[Patrick Clerkin]: So this isn't a brilliant answer. It's a simple answer. It's just something that we have to get right, which is getting people the information that they need in as simple as terms and as compelling of terms as possible. So that means the way that I see it, showing them a map of this is what the city looks like. This is what we're proposing, highlighting the areas of where we're planning to put additional housing, and then saying, this is how it affects your life, and this is why these areas are optimal. We've looked at other areas, and I think it's really important to justify to people that we didn't just pick these areas out of a hat, or we didn't pick these areas because someone in government or in the periphery of government had some connection to that area. It's really well thought out, and I think that if we There's this paradox that exists of if you want to get this better information out to people, but you Already can't get it out to people. How do you how do you let them know about it to begin with? And I think that really communicating with Through this channel through Medford happenings and also got to know Medford are two big Opportunities that we have right now to really get it out to people.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yes, I think that we need to find the influencers within Medford, the people within different districts, the people within certain knowledge categories, because they're not always the people in the titled positions, first of all. This is something that I was thinking about previously when I was working on a media project a couple years ago called the Medford Community Network. We were trying to basically think, how do you identify these key stakeholders who are very knowledgeable? And I think If you put the word out, once again, I'm probably going to repeat this a lot, through these new channels, through this one, through God I Know Medford, hey, All Point Bulletin, we're looking for people, if you know a lot about this, if you care a lot about this, we need you to be the representative so to speak, for your area of the city. And when it comes to holding them to that, I think we have to set a regular meeting among those people. And I don't know, there needs to be a leader of some kind. So I don't know if the leader is going to be chosen among them or exactly how that would look, but yeah.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, and I think that people who are more casually, people who want to be more civically involved in the city are dissuaded because of the just general tenor intention of politics right now, where they're observing, whether you realize it or not, they're observing other people who are putting themselves out there. And when those people get piled on, they go, okay, no thanks.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah.
[Patrick Clerkin]: On the public side of it, I think that if we put together a, when I say we, I have to decide exactly, think more about exactly who the we is, but putting together a coherent proposal, couple of pages that could be handed over to housing and urban development at the state level. Like if we're trying to get state funds for something like this, we have to, We have to, I think, show that we want to work with Massachusetts, but we're not going to get bullied and pushed around for state-level needs. Because one of the questions that exists right now is, OK, yes, there's some grant money out there, but what are the strings attached to it? And I have an announcement coming over the speaker. Give me one second.
[Patrick Clerkin]: You can't hear it on that end. Okay. So, so basically, you know, the question is what strings are attached to the, to the grant money and I think that a lot of people feel that. sometimes the things that are being pushed in Medford, is it really in Medford's best interest or is it the best interest of other entities like the Massachusetts government? So I think if we sort of meet them at the table with our counter-proposal, then that's a step in the right direction for public funding. When it comes to private funding, I think maybe working with the business community in Medford, partly the Chamber of Commerce, partly other maybe individual business entities, and Bruce Patterson, my campaign manager, actually introduced me to something that worked in Chinatown, where they wanted to put in some businesses and then there was the local said, well, if you're gonna put in these businesses, you're gonna put in this housing as well. And then there was pushback and then they said, no, we mean it. And then the businesses acquiesced and there was funding for the housing. So those are two leverage points, I think.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Well, a while back, probably a month and a half ago, I read through the entire document and I'm a big fan of it. I think that they did a great job. When I previously ran, I wasn't as familiar with their work and I was a little bit concerned, okay, how is this being done? Is there gonna be politics baked into it? But it's a really, I think it's a significant leg up on our current charter and I don't see any, you know, politics baked into it. So I think they did a really good job. Particularly, I'm a huge fan of the word-based representation. There's two other aspects as well that I really like.
[Patrick Clerkin]: As a whole, I certainly believe it will help the city. I would definitely encourage people to vote in favor of it. And I'm actually going to make a little video about that. But the word based representation is a huge step in the right direction. When I was talking about the answer to your previous question, Right about kind of community liaisons in these different areas.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Should the charter pass in November, there's going to be a period of 2 years before it goes into effect. And so I think that ultimately having this word based representation is going to be a huge step in the right direction for making sure. broadly every area of the city is represented. The second thing that I really like is that built into the charter is a review every 10 years, which I think is absolutely necessary so that this current situation doesn't happen again. And then the third thing is it forces, there's wording in the charter that forces the mayor and the city council to address budget much earlier in the year rather than waiting until the June deadline. They have to address it earlier. We need that in my opinion.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Correct. There's a, you know, there's a amendment process that's laid out. It's just like with the constitution, you wouldn't want a document that is so easy to change that anyone could just get all the time, but you want to have a built in adjustment process that adapts to the times.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Well, I'd really like to focus on commercial revenue. I don't think I'm saying anything new there, but I do think that we need to get the zoning process right. We've been focused on residential with the zoning, but the commercial aspect of it, I think we have to create incentive packages for businesses. Talking to somebody recently, I have a weekly Colleen's event every Wednesday. And there was a gentleman who was talking to me, he's a contractor and he's done work in Malden. And he says, Medford and Malden are night and day when it comes to the ease of getting stuff done. And I asked him more about that. And he just said that they basically just create a package for you where they say, this is what you need, these five things or whatever. And once you get that done, it's a breeze. once the contractors get that done. So I think that not only making it clear what people have to do, and this is across basically everything in our government, we just have to have clearer processes for people because I really feel like we don't have some of this stuff written down and we're just going on the fly a lot of the time. And if that's not the case, then where are the processes, you know? So I think we have to be clear with our processes. The second thing for the businesses is just create a better package of incentives that draw them in, like maybe quicker utilities hookups for their businesses. maybe having a storefront, what do I want to call this, like a storefront beautification grant or something like that, maybe having expedited permitting. There's a lot of options that you could bundle together and make it enticing to be commercially vested in Medford.
[Patrick Clerkin]: More inviting to business owners. And we get more tax base off of business.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Right.
[Patrick Clerkin]: You're gonna notice this is essentially a common answer or a common factor across a lot of money.
