[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clark in 50 Princeton Street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I'm going to focus on the fossil fuel aspect of this.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I wanted to say that if the topic is trying to reduce pollution, reduce waste, reduce litter, reduce regime change operations in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere,

[Patrick Clerkin]: I tend to support that if it's a substantive effort.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I do not see this as a substantive effort.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I see this more as signaling.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I wanted to focus on, so the fossil fuel industry is actually three industries.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's fossil fuels, there's chemicals and plastics derived from fossil fuels.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so a lot of people think if you take on the fossil fuel companies, you're just taking on things like hummers and smokestacks and the plastic we see on the side of the road.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I think that's noble, but I just wanted to bring to the attention of the council and the people in the chamber other things that are made from fossil fuels and its byproducts.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Audio and video equipment, including microphones, cameras, and digital displays for podcasts, e-learning, and remote access.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The grip tape and seat on your bicycle handlebars.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The paint that forms bike lanes.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The asphalt that forms the lanes themselves, or the equipment to mine the gravel.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Dyes and ink for flags and hair.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Paints for artists.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Stickers and marketing materials for causes.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Clothing, glasses, frames, and lenses.

[Patrick Clerkin]: the toys your kids and dogs play with, your cat's house, the safety equipment for work crews, the circuit board components and casings within your electronics, the insulation on the wiring that charges your electric vehicle and keeps your data and social media on a server-based cloud, medical equipment including the masks, testing kits, and ventilator components during the pandemic,

[Patrick Clerkin]: Hygienic cleaning chemicals and deployment systems, laboratory test equipment for scientific research, sex toys, contraceptives, and lubricants, sealants and insulation to make homes and buildings more energy efficient, refrigerants, desiccants, preservatives, and packages for food transportation,

[Patrick Clerkin]: paneling, gasketing, and control panels for cars and public transport, components, chemicals, and fuels for wind turbines and solar panels, along with their transportation, assembly, and maintenance, fireproof battery housings, and chemicals.

[Patrick Clerkin]: we're pretty intertwined with fossil fuels, and in some cases, pretty intimately, like with the sex toys, and it would be a pretty messy breakup, I would say, with fossil fuels.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So considering all of that, I would say we need to be more mature about what we're divesting from, and to realize that we live in a very complex world with a lot of trade-offs, and we shouldn't just make simple yes-no decisions, this is good, this is evil.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clerkin, 50 Princeton Street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I wanted to address two particular sub-issues on this, and the first is related to the wholesale divestment from particularly the fossil fuel industries.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I think that people don't realize the ripple effects of the fossil fuel divestment.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There are other industries, the chemical industry, the plastics industry.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I have critiques of all of these industries, and I think that there's

[Patrick Clerkin]: substantial negatives to them, but there's also substantial positives to them.

[Patrick Clerkin]: A lot of what we have that we take for granted are clothes, eyeglasses, equipment around us, medical equipment, vehicle equipment that reduce vehicle weight and that reduce vehicle emissions.

[Patrick Clerkin]: A lot of good things come from the fossil fuel industry and its byproducts.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so I'm concerned with the wholesale divestment, first of all.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And the second thing is, I think there are other industries that equally have downsides to them.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So looking at defense, we're focusing on how the defense industries have more of an emphasis on

[Patrick Clerkin]: war rather than defense and peace.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I understand that criticism.

[Patrick Clerkin]: You could add to the list media, which tends to emphasize getting people profiting off of getting people to hate each other.

[Patrick Clerkin]: You could focus on the pharmaceutical industry, which often focuses more on sickness rather than on health.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I think it's easier to focus on defense industries and fossil fuel industries when they're located geographically in say Texas or the or the south of the United States and not focus on the pharmaceutical industry which is in our own backyard which has

[Patrick Clerkin]: jobs and money flowing through the veins of Massachusetts more so than these things that we're trying to divest.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I think it's very specific and odd to focus on just several of these things and wholesale divest from them.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I think if you look at the broad systems level perspective, there's tradeoffs everywhere, and I think it should be looked at more piecemeal.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clerkin, 50 Princeton Street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I wanted to focus on some actionable proposals for how this process might be smooth for the board, the council, the public, pretty much all the stakeholders.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So we've already heard about the pace of the process.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Another piece is the presentation of information.

