Malden City Council 03-10-2026

Mook,

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 of 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 also like to do an additional moment of silence in memory of longtime Ward 3 resident Stephen Lewis. Many of you have likely met his wife, Sandy Felder, on visits to the gallery at 57. Yes, I'm sorry to be sharing this sad news. I know many of you have probably met his wife Sandy Felder at countless events around the city. It's almost too many to name the things that Sandy and Stephen were involved in around the city.

I saw Sandy as recently as this past Friday night at the Revolutionary Art Reception at 350 Main. I know I saw Councilor O'Malley there. Sandy had been carrying a very private burden of Stephen's recent diagnosis of Alzheimer's for the last few years. and he did pass away peacefully with Sandy at his side this past Wednesday at home. With her permission, I am gonna share an excerpt from a beautiful statement in his memory that she shared with me over the weekend. Stephen lived a life shaped by conscience, curiosity, and an enduring belief in justice. He attended Northeastern University where he became active in the anti-Vietnam War movement and the struggle for black liberation. His values guided his life from early on. He even lost his first professional job because he refused to cross a picket line. That quiet moral clarity would define him. He devoted his career to social work, supporting homeless youth in Boston and later adults living with mental illness through the Mass Department of Mental Health. He believed deeply in the dignity of those that he served.

His commitment extended into union leadership with SEIU Local 509, where he served as Chair of the Political Action Committee and Treasurer. There he helped strengthen the union as a powerful voice for human service and education workers across the state. He also collected political and labor posters, a passion that grew into a Second Life's work. With a collection of more than 7,000 posters, he curated hundreds of public exhibitions throughout New England, bringing messages of struggle, solidarity, and hope into libraries, universities, and community spaces. This was actually profiled in Neighborhood View just a few years ago. It's well worth a read. That collection now resides in the Stephen Lewis Archive at UMass Boston Preserve for future generations. Stephen will be remembered for his integrity, his passion for justice, his humor, and the many lives he touched. In his memory, Sandy asks that you send

a memory you have of him to lewisposters at gmail.com and in time she will compile these into a book that will bring comfort and joy as she reflects on how he was known and loved by so many. May his memory be a blessing, a moment of silence for Stephen Lewis. Thank you very much. You have another, okay. Yes, give me one moment, Councillor Winslow.

All right, yeah, I also just wanna say Stephen Lewis was probably the first person who got me involved in politics stuff, so we can either, Thank him or blame him for my involvement, but very dedicated and a civic-minded person. So I really appreciate it. But we also lost another Malden institution recently. Arthur Kahn passed away. just a few weeks ago and as many Maldonians know that Arthur was a central figure in Malden Square having been the owner with his brother and following up with his father, Malden Jewelry Store, and that it was always a presence in Malden Square, in and around, so that was a really big thing. Besides being an outstanding business person and salesperson, Arthur served Malden and our nation. He served in the Army during the Korean War and then dedicated himself to serving

veterans, including the Jewish war veterans and our Malden DAV. He served on multiple organizations in Malden. I first met Martha through the Rotary Club and also saw him frequently at the YMCA, both the old one here on Pleasant Street as well as the newer one on Dartmouth Street. involved in so many organizations, too many just to really mention here. He was a big lover of sports. He played football at Northeastern, so another Northeastern grad where he met his wife, Barbara, and he also helped establish Malden, Pop Warner as well. Arthur and his wife Barbara, also a civic institution, raised three wonderful children. Heather, Heidi, and Jeff are survived by 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. and we offer our sincerest condolences to Barbara and the entire Conn family.

And they did ask for donations to go to the DAV over in Chris's ward. who can make donations to DAV in Arthur's honor. So just a moment of silence. Thank you.

Thank you. Will the Clerk now please call the roll?

Council of Colón Hayes. Here. Council of Condon. Here. Council Crowe. Here. Council LeWong. Here. McDonald, O'Malley, Sica, Simonelli, Taylor, Winslow, Linehan, here.

Okay, under the provisions of the open meeting law, for those of you in attendance, please be informed that UMA, Urban Media Arts, will be recording this evening's meeting, so just be aware there will be audio and video recordings of tonight's meeting. First order of business, I believe we are going to take one item out of order before we go to our guest citizens achievement and announcements. That is item Bear with me, I apologize. Sorry, I'm looking for which agenda item. It's under communications.

It's under communications. It doesn't have a paper number. I just need a second to... Second. No, not that kind of second. She needs a moment. Oh. Understood.

We're going to be taking one of our items of communication from our Solicitor's Office out of order due to a scheduling constraint. So just bear with us while we bring in one of our Assistant City Solicitors on Teams.

Zahir, if you can hear me, it looks like I can't raise you to a participant, but I enabled your mic and your camera. Are you able to unmute yourself and hear us and speak with us?

Just bear with us one moment while we try to reach our solicitor's office on Teams. Okay, we're going to go to our next order of business while we work on our tech issues. Next item being our presentation?

Yes.

Okay.

So Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Ron Hogan will appear before the Council to provide an update on school funding requirements for FY27. And everybody should have a handout in front of them of what Mr. Hogan is going to present on right now.

