City Council - Regular Meeting

Medford City Council, 12th regular meeting, June 23rd, 2026 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Callahan. Present. Councillor Lemming.

Present.

Councillor Mullaney. Present. Councillor Scarpelli. Present. Councillor Singh. Present. Vice President Lazaro. Present. And President Fierce.

Present. Seven present, none absent. Please rise to salute the flag. Announcements, accolades, remembrances, reports, and records. 26-116, offered by President Behrs and Councilor Tseng, resolution to celebrate Marie Cassidy and her years of service and devotion to the children and city of Medford. Be it resolved by the Medford City Council that we congratulate Marie Cassidy on her retirement as director of the Medford Family Network and thank her for decades of public service to the city of Medford, especially her 33 years as the heart and soul of the MFN, which has been essential to building thriving childhoods and community connections for generations of children and parents in our city. Councillor Singh.

Thank you, President Beyers, for letting me join you on this. Marie is one of those members of our community who has given her whole life to our community, to folks who she doesn't know. And she touches their life in a way that I think is immeasurable. For the children growing up in Medford, I think a lot of us will remember the activities that they've held for the parents in Medford. the MFN and her work in guiding and creating events for the MFN has just made their lives easier as well. When we think about what this world is missing today and something that Medford is pretty good at, I'd say is that building of community. And Murray is one of those reasons why we have such a strong community and such a strong fabric of parents networks of children's networks and friendships here in the city. It was extraordinary to see the love for her at the teddy bear picnic a few weeks ago. Extraordinary to see so many people come out and just record videos and say, you know, share the love with her. And she deserves every bit of this and even more. So thank you, Marie, for your service to Medford.

Thank you, Councillor Seng. Councillor Scarpelli.

Thank you, Mr. President. Great job for my colleagues to put this on the agenda. I think that knowing Marie Cassidy in many different levels, one as a colleague, as a teacher, former teacher, and then as a parent of two young members at the time for the Meffet Family Network. And the efforts that Marie Cassidy allowed us to become better parents and give us the opportunity to network with other young parents. And that opportunity still exists today because of her efforts. And I know that my biggest regret is missing her party. The other night we had a zoning meeting party and we had a zoning meeting here and And again, sometimes these are the pains of this office that you miss important opportunities to thank people. So I thank my colleagues for bringing this forward tonight so we can publicly thank Marie Cassidy for everything she's done for our community and how many people she's touched in a positive light. So thank you, Marie, and thank you for my colleagues presenting this.

Thank you, Councillor Scarpelli. Councillor Callahan.

Thanks. I just want to comment how much people in other cities wish they had the Medford Family Network. It is truly amazing and just such an incredible service to so many families and so many people have met great, great friends through that network when their children were young. So it's really an incredible service that she's done for our community. And thank you so much.

Thank you. I know Marie has received a lot of accolades and celebrations over the last couple of months and really over the last year. And we do have a paper on tonight as well to talk about Medford Family Network and some funding to help them address a significant loss of grant funds due to the federal government's cutbacks on services for kids, education, healthcare, et cetera. So we will be talking about that, but Marie founded the MFN 33 years ago, and it has literally helped generations of kids in our city thrive. And I can't think of anyone more universally celebrated as just a kind and caring person who has made the lives of families in our city better than Marie Cassidy. And, you know, I said to her, congratulations on her retirement at a retirement party. And she's like, congratulations. It's bittersweet. She was like, She's bummed. She really loves this job. She really loves the kids of Medford. And what she also said to me is that she's going to be around. So she may be retiring from the full-time job, but she will continue to be supporting the MFN and our city and our kids. On the motion of councilor saying to approve, seconded by. Seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Council of Callahan. Councillor Lemming?

Yes.

Councillor Mullaney? Yes. Councillor Schauffele? Yes. Councillor Singh? Yes. Vice President Lozaro? Yes. And President Beers?

Yes. Seven the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. Records and reports of committees. We have the records of June 9th going to Councillor Callahan, records of the special joint meeting of June 11th to Councillor Lemming, a committee of the whole report from June 9th by myself, and a community safety report by Council Lazaro and a resident services and engagement committee by Councilor Mullane. Just before I go to Councilor Callahan, Councilor Scarpelli did notify me of one correction on the special joint meeting records of June 11th. I think there was a vote count on the neighborhood medical that should count Councilor Scarpelli as a no. All right, Councilor Callahan on the June 9th.

Thank you. Just on one tiny amendment on page 138, it says in the motion to prepare a 12-1 budget, but that should be a 1-12 budget. Great. Thank you. Aside from that, they were in order, and I move to approve.

Great. Councillor Lemming for the special joint meeting of June 11.

Aside from the amendment just said, I find the records in order and move to approve.

All right. COUNSELOR LIZARRO, PUBLIC HEALTH AND COMMUNITY SAFETY.

THANK YOU. THIS MEETING WAS THE RESCHEDULED MEETING ABOUT THE POLICE REPORT ON SEA COPS AND IT WAS DELIVERED BY THE POLICE DEPARTMENT AND WENT GREAT AND MOTION TO APPROVE.

GREAT. COUNSELOR MERLIN, RESIDENT SERVICES AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT COMMITTEE.

Yes, this is an opportunity to review the newsletter and we also selected dates for the neighborhood board meetings through the rest of the calendar year. So looking to host Ward 1 on Tuesday, September 22nd at the Andrews, Ward 5 Tuesday, October 28th at the Missatuck and Ward 2 Tuesday, December 2nd at the Roberts. All of them have been confirmed and booked. through the school as well. And then at the next meeting, we'll be able to do the rest of 2027 and talk through a strategy for communication to get as many people as possible to come and speak with us and to share things that are happening within each of their wards.

Great. Thank you, Councillor Mullane. And then for the Committee of the Whole for June 9th, that was our Committee of the Whole where we received a presentation from the Medford Arts Council and Arts Collaborative Medford on the need for more city funds for arts and culture here in Medford. On the motion of Councillor Callaghan to approve all of the records and reports of committees as amended, seconded by Councillor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Callaghan. Council Lemming?

Yes.

Council Mullaney? Yes. Council Scarpelli? Yes. Council LeSang? Yes. Vice President Lazaro? And President Beers.

Yes, I have the affirmative, none the negative, the motion passes. Motions, orders and resolutions 26117 offered by President Beers, Councillor Callahan and Councillor Lemming. This is the resolution to support the rent stabilization campaign and legislative compromise efforts. We're going to withdraw that resolution given the, in my opinion, extremely disappointing news from the Supreme Judicial Court today. So that is withdrawn. Vice President Lazaro.

Thank you. Motion to take papers 26127, 26120, and 26125 out of order.

Thank you, Vice President Lazzaro. You will note that there is not a 26127 on the agenda. That's because under communications from city officers and employees, that should read 26127. It's mislabeled, but it was submitted by the Medford Public Schools, and it is a resolution to establish a special education reserve fund for Medford. We received this from the school committee. I will read the resolution.

Oh, do you want to do that first? Yeah, yeah.

Oh, we need to vote. We need to vote on that. Sorry about that. On the motion of Council Lazaro to take those papers out of order, seconded by, uh, Councilor Callahan, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilor Callahan. Councilor Lemming. Yes. Council Mullane.

Yes.

Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Singh. Yes. Vice President Lazaro.

Yes.

And President Peirce.

Yes, having the affirmative, none of the negative, the motion passes. 26127, communications from city officers and employees submitted by Medford Public Schools, resolution to establish a special education reserve fund for Medford. Whereas the Medford Public Schools District experiences significant and recurring volatility in special education expenditures driven by statutory obligations to provide appropriate services and by student enrollment challenge changes, occurring throughout the year, whereas the number of students requiring special education services in Medford has grown substantially over the past three years, with a 2% cumulative increase in students with IEPs and a lot of individualized education plans and an 83% increase in students requiring one-on-one paraprofessional support, a 24% increase in students with out-of-district placements, a 7% increase in students requiring specialized transportation, placing increasing pressure on the district's annual budget. This is a long one, but it looks like we also have students requiring special education fluctuating significantly during the school year, an influx of move-ins during the year, 73 additional students, a 4% increase. So increase in move-ins with IEPs requiring one-on-one paras, students requiring out-of-district placements or requiring specialized transportation. Whereas special education expenditures in Medford increased 27% between fiscal 23 and 25, and the corresponding funding from the city's general funding grants increased only 17%. Whereas federal Individuals Disabilities Education Act grant faces growing instability from federal budget disputes and policy priorities, including an 8% reduction in the federal allocation between fiscal 24 and 25. whereas Massachusetts General Law authorizes municipal and regional school districts to establish a special education reserve fund that can be used in future years for unanticipated or unbudgeted costs of special education, whereas Mass General Law Chapter 40, Section 13E enables the establishment of a special education reserve fund through majority vote of both the school committee and the city council to mitigate these fiscal risks, provided that the fund balance does not exceed 2% of annual net school spending amount, Whereas establishment of such a fund provides a proactive and strategic approach planning for unforeseeable special education costs and to provide stability in the delivery of public education. And whereas the school committee has determined that establishing this fund is prudent financial management aligned with the district responsibility. BE RESOLVED BY THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE THAT THEY ACCEPT THE PROVISIONS OF GENERAL LAW CHAPTER 40 SECTION 13 E DIRECTING THE SUPERINTENDENT TO EMAIL A COPY OF THIS RESOLUTION TO THE COUNCIL AND THE ACTING CITY CLERK TO PLACE THIS RESOLUTION ON THEIR JUNE 23 COUNCIL AGENDA FOR THEIR VOTE. ESTABLISHING A SPECIAL RESERVE FUND FOR THE MEDFORD PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO PAY WITHOUT FURTHER APPROPRIATION FOR UNANTICIPATED OR UNBUDGETED COSTS OF SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES AND SPECIFYING THAT THE RESERVE FUND SHALL BE FUNDED THROUGH TRANSFERS OF YEAR END BALANCES AND SURPLUSES FROM THE ANNUAL SCHOOL BUDGET, SCHOOL OPERATING BUDGET APPROVED BY THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE, FREE CASH APPROPRIATIONS AS DETERMINED BY THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE AND CITY COUNCIL, INTEREST AND EARNINGS ON THE FUND BALANCE WHICH SHALL BE AUTOMATICALLY CREDITED TO THE FUND AND ANY OTHER PERMISSIBLE REVENUE requiring that any distribution be authorized by a majority vote of the school committee and city council all distributions shall be approved only by majority vote of both bodies and no distribution will be made without prior written request from the superintendent of schools or designated school administrator the limiting balance of the reserve fund to two percent uh establishing a minimum balance of two hundred thousand in the interest bearing reserve fund once that level has been achieved and affirming that the reserve fund is complimentary to and shall not replace other district financial management practices, including the Circuit Breaker Reimbursement Program, budgeting for anticipated special education costs, and maintaining emergency reserves for general operating contingencies, and finally, directing the school community to report to the community annually on the status of the Special Education Reserve Fund and its role in maintaining fiscal stability and program quality in special education services. I hope you will appreciate my live copy edit. That was about 30% longer than what I just said. So I will turn it over to Superintendent Galusi, School Committee Member Parks, Director Velez.

Thank you very much for having us be here and for taking it out of order. We do appreciate that very much. This was a resolution that's near and dear to member parks and the metro public schools. I'm going to have Miss parks do the framing and then we are happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Welcome. Thanks. So thank you. So this came about from attending the Massachusetts Association of School Committee Members training for new school committee members. And I learned it was probably one of the most impactful financial tools for addressing special education And it kind of immediately struck me as something Medford needed to explore, and it became kind of my mission to bring it back to Medford. As a district, our special education services are a legal and moral obligation, but the costs can be highly unpredictable. A sudden need for an out-of-district placement or specialized transportation can emerge mid-year as students move in and out of the district, creating immediate financial strain. and we are already seeing instability in federal funding, such as the recent 8% reduction in our IDEA grants, which only underscores this vulnerability. So establishing this reserve fund will provide us with a dedicated financial safety net, and it allows us to capture unspent funds and save them in an interest-bearing account. for these unanticipated costs. It protects our general operating budget and ensures we don't have to scramble or make painful cuts elsewhere to provide required services. And I really just want to thank our finance team, our special education leadership and the superintendent's office, because without them, all of the information to put this together would not have been made possible. We recognize that we're establishing this with a $0 balance, but we want to have it in place should we be able to have funds to put in it at any time.

Great.

The only thing I would just add to that, especially if there are people listening at home, is that, per general law, school committee has approved. You also have to approve. And as, fingers crossed, we hope to grow this so that we have this, as Member Parks said, safety net. It does require, so if we feel that there are unforeseen, unanticipated special education costs that weren't budgeted for that happen, that we may want to use this fund, I have to make that recommendation to both school committee and this body for approval for use of the funds. So we're here for the first phase of your approval tonight.

Thank you. Madam Superintendent, Vice President Lazaro.

Thank you. I want to thank school committee member Parks for bringing this forward, bringing this to our attention. One thing I learned when I was working for the school district years ago is that I'm not sure that this is the reason for this particular influx, but something that I didn't know before having the job that I had is that private schools and charter schools, not all private schools, but charter schools don't have the same obligation to educate all students that public schools do. And sometimes a family may not be aware that a student has special needs until they begin at a school. And if they're in a certain charter school, which is a public school, they may learn that their student has special needs that that school is not equipped to tackle. So then the family may decide to change schools. And then the student comes to Medford Public Schools, where we do have an obligation to educate every student. And that costs a lot more money. And it's sometimes is reflected in things like school readings and the expense of transportation and paraprofessionals and all kinds of, you know, different areas that we, we don't, we don't encounter a lot of this stuff in city council, but I saw a lot of discussions of it in school committee meetings. And we have talked a bit about it, about it, counselor Scarpelli and catch a lemming talking about, special education stuff. It just it costs a lot of money. And it is our obligation as the city to educate every single student that needs to be educated in Medford. And it makes a lot of sense to me that we would be thoughtful and preventive about having a reserve fund and trying to make sure that we don't play catch up and try to make sure that we're putting money that's available in a fund where we can access it beforehand. The other thing is it takes a long time to establish these things, and then when you funnel money into the fund, you can build it up over time. So much like other stabilization funds and the Affordable Housing Trust and things that we've established over the last few years, this is just like that, but I didn't know it existed until Member Parks brought it to our attention. So thank you very much. Greatly appreciate it. And a motion to approve.

Thank you. Councillor Scarpelli.

Thank you. Again, thank you, school member Parks. And our team, I think, as a former educator, I think my colleagues bring up good points. And I think that when you, if we can establish a fund that we can jump ahead and take care of situations before they escalate and before it becomes a huge money issue. And then we're sitting at the end of this and saying, what do we cut? What do we lose? Because we didn't prepare ourselves. I think this gives us a unique opportunity to really support the most vulnerable members in our school department, and that's our special needs community. So, you know, it's one thing that I've taken ownership of my personal life working in recreation. We've taken deep passion and passion extra steps to identify programs for kids with special needs and um i think that this is a a valuable tool that we'll have in the school department so i think that um i appreciate it the transparency behind it it's something's going to be open process where we can all talk about it and we know exactly where the money's going to help the most most vulnerable so thank you thank you thank you counselor site

We've got a long agenda, so I'll be brief. I think, don't worry, I have a 10 minute speech prepared. No, all I wanna say is I think we know that for the schools and for the city, opportunity for all is guiding principle. This is an opportunity for us to tell those who've been traditionally overlooked for a long time that we we do prioritize them that we see them that we want to invest um and i know the public schools have has been doing it for a long time um you know putting that focus on them but this is i think uh an additional tool for us um to be able to serve our residents and our students better thank you thank you so brief

Is there any further discussion by members of the council? Seeing none, on the motion of Vice President Lozaro to approve, seconded by Councillor Scarpelli. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Callahan. Councillor Leving. Yes. Councillor Mullaney. Yes. Councillor Scarpelli. Yes. Councillor Singh. Yes. Vice President Lozaro. Yes. President Behrs.

Yes. Seventh affirmative, none negative. The motion passes. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. We appreciate that.

Paper 26120, submitted by Mayor Brianna Lingokern. Free cash and retained earnings appropriations. Dear President Behrs and city councilors, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body approves the appropriation of One, free cash in the amount of $10,099,270.04 on the following items. $7,447,658.04 to replenish the capital stabilization fund to 13 million would contain $5,552,341.96 if the capital stabilization fund appropriation request on the agenda later is approved. $1,355,311.55 for the snow and ice deficit, $1,281,345 for the fiscal 23 and fiscal 24 patrol superior and dispatch union retro, and 15,000 for a feasibility study for the project labor agreement for the construction of a new Medford High School. As of the submission of this request, the balance of free cash is $21,012,459. And then two, retain earnings from the Water Sewer Enterprise Fund in the amount of $560,000.00 on the following item, $560,000.00 to replenish the Water Sewer Capital Stabilization Fund to $2,000,000.00. As of submission of this request, the balance in retained earnings in Water Sewer Enterprise is $5,091,021.00. Respectfully submitted, Brianna Lingokern, Mayor. And there are two other items here for free cash that are on our agenda later. I'll just note those. $250,000 for the Affordable Housing Trust and $100,000 for the Medford Family Network. And we will take those up later, but they are free cash papers. I will recognize the administration. Looks like we have Finance Director Dickinson, Chief of Staff Mazarian here, if they want to present on this paper. Thank you and welcome.

Thank you, President Behrs, members of the council. I'm happy to answer any questions. I don't have anything further to, I think, state at this stage. You know, I will say that broadly, with the support of this council, going back last year, we had identified that there was a significant need to have Funding in a stabilization fund going back further in time this council supported and collaborated with the administration with the mayor and myself and others to create the stabilization funds that didn't exist previous and so we have seen the fruits of that labor because unlike free cash capital stabilization or stabilization funds can be used anytime throughout the year and And in the times where we didn't have stabilization funds, we were somewhat benefiting from the flexibility of ARPA. But that came to a close, and this council agreed and moved swiftly with us, ultimately. The prior councils disagreed, but this council agreed, and we ultimately established a capital stabilization fund. a general stabilization fund, a water sewer stabilization fund at that time, and funded those things. We spent, over the course of fiscal 26, $7.5 million out of the capital stabilization fund, demonstrating the significant need of that pocket of funding because free cash, as you all know, as the public generally knows, is only available when it's certified. So that means that the finance department has closed the books on the prior year. It has, you know, submitted all the necessary paperwork to the state to get free cash certified, which can be a lengthy and arduous process that requires a lot more than I'm making it seem, which auditor and finance director Bob Dickinson can expand on as the council wishes. But it really effectively means that free cash is only available at best half of the fiscal year. So having this capital stabilization fund, replenishing this capital stabilization fund to the same level that it was at when we began fiscal 26 is what is being recommended here. The snow and ice deficit is effectively just what it is. I'm happy to answer any questions or our finance director could answer any questions on that who may have more depth and knowledge in that. The next item with the union retroactive payments, we were able to place the fiscal 26 impact in the fiscal 26 budget. The fiscal 25 impact was reserved, but we can't go back prior years once the books are closed. So that amount carries for those prior years. And then finally, a feasibility study for a project labor agreement for the construction of the new Bedford High School. I don't really have more comments on that, but happy to answer any questions. And then similarly with retained earnings, replenishing the water and sewer capital stabilization fund back to $2 million because we spent effectively $500,000 out of that over the course of fiscal 26. Thank you.