[Patrick Clerkin]: One of the things that comes to mind is anytime there are maps like that,

[Patrick Clerkin]: really calling out in red line form the differences between the two versions of the maps will really help because it's very difficult to look at two maps where a lot of things have changed and wrap your head around what exactly is going on and what's different between the two images.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The second thing is the different zoning codes.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's the old code, the new code.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I think it would help to have a diagram that really visually conveys the transition from one taxonomy to another taxonomy, like what merged, what split, what was added, what's the same.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It's difficult when you have two different vocabularies, basically, and you're trying to compare the two.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The third is the website is generally pretty good.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I was actually scrolling through it, but I would say that really reassessing, having someone look at it and just de-jargoning anything, particularly headlines.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I think that for the most part, it's good, but there's still some things out there that someone might look through it and say, what is this?

[Patrick Clerkin]: And plus some of the things within the tabs are kind of text walls.

[Patrick Clerkin]: People don't really like to delve into those often.

[Patrick Clerkin]: it's a lot easier to do that.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So visuals certainly help.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And then the third category of item is just aligning incentives.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I would say that anyone who has possibly anyone who has a property along the edge of a thoroughfare where we would be building taller buildings naturally, that's where you would put more

[Patrick Clerkin]: would have their property taxes decreased.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Um anyone who was right next to the tall buildings would have their property taxes decreased because they're losing the value of their of their homes and basically phasing out towards pretty much the edge of the shadow of the building.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The properties in the immediate area would have their property taxes decreased as well.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So that would align the city's incentives with the residents incentives, so they would basically think twice about having really tall buildings.

[Patrick Clerkin]: They gain

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you for having me, John.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It's really great to be here.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I've been in Medford for nine years now, coming up in September.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And before that, I grew up in North Reading.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I've been a North Shore guy my whole life.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I went to North Reading Public School.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And when I was in school, my favorite subjects were actually history, geography, and literature.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So what does somebody whose favorite subjects are those do after that?

[Patrick Clerkin]: They go to school for engineering, of course.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I went to Northeastern for mechanical engineering and it was it was partly

[Patrick Clerkin]: My high school had a couple programs.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It was not like the Medford High School with these great vocational programs, but it had an architecture program or a class, I should say, an engineering class, and those sort of stoked my curiosity.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So when I went to Northeastern Mechanical Engineering, did a couple co-ops there.

[Patrick Clerkin]: If you're familiar, they have this, you do classes one semester, jobs another semester.

[Patrick Clerkin]: That was great because that was work experience.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I also got involved with a fraternity when I was there and was eventually the president of the fraternity.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So that's my entry point into leadership roles.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And really post-college, I started working for a company in the semiconductor test industry.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Nothing that you or I would ever work with.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It's really company to company stuff.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I was there for a couple years and I just kind of decided, you know, corporate was not really like I was too restless for corporate.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so I ventured out on my own and I really got involved with

[Patrick Clerkin]: At one point, I was doing my own entrepreneurial pursuit called Tether, and that was in the realm of communications and software.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And then I also started making money through doing handyman work, which I really enjoyed because that was more practical, hands-on.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It was very face-to-face with clients, and I got to know a lot of my neighbors.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I'll say that

[Patrick Clerkin]: Those were sort of my entry points into, because people look at why you're involved in politics.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Engineering is sort of this profession that allows you to look deeply at problems from a systemic level and to look at the limitations of systems and to look at the possibilities.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So it's that.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It's a combination of having gotten to know my neighbors through the handyman work.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I would say it's also the desire to be civically involved and an intermediary between people.

[Patrick Clerkin]: OK.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, so I mentioned before that I started doing handyman work.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And at one point, one of my neighbors said, oh, I really wish that we had better options for city council and that people were better addressing these issues.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I looked into it.

