got some tough choices to make. So before I keep hearing this demonization of property owners and this and that, you know what? Nobody said you had to live in Medford. Nobody says I have to live in Medford. I'm not from Medford. I'm from Western Mass. First place I moved to, to get a job was in upstate New York. You wanna know where there's plenty of land? Western Mass in upstate New York. You don't have to live here. Nobody deserves to live here necessarily. It's not a, you gotta work for it. Yes, I wish we could sit there and wave and run and be like, everyone can have a house. I work, I go to work, I'd rather not. My wife goes to work, she'd rather not. We pay for daycare. So instead I can, you know, I can go to work to pay for daycare. It's almost like a break even song. I mean, these are real expenses that homeowners have. So every time I hear, oh, we're just gonna pass prop two and a half, because we need, no, I haven't seen it for years. I think we really need to take a look at where the expenses are too. And Councilor Bears, no offense, but you and I have gone around before and you said, I will not make cuts to the school. I will not. Some things are absolutely off the table. Then the same argument back at you. Prop two and a half, absolutely off the table. And then nothing gets done. And we're at an impasse and the roads are still crap. But I don't see a plan, even if you do the prop two and a half, it's an impulse of money. You're gonna fix the damn streets? There's no plan, you can't possibly afford to fix the streets in this city. Councilor Marks mentioned that like six years ago. The city doesn't generate enough revenue to do it, so what's the plan? And it's not build more houses. And this affordable housing thing that you're all talking about, great, so a young person wants to go buy a house. Okay, what are they going to apply to the city and get $100,000 free from the city? Where's it coming from?
[Nate Merritt]: Sure, because I have nothing else better to do tonight besides be here, councilor. No offense, but I have other things to do too. But this is a long brewing thing. When I hear terms of misinformation, and I see the keyboard warriors on Reddit coming after people like me that are homeowners, I got to wonder what's going on. And I don't see any comments from you all defending us.
[Nate Merritt]: You know what's going on on Reddit, because especially you, Councilor Leming, I see you on Reddit all the time. I'm sure you're very, very aware.
[Nate Merritt]: No, but demonizing homeowners is not okay either.
[Nate Merritt]: They are saying it on Reddit.
[Nate Merritt]: So what's the misinformation that you're not considering Prop 2.5?
[Nate Merritt]: No, it's not a case of revenue, it's revenue minus expenses. So right now in the current state of expenses...
[Nate Merritt]: Oh, it's real easy to sit there and fire it up. or maybe we gotta really get a handle on what our expenses are, and for the years that I've been here, the city council has never had a good handle on the city budget.
[Nate Merritt]: So maybe take a look at that first before raising revenue.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Avenue, Medford. So I've been around for a little bit, only about 10 years, moved in in 2014, a lot has happened. The roads still suck. And there's been a lot of development. No, no, no, no. But here's the thing. There was a ton of new housing development that happened right around the corner. The 61 Locust Street project, right? We're gonna build all new units and there's gonna be affordable housing. I've been hearing about housing. I've been hearing about linkage. I've been hearing about all these other taxes that are gonna benefit the area, but my street still sucks and another car can come up over the curb and hit my house. Nothing's happened in a decade. So the first thing I ask is, well, where's the tax money? So, you know, it's funny. I haven't lived in Medford my whole life, right? When I came out of college, I couldn't get a job in Massachusetts. I moved to upstate New York. It's really cheap to live there. There's plenty of housing. If people wanna go live somewhere, I recommend the Syracuse area, okay? I'm originally from Western Massachusetts. If you wanna find some housing that's actually relatively cheap, go to Western Mass. There's good people, good jobs, and they all have funny accents. Yeah, I said it. So I know people wanna play to identity politics. Yes, I'm white. My wife is Asian. I have two half babies. You know, they're whole babies, half Asian, half white, okay? Thank you, a little levity. I think everyone needs it a little bit here. But seriously, I mean, this is now the third meeting in a row that's happened. I have had to come and not put my kids to bed because this city has been a dumpster fire. And there's no other good way to put it between the firemen issue and everything else going on. It has been a dumpster fire and it's been going to 11 o'clock habitually. So we're kind of in a sad state of events. Upstate New York, you see your taxes in play. They have volunteer firefighters. That's what I did when I was out there. People didn't have a lot of money. They made due. I went and found work. I only moved back because my dad got sick. Now I make okay money. We bought a house we could afford. You know what I want? I want a gold brick to fall in my backyard so I can afford stuff and fix my crappy house that my wife and I saved up and bought without assistance from my folks. My folks are gone now. So there is no assistance coming from them. Right, I have a single family house, you have some problems that y'all are trying to address, and I'm hearing a lot of convolution, it's, we need quantity of housing, we need affordability of housing. Those two circles don't necessarily need to intersect, they're separate issues and they might have separate solutions. An affordable house is a single family house. It's not necessarily a multifamily house. So if a person wants to sell their single family house to another family, like we got lucky. It was a bidding war. I mean, this is what, and we used to pay it all the taxes and da, da, da, da, right? But we got into a single family crappy house. I have an 1100 square foot house. It's a three bedroom. I got two young kids. I wanna go somewhere else. Yeah, have a little more room to move, but I can't necessarily make that move right now. but I have a job, my wife has a job, we're middle-class. I have no idea what the value of my house is. I wanna say it was like 700,000 or something, which is just ridiculous. Okay, I sell it tomorrow. Where am I gonna go? I'm gonna go what, pay 800, 900 for the same house. I would literally sell my house and then with the cap gains and everything else, I'd still be in the hole. So now I have a job in New Hampshire just so I can go afford to pay my higher taxes, my daycare for my two kids so my wife and I can both go to work. which is a mortgage in itself is 1400 bucks a kid and they're not even full time.
[Nate Merritt]: Grandma's helping them out. You should shut this down tonight. The councilor Scarpelli made a good suggestion. So to councilor Penta, you don't have to take this. A perfectly acceptable answer tonight is no. And there've been plenty of other resolutions have been passed by this body, but without going to committee first. So I think it was a little disingenuous council, what you said initially where it has to go to pay.
[Nate Merritt]: Sure thing. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. I have to agree with the last speaker, and that was my comment. Sorry, this is so full that we got another separate room watching on the video.
[Nate Merritt]: Absolutely. When I'm starting to hear questions about, well, how would you guarantee, how would this, how would that? The position of fire chief is it's a leadership position, but it's not a dictator and it's not a king. Okay, all the men and women here are going to work for that person, and they give orders on a fire ground. But you know, there's the emergency time, there's incident, you know, commanders and management that happens, versus them, there's the administrative and personnel side. So let's say hypothetically, that whatever happened with sick time, this and that happened again, do you expect the fire chief to be able to sit there and unilaterally go, you're fired? Does that happen? Does that happen in any leadership position that you know of? And through the chair to Councilor Leming, I mean, do you think that happens in the military? I expect you know the answer. It doesn't. So it's kind of a conflated issue. Whatever happened with sick time and this and that is completely separate from what to do with civil service. This seems very reactionary on its face. And you all know me, I've been here for over a decade. I try to weigh in with logical, you know, logic on some of these things and be very balanced. This appears and smells reactionary. When do you install a sprinkler system in a building, before or after the fire? They know the answer. You do it before the fire. So if you're putting out a fire now, right, it's kind of too little too late. This is the wrong time for this particular topic. It doesn't mean you shouldn't necessarily address it in the future. But why are you doing it now? Because the opportunity presented itself? Well, okay, but now's not the time. When would you rather buy a car? Do you buy a car when your old one's crapped out or do you proactively think, you know, maybe I should upgrade while I still have wheels? So before you make your decision, reactionary, maybe consider this in a proactive manner, maybe revisit it and table it, but now is not the time. This stinks to high heaven. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Sure thing. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Avenue, Medford. Councilor Leming, are you still in the Navy? Yes. Okay. Um, so some of us are bound based on our jobs, so on and so forth, whether or not we can use controlled substances. Isn't that correct? I mean, you have the UCMJ, which you have to abide by for certain rules. Others like FAA pilots, right? Anyone with a DOT license. And there's a reason for that. And I'm not opposed to this at all. I guess I would just want to caution this council before we start. I'm concerned number one about distribution and what distribution means in your measure. Because as the parent of a child I can tell you, I can't even give my toddler cough medicine. I wish I could. I can't. So, I think there's some nuances that really need to be addressed which is why I'm glad that y'all are bringing it to committee, because there's always the unintended consequences. And just to think about that there are reasons that sometimes people don't think of why certain things are controlled and this and that are certain situations. So just before we wholeheartedly say this is great, everyone should have it all the time. I really hope that the council will heed law enforcement and maybe others too, and that there's a time and a place for everything. I'm not opposed to this, but I also don't like blankly saying, sure, it's great for everyone all the time. because I'm pretty sure nobody would want the pilot of your airplane on a controlled substance at any period of time, especially if it's a psychedelic one. That's all, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Merritt.
