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[Nick Giurleo]: Yes.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yes.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yes.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yes.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yes.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, everyone. My name is Nick Jorleo and I'm part of the Robinson room. I went to the school. I've said before, all of you that I consider much of my success in life due to the great education I had here. So I feel passionate about what this committee has been doing. I've been trying to attend all meetings and I take vigorous notes as I sit here. I have to say that I share the member prisoner in terms of considering our costs. Again, we all want the best school possible, but we have to think about affordability. We have to be realistic. Just sitting here tonight at other meetings, it just seems like this committee has not been doing enough to address that in terms of making reasonable reductions to square footage to try to eliminate more than we need for our vision. I'm hearing, hey, we're adding square footage, but it's the last thing we should be doing. I'm hearing tonight, arguments, keeping conference spaces, you know, grand schemings, is that real? They need to be bigger. It just seems like there's not enough compromise going on in this committee. It just seems like not really, we're seeing really, you know, discussion, people are really thinking about these issues. And the end of the day, the number one thing everybody here has to think about is how do we get the voters to approve this? They're concerned about the tax impact. just extraordinary cost of this project, regardless of reductions that occurred to date. This is something we have to think about. At the end of the day, every year has got to be focused on the prize, which is getting this passed, getting a new build. I was thinking just really the past few weeks, the issues with infrastructure here, that power bridge, the sewage issue, obviously things need fixed here, but at the same time, we've got to be realistic. It just doesn't seem like we're there. as well as what they're doing right. So thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Hello, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So I can speak tonight as a guy who comes up here a lot, and also I'm one of the neighborhood ambassadors for West Medford. So I think our city, obviously I think everyone agrees, facing a lot of different issues at this time. We've got the new high school, we've got zoning, we've got the legal transparency, which we talked about a lot tonight. But I think one issue that doesn't get enough attention, but really is an issue, is public participation, public involvement, civic engagement with our government. So I see the award meetings as a great way to bring people to government, right, and also, you know, bring government to the people. I think the Neighborhood Ambassadors Program has been a success so far. We've been meeting with various city officials and have had opportunities to ask some questions about what's happening in the city. And I've been getting some good answers that have clarified a lot of things that I've been trying to communicate. to residents. Of course, I can't speak for the other ambassadors. I'm not here to represent all of them. I'm just giving you my own kind of perspective on that. So, yeah, I don't see the reason to not promote the ward meetings. I really don't. And I would encourage everyone to go to them. I'm happy, you know, as in my ambassador role, I guess, to ask the mayor directly if I have that opportunity, you know, why She doesn't want to post these meetings. I do think they should be advertised. And I don't think they're in conflict in any way with the ambassador's program. I think both should exist. Really, as many ways as possible to get residents involved. We see a lot of indication that residents are very disengaged right now. You know, you look back at the last election where only about a third of registered voters even showed up to vote. You know, that's not something anybody should be happy with and anybody should accept. You think of things like people not knowing that we're building a new high school yet, although we're this late in the process, or just not understanding where we are. You think of things like going to these meetings, right? How oftentimes not a lot of people come up here to give their opinion, their take on stuff, right? So what can we do to bring people to government and also to bring government to people? So that's what I have to say tonight. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thanks so much for having me. I'm very happy to be back.
[Nick Giurleo]: So yeah, so to begin, some people might not even know it, believe it or not, but Medford is in the process of building a new high school, a new Medford High School. And we're going through a process in which we're collaborating with the Massachusetts School Building Authority, also known as the MSBA, to obtain some reimbursement for the funding for that project. So the project's been going on for quite a long time, but we're in a very late stage and not a lot of residents know that. So what's going on right now is the project began, as you can see in this diagram on your screen, with a feasibility study and is now moving into schematic design. And we're working towards a deadline, a very important deadline in October. And that October deadline is to finalize the scope of the project. So what had happened up to this point is various designs were considered for a new school, and those designs were then narrowed down into one design. The school building committee has been doing, and the school building committee is the committee of residents and educators who are working to try to get this project done. They're working currently on the scope of the project. So the project started at a certain cost and a certain amount of square footage and is now being reduced in size to an amount that residents would feel comfortable financing through exclusion. So that's where we're at currently. And like I said, in October a very important deadline will be met in which the scope of the project will be finalized.
[Nick Giurleo]: Right, so we started off with multiple designs. You can see in the screen the final design that we're at. This option is labeled C2.2A. I can give you just a rundown of some of the highlights here. It's a renovation addition and a portion of it will be new construction. That would be for the A and C buildings. The pool is going to be preserved. That was something that a lot of residents were concerned about. There will be above ground parking. They had contemplated at the time maybe a parking garage, underground parking, but it will be above ground. And they'll be building a new field close to the Winthrop Street entrance. The size is about 30 acres, is what we received, and there'll be about 450 parking spaces. And they had initially estimated this would take about 80 months to complete. When the project started, it was at about $813 million for total cost.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah. That cost has gone down since then. Okay. And we'll talk about that. Okay.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yes. As various scope changes remain. Right. Okay.
[Nick Giurleo]: What's going on? That's a good question. So where we're at right now is, like I mentioned, getting the scope down to something that everybody can agree on. And they've been doing this kind of piece by piece. So I can run through some of those piece by piece changes. That would be nice. To the scope of the project. I think people need to know. And again, this is decisions being made by the school building committee. It's also decisions being made by the school committee. So, school building committee and school committee, they sound similar, but they're different. School committees, you know, are school committee members who we vote for in elections. The school building committee was essentially created by the school committee to deal with this school project.
[Nick Giurleo]: Right.
[Nick Giurleo]: That is correct. So, some of the members have voting power at these meetings, others do not.
[Nick Giurleo]: The key decision makers are names you've probably heard of, the mayor, the vice chair of the school committee, and others. There's another school committee representative on as well who's voting power. So that's the difference between the two. But like I said, I'll go through just some of these scope changes that have been made so far. So one of the first major ones that was discussed was the Teen Health Center. That was estimated to be at 1,460 square feet. There were discussions about that and ultimately it was decided that will stay in the project. So some had called for removing it and argued it was a little more of a luxury than a necessity, but the school committee and the school building committee ultimately decided they want to keep those. They were talking about how other municipalities have teen health centers, so Cambridge, Revere, and Somerville, for example. The cost of that estimated to be about $2.4 million. Another that came up was community partner rental spaces. So this was discussed back in July. And what that means are the school district has some long-term renters. So for example, the most notable, the Japanese language school. It's been in Medford since 1974. And we learned that it actually gives the city of Medford about $150,000 a year in rental income. So spaces were allocated for that, so for educational prep and for storage, as well as for a community library. So some of that hasn't been decided yet, but the educational prep and storage space were voted to be removed from the project. So that was another. There were other more minor changes as well, things like to the athletic part of the building. So they got rid of, for example, a yoga studio and CPR room. They reduced some of the locker space, for example. It was originally almost 8,000 square feet. They reduced that to about 7,000.
[Nick Giurleo]: Right. Yeah. They reduced the size of the auditorium as well. It was 10,000 square feet, they moved it down to about 7,500 square feet.
[Nick Giurleo]: And all of this gradually brought the cost of the project down. But they're still going, and I can fast forward us to actually the last meeting, where a lot of different changes were made. For example, to what is being called the core academic part of the building. So what is that? Primarily classrooms.
[Nick Giurleo]: Right. So they were deciding on classroom sizes and they decided to bring that down from 950 square feet per classroom to about 900 square feet.
[Nick Giurleo]: And it was interesting. There was an interesting debate about this. I'm sure. The mayor had motioned to do like a half and half with 900 square feet and even smaller, but the building committee actually did not even second that motion, unbelievably, and it wasn't even decided or voted on.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nobody. Yeah, the mayor had wanted to do a half-and-half model, but the motion wasn't seconded. Wow. So that was interesting to me.
[Nick Giurleo]: Some other major decisions were made as well, such as with the Curtis Tough School. Okay. The MEEP program, the Medford Early Education Program. So both of those are going to be included in this project. So obviously the Curtis Tough School now is on Main Street. And South Medford, yeah. Right. I know it well. It's going to be moved into the new high school. That's the plan. So that's going to become part of the high school. It's going to be incorporated into the new high school. and the Medford Early Education Program is gonna be totally centralized in the new high school as well. Currently, it's a neighborhood-based model. Right, that's the way it should be. It's currently at two different public elementary schools in the city. Yes. They're gonna all be moved into the new high school. Okay. So obviously, both of that adds to cost as well.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, there have been discussions about entrances. Oh, boy, they're going to need a lot. Especially separate entrances for, like, the Curtis Toffs and for the early education program.
[Nick Giurleo]: So that's, in a nutshell, some of the changes that have been made so far. But honestly, I could talk for hours just on that alone because of how many have been made to date. I'm sure you could. Yeah.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, some people were arguing, and this has really been kind of the scope of the discussion, is what should this project be? Should it be just a high school, or should it be a high school plus something else? And you have to keep in mind that the vision for the school is based on two planning documents, primarily. Number one is what is being called the educational plan, which was developed by the school committee, which educates the, sorry, highlights the educational vision for the school. And another is called the space summary, And the space summary essentially is talking about space allocations in terms of square footage.
[Nick Giurleo]: Right.
[Nick Giurleo]: Right, right. So I can give you currently where we're at. So we're currently at about 750 million. For cost total project cost. Okay. Like I said, we started when we decided on this final design about 813 million Yeah, it's since been reduced and you can see the graphic on your screen kind of breaks that down Yeah to about 750 million and you can see that equates to about five hundred and seventy thousand square feet So, cost is really, you know, another part of this project. Obviously, we care about the educational vision. We want educational services that will give our students the best education possible.
[Nick Giurleo]: But we have to think about cost as well. Absolutely. Which is going to be a question of, you know, what residents can afford.
[Nick Giurleo]: Right. Yeah. And it will all depend on how we get it financed. So primarily that's going to be through a debt exclusion next June, which is something residents will have to vote on.
[Nick Giurleo]: Right. And the other word they've been using is efficiencies as well. Efficiencies. So this isn't just getting rid of spaces. So for example, getting rid of classrooms, getting rid of toileting rooms. It's also trying to make rooms more efficient. Okay. So for example, there were two large space instructional spaces that they decided to make more efficient rather than have them as separate rooms by putting a partition, essentially, between them. That could be removed at will to make one larger room. And also thinking, like I mentioned earlier, like a yoga studio. They said to themselves with that, oh, you can put that somewhere else. It doesn't necessarily need to be a separate thing. So I would call it reductions and efficiencies.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so. A lot more than a high school. Yeah, I would break it down as, you know, there's smaller things that we can look at in terms of classrooms and toileting rooms and individual rooms within the project. And then there's more of these discussions about programming. So the Teen Health Center, like you mentioned, these community partner rental spaces for the long-term renters, like the Japanese Language School. The theater as well, which would have a community function too. So that's been the discussion is what can we keep in the project and what can we take out? And we're kind of in somewhat of a dilemma with it because we do have to kind of base this off of the educational plan that the school committee members developed. I understand that. But also residents and other school building committee members have opined on, regardless of what the educational plan says, does this actually make sense? So for example, like with the Teen Health Center, is it beyond the scope of a high school given that we have a nursing office and there'll be a nursing suite? In addition to this, should we have a full health care clinic in the school? Some have argued it's essential and it needs to be in. Others have questioned it.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I had some questions. Yeah, I mean, that just doesn't make sense to me, you know, with me and that, you know, another thing that we were thinking about is, you know, could this be financed later, through a separate project, right, doesn't necessarily have to happen now. And that's something people have been discussing as well. I did want to add also to this, you know, in addition to talking about our project, there's been discussions as well about projects, or how our project compares to other projects in cities and towns across the Commonwealth, especially cities and towns that have done a project recently, Arlington, Lexington for example. So you can see in this graphic on the screen here, it kind of does a comparative analysis of the various projects. One of the things that kind of stands out, at least to me, is, you know, our project is considerably bigger than the projects in other cities and towns. You can see, you know, when we started here, we were over 600,000 square feet. That is a lot of space.
[Nick Giurleo]: And obviously the cost too, I think, Everybody kind of recognized initially this is quite high. Yeah. So, you know, my concern is because we need to get financing for this from the public, we need the public to approve the debt exclusion.
[Nick Giurleo]: Is this a cost residents are going to feel comfortable approving when it comes time to decide? You know, in my opinion, we want to do everything possible to get this to pass. You know, I want that yes vote like nothing else.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I'd say 90 plus percent of the residents I've talked to want a new school. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, the question is, though, you know, is this an affordable amount? And, you know, we've had some data on that, but really not a lot so far on the cost. the data I've been primarily looking at is the data that was compiled by the city assessor okay earlier in the year so the city assessor did an analysis to indicate you know what would the average tax impact be to residents based on various amounts that were calculated at the time and of course again I'm not an economist so I can't give you the details of this analysis but Various assumptions were made as well, including, for example, new growth was factored into it. So the city assessor basically provided some data to the building committee that was presented in a meeting, indicating that for the average homeowner in Medford, we're probably going to see about somewhere between $1,000 to $2,000 a year added to the average annual tax bill.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, yeah, there's all different factors that go into this, and for me, you know, I think it's important for residents to, you know, rely on economists to do this.
[Nick Giurleo]: I mean, obviously, you know, you can do your own work to try to figure it yourself, but this is very complicated math. Oh, I'm sure. So that's why I've been looking to data that, you know, I think comes from a reliable source, like our city assessor, who's a very competent individual.
[Nick Giurleo]: You know, rather than private citizens necessarily doing their own facts and figures. So that's what I've been looking at.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I think those are the best numbers so far. Others have attempted to calculate.
[Nick Giurleo]: I would probably defer to the city on this. Another thing to take into consideration is our debt capacity. Again, we're bonding the money. So you're gonna have to look at our credit as a city and whether or not we're capable of taking out this kind of loan. So that's another factor as well, again, that the city assessor's office is looking into. And I'm hoping that the city will have some updated information. Yeah, that would be nice. Because that data was from a while ago. I think it was from before when we even didn't have our final design yet. So it really should be updated.
[Nick Giurleo]: Our city has... This was actually part of the assessor's analysis from earlier in the year, where he looked at other major projects at the city. needs to have done yeah right like think about roads for example yes you know how rough shape they are yes um getting rid of lead pipes things like that fire station the fire station is a big one new equipment yeah and and even with this new high school nick it's
[Nick Giurleo]: It's... Yeah, maintenance costs too. The city assessor had figured that in. Yeah, so it's all figured in. Into his analysis.
[Nick Giurleo]: And so far, I don't think we've really gotten any data on that, maintenance costs, how that will be affected.
[Nick Giurleo]: Absolutely. OK. So the Massachusetts School Building Authority, MSBA, like I mentioned earlier in the show, is a state agency that could reimburse a portion of the project if we go through all of their essentially rules and regulations. And the MSBA is governed by a state law, state regulations, as well as various advisory and guidance documents. So in order to get that reimbursement money, you have to comply with MSBA rules and regulations. And they're actually quite complicated, and not just for the average ordinary resident. It's also complicated for an attorney like myself. But in any event, I've studied them to some extent.
[Nick Giurleo]: Generally understand. I know you have. Generally, understand, you know, what they kind of are asking for and requiring. So, the MSBA, you know, requires at each stage of the process that various planning submissions be sent to them and they review and then they typically give feedback on those submissions. So, at the most recent board meeting of the MSBA, they decided to move our project into its next phase. And at that meeting they talked about two things in terms of potential concerns that they might have with the project to date. So one of them you had mentioned was the deed restriction.
[Nick Giurleo]: The other is the cost, which we've talked about at length. I won't belabor that anymore.
[Nick Giurleo]: And I'll focus on the deed restriction. Sure. So this is really my wheelhouse because I'm an attorney and this is kind of an area of law I focused on when I was studying law. And a deed restriction, first of all, what is that? It's a restriction on development for land. So to really understand what happened here, you kind of have to look back at history. So portions of what is known today as the Medford High School campus belonged to what was called the Metropolitan District Commission, which is the predecessor of DCR, the Department of Conservation and Recreation. So basically state agencies that protect the environment. So that land was originally owned by the Metropolitan District Commission. And what had happened was it was given to Medford for the purposes of building the original high school. But it was given with deed restrictions, which basically said these need to be kept for athletic purposes. You can't be building structures on them. So back before we had finalized our design, what had happened was some of our designs for the new school conflicted with those deed restrictions. So this caused a significant problem. And I was actually the first person to give it any sort of publicity in Medford through the Facebook page and website that I run. I actually identified this before the school building committee had went public on it. And residents were immediately concerned. So the building committee ultimately, we don't know exactly what they did, but I think it's likely they talked to some attorneys at some point.
[Nick Giurleo]: You can kind of see the map of the high school campus So you can see the upper field, um, edgar lee field and then the practice field is really what was affected by this.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, okay So what they ultimately decided to do was adjust two of the designs and strike one of them Okay, try to get around the deed restrictions. Okay, the other option was doing a Procedure in which basically that they would get the restrictions lifted But that would have been long and it would have required a vote of the state legislator So that would have been a problem that would have delayed the timeline So the building committee said we're more interested in moving this project along. Okay, then taking the time to Resolve that through Beacon Hill. Okay, so ultimately It's still it's still an issue. The MSB still wants some clarity on what's going on with that. Yep, but they building committee kind of circumvented it in their decision-making. Okay. But of course it caused a lot of anxiety. It cost us money to correct this as well as... Why?
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so various surveys were done up to that point, and the survey should have picked up on that. Absolutely. So really, you know, something happened with that, and I did some digging into it. I'm not gonna get into the details. No, we're not looking for that, but. That shouldn't have happened in my opinion.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, a real estate attorney is going to be looking for encumbrances before the transaction is completed. This is essentially an encumbrance. You need to look for that.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, my understanding is that's a deadline that's been set by the school building committee Okay, and this is basically to finalize scope Okay, and what we're gonna do once we finalize scope is then we're gonna submit again our planning to the to the MSBA, and we'll make a decision on reimbursement. And again, there's laws and regulations that decide the reimbursement percentage. Again, complicated math. And ultimately, we'll get that figure. But then after that, and my understanding is before we even get the reimbursement money, we have to make a decision on the financing, so the debt exclusion. So that brings us to next June, where we'll have that debt exclusion vote.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, and you can see that goes even further than the vote. The vote will then take us then into construction, of course. And eventually building the new school and opening it.
