Malden City Council 04-07-2026

Moodle.

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. the Clerk will now call the roll.

Councilor Colón Hayes. Condon, Crowe, Linehan, McDonald, 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. We've also been notified that Malden News Network will also be recording this evening, so just be aware there will be audio and video recordings of tonight's meeting. First order of business.

Mayor Gary Christensen will appear before the council to provide an update on the fiscal year 2027 budget.

All rise to recognize the Mayor. Mayor, you have the floor.

As you know, a week ago tonight, Malden residents voted down an increase in property taxes to help stabilize city finances and maintain city services. Although Question 1A was defeated by a narrow margin of 124 votes, the community has spoken, and I respect the outcome. There is no interest in revisiting the past. only a continued commitment to building a stable and sustainable financial foundation for Malden. I remain hopeful that we can set aside our differences and work together in the best interest of our community. Our team is now working on a proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. There has been some discussion about the need to revise the net school spending number for fiscal year 2025.

And I'll comment more on that later. But let me assure you this, any representation that the budget situation is significantly better than what was presented is simply unsubstantiated by the facts as I have stated the greatest challenge in municipal budgeting especially ours is that the most significant line items are moving targets and continue to be even as we undertook extensive efforts to educate the community about the financial challenges we were facing. For example our anticipated savings from our transition to the GIC have always been estimates and will not be finalized until enrollment concludes in early May.

We also did not know that Malden would experience a reduction of more than $5 million in state education aid from fiscal year 2026 to fiscal year 2027. Additionally, our Northeast voc enrollment increased significantly, requiring a higher contribution than last year. None of these factors were known at the outset, yet each materially affects the city's financial outlook. This is, unfortunately, an inherently imprecise process and again one that remains a moving target. Regarding the net school spending deficit as another one of those many variables, the previously issued

fiscal year 2025 end of year report will require an amendment to accurately reflect healthcare costs for school employees, which were unintentionally understated. This was a regrettable but honest human error, and we are reviewing additional internal controls to prevent similar issues in the future. It is also important to note that the year-end report is a highly detailed document drawing from multiple data sources, much of which is manually compiled into Excel spreadsheets and put together in a compressed timeframe. While I acknowledged it changed one of the many variables discussed in the public meetings, it did not result in new revenue.

Rather, it just shifted the expense from the city side to the school side. But the overall structural deficit remains the same. Let me repeat that. the overall structural deficit remains the same. As I mentioned, our team is working diligently on a proposed budget Eliminating the structural deficit was the purpose of the proposed override and it remains the challenge before us now. We are working with department heads to address the cuts that will need to be made. Ultimately, the extent of those cuts will depend largely on how much the city utilizes in reserves. In unsustainable practice, we must move away from

It is my goal to submit a proposed budget earlier than past years to allow for meaningful collaboration and input. the right balance for Malden. Make no mistake about it, there are no easy answers this year or in the years ahead. With less state aid and reduced federal support in action is not an option. I am committed to addressing these challenges head on and to make decisions that strengthen this city for the long term rather than deferring them to the future. Thank you.

Well, I want to thank the mayor for joining us. It's been my understanding that while the mayor is not able to join us to answer questions from the council, of course, we will have an opportunity to do that as our budget get started in the next couple of weeks. And of course, that doesn't mean that we can't have a discussion amongst ourselves. And I do have some lights on. I'm going to take Councilor Winslow first.

Yeah, I appreciate the mayor coming. I mean, I think certainly we all want to know a bit more about how the $1.6 million related to school department health care, that mistake was made. and what steps are going to be done to make sure that does not happen. That's a pretty significant mistake and I can understand it can be hard to work with and I don't know if someone was relying on a past year or whatever, but really to get to the bottom and so that we have multiple key people double checking the numbers is really important. it just really does make it hard and you know I do too will respect the will of the voters as we go forward and consider the budget I mean one of the things we all have to realize is that There's not any true winners.

There's going to be people who survive, and there's going to be people whose lives are significantly changed. I was laid off from the Redevelopment Authority back after the dot-com bust. certainly know that my career took a little bit of a while to get back on track, but certainly it changes the course of people's lives. And that's what all will weigh on us. That's what we have to deal with the next few months. The voters have spoken, and that's up to us now and the mayor to deal with that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Winslow. Councilor O'Malley.

Thank you. So yeah, my question to the mayor and the administration would be, when was the miscalculation first known? I think that's a really important number. based on what I guess was talked about last night at the school committee. It sounds like it was in March. So just finding out when that happened would be helpful. And I can understand how finding out something like that would be concerning about how do you reveal that information? But I think that we all, as a council as well as a community, deserve to know that information, at least to understand it better. I think the optics are challenging. and the other question I would ask is I'm having a hard time understanding how insurance rates would impact this number because I would just assume it would be How much did you spend in total or in part on insurance last year?

So I just don't understand how the rates come into play. But I am also looking forward to learning more about this issue and others. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor O'Malley. Councillor McDonald.

Yeah, I also want to thank the mayor for coming in and giving us some basic information here. There has been obviously a memo that folks have seen that we've all received that outlines the specifics here. when I received this, my two questions were, so what is the impact on the choices before us? I'm glad that at least this is an error that works in our favor, as opposed to against it. But what I heard from the comments at the school committee and what I understand about all of the structural problems that have created our budget deficit is that all those things continue We don't have this catch-up payment. All those things continue. And they are greater than even had the voters chosen to pass the 1B. We still would have been facing cuts. It doesn't change that reality either. So I think the big picture from my perspective remains the same. and certainly this council has a role in financial oversight.

That's a big part of what we're here to do, not just to approve the budget. And I am glad that the mayor took responsibility for the team. However, that error was made, and I am glad to hear there's a plan to make sure that doesn't happen again. And I just will want to know what that is. I want to make sure that we have some real clarity about how that we're going to avoid that in the future, because this is, you know, an honest mistake that is not about money moving in places or not being found. It's not an accounting issue, it's a reporting issue, but reporting issues are still important. So I just wanna let folks know we will be meeting in the Finance Committee next week to scope out the many different conversations we need to have now that we've heard some setup from the mayor that's going to be a great time for folks to also bring the, what are the questions that you want to make sure we spend time talking about? No one of us at the council table makes decisions. We're all responsible for doing that together.

I want to make sure that we are scoping out those conversations early so that we have time. I'm glad to hear we'll have a little bit more time than the typical mid-May presentation of the budget. And I would... I would just echo my colleagues' reflections that it is going to be a tough budget. People are going to lose their jobs. This is why it was so important for the voters to weigh in. And now we know what the challenges ahead of us. So we'll have to have a lot more conversations like this. and do what we can to mitigate those losses without just getting ourselves back into a structural hole that we cannot get out of. So we'll talk a lot more next week, I'm sure, about this process.

Thank you, Councilor McDonald. Councilor Colón Hayes.

Thank you very much. So yeah, now we know where we stand after this vote. And I appreciate the mayor showing up. I do wish he would have stayed for some questions. I understand there's probably not a lot of answers right now, but at least to answer some questions that I had. So I'll save those for another time, but we definitely need to obviously figure out what happened here. Nobody wants to... and so forth. they did pass an audit, the same audit that we had passed here, a DLS audit. So that made me very happy that they're going to do an audit as well. So the both of us looking into it is definitely a good thing.

And also that we're going to be meeting earlier because there's going to be a lot of stuff that we need to discuss. And I'm glad to hear that we're meeting earlier. It's going to be very helpful. Finance team is going to be very busy. We're all going to be very busy. We should be showing up definitely as a team and trying to get through this because you're right. There are going to be layoffs. It's hard. I'm sure we've all been through a layoff at some time in our life. It's not easy. but we need to hold each other accountable and we need to figure out what happened here to build trust back up that I believe we lost during this process. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Colón Hayes. Councillor Simonelli.

Thank you, Madam President. You know, I mean, most of us spoke already. I was just going to, you know, if I had gotten the microphone earlier, I would have just said maybe we should just wait and talk about these things. as we grow into them. No doubt about it that we've got some serious work ahead of us and we've all got to kind of roll up our sleeves now and do our due diligence to make sure because we're all in this thing together. So, you know, the The bill didn't pass. So now we've got to kind of like, you know, figure out what we're going to do here. And without a doubt, there's going to be some layoffs here. And I know there's some, you know, money can come from the revenue reserve. I've reached out to a couple of counselors already. and let them know what my ideas were on being able to make up some shortfalls, pretty much a one-time thing so that it gets through another year, hopefully, if it works out. So we all got to start to look around and see how we can all work this thing out together because that's where we are. We're all in this thing together.

I wish the mayor would have stayed around a little bit longer. I don't know if Marie is... O'Hare, and the rest of the committee. McDonald, and the Finance Committee so that we do have some of these questions and answers tonight because it makes no sense for us to bring them up now if the Mayor's not here to answer them. So, I mean, like I said, unless, Maria, if you're going to answer some of these questions that some of these councils have, I would just say, we have a full docket tonight, so we should probably get on to the docket and... just to let the citizens know that we all should be working together on this thing along with the mayor's office on seeing if we can roll up our sleeves and see if we can get as few of layoffs as possible and few of cuts as possible and can think out of the box are ways of generating some new revenue and some maybe even long-term revenue. And we have done this before.