[Nate Merritt]: Name and address again for the record, please. Nate Merritt, 373 Roofside Ave. I guess I'm kind of curious as to why the city of Medford thinks that it knows or should be able to determine whether or not a country should be on the state sponsor of terrorist. This country has a wonderful defense and intelligence apparatus that knows more about the terrorist activities. than anyone in this community. So I guess I'm just questioning why this city feels like it maybe knows more than the federal government. And if the motivation behind it is because Trump did something, and therefore we need to unwind what Trump did because it's something Trump did, that's a poor decision. Things happen in time. Different people are in different administrations. But whoever the president is, they're not a dictator in this country. There's a whole bunch of staff that work behind the scenes. So before you pass something where I think you're kind of ill-posed, I'd really question, really, can you make that judgment to say they should be removed without having the data to back it up? Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Sure thing. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. I know it's getting a broken record. So why I'm actually concerned about this, I'm not a business owner. It is a little ambiguous. Does it only apply to storefront properties or would it be all commercial and or industrial businesses?
[Nate Merritt]: Right.
[Nate Merritt]: I can't ask him. I gotta ask you. Sorry.
[Nate Merritt]: Okay, great. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, sir. So and why I was concerned is because right across the street from my house is a vacant commercial property, 400 Riverside Ave, which I was just informed tonight that I guess is not at the moment now being considered for a migrant shelter. However, one of the reasons that they're in that situation is because it's a vacant commercial building. Now, why it's vacant, I couldn't tell you. Initially, it was supposed to be, I think, a biotech company was the intent, which to me is awesome. I love commercial business. I love private business. Why? Because it's a place for people to potentially work in their community. That's awesome. And a large space like that is great. I caution if we start having sticks, then people certainly can go out and rent out space. This has been demonstrated where Hey, I've got a space, let's make it a migrant shelter. I mean, there are plenty of other avenues besides business, right to one, they'd want to get income for that building, but then also to avoid on top of that a potential tax. I really would like to see some sort of plan for the city. For instance, city of Malden, right? When I want to go, Justin, I'm looking at you. Okay, when I want to go and get dim sum with my family, right? There's umpteen, you know, Vietnamese, Chinese restaurants, right? I can go to dim sum in I think three or four places, right? Not Songkran, I went to Songkran last weekend, right? Because the other one I can't, the larger one in Malden Center, right, is full, right? There was a plan behind that. I don't think it was completely random where a bunch of Asian businesses said, hey, I'm going to go put one next to the other on their own. I think there was some coordination by the city of Malden. And it's a place where young people can actually go and get entertainment. There really isn't a lot of that here in Medford. So I'd really love to see what a plan for this city is, and including these large industrial and commercial spaces that are vacant. So not just at the state level, I think there's a lot of local incentives that we could do to, you know, populate some of these commercial spaces in Medford. So my caution is be very careful with the sticks. They may have unintended consequences.
[Nate Merritt]: I'll make it quick. Just one question. Sorry, I can't ask you. Ask me and I will. Sure thing. What about considering if the buildings can't be fixed, maybe it's worth selling the property as a revenue generator for the city, if it makes sense, as a possibility, right? Versus if something's really bad and you'd have to tear it down and rebuild it, and you don't know what the city would wanna do with it, maybe it's in a location that's desirable to put something else, be it residential, commercial, industrial, I have no idea, but just as an option four in your list.
[Nate Merritt]: Sure. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave in Medford. I am an abutter of this place. The address is 400 Riverside Ave for the public that wants to know. And I am not satisfied with how the mayor has communicated information to the neighborhood.
[Nate Merritt]: Absolutely. Through the chair, I am not satisfied how the mayor has communicated information to the neighbors and the neighborhood and the abutters of that. If this was the Locust Street project again, right, this council hired an attorney because the Zoning Board of Appeals dropped the ball, didn't even have a public meeting, violated public meeting law, and the mayor was part of that. She understood that the residents had a right to information. But I only hear things when I come here. So I brought my wife with me tonight, who is an immigrant, and to all the Facebook keyboard warriors out there that want to say something. She's first generation American. I'm a grandchild of immigrants. I don't have a problem with immigrants. I do have a problem with the way that all the information has been communicated. This project started in October. And there's been nothing officially published until I came here and started asking questions to get them on the record. And thank you that you all as a body are willing to entertain this, but the mayor is not publishing anything except one Facebook post. And that's on set. That is not a way you communicate information and especially to gain information from your neighbors. She hasn't talked to me. She hasn't talked to my neighbors that I'm on the phone with right now. So no, I don't think she's got it. You know, she does not have a handle on this. And honestly, I don't think you do either. I care about safety of my kid. And again, for all the keyboard warriors out there that live up in the ivory tower in the hills of this community, you don't live where I do. Wegmans has a police guard every night, obviously because it's so safe and they're not worried about any crime. But yet New York City, which has one of the most fantastic police forces in the world, you had a Venezuelan migrant in a shelter stabbed by other Venezuelan migrants. Bullets fly through windows, bullets fly through siding, and it's my house that could potentially be a target with my two little kids at home. So yeah, I got concerns because it's my neighborhood. Is anyone in this council within view of this building at 400 Riverside Ave? Just posing the question here. Anyone?
[Nate Merritt]: Okay, through you to anyone. I'd like to hear an affirmative or a negative, quite honestly, from all the members.
[Nate Merritt]: Yes. And so it's a simple yes or no. I think that's fair.
[Nate Merritt]: The answer is no. OK. So I am concerned. The neighbors are concerned. So if they can't find more housing, this is temporary five days until you just said, there's no housing available. So then what? What is preventing actually the children from being enrolled in school? Because how does the city stop it when the state law says that they have to be allowed to enroll in community? These are, I think, some critical questions we need answers to in the utopian ideal situation, all's well and they move away in five days. How long is this gonna go on for? How many years? There are some legitimate concerns, public safety. How are we gonna address that, even for the neighborhood? Trash and garbage and logistical things like that that happen. We have some questions, but apparently now it's a done deal. So the train's gonna roll over us and you have zero way to influence it, is what I just heard tonight. That's unsat. Madam Mayor, that's unsat. I'm looking forward to the community meeting I think you're gonna have some neighbors that are very concerned, and I hope this council can help us, at least like they tried to do during the Locust Street project. So, who's gonna pay for this? I mean, there's a lot of questions to get answered. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Thank you for your comment there. And I guess just to the for the record. I don't think I'm a bigot. I'm just a neighbor who's concerned and I have neighbors, you know, that are, you know, fellow neighbors that are concerned in the neighborhood. And this can directly impact and people like, Oh, what do you mean trash? What do you mean? Whatever. I find shopping carts in my yard all the time to begin with, I'd be happy to take them to some other person's address. right and load them up in my truck and return them that way. It's silly things like that. But also, like I said, in New York, I'm not making this up. This is on the news that there were people getting stabbed and I don't I'm sorry, I don't want that in my neighborhood. So how do we fix it? And if someone says, Oh, we're going to detail a state police officer at this building every day, then okay, great. That's a potential solution. But without any answers. to get in front of it, right? Are we just going to sit there and wait for all the problems to boil up? I've heard from a reliable source that, for instance, that the state has had to train certain migrant communities, that it's not okay to sit there and grope a woman. Because culturally, that's okay from where they're coming from, but it's not okay here. So I mean, there are some serious issues that don't necessarily fall into the optimum narrative. that we really need to address it for the good of everyone.
[Nate Merritt]: I'll keep it short.
[Nate Merritt]: No, but I did want to address. something that Councilor Leming had mentioned. I appreciate statistics, I'm a scientist also, okay? So definitely some mind meld there. That said, my particular home is probably the outlier. And again, this is directly across the street. So this is where I'm coming from. When my wife was pregnant with my oldest child, just a few years ago, we had someone break into our house Right? Not okay. And the only thing that saved her from getting hurt was me putting a door in front of that person. Medford PD was great. They came over the detectives, you know, did their thing, right? I scared the person away. And they eventually caught up with them down the street. Okay, that's a terrible thing to happen to anybody. This is where I'm coming from. Not only that, during that incident, I found out from Medford PD that, oh, yeah, we arrested someone under your porch a couple years ago. Really? When the officers are familiar with my backyard, because they've had to come in and find people, I think it was shoplifters or something like that. This isn't about race. My concerns are literally because number one, there's crime in my neighborhood. It's a real thing. The businesses that are there actually are concerned about, like there's a lot of mechanic shops and so on and so forth, right? Vehicles, I'm sure you've heard like a legitimate thing where people were cutting off Cadillac converters for cars. I mean, there's real things that are happening in this city. So I'd love to hear from the police chief right, what the actual crime is by zone to help give you some real data to work from. But I'm going off my personal experience. So now there were two, two crimes committed, literally in my house. Right, like I said, Wegmans has a police officer for a reason, not because they want to go spend money. And, you know, like I said, it's great when the police can show up at your house. But at the same time, what happens if it's one of my kids? Who am I blaming? Who am I suing? Right? If we don't protect our people here first. So that's where I'm coming from. It's I don't care what your race or any of that is. I really don't. But I also know when you have like the Occupy Wall Street, when you've had a lot of clusters of people in places that aren't homes, they're not built for homes, bad things can happen to everybody. So I'm a concerned dad. I'm okay to say that, but I'd rather not have statistics thrown in my face and say, oh, you know, you're just a, you know, you're just a right wing nut job. No, I'm not. I'm a concerned dad where already bad things have happened in my neighborhood. That's my concern.
