Malden City Council Special Meeting 07/28/2026

Okay, it's 7.05 so we're gonna call the council to 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've given the ultimate sacrifice. Condon, you have an additional moment of silence? You should be on.

Thank you, Council President. I'd like to offer a moment of For my wife's younger sister, she passed away last week and she was always the life of a party. but she met a match on this one. She was a great athlete at Malden High School, she's in the Hall of Fame. She played field hockey, basketball, softball. And she was never one loss for words. She's just a wonderful person She was a wonderful person. She died suddenly, so the family was very much shaken up by it.

There was a tremendous showing at the Spadafora funeral home. So I hope she's resting in peace with her sister up above. That would be Rose Tomasello.

Thank you. Thank you. At this time, the Clerk will call the roll.

Council Colón Hayes? Here. Council Condon? Yes. LeWong, O'Malley, Sica, Simonelli, Taylor, Winslow, Linehan.

Okay, 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 there will be audio and video recordings of tonight's meeting. Is there anyone else present tonight who is recording in addition to Uma? If so, could you please identify yourself. Okay seeing none we'll go on to our first order of business which is public comment. Public comment is allowed under council rules. Each speaker is limited to the subject matter relevant to this evening's agenda and everyone must keep their comments to two minutes or less. Clerk, do we have anybody signed up for public comment.

I don't believe we have anybody signed up, but we do have two written correspondence that have come in.

Okay, let's go ahead and read those.

Okay so the first one is Bonnie Gildayla Galeta, sorry I got my letters mixed up there. 98 Beltran Street. My comments are mostly in form of questions resulting from have read Jadine Sica's original complaint on November 19th, 2025. Malden City Solicitor Alicia McNeil's findings in the Attorney General's report and conclusion presented on July 8th, 2026. I apologize, I forgot to set the timer. I don't think it's gonna be an issue. No problem with the length of this. It's short. Question number one. How can it be that despite Councilor Karen Colón Hayes' attempt to really try hard to not deliberate on the subject of a replacement on the Volk School Committee that she contacted or had contact with eight city councils via telephone calls, text messages

voicemail messages, a walk hike and a missed call unreturned call on the part of two separate counselors. Question number 2 after calling Council President Amanda Linehan regarding procedure and protocol why did Councilor Colón Hayes not wait to discuss these issues in the City Council meeting on November 18th, 2025? Question number three. City Solicitor Alicia McNeil states that she requested additional time to respond from JD and Sica who granted that request to 30 days. The response was issued on December 18th, 2026 however city solicitor McNeil also writes that more information was revealed in the city council meeting held on December 16th, 2025 questioning the veracity of the information she was already in possession of. Why then did she not request some additional time to investigate and integrate this new information into her open meeting law conclusions.

And question number four, can the city solicitor please articulate what information she learned in the December 16th, 2025 meeting and can she explain the gap between her conclusions and those of the Attorney General's office? Respectfully submitted. Bonnie. Galadia. I'm sorry, I don't know why my apologies to Bonnie. Okay and then the second one is a communication from Mayor Christensen Over the past several days, I have been contacted by several residents requesting that I address a series of inaccurate statements made by Councilor Karen Colón Hayes in a recent social media post. While I generally do not respond to such posts, the level of inaccuracy makes it necessary to get the record straight. By way of background the vacancy on the Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational School Committee arose following the passing of Jim Holland on September 17, 2025.

On September 24th after speaking with my office City Clerk Carol Ann Desiderio communicated with the city council to outline a potential process fulfilling the vacancy. In that communication, the clerk noted the following The regional community agreement requires that the vacancy be filled by the school committee and the city council acting jointly. Two, the mayor's office recommended posting the position to gauge interest. Three, the personnel committees of each body were encouraged to play an active role and the council was advised to consider the process used in Chelsea where the city council took the lead and submitted a nominee to the school committee. On November 13th, nearly two months after the vacancy occurred and with no substance follow-up to the City Clerk's September 24th communication I sent a letter to the city council to help move the process forward.

In that letter, I recommended Jeff Donahue for consideration based on his vast experience in the trades prior service as a city councilor and demonstrated interest in vocational education. I explicitly stated that the appointment had to be made jointly by the City Council and the School Committee, and suggested that the council consider following the process used in Chelsea. Contrary to Councillor Colón Hayes' claim that this was an attempt to push the matter through, the recommendation was placed on the City Council docket advanced through a public agenda and handled with full transparency and opportunity for discussion. By contrast Her own actions occurred outside of the public process and involved communications with a quorum of her colleagues. The Attorney General subsequently found that Councilor Colón Hayes violated the open meeting law by improperly engaging with the Quorum of the City Council

while she is entitled to her opinion on any nominee, she is not entitled to disregard the law in the process. Her communications included urging colleagues to oppose the appointment recommending an alternative candidate and suggesting that the matter be delayed or tabled. In effect, she actively coordinated efforts to influence the outcome before the issue was heard in open session conduct that directly undermines the transparency of the open meeting, that the Open Meeting Law is designed to protect. In an apparent effort to deflect attention from her violation Council, Colón Hayes has mischaracterized my recommendation as an attempt to circumvent the council and bypass an election. That claim is incorrect and unsupported by both the facts and by the Attorney General's findings. There was no election Rather, there was at best an ambiguous process with unclear procedures as outlined in the regional community agreement for filling a vacant seat.