[Patrick Clerkin]: It's a little bit of a black box to me. So I'm digging into this myself right now to get a better sense of it. I do think that the what I previously mentioned with the charter is a big step in the right direction where it forces management earlier in the year and in a more transparent and simple manner. Probably, you know, I don't know that our city has that. We have a very strained budget, but we probably need a second paid person somewhere to to address it and I know that putting out money for anything is seen as really during these lean times is seen as really drastic or is that really necessary but that this is something that is an absolutely critical area that you know it would it would ease up tension in all these other areas the way that I see it.
[Patrick Clerkin]: And I'll add that I think that possibly, I just said this the other day, I was doing an interview with the Tufts Daily. I think that, and people might get squeamish about this, but I think that the relationships between Tufts and Medford and Medford and the Chevalier need to be revisited, not in a way that scares away Tufts or the Chevalier, because they're wonderful assets to our community. But, you know, with Tufts, for example, there's the pilot program and there's these town and gown services that Medford receives in place of taxes. And maybe it can't be monetary, the compensation, but maybe the compensation or the arrangement between Tufts and Medford, who have both grown significantly since the original arrangement. negotiated where attention and these in-kind resources get shifted from one area to another area that's really, really within the city's needs right now. And I think that there's potential exciting room for negotiation there. And then same with Chevalier, where Chevalier has a big network. And if we can work with the Chamber of Commerce and with Tufts to, or I'm sorry, with the Chevalier to tap into that network and say, hey, how can we you know, use you to maybe optimize the Medford Square development process or something like that.
[Patrick Clerkin]: So I won't bury the lead. I view overrides in general as financial duct tape. And I. I support the underlying initiatives. I do think there needs to be a new fire station. And I know we're well on the way with the proposal and the development. So I suppose I support that. And I remember seeing that the sanitation and the fire station was quite a mess. And just in general, it's been a long time coming. The fire tower was taken down. There was nothing put back up. The police got a new station. It's time, I believe, for the firemen to get there. The underlying project I support when it comes to the high school I lean towards Renovation, I don't think that it's in our capacity being these lean times right now To support a full high school as much as it would be great to do that. I previously mentioned based on Rick Orlando's Previous interview on this show back in the 90s. We got a huge reimbursement. We really wouldn't get anywhere near that these days so But I would like to see the range of options. I would like to see the best case proposal for a complete do-over for a completely new school, for strategic renovations, and then basically for doing nothing. And I'd like to compare them. So back to the override aspect, I do think that when it comes to overrides, I would like to see the case laid out for people. why the override is the only option, if that really is the only option. I'm not saying there aren't cases that an override might be effectively the only option, but you really have to lay out that case. When it comes to city finances, you either tackle the revenue side or the expenses side or both. And with revenues, you pretty much have commercial revenues and that's... up and in zoning you have bonds that you can issue and you have tax overrides primarily and and then you have grants and with the with the recent grant cuts you know at the federal level and in the state level you know rippling down If you're going to make the case that an override is necessary, I want to see complementary efforts in the other areas to either increase the revenues or decrease the expenses. I want to see what else you're doing. Because what you're doing with overrides is you're basically targeting a specific group that is highly vested and really can't do anything. You're basically just, I've said it before, you're basically like a towel squeezing equity out of people's.
[Patrick Clerkin]: So I really want to see the public case made, if someone's going to be advocating for an override, that other things are being done. And even then, I would be very hesitant to support overrides.
[Patrick Clerkin]: You just go, the rest, you know, is fake.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Sure, so a couple come to mind. And this is the one that always is at the tip of everyone's tongue, is the state of the streets in the city. And I think that's partly, once again, an aspect of getting the current plans out there to people so that they can actually see. Because some people think that there's actually nothing being done at all. And I stumbled upon, months ago, when I scoured the city website, there's actually a city-wide heat map of all of the streets that that indicate by degree of severity the prioritization of the different streets when it comes to getting them fixed, and the sidewalks. So I think even just putting that out there, it's one of those situations where a lot of people, in the absence of information, they tend to grow more irritated. So that allays some people's, right there, that allays, okay, at least there's a plan, you know? And then the second part of that is getting the finances and the communications right. So that ties into the other, you know, getting the communication simple, getting the finances tied to other sources. So I digress on that particular topic. The other areas to me are Arts and culture, I think that there's a consolidation, or I know that there's a consolidation happening right now in the arts and culture space. I think that's actually a very good thing. Because arts and culture is more decentralized by nature. It's sort of the seedbed of creativity. You don't want it to be too top-down controlled. but it's actually good that some of these entities are coming together and they can coordinate resources and projects better. I would love to see the arts and culture community tied into more civic projects that are put into murals that are more relevant to Medford and Medford history, I would say. Yeah, phenomenal. And that's not, you know, Medford has a rich history. It has Italian and Irish and Jewish and black. And now we have Brazilian and we have, you know, Tufts area hillside. And there's just so many you could have. I think that would be a huge part of of neighborhood integration and neighborhood identity is sort of and I'm hoping that can be tied into the. you the new charter if it passes and charter represent word based representation. And then the third thing is I would love to see better relations with, um, with public safety officers. And I think that the national night out was a huge step in that direction. I was I was actually just talking with in tandem with the public safety officers, with veterans as well. I was just at a veterans meeting this morning at the senior center. And one of the things that's up for conversation is the American Legion, the future of the American Legion. Could it be a separate, could the veterans affairs office in the city hall be in a separate building? And could it be actually at the American Legion? And could that be a hub of other things as well, like a community food bank and offices related to other things, a bulletin? So I think that that would be, this is less urgent than some of the other matters.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Well, six week, five week sprint, basically. That's what's going on and probably diminished sleep. But I am in the midst of revamping my website right now. I requested from people all over my life. Going back a while. I'm talking I requested testimonials from them basically character references saying you know me from from some aspect Maybe you were a roommate. Maybe you were a client. Maybe you were a manager, but I have a like 45 testimonials that I'm gonna be posting out saying hey Because you can hear it from me, but I can you know, I can say hearing it from others really matters So that's that's coming out got a fundraiser coming up on October 9th. That's gonna be at Bertucci's I should I should clarify that once I confirm with them. It's going to be a British Yes, and outside of that, you're just going to see me everywhere. You're going to see me at events. You're going to see me canvassing. I'm getting really strategic with, okay, where did I miss at the preliminary? What? Cuz cuz general generally before the preliminary throughout the last three or four months I was just trying to hit broadly everywhere in the city I was going to registered voters, but now I have to be very specific as you know trying to shore up my my support So that's that's basically what's going on with me and where you'll find me everywhere and when it comes to contacting me My email is clerkin4medford at gmail.com. My website is clerkin4medford.com. And then you can also contact me on my social media. I'm on Instagram and Facebook, both of which are clerkin4medford, whether it's the number four or the word F-O-R. You'll find me.