Malden City Council 2026-01-06

and so on.

Okay, it's 7.04, so I think we can get started.

All right, the council will come to order. All rise and salute the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, Indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing for a moment of silence in honor of our veterans, service members, and those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. We honor and acknowledge the Massachusetts, Pennacook, and Pawtucket peoples whose ancestral lands we now call home and on which we gather today. We express gratitude to the indigenous peoples who have cared for this land for generations, predating European colonization and continuing to the present. Moving forward, we are committed to ensuring that the histories, voices, and contributions of indigenous peoples are recognized and respected in the life of our city. Will the Clerk now call the roll?

Councilor Colón Hayes? Here. Councilor Condon? Here. Councilor Crowe is not with us tonight. Councilor Linehan? Here. Luong, McDonald, O'Malley, Sica, Simonelli, Taylor, Winslow.

Okay, welcome, Councilor Luong. That was nice to hear. So under the provisions of the open meeting law, for those of you in attendance, please be informed that UMA, Urban Media Arts, will be recording this evening's meeting. So just be aware that there will be audio and video recordings of this meeting. First order of business. First order of business is public comment, which is allowed under council rules. Each speaker is limited to the subject matter relevant to this evening's agenda and must keep comments to two minutes or less. City Clerk, do we have anybody signed up for public comment? We do not. Okay, thank you. Next order of business is the consent agenda. This evening's consent agenda consists of 14 petitions to be referred to license committee and five papers to be referred to public property and one communication to be placed on file. Does any council have a desire to remove any of these items from the consent agenda for the purpose of further discussion?

Seeing none, we have a motion to approve from Councilor Sica, seconded by Councilor Simonelli. All in favor? Aye.

So those are The agenda is approved next order of business paper 22-26 the 2026 council president will announce the appointments of the 2026 council committees

Thank you, Madam Clerk. And bear with us for just one moment. In the interest of making this a little bit easier for the public to see instead of having to just Listen to things as we read them out loud. I've asked my council president pro tem to fire up a brief set of slides that I have to go along with the committees. So let's see. Madam Clerk, you said that you had not brought the list of committees. So let me actually get my computer up. Sorry, we're just juggling devices here. Well, if it's okay with you, is it appropriate for me to just read the list of committees? Oh, thank you, thank you so much.

Oh my goodness.

Okay, thank you. I know. Well, all right. Well, I'm going to pass around a hard copy to everyone. So let me see. Split this down. Pass those that way. I'm not sure if I have enough, but here you go. OK, so if we can go to the next slide, if you don't mind, Councilor McDonald. So I'm going to get started by reading the standing committees for this year, starting with the Community Engagement and Inclusion Committee. I've appointed Chair, Councilor Colón Hayes, Vice Chair, Councilor McDonald, and Member, Councilor O'Malley. For our Finance Committee, I've appointed Chair, McDonald, Vice Chair, Councilor Taylor, and Members, Councilors Condon, Luong, Sica, and Simonelli. For the License Committee, I've appointed Chair Sica, Vice Chair, Councilor Condon, and Members, Councilors, Colón Hayes, Simonelli, and Taylor. For the Personnel and Appointments Committee, Chair Crowe, Vice Chair Taylor,

Members, Councilors Condon, Colón Hayes, and Luong. Public Safety. Chair Condon, Vice Chair McDonald, Members, Councilors Sica, Simonelli, and Winslow. Public Property. Chair Luong, Vice Chair McDonald, Members Linehan, Sica, Simonelli. And finally, for the Rules and Ordinance Committee, Chair Winslow, Vice Chair Colón Hayes, and Members Crowe, Linehan, and O'Malley. Can we go to the next slide for special committees? Thank you, Councilor McDonald. For the Arts and Culture Committee, I've appointed Chair Taylor, Vice Chair Linehan, and members Crowe, Luong, and Sica. For Charter Review, Chair Winslow, Vice Chair O'Malley, Member Simonelli, City Clerk Ex Officio Carol Ann Desiderio, and Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Ex Officio Ronald Hogan.