With that in mind, I then placed the matter on a public docket accompanied by correspondence explaining my position. Furthermore once The then School Committee Vice Chair developed a process involving the City Council I fully supported and adhered to it. It is also important to emphasize that the Attorney General's determination did not challenge the existence of a recommendation or of the procedural framework itself. Instead, it focused on Councilor Colón Hayes' improper efforts to influence a quorum outside of a duly noticed public meeting. The law strictly prohibits such pre-meeting coordination regardless of intent. Councilor Colón Hayes' claim that she was merely, quote unquote, alerting colleagues of the situation and that some council members contacted her. But that specific matter was not discussed is simply implausible

The Attorney General's investigation found that she went well beyond what is permissible, including attempting to sway votes, personally attacking the character of the nominee and discussing her position. She also suggested removing the item from the docket, quote unquote quietly. These actions are inconsistent with someone who quote unquote champions transparency and instead reflects an intent to influence the outcome outside of the public process. Residents reasonably expect elected officials to act with integrity follow the law and accept responsibility when mistakes are made, attempting to shift blame through inaccurate representations particularly considering the Attorney General's determination. are inconsistent with those expectations. While I will continue to exercise restraint in responding to most public commentary, I will not allow demonstrably false claims to go unchallenged

Does that conclude our public comment? Yes, President it does. Okay thank you to the Clerk. So at this time we are going to move to our next order of business and I'm gonna ask our clerk Read the next order of business. And how this is going to work is we are going to summarize the paper, we are gonna hear from legal and we're gonna save discussion and questions until the end As you know, we don't respond to public comment and we are not gonna discuss before we have a chance to move through everything that the Clerk is able to summarize for us. Is everybody good with that? Okay.

Thank you. So it is paper number 345-26 City Council will address the open meeting law determination received on July 8th, 2026 from the Attorney General's Office numbered OML 2026-76, which found an individual violation of the open meeting law by Councilor Colón Hayes regarding the filling of the Volk School Committee vacancy. The Attorney General has ordered the release of deliberative communications within 45 days of the date of the determination and further instructs the counsel after which to certify with the AGO that the release communication was completed as ordered. So I'm gonna give a brief synopsis. The AG's determination was seven pages long, I'm not going to read the whole thing as Council President said but I will tell you that Councilor Jadine Sica

filed an open meeting law complaint with the council on November 19, 2025 based on what she thought was improper deliberation outside of a posted meeting. the City Council responded to that on December 16th, 2025 not satisfied with the findings of the city solicitor's office. Councilor Sica elevated that open meeting law complaint to the Attorney General's Office on January 8th, 2026. This is the determination that we just got back this month. The complaint was for an open meeting law against the full city council, but the attorney general's office stated that following their review they find that the communication from Councilor Colón Hayes to the Quorum of the City Council constitute an individual violation of the open meeting law, not one of the entire body.

So the conclusion states that An individual violation of the open meeting law when Councilor Colón Hayes deliberated with other councils reaching a quorum of the council. We order immediate and future compliance with the Open Meeting Law, and we caution that similar future violations may be considered evidence of intent to violate the law. We also order the release within 45 days of the date of this letter, of any written communications including emails and text messages exchanged by councilors about filling the vote committee vacancy left by the passing of Mr. Holland. We also order that the Council certify to our office that it has released the communications as ordered, which is why we are here tonight. So we have a couple of text messages and the transcript of a telephone call.

And for clarity, while you're getting that ready what we need to do tonight is The only vote that we're taking is to receive this and to place it on file. And after the conclusion of our meeting tonight, as a body, we will need to approve and finalize the minutes of tonight's meeting which we can do by email and we will then need to provide those to the Attorney General's Office by the 1st of August, is that correct?

It's not exactly the first of August. I don't remember the exact date but it's basically the beginning of August yes.

Okay, I do see one question from Councilor O'Malley. Is this process related O'Malley.

I was just going to move to receive the communication.

Yeah, we can absolutely do that. Do I have a second? Second. Okay on a motion by Councilor O'Malley, seconded by Councillor Luong to receive We can do a voice vote. All in favor? Aye. Any abstain? Okay, fair enough.

Okay, so this is a text message that went from Councilor Colón Hayes to Councilor Taylor on November 17th at 2.40 PM Hi, Ari. I've been making a lot of phone calls today because I just realized that Jeff Donahue was on the agenda for tomorrow and has an appointment to replace Holland for a position on The Vogue. I strongly oppose this appointment for many reasons but most recently he has verbally abused me in public during the preliminaries for Ward 4 School Committee as I was holding a sign for beer, he walked over right in front of my face to intimidate me and cursed at me completely unprovoked. After he walked off, Abeel was so shook and this was in front of a young person as well. Dawn is actually there, and I've also reached out to her. We have plenty of great people in the city that we don't need to appoint someone who has a history of abuse homophobic and racist comments on public social media.