I've done this before on some other budget crunches. you know, I'd like to try and do it again. Like I said, I've reached out to some of the councilors. It would have never made it because we would have needed a home rule petition to do it before the ballot question for March 31st, but now we do have time enough to get it for next year's budget. As you can hear the Mayor say that it's going to be a multi-tier type of years coming up on the budget as far as being able to be fiscally responsible and watching our pocketbooks. So again, I wish I would have spoke a little bit sooner. It's just the way it falls. But I think that where we have a full agenda tonight, I think it's probably important for us to get to that agenda. then to be talking about things that we don't have any answers for right now and I'm sure we will find them in your budget committees and joint committees as well. Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you, Councillor Simonelli.

Councillor Luong. Thank you so much. I just, you know, I echo what everybody else has said, but I didn't, so not to recap, but I did want to bring up two things that I hope that we will be looking at at the financial Finance Committee. One would be our municipal audit company that we have. You know, why wasn't this type of error found during our audit? Other things, what's the path? How did we do things? We have a checks and balances in this in this city. And how did that all break down? And I hope we spend some time to really look at that because, you know, to hear about a $1.6 million you know, mistake or whatever you want to call it, two days after the vote and then I find out on Facebook. Wasn't fun, obviously, but I really look forward to delving into those things as we go next week.

and we have a lot of work to do and we've all said this, the public does not trust us, they don't trust our processes, they don't trust what we say and we need to really do a lot of work to bring that back. I do have to say the mayor and his team have applied for the DLS financial review. that did include the Malden Public Schools as part of that review. It was approved. It's docketed or queued, I think they call it, queued, right? They queued it in for the fall. And that's by the state. That's not us. We asked for it as soon as possible, and that's what they gave us. So I think going through the budget process, seeing where our processes are, and then letting them come in and do their thing, I think it's gonna go a long way to hopefully that repairs.

Thanks. Thank you. Oh, I see Councilor O'Malley for a second time.

Yeah, I just wanted to ask my fellow councillors if my understanding of this was correct, because I know that we had the two different ballot question numbers. One was the 5.4. and one was the 8.2. And so my understanding was that 8.2 took into consideration in part this $1.6 million that we had to spend above and beyond and so on. So I do think that this is $1.6 million that we're not having to spend more. So it's a savings, but it's a savings from our free cash from our savings account, the $22 million. So the circumstances are not great. They bring up a lot of questions. But as has been cited, I think it is a $1.6 million savings from what we were expecting to spend. That's just my understanding.

And if I'm wrong, it would just be helpful. But I think I heard something different. And I just want to make sure I understand it correctly so the public also does.

Okay. I see a light by Councilor McDonald.

Yeah. I think that I heard two things that you were asking about, Councilor O'Malley. My understanding is that yes, this does improve the situation, right? It works in our favor. and the place that it improves it to is still, you know, $9 million. I mean, that doesn't, and many more. Thank you. I think this is a liability of the, if we don't spend this, we get billed by the state. So we avoid this bill that we would have had to pay for either out of and so on.

When we talked about this in the finance committee, that was part of why we, it was definitely one of the factors we used in talking about why a second tier was important to raise with voters. And we talked about other factors too. We talked about the increase in net school spending requirement for the future, not the look back, but what do we expect in the future? and we said, we don't know how bad that's gonna be. Well, that got significantly worse when we got the numbers from the state. And I will just speak for myself, that part of the reason I thought it was important to have a second tier was the uncertainty that went along with all of these figures. So there were some that we had good estimates, that we thought we had good estimates about, and there were some that we thought we had less good estimates about. But I think that the, I just really wanna state again, Yeah, this helps. Maybe it would have been a $10.5 million gap instead of a $9 million gap if we hadn't been able to find this error.

And I'm very glad that we did. and we will talk, I'm sure, more about that entire process. So it improves. The place it improves to is still worse. I don't know how we would have funded that additional piece because we hadn't gotten there yet. And again, I think the reason that that the numbers had been created, the different steps had been created had multiple inputs because there was so much uncertainty around many of these factors that we knew we had to consider. So that's my understanding.

Thank you, Councillor McDonald. Councillor Colón Hayes for the second time.

Thank you very much. So I just wanted to respond to the question because I think it was actually I think I made that motion in finance for the second question. And so for me, That's exactly what it was based on. So once we heard there was a shortfall, 1.6 shortfall, plus a penalty, what they call it, we added that up along with other numbers that Councilor McDonald just said, and we thought, this is what we're looking at, right? So we should, instead of coming back, like just passing the shorter one, the lower one, and come back again because we're still gonna need it with these numbers, we decided to put the second number on there. you know obviously now in hindsight which you know we didn't know then it would have made it probably easier it because the lower amount did better and the vote. So I don't know. Maybe that if people didn't hear us say, oh no, we found this 1.6, maybe more trust in passing the other one.

But I mean, we'll never know that. But that was my thought process of adding that other question. It was definitely based on those numbers that are now not right. So that's not great.

That's where we are. But thank you for asking that. Thank you, Councilor Colón Hayes. Councilor Luong for the second time.

Quick question. This is to Councilor McDonald. Not sure if you know the answer. when we didn't spend the one over 1.6 million and we received a penalty, do you know if we would charge the penalty? And if so, would we still be charged a penalty of 62,000?

Yeah, so I think that goes into the calculations of what we owe for next year. We need to make that up. So we hadn't gotten to making it up yet. Right, we hadn't got there. And I want to actually be clear, there's another piece of this whole calculation that is the penalty, which is the underspending relative to the target. of how far away we are from the dream scenario that the state has for us for how much local money we can spend. So we talked about both of those things in the finance committee. And so we hadn't paid it yet. This is a kind of retrospective report that takes effect for the following year. And so in checking these numbers over, I think my understanding is that's how the Sarah was discovered so we're going to figure that out more how do we make sure that we catch these things earlier how do we make sure that we have the people in place who are are going to be able to reliably generate these reports? All of those questions, those are the process questions. But I don't think this changes the money out the door.

And also, to your earlier point, I'm curious what the auditors will say, but I don't believe this is an accounting issue because no money moved. It's a reporting issue that the state would have sent us a bill for. but because no money moved or was expected to move at this point, it's not the kind of thing that auditors would even be taking a look at because they're not looking at our state reporting, they're looking at our accounts. So that would be my understanding. I'd love to know if that is correct. But I do want to also just note that, I mean, we have a lot of conversations about trust at this table and trust is a big word that means a lot of different things to a lot of people. but to me, what it means is keeping your promises and being trustworthy. And I think we all have a role in trying to promote enough trust that we can have basic conversations about the trade-offs we actually have to make.

and that we do not use shredding trust to avoid the hard conversations and make it seem like we don't have to make choices. We do. The voters chose. And now we have to grapple with that. So I hope whatever questions we want to put on the table that we as city leaders are doing that in a way that helps, yes, us build trust and be trustworthy and raise those questions in good faith. I certainly hear us trying to do that tonight. but we all know that that has not always been the case. I think that's the only way that we're going to be able to make it through this difficult set of choices. So I just wanted to offer that.

Thank you both for that. I just want to say from the chair to echo some of the things that have been said, I think all of us are feeling a little bit challenged by this because this has been a really, this has been a tough week. You know, a lot of us have given up Most of our free time with our families to try to educate the community on what's been a very difficult vote. We now have a budget that's a lot more difficult than we were hoping it was going to be. I think we're working as hard as we can to accelerate the timeline and to work a lot earlier than we typically do with harder circumstances to be able to make decisions that none of us want to be up here having to make. And this is certainly not information that any of us wanted to be receiving, certainly not right after an election. And having to communicate this to the community is I will say personally, it was really, really difficult. Some folks have mentioned finding out on social media. That's not how anybody wants to find out something, certainly not something this difficult.

And I think to the extent that we can all Row in the same direction and try to promote that trust, I think is what we have to focus on moving ahead. I'm certainly committed to that. I've had, I mean, I feel like I'm in constant communication with the mayor's office. This is just gonna be a tremendously difficult spring and Summer as we move into this budget cycle. I'm working as hard as I can. I know Councilor McDonald and I also speak so frequently about how we're going to be transparent and make these meetings accessible to the public. that's something that we're trying to make a commitment to and to bring our colleagues in and make sure that this meeting process is something that everybody can feel invested in. I will say that folks have been very, very and so on. People are brainstorming, what can we do?

How can we mitigate the impact of this? How can we do everything we can to make sure the community is as safe and healthy as possible? I want to appreciate that publicly because I want folks in the community to hear how hard everybody up here is working to try to come up with solutions in this hard set of circumstances that we face. So I want to thank everybody for the comments tonight. Obviously, this is not the conversation that we all wanted to be having. I do appreciate that the mayor came in. I do wish that we could have asked questions, but I also recognize we may not have answers to all the questions that we want at this juncture. I know that there's going to be plenty of opportunities for us to convene in committee. I hope that we can really dig into things. I know it's not gonna be easy, but I hope that we can get to that when we start those budget meetings. So seeing no other lights, I'm gonna say that we can move on to our next order of business and I appreciate all the dialogue that we had here, so thank you. Next order of business 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 speakers must keep their comments to two minutes or less. Clerk, do we have anybody signed up for public comment this evening?