[Nick Giurleo]: That's the... My understanding is the School Building Committee is deciding the pace of this project for the most part.
[Nick Giurleo]: Okay. But of course, they do have to comply with the rules and regulations... Absolutely. ...that require their various planning submissions.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, this project is, it's very complicated and it's very difficult, even for a person like me. And, you know, I'll say it, you know, obviously I'm an attorney. I talk about the legal stuff.
[Nick Giurleo]: Not an economist, though, or not an engineer. And most residents, I imagine all residents, are not going to be able to say they're all three. Right. No, no. So it makes it kind of challenging to keep up and follow what's going on. And that's why it's so important for the city and for the school building committee, the project team, to really communicate with residents and not only tell them, you know, when meetings are happening, but explain to them what's being accomplished at various meetings.
[Nick Giurleo]: yeah yeah i can tell you that's a shocker the last meeting i went to which was um it was earlier this week actually that we're recording um there were only three people from the public attending in person yeah see one of which was me another was a school committee member
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, you know, there's all different things to think about. Right. We obviously have to think about cost, but it's not our only concern.
[Nick Giurleo]: We care about education, too. We want to provide our students the best possible education. Absolutely. Absolutely. But yeah, there are a lot of things to think about. And residents need to be thinking. They need to be weighing them all when it comes to time to decide on that debt exclusion vote.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I've personally been committing to trying to help residents understand what's going on through my social media and website. And you're doing a good job, I'll tell you that. But obviously, it's going to require more than just reading my stuff. You'll want to look at these documents. The building committee does have a website. And on that website, there is a documents section that has all the documents, for the most part, uploaded. So those are some documents you can look at. I'd encourage taking a perusal of those. Um, the most, the two most important are by far the space summary and the educational plan. If you don't have time to read anything else, please read those two documents because that really helps you understand what's going on now and really what this project is all about. Um, but also, you know, I would encourage residents to go to the meetings. That's important. I try to advertise them as much as possible. The city does a fairly decent job advertising them. Um, so that's something to do as well. I would say engage with programs like this, Medford Happenings, where people who are connected to the project, or just citizens like me who are very invested, can provide some education as well. Talk to your neighbors too, that's important. Maybe your neighbor doesn't even know we're building a new high school, or your neighbor knows and doesn't really understand where we're at and how we're this late in the game. Get them involved too. Encourage them to really educate themselves on what's happening.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah. So my understanding is a 30 year bond.
[Nick Giurleo]: Right, it's a 30-year, my understanding is a 30-year financing agreement. It has to be. So obviously that's going to be happening. The financing burden is going to be lasting that long. So this isn't just in terms of up to the point when we get MSBA reimbursement, up to the point when the construction is completed. This is a long-term financial decision we're making and I think anyone would advise, you know, when you're making a long-term financial decision like this, you obviously want think deeply about, you know, what you're committing to.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. I am strongly opposed to this resolution. The city council should not be supporting the prolonging of a lawsuit that never should have had to been filed in the first place. To date, KP law billing records indicate the city spent more than $35,000 in defense of this lawsuit. At a special meeting earlier in the year, you took a vote indicating your support for spending at least $75,000 more in its defense. In the affidavit this resolution would require everyone to sign, you'd be doubling down under oath, I might add, to paying more than $100,000 in defense of this ordinance, which you were all warned an illegal opinion before it was passed was problematic as worded. We often hear claims that the reason we don't have X, Y, or Z in Medford is because of underfunding. Underfunding, however, is not just a problem of insufficient revenues. It's also a problem of how the limited revenues we do have are spent. Hemorrhaging money to defend a lawsuit that should be settled is a direct contribution to the underfunding problem. Think about what good things these funds won't go to because of this commitment, like our roads, schools, and city services. I encourage you all to cooperate with the mayor in reaching a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs. That agreement could very well come about by revisiting the ordinance and amending it so it addresses their concerns. I believe those concerns are brought in good faith, and I do not accept the conspiracy theories that have been advocated behind the motives of the plaintiffs. You all also should be receiving independent legal advice on the merits of the motion to intervene. Asking the attorneys who filed it if it's likely to be successful is not going to give you the honest answer you should be receiving. My professional opinion as an attorney, I think the motion is going to be denied. Intervention is intended for parties with cognizable financial stakes in the outcome of a case, not vague political ones. In any event, the greater point is you should be making decisions here based on sound legal advice and not political passions. Residents are struggling to financially make ends meet and should not be shamed into thinking they are not paying enough in taxes when financial decisions like these are being made so carelessly. Thank you for listening.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you. Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So I was glad to see this resolution on the agenda. I definitely support it. Glad to hear also that Director Hunt provided a response in writing. I still think you should all should pass it anyway because there was other stuff in that resolution that I think would provide information that would be helpful to know. And the reason why I feel compelled to do a public comment on this is just because I've had some process concerns lately regarding zoning. And I want to say that I think it has to do with the fact of just how fast we've been moving through our zoning amendments in this neighborhood by neighborhood strategy. In less than a year, we've rezoned Medford Square. That includes a spot zoning amendment for the developer transom. And we just passed a zoning amendment for Boston Avenue. That's really a lot to do in less than one year. And I think when you're moving this fast, you're inevitably going to be making mistakes, especially when you don't have a city solicitor providing legal oversight. It's important to remember, you know, General Laws 40A, Section 5, which is cited in that resolution, provides the procedure, the process, for how you validly go through a zoning amendment. I would encourage you all to spend a lot of time kind of studying up on that law. It's very important to know to make sure the process is done right and we don't have to go back and redo things. The last thing I'll say is, you know, it's very difficult to guarantee, you know, what they call in law procedural due process when a member of the public can't readily locate laws. This has been something that I think residents have been struggling with lately, just trying to understand what are the changes to our laws. It's very risky going on Munici-Code online because that's not being up-to-date with our changes. And I know there's been confusion, too, at City Hall, Clerk's Office, and other departments regarding, you know, what exactly are the laws given all these changes? So I really think all of you need to continue. I know I've said this many times before. continue to put pressure on the administration to get ourselves a city solicitor. One of the jobs of a city solicitor is codifying the law, putting it on the books so we know what the law is. So really, I think you should all be putting maximum pressure for that position to be filled. Thank you for listening.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah. Uploads.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you. Nick Jarleo, 40 Robinson Road. I speak in opposition to this appropriations request. Medford's law department should not be funded until the city complies with its legal obligations. And this includes not only the public records law, but the city's obligation to hire a city solicitor. Medford is required by law to have a city solicitor. Look at our city's ordinances. Article 4, sections 2-651 through 2-657 say so explicitly. One of those says, quote, there shall be a city solicitor, unquote. Another section says that the solicitor must be appointed annually by the mayor. Another section says that the solicitor has to be an attorney licensed to practice law in Massachusetts. Another section says, and I'll quote here again, quote, he only shall act as the chief legal advisor and solicitor of the city. Unquote. None of this is optional. And note that use of the word shall and the reference to the solicitor alone being the city's chief legal advisor. There's no mention that an outside law firm like KP Law can be a permissible substitute. And it doesn't matter one iota what other cities and towns might be doing. All that matters is what our own laws say and our laws are abundantly clear. If you go on the city's website right now, you'll see on the law department page that the position of city solicitor and public records access officer is listed as vacant. The mayor, however, has contradictorily said to the press recently that KP Law is the acting solicitor. Well, if KP Law were mayor's acting solicitor, why wouldn't KP Law be listed as acting solicitor on the city website or be acknowledged in any public way? I'll point out also that Medford has not even had a listing posted for the job since Kevin Foley left the position last November. We're approaching almost a year now without one. Now, as much as I don't like to compare Medford to Somerville, compare Medford's law department to Somerville's. Medford's law department is apparently being entirely run by an office manager who I don't believe is even an attorney. Somerville's law department, in contrast, is staffed by eight people, including not only a solicitor, but a deputy solicitor, two assistant city solicitors, a special counsel, a law clerk, a paralegal, and a claims contact. Not having a solicitor has led to the city making a plethora of legal errors. The city was recently sued in federal court for failing to ensure its divestment ordinance complied with state law. The city's lost multiple union arbitrations for things as silly as disciplining a firefighter for not being clean shaven. The city was recently sued in federal court for issuing a poorly worded notice to retailers pertaining to vape products. This very council recently gave itself a raise in direct violation of our charter, a lawsuit waiting to happen. The city is really in terrible shape right now due to all these legal problems. And one of the interesting commonalities is that many of these woes connect to the city not having a city solicitor. So I therefore call on the council to condition any restoration of law department funding to the city making a definite commitment to hire and keep a new city solicitor. We absolutely 100% need one and we need one now. I hope that if you pass this B paper, you'll add something about a status update on the process of hiring a new city solicitor to that. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you very much. My name is Nick Jorleo. I live in West Medford, 40 Robinson Road. I generally support spending more time with getting the use table right on the zoning. Generally, I would say I support discretionary permit requirements for uses that would be more controversial to the community. So for example, larger housing projects. I look at the multiple dwelling use, for example. Under the current draft, it allows for six or more unit structures as of right in all three sub-districts. I think that should require a special permit. Another good example of this would be the neighborhood medical office. I know you all voted on that at the last meeting, but I'd recommend a special permit in all three sub-districts for that one as well, just given the issues with the vagueness of the definition. And I think one thing to keep in mind is when you're allowing a use as of right, you're taking away community discretion. You're saying developer can go to the building department, get their permit, and be on their way with their project. The community discretion aspect of this allows for residents have a say in what their neighborhood look like. And I think generally that's what we should be thinking about when we're looking at zoning. I'd also say with the use table there's some unreasonable restrictions that I see. I'm looking at the motor vehicle uses for example. You know why are they all not allowed. I know, you know, people have said this before me, but yes, people have cars. It's a reality. You know, they need them to get place to place. So as much as it'd be nice to walk, I mean, it'd be great to have a place to like fill your gas tank up or to get your car repaired. So why aren't we allowing those uses? And also just generally blue collar uses. You know, why are we restricting those? I think blue collar uses are great for the fabric of the community, certainly for the tax base, but also just for the character of a neighborhood. So let's consider allowing those as well. With the dormitory fraternity use, you know, I wonder why actually it's even in the zoning to begin with, because I'm thinking that TOPS will just make a Dover Amendment argument if they want to build a frat or sorority. They might be able to somehow twist their way into saying this is an educational use, even though we all know what goes on in fraternities and sororities. And I think that'd certainly be debatable. Finally, as for the heights, I know that's kind of the focus of tonight's meeting. I'd say we've gone a little too high. I especially think this is true in BA3, 6 to 8. I think it's far too much for the neighborhood. I know this wasn't even an option considered, but I'd go even lower than the options that were presented to you. I'd go 4 plus 1 on that. I'd like to see a neighborhood that really isn't overcrowded, that really does preserve the quality of life for residents of the hillside. And yes, I understand the goal for many of you is to increase density, but we do have to be realistic in a lot of ways about things like traffic and just quality of life, health. There's a lot of different things to think about. So I hope you'll take the time and make those considerations. A lot of these technical suggestions I laid out for all of you in a letter, which I submitted as a public comment in writing. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Sure. So just to be very brief, my name is Nick Giurleo. I'm a lifelong resident of West Medford. In the last election, I ran for city council. I did not win, but it was a great experience. I got to meet a lot of wonderful residents and really get a good understanding of what's going on politically in Medford. As John mentioned, I'm an attorney. I work for a firm in downtown Boston. And I've been following very closely various things that have been happening in the city politically, including the zoning, the high school, as well as I was recently appointed to be a neighborhood ambassador.
[Nick Giurleo]: Sure, my pleasure. So I'll just begin with a disclaimer. I'm not on the building committee and I'm not many different things. I'm not an engineer, I'm not an economist, I'm not an educator, but I have been following closely what's been going on just as a citizen who's very interested in this. where it could potentially take our city. I am an attorney, so perhaps I have some legal expertise that could be of value. I've been following the project, and I'm happy to just give an explanation here of where we're at. The project is currently in the feasibility phase. The project team, the building committee, is considering different designs for what type of new high school we're going to have. So, the committee originally had a much larger number of designs, but then decided to narrow it down to six. So, I'll talk about each of those six designs. The information I'm getting is from various public documents that are out there, different slides that have been presented, as well as just what various members of the committee have said, as well as other elected leadership. So, happy to go through each of those designs with you today. Sounds great.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I'm glad to hear that positive feedback. So, like I mentioned, there are six designs. I'll go through each of them. Our very first design is a code upgrade. It's option A.1. And you can see on your screen here a basic layout of the current high school. Under this design, there wouldn't be any physical changes to the building. This would just be to bring the building up to code to essentially repair the existing high school. Part of that would be to meet what have been called accessibility requirements. But there would be some kind of ancillary renovations with this that have been mentioned. Renovations to the parking, to the fields, as well as the pool. Of all our six designs, this one is the least expensive. The last estimate we received was $437 million. And we received some information just about how long it would take. So it would be estimated to take about 54 months. How many modular units would be required? 56 units of modular units would be required. And there was also an assessment done as to whether or not this would support or hinder a document called the educational plan, which was developed earlier in the process, to determine what are the educational goals for the new high school that we're seeking to build here. Under the code upgrade, it was determined that that would not be consistent with the educational plan as developed as was ultimately approved by the school committee. So that's our code upgrade option in a nutshell. I'll move on to the next one, which is option B1.2. This is the first of our addition renovation options. And as you can see from this diagram, this would be a two-story addition to the central part of the high school. It would be about 150,000 new square feet. Regarding the fields and pools, there'd be light renovation to both of those. But parking, we'd see a significant difference. We'd see a two-and-a-half-story underground parking garage with just a small amount of parking above grade. It was discussed that there could be alternatives to this garage, such as taking away a field. That would allow us to place all the parking above grade. This second to the code upgrade is the next least expensive option. The last estimate we received was $825 million. And it would take about the same length as doing a code upgrade. It would take 54 months. And it would require just a little bit less modular units. The estimate for that was 46.
[Nick Giurleo]: So my understanding of a modular unit is similar to a trailer. It would be an outside structure to temporarily place students while the construction was ongoing. So obviously if you're building inside a building, you know, there are places the students can't be, so you need to put them somewhere else to keep the continuity of learning.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yes, I believe that is factored into the cost. I remember hearing at one of the meetings that the MSBA, which is the state authority that grants us money to fund the project, would not cover the cost of those modular units. So that takes us to the next option, which would be C2.2. This is an addition renovation option, so the second addition renovation option. And you can see from this diagram that the central premise of the project here would be to demolish most of the existing building and replace it with what looks like a scissor-shaped structure. You can see it on the left side of that diagram. It would be about 500,000 new square feet. Regarding parking, we learned that this one would have a one-story underground parking garage. There would be a little bit of parking above grade. And like with the other option that I discussed, the other addition renovation, you could reduce that size of the field. So with the other project, it was get rid of a field. This would be just take away a portion of the field and you could put some of the parking above grade, so above ground. This one is estimated at 833 million, the last estimate that we received. And it would take about 51 months. It's important to note that the project designs were recently changed at a Monday meeting of the school building committee. And some of the changes that were made were looking at ways to get rid of the modular classroom units. So this design originally had modular classroom units required. That was modified to allow no mods required. So currently C2.2 would not require any sort of modular classrooms. which many residents who have spoken at these building committee meetings have expressed their displeasure for modular learning. They don't want their students learning what would essentially be trailers. They don't want their students to be in a normal kind of classroom environment. So I think that's something very positive that we're seeing is trying to get rid of the need for these mods.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I would agree. I can't imagine you'd be learning very well in what's effectively a trailer.
[Nick Giurleo]: So that takes us to the next addition renovation option, which would be C3.4. This option is to demolish most of the existing building and replace it with a triangular shaped new structure. That structure, and you can see it right now on the diagram, that structure would be about 600,000 new square feet. Regarding the parking, that would have us with a one-story underground parking garage. Again, there would be a small amount of surface parking. Again, we learned at the last meeting, there's been this discussion going, well, we could tamper with the size of fields and reduce the size of the field and put some of the parking above ground. And, you know, there's different reasons why I think a person might prefer a parking garage to above-ground parking. I think aesthetically, I mean, in a lot of ways, it's nice not to have an above-ground parking garage. But at the same time, I think there can be safety concerns with parking garages as well.
[Nick Giurleo]: you know, would worry about. And, you know, you're always looking at cost, too. Maybe it would, I would imagine it would take more to build an underground parking garage than an above ground one or above ground parking.
[Nick Giurleo]: You know, it would involve some blasting, I would suspect.
[Nick Giurleo]: So, just a few more things about this design. So, Edgar Lee Field and two of the practice fields, they would be renovated. And this design was also, it was mentioned at the Monday meeting, this was the first I heard of this, was they would potentially construct a new stadium. You can see at one end of the diagram, and that's where it would go. So it'd be a new stadium with the multi-purpose fields and not just for one sport. And this project, we have a cost at about 833 million. And like that previous renovation addition, about 51 months to do this.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so it looks like with that design, that would be kept.
[Nick Giurleo]: But it looks like they want to add more field space. All of these designs, I think, are more or less contemplating adding more field space. And with that design, the last thing to say is they were able to modify it, so there would be no modular classroom units needed.
[Nick Giurleo]: So that takes us through the addition renovation options, and now we move on to the new construction. There are two new construction options under consideration. It's important to say that the MSBA requires a code upgrade option, which we have. But from there, you know, it's very much to the discretion of the committee as to the number of renovation addition and new construction options that they want. So we have now two new construction considerations. Okay.
[Nick Giurleo]: The math is pretty complicated, but it's all spelled out how they calculate that reimbursement rate in the MSBA regulations. So there's state laws that talk about how they make that calculations. The committee is nowhere near making that, getting that calculated number yet. But eventually we will have that number. So just talking about D1.1 here, our new construction option, So this new structure would be about 600,000 square feet, 600,000 square feet of a new building. And you can see it's placed where the main parking lot is today. So you come up to the high school from Winthrop Street, where you pull in to park, that would be where the new school is. And we would build a new field where the existing high school is. And we'd be keeping, but with some renovations, Edgerly Field and the practice fields. So this one would also have an underground parking garage and some small amount of surface parking. One of the things a lot of people were talking about, residents were concerned about the pool, you know, what's going to happen to the pool? It's such a valuable community resource.