[Patrick Clerkin]: That was 2023.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I really jumped in at the last minute.

[Patrick Clerkin]: This was like a week before the you have to get signatures to get your name on the ballot.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It was like a week before the signature deadline.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So when I say I was running for council, it was more like I was sprinting for council because it was such an immersive and quick process.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But what I learned from last time, I didn't win last time, but what I learned was that one of the biggest issues that affects the city, that affects all of the problems that people see, is the communications issue that's citywide and it's gotten

[Patrick Clerkin]: particularly bad over the last five or six years with the lack of a common hub of information, like a city paper or something like that.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so now we have some of these new sources, like we've got Medford Happenings, we've got Gotta Know Medford, we've got some things that have filled that void.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But after I ran last time, I really got this

[Patrick Clerkin]: civically oriented group of people together who really all saw the communications as a problem.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And we were meeting every week at the library, pretty much from New Year's to Memorial Day, trying to set something up.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And what we came up with was called the Medford Community Network.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And it kind of got shelved, but we got pretty far with that.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And that's the foundation that I'm building upon this time.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I have some ideas around improving the communications throughout the city.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Well, so there's kind of two things that need to, two realms of problem that need to be addressed.

[Patrick Clerkin]: One of them is infrastructure, and one of them is more cultural in the city.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so from the infrastructural side of things, I'm really focusing, first of all, on citywide issues and local issues.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But the ones that I've put on the back of my literature are the city budget,

[Patrick Clerkin]: The development, both commercial and residential, zoning is a big, big topic right now.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The high school, what to do with that, whether it's going to be a new high school, whether it's going to be doing renovations.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And then the fire station is another one.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I think that was pretty much it.

[Patrick Clerkin]: One of the biggest things that I've noticed is lacking is it's unclear what the processes are for these things, or if there are processes.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I'm not putting that on any given person, but coming from that engineering perspective that I mentioned before,

[Patrick Clerkin]: What I would be looking for is some kind of a flow chart that says, OK, this is the first stage.

[Patrick Clerkin]: This is the second stage.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Does it pass this stage?

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yes or no.

[Patrick Clerkin]: If it's a yes, it goes in this direction.

[Patrick Clerkin]: If it's a no, it goes in this direction.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And it says the different departments that are involved, the different stakeholders that are involved.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And it really gives...

[Patrick Clerkin]: It would really add to the transparency and accountability that you often hear politicians talk about, which often unfortunately falls through the cracks.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I think that there's ways to do that now.

[Patrick Clerkin]: fiddled around, people talk a lot about AI these days, and I'm not really on the doom train.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I'm not really on the hype train.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I try to walk the middle path.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But I was fiddling around with chat GPT and just asking it some questions like, you know, hey, generate for me a sample of a of a flowchart depicting a municipal Department of Public Works filling in cracks and holes in city streets, you know, what that would look like, or

[Patrick Clerkin]: Or show me what a typical budgeting process would look like for a city of 65,000 people.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And it's a little bit wonky.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It'll spit out something with typos.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But generally, it's pretty good.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It's impressive.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I think that those could be models for what we could build in the city.

[Patrick Clerkin]: That's one thing.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's others, but yeah.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yes, yes, and yes.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I hear that problem all the time.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I mean, that's probably the biggest problem that I hear, and I do think it can be addressed and it can be solved, but it's not an easy snap your fingers fix.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, the zoning thing right now that's happening.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I would say that thankfully, I just saw the other day, the mayor is releasing a letter saying, hey, I think we should move the decision for this process to the fall because a lot of the public is feeling caught off guard or uninformed about this, and I think that's very much the right choice.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Let's take the zoning.

[Patrick Clerkin]: A lot of people feel like this information is being dropped out of the void at the last minute and that the public comment period has passed and that there are these sort of

[Patrick Clerkin]: uh, in sincere efforts to get public opinion, like the, these, uh, cardboard cutout attempts to, to, hey, we're, we're listening to the public, but are you really listening to the public?

