[Trish Schiapelli]: Hi, good evening.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Patricia Ciappelli, 53 Garfield Avenue.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I would like to say that the zoning is climate action and it's going to meet our climate goals is laughable.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It's also laughable to say that it's going to meet our affordable housing.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It is not.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And to say that it's going to raise tax money, it will not.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And the simple reason is the infrastructure studies haven't been done and the cost that it's going to take on wear and tear on our electric grids, on our sewer, on our water is going to be insurmountable and somebody is going to have to pay for that.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And at the end of the day, if we're at a break-even, I would consider us lucky.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So I think we do need to stick to, I am opposed to this.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I think you need to go back and do the feasibility studies.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Start from the beginning.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Do it the right way.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Don't cut corners.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I understand this is a big project and we haven't done this before.

[Trish Schiapelli]: All the more reason to do it the right way so we have the right knowledge.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so again, I'm against this.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I am right in the thick of it.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I love the neighborhood, but there's a better way to do it than this.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And we are already in the hot, hot zone.

[Trish Schiapelli]: If you look at a climate map, we are red, red, red.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So to say we're gonna flip to green by adding more people doesn't work.

[Trish Schiapelli]: My name is Patricia Ciapelli, 53 Garfield Avenue.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So it seems like we've missed a lot of the process.

[Trish Schiapelli]: One community meeting does not a community outreach make.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I appreciate the fact that you've walked back so much of the units because this is already according to the GIS map and environmental justice neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: The map already has us in a very hot,

[Trish Schiapelli]: dense zone.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It's mostly yellow and red.

[Trish Schiapelli]: If you look at that GIS map, we have 980 residents that are against and have signed a petition not to move forward with the Salem zoning the way that it was.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There still is a lot of work that needs to be done, but I appreciate what you've done.

[Trish Schiapelli]: However, until there's, I agree that some of the other density needs to be taking place, but let's try it in other areas of Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: This is already a death trap for walking.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I have lived here since 2013 and there have been three deaths.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Salem Street is one of the hottest corridors for walking.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So if people think they're going to go out there and walk and not take their life in their hands, guess again.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Because I have been with one of those people that died on a Saturday night because I heard the accident and I came off my porch to go help the lady.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It was horrible.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And we just had another one the other night.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So you need to do some research.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You need to understand what the traffic is that goes up and down this.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And you need to follow the comprehensive plan that you've set for the city already in place.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Otherwise, you're going to have 980 very upset homeowners, taxpayers and voters.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Thank you.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Well, thank you for having me, John.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It's a pleasure to be here.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I think in May of 2024, I found some information from some neighbors that there was a methadone dispensary that was going to be going in on Salem Street.

[Trish Schiapelli]: As an abutter, I had never been notified.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And when I started talking to many of my neighbors and people in the neighborhood, they had not been notified either that

[Trish Schiapelli]: this methadone dispensary was coming in.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so through looking at where they were going to place the methadone dispensary, it was .2 miles from an elementary school.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So I contacted the Attorney General's office and said, this is crazy.

[Trish Schiapelli]: How can you let a methadone dispensary be .2 miles from an elementary school?

[Trish Schiapelli]: You can't even put, and as he said to me, you can't even put a liquor store that close to an elementary school.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I said, or a cannabis shop.

[Trish Schiapelli]: He said, exactly.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So, that's really what started and was the impetus to me gathering some neighbors together.

[Trish Schiapelli]: What do you think of this?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Are you concerned?

[Trish Schiapelli]: What are we going to do about it?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Well, I think it's probably a couple of possibilities and maybe a combination, a little bit of everything.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I think that the administration has their own agenda from the mayor all the way down to the city council members, the community development board, zoning, and just the list goes on.

[Trish Schiapelli]: None of them in particular seem to have

[Trish Schiapelli]: significant business experience, which is really there's processes involved.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You get experience with how things should be managed.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And their experience really for the city council consists of someone with a theater major.

[Trish Schiapelli]: someone that couldn't get elected in Somerville, so they moved to Medford, and then they were elected to the City Council.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You have someone on the City Council that has worked with some nonprofits and managed to bankrupt one of them.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And you have a lot of career students.