Would it be useful, since we're talking about free cash, I know we didn't take them out of order, but to talk about the Medford family is there like from just a financial perspective it's another about 350,000 for the affordable housing trust and Medford family network if you want to add anything at this point just about the fiscal picture there.

Thank you. From the standpoint of available free cash dollars, we have been fortunate as a community. I think we have said to this council and this council has, I think, seen the difference that our fiscal picture is starting to create. And what I mean by that is when we certified free cash for what would effectively have been fiscal 24, and Finance Director Dickinson can correct me if I'm wrong because these fiscal years start to confuse the brain a little bit, but we had about $28 million at that time. When we closed fiscal 25, we had a free cash balance of $21 million. Both Finance Director Dickinson and I have stated here before, and we are going to continue to see a narrowing of those dollars. But for the purposes of this picture, I can tell you that we will have somewhere over $10 million. I had the calculation nearby. I could recalc it because I don't know exactly what would remain. Off the top of my head, it's on order of magnitude of $10 to $12 million. with the totality of these free cash appropriations that will effectively stay in free cash. But come June 30th, it will become unavailable. We can't touch it. We can't use it. We can't do anything with it. It will fall into essentially This is my wording. This isn't the finance terminology. It will fall into what is effectively 27, fiscal 27. And then whatever gets added to it from fiscal 27, which we don't believe is going to be the same level as we've seen historically, especially considering how much we've tightened outside of our collective comfort zones for fiscal 27. then when fiscal 27 is closed we will suck sorry when fiscal 26 is closed then we will see those numbers come back so that 10 million ish will be the base added to whatever is added to if that made sense if not please please ask clarify questions and I would defer to finance director Dickinson for a different way to say it yeah I guess um just a really quick clarifying question I'll go to counselor Scarpelli do we have an estimate of how much we expect to be in surplus at the end of fiscal 26 that would roll to free cash I don't think either way no neither of us could give you that answer it's just it's every um every financial officer in every city in town is always advised from even the state to not venture a guess on free cash numbers because you don't wanna be in a situation where you venture a guess and your guess is off. And it's also so dependent on so many factors that are almost impossible to guess on. um for instance we could have a situation where we have building permits pulled for a project that wasn't on the city's radar at all because something changed economically and created a certain opportunity for a developer or whatever the case may be and that may not even be on the radar i can't think of other specific examples i don't know if um

you would have any off the top of your mind but it's just a very very difficult number to predict from from my point of view i wouldn't venture a guess until i've closed 2026's books and gone through them and made sure that everything is properly recorded um there's there's just too much there's too much variance to make an estimate and um i'm very loathe to make an estimate. Free cash is what the DOR says it is once I've got all the state reporting in. That's what it is. I can make an estimate, but you shouldn't spend it until DOR says it's okay. Replenishing the capital stabilization fund simply uses free cash to fund projects that we would ordinarily fund with available free cash. We just get to do it without having to certify free cash. We have a bucket that we can take money from to fix sidewalks, put HVAC on schools and all that stuff without having to wait for the free cash to be certified. It just increases the city council and the administration's flexibility in doing these projects.

Right, I'll go to counselors playing just one second, but essentially what we're talking about is the city's reserves. And those fall mostly into two buckets for the general fund, which is stabilization funds, which can be appropriated from year round. And what the state calls quote unquote free cash, which is really just actually reserves. But because of their calculation, we have to wait for them to say this is your amount for this year after all of the financial reporting is done. The bulk of this paper is, it's a $10 million request, seven and a half million is making sure that the stabilization fund is at a balance, is at the $13 million balance, basically that we can use our reserves without waiting for the state certification on the upcoming balance for next year. Another million, 1.4 million is, what we spent to plow snow and ice last year, which is the only account the state lets us run a deficit on essentially, by and large. Another 1.3 million for the police union contracts, which were out for many years, all the way back to fiscal year 23. And then 15,000, this is kind of the only looking forward item, I think I would say, which is the 15,000 to do a feasibility study for a project labor agreement for the new Medford High School. And then for retained earnings, it's just to similarly make sure that the flexible stabilization fund that can be used year-round is at $2 million for the water and sewer system. Great. Councillor Scarpelli.

Mr. President, before I go on to the $21 million, that's before we ask, just to be clear, ask for the 7.447, 5 million capital stabilization, so on and so forth, correct?

Correct. And just to clarify on the parentheses that's contained there, because there is a paper before the council to use the capital stabilization fund, I was identifying the number just to put it in writing so that everyone had it, what the capital stabilization fund balance would be today if this evening the council approved that capital request, which I believe is in the amount of $17,500, if I'm not mistaken. So small, but just wanted to identify the newest number if it was approved for tonight. So the 7 million, the 1.355, the 1.281, and the $15,000 would all reduce the $21 million that's before you.

But that's not knowing what the replenished number will be as we move forward.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

Sorry, George, your mic's low. Can you hear me?

Yes.

So at the end of the, as we subtract, will be minus 21,000 minus the 712, somewhat $14 million in free cash? I would, yes, $21 million minus 10 million, call it $100, if all of those items above are approved. So at the end of this vote, we'll have roughly 10, $11 million left in free cash. That's it.

Correct. And then there's two other papers which would deduct from that same number, but yes, that's correct.

So I know that, um, the big battle that I had, remember when we came up talking about the override, I said, let's use this. And we said that there was a certain number that we should have in that free cash. Do we fall in that range? Because in the past it was, Remember, we wanted it higher. Remember that? Remember the discussions we had when I fought against the override and they said that, well, we have $24 million in the override. Why don't we take the 4.5 for this one time to level fund the school budget so we don't have to look at an override until we do a study? Remember that conversation? And the conversation at that time was, no, we really need to keep that account at a higher number due to many different factors. But things have changed today, so dropping all the way down to $10 million is something that we feel comfortable with.

Mr. President, through you.

Yes.

I remember that conversation, Councillor Scarpelli, and we are in that same range. The difference today is when we appropriated funding at the end of the last fiscal year, we appropriated approximately $6 million out of the free cash number into general stabilization. We've been fortunate that we haven't had to draw on that amount. Because as the council knows, as the public knows, that would be our most rainiest days of rainiest funds, right? For a lack of better terms. That's probably a better way to say it. But that's if we have something catastrophic that's really problematic, which we hope to never see. We want to be, because when we're drawing on capital stabilization funds, we're drawing on preplanned projects. Things that, generally speaking, now it's not to say that we can't draw on capital stabilization if we do have a roof leak that needs to be addressed. It's just to say that we'll probably go to capital stabilization for capital items before we have to draw on general stabilization for any reason. If we're dipping into general stabilization, we have a larger problem on our hands, and we hope to not do that. So getting back to your specific question, Councillor Scarpelli, when we closed the last fiscal year, we were in this range. I think it was $10, $12 million, almost exactly. And to me, that's right there.

Okay, and it won't affect that bond rating if we dip? We're still in that range or the bond rating won't be affected?

Mr. President, through you and Finance Director Dickinson can also answer. The bond rating companies look at the totality of what's in free cash and the stabilization funds, so no.

Good. I will tell you on this, Mr. President, I think what I'm celebrating as one of the lowest numbers and that's the $15,000 for the feasibility study. I know that we've had a very difficult last few years with our support with the unions to see that the mayor is coming forward to look into this process and bringing in our Boston labor unions and really do a study to see how it most benefits the construction of possibly one of the most important builds we have in our community in the last 50 years. I think I'm really excited and I know that we have representatives here tonight that I'd like to hear from them because I think after talking with members of the Boston Labor Council for union members and really understanding the process for the building trades and what the benefits are after the study that will show the impacts directly to our community, having union laborers, residents who are union workers that will be working in their community. I think there's so many benefits that really it makes me pretty excited that if this happens, this could be something that We carry on for many, many different projects here in this community and hopefully across the Commonwealth, because I think that work where you live and live where you work is is a benefit. So I think that I know that there are representatives here that that I would love to hear from Mr. President either later on today or this evening or after a vote before this vote. But I think that having the building trade unions here and really listen to their presentation because I was fortunate to take a peek and look at the benefits. And I think this is $15,000 of really, really well spent money for the betterment of our community in totality. So thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councillor Scarpelli. I for one, I'm right there with you. I'm glad to see us moving forward with the feasibility study. I think we're going to see all of the benefits that a project labor agreement would bring to the Medford High School project from workforce benefits to stability of a multi-phase construction process that's currently being proposed to the fact that this is already prevailing wage project, right? It's public construction, so it's already paying prevailing wages. Let's use union labor. Let's hire local residents. Let's help apprentice folks. Let's make this project an even more of a win win win for our city, not just for the kids in the school and our educators and all of the community resources that exist at Medford High School, but for the people who are going to build the biggest public building project in the city in the last 50 years. So I'm really glad that this is on our agenda and I'm super excited about that. One more kind of, sorry for the esoteric question. You mentioned this, the bond ratings, basically this question of reserves. We use a bunch of different terminologies to talk about reserves. You said the bond ratings agencies look at us to have both in capital stabilization and quote unquote free cash, a certain amount of money. We established stabilization funds two years ago. That's a new thing for us. Before that, it was always free cash. Now we have these things. DLS also look and DOR also look at that recommendation when they say you should have about 10 or 15% of your annual budget in reserves. Are they just talking about free cash or are they talking about all of our reserves? All of them, sorry, could you just, your mic was off.

Sorry, they'd be talking about all of our reserves.

All right, great. Because I think that's just another important thing to really lock in on the terminology here is not great that the state uses and i think it gets confusing for folks so we're talking about our reserves no matter which account they're in any other comments or questions on this paper from members of the council counselor saying

Thank you. I find most of this very reasonable to be in the course of everyday business of the city. I want to piggyback off of Councillor Scarpelli and President Behrs that I am excited to see the 15,000 for the feasibility study. We've talked a lot on this council about supporting workers, supporting unions, and we've talked about that with the prevailing wage ordinance. We've talked about that with numerous resolutions that come by. And with such a big project coming to the city, I think it's important for us to be exploring, to be supporting workers with good wages, with high work standards. And I think this is putting our rhetoric into practice and preaching, not only just preaching, but practicing what we're saying.

Thank you, councilor Singh. Any further comments or questions by members of the city council on this paper? Seeing none, is there anyone here from the public who'd like to speak on this paper at this time? You can stand up here behind the podium or raise your hand on Zoom. Great. Um, welcome. And, uh, if you could just give us your name and, uh, your city for the record, and then you'll have three minutes.

Mr. President members of the council. My name is Frank Callahan. I am president of Massachusetts building trade unions. I reside in the community of Arlington right next door, uh, where I also serve on the building committee for the Arlington high school project. Um, I'm here to address, I know, uh, counselor Scarpelli and, uh, president bears, you asked. for comments on these determination, the legal determination for the benefits of a project labor agreement. I've been president of the Massachusetts Building Trades since 2007. I've negotiated dozens and dozens of these agreements, everything from offshore wind to power plants to school construction. This will clearly benefit the city of Medford and its residents. You'll get a quality project completed on time and on budget. I know we just heard a discussion about uncertainties on budgets. One of the main benefits in relation to that conversation is you take a lot of uncertainty. There are no strike, no lockout provisions. You make sure that you have properly licensed people, Medford residents, for opportunities to work on this project. It's already paying the prevailing wage. But you want to make sure that you have the highly skilled, highly trained local workforce to do this project. We represent 75,000 men and women around the state, and we train 74% of all construction apprentices in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We're the ones doing the hard work to make sure that the construction industry has that skilled workforce. And this study or determination is in compliance with Chapter 238 of the Acts of 2024, which allowed the use of project labor agreements. This is one of the steps that is required under that statute, and I can guarantee you that you will be happy with the results. In addition to the quality project that I discussed, there's great opportunities for the workers in Medford and the surrounding communities.

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. All right. Anyone else who'd like to speak on this paper? Great. We have one hand on Zoom. I will go to Eileen Lerner on Zoom. Eileen, if you could give us your name and your city for the record, and you'll have three minutes.

My name is Eileen Lerner, and I live at 3920 Mystic Valley Parkway. And I just wanna say that I am feeling so positive and excited as a result of watching the city council meeting and, I'm just thrilled that not only is the new high school going to become a reality, but it's gonna benefit union people. I come from a strong union family. I've been a member of the union as well. And I'm just thrilled to see the city cooperating with the unions. Um, couldn't be happier and also, I feel like the city is, it seems like what people are saying is that the city is in better financial shape. Then we have been maybe in a while and I'm really happy about that. So, I want to thank all of you for the work that you've been doing. I think it's. Really really great and exciting. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further comment on this item? Seeing none, is there a motion? On the motion to approve by Councillor Seng, seconded by? Seconded by Councillor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Callahan. Yes. Councillor Lemming.

Yes.

Councillor Mullaney. Council of Scott Pelley? Yes. Council of Singh? Yes. Vice President Lozaro? Yes. And President Pierce?

Yes. Seventy affirmative, none the negative. The motion passes. Next, we will go to paper 26125, submitted by Mayor Brianna Lingokern, Main Street Corridor. order to acquire easements order of taking an order of alteration of layout and there's a bunch of papers on this one so i will try my best to read them all um dear president bears and city councilors as you are aware the city is working in coordination with massdot to construct traffic and safety improvements to the main street corridor beginning just south of thomas street and extending just north of the westbound Mystic Valley Parkway on and off ramps. The work area also extends on Mystic Ave, Route 38 from Main Street to just beyond Union Street. Project will add traffic signals to the three major intersections and include roadway, mill, and overlay, intersection geometry revisions and improvements to sidewalks, bus lanes, bicycle lanes, crosswalks, signage, and pavement markings. federal funding granted for this project requires that the right-of-way be in complete ownership and physical control of the city a survey prepared for the project identified nine private properties that contain public infrastructure the city needs to acquire permanent and temporary easements as part of the project to facilitate the construct reconstruction of sidewalks driveway entrances and relocating overhead wires project also requires the city to alter the layouts of main street and mystic avenue to include within the said layouts the public infrastructure on private properties layout alterations have been approved by the mayor and by the community development board Enclosed are the following documents for your consideration. A city council order to acquire the easements, the order of taking, to take the easements by eminent domain, an order of alteration of layout to alter the layout of Main Street and Mystic Avenue, the alteration plan and the recommendation of the Community Development Board. The easements were appraised by a certified general appraiser and those appraisals were reviewed by a certified general review appraiser to establish just compensation for the easements. Written offers were sent to all nine property owners via certified mail on May 6th, 2026. Assistant City Engineer Sierra Schatz has been in contact with each owner to answer QUESTIONS AND ADDRESS CONCERNS THROUGHOUT THIS PROCESS BEGINNING WITH AN INITIAL CONTACT LETTER SET IN FEBRUARY 2026. I RESPECTFULLY REQUEST THE CITY COUNCIL ADOPT THE ORDER APPROVING THE ACQUISITION OF THE EASEMENTS TO EXECUTE THE ORDER OF TAKING, EFFECTUATING THE ACQUISITION AND THE ORDER OF ALTERATION OF LAYOUTS AT YOUR REGULAR JUNE 23, 2026 MEETING. ASSISTANT CITY ENGINEER SIERRA SHOTS WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ON THIS MATTER. THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. SINCERELY, BRIANA LINGO-KERN, MAYOR. I DO SEE, I BELIEVE THE ASSISTANT CITY ENGINEER Is here, great, in person. I thought I saw you on here for a second. Great, awesome. So if you would like to present a little bit more, if you have any visuals, that might be helpful. If you wanted to rejoin the Zoom, we could make you a co-host and you could share your screen. I think that might be helpful for people to see. But I think my, that letter's a little wordy. So if there's like a kind of a shorter summary of what the proposal is and what it looks like for us to consider.

Yes.

And you might wanna move the mic a little bit. You can shift it over towards you if you need to be at your computer. And also, thanks for being here. It's your first time before us, I think, right? So welcome. Yes, yes. Budget night, what a night.

Okay, well, let me, yeah, I'll work on getting back on the, getting back on the meeting to be able to show the alteration plan. That is, it's one of the attachments on the agenda is the drawing of the alteration plan. But yeah, hi everyone. I'm Sierra, one of the new, or one of the Assistant City Engineers. I just started here in February, so I haven't met most of you yet. That's my first time here. So I've been working, since I started, I've been working on the process for easements and right-of-ways for the upcoming MassDOT Main Street Corridor Improvements Project, which I think most of you are aware of. what the project entails. It's redoing the Main Street and Mystic Valley Parkway on and off-ramp intersections, and then also the Main Street-Mystic Avenue intersection, putting in traffic signals, also doing, really just redoing the entire corridor, doing mill and pave. bicycle and crosswalk improvements, intersection geometry, bus lanes, signage, pavement, really kind of redoing the whole thing. And it was spurred by traffic and safety concerns. And so The reason I'm here tonight is because we have two requests from city council requested by MassDOT. The first one is to approve the order of alteration of layout. of the Main Street and a portion of Mystic Avenue. And that's what the drawings that are attached show the... Yeah, the alteration of the street layout. And the other is to approve the order of taking, which encompasses the seven permanent and 11 temporary easements that are part of this project the city will be acquiring from private property owners. and yeah so the or so yeah the attachments are the um the the alteration plans um the order of alteration of layout and then the order of taking which requires a vote and then signatures of the majority of the council um to adopt or to basically devote to take the easements by eminent domain and in turn adopt the order of taking so hopefully that Yeah, any questions I can answer about the process?

Yeah. So we'll need two motions. The first will be the order of layout, the second will be the order of taking. Is there an allocation connected to the order of taking of financial allocation? Yes, so there's... That's the Schedule A, Schedule B. Schedule A is the list of property owners. Schedule B is the damages awarded. Yes. And we approve that amount as well.

Um, I think so that the all the compensation for the property owners is coming from chapter 90 funds, which we already have approved through chapter 90. So I don't believe that the city council needs to needs to approve that.

That is the list of how much was awarded. Yes.

Well, it hasn't been awarded, but we'll yeah, we'll be once. Yeah.

Were we to approve it, that's what would happen. Yes. OK, comments from counselors. I saw Councillor Scarpelli first.

Thank you, I appreciate this, but I I think that as you presented the presentation, we understand there might be some sort of a timeline and I can respect that, but I. We have residents that are here in the Chamber on zoom that are on this list that said that that have notified me that. This is the first time they heard of it was sometime today. And whether it is, whether it isn't, I think there's enough of confusion that when you're talking about the taking of land, it really scares people. And I think not just them, but also everybody else in that corridor, because it then starts a negative effect down the road. And I think that for one counselor, I understand the process, but I don't. I think that if we can have a more thorough breakdown, maybe call for a Committee of the Whole meeting prior to our next July meeting, where we can bring all the stakeholders, there's only a few, but bringing them in so they can understand the process. I think that one business owner who called rarely expressed, even though it's a small piece of land, how important that small piece of land is for their company. Being a small business in Medford, I think we owe it to all of our small businesses to make sure that we're protecting them or at least making them part more, getting them more involved in the process. So I for one will be asking to table this until, When my colleagues are done with asking any of their questions and I know we have residents here that I think there's enough questions out there that I've received that really lends to some confusion with some of these. Director butters that we are proposing some taking and. so on and so forth. So maybe for one counselor, just understanding the process and how we can have not just one, two or three, but a few business owners that said that they were notified for the first time

today an hour ago that this is yeah is that if you can help that yeah i can explain so first of all i wanted um i want to take all responsibility and i i apologize for the for the late notice um we were confirmed i guess we confirmed that we were going to be on the agenda last week and i uh failed to give enough notice to all the property owners about this particular meeting um so if We can and I I want to deeply apologize to all the residents of all the all those affected that I did not give enough notice.

