Malden City Council 9-2-25

Bye.

Okay, it's seven oh six. 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. I'd like to do two additional moments of silence tonight. Firstly, our city solicitor, Alicia McNeil's father, Oscar McNeil, who was a World War II veteran, passed away this weekend at the incredible age of 101. Ali, we're keeping you in our thoughts at this time of grieving. I would ask for a moment of silence in his memory. And secondly, I know I'm going to have a little trouble getting through this one. Um, I didn't have the pleasure of knowing this person, but anytime a young person from our community passes, it's incredibly tough. And I see a huge crowd here, um, on this person's behalf, a young woman named Rena Santeo, a Malden high school graduate from the class of 2002 died unexpectedly last week while living in Texas, where she was in school at the age of just 21. Rena was born and raised in Malden, attended the Forestdale School and Malden High School and had served as a Navy medic for two years before an honorable discharge and was pursuing a degree in science before her passing. Rena maintained close ties to Malden and I did have the opportunity to speak with a parent of one of her childhood best friends who shared with me a bit of her personality and the enormous loss that they are of course all feeling right now. Ren is being remembered as someone who was the glue of their childhood friend group, someone who loved others deeply and worked hard to keep their friendship ties close. She was a gifted athlete who grew up playing Malden soccer and went on to play for Malden High's varsity teams, who was also a musician and played in the high school band and in the choir. I know so many of her friends and family are not only here tonight but watching from afar. I just want to extend our sincerest condolences to all of you and for anyone who would like to attend the services for Rena. Visiting hours are going to be Sunday this Sunday, September 7th from two to five at O'Donnell Funeral Home in Peabody, with the funeral being held the following day at 11 a.m. from the same location. So if you would please a moment of silence in her memory. Thank you very much. And the clerk will now call the roll.

Councilor Cologne-Hayes? Here. Councilor Condon? Here. Councilor Crowe? Here. Councilor McDonald? Here. Councilor O'Malley? Present. Councilor Siga? Here. Councilor Simonelli? Here. Councilor Spadafora? Here. Councilor Taylor? Here. Councilor Winslow? Here. Councilor President Linehan?

Here. Okay, thank you. Okay, under the provisions of the open meeting law for those of you in attendance, Please be informed that Urban Media Arts, UMA, will be recording this evening's meeting. So just to be aware, there will be audio and video recordings of this meeting. First order of business.

Cemetery Superintendent and Tree Warden, Chris Rosa, will appear before the council with a status update on recent projects, as well as the new Tree Steward Program that will soon be rolled out for residents citywide.

Welcome.

Hi, good evening, councils. I don't know where to start first. I guess we'll start with the tree steward program. So everybody has a package in front of them. One book, the top one, is something we put together last year, but I thought you guys should have a copy of it. So that's kind of our tree planting and guidelines book that includes tree protection in parks, public sidewalks, things like that. The second book you have is one that I just completed. It's still in a draft form. I'm just waiting for input from two state agencies that want to adopt it as their Tree Steward training program. Took me about eight months to write it, and it was all through a Cool Corridors grant that we received last year. And some of that money actually went to purchase some cool t-shirts too, like the one I'm wearing. The one I gave each of you, if the sizes don't match, let me know and I'll get you another one. But the idea behind the Tree Steward Program is a lot of the grants that we apply for require some kind of community engagement. And I figured this was the best way to help us in the city. So we're gonna open the enrollment for people to sign up if they'd like. There is gonna be a minimum commitment of at least eight hours a week. We just don't want people getting a free t-shirt running around the city, so we do require some kind of commitment. They're going to have the training manual, which will teach them just about everything they need to know for the basics of trees, and then they're going to help us. They're going to be my eyes on the ground, show me where trees may be stressed, diseased, dying, weeding tree pits, which I know is popular on SeeClickFix, help out with the watering. I already have some volunteers that say, I've got four trees that were just planted on my street. I'd love to water them. So that's the idea behind the Tree Steward Program and to get more people involved and let them learn the benefits of planting trees. The past three years is when I started keeping count. We've planted almost 800 new shade trees. About two thirds of that are public shade trees and the last third is private. There's some misconception out there that I plant them all myself I do not I rely on the DPW the water department helps plant trees cemetery contractors Volunteers Mystic River watershed, so it's really a collaborative effort all the way around So in the past two and a half years I've received I've applied and received a six hundred and sixty five thousand dollars worth of tree grants. So we really haven't paid for trees or care in about two and a half years, which is which is great. We have four hundred thousand pending right now for two grants that I wrote in June just waiting on the federal disbursement of those. I'm not sure how much we're going to get. I'm confident we're going to get at least half and that grant Believe it or not, it's already spent. I plan on handling the ash borer problem on Commercial Street, so we can get those down and get them replanted. I also received a $475,000 CPC grant. I don't know if any of you have had a chance to get by the Forestdale Cemetery, but we planned on that 475 being used just to repoint the entire wall on Forest Street. Bids came in, much to my surprise, in my favor. So we were able to do all of Forest Street, the main street side, the two crypts inside, and two inner walls. And we still ended up about $30,000 under budget. So that was a huge success. The cemetery, I'm sure a lot of you know that we're a level one arboretum, registered through the Morton Arboretum. Found out about an hour before I got here that my paperwork was processed and we are now a level two arboretum. We're one of the top 10 in the state and as a level two we joined UMass Lowell, Northeastern University, and Peabody Essex Museum Arboretum. So that was good news. We also, last month, achieved a certified wildlife habitat to the National Wildlife Federation for the cemetery. I'll digress to something I've been working on on weekends, helping Councilor Linehan and Councilor Spadafora with Felsmere Pond. We've had a fishing issue there. So we've removed a lot of the line from trees with the help of wildlife rehabber Linda Amato and Mary Ann Neville. And the councilors have been Very gracious to allow us to roam the park and do what we have to do. We have new signage that's going to go up along with polyfilament stations where people can recycle the line and the hooks instead of leaving them all around the park. I know that Councilor Linehan and Councilor Spadafora saw my post on Facebook about the wildlife habitat and reached out to me and asked me if we could do something for Felsmere Pond. So proud to say that as of two days ago, Felsmere Pond is a wildlife habitat as well.

I will.

Doesn't go to the house, goes to the pond. And just some other things about trees that you may or may not be aware of. When I first became the tree warden almost three years ago, we signed our first vegetation management plan ever with National Grid. So we continue to sign that every year, which gives us control of how they can prune our trees and when and how much. We did identify the emerald ash borer situation, which I personally went and looked at 304 ash trees through the city. Unfortunately, all but 13 of those are too far gone. But the 13 that we were able to treat successfully, it's year three, they're still healthy, are at Bell Rock Park. So thanks to Council Crowe for letting me do that. We purchased our first tree care and watering truck, which was a $100,000 earmark that I received. So that's being put to good use by the DPW. We just celebrated our 10th consecutive year of Tree City USA and our second consecutive growth award. And Arbor Day Foundation and Tree City USA came to Malden High School in June for the first time in Malden's history where every municipality in the state was invited to come and grab their awards and listen to me bore them with a speech. Other than that, we're working on a new ordinance that I hope to have in front of the council soon. And I'm still working on our second pocket forest, which will go in Ward 8 into Council Seekers Ward. That's been a little tougher than Goodwin Ave, because I've got some hoops to jump through, because it's not our land, it's state land. But I expect that to be settled soon. And that's really all I have. So if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I do see a lot of lights on. Unfortunately, they're not blinking. It seems like everybody's able to put their lights, or put their mics on. So I do see the order that everybody came up, but I'm just gonna ask folks to be really careful with side conversations because your mics are all live. So if we could just make sure to keep mics up. Yeah, or you can turn it off and re-enter the queue, but I had Councilor Simonelli first.

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Rosa, I just want to say that, you know, I think you've been doing a fantastic job with both at the cemetery and being the arborist for the city. Malton's a big city, and it's a big undertaking doing what you're doing, because people don't realize that you just can't take down a perfectly healthy tree, as much as it might be ugly to them, and as much as they may not like it. People don't understand sometimes, it's funny because We've come from a time back in the 70s and 80s when people didn't want a tree in front of their house. And now people do want trees in front of their house. And then there's some people that don't want a tree in front of their house because they think that this tree somehow is going to grow like Jack and the Beanstalk overnight and cause all kinds of problems to their gutters. And I try and tell them, or you try and tell them that by the time that happens, your grandchildren, We'll be old, old enough to be owning this house. So I appreciate all the work that you do. Every time I call you, you come out and take care of the issues with the constituents when it comes to the tree stuff. And there's a lot of work that goes behind it. You gotta put it out there to be, not bid, but have a public meeting for a couple of weeks, and you gotta keep track of that. on top of doing all the tree plan that you're doing. I mean, you can see it in my neighborhood. So I appreciate all the stuff that you do. It's a lot of work, and this is very impressive with this book. I don't know how you found time to do all that, but you did, and it looks good. So keep up the good work. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you, Council. Ward 7 keeps me busy. I'm sure it does, yeah.

Thank you, Councillor Simonelli. Councillor Condon.

Thank you, Madam President.

I'm going to turn others off. I've got a written down queue here. I'm going to turn folks back on when your turn is back up, if that's okay, just to keep the feedback down.

Chris, last year, I know it was a good year for trees, but out of all the trees you planted, how many about?

Last year, 668, if I remember right. And that includes Dever? That included Dever, correct. How many you figure we lost? So this year was an abnormal year. We had a 98% success rate. This year was a little tougher. A lot of road salt, the drought. I'd say we lost about 6%. So maybe 40.

6%. Yeah. I think that's a tremendous job. to do that because years past seemed like we really lose them all. But I was there when you're in that class at Denver, teaching those guys how to plant the trees right, strapping them in and the whole thing, you know, so you deserve to be commended. And I thank you particularly. I know I got a lot of trees down in Denver, but I went a lot of years without trees, so. They all went to Ward four. Thank you.

You're welcome, council.

Thank you, Councillor Condon. Councillor O'Malley.

Thank you, Mr. Rosa. You've done an amazing job as tree warden and superintendent. I know it's a hard job and I just want to say thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

I also want to give credit where credit's due. You know, I know a long time ago, the former Ward three Councillor John Matheson was instrumental in getting our designation as a Tree City USA. But I do have to say that where you've taken it since that time is leaps and bounds. And I'm just so happy that you are our tree warden and that you really care about the tree canopy in our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Just a note on that too is Mr. Matheson was instrumental in that. The first five or six years for Tree City USA, they based it on a per capita spending. And the minimum is $2.50 per capita to be considered. So for the first six years, we were right around that 250, 260, 270 mark. Last year was the highest ever with almost $13 per capita.

Wow.

So it's worked.

Great. Thank you, Councillor O'Malley. I'm going to go to Councillor Taylor next.

Thank you. I just really want to say I'm very grateful that you came tonight and went over all of this. I think it's important to recognize our department heads and the people in our city who put so much time and effort above and beyond into making this city what it is and where it's going. And I really appreciate all that you do and how you've worked with the councilors, with the community to just make Malden what it is, which I think is a pretty great place. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Taylor. Councillor McDonald.

Thank you so much. Chris, I just have to say you are such a gem and an asset to this city. And I'm and I'm really grateful to hear this update. In addition to trees raising property values and just being really beautiful to look at, I think it's important for the public to understand that that increasing our tree plantings like we've been doing, like you've been leading us to do, is a key part of our climate resilience and climate mitigation strategy. It cleans our air. It helps us lower the heat island effects and the temperatures. that are really concentrated in certain parts of the city. And so I just wanna recognize how like strategic and long-term this is in addition to, you know, being popular and that you do this in a way that really brings people along. So that's why I love seeing this Tree Steward program. I feel like I'm going to have to actually read all of these books that you gave me in order to wear the shirt with integrity.

And you can click the button later.

That's right. I did have a question. Do you have, I mean, do you have a picture in your mind of the tree city that you'd like to see in the future that we are working towards? Or I know we're just doing the, you know, as much as we can, every time we have the opportunity, um, you're really good at finding those opportunities, but is there a, is there a bigger vision that you have for what is possible in Malden as we really begin to set the pace here for other cities and towns?

Yes. So, so right now we have about 16% canopy coverage throughout the city. So the goal is to get to 40. Wow. That's really where we should be. But my ideal vision is, and I think you've been in the cemetery, but we did install the first permeable pavement road in the city of Malden. We used Forestdale as a test section. So if you drive down that road and you see the permeable pavements that, like you just said, conform with our climate action plan, reduce the heat island effect, recharge the groundwater. And the trees that we planted along that, that's really what I'd love every street to look like eventually. I don't think I'll make it to see that, but I'll try.

Well, I really appreciate that, and I think I'm all for seeing how far we can get in that direction, because I think that's a great innovation. So thank you so much, Chris.

Thank you, Councilor.

Thank you, Councilor McDonald. Councilor Colón Hayes. Thank you very much.

I'll keep it short, but I do want to tell you how great you are, and way back when you used to work at a landscaping company here in Malden many years ago and how great you were then. And just to see what you've done here in the city is amazing. I cannot wait to go home. I know that sounds really like nerdy, but I can't wait to read these books. Thank you so much for giving them to us. And I know my husband who's like a birdwatcher and goes walking in the cemetery and the fells, but he's gonna be very excited to see that. So thank you so much for everything that you do for this city.

Thank you. I'll email you a quiz. for when you're done.