[Trish Schiapelli]: with very limited life experience and no business experience as it stands.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They think of the people of Medford are not paying attention.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And up until some of the recent things that have been happening throughout the city, that is probably very true.

[Trish Schiapelli]: People became complacent.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And look at the meetings.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Our city council meetings are consumed with they all vote in a pack.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They look at their historical trend of how they vote.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There's only one outlier on the city council, and that's George Scarpelli.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Other than that, you have six members.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They all seem to vote alike.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And you and I both know you can walk out there on the street.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You're not going to get five people that agree on the color of the sky, what the temperature is.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And yet, sadly enough, they all vote together.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And they ran on a slate.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I think they agreed behind closed doors, from what I've heard, that they all vote in a pact.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so that's what they're doing.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And unfortunately, what that causes is we have lost democracy on our city council.

[Trish Schiapelli]: This is not the democratic way.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You should be having discussions.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You should be having three and four people against and for something and arguing and having in-depth conversations.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And we just don't have it.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And one of the city councilors,

[Trish Schiapelli]: just a few weeks ago, Collins said, we are elected to make decisions for you.

[Trish Schiapelli]: No, that is not correct.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You are elected to represent us and vote how we as constituents and taxpayers would want the vote to go.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So initially we went old school with standouts and this and that and the other thing and trying to go to the city council meetings and voice our opinions and it became very apparent that that isn't what they wanted to hear.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So I think right now we are in the throes of

[Trish Schiapelli]: legal action.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I started reaching out to attorneys that I know to have conversations to start to figure out what are our legal options?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Do we have legal options?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And sadly, through the methadone experience, I quickly learned that they don't care what you think.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so, you know, people were completely blindsided with the fact that we were going to get a methadone dispensary.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We gathered 550 signatures against the methadone dispensary.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And that was gathered quickly.

[Trish Schiapelli]: That was gathered quickly in weeks.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We were running behind the eight ball with everything on that one.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We were working weekends.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And then it came time to show up to the final city council meeting.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And we sent out emails and all the people that had been at the standouts, which was very obvious.

[Trish Schiapelli]: People were pulling their cars over going, where is this methadone dispensary going?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Right here.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Well, there's a school 0.2 miles away.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They couldn't believe it.

[Trish Schiapelli]: How come we haven't heard of this?

[Trish Schiapelli]: We even had people on West Medford signing our petition.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And I said to one woman, I said, why are you signing our petition?

[Trish Schiapelli]: This doesn't really affect you.

[Trish Schiapelli]: She goes, it's Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We're all Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It affects all of us, right, for the city and how we are perceived.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so

[Trish Schiapelli]: Everyone showed up at that city council meeting.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Everyone was ready to voice.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We had filled that gallery and we were shut down.

[Trish Schiapelli]: The city council president, Zach Baer, said we will not be taking public comment.

[Trish Schiapelli]: People were in outrage.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I was worried somebody was going to go actually over the rails.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It was that bad.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so George Scarpelli got a break, and they went in the back.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And I think he said, you know, this is not going to be good for any of us if we don't let the people that came here to speak.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Sadly, the majority of people had already left because they were just so frustrated.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And I felt bad because I said, listen, if you really feel this strongly about the methadone dispensary in the neighborhood that close to a school, then please, show up.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Tell them, I can't be the only voice.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Ten of us can't be the only voice.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Anyway, you know, they were just outraged.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And George eventually got them to, who was left in the gallery, be able to come up and speak and things like that.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And the reason I think people felt so strongly is that this Habit OpCo is really a company of bad actors.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They have a long, long list of complaints.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Every city that they have gone into.

[Trish Schiapelli]: and every city that they manage from Lynn to Springfield, they're up in arms.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And because they purchase the buildings, they really, they have, they're property owners.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So there isn't anything that the city is going to do except ask them and they very vehemently say, you know, too bad we own the building.

[Trish Schiapelli]: This same company recently,

[Trish Schiapelli]: had an article written in the New York Times that there's a federal investigation going against them because they also own inpatient clinics for mental health and bipolar and things like that.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And they were found, even the employees are testifying against them in the federal investigation and the federal lawsuit, that they hold people against their will.