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Pretty much. Just across, just search that, you'll find me. Yeah. The last thing I just want to say to people is, um, so I've been in Medford for eight years. I ran three years or two years ago. And so I have more name recognition, but it's still an uphill battle with name recognition. So if you like my ideas, I'm not tied to a large organization and I don't have the multi-generational name recognition that some people have. So if you like my ideas, if you know someone who wants a sign, If you could donate, it goes a long way. Even just spreading the word to people that I'm running, it all adds up at the end on November 4th. So you can contact me. You can let me know. I really appreciate it.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you, John.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Hi everyone, I'm Patrick Clerkin, and I'm gonna start off with a little bit of my backstory, and then I'm going to get into why it's relevant and what I'd like to do for Medford. So I'm a mechanical engineer. I've worked in both a corporate context as an employee and as a contractor, and I've also been an entrepreneur, and most recently I've worked as a handyman. And with the handyman work, it's been a lot of meeting neighbors, getting out there, and a lot of practical hands-on stuff, so it's kind of combining the street smarts and the book smarts and the abstract and the physical hands-on stuff. So, I have also been involved with a lot of different civic organizations, both as a member and as a leader within those organizations. Some of them have been Habitat for Humanity, Big Brother Big Sister, American Red Cross, and the board of my fraternity. So I want to bring all of those perspectives and experiences to my efforts here in Medford for the city's benefit. And what I wanted to focus on in particular was robust community. And how I see it, community is both communications and unity. And in 2023, when I ran for the first time, what I saw was that this city has so many resources and there's no hub of communications anymore. There used to be a paper, there isn't anymore, there's some new things, but basically there's not a dashboard or there's not a consistent reference that people are consulting. And when you don't have that, it causes anger and fear and distrust and confusion to proliferate. And so I have a bunch of different ideas as to how to practically address that. They're on my website. I can't get into all of them right now. So I recommend that you consult my website for those. But I will say, if you want a practical example as to how lack of communications negatively affects the city, look at the current zoning issue, how a lot of the people feel that this information has been dropped on them at the last minute. They feel like things have already been decided. they feel like basically the neighborhoods aren't getting a say in this citywide process. The other aspect of what I wanted to focus on was unity, and I'm already embodying that democracy within my campaign where I've gone to all 16, canvassed all 16 precincts. I've crossed demographic, geographic, partisan, ideological lines, talked to anyone, I don't care what, what flag you have in your yard, what letter you have next to your name. I want everyone to be involved in this process, and I am actively doing that. So the last thing that I'll say is that I'm focused on independent thinking, on practical solutions, on Medford in its entirety, and on local issues. So I would be a Councilor at large for Medford, not for Massachusetts, not for the United States, not for the world. So if these are values that you appreciate, please vote for me on September 16th and on November 4th. Thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clark in 50 Princeton Street. And I'm going to focus on the fossil fuel aspect of this. 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, I tend to support that if it's a substantive effort. I do not see this as a substantive effort. I see this more as signaling. And I wanted to focus on, so the fossil fuel industry is actually three industries. There's fossil fuels, there's chemicals and plastics derived from fossil fuels. 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. 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. Audio and video equipment, including microphones, cameras, and digital displays for podcasts, e-learning, and remote access. The grip tape and seat on your bicycle handlebars. The paint that forms bike lanes. The asphalt that forms the lanes themselves, or the equipment to mine the gravel. Dyes and ink for flags and hair. Paints for artists. Stickers and marketing materials for causes. Clothing, glasses, frames, and lenses. 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, 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, 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. 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. 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. Thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clerkin, 50 Princeton Street. 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. I think that people don't realize the ripple effects of the fossil fuel divestment. There are other industries, the chemical industry, the plastics industry. I have critiques of all of these industries, and I think that there's substantial negatives to them, but there's also substantial positives to them. 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. A lot of good things come from the fossil fuel industry and its byproducts. And so I'm concerned with the wholesale divestment, first of all. And the second thing is, I think there are other industries that equally have downsides to them. So looking at defense, we're focusing on how the defense industries have more of an emphasis on war rather than defense and peace. I understand that criticism. You could add to the list media, which tends to emphasize getting people profiting off of getting people to hate each other. You could focus on the pharmaceutical industry, which often focuses more on sickness rather than on health. 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 jobs and money flowing through the veins of Massachusetts more so than these things that we're trying to divest. And I think it's very specific and odd to focus on just several of these things and wholesale divest from them. 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. Thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clerkin, 50 Princeton Street. 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. So we've already heard about the pace of the process. Another piece is the presentation of information. One of the things that comes to mind is anytime there are maps like that, 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. The second thing is the different zoning codes. There's the old code, the new code. 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. It's difficult when you have two different vocabularies, basically, and you're trying to compare the two. The third is the website is generally pretty good. 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. 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? And plus some of the things within the tabs are kind of text walls. People don't really like to delve into those often. it's a lot easier to do that. So visuals certainly help. And then the third category of item is just aligning incentives. 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 would have their property taxes decreased. 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. The properties in the immediate area would have their property taxes decreased as well. So that would align the city's incentives with the residents incentives, so they would basically think twice about having really tall buildings. They gain
[Patrick Clerkin]: Thank you for having me, John. It's really great to be here.