Thank you. And I just wanted to say from the chair, I wanted to give a perspective for folks watching. As someone who's been here about six years, just the difference as a counselor, especially a ward counselor, of when I came in, if you wanted to get a tree, it could take months, if not years. You had to source the funds. I certainly am not an arborist, have no expertise in what is an appropriate breed, location, really anything. And finding the location and finding the right just funding and timeline for planting. It was not something that I was frankly really overwhelmed and wanted to try to meet that need for residents who wanted them, but it was not something that I felt like should be up toward counselors. And so the difference of my first year or two trying to meet that need versus when you joined and when you have had this vision and strategy and bringing in the grant funding that you brought in and seeing the difference it makes and seeing that baked into the street paving process and work that you do so that it's not only off our plates but that we can tell residents someone knows what they're talking about and if you know you're worried about it being under a power line or growing roots where they shouldn't grow being able to have you come meet with them talk on the phone and explain no we really are doing this in a strategic way and there's someone who has deep expertise and can explain to you why a certain breed or type has been selected the change and the shift in their confidence in the city's approach to tree planting and just our entire strategy, the world of difference that that makes and how residents trust is in us and also just the burden that's off of counselors to have to come up with that strategy ourselves. I know there's been a lot of groundwork laid over many years to get to the point where we're able to bring you in to be able to do that work. But from my perspective, it is just a night and day different. And the reaction that I get from residents is It's just amazing. There's just so much more trust and belief in what we're doing as a city. And having gone through this in my ward with some entire neighborhoods that went through the wholesale, you know, gas line replacement, water line, then street rebuilding, sidewalk rebuilding, and then to get to the planting and they see that there's this wholesale vision and that it culminates in climate sustainability approaches, that there's a reason that we want to put trees in, that it's going to save folks on their utilities, that it makes the street more livable. and that there's this really this full package approach. It is a complete world of difference to how folks feel about their city. So I just wanted to share that as a ward councilor who deals with the calls from the residents. And it really is, you know, to Councilor Simonelli's point, it's very rare that people call and say, I don't want a tree anymore. Or if they do and we're able to get them on the phone with you and you explain well, it's gonna keep your house cooler or it cleans the air. Sometimes you can actually change someone's mind and that's a pretty cool thing to have that conversation with folks. And that's before you get to all the pool work that we're doing at the pond. So I just really wanna elevate that so folks understand it and can appreciate it. And I did also wanna just give some kudos to our Girl Scouts who helped to build the fishing line recycling stuff. 100%, you got it over the finish line and we wouldn't be where we are without you going out on the weekends and building those. But I know that it was something that our little Girl Scouts helped to get started. So I want to give them a shout out and also just really thank the clerk's office for helping us to do the translations for those signs too, because we want to be inclusive with our signage. That is something that I get a ton of questions about. Are we going to make sure that our signs are understandable for our whole community? And Ana was fantastic, not just translating it, but making suggestions for how we could use graphics that were more culturally competent, and just use images that helped Chris and I to understand how to make those signs the best they could be. So we're getting somewhere with some of those elements of the master plan at Felsmere Pond. And trees are part of that. And I think when you start with, OK, we have fishing lines stuck in trees, but what more can we do? That was really the launching off point to do so much more work. So I want to thank you for that big vision that you bring to everything, because it helped what can be a very overwhelming property to manage in Ward 3. to be something I felt like we could tackle in bite-sized chunks and not feel like, oh my gosh, how are we going to do all this? How are we going to address all the problems that are there and make residents feel confident that we can start to make some headway there? So thank you.

Thank you. I do have help, though. My fiance's out there with me every weekend.

Believe me, I know it.

The Nevels are with me every weekend, so I don't want to take all the credit. But yeah, we do what we can.

Well, thank you. You're welcome. Yeah. Councillor Spadafora.

So the first question is, I think you're going to stop calling her fiance and settle that, you know.

She won't commit. We'll talk later.

You know, I think all the council said it much better than I would say. But, you know, you read now that trees and vegetation is just as important as any Utility that the city has right in terms of the importance of it in the environment and you know Psychologically and things like that, you know, they call it green infrastructure and it's believable, right? They tell you go take a walk in nature and you kind of decompress and it works I also remember my first couple months as a council was the worst experience I ever did is I had one resident called me up and say take the tree down and I Was able to take the tree down and then three other residents or the other side got mad cuz I took the tree down so you can't win But I think that like constantly and said you don't see that as often not just because you helped We're also planting the right trees, right? In the past, we were just planting. I think maybe what maybe was just the cheapest or what was there before. And it was growing, you know, every which way to Sunday. And it wasn't the proper tree for the environment. I think you've come along and you've changed that, that that's just as important of planting a tree as planting the right tree, especially in the urban environment. So I think that's a big part of it. A lot of help has gone into this. And like you said, it's been a long, long time cover, but I think you've just taken program to another step you can see it's a passion of yours uh you're always out there doing things and uh it's great to have some of your talent in the city uh i've known you for a long time uh the one thing i want to ask is the tree plantings that you mentioned the 668 i think you said does that include the dcr it does it does it does has that been successful meaning didn't we have like a million dollars that we could use for the there was a number right a cap that we could use.

No, we don't. There's no number of budget. They committed to be here for three years and plant approximately 2500 trees. Now that is changed because when they first got here, really The only ward they were planting in was Ward 7 and the outskirts of 6 and 1 because those were the environmental justice areas. Okay. DCR and EEA have redone the maps. So now Malden is all environmental justice except for a couple of streets up near the hospital. So they've expanded.

I don't know. I had to use twice.

Yes, you get trees twice. So it's expanded. So now I think they've already been here three years. I honestly think they'll be here at least another four, and they will double that tree amount.

And is that program, this is the one where they'll plant it on private property, right? Correct. And they'll come and water it. It was good to see the truck the other day from DCI, because I haven't seen that in a while. I did have some neighbors, and I called you in a couple that wanted those trees, which they could water themselves. I mean, I know that, but they...

So DCR waters their trees, DPW waters the trees that we plant. Correct.

So is that so that program still out there? It is. So for the audience and maybe the council, how does if a resident wants a tree Planted in their property, how do they access that?

They can go to massurbancanopy.org, and there's a contact number for Malden. Or they can reach out to me, and I have Anna Nanchati's number. She's the Malden Forester, and I can pass that out as well.

And they'd probably plant in the spring. They wouldn't plant now, right?

They're going to be doing a fall planting. This fall, though, I've kind of committed them to planting more public shade trees. Some of the grants I got, I opened- 160 new tree pits throughout the city, so they're going to try to plant those 160 pits that I opened this fall.

Well, I think it's great work, and you can see, well, we might not all see when it comes to fruition what the city looks like when you get the 40% mark, but I think if you go down certain streets in the community that's got older trees, you can really appreciate it. Even the Fellsway, you have all those sycamores, and you really appreciate it, especially come now, you get to see all those leaves fall, but you can tell the difference of A street that doesn't have any tree canopy and how it looks average versus the majestic of, I think, the fouls when you go down there. So great work. Thank you. And I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Spadafora. Councilor Crowe. Hang on, not working.

There we go. Thank you, Madam President. And I echo the kudos of all the work that you have done. I really do appreciate how much time and effort you've put into Bell Rock Park. you know, really mature trees that we could have lost would have just been really devastating. And I know that Commercial Street is we're going to have no trees on that because they're all have the ash borer. But one of the things I wanted to ask about in doing all these grants is fantastic. It is a lot of work. But as even as wood counselors or every counselor, when you're working with some developers, you mean like sometimes you ask for a crosswalk, you ask for something else. And a lot of times we've been asked to add some trees because it might be taking down a tree or doing something else. So is there a mechanism, and I think the ordinance that you're talking about, some people that aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. Yes. If there is a mechanism to ensure that sort of any of those funds. So if I develop or I have them do some trees, we know how much the trees might be. But I don't need the trees right now because it's not the right time to plant the trees. Is there a mechanism to sort of make sure to kind of help support the city in the grants that you're writing?

Excuse me, there is. So that's going to be in the new ordinance. One of the biggest issues we have with trees is construction around trees. Whether it's water contractors, utility contractors, road contractors, nobody really pays attention. They just put the machine in. rip the roots and that's the biggest problem with our trees. So with that and new developments, the new ordinance actually lays out fines and replacement values. So our ordinance that exists now, the biggest penalty is $500, but that doesn't really do much considering a new tree nowadays is about $500. So it's gonna go by, the size of the tree. So for an example, a 30 inch diameter tree, if you were to damage it, kill it, cut it down illegally, the mitigation values on that are about $25,000 and replacement trees per caliper inch. So I mean, most cities are doing this. I actually did the mitigation values with a friend of mine in North Hampton. He has a double mine. I thought that was a little harsh, but we can expand that over time. But I think the first person that does it has to pay $25,000 for a tree. I don't think they'll ever do it again. And we have issued those fines.

Wow. Just to make sure that those funds do go into really the replanting and

And that's something I'll talk to the controller about. I'm sure that's all going to be part of the ordinance process.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Councillor Crowe. Councillor Winslow.

Yeah, Chris, I mean, this is amazing. I think it's funny on the east side of town, there's Maplewood and Linden because when those areas were being developed, trees were really part of the selling point. And I think really until about the 1930s when the hurricane of 38, you look at the old pictures of Maplewood and Linden of just how extensive the canopy was and how dense it was. And in some ways it never quite recovered after that. And then you had, I call it the car talk area. One day I was listening to car talk on BUR and someone called in from Malden and they said, oh, Malden, that's Medford without any trees. So we went through that as kind of the lowest. So I think now we are in the Chris Rosa era where we are recovering. It's so great to see all the different ways we're doing that. And I think what I want to see and hopefully we will see in 2030 what we saw in the 1930s of a full canopy in Maplewood and across the city. So really great to know that that we're working towards that. And I know the residents in Maplewood area are very appreciative of what we've done already and looking forward to more and looking forward to the ordinance and working with you on that. So thank you. Thank you.

And I just to say, I don't think it's the Chris Rose or I think it's just it's just the way we're doing things now. I mean, in most municipalities and it's been this way forever is the DPW director was always the tree ward. So it was just another job and it wasn't their fault. They just didn't have the experience. And we never learned our lesson. We lost our all our own to Dutch Elm. And then we planted all these Norway maples that became invasive. And then we planted all these ash. So it's more of just diversity. Something like Commercial Street, where you have 105 ash. If you get an insect or a disease, they're all gone. So the new plan is five oak, five maple, five tulip, and just really make it diverse. So in the future, if we do get a disease or an insect that hits us hard, we lose five trees and not 105. So that's one of the big differences.

Yeah, it is that thoughtfulness and realizing that Trees are part of our public infrastructure, and we have to respect that and do that. So it's great to have your expertise and that vision that will create that. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, seeing no other lights, I want to thank you so much for coming. This was fantastic.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Okay, our next order of business is public comment. Public comment is allowed under council rules. Each speaker is limited to subject matter that's relevant to the evening's agenda and folks must keep their comments to two minutes or less. Clerk, do we have anybody signed up for public comment?

I believe we have one person signed up for public comment. Okay.

Perfect.

My name is Lauren McGillicuddy. I am the clerk of the Friends of Felsmer Heights, and I'm here to speak about paper number 344-25. And the first thing I have to do, unfortunately, is to speak about the demise of a beloved tree. The tree, the evergreen tree at the corner of Hospital Road and Murray Hill Road, which was taken down unannounced as part of preliminary work for the road changes, which are under review in this paper, before anybody had approved them, and without notice to anybody, and which was very beloved by the people of the neighborhood, we got probably six, eight, 10 people calling us saying, why is the tree coming down? And I know, Amanda, you heard about it as well. And what's disturbing about it is it's kind of indicative of the communication process that's been happening recently, not throughout, but recently. This paper, which is about changing the new takings and changing the width in various places of Hospital Road, was first proposed to be heard at the emergency meeting that you guys were going to have last week. I think I saw it on the agenda then. In any case, it came up here right after Labor Day, and the first comment from people in my community, Friends of Philsmere Heights was, why are they doing this like this? Why is it happening under the table like this? Why is it, what's happening here? If there's one thing that people care about even more than trees, it's the roads they drive on. And changes to the roads need to be made in a, need to be communicated in a collaborative manner. I've had questions about why is this happening when they've already repaved Hospital Road? I've had questions about how is this going to change the traffic pattern in Hospital Road? I've had questions about why is preliminary work being done when it hasn't been formally reviewed by the traffic planner? I'm not saying that this is a bad thing to do. I'm saying that the way it's been communicated to us, citizens of the city and even to the city council is not appropriate and needs to change. That's what that's it. Thank you.

Do we have any comments received via email? No, we don't. Okay. Seeing no other public comment. We will move on to our next order of business, which is the consent agenda. So this evening's consent agenda consists of meeting minutes to be approved, one appointment to be placed on file, four appointments to be confirmed, and two papers being referred to a joint session of ordinance and finance. Does any counselor have a desire to remove any of these items from the consent agenda for the purpose of further discussion?

Where is 344 25 going the one that was just discussed Oh The hospital road that's not part of the consent agenda.

Thank you Okay, so Hearing none. We have a motion to approve the consent agenda from councillor Sika seconded by councillor Simonelli all in favor aye aye Oh, I'm so sorry. We need a roll call for the consent.

Only because there's appointments on it. Thank you. Okay, so the clerk will call the roll. To approve the consent agenda. Councilor Colón Hayes? Yes. Councilor Condon? Yes. Councilor Crowe?

Yes.

Councilor McDonald? Yes. Councilor O'Malley?

Yes.

Councilor Siga?

Yes.

Councilor Simonelli? Yes. Councilor Spadafora? Yes. Councilor Taylor? Yes. Councilor Winslow? Yes. Councilor President Linehan?

Yes. Okay, thank you. Okay, the consent agenda is approved. So the next order of business is motions, orders, and resolutions.

Paper 342-25, order that the city submits to the Massachusetts legislature for passage an act increasing the maximum age requirement for retired police officers for appointment as special police officers in the city of Malden. And we do have Chief Cronin here with us tonight to answer any questions the council might have.

As a point of order, do I need to vacate the chair, even though this is a paper from the mayor's office? Am I good to stay?

Okay. Just introducing it, right? Okay.

Thank you to the chief. Thank you to the chief for coming. So just to briefly introduce, so this is a paper that would essentially increase the age for special officers, which is really what we're calling detail officers, right? And so you can tell us a little bit more about it, but essentially this would allow us to have a little bit more flexibility and open up the pool to have more detail officers available. No cost to the city. Why don't I just turn it over to you to go over a few of the bullet points?

Absolutely. Thank you very much. So just a little background on this. Back in 2018, many of you here in this council now voted unanimously to allow retired officers to perform details after they get sworn in as specials. This is something that happens across the state, so it's not anything that's local here. You did that back then. For whatever reason, we capped it at 65. Fast forward every year, we're doing more and more details in the city of Malden. My pool is getting smaller and smaller of offices to fill those details. So that becomes a public safety concern for myself as well as the community. So by pushing the age from 65 to 70 for retired officers, it just simply increases my pool of office available for details. There's other benefits. By doing this, you have more of a police presence across the city. by the city at all. The officers pay for their own equipment. They pay for their gun, their radio, their badge, their uniform. The training is free through the state. They have to train twice a year. They have to qualify through the post standards. They have to have a medical examination every year. So there's a lot that they put into it, but no cost to the city on that. These officers are experienced. They have a lifetime of experience for the city of Malden. These are just Malden police officers. They understand the culture of this community, which I think is critically important when they're out there doing their job. Not that there's any financial consideration in my opinion, this is strictly a public safety matter. But right now we do about $5 million a year in details in the city of Malvern. The city realizes 10% of that, so that's about $500,000 a year that the city receives. without really making any investment in that. So not that that's a consideration, but it is a benefit that we do have. And last and not least, last year this council passed a whole new petition to eliminate the upper age limit for civil service for new hires. This is in line with that. Right now I have, for example, a 51 year old candidate who's a good candidate, he's in great shape. If he passes everything, he'll get on the job and that gives him about ten years and he'll have to retire at 65. But it will also give him an additional four years, because the month he turns 70, he would have to retire. So those are the bullet points.