[Nick Giurleo]: With this design, the proposal is not to renovate the pool. The other designs talked about renovating the pool. This is to build a new pool, and it would be a standalone structure. It would be separate from the main building. You can see that little orangish box in the corner there, that's where the pool would be. You can see it's not connected directly to the building. So this option here, unfortunately, this one's the most expensive. Of course. That's been estimated so far. We're at $893 million. Right. And that would make it one of the most expensive projects in probably state history.
[Nick Giurleo]: Of course, there's a lot of things to think about, such as, you know, where we're at in the process right now.
[Nick Giurleo]: And how much the MSBA will ultimately reimburse, as well as.
[Nick Giurleo]: space reductions. This Monday meeting, there was talk about reducing some of the space to try to bring the cost down, and the committee did vote on some cuts for that. This project, again, they were able to modify it so the modular learning classrooms would not be required, so that's another benefit.
[Nick Giurleo]: And then finally here we have D2.1, new construction. This is the second new construction option. You can see it's kind of flipped from where that other new construction design placed the school. The other design placed it coming up from Winthrop Street, pulling into the school where the main parking lot is. This design would build the new high school essentially where Edgar Lee Field is currently.
[Nick Giurleo]: In the back. Exactly. And again, this would be over 600,000 square feet. This one would have garage space underground. Again, considering do we want to take away some of that field space and put some of the parking above ground. And you can also see there'd be a standalone pool as well. The diagram shows that again, that orange box structure that's kind of separated from the rest of it. That's more or less where the pool would be. So that's a proposal with this as well. This project is a little cheaper than the other new construction. It was estimated to be about $860 million. But of course it would still be the next most expensive.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, you know, I was thinking about this at the Monday meeting, where they cut, you know, a million here and a million there, and I was thinking to myself, that sounds like a lot. A million dollars used to be a lot of money. But now it's really not, it's kind of peanuts. So you'd have to make significant cuts to really see a difference in these huge numbers. So that more or less takes me through the designs. I think it's important to say that the designs are changing, and the designs will continue to change. They'll also assess, do they want to reduce space? We have a space planning document that says essentially, ideally, how much space they want to dedicate to everything in the project. And the committee will be making decisions, do we cut things to reduce the cost to make this a little more economically feasible? So there'll be discussions about that. Overall, I would just encourage residents strongly to follow these meetings. Go to them. advertise them on my social media page, but just follow them, go, make a public comment, and keep up to date because the decision of what we do with this high school, it's really gonna impact the community in a lot of different ways. Quality of education, our ability to financially do well in the city, and a lot of other things as well. So really, I encourage everybody to keep up to date.
[Nick Giurleo]: Sure. So happy to talk about zoning and I'll do also what I did at the beginning of the last segment here.
[Nick Giurleo]: Just a little disclaimer. So I am an attorney. I have spent some time studying various aspects of the legal issues here, so land use and and zoning and municipal law that would be related to a discussion on zoning. So I do have a little bit on that. Of course, you know, you always say to yourself, you know, I'm not this and I'm not that. So I'm not an engineer or an economist. So giving you my kind of legal take on things so far is also just as an informed citizen. who's interested in these politics. So as you mentioned, zoning resumed in January, very much a result of the election outcome, I would say, in terms of the pacing and the process, but also due to just the logistics of getting more funding to pay our zoning consultant to get it going again. So that was done and the City Council and Community Development Board decided that they would start with Medford Square. So there's kind of two aspects to the Medford Square zoning. I'll start with the first aspect here, which is what was created on Tuesday night by vote of the City Council, and that is a new Medford Square zoning district. So I'll give you just a few highlights of what this zoning amendment contains. So you can see the map on your screen here. That is the new district mapped out. The black dotted line encompasses the borders of the district and you'll see divisions into different colors within that odd shape. Those are called sub-districts. So there's the district and then there's the sub-districts. And the sub-districts have different requirements as to things like uses and dimensional requirements as well as other aspects of the zoning law that was passed. So this process was done fairly quickly. January 2 now is a pretty short period of time to draft a law that's gonna have such a tremendous impact on the way our square looks. But there were several meetings and the Community Development Board was very invested in trying to get this right. And I think they did their due diligence very, very well. So you'll see with the four sub-districts, they allow between four to eight stories as of right. and that additional incentive based stories can be added as well. There's different incentives such as affordability that can be utilized by the developers to get these extra floors essentially to build higher. In terms of density, you'll see that the highest density is the uh part kind of close to where city hall is the senior center right those city-owned lots yep and part of that has to do with helping the developer transom build its project i'll talk a little bit about the details of that in a bit but um the higher density areas will be in that part of the square.
[Nick Giurleo]: Sure, so you'll see there's a key to the left-hand side. That actually will help you coordinate which sub-district is which.
[Nick Giurleo]: So I would refer people to that if you're trying to understand where the particular number of stories is allowed in which sub-district. So, the stated purpose of this zoning is to promote more housing, more density in the square, more mixed-use structures. The zoning ordinance contains uses that allow for mixed-use. I believe the previous zoning did not even mention mixed-use structures, so there was really an intent here to implement mixed-use structures into the zoning ordinance. law that was created here. Walkability was another stated purpose as well, let's make a square a little more walkable, a little more easier to navigate on your feet. In the table of uses, so the uses are what is allowed in the square, we see various changes that I think reflect aesthetic desires for the square, reflect what we want our square to look like. One that was discussed was banks. Some have argued that there are way too many banks in Medford Square. I actually totally agree with that.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nothing on the banking industry.
[Nick Giurleo]: But yeah, there's quite a lot of banks in Medford Square. We could maybe have different types of businesses in their spots. I think of what happened to Salvatore's, which is very sad.
[Nick Giurleo]: So under the new zoning, you need a special permit to get a bank. It's not allowed outright. You have to go to the Community Development Board and they have to give you a special permit if you want to open a bank. Another use that was added was neighborhood medical offices. So if you remember with the Salem Street zoning, there was a big controversy over whether or not the zoning allowed for a methadone clinic on Salem Street. And this all had to do with this term, neighborhood medical office, which was a use defined for that zoning district. So there was a lot of back and forth with that, but ultimately with this zoning district, it's allowed as of right. I think a lot of people might have missed that, that you can build a neighborhood medical office as of right under the new Medford Square zoning. Whether or not that would lead to a developer coming in and possibly wanting to open a methadone clinic, I mean, that remains to be seen. I mean, there's probably practical and political reasons that might motivate them not to do that. But ultimately, if you look at just legally, yes, they could do it under this new zoning. And there really wasn't any discussion or debate on whether or not that was a good thing. I recommended a special permit required for it. So in other words, discretionary. Give the Community Development Board discretion whether or not to grant that type of permit. And then just some other things I'll quickly run through. Neighborhood cafes is a use that was mentioned, maker spaces, breweries and tap rooms. Another that was interesting is no funeral homes in the new district. Can't build a funeral home.
[Nick Giurleo]: Not even with a special permit.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah. And there wasn't really any discussion about that either, what the motive for that was. And I think part of this has to do with, you know, in the end of the day, practically, who writes our zoning? It's really the consultant and the planning office of our city.
[Nick Giurleo]: Director Alicia Hunt's office. In a lot of ways, I think the city councilors are very, like, disconnected from, like, what exactly is happening. with the zoning and they're relying quite a bit on others to tell them, you know, this is the type of zoning we want or desire. And I think we have to be wary about that because ultimately we need leaders who are lawmakers. You think about it, what is a lawmaker? A person who makes laws. Absolutely. If you don't know how to make a law, should you be a lawmaker? In my opinion, no.
[Nick Giurleo]: So that's just kind of some highlights of that and I'll move on to the transom project, because I know that's another aspect of this that I think bears mentioning.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, you know, one of my kind of things that I really harp on a lot is it's important to get into the details. There's some people who are satisfied with these kind of surface level analyses of things, like for example affordable housing. There are people who say we need more affordable housing and there'll be people who say, you know, will argue the contrary essentially. And then we kind of have these surface-level discussions back and forth on that. But let's get into details and talk about why specific proposals cause certain changes, and whether or not our decision-making, just as a pragmatic matter, makes sense. And that's really been my focus. I like to go into the details and try to understand what exactly is happening.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, and again, at the end of the day, it will depend on what the developers decide to do, right? Just because the zoning allows something doesn't mean a developer is going to come in and file their application with the building department for their permit.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so the city announced last year that the developer, Transom Intents, was awarded a bid to build this very large housing project in Medford Square that's really fundamentally going to change aesthetically what our square looks like. Okay. The city believes and elected leadership believes this will be consistent with its affordable housing goals. But ultimately, you know, you have to look at the facts in terms of what is being proposed. to determine whether or not it will achieve any sort of policy goal. So I'll just give you some numbers on that. 283 new apartments, that's the plan. About 56% of them would be intended to be affordable. You can see in this diagram here a map from the developer. You'll notice, I find this amusing, and the developer is aware of it. Notice Lakeview Avenue on that map. doesn't exist. No, there is no Lakeview.
[Nick Giurleo]: Maybe, but I think it was just an error.
[Nick Giurleo]: Not to, yeah, it's not the most important thing.
[Nick Giurleo]: People do make mistakes, but pointing that out there in case people are confused. Yeah. But yeah, about 56% affordable, what does that mean? 80% median area income. My understanding of this median area income is it's a state calculation that determines, that's used to help to figure out what exactly is meant specifically by affordable. So often people will ask, affordable, what does that mean in terms of numbers? So there's this formula that can be applied to figure that out. 13,000 square feet of a grocery store. That's another aim of this project. So they want to build a small grocery store, community grocery store, to connect with this housing structure. You can see it labeled New Grocer on the map. There'd be a cafe as well across from that attached to that residential building. It's labeled New Cafe. The other thing is they would build a garage. You can see it labeled New Garage in the corner close by City Hall. There was some concern because obviously this project is very close to the senior center. you know, with senior parking. And I believe the developer mentioned at one of the meetings that we'll be parking close to the senior center for seniors to alleviate those concerns. But some were wondering, you know, well, if the seniors have to go to the garage, that's a long walk to get to the senior center. You can see where the garage is in relation to that senior center.
[Nick Giurleo]: Um, so connecting this back to zoning the zoning, um, in addition to passing this Medford Square district, uh, about a week before that, the city council passed is zoning Amendment to create a overlay district or special zoning district just for transom So this is zoning specifically for transom and a number of elected officials Admitted including director hunt that this is to you know Economically benefit the developer and to make sure that developers project gets through as easily as possible So they created this special zoning overlay district. I was personally concerned legally with spot zoning. Spot zoning, for anyone who isn't aware, it's when you zone basically for the economic development or benefit of a developer and not for the greater community purpose. So I had requested that the council solicit a legal opinion on spot zoning. Ultimately, they chose not to do that.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, we could have got that opinion from the solicitor.
[Nick Giurleo]: Instead it has to come from K.P.
[Nick Giurleo]: So the council didn't want to do that, unfortunately. But this zoning in a nutshell basically allows for Transcend to build more units and higher and also get that off-site parking garage into their plans. And the whole idea of zoning is essentially, do we allow things as of right or do we require some community discretion? So with this zoning ordinance, it's basically to try to eliminate that community discretion and make it so transom doesn't have to go to the community development board as much, if at all. or the council or the community as a whole for its plans.
[Nick Giurleo]: There are pros and cons because you obviously want development to happen.
[Nick Giurleo]: You don't want to put too many obstacles, but you also don't want it to be totally unregulated.
[Nick Giurleo]: Absolutely. Everything does that we do.
[Nick Giurleo]: Sure. So I obviously can't speak for the mayor. The mayor was the one who created this program.
[Nick Giurleo]: But my understanding of it is it's an attempt to solve an issue that's been affecting a lot of residents, which is communications with the city. Residents are very concerned that they have problems and they can't get it to the right people or they get it to the right people and there's no action. There's no follow-up. So my understanding of this program is we're trying to create an intermediary here to facilitate communications. So residents have problems, they go to their ambassadors, who are not elected officials, but then they take those issues and bring them to elected officials or to just the city administration, the various departments, the mayor herself, whoever it is. So basically their job is to do what ambassadors do on the international level, which is to represent somebody else and to facilitate communications between two groups. So that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to be open and available to the community. We all represent different parts of Medford. So I was appointed by the mayor to represent West Medford, but other residents have been appointed to represent North Medford and South Medford, Hillside. So I'd encourage you all to get in contact with your ambassador. I believe that the city will soon be publishing contact information for everybody.
[Nick Giurleo]: There have been some concerns, well, how do I even reach these people? For me, I have social media, you can send me a DM, or you could email me. I have a website as well. I'm really all over the place, so it shouldn't be too hard.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, and I'll try to respond as quickly as I can. And my goal here is to take action. It's to not just be a sounding board for your concern, but to actually do something and produce results. So I'm feeling good about this program. I think it's a positive thing. I hope it's successful, and I'm going to do everything I can personally to make it a success. Yeah.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so some names you probably have heard of.
[Nick Giurleo]: A number of these people ran in the last election, so you mentioned Milva.
[Nick Giurleo]: Okay. You can see on the screen here the full list, but some highlights would be Milva, Page Buldini, and Patrick Clerkin. of course myself, really everybody on this list. I don't know all of them well.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah. We did have our first meeting earlier in the month and it was very positive. I think we were very productive and I liked our dynamic and I'm sure it's going to improve as we continue working together. So yeah, please, please, please reach out to your neighborhood ambassador, engage with this program and give us feedback too if you feel like it's not working or something could be adjusted.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yes, so we'll be publishing the contact information. One of the things I personally almost insisted upon was that we take minutes. Because this isn't a publicly noticed meeting, we're just meeting privately with the administration. So I'm the secretary of the group, so I'll be writing up the minutes myself and disseminating them on my personal website and hopefully the city will publish them as well. So we can go back and see what was discussed and accomplished at our meetings.
[Nick Giurleo]: As you know, I could talk all night.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening. My name is Nick Trollejo. I live in 40 Robinson Road. I graduated from this school about a decade ago. I'm only 15. I graduated number one in my class and been a lifelong student in the Medford Public Schools. I would definitely say I owe just about all my success to the great education I have through the school system. I just want to make a global comment here. I think it's a way to help you all of you kind of frame what we're looking at here in terms of space reduction. For me, I see this as, is this just a high school or is this a high school plus something else? And honestly, I think arguments can be made both ways as to which direction we should go with this. But ultimately, we do need to have discussions about which direction we want to go to this. We also have to kind of keep the overarching goal in mind, which is Ultimately, we're going to need the taxpayers and the voters of our city to get exclusion. So the question is, how can we make that happen? You want to go through worst possible scenario of putting a debt exclusion up for the voter consideration and having it fail due to concerns about costs. And I can tell you just many, many people have reached out to me and the overwhelming sentiment has been deep concerning about costs. And I understand there might be different points when we want to have that discussion, But ultimately, it's only you can do that. And this is a way here, I think, as we discuss space, making realistic decisions in terms of how can we make this pass? How can we make this happen? So I hope the discussions tonight are just very reasonable and rational. We don't resort to attacking people's characters and motivations. And we just look at what realistically can we do to make this happen, really approach it in a kind of a pragmatic way. That's fine. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Susan, you're going to have to speak up.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yes.