And please yeah, I'm I think I think that's okay, but yeah, I think we in trouble if we if we wait till July July meeting the next meeting. Yeah, we it's really I don't think.

So I. Yeah, I guess we I have been in contact with all of the property owners since February. We've met on site to discuss the discuss the process. And I sent yeah, I sent. We sent the preliminary offer letters. in the beginning of May. And I guess I just learned this afternoon that some of the, we sent them via mail and that they were not all received. And so yeah, any questions about the process, I would be very happy to answer from any of the affected property owners. And I think if we, if we pushed it back or if we, if we revisited it, um, in two weeks at the next meeting, that would be enough time to meet MassDOT's deadline. But I don't think, I don't think we can push it any, any further back because MassDOT is giving us, um, is giving us deadlines.

Okay. So I think just for the sake of time, I think that this probably Mr. President, isn't a form where you can. You know, I think it's important that the direct butters that are affected, if they can share their issues tonight, and then maybe take this to the next step where you might be meeting with them, and maybe it could be handled with a separate meeting with them, and then we could bring it to the floor with some more information, or maybe have a call for committee of the whole meeting prior to our July meeting, and then bring it to the vote for that evening, I think. I think it would be responsible for us to do that and reasonable because of the confusion that we have.

I want to express my apologies. I just want to be really honest. I've never done this process before, so I'm also kind of learning how it works. And I'm really sorry for the confusion.

It happens. Believe it or not, it happens. with people that have done it a thousand times, just so I, you know, so it's not, I don't think it's a big deal. I think we've caught it in enough time that we can involve the stakeholders involved and really be, they can become part of the process moving forward. And then we could make a decision, a more reasonable decision, because if I had a vote today, I would, tell you the truth, because of the situation, I would vote no, just because we didn't prepare our residents and our small business owners for what's happening. So that's my opinion for one council. So maybe that doesn't mean anything, but I think that it's important that maybe we hear the presentation We hear the small businesses that are being affected and what their concerns are. And then I would move to table after my colleagues share their input. And then I think that that'll give you enough time in the next few weeks to maybe meet with them to you know, air out some issues and move on.

Yeah, and I do want to encourage, yeah, all property owners, we have, I will say we have met, we have spoken on the phone, we have emailed, and I would love to talk it out more with anybody, and as well as bringing in the other members of the Engineering and Public Works Department and MassDOT, because MassDOT is really the ones that have tasked us with this, so we're kind of just doing what MassDOT has asked of us for this project.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you, Councillor Scarpelli, and I will go to you, Councillor Callaghan, in just a second. Just so that we're all on the same page, our next meeting will be July 14th, so it'll be three weeks, and we could have a meeting at 6 p.m. We should be able to do that, although I may have promised trees to Councillor Callaghan for July 14th, so we may just have to have a long committee of the whole on July 14th. That would be the next time. So we would have a 6 o'clock where we could talk about this, and then at 7 o'clock would be another one of these regular meetings. So just I wanted to say it would be the 14th, so it's three weeks from now, not two weeks from now. So if that affects the timing, I just wanted, and the deadlines from MassDOT, I just wanted to put that on the table. I have one quick kind of adjacent question to that, which is... guess like if if we start bumping up against deadlines like what happens um i know there's like several million federal and state grant dollars here so if you just could talk about that a little bit more

Yes, to my, so my understanding is that the date that MassDOT has given us to advertise the project for construction bids is, I forget, it's like the last week of August, I forget the exact date. And so I will have to, in terms of can we get everything done after July 14th if we're able to, resolve any questions and pass it on July 14th. I do want to check with the right-of-way team at MassDOT about that, so I can check with them tomorrow morning. I guess we don't, yeah, if that's our only option, we'll do the best we can to get everything done before the end of August. And I think if it doesn't, I believe that if it's not, if we can't get it approved, I think it'll be, I'm not exactly sure what happens, but I think we have to go into the next fiscal year's funding. I don't know exactly how that affects the planned construction schedule for the project, which is spring-summer 2027.

Okay.

Yeah.

So there is a potential for some sort of delay. Yes. And it's not clear that MassDOT could like give us a week or give us two weeks of extra time.

I can definitely ask what, if July 14th, if we, if that would be possible. Okay. I apologize. I just, I'm not exactly sure how long, how long all the steps take after this. to get the payments out. But I can obviously expedite as much as I possibly can. All right.

Yeah. Great. Thank you. Councillor Callahan.

Thank you. Welcome. It's great to have a new engineer, and I'm going to make some comments. Don't take them in any way personally, but I think both for city councilors as well as for the general public, I think it's really important that when things like this come up, there's enough information for people who are maybe less policy wonky to be able to understand what's being decided. And so, for example, when I read, and I know a lot of this comes from MassDOT, but like, The one descriptive sentence in here says the project will add traffic signals to three major intersections and include roadway mill and overlay, intersection geometry revisions and improvements to sidewalks, bus lanes, bicycle lanes, crosswalks, signage and pavement markings. But it doesn't actually, in the words, it doesn't actually describe any of the changes. It just says things will be changed. And as you may understand, improvements to some people are not improvements to other people. People disagree sometimes on whether something is an improvement or not. And when I look at the diagram, I have to admit, and I don't mean to insult anyone, but this looks like I can tell that there are streets But then there's like 50,000 words, each of which is too small for me to read. And I genuinely have difficulty trying to understand what this is telling me. So it would be so incredibly helpful to have even if it were just verbally, but in writing would be excellent, and maybe a diagram of something that actually says what in fact is being changed. And even for the public, what is an easement? That kind of thing that would help people to understand what it is that we're actually deciding tonight. So I also tend to feel that it would be really excellent if we could table this and then talk about it a little bit more in depth when hopefully there could also be some supporting documents that were a little bit easier for the general public to understand because when it does involve private property, it really is crucial that people who are a little less sort of wonky can understand what it is that we're voting on.

So that would be great. Yeah, absolutely. The plans, those are specifically like the right-of-way easement plans, but there's also several hundred pages of construction plans, which I think with the help of Todd Blake, our traffic and transportation director, can be better distilled into more readable images and descriptions of all the changes that are proposed. That's definitely something that we can do, for sure.

That would be amazing.

Thank you so much.

If you could do it in five slides and have it to us by July 9th, that would be great. Okay, that we can do, yes. Thank you. Councillor Mullane.

Thank you. Thank you also for coming here tonight and talking through it. I do kind of want to echo what both Councillor Scarpelli and Councillor Callahan said. I think even hearing you talk through the process of what you started doing in February and laying that out was helpful for I this is a new piece for me as well. So I think certainly at the next Committee of the Whole that's possible just to lay that out as well and the diagrams as well being getting a better sense of what exactly we're talking about. I think that will help us help the public understand and just, you know, moving forward, be able to help us make some better and quicker decisions on it moving forward. But yeah, just even have the outline of the process timeline before and then hopefully even afterwards what happens to just so that we kind of know full circle. I think that'd be very helpful. So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. And, you know, I also, and I actually have reviewed the other materials from the previous public meetings, the MassDOT materials and stuff. I'm still a little bit confused about exactly what's coming from where it looks like most of the takings are for like where the gas station is and maybe a little bit by the, like the 7-Eleven or, yeah. So it's just hard to see what's what and obviously like the names of the, companies don't actually match like the some of them don't oh yeah those are the names of the owners property owners yeah so you know those are just some kind of things that i think will will just help us to clarify you know because some of these are small it looks like some of them are you know 10 square feet and then some some are over a thousand square feet so um i think that kind of descriptive you know, just being able to like kind of show a little bit more other than just specifically the right of way plan would help too.

Yeah, I'm just taking notes.

Thank you. Appreciate that. I think at this point, I know there's some residents who are here who I think some of them are folks who are specifically property owners who are affected by the proposal. If there's anything else you want to add at this point, please do, and then I'll recognize the members of the public if they want to speak on this.

Okay, all right, yeah, thank you all for your feedback. And once again, I really appreciate the opportunity to try this again. I thank you for your cooperation, as I've never done this before, and I'll come better prepared next time. So thank you for your feedback.

Yeah, it's not. As a fellow, it seems to me, perfectionist, I understand. I understand that we wanna get it right on round one. I've only done one of these. I've been on the council almost seven years. We did one for Safe Routes to School on High Street. I think that's the only one of these similarly that I've done a MassDOT directed project with a number of weird like easements and takings. And it took us a couple of meetings to get through that as well. So appreciate all the work that you put into this. And, you know, I know some folks want to speak to it and then we'll get back together in a couple of weeks and we'll get it done.

Okay.

Thank you. All right, I will go to members of the public who would like to speak on the proposed orders of taking for the Mystic Avenue and Main Street. If you'd like to speak, please raise your hand on Zoom or come to the podium here in the chamber, and you can let us know. You'll have three minutes, and you can let us know your concerns, and then we will, you know, the person from the engineering department is here to hear them, and then we'll come back in a few weeks with more discussion. So welcome, and if you could just give us your name and.

Yes, good evening. My name is Thuy Truong. I am one of the owner of the impact properties. The other owner is over here as well. First and formal, I support this project. However, I do have some concerns in terms of the communication process, which you already addressed, so thank you, and the evaluation process. Since we haven't received any Letters for some reason, but Sierra did send it to me today, so thank you for the prompt response. That says, I just literally received the letter today. Respectfully, I do have three, I would like to raise three requests. Number one, I would like to have the supporting document and the, that explain the determination of the evaluation. Number two, we would like to have more times. And number three, since we just received it today, I would like to have more times and a chance to do our own evaluations. I'm simply not objecting this project. We just want to ensure that we are fully informed and our properties are being fairly and properly evaluated and compensated. Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak about this order, proposed order of taking at this time, either in person or on Zoom? All right. Owen, I think that might be the city engineer, Owen. So I will recognize you, Owen.

Hi, thank you. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Great. So just to answer some of the questions that you guys had here, you know, this is a state project. This is something that we've been working with the state since February to do. We have been in contact with all the property owners and we have had an appraisal by a third party to appraise all of their properties within the last few months. So these are up-to-date numbers. These are up-to-date figures of what their properties are worth. And these easements and temporary easements and permanent easements are only slivers, like little slivers of land that are currently sidewalk and will continue to be sidewalk. That's all. So this is just a formal process of how to take the land. Going back to Ms. Kellyanne's question about what is actually going on, there's technically three blinking red lights at the Route 16 Rob Suerth, Underpass and at the main street mystic have intersection all of those will be turned to working lights. Rob Suerth, And that is what this project is about it's about safety if anybody has been through there lately, you know that it is completely a mess during. Rob Suerth, rush hour, so this is all about a safety improvement it's about a little bit of widening of road so that there's just a little more breathing room for two lanes of traffic. for bikes, for pedestrians, and that's what this whole project is about. But if you have any other questions, I am here to answer those.

Thanks.

Thank you. I do have Councillor Scarpelli. Councillor Scarpelli.

Yeah, to you, to the chair, to the city engineer, it sounds so easy, but yeah it is we've done this before and we've done we'll be doing it multiple times again so yes just if um i will recognize you all right thank you it sounds so easy like like you said but i i think that an hour before this meeting we had three of the eight um members that are being affected reached out so uh this simple sliver of land to them might be to you owen um something, you know, simple, but to them, it's pretty, pretty, to them, talking to them, it's pretty life changing. So I think that really having a better outline and really a better way to inform them and inform us as a council, so we're prepared for that, I think would have been helpful. So I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Owen, if you'd like to speak.

You know, We have been reaching out to all these people, and they are all aware of the land that was being asked for as an easement.

All right. Thank you. I will go back to the podium. If you could give us your name and city for the record, and you'll have three minutes.

Sure. Mikey Kesselman, 499 Main Street. Incidentally, I actually drive up Thomas Street from Maine almost every day because there's a daycare there. There's also a hospital there. And the one comment I just want to make is that since you're already doing safety work there, that turn at Thomas Street off of Main where that gas station is and the way people use that turn to go against traffic down Thomas to get back onto Main is actually wicked dangerous. And Massachusetts drivers on a good day are the worst drivers in the country. And with this particular corner, it gets exponentially worse. So I don't know if there's a way you can actually that part into your safety review analysis. But the community and commuters there and people who live there, too, would benefit a lot from that. Also, for the valuations, it is kind of weird that global companies, the gas station on the triangle corner, seems to be getting a way higher payout than the rest of the properties here for a so-called sliver. observation, but yeah, that's it.

Thank you. Is there anyone else? Yes.

Hi. My name is and I own a property in . So I was informed that there's a wire going above our roof. It's not really above our roof. It's on the sidewalk. And I was informed that it's not in our property. Is there any way I can avoid the temporary easement? Because if it's not involved in our property, then why do we have to abide to a easement.

I will recognize the city engineer.

Thank you. Hello. So this utility pole that is located next to the gas station is being shifted five feet and the property owner has the corresponding pole 200 feet away. So this shift of five feet is going to shift those wires to two or three inches closer to his property. And MassDOT requires a 10 foot easement along the center line. And that's how this, even though the wires are not over his property, there is an easement associated with the wires being shifted over the few inches. And that is why his property is being affected.

All right. Thank you. Councillor Lemming.

uh through the chair question for the city engineer in your opinion would delaying this until july have any uh substantial effect on the project uh owen do you have an answer there i would say yes they're they're going to bid in early august and this is the time frame that we need to get these

temporary easements through city council.

So could you just clarify that a little bit more? What happens if we approve it on July 14th instead of today?

I don't know. The question is, do you need three readings to approve it?

No, we shouldn't need three readings to approve it.

It shouldn't matter. You know, we're willing to, you know, again, the city is You know, the liaison for the state in this case. So this is a state project. The state is doing this. We are just going through the, you know, the paperwork, which requires a little bit of line adjustments, property line adjustments and easements for this project. And that's why we're in front of city council.

All right. So what I'm hearing is that if we approve it, The order, all three readings, I don't even necessarily think this needs the three reading approach, but assuming it did, if we chose to approve all readings on July 14th, that would be an acceptable timeline. Just wanna confirm that, Owen.

Yeah.

All right, great. Any further discussion by members of the public on this who haven't already spoken? Seeing none, any further discussion by members of the council? Is there a motion to table, motion to table to the July 14th regular meeting, maybe a committee of the whole on, we'll figure out if we need a committee of the whole, but motion to table the July 14th regular meeting by Councillor Scarpelli, seconded by Councillor Callahan. Motion is undebatable. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Callahan. Yes. Councillor Lemming.

Yes.

Councillor Mullaney.

Yes.

Councillor Scarpelli.

Yes.

Councilor Singh.

Yes.

Vice President Lazaro. Yes. And President Peirce.

Yes, I'm in the affirmative. The negative of the motion passes. We'll take this back up on July 14th. Two paper motions, orders and resolutions. Paper 26118 offered by Councilor Scarpelli, resolution to appeal deficient public records response of city administration regarding legal matters. Whereas on April 29th, 2026, the city council through its president, Isaac Bears, filed a public records request to the law department, Janice Spencer, Seeking various public records this request is set forth in council paper 26 0 7 7 and whereas this council's April 29th request was substantially based on the failure of the administration to respond to a request for records and information sent to it by the council in February 26 2026 in council paper 2 6 0 4 3 and whereas on May 13th 2026 Jenna Spencer filed a request with the public records division seeking an additional 30 days to respond to the council's request and the request for an extension of 30 days to respond was granted by the supervisor records on may 19th 2026 and whereas on tuesday june 16 2026 nina nazarian on behalf of the administration sent a series of five emails to the city council in which she attached a small handful of settlement agreements including one that included a confidentiality provision in spite of the fact that the mayor had previously stated the council that the city does not have non-disclosure agreements and whereas the extended period for the city to respond had expired now therefore be resolved by the medford city council that in light of the sparse and inadequate response of the administration, along with the questionable veracity of its prior statements, we authorize by roll call vote an appeal of the administration's response to the Secretary of State's Office Public Records Division. Councilor Scarpelli.

Thank you, Mr. President. I think this resolution speaks for itself. I think that we have asked this administration to present to us a pretty detailed breakdown when it comes to our fiscal responsibilities for council, especially for what is being released publicly with lawsuits from our city administration to our city employees and on. What we heard from the administration is that this is a lot of work, that what we're asking for is really too much to compose and present. That we then received a breakdown from the mayor asking us that from our request that if we took some items off the table, then she would then grant us some of our requests that we've asked for in this budget cycle. To me, I think this is so disingenuine. and the fact that we received multiple emails from the administration that makes no sense to this counselor. It is a breakdown of a process that shows who is using what law line or not even a figure. This is something very simple we asked for. The Freedom of Information Act that we requested was broken down step by step so we can see the true impact of the legal issues and concerns that have been brought up time after time to this council. And what we've been getting back is trivial rhetoric that makes no sense. I personally, as one counselor, do not care what neighboring communities spend on a line to say that we in in communication that we can't actually get the information financially what we're paying out because there are different outsourced from different departments to me is very confusing This is an administration that has all this at the tip of their finger. And it really frightens me for the fact that this is taking us this long. This is just a true indication of what we need to know before we can vote on a budget, truly vote on a budget, that has our financial responsibility attached to it. We are the fiscal stewards of this community, and that's our job. And we've been saying since February, please give us this information so we know that there isn't a gap or there isn't an ulterior issue here in where we're spending our money. And to get back some of the information from our administration just makes no sense. To say that we don't have a way, a mechanism in place to understand where that financial breakdown comes from is befuddling to me. When we used to get month to month, remember those days we used to get the breakdown and you used to scan down, you go to school department and you saw KP Law, KP Law, KP Law, KP Law. Then you went to the fire line, it said KP Law, KP Law, KP Law. It's there, it just has to be presented. But for some reason, we can't manufacture that in this community. To me, that's frightening. To me, that sends a bad message. So Mr. President, with this resolution, it's very simplistic. It's sending this off to the next layer in the state to figure out what our next options are because our administration is not giving us the uh requests that we required by law and after given the 30-day extension we still have yet to get the breakdown and by the way just to add this isn't just kp law everyone there are multiple law firms that are being used by the city now so even in reference to the responses we're getting back it says kp law that's just not not true we want to know the full implications of the lawsuits and the arbitrations and the settlements and the pay structures for the attorney fees and any outside source or payments that have to go to private investigators that were used and such. This isn't This wasn't that difficult. It was spelt out for them pretty easily to break it down. So for this, Mr. President, I would request my colleagues to support this as we move this along to the next level so we can get the state involved in supporting us to get this information before we vote on any sort of a budget. Because I'm more nervous now today for the information that i've been receiving and and and i could read it mr president uh... that that that that doesn't didn't see anything like again i would i would have asked my city solicitor if it's possible for me to read the communications to the public but i i don't know if this is confidential or how it was presented but we we see a breakdown from many different departments and how to how each department uses their legal fees here's a it's not a shocker we understand as a council that each department in the city is going to use some sort of funding through legal avenues. We know that. That's not what we're asking. So I would hope my colleagues support me as we move this forward. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. Any comments from members of the council on paper 26118? Councillor Callahan.