Great. Well, I see a bunch of lights. Again, I'm just going to remind folks just to be careful with the microphones. If we start to get feedback, I'm going to shut folks off and then turn them back on again in turn. But I have Councillor Simonelli first.

Thank you, Madam President. Chief, thank you for being proactive on this and coming forward. And I know that you and I have talked over the summertime and even before that, and we've had a couple of incidences in my neighborhood. Nothing big to talk about, but you guys handle it terrifically, very brilliant. It's quite the situation. So now, the thing that's there, we can move it to another place now, because everything seems to be working out. So anyway, real quick, we had talked about this. And I used to be a Mass Criminal Justice Training Instructor for Mass Criminal Justice Training Council. And 40-hour in-service training is something that these guys need to do and continue to do. And I think that it's something that the city needs. I think all the cities in the state of Mass need. You know, a lot of young kids today aren't actually taking the police exam, so we're really getting short on police officers, especially police officers that already know the job, you know, know how to deal with people, because that's something you just don't learn over 21 weeks of an academy. So I just think, you know, I take my hat off to you for, you know, Going forward like I told you before I go out at night. Sometimes I can't sleep. I see you guys all around at night time So I appreciate it and I just think this is an excellent idea and it keeps people working 51 I'm gonna have to try that that's what I haven't done yet. Just become a police officer. I'm gonna have to try that one Let me know. Thank you chief.

I appreciate absolutely Thank You counsel Thank You councillor Simonelli Councillor Spadafora.

Thank you. Thank you madam president First I support it. I do have a couple quick questions. You said you The maximum age, so is there a cutoff age that they can no longer do it?

Yeah, absolutely. At 70 years old, you can no longer do it. Okay, so that's 70? The month you turn 70, you're all done.

So I don't mean to throw a curveball at you, and I know you said there's no financial implication for the city, but what happens if one of these detail offices gets hurt in the job?

It's already covered by the state. We've done it with the retired officers that are working now. It's off our books? financial obligation on the city whatsoever. The city is protected from that. I think it's Master Interlock. It's not Chapter 32.

So the state covers it?

No. They're kind of on their own. They're on their own? Yes. Okay. Yes. They have health insurance and that's what we have to use.

Understood. Okay. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate it. That's all I have.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Spadafora. Councillor Condon.

Thank you, Madam President. It's a win-win for everybody. You know, it was good news. You know, you explained it to me briefly, and I look at it's going to give us more visibility. They're going to be in uniform and travel in the streets, you know, maybe slow some of these lunatics down.

Yeah. Yeah, you have that, Counselor. I can give you an example of detailed officers on Pearl Street about five years ago ended up Arresting a murderer who come running down the street with blood all over them. And they just happen to be there doing a detail. So they're often in areas where something's going on and they just happen to be in position. So otherwise, we wouldn't have them out there. That would be a detail that went unfilled.

I think we should bring them back because few of the neighbors like to murder some of these guys that are going 50 miles an hour down Pearl Street. No, I get that. But just seeing the police officers out there is gonna be a big plus for us. Absolutely.

Yeah. Thank you, Councillor Condon. Councillor Crowe.

Thank you, Madam President. I just had a question, why the 70 cut off? So do we have to put an age on it?

But you can- We could have 70 years to cut off the state law. We could have done that when we did this initially, but we just said, let's go with 65. Because all police officers have to retire at 65. Okay. Full time police officers.

I was just wondering why that number. I know a lot of older people would be great.

Yeah, absolutely. A lot of cities and towns around us have done this, most recently Cambridge and Somerville. Okay. All right, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councillor Crowe. Councillor McDonald.

Thank you so much. Good to see you as always, Chief. My question was just a narrow one. I have no opposition to this paper, but I am aware that in Massachusetts that local cities and towns can adopt road flagger programs. And if we're having a shortage in details, I mean, I'm aware that that can be a significant amount of hours when we're also struggling with other kinds of shortages and needs. Have we looked at a road flagger kind of alternative certification for other staff, or is that possible?

At one point years ago, counsel, I don't know if you were here yet, but that was an issue when the state was trying to push it on cities and towns, and I believe it was a city ordinance. It's a violation. And if a flag person was hired, there would also be a police officer hired to stand beside the flagger. I'm sorry, say that last part again. If a company said, we're not going to go by city ordinance, and we're going to put a flag person there. The ordinance requires that a police officer goes there, too. So it would be a tremendous waste of money. That's Malden City ordinance? Yeah, it's an ordinance, I believe. I believe. I'd have to look into that a little further. I will take a look at that. Absolutely. But when you do that, you're losing some benefits. They don't have arrest power. Technically, they don't really have the right to stop traffic. When you stop traffic, it's a Fourth Amendment. It's a seizure. You've got a civilian. who doesn't have any of the rest powers or anything like that can't really stop out. A person can drive right around them. There's not really much you can do about it. A police officer can write a citation. A police officer can stop that car. So I don't think there's any benefit of getting flag men hiring retired police officers. We have plenty of them that could fill that void once we do that.

So thank you for that. I'm sorry. Forgive this question. Are parking and road flaggers who like help kids get to school, are they not able to stop traffic?

The crossing guards, they do stop traffic. But I think they have a special right to do that as crossing guards. They're trained to do that. Where they get their authority, I'd have to look at it, but- Just relying on charisma to- Yeah, no, no, totally, totally. But I don't know if there are any flag men in Massachusetts anywhere, so.

All right. Just a point of information.

It would be a real problem, I think, for the unions.

Well, I guess that was my question is whether that's a was that an ordinance issue? Is that a contract issue? Is that like, well, I just don't understand the law around this.

It's just I don't really see the benefit of bringing a flagman as opposed to an officer that has full blown arrest powers that can investigate, you know. So I think you lose a lot looking at a flagman. So in the end, when you're paying, you're going to have to pay a flagman health insurance. There's a lot of costs that are going to go with a flagman and their pay is Right up there where the police officers pay, so I don't really see a benefit in looking at Flagman.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councillor McDonald. Councillor Simonelli, I'm going to take Councillor Colón Hayes and then Councillor O'Malley before you take me for the second time. Councillor Colón Hayes. Thank you.

So just a couple of questions. You were calling them special police officers and they're only doing They're retired, coming out of retirement, and they're only doing details. Could you, like, give me an idea of what kind of details, like, the thing that comes to mind is, like, in the traffic?

Very typically a road detail. You'll see National Grid, and you'll see an officer standing, you know, wherever they're digging in the street. That's the most typical situation.

Okay. And any hours? Are they, like, subject to different hours? The first thought that came to mind is I've called you a couple of times, and I'm sure every counselor up here has done that about the drag racing and in parking lots and stuff.

Would that be something that's not a- So they would be primarily hired to do details. While doing that detail, they'll have the ability to stop a car if a call come in like that. And answer to your other question, they can work at any time, 24 hours a day.

Okay, and then the other question is, do they get vehicles or they're using their own vehicles?

No, their own vehicles.

Okay, and so their own insurance, all that is on them?

There's absolutely no investment. the city at all okay okay thank you okay thank you councillor Colón Hayes as opposed to paying for flagman too so uh councillor o'malley hi chief um so special police officers is is are they only allowed to do detail work or are they allowed do they have the full powers of other police for others no they're allowed to do details that's what they're hired for you know if something happens during that detail they have the ability to make an arrest stop cars Question people, absolutely. But at that point, they would be joined by a full time police officer who would take over from there.

Is that a policy decision that you're making? But they are legally allowed to do more than just detail?

No, we have our retired detail policies through our accreditation process. So everything is covered in there, but primarily their job is to do details.

And is there a difference between a special police officer and like an auxiliary police officer? Is that like the old term?

Yeah, auxiliary, we did have an auxiliary police force here, but it was all volunteer.

Okay, so it's like separate and distinct?

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councillor O'Malley. Councillor Simonelli for the second time.

Thank you, Madam President. Again, I think Marie Louise would probably know more to this than me, but I think that with the flag thing too, I think this was back years ago when they were trying to implement them in Massachusetts. State police, local police, it was a big deal with their collective bargaining agreement too. I think there was a lot of language in there that prevented flag men from coming in and taking away overtime or details to police officers.

give up something to get something so you know I think that would just open a whole new can of worms so I think this is the right approach Thank You Thank You councillor Simonelli so I think before we look to have a vote on this do we have a memo from the mayor to read recommendation from the mayor

And now that I'm looking at it, the attachment has disappeared.

The attachment has disappeared, okay.

So I'm gonna fix that in my end. Okay. And we'll obviously be part of the minutes.

Attach it later. Yeah. Okay, no problem.

I will say that the mayor was in support of this, obviously.

Okay, so we had a memo from the mayor in support of this. We will be attaching that to the agenda so the public can view that after the meeting. Unfortunately, it's not able to be pulled up at the moment for us to read into the record. But do we have a motion? Motion by Councillor Sika, seconded by Councillor Winslow. All in favor? Aye. Motion to approve the order. Okay, so that motion carries. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Motion to adopt. Yes, thank you. Yep. Okay, next order of business.

Paper 343-25, order that the city- Paper 3, 43-25 order that the city council develop a home rule petition to be submitted to the Massachusetts legislature that would provide the city the right to adopt rules for the regulation of parking on private ways within the city. And this was sponsored by Councilor Winslow.

Okay, Councilor Winslow for the paper.

Yeah, this just came to my mind. I know that Councilor Condon led a pretty extensive review a couple years ago of trying to look at resident wide, city wide resident parking. and just trying to figure out parking issues that just come up in every ward. And private ways ended up being a pretty significant barrier because the way the laws are structured right now, enforcement really on private ways is beyond what is allowed by the city. And it sort of falls back to the residents. I have some residents on Byron Street. There's a new business there that it's been difficult to have to manage both know employees of that business and and it's a businesses that have a lot of customers so it's just been a burden on you know a handful of residents and i think other counselors have experienced that so i did sit down with you know ron hogan um in the traffic department and just threw out the idea would that be something that um you know the parking department would be open to working on and um so he was supportive and and just just as you know we sort of did with the um you know, with the home rule petition related to charter, the thought is to get some authority and then we would work out the details through either with it, you know, the transportation commission or or through this city ordinance. But my thought is, is that ultimately it would be something that residents would initiate if they wanted to have the city to be able to write, you know, warnings and citations. But and there would still be the ability for those residents to hire a tow company. tow people away. It's just this would add add a tool. And I think it would be helpful because, you know, going from nothing to towing away cars is a lot of a lot of issues. But my my thought tonight is this is just a talking about, you know, developing a petition. I'm not asking people to vote on this tonight. I like this order to be referred to. The Rules and Ordinance Committee, we can talk about it more. But I just thought it's something that I know we would like to have another tool in the city to help deal with private ways. And I just thought, let's see if we can get a home rule petition on this. But I am looking to have that discussion with councilors in Rules and Ordinance and to see what the sense of the councilors are moving this forward. So that's just, you know, I'm not asking for a vote on this tonight other than to refer to rules and ordinance so we can have more discussion in detail. And also, I want to ask, you know, I'll be asking the legal department to come in and give their opinion on this to see whether that's something that can be done. You know, but so that's just what my thought is that something we can have that discussion rules and ordinance and decide whether this is something that would be helpful to the city. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Winslow. Any questions on this paper? Do we have a second on referring that to? Yep. Okay, on a second by Councillor Spadafora. All in favor? Aye. Okay, that carries. Okay, next order of business.

Paper 344-25 order that the city council review and approve the proposed revised layout of Hospital Road and 7th Street which requires takings and discontinuance of portions of the existing public rights of way as per the proposed widening and relocation plan. And subject to review by the city engineer and final approval by the DPW commission in accordance with the special permit granted by the planning board in case number 23. And I will say that attached to this paper, we have the most recent draft of the plan. But to my knowledge, in discussion with Planner Romero, this is not the final, final plan. But it gives you an idea. Correct. Of what they're looking at.

Correct, and I think to add confusion, it does include the portions of Hospital Road referenced during public comment, which are actually not the section that we are discussing in this item. So I want to apologize to the community who saw that and experienced distress seeing the schematic for the Murray Hill Road section where we did distressingly lose a tree in error. And we are working very hard with our tree warden and arborist to correct that. That was certainly a low point for the project, seeing that tree come down after we had worked so hard with the community to promise that that tree would not, in fact, come down. And it is not what we are talking about tonight, but I wanna just address that because Lauren has taken the time to come out and address it in public comment. And it is certainly something that I know friends of Felsmere Heights and myself and Chris Rosa, many others in the community have been talking about this summer. Very unfortunate mistake that happened, but something that we're working hard to address. What we are talking about tonight is the slight shift in dimensions of Hospital Road on the Savin Street side. So where you approach the project on the other side of the pond, we are narrowing the roadway slightly and widening the sidewalk. And the developer of the new hospital is going to be managing portions of the sidewalk and where the bus is going to be pulling in. You can see in the schematic, we typically don't have a role in re-accepting roads. in a kind of unique and unusual situation, the planning board saw fit to put in the special permit, a requirement that we take this step of pre-approving this road re-acceptance before it goes to the DPW commission, which actually will re-accept the road. And I also want to just say that in an even more unusual situation, this is something that I think will never happen again, because moving forward, Malden is about to launch a new process for accepting roads that is more deliberate and will actually have a manual attached to it and a set procedure so after tonight I think the planning board will not ever put into a special permit again that the council will have to do this because there will be a procedure that will have check boxes and it will not go through the council to the DPW commission so I think essentially what we need to do tonight is to vote to approve the attachment and send it to the DPW Commission, which I know is something we are not used to doing, but is the step that we are being asked to take to get it on its way and where it will go from there is to help the building to get its certificate of occupancy. And they're on track to be opening or at least getting their certificate occupancy of occupancy to do a ribbon cutting in October with the goal to get DPH approval to be able to take patients hopefully in December. So building opening and opening to patients are probably a couple of months apart, but it is on schedule to be opening this fall to early winter, which is really exciting. And if anybody hasn't driven up there to take a look at it, it's absolutely gorgeous. And Councilor Spadafora, I hope you saw the email today that the poll is finally gone. as of this morning, the utility poll that we all put a halt on all our other national grid petitions for, which I want to once again thank my colleagues for. The poll came down today. The 99 bus, in fact, did complete the route this afternoon for the first time in, I think, eight or nine months. So we're on our way to the project and the surrounding area getting back to normal again. I'm happy to take any questions. Councillor Winslow.