We actually do. Mohamed Ubatta.

Oh, let me put the podium light on. Mohamed Abutaha, you have the floor. Yes, thank you. 190 Mountain Avenue.

My name is Muhammad Abu Taha. I live at 190 Mountain Avenue. Like many residents, I voted no on the tax override, not because I don't support the services of the city or the school, but because many families in our community are already struggling to keep up with the rising costs For them, another tax increase right now would have been a real burden. The voters have spoken clearly. Now responsibility shifts to all of us, the city leaders and residents, to work together on real solutions. We need transparency, we need accountability, and most importantly, we need a clear plan. Residents want to understand what went wrong on the budget what steps are being taken to fix it and how we will move forward without placing more pressure on working families. This is not about blame. This is about trust, responsibility, and leadership.

Thank you for your time and thank you for your service. Thank you.

Thank you.

Clerk, did we receive any items by email? We did. So we have a comment that was submitted by Brian DeLacy of 1 Earl Street. Regarding agenda item number four, the Clerk received a written public comment from Brian DeLacy of Malden News Network, accompanied by a full written statement containing 16 numbered questions. The submitter asks that the full document be entered into the record and that the Mayor be asked to respond to each question on the record tonight or in writing within a reasonable and publicly stated time frame and that the following be read. The submission documents the following timeline. September 2025, Mayor proposes a $5.4 million override. December 2025, the Mayor arrives unannounced with his full financial team, introduces a new $1.6 million School spending crisis and the override jumps to $8.2 million. March 2026, both questions fail.

April 2026, two days after the election, a memo revises the $1.6 million shortfall to $62,730, a reporting error. Fixable with the journal entry, no voter authorization required. The 16 questions fall into four categories. On the books, when was the error identified and who found it and who verified the $1.6 million before it went on the ballot? On the disclosure, why were the full council, the press, and the public the last to know? On the audit, have corrected entries been made? Has the external auditor been informed? On the budget going forward, the finance chair now projects a gap north of $9 million. What is driving that number? Was it known in December? The central question is this. If the error had been found before March 31st, would the second ballot question to raise their taxes by $8.2 million have existed at all? The full written statement is in the record. The submitter asks that the Mayor respond to all 16 questions on the record. Thank you.

Brian DeLacy, Malden News Network.

Thank you. Okay, next order of business. Next order of business is the Consent Agenda. This evening's Consent Agenda consists of meeting minutes to be approved and 10 petitions to be referred to the License Committee. Does any Councilor have a desire to remove any of these items from the Consent Agenda for the purpose of further discussion?

Okay.

Hearing none and seeing none, I have a motion to approve the consent agenda by Councilor Sica, seconded by Councilor Winslow. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, the agenda is approved. Next order of business.

Paper 196-26 order that the Finance Committee engage in discussions regarding the city's current self-insured status and consider possible options for a comprehensive insurance policy. The discussions shall Colón Hayes for the paper thank you very much so

A couple of weeks ago, I had noticed there was a lot of questions about our insurance policies and what we do here for the city. And we went... I put in an original paper, so we went back and forth with language with Mr. Rannigan and Mr. Hogan, and I'd like to, I can talk about it a little bit, but I also wanted to make it a change, ask for a vote to amend the wording. So basically what we're looking for, we're self-insured on, let's say our automobiles, We have different insurance for other things. So rather than just hold the conversation to just a limited view, we wanted to open it up here from our insurance

agent from the city, our finance people, our city solicitor, have them all present and discuss, learn about what we have and then discuss possible ways, if any, that we can move forward with other insurances that might and so on. to, did we read in the original one? Should we do that first? We did, yes. Okay, so the suggested change is that the finance committee engage in discussions with the city's finance and legal team as well as a representative from the insurance company to discuss the city's current insurance policy. So it's broader because we didn't want to limit it. And, you know, because if something comes up that we want to talk about, we wanted to have in that. I also talked to our finance chair.

our Council President before putting this forward, so.

Okay, so you're making a motion to amend.

I'll second.

Okay, so we have a motion to amend as stated by Councilor Colón Hayes, seconded by Councilor Sica. Does everybody understand what the amendment entails? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay.

Did you email me that exact language because you read it so fast? Yes. Thank you.

Okay, so we'll email the language to the Clerk.

The New York came out.

Okay. Are you all set with introducing? Okay, so I'm going to take some lights with questions on the paper. Councilor Winslow.

Yeah, actually, one of the things I did after I was laid off from the redevelopment authority, actually set up a law practice where Part of my practice was dealing with municipal liability issues like this. And one of the things that Mass Municipal Association has a program called Maya, which is an insurance program for municipalities. and one of the things I learned at that time was basically it did not cover cities over I think 60,000 or whatever. Malden could not qualify. Lynn or Somerville cannot qualify. It's really set up for towns that have smaller legal staffs or maybe not much at all, just a lot of towns. even some cities just have outside legal counsel. They don't have staff attorneys. And it was also very interesting to get the perspective of where public entities look at Insurance.

So one key and one role our legal department does is not just about lawsuits. A big thing they do is risk management. So an entity like the MBTA actually has someone called a risk manager in addition to their legal staff. So it's just something that is complex. And then when I worked in Somerville and was looking at getting, they didn't have an admissible insurance policy. And the difficulty is sometimes you can kind of get one-off policies for a issue that you have. But when you look at, and this is what we can talk about with our insurance agency, when you get an all-in insurance policy. There's a question of cost and value. Ultimately, an insurance policy at the heart of it is just a guarantee to be able to hire outside legal counsel to pay your bills to defend something sometimes. So that is, and then there's also liability limits of how much that insurance covers.

So it's a complex thing to see whether it is worth it or not. So that's the type of thing. It might seem, but because municipalities, it's not, you're not making, they're not like millions of people, like homes, and cars that balances out. It's very specific. So it's more complicated than signing up for an auto insurance policy or something like that. That's just something I'd be happy to sit in on those. So but, you know, let's look at it. Doesn't hurt. I'd be good to get an update and hear what that is. I mean, something I dealt a little bit of MRA, too. So thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Councilor Winslow. Councilor McDonald.

Thanks. I just wanted to clarify for the public what I know from our exchange earlier. But this paper is not about health insurance because some folks had asked me, well, are we moving away from being self-insured? Which we are for the health insurance pool. This is actually about property and casualty insurance, general liability insurance, directors and officers insurance, those kinds of other types of insurance products, cybersecurity insurance that you can carry. And so I'm happy to have us have some discussion about it. I know the city does carry some limited policies and also we, As Councilor Winslow was saying, it can be challenging for municipalities to carry the kind of insurance that private businesses and organizations are able to buy on the open market for a range of reasons. So I'm happy to have us talk about that in the Finance Committee. I just want to make sure folks knew that We've already made choices about the health insurance. They're not revisiting that.

But we are talking about this, whether purchasing additional insurance coverage, basically, as I understand the question, is a good use of resources and worth it at the moment. McDonald. Look forward to talking about that.

Thank you, Councilor McDonald. Councilor O'Malley.

Thank you. I'd like to thank Councilor Colón Hayes for bringing this forward. My understanding in my time on the council is that we were self-insured across the board. So I wasn't actually aware that we had any insurance policies. I was under the impression that we were, like I said, self-insured for our Health Insurance that we were self-insured for, auto that we were self-insured for everything. So to hear that there are insurance policies was news to me. And so I think it is helpful for us to better do a deep dive into this, like what insurance policies do we have and does it make sense for us to have more, whether it's, you know, I think maybe the ones we have might be property insurance, but does it make sense to have liabilities, errors and omissions, an umbrella policy if something happens. I don't know. As Councillor Winslow had identified, it really has to do as a cost-benefit analysis. But I don't think that's going to be a very hard cost-benefit analysis to do.

you just look back the last 10 years how much money did you spend in lawsuits and how much is an insurance premium going to cost? I think it kind of helps us decide does it make sense for us to get insurance so that we don't have to pay out of pocket and the benefit Winslow identified, is that you're not using the resources of our local council in-house. Because the insurance company has a really big incentive to not pay that claim, and so they're going to defend you tooth and nail. That's the whole way that they keep the money. They cover you and they try not to have to pay out any claims that you might be liable for. That's all they do. They don't have to worry about all of the myriad things that our in-house legal counsel has to do. I don't know if it's going to pan out in the end, having the conversation is really helpful. Thank you, Councilor Colón Hayes.

Thank you, Councilor O'Malley. Councilor Colón Hayes again.

Thank you. Just quickly, yeah, I should have probably mentioned that to those listening. It's not health insurance, but also the reason why we didn't put all the specifics that you're bringing up about insurance is just because this is an open conversation. We didn't want to make sure like things weren't left out and that We did learn. It's going to be a learning experience about exactly what we have and then what we need. And it is, to Councilor Winslow's point, we know it's complicated. That's why we're having our solicitor, our, you know, the people who deal with this come before us to give us an overview before we get into any discussions because we are going to be learning. We're small business owners, my husband and I, and I spoke with him and he was talking about how The reason why they get a big liability insurance is exactly what Councilor O'Malley was saying. So that when something happens, he's an architect, so big major mistakes can happen there. They're not fighting it hiring a lawyer.