[Nick Giurleo]: So at the meeting in which the zoning was referred to the Community Development Board, I raised to all of you my concern regarding spot zoning. And I believe the city's attorney responded to my point and said that it would be discussed by the CDB during its public hearing. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and now it looks like the council is preparing to take a vote to adopt this zoning. without a legal opinion analyzing the possibility of illegal spot zoning. Just as a reminder on that, illegal spot zoning is when a discrete parcel is zoned for the economic benefit of the owner and it's not consistent with the surrounding zoning. And as was discussed at that March 31st meeting, which I wasn't able to attend but I listened to after the fact, there are significant differences between the Medford Square zoning and the zoning for transom. And we also heard many comments on the record suggesting that the legislative intent of this zoning is to facilitate the developer's project and meet its economic goals. For me, based on what I understand about spot zoning, all of this raises concern that we might be going into the legal territory. So I'm not here to tell you definitively whether it's legal or not legal, but I think if I were in your shoes, I would not feel comfortable adopting this zoning until I receive the legal opinion. analyzing that specific issue, which does come up often with overlay districts to benefit its specific developers project. It's almost always, I believe the city's attorney mentioned that, it's almost always raised the spot zoning question. And of course, that opinion does need to come from what I would say is a competent law firm or a lawyer or a disinterested one. Actually, preferably both. You can't rely on the representations of the developer. And I'd say you can't even rely on the representations of the city's planning office because you're going to probably hear, you know, in their opinion, it's okay. It's fine. There are no problems. So I don't think I should have to say obviously adopting zoning is a big and consequential thing. it will have a very dramatic impact on what our community looks like. And I think it's important to say we do have to make sure all boxes are checked before any zoning is adopted. And one of those is protect against potential legal liability. So it'd be my opinion that you should request that opinion before any vote's taken. I don't really see why this needs to happen tonight, this vote, necessarily, given the timeline. I understand there's a contract. I understand a schedule has been made and adopted and kind of put into place. But I think you should perhaps take your time with that and explore that aspect of it just to make sure, like I said, all those boxes are checked. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening again, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. I speak tonight in strong opposition to this resolution. The city of Medford should not be spending a dime defending this lawsuit. You were all warned in a legal opinion before you passed this ordinance that it had serious legal concerns. You ignored that opinion and the city was sued. Medford should be entering settlement discussions with the plaintiffs. It should not be wasting taxpayer dollars litigating a lawsuit it is very, very likely going to lose. At your last meeting, you approved over $300,000 in payments to settle eight cases. Now, while this lawsuit is not seeking money damages, it is going to accumulate a huge amount of legal fees because it was filed in federal court and involves fairly complex questions of constitutional law and state investment law. It seems like at least the sponsor of this resolution acknowledges that because the request is for a very large sum of money, $75,000. Granted, given what you said about, what the sponsor did say about the administration requesting that that resolution be put on the agenda, I'll acknowledge that. But in any event, it's still $75,000. Now, with some of these recently settled lawsuits, these were brought as far back ago as 2022, and they only settled for a few thousand bucks. I'm willing to make a bet that that is far more than a few thousand bucks in legal fees that had accumulated in the course of filing to settlement. And I think these cases, and the reason I highlight them, that they're good examples of why unnecessarily delaying settlement of meritorious cases makes sense, makes very little sense financially. It doesn't make sense. You all should also know that residents in our city are struggling to make ends meet due to a very bad cost of living crisis. Allowing large sums of money to be allocated defending this lawsuit will provide yet another example of this council's poor fiscal management and disregard for those who are suffering. As I've said to all of you before, you could probably resolve this case by amending the ordinance. That's what I would recommend doing. If you choose to fight to the end, however, and it's struck down by the court, you'll lose the entire statute and you'll be back at square one. Our charter creates a system of checks and balances. The council is not entitled to spend as it wishes from our treasury. The mayor has every right to refuse an unreasonable appropriations request. She's wrong about many things, and I haven't hesitated to point them out, but on this, she's correct. I'll say it one more time, this appropriations request should be totally rejected. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So I appreciate the cover letter kind of highlighting the changes that were made between the last draft and this one. It's very helpful because sometimes it's hard to track between drafts what has changed. So hopefully we can do that going forward. I'm going to start kind of broader and then focus on some narrower things. So broadly speaking, I'm very glad we're reconsidering uses. I noticed there were a number of changes made to the table of uses. It seemed like before we weren't devoting enough attention to them and it also seemed like we were focused like entirely on residential. Not really on commercial. And I honestly think we should be focused more on commercial because as you all know, Medford Square is the commercial, one of the commercial hubs of our city. So let's think about ways we can incentivize commercial development in the square, bringing people to the square, spending money there. On some narrow things, I was very happy to see that change requiring special permits for banks. I think the square has far too many. the tragedy of Salvatore's comes to mind. But also I would ask yourselves to think what other industries maybe have oversaturated the square, uses that could be restricted. I'm tempted to name a few, but I won't. support keeping the marijuana establishments out. I would also suggest changing, I think the neighborhood medical offices are all allowed in the sub-districts. I would consider maybe a special permit requirement for those given the whole Salem Street fiasco. I think that would be worth it. More generally, you know, I think you can maybe add some uses to the table uses for the commercial side of it. You know, things I would want to see would be restaurants, diners, cafes, boutiques, bookstores, maybe a small independent movie theater, other retail. You know, again, the goal has to be getting people to go to Medford Square and spending money there. Of course, you got to think about parking as well, and I know you all are. If you can't park in Medford Square, how are you going to visit it? And then kind of wrapping up here, I'm also a little concerned, you know, I think, you know, because we're focused so much on residential, the idea is, well, with these mixed use projects, you know, there'll be ground floor retail. I don't think that's always adequate. And I do think there are restrictions with that. So, you know, in terms of bringing new business to the square, I don't want our parameters to be limited to just through mixed use. I think there are other ways you can do that as well. Just some thoughts for all of you. Appreciate your time on all of this. Thank you. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening. Nick Jorleo, 40 Robinson Road. I'm all for more trees in our city. And I think one of the reasons many people like moving to Medford is because of its beautiful natural landscape. I was glad to see in this resolution a reference to zoning because I think obviously zoning has a relationship to what our city looks like. And that said, though, I think it's important to point out that You have very high density zoning. It makes it a lot more difficult to have trees. And I understand there's some creative solutions to this in more urban environments like rooftop gardens. But if you do drive through cities like, you know, Somerville, Cambridge, you're going to see that there's less vegetation. And I think it does relate to land use decisions. So I think it's good to mention zoning in this resolution. Also just to continuously be thinking about zoning and how it impacts, you know, our city ecologically. Going forward, I would, you know, encourage zoning that promotes open spaces, preserves them, backyards, you know, ways to have green spaces so we can put trees in. I think, again, this kind of beautiful natural landscape that we see in Medford is a reason people move here. It's good for quality of life purposes. So let's, you know, give people a reason to move here and not make zoning decisions that aesthetically affect the city that give people a reason not to live here. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you Nick Giorleo 40 Robinson Road. I was able to review both this overlay and the original Medford Square zoning and I'm actually going to raise a legal concern here. I know we've seen the letter written by the attorneys for transom that. The two proposed districts here are generally consistent, but if you actually put them side by side, they're not. So my concern is for spot zoning. Hopefully you all know what that is, but in case you don't, it's essentially when a when parcels are zoned specifically for an economic benefit of the developer and it's inconsistent with zoning in the surrounding area. So, you know, I was able, like I said, to put them side by side and I'm seeing significant differences, you know, and we see this both in the table of uses, we see this dimensionally. Like for example, in the table of uses, we see with like three unit dwellings, detached, multiplex, multiple dwellings, you know, those are allowed as of right in this overlay district but if you look in the original Medford Square zoning, they're not allowed. We see this dimensionally, you know, there's all these dimensional waivers in the transom zoning that aren't present in the original Medford square zoning. And I could honestly keep going with this. Parking as well, we see that. We see these kind of inconsistencies. So, you know, my concern is for spot zoning here. So I'd actually just recommend to all of you you get a legal opinion on that before you refer this to the Community Development Board because it does seem like our intent here and that's what spot zoning, you're looking at intent too. You know, it does seem like our intent here is to help this developer out as much as possible. You know, our planning director just said that money is a consideration here, right, which makes me think we're thinking about, you know, the economic benefit of this developer. I mean, we see as an express purpose in this overlay district to facilitate the redevelopment of multiple city-owned plots. So, you know, all of this combined does raise a concern here. So I would just recommend that getting a legal opinion on that specific issue. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurileo, Forty Robinson Road. So I support this resolution. Lately I've been looking into lawsuits filed against Medford, and it's clear to me that there are many of them, both in federal and state court. The dockets are usually public records, but the discovery attached to different filings, like the deposition transcripts of city officials, those are usually under protective order, which essentially means that the public can't see them, despite the huge public interest in looking at, you know, how our city officials are responding to questions under oath. I'd caution all of you, however, as much as I like this resolution, that it seems just based on the mayor's recent behavior, her administration is probably not going to respond to this resolution. That's why I think you kind of need to escalate things here and pass this as an ordinance or ultimately utilize the council's subpoena power. I'm not entirely sure if you have it, but I think you should utilize it if you do. Because really I think ultimately the mayor's not going to be responding to any of this, along with the resolutions on other topics that have been passed recently calling for information without any sort of legal obligation to do so. Another thing I'd like to do is just say You know, while the council is initiating this procedure here, this process here with this resolution, I don't think that absolves the council from blame as to why the city is being sued so much. So yes, our mayor might not be transparent. I think almost everyone agrees on that. But a careless lawmaking has also led to. this plethora of lawsuits against the city. I think one of the best examples of this is the recently passed Values Aligned Ordinance. Despite a legal opinion warning all of you that the text as worded had issues, you decided to pass the ordinance anyway. The mayor then vetoed it, and you had another chance to refine the language, but you chose a second time not to do that. And now we're being sued in federal court. I myself have warned you guys about this. Others did it as well, but now we have that lawsuit. So ultimately, you know, I think there's a lot of blame that could be placed here in terms of why we're in this position. But I do appreciate this resolution and I hope you'll follow up on it if it's passed and also consider that option of passing an ordinance or using subpoena power. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: If I may, just very briefly, I don't doubt that all of you had good intentions with this ordinance. And I personally supported the idea behind it. It's just obviously there were some concerns that were raised by council. And I would just suggest to all of you, you do have the power to amend the ordinance as well. Right? And oftentimes when a party is satisfied, they'll dismiss their lawsuit. So maybe you make an amendment to the ordinance, the people who are suing are satisfied, and they say we don't need to bring this forward anymore. Just a suggestion. Yeah.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Jarleo, Forty Robinson Road. So I think definitely with our new city charter we're going to have to rethink how we do politics in Medford. I think everybody agrees on that and I do agree with kind of this ward centric way of looking at it. My only reservation with the system that seems to be proposed here is this idea of the council kind of organizing it and running it. I actually would disagree with that and I think this should be run independently from residents otherwise I think What we're probably going to see is the council becoming or these meetings essentially becoming an extension of city council meetings which I don't think would be the most productive for our neighbors. I think ultimately residents should really be kind of driving them as opposed to elected officials. So hopefully I see it's getting referred to committee here. Hopefully there can be some discussion and debate about that. the extent to which these will be independent versus kind of extensions of the council. And I think if that ultimately isn't an option for independent meetings, I would suggest residents to start their own. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: So I'll speak in support tonight of both of these resolutions and call on the Mayor to provide the public an answer here on why she didn't respond to the Council's request for information. So, yes, I understand that maybe this request wasn't legally enforceable. She didn't have a legal obligation. to respond. But regardless, just because you don't have to do something doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't do it. Anyway, the mayor has demonstrated, I think at this point almost brazenly, just her complete unwillingness to be transparent here on why we switched providers. And for members of the public who maybe aren't aware, when the CEO of Armstrong spoke at that lengthy Committee of the Whole meeting, he quoted from an email that was sent to the mayor. I didn't see the email personally, so I can't verify that he was reading it correctly or it was accurate. But from what he said, you know, representing to all of you here, he quoted the mayor as saying this, quote, we don't want to go public on the reasoning on why we are going in another direction. To me, that was just so mind-blowing that I had to write it down when I heard it, because she's saying openly in writing, like, I don't want the public to know, which is really appalling when you think of yourself as an elected leader who's supposed to be transparent to the people, to this body, to the whole city. We heard a similar comment from the mayor's chief of staff at the meeting before that. She talked about concern and fear if the public knew, the public would know what's going on here. And at that meeting, sorry, the committee, the whole meeting, the mayor wasn't there, right? You would think other city officials showed up, the police chief, the fire chief, but the mayor herself didn't show up, which is really just stunning, given that we really needed information, and this was really an important topic of public interest. So the fact that you wouldn't show up and comment really, to me, is something to be ashamed of. And we only heard from the city, too, notably, you know, when they're put on the spot, when we called them to come to that committee, the whole meeting, and provide some information. You know, it wasn't like they were going to do this voluntarily. And we did get a few, you know, people show up and give some answers. But still, you know, we're really not seeing enough. Overall, we're seeing crickets. We're seeing radio silence. And it really amounts, in my opinion, to just a dishonesty, a dishonesty to the whole of the public and to this body as well. So I'll call on the mayor. You know, I think it's never too late to change your ways. So hopefully she does that and we get some more transparency here. We see a pivot. We see a willingness to work this out. Otherwise, you're just going to drag on, right? And there's so much else going on in the city. It'd be great to move on to other topics. We're not going there because we're dealing with this. So that's my call. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. I'll start with just some technical observations and suggestions, and then I'll just give a comment about approach. So starting with the technical, first, with the table of uses, I noticed with the uses for mixed use, I see blank spaces in the column with the parking. So I'm wondering, I'd just like some clarification, if the current proposal is proposing no parking minimum, or that just hasn't been decided yet. Secondly, I was going to make a comment about that residential portion that was included within the boundary. I'm happy to hear that that was removed. I was gonna suggest exactly that, cuz I don't think it fits with kind of the purpose of this district, which is mostly focused on mixed use and commercial. So I was glad to see that. go out. Councilor Leming suggested looking to historic district feasibility for the square. I know that's a little bit outside of the scope of zoning. I do think that's a good idea. I would like zoning that takes into account the historic character. of Medford Square. I know Chair Carr also mentioned history. I think it's important that any new developments try to integrate the history of Medford Square as much as possible and also take into account just that history is a drawer to Medford Square. So I think there's value in looking at that as well. Another thing in the table of uses, there was a neighborhood medical office included. I believe in all the sub-districts that's allowed as of right. I'm thinking to the great controversy that arose with the Salem Street Corridor regarding that definition, which I personally find to be quite vague. So I'd suggest making that discretionary and adding a special permit requirement in all of the sub-districts. I know there's also mention by Chair Carr of the church being in the district as well, or sorry, one of the churches not being in, I believe St. Joe's is in the district, as well as the library being out of it. So I would consider too, you know, the impact that, you know, maybe rising development incentives might have on our religious community in the square, you know, to the extent that this might motivate them to sell and leave, and obviously would detract significantly from Medford's character, which in a large part has been based on its various religious communities. And then my general comment here, kind of on approach, I do understand obviously that the transom project was approved. The bid was accepted. I would just encourage both bodies here not to develop zoning that really is just trying to get that developer's project through easily. You know, in other words, writing the zoning for the developer as opposed to what the community as a whole wants. So I personally don't understand why we accepted the bid before we settled the zoning question, but the fact of the matter is it has been accepted. And I know a goal here is to try to tailor zoning to make that project So I would just encourage both bodies here to just try to think of the broader purpose here. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: I'll live with it.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. I wasn't actually planning on speaking about this, believe it or not, but there was something that the mayor's chief of staff said that really stood out to me, really struck me. She mentioned that carrying on this conversation would create, quote, concern and fear, unquote. Carrying on the conversation. In other words, simply talking about this will make residents worried. Simply talking about this isn't in the public interest. To me, that's just really, really, shameful, a really kind of terrible thing to say. This, what our city government does, you know, behind the scenes, behind closed doors, is something the public should know about. We should know what's going on with these negotiations, with any negotiations. I have tried to look for contracts that our city has entered into on the city website, and you would think, you know, you could just go onto the city website and it'd be an easy PDF download. They're just not there. And sometimes you reach out to department heads, you ask for contracts, and some of them are very cooperative and will give you the contract. Others will dig their heels in, and you try to make a public records request, and there's heel digging in with that. So many citizens, and just speaking on behalf of one who's not behind the podium here, just don't know what's going on in Medford. You know, they just don't understand what our city leadership is doing. And, yes, to some extent, we vote for our leaders, we entrust them to make decisions for us to exercise leadership. This is what the chief of police alluded to. Yes, I understand and respect that. But at the same time, the public does have a right to know what their elected leaders are doing so they can hold them accountable for the decisions they made. If we don't know what our leaders are doing, we can't hold them accountable and make intelligent decisions come next election. So this is very much in the public interest, and we really do need to flesh it out. So I'm in full support of this resolution. I think we need to keep this conversation going. Armstrong has been with us for 25 years. It's a long time. By most accounts, they've been doing a good job at what they've been doing. I know there's some dispute to the facts of that. Let's investigate that, and let's get some more information on why there's belief in the administration that they're not doing a good job. But I've only heard good things, and I don't understand why the mayor made this decision, and I'd like some answers. And I think so many other people would. And I hope our leaders will get those answers for the public. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Giulio, Forty Robinson Road. So I know we're watering down the resolution just a little bit, given concerns about, you know, can we actually legally draft an ordinance, you know, addressing this subject. But I would just caution you not to close the door on that. right away. I do personally think that the city does have legal power to draft such an ordinance. I liked Councilor Leming's idea of getting a legal opinion on what the city can do. I think that's something that probably would be a good starting point in terms of can we actually draft an ordinance here about private ways. Another thing I was doing before this meeting was just researching, you know, in our code of ordinances, you know, do we actually have anything currently on private ways, and I did actually find something. I just had spoken, not in front of the podium with Commissioner McGivern about it, but there's a section, it's Chapter 70, Section 91, it's called Temporary Repairs of Private Ways. I'd encourage you all to take a look at that. It says that a city may make temporary repairs on private ways provided that a private way has been open for public use for a term of five years or more. Fifty-one percent of the abutters who live along such way shall petition the mayor for temporary repairs of such way. And it goes on. And it says that the city may perform such temporary repairs on private ways as determined by the mayor based on recommendations from the director of public works and the city engineer. So it looks like we do have a little something. I mean, that was really all I could find. But it looks like we do have a little something on private ways currently on the books. So for me, that suggests that, you know, there could be potential here in drafting a more comprehensive ordinance on private ways. I've dealt personally with the law of what is a public versus private way in my professional life. And I'll tell you, it is confusing. It is archaic. I do believe the municipalities have power to address this subject just given how fundamental it is to cities and towns and what they do. And just another thing, I think if we eventually do get to a point of drafting a comprehensive I just encourage some sort of like prioritization of safety concerns on private ways. I talked to one resident who was very worried about an old tree, a branch on this old tree on the street falling where a school bus picks up kids, you know. And he was saying, you know, I've been asking for this branch to be cut down for so long and just, you know, it doesn't seem like it's being prioritized. And in his own words, he said, you know, this is an accident waiting to happen. So, you know, I think in terms of liability, too, you know, it's something we want to take a look at because it is concerning. You know, I think there's potential for a lawsuit if, you know, somebody gets injured on a private way due to perhaps DPW work not getting there in time. So I think there are really tons and tons of benefits here of some sort of ordinance on private ways. So hopefully we can kind of keep that discussion going. But of course, the forum ideas is a good starting point as well.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening. Nick Joliot, Forty Robinson Road. I will speak tonight in opposition to this appropriation request. The mayor told us in July that to date the city has spent over $200,000 on Innes Associates. That's a lot of money. What do we have to show for it? A citywide residential rezoning proposal widely recognized to be significantly flawed and not an adequate representation of public opinion. I'm all for second chances, but when it comes to services like this, we have to put our foot down at some point. If a contractor made a $200,000 mistake in the construction of your house, would you hire them again to do the same job? Makes little sense to me, and I would hope we can get some transparency on why the city is reelecting, is electing to rehire Innis. And I direct you to many of the criticisms that others have raised on whether this firm is actually competent to handle a project of this scale. So my understanding is that an RFP was released on resuming rezoning. But my question is, who responded? And was any serious consideration taken into perhaps other respondents to that? You know, or is this just us executing the quid pro quo that was negotiated behind closed doors that the public is largely unaware about? I encourage you all to take a step back and reconsider. This is a big commitment. We're looking at $85,000 more on top of the $200,000 that was already spent. Is this worth it? Residential rezoning came to a screeching halt because of the work INIS did. on the project, so it's just a really wise idea going back to them.
[Nick Giurleo]: So no RFP has gone out to date.
[Nick Giurleo]: Okay.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thanks for that clarification.
[Nick Giurleo]: Welcome, Nicholas. Good evening, Nick Giurleo, Forty Robinson Road. I would like to just begin by pointing out that during the existence of the Solid Waste Task Force, a survey was put out. Over 700 people were polled. About 60 percent of the people who were polled in the survey contained a question asking directly, do you want this change? About 60% of people polled said no. Only about 20% of people could actually commit to a yes response. Now you compare this to the survey that was recently released, which doesn't ask directly, do people want the service change, right? And it's full of loaded questions and really, really unscientific. in a lot of ways. So my question for the city is very simply, will the city make a decision here that reflects what the majority wants? Based on that poll, based on what people are saying here tonight, it seems that overwhelmingly, and based on what people have said leading up to this, it seems overwhelmingly that people don't want this. So will the city listen? Will the city propose an alternative? And I fully understand and respect the financial implications of this tough choice, but will the city propose an alternative here? that reflects what the majority wants. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: The service change, obviously, to bi-weekly trash collection.