[Patrick Clerkin]: So I've been in Medford for nine years now, coming up in September. And before that, I grew up in North Reading. I've been a North Shore guy my whole life. And I went to North Reading Public School. And when I was in school, my favorite subjects were actually history, geography, and literature. So what does somebody whose favorite subjects are those do after that? They go to school for engineering, of course. I went to Northeastern for mechanical engineering and it was it was partly My high school had a couple programs. 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. So when I went to Northeastern Mechanical Engineering, did a couple co-ops there. If you're familiar, they have this, you do classes one semester, jobs another semester. That was great because that was work experience. And I also got involved with a fraternity when I was there and was eventually the president of the fraternity. So that's my entry point into leadership roles. And really post-college, I started working for a company in the semiconductor test industry. Nothing that you or I would ever work with. It's really company to company stuff. 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. And so I ventured out on my own and I really got involved with At one point, I was doing my own entrepreneurial pursuit called Tether, and that was in the realm of communications and software. And then I also started making money through doing handyman work, which I really enjoyed because that was more practical, hands-on. It was very face-to-face with clients, and I got to know a lot of my neighbors. So I'll say that Those were sort of my entry points into, because people look at why you're involved in politics. 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. So it's that. It's a combination of having gotten to know my neighbors through the handyman work. And I would say it's also the desire to be civically involved and an intermediary between people. OK.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, so I mentioned before that I started doing handyman work. 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. So I looked into it. That was 2023. And I really jumped in at the last minute. This was like a week before the you have to get signatures to get your name on the ballot. It was like a week before the signature deadline. 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. 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 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. 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. But after I ran last time, I really got this civically oriented group of people together who really all saw the communications as a problem. And we were meeting every week at the library, pretty much from New Year's to Memorial Day, trying to set something up. And what we came up with was called the Medford Community Network. And it kind of got shelved, but we got pretty far with that. And that's the foundation that I'm building upon this time. 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. One of them is infrastructure, and one of them is more cultural in the city. And so from the infrastructural side of things, I'm really focusing, first of all, on citywide issues and local issues. But the ones that I've put on the back of my literature are the city budget, The development, both commercial and residential, zoning is a big, big topic right now. 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. And then the fire station is another one. And I think that was pretty much it. 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. And I'm not putting that on any given person, but coming from that engineering perspective that I mentioned before, What I would be looking for is some kind of a flow chart that says, OK, this is the first stage. This is the second stage. Does it pass this stage? Yes or no. If it's a yes, it goes in this direction. If it's a no, it goes in this direction. And it says the different departments that are involved, the different stakeholders that are involved. And it really gives... It would really add to the transparency and accountability that you often hear politicians talk about, which often unfortunately falls through the cracks. So I think that there's ways to do that now. fiddled around, people talk a lot about AI these days, and I'm not really on the doom train. I'm not really on the hype train. I try to walk the middle path. 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 Or show me what a typical budgeting process would look like for a city of 65,000 people. And it's a little bit wonky. It'll spit out something with typos. But generally, it's pretty good. It's impressive. And I think that those could be models for what we could build in the city. That's one thing. There's others, but yeah.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yes, yes, and yes. I hear that problem all the time. 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. Yeah, the zoning thing right now that's happening. 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. Let's take the zoning. 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 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? And so, um, once again, I'm not trying to, to put that on, on any given, you know, person. 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, Like we don't want to get the public to shut this down at this point. So let's kind of you know Pass it through the through the later hours of the night or something like that. But then I think other times there's 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 The new city website is actually, it has some problems, but it's much better than what it was. And there's a lot of great stuff on there. There's maps of the city that show these plans. There's all these different project proposals. But if you don't know that they're there, like what good are they to some extent? 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? They could be a new they could fill that void. Yeah, and and I think that the city On the front page of the city website, there currently is a section that shows the quick links for city services. And then beneath that, there's news and events. 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. 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. 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. But broadly, I think we need to focus on seriously increasing and diversifying the commercial and industrial tax base, and you don't do that in the residential areas. 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 you know, zoned for and have significant commercial and industrial development. 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 really are just casually observing. They go for walks with their dogs, they take notes of things. 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. There's a sausage casing business and it's just been shut forever and there's a whole strip of And you see a lot of those types of things throughout Medford. So I think that the city can create certain incentives, like maybe expedited permitting processes could be one. 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. It's something that if it's done wisely, it can balance all of those forces. 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 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. And there's a plan for that on the city website. So seeing that through is one thing. looking seriously at how far we can stretch the money that we have. 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. The school is one of these looming things. What do we do with the school? Do we renovate it? Do we do it over again? Well, Rick talked about how if we're 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. You know, there was that racial balancing that paid for, you know, like 90% of the schools or 75% of the schools. So I think we should prioritize the school because this school does have this studio that we're in right now is a gem. There's the robotics club that's a gem. This school has, I'm blanking on the name right now, Bistro 489. There's some really great stuff at this school, both vocational and otherwise. But maybe we could look at it, how do we stretch our dollars? Some people say, absolutely no way, never renovation, redo the whole thing. Well, first of all, we're not going to get those refunds that we previously did. Second of all, There's good bones in this school. 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. It was built for a certain number of students that it currently is not filling, I don't think. I've taken a tour of the whole school, so that is a goal of mine. I have a neighbor down the street. a couple, and they just moved here a couple years ago, and they're saying that they're already considering moving out. 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. And they say, you know, we're moving out. And I think they're not alone with that. There's people who look at the school. So I would consider that like, A hemorrhage within Medford is the school system. And outside of that, I would just say, yeah, the streets. The streets are a mess. And putting forward on the city website, there's a plan for all the streets, prioritizing them by area. Really putting that forward and putting that next to that process flowchart that I was describing before. So people can see and hold the city accountable. 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 So it's really unfortunate. But people tend to lock into the things that aren't working. So the state of the streets, the fact that we have a bunch of business sections that are 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. 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, these processes and communications failures that are happening that would make addressing the front end more possible. And I'll say that 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 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 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. It's not helping. 