[Trish Schiapelli]: If you have the right kind of insurance, they're able to figure out that they're going to get paid, so they hold you against your will.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I think that's really sad, and I think that fortunately we dodged a bullet by not letting that company into the parameters of our city.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And one of the things that was so interesting in a lot of the research, our government, the Health and Human Services Division, went on to say and has done research around the methadone dispensaries, and there's a huge increase in human trafficking and

[Trish Schiapelli]: things like that, and sex trafficking of children around those areas, which, you know, so close to an elementary school, it just makes me shudder to think that.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And it was then that I decided, after all of that, that really legal action was the only course that we could have where we were going to get the results that we needed immediately.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So legal actions, unfortunately, did not just end with the methadone dispensary.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Legal action and having a legal guidance, if you will, and an attorney on retainer is something that we continue with to this day.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We believe that is our only avenue currently with this administration to really push back around if there's large numbers of people that are seeing things that they don't want.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And the reason we have to do that is, think about it, the mayor hasn't had a solicitor in this town for three years, I believe.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It's because the people have no legal guidance.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Typically, you would be able to go to the city solicitor and say, this is what's happening.

[Trish Schiapelli]: What do you think?

[Trish Schiapelli]: But because we don't have that, we have no guidance for the community and for independent people to ask questions and confirm.

[Trish Schiapelli]: She has then engaged a law firm that has allegiance to her because she's paying them, rightfully so, and now she can do whatever she wants, wherever she wants, and we are forced to live with it.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Basically, she has carte blanche.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And she's banking on the fact, and I believe, my opinion, that we don't have the wherewithal and we don't have the financial capacity to hire a law firm, a good law firm, a big Boston law firm that will represent us.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We do.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And we have.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And while we do have the same law firm that represented us with the methadone dispensary, we have a different attorney.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And we did that intentionally because the attorney that we now have has a municipality expertise and specialty, which is, we feel, something that we really needed going forward with some of the things that are going on in Medford currently.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And he's gone up against KP Law.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Our newest fight, as I'm sure you're aware, is the Salem Street debacle that's going on.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so he was able to put together and pen a very nice but strong legal letter as to why this shouldn't be taking place on Salem Street.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Oh, right, yes.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Exactly, yes.

[Trish Schiapelli]: She's really dug in and learned a lot about that.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Yes, she has.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Well, obviously, all of my neighbors are concerned.

[Trish Schiapelli]: But then Sheryl Rodriguez, who we were just talking about, started a change.org petition online.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And actually, as of last week, we had 980 verified signatures against the rezoning and against what the administration in this town wants to do.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I think that's a strong number.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There has, and it isn't, there just hasn't been any community outreach.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And there was a meeting we were sitting in when they had just started talking about this and Kit Collins said, oh, if we could have knocked on every door in the Salem Street area, I would have wanted to talk to every neighbor and hear what they had to say and whether they were behind this.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Well, you know,

[Trish Schiapelli]: put that in an RFP then and have this Innis company, if they're the be all end all to community design and planning, they should be doing that.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Put that in the RFP.

[Trish Schiapelli]: That is your job to take care of the people in this area of your city and make sure that they are heard.

[Trish Schiapelli]: The one thing that they're overlooking is that we are an environmental justice neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And that means, and this was put in the letter from our attorney at Richmond APC, and that is we are a racially diverse neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We are an economically diverse neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We are a multilingual neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And no notice or community outreach has been done in English

[Trish Schiapelli]: let alone other languages for those that don't speak English.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And that's not right.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And this Salem Street rezoning has been in place since, I believe, July of last year.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And the residents are just learning about it.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And I find that crazy.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And the first community engagement didn't happen until after they received our letter from the law firm.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So that tells you

[Trish Schiapelli]: that all of the people that raised concerns, many people say, oh, we brought it up.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We wrote a letter.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We called the Community Development Board.

[Trish Schiapelli]: No action was going to be done until they got that our environmentally justice neighborhood is unhappy and the people need to be represented.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So I think at the end of the day, we can all agree

[Trish Schiapelli]: Salem needs a little facelift.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It needs some love, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: But they have not followed processes set forth in their own procedures.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They haven't done that.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Therefore, by law, if you haven't notified abutters and if you haven't had community engagement, and it's not just one community engagement, one time at the elementary school, six months, seven months after you've already started the process, no.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They have to go all the way back and start over from the beginning, and that is what we intend to make them do.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There have been no traffic studies, no studies on the effect to the school enrollments.