Yeah, I know. I talked to Ron Hogan this morning about this and Councillor Linehan a little bit. You know, one of the roles I had when I was at Malden Redevelopment Authority was actually for, you know, Commercial Street and down into Corporation Way in Medford is to be in charge of assessing properties and was very much involved in negotiating land takings back and forth to widen that road. And then Councilor Condon remembers that that that process. And I know, you know, what, you know, our attorneys at that time for the OAG working for the Malden Redevelopment Authority did. was when we had this type of situation, we would do something called the confirmatory taking. And it does a few things. It clears up title, and those were consensual so that there was no chance of a lawsuit. There's literally firms out there that are waiting to have cities take property and try to make money off of that. So it's important that there be a consensual agreement. I mean, I think the other thing is to make sure that there's no cost to the city in this. So my suggestion in talking with Ron is to really just make sure that we, in this order, that we ask the DPW Commission to make sure it's done in a way that takings are done in a confirmatory way and without any cost to the city, consensual takings or without any cost to the city. So that would be my recommendation that Yeah. In referring this to DPW Commission, we asked that they not put the city at risk for any funding or whatever. And that and that can be something now and in the future, you know, because it could be something that could come up 20 years from now with a future owner and some disputes or whatever. So I think it's just clear and confirmative taking just makes it clear that whatever land we are taking is now and forever the city's property. So that's just the type of thing. We need that document that gets filed at the Registry of Deeds. And so that may, it cuts off any legal dispute about who owns that property once that plan is filed. So that's just, it's important detail that is, it's not clear to me that normally when we were doing this process back in the 90s and 2000s, we'd have that plan, but we would also have that specific agreement that the Mystic Valley Development Commission would approve when doing this stuff. So thank you.

Okay. So are you suggesting that we amend the wording here or that we relay that to the DPW commission?

I mean, I think we should put it in our order that we relay it, that they that any taking be done and that takings be done consensually through a confirmatory taking with no cost to the city. I think that we should direct that. That's part of our our order, whatever that that's our understanding that this isn't at any cost to the city that we're doing this.

So my only hesitation is that I'm not able to answer whether there has been a cost already to the city or not. Do we I'm laying Maria, I'm looking at you. Do you know or not?

So so I mean, the city is not being asked to buy this property or there's not a number attached to it. So that's what Ron representative.

So but I don't think we're gaining. I think we're actually Losing some inches from the road and essentially the sidewalk is gaining square footage that they will then be taking on The care and feeding of is my understanding but then there's that little bit the second bit that they're kind of it is going to be some change from the from the you know hospital to the city on that corner down by Murray Hill Road, so I Again baffled as to why we are including that in here when we're not actually voting on Murray Hill Road tonight This is my this is my key question. Yeah So I don't want to hold it up, but I think it's just, you know, I mean, this is going to hold up their their CFO, but we. The Murray Hill thing is is problematic. It's not pertinent to what we're voting on tonight, but it is attached to the agenda. And that is land that we are ultimately, I think, all of it going to own. It's on the side of the property that we're. Right. That's not part of the hospital property at all in the end. That's that's what we're acquiring.

Yeah, so I mean, I say, you know, we did quite a few of the takings associated with Commercial Street at no cost to the city, often just saying to the business it was going to be a benefit to them to have a wider road with better sidewalks. So so I think it's just making it clear that that you know, however you want to phrase it. I mean, I don't want to hold up the opening of the hospital or whatever, but I think we just need to make clear that the documentation that finalizes this, I mean, you have to file. It doesn't become final until some, you know, document plus a plan is filed with the Middlesex Registry of Deeds. So that document really should be in the form of some sort of a, you know, consensual document at no cost. that, you know, I guess that maybe would add that as a recommendation or whatever with that, but I would just make, you know, I think I just, I'm afraid with, you know, with, you know, so many changes, you know, this, this process might've been driven by the MRA back in the day and, All the expertise they had from the 1970s in terms of taking properties and stuff like that. We don't necessarily have an entity in the city that really did all the work that the MRA staff would do. So I just think it's important that we don't gloss over something. We really want to make sure that it's clear who owns the land into the future and that we don't have to pay anybody to use it in the future. So it is a detail that we should make sure that is taken care of.

To our clerk, do we have a regular meeting next week? If we table it, could we take it up next week? We might need to do that then, because I'm afraid if we add that in, we are literally paying for the rest of the land. So if we add that in, I don't want that to be in conflict. I completely understand what you're saying, though. I feel we can sort this out. I wish Ron was here. If he was here, we probably could have asked.

Yeah. I don't know the other way. But some of it is just to be clear. There is some land we're acquiring through this plan, so just to be clear, it's mentioned as some sort of taking, so we just need to make clear that I mean, and really should be clear that any land that we are, in fact, acquiring should be through a confirmatory taking. So if there's no question that that nobody, no other ownership, no one who might have some claim or or whatever can affect the city's title. So it's very important that this is one of the things that actually came up on the bike trail where abutters were trying to claim we couldn't do the bike trail. But because the MBTA did a confirmatory taking when they bought the land in the seventies, all those lawsuits were foreclosed. So it's just important when the city is buying, acquiring land for whatever process, even if we're paying for it, we need to do it and have that done through a confirmatory taking so that it cuts off any future title claims or any, it just, And there's no cloud to the title. It just it's a process that if we're going through acquiring land for the city, it's just it's very helpful and it forestalls any question in the future about who owns what land. So just OK, understood.

I think I'm going to go. I now see some other lights popping up. So before we undertake a motion to table, I'm going to take Councillor O'Malley. Thank you, Councillor Winslow.

Do we know who will be presenting this to the DPW Commission?

I have not checked on their agenda. I don't know when their meeting is, but I mean, I know the folks that I've been meeting with at Tufts and it's the same crew that we've been working with kind of the whole time. They have a VP of strategy and a government affairs team that has been kind of working through all these various steps.

And the reason why I ask is I'm usually when we get something like this, someone presents the project plan to us. And so I think that some of the questions that Councilor Winslow has, and maybe some of the questions that we all have could be answered by the team. So I think tabling it would be helpful for them to explain what's going on. Only because I did look at, not just the plans, but also the agenda item says Savage Street, which is the side that you were referring to, but it also says Hospital Road where Murray Hill Road is. So it is everything that's presented. And I just don't, I looked at the plans, it's a little confusing. in terms of what lines mean what. So yeah, I'd be in favor of tabling it to get more clarity in terms of what's going on. Are we gaining property? Are we losing property? Is it a public road now? Or is it a private way? I don't have any of that detail.

Thank you, Councillor O'Malley. Councillor Condon.

Yeah, for years they've been complaining about the traffic going up goes all the way to Medford, the hill, and they use it as a cutoff. But if I remember it right, the one house with the tree got taken down, that should be number 31, if I'm not mistaken. And I don't think there was any other numbers on that side of the street, okay, because you had the hospital over there. But you had Murray Hill, And then you had Murray Hill Park, and that was a dead end. Come out, Mr. Schwartz lived there. No, Mr. Schwartz.

I had him in class. Is that the driving guy?

Yeah, I remember that. But then you come out of the park, and you take a left, and there was three houses there. That ended in Malden. Yeah. Yeah. Are they touching any of those properties?

No, no, no properties are being affected. And that end where folks will be pulling out will be we will soon be putting in signage that directs, you know, there won't be traffic in coming to the site on that end. All the deliveries and everything else is going to be going off the other side, just as they have been during the construction. So hopefully, you know, God forbid in case of an emergency, obviously we wanna make it a passable turn radius there, but otherwise the traffic is gonna be going up the other way. Okay, Councilor McDonald.

Thank you, Council President. I would defer to you as the ward councilor what you would prefer to do on this paper. I am just very conscious of how much timelines are carefully baked into this project. And so from my perspective, it seems like we could clarify that this order does not apply to the intersection of Hospital Road and Murray Hill Road, and that we could simply add a requirement that the legal department also review this, which could answer these questions that Councilor Winslow is raising. And I feel like we could make those changes pretty directly on the floor here, and I would be comfortable voting for it. But if you would prefer to wait and engage in additional review, then I would be happy to defer to that. But I just wanted to create another option that would allow us to more appropriately dispose of this paper tonight, if that seems amenable to my colleagues.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Councillor Simonelli.

I'm just going to echo what Councillor McDonald said. Same thing.

Oh, did you like you need to. I apologize. I did not see that you did that. Councillor Colón Hayes, you can have the floor.

Thank you. I was going to. asked a question to Councilor Winslow. I wasn't sure if he was asking to table this. There's no motion on the floor right now, because it sounds like there's questions that need to be answered. And so I would be fine with waiting until next week, unless you think what Councilor McDonald just said, like we can get answers right now tonight, I'd be happy to vote on it also. If we do have those answers.

I did not hear a tabling motion yet. I will say from the chair, I think waiting one week is not going to destroy the project timeline. I am feeling badly that Tufts did offer to come tonight and I told them that I didn't think it was necessary because I thought this was understandable from what we had before us. And so I'll take responsibility for that. I told them that I didn't think their presence was needed. didn't really realize until friends of fells near heights email came out over the weekend that the maury hill portion was even included and that there was confusion in the community about what we were voting on tonight so i think there are some parts to this that could have been prevented if i noticed that during you know at during business hours on a weekday i didn't so it wasn't we weren't able to fix the agenda in time i think we could have prevented a lot of this if we'd been able to remove that schematic because it simply isn't what It simply isn't the intersection we're voting on. I also don't want to disregard folks concerns and what Councillor Winslow is bringing up, I think is a good point. I mean, I would prefer to vote on it and keep it moving because we are not the final deciding body. And I think we could address these things at the DPW Commission. That is their job to take up all of these concerns. They do accept roads. I don't know when their meeting is, so I don't want to even say I'll commit to going because I don't know if it's something that I can commit to being at. They probably do. If they're meeting next week, then they probably already have it on their agenda, the DPW commission. I don't have a computer where I can look up things in the seat, so I don't know what that meeting time would be. So if it can't be on next week's DPW agenda, it will truly mess up the opening timeline. I can't wait a month. I will say that. My preference would be to vote on this now. Yes, hang on. Councillor Condon.

I would advise you to, if we can pass this, to get on the phone tomorrow and they'll be able to put it on the agenda. I think it's the third Tuesday.

My assumption is that it's probably already on their agenda. That's what I'm worried about.

It could be, but they certainly could add this.

Okay.

They have not posted. They could add it. No, it's not posted.

My understanding was that Tufts was working simultaneously with both boards to make sure that it kept on a parallel track because they're hoping to get their certificate of occupancy next month. All right, I have some lights. I don't want to just keep... My apologies, Councilor Colón Hayes.

I was waiting for some feedback, and so it sounds like... You had asked Councilor Winslow.

Okay, Councilor Winslow, feel free to answer Councilor Colón Hayes.

What was the question again?

Yeah, I wasn't sure if you had a motion on the table or if it sounds like some of the answers that next week Sounds like it might be OK, but waiting a month is going to slow things down and nobody wants to do that.

You know, I just I think when I see the word taking in order, it just rings a lot of bells. We had this issue over on Crescent Lane where we're trying to designate something as conservation land, where there's we just did a survey and we realized some of the land is probably a road that was discontinued. sometimes you've really got to make sure you get this stuff right or it can cause havoc 100 years out. So so it is making sure we do that. But I think, you know, I think Councilor McDonald's language about making sure this gets legal review confident. It's just something I just wanted to make sure we have attention to. There's there's detail here that, you know, it's so easy to rush towards the certificate of occupancy, but making sure we get the detail right in terms of you know, what's taken and then we're not going to pay for that. I think we just got to make sure that that happens. And knowing that, you know, our legal staff has not handled this type of matter as far as I know, and that, you know, we don't have the experience of the Malden Redevelopment Authority as we've had. So I just it's something that You know, making sure that that happens before the DPW Commission is all I'm really asking for. So I'm I think I would if it counts from McDonald, I would second your motion to to make sure we have legal review.

Wrap this up. Thank you. Well, I think I still have the floor. I was just going to wrap it up. So what I was just going to say, I think hearing that I'd also be OK hearing that we making sure that we're going to ask legal. So we're protecting ourselves as well. And I'm fine with that. Thank you. Understood.

Councilor Condon, are you. for a second time or is your light still, just still on? You're okay? All right, Councillor Spadafora.

So if I'm hearing you correctly, Councillor, your ask is to pass this with conditions that the legal and DPW look at all the issues that Councillor Winslow brought up in terms of making sure that it's just done right and that it's deeded right, that the ownership's put in there in details, but you want to pass it tonight simply because Will the timeline continue? But again, legal's got to review it, and so does DPW commission. Hopefully they can address these issues at that hearing.

So I'll make that motion.

Yes. I'm just saying.

The DPW commission is the body that actually has the deciding power. If we actually didn't do this, I don't think- It would matter. They could meet without us, to be honest. I agree. I don't think if this didn't take place, it wouldn't actually matter. But I think this is a step that was in the special permit that we're trying to do our due diligence to take.

So I have a motion to move it forward.

OK, Maria, are you OK? Were you trying to raise your hand to speak? Are you OK?

OK.

There you go.

Oh, it's a condition of the planning board, so they have to do it. I'll repeat what she says. Understood. Okay, so what Maria was saying is that the order of operations does not matter. The special permit states that the council has to review this, but that it doesn't have to get referred directly or in order from us to them, just that we have to approve it. So if we did want to table it, they can still take it up and we can review it at another time.

Okay, so- So why not just move it out favorably and let them- Okay.

So we have a motion from Councillor Spadafora, seconded by Councillor Simonelli to move it favorably.

With your conditions, with any of your conditions.

Councillor McDonald, did you have a motion to amend?

Yeah, Council President, I would still prefer to amend given the concerns that we heard from multiple parties if that is amenable. So I would recommend the amendment. to say Board of City Council review and approval of law as per the proposed widening and relocation plan, comma, not including any changes to the intersection of Hospital Road and Murray Hill Road, comma. It says in subject to the review by the city engineer, then add, and the city solicitor, and then final review, et cetera, et cetera. So I will send this to you and the clerk. Got it.

That would be wonderful if you could send that.

Okay.

Okay, on a motion by Councillor McDonald, seconded by Councillor Winslow to amend the paper as read. All in favor? Aye. And on Councillor Spadafora's motion to approve the paper as amended, seconded by Councillor Simonelli. All in favor? Aye.

Okay. Good job.

I voted no.

All right. I'm sorry, you voted no.

Okay. You voted to amend. Voted to amend. Thank you. Got it.

Okay, got to turn all these lights off. Next order of business.