They pay so that other people can fight that for them and and it works out well, but it might not work out for us That's the whole point. We're having a conversation. So, thank you

Okay, thank you. So we will be looking for a voice vote. You want to refer this to Finance Committee, is that right? Okay, so on a motion by Councilor Colón Hayes, seconded by Councilor Sica, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? that is referred to Finance. Next order of business.

Paper 197-26 be it ordained by the Malden City Council that the Code of the City of Malden 6.08.070C2 Licensing of Marijuana Establishments is hereby amended by inserting, provided that no fewer than five marijuana retail licenses shall be made available after Mass General Law Chapter 138, Section 15. Also sponsored by Councilor Colón Hayes.

Okay, Councilor Colón Hayes for the paper.

Thank you very much. I won't be changing any wording in this one. So a while back, I had noticed while I was doing some research on the city website that there was a number The cannabis license number that usually said five for the amount of license we had had changed to four. So I reached out to Mr. Hogan to understand how that happened, when it happened, and why weren't we aware of that. and so our ordinance states that it's based on our, so our amount of cannabis licenses is based on the amount of liquor licenses that we have and the liquor licenses in Malden dropped below to a point where it affected our cannabis licenses to four and and we just didn't hear about that. I guess there's not a clear way of letting us know when that happened because I had reached out to the council president also. None of us were aware.

So we were talking about ways to clarify that and the language suggested so that We don't want to keep having to pay attention to when liquor license can go up and down. They can fluctuate. And so rather than keep a constant eye on that to keep our five, we figure to put in the wording that says provided that so still going by the alcohol licenses, liquor license, but providing that no fewer than five marijuana licenses shall be made available so we don't run into that problem.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Colón Hayes. I see a light from Councilor Simonelli.

Thank you, Madam President. I actually support that. And I think that we should be made aware of when the licenses drop or go up, indicating on whether or not we have how many liquor stores in the geographical area. I'll give you an example. In my neighborhood alone, I got like four liquor stores, but I can't have one, not to go back to this thing again, but I don't have one marijuana shop. in my neighborhood, but I have four liquor stores, so I don't know how that all works out. But I think that, that all being said, I think it's a good paper, I will support that paper, I think that we should be made aware of it, especially right now, and I know that the marijuana sales I haven't seen the numbers, but according to what everybody tells me, that the numbers aren't what they were supposed to be or what they want them to be. Nevertheless, they still are numbers.

So under these trying times, we should make sure that we're aware of when those numbers go up or go down, just so we're aware of it. I don't know how that even helps us. I don't know how that... helps or hurt us with a lawsuit too. We've got, I think we've got another one coming in too from the other one, from the one on Taylor Street, the corner of Taylor's, not to, you know, I don't want to mention any more about that, but I think I'm sure it's coming in. So I don't know how that affects us that way. Again, very confusing, but we should be made aware of it. How we do that, what is it, the clack board, clack? The clack. Clerk, Board, I mean, they should just let our license committee chairman know when those things go up and down. And, you know, Councilor Sica could advise us on occasion when they go up and down. I don't think that's a big thing to ask.

Why you?

No, I'm just saying. Well, because she's the chairman at the time. If it's Mickey Mouse next year, then it's Mickey Mouse. But I'm saying for now, it's J.D. and Sica. So I'm just saying she should be the one. She didn't charge a license for us, right? Why not? just to keep us up to speed.

Okay. Thank you, Councilor Simonelli.

Thank you.

Councilor O'Malley.

Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. You want to respond? I'm sorry. That's fine. That's fine. Okay. So really quickly, I'm not quite sure that falls under the purview of my license committee. I think that that number probably changed because it It directly comes down from how many package stores we have in the city. Correct. if the package stores fluctuate, then I would assume the cannabis licenses would also fluctuate. So if we don't have the exact amount that we need, then it would go down. So I'm pretty sure it went from five to four because package licenses went down. When we were discussing this in 2018, I think we were going back and forth between four and five, and we were at four and a half, based on the, if I remember, Based on the amount of package stores we had, we were at four and a half.

So we, as the council, could have chose to go to four or chose to go to five. We got to pick. and I think at that time we went to five, but since then, it's been several years, maybe the package stores declined and hence why it went from five to four. and so I don't necessarily think that I should be made aware as the chair of license. I think it would be nice for the council. I mean, I did know that that happened, but I'm in constant contact with, you know, the clerk with this all different stuff going on. So I was aware that that changed because our package stores went down. So maybe just moving on if We can just ask them if it was to ever happen again, if our package draws keep decreasing and it decreases more. But if we're going to have four, it's not like we're going to go down to three when we have four. We're going to keep it at the four. Am I correct?

if we ended up getting five licenses and our package stores keep declining, we're not gonna change it from the five. We can't decrease it from the five when we currently have five. Am I correct, Nelson? Does that sound right? All right, so yeah, so thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Sica. Councilor O'Malley. You want to respond. Councilor O'Malley, are you okay?

Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks. Again, good information. I have no problem with it. I'm just saying that would be a... That's where I think it would go for us, is the License Committee, so we can be informed about it. It's probably simple as just a memo letting us know. But right now, like I said, these trying times, I mean, just what, Councilor, Sica just said, and I know she's been on top of this stuff. It's confusing. And when people are asking for answers right now from us, and we're talking about, you know, being transparent with people and they're expecting five licenses and then we're down to four, we want to be able to have the answers for them, that's all I'm saying. So I think that when things like this do happen, there should be a mechanism to allow this council to be aware of when you know, the liquor store formula increases, decreases, so that changes the outcome from the marijuana status and stuff like that. We should have that information, because you know when people ask us out there, like, oh, what are they doing with the,

with the proceeds that they're getting for the marijuana sales and stuff. I mean, as a city councilor, you should have the ability to be able to answer those questions. And I think that's a good way of knowing about it. And again, it just seemed like there was a, Situations, it's a few minutes ago on us not being able to get this information and I thought that that was just a good way of doing it. if that's not the right mechanism, then fine, let's figure out another one. But we should be made aware of when the formula changes to see if the license is gonna go from five to four, from five to six, for the three, who knows? But I think we should be made aware of it. That's all. Thank you, Council President.

And I hear you. And I think I can make sure to work with the clerk so that we can get the information. I think Councilor Sica is due in her due diligence. has package stores and an overlay and probably a little bit more incentive to stay on top of it as well. But we can make sure to get that information so everybody has it. I don't think we need a paper to necessarily do that. O'Malley, thank you for your patience. You have the floor.

Yeah, I think it was a good dialogue and discussion. And I think, if I understand correctly, what Councilor Colón Hayes is stating is that she would like to move it away from a purely percentage-based formula to a fixed number so that there's not this ambiguity. What I would say is that works for going down, but it doesn't work for going up. so we have to have at least 20%. So what I would say is probably what the language should be is five or 20%, whichever is greater, something like that, so that there's a floor but not a ceiling, because if we end up having a ton of package stores that open up, probably not going to happen, but it could. That would require maybe more than five. So I appreciate that. The reason why I was putting my light on, though, is that one of the things I'd asked the Council President and the Our legal department is to give us an update on Driss and Benevolent without going into anything privileged.

On March 25th, there was a status conference with Driss and then Benevolent tuned in. and I've requested the transcript and audio

O'Malley. I don't think this is relevant or appropriate to talk about on this paper, though.

I'm going to explain why it's relevant. Can you do that very quickly?

Because I fear it's not really relevant.

Oh, yeah, no, it has to do with our marijuana ordinance. So basically I requested the transcript in audio. I found the transcript as part of a legal filing, but I think the audio is really important for you all to hear what's going on in reality. the judge has serious concerns about what we're doing in terms of how we're handling the rewriting of our- I don't think this is appropriate. Of our ordinance. Yeah, no, it's just because we're talking about rewriting the ordinance and I'm just saying... We're talking about numbers, though. No, correct, but... Just a number.

We're not talking about the Driss suit right now. This is not docketed.

Correct.

Councilor O'Malley, can you put in a paper and we can talk about this next week?

Which is my next thing. We have to respond by April 22nd.

We don't have to respond to anything that we don't have a legal communication about.

Yeah, so we have to respond as a city by April 22nd, and I would ask that next week we have a meeting to discuss the fact that something in our name has to be filed on April 22nd.

So I just want to be really clear that you're talking about something that our legal department has received, not that this council has received.

That the city of Malden must respond to.

but what you're saying right now makes it seem to the public like the council is in receipt of something that necessitates us to hold a meeting.

That is true.

That is not correct or we would have scheduled a meeting.

My understanding is that the city, our legal department, has to come to us based on what was represented in court for guidance about what will happen on April 22nd. Thank you. So as we're rewriting our zoning...

Okay, we are not going to discuss this particular issue any further, but if it's appropriate and if we do need to take action on it, we either need a paper or we need for legal... to speak to me about it. So I'm not gonna allow further discussion on Drist right now, but I don't want us to talk about this anymore.