Thanks. I was just looking back at the original paper in February that was requesting information, and I think what's particularly been missing is Like what we've received is very specific about like one case will be attached to an email and then another case will be attached to an email. And what I think is missing is the broader picture. And really the question has been, What did we spend last year on total legal costs and which budgets did it come out of? These are the kinds of questions that we want to understand because we have learned that not all settlements are coming out of the Not all law expenses are coming out of the law budget. And so if that's not true, then it's very difficult for us as city councilors to understand what our total legal expenditures is. So receiving information on one particular settlement and then on another particular settlement doesn't answer any of those questions. so that's the part of it that i feel like has been really too difficult it should not be so difficult that is information that the administration has and that i think is the information that we would like to know or at least i'll just speak for myself but that i would like to know before voting on a budget so i think this is where To me, this is where this is coming from, is this lack of the broader picture information. So yeah, I am also frustrated, I'll put it that way, that it's been many months of us asking for information that really should be available to us. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor Callahan. Any further questions or comments, members of the council? Councillor Singh.

I'll chime in just shortly to add that For me personally, it's not only just about the big picture. When we got the list, for example, the fire services, the professional services line item and the fire budget and what that's been used about, we've got names or vague ideas of what it was used about. But I think we want to understand, is this actually a good use of our money? Are we actually spending it on what is the quote unquote discipline that we're spending it on whether that's fair to the workers there's no way to ascertain that from what we've gotten.

Thank you counselor saying. And you know I will obviously the administration will have the time to characterize the. responses and messages that we've received. But, you know, we've been asking to me what feels like the same questions and getting a little bit more specific on them for almost six months. The answers are not forthcoming. And, you know, we got an email today that says that like last year, we spent $150,000 on KP law outside counsel out of the fire department budget. And like, we got that information today. And so I just have very, very I have a huge struggle understanding, and even that was presented kind of on its own. We asked that very specific question a month ago during the fire department hearing. So I have a very hard time voting for a law budget when I don't know where it is and how much it is for and what it's going towards. I just have a very, very hard time with that. I don't appreciate, frankly, the responses That I mean I appreciate that we've received some responses, but they are not answering the questions that we've asked so that is. I don't know what else we can do to further clarify I feel like we've sent a number of official resolutions. And we've also then clarified those across budget meetings. And I feel like we're further clarifying tonight exactly what we're looking for. I sent an email last week that said, can you send us all the money we spent on outside council in fiscal 26 and what budgets it came from and all of the budgets in fiscal 27, where we expect to spend money on outside council. And I feel like if we at least had those answers, that's maybe enough information to talk about What the law budget for the city looks like in fiscal 27 but you know we're getting pieces of that or incomplete pieces of that or a list of all the things that we might need to. The lawyers might need to do for the city and I don't think the question is we that we don't think that lawyers need to do stuff for the city or that the city has legal issues or that the city may need legal counsel it's that. We don't know how much money was spent on legal services and fiscal 26 and we don't know where in the fiscal 27 budget, there are plans to spend money on legal services. Nevermind then going to the second level questions that counselor saying was bringing up, which is like, are we doing the right thing with those funds? So I support this resolution. Thank you. Seeing no further discussion by members of the council go to

the public you can raise your hand on zoom or line up at the podium we'll start at the podium if you give your name and your city and um you'll have three minutes all righty uh simon alessandor 414th street um just real quick um through the chair to counselor scarpelli if i had i heard that you mentioned that the city was essentially offering to allow certain budget items in exchange for taking off certain requests related to like our legal spending Is that correct?

Outlining what we asked for in lieu of not cutting the legal line.

okay um just because like simply the fact that that is happening i think is just frankly disgraceful um that like the that currently what our what our city executive administration is offering to do is essentially swapping what we're funding for just getting basic information from our city about like where our money is going that should be a concern to anyone who's a resident of the city and I also support this resolution but I also think that like we should be looking more into just like how this mayoral administration seems to be trying to use this pressure to how they're trying to basically force concessions in favor of actually getting things that we should be getting as basics from our mayoral administration in exchange for funding what is always going to be important, which is the city services that keep the city going. So yeah, I very much support Councillor Scarpelli's resolution and very much hope you all will too.

Thank you. Seeing no hands on Zoom, we'll stay at the podium. If you give your name and city for the record, and you'll have three minutes.

I'm Michael Hesselman, 499 Main Street. Um first I I actually. Chair, thank you. Counselor Scarpelli for being very aggressive. I'm trying to track this down and actually it's shed some daylight on this. This is actually super important. I am honestly baffled how you're like this isn't a simple report to generate. At this point in my career, I've worked in-house longer than I've been in private practice. And managing outside counsel, if you want to know how much you've spent and what that money has been spent on specifically, the outside counsel provides a report in a spreadsheet that should break it down. Law firms are in the business of making money. They track very closely how they are billing you for that money. It's very easy to get this information. It's shocking to me that this is this crazy, fakaka nonsense headache. I don't understand it. This is so incompetent. It's wild. So, and I'll also add that I'd reach out to Councilor Cappelli earlier about this too. You know, what is the, like you should at least have access to the engagement letters and the engagements with these law firms so that you know the meets and bounds and scopes of representation that the firms are being contracted to do for you. That's crazy that you don't have that as well. Like this is literally a one day operation for each of these firms, less than a day. You put a couple of paralegals on it and they'll get it done. How is this not done? This is crazy. It's so infuriating because it's so incompetent. It's pathetic. And I really, really hope that you're able to move this forward because it should not be this hard for basic, minimal accountability from outside contractors to the city. Thank you, that's it.

Thank you. We'll go to Zoom. Laurie Krieger on Zoom. If you can give your name and city for the record, you'll have three minutes.

Hey, y'all. Hi, Lori Krieger, Medford, Mass. I thank you for bringing this up. I support the resolution. Anything to do with the budget should be a matter of standard reporting and the full city council and the community should have complete access to it at any time. And anti-democratic behaviors by the mayor cannot be tolerated by any means at all. So I support you 100%. Thank you.

Thank you.

Stephen South, 106 Damon Road, Medford. First of all, I want to thank Councilor Scarpelli and all of you for standing up to make sure that city residents' tax dollars are spent appropriately and responsibly. I believe that since January of 2020, that has not necessarily been the case. I just have a list of just some of the lawsuits that city employees have filed in the last few years. Howard et al. versus City of Medford, Connors et al. versus City of Medford, Ayala et al. versus City of Medford, Conboy versus City of Medford, Fargo et al. versus City of Medford, Gill versus City of Medford, Nunley versus City of Medford. There's also a class action lawsuit that was filed within the last year or so. I don't have the exact date. in which the city administration chose to drug test the entire DPW and alcohol test on the same day because an unused needle was found allegedly at the DPW. Now, all these cases have been represented by current counsel for the city. I'm actually curious as a resident and a taxpayer, number one, how much money are we spending? Number two, where's this money coming from? And number three, how could this money be spent more appropriately? I mean, these are not monopoly dollars. These are our tax dollars. And again, I really appreciate you all stepping up. And I believe that my last point I'd like to make is, The city of Medford is very unique, and I don't think for a positive reason. If you look at the city of Malden, which is comparable, I believe a little smaller, Malden has four city solicitors. I believe it's one solicitor and three assistant solicitors. You look at Everett. Everett has three city solicitors. And you look at larger communities like Newton and Cambridge and others that have many city solicitors. I just don't understand how a community of our size has zero. And I know you all know the story. We had one, I don't know, five years ago. Then we didn't have one for many years. Then we had one for, I believe, what, five months and 29 days or something, whatever the probationary period was. But it seems like it is... part of this administration's strategy to not have a solicitor because a solicitor answers to the entire community, the council, all the employees, and is responsible for the upkeep of the laws, whether municipal, federal, and making sure the city's doing the right thing. And for whatever reason, this administration wants to have their own private hired guns through KP Law and now other, I believe, another firm and then won't let anybody know what the... Is that my three minutes? So I'll just close out with saying, again, President Behrs, Councilor Scarpelli, and all of you, I appreciate your fortitude in making sure that the community and the taxpayer dollars are taken care of. I appreciate your time.

Thank you. And the default sound changes every time, so I'm sorry it was like playing you off at the Oscars. It's usually just a beep. Any further public comment? Seeing none, I will recognize Councillor Scarpino.

If I can, to that point that Mr. South brought forward about the city solicitor, we're also giving a breakdown for each department and what they're using for the legal line. Not only did I share it with fellow friends that are city solicitors i also just you it's it's great because the people that aren't as gifted like myself you take that information you add it into chat and ai tells you exactly what the city of medford and our departments are using and then asking it what is the role of a city solicitor and if not most all those requirements that were being fed out to outside law firms

most of them are done by our city solicitor so i think that's an interesting point that you brought forward i wanted to share i forgot to mention that earlier but thank you mr president thank you councillor scarpelli see no further discussion by members of the council or the public on this item is there a motion on the motion to approve by councillor saying seconded by seconded by vice president lazaro uh chief of staff nazarian

I'm not sure what would be helpful in this discussion. If there's anything that can be said that would be helpful in this discussion at this point. But I just want to, restate what the mayor stated before. We are happy to have a discussion on what we can provide that would be helpful to this council. I think there's a number of other discussion items here before the council, so I don't have an issue with an appeal being filed by the council on the public records request or whatever. steps that the Council wishes to take. I'm not here to oppose that, but I just want to remind the Council that we're happy to have a discussion so that we can go through the records in a manner that's systematic and actually can provide some guidance because of the cumbersome nature of the records request. So, you know, just to throw a thought out there, if the Council were to potentially designate a member or two of the council to have discussions that would be helpful in our process but um you know i not standing in the way of any appeals being filed just just um stating that to assist the process if that's helpful uh thank you madam chief i think um and i see councillor scarpelli for me what would be helpful is understanding

what clarifying questions you and the administration may have to the February request or the April request or the subsequent budget meeting requests. I think we've obviously presented a number of questions. I think at least I and my communications with you and the mayor have asked some maybe more narrow questions that I think get to the heart of some of this. But I think we're really talking about a spreadsheet, a table, a chart that talks about the aggregate cost to the city of legal matters over the last six years. you know, some sort of data-driven approach so that we can know how much have we spent, on what things, and then also, I think, going forward, how much we expect to spend. You know, I appreciate that we got the answer today about the fire department budget, but the answer today was we spent $150,000 on KP law out of the fire department budget last year, and, you know, that's a significant number, right? Like, even from the communications that, you have sent to the past, right? Oh, well, we only spent 450,000. This is 2022, right? But that's 25% of, you know, that's another 25%, right? If there's another 150,000 on that. So I don't have a clear understanding of what we're spending on legal services across all the departmental budgets. I can maybe understand the principle of what you noted in your email earlier of putting those out to You know, if there's a service for a specific department, that that department's budget pays for it. But I think that also obscures the cost of legal services, since we also have a law department budget. So if there are clarifying questions to especially, I think, the February resolution, which I think was maybe the most comprehensive, but also not necessarily requiring the public records law standards that the April request has, that would be helpful for me. I have any answers to those clarifying questions that might get us to the point of getting the information we're looking for, but I just think the bit one offs and like are not answering the question. So, and I personally feel like we've communicated many times what our questions are. So that's like where I'm running into a struggle is. I feel like we've articulated the questions, re-articulated the questions, several different ways and approaches, but the answers are not forthcoming. That's my two cents. And if you want to respond to that now, or if you want to wait, I can recognize Councillor Scarpelli.

That's fine.

All right, great. Councillor Scarpelli.

Thank you, Mr. President. To the podium, I don't know what else we can do to simplify this. I've asked these questions years ago. We brought it forth as a team to understand that we want to know what we're spending so we can also understand the motives behind what we're spending. Because it's not a secret that it seems like the question you're asking, it's new to you. The increase in lawsuits from just our city employees coming from this administration over the last six years have been an increase of over 590%. That's not a secret. So with those numbers and understanding what we've been asking for and not getting any answer at all. So the public can understand, because it seems like for the people that are tuning in right now might be a little befuddled as well. Apologize for the time constraint, but I'm going to explain something. On the 28th, we legally asked and implemented the FOIA request. It's a public record request that spelt out exactly what we wanted. Pursuant to mass general law, we went through that, the request All public records that contain any reference to lawsuits, claims, administrative proceedings, arbitrations, and or other legal actions in which the city of Medford and or Brianna Longo Cone is her capacity as mayor of the city of Medford is or was named party whether it's as plaintiff, defendant, respondent, or intervener in any court, tribunal, or administrative body including but not limited to United States District Court, Mass Superior Court, Land Court, Massachusetts Appeals Court, Supreme Judicial Court, Civil Service Commission, the Department of Labor Relations, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, House Appeals Committee, the State Ethics Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and any other federal, state, or local forum. For each lawsuit, claim, administrative proceedings, arbitrations, or other legal actions that included any response to subsection of this request, please provide all public records that contain any reference to each matter, including the full case name, the docketed case number, the forum, the date filed, nature of the claim, And present status, for example, whether it is presently pending or has been settled, dismissed, adjudicated, or resolved in any fashion. c. All public records that contain any indication of the cost of representation and related litigation costs paid by the City of Medford regarding each lawsuit, claim, administrative proceedings, arbitration, or other legal action that is included in the response to subsection of this request. including all records indicating fee paid to outside counsel, identified by firm name and total amount per firm, expert witness fees, court costs, mediation, and arbitration fees, and any other litigation-related expenditures. D, all public records that contain any indication of cost of representation and or related litigation cost paid by the city of method using the funds received by the city pursuant to the American Rescue Plan Act 2021 ARPA. For each lawsuit claim administrative proceedings, arbitrations, or other legal actions that included in the response to subsection A of this request. This request includes all records related to fees paid to outside counsel identified by firm name, total amount per firm, expert witness fees, court costs, mediations, arbitrations, fees, other litigation-related expenditures. E. All public records containing any indication of settlement payments, judgments, awards, and other monetary considerations paid by the City for each lawsuit, claim, administrative proceeding, arbitration, or other legal action that is included in the response to Subsection A of the request, including all payments made by insurance carriers pursuant to policies and insurance that provided coverage to the City of Medford or its employees. F. public records that contain any indication of any payment or cost reimbursements or other considerations paid by the city to any private investigating services detective services or surveillance services of any kind or for any purpose since January 2020 this includes any payments across reimburse or other considerations paid to any person or entity who on behalf of the city of method then hired or maintained or employed any private investigative service, detective service, or surveillance service of any kind since January 2020. All public records including but not limited to emails, memoranda, reports, meeting minutes, internal communications that refer to relate to the deletion, destruction, removal, alteration of any other dispositions of records that relate to each lawsuit, claim, administrative proceedings, arbitration or other legal actions that included in response to subsection A in this request. H, all logs, reports, memorandums, systems generated, or other records that track or document the deletion of destruction of records that relate to each lawsuit, claims, administrative proceedings, arbitrations, or other legal actions, including the response of subsection A in request. i copies of non-disclosure disagreements that are currently in effect or were entered into the city of meph in january 1 2020 to the date of this request this includes but not limited to the confidentiality agreement settlements agreements containing non-disclosure provisions and limit limited to confidential agreement settlements agreements non-disclosure provisions and any other agreements that contain confidential confidentiality a nondisclosure clauses to which a city of Medford and or Brianna Lunger Kern in her capacity as mayor of the city of Medford is or was named party whether plaintiff defendant responded intervener or any other capacity if there is any fees searching or copying these records please inform the council of the cost of that it exceeds $100. Please note, the council is requesting a waiver for the fee for the disclosure request informing information of public record interest and will contribute significantly to the public understanding of the administration litigation history and expenditures since 2020. The public understands that the history expenditures is especially important in the light that the administration's failure to respond to The city council resolution 26043 that was passed February 24th, 2026, in which a council essentially requested similar records. The request for the council for non-disclosure agreement anticipated the need of possible redactions, but as of Justice Bosford said, for the court in Champa versus Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass 86, case involving student records, the inclusion of contractual confidential clause does not, does not apply. So this information request is not being sought for commercial purposes. Onward and onward. This is spelled out. And the reason why, because these questions were asked very simple. And the simple question was just a simple breakdown of what we're paying our legal teams for all of these lawsuits. But nothing was responding. No, this is, to your credit, you were right. The mayor stood at this podium a few weeks ago and said, we're in compliant. We spend $110,000 in legal line or whatever it was, and we're spending under that. She wasn't wrong, but she's not listening to us. We've been asking year after year, month after month, for this breakdown. This is legally in process, so I appreciate my council president saying that he maybe would accept something lighter. I personally do not. I want what we're asking for now, because what I'm seeing so far in communications with your office, it seems like It makes no sense. The breakdown that we're getting is total opposite of what I just read. It seems like it's deflection, deflection, deflection. And I don't know why. So until we see these documents legally, then I will not vote for any budget. I will not move forward with anything until we know that our money being spent in our city is being spent correctly. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councillor Scarpelli. And yeah, I mean, just to clarify too, I wasn't necessarily saying accept something less, but like some sort of document that at least it shows we're making progress, because I don't think what we've received really shows that to me. So that's more what I was trying to say. Thank you. Madam Chief of Staff.

Thank you. I don't want to belabor the point. I'll just say that As I have said at a prior city council meeting, this public records request and even the resolution is incredibly voluminous. We have made good faith attempts to send the council information with regard to settlement agreements that exist and where we've also sent the breakdown for the fire department that was requested. As the mayor has said before, as I've said this evening, I've just wanted to let the council know that we are happy to continue the discussion on this to make sure that the council gets the records that it's requesting. That was my only intention. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Scarpelli.

While the chief of staff is here.

Yes, Councillor Scarpelli.

Thank you. maybe the public can understand where the frustration comes in. The mayor stood at this podium and said, we never and have never done non-disclosure agreements. But the first two lawsuits you sent us, the settlements, distinctly said that was in place. So right off the bat, the trust and understanding that maybe we're not getting the information we want is out the window. Because we have those in place for many, many years. And you proved it by sending those documents to us. So just that alone, it just spells out the questioning behind whether we're really going to get this information or not correctly. Now, the answer was, a few weeks ago, was this is just too much work. This was just too much work. You spent more time sending us information that has nothing to do what we asked for. It really doesn't. We asked for the FOIA request. That's what we asked you to do. So now we're moving on to the Secretary of State's office and hopefully they can expedite this process, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you.

One minor piece of clarification. When a settlement agreement states that it is confidential to the extent permissible by law, that means essentially and effectively that if we receive a public records request, we are obligated to release it. So those agreements contain that language. So I think that's an important clarification to make. So that's it. I've said everything I need to say. Thank you.

I just wanted to clarify, though, those also contain some agreements that say we aren't going to we aren't going to basically speak publicly right about these matters. And those are like essentially nondisclosure.

I'm not an attorney, as you know, President bears. But to answer your question, it's my understanding that that would not qualify as a nondisclosure agreement.

Okay. I will just say this to belabor the point we've been belaboring, but is there a spreadsheet in the law department of all of the legal cases against the city, whether that's lawsuits or formal complaints to state and federal bodies or arbitrations, like is there a spreadsheet of all of the things that we're facing? And then is there a SharePoint folder with all the documents for that case and a column in the spreadsheet that says this is how much we spent on this and a column that says this is the status, it's closed, it's open, it's like, that's really what I'm just wondering. Like, I mean, essentially what Councillor Scarpelli read is that, right? It's what, is there a document somewhere that has all of the information relevant to legal proceedings that the city is involved in president bears not to my knowledge okay and like that's yeah okay thank you not to my knowledge for the last 30 40 however many years sure thank you um there is a hand on zoom i we do have a motion on the floor but i'll just do it um mr castanetti if you give your name and city for the record please you have three minutes thank you council of beers uh can you hear me yes we can hear you okay thank you appreciate the time um you people are talking a lot better than me

I simply want to say we the people deserve a comprehensive accountant of all lawsuits versus the city for the last five years. After all, this is our money. Taxpayers money. Period. Good night.