[Nick Giurleo]: Alright.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giroleo, 40 Robinson Road. I'm speaking tonight in favor of this resolution, both originally or as amended. What's most stunning to me is how little it seems we're getting in return for this grant. In exchange for this huge sacrifice of cutting our trash collection pickup in half, we're getting, drumroll please, compost bins. Now, it's $200,000 worth of compost bins, but again, it's still just compost bins. I'm asking myself, do we actually need more? Is there a shortage? Are there answers to these questions? I can look up. And I think if we had discretion to spend this money any way we'd like for waste management funding, there'd be a case perhaps for this trade-off. But since it appears we're just stuck using it for these bins, I don't see anyone could make the case this is a good deal. Now, the city says if we generate too much trash, we can just buy overflow bags or lease for $12 a month another 64-gallon bin. No big deal, huh? For many people, the weekly pickup with the 64-gallon bin is hard enough as it is. And even with, I think, intentional efforts to produce less rubbish, it is still highly unrealistic people are going to be able to meet this quota. And all this is going to do is force them to pay these fees. Residents are already struggling under high taxes and fees and a climate of a cost-of-living crisis. This is only going to make that struggling worse. And it also makes you question when we're told that tax hikes are necessary to fund essential city services, and we say yes, why we are getting less city services in return. And we're also getting a vague promise here that this will save the environment. How do we know collecting trash less regularly is going to incentivize people to produce less trash? What will stop people from dumping their extra trash or just sucking it up and paying for overfill bags or renting a bin? As has been discussed, our neighborhoods are already infested with rats in many areas. Unsustainable density increases due to comprehensive residential rezoning changes, which do seem like an inevitability to me at this point, are only going to result in less sanitary conditions. To me, all this is just a recipe for disaster. It's my hope that the mayor will reconsider the wisdom of this grant and work with all of us to provide some answers to questions I think we all have. I don't care how many cities and towns across the state have accepted this program. We need to do what's best for Medford. Thank you. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening. Nick Joleo, Forty Robinson Road. I'm in favor of the amendment, but before I discuss why let me first just say that the agenda for this meeting tonight the whole agenda was not posted to the city website until 1115 this morning. I had to call the city clerk's office and ask where it was. And only then was it uploaded. This isn't acceptable. Residents need adequate notice of what the council is going to address at a meeting so they can do appropriate research, prepare their remarks, and make logistical arrangements to be here.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you for the apology and explanation.
[Nick Giurleo]: I'll continue now with my thoughts on why I'm in favor of the amendment. So I'm in favor of the amendment because the six-story height maximum allowed by MX2 is excessive in this area, which is residential. But I'm also in favor because rezoning that node, MX1, is going to eliminate, as we've discussed, this very vaguely defined use neighborhood medical office. And I think as others have pointed out before me, this would likely encompass a methadone clinic. And I hope we can all agree, regardless of what a person might think about the utility of having one of these anywhere, that putting one a few blocks away from a school, an elementary school for that matter, is not a good idea. And I don't think that requiring a special permit from the Community Development Board would be an adequate safeguard, and that we are better just forbidding the use altogether in this node. But again, I'm not opposed to having one of these in Medford. It's just a question of where we put it. It really isn't wise to put one near where their children, in my opinion. And I hope that the council will not only approve the amendment tonight, but also revisit other decisions made for this quarter. I don't think there's anything wrong with making changes to our zoning ordinance. I've never thought that our zoning ordinance, given how old it is, has been perfect and that could not use any revisions at all. It certainly should be revisited. And I would hope that the Councilors tonight would not view a yes vote on this as some sort of admission of defeat. I think this legislative process is designed for this kind of thinking let's look, what's not working, how do we fix it. And we want to make sure of course that our zoning decisions reflect what people who live in our neighborhoods want, you have to think of the overwhelming opposition at that Roberts meeting. And again, the CDB had originally recommended to you based on all the public feedback they had received, approval, and it was rejected. So we're just kind of wasting time here. We have to retrace our steps, revisit it. It's just not efficient. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Jaleo.
[Nick Giurleo]: No problem.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you for the question. And I'd reiterate what my fellow panelists up here have said. Thank you all for being here tonight. Parking is a key issue in Medford. Many residents are concerned about it and its availability. There's a special concern about it given the zoning proposal on the table at the moment. How will it impact parking? have any studies been done indicating that. Unfortunately the answer appears to be no. So we don't really know if this massive residential rezoning plan how that's going to impact parking. And parking is very important I'd say economically and commercially for our city because it encourages people to go to our businesses and spend money at our businesses when it's available. Medford Square for example is significantly problematic because of the lack of parking. You go there where you put your car. How do you go to the businesses. So we really do have to take another look at parking and do much better with it. We need to make sure parking is available throughout the city in the event we pass any zoning changes. So that's a priority for me. I want studies done. I want input from residents and I want to make sure that we just accept the reality too that you know people have cars and not everybody drives a car but people have cars and they need a place to put the car. And we want to make sure we have places for that. That's my answer. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: This is a very good question. So for those who don't know, free cash might sound like something wonderful and magical, but essentially it's over-budgeted money that the city over-budgets in a given year. And with the debate over whether or not we should pass our Proposition 2.5 overrides that we had just about a year ago, there was a lot of discussion about free cash and its viability. So the important thing to know about free cash is it's a limited amount of money and If we spend too much of it too quickly, it affects our city's bond rating. So we want to be intelligent about it, and typically it's only used for one-time expenditures. That said, though, my position with the overrides was that free cash could have been used smarter to meet our spending needs and avoid having to essentially hike taxes and put a significant burden on residents to meet our spending needs. So I think we can use free cash much more intelligently. That's going to be my position going forward. We can use it to meet our spending needs while also not raising concerns about our city's credit. So, free cash is out there. It is an option. And really, you know, my position with any sort of, you know, need for tax hikes in the future has been, you know, we should really, really look at every other alternative before we put that burden on residents. And they're struggling. There's a huge cost of living crisis out there and taxes are going up and rents are going up and people are really having a hard time. So, let's look at every other option before we put that burden on residents. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Perfect pronunciation. A great teacher I had at the school we're in tonight once told me that you should always end a speech with a thank you for listening. I'll take his advice but flip the timing and begin by thanking all of you for being here and listening. Our city might be more divided than ever. Rather than brood on the reasons why in these two minutes I have with you, I'd like to instead reflect on the path forward. I have no doubt that everyone on this stage wants what is best for Medford. We may disagree on what is best and how we get there, but I think the most important thing to remember is that the system of government our city operates under was designed to handle these differences. Medford is an enormous city, nearly 60,000 people. There's no doubt that among the 60,000, we have residents with a very wide range of perspectives, ideas, and points of view. I've always been a strong believer that diversity in this respect makes government better. It avoids the many pitfalls of groupthink and leads to legislating that, while might not leave no one fully happy, represents workable compromise. Compromise is good and is something I believe we should all be striving for. I've said much in these many months of campaigning, but of all the themes I've touched on, the one that has given me the most passion to keep going is the value of the ordinary person's opinion. My first glimpse of this was in my professional life when I tried my first few cases before a jury, but I really learned it observing the many intelligent people in our community come up to the podium at our meetings and express their thoughts on the issues that matter to them. We need to preserve that voice. We need to be wary of a government that discounts it. The voice of the ordinary person matters, and their collective voice makes a difference. The greatest case I can make to you for electing me is I have a passion to preserve this voice, and it goes far beyond the voices of people I already agree with. I want to hear from people who don't. I want to hear from people whose perspectives differ from my own. I want to hear from all voices in Medford, because every voice matters, and the city we call home. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Gioleo, 40 Robinson Road. So first, I just want to ask a question. I think it's a procedural question. I was just curious why the mayor's veto of the values aligned ordinance was tabled tonight. Was there a procedural reason for that?
[Nick Giurleo]: OK. Does anyone have an answer or no? OK. Also, I don't know it off the top of my head, but I could look it up. I believe the Charter has a limit.
[Nick Giurleo]: Sorry, I had to get into my head. Okay. I believe the Charter has a limit in which the time a veto may be overridden. I don't know. Does anyone know that off the top of their head?
[Nick Giurleo]: Okay. Yeah, I can, I could look that up. Anyone could. And then the last thing I'll say is, with Councilor Scarpelli's resolution I don't believe there was a public comment on that but I just wanted to voice my support for it. and say that I think the charter, first of all, I think it's good to just educate the public in general as to what a charter is. My conversation with people, a lot of people don't even know what a charter is as like a legal instrument. So I think it's good to kind of educate on that as well as this process of how we got to this point on voting on it. So I like this idea of educating as well as just what it is. It's a very long document. And I understand that our current charter because it's a planned form of government, you know, it's essentially just taken directly from the general laws. So it's kind of like in several different places. So I think it's kind of hard to understand, you know, what is our charter now and what will it become later on? So I think it's a good idea to really emphasize the differences between what we have now and what will come later. You know, beyond the obvious switch to ward representation, some of maybe the more subtle differences. And I know the charter committee has done a lot of work educating people on that. I definitely praise them for that. And hope they'll continue to do that. And I hope the council will assist with that process as well.
[Nick Giurleo]: Hello Medford, my name is Nicholas Straleo. I'm a candidate running for City Council. I'm speaking to you today to tell you a little bit about who I am and my solutions to two very important election issues. Let me begin with a little bit about who I am. I grew up in Medford and have lived here my whole life. I went to the public schools and graduated valedictorian of my high school class. I then went on to attend college at Tufts University, where I graduated with degrees in history, international relations, and Italian. After Tufts, I went to law school at Boston College. The focus of my studies was municipal law and land use. I graduated BC Law and took the bar exam that summer. I passed on the first go and scored in a top national percentile. Since my admission to the bar, I've practiced as an attorney with a firm on State Street. I would now like to talk to you about two key election issues this election is about. I'd then propose for your consideration the specific solutions I'm offering. One of the biggest issues this election is zoning. On the table is a plan to comprehensively rezone Medford's residential neighborhoods. It will see essentially all of them upzoned to allow or permit a substantial increase in the number of units per lot. While some claim that this plan will make housing more affordable, serious questions have arisen regarding the process that has brought us to this point, and whether the proposed changes would even achieve the goal desired. Ultimately, in my view, zoning needs to be a reflection of what our neighbors want their neighborhoods to look like. This is simply because they are the ones living in them. As much as academics, activists, and consultants might think they know what is best for you and your neighborhood, zoning amendments that would fundamentally change the character of where you live need to be approved by you and your neighbors. The process concerns arose by how blindsided residents were when they became aware of what the changes would actually entail. To this day, many do not know or do not fully comprehend the amendments. This has been a failure of city communications, particularly communications from the council. Regardless of the number of meetings that have taken place and how technical the concepts are, the Council has a duty to ensure the public understands what is happening before it happens. It is patently clear to me that the public was not adequately informed. More importantly, in my many conversations with neighbors on the campaign trail, and in reviewing the comments received by the Community Development Board, residents are overwhelmingly against the changes. They don't want overdevelopment in their neighborhoods, and they are deeply concerned how the amendments will impact essential city services, like fire, police, our infrastructure, and our already overcrowded schools. To date, insufficient studies have been done. We have none on the economic impact or how services will be strained. All of this leads me to say unequivocally to you that I am opposed to the comprehensive residential rezoning plan on the table in its current form. I'm not opposed to reasonable revisions to our zoning ordinance, but this isn't one of them. I will vote no if the proposal comes before me as a councilor. The second major issue I'll discuss today is council access. We've seen in the past two years very alarming efforts to reduce the ability of the public to meaningfully contribute at our public meetings. We saw a reduction of public speaking time from five minutes per person to three minutes per person. We have seen meetings running very late, sometimes past midnight, with papers on local issues taking a second seat to papers on issues pertaining to national and international issues. We've seen Councilors talk at length, flattering and grandstanding to no end, at the expense of time that could be spent hearing from the public. We have seen Councilors laugh and belittle commentators, expressing viewpoints that simply differ from their own. All of this has led me to see the need for comprehensive procedural reform in how we conduct our meetings. My very first resolution, when elected, will be to restore the public voice lost at our meetings. I will propose an immediate return of public speaking time to five minutes a speaker. I will also work to implement reforms to our council's internal rules to limit councilor speaking time, ensure a hard cap on how late our meetings run, prioritize papers on local issues, and bring us back to weekly council meetings. The public voice should be a priority at our meetings. It currently is not. For all these reasons, this election is a critical one, maybe one of the most critical in our city's long history. Do we continue with the same failed leadership that is making Medford into a city we no longer recognize? Or do we elect new, independent-thinking leadership and restore common sense to our local government? The choice is clear. Thank you very much for listening, and I respectfully ask for your vote on November 4th.
[Nick Giurleo]: Hi, John, thanks for having me.
[Nick Giurleo]: I think you're right, John, that this certainly is the talk of the city at the moment. So this is, in my opinion, a very critical election issue. Who we decide to be in the council will influence our zoning going forward. So first I'll just talk about, for anyone who might not know, just a summary of what is happening. So currently on the table is a proposal to comprehensively rezone the residential neighborhoods in our city. Under this proposal, they'd be creating five new sub-districts. and essentially everyone would be getting up zoned. The idea behind this is to try to create a larger housing supply under the belief that more housing will result in affordable housing. So this proposal, we'll see upwards of six units as of right in neighborhoods, historically zoned to be single family. And the zoning, it's really been under the radar for a while, but it really came to public attention recently. People are very concerned, very concerned about the dramatic impact that density increases will have on our neighborhoods. Some opposition groups formed and there was major public backlash at a meeting of the Community Development Board. And this actually prompted the mayor to intervene and essentially say that she'd be refusing to extend the contract with the city's zoning consultant unless the proposal was scrapped. Council President Bears responded, essentially punted the issue and says, we'll take up residential rezoning in the spring. So to me, this is obviously his attempt to try to see what will happen with the election, which is why I said at the beginning, this is really an election issue. I think we're seeing with the council this kind of concept of, well, we know it's best for you, as opposed to, well, let's ask neighbors what they want and what they want their neighborhoods to look like. So my position has really been, we need to do what neighbors want. We need neighbors to have a say in what their communities look like. So I'm opposed to the plan on the table. I think it should be totally scrapped. And if I'm elected, I'll vote no on it, if it comes up before me. And ultimately, there's been a lot of process concerns, process issues. This process needs to reflect what the majority of our neighbors want. Not what consultants say we need, not what academics say we need, not what activists say we need, but we need to talk to ordinary people. They should have a say in what their neighborhoods look like because they're the ones living there. I think that makes perfect sense. I think it's very common sense. For me, you know, particularly, I also want to see studies too about, you know, if the zoning is approved, how will services be impacted? How will our fire be impacted? How will our police, our infrastructure, our schools, which are already overcrowded, And we've seen it, you know, with the council, just this unwillingness to listen. I can point to specifically the Salem Street corridor, for example. The CDB recommendation for one of the critical nodes of that, the Salem and Park Street node, it resulted in this sub-district designation that would have allowed up to six stories. And currently that's what's in effect. So there's efforts now to try to reverse that, but we're seeing, you know, this just unwillingness to listen. And it's very concerning to me. So, you know, I want to and I'll put out there, you know, I think it's okay to make reasonable revisions to our zoning ordinance. I would just like to make sure that those changes are what neighbors want and ultimately don't result in excessive density, overcrowding, overdevelopment. I think we'd be better spending our time more focusing on the commercial side of it. To me, we need to be preserving, not only preserving our commercial tax base, but expanding it to encouraging businesses to come to Medford. And I think reasonable zoning changes could achieve that. But I guess in summary, again, not in favor of the proposal currently on the table. And I definitely wanna make sure that when I'm elected, I'm listening to what residents have to say, giving them a voice, and ultimately making sure that they feel heard.
[Nick Giurleo]: Sure. So yeah, like the zoning, it's another big issue. And it will be on the ballot in November. So voters will have to decide whether or not they approve or they reject this thing. So first, I'll just back up a bit. You know, what is a charter for anyone who might not know? Essentially, it's the Constitution for our city. It's the governing document that tells us how our city is organized in terms of a mayor, a school committee, and a city council, as well as all our departments, and boards, and commissions, and administrative agencies. So Medford's currently under what is called a plan A form of government. There's a provision in the Massachusetts General Law, this chapter 43, gives some general rules on charters, and then gives cities an option to choose between various plans. So in 1986, Medford voters moved us from a plan E to a plan A. And now in November, voters will decide whether we transition again away from a plan A to this kind of new charter that our charter committee has worked very hard to get together. And that leads me to the next thing here. So charter review committee was established. We had some notables in our city who were on that, people like Ron Govino, Melvin McDonald, Eunice Bratton. who really worked hard to make sure that residents' input would be taken into consideration to prepare this document. So I applaud them and all their hard work. And I appreciate all their patience too, you know, getting us to this point where we can finally have something to vote on. So it was, like I said, approved for the ballot. So the state legislator said, it's okay for our ballot. So we'll be deciding on it in November. And there's various changes to it, but I think in our short time together, the number one thing to highlight would be it's moving us from a seven member at-large council now to an 11 member council with eight ward Councilors and three at-large Councilors. And we see a similar setup with the school committee So for that, there'd be two at-large members and four from districts, districts being wards combined. So my position on the charter is I tend to vote yes on it. I think by no means it's perfect, but I certainly think it's an improvement from what we have. And I think it's important to remember that year that I said earlier, 1986 was the last time. Medford's charter has been changed. This is a considerable amount of time to not have changed your charter at all. So I do think, you know, one of the reasons I support this is because board representation, I think is gonna be a lot more representative than what we're currently doing under our at-large system. It's going to be giving a voice to those who've been very frustrated by the council's conduct as of late. We have people in our wards who haven't seen in a very long time anyone on the council from their ward. So I think it's important that we make sure everyone in our city is being represented. That's one reason why I support it. Another thing I think it's important to put out there is that some of our current council members, actually almost all of them, were pushing for a district model for the city. So like I said, kind of with the school committee, a district is essentially wards combined. So they held out really until the very end on this. So they were getting pushback from their own base. And to me, you know, this this reason why they were really pushing the district model, I think the only word we can use to describe it as gerrymandering, I think they were trying to gerrymander our city to try to make it more favorable for them and their base to win elections. So I think this word based system be a lot fairer. That's one of the reasons why. I support the charter. Another thing is though, even if you're upset about it and you think it could be better, it does have provisions in there that would have us being periodically reviewing the charter. It's part of the language. And I strongly encourage that. I think under the current language is a review every 10 years. I think we should be doing that even more frequently. I mean, I think we should always have an open mind on making changes. We should try to make our government work as best as possible. So that would be my take on the charter.