Thank you, Mr. Hogan. You have the floor. Thank you. And so hopefully everyone did get the presentations, got a hard copy in front of them. I've asked the Clerk to just upload this to the meeting resources afterwards so anybody from the public that wants to take a look afterwards can follow along at home. I think everybody knows come budget time, we end up covering some of the school side of things, but always in a bit of a hurried fashion. And given the oversized role this topic has played in some of the conversations that we've had, you know, relatively to override in some of the city's financial challenges, it felt like it made sense to just take a few minutes and pull it out and really highlight what we're looking at for the current fiscal year relative to school financing. I'm going to give you a little bit of background, but I'm not going to spend a ton of time. You all can certainly jump in and ask questions. But I want to just walk through how the state goes about very quickly determining, but really then tell you what this year looks like. The very first thing the state does for education funding is to determine what's called a foundation budget.

simply put, it's the state using the various demographics and characteristics of our student base to determine what it is that the public schools, and in this case, it's the public schools and the charter schools, need to spend in order to provide and sort of a quality education for all of the students. And so that's the first slide, it's the first step. This year that number was about $2 million more than last year. Some of that is definitely tampered down by enrollment going down. the number of students went down, but certainly the cost of doing everything went up, and so the very first thing the state determines is pay all the things being equal, you need to spend another couple million dollars to educate the folks in the public schools. The next thing the state does is to determine how much, and this is where it really gets important, how much this city of Malden should be able to contribute towards education. And this is the term you've heard me refer to a lot of times as the target local contribution. how much can we using our resources

based upon the state formulas as compared to last year. How much more do they believe that these formulas say we can contribute over last year? And in that case, they plug in the different variables. We've talked about them. I'm not gonna go through them in detail, but it's basically EQV and income. and their very first calculation says that the city of Malden should be able to contribute $3.46 million more toward education for this year as compared to last year. I do want to point out one thing, that the two things that the state uses to determine that, EQV and income, one of those numbers generally only changes every other year. So the EQV number, in fact, did not change from last year, and yet the calculation yielded a result that the City of Malden should be able to take from its resources and increase school funding by $3.46 million with one of the two variables staying constant. It's a really important thing to remember.

So the next thing that the state calculates is, okay, that's how much our target is going up. So what they then try to say is, what can the city truly afford? That's where the target moved. What is the increment toward that goal? How much do the metrics tell the state that we should be able to add to last year based upon and some other factors to get to that target goal. And the main input here is what we call a municipal growth factor. So state looks at the growth of all local revenues they've got a factor here of 5.25%, and they say all other things being equal, you are expected to at least go up by the amount you contributed last year to education, multiplied by that growth factor. So your very starting point is, the target went up as I mentioned by 3.4 million, but our required contribution, what it is for this current year, is being incremented by the municipal growth factor, which yielded a $3.3 million increase over last year.

So that's the starting point. The state says, your target could have gone up $50 million. the amount that's expected to actually be funded starts with that required local contribution going up by the growth in our local revenues over the prior year. then what they say is, okay, but we need to see how far away from your target you are because we're gonna give you a little nudge with this penalty factor. And so because we are, We are sort of in between the 2.5% and 7.5% range. They add another $629,000 to that figure. and this is again, the formulas are designed to push us towards that target number. So they first say we're gonna grow it by your local revenues and then we're gonna add in another amount onto it to try to get you closer to that target figure. So when you put those two together, you yield what the state calls our increase in required local contribution from last year to this year of $3.9 million.

So again, that is the amount that on education, public schools, charter schools, vocational schools, that we must spend incrementally last year to this year just on education. So you see the summary here shows you on the very line, that very bottom line that required net school spending increase by $3.9 million. and so regardless of what the state is going to do for aid, that is our required contribution. In addition, you can see that we are receiving $501,000 in federal funds Chapter 78, it's what they call the minimum aid, where they take an amount per student, $75 this year, last year it was twice that. and they basically say, even though you have no need because our required contribution covers more than 100% of the expected increase to cover

the increase in education costs, the state provides us this $500,000 minimum aid last year over this year. So nobody gets zero, everybody goes out by this minimum aid amount. You can see that last year we got 5.3, I'm sorry, $5.8 million last year, so our Chapter 78 went down about $5.3 million between last year and this year. So our local contribution went up, which up to 78 went way down. So when you look at it in total, there are four numbers that make up what it is that we need to spend on education. The first one is the required increase to the bulk spending, which is a subset of that $3.9 million number that I mentioned earlier. The required contribution to the ball in the district, $3.4 million in change. Those two together make up that $3.9 million that we are required to fund toward education.

required increase to the Northeast Volks School Building Project, although not part of the minimum school spending requirement, it is an amount that we are are obligated to put towards that desk schedule. It's that final big jump in that building schedule and it's on the schedule and we are committed and must fund that. And then the last piece is the increase in and Transportation. So transportation is one of those items that does not count towards net school spending, yet the schools must pay for it year over year. whatever they spend towards education doesn't count towards net school spending, but we've got to fund it, right? Because essentially whatever they do put toward that reduces the amount that counts towards net school spending. We're going to have to go ahead and backfill that. Those four items required by law, there's nothing we can do about them, total $4.87 million.