Thank you. Yeah, one minute.

So, okay, there's no record of the cases and the legal matters that the city has been involved in. That's crazy, but whatever. You still know what firms you have worked with, ask them to report out the matters that they have billed you. They will provide that information. They do have a spreadsheet. You're not hiring Better Call Saul. You're hiring real law firms. They will have that spreadsheet. You can just get that information from them. And then you can redact whatever needs to be redacted. And I want to be clear about something, too. Talking about the billing of a case does not necessitate talking about the substantive matter of the case, which might put you in violation of any confidentiality or NDA that came out of the case. So this still, even without that spreadsheet here, which that makes me very angry for a different reason. I would count to four inside and take a deep breath. you still have very easy ways to get this information and it should be, it should have been gotten, received already, retrieved, it's easy. All right, that's it, thanks. Thank you.

On the motion by Councilor Seng, seconded by Vice President Lazaro to approve, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Council of Callahan. Yes. Council of Lemming.

Yes.

Council Mullane. Yes. Council of Scarpelli. Yes. Council of Sane. Yes. Vice President Lazaro. Yes. President Peers.

Yes, 70 affirmative, none of the negative, the motion passes. 26119 offered by Councillor Scarpelli, resolution to prepare 112th budget due to missing financial information. Be resolved that in light of the administration's repeated failure to provide the council with information regarding lawsuits, claims, costs, and other financial impacts of lawsuits, claims, administrative proceedings, arbitrations, and other legal actions, which would allow it to properly discern whether to approve the budget submitted by the mayor, that the council vote to reject the budget submitted by the mayor, and instead vote that the mayor submit a 112th budget, which is a continuing appropriation budget on a month-to-month basis for a period not to exceed three months, pursuant to General Law Chapter 44, Section 32. Councillor Scarpelli.

Thank you, Mr. President. I JUST WANT TO REMIND MY FELLOW COUNSELORS, WE SAT AT THIS BUDGET MEETING LAST YEAR. WE WERE PROMISED A BUNCH OF THINGS. We reluctantly decided to move forward with the budget. Those necessities that we required didn't happen. We don't have a city solicitor. There are concerns that as we move forward with this, that this is our right and our responsibility to make sure that we get the information so we can move forward with a trustful feeling when it comes to the budgeting process that the residents that elected us for is one of probably the, maybe the most important, if not the only two things that we really are in charge of doing here as city councilors. So simply put, the request is the mayor has up to three months she could finish in one month but the mayor has uh the process for a 112 budget to work on uh the fiscal 2025 budget that's without us cutting anything moving forward business as usual until we get the information on a month-to-month basis we meet again in july then we meet again in august hopefully after reading the resolution out loud and the foyer request out loud hopefully the administration now knows what we're looking for and we can get that information so we as city councilors and stewards of the fiscal responsibility of this this position that we know that we're making the decision um that was thoughtful uh and all the information was presented properly so we know where our city taxpayers money is are going so I would request that my colleagues follow approve my request in this resolution that we move to a 112th budget and I believe that's chapter 44 section 32 and that will allow the city administration at least a month or two or it's up to three months possible to correct the issues that we have and making sure that we are voting on a budget that we can feel confident that our taxpayers' money are being spent correctly. So I hope my colleagues would vote in support with that resolution. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councillor Scarpelli. Any comments by members of the Council? Councillor Seng.

Councilor Scarpelli and I have spoken before about this. I think throughout the process of crafting a budget, moving to a 112th budget is an important option to leave on the table to get the answers that we've been wanting, to get the requests that we have made to be fulfilled. I am hesitant to vote on this first before we discuss the budget itself, because even though the budget isn't perfect and I think there are changes that we can make to it, I don't want us to lose the supplemental appropriations. that residents have been asking so long for. For example, increasing the pay for librarian staff. For example, the money for, sorry, my brain short circuiting a little bit. I mean, I think the librarian staff is one example of that. The arts, the small increases to arts, even though it's not enough in my opinion, it's a little bit of a step forward. I think it's better for the council to have a conversation about those things first before we vote on this. So I would respectfully, um, just, yeah, just move to table until we, we do that.

On the motion of Councillor Scarpelli to table, uh, for until the end of the meeting, seconded by Councillor saying, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Callahan. Council Lemming?

Yes.

Council Mullaney? Yes. Council Scappelli? Yes. Council Hussain? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. President Beers?

Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. That's tabled to the end of the meeting. We have a few items and then we'll come back to the budget. Communications from the Mayor. 26105, free cash appropriation for the affordable housing trust. So this is the $250,000 for the Affordable Housing Trust that we originally heard two meetings ago. We said that we wanted to hear the full picture on free cash, and we did hear that earlier. So we do have the following two papers, which is the $250,000 for the Affordable Housing Trust and then $100,000 for the MFN. Is there any further discussion by members of the council on the Affordable Housing Trust piece now that we've heard the full picture on free cash? Seeing none, is there a motion?

Motion to approve.

On the motion approved by Councillor Lemming, seconded by? Second. Seconded by Vice President Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Callahan. Yes. Councillor Lemming. Yes. Councillor Mullaney. Yes. Councillor Scott-Pelly.

Yes.

Councillor Singh. Yes. Vice President Lazzaro.

and president bears yes seven the affirmative no the negative the motion passes two six one two one submitted by mayor brianna lingo kern free cash appropriation for medford family network dear president bears and city councilors i respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body approves the appropriation of free cash the amount of a hundred thousand dollars for the medford family network to for a grant to bridge a funding gap that mfn has identified given the loss of funding from one of their major funders the children's trust MFN has identified a funding need of $240,000 for fiscal 27. Fortunately, through efforts by our state delegation, school committee members, and myself, Tufts University is donating $50,000. The Cummings Foundation is providing a $100,000 grant for a period of three years. And Senator Jalen has been working hard on a $100,000 budget amendment. This free cash appropriation, together with other funding sources that have been secured or are currently being pursued, will enable the City to begin developing a formal grant agreement this summer. In the meantime, MFN can rely on grant funds it has already received or expects to receive to support operations through at least the first quarter. If funding for MFN is not provided in the upcoming state budget, I will work with you all to increase the amount of funds available for the City's one-time grant to MFN to avoid any shortfalls. We want to be clear that negotiating and executing the grant agreement will take time. AND WE ARE ALL WORKING TO ENSURE THE PROCESS IS COMPLETED THOUGHTFULLY IN ACCORDANCE WITH ALL LEGAL REQUIREMENTS. AS OF THE SUBMISSION OF THE REQUEST, THE BALANCE OF FREE CASH IS $21,012,459, RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, BREANNA LONGO-KERN, MAYOR. CHIEF OF STAFF, NEZARIAN OR DIRECTOR DICKINSON, IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO ADD TO THE MAYOR'S LETTER? YOUR CALL.

Thank you, President Behrs. No, I don't have anything further to add. I'm happy to answer any questions, however.

All right. Do we have any questions or comments from members of the City Council on the proposed free cash funding for the MFN? Councillor Mullane.

Thank you for putting this together. I know that I think all of us on the City Council, I guess I should say for myself, have received a lot of feedback about how critical and important it is to provide this type of funding. having worked in nonprofit, I also know how difficult it is, especially to get funding when it comes to staff support outside of just even programmatic. So knowing this could go to it, I just definitely wanted to confirm because I see that that there is that 100,000 budget amendment that we still are unsure of whether that is and that I just wanted to triple check that yes, if that doesn't come through, we'll be able to have another conversation to provide that bridge funding at least for this year. to ensure that they have everything they need in order to operate for the next fiscal year.

Thank you, President Behrs. Yes, if, Councillor Mullane, if you're referring to the Cummings, sorry, if you're referring to the work that Senator Jalen is doing to get a budget amendment, yes, this appropriation would provide a bridge either way. Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Seng.

Thank you. I know for me as a counselor, getting the MFN funded through the next fiscal year has been one of my top, if not the top priority of this budget. Given that it is such a resource for our community, for our families, for our children, I think we've waxed poetic about it many times in the past before, but especially in the time of rising cost of living, The MFN stands as a resource that is pivotal for families and pivotal for children to continue developing socially and in terms of education. I want to think, I know various counselors have led on different fronts with regards to this, school community members as well, and I want to make sure that everyone gets recognized for their work. work that oftentimes gets conveyed to residents in emails or in public. But between I think, I think we've all played different roles. Some of us really getting this to the attention of the council and to the mayor, the public, some of us have been involved directly in conversations between offices about getting this funded. I've been in contact with state legislators and our congresspeople about this as well. And it's taken a village. So I just want to say that and say that I am happy that something is getting done. I think Councillor Mullane and I have talked about this. It is important to ensure stability for the MFN going forward, the difficulties in terms of staff support just by only having one year can be really difficult, especially when they may need more support for development for fundraising. But I think that's a conversation for us all to continue to have as well after this gets approved. I think my one question to the chief of staff through the chair is just for the, if the $100,000 doesn't work, Just to follow up on the previous question, what's the plan of where we're drawing the funds from to cover that?

I think the reality is we will address that if the reality comes to that point. But we are committed, the mayor is committed to working with this council on ensuring that we continue to support this obviously incredible program in Medford. I don't know if it was Councillor Callahan that said it earlier. I believe it was you, Councillor. As a person with a small child, I agree wholeheartedly. you know, anyone in another community would be jealous of what resources this organization provides the residents of Medford. And it's an incredible and special thing. I think that everyone here on this council, the mayor, and anyone who's interacted with MFN or, you know, had the opportunity and fortune to utilize the services of MFN see that. So thank you.

Just to clarify, yep, through the chair, Are we looking, I mean hopefully we get the $100,000. That would be really ideal. I think it would be really necessary. It would mean that our city can do, can have that pressure off of us. We all know how tight budgets are generally. And so I really hope the state delivers on that. Are we looking at using stabilization funds for it or?

President Barras, through you, we would want to probably try to avoid using stabilization funds on it because of the nature of the stabilization fund, that it's capital stabilization fund. I think we could evaluate alternatives. I think we would be good for enough of a period of time where MFN shouldn't have to bridge anything before we have free cash certified again. So, you know, hopefully we're in, I don't see a scenario where that's an issue. Now, if that scenario were to present itself, we would work very diligently to try to figure out options. Maybe that means a general stabilization. I don't know. I'm not entirely sure. It really hasn't been contemplated at that level, but I don't think the timing is such that we're going to run into that question, but if we do, We'll have that dialogue with the various people we need to discuss with the state, with this council, and we'll figure it out. I'm confident on that.

Thank you. I just wanted to ask that question so that we know that we're thinking about these things, thinking about the worst case scenario, thinking about plans for doing it. I'm glad to hear that the timing will likely work out. And I do want to thank, through you, the mayor for her work on this as well. It really has been a team effort.

Agreed.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Seng. Any further questions on the MFN? Seeing none, any questions or discussion from members of the public on the MFN? Seeing none, is there a motion? On the motion to approve, by Vice President Lozaro, seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilor Callahan? Yes. Councilor Lennon?

Yes.

Council Mullane? Yes. Councilor Schaap-Pelly? No. Councilor Singh? Vice President Lazaro? Yes. President Behrs?

Yes, 70 affirmative, none of the negative, the motion passes. 26112, submitted by Mayor Brianna Locarn, request for food truck permits, Tandor Curry and Revelry. I believe we approved the June one, but we were coming back to look at the July and August dates for the Medford Square Fest Bruise, Bites and Beats events. Councillor Scarpelli?

Thank you, Mr. President. with the brick and mortar owners that had some questions um and uh the response that they are um they are fine with this process um not fine with it but they're accepting it i would just move approval thank you counselor scarpelli on the motion to approve by councillor scarpelli seconded by vice president lazaro mr clerk please call the roll councillor callahan council lemming

Yes.

Council Mullane. Yes. Council Scott-Pelly. Yes. Council Hussain. Yes. Vice President Lazaro. Yes. And President Beers.

Yes. Seventy affirmative. None of the negative. The motion passes. Twenty-six, one, two, two. Submitted by Mayor Mariano Lungo-Kern, Community Preservation Committee, Appropriation Request, Royal House, and Shiloh Baptist Church. I do want to note that there was a fishing... scam that did go out essentially using my name and some random email to folks who had received cpa funds being like you're on the city council agenda please pay us money we will never ask you i certainly will never send an email from my account or another account asking for you to pay some random bank account money to just come to our meeting as you have a complete and total right to when you're putting something on our agenda. So that phishing scam went out. I know that some folks saw that and were very worried or frustrated by it, and I just want to say that we are working with city clerk, IT, and our CPA manager to see if there are ways that we can change some of the ways that items are appearing on our agenda, specifically as results to CPC, because it looks like an AI scraped the agenda, scraped contact information from the agenda, matched that to people's contact information, and then sent an email that seemed relatively legitimate. Certainly it contained a lot of the content um that was on our agenda and these are getting more sophisticated so I just wanted to note that before we continue um you know that bad actors are everywhere and trying to take advantage of um of our of our city and and some folks who are residents here so with that um I will read the letter and then I will recognize Teresa Dupont unless Teresa you want to speak specifically to this

No, I'll just briefly say thank you very much for calling attention to that. And we'll do what we can to continue the awareness on this.

Thank you, Teresa. All right, so here's the letter. Dear President Behrs and city councilors, on behalf of the Community Preservation Committee, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body approve the following fiscal 26 recommendations of the Community Preservation Committee, requesting the appropriation of 38,000 from the CPA General Reserve to the Royal House Association to fund emergency perimeter wall repairs at Royal House and Slade Quarters Museum, and requesting the appropriation of 70,000 from CPA General Reserve to Shiloh Baptist Church of Medford to provide final contingency funding for their ADA improvements project. the letter project will be tracked in the community preservation fund and cbc recommendation letters will be attached incorporated community preservation act manager teresa dupont will be in attendance to address the council thank you for consideration respectfully submitted brianna lingo current mayor and we do have um some descriptions that were attached to the agenda including the aforementioned contact information that an ai scraped to try to scam somebody um so but the information is really great and the projects are interesting so i'll recognize cpa manager teresa dupont

Great. Thank you very much. President bears. Good evening. And, uh, thank you to our team members of the council. I'm here tonight. To support these 2 recommendations of the Medford community preservation commission. I'll try to be brief. I know you still have some more time on this agenda. Um, I'll 1st, start with Shiloh Baptist church. It's a project you all have seen before. Um, they're seeking some final. contingency funds in the amount of $70,000 to wrap up their ADA improvement projects. We're excited to share that the elevator is in. Remodeling is nearly complete, but they are up against some unanticipated change orders and are seeking assistance with covering those final bills. I want to applaud Shiloh for their efforts in actively fundraising. It's tough in this financial environment right now, but their efforts have raised a bit over $10,000 to assist with this project. you know, happy to report that the improvement projects have led to the ability of a child care provider to open as a tenant and serve the Medford family community. I believe they're providing spots currently for 50 children or so. So this funding would see the, again, the final bills paid for their ADA improvement project. I'll pause to see if there's any questions on Shiloh before I go into Royal House.

Any questions? Councilor Scarpelli.

I just have one. Teresa, Mr. DuPont, I apologize, but again, just to be clear, no matter what we say every meeting, that the process that the CPA goes through for private churches falls into our category and it is legal and um it fills all the categories i just wanted to make sure we said that again because we still have people contacting and saying why are we paying x amount for an outside facility but again i know that you uh you always eloquently put it to rest so again i would just ask you the process

Certainly, yes. So CPA funds can go towards three different categories. One of them is historic preservation. And the purpose of CPA is to always support community. That's first and foremost, our community gathering spaces. So yes, it is a church, but first and foremost, it is a community gathering space. They do food drives, they have community meetings there. And as I said, now they are hosting a childcare provider in their basement. So I understand people's concerns about this, but first and foremost, we're funding that it's a community supportive project. So I'm always happy to answer any questions if folks have questions on what type of projects we fund. We just opened up our fiscal 27 CPA application round. So this is a great time if folks have questions. Teresa DuPont, you know, I'm up in the planning department, always happy to talk to people about projects, potential projects, past projects, whatever it may be.

Thank you again. I know that this is redundant, but I think it's important that people understand the impact that the CPA makes on our, especially our historical community and making sure that we feel everybody, everybody feels welcome in this process. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Counselor Singh.

Thank you. Thank you, Teresa, for your hard work on Well, really on everything CPA related, but especially with these two projects, these two are really treasured institutions of the city, the Royal House being a place where we reflect upon our history, the significance of Medford going back centuries, but also the harm and damage done to people who lived here then. The Shiloh Baptist Church is the center of community, as you have talked about. And so these are important projects to me. To kind of back up what Councilor Scarpelli was saying, agree with it or disagree with it, there is Supreme Court precedent on not excluding religious institutions that would otherwise qualify for funds like these. It would actually be illegal to do so. According to the Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia versus Comer, that is a case where there was a similar kind of municipal grant structure. And Missouri had denied a religious preschool access to the state grants for rubber playground resurfacing. And because the institution otherwise qualified, aside from its religious character, The Supreme Court said at the time that that imposed the penalty on free exercise of religion. Again, residents can agree or disagree with that decision. But that is what the law says. And so we have to be careful in our decisions. And the CPC, the Community Preservation Committee, is, in my opinion, following the word of the law and being careful with our decision-making process.

Thank you, Councillor Seng. Manager Dupont.

Yes, thank you, Councillor Seng, for your comments there. I will also just add to stress that as the CPC, the committee that reviews these applications, we've funded plenty of church projects in the past, but we've always been adamant, and it's a a condition of the funding that no CPA funds, no tax public funds go towards anything that has religious imagery or iconography. So just to kind of solidify that, you know, I just wanted to share that and make sure folks were understanding of that. I'm happy to talk about Royal House, but, you know, there's obviously I defer to the council if there's further questions on Shiloh. Okay. I'll be brief on Royal House. So they're seeking $38,000 to address some urgent repairs needed on the section of the historic brick perimeter wall that serves as the property's boundary. You know, this wall is approaching 150 years old and the original mortar is shockingly failing in this section and is bowing into the abutter's backyard. The Royal House Association has always taken their role as both a steward of the museum and as a neighbor very seriously. So they jumped right on the issue when it was brought to their attention. So this funding would see the wall be repaired with new mortar, new flashing, and to help kind of like reseat the wall so that it does not, you know, it reduces this risk of collapse here. I'll also just do a quick plug that the Royal House, they are now open for the season for their house tours. So I would encourage folks if they're in the neighborhood, it's open on Saturdays and Sundays from one to four. So come on down, take a tour. We're very blessed to have such a rich piece of American and Medford history right in our backyard. And I'm happy to take any questions on the Royal House project.

Move to approve. Move to approve.

This is what happens when you can unmute yourself. On the motion of Council, let me to approve. Thank you, Teresa, for the presentation. Seconded by, seconded by Councilor Callahan. Any further discussion? Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilor Callahan. Council of Lemming?

Yes.

Council of Mullane? Yes. Council of Scott-Pelly? Yes. Council of Singh? Yes. Vice President Lazzaro? Yes. President Beers?