[Nate Merritt]: Yes. Cool. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave in Medford. Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. for inviting me here tonight. So I came a few weeks ago as a concerned neighbor regarding a potential migrant shelter diagonally across the street from my house. I saw on a Facebook post through my wife's Facebook, I guess the mayor sort of addressed some things that are happening, but I'm hoping maybe someone here can help shed some light.
[Nate Merritt]: Absolutely. Would the residents also in the area be invited to this?
[Nate Merritt]: So just as a FYI, Mr. Clerk, I don't know if it's just me not able to work the website correctly, but I couldn't even find the agenda for tonight's meeting because it's bucketed under 2023. There is no link for 2024 agendas on the website.
[Nate Merritt]: Okay, but the 23 link will still get you to the right Google Drive page to get there.
[Nate Merritt]: So that's fine, and I can help then once you guys settle on that date.
[Nate Merritt]: And just for clarity, I mean, I'm not opposed to this. It's just as a resident literally across the street, my concerns are my family safety. That is number one top dog. And if there's a plan and So I work with government myself and sometimes I find that if you package ideas ahead of time, you can help contribute and shape those things versus waiting for the train to hit you and then backpedal. So my hope is that maybe we can get some engagement locally and have some asks that are constructive to then help the state shape their decision.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside at Medford. Councilor Knight, it's gonna be, I'm sorry to see you go. So it's been a pleasure. Sorry, I had to pull myself away from-
[Nate Merritt]: Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you did that already.
[Nate Merritt]: Absolutely. Or words, or words. No, but other things too, I'm sorry. No, I was just gonna give him some, cause he was gonna end this before I could talk. Transparency seems to be like a common theme here among my years in the city. I've been here since 2014. This council was actually very much a proponent of trying to bring transparency back to a process with the 61 Locust Street project, to which I commend the council at the time, and some of you were still a part of that, which is great. So then I find out that through the grapevine that there's a potential for having 50 to 75 migrant families directly across the street from my house, sorry, diagonally across the street from my house on Riverside F in a commercial project. Haven't heard anything about it. So the good councilor Scarpelli's point about no transparency or lack of transparency from folks in the administration. We have the CEO who was part of the council at that time of the 61 Locust Street project, who was very much a proponent of transparency from the city. So I got to ask like, what is going on? And can someone please make public the rumors that have been talked about? Because as a resident in an adjacent building, and a neighborhood, and I know that my neighbors know nothing about this, it's kind of a big deal, especially because these sorts of things are also on the news, especially in New York City, where they can't handle what's happening to their properties. So this, I guess, is a commercial property that now we're going to all of a sudden start housing people in. And I just want to know what's going on because I live there. I know some of you don't, and it's not in your neighborhoods, but it is in mine. And I have two small kids at home, and so I'm concerned about things like safety. That's my number one thing that I'm concerned about. I don't have a good feel either way. It's not that I'm opposed to it, but with no information, it seems like it's kind of underhanded. And it's kind of a theme that I'm seeing in this city's government to the point of two topics ago between elections and zoning, so on and so forth. So I'd really appreciate some answers if someone can give it. And let's make this for the public record instead of just rumors.
[Nate Merritt]: I guess just one last comment. I certainly appreciate Councilor Collins. He's saying that nothing has happened yet. I also remember being part of the community where with the 61 Locust Street project, we were told the same thing. It was basically, sorry, too late. And the time to address it was beforehand. So there's certainly folks in my neighborhood that, you know, if they're made aware of something early, would definitely like to voice their opinion when it can be heard versus being told, sorry, too late. So that's where we're coming from. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Name and address for the record, please. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave in Medford. It's not necessarily in opposition, but you don't have another option of like just questions. So that's why I'm doing it there in the opposition portion. So out of the city councilors, who here shops at stop and shop? Okay. Do you ever go out like five o'clock at night? have to work. Okay. Uh, some that live in the neighborhood do it's great. It's convenient. I live a half mile away just for, for the folks there. I love chicken. I love small business. I'm, I'm, I'm a big, you know, capitalist, you know, proponent. So yeah. Um, in fact, I like chicken so much that I've been to Chick-fil-A so many times. I know it's the other company, right? But they're awesome and they run a good operation. So I guess one of my questions for you is, are your peak hours going to be around that five o'clock, six o'clock dinner time? Uh, which there's already a traffic issue where that don't block the box is always blocked. It doesn't matter how many lines you put on there because nobody can move. It gets gridlocked to begin with. So without a higher level plan, I don't know how some lines are going to fix that issue. And then for those of us that just want to go to the grocery store, we'll turn down commercial av. There's some ways to get around there, but I can see that clogging up pretty quick if this place is successful, which I hope it is. I guess my other concern is the actual footprint. And again, I'm going to cite Chick-fil-A and Woburn because that place is a goldmine. And they have a really good operation, similar to what you're talking about with the two drive-through lanes. They've got their act together. And it's like a minute or two, if you do your online ordering, you can stop it. You literally can pull in, get your food, get out. It's wonderful. Do you have the right footprint to accommodate the traffic that you might see based on this? Someone did some market research and said, this is a good area to put one of these restaurants. And I don't know anywhere else you can get chicken besides Popeye's in Everett, which again has a one-sided access. It's difficult to get in there. But have you done the homework comparably to see that if you get the business like you get in Woburn, are you going to be able to accommodate it without causing a bigger problem to the neighborhood? I appreciate you Rick Councilor for addressing the commercial have entrance there's also another truck entrance right for stop and shop on 16. If you're coming from the south you can turn left and there's that that dumb little sign for stop and shop. This is turn right and go through the loading area for stop and shop and all those other businesses to that's another access. Right. So instead of just commercial where you have all the other, you know, 18 wheelers parked over. My final question is regarding the hours of operation. The other restaurants in the area it looks like they close up at nine or 10 o'clock at night on some nights and 11 on others. Do you think you're really going to have the business to drive having extended or require the permit all the way to having normal business till midnight, and then deliveries at one that you don't have in Boston. or BU, which quite honestly has a lot more young people that are probably hungry for chicken after 11 o'clock at night. So those are my comments. Hopefully you guys can take those into consideration and maybe we can get some questions answered. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave, Medford. I love this idea. I'm a loyal BJ's customer in the fact that your gas is cheap, it works, it gets me to work back and forth. I think we've already talked tonight about the conditions of the economy, right? 6% inflation is not what it really is with gas compared to last year. So as a parent, this is a great idea and it saves me a trip from going to Stoneham and back every time I wanna go fill up my gas tank, because you guys have the best prices in the area. I understand that there's concerns for the residents in the neighborhood and at the same time, I live right in the corner of Lucas street where there was a lot of development forced down our throats. So the fact that you guys been able to help work out something that's mutually mutually beneficial. It will actually benefit the community. I applaud you for that. So thank you Councilors, because we need some more commercial business in the city. We really do. Residential side is good, but anything we can do to help support commercial business and also people live in Malden, people live in surrounding communities, they will come to BJ's to go get gas. They will help bring money into our economy. So I fully support this. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Ethan Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave in Medford. It's more of a question for you, Councilor Bears. Did you hear about a high school in Western Massachusetts that couldn't turn the lights off since October of 2021? I do watch Saturday Night Live. Okay. So I know some folks don't necessarily know what I'm talking about, but I'm actually from that town. That was the new high school that replaced the one that I went to.
[Nate Merritt]: I'm also a taxpayer in that community. Yeah. So I just found out that, you know, we've been getting a bill for approximately $220,000 because we couldn't turn the lights off with switches because good intentions for having centrally managed green buildings, but yet Information's fuzzy, there isn't a lot out there in the public domain. Sounds like it might be because of a computer hacking or something, and therefore it's a centrally managed issue. We had teachers literally trying to unscrew light bulbs, I guess, to try to turn the lights off because there weren't local light switches. So if you adopt this in its current form, are you handcuffing people to build buildings like that where they don't necessarily have local control over their HVAC systems and or lighting, especially when you wanna have, even as, as a backup, but also just because it makes sense, right? Local control. So if you can turn the lights off, if you want to, and not necessarily rely on the internet and a program because it's free.
[Nate Merritt]: Okay. Like I said, good intentions right by all I'm sure that we're involved but at the same time, it's really embarrassing. And you've kind of shot yourself in the foot from the green objective when you've literally been just setting energy and money on fire, and yeah, the city can't afford it, quite honestly, to make that kind of mistake. So just making sure that
[Nate Merritt]: Sure, sure. As long as you're not handcuffing even private businesses that want to, you know, build a building, right, that they all of a sudden have to adopt something that's remotely, you know, internet only control.
[Nate Merritt]: Because chances are, if you did, they'd probably end up hiring him here at Medford. Actually, it may have been, I'm not positive.