Understood. It just had to do with the rewriting of the ordinance.

But I actually don't think it's pertinent or appropriate because we're not talking about... Right, it's two separate things. I don't want to stifle debate on this, and we have other lights, and if we want to talk about this, we need to have it properly before us.

Okay, so then I'm going to, just so I understand, through the Chair and the Clerk, I'm gonna ask that we put that on the agenda next week. I will copy and paste a similar posting from a prior one. and I will submit it.

Please communicate to legal and myself and the clerk and we can handle that offline tomorrow.

Thank you so much. Okay.

So I have two other lights and then I do want to take the vote to refer this to ordinance. Councilor Winslow.

Yeah, just a couple of things. Yeah, I mean, this is about seven or eight years ago when This is really offered by Councilor Matheson at that time. And we knew exactly what Councilor Sica said. It was like we're at four and a half at that time. And everybody kind of understood that that it might be five. So I think it is now that we, I always thought it was tied to how many we could have and how many we actually had. So I didn't think that it was something that would actually go down, but I guess it does. the way it works. So that is one of the things. So it makes sense to make it clear that we kind of set a floor and have kind of this weird fluctuation. But it was sort of the intent of the council we might have up to five at that time when Councilor Matheson proposed this. And I think that passed. It was sort of one of the first things we took and related to recreational cannabis. Yes, the other thing is like we do have coming out of rules and ordinance, the papers related to

the zoning and this section of just the regular code, section 12, section 12 related to cannabis and cannabis establishments. I, you know, I don't know whether we I guess it's some of the timing of that is something we got to think about is like obviously something on zoning has to go to a joint rules and ordinance committee and planning. and the, you know, there are actually some of the, something that's coming out of ordinance is actually related to this section too, so I don't know whether, I know Councilor Colón Hayes reached out to me and said how to do this and I said put it on, we weren't going to amend what was coming out of It just has made sense to have it different than what's coming out of Rules and Ordinance. But we should sync them up. We should probably end up, I mean, I don't know. I mean, my intent in Rules and Ordinance, if it gets referred, is that we would ultimately sync up

and you know do go through the process of getting the hearings for this section 12 zoning changes for the related to the you know what we need to do to update our zoning because of the and then a vote sort of at the same time on Section 12 changes and Section 6 changes. So that would be just to let you know what the process I see going ahead. So I think.

Okay. Thank you, Councilor Winslow. Simonelli.

Thank you, Madam President. I agree with Councilor Winslow. I think we should take that paper up again, but I think that the paper has already been I think it may have died in committee, and I think it was Council President Amanda Linehan's paper originally. because I know that when we were discussing this thing when I first got on and, you know, there was talk about, you know, Driz opening up on Taylor Street. So I kind of went through that thing and we went back and forth for a little while. You know, I'm just saying, I'm saying, I think that, I'm saying that I think that if that's what he wants to do is resurrect that paper, move it forward for the future so we can start working on that, if that's what he wants to do.

We really can't talk about Driz.

Thank you. All right.

On a motion by Councilor Colón Hayes, seconded by Councilor Sica to refer to ordinance. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that is referred. Next order of business.

Paper 198-26. Be it ordained by the Malden City Council that the Code of the City of Malden 12.12.030 Use Regulations is hereby amended as follows to update the existing table of use regulations by striking the end designation for self-storage facilities in industrial one and industrial two zoning districts and inserting in place thereof the SP designation. this amendment shall restore the status of such use of self-storage facilities to its state prior to the 2023 amendment as was ordained with paper 198 series of 2023 and shall take effect upon its passage following the completion of the public hearing process as required by MGL Chapter 48, Section 5. Councilor Sica is the sponsor.

Okay, Councilor Sica for the paper.

Thank you, Council President. So really quickly, I'm going to just briefly talk about why this paper is on the agenda, and then I'm hoping to refer it to committee. I did ask Building Commissioner Nelson to come to the meeting tonight just in case anybody had any questions before we refer it. But it's been brought to my attention that we have two public, two self-storage units that are currently operating in the City of Malden. One is on Easton Ave at the Old Hostess, the U-Haul, and one is in my ward up on Route 1 on Linehurst behind Cathy's. They are both looking currently to expand their business. and the zoning that we changed a few years back prevents them from doing that. So I'm hoping to maybe make some provisions to what we voted on before to allow,

You know, self-storage units that are currently already in business in the city of Malden to be able to come before the planning board for a special permit to expand what they currently have. in no way shape or form am I looking to change the way you guys voted years ago. I think I might have been the lone who voted against it, but it is what it is. I'm okay being that lone person on that island. But I don't want to hinder two businesses that we currently have operating here in the city. especially the one in my ward on Linehurst. No one even knows it's in Malden. It's the perfect place for a self-storage unit to be put. Can I have Nelson come up and just throw some two cents in before you take questions?

Sure, Nelson.

Come on up, Nelson. You can say that so much better than I can. and they technically, I have not heard from anybody. They actually contacted the building office so he'll be able to. Okay, Nelson, can you introduce yourself?

Hi, Nelson Miller, Building Commissioner.

Thank you.

Yeah, so when the change was made a few years back, which prohibited storage facilities in the city, the way our zoning works, when you prohibit a use entirely, you also prohibit the expansion of that use. That's the way our zoning reads. So just as an example, if you have a storage facility and it were completely destroyed, let's say in a fire, you could get a special permit to build it back the way it was. in this case with these two facilities where they have existing buildings they want to make larger, our zoning doesn't allow, there's no mechanism to move forward and make them larger. So Councilor Sica, you know, asked about How to sort of alter our zoning to allow the expansion. Then we also have the discussion about allowing new ones in other places. You don't have to do both. You could craft this ordinance if you didn't want to allow new ones in new locations.

You could craft it to just allow the existing ones to expand, you know, through a special permitting process through the planning board or through the city council, however you want to do it.

Thank you.

Okay. Well, I have a lot of lights. Okay, I'm going to go to Councilor Winslow first.

Yeah, I mean, this, you know, I appreciate some of the thought behind this, but, you know, it's just back in 2023 where we had a discussion. So, and, you know, at that time, I mean, you know, we, we, we, We had just, in Ward 6, we had just had a pretty big property, a storage thing, and one of the things that really concerned me about that business was sitting here and hearing the businesses Joke about they're in the business of death, displacement, and divorce. And displacement is really about when people get evicted. and I thought, is this the type of businesses we should be really to encourage and expanding? And that was really, you know, hey, we got the new one but I think it is the type of thing of, you know, we are planning to do a master plan and we now do have an economic development committee.

So I think it's the type of thing of these, you know, whether this really fits into the plan for the master plan. Like I am a bit concerned about the one the U-Hauls next to the trail, they're good tenants there. They've helped out with the fridge and stuff like that. But another storage building on, Eastern Avenue is exactly, I think, what we didn't want to see. So, and a bigger one, these are, you know, I think that's the type of thing. We're missing potential. So I really think it's, that's kind of my view. I think maybe, I think it's, we got to think about it a little bit more as a council. So my suggestion was, and I reached out to Councilor Sica maybe having the Economic Development Committee look to make some decision about what we do. I mean, we're trying to get some more tax revenue. So this is, you know, the reality is, is

this is where you know the only things people might be building besides data centers or something like that so so but I would sort of put that to and the Economic Development Committee to weigh what do we do in the short term and what do we hold off. I mean, one part of a master plan is to say there's going to be some different things that are going to happen. so that's really you know just my concern that we are on this track to get high quality commercial development that is more valuable I mean talking about hotels and other type of things that not only generate property tax but generate other things so it's something that That's part of what we didn't want to see Malden become, you know, all this, you know, have the storage places that are getting forced out of Cambridge and Summerville because they're doing great development come here. So it is the type of thing we have to think about. And that's why we voted on. But I want to have the council consider that before we put it on a joint rules and ordinance and planning board committee.

I'd rather have the discussion before dragging the planning board into this. Thank you, Greg.

Thank you, Councillor Winslow. Councillor O'Malley.

Winslow did a pretty good job of highlighting kind of where I'm feeling on this. You know, these are very predatory business models. People put their things in here, as he was stating, death you know, divorce, displacement. And people put their stuff in there thinking that it's going to be temporary and then it gets so onerous and difficult to move their stuff out that it stays there for a long time. and oftentimes people lose stuff because of that because if you miss a month's payment, then they sell your stuff. It's just not the type of business that I think, and I know people who have lost like family heirlooms through this and so it's just not the type of business model that I think we want to have in Malden. It is the lowest and worst use in my opinion. Higher and better uses would be commercial properties that bring jobs, housing, high quality development, and the other thing is like let's say you miss a payment and you want to try to like correct it

they never have anyone there. There's never anyone on site. It's like, if you actually want to try to pay your bill or if you actually want to try to do anything, trying to get ahold of someone is they intentionally make it almost impossible. So I can't support doing this, but I can definitely support having the conversation. I wouldn't want to prevent having this conversation. I just could not support expanding anything like this because I think my hope would be Some of these uses would turn over in the future to something that's actually bringing jobs and real tax revenue to the city of Malden. But I would never stifle the ability to have that conversation.