[Nick Giurleo]: Exactly. Yeah. So there'll be opportunities to change it if things aren't working. And we also just got to respect that hard work that the Charter Committee did in getting us to this point.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you so much, Sean. Always a pleasure.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening Nick Julio 40 Robinson Road. I am in favor of this resolution and I thank Mr. Carney for bringing this issue to my attention. I think it very much being the public interest to get some sort of update on why we're seeing this unequal treatment here doesn't really seem fair to me. And I think regardless of whether or not there's a contract in place I think everyone would benefit, just at least from a little more information to kind of understand the rationale behind this so I think. Councilor Leming for bringing this very local issue to the council's attention. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening. for Robinson Road. I strongly support this referral. I think I like others don't believe the six story height maximum is appropriate all for the note and I think it's important to point out the same height maximum. It's a commercial I know there are many neighbors who express concerns about that MX to designation early on so I applaud not only them for voicing their concerns but also for the Community Development Board for for listening and ultimately recommending that MX one designation so of course the Council does have discretion to accept or reject. recommendation of the CDB but I think it's just a matter of principle. It should be giving significant deference to those recommendations. So, it's unfortunate that we're in this position where we have to essentially backtrack because the recommendation of the board was not taken. So, strongly in favor of referral and I'm looking forward to speaking more substantively on this when that public hearing opens. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Hi, everyone. I'm Nick Giurleo. Thank you all for being here. Just a little bit about my background. I grew up in Medford, lived here my whole life. Went to Medford High School, graduated number one in my class, and decided to stick around for college and ended up going to Tufts University. Great education there. And after that, I decided to work for a little bit. I ended up working here in the square, actually, for a law office. Really got interested in law through that experience, and decided I would go to law school. So I went to law school, ended up at BC Law. Graduated from BC Law, became an attorney, and that's what I do today. I work for a great firm in downtown Boston. Just one little brief thing about here about why am I running, right? Why am I running? I'm running because being civically involved is really important for me. I want to be involved. It's important to not complain when you have problems with what's going on in the city, but to take a step forward and do something about that. So I decided I needed to step forward and do something about the things that concern me. So two issues that I just want to talk to you about in my very brief time here. Number one, that's been central to my campaign, affordability. Medford is, as everyone probably knows, an increasingly unaffordable place to live. Long-time residents feel pressured out of their homes, and residents who want to move here feel like they can't because of barriers. So what can we do about that? In my opinion, the main reason for unaffordability is just the burden that residents have. in meeting our spending needs, primarily through property taxes, which is where we get the majority of our revenue. I think we can be smarter, though, and take that burden off them and shift it into areas like commercial, bringing businesses to Medford and also preserving our commercial tax base. The commercial tax rate is nearly double the residential, so we get significant revenue through that. That's one issue. is transparency. And for me, that primarily means council accessibility. So allowing the city council to be a resource that everybody can use. So there's a lot of problems in terms of accessibility that we have to do something about. Very late running meetings, last minute agenda changes, getting very off topic often with the agenda items, as well as Reductions in the public speaking time at the expense of hearing people's opinions. So I think we can do simple things like change the rules of our city council to make it more accessible. And also I'm interested in information too, public information. Voters should be informed, they have a right to be informed. What can we do to make public records more accessible to our citizens, honoring requests and making sure people don't feel left out, people don't feel that communications are lacking. So these are two issues central to my campaign. Again, I thank you all for being here, and I would very much appreciate your vote. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Hi, everyone. I'm Nick Giurleo. Thank you all for being here. Just a little bit about my background. I grew up in Medford, lived here my whole life, went to Medford High School, graduated number one in my class, and decided to stick around for college, and ended up going to Tufts University. Great education there. And after that, I decided to work for a little bit. I ended up working here in the square, actually, for a law office. Really got interested in law through that experience, and decided I would go to law school. So I went to law school, ended up at BC Law. Graduated from BC Law, became an attorney, and that's what I do today, work for a great firm in downtown Boston. Just one little brief thing about here, about why am I running, right? Why am I running? I'm running because being civically involved is really important for me. I want to be involved. It's important to not complain when you have problems with what's going on in the city, but to take a step forward and do something about that. So I decided I needed to step forward and do something about the things that concern me. So two issues that I just want to talk to you about in my very brief time here. Number one, that's been central to my campaign, affordability. Medford is, as everyone probably knows, an increasingly unaffordable place to live. Long-time residents feel pressured out of their homes, and residents who want to move here feel like they can't because of barriers. So what can we do about that? In my opinion, the main reason for unaffordability is just the burden that residents have. in meeting our spending needs, primarily through property taxes, which is where we get the majority of our revenue. I think we can be smarter, though, and take that burden off them and shift it into areas like commercial, bringing businesses to Medford and also preserving our commercial tax base. The commercial tax rate is nearly double the residential, so we get significant revenue through that. That's one issue. The other issue here is transparency, and for me, that primarily means council accessibility, so allowing the city council to be a resource that everybody can use. So there's a lot of problems in terms of accessibility that we have to do something about. Very late running meetings, last minute agenda changes, getting very off topic often with the agenda items, as well as reductions in the public speaking time at the expense of hearing people's opinions. So I think we can do simple things like change the rules of our city council. to make it more accessible. And also, I'm interested in information, too. Public information. Voters should be informed. They have a right to be informed. What can we do to make public records more accessible to our citizens, honoring requests, and making sure people don't feel left out, people don't feel that communications are lacking? So these are two issues central to my campaign. Again, I thank you all for being here, and I would very much appreciate your vote. Thank you. There we go, yeah.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, Forty Robinson Road. I'll begin tonight with the positives. First, I was happy to see that the ordinance was substantively revised, especially subsection D on the divesting from human rights abusers. I think striking that word entity from the subsection, for example, was a very good edit as I think that word was a contributor to it being overbroad. And I was also pleased to see that my concern as to how the treasurer would make the determination of which entities fall into this category of human rights abusers. I was glad to see that that was addressed as well by adding a subsection to section 2-698. That, as I understand, establishes a criteria in which the treasurer is to make determinations on which entities are abusing human rights, although I did hear tonight for the first time concerns about the partiality of that criteria. I think that's something I will personally look into as well as something all of you perhaps should look into as well. So overall, I'll say, I do think between the drafts ordinance was improved, but that doesn't mean I think that it's perfect or I think ready for a vote. I think now we have to really focus our attention on subsections A through C. I know in the past meetings, speakers discussed that at length. We really didn't see any edits there, that I noticed. So my concern, again, with this is, once again, overbreath. I think those sanction categories are far too over-encompassing. And I do think they could potentially lead to unintended consequences. So for example, a company that might derive more than 15% of its revenue from the combustion distribution or extraction of fossil fuels, that might not be as nefarious as you might assume. A reality with fossil fuels is they do power the world, whether you like that or not. We don't want to be unintentionally harming workers who are employed in these industries, when they're working under contexts that aren't unethical. And the same reason I think would apply for the defense industry or companies that might assist with the logistics of running jails and prisons I mean for example with a company that just simply surprise the jail or prison food, I mean with the divestment ordinance apply to that. You know, many of these businesses I think are ethical, even if you might kind of have utopian ideas about the world we want to live in, without maybe prisons or war, or anything else kind of bad. So overall I guess my suggestion here is I think we do need to refine further I don't think this ordinance is ready for a vote tonight. So I would hope that the Councilor who moved to approve for the first reading withdraw that motion. We can continue this and continue to refine, continue to work on this ordinance. I do think it's feasible, and I think it's ideal to have some sort of ordinance like this, but let's try to put emotions aside and do this the right way. Let's do this prudently, rationally, and prevent the city from getting sued because of some problem with the ordinance. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Mr. Alejo, 40 Robinson Road. So the first thing I'll say is just the late hour here. I mean, it's 1 AM, public comment is opening. This paper is extremely substantive. Like this chamber should be packed. And I'm sure a lot of people wanted to speak about this tonight, but couldn't because of how much time we spent on the other paper. I'll try to just be as condensed as possible with my thoughts on this matter. First of all, I'll start with the positive thing. That is, I do think it's a good thing to have these kind of press release statements on positions. So I appreciate that the council president did that in the form of a speech, and that the mayor released what could be called a press release, just basically saying where they're at. I think that's helpful for the public and following. So I would encourage putting things in writing so people can follow what's going on because really developments are happening rather fast. I don't support extending the INIS contract unless conditions are met. I think it's before we even talk about that, you know, first we have to say, obviously, you know, this is coming as a result of a pretty big public backlash against changes when residents actually started to become informed about what was going to happen if these changes were approved. So it goes to show you that we can't assume a louder vocal minority of activist residents are representative of what all residents think, right? And we have to also think about, yes, there were probably election concerns that got us to this point as well. So I think with the conditions that the mayor has put out there, I think generally they're pretty reasonable. But I think the first and most important one has to be restarting this process, given the concerns that have been expressed. And I don't think the Community Development Board, based on the feedback it has received, could in good conscience possibly recommend to you the map in its current form for a final vote, just because of all the feedback criticizing it that has been received. So I would encourage all of you to work with the mayor, try to reach an agreement here, and hopefully it's not just a repackaging of what has been extensively criticized. I think it's important that all of you proceed in good faith here. acknowledge this desire not for dramatic density increases that harms the character of our community. You know, people move to Medford because they don't want to live in a place like Somerville or Cambridge. It's not because they want a replica of it. We can address issues with housing demand without wiping out the reasons that Medford is a good place to live. It does offer this increasingly rare thing in the overpopulated world that we live in called home ownership. I think this kind of do or die alarmism that we've been seeing from people who think we need the density at all costs, I don't think it's helping anyone. And I think it's really ignoring this problem. Affordable housing is not a new one. This burden is really being placed disproportionately.
[Nick Giurleo]: On suburban communities like Medford. So work with the mayor. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Julio 40 Robinson Road. So, while I'm glad that we're not going to be taking a vote tonight on the value aligned ordinance. I do think that decision to table discussion on it was pretty cowardly given there's an obvious presence, people here who are going to speak against it. applaud the Councilor who voted against the motion table as well as moved to take public comment out of order. So people do have that opportunity to voice their thoughts. My comments, which I'm going to be discussing, we're assuming that we would be having that discussion tonight. So forgive me if they're a little off and some to some extent, but I'm very disappointed that, looking at the draft of the ordinance between the last public meeting and this one, that exactly zero changes were made, zero edits, despite extensive public comment at the last meeting from many people, including myself, who were critical of the language. Speaking just for me, I pointed out that subsection D of section 2-697, that's the part on divesting from human rights abusers, is very disturbingly vague, and I've yet to receive an answer to the question I asked for the record at the last meeting on this, you know who makes a determination that a company or entity has severely violated, quoting from the ordinances drafted human rights and international humanitarian law as determined by international legal Humanities bodies, including the United Nations, unquote, maybe it's implied that this would be the treasurer, based on the next section of the draft, but is the treasurer at all qualified to make this determination does she have a degree in international relations does she have a degree. uh, in or is she an international law attorney? I mean, I call on all of you to ask the treasurer the next discussion to come here and actually provide some information as to will they be qualified at all to make these determinations. The ordinance calls for if the ordinance or were to be approved. So since it remains completely unchanged between the last meeting and this one, I have to oppose it in its entirety. I think the vagueness and the overbreath is just going to open the door to political abuses. And I definitely agree, this will include targeting based on religious affiliation. So an absolute minimum, I'd hope the council, when this comes up again, would strike subsection D entirely. If they're not willing to do that, you definitely should not approve this ordinance until that language is made more specific. I would ask, which companies and entities do you wanna sanction? Name them explicitly. If that includes the entire country of Israel, don't hide the ball. Some of you have made it very clear your legislative intent is to target Israel, but at least own up to that and hear what the public has to say in response. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So obviously very happy that we're revisiting, you know, changing our zoning comprehensively, but I do have to count myself among those who think this process is moving too fast. And it's not because we're, you know, not spending a lot of time. you know, with various meetings, but this is just monumental changes, you know, inherently, they should be a slow process, it should be a slow process. I know you didn't want to hear general comments about speed. So I'll just discuss one thing in my short period of time here. I think my biggest concern, and it's been expressed by so many others, and it was expressed in part, I think, by the DPW, Commissioner Tite, is just the impact on services, right? Schools, DPW, fire, EMS, police. And as we heard from the DPW commissioner, you know, he can only really speak generally on the impact. He doesn't have any information. So that's why I think there'd really be benefit in getting studies done here that really give specifics on if population increases, you know, forecasting what that would have in terms of strain on our essential city services. So really, That, I think, is the most compelling argument for slowing things down. So I strongly support that. And I would just urge, I guess, finally here, all of you to really take your time with this and try to avoid political pressure from the council to rush forward recommendations. Because of just the drastic impact of these changes, it's super important that you take your time and try to do this in as scientific a way as possible. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Mr. Alejo, Forty Robinson Road. So for members of the public who might not be following, this letter from the mayor is requesting an appropriation of $8 million from our free cash balance, so over-budgeted taxpayer dollars, from a balance total of over $20 million for capital improvements. And as the letter indicates, this includes street and sidewalk improvements, Oak Grove Cemetery repairs, equipment and vehicles. If you recall, during the campaign to override Proposition 2 1⁄2 and raise our taxes, money was requested to fund the Department of Public Works. I'll quote from the ballot question that was approved, quote, general operations of the Department of Public Works, in parentheses, 500,000, including but not limited to additional staff for road and sidewalk infrastructure repairs. That was question seven. You also have to recall that supporters of the yes vote, including some members of this council repeatedly dismissed that we could use free cash as a substitute for raising taxes but you have to look and see what's happening here. We're using $8 million in free cash, that's what this comes down to, or at least putting it aside in a separate fund for that purpose. So I just as rhetorically you know why, given the amount of free cash that we had. that the people of our city were told raising taxes for $500,000 DPW money was necessary, and that we did suffer apocalyptic funding shortages if we didn't do it. So this isn't the first time though, that since the election, the free cash has been used to meet city funding needs. At a actually recent meeting I spoke at, the mayor requested 5 million from our free cash for HVAC repairs for the schools, another about 200,000 for security upgrades across the public schools as well. And that was approved by this council. So I view this in addition to what I discussed previously as just yet another vindication of that free cash argument. I think it's unfortunate taxpayers have to suffer as a result. So we can only hope that voters aren't misled again. And what I think is a likely event, we see another override on the ballot. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So it's very tempting for me to comment tonight on the substance of the case, but I won't. And I think there's a reason for that. And the reason is I personally believe that this holding of the United States Supreme Court doesn't have much to do with what this council is tasked with doing. So obviously SCOTUS rulings are binding on Medford, just like any municipality in the country, but this resolution really isn't about the applicability of the law as it might affect Medford and its people. To me, it seems more like a political statement, essentially, we don't like the outcome and that's fine. You don't have to like the outcome. But I'm just wondering, you know how the legal rationale right and it is pretty technical. It's talking about scrutiny, which is a very complicated legal concept, you know how that has anything to do and of course is about a law in the state of Tennessee, you know how that has anything to do with what the city council is supposed to be doing, you know, and to my knowledge, none of you are licensed attorneys and I don't see any indication this our new city solicitor contributed to this resolution in any way. And I just want to point out also that, you know, our city is facing a series of significant very local issues at the moment, like the zoning, as well as affordability, and really a host of other things. We had a talk tonight about a rat problem, right? These are very local Medford issues. And it's okay, right? You might think, you know, access to gender affirming healthcare is a local enough issue. And I probably don't disagree with that. But I think just practically speaking, if you look at just how the Massachusetts legislators composed at the moment, I don't think there's any chance it's going to pass a law banning access to gender affirming health care. So it doesn't seem like what we're talking about today is super consequential. So respectfully, I'm just going to put it out there. I don't think this is worth our time. I think there's other things we should be addressing before we worry about national political issues. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening again, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So I'll just devote my time to just putting some questions on the record that hopefully the council will be able to answer. So the first question is, what is the city invested in currently? And where can a member of the public get that information? I ask that because part of this ordinance is not just about investing, it's also about divesting. So I think it's important to know what we're invested in currently. The other question would be is just regarding subsection D of section 2 dash 697 so that's the part about no investment. of city funds and entities that severely violate human rights. I think it's a great idea, but I'm a little concerned about the vagueness. My question regarding this is who determines what a severe human rights violation is? The ordinance does reference international legal community, but what entity in the city is going to determine what the international community has to say about that? Is it the treasurer? Is it the council, the law department? Do we have anybody competent to do that at the local level? It seems not something that anybody in local government really would have knowledge about. So those are the questions I put out there. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: So, John, I was, I've lived my whole life in Medford. I grew up here from a hardworking family, Italian-American family. I went through the Medford public schools. I attended the Brooks for elementary, then the McGlynn for middle, and then I went to Medford High. At Medford High, I really focused on academics, so I studied hard. And I was fortunate enough to graduate number one in my class. After that, I decided I would go on to college, so I attended Tufts University. When I was at Tufts, I studied history and I studied international relations. I also did a minor in Italian. Graduated from Tufts, magna cum laude. and then went on to attend law school at Boston College Law. And there I had really excellent professors and a really great course of study. A lot of it was focused on municipal law and zoning and land use. I also had some clinical experience, too. I worked for a while as a prosecutor with the Malden District Court. And after that, I graduated from law school, and I took the bar exam. I passed on the first go, and I became a lawyer. And that's essentially what I do today. I've worked in criminal law a little bit. I worked for a law office in Medford Square for a while. And today I'm with a law firm in downtown Boston on State Street. It does primarily medical malpractice in court all the time defending rather prosecuting cases for people who are injured by doctors.