Although I did not agree with what happened with Lisette's appointment being taken away to do some social media post, sorry hang on Oh, I'm sorry. It's in two different messages. That's OK. Take your time. Although I did not agree with the two different screenshots, that's why I'm hesitating. although I did not agree with what happened with Lissette's appointment being taken away due to some social media post, I believe this one has more merit as he was verbally abusive to a city councilor in public very recently. The good news is Ryan spoke with Lenny Iovino, the former Ward 4 School Committee rep and he's very interested in the position. We have both called the Mayor Ann Marie Louise and we're hoping that this can quietly be taped while we review and put forward Lenny's name.

I hope you agree with the suggestion, I'm going to try and table it tomorrow if the mayor doesn't take it off before then feel free to give me a call on making the rounds and then another message that said tabled, ugh sorry for the typos I was text talking. And the other text message chain This is a text message from Councilor Colón Hayes to Councilor Simonelli. The first one says, I will call you in the morning. I did to Lenny and he said he didn't want that appointment. Hang on, I'm trying to get... That was a comment by

I think that was Councilor Simonelli. Yeah, they go back and forth. And then expletive what? We need a process and this is Councilor Colón Hayes we need to process anyway, we cannot just give someone a position it has to be posted and then the follow up to that was another text message that said, okay this is the last post of the night but people are definitely speaking out against Jeff. And this was just posted in Reddit and I'm sure There will be more to come. Is there someone you're going to vote for working in our schools? And the two screenshots are of Jeff Donahue making a comment on February 8th, 2027 that says well folks it's that time again when I go into fake book hibernation. See you all in a few months. I thought by now some of you expletives would stop with your political rants and that's on both sides of the aisle.

I should go away before I actually bite on one of these posts, because I know it will go down the wormhole eventually and I will end up punching someone in their expletive spewing pie hole. And I hate prison food because we all know 99% of the big mouths are the first ones to dime you out. You're welcome and good night. And then there was a second screenshot that was sent in this text chain and it looks like it is from Jeff Donohue on October 19th, 2021 posted to a Facebook page called nickel for your thoughts Malden mouse. I hear old Nikki Lennox's fishing old Facebook post. It's a shame He has me blocked. No worries, pal. I will always call someone out when treated unfairly. Sorry if my language melts the outer layers of your emoji. Looks like a snowflake? We all have screenshots. Oh, and did that ethics complaint you were talking about against me materialize yet?

Asking for an old friend. We were just starting to warm up to each other. What happened? Bear with me folks. and then the final, it doesn't look like Councilor Simonelli responded to any of those messages from Councilor Colón Hayes. And the last one says Hey buddy, the next time I reach out to you please remind me and say do not talk to me or trust me lol. We then have two screenshots from Facebook showing pictures of Councilor Colón Hayes and Councilor Winslow on their hiking trip, which was discussed in the meeting in December when they had their deliberation face to face. Then we have a voicemail recording transcript that was submitted by Councilor Colón Hayes to Councilor Crowe's cell phone.

It says, hey Peg it's Karen I'm calling because I just saw Jeff Donahue's name on the agenda and I am not pleased at all so I've been making some phone calls I talked to Amanda. I actually called Gary as well. I have serious, serious concerns about him being on the board of anything let alone something that involves kids in the safety of kids. Jeff's history of his violent behavior, but also he has been verbally abusive to me just as early as the preliminaries that just happened at Ward 4 where he came up to my face in front of people so they will also say this and verbally abused me. and I'm thinking of what you all did with Lissette when you pulled back somebody who was actually appointed for reasons that were not even as clear as the ones for Jeff, with his history of being homophobic as he has written things down that I will now be getting a copy of. Instead of embarrassing everybody here, I'm hoping that this gets delayed or tabled or something until we find someone better who does not have a background like this

who does not have a background like this to sit on that. So anyways, I know that was a lot but if you want to give me a call back do so. If not, you can also talk to Gary. Like I said, I left him a message as well thanks. and then we, today I received an email from Councilor Winslow who went through his records and double checked all of his records. And the only one that was relevant to the complaint that we're talking to tonight says this Caroline, here's my response to your request. Voicemails, I have reviewed my voicemail records. I don't have any voicemails. I do have a phone record of receiving a call from Councilor Colón Hayes on November 17th, 2025 at 1233 PM and a call on November 18th, 2025 at 2.12 PM to Councilor O'Malley both of which related to obtaining information about the process to place a member of the Northeast Folk Board as I explained to our legal office.