[Trish Schiapelli]: How is that going to affect it?

[Trish Schiapelli]: No studies for safety, just our own safety in the neighborhood around fire and police.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They're saying you can go four to six stories high and with eight foot between the buildings.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Now, does that make common sense?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Our streets are old.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We are an older neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Very narrow.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Sometimes if, on my street, if you have two cars parked on either side, the fire truck really has to finagle.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And I'm like, I hope that guy's a good driver.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Exactly.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And there are just so many other problems around Salem Street area.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We are fortunate enough to have a trained engineer working with us, and we found out many, many things that need to take place.

[Trish Schiapelli]: are not, and so we are bringing those all up together, and there will probably be another legal letter.

[Trish Schiapelli]: But ultimately, we are interviewing attorneys for a class-action lawsuit regarding the Salem Street lack of process as defined by the law.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It constitutes, from a couple of attorneys, a taking of land, if you will.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And ultimately, above all other items, there's discrimination, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: We are an environmental justice neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We have certain rights.

[Trish Schiapelli]: This isn't taking place in West Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Why is that, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Why is nothing like this taking?

[Trish Schiapelli]: So that is discrimination, and we intend, you know, to see where that can go, so.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Yeah, yeah.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So that's really a loaded question, because there is so much going on.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We could be here just for its own show, just on that, what's going on.

[Trish Schiapelli]: But I do know that there is a 10-story dorm going in with Tufts in South Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: The neighbors were very upset about that, and rightfully so.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There's going to be 670-some people in that dorm.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And as one of the neighbors said, I don't want 670 people staring at me when I'm in my backyard on a Saturday or Sunday morning.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And that's not even the biggest part of it.

[Trish Schiapelli]: The biggest part of it is they're losing sunlight.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We already in New England don't have a lot of sunlight.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There's sunlight studies.

[Trish Schiapelli]: seem questionable at best, if you will.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And, you know, so that's an issue.

[Trish Schiapelli]: In fact, they are using our same attorney at Richmond.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Those people in that neighborhood have banned together.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Mystic Avenue is

[Trish Schiapelli]: In the process of being rezoned, I hear 20 stories on the side that's near the water, which is crazy.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You know, they want to put in all of this communal living and all of these dorms and all of this, and it's not really the neighborhood environment that people and that the homeowners, the taxpayers and the voters want to live in.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There's St.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Clair going up where we don't even know really what's going in there.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It's supposed to be, it was originally supposed to be a domestic violence shelter then, but they referred to it in their business plan as recidivism, so recidivism and domestic violence.

[Trish Schiapelli]: domestic violence victims shouldn't really be used in the same sentence, in my opinion.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So there's a lot going on there.

[Trish Schiapelli]: But again, all of these projects are going on all at the same time.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And this, again, speaks to my point where the city lacks the experience and this administration lacks the experience because there isn't a business out there unless they are

[Trish Schiapelli]: a staunch, sophisticated business that has done this for years and learned their lessons and made their mistakes and learned that would do this many projects at once.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so I would say, let's pick one project, do that one project, do it well, experience it, learn from a few mistakes, and then move on to the second project, not six projects.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I hear you.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Do it.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Well, I think that's the driving force behind all of these projects taking place.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I think that that's a great question.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And I think most people living in Medford would say, when you look around and you drive around, not much, not a lot.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And it's as if the administration has had this epiphany that, oh my gosh, we've been in office X amount of years, and we haven't really done.

[Trish Schiapelli]: People are still complaining about the streets.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There's still lead in the water.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There's still problems at the school.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so they're trying now to overcompensate for that because there's another election coming up.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You know, the roads are awful and the schools are not being run efficiently, to your point, and the list just goes on.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There's still no city solicitor, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Why can't that be fixed in three years?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And there's nothing but lawsuits.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Nothing but lawsuits.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And as someone that's, you know,

[Trish Schiapelli]: run a business and run profit centers.

[Trish Schiapelli]: If you're getting sued that often, someone should be figuring out why.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You need to be having conversations.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Who's getting all of the lawsuits?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Is it one specific department?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Is it one specific manager?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Is it a group?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Where is it coming from?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And what is the impetus to that?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And how do we stop it?