Last year to this year, what we have to pay in order to keep up with the requirements for the various education funding pieces. and what I show down below, folks, is just the expected increase in revenues for the fiscal year 27 budget. If you assume our typical 2.5% property tax base increase of about $2.9 million. I put in a million dollars in new growth. That number is varied right around that number, but it's a reasonable assumption. It's a number that we've gotta grow, but that's pretty much where we've been at. I show you the all local receipts growing at a 3% number. These are excise tax and meals tax and all the other different local licenses and fees and parking tickets, right? So we collect about $20 million local receipts, if you assume those go up by 3%, I put in another $600,000 number there, and then I added in the unrestricted state aid of about $400,000. And you can see that all four of those sources would cover the state required spending on education.

And now we've got to figure out how everything else gets paid for from there. So before we start this budget, the four major line items, property taxes, new growth, Unrestricted Aid, and increase in local receipts. Maybe it's 5%. I don't know. Maybe it's 5%. Well, another $200,000. Well, that's what we'll have to play with. But you can see that before we start the budget, the lion's share of our increase in revenue is already spoken for. Now we've got to start talking about funding the rest of the city operations. So it's... it's a little sobering because I'll tell you before we knew this, we knew we had a problem, right? We started talking about the deficit within the budget before we got the results from the state that told us are required to put this amount towards education and that we're getting half a million dollars in state aid. And this, as you can tell, is only going to dig that hole just a heck of a lot deeper.

hopefully that helps just kind of give you an idea what we're looking at before the budget comes down and it's baked all into that, but that is going to without a doubt make this budget far more challenging than even last year's because we start with that baseline and we add to it this what I call sort of an impossible situation. So happy to take any questions that you all have.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Hogan. I definitely see some lights. I just wanted to say this is helpful given that we don't you know we've had the cherry sheet come out but it's going to be some time before we get the mayor's budget and obviously we do have a special election in March. I think this is helpful because the public is asking for what information can we talk about now and this does feel like that kind of level sets a little bit to understand what we're facing before we have more that we can talk about. So I'm gonna go to Councilor McDonald first.

Yeah, thank you so much, Council President. And thanks, Ron, for laying this out. It is grim this year. And I just want to clarify, this list, you know, this chart on the last page that you've got of these required increases, This actually doesn't even take into account the catch-up payment that we need to make for previous Gapson required local spending once we, you know, kind of went through the post hoc analysis, right? That's right. So that's another million and a half on top of this. So that's a great point.

Yeah, I did not, I didn't want to feel like I was piling on, but the reality is there is a bare minimum 1.6 million carrying over from FY25. And if you assume that FY26 just stays level, it carries over to 26 and has to get added on. So yeah, this is, I guess you could call this the best case scenario.

So I do just want to say, you know, I went back and looked at these formulas so unpredictable about what it generates on the state funding side. It's pretty steady that it just keeps chugging up and up and up on the local required contribution side. and so when I look back at the, since 2019 when the Student Opportunity Act was implemented, we've averaged about a $3 million a year increase in the required local contribution and a $3 million a year increase in state funding. Again, it bounces around, but if you average it, right? So that, both things are worse. It's two and a half million less in state funding than perhaps on average in the last couple years. Meanwhile, it is almost a million more in the required local entrepreneurs. So that swing, that's sort of a $3.5 million swing compared to

and so on. and this is the, just wanna again say, this is why we went to the hearings that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had about this required local contribution. They're doing this local contribution study. A number of us went and testified, including Ron and myself and the mayor, and submitted comments about how to change this formula. And one way to do it is to look at the impact on the rest of the city budget. Another way to do it is to put some limits on what that target local contribution can be because right now there are no theoretical limits. Theoretically, I don't know if we can figure out what this would look like, it'd be a weird city probably but, theoretically, your target local contribution could be 90% of your local revenue if the property values matched up and everything. There's no theoretical limit to it.

And as other things in the formula move forward in other wealthier districts, run into their caps, all of that cost has to get redistributed and it comes right back to us. So that is all to say, you know, I'm now in the, this is more of a comment than a question phase of this, but to note that that report from DESE is coming out this summer. and this will be the final year of SOA implementation, which the legislature has said they wanna do. So that means that there is an opening here, hopefully, maybe our best, that we've had recently to try to get some changes. I've had a number of residents email me and ask about like, what more can we do? This came up at the forum. And Ron, I would just love your thoughts about whether there are ways that we could collectively try to mobilize our residents to really get some changes to this formula on the table for next year.

Yeah, no, and I think a resident asked that at one of the forums. I think it's a great question. I do think we should get the benefit of the study to know what it is that the professional staff at the Department of Education is recommending in order to go ahead and figure out how to mobilize the folks in this community that want to be I think everything we do until then to create a foundation of knowledge will make that report make more sense. But I absolutely think the suggestion of how do we get folks to have a voice is one that we should be thinking about. But I think we need to figure out what's going to be put on the table in that report and hope that it doesn't take a pass. I'm cautiously optimistic the folks at DESE are incredibly competent, right? They know the stuff inside and out, and I really am optimistic that this type of thing, guys, this doesn't work. You cannot put 100% of your revenue towards one line item and then sit there and think that this is voodoo math. This is just, this is real.

And it might be buried within a complicated budget that comes down in a month and a half, but it's in there. I promise you it's in there, right? Because there was just no other way around it. Because one way or the other, they're going to get you there. And to your point, Councilor McDonald, this could have been another $600,000 more if that penalty piece triggered just to the next level, which we're right there, and I can promise you, right, we're on tape, we'll be there next year. that penalty number when the EQV kicks in for two years will be the higher end of the penalty. I'd be willing to stake my presentation on that.