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. And by the way, block parties are one of the biggest examples of this. 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. 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. You know, that's not a lot of towns have that, you know, that aren't oceanfront. So there's just a lot of cool stuff that I've been discovering. 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 a ton of budding potential. And it's just seeing that validated is really reinforcing, I would say. So that's one of my favorite things. But negative things is the counter to that. Well, first of all, driving over all those potholes all the time, that's definitely a negative thing. Passing by a lot of these things that have so much potential, but it's just not realized. Those boarded up buildings, those neighborhoods that could be having block parties and could be getting together but aren't. 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. And my campaign website is clerkin4medford.com. The email address is at the bottom of that if you don't remember it. And then I'm on Instagram. 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]: Glad to be here, Danielle. My name is Patrick Clerkin. My pronouns are he, him, and about myself. I grew up on Boston's North Shore, lived in Medford for nine years now, was a mechanical engineer, have been a handyman for a bit, have traveled the country on a bunch of road trips, Yeah, that's a couple things.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Gosh, OK, so. It's tough to choose, but I would say that it's a tie between Bob's Italian food, which is right down the street from me, and there's a lamb tip sub, which is awesome. And then Rosso's, which is also fairly close to me, and they have a great vinegar, pepper, and fingerling potato pork chop, which I really enjoy.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, definitely. So, um. Okay, I'll start with the last time I ran, I really came out of the woodwork. It was actually someone I had been doing handyman work for had said that he wished more people were running and I was civically inclined. So I looked into it. But I really jumped in like a week before the signature deadline. And so it was just a rapid fire immersion, learning everything that I could. At that point, I'd been in Bedford for seven years, but you really start to learn a lot more a lot quicker once you jump into the political fray. I did what I could that time, but ultimately, there was a lot of limitations. Three-month time period, I was my own campaign manager, and I would say that my assessments of things and my The way that I was speaking was less matured than it is now and also less polished in the sense of I was working on a I was working in incubator at the time, I was trying to get an entrepreneurial idea started. And so my way of talking was a little bit more kind of like technical with that. And so I kind of came right into this, this public facing field and was maybe a little bit jilted and awkward with the way that I was talking. So this time around, I really want to build off of the foundation from last time, but take some of the critiques and really, you know, run a better campaign. The second thing is I really want to focus on Medford in its entirety. And by that I mean, you know, not just conservative or progressive or libertarian, not just this precinct or that precinct, all of the precincts, all of the people, and really just take inventory of all the resources that Medford has. So focusing on Medford in its entirety, and I would say also focusing on Medford locally, you know, like what's happening within the city. There's clearly all kinds of things happening right now, you know, from a personal to local, state, national, global, but I really think that we have to, in this context, as a city councillor, I would need to focus on, you know, what's happening within the city. So, you know, The other part of your question was, what have I been doing since last time? After the tail end of the election, I was really like, okay, I want to do a postmortem on what it is that I did, what could I have done better, etc. One of the big things that I learned from that campaign was, yes, there are all these city issues, what I'll be focusing on again, like, you know, the streets, high school, fire station, the city budget, development. But one of the big things that wasn't really getting a lot of attention was the distribution of information, communications within the city, which I feel like is quite fractured and has resulted in people sort of retreating to various uh you know facebook groups and reddit pages and newsletters and sometimes it can be kind of like an echo chamber you know so i had really been trying to from january of 2023 i'm sorry january 2024 through memorial day of 2024 to work on a um an answer to that you know to fill the information void that I felt was in the city. And I learned about how there previously had been a paper, but there hadn't been for, I don't know, maybe five years. But getting a paper started would have been exorbitantly expensive, production run and getting the distribution out. So what we settled on, it was me and a team of people that I was leading from who I had met. during the election who cared about this issue, we decided to choose a platform, it was the Mighty Networks platform, and to try to build upon that basically a local social media site dedicated to Medford. Not like a group on a Facebook page, but a Medford-wide group for Medford residents. And there's all kinds of issues that arise with that is like, how do you have it be both open and somewhat moderated, where like, there's there's ground rules for it, you know, it's not like anyone can just stomp through and start lobbing grenades. But how do you have it be as open as possible, and we're creating sub sections on it that were dedicated to our specific topic areas like Medford dining, or recreation or You name it, really. There was a governance section as well, and this was really supposed to be a comprehensive hub, if you will, like a dashboard for existing Medford Media, and also adding on to that as well. actually the plan was to have, you know, this very podcast be one of the things that would be linked to that hub. It would it would be this podcast, it would be WMFO, the Tufts radio station, it would be Medford Community Media, anything related to the city. Now we have Gotta Know Medford, and there's a program Medford Happenings as well. But yeah, that was what I had been doing related to Medford. And then around March of last year, I got, I started getting involved at national politics level with the Kennedy campaign, which is, you know, a controversial thing. Some people like him, some people hate him, but my entry point into that, and I want to, you know, people have been asking me about this. I want to state that my involvement with that was basically, I felt that at a federal level and at a global level, the United States The pharmaceutical industry and the food industry, the agricultural industry and the chemical industry have become a powerful lobby and that we're sort of immersed in chemicals and it has affected our health. And so that's one of the things that I felt like was a high priority. And I had previously, I know I've been going on at length here, but I had previously been working when I was an engineer as a chemical project manager at one point, where it was swapping out the chemicals in the mechanical systems from a chemical that was now considered a forever chemical and was very constrained to an alternative chemical. And I think what people don't realize is these forever chemicals like asbestos, like lead, these things that are very durable in construction environments are also very durable in biological environments, whether that be the ecological environment or whether that be in the human body. And so similarly to that, what people don't realize is that the industrial food supply in our country, the preservatives that get put in the food that keep them shelf stable, or actually, you know, like prevent them from rotting, basically, are actually the same preservatives that are being fed into our body continuously that, you know, have an effect over time, an aggregate effect. And so that was really how I started to get into that. And like people, you know, I don't agree with everything, like, I'm not trying to delve into national politics here. I don't agree with everything that, you know, Kennedy has done or everything that he has said. That was kind of my entry point. And so I was involved from March through July with students for Kennedy, the goal of which was to get, you know, college students, particularly in Massachusetts, aware of his campaign because he was running as an independent candidate and to consider you know, how on their campus they could organize awareness. So I was involved with that and once his campaign ended at the end of August, I was at both the RNC and the DNC, once his campaign ended at the end of August, I started getting involved with this unity coalition concept, which was basically like, how do we get, there's clearly this major political divide, how do we get the populists, like the Bernie supporters, the Trump supporters, the Kennedy supporters, that have a lot in common with each other. They're reform-oriented people that see all these systemic problems. How do you get them to see what they have in common with each other and work together, basically? And that was a tall order, but that was what I was working on. And then I sort of, you know, once the election happened, it was kind of like, okay, now I can re immerse myself and in Medford stuff. And so I started showing the local meetings and stuff again.