Waterfront Access, Chair Colón Hayes, Vice Chair Crowe, Members O'Malley, Simonelli, and Winslow, and Harbor Master Ex Officio Neil Anderson. We have a new committee that I've decided to set up this year with Chair Taylor, Vice Chair Luong, and members Condon, Crowe and McDonald. And then you may recall that earlier this year, we have two new committees that have not actually met with the exception of the Code of Conduct Committee, which I think met once, but we haven't really gained as much traction as we would have liked because of the business of the override taking up the bulk of our fall docket. So I'm considering these to still be new, but I'd like them to really have the ability to do a lot more business this year. now that we have more time, and those are the Library Committee with Chair Winslow, members Condon, Linehan, and Taylor, and the Code of Conduct Committee with Chair McDonald, and members Colón, Hayes, Crowe, Luong, and Sica. Excuse me, the only change there is to add our new Councilor Luong to the Code of Conduct Committee.

And then if we can go to the next slide. Okay, give me one second. and finally our ex officio committees. Many of these have statutory reasons for having counselors either because their ward requires somebody to be from that ward on that committee or we need a certain number of counselors to be appointed to these committees. Some of these have a limited scope, meet during the day or have a finite task and will sunset once that project or scope is done. So some of these won't exist after this year. Some of them exist long term. So for these, we have very few new, most notably the Municipal Building Committee to construct a salt shed and boathouse as part of the RiverWorks project. So you'll see very few changes here.

On our ex officio committees we have for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, Linehan, Climate Action and Sustainability, McDonald, Complete Streets, Winslow, Comprehensive Plan Steering, Linehan and O'Malley, Library Trustee, Linehan, Riverworks, Colón Hayes, Municipal Building Committee for the Salt Shed and Boathouse Construction, which had our first meeting just this week, Crowe, Linehan, and Winslow, Open Space, Taylor, and Colón Hayes, Problem Property, Crowe, Sign Design, Sica, and Taylor, Site Plan Review, RIO, MBTA, O'Malley, and Linehan, Site Plan Review, Malden River, Colón Hayes, Crowe, and Winslow, and Site Plan Review, Rose Quarry, McDonald, and Sica. I do have some brief remarks that I wanted to read. And if Councilor McDonald, if you wouldn't mind just showing my final slide, I have some overarching goals that I wanted to share how I thought about putting this together.

So in forming these committees, I took great care to ensure that we had both the stability of experience leading our standing committees, given the volume of business that we are expected to come through finance and ordinance this year, while also making sure to provide new opportunities for growth for our other councillors, for additional councillors. I do really want to thank our committee chairs who have agreed to multi-year appointments because chairing subcommittees requires a tremendous amount of organization and attention to detail and fairness. And assigning members so that there's minimal overlap and so that all can achieve quorum to meet every week is a very complicated puzzle. At the same time, the number of ex officio committees requiring counselor appointments has grown year over year, so that many of these committees meet during business hours, which makes it very challenging to seat enough counselors.

and in a reversal to when I was elected just six years ago, the vast majority of our counselors do now work full-time or part-time and many of us are also caring for family members or have health concerns of our own that also have to be factored in. So I do want to reiterate just how much I appreciate the time during the weekdays, during business hours that so many of you have agreed to take away from those additional responsibilities to give to committees that meet at times that are not at night. I've tried to streamline the number of committees wherever possible. I've created only one new body that I believe addresses our most pressing need, which is to create new economic development opportunities. My intent is that this committee can meet the need articulated in our December Finance Committee discussions where we met with the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development, which is to identify a small number of key corridors in the city where we can act quickly in partnership with the mayor's administration to rezone for revenue producing development.

I'm very pleased to appoint Councilor Taylor to lead this important committee, and I have full confidence in her ability to take on this charge. By taking up this work in a new committee with a defined goal, it's my hope that we can ensure the Ordinance Committee may continue to do its additional business unimpeded and that any zoning recommendations that result from the work of this new Economic Development Committee will be properly referred to Ordinance and or a joint ordinance and planning board meeting at such time as they're ready to be discussed at that level of detail. Additionally, it's my sincere hope that now that our council has concluded the work of producing a financial paper sufficient to schedule a March special election, we can shift our focus in that committee towards supporting the administration in a robust community engagement and public education campaign to help prepare the community for the election. and to discuss in committee the relevant budget adjustments that we still need to make this fiscal year regardless of the outcome of the election.