Thank you, Councilor McDonald. Next, I have Councilor Winslow.

Yeah, Ron, when we were looking at and talking about the override vote, initially the mayor put forward the $5.4 million proposal, and I know there was some discussion and one reason why the council put forward 8.2 million was some concern. Now this, that was, 8.2 was 2.8 million above what the initial proposal was This is looking at a $3.5 million difference. So it's actually what we might estimate the way we were putting that override on the ballot is actually now that final figures are $700,000 more. So, yeah.

Yeah, although I think if you recall, there weren't necessarily, we didn't get from there to, from sort of that way, but certainly I would say that This level of worst case scenario was certainly not contemplated in any of those conversations. I mean, I think all you were there know that nobody was sitting there saying, and we should assume. I remember the conversation being, well, let's assume an average year. And I'd say, well, what's an average year? 5.8 million in state aid to 500,000 in state. And I get news for you, like we're gonna be having conversations with the school department. They are gonna have a tough time budgeting even to this number, right? They'll tell you that their costs are going through the roof also. The numbers might be close in terms of what that override number changed in committee, but it's not because any assumption was made here. This added on to that problem.

So this is added on.

100%. All right, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councilor Winslow. Councilor Colón Hayes.

Thank you very much. Actually, you were just touched on, Councilor Winslow, what I was going to ask. So circling numbers on page five, it's not numbered, but it's basically adding the shortfall penalty. That's what I was going to ask about. It says 629. There's so many numbers that have been going around in our heads right now. But the last time we talked about this, there was a penalty and a gap that we were adding on already. which is where I think we came to that 8.2 million. So on page five, this penalty, what you're saying is new, is that?

So we have pretty much been in a penalty situation every year. It's just a matter of whether we're in what you'll call the first tier or the second tier, right? So if your shortfall is between 2.5% and 7.5% of your target, you get hit with a 1% penalty if it's over seven and a half, you get hit with a 2% penalty. Last year we were at the 2% and I think, you know, Councilor McDonnell rightly predicted we'd be there again this year EQV to have moved year over year, we absolutely would have been. So it's just, it triggers each year based upon how far away you are, but that target's running away from us and we're trying to catch it, and every year, I mean we're going to have that, Councilor you know we're going to have that second tier penalty and this is not a place we want to be in a second tier.

Okay, so that's why this number goes up because that's people are going to hear this tonight and we're going to have to Okay, respond to that. Much appreciated for this. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Hogan, for this presentation. I think I kind of know the answer, but would you agree that, like, the chapter 70 foundation for me is the primary reason why we're facing this prop two and a half override? A hundred percent, yes. I mean, cause like what you've shown here is that as state aid has gone down, Our local contribution is going up. And at the same time, we have increased health insurance rates, increased inflation, and we have no money to take that into consideration. I appreciate that you've done the yeoman's work of not just educating the city of Malden but educating the state. I think that the reason why the state knows this is a problem is because of your work and it doesn't go unnoticed. I appreciate that and I will just say, Councilor,

it's a bit of an inverse. Because our contribution keeps going up disproportionately, the state aid has gone down. So the state aid is the backfill between what we must spend and what they say we can afford. It's just a mathematical equation that says if you must spend four million and we've determined you've got three, then we're gonna fill it in with a million. And so that's the reason why it's just a little bit of an inverse, but they're all related.

And members of the community haven't had the chance to necessarily research this for 10 years the way you have or even longer. You talked about the EQV. Can you explain what the EQV is really high level?

Yeah, so it's just another word for property value with a few minor adjustments that are done to it from an assessor perspective, but it's better labeled probably as aggregate property value within the city of Malden. And so they, they sort of add all that together and they add a factor to it and that's one of the two inputs to how much it is that that the numbers say that we can afford. Like we've talked about ad nauseum, that's all well and good, but when it's almost 50% of your revenue and your neighbors are at half that, it doesn't work.

And you had said that that number is not changing. and that that was significantly, that was important and that's because it is gonna change this coming year and we're really gonna get hammered even more.

Yeah, it seems to lag and then go up two years and then the next year it stays flat, then it goes up for two years, so... I expect next year to see a big jump in that EQB number because it'll reflect two years worth of growth and that'll be what pushes us into the higher penalty amount.

And I mean, I think, like, I know we've kind of talked about this ad nauseum, but the other dynamic is that the way the formula is currently written, it also discourages housing development and economic development. And so you can't have these two policies that are so in conflict with each other. You can't say that you need to build more housing in our state but penalize when we build more housing. So I appreciate the work that you've done and thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, seeing no other lights, I just want to thank you again for coming in. Again, just for the public watching the presentation that we all have in our hands will be attached to the agenda. So anybody watching that will be something that you can go to the agenda, click on this item, and open the presentation if you really want to dig into those numbers. But thank you again for coming in. I think this will be really helpful for folks watching to understand. As others have said, this is a difficult topic and something that isn't likely to change dramatically next year. We're going to be likely facing a tough discussion for the foreseeable future. highlighting the specifics helps us to at least have the same information so that we have eyes wide open while we're having these hard conversations.