He also then forwarded me a public comment email and a text message that he received from Mr. Donahue, but we ran them by the city solicitor's office. Thank you for submitting those, Councilor, but they're not relevant to this violation So we're going to put that away for now. And I believe that's it, for the evidence that we have to read into the record tonight.

Okay, thank you. So at this time I'd like to recognize our legal staff to come to the podium

thank you so much. Evening everyone, Alicia McNeil City Solicitor. So I just wanna start by talking about the violation and I wanna go to the conclusion, I want to go to end. And then we'll go, I wanna back to the beginning but the end of the AGO's decision says basically says that We order immediate and future compliance with the open meeting law, and we caution that similar or future violations may be considered evidence of intent to violate the law. So if there are future violations, the AG's office has stated to us that will be considered intent intentionally violating the open meeting law.

So, there's just a couple of things or few things that I want to address about the Open Meeting Law in violations In the AG's opinion or decision, it says a meeting is defined in relevant parts as a deliberation by a public body with respect to any matter within the body's jurisdiction. and oral or written communication through any medium, including electronic mail between or among a quorum of a public body on any public business within its jurisdiction. Jurisdiction. So that's defined as an oral communication and could be defined also as a meeting

Again, a one-way communication from one public body member to a quorum on matters within the bodies jurisdiction constitutes deliberation for purposes of the open meeting law. Even if no other public body member response. So the text messages, the phone calls, the emails if no one responds it's a one way communication that is considered an open meeting law violation the open meeting law does not carve out any exception to the definition of deliberation for discussions that do not result in a decision or a vote. And what that means is that even if There is no deliberation, even if there's not a vote. If there is a one-way communication, a two way communication, A hub communication and there's no vote that is considered deliberation according to the Attorney General's office.

Finding that private serial communications violate the spirit of the open meeting law and may not be used to circumvent the intent of the law. And they cite the case McCree v. Flaherty, again another violation even without evidence and this is specific to this event, this situation. Even without evidence that Councilors Crowe or Taylor responded to Councilor Colón Hayes we find that the voicemail and texts constitute are clear evidence of communication between four members of the same public body. My whole point here is really to say that as a body, we just need to be more cautious Why not err on the side of caution? The body really should not be talking about anything.

If it's on the agenda and you're going to deliberate, the body should not outside of coming here. As the AG said, it should be at the public meeting is just for that so the public will understand what's going on and things will not happen behind closed doors. Again, I just want to really stress to the body that as the AG has said before. The AG did a very extensive investigation of this complaint and the AG is stating that if there is another violation of the open meeting law, whether it's intentional or not. The AG is going to find that it was intentional because they've given very clear instructions

and I would strongly suggest that all of us look at this decision, highlight the decision as I have so you understand what a violation is. and that's all I want to say. If anybody has any questions for me, I'd be happy to answer them.

Thank you, Solicitor McNeil. You're welcome. Does anybody have any questions at this time? Taylor, I'll take you first.

Just to clarify sorry thank you so much for going over all that. I just want to clarify from my own knowledge one-way communication, deliberating on anything. Social media. If we're posting our views on social media before a vote if we're saying how we intend to vote is that one way communication?

There was discrepancy. I know there was another open meeting law complaint and there was a discrepency where there was mixed communications, mixed opinions let me say between a previous city solicitor or the legal department in the current legal department. And so to answer your question, yes that is considered open meeting law violation. We need to be very, very careful about social media.

I want to make sure that we're clear on what the guidelines are so that we aren't accidentally breaking them and then coming back. thank you very much for answering. You're welcome.

Can I ask a follow up to that? Just for clarity, because I do want to underscore this. I think social media is both a blessing and a curse a lot of the time, I think. And as counselors, can be an effective way to let the public know what's going on, but I think there is an important distinction between saying hey I have this event coming up or even hey I filed this paper and leaving it at that and saying, hey this thing's on the dock and I plan to support it. Is that a correct assessment of where the line would be? There's a difference between stating something is happening or the council agenda says X, Y and Z the meeting is at 7pm tonight, versus stating I support the following things or I plan to vote a certain way. My understanding is that it's the latter that gets you into trouble because you could reach a quorum in theory, whether you know that counselors are on that platform or not.

Yes, that is correct. That's correct. I have done additional research as a result of this decision and that is on social media. If you're talking about anything, if it's within the jurisdiction of this council and it's something that's on the agenda, that could be considered deliberation whether Somebody sees it or no one sees it. It's the possibility of someone seeing it.

Okay, so whether someone has a profile there, whether you see them comment or not irrelevant. It is the possibility? Yes. Okay thank you for clarifying that I think that's important for us to here and understand, and thank you for going down that road a little bit.

You're welcome. Does anybody else have any questions?

Okay, Councilor Colón Hayes.

I have a follow-up on that as well because this is very important for transparency reasons, put the agenda up every week. So now I want to make sure this is okay so I put an agenda up. I usually just take out... things that like say, pay close attention to this let's say and I link the agenda. Sometimes also trying to think of it if there's no vote I learned from a previous case that, you know, I'm not talking about what we're voting on. But could you say I want feedback from people on how... Because I always say give me your feedback like is that okay? I think it's okay to ask for feedback. Just don't respond with something?