[Nick Giurleo]: It's a good question. I feel like the people who are considering voting for me, they should get an explanation for that because I think it's important to understand why somebody is running for elected office. So it's hard to summarize it in a few words, but to say it in a few words, or at least attempt to, I would say it's because I really do care about Medford. I love Medford. I've lived here my whole life. And I want to do, I think, what's best for Medford. I'm really just passionate about this community, and I feel like it has so much potential. I feel like a lot of it is untapped potential, so potential we could actualize. So that's a big part of it. And also, I've just been unhappy, I would say, with the way things have been going with city leadership. And I feel like we could be doing better. And I feel like I might have the qualifications to improve what's been going on in our city. qualifications primarily I'd say for my education just the fact that I've done a lot of school and I'm a lawyer and I think being a member of any sort of elected body you need to have kind of skills like that that a lawyer might have so I'd say all of that overall has kind of motivated me to run and for me it's very important you know it's easy to complain and say I don't like the way things are going but then we complain we don't take action. There you go. So for me, I said to myself, it's time to stop complaining and time to do something about that. So that's why I'm throwing my hat in.
[Nick Giurleo]: I like what you said at the beginning, that there are a lot of issues. We could sit here all day and talk, but obviously we can't do that, so let's just talk about, I think, what are the major issues, just like you asked. For me, I would say that the number one issue is probably affordability at the moment. We're seeing on the national level just an issue of cost of living. It's just becoming very expensive to live anywhere. But especially in suburban communities near big successful cities like Medford, it's just becoming really expensive to live in Medford. And I think there are various reasons why that's the case. So for me, I want to do something about the situation with affordability in our city. I feel like people are very worried and concerned, you know, how am I going to afford to stay in the home that I've lived in, you know, or my family's lived in, you know, for all our lives. So what can we do about that? How can we make this city an affordable place to live? I would say the next issue in terms of importance would probably be, and I think it's related to affordability, but economic growth. We're seeing a Medford, I think, that's stagnating a bit when it comes to economic development. So for me, this is something I want to address. What can we do to make our city more prosperous? What can we do to make our city wealthier and a wealth that everybody can have a part in? So what can we do to bring businesses to Medford, for example? What can we do to promote growth? So hopefully that's something I would be able to address if I were elected. And I would say, just maybe as a third one, just to kind of wrap up, what are the major issues here? I'd probably say it's transparency. I think we're seeing a significant problem with that currently. I think people feel left out. People feel like they don't understand what's happening at City Hall. People feel worried about this, concerned, maybe angry, upset. And I feel like information has been hard to get in a lot of circumstances. So I think transparency needs to be addressed. I think we need a Councilor who is going to address that.
[Nick Giurleo]: Sure. So for anyone who's following my speeches at city council or maybe read my op-ed in the Tufts Daily, it's no secret that I was very opposed to all three ballot questions that we were presented with in November. So I really kind of made it a point to be outspoken about that because I was deeply concerned about what I was seeing. So for anyone maybe not familiar, I'll just briefly recap them. There were three. The first one was $3.5 million for schools and DPW. This would be an override proposition, two and a half override. This is a state law that allows taxes to be raised over a certain cap. in a given fiscal year. Question 7 was a $4 million one for schools, and then question 8 was slightly different. It was called a debt exclusion, essentially a bond, $30 million for a new fire station. So these were the three questions Medford voters had to decide upon for the next election. So the reason why I was opposed, I had various reasons. The most important, I think, was just the burden this would have on residents. This would essentially be a massive tax hike that would really hurt people who are already struggling. I talked about affordability at the beginning. This was, I think, a major contributor to the affordability problems we're seeing today. This idea of any time we have a problem in the city, let's just raise taxes. That more money thrown at a problem fixes it. which I think there's misperceptions about that. So the tax impact was a big part of my opposition. And I also think there was a lot of kind of fear mongering that came behind putting these questions forward, what I call maybe scare tactics, that I don't think was supported by data at all. I can give you a specific example of that. I mean, there was talk of, you know, teacher salaries, for example. You know, oh, you know, our teacher salaries won't be competitive, but according to the Department of Education data, Medford salaries for teachers are competitive compared to elsewhere in the state. And this is data anyone can look up. There was also just a vagueness, too, you know, in terms of what is this money going to be used for specifically. We got general categories, like schools, DPW. Right. Fire station, but specifically, you know, where was this money going to go? You know, for me, I think for voters, you know, they should be entitled to know line item, in a line item manner, where money is going to go, specifically. So the fact that it was vague, you know, was another reason I felt like I couldn't support. And then another thing that just cannot be passed aside is just the free cash. that we have. Yes. Quite a bit. Quite a bit. It's gone up since the election. Yes. Funny how that happened. At the time, we had about $25 million, according to the Department of Revenue. But like I said, that's since gone up. And anyone who doesn't know what free cash is, obviously, it's not free. It does come from taxpayers. But it's essentially over-budgeted money in a given fiscal year that goes into a reserve fund that we're able to use for a broader range of purposes once it's certified. So we heard a lot of talk during the override campaign, oh, we can't use free cash to meet, for example, school expenses. But what did I see at a recent city council meeting? The mayor requested $5 million to repair deficient HVAC and the roofs at the middle schools. So $5 million that could have been used and is going to be used to net fund that. Right. Right. And then there was that same day there was another request for $200,000 for security upgrades across the school. So it really was misleading for people to say that free cash was just off the table completely. Right. I hear you. Yep. And then just kind of to wrap this up, I would say growth, right, was another alternative to raising taxes, right? If we're increasing the commercial tax base, for example, we're getting more revenue, right? And we can use that to meet funding shortages. So we ignored new growth as well as an alternative. to the overrides. You have to think also just of the diversity of our city, economic diversity of our city. What happens when taxes go up? Well, it drives out lower income people. It essentially gentrifies the city. So if you're concerned about gentrification, supporting tax hikes doesn't solve that problem. So we have to think of that. We have to think of how lower-income, middle-income people are going to be affected by tax hikes. Especially people on fixed incomes, too. You've got to think of seniors who are really struggling and barely getting by in a lot of circumstances. People with disabilities, as well.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so another great question. I'll go back to what I said again earlier, this idea of untapped potential. Medford is a city that could be much better in a lot of ways. It's great now in a lot of respects, but there's so much more we could be doing. So for anyone not familiar, recently it was announced that there will be a very big development project coming to Medford Square, essentially three city-owned lots that are going to be transformed, a combination of mixed-use retail and residential, and nobody's denying this is going to fundamentally transform the square in terms of the way it looks, in terms of the way it's structured, who's living there, who's doing business there. So, I'd say it's quite early, this proposal was only announced very recently, so I think I would need more information to form a definite opinion yet on where I stand on the proposal itself. Right. But before I talk about maybe the questions I have regarding that proposal, I'll first say I think it's super important that we all dial in on the need to revitalize Medford Square. As a guy who's studied a lot of history, Medford Square in the past used to be a very different place. And I'm not talking like 100 years ago, and it was. No, you're not. But in decades past, it was a very different place. It was much more livelier and more of a kind of gathering spot for the people of our city. But now it's in very rough shape in a lot of respects. And there have been improvements, but not enough. And you have to look also, I always say this to people, you have to look at our neighboring squares and compare them to Medford Square. Think of Davis Square, for example. Central Square in Cambridge. Harvard Square in Cambridge. Kendall. I could go on and on. Yes, you can. Do all of these. resemble Medford Square? No. These squares, you have a lot of traffic, a lot of activity. They're booming in a lot of respects. But then you look at Medford Square, where I know people who live the next town over, you know, who move here from other places, and don't even know there's such a thing as Medford Square, you know, because there's so few reasons in a lot of respects to go, because it's difficult to park. The traffic is horrendous sometimes. So what can we do to support our local businesses there? They're awesome, they're great, I love spending my money there. I'd much rather spend my money there than at the big brand name shops. I agree. What can we do to improve them, right? Bring traffic to them, business to them. For me, like I said, it's the parking and the traffic. I think a lack of access by public transit's also an issue too. Yes, yep. Right, I think there's just bus routes at the moment, right? Yep. What are the other ways we can get people to the square? But then I guess just turning to the proposal itself, Like I said, I think it's still early to form a conclusive opinion on it, but there are questions that I have, and I'm just going to go through a few of them that I have. For example, referring to the business here, how will this proposal affect the businesses that are already there? That's something to think about. Parking, of course. We always have to be thinking about parking with any project. We can't ignore parking, period. And then another important thing is, you know, if you look at the map, where is this going to be? This is going to be right next to the senior center in Medford Square, right? So how is this going to impact the senior center? Is it going to pose any safety concerns, for example? Accessibility concerns to the senior center? So seniors who regularly frequent the senior center, they're major stakeholders in this. We have to talk to them. We have to make sure their opinions are heard on this project. And then also, we just have to think, you know, how will it look? I mean, the aesthetic impact, right? You got to think about how old these buildings are in Medford Square, you know, with this big, new, modern, towering structure, you know, fit with the buildings that are already there. Obviously, when it comes to looks, we tend to put that lower in our list of priorities, but it's still something to think about. We want our community to be beautiful, too. So those are the questions I have. Overall, my suggestion to the people who are involved with this would be not to rush this process. I think we need to slow down and we need to get adequate community input. One of the things we need to do is not just take community input, but actually actively change our plans based on what people have to say.
[Nick Giurleo]: any solutions any anything you can offer for that absolutely and like i said at the beginning this is a major aspect of my campaign here is i want to prove transparency in our city okay and i'd say i've included among these people who do feel left out in a lot of ways i think it's something many of us share So for me, I think we're seeing a lot of ways to try to reduce the ability of the public to participate, right, for the purposes of, I guess you could call it expediency, trying to rush things through and promote an agenda. But we have to look at the ways, number one, in which public participation was being reduced. So I can give you some very specific examples of that. We saw a resolution uh... last year to reduce the amount of time by several minutes in which people can participate in public comment at city council meetings uh... this is terrible right because it we're now in a position where people go up and they have to rush and say everything they have to say i think it's currently three minutes very very fast they often forget things and Sometimes there's pressure from the president of the council to immediately wrap up once that three minutes is reached. It's not like he says, oh, you can have a little more time. Most of the time, that's what's happening. We're seeing also just the meetings, how late that they're going. Many of them are going far past midnight. And you think of people who have to work the next day. Maybe they have to go to school or take care of children. There's all these different reasons. why, you know, a meeting running really late is not a good thing. So I think we have to look at ways we can try to make it so we don't have that problem. But we're also seeing some kind of procedural sneakiness, too, with, for example, sticking controversial things at the very end of the agenda so that we don't get to them until midnight. I mean, there was a resolution against anti-Semitism before the council recently. We didn't get to that until very, very late in the evening. But that's such a huge community issue, you know, it's something, why are we not considering that? In any event, it was tabled, so no one had a chance to say anything about it. I remember that, yeah. I can remember also a recent meeting in which we were talking about the charter and the charter was on the agenda along with other things that merited time but weren't as pressing as getting the charter to Beacon Hill. So what ended up happening was one of the Councilors moved to take it out of order and didn't even receive a second to do that. That's just horrendous. I mean, if anyone doesn't know what that means, like a second, you're not saying you approve. You're just saying, you know, I'm willing to have the discussion on this now. And they wouldn't even do that. This is just horrendous, in my opinion. And then immediately after that, someone else proposed a motion to take something else out of order. Sorry, a motion. And that was approved without question. So it's really just insane, a lot of the things that have been happening. So for me, I want to do things. like change the rules to allow the public more opportunities to participate and do something about these like midnight, 1 a.m. meetings. Everyone should have a chance to come to these meetings and say what they think. They shouldn't have to wait hours and hours and hours to talk for three minutes. It's just not right.
[Nick Giurleo]: That is the question, I would say. It's so easy to make promises, the hardest part is delivering on them. This is something I'm thinking about now. You know, if I'm fortunate enough to get elected, it's something I should be thinking about from day one. How am I going to make these things I want to change happen? So for me, I think the most important facet of it is listening. Listening to residents. What are residents thinking and feeling? And not just pushing them to the side. You know, we have our opinions and beliefs, and we should definitely stick to our principles. But at the same time, As an elected leader, we're not, there's some who say, you know, you're elected to make decisions, and that's not false. But as an elected representative, you are an agent of the people who vote you in. You know, I think of as being a lawyer, I mean, what's my job is to represent a client. My judgment's entrusted to make decisions for the client, especially legal decisions where there's a knowledge gap. But at the same time, I'm working for the client. The client isn't working for me. And the same thing is true with, I think, being elected representative is you have to do what the people want. So listening is a big part of making things happen. And then, of course, just common things like hard work, for example. It requires hard work and not laziness. Prudence, you know, being smart and listening and learning, teaching, and it's always good to admit when you don't know something. Right. And do the homework and research, right? We have a lot of, I think, elected leaders, not just in Medford, but everywhere, who say, you know, I know what to do, right? You know, they kind of jump to conclusions about things, and they don't take a step back and say, well, maybe I should reevaluate my own perspective. Maybe it's wrong in certain respects. What can I do to make it better?
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so I think there's kind of two ways to talk about it. Number one is like, literally, how do you get in touch with me, right? I live here in Medford, obviously, I like to go to events. I do have some social media pages for the campaigns. I have a Facebook, Nick Trelaya from Medford City Council. I also have an Instagram. So I've been posting regularly about what I've been doing and who I've been talking to on social media. So if you have social media, feel free to take a look. Of course, anyone who wants to just talk with me, feel free to just find me, reach out to me, give me a call, send me a text, ask to meet for coffee. I'm happy, honestly. you know, busy guy between what I do for a living and campaign activities, but I'm going to make time for everybody. Even people who don't agree with me, I encourage us to have conversations, right? Let's talk. Let's try to iron out, you know, what we don't agree upon. Because that's how it works. That's how you get things done is you cooperate. But in terms of just the other kind of aspect of your question, I'd say is, you know, where can you find me? Like, what do I like to do in Medford? I love Medford, I honestly do, and that's why I'm running. Number one place you'd probably find me is probably the library, right? I love the Medford Public Library, all the services it provides, just the space it offers for people who are interested in learning, and I'm a guy who just loves to learn, I love to read. So I like to go there a lot, hang out in the local history room, look at the yearbooks, look at the old historical documents, and just learn about Medford and how great a city it is. Also love being outdoors, enjoying the many beautiful things that Medford has to offer, like the Fells, Brooks Estate, Mystic Lakes, Mystic River. Always like being outdoors. You want to go on a hike with me? Feel free. Let's go on a hike. Talk politics and hike. Or just enjoy the beauty of nature.
[Nick Giurleo]: And then I can't not say also, I just love going to Medford businesses as well. I love going to the Square, having lunch there, brunch, wherever it is in Medford. Just love spending my money in my hometown.
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, we do. We know how to eat in this city.