And I'll offer up, I mean, honestly, if there's anybody out there that feels that we're overstating the role that displays in our challenges, I'm Truly happy to sit down with anybody one-on-one and kind of walk through this. I mean, it is truly something that I don't know that any city could overcome and so on, this sort of pressure from one area. And we will also load this up to the Prop 21F override. We have a section on the challenges coming from the school finance side, put it in both places in case anyone wants to look for it there too.

That would be great, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Okay, do we have Zaheer back?

We do.

Wonderful.

Here we can see you now. I understand you are logged in.

Yes, I'm sorry about that. I didn't know I was going to be discriminated against if I wasn't logged into Microsoft, but I am now.

Okay. Thank you for doing that. I have had that problem before as well.

I imagine it's a security feature, so probably for good reason.

It's a little fuzzy sounding.

I know, I'm having a hard time understanding you.

See here, we were having a little hard time hearing. Are you using a headset? Are you able to get closer to the microphone? Let me try that. Is that better? Oh, that's a lot better. Thank you. Okay, sorry about that. Okay, we're going to have the Clerk read the... The item first, because we actually didn't read that yet. And then we'll give you the floor to give us the update.

A representative from the solicitor's office will follow up on paper 128-26 with an update to the council. on the investigation into the open meeting law complaint filed by Ryan O'Malley of 706 Main Street on February 17th, 2026, revised February 19th, related to accusations made involving the executive session of February 10th, 2026.

Okay, thank you. Zaheer, you have the floor. Okay, can you hear me? Can you speak a little closer?

Can you hear me now?

Is everybody able to hear him? No, I think we're still having a little bit of trouble.

Sorry about that. Let me...

Did she freeze?

Is that better at all? Can you hear me?

Yes, that's fine. You can go ahead. Thank you. Sure.

This was a complaint that we investigated, and the complaint basically alleged that there was improper deliberation at the February 10th executive session. So we did some research, we investigated, the law reviewed Attorney General decisions and basically our conclusion is that there was no improper deliberation at the February 10th executive session meeting and It's pretty straightforward actually, but if you have any, it's also explained in great detail in the four page letter response. But if you have any specific questions about the letter, I'm happy to try and answer them.

Okay, we're just going to make sure that we can have him. You want me to have him say that? Give us just one second to hear some apologies. Okay. Zaheer, could you briefly explain what your findings were? The item wasn't attached to the agenda, so the Clerk and I were just conferring as to what our next steps should be. given that counselors haven't seen this attached to the docket tonight. So if you could just give a very high level overview before we go ahead and vote to authorize or not authorize the solicitor's office to respond on our behalf.

Sure. So the complaint had alleged that the the notice for the executive session on February 10th, which had to do with reviewing minutes of previous executive sessions that there was a discussion regarding the substance of some litigation That was the subject of the prior minutes of the executive sessions that were being reviewed for potential disclosure and whatnot. and the complaint alleged that instead of just reviewing the minutes of prior executive sessions that there was some improper deliberation or discussion regarding the underlying purpose of those executive session minutes. For example, discussing strategy and litigation or one of the other purposes for which executive session is allowed.

So the Attorney General actually, I found a decision from the Attorney General's office, which was remarkably recent, actually decided this year in 2026, which was very similar in which the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School Board was discussing, like as you were, minutes from prior executive sessions. And the Attorney General basically said, in that decision that even though the discussion may have been heading toward to an evolution of a general discussion of litigation strategy rather than the minutes themselves. Any discussion of litigation fell within the context of a release of the executive session minutes

and the discussion ended with a vote to continue to withhold the minutes in light of potential appeal, which was actually very remarkably similar to the scenario that this city council was in on February 10th. and based on that decision as well as the open meeting law, I determined that there was no improper deliberation of any topics that were not noticed in the meeting agenda.

Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. So again, I'm going to remind folks that this does pertain to executive session. So we are looking for a vote to authorize legal to respond on behalf of the body. Okay, on a motion by Councilor Crowe, seconded by Councilor Sica, we can take a voice vote. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Present. Present, Councilor O'Malley. Okay. So we have authorized legal to respond. Okay, next order of business. Yes, thank you, Zaheer, we're all set. We appreciate you zooming in.

Thank you, yeah, I'll send it to the Attorney General and to Mr. O'Malley tonight, thank you.

Okay, thank you. So we're going back to public comment. Okay, public comment. Public comment is allowed under council rules. Each speaker is limited to the subject matter relevant to our evening's agenda and speakers must keep their comments to two minutes or less. Clerk, do we have anybody signed up for public comment?

We do. We have one email and we have one person signed up.

Okay, let's take the in-person comment first.

Actually, can we read the email? Oh, absolutely. Thank you. Both of them have to do with paper 123-26, this first... Comment is an email that was submitted by Bruce Freeman of 8 Marvin Street. And it goes on to say, I am sending this public comment in regarding your appointment of Yemlip on tonight's docket as paper 123-26. This body continues to withhold the executive session minutes where the council discussed the lawsuit brought by Tufts Construction against the city and LEP. The case was settled on January 20th, 2026. On March 2nd, 2026, the Mayor and Mr. Lips signed all required paperwork to finalize the settlement entered into court on January 20th, 2026. Mr. Lips' actions resulted in taxpayers being on the hook for a $1.2 million settlement and yet to be determined monies for attorney fees and sanctions. Mr. Lipp should not be reappointed and the public should have access to discussions. Their elected representatives had an executive session about the case Tufts filed against Lipp before any reappointment is considered.