Yes. Seventh affirmative, none negative, the motion passes. Thank you. 26123, submitted by Mayor Brandilungo Kern. Capital Stabilization Fund Appropriation Request, Curtis Tufts Capital Needs Assessment. Dear President, mayors and city councilors, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body approve an appropriation from the Capital Stabilization Fund in the amount of $17,500.00 to fund a capital needs assessment of the Curtis Tufts High School in support of planning for the building's future use. Capital Stabilization Fund has a balance of $5,569,841.96 Director of Facilities, David McIntyre, will be available for questions. Thank you for your kind attention to this matter. Respectfully submitted, Brianna Lilker, mayor. She's the mayor. All right, David, let's go.

How we doing? I would just add that I support assessments like this. I think they give us a great perspective and level of groundwork for making future decisions, especially when it comes to our buildings as assets that are vital to the city and services that we can provide now and going forward. I WILL TAKE ANY QUESTIONS IF ANYONE HAS ANY.

ONE QUICK QUESTION IS THE MOTIVATION FOR THIS ESSENTIALLY THAT THE PLAN IS TO MOVE THE CURTIS TUFFS BACK INTEGRATED INTO THE NEW MEDFORD HIGH SCHOOL SO WE WILL NEED TO DO SOMETHING WITH THIS BUILDING?

I DON'T KNOW THE FULL CONCEPT OF WHAT FUTURE PLANS FOR THIS BUILDING ARE BUT I KNOW THAT THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF CITY SERVICES AND DEPARTMENTS WHO INCLUDING WHAT YOU JUST MENTIONED WHO ARE LOOKING AT POTENTIALLY USING SPACE IN THIS BUILDING SO.

Great, I'll go to Vice President Lazzaro and then Councilor Mullane.

I couldn't agree with you more that it's important to have an assessment of the assets for the city and I motion to approve.

Councilor Mullane.

Thank you for bringing this. I just had a couple quick questions. Who is actually going to be doing the capital needs assessment? Do you know what firm is going to be doing the, or who's going to be running it? We're still deciding on that, yeah. You're still deciding. How are you going to come to that decision? Are you putting out bids or what does that look like right now?

I believe that we're still waiting. We reached out to a couple of different groups to see final numbers, but I believe that it's such a number that doesn't have to go out for a formal bid. I believe it could be fulfilled with just three quotes. Okay. I would double check with the procurement department on that.

Okay. And I guess who's going to be providing? Is it you working directly within the vendor with the requirements and timeline and all the needs that they have around that facility, around the building?

I would be working with them. I would be in contact with Ken Lord as well, who has some of the information that would be used for this. You know, typically they look at any kind of documentation that exists and any kind of staffing that may have interacted with kind of maintenance schedules. I would primarily be working on this, but it would be in conjunction with some of his support.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lane. Any further questions? Seeing none, is there a motion? Oh, on the motion approved by Vice President Lazzaro, seconded by? Seconded by Councilor Callahan. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Kelly. Council Lemming.

Yes.

Council Malina. Council Scott Belly. Councilor Singh. Vice President Lazaro. Yes. And President Beers.

Yes. Seven the affirmative, none the negative. The motion passes. 26124 submitted by Mayor Brianna Longo-Kern. Personnel ordinance amendments. Director and Assistant Director of Health and Human Services. DEAR PRESIDENT BEARS AND CITY COUNCILORS, I RESPECTFULLY REQUEST AND RECOMMEND THAT YOUR HONORABLE BODY APPROVE THE FOLLOWING AMENDMENTS TO REVISE ORDINANCES CHAPTER 66 ENTITLED PERSONNEL, ARTICLE 2 ENTITLED RESERVE CITY'S CLASSIFICATION AND COMPENSATION PLAN FORMALLY INCLUDED AS ARTICLE 2 SECTION 6631 TO 6640 BY ADOPTING THE FOLLOWING CHANGES EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2026. AMENDMENT A, THE LANGUAGE OF CAF 12 SHALL BE AMENDED TO REMOVE PREVENTION AND OUTREACH MANAGER AND THE LANGUAGE OF CAF 13 SHALL BE AMENDED TO INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING POSITION, ASSISTANT HEALTH AND HUMAN Amendment B, the language of CAF 19 shall be amended to remove Director of Public Health and replace it with the following position, Director of Health and Human Services. Director of Public Health, Marianne O'Connor, will be available to speak on this request, respectfully submitted, Brianna Lungokern, Mayor. And I'll recognize Director O'Connor.

Hi, good evening, uh, president bears and members of the city council. Basically here tonight as a continuation of the discussion we had during my budget hearing when we talked about how the current name of the department no longer really reflects the scope of service you currently provide. And also to acknowledge the work of the current prevention and outreach manager, Catherine. She's integral to the expansion of these services. The federal $1.2 million grant we received has secured our programming for years to come, but it also increases her job responsibilities in managing that grant and the programs and the staff and the reporting requirements associated with it. Also, I'm happy to report tonight that we recently were notified that we did receive the $70,000 grant from the Gaming Commission. which will continue our problem gambling prevention work, which will also be under Catherine's purview. So therefore I'm asking tonight that you approve the request to include the changes to CAF 13 and adding Assistant Health and Human Services Director for Catherine's position and changing my current position title under CAF 19 to Director of Health and Human Services. I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Do we have any questions for Director O'Connor? Seeing none, is there a motion? On the motion approved by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Vice President Lazaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. Approve for first reading.

Council of Callahan. Yes. Council of Lemming.

Yes.

Council of Mullaney. Yes. Council of Scott-Pelly. Yes. Council of Singh.

Yes.

Vice President Lozaro. Yes. And President Beers.

Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion passes. Thank you, Director O'Connor.

Thank you.

If you did, 26-125. So that moves us to the budget items. Councilor Tseng.

I have a motion to take the supplemental amendments out of order.

On the motion by Councilor Tseng to take paper 26-126, seconded by? Second. Seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilor Callahan. Council Lemming? Yes. Council Mullaney? Yes. Council Schauffele? Yes. Council Hussain? Yes. Vice President Lozaro? Yes. And President Behrs?

Yes. Seventy affirmative, none of the negative. The motion passes. Dear President Behrs and city councilors, As you know, pursuant to Mass General Law Chapter 44, Section 32, I respectfully request and recommend that your honorable body approve the proposed fiscal year 2027 General Fund Budget Public Educational and Governmental Access Special Revenue Fund and Water Sewer Enterprise Fund As outlined in my letter dated June 4th, 2026, which appears in the council's June 9th, 2026 regular meeting packet as part of city council and mayor budget negotiations, this offer is conditioned upon the council approving the budget as proposed without any reductions. I'm also requesting and recommending that the following supplemental appropriations, the fiscal year 2027 general fund budget, and the total supplemental appropriation is $112,929. outlined in the following table, 25,000 legislative salaries, 15,000 executive salaries, 5,000 executive ordinary, Law, 22,230 salaries. Recreation, 25,000 salaries. And library, 20,696 salaries. And to meet these appropriations, the sum of $112,926.00 be appraised and appropriated from the fiscal year 2027 tax levy. Thank you for your kind attention in this matter and for negotiating a solid fiscal 27 budget that includes a number of key priorities important to both the council and me. Sincerely, Brianna Longo, current mayor. And I believe that those are for the council to hire the city messenger slash legislative assistant position. The arts liaison position, as well as increase in funding to the arts council is the executive budget for the law budget. That is an increase in the solicitor salary so that we can hopefully finally hire a solicitor. For recreation, that was 25 in salary funding to allow for Director Bailey to address some of the turnover and needs in that office. And the library, $20,696 was to increase from a $2 an hour raise to a $4 an hour raise for some of the part-time folks at the library. Any discussion? Councillor Scarpelli.

Just some clarity, Mr. President, if you can. The voting of this supplemental budget would allow us to accept what the mayor has offered and then leave the option open for a vote of the total budget. Is that correct? I don't want to... Like I said, I think that my resolution speaks for itself as we move forward, but I would hate to not... vote something in without understanding it before I move forward. Because again, these are the, um, these are the pieces that the mayor had, uh, requested that, that if she's, uh, appropriated throughout to the budget, uh, as part of the negotiation that we then do not cut certain other lines. Um, but again, until we get that information. that we need, I think it would be prudent for us to make sure that we make the right decision in what's being asked right here, Mr. President. Because if this is to move this along, and then if we go to the next step, which is a supplemental or a 1-12 budget, and we get the information that we want in one month, that this would allow everything to be implemented into the budget. I support it a thousand percent. That's not my intent. My intent is to make sure that we get the information. And the only way to get that information is slow the process down until we get what we want. So if anybody can help answer that, that'd be that'd be. That'd be helpful, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. I'll just say for myself and I do see a number of other councilors. I support these five items being funded. I don't accept the kind of whatever you want to call it. In my opinion, quid pro quo, we didn't really have a public negotiation. The mayor just said, if you don't cut anything, I'll fund these five things. The papers before us, I support the five things. I personally don't believe that we should give up the power to make targeted cuts in the next vote that we take. I would support these appropriations. I would also probably support some proposals to make adjustments or cuts to the budget. And if the mayor chooses to decide that we don't fund the Arts Council or we don't fund the librarian raises or anything else, that's her choice. So that's my opinion on the matter. But that's just my singular opinion. And we do have the supplemental before us tonight. Thank you. Councillor Seng and then Councillor Callahan.

Thank you. I'm going to vote yes on the supplemental. And I want to say why, because it's important for residents to see this as a statement of what our council has spent the last few months fighting for. I think we all remember that meeting when the librarians showed up. And not only did they show up in the city council chambers, they show up every day for our families here in Medford. shelving books they run programs i think a lot of folks were at the fairytale ball they answer questions in multiple languages yet at the same time they make wages that don't reflect what that work is worth and what the city owes to people who do that work and tonight that starts to change it's imperfect but four dollars an hour is better than the two dollar an hour offer And that is a win for the city council as well. It's a win for all residents of the city. Across the legislative, the executive recreation library budgets, I think these amendments reflect real investments in the people who run the city and the residents who depend on it. It would improve constituent services, improve investment in arts, create more accessibility and equity in recreation. Um, among other changes and, you know, it's easy to look at what we were presented with and see it as, as lines. But again, as I always say, these aren't line items. Um, these are, it's what a city government should be doing. It's a, what it's the responsibilities of a city government that says it's going to do something, um, and turns that plan into a budget. And the budget then in turn becomes the thing that exists in people's lives. So even though it's, you know, five items, um, it might not be as much as we wanted. It's not a small thing. I think it's our job. It's the whole part of the reason why we're here as a council. But I do want to name something very plainly. Um, I think it's evident through the quote unquote negotiations. that the funds for this existed before tonight the money for the library wages for constituent services for arts it was there and it is there what changed i think between the proposed budget and this offer wasn't the city's finances it's that we started asking questions as a council and i think too often the responses to those questions were um you know stop asking we'll fund the things you care about in the future um and and here's the here's the hook here's the kind of the quid pro quo keep asking questions and we won't fund it and I I think it's important to put on the record that that's not really a fiscal offer it's a political transaction it's one that asks our council to purchased services that Medford workers and families have already earned with a promise of silence about how our city spends our legal budget. And I agree with the council president that that condition is unenforceable. Legally speaking, the condition that was contained in this transmittal letter is I think a political statement is a statement of policy, but it's not a legally binding statement. A transmittal letter, it's not an ordinance, it's not a money paper. The funds that we approve are, but that statement itself isn't. And furthermore, I think that statement itself would be unenforceable because it being unconstitutional. It goes against the separation of powers in this city. It would go against Massachusetts state law, which allows us the power to make adjustments down from the, to reduce line items in the city budget. And it would reduce our oversight over that process and our ability to make those changes. The budgets are relatively simple in terms of the approval part of city council you either approve reject or reduce and adding conditions isn't contained in those options offered by state law um so i just want to put it put that out there i've sure i have more to say about it later um but what's important to know again is the money exists we're gonna we're we we i i i would hope that this council approves it and If it's approved and we make changes to the budget, it's up to the mayor to see if she wants to try to enforce that condition. But these are real services that hardworking taxpayers, hardworking families have paid into that workers are working for to keep running. And it becomes a political choice whether or not that exists or doesn't in a few weeks.

I think that's they're saying. Councillor Callahan.

Thanks. So a couple of things. First, I did have a phone conversation with the mayor. This was way back. Must have been around August timeframe when we were discussing zoning and there was another sort of ultimatum that like. She would only allow zoning to move forward if we agreed to the exact things that she wanted on this particular zoning corner. And during that conversation, and it was a good conversation, I was quite clear that as a personality type, I do not appreciate being told do this or else. There will be some sort of punishment and doesn't punish me, it punishes the whole city. That I will not react well to that. So I was quite clear. I see this in the same way. And in addition to sort of my own real resistance to this kind of, I would not call it negotiations. I think that is the term that is being used. You know I would not call it that I think this kind of ultimatum. In addition to that, I also want to point out that you know I think people often get frustrated with government with people. Who there you know folks who. Fight really hard for stuff and then there are folks who will just beg for crumbs right that's like a phrase people doing things for crumbs and I want to point out that what this piece of paper is is crumbs. So this is $113,000 out of a $200 million budget, and that is point 05% of the budget. $25,000 of which is for a position, a paid position, and I want you to think about $25,000. $25,000 is for a paid position mandated by our new charter. In my opinion, $25,000 does not cover a paid position mandated by the charter. But we as a city council were willing to put this forward because we understand that we are not a city that has a ton of money. So we were willing to ask for crumbs. We were willing to accept that. I almost regret that we were willing to do that, that we bent over backwards to ACCEPT A $25,000 FOR A ROLE THAT IS MANDATED BY THE MANDATED BY THE CHARTER AND THAT WE NEED IN ORDER TO DO THE BUSINESS OF THE CITY COUNCIL. THE $20,000 FOR THE LIBRARY IS BECAUSE WE ARE THE ONLY CITY AROUND THAT PAYS THEIR NON UNION PART TIME STAFF far, far below what they pay their union staff and far below what any other surrounding city pays. It is disgraceful what we pay the part-time library employees. I am genuinely, as you can tell, I'm a little worked up about how we are being told that the only way that the mayor will punish the librarians and go against the city charter and as well as not funding other you know the arts like five thousand dollars for the arts wow that's the smallest crumb on this page that these people will be punished because we have the audacity to ask for information about where the money for lawsuits is going in this city. So I will definitely not vote for this if it includes the phrase which I read for you right now, this offer, offer, this is an offer. This offer is conditioned upon the council approving the budget as proposed without any reductions. reductions is by law the only thing that any city council in massachusetts is allowed to do to a budget it is the only statement we can make the only one so we are we are supposed to accept a 0.05 percent Of the budget that already existed that includes up something mandated by the city charter. we're supposed to accept that and agree to not do our jobs to not do our duty to give up that right for this city. And I will not do that, but I will vote in favor of this with the amendment that it removes the phrase, this offer is conditioned upon the council approving the budget as proposed without any reductions.

I can do you one better. We can vote to approve this paper. I don't think we can amend the mayor's papers, but we can vote to approve this paper. And then if people wanna make reductions, we can make reductions and we can just like not get blackmailed, so. Councillor Scarpelli.

Thank you, Mr. President. Technically, would we be cutting if we go to a 1-12 budget? All that would be is delaying. It wouldn't be cutting. So that would still leave this in place. I can't believe we're even talking about it because my colleagues are right. Imagine cutting something that we feel that is a necessity, but then the mayor saying, well, I'm going to cut the $25,000 for inclusionary programming for recreation. Good luck. Good luck. So I don't know, Mr. President. I just want to make sure that we vote will vote in the supplemental budget through we all agree, this is in place, whatever we decide on. On the regular budget, whether we cut whether we do a 112 budget, I think that I don't want to use counts Callahan's crumb statement but minimal. At least we. make a few people happy. And it's sad because we all see the emails, right? From the librarians and the art community, please help. It's like, it shouldn't be that way, but I guess that's where we are. So thank you, Mr. President. Move forward then.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, before us there's a $112,926 appropriation. Then we'll take a vote on the budget. If there's reductions to the budget, we've approved this appropriation. If the mayor doesn't want to spend it, and the people who have interest in these funds being expended, we can direct them to, you know, we approved it. That's all I'm saying here. On the motion to approve by Councillor Scarpelli, seconded by? Seconded by Vice President Lazaro. Any further discussion by members of the council?

seeing none i do see a member of the public if you could provide your name and city for the record and you'll have three minutes simon elsinore medford um i just want to come up here again because once again it seems as if this mayoral administration is attempting to make quid pro quos in this case they are not only like we're again going back to the thing of The mayoral administration, trying to go against what our elected body is attempting to do in order to get what she wants now. Let me put it this way, a quid pro quo should not be three words i'm hearing in a city council meeting in the year of our Lord 2026 this is not 70s, we are not being run by the mafia act like it's okay. I like this is just excuse my language is fucking insane just as a baseline.

Okay, we can't say that can't say that on the meeting. Excuse me. There's like a lot of other words that we can say.

But just straight up. This is not something that we should be doing. I just here to very strongly condemn the fact that the mayor is currently trying to offer quid pro quo to the council. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Seeing no hands on Zoom, we'll stay at the podium. Name and address for the record, and you'll have three minutes.

Michael Kesselman, 499 Main Street. I actually encourage you to vote against this. As has been stated already, none of these line items make any difference. This is not going to affect anything. And all it's going to do is feed into this Wild, absolutely unprofessional, petty, pathetic, and childish view of the office that the mayor holds that it is a transactional process. You are not negotiating. Like this is not, you don't negotiate our city budget. You don't negotiate the services that we have, that we provide to residents. You determine what the needs are and you fill them and you fund them. Like that's not a negotiation. It's not a transaction. It's not adversarial. It is a collaborative process to serve your community. And I mean, that goes as much for you guys as it does for the mayor. But like, it's just like, this is just crazy. The idea of like, I offer you this. Who is this being offered to? Because you're not getting the money. It's not being offered to you as counselors. It's not going into your bank accounts. Is she offering the city of Medford to fund the services that she agrees that we need and deserve and should be funded? What the hell is she talking about? This is crazy. So I don't think you should feed into this nonsense It's complete garbage, and I don't think that these line items are gonna make any difference anyway So why put up with it say no and we're still gonna do what we can do to the budget because that's the job It's not a negotiation Like if you wanted to go negotiations go back into private practice go back to real estate law I'm sure you'd be great at it

Thank you. Seeing no hands on Zoom, we'll stay at the podium. Name and city for the record, you have three minutes.

Barry Ingber, 9 Draper Street. Mr. President, I'd like to agree with the previous two speakers and with Councilor Callahan. I actually think that you should table this resolution rather than voting it either up or down. Just table it until you actually vote on the budget. What the mayor is saying here is that she has the money to fund these programs because she's offering it to you to fund. If you cut the budget, you have even more money to fund these programs, but she's not going to fund the programs. I dare her. I dare her to say, I can afford these programs, but I am not going to fund them. It's bald coercion and it's an attempt to take away the only power that this council really has.

Thank you. Vice President Lazar.