[Nate Merritt]: Totally agree. But, and just as you're doing other, you know, projects in the city, right? Not just the high school, but. Yes, yes, no, I'm with you. When I find out, I'll let you all know, but as a taxpayer, yeah, we want some heads on pikes for that one. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: You're good. OK, thanks. Has anyone looked into if there's a gap in service, is there something the city can do, and perhaps maybe generate some revenue while helping out the citizens.
[Nate Merritt]: No, no, no, I'm not saying compete with the MBTA but if the MBTA isn't going to move and you do have some infrastructure in place we have school buses we have drivers, perhaps there's an opportunity where the city can help the community and fill in the gap of the MBTA isn't going to cooperate.
[Nate Merritt]: Yeah, but this could actually make money instead of the parking department which is losing money.
[Nate Merritt]: I didn't want to say it, but if there's other options for folks to use, even just information about what's available is probably helpful in the short term.
[Nate Merritt]: Thank you, Councilor, and I'll keep it quick because I have a little one at home. I'm here as a parent, but my child is not even in school yet. I'm here because I'm looking at, do I want my child to go to Medford Public Schools? My wife asked me a question last night. She says, because she read and saw everything on the news. So in fact, Councilor Scarpelli, I may ask you a couple of things to get through the chaff. What we saw in the news was it was three hours. People were in lockdown. There was no official communication on what happened. And the only way that students could communicate to their parents was with this. Is that pretty accurate, sir? Okay. I hate these. What really bothered me, and when I saw Councilor Caraviello this morning, first question came to my mind. why were people doing this? And I will respectfully disagree with you in the terms of what happened 30 years ago and so on and so forth when I was in high school and longer when you were, because I think there are things we can learn from that, especially in policy. Yes, situations change, environments change, technology changes, and policies change. But it doesn't mean that maybe all the changes that we have made are good, and maybe we can learn from history and try to tweak things for the better. So I think we should respect their history and not ignore that.
[Nate Merritt]: That's my intent. Absolutely, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound accused or that, but just we should keep in mind that, you know, things that were policies when I was in high school or when you were in high school, maybe you're not necessarily bad things to revisit or consider. So I think as a policy action, right, something that doesn't take a lot of money, we could figure out within a week, right? People do hot washes in jobs, in corporate, in the fire service, In the military, you do an operation right afterwards, you do a debrief. What happened? How do we do it better? In the medical community, they'll do what they call M&M rounds, right? Unfortunately, if a patient passes away, they wanna figure out how do we get better? I think that's something that we should be asking the schools to get within the next week or two. Why did it take hours for the school to communicate to parents. I personally don't understand the purpose of a lockdown given this incident and why it was ours. There's difference between preserving a crime scene versus locking everyone in because you think it's an active shooter. I don't wanna debate that. I have no idea what that is and there may be a rationale. That rationale should be communicated to the parents, but also within a week or not even, why did it take so long? Because I'd love to see all these gotten rid of from schools. But at the same time, if a parent can't know that their students are safe or their children are safe, then what other mechanism do you have? So it's kind of a catch 22. So I think we really can do better and this doesn't cost a nickel.
[Nate Merritt]: And that is the indifference of good men. It's a quote, I'm sorry, but that said, I think it rings true, right? Especially in situations, we can take action, right? I think these are things that could be taken, you know, done now, because otherwise, when my wife asked me, do we send our kid to public schools? My answer is no.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. Thank you, Councilor, and I'll keep it quick because I have a little one at home. I'm here as a parent, but my child is not even in school yet. I'm here because I'm looking at, do I want my child to go to Medford Public Schools? My wife asked me a question last night. She says, because she read and saw everything on the news. So in fact, Councilor Scarpelli, I may ask you a couple of things to get through the chaff. What we saw in the news was it was three hours. People were in lockdown. There was no official communication on what happened. And the only way that students could communicate to their parents was with this. Is that pretty accurate, sir? Okay. I hate these. What really bothered me and when I saw Councilor Caraviello this morning, first question came to my mind. why were people doing this? And I will respectfully disagree with you in the terms of what happened 30 years ago and so on and so forth when I was in high school and longer when you were, because I think there are things we can learn from that, especially in policy. Yes, situations change, environments change, technology changes, and policies change. But it doesn't mean that maybe all the changes that we have made are good, and maybe we can learn from history and try to tweak things for the better. So I think we should respect our history and not ignore that.
[Nate Merritt]: Absolutely, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound accused or that, but just we should keep in mind that, you know, things that were policies when I was in high school or when you were in high school, maybe you're not necessarily bad things to revisit or consider. So I think as a policy action, right, something that doesn't take a lot of money, we could figure out within a week, right? People do hot washes in jobs, in corporate, in the fire service, In the military, you do an operation right afterwards, you do a debrief. What happened? How do we do it better? In the medical community, they'll do what they call M&M rounds, right? Unfortunately, if a patient passes away, they want to figure out how do we get better? I think that's something that we should be asking the schools to get within the next week or two. Why did it take hours? for the school to communicate to parents. I personally don't understand the purpose of a lockdown given this incident and why it was ours. There's difference between preserving a crime scene versus locking everyone in because you think it's an active shooter. I don't wanna debate that. I have no idea what that is and there may be a rationale. That rationale should be communicated to the parents, but also within a week or not even, Why did it take so long? Because I'd love to see all these gotten rid of from schools. But at the same time, if a student, if a parent can't know that their students are safe or their children are safe, then what other mechanism do you have? So it's kind of a catch 22. So I think we really can do better and this doesn't cost a nickel. So last quote that I will leave you all with, we must all fear evil men. but there's another kind of evil, which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. It's a quote, sorry, but that said, I think it rings true, right? Especially in situations, we can take action, right? I think these are things that could be taken, you know, done now, because otherwise, when my wife asked me, do we send our kid to other public schools? My answer is no. I will work more and send my kid to private school. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: and address for the record, please. State Merit 373 Riverside Ave in Medford. I live on a small, narrow street. Riverside Ave. It's not a side street.
[Nate Merritt]: So I think some, I appreciate what some of the Councilors have said tonight. I was watching this on TV. I had to come down because my kid didn't want to watch this on TV. He'd rather watch Paw Patrol. I don't blame him. I'm sure some of all of us would too. I think that there's a lot of, I'll call them corner cases that maybe where some of these blanket policies don't address, you know, if you live on Riverside Ave and you're having work done in your house and you can't pull into your driveway, and you don't have a permit and you come down to the parking office and they say, no, you can't have a permit to park on this side street. Really? No, because you don't live there. No, I don't. But if I actually want to go to work so I can pay my mortgage, pay my taxes, pay the salaries of the fine people working in that office, what am I supposed to do? So I think a lot of care and consideration needs to be taken before some blanket policies are put out. I really appreciate Councilor Knight, something that you brought up, which was, you know, what is the purpose of having parking? What's the scope? Is the intent to make money for the city? Or is it instead to keep people from say parking on Governor's Ave and kind of abusing the parking and preventing other people from coming into the city and shopping? It feels like the scope has been lost. If you wanna tax your citizens, tax it. If you're gonna have people pay, yeah. But at least come out and say it. But at least come out and say it. Because if you're having people pay to come shop and spend money in the city of Medford, and most of those people are your residents, then that's in effect a tax. If it's to keep people from say outside the city, you know, from parking and abusing and using the commuter access that we have, that's a different story. And there's different ways to address that. So the city of Arlington, town of Arlington, I think it's a town. Okay. Do they have a parking department enforcement and stickers? When I lived in Arlington, I didn't have a sticker and I was a resident. I could park on the side and all I had to do is like if I had an extenuating circumstances, you call Arlington PD and say, hi, I'd like to park my car on the street because they have no on street parking for the most part, right? They have a, the process is communication and otherwise, okay, we know that plate number. We're not going to ticket it. It works pretty good as far as I know. City of Cambridge, you can have a parking permit, you get a sticker and that sticker is, you know, it's a permanent resident sticker. and you can park anywhere in the city. Councilor Scarpelli, how does it work in Sutton-Merville where you work?
[Nate Merritt]: I mean, there's a lot of different ideas in here, and I think we need to find something that fits for Medford, but let's keep in mind the scope. If the scope is to raise revenue for the city, that's one thing. If the objective is different and it's to keep people from abusing streets and preventing people from coming outside the city to spend money in our city, which is, I think, what everyone wants, that's a whole different objective. So I appreciate y'all maybe keeping that in mind as we go forward and maybe trying to refocus the scope.
[Nate Merritt]: Just one other point that I wanted to ask. Councilor Knight, I thought I heard you correctly, but I want to be sure. Did you say that $500,000 of ARPA funding was spent I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay, so we spent half a million dollars to buy parking meters for infrastructure. Instead of fixing roads, we bought parking meters. Okay. When people say generate revenue, that's great. But there's another side of the coin and that's the expense side. So the city's currently looking at a shortfall of at least depending on who's math, Councilor Bears, your math had somewhere around 12 million. Mayor says somewhere around 3 million. She said, she said eight. Excuse me, I'm sorry. She said eight, she only wanted to fix three. Eight, oh, okay, okay. I guess the point is that even if it's a revenue generator, and I'm sure the gentleman behind me might be disappointed what I'm about to say, I'm sorry, but if we're paying more salaries for a problem that doesn't exist versus if the cost is $0 from the city, if we don't enforce parking, right? We just went back to before, no enforcement. We're unfortunately probably not gonna pay those people working that office.