Yes, I think its okay to just ask for feed back. Those are your constituents. Okay.

Thank you. Thank You. Councilor Luong Thank you. I just wanted to, I don't know if anybody else had the opportunity when they started as counselors but I have the opportunity of doing the Mass Municipal Training and I spent hour listening to open meeting law and you are absolutely correct with everything you've just said. But I encourage when it comes around again, there were plenty of people that were there for the third time in a row so I plan to go back for any updates but I encourage everybody to do just that.

You took the words right out of my mouth. I was gonna say the same thing. Yeah, I think I recommended that training to you because it's been so valuable. I think one of the things I wanted to mention is that I know we do the ethics training We take that very seriously. Every two years we have to get recertified. I know our Clerk of Committees and our HR department tracks that, and they give me a report so that I can see that everybody's staying compliant with that It is very light on things like open meeting law. It is much more things like personal dealings and what's the limit of gifts and things like that, I wouldn't mind if we started to put even an FAQ or something in our rule book, anything that we can do on our own to hold ourselves accountable and keep that knowledge in house. I think we need to take this seriously as a body and anything that you can do in this building for ourselves, in addition to making use of resources like the MMA I think is clearly needed. The MMA? Yep, Councillor Long. Sorry let me put your light back on.

They went into detail on social media that the yeses and the nos they just went into every part of being a city councilor and I just thought it was invaluable for the eight hours I was there.

And that is a municipal organization, it's statewide organization that all municipalities belong to we covered this in our budget discussions. It's a membership organization, but all electeds are part of it. It doesn't affect our budget. We're automatically members that as a city be part of that we should just take up the resources since they're there. Okay, Councilor Winslow.

Yeah, I guess I'm a little bit confused of why the couple things that I submitted were not component to the record because here's the dilemma for me So when a potentially controversial issue is out there, often we might get individual or from constituents individual things on that point. sometimes those responses might come collectively. They might send it to every Councilor, so it's not something a Councilor initiated. Here even Mr. Donahue sent something. So I'm in this dilemma of Is this thing being sent to me, being sent collectively? And suddenly if I talk to any counselor or talk even respond to that? Am I violating the open meeting law because it's on topic and I don't, you know. That's the dilemma I feel like I face in this situation

Literally, if someone initiates something to me that's on a topic on the agenda I don't know whether that is part of some initiative to get us to talk collectively. Now like I say, if I responded and said Jeff, like Jeff say I'm Jeff. I like you or another one the other ones that oh yeah, I am very concerned even though that's just back to a constituent. Am I am I violating open meeting law to even respond to a comment from anybody about something that's on the agenda. So I'm a little bit confused here. That's the type of thing, that's basically the situation I found myself in and it's hard to understand just really talking about that. So I don't understand a lot of it.

So your question is why is your communication with the constituent not as a response to this?

Yeah, because I just questioned here. I mean, I don' know whether Mr. Donahue's comments went out to everybody or not. I mean, and then like if I suddenly responded to that would that be part of a Deliberation. So that's the dilemma that we're facing.

Just to clarify the record so people understand what we're talking about here, two of the records that Councilor Winslow was speaking of is one was a text message from Mr. Donahue asking for your support during the vote and the other one was an email comment to you, Councilor Winslow from a constituent speaking against Mr. Donahue's appointment, the reason why they were deemed not relevant to this particular violation is because those communications had to do with the appointee and a constituent, not this body. not a quorum of this body. So even if that person emailed everybody on this body, you don't know who they emailed. They might have blind copied everybody but either way because it was a conversation between you and a constituent doesn't cause an Open Meeting Law violation.

And I say, because the thing is like my talk with Councilor Colón Hayes, I had no idea that she did talked to other people. So that's the dilemma.

That's the reason why the Attorney General said that it was an individual violation and not a body violation. It wasn't a violation of the entire body because all the other councils didn't know that Councilor Colón Hayes was talking to everybody else. That's the difference between a body violation and individual violations.

You know, I just get concerned like this is very similar to what happened when I was work up to when I got elected council president because what happens some issue gets out there on social media, we start getting comments and it kind of blows up. And I mean, I know we have to be cautious. You know, my discussion with Councilor Colón Hayes was like hey, This is on the agenda, so we didn't really talk about it. So talking about not talking about becomes a deliberation. So that's my concern of just that is the dilemma of actually saying we shouldn't talk about this because in a way became part of the deliberations. So that's just, it is the confusion here of with so many ways to communicate and so many way if an issue becomes a big topic it becomes beyond our ability as a council or individual to control that.

I definitely hear there's some more bold things than I ever did, that Councilor Colón Hayes did Yeah, it is the dilemma as we try to be respectful. Things are outside of control and we may not know so I'm just making that statement but it is... That's why I put those in there because I don't really in the context of what I did, those were other things. Those are the things that kind of triggered me to and, you know, asked a question. So that's all.