Thank you. Respectfully, this is funding programs. We've already done the work of getting these on the agenda, of course it's not the way we would have wanted to, and of course it's not enough. My biggest concern this term was to pay the library employees a competitive wage. We haven't achieved that, but we've at least gotten to the minimum amount that the library staff requested. And that is something that the trustees of the library were very excited to hear about when I told them that that was a possibility. Now, if we said, no, it's the principal, so we're going to take the thing that we achieved after months and months of these late meetings, and we said, actually, on principle, we're not going to do it. That's not going to work. Why did we? No, we're not going to do that. I'm not going to do that, respectfully. So I think that we should vote this through and move on to the next item. But also, I am very tired. So after this paper, I am going to go home, and I will finish this meeting on Zoom, because otherwise, I might die. Thank you.

I'm just going to say very quickly that I actually don't think any of us are in disagreement. What I'm saying is we can approve this supplemental appropriation because the only thing that's on the agenda is a supplemental appropriation. And then we can vote the budget down, we can vote the budget up, we can cut the budget. I'm just not accepting the coercion. Like just deny the coercion. There's an appropriation before us. I support the items being appropriated. I don't support those being like traded for something else. So we don't make a trade. And then if they don't get funded, we approved them. That's just all I'm saying, Councillor Mullaney.

Um, I agree, uh, president bears and vice president Lazaro. I mean, I, I, it's $112,000 that we're talking about, and these are critical pieces that we've had these conversations with. I am not going to vote down, especially when I've spoken to, um, various members with the library around a this increase for their funding. Like, I just, I'm hopeful, maybe naive, but hopeful that because we've gone through all of this process and we have said yes to these things, that this can be still approved and regardless of what happens next. But for, again, $112,000 that we're having, I'm really hopeful that we're able to approve this and get this money funded.

That's it. Thank you, Councilman Lane. Is there a motion? Who's it by? By who? Make motions at the end, please, then I'll remember them. On the motion approved by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Vice President Lazzaro. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilor Callahan. Yes. Councilor Leving. Yes. Councilor Mullaney. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Singh. Yes. Vice President Lazzaro. Yes. And President Beers.

Yes. And the affirmative and the negative of the motion passes. 26061, submitted by Mayor Brianna Lingo-Kern, fiscal year 2027, budget submission revised. Dear President Beers and city councilors, pursuant to Giles and $904.68, thank you for your kind attention to this matter. Sincerely, Brianna Lingo-Kern, Mayor. I do believe this contained some, I believe, just like technical edits to some of the figures within the table. I don't know if Director Dickinson or Chief of Staff Nazarian, you want to speak to any of them, but I also believe that the total amount for all of the funds has remained the same. And then I do see questions from members of the council.

Thank you, President Beers. Yes, in brief, the changes to the paper are effectively not material. They were a scrivener's error and a minor adjustment that got overlooked.

Great. Thank you. All right. I will go to Councillor Scarpelli and then Councillor Seng. Councillor Scarpelli.

Thank you, Mr. President. I think this is time we can look at the budget in totality and look to see what budget cuts we would like and then at the same time also vote on a 112th budget. I think that to sit here tonight and hear the administration tell us to our faces that they cannot provide the information that we need. but we can look at the papers that were sent to us today, everyone. We can look at a snow and ice deficit and an appropriation of $1,355,311.55 to the cent, right? You can give us the breakdown for all of the contracted services and all the fees and all of the extras that we needed for snow removal. We can find that to the penny to replenish our capital stabilization fund of 7447658.04. We can do that to the penny. But the administration can sit here in front of everybody and say, we don't have an avenue to get a breakdown of what our taxpayers are paying and legal lawsuits. I think that this council should really take notice that the only leverage we have to get this information is to vote the 1-12 budget, make the cuts that you see fit, but vote the 1-12 budget so nobody gets, no one's hurt, everybody still gets paid from the same schedule of our FY25 budget for up to three months or as long as it takes to find these numbers that are hiding somewhere, that can't be found. Because I will tell you publicly, if we don't do that, and we don't do a 112th budget, we will not get the answers that we need that taxpayers have now come forth to us since this has been put forward. Now, politically, put it all aside. The average person is seeing and hearing what's happening and they want answers. We heard tonight from our administration and our financial team that it's impossible to get a breakdown of our legal fees, impossible. I think that is enough information this council needs to say our jobs and our duties are to call for a 112 budget, section 44, chapter 44, section 32, move forward with at least three months to get that information. So then we can move forward with what we have been working so hard for. Um, so Mr. President, I would, um, put this as a B paper or as a motion and, um, move forward with any other options that the council wishes. But I think we're in a very, um, unique situation. This hasn't happened, but how do we wake up tomorrow morning if this passes? and say that we have faith in our administration to get us these numbers if this budget is passed. So I respect all of you. I think we've gone a long way, but I think this is something that we've seen in the past, and we've been asking. This isn't $15,000. This isn't $112,000 that we're questioning. This is a lot of money. So thank you for listening, Mr. President. I know that I'm being redundant, but I think we need to move as a council with some authority and some strength. So thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Scarpelli. So we have a paper to move to a 112th budget. I don't know if you guys want to speak to that before I recognize Councillor Singh.

I mean, I would say it's my hope that the council wouldn't vote a 112th budget this evening. I'm sure that doesn't come to you as a surprise. There would be a significant amount of resources drawn on the city. I'd prefer to put those resources toward responding further to public records requests in general that we have. to work that the finance department wants to do. I'm not saying that, let me back up, and I'm not saying that that excludes the records that the council has requested. I think there has been some characterizations that have been made here tonight. I'm not gonna correct them at this stage because I'm hopeful that we can proceed forward. But to continue on what I was about to say, that would draw away from resources in all of our departments. It would significantly draw on resources in our finance department and our finance director can speak to that. It would draw attention and resources away from our ability to take the lengthy and arduous journey of transitioning to a new financial software. As you all know, that's going to take several years. That's all I have to say at this stage. I don't want to go down a path I don't hopefully have to. I respect the feelings of this council. I respect the sentiment of the council. I don't have any issues and I don't think the mayor has any issues providing information to this council. We have been trying to do that in good faith. The mayor feels she's negotiated in good faith for several weeks to adhere to the council's priorities. I'll pause there and I defer to.

Is there anything, can I just, Director Dickinson, and then I'll recognize you, George?

Just operationally to, I've never been in a situation where I did not have a budget. So to do a 112th budget means that, I mean, for example, my department, it's not very difficult to do a monthly budget because you're basically talking our salaries. When you're talking the DPW facilities, making sure we have enough money for each month. I mean, for instance, Treasury has to pay debt service. I've got to issue $25 million worth of bonds in August. I have to make sure that I have the resources available to do that. So that needs to be calculated for every month, for every department. It's just an awful lot of work. have to really look at exactly what we have to do and how to um how to quarterback this you know so i'd really appreciate it if we could work on the council's needs some other way than to basically you know uh grind things to a halt at the city we need to we need to do things we need to you know we need to close the fiscal year we need to uh have lifeguards at the pools we need the recreation department to have its money it can be done it's just an awful lot of extra work so thank you councillor scarpelli then councillor singh thank you mr mr president

I just share the information that we heard over and over again. I read, I read our FOIA. It was very clear back in February and what was told to us at that podium. We don't have time, but we have time to look at the emails. Go back to the emails. Everybody go back to the emails from the chief of staff sent us a breakdown of What each department is using legal services for. They spent time for that. Didn't spend time on what we asked. Look at what was shared in what was presented just in an email recently with fire department professional services line. We didn't ask for that. Look at what was asked for legal costs when it talks about the breakdown. That's not what we asked for. That all took time. So the fact that we're sitting at the podium tonight and saying that this is gonna take resources away, that's not on this council. That's on this administration and the department heads. Because we were very clear what we asked for. And there's a process that you know as a financial director, that you move the process through as a 112 budget using last year's numbers. That's it. Is it going to be work? I'm sure it is. But you know what work is? Answering to constituents that want to know where our money is being spent in this community. And when the chief of staff and the director of finance sit at our podium and look at us and tell us it's impossible to get us Information from what I read to you is totally disingenuous. So Mr. President, this isn't shocking. This isn't something that should go out to the community. Like, wow. Wow. Look at council Scott Pelley's asking for out of nowhere. The process started in February, February, February, March, April, May, June. Here we are in June. It's five months we've asked. Five months for a breakdown. And to sit there and look us in the eye and say, it's impossible for us to get you that information. But then you want to say, let's vote this budget through like we want. And let us then put all of our energy into getting you what you want in this FOIA. I don't trust you. The residents have voted us to ask these questions and get these answers, these questions answered. So again, Mr. President, we know the timeline. We know the history. This is our duty. This isn't a game. This is our duty to get the information that we need. So we're protecting the fiscal responsibilities of this community. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Seng. I'm going to go to Councillor Seng.

Thank you. Like all the folks behind the rail, I've been knocking on doors in this city for years now. And there's a feeling I encounter more and more. It's not anger. It's not apathy. But it's something that is quiet and it's hard to name. And the feeling is one that showing up doesn't change anything, that you can come before the city council, you can give testimony, you can organize your neighbors, you can send the email, sign a petition, wait for your name to be called. And two years later, you're back at the same podium making the same case and someone is thanking you for your patience, for coming here. And at the same time, it's equally heartbreaking for us as counselors to not be able to say, yes, we're going to do that. Instead, I think way too often we have to say, yes, we agree with you, but we can't do that. And, you know, I think that feeling deserves an honest answer. It's not cynicism, right? That feeling is a sense of memory. It's a sense of accumulated weight of being told year after year, we hear you, we share your priorities, we just don't have the money this year. Come back next year. Residents have been asking for a more organized grant manager, assessing staff for the residential exemption for a program that taxpayers are looking for and counting on for real relief. They've been asking for a fire dive team, an urban forest, come back next year, come back next year, come back next year. And over time, I think that that memory isn't just bitterness it becomes evidence it's a. Evidence of the gap between what this city commissions in our budgets and what the city funds, but that that gap isn't in fiscal inevitability it's political choice made quietly made year after year and. When I think about our job as a city council, it's to make that choice harder to make without consequence, to demand the plans, to build the city that our residents deserve, to develop a revenue plan that stops budget season from becoming a battle of attrition between branches of government and makes it into a win-win where our residents get more than just crumbs. And I think that's what tonight, I wish tonight was, and I think it's what tonight could be. There's an elephant in the room, the law department budget. I'm not calling to eliminate it. I think the city has active legal obligations and council needs to be paid. I'm not here to manufacture a crisis. I also can't fully fund a line that I cannot see. And that's the information that we've been missing. In February, this council passed Resolution 26-043, I believe, requesting a full accounting of Medford's litigation history, its legal costs, its settlement agreements since 2020. In April, every member of this body signed a public records request making the same demand. The statutory deadline passed and extension was granted. That deadline passed too. And now we're in June being asked to appropriate funds for outside legal costs that run three to four times what it seems like. It seems reasonable in other cities' budgets, but we can't even know that because we do our line items differently and it seems like we're spreading it across different budgets. We don't have full knowledge about what exactly we are defending, how many cases that we're defending. We don't really know clearly what we've paid firm by firm without knowing what we've settled, why, and for how much. I think in short, we're being asked to trust. But I think the governance of a city can't run on trust alone. We can trust, but we have to verify. And with verification, we need information on the ability of residents and their representatives to see what's being done in their name and to correct it when necessary. We hear from residents that they want more transparency, we hear it from city employees that we they want more accountability and year after year those two words. It's not a complaint about tone. It's a description of a distance between the decisions that are being made and the people those decisions are being made about. And that distance is a choice. And we can work hard to close that. This council has very few tools to close it. I think we've talked time and time again about how limited we are in our powers. But tonight, we do actually have one. I think I also want to note that, you know, the administration's position is that any cuts are impermissible if we want the supplemental appropriations. But that appropriation authority doesn't come from the mayor's position of permission. It comes from Article six of our city charter. Section 6-4 gives this council the power to reduce or decrease, to reject or decrease any appropriation except expenditures required by law without qualification, without an exception carved out for transmittal letter conditions. And as I said earlier tonight, a transmittal letter isn't a contract, it's not an ordinance, it's not law. And the mayor still has a remedy to what I'm going to propose. Section 3.7, a veto. So, you know, she can return the budget with written objections we can reconsider. And if we choose to override the budget, you know, the budget we pass takes effect. That's the process. That's what the charter lays out. That's the separation of powers isn't just a technicality. It's an architecture of accountable government. So there actually is a path to full funding. That path's direct. Produce the records. That path's open tonight, but, you know, and if we choose to cut the funding, as I'll move, then if we get the records, The mayor can transmit a supplemental appropriation. This council can and should vote and hopefully the funds will flow and whether the mayor walks, I think it's entirely her decision. So let me talk about what I'm going to propose. Earlier tonight, I moved to table with Councillor Scarpelli's resolution that would have rejected this budget entirely and sent the budget into a 112th budget for the coming year. That would mean month to month appropriations across every department. And my fear is that that provides no stability, no certainty for the workers and residents who depend on city services. But I wanna say that option was available. It's one I considered. Um, and it's an option I chose I'm, I'm choosing not to use because I believe that the council's job isn't to maximize pressure. It's also to govern what I'm moving instead is a targeted reduction to a single department for a defined period with a defined path to restoration. One that preserves stability across the rest of City Hall and places on the administration a choice. It's been deferring since February. Produce the records or explain to the public why you won't. So with that, I move to cut the law department by 83% or 10 twelfths to leave two months of funding and allow the administration to come back to the council with the requested information on legal expenses alongside a request to fund the department for the remaining 12 months of the fiscal year. More specifically, I move to cut the following amounts from these specific line items from 010-151-5110 permanent employees to cut $182,576.33. From 010-151-5302, professional services legal to cut $130,000. From 010-151-5761, claims under $2,500 to cut $41,666.67. From 010-151-5762, claims over $2,500,000 to cut $62,500. And finally, 010-151-5763 claims to cut $8,333.33. I think this gives us enough time to get some more answers. you know, it sounds hefty, but I think with two months, maybe we can get the answers and hopefully we'll be able to pass the rest of the year's worth of a budget. And it gives us the time to find out the answers so that we can go back to our constituents with real answers. I think that's the big news of the day, but look, There are things that this budget doesn't do. And I think I've enumerated that. With that motion, if this council accepts it, I'd also be comfortable voting yes on the rest of it. Because I think the vast majority of this city's workers and departments have done nothing to earn instability. The men and women in public works and recreation and our health departments in the library, I think they submitted their budgets. They made their case. They're ready to do their jobs. A 112th budget doesn't punish the administration for its choices. It punishes them for ours. It punishes the workers for our choices. It denies every department and operating budget calibrated to the actual costs of fiscal year 27. Not the cost of a year ago, not a rolling average, but what it actually takes to run the city in the fiscal year. And I'm afraid that that leans more towards show than accountability. That becomes somewhat like collateral damage. And so a yes vote with the amendments I proposed, in my opinion, is a decision to protect the people and departments that have earned a real budget, hold the line on one that hasn't answered for itself, and to leave the remaining choice. transparency or obstruction exactly where it belongs. We need to move past being a city that manages scarcity. The plans we've commissioned, the promises we've made, the things that we said we valued but didn't become real, I think these are all justified feelings from residents. And we need to create the conditions by which we can build trust again with residents that we can give them all the information that we have. And to really have an accurate picture going forward of how we're going to fund the big projects that our city demands and deserves. So I put that motion out there for this council to debate. I'm looking forward to hearing different viewpoints about what folks think of it.

Thank you, Councilor Sang. On the motion of Councilor Sang to cut, seconded by.

Second.

Councilor Callahan.

I mostly wanted to really thank Councillor Seng for having done a lot of homework before tonight. You know, it's a really difficult position that we're in. And I very much also appreciate Councillor Serafeli for having a solution, which I think is kind of the textbook solution that 112th budget is what is described as like, this is what has to happen when a city council and a mayor cannot agree on a budget as you go to 112th. The way that it is dealt with in Massachusetts sort of on a textbook. perspective, but I also appreciate what our finance director is saying that, like moving to a 112 budget is actually extremely cumbersome, to say the least, and will require a ton of ton of extra work and effort um and uh and i also very much appreciate this the the basic premise that like instability is not healthy for anyone in our city um and moving to a 112th budget would would just be very unstable um so i just very much appreciate this as uh what i think is a incredibly well thought out option for us that we can approve You know, the rest of the budget leave not just one month, but two months of law budget available. And then, you know, the ability upon the production of the information and documents that we have requested to move forward on the rest of the 10 months, I feel like it's an excellent compromise. So I really appreciate that. And that's my thinking so far. I also look forward to hearing the rest of the councilor's opinions.

Mayor Mrakas, Thank you counselor scarpelli then constantly I yield to constantly that she has spoken.

First, a I appreciate both Council scarpelli and counselor saying for bringing up these two different options we've been having this conversation for so long about trying to find information around the law budget. I think what makes me the most nervous is that I don't want to leave departments feeling unstable, but also I get where Councilor Scarpelli is coming from on the 112th budget, and at some point, you know, at what point do we finally say, I don't know, enough is enough and get these types of answers? I guess my question would be if if Councillor Singh's amendments to this go through and the two months, you know, pass by and we still don't have that information, what's what does the council do then? What does that look like? And again, being kind of new to this process, I'm not quite sure how you handle that. Then it jumps into, do we look back to the 112th? I just don't know what the end result is one way or the other and would appreciate any feedback or thoughts that people could share on it.

At that point, the administration would have to put forward a supplemental appropriation for the law department budget. So the money would run out at the end of August for the law department. So KP Law Retainer, city solicitor nominally office manager spencer which is one person i don't think we want to harm at all um but um yeah so that's what would happen if the information requesting wasn't provided um there's like some wiggle room in there from what i read of counselor saying's motion he proposed to cut i think the five big line items in the law department there's some small ones i don't know how many weeks that gets past August 31st, depending on what the administration chooses to fund in the department. But yeah, in terms of what would happen, it would just be within the law department budget after today, if the cuts were made to the law department budget and then information wasn't provided that the council felt was sufficient to approve further funding. You could also approve, take the law department month to month after two months. I mean, there's a lot of things you could do within there, but in terms of what happened, I mean, this is not really precedented. So your lack of understanding what happens next is not really, this has come up a couple of times in the last six, seven budgets, the budgets I've been around for. To be honest, it's 11.05, that's an early night. I remember, I think it was fiscal 23 we were here till two in the morning. um the mayor was actually here um that was a yeah bob looks back wistfully and fondly with a smile at the 1 35 a.m budget agreement um so uh Yeah, I mean, we haven't done a 112th before in my time on the council. So, and certainly if we go the route of approving essentially most of the budget, except for the law department budget, then future discussions would be constrained to the law department budget. Councillor Scarpelli.

Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate Councillor Seng's thoughtful approach. But again, to be clear, it's not competitive from one council. This is the process that we have as an option. And a 112th budget doesn't, the fear that our employees and recreation and our lifeguards won't get paid is not true. It's the process. No, they did. No, no, no. That's what Councilor Dickerson, Mr. Dickerson said, that that's the fear that it's going to be so cumbersome for the staff. Well, what guarantees that, why are we here? We're here because we're questioning the law line. The mayor has come up here with the chief of staff and our finance director and said, see, we are following the rules with the law line. And they weren't lying, they're truth, they're right, because they're funding the law issues and concerns through other avenues which we don't know. That's why we're here. So I know it sounds good, but understand, even if we fund it for two months, they'll find a way to fund the legal line and other options. We just don't know how because we've asked legally, but they're not telling us. So although it's a thoughtful process and a very well put forth process, this administration has shown already that all that they'll do is say thank you, move on, maybe cut the supplemental, maybe not. But they'll just move on and fund the line the way they're doing it for the last five years. That's my concern. It's not anger. It's not bitterness. It's the tool that we have as city councils in our toolbox to say, how do we get the answers that we require for our residents so i would hope that we at least put the um the 112 um b paper through a motion and it voted up or down that's fine and then that'll give us uh an opportunity for the um the second option which would put it out there so again I do have a motion on the floor, Mr. President, that I'm hoping that my council colleagues understand the reason why. So it's not to hurt any other department or make any department feel like it's not stable. All it is is a continuation. It's like having a 13th and 14th month of the year. It's using the numbers of 2025. That's what the intent of this rule is, this law is. It's the only thing that we have because, again, to sit in front of us tonight, look at all of us in the eye and say, there's no way I can get you that information. It's impossible. What makes you think it's gonna change in a month?