[Nate Merritt]: Okay, yeah, as long as it's not just a revenue side, but it's actually net revenue minus expenses, if that's the objective. And otherwise, if it's generating revenue, but it actually costs more to do the enforcement, even though you're generating revenue, that's not a good solution either. So I want to point out there's a difference between revenue and expenses.
[Nate Merritt]: Please, Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. Regarding receivership, Chelsea, is that the closest community that was involved in that recently? Chelsea, Lawrence, Springfield. So I'm gonna throw wacky idea out here. I'm looking at you, Zach. You're the money guy. You're the numbers guy. Okay. If we can't pay our bills, okay, you go into receivership, there's some sort of restructuring that happens, right? Usually when that happens with businesses at least, right? Some people, you know, people lose work, people get fired or laid off or so on and so forth because there's, usually there's a plan and part of that plan is painful. What if there's no more Medford? We take the East side and it goes to Somerville, right? And we take the West side and that goes to Arlington. or Winchester, and we just carve it up. Take the land, dissolve it. I'm against it. I'm not saying anyone's for it. No, no, no, no, no, no.
[Nate Merritt]: Yeah, where I'm going with this is unfortunately, I just want people to be careful that as far as services.
[Nate Merritt]: I'm not suggesting we had, but it also might be out of your hands.
[Nate Merritt]: I guess I would ask you this, because I know you do a lot of homework, Zach. There's other communities that have gone there. What's the trigger? and maybe we can be proactive and not dig ourselves into that spot.
[Nate Merritt]: Good evening, Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave in Medford. I fully support fixing Riverside Ave, because I'm the guy that lives on the street that has to drive up and down that terrible road every day. And I've been saying it for years. So on that point to the gentleman out in Zoom land, fully agree with you on that. I've been saying that one for years. And in fact, they've been digging that thing up, National Grid, the water, this, that. It's a disaster. It's been a disaster for years without a plan. We have a DPW that doesn't have a plan. I think there are some efficiencies we can pick up. Councilor Bears, I appreciate the situation you're in. It sucks. Let's just put it that way, okay? Nobody wants to talk about tax increases ever. It's a crappy spot.
[Nate Merritt]: Everyone loves slings and arrows. And I think the residents do appreciate, you know, like I said, nobody wants to take anything in the shorts. Please know people do appreciate the work you do. And we know that there's some hard decisions to be made. So thanks for letting us be heard. That said, I do have a list of things so I could try to be efficient. I live on Riverside Ave. There's been a crap ton of development on Riverside Ave and Locust Street and all around my side of the city. And I'm not gonna get personal attacks. I am gonna say that there are folks that live in one half of the city where you would never be putting mega apartment complexes and doing a whole bunch of development. And they also have different schools their kids can get into. If you live on the wrong side of the city, now I've got to try to get my kids into a lottery in order to go to the better schools. Arlington doesn't do that. Lexington doesn't do that. If we're trying to keep up with the Joneses, then let's keep up with the Joneses. Is that what's happening? Is that why we need a new school? Because Arlington built one? I don't live in Arlington because there's no way in heck I could afford it. No way, my house, you can say on paper and I agree with you what the paper says, what Zillow says and this and that about my house. My house is a crap hole, okay? I bought it for $340,000 because that's what I could afford before my wife and I were married, before I had a rug rat. Right? Kids just make everything cheaper, don't they? All those tax credits you get, sure, no problem, right? I'm being facetious. Tell me I'm wrong.
[Nate Merritt]: Just wait, just wait. Daycare, there's other things, right? I'm a young family. So you can sit there and tell me, great, my house is worth $500,000. There's a reason why I paid 340 for it. One, that's what the budget I could support. And my parents are gone. I don't have a well to go back to. I gotta work more. My wife has to work more, if we can. We're both salaried already, maxed out. Someone's gotta actually watch the kid. I appreciate y'all being here. I wanna go home to my kid too. In fact, I missed bedtime an hour ago. So I know you know how that is, right? So, but we have personal budgets. We have to stick to them because there's no more well to go to. We do that in our families, right? Responsible people. The city has a spending problem. The city's had a spending problem since I moved here in 2014. It was painfully obvious. And when I hear the council say, there's nothing I can do. Okay, dissolve the council. There's $210,000 saved in the budget right now. If there's nothing you can do, why are we here? That's just quick math, sorry. I know it's a little fudgy. It might be more, it might be less, but 30,000 times seven is 210, right? So, sometimes you still. All right, so that said, other things that we've done here. Let's see, we've already increased tax revenue on the residents with this thing called parking since I moved here. You didn't have to pay for parking. Who pays the most for parking? Do you think it's people from the outside? Are they really flocking to Medford Square to go pay for parking? Or is it your residents that are keeping your businesses alive, and now they gotta pay effectively in addition to tax?
[Nate Merritt]: Great, get rid of the parking and save a million! But who's footing that bill? It's your residents. This isn't Cambridge. This isn't Somerville. There is no assembly square to go to. If I wanna go to a bar around here, where do I go? I go to Somerville. I'm spending my money somewhere else. Now I'm a parent and I have a budget and I can't afford to go to a bar. So I gotta stay home. And that's a choice I gotta make. That's a tough choice. I don't go out to eat. It's not that I'm poor.
[Nate Merritt]: Right? But I mean, this is what we have to deal with. So, you know, we've got parking now that is taxed on your residents. We hired an outside consultant Martha Coakley, during the Clipgate incident. Do we not remember that? Because we couldn't have Medford PD figure out why there was a magazine found in one of our schools. Really? We couldn't have Medford PD figure that out. We had to contract that out. This city has a spending problem. The DPW has a night watchman, last name of Pellegrini. He likes to yell at people that, you know, pull up in front of the recycle bin and don't sit there and park in parking spots that don't exist. I don't know whether the added value he's bringing when the DPW wants- Again, just no personal attacks. No, no, no, this is something I was gonna bring up anyways, is as a complaint.
[Nate Merritt]: Fine, you have a person who functions only as a night watchman according to his own admission. I don't know how much his salary is. It's nine o'clock on a Friday or Saturday night. Nobody's coming in and out of that parking garage or the DPW garage. You couldn't contract that out to Securitas or some other function instead of paying that person's salary plus their retirement. I think there's things that we can do to look at the budgets and spend more efficiently There's plenty, Tufts University, we've talked about this, Zach. There may be ways we can actually bring in some metrics and bring in some data analysis. I think it's time. It's been long overdue. What's the number of personnel in the city by department and how much has been, what is that number year over year? I don't expect you to have the answer. The problem is it's not published. Let's put it to the voters. Okay, well, the voters gotta be educated. The voters need to be able to find the data and make educated decisions. And no offense, you're not gonna take Zach Baer's word for it because you're only one person. And even you don't have all the data, right? Trust me. Trust me, I'm from the government. I'm here to help. You know? No, you wanna present the data and let people make educated decisions. There's no possible way you could do that.
[Nate Merritt]: I think it is when you have someone saying, hey, let's put it to the voters and they can't, they don't have the information to make the educated decision.
[Nate Merritt]: It's not about trust. It's about, they don't have the information. It's trust, but verify. I wanna be able to verify. And I think that's fair. You would too.
[Nate Merritt]: I am. Well, we can suspend the rules.
[Nate Merritt]: Yeah, if I'm running over my time, then suspend the rules, please. So I think we need the data. I think we need it published. Did the city hire a person specifically to figure out how to use the COVID-19 funds?
[Nate Merritt]: Okay, but the point is you still spent the money ahead of time for a person to figure out how to spend money. There's ways that happens in this city to say there's no way.
[Nate Merritt]: It doesn't matter. It's different sources. It's a pattern of, it's not the bucket you draw from. And that's part of the spending problem is there's always been proposals. Oh, well, there's this match we're going to get for the state. So we got to do this project now. The library wasn't supposed to cost anything for the taxpayers.
[Nate Merritt]: I am.
[Nate Merritt]: You have a spending pattern.
[Nate Merritt]: So just to clarify, did I just get cut off?
[Nate Merritt]: And if I do want to finish my points, I have to come back next week.
[Nate Merritt]: Okay, so I'm cut off for the night. That's, right Councilor Knight?
[Nate Merritt]: Um, comes to Carve yellow. Thanks for taking the time this morning to address the city.
[Nate Merritt]: Um, so for the rest of you, um, The parks that we have in this city are awesome. So I just wanted to start with that really appreciate now they have a small child, especially when it's warm out, you know, we have things like a splash pad that's available to the public as well as a dog park actually exists, you know, behind the Andrews and McGlynn schools. If I recall, those though, weren't paid for with city funds. Councilor Knight you might actually remember how that was funded.