Thank you, Councilor O'Malley. Councilor Taylor.

Thank you. So I had a chance to discuss this a little bit with Nelson earlier and did some thinking on it as the Chair of Economic Development just to see what made sense and while I'm not okay with more storage units and that being the only business that we have, I do think we really need to take a look at how to manage the businesses that we have and what's coming in and what we're getting for commercial taxes and if there's a way to increase that using this. So I would like to see more. have a conversation with this, whether it goes to ordinance and then to the planning board and that joint committee or at economic development. But I don't think this is something that we want to just shoot down right away without looking at it further.

Thank you, Councillor Taylor.

Councillor Lalonde. Thank you. I look at this maybe a little bit on both sides, not to just be in the middle of the road. And I agree that we don't want more. Storage Units, but both of these companies have been in, they're in our city, they pay taxes, they have large amounts of property, and I feel like if we have the ability to let them expand their business, then I think it needs to be looked at before we say no and then we lose them.

I would love to lose them.

I mean, you would like to, but I think economically right now, we can't afford to lose that tax revenue. Do I think, I have the floor. My point is, we should, I mean, I'm not thrilled to have more storage facilities. but I think we need to keep what we have.

Thank you, Councilor Luong. And I'm sorry, I talked over you as well. Councilor Crowe.

Thank you. And one of the, Businesses had reached out to me, and that's why I asked Nelson about that, if they were business. And I do agree that we don't want, maybe not new ones, but as Mr. Miller just had mentioned it, we can craft it in a way, they are businesses that are already here, that want to do some expansion. Do we limit that in some way? I think we can do that. Maybe we don't want a lot of more big ones, but people that are, we do want to keep these businesses and if we can grow some of their business for a tax base, then we need to at least have those conversations. But just saying absolutely no when, again, we don't want them to be leaving the city and then we'll just have an empty building. It is a conversation to look at to actually try to keep businesses in Malden and growing.

Thank you, Councilor Crowe. Councilor McDonald.

Oh, I have the same flavor of comment on the same thing. I would just say I do think that it is, it's hard to dislodge storage facilities. The whole point is they're a room full of people's stuff. So it's like I don't worry about them leaving. That's the problem actually is it's very difficult to get them to leave because It's an easy business model, and it is somewhat predatory, and it doesn't create jobs, but it does create some taxes. So I just think they're good points. I'm open to the conversation about this. I've made up my mind. I do think, you know, Councilman, was it your point about the U-Haul is a good example of a property that's in a corridor that we are likely targeting for development and I think it's important to not make the problem worse again because it is hard to dislodge a storage facility. And that may be different for other parts of the city where the zoning is different, where the thinking is different about what we hope to see. So yeah, open to the conversation, trying to be fair.

to our businesses here.

Thank you, Councillor McDonald. Councillor Simonelli.

Thank you, Madam President. Listen, you know, I'll be fair. I'll let it go to committee and I'll listen to it. And I feel the same way that Councilor Winslow and several other Councilors, Councilor O'Malley feel about the same thing is that, you know, I just think that once again, you know, Malden always wants to sell itself short because it's the only game in town. You know, I've got, you know, nobody sat and talked to me. I like when the councilors up here sit and talk about like how they get aggravated when other councilors put, Poked their noses into their wards and stuff. It's been like a thing going on for like 100 years. I take it with a grain of salt because, you know, it's good for some but not good for others. Holsters happens to be in my ward. I actually got like three of them. and my ward. So in a short. the corridor of Route 60. So I don't know where they'd be able to expand to.

I mean, they'd have to build up and I don't know if I really want to build up high stories for storage. Facilities. They don't bring any jobs. They got like one person that works one shift, maybe two shifts out of the day. That's about it. So they don't bring any... I mean, it's warehouse rate revenue of tax base that we're bringing in, not the commercial or... Highway Business type of tax base that we're looking to bring in to solve this problem. I don't know how many there are in Melrose, but I know there's not as many as there is in Malden. So, you know, like I said, I'll sit, you know, I'll talk about it because, you know, and I do, you know, I feel for Councilor Sica a little bit because she does have a large car on Broadway, and I think she kind of missed the boat a little bit with the construction, not her fault, but... because of construction that went on over there. That would have probably been a good area over there for a storage facility over there.

But as far as I'm concerned, for my constituents in my neighborhood, I have to fight this thing tooth to nail and say absolutely not. Because my neighborhood don't want it. They've had enough. It brings nothing to the community. And I've been looking at the Route 60 card and I said that For 16 years that I've been in office, I have been talking about Route 60 being the new mecca of businesses, for people to be in, because people want easy access on and access off. All right, they don't want to come to Malden Square no more. I mean, you know, the business that are there, the rest of us, they do okay, but you hear it all the time about parking and inconvenience. So they want, you know, a place like a Route 60 that they can come off and on and be able to do some things. So I'm looking to do some serious development over there and been talking with a lot of people that own a lot of buildings over there. from where the storage unit is across from like where Honeydew is all the way down to the police station.

And we're talking about doing some like, you know, affordable housing, affordable home ownership, multi-dwelling type of lofts, and things like that, which I'd rather see something like that come in than just to have some open space that anybody from any city could come in and just store their stuff there. and brings nothing to the neighborhoods. So, you know, again, you know, I will, you know, I'll be fair and I'll listen to my colleagues and hear what they have to say about it. But like I said, there's no room in my neighborhood for it to go up higher. And I'm gonna tell you something, The gloves are going to start to come off soon because I'm going to start going into other people's neighborhoods where they're having meetings and they have a controversial issue and I'm going to step in on that and see how they feel real soon. So thank you.

President. Thank you.

Can I just respond to that? Don't do it. Don't do it.

No, I'm going to, Councilor Simele. because I am not going into your ward and I apologize if you'd think that I am, but did you hear me mention the old hostess on Easton Ave? and Linehurst Road in Ward 8 on the highway, on Bennett Highway. I never mentioned anything about Route 60.

Yeah.

Hostess is in your ward. I thought it was, my apologies, I thought it was ward five.

Crowe, would you like to speak?

I would. It was, well, because Councilor Simonelli, I would have called you. I, um, Actually, I did reach out to Councilor Taylor because I... You told me it was Councilor Taylor. I thought it was in Ward 5, and I said, you know, it's the hostess, so just to kind of let her know. So if I had known it was in Ward 7... I'm going to call the vote if we don't stop yelling over each other.

We're literally yelling about it.

Go ahead. Refer it to committee. Refer it to committee. Do I make a motion to refer it to ordinance, please?

I got to speak. I want to speak.

All right, let's keep it really brief. Councilor Condon, thank you for your patience.

Oh, thank you. To be honest with you, this conversation is ridiculous. Okay, because the people that brought it up, they are run by like one person, all right? You get no jobs, they draw in rodents, okay? and if you ever had one in your ward, you know what I'm talking about. But just look at the size of that building on Eastern Ave. And try to picture what could be there. and how many jobs it could create. You're being short-sighted, people. You know, you really don't want those kind of businesses in your ward. You're not going to throw them out, but, I mean,

If I have anything to say about it, I know I went through it with Peg at the Obama news and we just didn't want it in the wad, you know, so. and if you do put it in your award, believe me, you'll pay. You will pay the price. Because people do not want it.

Okay, that's all. Thank you, Councilor Condon. Okay, Councilor Colón Hayes, this is going to be our last and final comment.

Thank you. This is going to be quick. Yeah, no problem. I was going to say that I would, just to... and so on. look up where you said the address just to see because if we do talk about like, allowing this, obviously nothing about new ones. Could we have... That's what I was going to say. By special permit, I was just typing that down, you said by special permit, and then maybe if we could make sure that it also... follow certain rules, like maybe an expansion no bigger than blah, blah, blah. Yeah, exactly. So I'm fine with passing that on. I want to hear more about that. And just to make sure that it's not New. I just want to clarify that there, buddy.

Okay, thank you. Okay, so I heard two different proposals, though. Someone had said... Nelson had his hand up. Oh, I'm sorry, Nelson. I didn't see that.

I just wanted to clarify, because from some of the comments I heard, I get the impression that maybe... Everyone feels like I'm a member of the Self Storage Facility Society of America or something like that. I'm just here to answer zoning questions, so. We brought up Melrose. For some reason, I don't know, but I'm not advocating for this. I'm just here to answer questions. That's all.

And we appreciate it.

Motion to refer this to ordinance.

Okay, so I did hear a proposal to send this to Economic Development though. Are we sending this to Ordinance or Economic Development?

I would like to send it to Ordinance.

Okay, do I have a second to send it to Ordinance? Okay. on a motion by Councilor Sica, seconded by Councilor Simonelli to send it to Ordinance Committee. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Is that two people that said no?

I'm actually going to vote no as well. Do we need to re-vote that? Are we good? Winslow, Condon, and Linehan are no. and it's not joint planning, it's just ordinance.

So that would be an 8-3 vote. It was referred to ordinance.

Thank you.