This body refuses to stand up to the mayor and his administration, rubber stamping his appointments, budgets, and now tax increases to the taxpayers. This is true even when a city's official action have resulted in substantial liabilities for the city. It is past time for you all to work together despite your differences and reestablish the authority and power of this body to hold the executive accountable. Thank you. And then signed up to speak. on the same paper is Marie Louise.

Sorry about that. Let me put the microphone on. Can you just state your name and address or street for the record? Yeah, you should be all set.

Thank you. Marie Louise, 1410 Eastern Ave. I feel compelled to reiterate what I had discussed in personnel and appointments, I believe last week, and this is on the appointment of Yim Lip. I just want to reiterate our support for that appointment. YEM has been a very critical part of our team here at City Hall. He wears many hats. Our city engineering department is probably involved in more varied responsibilities than other departments. and actually I even had to write down some of them so that I remember them myself. As part of overseeing the whole city public infrastructure, He's also involved in overseeing traffic calming and pedestrian safety.

up ADA upgrades, sewer and stormwater work, supervising full road reconstruction and sidewalks, and most importantly, implementing our lead pipe program. And it's basically his work, he's done yeoman work to make that Um, program very aggressive and it's why we always meet not only the requirements that DEP requires, but also we go above it every year. This year we did well over 330 lead line. and that's been what has pushed our program forward. I also wanna... remind the counselors that were in the meeting last week that all his colleagues showed up here for the meeting, which I think is a huge testament to his reputation and character here at City Hall. So I felt that it really needed to be reiterated this evening for those that weren't at that meeting.

Thank you.

Okay, next order of business is the consent agenda. This evening's consent agenda consists of meeting minutes to be approved, one reappointment, and two communications to be placed on file. Does any councilor have a desire to remove any of these items from the consent agenda for the purpose of further discussion? Okay, hearing none and seeing none, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Okay, so made by Councilor Taylor, seconded by Councilor, I think I saw Colón Hayes first. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Okay, seeing none, the agenda is approved. Next order of business.

Paper 147-26, Council reappointment. Robert Donnelly of 38 Goldcliffe Road, Malden, as part-time member of the Board of Assessors, having served since February 15th, 2011. said term to commence upon confirmation by the City Council and to expire on March 1st, 2029.

Okay, Councilor Crowe for the appointment.

Thank you, Madam President, and usually for appointments that are over 20 years. We've had referred them back to there. But we do know that Bob Donnelly, and he was our city assessor for a while, for a long time, and he's really kind of pulled all those things together. So we can always have a conversation with them, but I do know that our assessor, Nate Kramer, does need Bob Donnelly on the assessor to be able to sign some things that we have always going on. so with assessments. So I would like to make a motion to approve on the floor.

On the floor. Okay, and I do have a note that Mr. Donnelly has been a 15-year member. We're close to the 20-year, but we're not quite there yet. But appreciate the long-standing service. Okay, so we had a motion by Councilor Crowe, seconded by Councilor Winslow. Okay, so to do a confirmation on the floor, we do need a roll call.

Councilor Colón Hayes? Yes. Councilor Condon? Yes. Councilor Crowe? Yes. Councilor Luong? Yes. Councilor McDonald? Yes. Yes. Councilor O'Malley? Yes, Councilor Sica? Yes. Yes, Councilor Simonelli? Yes. Yes, Councilor Taylor? Yes. Yes, Councilor Winslow? Yes. Yes, Council President Linehan? Yes. Okay, so that was a confirmation of 11-0 unanimous vote.

Okay, so he is confirmed. Next order of business.

Paper 148-26, Communication. The Police Community Advisory Council respectfully submits their inaugural recommendation report as was submitted to Chief Cronin of the Malden Police Department for the year ending 2025. This was sponsored by Councilor McDonald.

Okay, Councilor McDonald for the communication.

Thank you, Council President, and I'm excited to get this all in front of you because you may remember that a few years ago this Council approved the creation of an ordinance that established the Police Community Advisory Council to carry on a number of conversations that have been happening in the community about public safety, community safety, the role of our police department, and more. And so this group, I am the council liaison to this group. I'm not a voting member. And this group has been meeting monthly for the last about year and some change. year and a half, I think. And they have met with many different members of the Malden PD. They have toured the Police Station, and Taken Ride Alongs. They've also spent a lot of time in the community. They've reached out to community organizations, brought folks to their meetings, They've been at fairs and community festivals where they've gotten feedback from a wide range of folks.

And so they are charged every year in the ordinance that we adopted with providing recommendations. These were set... right around the beginning of the year and I wanted to make sure we had a chance to include the response from the police department as well, which you'll see here. They are charged, as I said, to give these recommendations to the police department as well as the mayor and the city council. So I'm fulfilling my role as liaison by passing these on to you. I'll just share really quickly and I do encourage you to read it. It's not a long report, but it talks more about their process. Their recommendations include making more data available. There are a number of really excellent reports that MPD prepared about the demographics of officers, use of force incidents, traffic stops that were requested. So those are attached to the paper. So they want more data at a raw form so that it can be better analyzed to be available.