Next order of business is paper 345-25, resolved that it is the sense of the city council that they wish to support bill S41, an act to modernize funding for community media programming and H91 to sustain local media infrastructure and civic engagement. Whereas a robust and independent local media infrastructure is essential to assuring community media centers, serve a crucial role in maintaining civic transparency, supporting local education, offering workforce training, and strengthening community engagement. Whereas Malden's Urban Media Art mission is to inform, engage, and connect the community, directly supports local government, transparency, civic engagement, small business visibility, and youth and adult media literacy. Whereas local news organizations face significant financial challenges that threaten their ability to provide comprehensive coverage of community issues, local government, schools, public safety, and other matters of public interest. Whereas Urban Media Arts was recently forced to reduce staffing levels due to a significant decline in cable franchise fee revenue, funds that have historically supported our core operations and community services. Whereas bills S41 and H91 have been introduced in the Massachusetts legislature to provide critical funding and resources to preserve and strengthen local news outlets and civic information platforms. Whereas sustaining local media infrastructure aligns with the city of Malden's commitment to open government, community participation, and ensuring residents have access to timely and accurate information. And whereas supporting these bills will help maintain a vibrant local press that holds public officials accountable and encourages citizen involvement in democratic processes. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Malden City Council hereby expresses its strong support for bills S41 and H91 and urges the Massachusetts legislature to pass these measures promptly and be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Governor of Massachusetts, the Speaker of the House, the Senate President, the local legislative delegation, and the Massachusetts Municipal Association to advocate for the importance of sustaining local media infrastructure and civic engagement across the Commonwealth.

Okay, thank you. Councilor Colón Hayes for the paper.

Thank you very much. Thank you for reading that. It was a little lengthy and wordy, but very important. So I'm sure everyone here is aware that UMA had had a reduction in staff due to a loss of funds from the cable franchise fees and those staff were very near and dear to Uma, helped build it up from the beginning. And that was a shock to many of us. And at the time, I had reached out to the director of Uma to ask, could we do anything? How could we help in any way? And that's when she told me about these bills on the table. And she asked if that would be helpful to maybe write a resolve for that. But during the summer, They also almost sent an email to everybody, so I'm sure people here might have went to the State House and testified themselves on this bill. But they were asking for our help in writing and testifying to the Joint Committee on Advanced Information Technology and the Internet Cybersecurity. So if enacted, these bills could replenish essential operating funds, helping stabilize our budgets, reduce their independence on cable fees, and offer some hope for long-term, more equitable funding mechanisms that are consistent with UMA's mission. So I would love it if everybody supported me in this. And thank you for those who joined in on sponsorship.

Great. Thank you, Councillor Colón Hayes. Any of the other sponsors want to speak to the paper? Councillor O'Malley.

I just want to thank Councillor Colón Hayes for moving this forward. She was one of the first councillors up here to really kind of advocate for UMA and MATV. Also, Councilor Taylor, who is a former board member, is also an advocate. I think where we are going in our nation with the defunding of arts and defunding of media, local media is going to be essential. And the fact that we lost two or more devoted long-time staff members who have carried the organization for decades is really traumatizing, I think, not only to the institution, but also to our community. So anything we can do to help bring more funding there, I think it's more essential than any time. So I just want to thank Councilor Cologne-Hayes for her leadership here, and I do hope that we can refund and expand funding for local media. Thank you.

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

Yeah, no, I definitely chime in the same way with Councilor O'Malley about the importance of local media. MATV has been really present in the community as long as I have been, and it's been a great institution celebrating both our cultural youth and seniors, a broad range, as well as providing important transparency by allowing citizens to see us in action. And it takes resources to allow that to happen. we are called on as a government to be more and more transparent and to have a partner that we can work on to help be that. And that's also independent of us. I think that's important. And, you know, we we know just a few years back we voted on a bunch of, you know, small cell towers that now allow people to you disconnect, you read about the whole media industry that the old model of over the air television gave way to cable and now cable is giving way to things that are run through your cell phones or your social media devices. So having a source of funding to make sure that local media can survive in that new environment is important. And that's really why I'm supporting this. And we just need to make sure that our local media can thrive in the future. It's important to us as a democracy and as a community. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Winslow. Councillor Taylor.

Thank you. I don't think it's a secret how valuable I believe is as I was one of their first youth program participants, uh, way too many years ago, um, as well as their board president for just over six years. And I'm really happy to see this being, being presented. Um, I was able to testify, uh, at the, send in my testimony to the state house over the summer. Um, and I'd also just like to add in addition to this as something that we can do, which I am grateful for, um, As we cut our cable bills, and I know many of us have, you can donate to UMA. That's where the loss of funding comes from. You can participate in programs. You can show up to their events and make sure that we're being active supporters as well. And I urge everybody to get involved. It's been an important part of my life for a lot of years. And I think it would be great to see everybody getting out there and building them back up.

Thank you, Councillor Taylor. Councillor McDonald.

Thank you so much to my colleague, Councillor Colón Hayes, for putting this forward. I really agree that local media is so essential for our democracy. I just wanted to be asked, I wanted to ask to be added as a co-sponsor. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Well, from the chair, I would echo what others have said. I think this is a tremendous paper. And I would just highlight some of the new work that has been going on in the community. I know as someone who is a parent of a middle school age child, some of the media programming that was newly launched this summer was pretty fantastic and well worth checking out. I would applaud some of the ways that they're trying to iterate and just reach new ages and be responsive to what the community need is. So definitely look into that if you haven't. Do we have a motion to pass the resolve? So moved by Councilor Simonelli. Seconded by Councillor Taylor. All in favor? Aye. Okay, that passes. Next order of business.

Paper 215-25, be it ordained by the Malden City Council that the code of the City of Malden, 6.20.010 permit required for canvases and solicitors is hereby amends as follows. And that was sponsored by Council Winslow.

Okay, Councilor Winslow for the paper.

Yeah, I know we were working on this paper just in June as we were going through budget process. And there was a lot of fine details that were approved in committee and then came up to the council. And what we decided was rather than kind of rushing it through, we wanted to make sure that we worked to make sure we had the clear version. So Councilor McDonald and Clerk Desiderio We worked on that over the summer. So that is reflected in the no knock proposal version three, just to make sure that everybody was clear as to what we actually enrolled last time. So then we ordained it. We have a clear paper. So I thank you for that work over the summer. And so I just ask that we take the final action to enroll what we created back in June. Thank you.

So you need to set a motion to ordain. Motion to ordain, yes, great.

Okay.

No, well, I'm sorry, yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, a motion to ordain by Councillor Winslow, seconded by Councillor Sika. All in favor? Aye. Okay, that carries. Next order of business.

Paper 346-25, the standing committee on rules and ordinance to whom was referred paper 29 series of 2025, having considered the same. Make the following report, committee recommends this paper be reported out favorably to the full council.

Okay, on a motion by Councillor McDonald to receive the committee report, seconded by Councillor Winslow. All in favor? Aye.

Okay. Paper 29-25, order. That section 5.0, non-members write to the floor. Subsection 5.04 of the 2023 city council rule book be amended by inserting the following. In the last sentence after name, add street and city or. In the last sentence, strike the word public and replace with legislative. Be it further amended that subsection 5.05 of the 2023 city council rule book be amended by inserting the following. After name, street and city or. After the first sentence, upon request, the city clerk may privately verify speaker's address in lieu of it being part of the legislative record.

Okay, Councillor McDonald for the paper.

Thank you, Council President. Yes, this came from folks who had appeared before us and were surprised to learn that they have to deliver their full address on TV. And in this time when doxing and targeting online based on political speech is pretty high, we wanted to figure out if there are a way that it could be safer for those who consider the risk. or considered their testimony here or public comment here risky on a personal level for themselves or their family or the ones they live with. And so we had some good discussion in committee about this. This was my suggestion evolved somewhat from the original paper that I had submitted. And so I think we have some, I think we had a good discussion and support in the committee to create this opportunity for having your address privately verified by the clerk if you don't want that to be in the record when you're submitting public comment. I do think that folks who are mailing it or emailing in their public comment would have to be in a separate conversation with the clerk about how to manage that if you didn't want your email address public. But I think the idea here is to just make it as safe as we can for folks who have extremely valid questions. about the safety of being potentially targeted based on what they say, while still giving us, as elected officials, the opportunity to verify that the people before us have a stake in the issue that is important for them. So that allows us, the clerks, to verify that and ask specifically that you provide your street, but not necessarily the full address, meaning I could say I live on Pierce Street, but I don't have to give the house number. So that was our proposal. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councillor McDonald. I missed that discussion, so I'm very interested to hear what folks think. Do we have any questions? Councillor O'Malley.

Yeah, I'd just like to speak in favor of this. I think that it is a common sense way that we can encourage more people to participate in public comment without feeling like they could be harassed. I think it's completely reasonable. Giving meets and bounds, descriptions of where you live, even like ward or neighborhood, I think is completely fine also. And I'll give the reason why. You are allowed to vote even if you are homeless. So you don't have to have an address to vote. You shouldn't have to have an address to go to public comment. And so I think it's completely reasonable and entirely within the bounds of what we allow. And as you can see here, if for some reason We suspect that we have what are they called astroturfers that come from out of town And they're trying to you know Swamp our public comment The city clerk can privately confirm whether or not someone is a resident So fully in support.

Thanks to councillor McDonald for moving this forward Thank You councillor O'Malley any further questions If I could just ask one from the chair and again with apologies for having missed the committee meeting. I know very occasionally we have really hot button issues where we do get a lot of emails or comments that come in and we have found ourselves having to weed out or give priority to folks who do have a mall and address before we take comments from folks who live out of town or we've chosen to do that. In situations like that, how would we handle that? Or did we discuss that at all or would we just kind of

deal with that ad hoc if it comes up like a Roosevelt Park or the the Gaza debate things like that where we get like hundreds or thousands and we have a have to find a way to weed through and give priority um well I I will defer to the city clerk on the details of this I mean we this doesn't change anything about what the clerk's authority is to help the council president prioritize those and just to say that this this is this says upon request the city clerk will verify this so that would meaning If I didn't wanna state my address at all, I would have to reach out to the clerk's office, presumably not in the middle of the meeting, and ask about this. So I think it's a little bit higher bar to do that, but it is an option for people who may be on, say, I can think of so many situations when you don't want to disclose your address. What if you are, you know, in a witness protection program? What if you are a victim of domestic violence and you need to live someplace? I mean, there's so many scenarios. And so just being, if like, if you really don't want to do that, then you can just say, then, then to post this as part of our guidelines of public comment, that this is an option for you.

Yeah, no, I, I'm supportive of this. I think it's increasingly a question that I'm getting as I'm sure other counselors are as well. We, You know, certainly in this day and age, don't want to have a deterrent to public participation in our democracy. Any further lights or comments? Do we have a motion to adopt the order? Oh, yeah. Councilor Spadafora, you have the floor.

I would just second the motion.

Got it. So if somebody comes before the council right now on a hot question issue, we don't we don't have to ask if they live in the city of Baldwin. We don't have to verify they live here. That's not what this is. No, no. I'm saying what happens if somebody comes to the podium and wants to speak, we're going to change it and we're going to say, you just can give us your name and address or your name and street, right? How do we know today, right now, if they say Pierce Street moment?

Is the question how are we going to be in newly instructing people when they come to the podium?

Well, how do you verify that? Because there's been many times where I've sat here and people have said the same address five times. And I know for a fact that the people didn't live at that address because you can Google the address and many times they've given like 104 Main Street and it's not a multifamily. So my question is for the residents who do live in the city and I'm not trying to speak against, I'm just trying to figure out a way where people don't take advantage situation, just because the same thing can be said, we have to give our addresses. So if people want to do things to us that are ill will, they have every right to do that. And we can not write protects. No, but I'm saying we can't not put our addresses in the record book, right? My question, if somebody comes here, and they get up and we ask, and they say past street mall, then we don't have to ask what the addresses are verified later on. Well, they say their name and address in some topics. I write them down. I don't know anybody up here. I write them down to see if those people actually those people and many times it's not. So my question is, how do you do that?

So, Councillor McDonald, do you want to.

Yeah, I'm good. I wasn't at this discussion and I'm not against it. I just feel like. Council now is very good at this. There's always an angle with things like this, and it's not going to be the stuff with the gas lines and putting a tree up, right? It's going to be a hot-button topic. There'll be 100 people in the room. There'll be 50 from another community here, and they're going to load up, and we're going to say, well, you don't have to provide the address. And to be quite honest with you, if it's a mall initiative, it should be mall that people come first in preference. That's the only thing I want to be able to say. If the clerk can verify during the meeting privately, I have no problem with it. If you don't want to publicly say the address, I think you should have to. I think we should have to verify it at one point.

Okay, thank you, Councillor Spadafora. I have something. Okay, one second. I want to let Councillor McDonald answer the direct question.

Yeah, sure. So just to be clear, that is apparently a problem based on how we do things right now, right? We don't sit there and look people up. I mean, there are other records that the city can cross check, but they don't apply to everyone, right? Not everyone is a registered resident. Not everyone even is a citizen and able to vote. And so there are lots of different ways. I am not trying to solve the problem here of like, how do we keep people from lying on public comment? People can say whatever they want. I mean, I think it's protected speech to a certain degree. What people say to us, we don't have to take it in that dimension. So I don't know how to solve that problem. This paper, I will just say again, came directly from a constituent who said to me, I was shocked and surprised that I had to say my full address when I came to speak in front of the council. I didn't realize that, it threw me off, and I didn't think that was fair. And I said, I agree, I'm concerned. I'm concerned for all of us as city officials about the potential targeting, but that is outside the scope of this particular bill, or this particular paper. So anyways, I don't know how to solve that problem, but I do think we can make it, we can create a slightly less dangerous situation for folks who are concerned about that and wanna participate in our democracy.

Thank you, Councillor McDonald. Councillor O'Malley.

Yeah, I just wanted to respond because Councillor Spadafora said my name. So I know it's not always convenient or easy protecting people's constitutional rights, but it's something that you're required to do as an elected official. And so we can control people's time, place, and manner. But if people from Ward 3 want to testify about something in Ward 2, they're allowed to do that. The same way if someone who lives up an upper part of the spot pond brook in Melrose wants to testify about something that's happening to the spot pond brook in Malden they're able to do that so yeah your constitutional rights do not end at the borders of Malden thank you Councillor O'Malley Councillor Simonelli thank you thank you Madam President so I guess I'm confused so they don't have to if they're going to

Request public comment. They don't have to check with the clerk beforehand and give the clerk their information. No, that happens. That don't happen?