So as far as the constituent contacting you, that's different. What the AG is talking about is deliberating among the body, the city council. So if a constituent is contacting any one of you and you respond to the constituent that's not a deliberation because it's the constituant is not part of the body so the open meeting law involves being a part of the body unless you know for some reason that somebody, one of your fellow council Councilpersons are actually telling this person contact all of these individuals. So if you don't know that and you have no knowledge of that, it's that would not be a violation

That's the dilemma, is that there's this presumption that that's happened. That's what I felt and that's why I put in the memo and when I sat down in the interview, that's what I felt. I had no idea that there was anything else going on so that is a dilemma just putting that on the record set.

And the AG did address that in the decision as it related to Councilor Simonelli, that he said he had no idea. And again as our Clerk Desiderio said, that's why it wasn't a violation of the entire body because the entire did not know.

Thank you, Councilor Winslow. Councilor O'Malley?

My question had to do with clarification on publicly posting stuff so my understanding is that if You write an op-ed in the newspaper of general circulation about your policy positions. For instance, I, Ryan O'Malley, support speed humps and traffic calming in our community like proposing, you know, papers to address that. Obviously I've expressed my opinion about a topic that is gonna come before the city council. My understanding at that, that is allowed?

That would be allowed yes.

What would not be allowed is I am proposing paper 103 next Tuesday, the 18th, and I will be voting in favor.

Yes, that's correct.

So you can talk about your general priorities and proposals. You can't say I'm gonna specifically vote on this date in the affirmative, kind of like when you're meeting with people who are petitioning the city for like development projects. You could talk about how you're generally in favor and wanna know more about the community benefits, and the impacts it's gonna have on the community but you can't say I'm going to support your project on this date. That's my understanding.

I had the same question, thank you for asking that. I was wondering the same thing.

Okay, Councilor Sica?

Okay, I'm gonna be brief. Hopefully. No, no, no. So before I get into the details of the open meeting law violation, I wanna take a brief moment to address where things stand on a personal and professional level.

I think you're all set, thank you so much.

Back in March after seeing many negative social media posts or comments I should say regarding myself and Karen's bickering back and forth during meetings and in general, I decided to reach out to Karen extending an olive branch and suggested a truce so that we could move forward productively for the betterment of Malden. My desire to work constructively hasn't changed, and I stand by that effort. However, I am a little disappointed to see the pattern of blaming rather than taking responsibility for your actions. Good governance requires accountability, which is why we need to address this matter tonight and I hope you don't take my constructive criticism in the wrong way. but over the last two weeks, I have seen many social media posts and videos that I have concerns.

and the concerns that I have with all of them are, the first one is the court issue is accountability. It's not politics. Taking ownership, being an effective leader isn't about being perfect. It's about taking responsibility when a mistake is made. rebranding a state law violation as a learning experience while blaming others demonstrates a complete lack of personal accountability. respecting the findings, the Attorney General's Office conducted an independent objective investigation based on hot evidence. Voicemails, text messages, call logs. Refusing to accept those findings sends a message that the rules apply to everyone else but not to yourself. the deflection versus the direct action, shifting the narrative whenever a violation or a misstep occurs.

The response shouldn't be to point fingers at other people who have violated the open meeting law. the Mayor, the City Solicitor or us fellow Councilors turning a clear legal ruling into a narrative of personal victimization distracts from the actual issue. The public's right to open government was compromised Actions speak louder than words. you cannot in one sentence claim to champion transparency while simultaneously attempting to handle council business quietly behind closed doors and blaming others when caught. the impact on constituent trust, patent of behavior, residency through patent of playing the victim. Constantly shifting the blame creates a double standard where transparency is used as a convenient campaign slogan rather than a binding standard of conduct.

Setting the right example means holding us elected officials accountable to state law. It's not bullying, it's the fundamental duty of every one of us council members up here to protect the integrity of this body and the public's right to know. Furthermore, publicly posting that you will keep contacting colleagues while counting. your contact shows a clear attempt to circumvent the open meeting law process. The Open Meeting Law exists to protect public trust not to be treated as a game of loopholes. my hope for the future is simple. That not just you, everyone up here if they get found in violation learn from our mistakes take responsibility for our actions and hold ourselves to the standards a community expects of us.

I saw over the course of the last two weeks, oh, Councilor Sica, the accuser she violated. I did, I violated in 2021 or 2020 I was the council president. I sent an email to the license committee. I might not have been, but I think I was council president that I might misspeak on that I sent an email with material for the license committee meeting for the evening of, the morning I sent the email. And I put all the material and said, I just want to make sure everybody has all this information and I said, I will not be in support of this petition. And because I said I will now be in the support of his petition, I gave my opinion and that means I violated the open meeting I didn't call anyone, I didn' try to change anybody's mind. I just gave my opinion.