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so, um, once again, I'm not trying to, to put that on, on any given, you know, person.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Uh, in some cases I do think it's deliberate where, you know, the, the process has already gotten to a certain point and all the consultants have gotten involved and, and it's just about done and it's like,

[Patrick Clerkin]: Like we don't want to get the public to shut this down at this point.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So let's kind of you know Pass it through the through the later hours of the night or something like that.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But then I think other times there's

[Patrick Clerkin]: there really is information that's posted out there, but it's posted in one of the drawers of the bureau in the city website, and who is ever going to find that?

[Patrick Clerkin]: It doesn't come out of the drawer, and so a couple weeks ago I really scoured the city website, and I'll be the first to say that

[Patrick Clerkin]: The new city website is actually, it has some problems, but it's much better than what it was.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And there's a lot of great stuff on there.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's maps of the city that show these plans.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's all these different project proposals.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But if you don't know that they're there, like what good are they to some extent?

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so so that's why I think that there needs to be a bunch of people in the city the council included Working together to to address that to work with this, you know, you've interviewed gotta know Medford, right?

[Patrick Clerkin]: They could be a new they could fill that void.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, and and I think that the city

[Patrick Clerkin]: On the front page of the city website, there currently is a section that shows the quick links for city services.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And then beneath that, there's news and events.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But I think there needs to be either a link or a little bulletin board that shows all of the currently ongoing city projects and links to key maps and key project developments.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I think that would go a long way as well.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, I think it was the right choice.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, I mean I don't think that the immediate, and things have gotten bad enough where to some extent people might feel that this is the only option that they have, but I don't feel like the answer is just to squeeze the life out of the homeowners, you know, and wrench money out of their equity.

[Patrick Clerkin]: You know, it's not to say like taxes are a necessary evil, but I think if it's part of a bigger package and a wider lens view of how to balance the city budget, I do need to familiarize myself more with the the details of the city budget.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But broadly, I think we need to focus on seriously

[Patrick Clerkin]: increasing and diversifying the commercial and industrial tax base, and you don't do that in the residential areas.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The residential component of development is a separate issue, but you do it on the Mystic Ave corridor, you do it partly in the Wellington area, in East Medford, you do it in places that are already really

[Patrick Clerkin]: you know, zoned for and have significant commercial and industrial development.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I think it's a damn shame that in the city, and this isn't just someone who's deeply at this point, I consider myself pretty aware of what's going on, but I've heard these comments from people who

[Patrick Clerkin]: really are just casually observing.

[Patrick Clerkin]: They go for walks with their dogs, they take notes of things.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But some of these boarded up shops and stretches of boarded up windows, I have a friend who lives over near the royal house and we used to take my dog for a walk and it can't even be real.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's a sausage casing business and it's just been shut forever and there's a whole strip of

[Patrick Clerkin]: And you see a lot of those types of things throughout Medford.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I think that the city can create certain incentives, like maybe expedited permitting processes could be one.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Maybe the utilities are a mess, in the sense of particularly the streets, making streets in front of businesses more attractive.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And there's other financial arrangements that can be made.

[Patrick Clerkin]: One last thing is I do think that it doesn't have to be an either or thing of you have to wholly satisfy the homeowners or wholly satisfy the renters or wholly satisfy the landlords.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It's something that if it's done wisely, it can balance all of those forces.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Because Medford at the end of the day is an ecosystem and you need all those groups.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah well It would be nice if there if there was an audit but that is there's been some resistance to that and When it comes to priorities in the city for for spending I would say

[Patrick Clerkin]: putting a significant amount of that money into projects that are already underway, like the fire station is a big one that was already promised to the firemen and the fire tower when the new police station was put in.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And there's a plan for that on the city website.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So seeing that through is one thing.

[Patrick Clerkin]: looking seriously at how far we can stretch the money that we have.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I do think that, you know, Rick Orlando was on in one of your episodes and he was talking about the process of building schools.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The school is one of these looming things.

[Patrick Clerkin]: What do we do with the school?

[Patrick Clerkin]: Do we renovate it?

[Patrick Clerkin]: Do we do it over again?