[Nate Merritt]: Sure, but it wasn't solely done. It was like you said, a public partnership. It might be something you want to look into with the Tufts Park area as well, instead of just maybe temporary fencing, because the dog parks that we have behind there are actually pretty nice. They were segregated for like large dogs versus small dogs.
[Nate Merritt]: So a general theme, I think that I'm starting to see though, and it sounds apparent that it may be it's happening at Tufts Park as well. As you know, the McGlynn schools is, there's kind of some neglect happening in some of our parks, and you know, to the good Councilors point about just in the city, right? If we take care of the city, the city will take care of it. In a sense, right, the townspeople in the city folk will get into it, right, and wanna keep things nice, but if you let it get junky, then people just don't care. So this Saturday morning, I went with my child to go play on the swings in the park at McGlynn, and there were cases of beer left over, there was a bunch of trash everywhere, there was clothing left over from the middle of the night, so I don't know what was happening with that, but it was adult clothing. These aren't the things that we should be having, especially at our elementary schools. I think the administration needs to do something in terms of personnel to start paying attention to your city, because the city cannot afford to keep doing overrides and debt exclusions and so on and so forth. Gas is expensive for everyone. Most of us have to drive to get to work. Everyone's feeling the pinch. Let's take care of what we have. And if that means maybe spending a little more on personnel to help monitor these places, that might be cheaper in the end, net net, right, with all the benefits, everything else that person would be paid versus constantly repairing the good things we have already. So if that is a person who drives around and looks, you know, throughout the day. looks at the parks. During school, it's one thing, right? I mean, there's teachers there. It's the after school hours at those parks, but maybe a Tufts driver. And that way, if someone does have their dog off their leash, and they're not supposed to, there's someone with some authority to say, hello, would you please put your dog back on your leash? Because I don't want my children to be eaten, right? Which I know it's an exaggeration. However, these are problems that can be reasonably solved with, I think, a person. So, but it's more than just the dogs, it's making sure that we're not trashing the city, that we've worked so hard to build some nice things for the city. So I'd appreciate if, I don't know if that's something that can be made an extra motion or whatnot, you know, to the administration.
[Nate Merritt]: I certainly appreciate it. I guess the only other thing I would add is that if we can at least make sure that those decisions are made consciously, then they can also be held accountable later for those same decisions. and lack of decisions. So I'd urge you to push for that. And the other thing is that, I mean, there was COVID money that was given to this city that is still trying to be figured out how to be spent. And if I recall infrastructure of various types was, you know, is a category that that could be spent on. Now hiring a person to figure out, and their sole job of getting paid is trying to figure out how to spend money and salary. I'll do that for you for free. There's plenty of things to spend money on in this, you know, like I said, I hope improve our city that we don't need to wait six months or a year seven different committees to act now, or not necessarily act now but at least be judicious, and maybe we can be pound wise, instead of penny wise and pound foolish. So, but, but I do appreciate you. You looking in that and helping fight for so thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: That actually, in this particular case, that was a Saturday morning.
[Nate Merritt]: I guess one last piece to that is that, you know, maybe if we can stop some of this at the source, I know maybe I'm sounding old school, but I know that if I was like caught littering and whatnot, my parents would drag me out and make me clean it up instead of paying someone else overtime to do. I see you later. Likewise, but in all seriousness, maybe it is just a patrol, you know, of someone, I understand the police are busy and whatnot, but if they- It's called taking a little pride in your community. You know, take a lap around and if you see people trashing, you know, if they happen to see people trashing up the place, well then there you go. However many people there are trashing the place, that's, you know, 12 more volunteers that can be voluntold to, you know, clean up their area that they made a pigsty. So not everything has to be, we pay to fix other people's problems.
[Nate Merritt]: Name and address of the record please. Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. Besides marking, is it possible that there's something you could put around the casting so that you can drive over paint and you'll still wind up with a flat tire? But I can't imagine that there isn't something around the casting that slopes so that if you do happen to drive over it, you don't wind up with the flat tire and you can see it. Just something to consider.
[Nate Merritt]: Mayor, 373 Riverside Ave. So a lot of you have actually met since 2017 when I moved in here, and there's been a lot of excitement on the corner of my street. It's a busy area, understand that. We now have Wegmans right at the Meadow Glen Mall. I had a car crash through my house the first year I came through here, so I kind of understand what it means when there's an emergency that happens, especially in the middle of the night that might wake you up. Literally, the foundation of my house shook, and there was like bricks flying from the house next door. I know you work here at Councilor Bears, Yeah, it was kind of a disaster. I felt bad for the car too, actually, when I saw it. So that said, I do try to come here and not just complain, but also offer some solutions if we can. So that's really my goal. That said, I'm also now a dad. So since I've moved here, some things have changed. I have a 13-month-old son who's actually not feeling well tonight. So I'm going to go home and probably have to take care of him. So definitely some shifting priorities, just like you, Mr. President, in terms of your age, mine also. So now that I have a newborn, a couple weeks ago, starting on October 20th, I put my kid to bed and around nine o'clock at night, all of a sudden it's like, all right, what's going on here? And in fact, I wasn't home. My wife put the kid to bed and I went to come in. I couldn't get in my own driveway because someone decided they were going to dig a hole in front of my house to go fix a gas leak. Excellent. Thank you for fixing gas leaks, especially when they need to be fixed. So no gripes with that, especially as it's approaching winter. Let's not try to fix gas leaks in the wintertime if we learned anything from the North Andover instance. OK. So that said, hey, how long would this take? No notice whatsoever. And I'm not the only resident that was like, oh, what's going on? Didn't even know they were necessarily fixing a gas leak. It's got the giant national grid truck and they've been poking holes in that intersection for the past four years, chasing gas leaks here, there, everywhere. So jackhammer in the middle of the night, right? Going through the middle of the night to like three, four in the morning, what's going on? So when I came back the next night and said, hi, what's, you know, there's no one really to talk to, and I'm not going to go walk in a construction zone, but there are some nice police officers on both ends where they shut down the street. And of course, I want to go home. Where do I put my car so I can get home? Not very good answers from one officer that asked it. Sorry, I don't know. You have to go talk to someone and see. Well, someone hired you for the detail. And I know when they have these jobs that they list the details and who can sign up to actually work the road job. So that was kind of a poor answer. Didn't really like that one. So I tried to do some homework. I actually wrote an email eventually to, cause this lasted for like a week, Monday through Friday. And what's going on here? We're starting work at nine o'clock and it's wrapping up, you know, three, four in the morning. I'm trying to keep the kid asleep. and my neighbors are asking, what's going on? None of us have any answers. So they stopped for the weekend. Oh, they must be done. No, they started up Monday morning back at it. So that's when I, you know, send an email, asked the chief engineer McGivern, what's going on? And the answer I get is, oh, well, I don't approve anything during the day. You'll have, you know, we'll do some homework, but you know, it's the chief of police. Is that chief Buckley? Is that right?
[Nate Merritt]: Okay. So Finally get a response, oh, this is an emergency, it had to happen at night. It's an emergency, got it. Takes a week to fix an emergency for a gas leak. Apparently takes two weeks, because that's how long this thing took. We couldn't give anyone in the neighborhood any notice. Couldn't find a slip in my mailbox, something on my door, right? I get those in the mail all the time. Those work fine, they come great. Nobody could walk around and put something in there. Who's the person, the community person from National Grid that we contacted? Dan Cameron. Yes. So, I spoke with Dan Cameron. He said, oh yeah, apparently, and he was nice, very nice, very cordial. Apparently, there was a failure in communication. My point is, this isn't the first time this has happened. In fact, in June of 2019, there was a sewer lining project on Locust Street that someone decided was a good idea to put a, you know, basically make a giant hissing noise for hours starting at 10 o'clock at night and they said, oh, we didn't realize it was going to make noise in the neighborhood. There's people that live there. There's people that get up in the morning to go to work. They have kids, they have, you know, so on and so forth. And there's a lot of residents. I think we need to do better, especially communicating if projects are going to happen at night, whether they're emergencies or not, we can put some signs out. And the mayor offered a solution that was, well, Even if National Grid doesn't, we'll send out a robocall. So I'm going to pick on you for a second, Councilor Falco. You have a cell phone?
[Nate Merritt]: Awesome. So you get phone calls on it.
[Nate Merritt]: Do you get spam calls on your phone? Yes. What happens when you get a phone number you don't recognize?
[Nate Merritt]: You probably don't answer it. So you think you're going to wind up necessarily hearing the phone call, the robocall? That's not a good solution. And more so is when you go ask for, you know, where's the buck stop? Who approved these things at nighttime? Why do they have to happen in the middle of the night? I understand traffic can be an inconvenience. Got it. I drive around here too. Traffic's always an inconvenience. What's the policy in terms of like, how is that determination made besides it's easy for me to get a detail at night versus during the day? Maybe that's part of the calculus. I don't know. But I think it would be nice if, you know, maybe this council could take a look at what that logic path is. When we start approving projects at night, didn't it generate some noise? And I don't know about you, but I would think it's a person.
[Nate Merritt]: Well, apparently, according to the engineer, he doesn't authorize the permit. The police chief authorizes anything when they open the road at night and they do construction at night.