[Trish Schiapelli]: How do we quell that from happening?

[Trish Schiapelli]: But, you know, what they have accomplished is they've increased taxes.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They've offered to give themselves salary increases.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There's complete chaos in every single neighborhood except West Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Isn't that interesting?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And I just think that there's

[Trish Schiapelli]: a lot of reasons for many homeowners, taxpayers, voters, and citizens to have concern, a lot of concern.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I think people... They're starting to... And you know, that's the good thing, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: We were all very sleepy and I used to say, oh, ignorance was blessed.

[Trish Schiapelli]: When I didn't know any of this stuff was going on, it was great.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Now my whole life is consumed with it when I'm not at work.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So, I think, and this is the benefit, they have woken up tens of thousands of people, taxpayers and voters, that are really ticked off and fed up.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I hear it day in and day out.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I love Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I bought my home here in 2013, and I've lived here.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I love being in a diverse neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I love its location to Cambridge, and you can be in and out of Boston very quickly.

[Trish Schiapelli]: But it's not going to get better in Medford and keep the neighborhood feel until

[Trish Schiapelli]: there's a change at the next election.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I mean, that has to happen.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And there are certain things that we need desperately to happen that this administration just will not allow.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And one of the things is an audit, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And we had asked

[Trish Schiapelli]: Can we have an audit?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Can we vote on that?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And unfortunately, it's Massachusetts state law.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It's the only state in the country that in order for a municipality to pull an audit, you need to have all 100% vote by the city council and the mayor has to agree to it.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So, and it isn't that there's any necessarily wrongdoing.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It's just that what we see even in business is dealing with the same vendors, if you will, which is what an audit firm is, they get a little complacent.

[Trish Schiapelli]: and don't look as hard as they should.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And then what can we ask for from them, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: We don't get line items.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We should have line items.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Was that department, so without having line items for departments with specific expenses, you have the ability to move funds around.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, as long as at the end of the day your dollars and cents balance out and you know technically where everything is.

[Trish Schiapelli]: But the perfect example of not having a line item is they left $9 million in a checking account for a year.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And they said, oops, we found a checking account.

[Trish Schiapelli]: How do you leave $9 million in a checking account in an interest rate environment that hasn't existed in decades?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Correct.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And so $9 million at a 5% interest rate

[Trish Schiapelli]: 100% collateralized, because you would never take a risk with public funds, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Lost us $450,000 in one year, and if it had been there for two years, well, let's do the math, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: That's a lot of money.

[Trish Schiapelli]: But again,

[Trish Schiapelli]: You don't know that because you don't have line items, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: When you have line items, you know every single penny, where it is, and you list all of the financial institutions.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And we need to have an ethics committee.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I feel really very, very strong.

[Trish Schiapelli]: The state has an ethics committee.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We can model it after what the state does for an ethics committee.

[Trish Schiapelli]: and set the rules of the road that everyone has to adhere to, whether you're a developer in the city, whether you're a business owner, whether you're a taxpayer, whether you're a city councilor, whether you're the mayor.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Let's say here's the line in the sand, and this is where we don't go over it.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And it has to happen.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It just has to happen.

[Trish Schiapelli]: And if not, my concern and my fear is that this administration is on the way to bankrupting the city of Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: That's my greatest fear.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I mean, how many lawsuits can you take?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Especially if we start a class action and especially if we do.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I mean, you have 947, 980 people in

[Trish Schiapelli]: And a class action lawsuit, that's going to be expensive.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Right, right, right.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They didn't want to spend the money.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They don't want to spend the money on that, but they'll spend the money on the lawsuits.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They don't want to spend the money on hiring the right planning company that's going to do an RFP that's going to include going out.

[Trish Schiapelli]: their comment to us when we said, well, you haven't even done traffic studies on Salem Street.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Their comment to us is, well, when the businesses come in, they'll do their traffic study.

[Trish Schiapelli]: When what they want to build comes into play, why do we have to do 10 different traffic studies that we, you know, we do one traffic study, then you know where you go, right?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And they do it a little bit backwards.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It's almost like you need to run the city with a business plan.