[Patrick Clerkin]: Well, Rick talked about how if we're

[Patrick Clerkin]: you know, if we were even to consider redoing the school all over again, we're not going to get the same, you know, abatements as previously.

[Patrick Clerkin]: You know, there was that racial balancing that paid for, you know, like 90% of the schools or 75% of the schools.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I think we should prioritize the school because this school does have this studio that we're in right now is a gem.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's the robotics club that's a gem.

[Patrick Clerkin]: This school has,

[Patrick Clerkin]: I'm blanking on the name right now, Bistro 489.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's some really great stuff at this school, both vocational and otherwise.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But maybe we could look at it, how do we stretch our dollars?

[Patrick Clerkin]: Some people say, absolutely no way, never renovation, redo the whole thing.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Well, first of all, we're not going to get those refunds that we previously did.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Second of all,

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's good bones in this school.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's a lot of, I mean, it's a brutalist architectural style like the Boston City Hall, but maybe efforts could be done to make it more, you know, coming into the school to feel less sort of ominous, I would say.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And to just renovate parts of the building.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It was built for a certain number of students that it currently is not filling, I don't think.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I've taken a tour of the whole school, so that is a goal of mine.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I have a neighbor down the street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: a couple, and they just moved here a couple years ago, and they're saying that they're already considering moving out.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Like, they have a baby, they have another one on the way, and they're like, the school system, we just, you know, whether it's true or not, perception is reality to them.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And they say, you know, we're moving out.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I think they're not alone with that.

[Patrick Clerkin]: There's people who look at the school.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I would consider that like,

[Patrick Clerkin]: A hemorrhage within Medford is the school system.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And outside of that, I would just say, yeah, the streets.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The streets are a mess.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And putting forward on the city website, there's a plan for all the streets, prioritizing them by area.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Really putting that forward and putting that next to that process flowchart that I was describing before.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So people can see and hold the city accountable.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Those are the big ones.

[Patrick Clerkin]: see it from two angles one is the on the streets level which is the meat and potatoes of like what is what is the average resident of Medford see and they see bad quality streets they see and unfortunately the bad things tend to stick out more than the good things and the things that are working you know you don't you know and when you're paying attention to things you don't go oh that's working really well you go oh that's a mess

[Patrick Clerkin]: So it's really unfortunate.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But people tend to lock into the things that aren't working.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So the state of the streets, the fact that we have a bunch of business sections that are

[Patrick Clerkin]: more worn down or mismatched or, uh, you know, not really diversified in the sense of, you know, not to, not to demean banks and credit unions and barbershops, but we have a lot as I walk around, we have a lot of both, both of those.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So, um, a, a focus on the, what people actually see on the front end and then simultaneously on the back end, there's all these, these, um,

[Patrick Clerkin]: these processes and communications failures that are happening that would make addressing the front end more possible.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I'll say that

[Patrick Clerkin]: this is both meat and potatoes and back end but I mentioned before how there's an infrastructural part of this and then there's also a cultural part just getting people to talk to each other again and not see each other as villains you know it's it's really like the number of people that have just disengaged has left the the smaller public square open to to be taken over by

[Patrick Clerkin]: Brats and bullies I would say And there's a lot of people who do participate who really just want to see things work and they're trying to get things work get things to work, but you know, there's there's also a lot of rancor and a lot of

[Patrick Clerkin]: stuff that sucks the oxygen out of the room, you know, and I do, I want to see neighbors talking to neighbors again and seeing each other as such, rather than like, you're a red, you're a blue, you're this, you're that.

[Patrick Clerkin]: It's not helping.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so that cultural component play in people talking to each other again, plays into whether this stuff gets done and whether neighborhoods can start participating in the political process.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And by the way, block parties are one of the biggest examples of this.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Like that might seem like a small thing, but it's a sign in my it's like a vital sign, in my opinion, of like a healthy neighbor.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Well, some of the more relatable things would just be discovering new restaurants and trying new things on the menu and discovering like, oh, we've got Wright's Pond in North Medford that has its own beach.