[Nate Merritt]: Well, and especially if it's going to go on, you know, it's supposed to happen a day or two and that like what defines an emergency is a two week project and emergency or is it two week project to project? And stuff happens.
[Nate Merritt]: So in this particular spot, it was one area.
[Nate Merritt]: And they would dig and then cover it over for the traffic to go during the day and open it back up. So you actually have that lost time too, where it takes them a couple hours to open up the same hole and then cover it back over. And if you total those hours up over two weeks, let's say it's like two hours a day times 10 days, that's 20 hours, almost 24 hours worth of work. National grid says they'll work 24 seven. So I'm with you Councilor Knight. If this is an emergency, fix it and get it done. Don't drag this out over two weeks. And a lot of you have heard plenty of complaints of residents. When you hear the airplanes flying overhead, when they're taking off runway three, three, you drag the FAA in here saying, Hey, it's too loud at night. It's waking up my kids, blah, blah, blah. I challenge you to then deal with someone with a jackhammer outside your house till four in the morning. You want to know some noise? In fact, I can, you know, I have DB levels that I was measuring and talking about, you know, a thousand times sound that's, you know, happening. It's 30 DB, right? When they're wearing hearing protection, operating the equipment, it's not just the abutters. It's not a magical line that sound then up, it only touches the property lines, sound travels. So that's why I think there's maybe we can look at the criteria. Yes, it was an emergency. But once it starts moving past a couple of days, maybe we're not in emergency territory in terms of how we get the work done. Maybe then we take a look and go, hey, this is getting out of hand. We can't keep dragging this out over two weeks. Let's wrap it up and get it done. So I guess my ask of you, is there something that we can do, pass a motion to revisit the logic tree of when work is done at night in this city versus during the day? I would hope so. And if not, I think that's a problem too. And if you guys don't know what that is, that's a problem.
[Nate Merritt]: Sure. And like I said, I'm sure there's rhyme or reason, but you know, sometimes things change and it's good if we can understand and we can communicate what is that decision logic?
[Nate Merritt]: They tried to do that last winter. Right, right. And we said, that's probably not a good idea to play with gas lines in the winter.
[Nate Merritt]: And he did. And he owned up and said, you know, they could have done a better job. So totally agree. But, you know, and in terms of coordination, if you're going to rip open the street again, well, don't pave over Riverside Ave anytime soon until they do that. I mean, it's like a war zone there anyways, but, but at least save some money and not let, you know, pave it over and then rip it up again.
[Nate Merritt]: Well, I'll tell you what, if you want to take all the granite curbs and pull them out and give them to the, well, I was going to say they're useless where I am anyways, because there's no curbing left. That's a whole nother thing that needs to happen there. Take the granite curbs, give them to the gentleman that was talking two weeks ago that was saying, Hey, I need some granite curbs because they're useless to us. and then fix the street right after they do the National Grid project, but just don't play with our gas in the wintertime when we depend on it for our heat. Because God forbid something goes wrong, you're not running gas lines up on the street. Otherwise, I'm coming to bunk in with one of you and my family so we can stay warm in the winter. So some of you better sign up.
[Nate Merritt]: Motion for approval, Mr. President.
[Nate Merritt]: Dave Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave, Medford. Not related to free speech or anything like that, but as a resident, and I'm sure some of you have actually driven by my house. I live right near Wegmans. Trash pickup. Normally our trash is picked up on Monday. My trash barrel is still out from waste management. It is Tuesday. I don't know when they are coming. Should everyone on Riverside Ave be calling the phone number that's given to report this trash pickup, or is this something that could be handled?
[Nate Merritt]: I think they missed the whole street.
[Nate Merritt]: Great, and just because I know you do have a budget coming up, maybe one thing to consider are metrics in terms of, because this isn't the first time that this is happening with waste management. So perhaps if you do have missed pickups or whatnot, that's something y'all being interested in, perhaps you can use this some leverage to set the rate in the future. Thank you. Thank you, sir.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave in Medford. Thank you all for taking my comments. Just for a point of information for Councilor Martz, last time I checked, the fire department also runs 24-7, 365. So that would be two departments minimum in your city, not just the police department. But just wanted to give credit where it's due. I actually have a very personal story and I know some of you on the council have known me for a number of years. Last Wednesday, someone decided to break into my home. I have a wife, I have a baby on the way. And I will tell you that the Medford police responded very quickly, very professionally, and we couldn't thank them enough for being available as quick as they were. I'm from a small town in Western Massachusetts. I'm very familiar with, you know, how it can be where you live in a town where it can take 10 minutes, right? 10 minutes for help to arrive. And it's just sheer distance. It's not because there's, you know, it's a lack of budget, but it's also sheer distance. And if someone's on the wrong side of town or the opposite side of town, it's just sheer distance versus time versus how fast can they go down the road. People in the Eastern Massachusetts area should be very thankful for the fact that they have the resources they do. You don't have volunteer fire departments in the greater Boston area. You do up on the North shore, you do in Western Mass. When I lived in Syracuse, I know what it's like to have sheriffs respond because you don't have a local police force. And when someone needs your help, it, you know, minutes seem like hours. I'm a public servant myself. I'm an EMT basic. I've been one for over 20 years. There are probably people, you know, that have been helped trained by me. I just want to say that I would take very much a bit of caution when we start talking about removing funding or reappropriating funding from your public services here. I'm a taxpayer just like everyone else. I want to use money efficiently. and put it in the right spot, but we shouldn't be having knee-jerk reactions because when you want the help, there is nothing that you will want to stand in your way to enable them to come help you. So before we say we're going to reappropriate funding and reduce funding, instead, let's try to look at problems that need to be solved. I don't disagree with anyone that's talking about, lack of better term, cleaning up the act when there's bad behavior. the police that we have here, in my opinion, are already overtaxed to begin with. And when seconds are counting, you're gonna want the help when you can get it. So again, thank you. My personal thanks to Medford PD for responding as quickly as they did, being professional as they were. And to Councilor Scarpelli's point, I'd actually like to be very much part of that public discussion that occurs, the police department and whatnot. And also, just a note for Councilor Knight, you can use the dialing number for Zoom and it might be a good alternative. I know being a person that used it myself a lot for meetings, that's a good alternative. You can call in on your cell phone and sometimes you have a much more reliable connection. You can still keep the video up on internet, but at least you can get your audio through without having a text message. Thank you very much.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. I just want to second Councilor Marks just to make sure that the fire department has all the communications gear it needs, especially with the recent development of all the large apartment complexes in the area, especially using 700 800 megahertz radios like is described in the paper. They can have difficulty penetrating even through the building. So we just want to make sure they get the equipment they need, especially with a lot more residents that could be using the fire department services. You know, the repeaters are important. Backup power, if there really is an emergency for those repeaters. Just want to make sure before we take money back before the new fiscal year budget, that they have what they need. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Specifically, it's actually towards the end, page 20, section 5B, compliance, where it states that compliance with federal law, since as I'm still aware, unless I'm wrong, that distribution of marijuana is still not compliant with federal law. You just wanna tighten up the language so you don't permit someone to set up an establishment and then have them get in trouble. That's all, thank you. Thank you. And besides federal, I'm sorry, besides that item, there was a similar throughout page six at the top. There's something that says this isn't supposed to supersede federal law, although the whole content therein kind of does. It's avoided on page 14 in section 12 there. They don't mention federal law, but did you mention state and local law? So you might want to have someone take a look and tighten up the language.
[Nate Merritt]: Name and address of the record, please. Nathan Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave, Medford, Mass. So the 30,000 foot view here that I saw tonight is the city has a spending problem. The city has a problem making commitments, honoring commitments, then surprises come up. How do we pay for it? before you talk about a debt exclusion, which absolutely it's a tool in the toolkit. You should be able to have it. Be prepared in that same discussion to answer what else can you do? So tonight, right, one of the things that got passed was $500,000 or so on and so forth. Was that a planned expenditure in the budget for the park? I'm gonna ask you, Councilor Marks. It wasn't in the budget. It was a surprise. No, not a surprise. It's not a surprise. It was something else. But in terms of budgetary planning, it was a surprise. You didn't expect to do that last year. Right. It's a capital project. So is maintaining the buildings by the same argument. So now we can't maintain our buildings, we can't afford to honor the commitments that the mayor made, so we're going to go As you like to say, reach into the pockets of the taxpayer. For the record, I am not a million dollar business owner.
[Nate Merritt]: Absolutely. Thank you. Absolutely. But the proposal is to reach for more money.