Next order of business. The next paper is 199-26, Committee Report, the Standing Committee on Finance, to whom was referred Paper 160, Series of 2026, having considered the same. make the following report. Committee recommends this paper out favorably to the full council.

Okay, on a motion by Councilor McDonald, seconded by Councilor Taylor to receive the committee report, all in favor? Aye. Committee report is received.

paper 160-26 order that $398,674.25 is appropriated from available water sewer enterprise fund retained earnings to fund principal only debt payments due to the MWRA in May 2026.

Okay, Councilor McDonald for the committee report.

Yes, this is an appropriation to pay the bills that we owe. we have in the past regularly authorized loans and lines of credit from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. They are the ones of course who supply our water. Most of this appropriation is for all kinds of just standard water replacement work that has to happen. And a subset of it is for lead pipe replacement. As folks may remember, we have a specific and a led service line loan that is zero interest in great terms. So there's a portion of this that is led service lines, but that's not the majority. So it's to pay, it's to authorize the payment of the loans that we had already authorized us to take out from the fund. This does not clean out the fund. There's still a few hundred thousand dollars left in the Water Sewer Enterprise Fund.

and so we had a quick and easy discussion about this in the Finance Committee and unanimously recommended approval of this order.

Okay, any questions? I see Councilor O'Malley.

I just wanted to confirm, so this doesn't have to do anything with paying the Tufts situation?

This is not related to the Tufts situation.

But does this replace, so this is a completely separate thing that we would have had, we have to pay regardless?

Yes, that's correct. I mean, we use the earnings from the Water Sewer Enterprise Fund for multiple purposes. This is one we have historically often done, is borrow money at a good rate from the MWRA use it to finance capital improvements and pay it back with the retained earnings in the fund.

And is there a reason why this isn't appropriated during the annual budget but we're doing it mid-year?

There are timings of when these payments are due and also it doesn't impact the city's bottom line. So it's not something that I would expect to need to consider as part of the annual budget. It's not an operating expense.

but we do know when it would come in regularly?

Like these are... You know, we didn't ask that question. I didn't hear anybody ask that question in the finance committee about like, well, when were the invoices incurred? it's been a normal in the course of business kind of appropriation and payment in the past because it's from a restricted fund that is restricted for this purpose. And so there were no concerns about the timing. As I said, it's not an operating expense, it's a one-time. Capital kind of expense to pay back loans we already authorized.

And I appreciate you answering the questions. I think it's just something that we need to start now asking, like, how many times are we expecting to see this payment come in every year. And then I think we should be able to say, OK, if we expect to see it every quarter, then during the annual budget, we should be knowing that we're appropriating the appropriate amount. It could be a cash flow issue. maybe it's that we don't have the money in the water and sewer account when we're doing the annual budget to actually appropriate it that far in advance and we need to wait for people to pay their water rates. That could be the reason why.

My understanding from the controller is that the reason that we don't appropriate is because we don't know how much to pay, and we don't want to give a blanket authorization to pay. We wait until we get the invoices, then we authorize payment of the invoices.

Great. I appreciate you talking me through this.

Okay, thank you, Councilor O'Malley. I'll second. Any other questions? Okay, seeing no other lights, we have a motion by Councilor McDonald, seconded by Councilor Simonelli to adopt the order, and we need a roll call.

Hayes, Condon, Crowe, Linehan, McDonald, O'Malley, Sica, Simonelli, Taylor, Winslow, Council President Linehan. Yes. That order has been adopted by a unanimous vote. Okay, next order of business. Paper 200-26, order that the City Council will vote whether to go into executive session with legal counsel for the city for the purpose of Exemption 3, Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 30A, Section 21A3. for the purpose of discussing strategy as to possible future litigation related to budgetary constraints. With such discussion in open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigation position of the city if so declared by the chair.

and if so allowed by the body to admit Special Assistant to the Mayor Marie Louise, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Ronald Hogan, and the Honorable Mayor Gary Christensen.

Okay, I see a couple of lights. Do we have questions on this? All right, Councilor, oh, I have a lot of lights. Councilor Sica.

Thank you, Council President. So after hearing a bunch of back and forth on this particular agenda item, out of abundance of caution, I am asking that we table this paper until we dot our I's and cross our T's to make sure that the wording of it is appropriate for what we need to do. So I'm making a motion to table executive session for this evening.

Okay, that takes precedence. We can't take discussion, or we can? You can take discussion, but it takes precedence over any other motion. Okay, I'll take Councilor Winslow next.

Yeah, I mean, I just, in addition to that, what Councilor Sica has raised I think we should also think, I mean, the question I would have is to, if we get the language, I would want to know that either there's, some sort of correspondence we've had received related to potential litigation or you know, someone is filing a notice of a lawsuit. You know, the voters just voted against raising taxes. And we really need to make sure we're transparent and Bill Trust and to have maybe the first discussions being in executive session. I don't know if that really sits well. So I'm kind of almost leaning not to have this discussion in executive session. it's something we have to think about.

So that's my concern that we actually need to work with the mayor, our staff through their unions, but we need to make sure that the public has a view of that. Just the situation this city is in, they're looking over our shoulders. And trust is something that came up several times as we were talking about, you know, the mayor being presented and Muhammad presenting trust, building trust. We may need to have these discussions out in the open so people do not think that there's something happening behind the things. So that's just, so that's my comment that it's something that, you know, when this comes back up next week or whatever, we should be able to hear those answers of that. I just, you know, We can make up reasons to try to have these discussions outside of a public session, but we may not want to.

That's an option, and we may not want to as a council. Thank you, Craig.

Thank you, Councilor Winslow. O'Malley.

Yeah, it's a delicate balancing act. You know, what Councilor Winslow is referring to is if we are defending against litigation. It gets a little bit more complicated if we're talking about initiating litigation. I know we've in the past talked about, you know, it's not fair with Chapter 70, should we be suing DESE? Like, is there a proposal to sue the unions? I have no idea what this is about. And I would like to know, going in, at least some basic information so I can prepare. and at least be able to field some questions that people are asking and so I don't know what this is about. It's very broad and obviously we have to be careful what we broadcast but I think there's a way to add a little bit more information so we know roughly what we're going in to talk about, or at least roughly what it has to do with. I'm not saying to air litigation strategy, but I think everyone knows that I don't think we would be upset to sue DESE. That's not a secret. I think DESE knows that. Thank you.

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

Oh, thank you. Yeah, so I had similar questions. I had reached out to the Council President, Clerk, and I was already saying I was gonna vote no to go into executive session just because I don't know what we're talking about. And without more information, I don't know whether or not it deserves to go into executive session. I was told that we have done this in the past, so I'm going to give that up. done this, I can't even say what it was about, but we did go with the past, I almost said it. We did go into executive session with similar wording, but I question that now for the exact reasons that I'm hearing my counselors too. at the time, maybe I thought that was okay. I don't think that's okay now. And so without, our conversations need to be held in public before the public as much as possible. I did second a tabling vote, but I don't know what happened there. We'll take it up after discussion.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Colón Hayes.

Councilor McDonald. I certainly, of course, agree. We need to have budget discussions in public. I don't think this is a budgeting discussion. It's a litigation discussion, and I also don't know what it is, Frankly, I would like to go into executive session to hear what it is the topic. We have a chicken and egg problem. We can't talk about the thing, we can't talk about it, but we can't talk about talking about it either because we're not in executive session. I just want to know what we're talking about. I think if we could go into executive session, then we could talk about it. And then if we were like, we should do this in open session, we could adjourn executive session. and come back and do it in open session. And that would be our judgment. But right now, I feel like we're having an argument with phantoms because we can't go into executive session and hear what it is that the administration wants to bring to our attention. So I'm in favor of at least hearing what the topic is and then deciding if we want to proceed.

We have a tabling motion.

We have a tabling motion, so I will vote against tabling right now because I would like to know what the topic is, and then we, it's not a motion. I can't make a motion because tabling takes precedence. If the tabling motion fails, then we could have the opportunity to hear what the topic is and decide whether we would like to discuss it in executive session. If we table it, I don't know where that leaves us, I guess trying to further get more info. get more info, except that if we can't get more info because it's appropriate for executive session, we will be right back here in a week. So I don't know that rewording, my perspective is rewording this because people are concerned about the docketing of this. If we've already done this before, is it okay if I ask our legal?

Yeah, the language comes from legal, but I'm happy to invite legal to come to the podium.

Can I ask our legal representative to say, do you have any concerns about the docketing of this?

They did docket it.

You did docket it. Has anything changed your judgment about whether this is an appropriately docketed item? Because if the docketing is the problem, yes, we should fix it. but if the issue is we don't know whether this issue is appropriate for executive session, I don't know how we find that out until we go into executive session.

Thank you, Allie. Can you introduce yourself? Yes, I'm Alicia McNeil. I'm the city solicitor. I didn't hear the entire... Discussion, I was in the back, so.

I'm sorry, my question was just, I know that the legal department docketed this issue, since you've docketed it, have you had any concerns about whether we should be revising it or does it still seem properly docketed to you?

It seems properly docketed to me.

Okay, so that's not a thing we can fix because it's not a problem. because it's properly documented. So anyways, that's what I think.