[Patrick Clerkin]: um it was the website it's uh it was once again it's called the medford community network it's mcn02155.com it's still operational but it's incomplete so the original goal was to like basically find local representatives for each of these topic areas you know one of them was dei one of them was um uh as i mentioned a bunch of them before to find local sort of um leaders or people who were stores of tribal knowledge basically and get them to be the representative for that topic area and to to build out the page on the site and then to to you know invite others to uh to engage in those spaces basically so the goal was to not only have all these different spaces on the site but to also have a like a hub space that would be like the equivalent of a A virtual cafeteria where, you know, you could go on to Medford community community networks and say, oh, I want to, I only care about the arts and culture and the city government. I don't care about this other stuff. So you could, you could do that. And you could. Like each of the sections would have its own calendar of events, and those calendars would migrate their events towards the main calendar. So if you only cared about two pages, you'd only be getting the events of two of those pages on your main calendar. And you would also have the space where you could go and engage with other people in like a digital common forum basically that would be you would allow cross-pollination of ideas and awareness but it was all right there it was all like the digital version of a of a shopping mall where it has all these storefronts in it and the goal was to not only have that be um pulling together all these components digitally, which I feel like Reddit is more... First of all, one of the problems with Reddit is it's anonymous. The anonymity factor really, I feel like, undermines, in a local context, that community building because it allows people to be... some cases nasty to each other and in some cases to do things that they would otherwise not do to people if they had their name or their or their photo associated with their account. So one of the things was to get people to be open about, you know, their they didn't have to use a photo of themselves, but like, at least their name, you know, a real person, it would be focused on residents, because as far as I know, there's not really a constriction with the Reddit page as to like, you could be a non Medford resident, you can still be on it. And then just like, yes, we have this digital thing, but also encouraging people to go and interact with each other in the real world, basically, these events are these various things. And that's what builds the civic, the social fabric.
[Patrick Clerkin]: somewhat improvising in the sense of like, you know, I'm certainly not modeling myself after, after RFK, I'm modeling myself after My politics, I'm more of an independent centrist. And when I say that, I don't mean I don't have opinions on things. I don't mean I'm a fence-sitter and I'm like, can't we all just get along, man? What I mean is in the aggregate, my opinion on this issue might lean more progressive. On this issue, it might lean more conservative. On this one, it might lean more libertarian. But, um, so, so, yeah, there's no real model model on and I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm improvising on a large way. But when it comes to what you're saying about Kennedy. Yeah, I, you know, I would say that my personal take on it with when it comes to like, vaccines is like, I think vaccines have have were like, 1 of the miracles of of modern science. And I think that they helped to prevent a lot of the naturally occurring diseases like. you know, measles would be one of them and, you know, like typhoid, I'm not sure if these were vaccine diseases, but like typhoid and tuberculosis and malaria and like, you know, hepatitis and all these various things, you know. I feel like it gets into more dangerous territory once you start getting into gain-of-function research because there's, that's where the, first of all, I feel like people assume that when you question sort of some aspects of medical science that you're like anti-science and I think that is some people are but like I think that it's dismissive because there's really a lot of valid critiques of the pharmaceutical industry you know which is like they fund a lot of medical science and so it would be like saying it would be wrong to critique military policy coming out of the Pentagon, because yes, the Pentagon, they're in theory the experts, but they get a lot wrong, too. So I feel like, on the one hand, critiquing the pharmaceutical industry is different than critiquing the science. And the other concern is like when I just what I just mentioned with gain of function research is like, and this is a rabbit hole, but there is a Pentagon slash. defense agency partnership with pharmaceutical companies on bioweapons, and people don't really realize that. They don't really realize the history of the bioweapons program in the U.S. and global bioweapons programs. They don't really understand Going back to World War II, how the Japanese had Unit 731, which was a bioweapons facility, and the United States, after the end of World War II, inherited that. It's just like Joseph Mengele was sort of that experimenter at Auschwitz. The Japanese also were experimenting. And so that bioweapons program combined with American bioweapons programs and I don't remember if it was like Fort Detricks or Fort Dix, but we had our own facility. It ties into pharma, it ties into military, it ties into various aspects of US policy. And I feel like that is worthy of critiquing because one of the concerns is that, where does medicine and health policy begin versus defense and military policy?