[Nick Giurleo]: Everybody in this city, regardless of ethnic background, we know how to eat in Medford.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you very much for having me here.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So I just want to point out something that I noticed in looking at this resolution in comparison to the Sanctuary City Ordinance that we recently passed. So I don't think the resolution is actually consistent with the ordinance. So going to in the ordinance section 5105, there is a reporting requirement in there already. I'm going to just read a little bit from it. It says beginning on the date of passage of this ordinance and every six months thereafter, Medford chief of police shall submit a report with the information detailed below in a de identified manner relating to the preceding six months to, and then it goes on to say, the Public Health and Community Safety Committee of the Medford City Council. In accordance with the provisions of the open meeting law and then it goes on the list specifically what is to be included in this report total number of ice detainers administrative warrants. Account of each instance in which information was given to a federal immigration agency with the names of individuals redacted and so forth, so to me, it seems like. In order to make the reporting requirement more frequent, what would need to be done is amend the ordinance. So I don't think this resolution would be enforceable because, again, I think it's inconsistent with the ordinance. So I think at a minimum, what you should do is at least talk to legal counsel about this to see if there's a conflict and if the ordinance does need to be amended. But otherwise, I think more practically, I don't think this resolution is entirely necessary because there's already a reporting requirement. So I don't think it's necessary to pass. So those are my thoughts. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. So for the members of the public who might not be following, Mayor's asking that money be appropriated from our free cash fund, essentially over budgeted money to pay for HVAC and roof work at the McGlynn and Andrews. Mayor's asking for $5 million to do that. Another item on the agenda tonight, there's another letter from her asking for almost $200,000 for security upgrades across the public schools also coming from the free cash fund. The second letter says that the balance of free cash at our disposal is over $27.5 million. And it says in that first letter that if we don't make this appropriation using our free cash, an additional almost $2 million per year would be added to the city budget for the next 30 years. That quote on our current free cash balance is even more than what the latest data available on the Department of Revenue's website indicates Medford has in certified free cash. We heard repeatedly during the override campaign arguments against the use of free cash to help meet our school's financial needs. We were told it wasn't a feasible substitute for raising taxes. I find it ironic that now we're almost half a year out from that election that we're proposing to do exactly what was said we cannot do, and that is using free cash to meet school funding needs. So I acknowledge there's a little bit of nuance to the arguments. Some said it was possible to use free cash, but not for long-term needs, and that's fair enough. But when we look at things like what is being proposed here, so infrastructure improvements that are intended to last in the long-term, it's hard for me to grasp how this wouldn't be an appropriation of free cash for long term school needs, which again we were told we could not do. That is all I have to say thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening. Nick Troleo, 40 Robinson Road. I was originally going to comment on the substance of this motion and just express some opinions about why I think it's overbroad and doesn't really do anything. I'm very frustrated with what procedurally happened leading up to this taking of this motion or this resolution, sorry, discussion of the ordinance out of order. I think it's really, really shameful that this Council would not second Councilor Scarpelli's motion to take the city charter resolution out of order and discuss that first. We're prioritizing here an ordinance on gender identity over our city charter, our constitutional foundational government, the changes in the city charter are going to significantly impact how elected officials are elected in Medford. So the fact that we would just not even second the motion and not even be courageous enough to vote no on it really is shameful. So I think everyone in this council who did that should be ashamed of themselves. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Hello again, Nick Traleo, Forty Robinson Road. Um I'd like to first just reiterate what I said in the earlier discussion about, you know, taking this resolution over resolution of the city charter. Again, concerning to me. But in terms of what happened to miss us Turk, I just like to offer a legal perspective given the lawyer and this is what I do for a living is think about legal problems. I think the issue is very narrow, to be honest with you, you know, because I think the legal questions really does a visa recipient. have that same right to freedom of speech as a citizen of the United States. And I'm not here to answer that question I mean it would require a great deal of research to try to understand what the law says on that subject. Ultimately, I think it's a question that judges have to decide and that's what's happening right it's being litigated in the federal court. So I think when we use inflammatory language, really on either side, right? Screaming about deportation or screaming about political imprisonment, it really doesn't help address this problem, which is to try to resolve a legal question. Another thing I'd like to just point out is I think this is a little bit beyond the scope of what the city council is tasked with doing, right? We're talking about federal immigration law here. I think every one of you would admit you don't have any jurisdiction. to handle that. Um so, you know, ultimately, if you're not happy with what happened with miss Oster, you do have a right to be upset about that. You do have a right to petition your elected representatives in Congress. Um but you know, let's try to respect what authority this city council has to actually do things. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Trillio again, Forty Robinson Road. So, you know, the premise of this is actually great, right? Informing people of their rights. I mean, when I do my job of defending people accused of crimes, I mean, that's something I encourage, right? Know your rights. It's important. Everybody wants that. You know, it's just the issue with supporting a lot of these resolutions is hard just because of a lot of like the inflammatory language that gets put into them. that kind of politicizes the issue right like the issue at core here is like we should inform people of their rights, which is great, but then you have things like making blanket statements that, you know, federal law enforcement are like. disproportionately targeting non-white people, you know, when that's not really supported by any evidence that I've seen, you know, to me, that just unnecessarily politicizes these decent ideas behind the resolutions and makes it hard to support them. So I think if we can just get proposals out there that just get to the issues and avoid all the political fluff, we're going to actually accomplish more. And we're going to realize we actually agree on more than we think we do. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Julio 40 Robinson road. I'll try to be brief but basically my point is I think it's very important that the council remember the last step in this process right the last step of getting this done and that is it goes to the people, the people are voting on the charter, right, so we wouldn't want to go through a process in which we finally get to the last stage of it, and then we get some sort of tragic outcome of the people reject the charter, because they feel like it doesn't reflect what they had believed over time it should contain. So that's why it's very important. I think the overarching consideration here should be, what do the people want? So it's important to put individual opinions and egos aside and look to that. So when it comes to ward versus district, when it comes to mayor on a school committee, we have to overall defer to what the people want. And when we have, Procedural issues like what we're going through now with the amendments, but also the fact that we didn't get the public comment until 1030 because we took other items up on the agenda first, despite the importance of this item, it really does diminish the ability of the council to understand what the people actually want, which will get us to that goal of getting a charter through. So I would just encourage all of you to really take that into mind. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Victor Leo, 40 Robinson Road. So with my comment I would just like to take a step back here and just remind the Council of kind of what is the overall goal of this process of getting charter out to the people to decide on. To me, it seems like one of the major objectives here is we need a charter that makes our local government accessible to the people of our city. Right. So I think it's just a matter of common sense. I'm not really going to advocate strongly for one of these systems or the other in this comment, but I think just as a matter of common sense, I lean kind of more towards the word based system as representing this way of getting people directly to their elected representatives so they can feel themselves heard. But kind of focusing on this process, you know, I would say that it really does seem like we're really speeding through it here. Like, I understand the charter review process has been going on for a while, but it really does seem like we're trying to make an extremely consequential decision that will dramatically impact our city at a very fast speed. So I think there would be value in potentially slowing things down and talking more to the people to try to get a better sense of what they actually want. So there are benefits of doing that. There's also other aspects of the charter we could take a look at that I think would deserve some of our time, right? You look at some of the provisions, changes that were being made to kind of make it easier to reduce public participation in our city government. You know, we can go back, we can look at those and try to eliminate those. So I think that's all I have to say. Thank you for listening.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening. Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. I'm going to just speak briefly tonight in favor of the A paper. And I think the simple reason is that, really, this is something that we should be discussing, right? Medford, in its entire history, never approved a Prop 2.5 override before. So really, regardless where you fall on the issue, it is an unprecedented time. for all of us. And as Councilor Scarpelli represented, you know, there seems to be some legitimate concerns across the city among residents as to, you know, what will the impact of this be. And the reality is taxes have gone up for everyone. And there is a huge cost of living crisis in the country. So it's really going to be harder now for members of our community to make ends meet. This council talks often about affordability and how they're concerned about affordability, so let's do it. Let's talk about affordability. And we really do have to continue to think of the impact, especially on the most vulnerable of the community, like the elderly, veterans, people who are suffering from disabilities. They face unique challenges. They deserve to be heard. So I really wouldn't see any kind of legitimate reason to have to go with the B paper here. I think the A paper is innocuous enough. I don't think it's political. I think it can be approved on its own. And just generally, you know, as for unhappiness over, I would say, the outcome of the election, while I personally think it's justified, I mean, I agree that really this was a decision of the voters. So, you know, if you're not happy with the outcome, express that unhappiness at the ballot box in November. It seems like we have a pretty significant difference of opinion here as to how are we going to meet city funding needs. So if you don't like the fact that these overrides passed, show up in November and vote out of office to people who supported them. Express that unhappiness. That's kind of how democracy works. So that's what I'll be doing, and I would encourage everyone else to do. That's all I have to say. Thank you for listening.
[Nick Giurleo]: Victor Alejo, 40 Robinson Road. So I'm here tonight to speak, again, against this ordinance. Although I do see some changes were made, like getting rid of effectively all of the section on enforcement. I still don't believe this ordinance is legal. And I think sooner or later, a court, probably the United States Supreme Court, to be honest with you, is going to strike it down, and it's like, as unconstitutional. The reason I believe this is, like I said the last time I was up here, is that it really does try to put local and state laws above federal law, which the Constitution prevents, as much as the city council might not like. That federal law says being in the United States unlawfully is against the law and could subject a person to removal, deportation proceedings. This is the law. If you don't like it, petition your representatives in Congress to do something about it. That's the remedy. The remedy is not to do what the city council is doing or attempting to do, which is act far beyond its legal authority. I spoke the last time about some practical reasons why I think this ordinance is bad policy. And I'll just reiterate them. I think even with the tempered language, the ordinance still does handicap to a significant degree, the police department's ability to do its job, which is to keep the community safe. And I just point as two examples here, look at 103D, talks about the police department not being able to initiate investigations. look at 103E, which limits the department's ability to make arrests. These are two fundamental functions of what police departments do. They investigate, and they make arrests of people who are not obeying the law. So us telling us, essentially, police departments don't do what you're designed to do, what you're supposed to be doing. And again, I understand there's tremendous intent tonight to approve this ordinance, but I would seriously just ask you to at least wait until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in on this, because I'm telling you, there's going to be a case about this, and it's going to strike this down, and the city's going to be embarrassed, and it's going to show that Medford's leaders don't really understand the concept of limited government. That's what I have to say tonight. Thank you for listening.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Giurleo, 40 Robinson Road. Good evening. I just want to comment tonight for the public, primarily coming before you as a licensed attorney just what exactly is in this welcoming city ordinance as I read it. I think it's common for legislators and not just the city council, but really all legislators in general to use kind of soft kind of flowery language to describe what laws are really saying. So I think this welcoming ordinance is a pretty good example of that. What you might not realize, unless you actually read the fine print like I did, is that really the crux of it is not really to welcome anybody, but actually to just significantly hamper the police department's ability to do its job of working with fellow law enforcement to keep the community safe. So what do I mean by that? I think the ordinance essentially prevents the Medford Police Department from cooperating with all federal law enforcement and enforcing immigration laws. I think, in my opinion, this is not only illegal, but also a seriously concerning violation of the concept of limited government, or as we've been hearing a lot tonight, separation of powers. The ordinance, for example, says that Medford PD can't comply with immigration detainers, detainers being requests from the federal government to hold a person who's in the country unlawfully. So this means even if the Medford PD became aware a person was violating a federal immigration law, Medford PD wouldn't be allowed to do anything about it, which is confusing to me because it's the job of law enforcement agencies to enforce the laws and our city council and mayor making it essentially unlawful for them to do their jobs. The previous draft of the ordinance that I read mentioned a cause of action, basically giving an opportunity to sue the city at the taxpayer's expense if this ordinance were to be violated. I'm grateful to see that that's out of the ordinance now. But it was in there before, which I do think speaks to the motive behind this ordinance. Another thing that concerns me is the very end where it talks about the Medford Police Department, having to report data on its detainers, and you think that data would go to write to this legislator the city council but. That's not what it says. It goes right to the mayor, which is a little suspicious to me. So my legal opinion is I think this is a legal ordinance. And even if it isn't, it shouldn't be. And I think it just is a matter of policy, too. It's terrible. Shouldn't be on the books. That's my take. Thank you. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Jorleo 40 Robinson Road. Before I criticize this resolution I'll just say, I'm sorry, President Bears you had to go through that that was very inappropriate. We probably disagree on a lot of things but nobody deserves to be treated like that so I guess
[Nick Giurleo]: we have to have civil discussions
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you. I appreciate that. So now for the criticism. There's mentioned in this resolution here of cost of living, a cost of living increase.
[Nick Giurleo]: Okay, well I wasn't aware.
[Nick Giurleo]: Okay. Totally, totally gone. Great, so that makes it.
[Nick Giurleo]: not attacking you, the version of the resolution that I had in front of me said that, so I didn't know that that was taken out.
[Nick Giurleo]: Thank you. In any case... I should be nicer to you more often. We can have civil discussions in the city council, we really can, even though we disagree. But I'll speak about just in general then the cost of living issue. You know, our city, these overrides, this is what it was all about. I mean, this is what was raised as a problem, cost of living crisis across the country. I mean, we saw in the national election here that cost of living crisis really impacted voters. It really made a difference. It led to a very unexpected outcome. So it's something that can't be, in any context, when we're talking about raises, something that can be disregarded here. And we have to take, you know, what people are experiencing, what people are feeling, what people are suffering through into consideration. I mean, we can't be forgetting, as Bernie Sanders himself said, the working class people. I mean, we have to think about that. We have to think about the impact of our fiscal decisions. So that's just my general comments tonight. Thank you. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, G-I-U-R-L-E-O, Forty Robinson Road. So on the subject of the math, my question relates to essentially, you know, these overrides and so-called consequences of not passing them, of not approving them. So we're hearing kind of these expressions of certainty. You described what will happen if the overrides don't pass. We've heard from Councilor Bears, there will be cuts. We've heard from Councilor Leming, the roads won't be repaired. So my question is, you know, where is this math? I mean, where is, for the average citizen who's not a mathematician, you know, where are we going to see this data that shows that these consequences will actually result if these overrides don't pass? I've looked and I haven't really been able to find anything. So where do I go?
[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, but data on- We're not doing follow-ups.
[Nick Giurleo]: To her response.
[Nick Giurleo]: Okay, just clarifying her answer, because I'm not quite understanding.
[Nick Giurleo]: I'm just, the clarification I'm requesting here is, are we saying that various reports and data showing that there are certain needs are the same thing as saying that if we don't pass this overrides, that this X or Y will happen? Are those two exactly equivalent? They don't seem exactly equivalent to me.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Nick Giurleo, G-I-U-R-L-E-O 40 Robinson Road. I'm speaking in favor of this resolution. I'm very happy to see it. Seniors really are important in Medford, so it's good to reach out to them in any way we can on issues that really will impact them. The way I see this resolution, it's just calling for a fairly innocuous community meeting to give our seniors some information on what these ballot questions are really all about. Given my personal opinion that approval of them will have a disastrous impact on seniors. I think it's very important to educate them on the issues so they can come to those conclusions themselves. My opinion is based on this just terrible cost of living crisis the country is facing. That crisis is due to fiscal irresponsibility. And it seems like these ballot measures, if approved, are really gonna be promoting that, which has led to this cost-of-living crisis. There really is, I think, some misinformation out there about what these ballot questions really are all about. We hear words being used, like investment, when we're not really saying what this really is, which is just taxation. People really are struggling. It's important to educate them on the issues so they can understand why they're struggling. And I would just highlight what the previous speaker said about the severe economic challenges that seniors throughout the country really are facing that I think we can all agree on. They're on fixed incomes. And data shows that when seniors on fixed incomes face unexpected increased costs, they're forced to forego necessities, necessities like food, necessities like prescription medications. really do have to be aware that recklessly raising taxes will have real consequences. You know, it's more than just harming the economic diversity of the city. In some cases, this could be life or death for people who are vulnerable. So I would encourage everyone to approve of this resolution. Thank you for listening.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Giorleo, G-I-U-R-L-E-O, 40 Robinson Road. I would just like to use my time tonight to speak in favor of Councilor Scarpelli's resolution and to provide a legal opinion on some of the legal issues that we've been talking about tonight. I'm a licensed attorney, so I feel that might be appropriate. I'm not speaking on behalf of any organization, just speaking here as a concerned citizen. So I've reviewed the materials here, I've reviewed Councilor Scarpelli's letter, the resolution, the law at issue, the rules at issue. Councilor Scarpelli claims that his rights under the statute 43-22 were violated. I have the statute here, I'll read from it. Any ordinance, order, or resolution may be passed through all its stages of legislation at one session, provided that no members of the council objects thereto. But if any member of the council objects, the measure shall be postponed for that meeting. Councilor Scarpelli says the statute's applicable, and that he invoked it at that June 25th meeting, and I agree with him. I was actually there at that meeting, and I heard him say that. I heard him invoke his right under that statute. Now, five financial papers were presented at that evening and passed through all stages of their legislation, as the statute says, at one session over Councilor Scarpelli's clear objection, an invocation of 4322. Therefore, a vote on those papers per the plain language of the statute here should have been postponed for the next meeting. My interpretation of that statute does differ from Councilor Tseng's interpretation. I think suspension of the rules through 32 was improper. State statutes do supersede all local rules of this council and any council in Massachusetts. And the council's own rules recognize this. If we actually look at the text of rule 32, the suspension rule, it states that suspension is only allowed, I'm quoting, insofar as these rules are not of statutory sources or origin. Rule 21 states that any finance paper appearing on the council agenda for the first time shall be automatically laid on the table for one week when such action is requested by any member. That's clearly of statutory origin, in my legal opinion here. By its plain language, you're basically codifying through that rule that we have in the council here, 4322. So in summary here, not only do I think the council violated 4322, I think it violated its own internal rules here. And more politically speaking, I would say our city really should be promoting financial transparency. So I really do believe a vote in favor here. about 30 seconds. I really do believe a vote in favor of here would do just that. So I'll support it. And also just stay for the record, my legal opinion here that, uh, I do believe Councilor Scarpelli has legally meritorious claims. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nick Gioia, 40 Robinson Road. So there are a number of reasons why I'm opposed to all of these overrides, but there's one that I'd really like to bring to attention of the council tonight, just for the purposes of time. To me, it's just incredible how exceedingly vague they are. If you just read, for example, the one called To Invest in the Future of Medford Public Schools, we're talking about a humongous sum of money for general operations. What does that even mean, general operations? We have increased access to the arts. Well, what does that mean either? So you're asking the voters here to vote on something where they don't even entirely know what they're voting on. That's very concerning to me. Now, generally speaking, I think we have to acknowledge also that people really are suffering with taxation. The cost of living crisis in our country is incredible at the moment. There's a lot of economic data supporting that it's bad. So we're saying to ourselves, you know, increase taxes, but we're not really addressing the real impact on people who have to pay these taxes. right? Everyone wants services. Everyone wants to improve our schools, our roads. We have to acknowledge reality. We can't pay for things we can't afford. Another reason why people are leaving Medford, going other places, or not moving here in the first place is because it's too expensive to live here. And part of the reason, I'd say main reason it is, is because buying a home here requires you to pay enormous sums of money in property taxes. It's really an insufferable situation, and I really don't think these overrides are going to do anything to improve the economic diversity of our city, much less any of the other problems we've been talking about tonight. So for those reasons, I'm very opposed to these overrides. As much as I love the Medford public schools and I want to increase services, we have to be realistic here. We have to do what we're able to do. This is coming from a guy who went to Medford High, who was number one in his class. I really do care about this city, but I have to acknowledge reality first. Thank you.
[Nick Giurleo]: Nicholas Jorleo, Forty Robinson wrote, I'm speaking tonight in opposition to this resolution. There's talk of efficiency, there's talk of, this is about making the process more open to other people, so they don't have to wait, because maybe people have to go to work tomorrow, or there's other reasons why they don't want to stay the whole night and wait for their turn to speak. To me, though, I just don't buy that. I really do think this is pretextual. I really do think this is an attempt to limit democracy in Medford. And it's very sad, it's very troubling. This is a public forum here. This body of elected officials is supposed to be accountable to the people of Medford. We should have an opportunity to stand up here and tell you what we think. Now reflected in the previous debate here on the registry resolution, it's very clear here that this council doesn't really want to listen to the popular will. Every single person who spoke here tonight was opposed to the registry resolution and it passed. Aside from one councilor who had a change of conscience and another who was opposed from the beginning, the resolution passed without any sort of consideration of the public input. And it really reflects how detached from reality the city council is. It's sad. They're not reflecting the popular will here. I'm a person, I have to wake up at 6 a.m. to go to work every day. I don't wanna stay here all night to speak here for a few minutes about an issue. I wanna go to bed, I wanna go home, spend time with my family, relax, read a book, do something normal after work. But I wait, I wait my turn, I wait patiently, I stand up here, I speak, I say what I have to say. It's part of the process. We can't be limiting public availability here. We can't be limiting public participation in debate. This resolution is really, it's despicable. Mr. Scarpelli was exactly correct. Thank you, I'm opposed.
[Nick Giurleo]: We must always recognize that- 30 seconds, Travis.
[Nick Giurleo]: You have 30 seconds, Pri.
[Nick Giurleo]: Good evening, Councilors. My name is Nicholas Shirleo. I live at 40 Robinson Road. I'm a lifetime Medford resident, an attorney, and director of an international relations publication. I'm not speaking on behalf of that publication tonight. I am, though, speaking in opposition personally to the resolution. Putting aside why the council is spending time crafting legislation on international politics when our city faces plenty of problems on its own, the proposed resolution in effect supports the totalitarian government of Cuba, a socialist dictatorship with a horrendous human rights record. As Human Rights Watch, one of many organizations, has highlighted, Cuban government human rights abuses have included arbitrary arrests of activists and independent journalists, torture of prisoners, significant repression of free speech, and extrajudicial killings. Nearly a million people have fled Cuba's communist regime. Imagine some or many have called Medford their home. We should embrace these people, not tout Cuban government propaganda at our city council meetings. Put simply, a vote for this resolution is a vote in favor of the current regime. The United States of America should not be doing business with dictatorships. Why would Medford support the contrary? Thank you.