We, Solicitor McNeil, we have a motion on the floor to table this item because the counselors have asked if the description is sufficiently specific enough. And I've explained that this the Clerk and I have received this from the Mayor's office and that this language has undergone review from your office and that it's identical to similar litigation discussions that we've undertaken in the past year when, I mean, I think we've been as specific as we can related to future potential litigation. It's not related to discussing the budget.

Yes, and I've checked with determinations with the Secretary of State and I'm comfortable with the language that we proposed.

And that if we do not discuss, if we convene an executive session to Councilor McDonald's question and we decide that it's information that we would prefer to discuss in open session, may we do that? is that something that we would have to determine once we're in executive session if that's appropriate or not?

I don't actually know the answer to that. Okay. I don't actually know the answer to that.

Okay, that's helpful. We could redock it for next week. Okay. Okay. We have, we actually still have a lot of lights to get through before we can take the vote on the tabling motion. Thank you for answering those. I'm gonna take Councilor Condon.

Thank you, Madam President. Does anybody think that it's right that Revere and Everett should get $20 million more than the city of Malden, Chapter 70? No?

Is this related to the tabling motion?

Well, I'd like to tell you. I'd like to tell you because I don't think it's fair either. And we've talked about the city of Malden getting screwed by those reps and senators up in the State House. And we all know that the formula is messed up. really messed up. But nobody wants to admit it. Nobody wants to point fingers at the higher ups. So, You know, we're gonna just go down a road that if we're not willing to fight or push forward and let people know that it's wrong, and it is wrong, then we get nothing.

So I'm in favor of it any way you want to talk about it because everybody says, yeah, I know the formula's wrong. Well, no one wants to do anything about it. We're the losers.

You really can't say that.

What?

I was asking Councilor Simonelli to keep it down. Are you all set? Yeah. Okay, thank you, Councillor Condon. Councillor O'Malley for the second time.

Yeah, and I agree with Councillor Condon. I want to have that conversation anywhere. And if we're talking about suing DESE, I think we can talk about that out here. Obviously, we shouldn't be talking about litigation strategy specifically, but it's not a secret that the City of Malden is pissed and wants to sue DESE. And so I don't know what we could possibly say that would hurt our litigation strategy. having that conversation in public. And I think it would actually build a lot of trust and a lot of confidence that we're doing something as a city rather than having it behind the scenes. In hindsight, Councillor Sica, I probably won't support the tabling motion, but I would vote not to go into executive session with the hopes of having that conversation here in open session. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor O'Malley. Councilor Simonelli. Hang on one second. You're all set. Okay. Councilor Winslow.

Yeah, no, I just, I don't know if Councilor McNeil heard the questions that I was raising about my kind of confusion about what's here. So, you know, specifically what I asked was, have we received either any correspondence or notice saying that there may be potential litigation against the city because of the and so on. And I think it's important to think about the future litigation due to budget constraints. Has that something, has anybody communicated to your office, the mayor's office, is that why we're meeting? Or is it a proactive thing? I guess that's just, to me, that is the type of thing is this just something we're thinking of or is it something we're having to react to? And what is the likelihood of that happening? I mean, is there actually been a lawsuit filed? I mean, that's the type of thing of, you know, It's speculative. That's the thing that gets me.

So that's... Oh, did you turn your light off? Hang on.

So there has been no communication from my office to anyone. I can't speak for the mayor's office. I guess if you all didn't receive any communication, then there hasn't been any.

Has anybody communicated to you or the mayor, like any union or other entity, communicated a threat of litigation or filed any written thing. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Is this something that we're Anticipating litigation against us?

Are we reacting or initiating?

Are we reacting or are we being proactive? That is what I'm asking.

Let me see if I can answer that question without... We're being proactive, not reactive.

Are you all set? Okay. Okay. I have Councilor Luong, last but not least.

I'm just going to echo what, you know, McDonald, and I think it's not a matter of trust to the public. I think it's in any potential litigation on our part being proactive or reactive. I think as a council we should step out, find out what it's about, decide what we want to do and then come back out. It's not time to be in secret, it's just, I don't think it's a correct what's the word I wanna use? Precedent to set to just to decide if we don't know, I have no idea what we're gonna talk about. So I'd like to go back, find out what we're gonna talk about and then decide should it be for the public's, you know, Let's talk about it in public or not.

Thank you, Councillor Luong. And I'll just say from the chair, this is in an attempt to be respectful of folks repeated requests that we have more executive session and that we are involved in as much decision making process as possible with respect to litigation and that sometimes the language here is necessarily not as descriptive as folks might like but again modeled after many other instances where we've had to just be as specific as we can and you find out more when you get into the session and then that's the intent of the executive session. The Clerk and I, again, not to be repetitive, but went over this many, many times over the weekend, and I'm comfortable with the language as it stands. But we do have a motion to table. That motion was made by Councilor Sica. Do we have a second? Councilor Colón Hayes. So we need to call the roll for that?

On the motion to table. Councilor Colón Hayes? Yes. Yes. Councilor Condon? No. No. Crowe, no, Councilor Luong, no, Councilor McDonald, no, Councilor O'Malley, no, Councilor Sica, yes, Councilor Simonelli, no, Councilor Taylor, no. No. Councilor Winslow? Yes. Yes. Council President Linehan?

No.

No. Okay. So the paper has not been tabled.

Okay, so therefore citing Exemption 3 on Mass General Law, Chapter 30A, Section 21A, wherein discussing paper 200-26 in open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the city's litigating position. I'm looking for a motion to enter executive session. So moved by Councilor Taylor, seconded by Councilor Luong, the Clerk will now call the roll.

Colón Hayes? No. No. Councilor Condon? Yes. Yes. Councilor Crowe? Yes. Yes. Councilor Luong? Yes. Yes. Councilor McDonald? Yes. Yes. Councilor O'Malley? No. No. Councilor Sica? No. No. Councilor Simonelli? Yes. Councilor Taylor? Yes. Yes. Councilor Winslow? No. No. Council President Linehan? Yes. Yes. So the order to enter into executive session has passed.

Okay.

By seven to four vote.

Passes seven to four. So we will enter executive session. Do we want to have personal privilege prior to entering executive session? Okay, I see Councilor Winslow.

Yeah, I'm just going to hand out Maplewood Fest. I have the initial flyer here Saturday, May 16th. So just encouraging people, we have more Crafters that are coming in, and we're going to have a puppy parade, and we're going to have a couple local bands. So just want to spread that word. So I'll hand this out to everybody as we're going into the executive session. Thanks.

Great. Thank you, Councilor Winslow. Councilor O'Malley.

I just want to announce that Saturday, April 18th, and myself. This is something we do annually and it's going to be at 10 a.m. Hopefully the weather will be great. It's rain or shine. Doing park cleanups and planting trees is you know, one of my most favorite things, genuinely, and so we're gonna be doing both. Additionally, I just want to address, earlier in the night there was some talk about rewriting the Chapter 6 portion of our marijuana ordinance, and I just wanted to clarify the reason why Driss was coming up. was because that fifth license, I believe, is the license that is being proposed to be taken away from Driss. So I think the reason why we were talking about that is because it has to do with Driss. And I apologize if I went over the line.

but I, as mentioned, will send everything I can to yourself, legal, and the Clerk. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor O'Malley.

Councilor Taylor. Thank you. Really quickly, April 25th is the citywide yard sale. We have almost 50 people signed up in over three locations. Sorry, over 35 locations. So three of them being multiple people at the Forestdale School, the Beebe School and the ELC. And then at individual cities, individual houses, sorry, it's late. I've got too many words in my head. So we hope that you'll join us between 8 and 2. The coffee cart will be at BB, I believe, between 7.30 and 1. So you can start there, make your way across the city. There'll be lots of great finds. and there is a extensive map and detailed list on Facebook and also will be getting posted and I need to just say that

This is something that I help with, but really it's been my constituent, Marlene Galla, who has put this all together, taken on the brunt of it. She has done an amazing job from starting this last year in Ward 5. I'm so excited to see, go to every location this year and hopefully not come home with more than what I need.

So. Book yourself a donation truck to come pick it up the next day. That's what I'm doing. Well, from the chair, I'll wrap us up. I am so honored to be announcing that our very own Diana Fajardo, our elections administrator from the city clerk's office, is going to be honored at this year's North Shore Hispanic Association. 2026 Americans Making a Difference Gala on April 30th, which Councilor Colón Hayes had updated us on last week. So just a little bit about Dinah. Prior to accepting a full-time position as the elections administrator for the city, She served the voters of Malden for seven years running elections as the precinct warden at the Ferryway School. Last year, Dinah was recipient of the 2025 Latino Excellence Award sponsored by the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus. and she's helped lead the Clerk's Office in earning consecutive A ratings on Malden's Bilingual Voting Rights Report Card in both 2024 and 2025's election cycles.

Dinah is an essential member of our Clerk's team, and I am so happy to take this opportunity to highlight the great work that she does for Malden's constituency. So with that, the council will now enter into executive session and the body will not reconvene for any further business this evening. So we will adjourn directly from executive session. Thank you and good evening.

Okay, so we are at 8.54 PM.