Separate from those specific committee goals, I'm committed to taking up a long overdue refresh of our council rulebook with our city clerk starting effective immediately. And as part of that process, I will seek to codify our land acknowledgments placed on the agenda. to ensure that we keep our hybrid technology in place, which has been working so well, and of course adjust it if state law at any point changes. and I'd also like to add some new language regarding our use of AI working of course alongside our city IT department who I know has also been thinking a lot about this. and of course I'll be incorporating the many other ideas that colleagues have already shared with me about our rule book this past year so that it remains a collaborative document. So in closing, I want to once again thank all of you for being willing to serve and I look forward to what we can accomplish this year together. Thank you. So unless there are questions, I think we just need a motion to place on file.

That is fine, and I think I actually killed my room here, my view. Okay, thank you. Sorry, I leaned on it.

Councilor McDonald. Yeah, thank you so much for this, Council President. And I just wanted to ask that we post the committee assignments on the webpage this week so that the community members who weren't able to watch this meeting can see them.

Absolutely, we will be sure to do that. That's a great idea. Any other questions? Councillor Winslow.

Yeah, no, I think we should also make sure that it gets up to the You know, the city's communications folks so that our website can get updated because that's sometimes lagged a little bit. So just making sure that it has. Yes.

We have some formatting that we need to do. There's a couple issues with the file right now that Carolyn and I were just talking about. We'll make sure to get it posted. I also think that it might be nice if we could have our committees listed under our names, not just as a document, but I've wondered over the years if sometimes the public, I think they go looking for us and they would like to see under each of our headshots kind of what we're on each year. I don't know if that's too much work, but something that I've been thinking about too. Oh, was it? Okay, well, maybe we should go back to it. Yeah. Okay, any other questions or ideas?

Yes, I can share that.

Oh, that's a great idea. Post on the Clerk's Facebook.

No, people ask all the time where to find it.

It's a very frequently emailed question that I get for sure. Okay. Okay, on a motion by Councilor Simonelli, seconded by Councilor Colón Hayes, we just need a voice vote. All in favor? Aye. Okay, thank you everyone.

Okay.

I don't want to stifle personal privilege. We do have another meeting next week. Oh, okay. Hold on one second, Councilor Winslow. You have the floor.

I just want to acknowledge Adam Weldi and the Malden Fire Department for their work at the fire at 49 Bishop. Adam literally went into the house to make sure people were safe, got a few animals out. and there is a Facebook page set up for actually a GoFundMe for the residents there as well. He went above and beyond what a neighbor or a resident needs to do. So that's a great thing. And I appreciate the Malden Fire has given them recognition as well. So thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you, Councillor Winslow. Councillor Colón Hayes.

Thank you. I'm just going to keep announcing this until it's here. So I just want to remind people that we have scheduled the Martin Luther King Day celebration Sunday, January 18th, because it's right around the corner. It will once again be at the Emmanuel Baptist Church and we have a great keynote speaker, Dr. Carl B. Mack, and we're partnering with Malden Reads, Malden High School, Love for Kids, the Friends of the Malden Public Library, City of Malden. and a few other groups, but please mark your calendar and I hope to see you there. It's from three to six.

Thank you. Great, thank you, Councilor Colón Hayes. Councilor O'Malley.

I just wanted to let everyone know that there's a text on your terms meeting happening at the library tomorrow, Wednesday, January 7th at 6.30. This is a community group that's looking to advocate for how and when children will be exposed to AI in Life, and I think specifically in Malden Public Schools. So it's being run by parents and community members. So everyone's urged to come out. And it's in the Macario room at the Malden Public Library. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor O'Malley. Any other lights? Okay, seeing none, I lost track of who made the motion to adjourn.

It was Sica and Simonelli.

Okay, on a motion by Councilor Sica, seconded by Councilor Simonelli. All in favor? Okay, we are adjourned at 7.20. Thank you, everyone.