So while Councilor O'Malley is correct, you can write whatever you want, you just cannot give your opinion whether it's on social media. Back then, they didn't even know if any of my colleagues opened that email. They didn't care but because I sent the email to a quorum of that particular committee, it was deemed an open meeting law violation and I have since learned never to do that again. And I tried to... I err on the side of caution when it comes to anything. I may talk to one person up here or two people, I don't talk much about anything anymore because to be honest with you, I'm not quite sure who I can and cannot trust up here. And you should... Everybody should kind of have that same logic in the back of their mind. And, you know, Councilor Winslow said he didn't know you talked to everyone and that's why the AGs office

decided to give it an individual violation and not the full body. Because there's been plenty of times this whole entire body has gone down for something that others have done, particularly myself or yourself or whoever, but because we're a body, we get the violation as one particular violation. So I just... Moving forward, Karen. It's easier to just say yeah I did it and end it kind of because I was trying to be quiet since I got this response from the AGs office I really did try not to bring light to it. You brought it to yourself when you posted the video, like I think you kind of made it a little bit worse for yourself and people were attacking you because you tried to bring it to light but and I was trying not to do that. Like, I just

I get it, but you know, I'm just trying to give you a little constructive criticism. It's just, I heard from people, oh she's never gonna learn a lesson because you post the video and you're like Oh, well, Councilor Crowe and Councilor Spadafora and Councilors Sica violated. And that wasn't even an open meeting law violation that I violated. I had nothing to do with that particular One. So I just, I want to continue to move forward with you and call you for things and you vice versa and show up to my events. I truly since March I feel it's been a weight lifted off of my shoulder with me and you. And I'd like to continue that, but moving forward I would really, you know. I will share with you what I wrote if you'd like but I do think that moving forward we really have to do better for this community. We're never gonna move forward. The last six months, I don't know if had this aha moments.

I want like peace. Like I don' t want all of this back and forth baloney. It's exhausting and it's not the Malden that I know and love and want to continue. to see, like it's getting bad. Like people don't like you because you believe a certain thing. I saw her post that I'm dancing to Craig Spadafora's tune. I think I have my own tune. danced to a tune of former Councilor Spadafora. I think, I dance to my own tune. I don't want to dance in the shadow of somebody else so I just... I want all of us to get along. It's been a lot easier, like I said, the last few months and I hope to continue but hopefully moving forward we can figure this all out so thank you. Thank you Councilor Sica

Colón Hayes. Thank you, so I wasn't going to say much tonight because I did address my constituents already in a video like you said and I posted then a written um, explanation because that is how I work. We all work differently here, I understand that. Once I heard about this, I got the call. I was in New York so didn't have time to do things. All I thought about was like can't wait to get something together and explain to my constituents what's happened and to get that out there. Everybody here has different ways of doing this, and first I just want to say I do appreciate, you know, Jadine we have been it's been Wonderful, we had a great relationship before. We both acknowledge we have no idea how this even happened so I appreciate that and we will still move forward. So I do hear what you're saying, I'll take it to heart but people react differently to things.

I also had tons of people calling me saying thank you very much for bringing that up, they loved what I said so you know Most likely anyone who doesn't like me now are just not going to like me even more and put that out there. But the people who know me, this is how and who I am. I put out things that I want to be transparent about and that is a real thing. I just messed up, you're right. About counting? I literally mean that. I don't know how other way you could take that but I really was thinking, I know I'm allowed to talk to some people. I'm not skirting anything. I know this is not supposed to be on the agenda so the immediate first person I called was the council president saying, why is this on the agenda? I don't want to go through all these details because I said it wasn't going to do that tonight. But I do want to realize like everybody know here it wasn't a willy-nilly thing. This was very, very hard for me I was distraught when I saw the name.

I was bullied verbally yeah, the fear was a lot and I admit that I was making calls very quickly to people about what had happened to me and when I saw that agenda. But aside from that, I learned so much now about who to contact. And I mean it when I said counting because I was like all right, call three people and then be done but I didn't, I learn so much yeah, someone who doesn't answer and even how this could happen. So I'll be extremely more careful. And what I was trying to get out there was not that I'm gonna be calling up breaking a meeting law but I wanted people to know and if you're listening now, I'm still gonna try and do my job to the best of my ability. And sometimes that it does mean I'm going to have to call one of you and I'm just still gonna do that. but learning exactly what we can say and you know, because we need to move forward. We need to get things done so I'm not sure if that's coming out right but it's not like oh, I don't care what happened.

It's more like please know we are allowed to talk to people. Like I don't want people thinking that we're never, like what Councilor Winslow was just saying blows my mind here how worried about having someone email us and now is that an open meeting law violation? That's a lot to talk about. And I like talking with my constituents, you know? I like putting stuff out there about what what is going on in the city council. So I will do that, but I'll just be more careful about yeah, what's going on. But anyway thank you very much and my apologies for bringing you all out here this morning this summer night and trust me when I say, I have learned. I have learnt and I'll do better, thank you.