[Patrick Clerkin]: You know, that's not a lot of towns have that, you know, that aren't oceanfront.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So there's just a lot of cool stuff that I've been discovering.

[Patrick Clerkin]: sort of a behind-the-scenes satisfaction is just seeing how How much common ground that there is with all the people that I talked to I really enjoy the conversations that I have with people and just finding out that like this person who would Never associate with that person actually has so much So much of a common description of what they consider the strengths and the weaknesses of the city, you know, and and so there really is like a

[Patrick Clerkin]: a ton of budding potential.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And it's just seeing that validated is really reinforcing, I would say.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So that's one of my favorite things.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But negative things is the counter to that.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Well, first of all, driving over all those potholes all the time, that's definitely a negative thing.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Passing by a lot of these things that have so much potential, but it's just not realized.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Those boarded up buildings, those neighborhoods that could be having block parties and could be getting together but aren't.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Um, and then also just the people who are talking past each other, but, but missing the opportunity to sort of connect, you know, like two ships in the night.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yes.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you, John, for giving me a platform to talk about some things that are just quick soundbites.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yep, so my campaign email address is clerkin4medford.com and that's C-L-E-R-K-I-N.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And my campaign website is clerkin4medford.com.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The email address is at the bottom of that if you don't remember it.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And then I'm on Instagram.

[Patrick Clerkin]: facebook and reddit and all those are uh clerking for medford some what whether it's the number four or the word four for you'll find me good stuff patrick thank you and and i should just one last little plug is on my uh website my campaign website i do a weekly blog updating what i'm doing and you know the people i talk to and the canvassing the events all that so uh check that out yep

[Patrick Clerkin]: I can tell, and you've got a lot in the pipeline.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clark in 50 Princeton Street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I actually like this idea.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I thank the Councilors that put it forward for putting it forward.

[Patrick Clerkin]: But I also think it's half the story.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I do think that people tend to, not everyone, but a lot of people tend to bloviate and they tend to like a gas fill whatever space is given to them.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I think that Medford is going through a tough time of transition and transformation right now, and that we're pretty dysfunctional.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so I do think that it is important to have some measures like this in place to, to sort of

[Patrick Clerkin]: rain people in a bit and I think in a functional city, you have the public and the governing bodies, holding each other accountable, as well as having some degree of self regulation but you can always rely on the self regulation so

[Patrick Clerkin]: I like what was put forward, and I like that Councilor Callahan suggested some alternatives to it as well.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The other half of this, though, is that I think that the council should potentially consider, and the committee's address is part of this, but putting maybe less agenda items per agenda.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And then the second thing, and I've mentioned this before, is staying within the realm of local issues, because bringing in national and global issues as well

[Patrick Clerkin]: a couple weeks back, Gaza and the embargo in Cuba, tonight talking about some of the big oil company issues.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Those might touch on local issues to some extent, but I think that it also massively extends the conversation beyond the local purview.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And we'll, as time goes on,

[Patrick Clerkin]: very much track, like even if everything that was talked about here was put into effect, I think that it would still extend the conversation into the hours of the night.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So something that I've been focusing on on the side is just filling the communications and information void in the city.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And if outside of council, some of the councillors wanted to talk to me on how to better reach the public in certain ways, I'd be open to that conversation.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you.

[Patrick Clerkin]: We're gonna go- And that was two and a half minutes, by the way.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Lurken, 50 Princeton Street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Like Councilor Tseng, I'm a man who appreciates nuance.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And on this particular topic, I think that it's an example of a mistake we all often make, which is comparing the best aspects of something that we support with the worst aspects of something that we don't, rather than the best and worst aspects of both.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so really what I'm addressing here is kind of the philosophy behind this rather than kind of the details of it.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I think one of the mistakes that's made with with fossil fuels and I have many many criticisms against the fossil fuel industry, and it's negative externalities, but we're comparing a mature industry with against an industry that isn't mature yet which is renewables.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So,

[Patrick Clerkin]: Fossil fuels is a fully scaled enterprise at this point.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And it's sort of like comparing Facebook as a startup to Facebook as a mega corporation, because we are not really aware of the externalities of scaling renewable energy yet.