They strongly endorse adding a second mental health clinician to the staff of helping out MPD. There's one right now, I mean up to our eyeballs all the time as I understand it. Because if you look at their use of force statistics you see, and that's really anything more than and many more. It is far from deadly. like the biggest contributor to that is people experiencing mental health challenges and crises. And so the need to have that kind of additional support I think was very much endorsed in the response as well. Of course, we are facing some challenges in providing additional city staff, but that original position, I think, was funded by a grant that you helped get, Councilor Crowe. So that is badly needed, and I wholeheartedly support that as well. They recommended some additional ways to code data around working with unhoused folks in Malden, since that's a big thing that the police department gets called to respond to.

Some ways that they can better communicate with the the PCAC and the police department which they're responding to and note they're going to continue their work. They also had some affirmations for our Malden Police Department of things that They think they're doing really well. They highlighted the fact that MPD is now an accredited department. That's maybe a two-year-old designation at this point. but that was a big effort under Chief Cronin to demonstrate excellence. They note their high visibility and presence in the community just across the board. they appreciate the efforts of traffic officers and traffic enforcement since traffic safety and pedestrian safety remain a top safety concern and and so they wanted to include those affirmations as well. So I encourage you to read the whole thing and chat with those members. Their next meeting is next Wednesday. as they take up new topics.

They may also propose some changes to the ordinance like around how some of the members are important. But they do have youth members and those members have really contributed a lot. I just want to highlight our outgoing youth member, Vinnie Spartacino, and our two youth members this year have been extremely, have just been great participants. So thank you all for just paying attention to this key report and its first First presentation to you all.

That's great. Thank you, Councilor McDonald. I do have one light from Councilor Winslow.

Yeah, I want to thank Councilor McDonald and everybody on the committee and the police department who participated as well as the public. I thought it was a very good and Thoreau report and reflected a lot of thought. And I encourage everybody to read it and encourage the people from the public to take a look. I think it was all Very sensible recommendations and a thoughtful response from the police. So I think that's just it's really why we really wanted to establish the committee. And I think it just shows the good work of citizens as well as our police department. I encourage you to read it. So thank you.

Great. Great. Thank you, Councilor Winslow. Seeing no other lights, I wondered if you could just remind folks where and when you meet and how to find the meeting schedule. Is it on the city website? Oh, sorry. It helps if I put your microphone on, doesn't it?

Yes, thank you, Council President. So they have their own webpage and an email address, which I believe is PCAC at cityofmalden.org if you would like to reach out to them to share feedback or chat or ask questions, which they will then bring to their next meeting and ask the department representative who's there. You can also come and meet with them. They meet typically, I think, on the third Wednesday in the evening. So you can come to their meeting online or in person. And I will convey your... your appreciation for their report. Do I need to make a motion to put this on file?

I would love that. Seconded. So moved. Thank you. Seconded by Councilor O'Malley. Okay, all in favor to place this on file? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we have placed that on file. Thank you so much for the update, Councilor McDonald.

Next order of business. A representative from the solicitor's office will follow up on paper 138-26 with an update to the council on the investigation into the open meeting law complaint filed by Bruce Freeman of 8 Marvin Street on February 19th, 2026. related to the release of executive session minutes from February 3rd, 2026.

Okay, let me just put the podium microphone on. Okay, you have the floor. Thank you so much for being here.

Of course. So this is very similar open meeting law complaint to the one we addressed two weeks ago. It pertains to the executive session minutes about the Tufts litigation. And our response is essentially the same thing that we said a few weeks ago, which is that because this matter is still pending, the final settlement settlement agreement has not been approved by the court. the release of executive session minutes pertaining to the litigation would defeat the purpose of the executive sessions at this time. So withholding those minutes is not a violation of the open meeting law. Happy to answer questions that if anyone has any, but it's essentially the same position we just took in the last one.

Thank you. And if we don't have questions, again, we'd be looking for a vote to authorize the legal department to respond on our behalf. Yeah, one second, Councilor O'Malley.

I do. I'm confused. I thought that, didn't we vote last week to release meeting minutes? or the week before, didn't we do something?

We voted to release them once the post-court documentation was signed off, processed appropriately and everything was finalized.

But at the last meeting, I believe the chair made the designation that that had happened and that we were releasing it.

That's what it was reported. I can't make that designation. It's a court action. So our phrasing is pending the courts and what the Clerk just said. We release it as soon as it's off the court's docket. I'm gonna look to the Solicitor's Office to get the exact wording.

But I asked a specific question last meeting because I had said, it was literally reported that that's the finding that was made is that we were releasing the minutes at the last meeting.

At the pending. pending the core, I will look up the meeting minutes from last week's meeting and I'll read it to you exactly. Just a moment, please.

Because I was surprised, I'm surprised this is still a conversation because I thought we voted last meeting. to release, no, we placed it on file. It was a communication from you that you had made the confirmation that the meeting minutes would be released.

May I read the communication?

Yes, please read the communication, thank you.

The communication from last week's meeting says as follows. On February 19th, 2026, a request was made by Bruce Friedman for the regular and executive session meeting minutes from the Malden City Council for the dates of February 10th and 17th, 2026. Regular session minutes may be found at the agenda center of the city's website. In accordance with MGL Chapter 30A, Section 22G, the public body's chair has conducted a review of the executive session minutes and has made the determination that those minutes from February 10th and 17th shall be released in accordance with the completion of post-judgment actions on each of the respective court cases which were discussed during those sessions.