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, like I'm basically a federalist in the sense of like, I believe that there's the realm of the personal, the realm of the local, the state, the federal, the global. And that doesn't mean that they don't lead into each other, of course. But I think what people, you know, like some people have said to me, well, all politics is local. Tip O'Neill said that. And it's like, I understand like what's meant by that like local politics is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak, but I also like that's a slogan and and so like there's some truth to it, but like saying all politics local is like saying all all. all life is cellular, you know what I mean? Like, it's like a human, the human organism is composed of cells, which make up tissues, which make up organs, which make up organ systems, which make up the organism. And so clearly, not all the functions of the organism could happen at the cellular level, to draw an analogy. So like, what I'm what I'm trying to say is like, there's levels of complexity and levels of order, that really can only be handled at higher levels. And so it's not to say that like, clearly Medford doesn't exist in a vacuum. Like I've mentioned this before, it's like there are effects of higher level things that come down to the Medford, there's the animosities that exist among people in different groups, there's technologies, there's inflation, there's immigration, there's there's these things. But I so you know, as they affect the city like i i feel like you you can obviously comment i'm not sitting like no no we can't comment on um you know like that student granted some people say you shouldn't like because it was in somerville but it was right on our doorstep that student that was uh was abducted by ice uh i'm not saying that shouldn't be talked about that was right in in our area but what i'm saying is the example of like you know, there was one meeting where it was calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and then calling for an end to the to the the American embargo of Cuba. That to me is like going out of your way to find an issue to make it the city's issue. And I just felt like that was like that. That wasn't just like, let me say that this is going on. And it's it's it's unjust that that was like that took like hours out of the meeting and it pushed the other things out of the way. And at the end of it, it's like, we don't really. It's not really something that the city council is capable of.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, I think that it's like for some of the issues that you mentioned, like if it was addressing prejudice within Medford, I think that would be one thing. If it was addressing an abortion clinic within Medford, things like that. But talking about some of these general things, I think it overwhelms the city's capacity to address the things that are within its
[Patrick Clerkin]: So yes, and that's why I think that those should happen through things outside of the city council, like action networks and in various organized groups and things like that. It's really, my point isn't that people shouldn't talk about these things or have opinions about them. My point is ultimately, is city council the place to address these things in this way, basically? And if we allow, and I feel like people, assume that i'm specifically targeting like progressive policies in this and in reality it's like i i would be the same with conservative or libertarian or whatever like it's really like once you open the door for this it really overwhelms the like there are core functions that the government is is supposed to uh deliver on and our capacity to deliver on those gets marginalized and pushed to the perimeter when it becomes sort of an open forum to address any topic, basically.
[Patrick Clerkin]: I mean, on that specific meeting, I'm not sure. recently um there was a charter uh there was a charter thing that got kind of pushed late so like my concern is and this is this other issue isn't entirely city council or any one uh entity or person's fault this has been a cumulative issue that what i was talking about before with the city communications i think that because the communications have um degraded over time. And by the way, I scoured the city website over the last two weeks and really went into every nook and cranny to find important plans and important maps and things that I felt like the public might have been missing. Because I think that there's this notion that just because something gets put onto the municipal website that it gets beamed into everyone's brain, which clearly isn't true. And so, yeah, the point of what I'm saying is, a lot of people feel that some of these plans and some of these proposals get dropped out of the void into their consciousness at the last minute, past the moment of public comment. And so some people show up to these meetings to speak on these Medford issues and to hear on these Medford issues, and then they find out that, you know, that issue is being displaced to the end of the meeting so that people can talk about trying to solve the, you know, the Gaza crisis or the ending the embargo in Cuba. And then they go home eventually because they're like, you know what, I can't spend three hours here, four hours here, into the wee hours of the morning. I was hoping that I could get this addressed. That's where I'm saying like, I really feel like people sense that it's like a lack of compassion in me. It's not that I lack compassion on these issues, it's that I feel like some of these are just the wrong place. Like the Gaza issue or the Cuban, and I don't mean to just harp on those two things, but those are the most obvious. It's like the amount of complexity that it's like, you know, it's it's like the the what the UN and some of these global governments haven't even been able to address these things and I feel like like you know the everyday person can get involved through like an action network or through organized means but I just think that it's really it's wading into very very deep waters that local government doesn't have the capacity to handle. And I understand that people It gives people comfort, but I think that can be dealt with by giving referrals to people to say, hey, you're being heard. And just so you know, like this, this isn't the best place to solve this, but there, there are resources like there's this group, there's this action network, there's this support group, there's this meetup group, there's this, there's other avenues. You can petition the, the, the other higher level governments. There's other avenues to, enact this, you know, I'm not implying like, hey, squash this. Don't address it. Forget about it. Yeah, it's like a particular thing that I'm basically taking.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, the answer is, like, Medford can't solve those issues. You know what I mean? And maybe people just need to hear that outright is like, this is not going to be solved in Medford. And it doesn't mean that it's not important. It just means that there's, it's the wrong tool to use. It's the wrong avenue to approach it. And like, if we lose sight of like, if we try to make everything i mean maybe this is like you know i mentioned i've been a handyman maybe this is like a handyman way of looking at it but and i know that's not handyman work is not you know work in the public sector but pools are for specific purposes and if you like if you start using things forever like if you start using uh you know a hammer for every for every purpose or a screwdriver for every purpose like that's not what it's intended for and you're gonna get you're going to not only get bad results, but you're going to destroy the tool.
[Patrick Clerkin]: That's, that's my point. They had a way to address that, because the issue that you addressed was a local issue.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, yeah. Ultimately, I think what should also be considered is, How do we give people a sense of comfort, but without inflaming Islamophobia and antisemitism in a local context where it might have not existed at that point? That's another concern is like in addressing some of these things in the way that we're addressing them, we're creating inflammation and counter inflammation and sort of in some sense, bringing the war to Medford and we have to be careful about like and that's just one issue but like any any of these things is like it creates inflammation and counter inflammation that makes the performance of of other functions lessened or more difficult.