[Patrick Clerkin]: We don't know the externalities of scaling windmills or solar panels.

[Patrick Clerkin]: We have small arrays of these things so far.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Everything, once you scale it, has

[Patrick Clerkin]: side effects and has unintended consequences.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So windmills, for example, you have to source the materials from all across the globe through supply chains, some of which might be in fraught regions which require forever wars like oil has, some of which might require child labor to produce, some of which might have

[Patrick Clerkin]: byproducts that you have to accumulate in big open pits.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Some of them might have concentrated waste products like nuclear fuel.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Some of them might have dispersed waste products like the CO2 emissions of fossil fuels.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So when you really look at this from a systems level perspective, which we're not really used to doing, there's a lot of

[Patrick Clerkin]: complexity and a lot of nuance.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I just want to remind people that while the fossil fuel companies are by no means saints, they're also not

[Patrick Clerkin]: purely villains either.

[Patrick Clerkin]: We do live in a world that has been for better or worse defined by the industrial revolution.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I think that fossil fuel companies just like renewables companies are improving their products all the time.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so we should just keep this in mind when we put these carrots and sticks in place.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So thank you.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick clerkin 50 Princeton Street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I'd like to start off by commending Councilors Callahan and Leming for putting this motion forward.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I am pretty passionate about history and I have learned about the history of the Cold War and the war on drugs and how they relate to this particular issue of entheogenic and psychedelic substances.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I started really getting into this when I started noticing the trends and rises in depression and anxiety, chronic depression and anxiety, deaths of despair, the opioid crisis, as mentioned.

[Patrick Clerkin]: PTSD.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I heard about these trials that were being done at John Hopkins University, my curiosity, a lot of the people that suffered from these things saying that this was using some of these substances really psychologically healed them in a way that some of these holistically healed them in a way that some of these more kind of reductionists artificially derived substances like, like,

[Patrick Clerkin]: oxycontin would not do.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And so I thought to myself, if I'm going to potentially advocate for these, I want to know more about them directly.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Long story short, I myself ended up trying them.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I tried ayahuasca several times, I tried 5-MeO-DMT psilocybin, and I come up here not to just drop that in front of everyone, but to say that

[Patrick Clerkin]: I can speak personally to their possibilities and their limitations, and I would put myself forward as someone who would help you to advance this.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So, thank you.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clark in 50 Princeton Street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I want to commend Councilor Lazzaro for putting this motion forward.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I share conditional enthusiasm for biannual DEI training and encourage City Council's consideration of the following conditions.

[Patrick Clerkin]: DEI training could be folded into an overall city employee training, also including nepotism and conflict of interest, where all three together will bring forward the most competent and qualified candidates.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The nepotism section would emphasize prevention of the old boys club of private deals and back-slapping, where family lineage and patronage determine qualification for government service.

[Patrick Clerkin]: The DEI section could emphasize variety and integration of broadly cross-sectional experiences and skills across government, in practice and in recruiting, as opposed to simply patronizing box-ticking visual diversity, which can also lead to poor qualifications along a path parallel to nepotism.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Three, the conflict of interest section could emphasize public disclosure of membership in or receipt of resources from state, national, or global organizations, whether they be in the form of a hierarchy or network whose stated goals undermine the fulfillment of responsibilities as an employee of the city of Medford.

[Patrick Clerkin]: These trainings would not only be undergone by city employees during their tenure, but also publicly disclosed and advertised in a place of common access during campaigns or before hirings.

[Patrick Clerkin]: This would fulfill both the calls for transparency, competence, and integrity within government and between the public and one fell swoop.

[Patrick Clerkin]: If implemented and followed in the true spirit of this proposal, these measures will prevent the kind of mob formation, trials by ordeal, and loyalty tests recently depicted in the film Oppenheimer from being carried out in Medford.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Times of high confusion, stress, and suspicion coupled with low transparency have often congealed into culture wars attempting to rip some bogeyman or folk devil out by the roots.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Witches, communists, fascists, Jews, racists, anti-Semites.