My understanding is that it'll function the same way it does now. They simply won't have to put a street number down. They can put a street name and Malden. So it's to give people an extra level of anonymity to enable them to feel more comfortable participating in public comment.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I could take it both ways. I mean, even at my Fourth of Julys, I really don't ask people for evidence to show that they're an award seven person if they won the bike. But I mean, but the thing is this, though, I understand, though, like if there is a hot topic and, you know, if I'm really in a heated discussion about my neighborhood, you know, like some of us ward councils can become very territorial on one of them. But I'm just saying, like, if you really have a hot topic and then the person who you're trying to explain it to don't even live in the city. I mean, I guess as a person and a human being, do they have the right to know what's going on? Is it their community? I don't know. That's kind of a gray area for me. I mean, you know, I don't, I don't know. That's kind of a tough one, you know, cause there's always, There's always so much time in the day and we're very busy people throughout the day with the things that we're trying to get done and our agendas and everything and moving the city forward. So sometimes it's hard and all of a sudden you sit there and you're talking for 45 minutes. It's not hard for me to talk for 45 minutes, but anyway. But if it's somebody that's not even from the city of Malden and they're from a whole nother city, I don't know. That's confusing. I don't know. I don't know.

Thank you, Councillor Simonelli.

council mcdonough did you want to respond i just i just want to clarify the way this will read is that you shall give your name and your street and city or address i honestly think most people are going to stand up here and give their street number like they've always done that's what i think is likely it's just not a council rule that they must do it in order to be able to speak to us and then it creates this other option that is on request only so i i don't think we'll even notice that much of a difference It's just not, it doesn't change how people sign up. It doesn't change how we think about prioritization because they'll still need to tell us the city they live in, right? And so that's how I would imagine when we're prioritizing, that's what we do is we sort by the city. We don't like try to verify every individual person's address. So I think this is perhaps a smaller change for our process and is just a gesture of goodwill to our residents, particularly who may want to participate. That's all.

I just want to piggyback on that and say that we still do have in our council rules that the president and the clerk have discretion to adjust when there are unusual circumstances. And when those circumstances arise, we're not, God forbid, out there verifying people's IDs or anything. I don't want anybody to listen to this and get the impression that we're going to start checking on where people live. You just have to take the circumstances. When things are busy, we have to make a judgment call based on it. And sometimes there are issues where maybe there own a business here or work here or commute through where they really do have a vested interest in an issue. They might not have a residential address here, but we wouldn't want to turn them away. So I think, as Councilor McDonald stated, functionally, I think it will not be a big difference. It just gives people an additional option to open things up. I want to go to Councilor Condon who's been waiting patiently.

There's been many times that people from other cities have testified, not only here, but I can't even remember when they were gonna do something with the Lawrence Memorial when the Malden Hospital closed. We went over there with about 10 or 12 people and they let every one of us speak because we were affected as much as anybody in Medford, you know? So there's been a lot of times where people from other cities would come over here. I can remember testifying in Medford. I mean, I wasn't here when they built that conglomerate across from Dunkin' Donuts, but I certainly, if I was on the council, I would have been over in Medford, over that thing they built down there, because that, through the between BJ's and everything else, threw everything out of the way. And that doesn't include the rats moving in when they built that 380 something units. So a lot of times you have to testify in other cities, especially counselors on the line. They do something to affect your people, you're going to go and talk. So that's all.

Thank you, Councillor Condon. Very quickly. Councillor Sika.

Thank you, really quickly. I think we're reading into this a little bit too much. I actually have a poll book in front of me, and as of right now, I don't think that this paper's going to change anything that we do, other than we're not going to hear that Jaydeen Sika lives at 12 Cleveland Street. We're going to hear that Jaydeen Sika lives on Cleveland Street. And if you really want to, you just go home and You open up this book and you go to Cleveland Street in your ward and I can see where Mary Smith lives, because it's going to tell me if Mary Smith really lives on Beach Street. As long as they're a registered voter, I'll know, but no, right? No, yeah, it's the census. Yes, it is, exactly.

It's the census, it's not the voter.

Exactly, the little asterisk is the key. If you're worried about where somebody lives, then we can just look them up in the book, write the name, jot the name down, and I'm fine with them not saying the particular number of the street that they live on, because the world is crazy these days. I see how mean people can be to each other on social media, and I would hate for somebody to be retaliated against on the way that they're speaking at our podium. Right now, I've often wondered several times on Hot Topic issues if the people actually lived in Malden. Because it's not like they sit up there and say, hi, I'm Jaydeen Sica. I live at 12 Cleveland Street in Malden. They say just the address. So we don't know if they're actually from Malden or not from Malden. There's a Beach Street in Revere. There's a Beach Street in Malden. There could be a Beach Street in Medford and any other city around. So I have no issues with this. I say we move this paper. It's not going to change, so thank you.

Who made the motion? Okay, we have a motion on the floor by Councillor Colón Hayes, seconded by Councillor O'Malley. I want to move the question. All in favor? Aye. That carries. Next order of business.

Paper 347-25, order. The City Council will vote. Councillor O'Malley.

Do rules have to be, do we have to take a roll call for a rule or no? I don't think so.

We can if you'd feel more comfortable with that, but I don't think that's- No, no, no. Okay, just a valid question. I'm sorry. Paper 347-25, order the city council will vote whether to go into executive session with legal counsel in accordance with exemption three, Massachusetts general law chapter 30A, subsection 21A3. To discuss strategy with respect to the opioid litigation with such discussion in open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the litigation position of the city, if so declared by the chair. Also, if allowed by the body to admit special assistant to the mayor, Marie Louise, in control of Charles Rannigan into meeting.

Thank you, and I have a point of information. If we vote not to go into executive session, Does that do, can we do it on the floor? Is that the vote to do it? So should we just take the vote?

The vote is whether or not to enter into executive session.

Understood. Do we need to consult with our assistant solicitor before doing that? Or can I simply make a suggestion as to how we proceed?

I think that you can introduce the paper. Yeah. If there's any further debate, I would invite legal to come up and speak with us.

Okay. My preference is to actually do this on the floor after consulting. And reading a little bit more about the paper. This is the opioid litigation. This is not litigation particular to the city of Malden. This is statewide legislation that all municipalities are undergoing right now. And after looking at it, I don't actually think there's any detrimental effect to the city's litigation positions. Zaheer, would you mind coming to the podium? I don't see any reason why we couldn't personally discuss this in open session. I think that this has been. In the news, it seems to me that we could probably do this on the floor, but I'd love to hear your opinion on that.

Yeah, so Zaheer Sami, Assistant City Solicitor. So you're right, this is not litigation to which Malden is a direct party in any way. So it's really up to you. I was prepared to do this in executive session, but if you're all comfortable and want to do it openly, that's fine too. I'm okay either way.

Are you making a motion to recuse? Okay, so Zaheer, I'm going to ask you to pause there. Sorry, we have a motion on the floor for Councilor Simonelli to recuse. Seconded by Councilor O'Malley. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Zaheer. So is it your recommendation that I vacate to discuss?

If you're going to debate it back and forth with the rest of the councilors, you may want to vacate the chair. I mean, you've introduced the paper. I think any more than that would be grounds for letting Council McDonald take this.

OK, I'm fine with that. Do you want to? I don't have a lot to say about it, but we can do that if it's procedurally preferable. Sure, would you mind?

So we need a motion to decide whether to go into executive session or not. Do I have a motion?

Well, I just have a question.

I have a question too.

All right, Councilor Winslow and then Councilor- Yeah, I have a question for Zaheer. Is there any information that will be prejudicial to the city that really would necessitate going to an executive session, in your opinion?

No, in my opinion, there isn't. Yeah. Most of the information that would be discussed is public record, since this is really a massive litigation that's been in the news in the courts for many many years um literally like almost going back maybe 10 years so there's a lot here that is already in the public record and we're not going to go through all of it anyway so it's just really the the bottom line is what you know you're going to discuss yeah that's i'm fine thank you thank you councilman counselor o'malley

You had said that we are not a direct party. Is this a class action?

No, it's not exactly. It's really a mass tort case, which there might be class actions among the many thousands of lawsuits that have been filed against Purdue Pharma and its affiliates and its shareholders and officers and directors. So some of those might be class actions, but it's more of a mass tort case.

Because for some reason, I feel like it was in 2017, we met with attorneys to vote whether or not to participate. Is this the same lawsuit? Do you remember that? We met at the senior center. We met with attorneys about whether or not. It was like a law firm. That was a long time ago. Was it like Sandman and Sandman? It was Sandman and Sandman, right? Something like that, I think.

Councilor O'Malley, if I may. I would love to just take the vote on whether to go in executive session and then we can actually talk about the thing.

Yeah, well, I'm just trying to figure out, is this a lawsuit that we're a party to or not?

We are not. Did you say we are not currently a party to this lawsuit?

No, the state of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit, like many other states, against Purdue Pharma and its officers and shareholders. As far as I'm aware, the city of Malden has never been an actual party filing a lawsuit against any of those entities.

Thank you. Does that answer your question, Councillor Mele? All right. I think we need a motion on this paper. And if we would prefer to do this in executive session, then you would vote yes. And if you would prefer to do it in public session, then you would vote no.

Is that correct? So the motion would be to enter into executive session.

But just to clarify, the chair already said that it's not detrimental.

Correct, my motion is to do this on the floor.

I don't think we can go in because you said it's not detrimental.

So Councilor O'Malley is correct. The council president has to declare that this would have a detrimental effect on the city's litigating, litigation position.

But she declared that it does not.

And she declared that it does not. So I'm not sure it necessarily makes the paper move necessarily without taking a vote at all. But her recommendation clearly is to not enter it. Correct.

I think I agree. If Councilor Spadafora, myself, and Linehan agree, we're probably right.

You need one of the 10 reasons to go into the second session.

So understood. I think we need a motion to then get ourselves into this discussion. Could we simply have a motion to proceed with the discussion of the paper in open session?

So moved.

So moved by Councillor Linehan, seconded by Councillor Winslow. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Great, we will proceed.

Enter into the conversation in open session.

Councilor Linehan for the paper.

Thank you. So I'm going to again defer to Zaheer a little bit to explain this, but this is related to the Purdue Pharma and the Sackler bankruptcy cases. The recommendation from the Attorney General is that municipalities opt in. Opting in would be forfeiting the right to sue the Sacklers. And again, Zaheer, please jump in if I'm mischaracterizing this at all. But because the Sackler's individual fortune is they are giving up their right to be sued as individuals, you essentially opt in at this point to get a guaranteed amount of money. And if you move forward and take your risk to sue them later, you may get nothing. And so the attorney general's recommendation is that municipalities take what is virtually guaranteed to be some money now to get a little bit more than the settlement that we've already gotten from Purdue Pharma. And so they're asking local legislative bodies to take that vote to officially opt in. I know Mr. Rannigan is here to talk about specifics of the money if we want to get into that, what we are already entitled to, what we I think we don't know what we likely would be in the future yet. But again, it's a it's looking at what we would be certain to get versus taking a very huge risk and possibly getting nothing additional. And so that's why the AG's office is making that recommendation that local bodies take the guaranteed something over the probable nothing. And I don't know, is it here, if you have anything more to add to that?

Yeah, no, that's a pretty good summary. I mean, basically, you've had thousands of lawsuits, like I said, against the Sacklers, who are the family that owns Purdue Pharma, as well as against Purdue Pharma. The Sacklers didn't file bankruptcy, however, Purdue Pharma did file bankruptcy in 2018. And the idea of this settlement proposal is that the state of Massachusetts will be getting a certain sum of money from the Sacklers and the bankruptcy estate. The cities and towns in Massachusetts that accept the bankruptcy plan and accept the release or sign a release of the Sackler family will be getting a cut of whatever Massachusetts gets. So the more cities and towns accept the bankruptcy plan and then release the Sacklers, the more money Massachusetts gets, and if a city or town does not accept the bankruptcy plan and does not release the Sacklers, you don't get anything, pretty much. So that's basically, if you were to vote on whether to, if you were gonna vote on accepting this, you'd basically take two votes, which are almost very closely connected. You vote to accept the bankruptcy plan, that has been put out by the bankruptcy court, or filed with the bankruptcy court, and you'd vote to release the Sacklers. That's basically it. If you have any questions on, you know, other questions about the case or the procedure, I'll do my best to answer it. But this is probably, by the way, the most complicated bankruptcy case in United States history. It's gone up to the US Supreme Court. You know, it's very, very complicated.

Yeah, I mean, you're in charge.

All right.

I keep going like I'm tough, like I'm leading.

All right. I could ask you to run again to come up and and talk to us a little bit more about what this potential settlement could look like. I know we're all dying to learn.

Yeah. So as as attorneys here had mentioned, you know, the action that we need by the council. And I do just want to add, the documentation that I see, it says that your subdivision's vote, our city's vote, must be submitted to the national consortium, that's like the administrating entity on behalf of all of the participants, by email no later than September 14th, 2025, to ensure inclusion in the master ballot. As attorneys here mentioned, he had said there's two different votes needed by the council, one to vote on the Purdue bankruptcy plan, and then a second one to release the Sacklers. I would just request or suggest that that be two separate votes, because the vote that we have to forward no later than September 14th is just on the Purdue bankruptcy plan. So I think it should just be two different votes. In terms of what the settlement would mean for Malden, we definitely don't know. It's a big amount. Is it here? Is the amount, so I have, I have,

So basically, the total amount that the Sacklers are going to contribute to this bankruptcy plan, their contribution is going to be something in the order of six and a half billion. Six and a half plus 1.5. Yeah, six and a half billion. And then there's the six and a half comes from the Sacklers. Then there's the business itself that's going to contribute another one and a half billion or so forth. Now, that's probably the maximum that will be paid out to all the governmental entities and the states and whatnot. Massachusetts portion is just a portion of that. And then of course, most of the money that comes to Massachusetts, 60% of it actually goes to the state directly. 40% of what Massachusetts gets will be distributed to all the cities and towns. But if the city and town wants to get anything, they have to vote to approve of the bankruptcy plan and they have to vote So it's sort of like it goes to the states first and then it trickles down. A portion of what goes to the states trickles down to the cities and towns.

So, okay. I think we have some questions from my colleagues. I see Councillor O'Malley. Did you have your hand? And then Councillor Spadafora.

So just from a basic open needle law perspective, did not expect to release the Sacklers tonight from liability. That was, you know, not anticipated, so just for me. Reading this, I would not have known that I was planning to release the Sacklers from liability. So my question is, and I'm not saying that I'm going to file an open knee law complaint. I'm just saying that who would have read this and thought that we would be releasing the Sacklers? Can you clarify, wasn't this bankruptcy plan thrown out by the Supreme Court? Can you guys stop talking? Excuse me, Councilors Taylor and Spadafora.

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to hear. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

I'm going to turn off. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

So is this the same bankruptcy plan that was thrown out by the Supreme Court or is this a different bank?