[Trish Schiapelli]: What do we need for money and where are we going to get it?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And how are we going to divide that money up that we want to get between the homeowners and the taxpayers and the businesses and the new businesses coming in and how can we attract people here that are going to help that?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Okay.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Patricia Ciappelli, 53 Garfield.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So one of the comments was last to the table, and I would say that's about right for Medford because nowhere did we apply for any road grants, which the federal government granted to Everett.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They granted it to Somerville, and Springfield got $15 million in road grants.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So what are we doing about that?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Grants for the water and sewer are up and available now.

[Trish Schiapelli]: What are we doing about that?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Yet we're told, oh, you have to come up with the $200 million for that.

[Trish Schiapelli]: $9 million sat in a checking account.

[Trish Schiapelli]: In the highest interest rate times, in something conservative with a decent interest rate, you lost us $450,000 in one year's time.

[Trish Schiapelli]: How long?

[Trish Schiapelli]: In two years?

[Trish Schiapelli]: You tell me.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So we still haven't learned our lesson because I chased down Ted to say, why am I on the DLS website and it's showing me something different for the rate that our taxes would be coming up?

[Trish Schiapelli]: And he said, oh, you added in the fire station.

[Trish Schiapelli]: I said, well, of course I did.

[Trish Schiapelli]: That's coming up next year.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So people need to plan.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So again, we haven't planned like we should three years, five years.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We're just looking one year ahead.

[Trish Schiapelli]: What do we need for one year?

[Trish Schiapelli]: When the fact is, people who live on budgets actually do have to plan three and five years ahead.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We can only do expenses we can afford, but we can do an electric street sweeper.

[Trish Schiapelli]: So my question to you is, why would I trust this administration with another dime of my money?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Patricia Ciapelli, 53 Garfield Avenue.

[Trish Schiapelli]: As an abutter to the methadone dosing facility at the end of my street, I was never notified.

[Trish Schiapelli]: There's a reason why legal notices are to be sent certified mail.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Then imagine my surprise when I find out this firm is the same firm that has wreaked havoc in Lynn, Springfield, Lowell, and Boston, Mass and Cass, where people defecate and urinate in the streets, and the engagement center had to be closed because the employees were afraid to go to work.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We have gathered hundreds of voters' signatures, hundreds, over the past few weeks against this facility coming to our neighborhood, and we will continue to gather more.

[Trish Schiapelli]: People from North Medford, West Medford, Brooks, Lawrence Estates area, when we asked them, why are you signing our petition?

[Trish Schiapelli]: This doesn't affect you or your neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They responded, it's Medford, and we've heard about this company.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We don't want them in Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We already assist those afflicted with this horrible disease.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We have 10 locations within two miles of just downtown Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You recently asked for a 2.5% override for our taxes to fund the schools for additional programs because you care about our children.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Do you really?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Does putting a methadone dosing facility 0.2 miles from an elementary school speak to your care for the children?

[Trish Schiapelli]: Or is prostitution and walking through needles on the street to get to school a new program of education you are offering?

[Trish Schiapelli]: I can't believe you let Habit Opco be in charge of their own traffic study.

[Trish Schiapelli]: This is a horrible way to run the city.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We trust you to provide a checks and balances on how you produce your business and how you make your decisions.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You are the equivalent of a publicly held company and we are your stakeholders.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You owe us the complete transparency on information and financing.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Recently, the Administration for Children and Families, a division of Health and Human Services, recently held a human trafficking and the opioid crisis webinar conference.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Dr. Catherine Chong stated, there is an intersection where opioid users and human trafficking cross.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We have learned that human traffickers are increasingly recruiting in drug rehabilitation facilities and other similar programs because they see the vulnerability when someone is trying to recover from opioid or substance use.

[Trish Schiapelli]: They are also focusing on the parents that come to those facilities and exploit their children.

[Trish Schiapelli]: How do we know this would stop here, given the close proximity to any neighborhood or elementary school where they want to come back?

[Trish Schiapelli]: The Glenwood area has received your message loud and clear.

[Trish Schiapelli]: We are a racially, ethnically, and economically diverse neighborhood.

[Trish Schiapelli]: It is clear you are blatantly discriminating against us.

[Trish Schiapelli]: You may be the Our Revolution, but we are the Take Back Medford.

[Trish Schiapelli]: Nice to meet you.