[Patrick Clerkin]: I'm fine with I'm fine. Like I actually this is one of my big things is like I've been so first of all, I understand that people a lot of people want catharsis, you know, there's so much happening right now. And there's so much that is unsettling and uncertain and disturbing. And people people want an anchor point and they want a compass and they want like, you know, what the hell is happening? Am I going to be okay? Is the world going to be okay? Is that like, there's all these things, right? And so naturally I understand people looking for comfort. I don't mean to be dismissive of that by any means. But I will say that I'm very comfortable around people of different persuasions and people of different beliefs. I've been in in virtually every group, politically, demographically, whatever. And I find that like, you meet wonderful people in all of them. And then I find that you also meet assholes and all of them. Like there's there's people who are like, I think that people shouldn't be afraid to be prideful of whatever, you know, that all that intersectionality, like whatever fragments of your identity, like, shine your it's your kaleidoscope, right? You know, like, be prideful, but don't be. This is to all all groups. Don't be chauvinistic or militant. Because some like any group can have the capacity to become a, like a dark version of itself, basically, you meet you meet people in any group who are, as I just said, chauvinistic or militant, where they take it beyond a healthy pride, to the point of like, Everyone else must see the world through my sliver, basically, and pushing everything to the margins. And so I think that that needs to be kept in mind. The overall balance. I think that Medford will do well when things are kept in balance and people don't have to be in fear. But they also shouldn't feel that they can dominate others. I feel like I've seen examples of that from a lot of different corners, and so the fault doesn't lie exclusively on any one group. But I'm hoping that we can transcend that. Yeah, so I'm comfortable. I very much am comfortable with different groups. If I got invited or was, you know, as long as, you know, I'm not being chased away with a bat, I would feel comfortable going into any circle.
[Patrick Clerkin]: My campaign website, CLERKIN, C-L-E-R-K-I-N, the number four, medford.com, and that has an Anadot donation page on the front, but also at the top has the different tabs where you can find a little bit more about me, a little bit more of what my vision is, and the issues. Starting out on the campaign, the issues are more crude in the sense of, as I learn more, I update my perspective and make them more nuanced. So right now, it's a little bit like, hey, I'm out there learning on these issues, but you'll see that there. Um, I have three social media accounts. Um, one of them is on Instagram once again, at clerking for Medford on Facebook, clerking for Medford and on Reddit, I think it's just like CP clerking or something like that. So that's primarily where you can find me. I'm going to be at Colleen's, um, every Wednesday from seven to eight. I really, that's important to me that people have, uh, An in-person opportunity to just to talk to me or to share their concerns. So that's every Wednesday until election day I'll be available and That's that's pretty much it for now. Otherwise, you'll you'll see me at events. You'll see me around, you know I'll be I'll be glad to talk to any of you. Please feel free to come up and talk to me. I'm not You know, I'm not a like angry or avoidant person, so I see a lot of ice cream in your future, but Oh, yeah, I know. Well, that's another thing that I didn't mention before. There's a sandwich. I don't remember what it's called, though, at Collins. I try to get it fairly frequently rather than having the ice cream every week. But I love ice cream. I just want to say, Danielle, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it because, you know, I, no one agrees 100% with anyone, but like, I just appreciate you giving me the forum to clear the air and to for you to ask questions to give pushback and all that. I just, I just appreciate it. So thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah. Thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clark in 50 Princeton Street. I actually like this idea. I thank the Councilors that put it forward for putting it forward. But I also think it's half the story. 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. And I think that Medford is going through a tough time of transition and transformation right now, and that we're pretty dysfunctional. And so I do think that it is important to have some measures like this in place to, to sort of 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 I like what was put forward, and I like that Councilor Callahan suggested some alternatives to it as well. 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. 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 a couple weeks back, Gaza and the embargo in Cuba, tonight talking about some of the big oil company issues. Those might touch on local issues to some extent, but I think that it also massively extends the conversation beyond the local purview. And we'll, as time goes on, 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. So something that I've been focusing on on the side is just filling the communications and information void in the city. 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. 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. Like Councilor Tseng, I'm a man who appreciates nuance. 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. And so really what I'm addressing here is kind of the philosophy behind this rather than kind of the details of it. 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. So, Fossil fuels is a fully scaled enterprise at this point. 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. We don't know the externalities of scaling windmills or solar panels. We have small arrays of these things so far. Everything, once you scale it, has side effects and has unintended consequences. 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 byproducts that you have to accumulate in big open pits. Some of them might have concentrated waste products like nuclear fuel. Some of them might have dispersed waste products like the CO2 emissions of fossil fuels. 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 complexity and a lot of nuance. And I just want to remind people that while the fossil fuel companies are by no means saints, they're also not purely villains either. We do live in a world that has been for better or worse defined by the industrial revolution. And I think that fossil fuel companies just like renewables companies are improving their products all the time. And so we should just keep this in mind when we put these carrots and sticks in place. So thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick clerkin 50 Princeton Street. I'd like to start off by commending Councilors Callahan and Leming for putting this motion forward. 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. 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. PTSD. 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, oxycontin would not do. And so I thought to myself, if I'm going to potentially advocate for these, I want to know more about them directly. Long story short, I myself ended up trying them. 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 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. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Patrick Clark in 50 Princeton Street. I want to commend Councilor Lazzaro for putting this motion forward. I share conditional enthusiasm for biannual DEI training and encourage City Council's consideration of the following conditions. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. This would fulfill both the calls for transparency, competence, and integrity within government and between the public and one fell swoop. 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. 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. Witches, communists, fascists, Jews, racists, anti-Semites. 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. Let's proceed wisely. Thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, if you need to find me. 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. My concern is really the precedent that it sends that If Gaza or if Cuba are local issues, then what isn't? You know, I mean, should we be talking about the Rohingya Muslims? Should we be talking about the Uyghurs in China? Should we be talking about what's going on in Colombia and Argentina and anywhere in the world? I mean, in a sense, yes, but should it be here in these chambers? I think that there's 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, completely sealed off entity it were affected by by immigration were affected by by technology changes were affected by inflation. We're not her medically sealed but. 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. And it's like the body needs to continue to function. And if you pump all the blood towards one organ, then all the other organs start to die. I know that's not maybe the best analogy, but it's the best analogy I can think of. So I just wanted to put that on the record. Thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Hi, Patrick Clerken, 50 Princeton Street. A lot of great comments made here tonight. 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. 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. So I wanted to request if possible, just for public edification, 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. Is it based on the hours worked overall? Is it based on the content of the work? Because it's not necessarily the same. 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 how they could be brought up to parity or if they should be brought up to parity. 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. So anything 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. So thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Once again, Patrick Clark in 50 Princeton Street. 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. 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. You're comparing not just men and women, mixed bodies, but you're also comparing a school committee and city council. 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. That's basically what I wanted to say. Thank you.