But thank you. Thank you, Councillor Scarpelli. Councillor Callahan.

I do appreciate what Councillor Scarpelli is saying. I think that for me, The law budget that is being requested is $529,000. And I know how tight the budget of the city of Medford is. I do believe that cutting that by 82, 83% is enough to get the information. I do. I see the value of both of these perspectives and I do agree that a 112 budget is that is a thing that we're not it's not invented right, this is what happens in Massachusetts when city councils and mayors cannot agree on a budget, so it is you know, a standard thing. But I also think. That we will, I believe, will get what we want through. This. drastic cut of the of the law budget because of its size so i think that's why i'm leaning toward um counselor sang's proposal um but i you know i i could be wrong if i'm wrong next time george we're going for it all right um just a second i want to list the motions that we have

We have a B paper from Councillor Scarpelli, a motion to cut the law department budget specific line items. I think I got them down by Councillor Singh. And then we would take a vote on the final paper. So those are the motions. I'll come back for seconds after we hear from the administration.

Thank you, President Behrs. I feel it's important to set the record straight at this point from our perspective. You know, it was stated at some point during various discussions, the prior paper this paper that. Something about I don't honestly recall which counselor was but something about audacity to ask for information where money is going for legal costs nobody's saying that that that characterization is simply false. The reality is. The nature and specificity of the council's request itself has been a major barrier to our ability to fulfill the records request. As I believe was stated on the petition to the Secretary of State's office, and I can pull it up, there's about 30,000 records that we discovered would need to be reviewed for item A alone of that public records request that Councillor Scarpelli read all the way to letter K. i think it needs to be stated by me that it's a lot more cumbersome and a lot more complex i mean i think the language of the foia request itself speaks volumes as to the complexity of it but in case you know any member of this council has any um has any has any unawareness of the complexity and amount of resources and time that it's going to take from the city to comply with that records request which we have begun working on by the way our law department has begun working on it And we have, in good faith, sent records that are compliant with the resolution and with the public records request. So Councilor Scarpelli, President Behrs, through you, had stated that we have been providing information that wasn't requested. Well, that's just purely false, because we have provided information that was specifically requested. That included settlement agreements. That's fact. That included a breakdown of the fire department line item. There's a motion. It occurred at the meeting of... Sounds right. It occurred at the meeting of June 2nd. I actually believe it was May 27th, but we can agree to disagree on that. No big deal. We're not quibbling on that one. The fact of the matter is that we have made as much attempts as we can. The reality is, as I stated to the council, that we have... We had a very complex budget preparation process before us this year. We are fortunate to have onboarded a new assistant finance director and budget manager. That position and that person has done a good job coming up to speed where they can, but there has been a lot of work that has been put into the process that others ordinarily wouldn't have to do because of that onboarding. myself included and this has been a challenging year at best but we with the council's and i won't discount the council's um flexibility here on this but with the council's flexibility we have delivered i believe a comprehensive and solid budget that was well thought out by the mayor all department heads dialogue with this council including but not limited to a 15-page memorandum from this council to which the mayor personally reviewed and responded to with the support of department heads over the course of several weeks upon receiving that communication The mayor has communicated with this council the work that she has done and has negotiated with this council to provide for the things that this council felt were dire and important. I'm not going to drill down into those at this point, but one thing that's worth noting, which is an incredible, incredible change in this process, is that We're not talking about $112,000. We're really talking about $1.4 million on order of magnitude, because we're talking about an additional $1.25 million that was allocated to the school department. So while I don't agree with the characterization as to you know, small potatoes. I know that those weren't the words that were used, but I'll just say that because I think we're really talking about significant changes to meet the city's needs, to meet the school department needs, to meet the priorities of this council. One of the specific things outlined in the city council's 15 page memo was the request to increase the funding for the school department. And that is unequivocally provided for in a $1.25 million adjustment to the allocation that would have otherwise went to the school department. I said this before, but the mayor has negotiated in good faith for weeks. She indicated that she'd be available for discussions with counselors to discuss both the records request and any other council matters with regard to this budget. in her email on June 3rd. And I know that she received three communications that effectively thanked her for the clear and concise communication from this council. So I also never said it was impossible to provide certain information. I never said it was impossible. But what is incredibly and challenging and darn near impossible is the length and complexity of the public records request that has been placed before us. I think it was already stated here, but cutting the law department budget by the amounts that were proposed could affect our union employee located in the law department, the office manager, Janice Spencer. I think that is really unfortunate that this council would venture that direction. Thank you.

say we all take a breath uh we would happily entertain a supplemental appropriation to fund janice's position um if you know the threats it's the threats that really are just like unbelievable we're not going to do five thousand dollars for the arts if you don't cut anything if you cut anything we're taking it out on janice like i just don't i i want to say Go ahead, George, and then I'll go.

Mr. President, because the chief of staff has come up here time after time and spewed these different poor me attitude like this is important that I didn't say that. Let me defend this. Let me defend that. We were very clear five months ago. We were looking for, you know, let me let me let me even be clearer than that. Four years ago, I was very clear when I said all I wanted to see is what we're paying people out in the legal line. That's what I've asked for, for years. And the pushing this down can down the road, pushing it down the road has come to this. It's come to a legal document that says this is what we need. But we don't have this, we don't have time, we don't have this. This is the emails that we've received. Legal expenses. Dear President, expressing what the Chief of Staff has sent to us back in the day, expressing, sharing with us what neighboring communities have spent. That's not what we asked. We never asked that. But you're going to spend time going through that to prove what point? The gotcha game? So she can say that we're doing our due diligence? It only looks, it looks shady. It doesn't look right. We can go back to her other emails that she's told us that she's done. And let's all be prepared. In a minute, our chief of staff might come back to the podium and say that my aggression has put her in a bad way. So I want us to be prepared for that because my lawyer is. Fire department, professional services line. This is what she said we asked for on June 3rd. American Arbitration Association, $3,400. Harvey, $1,000. New England ladder testing, $3,000. KP Law, $157,000. $157,000. Nets, $2,600. But that's it. It doesn't break down what we asked for. We asked for a detail of what the law lines are, what we spent them on. And geez, why is Counselor Scott Pelley saying that? The fire department just settled a lawsuit with a firefighter that they chased all over his hometown with a private investigator who they fired. We went to court. They figured it out. We lost. He's getting his job back with back pay. Who's paying his attorney? Where are we paying the money to back pay him? If it's through insurance, how far have we gone over the retainer? These are the questions we're asked every day, Bob, every day. These are the questions that residents are asking us. That's one case. But then they talk about truths. The mayor sat in front of us weeks ago and said, we'd never negotiate and implement a non-disclosure. Never. And what do we get the other day in the first two documents that was sent by the chief of staff? And legal litigations, what did it say? It said, this is in place. So to sit at the podium and present a fact that, geez, this is way too much and this is something new, this isn't. This is something we've asked for that, forget the five months, this has been asked for for years. So let me make it as simple as possible. Maybe you can bring it back to your team, Bob. at minimum, share with us every single penny we spent for legal lines, for arbitrations, for settlements, for any outside fees incurred through that, which means private investigators, and then give us a breakdown of what our insurance looks like now. Because if we have $100,000 retainer, did we go over it? That's what we need to know. At minimal, if the administration came back with that, maybe my counsels tell me I'm wrong. If they at least came back with that, that's at least a semblance of what we asked for in the FOIA, at least. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if at least we got that, then we could say, you know what, that's good faith and it's showing us for one department, for one law group, KP Law, 150 some odd thousand dollars this year. That's one. Now we know there's other law firms. We know there's other law firms that we're using for the fire. And that's just fire. You just heard You just heard the Teamsters treasurer come up and talk about all of these lawsuits that have just been settled and what's still in front of us and how much of that is paid. So there are so many more things. The fighting with the 40B projects, how that went down, who paid the attorneys there. We lost, we fought it in appeals. I just ring off 10 things that are very easy. Come back in a month with that. Maybe that might move the needle. But don't come back with old emails from 2022 with Councilor Morrell showing us that we're on par with any other community when it comes to legal fees. That's disingenuine. So if feelings are hurt, this is the arena. My job as an elected official is to ask the questions that the residents that voted me in

need me to ask and if people are offended or hurt maybe find another line of work thank you thank you counselor scarpelli any other counselors have comments at this time um i'm just gonna be pretty brief i don't think you end up with an agreement until there's a vote i don't think You know, hearing from three counselors over email or phone is a negotiation. This is the place where the discussions happen in the past. This is the place where the discussions have happened. Clearly, we're at a point tonight where there's not an agreement. I do wanna say, I think we got pretty close on many of the items other than the law department budget. I have concerns with spending, saying that there's a firefighter who costs a dollar and certain other kind of tips and tricks that were used. But by and large, my concern is with the law budget. And I think that we've been very consistent for months about that. And I don't think it's a surprise. And it kind of sounds to me like we actually got to the core of the issue tonight, which is there isn't a document in this building that is a record of the legal expenses and the legal cases against the city. It just doesn't exist. There's not a list of here are all the legal cases, here are the arbitrations, here are the grievances. There's not a document is a list of all of the proceedings, and then because that doesn't exist, there's not a column that says this is how much this cost us, this is the status of it, and here's a link to the folder where all the relevant documents are. If that existed, then the public records request wouldn't be nearly as hard to put together as is being said. Maybe the public records request wouldn't have happened because it would have been easy to answer the February resolution. Beyond any of that, I did try to get this down to a pretty specific distillation. About a week ago, this is last Wednesday around noon, in an email I sent, I said, hi, Mayor. I think one of the major outstanding questions from both of the council's resolutions this year and the budget discussions are legal expenses across the budget. For example, we had asked for a breakdown of the fire department professional services line item, both what it was spent on in fiscal 26 and the components that were used to decide the number for fiscal 27, but we haven't gotten that. yet would it be possible to get a vendor export from admins at the city's financial software for fiscal 26 expenses for kp law and the other legal services vendors and would it be possible for us to get an explanation of any line items or legal expected expenses appear or are expended expected in the department budgets other than the law department for example in professional services line items i think that's a pretty clear set of things asking for specific reports specific information specific data We did receive the breakdown of the fire department professional services line and i'm half of what we requested received the what it was spent on in fiscal 26 but not what the components were that where it's going to be spent in fiscal 27 and that said that we spent $150,000 on kp law from that line item. Which is essentially double what the professional services legal line item is in the law department budget so. That answer shows that law expenses are spread and legal expenses are spread across the budget in a way where it's not clear what the actual cost is to the city. And therefore we don't have the information to do effective oversight. I think that's the story here. There seems to be differing levels of trust in what solutions are required to get the answers that we're seeking. You know, one is the whole budget's gotta go 1 12th. One is a significant reduction in the law department budget and the request to come back with information and a supplemental appropriation. But it sounds like we all agree on the substance of this, which is we've been asking the same questions for six months. I don't disagree that work has been done to provide responses and that those responses contain some information that we didn't have before. but I don't think that those responses actually have enough information for us to answer the question, which is how much are we spending on legal expenses across the city budget? And then back to where we were three hours ago, Councillor Seng's point of, is that the best way that we should be doing this as a city? And I do think that our job is, that's part of our job. So that's where we are. I don't think we're gonna come to an agreement tonight. There's obviously significant disagreement between the council and the administration. And there are essentially three votes left, although I actually do have one more thing I'd like to do after this. Sorry, everybody. But we have the B paper from Councillor Scarpelli to move to a 112th budget. Is there a second on that B paper? I will second it. And then we'll take the cut, and then we will go to the final vote on the whole budget. So we have a B paper from Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by me, to move to a 1-12 budget. Any further discussion by members of the council? Seeing none, we'll go to the floor, members of the public. If you could provide your name and city for the record, and you'll have three minutes.

All right. Simon Alcindor, 44 Tainter Street. So I feel like I'm getting a lot of echoes from a couple of fights I've already been in this year related to politics. And it really comes down to questions. The first one is, where the hell is my audit, as you may know from state legislature? The second one is, are you going to fund us or fail us? I think that it's very interesting just looking at this. Because I think this also requires a separate this again like as counselor bears was referring to this requires again a question. How much are we going to trust this group that has continued to use mafia like tactics to attempt to get what they want out of us. Now, I would say that I would presume that the answer is that we're not going to trust that group for the most part. And I think when it comes down to it, really the best way of expressing that is through the 112th budget. Now, the other reason why I support the 112th budget is that simply put, I'm somebody who evaluates policy a lot, just like literally as a job in some cases, as a policy debate judge. And one of the things I'm looking at here is I'm really struggling to see, because what I'm seeing here is a lot of what Mr. Scarpelli is talking about, where essentially the 112th budget functions as a continuation of what the current year's budget is. Well, it might be unfortunate that some raises might not come as quickly as we might hope, In the end, if we are really able to actually pressure this administration to making change, I think that is what's needed. Instead of giving them this out of that we're not really holding any real pressure to the administration. While there might be some fears of a poor lack of stability, I think that in terms of actual concrete evidence, I think that There has been a lot more for me that really makes me feel as if a one 12th budget will actually be able to apply pressure. Just generally um because it makes sure that, like there is actually some motive for the administration to come back and. actually do stuff. I don't think that, considering the fact that, like, it's not like there isn't any time for us to go over this again. I mean, like, it might be inconvenient, but that's sort of what happens. Yeah. And finally, I just want to say that the chief of staff tried to say that we're suddenly caring about union employees is a bit rich, but, you know, that's besides me. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no hands on Zoom, we'll stay at the podium. Name and address, name and city for the record, please. You'll have three minutes.

Yes, 1-499 Main Street, Medford. I think that what might be helpful moving this forward to resolution is if the administration could identify with specificity what the actual blocker is and what's preventing them from getting this information. Not just say, we can't get it, it's hard. Let's say, what's hard about it? This is what I use when I'm mentoring people that might get fired. So what is the specific thing that is preventing this goal from being accomplished? And then figure out a way to get over that. This is not an insurmountable task. Honestly, it shouldn't be super challenging. So there must be some sort of thing that the administration is accidentally overlooking, giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because literally, you know what law firms you have hired. You know that. Even if you don't know specifically what you've used them for, you know what firms you've used. And then just go and backtrack to the firms what they have charged you and you have paid them. They will have those records. If they don't, they're committing malpractice. you can do this like it's not hard actually it's actually pretty straightforward even if you for some unfathomable reason don't maintain a record of your own legal matters in that's in the city hall also start doing that please like what so i i think that you could like this is the way forward like this is not super CHALLENGING, I THINK, LIKE, YOU KNOW, YOU CAN HOLD HANDS AND TAKE THE LEAP AND MAKE IT HAPPEN. PLEASE. WE'RE JUST ASKING FOR COMPETENCE. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. ANY FURTHER PUBLIC COMMENTS? SEEING NONE, ON THE MOTION OF COUNSELOR SCARPELLI, SECONDED BY MYSELF, as a rule of necessity since there was no other second and I was willing to second it. That would be preferable. Seconded by Councilor Singh. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. Councilor Callahan. This is 112th budget.

Council of Lenny.

No.

Council Malay. Yes. Council of Scarpelli.

Yes.

Council of Singh.

No.

Vice President Lazaro. No. And President Beers.

Yes. Three in the affirmative, four in the negative. The motion fails. on the motion of Councillor Singh and Councillor Singh, could you send that in writing? We have the motion of Councillor Singh on the main paper to cut the law department budget by 83% 0101515110 by 182,000. $576.33, 0101515302, $130,000, 0101515761, $41,666.67, 0101515762, $62,500, 0101515763, $8,333.33. And I'll invite the administration to come back to the council with the requested info on legal expenses alongside a request to fund the department for the remaining 10 months of the fiscal year motion by councilor saying seconded by councilor Callahan. Is there any further discussion on that motion by members of the council?

I move the question.

On the motion of councilor Lazaro to move the question, move the previous question, which is seconded by counselor saying that requires a two-thirds majority so we're going to take two votes on this one motion but this is robert's rules when you move the previous question a two-thirds majority ends debate and then then there'll be a vote on the motion so we're taking two votes on this one so this is on the motion essentially to move the previous question to end debate then we'll take a vote on the actual cut and then And there can be a motion to approve the budget with the reductions. Yeah, sorry. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. This is to move the question.

Yeah. Council of Callahan. Council Lemming. Yes. Council Malay. Yes. Councilor Scapelli. Yes. Councilor Singh. Yes. Vice President Lazaro.

Yes.

And President Pierce.

Yes. That motion passes. Debate has ended on the motion by Councillor Singh, seconded by Councillor Callahan as read to make cuts to the law department budget. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Council of Callahan. Yes. Council of Lemming.

Yes.

Council of Mullane.

Yes.

Council of Scarpelli. Yes. Council of Seng. Yes. Vice President Lazzaro. Yes. And President Piers.

Yes. I have an affirmative, none of the negative. The motion passes. On the main budget, is there a motion to approve as reduced?

Motion to approve as reduced.

On the motion of Councillor Seng to approve the budget as reduced, seconded by.

Second.

Councillor Callahan. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Callahan. Yes. Councillor Leving.

Yes.

Councillor Mullaney. Yes. Councillor Scott Pelley. Yes. Councillor Seng.

Yes.

Vice President Lazaro. Yes. And President Beers?

Yes. Seven in the affirmative. What? Did you vote no, George?

No, no, I said no.

You said no? All right. Six in the affirmative, one in the negative. Sorry. I just wanted to make sure. Six in the affirmative, one in the negative. The motion passes. The budget is approved as reduced. Is there a motion to take paper 26092 from the table for third reading and approved? On a motion of Councillor Seng to take paper 26092, the non-union personnel ordinance wage adjustment from the table for third reading and approve. Do you want to speak on this? Great. On the motion by Councillor Seng, seconded by.

Yeah, we approved this already.

This is the 2% for non-union for fiscal 20. Two and a half. Yeah, two and a half, sorry. I don't want people getting confused. Two and a half percent and the one guy. Yep. And that's right, so that they're not gonna have to do retro. All right, on the motion of Councillor Seng, seconded by Councillor Callahan to approve. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councillor Callahan. Yes. Councillor Lemming. Yes. Councillor Mullaney. Yes. Councillor Schaap-Pelly. Yes. Councillor Seng. Yes. Vice President Lozaro.

Is absent. Is gone.

And President Beers.

Yes, six in the affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. Any further motions? Oh, public participation. Anyone who'd like to speak on any matter? Wow, all right. On the motion to adjourn by Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Mullane. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilor Callahan. Council of Lemming. Yes. Council of Mullane. Council of Scapelli. Yes. Council of Sane. Yes. Vice Presidents are absent. President Beers.

Yes. Sixth affirmative, one absent. The motion passes. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you.