It's not. It's a different it's a different plan. So the plan that was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court basically was what you would call a cram down plan, basically the court could approve the plan and it would release the Sacklers without the consent of the cities and towns or anyone else who wanted to release the Sacklers. This is a different plan. You don't have to release the Sacklers if you don't want. If you want, you can go sue them and spend the next 30 years in litigation with them because they're billionaires and have money in tax havens all over the world. So you can do that if you want. But if you do release the Sacklers, you're pretty much guaranteed a chunk of this massive $8.5 billion settlement that's going to come to your state and then flow down from the state level to this local government level. So this is a different plan from the plan the US Supreme Court rejected under the bankruptcy law one or two years ago.

And is it both the Sackler family filing bankruptcy and the company?

The Sackler family, the reason the US Supreme Court rejected the release of the Sacklers in that old plan was because the Sacklers themselves had not filed bankruptcy. Because when you file bankruptcy, what you have to do is you have to basically tell the court, OK, I'm putting all my assets on the table, and I'm going to make them available to my creditors. The Sacklers never did that. They didn't want to do that. They wanted to keep their money and hide it. And the U.S. Supreme Court said, sorry, Sacklers, if you're not gonna put all your assets on the table and make them available to creditors, we're not gonna release you. We're not gonna let the court release you.

That was the old plan. Is the new plan, are they filing bankruptcy in the new plan?

So in the new plan, they are not filing bankruptcy. And they probably never will file bankruptcy. Because they have more money than, you know, enough money to litigate with you till the end of time. What they're doing is they're contributing six and a half billion dollars to the plan of their own money. So what happened is this. From the 90s to the 2010s, the 2010s, you all know they marketed OxyContin as a less addictive drug. They made billions and billions, $34 billion in revenue over that time period, gross revenue, not net profit. What happened is in 2007, One of Purdue Pharma's affiliates pled guilty to a federal felony for that marketing, which was basically lying, basically about the addictive nature of OxyContin. Once in 2007, some of their executives pled guilty to that felony, the lawsuit started. Once the lawsuit started, the Sacklers realized, oh, let's basically milk our company of all the money we could take out of it, because we know the lawsuits are going to drain the company. So they transferred $11 billion over about 10 years to themselves from the company. But the lawsuits kept coming against them and against Purdue Pharma. So I forget where I was going with this, but they haven't filed bankruptcy.

The last question is, is this more money under the new bankruptcy plan than the last one?

Yeah, it is. They're contributing more money. I think on the last plan, they were contributing four and a half, five billion, maybe four something. In this one, they're contributing more like 6.5.

And do you have copies of what he's holding in his hand?

I do, yes.

Can I look at a copy?

We can give it to you at a later time. I'll give it back to you.

I just want to look at it before I just make any decisions. And I'm welcome to pass it down or not, but it's hard for me to vote to release the Sacklers from liability without looking at a piece of paper.

So, let me ask you this. So I don't know if I'm allowed to share this right now, simply because it says attorney-client privilege and it's come from the council. Yeah, the executive committee of lawyers for the- So don't you think talking about this document in public would have already made that a public document subject to public- I'm not talking about this document. I'm talking about the facts in that are a matter of public record in the bankruptcy court, which is the bankruptcy plan. If you want to go read the 200-page bankruptcy plan, you can. You can knock yourself out.

No, I'm just saying that that document that you've referred to.

That's just a summary that Chuck has for himself that he's referring to. That's not the bankruptcy plan.

But it's a public record now. We just talked about it.

It's not a public record.

We're talking about it in an open session.

I'm not talking about it. I'm just telling you what I have learned from from the facts of the case and the bankruptcy plan. I'm not sharing, I'm not showing that document to anybody and I haven't shown it to anybody.

Is it too late for us to go into executive session? Cuz I mean, we can't.

I don't know the answer to that. Let me consult with the clerk. Is it okay if I go to Councillor Spadafora so he can ask this question? All right, Councillor Spadafora, please go ahead.

Councillor Till would try to figure out how much money We've got to stand. So I do. I mean, if anybody's seen the Netflix special Painkiller and his family, I mean, it was diabolical. This was all done with intent, the amount of money they made. So I get this hotness for the family and I understand releasing them. My question is, maybe you don't know it. So if we were to vote on both, the state gets a sum of money. If theoretically one city out of the 351 town got that money, they would get the full 40% that's remaining? 60%, right? No. Does the state get 40?

The state keeps 60%. But the total amount of money that the state gets, it goes up the more cities and towns accept this plan and release the site.

Do you know, does every city get the same amount?

No, they don't. There's a schedule that the Massachusetts has written up for what percentage, and I don't know how they came up with it, but there's a percentage, a tiny percentage that's divided up amongst all the cities, and they're not all the same. Also, I should also mention, the money that's gonna be paid out by the Sacklers, it's not all at once to the states, it's actually over a period of 10 years.

10 years? I mean, Council Taylor just did some quick math. I mean, she figured out, I think it was like 180, again, round numbers. Everything was even. Yeah, everything was even. It's like $182,000 per city in Massachusetts. If you take the $7.5 billion divided by 50 states, divide that up, it was something like $182,000, right, based on mass?

Yeah, after the six, wait, the four years.

So over 10 years.

That $7.5 billion, that's not all for Massachusetts.

No, I know. I know we divided by 50 states. I'm saying round numbers, but $182,000. You're releasing them from any future payments to I will just add from the chair.

I also did math, but I did it proportionally to population and my estimate is $650,000 per town. If you just divide the 330 million people of America by the 67,000 in Malden and then you multiply that by our

40% share, that's 650,000.

Yeah, but that's why I asked if it was all the same to every state.

That's the difference, right? These numbers, they're really speculative.

I'm just saying that's an upper bound. Yeah, that's a better number. No, I'm just saying over 10 years, that number's not, I mean, we need the money for the budget, but it's not a windfall.

The other thing is the money that's going to be paid out, there's strings attached. It has to be used for opioid abatement and remediation. So it's not like free money you can do with anything you want with it.

So I'm sorry, to clarify, those would be legally restricted funds?

I believe so, yeah. There's some strings attached.

Okay, I understand. It's over ten years? Yeah. And that will end all the payments that we've been getting throughout the last- I believe so, yeah. Right? That will end- Cuz Chuck, how long have we been receiving settlements before on opioids?

So this is just one, that Purdue Pharma, that'll be one settlement. Yeah. We also have the distributor settlements. We have Janssen, Teva, Allergan, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and McKinsey. Those are different companies. Those are different cases. Those are different- But these will continue.

Those are going to continue. Okay, okay. Are you good, Councilor Dunford? Okay, I'm going to go to Councilor Linehan.

My question is related to whether we should be still in open session or not. Yes or no. When we are in executive session, you reserve the right to not show us confidential documents. Is that true? Would we be in executive session and you would still not show us that paper just to put this issue to bed?

We'll do that in executive session. But frankly, it's not going to add much to what we've already discussed.

I mean, I agree. I think you could watch the Hulu series Dope Sick and read the news and be equipped to understand what's going on here. Tonight, I feel fine with our vote. But if others feel differently, I'm fine to have us take a different vote than what my recommendation was. I'm fine. I'm set.

Thank you, Councillor Anahan. I'm going to go to Councillor Winslow. Councillor Winslow?

Yeah, I think, you know, I did sort of the math portion to pop population. I think I came up with a number similar to Council McDonald. So I think that if I mean, I mean, but it is it's who knows what that rate would be. You know, maybe the the rates depend upon how many deaths or opioids. Who knows? So so I think that is a sense of what maybe we're talking about over and that would be. 65,000 a year over 10 years if we and is that check is that kind of consistent what we're getting from some of the other settlements is that kind of These is a pretty big one.

Yeah, the other ones are smaller. So the distributor payment so this is just one each one of these Settlements that I'm going to mention. It was just one of one settlement distributors $44,000 a year approximately Walgreens $11,000 a year. These are over That's over 12 years. Jansen is over six years. It's about $7,000 a year. Teva, it's over 11 years. It's 12, almost $13,000 a year. Allergan, over five years, $13,000 a year. So these are obviously much smaller than the Purdue one would be. CBS, $23,000 a year. Walgreens, $11,000 a year.

And as far as we know, all those are going and have sort of the same tag that they have to be used to opioid prevention or that type of thing.

Yeah, so all of these opioid settlement funds that were just discussed, it's all general fund money that if it were to be, I mean, you know, once general fund money hits the general fund, It has to be appropriated through the through the budget process. So when I file reports saying what we've spent this money on, it's technically zero. But then with a caveat that we've also, you know, paid for two full time recovery coaches, we pay for Malden Cares for all of the recovery coaches and things like that. So On paper, it shows zero, but in theory, we're spending more on opioid addiction services than the $130,000 a year or so that's coming in. But yeah, no, we can't use it to hire additional firefighters or police officers. It's definitely restricted.

But we're fulfilling our obligations in those settlements by showing we are spending. that amount of money. So, all right. And then this would just be another 65,000. We would have to maybe go through the same process or whatever. Yeah, the amount we won't know for a bit. Yeah, or something. All right. Now, just a question about those other settlements. I don't remember us going into the executive session to settle those. So I'm just, is there, do we know, is this just different because it's federal bankruptcy or what do we do in the process?

I don't know where the idea came up came from for possibly entering into executive session. If it wasn't for those others, I mean, this is the first time I've been involved in any way in one of these opioid lawsuit settlements with the city. So I don't know.

So if I can just clarify, all of the other settlements that we just discussed, none of those required a vote of the city council? Um, myself and Allie McNeil were talking about this one and we're not even sure that this one requires it. What it says is they highly encourage the legislative body, um, to take a vote on it. Um, I think it's for optics. Um, one of the comments that was made from one of the law firms was to summarize simply the Sacklers will pay the most amount of money when they have the highest level of participation from the governmental entities. So I think what they're trying to do is just have all of the governmental entities documented just to help support, to make the optics just that much stronger. To get the maximum amount of money, the upwards of the $6.5 billion out of the Sacklers. All right, thank you.

Are you good, Councillor Winslow? All right, I'm going to go to Councillor O'Malley and then back to Councillor Linehan.

What year were you elected? So if I remember correctly, it was 2017 when we were still at the senior center. And I remember being in the library in the back. And I remember attorneys coming from some law firm saying, do you want to join on to this class action or mass tort case? And we- So I'm sorry. So that's what I remember. But when it comes to this, Um, I am not prepared to vote tonight. It feels very much like we're shooting from the hip. I haven't reviewed anything. Um, and we're voting to release the sacklers from liability for what sounds like a pittance amount of money. Um, you know, $600,000 is not worth a human life, not even one. Um, so I think we should at least be doing our due diligence in reading the documents that we obviously, I mean, if you have it, the privilege to read this, and you work and represent us, and we have the right to read that, maybe not in open session, but it sounds like we have one more week to discuss this, potentially. I'm not prepared, and I will be voting no to release the Sacklers from liability tonight. Thanks.

And can I just, Control Rand again, or I don't remember which of you said this, but to clarify, the deadline you said is September 14th? to confirm or to confirm our participation if we want to participate? Correct. September 14th. All right. Thank you. Councillor Linehan.

I was just going to follow up on what Councillor Winslow had said about the previous settlements that we got in. I did just want to reiterate that the mayor's office has communicated to us about this. We've been receiving this information by email. In addition to it being in the news, this has been something that's just been very important to me. And really, Maria Louise has been fantastic about answering questions that I've had about it, how we've been going to spend it, where it goes into the general fund, how how all this works. So if we've been willing to do our due diligence up to now, this information has been made available to us. And I think from here, whatever whatever we decide tonight, when the money comes in, whatever amount that ends up being, this is something that is going to be my understanding is that it's at the mayor's discretion how it's going to be spent. So for the community's clarification, I just wanted that to be also stated. I think this is an unusual step that we have a decision point here around which path we go down. But this is something that the city has been very transparent on. It is a significant amount of money that has been coming in for us and other municipalities. There's been a tremendous amount of impact in the community, obviously, from the devastation from OxyContin and the decisions that Purdue and the Sacklers have made. This is something that I think is going to have the ability to sustain some of our recovery programs and that we can do a lot with. So just not to lose the overall picture of what we're talking about here. Obviously, the Sackler family, as attorneys here said, they have more money than they can. They can shield themselves no matter what we do tonight. So we need to really focus on how do we want to move forward and make sure that we are capitalizing on the resources that we know we can get to be able to sustain the programs that we have to be able to serve folks who are gonna be affected forever. The addiction treatment services, if you're left in treatment from substance use disorder, these are drugs that you cannot wean yourself off of. Folks are in treatment for the rest of their life because of the addictive nature of the science of these medications. So these are things that we need to be able to have sustainable programs for in order to keep people alive. I have strong feelings about this because I think the impact to our community has been so great. And we have a program that we would otherwise maybe not be able to continue to fund. And I want to make sure that we can continue to fund the work that we are doing, that we're doing well now.

And I'll just say our office's recommendation is that you should approve the plan and ratify the release of the Sacklers. You know, there's no perfect solution here for anyone given the situation, but this is a reasonable, a very reasonable outcome to this, you know, whatever you want to call it, catastrophe.

Thank you. Councillor Colón Hayes and then Councillor Spadafora.

Oh, thank you. I know I've been in conversations with you, Chuck, a couple of times over the opioid grants and how they move forward because, yes, it's obviously it's a huge issue. We're all very concerned and waiting a week. Well, you know, we'll still be able to get that money. That's not a choice. I'm fine with it tonight. But what the question I had was the general fund the last time when you said it goes into the general fund, the last time we spoke, there was the state made a change and we could opt into appropriate, do you remember that conversation? I might, yeah, okay. Is that, are we making that change?

So not as of today. So the change that you're referring to is when these settlement funds first started coming in, it was mandatory that they were accounted for as general fund money and could not be spent without further appropriation. Recently, I'm not sure when, a year ago or so, they amended the legislation to allow cities and towns to create a special revenue of fund, special revenue of fund to account for these funds without further appropriation. So as these funds came in, they would go into an account not within the general fund, outside of the general fund, where the city could spend them without being appropriated as part of the yearly budget. We have not done that yet. We've had the luxury of having ARPA funds to fund a lot of the Malden Cares program. As I stated earlier, we have two full-time addiction recovery people within the Board of Health, Health and Human Services, and we also fund an additional $40,000 a year for Malden Cares. It's something that we're entertaining in the future, but as of today, the beginning of FY2026, These funds are still being deposited directly into the general fund and can't be spent without being appropriated first.

Okay, so then is that why you're saying that you'll see a zero on there if we're looking in? Because there's been times where I'm like, where's this money? Um, going, where is it appropriated to? What are we spending? And I've gotten answers, but, um, right. I couldn't find them.