[Nate Merritt]: And I understand that things need to get done, but I haven't ever seen this council say no to a monetary request from the mayor for something that was a surprise. So when you have that happen in one hand and then, oh, but wait, in order to pay for the things I actually promised, we got to get more money. So we're going to go build Locust Street, and there's going to be, what's the term you use? Linkage. Thank you. Sorry. I'm not a lawyer either. I'm an engineer, right? I actually work for the defense. I get money in a budget. When we don't have any more money, sorry, better find some other work. We don't get more raining down from the heavens. You just can't reach back into the pocket. I know that might be surprising that the federal government actually can work that way, but it's true. I haven't ever heard anyone say no, or for the park, hey, we gotta spend 587,000 or whatever, but in order to get that 300,000 more, right, we gotta spend 580. You couldn't spend four. You couldn't spend 350. Maybe it doesn't have the water part, right? Where can we trim? And a little here, a little there can actually add up, right? So maybe there should be some pushback, not just, you know, pencil whipping and rubber stamping, what the administration wants, which is what happens here, unfortunately. This is what I see. This is the 30,000 foot view. We can't afford to pay our bills. We need more. We can't afford to honor our promises because we have to pay for the things that we didn't make a commitment on. And we're going to build these new buildings. You got Wegmans. Wegmans is awesome. Thank you for bringing Wegmans here. You actually bring in money from outside the community, and you're not just reaching into the, you know, the taxpayers to pay for things. Good job. Locust Street, you're going to get linkage money. That's more than you had in the budget this year, right, when you get that money. Where's it going? It's not fixing a road any more than you would have already. It's not paying for the firehouse. But you're going to get more. Every time you get more, you spend more. See, it's a Pandora's box. So if you're going to go down that road, you should have the tool. Be prepared to answer, where is the accountability? When are you going to say no? When are you going to trim something? So the city needs a, you know, you have a fire tower, you're going to go spend some money to tear down a fire tower, and then maybe build another one in a couple years. So in the meantime, are we going to say, oh, the firefighters don't need training? No, that's silly, and that's political suicide, let's be honest. So what are you going to do? you're gonna pay them money to go train in the neighboring city, because they have fire towers, they're not used 24-7, but in order for them to do their training there, they can't be on duty because they're out of the city. So you're gonna pay another crew to come in to backfill them while they go do their training, and they train hard. I was a firefighter for 10 years. It's very hard, it wears you out. If you're doing it right, it's gonna wear you out. So they're not going back to work afterwards. Not if you're going to go out of town anyways to do it. You're going to spend more money than you think. Start trimming a little bit and have that plan when you come and ask for more money from my pocket. Show the accountability. Yes, we want more money because we got ourselves in a rut, or mayor so-and-so got us in a rut. Good. Fine. Stuff happens. We need to work through it. But show me the plan. and boil it down in English. The budget, every year you guys talk about the budget. I don't ever see a line on them in the budget. It's never broken down enough and digestible for John Q. Public like me even to understand or to see it or pull it up, you know, easily and then hold you guys accountable. Did you spend the money you said you were going to spend here? What were the surprises? Oh, we had more money here so we transferred it over here. That happens every year and it's a lot because we can't plan. Start planning. You people are the money people, right? This is the body that does money? You approve the budget, therefore, the buck stops with you. It's got to stop with someone. Who else do I complain to? You don't have to rubber stamp everything. Maybe push back. If I see that, then I'm actually open to you saying to fix the hole that we dug ourselves in, This is how we fix it. And then I want to see the plan. This is how I'm going to achieve it. Right? Smart. You people in business understand smart, right? Okay. Show it to me. And not just at some meeting or whatever. Put it on the website. Put it somewhere. I want to see it. I want to hold all you accountable so that when things go wrong, I'm going to come back at you and say, well, I gave you more, and you still have the same problem. Same with the maintenance. We're going to build new buildings. Okay. You still don't have the budget fixed to then once you build that building, maintain it so that we're not doing it again. Oh, in 20 years, we need a new building. Really? I need a new house every 20 years too. I wish I could have a new house. I just want a roof. You know, the library, we needed to approve the library because that was, you know, the grant is here. The grant is here. And there's always that impulse, grant, grant, grant. We got to get it. We got to get it. Maybe it's not the right choice. So just think about that as you do. You should not have the tool, but be prepared to answer that question when you go down the road, Councilor, because I know you're trying to fix the problem. And thank you for that. But show me something with it. Thank you very much for your time. And thank you for the, you know, it wasn't quite my, what do you call it? the donation thing. It's not GoFundMe, but you know, at least someone's listening. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Name and address of the record, please. Nathan Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave, Medford, Mass. Thank you, Councilor and vice president for bringing up this issue. And as a resident on Riverside ave, I can personally attest that the curbs are very low. Back in 2014 in October, a car drove through my front yard, took out my fence and hit the steps at what was the building on the corner of Riverside and locus. So there is a need. Also for the record, I'm sure you're all aware that Wegmans is going to be open soon. So in terms of prioritization, maybe when these big projects are happening and you know that, hey, a place like that's going to open, if you're going to choose to repair roads, it may be a good time to do that and a bad time. You just talked a lot about the inconvenience on Boston Ave, you know, to the residents there. Well, what do you think is going to happen when Wegmans opens up? There won't be a good time to fix Riverside Ave for a very long time. Finally, as far as how to come up with a million dollars, So I see that, and I know this is kind of furthering business, but the city is looking to raise $1 million ahead of time from our water bills. It's a notice I got in the mail the other day. We can come up with a million bucks. Mayor Burke is also asking for what, 900K for a leak detection system. That's a million dollars. So you could say no to that and there's a million bucks. Thank you. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Name and address of the record, please. Nathan Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave, Medford, Mass. Thank you, Councilor Martz, Vice President Martz, for bringing up this issue. And as a resident on Riverside Ave, I can personally attest that the curbs are very low. Back in 2014, in October, a car drove through my front yard, took out my fence, and hit the steps at what was the REMAX building on the corner of Riverside and Locust. So there is a need. Also, for the record, I'm sure you're all aware that Wegmans is going to be open soon. So in terms of prioritization, maybe when these big projects are happening and you know that, hey, a place like that's going to open, if you're going to choose to repair roads, it may be a good time to do that and a bad time. You just talked a lot about the inconvenience on Boston Ave, you know, to the residents there. Well, what do you think is going to happen when Wegmans opens up? There won't be a good time to fix Riverside Ave for a very long time. Finally, as far as how to come up with a million dollars, So I see that, Lynn, I know this is kind of further in business, but the city is looking to raise $1 million ahead of time from our water bills. It's a notice I got in the mail the other day. We can come up with a million bucks. Mayor Burke is also asking for, what, 900K for a leak detection system? That's a million dollars. So you could say no to that, and there's a million bucks. Thank you. Thank you.
[Nate Merritt]: Nate Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. Um, just so y'all know, if you want. Nathan Merritt, 373 Riverside Ave. Medford. If you go to the Park Medford website, how can I appeal my citation? Answer, you can appeal your citation online at, and it gives a link, or you can visit the office. All appeals will be reviewed within 30 days, and you will be informed of the result. Go click on the link. Technology server error in slash application resource cannot be found. Basically, it gives you an error page. Will be with them. You have a problem now. But to answer the question, sounds like 30 days. Is there policy?
[Nate Merritt]: Violent agreement, but just, even their own website, like, right now, if you try it, doesn't work. We will address that.
[Nate Merritt]: Yes. My name is Nathan Merritt and my address is 373 Riverside Ave. So I'm the adjacent property to the property in question. Thank you. So this is actually the first I've heard the information about what was being there in the past. Um, while it was a realty office, um, we've been there since April of 14 and we had no issues with the business. It was conducted the time of the hours, traffic flows, so on and so forth. Um, some of my concerns that I had coming into here, um, I'm assuming that the hours would be similar for operation nine to five. 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. okay okay same as them all okay and that said it's actually very difficult to access my own driveway on Riverside Ave due to the nature of the configuration of that intersection so basically the stop line actually is just in front of my driveway so on a daily basis My other half, Kim and I, when we try to come home from work, it gets kind of congested during the day. And it can be pretty hairy just pulling into our own driveway. So I do have a slight concern, and I don't think it's It's nothing on their part whatsoever, but I'm a little interested if there's ever been a traffic study done in there recently, only because people will, no kidding, fly right through that intersection. And there are times when we've almost gotten T-boned trying to come out of the driveway. People just ignore the red light. They go right through the line. So someone else, a customer of his, were to be coming out that same exit. It's not a great situation whatsoever. I don't think should necessarily hold up what they would like to do. I'm certainly not opposed to it But it is concern I have just as the neighbor in the area We've already had one car crashed my yard and into the stairs of that building.
[Nate Merritt]: Yes, sir. I guess I'm just a little concerned that maybe there's something else that could be done to help the people that are entering or exiting through that particular driveway. Because right now it's actually past the stop line. It's kind of in this no man's land with the light. Should you go or should you not when it's red or green? I have no idea. So that was a concern of us, just for, in general, we'd rather not have cars crashing right next to our house, if we can help it. And I think, any, I'm sorry. Madam Vice President.
[Nate Merritt]: That's the first I've seen of this. Please do.
[Nate Merritt]: I think it's a business that's probably going to be a little bit more frequent than a real estate office, so maybe even a sign, one sign and a couple arrows would solve the problem. We could do both, arrows and a sign.
[Nate Merritt]: I guess my final question was, is there any estimated impact to the property assessments in the area based on doing this conversion? Is my assessment going to go up or down?
[Nate Merritt]: It'd be nice to know informational-wise, but it's nothing I'm going to be opposed to. Nothing's a showstopper here.