[Patrick Clerkin]: We could take a wider lens on what DEI, in union with other measures, could do for Medford's future, or we could see it turn into proving one's diversity credentials in an oppressive, harassing, ultimately counterproductive manner equal and opposite to proving one's patriotism credentials.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Let's proceed wisely.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, if you need to find me.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So my concern with this, not to take away from any of the testimony from the Gaza issue earlier, it was powerful and it was meaningful.

[Patrick Clerkin]: My concern is really the precedent that it sends that

[Patrick Clerkin]: If Gaza or if Cuba are local issues, then what isn't?

[Patrick Clerkin]: You know, I mean, should we be talking about the Rohingya Muslims?

[Patrick Clerkin]: Should we be talking about the Uyghurs in China?

[Patrick Clerkin]: Should we be talking about what's going on in Colombia and Argentina and anywhere in the world?

[Patrick Clerkin]: I mean, in a sense, yes, but should it be here in these chambers?

[Patrick Clerkin]: I think that there's

[Patrick Clerkin]: we have to start to put some structure in place where, you know, there's personal matters, there's local matters, there's state matters, there's national matters, there's global matters, and they're all important, but, and I completely agree that Medford is not this, you know,

[Patrick Clerkin]: completely sealed off entity it were affected by by immigration were affected by by technology changes were affected by inflation.

[Patrick Clerkin]: We're not her medically sealed but.

[Patrick Clerkin]: the amount of energy that will go into fighting global issues in these chambers will pull energy away from all of these other things that truly are locally confined issues.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And it's like the body needs to continue to function.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And if you pump all the blood towards one organ, then all the other organs start to die.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I know that's not maybe the best analogy, but it's the best analogy I can think of.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I just wanted to put that on the record.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Hi, Patrick Clerken, 50 Princeton Street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: A lot of great comments made here tonight.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I just wanted to add the comment that I felt like I think we've gotten significantly past this, but I think when this was first brought up by Nicole back in December, the initial argument for it.

[Patrick Clerkin]: was a little bit reductionistic in the sense of bringing pay parity between council and the committee, just because I understand historically the difference between men and women and that still exists to some extent, but because the committee and the council are both mixed at this point, it's a little bit comparing apples to oranges.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So I wanted to request if possible, just for public edification,

[Patrick Clerkin]: a simple diagram that compares basically what council does and what school committee does and how they should be potentially brought up to equity or not.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Is it based on the hours worked overall?

[Patrick Clerkin]: Is it based on the content of the work?

[Patrick Clerkin]: Because it's not necessarily the same.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I don't know for sure what, and I think probably a lot of people in Medford don't know for sure what each of these two bodies does, and so it would be difficult to understand

[Patrick Clerkin]: how they could be brought up to parity or if they should be brought up to parity.

[Patrick Clerkin]: And I just want to add that just like when you're talking to people and you meet them for the first time and you hear their name and it goes in one ear and out the other, a lot of the times if we don't have these diagrams or simple ways to understand these things, when you just hear the information in a stream, it just goes right out the other side.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So anything

[Patrick Clerkin]: with this issue and with future issues, that's like a simple diagram or something that could be posted in a public place would really help.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So thank you.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Once again, Patrick Clark in 50 Princeton Street.

[Patrick Clerkin]: I just wanted to be simpler with what I said before, which is it basically comes down in my eyes to, if this is a question of equal pay for equal work, you have to make sure that you're comparing equal things.

[Patrick Clerkin]: If it was comparing a school committee that was all men and a school committee that was all women that were getting different pay, that would be one thing, but you're changing multiple variables.

[Patrick Clerkin]: You're comparing not just

[Patrick Clerkin]: men and women, mixed bodies, but you're also comparing a school committee and city council.

[Patrick Clerkin]: So you either have to demonstrate that it is equal work or if it's not equal work, you have to demonstrate why there should be equal pay for an equal work.

[Patrick Clerkin]: That's basically what I wanted to say.

[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you.