Yeah, no. So that's a hundred percent accurate. And, and a lot of cities and towns are dealing with just that. We actually had to amend our reports because originally I'm like, no, you know, we, you know, the city of Malden spent, you know, over a hundred thousand dollars on this. So when I first filled out the report, I wrote what we actually spent on, um, opioid, um, services. They got back to me saying, that doesn't tie out to the reports that you submitted to the Department of Revenue. So then we amended those to reports to clarify it, as have many cities and towns, because a lot of cities and towns are handling it the identical way that Malden is, by depositing it into the general fund. Only communities that have created that special revenue account would be reporting actual expenses out of these settlement funds.

Okay, I'd love to see that in the future, just putting that in there. Thank you.

Councilor Spadafora?

Yeah, I think Councilor Linehan said it well. I mean, at the end of the day, there's no winners. There's a need both for us to continue to keep the support and the services in the city of Malden there. That need also translated to funding. Listen, we're not going to beat the sackers, unfortunately. I mean, you don't have to be an attorney to realize that. But if you've seen all the news reports, yes, morally she would be doing it, probably not. But at the end of the day, reality is we need to continue what we've been doing from the community and fund this. And I think a week, it's not going to change, I think, most of our minds. But I would be willing to put a motion forward to accept the recommendations by the city solicitor to vote in favor of both these papers. I have one question. If this were to, if this is to settle, when is, do they expect the first payment next year, 27 or 26?

Sounds about right.

Is it?

I think it could be longer. I don't know.

I'm sure it is. I think in the next couple of years. I mean, it doesn't matter. It is what it is. But I was just wondering when it would be resolved. So that's all I have. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councillor Spadafora. Councillor Winslow.

Yeah, I guess, I mean, this is obviously a negotiated settlement. And going back to law school, what is our alternative if we would not accept this negotiated settlement? I mean, I think the thought that we would be on our own to litigate this, I mean, this was very unprecedented in the sense of what the federal court did in rejecting the initial settlement and really forcing the Sacklers to put in more money to make it more painful. I mean, it's sad that there morally is not more that we can do as a city. But I don't think that we really have any true alternative to pursue our own litigation or be certified in some class. I mean, I think it is. This is you know, we've been getting the money. It's been helping relieve needs and creating great successful programs here and that we could sustain those is That's a great success. And you know what our opioid deaths are way down I don't the mayor announces those we've had a great success in controlling our own destiny rather than having that wait to a court so we could probably do a lot more with this amount of money than You know waiting waiting. So I I think I would support councillor Spadafora's motion to to accept this.

Thank you Let me just come back to this in a second I'm gonna go to councillor O'Malley and then we're gonna clarify the motion on the table Yeah, so thank you.

I just want to say that I just think that we all should be having a chance to do our homework and our due diligence on this and And I don't believe that watching Hulu is doing our homework or due diligence. I'm sorry. Reading the documents would be doing our due diligence. So I think waiting a week would be reasonable. I'm not prepared to release the Sacklers. I would like a chance to read what is the bankruptcy court saying. And just in case other people want to do their homework, that does not include Hulu, the attorney general is having a webinar on the opioid settlements this Thursday, September 4th at 12 p.m. And this is an email that we received from the Mass Municipal Association. And it says, we invite you and your colleagues to attend a special webinar hosted by Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell on Thursday, September 4th, 2025 at 12 p.m., created specifically for municipalities across Massachusetts. This webinar will focus on the opportunity for municipalities to participate In the Commonwealth's recent settlement with A, opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, and two, opioid manufacturers, and it lists them. You can RSVP. I will forward this to Lisa and the clerk and our legal team. Someone should be on this. Ideally, it should be all of us, but someone from the city should definitely be on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor O'Malley. Can I just ask Maria Louise is here from the mayor's office. Maria, is there anything you want to add to this discussion from the mayor's perspective? It's not required, I just wanted to give you the opportunity.

I don't think I have anything to add but what Zaheer and Mr. Rannigan said. The only thing is that we wouldn't be able to represent ourselves in this. And lawyers from several firms have looked at this and have participated in this suit. Ali's been involved since, you know, she's been here sort of keeping an eye on it. So I think I'm very comfortable with the attorneys involved in that. Their recommendation is that we move forward and approve it.

Can I ask you or Zaheer or whoever is the right person to ask? Are you aware of any cities or towns that are declining to participate? Or is there any discussion that you've been a part of of anyone declining to participate?

I'm not aware of any governmental entity that has so far declined.

You are not aware, I'm sorry.

All 50 states, attorney generals of all 50 states have signed and agreed to it.

Okay, all right, thank you. So, Councilman, did you have your light on again?

Well, I know typically in these type of cases that attorneys will take a contingency. It sounds like the attorney general in the state by taking a 60% any there won't be lawyer fees taking out of the 40% that goes to municipalities, as far as we know? Is that essentially the... There's provisions for lawyers' fees in the bankruptcy plan.

I don't know the details of them. You know, but... So, yeah, I mean, some of that $8.5 billion is going to go to, you know, lawyers' fees and administrative expenses and whatnot, administering the plan and the funds and the trusts that are going to be set up to, you know, distribute all the money. I don't have the details of how much that's going to be, but yeah, there's administrative expenses, including attorney's fees, yes.

So it's very speculative as to exactly how much we may get, ultimately.

Yeah, and part of it depends on how many people actually sign on and approve, because the more governmental entities that sign on and approve, the more money that's going to be distributed.

All right, thank you.

All right, so I think we have a motion on the floor. So let me just clarify this. Councilor Spadafora, did you make a motion or was it your intent to make a motion for one of these two things that we need to approve? Both, okay. So we're gonna do this, we're gonna do them separately as recommended. So let me take the participation one first. Councilor Linehan seconded. Is that our, did you second? Okay. So Councilor Winters deferred to Councilor Linehan to second this. I do wanna just ask, before we proceed on discussion, Councillor Mele, I know you have additional questions that may not be appropriate for public session. Would a five minute recess to be able to ask any questions you want to ask of our council?

No, I appreciate that. I don't think five minutes. I would like to attend the Attorney General's webinar, and I'd like to read the documents that they have. But I can do that after you guys vote. That's fine.

Okay. So we have a motion on the floor from Councillor Spadafora to approve Malden's participation in the opioid settlement as we described here as invited by the Massachusetts Attorney General? Is that properly phrased? Can you give us better language on this motion, please? That would be very helpful.

Vote number one would be to vote to approve the Purdue bankruptcy plan.

We approve the plan or we approve our participation in the plan?

Approve your participation in the plan, yeah.

Okay, so the motion from Councilor Spadafora is for us to approve the City of Malden's participation in the Purdue bankruptcy plan as presented by the Massachusetts Attorney General.

Good.

Yeah? Yes. Okay, is there any further discussion on that motion before we take the vote? I will just say from the chair since I've not contributed to this discussion up to this point that I understand the need to practice due diligence on this and I defer to our professional staff and trust you all that you have done your due diligence. My loyalty is really to our incredible addiction recovery community in Malden and that we were just this Sunday recognizing um, international, uh, uh, losses, uh, a day on losses and addiction. There was a vigil and everything as, as Malden overcoming addiction does every year. So it was very heavy on my mind. Um, and believe that this is yes, the best option to be faithful to those commitments, um, in what is an awful situation. Any other comments? Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Council clone Hayes, council Condon, council Crowe. Councilor McDonald. Yes. Councilor O'Malley. Yes. Councilor Sika. Yes. Councilor Spadafora. Yes. Councilor Taylor. Yes. Councilor Winslow. Yes. Councilor President Linehan.

Yes.

Okay, that has passed into.

That passes unanimously. The second motion that you are making, Councilor Spadafora, is to.

Yeah, it's to release the Sackler family under the terms of the governmental, let me just get the wording right, sorry. Governmental entity settlement agreement, GESA for short.

To release the Sackler family under the terms of the governmental settle. Settlement agreement. The governmental. Entity, sorry, entity settlement agreement. Governmental entity settlement agreement as recommended by the Massachusetts Attorney General. Good, yeah. Yeah, because if I'm gonna vote on it, I would rather say, that the Massachusetts Attorney General advised me to release the Sackba family than to have that be, you know, our own personal initiative here. Okay, discussion on this motion.

I will be voting no. And you will absolutely have the opportunity. I encourage you all to vote no too.

Councilman Riley, do you want to speak to the motion?

Yeah, I don't think we should be voting to waive our right or to release the Sackler family from liability here. So, yeah, I think this is, particularly without doing any due diligence.

Thanks.

Okay. Any other commentary on this? Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Council Clone Hayes? Yes. Council Condon? Yes. Council Crowe? Yes. Council McDonald? Yes. Council O'Malley?

No.

Council Seega? Yes. Council Spadafora? Yes. Council Taylor? Yes. Council Winslow? Yes. Council President Linehan?

Yes. So that passes nine to one. Yes. All right. Uh, I think that concludes this paper and I will return the chair to the council president. This has been fun. Everybody.

Yes. Okay. Next order of business is personal privilege. Counselor Winslow.

Yes. Um, Just want to remind our residents in Ward 6 and Ward 4 that on September 16th, there is a preliminary election. And you can actually come down to City Hall during business hours right now to vote until September 11th. And I think if you've taken out a mail-in ballot, it's what day do we have to get that in, Carol Ann?

Mail-in ballots have to be received back to the office by the election night, September 16th, 8 p.m.

All right. So just reminding people in wards four and six to get out and vote for those things. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Winslow.

Councillor Taylor. Thank you. I just want to remind everybody that this Friday, Councilor Simonelli and I, along with the Malden Public Library and the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development will be hosting a back to school night. There'll be some back to school giveaways, a movie, food, and you can get your library card there. There'll be free books from the library, from the Friends of the Library, and you can also, It's at Roosevelt Park, 5.30, 7.15 starts the movie. Movie will be determined by tomorrow. And the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development will be talking about the housing rehab program, so we hope that there's a little something for everybody. Come on down Friday night, Roosevelt Park, 5.30. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Taylor. Councilor O'Malley.

I just wanted to let everyone know that tomorrow, Wednesday, September 3rd at 6 p.m., the Malden Public Library will have an exhibit on Malden dresses.

Brides.

Wedding dresses. So check that out. You can check out the old Converse Memorial Building. Additionally, on Friday, the Malden, Friday, September 5th, The Malden Sketch Group will be having their gallery opening at 6 p.m., and that's at 350 Main Street. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor O'Malley. Councillor McDonald.

Thank you. I wanted to let folks know that our Police Community Advisory Council, which has been meeting dutifully monthly since we made appointments last year. Thank you all for reappointing our two council appointees who have been doing great work. They're having their first community forum on Wednesday, September 17th at 7 p.m. It will be, I believe, there's an online link. It'll be at the community room at the police station. And so that hasn't been fully noticed yet, so some of the details could change. But I just wanted to make sure that folks were looking out for that, and I'll confirm the details next week as well. They'll be presenting some of the data that the Malden Police Department has been providing and some of what they've heard from the community over the past year. and there'll be opportunity for community input there as well. Is anybody gonna talk about the Fairy House Festival? Is that on your list? Okay. This Saturday is the, it's this Saturday. Yeah, this Saturday is our annual Fairy House Festival. It had been originally at one point in August, and now it's been moved. It's this Saturday, September 6th, 12 to four at Pine Banks Park, and it's a great time, so come on down. Our church camp created a fairy house to enter this year, so I can't wait to see it. And I wanted to just say to folks, most of my colleagues I think know this, but last Thursday we did have a finance committee meeting that was well over an hour and a half long to talk about the trash strike and what the city has been doing to respond, all of the ways in which we're trying to manage the limited hours we do have in terms of drivers and folks to pick up the trash from Republic. the pressure we've been trying to put on Republic to end this strike. So the video of that meeting is now available. It's posted. It was live streamed by Urban Media Arts. We've also we're also posting the slide deck that was used. There's a lot of great information there and been trying to get that information out. So I know folks had a lot of questions. I know this is an unresolved and unsatisfactory situation. I want to assure folks watching that the city is doing everything that we can to pressure Republic to review the terms of the contract. and review the terms of the invoices we're now getting from Republic and and give the best service we can at the curbside for our residents and and make allowances where we can and just ask for everyone's continued help in trying to keep the streets clear trying to keep your your bags in bins to prevent a worsening rodent problem that is still just a part of everything that folks are doing and last week we started the We started an opportunity for folks to drop off their recycling since curbside recycling is now paused, again, because we don't have the hours for it. To have trucks just in different parts of the city on different weeks. So I know last week was in Linden, this week I don't know that they've announced the location yet. They did, okay. 245 Bryant Street.

The old synagogue.

Okay, right, right, the old temple property. So check that out, keep track of the city. All the updates get posted on the city's social media. You can also go to cityofmalden.org slash connect and sign up for those trash updates. We encourage everyone to do that. Those are available in multiple languages, even though I am talking in English right now. I think that covers it for me. Thanks, everybody.

Okay, great. Thank you, Councilor McDonald. Just very quickly from the chair, I want to congratulate, Councilor McDonald mentioned this briefly, but I want to congratulate Malden Overcoming Addiction and the Bridge Recovery Center for their overdose awareness vigil. on Sunday night. I wasn't able to attend due to a prior family commitment, but I saw that the turnout was great and I want to thank them for all the great work they do in the community and hosting an amazing event every year. I also want to thank all my colleagues who I saw at the Labor Day parade in Boston, Boston's first ever Labor Day parade yesterday. I was very proud to march with my husband's union, Actors' Equity Association, and they marched alongside SAG-AFTRA and IATSE. It was honestly an incredible turnout. Very worthwhile and really cool to see so many spectators along the route too, which was kind of a huge surprise. So those were two weekend events that I just wanted to kind of recap and highlight. And then coming up next week, I did want to share that on Monday the 8th at Felsmere Pond, going to be co-hosting Good Dog Day, the third annual Good Dog Day with our animal control and Malden police. That's going to be from 5 to 7 p.m. down at Felsmere Pond. free pup cups and treats provided by the barkery and alongside the police that's going to be sponsored by the downtown paw and the ocean view kennel so come on down whether you have a dog friend or not I do not have a dog but I always enjoy coming down and enjoying the fun so hope to see you there I forgot to put my oh that's fine counselor Colón Hayes personal privilege for you you have the floor

Thank you very much. I just wanted to briefly announce, I'll have more information on this next week, but the North Shore Hispanic Association is holding their festival right here. Actually, it was changed. It was last, I think, I want to say two years maybe. It was down in Maplewood Square, but this year they moved it to the Ed Lucy Plaza. So that will be from 12 to 4 on Saturday, September 20th, and I'll give you more information when I have it. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, and the docket is clear. I have a motion to adjourn by Councillor Sika, seconded by Councillor McDonald. All in favor? Aye. Okay, we are adjourned. Yay.