Thank you Councilor Colón Hayes. I see one more light from Councilor O'Malley for the second time.

I move to place on file both the determination and the attachments.

I think you made the motion actually.

I thought it was to receive and place on file.

We might be good. Thank you for being so thorough.

I don't want to belabor, I just wanna say from the chair that I think I'm hearing a desire to get us an open meeting law training

I think everybody.

Yeah, a refresher can't hurt and I do wanna just also reflect on the fact that I'm also hearing concern that we don't want constituents to stop reaching out to us the responsibility is on us to govern ourselves. Please don't stop emailing counselors, please don't start inviting us to events. We are allowed to come to events we can't go off in a corner and talk about city business that's our responsibility to do that and to mind ourselves. So I hear you, Councilor Winslow, I hear that concern we are gonna do better and we are going to work on this and we very much take this seriously and the last thing I'll say is, I know as council president, I try to have an open door, open phone call policy. I know a lot of you do call me to talk about the docket every week I would just say that one of the things that our Clerk and I have talked about is that the Clerk is also there to talk through the agenda. If you have questions, if you feel like you want to talk to your colleagues

or a colleague about something on the agenda and you're concerned about deliberating, you can call the Clerk instead of calling me. That's an option that folks have. I mean, I want to be here to address concerns and to talk through the agenda let that not be a barrier to us having a concern like this come up again, much as I want to be open for you. Yes, Councilor O'Malley?

So I did only receive and just out of an abundance of caution, I would like... Councilor Sica is correct I would like to take the motion to place on file because usually you receive it, have the conversation and then place it on file at the end of the conversation.

We don't do it that way. We always receive in file, like every time there's a committee report on the agenda It's always one vote to receive it and place it on file if you'd like to take another vote

I think it's usually because we don't have a deliberation about it. But yeah, I mean, um, I just, I would want to make sure...

I don't mind redoing it. The script says to receive in place on file and that's what the Clerk's minutes say we did. I don t mind re-doing it cause I definitely don't wanna come back and have another meeting I move to place on file. Okay, do we have a second? Seconded by Councilor Sica. All in favor of placing on file? Aye. Okay that is placed on file thank you Next Order of Business. Does anybody have personal privilege tonight? Oh, I do. Of course. We're on television. Yes, thank you.

Really quickly, next Thursday, August 6th down Linden Park is our annual color party from six to 7.30 PM. Everybody wear a white shirt or light colors so the colors that you throw up in the air are more visible when you get... completely covered in beautiful pastel colors, and 6 to 7.30 down Linden Park, the annual color potty. Thank you. Great, thank you.

Councilor Winslow?

Yeah, a couple times. Tomorrow evening at least tomorrow at 6 o'clock on the county committee.

Who is that? Somebody unmuted themselves.

Okay, so there is a community meeting about the proposal for Cannabis Shop by Beneficial Photonicals. So that is tomorrow night at 6 o'clock and Malden PD. And then on Saturday, Malden Overcoming Addiction is going to be having its annual family event at Lincoln Common. I believe that's at 10 o'clock. So come out for that. That was a nice time. Great.

Okay, great. Councilor O'Malley?

I just wanted to remind the residents that Tuesday September 1st is a primary it's before Labor Day Crowe. So summer won't be over, so make your plan whether that's early voting or mail-in ballots or voting on September 1st. Thank you.

just really quickly since none of you are going to say it, that there is a softball tournament this Saturday as well. The first game is at 10 o'clock and the process that they're raising for us with Down syndrome. And I know a couple of my colleagues are going to be playing softball, so come and support them.

Thank you. No council business will be discussed on the field. Yes, do we have a motion to recess to the call of the chair? Okay. On a motion by Councillor Sica seconded by Councillor Crowe all in favor?

Oh my Lord I'm sorry.

Thank you very much.

I believe this is a 95th

96, St. Rocco's Feast. Recently we've lost some people that really When you think about St. Rocco's, you think of them but unfortunately they won't be there. But it's always a good time, it's a great tradition There'll be a parade with the saint Sunday starting at 1. Joyce Mover and her husband Sheldon do a terrific job along with Peter. The chef, I call him the chef from Melrose Wakefield but come down, people show up. People come from other communities just to be there and there's fantastic entertainment

They got wildfire Friday night. I know Dave Russo is here Sunday night, so everybody's welcome. It's usually a great time Look forward to seeing everybody. And this young lady will be sitting next to the saint She calls herself the saint, so. All right, wouldn't miss it. Thank you, Councilor Condon.

Okay, we have one more light.

Just a quick one because nobody announced it so I was like okay um i'm not going to be here over the weekend which is a bummer for many things but Malden Overcomes Day is Saturday, August 1st, 11 to 3 at Lincoln Commons. I always make that so I'm kind of bummed. I'm going to miss that. I'll be away but anyway, that was it.

Thank you. Okay thank you. We do have a motion and a second to recess to the call of the chair. All in favor? Aye. Okay.