Okay, because I guess you can read that two ways. The way I had read that was that you were making the determination that they would be released pursuant to those things happening. And that's why I asked that clarifying question last week. I said, is that the determination that's being made? And maybe I'd misunderstood the answer, but that's what I thought we were doing last week, so. I thought we were, I was surprised to see this because I thought we had already did this last week. So yeah, thanks for clarifying. Sure. The way I read that was that you were making that determination that that had happened. Sorry.

You did make the determination. Pursuant to those actions. Pursuant to those actions happening. At the time, those actions had not happened.

Yeah, I don't know that.

But the decision was made to release the records. As soon as the court signs off and the solicitor signs off and everything is clear and ready to go, the Council President has already determined these records will be released, but not before their time.

That's fine. I think the sentence is probably ambiguous. It could be read. It's not clear that it was happening in the future, but I just understood it differently. I thought we had done it. Thank you.

Okay. Councilor Colón Hayes. One second. Yep. Sorry.

It's OK. Yep, sticky mouse. OK, thank you. I just had a quick question. I had sent this in to both of you also, but just for anybody else that might be listening. Could you explain what post-judgment actions are? Is that comes after? well, the judgment, like what kind of actions do you have after the judgment?

So, I mean, that language, I mean, it sounds like that language is relevant as to the last vote, that communication that was just read. It's not really relevant to this particular open meeting law complaint. This one pertains to the February 3rd minutes. And I think the language that was used by the city council in withholding those minutes was, hold on, let me pull it up real quick.

138, Paper 138-26.

to release the February 3rd, 2026 executive session minutes whole and unredacted upon the court's acceptance of the proposed settlement agreement between Tufts and the city of Malden. So that's the language that I was going off of for this, except in the court's acceptance of the settlement agreement, which has not happened in this particular case.

Okay. So then just in general, if you don't mind, or maybe you could answer what it sounds like We use this now sometimes before we release minutes. What, until they're finished with post-judgment actions, like just in general, what that means? I think it would depend on- Yeah, but like what are they?

So in the context of a settlement of groups, so in the context of this case, the court's acceptance of the settlement agreement is coterminous with the judgment being entered, right? So it wouldn't be a post-judgment action.

Oh, so this is not on every Settlement, or a case.

It's not, yeah, I mean, I don't understand it to be a general legal term, terminology.

Okay. That's why I was, I've never seen that or heard of it before, so I was confused on what that was. Yeah. Okay.

All right, thank you. Okay. Seeing no other lights, we again will be looking for a motion to authorize legal to respond on our behalf. So moved by Councilor Taylor, seconded by Councilor Luong. Okay, we can do a voice vote for this. So all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Present. Present by Councilor O'Malley. So we have authorized legal to respond on our behalf. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next order of business.

City Solicitor Alicia McNeil will appear before the Council with a communication from the legal department regarding procedures on responding to records requests.

Thank you, Solicitor McNeil. You have the floor.

You're welcome. Good evening, everybody. The city's records access officer is Joanne Paparian, and she is a staff employee in the legal department. Ms. Paparian has a method by which she tracks and responds to record requests to ensure that the requesters are provided with the proper records and that information that is exempted from disclosure is redacted. This process maintains the integrity of transparency, while at the same time protecting the confidentiality and privileged and or personal information of individuals. On February 19th, Mr. Bruce Friedman sent a record request directly to Councilor Ryan O'Malley and cc'd the public records email address, which goes to Ms. Paparian.

Mr. Friedman requested Councilor O'Malley and many more. The open meeting law complaint dated February 17th and the amended open meeting law complaint dated February 19th. and to my knowledge, Mr. Friedman has not sent requests for records directly to an individual besides of course the city clerk, the city's record access officer, any departmental record access officers and the public records email. Before Ms. Paparian could log the request or check to determine whether any redactions were needed, Councilor O'Malley responded to this request by sending the two open meeting law complaints directly to Mr. Friedman.

By responding to this request, Councilor O'Malley released confidential information that took place in executive session. That would not have been released had it gone through the proper channels. This is concerning as there is a clear separation between the duties of a city councilor and that of a city staff employee. Ms. Paparian's responsibility is to manage all record requests that come into the city by assigning them to the correct department, redacting any exempt information and responding to those requests. Councilor O'Malley's duty is not to manage the day-to-day responsibilities of my staff nor of any city staff. that is the responsibility of the directors.

Councilor O'Malley's actions impacted the workflow of my department leading to confusion and the release again of confidential information. This communication tonight is twofold. Firstly, to reinforce the importance of maintaining clear boundaries with respect to the role of city councilors and city staff employees in this case, the City Records Access Officer, Ms. Paparian, and secondly, to provide clarity as to the correct procedure city councilors should follow when any councilor receives record request. Finally, when it comes to day-to-day operations of the city, that should be left to department heads under the direction of Mayor Christensen.

Thank you. Okay, I was going to say, Councilor O'Malley, I saw your light. Would you like to respond?

Yeah, so I can't speak to the procedures that the solicitor has set up during her tenure. but I can speak to the procedures since I've been on the council and we have often received open meeting or public records requests from the public and on numerous occasions, if I have information related to a public records request, I will release that. It's a public record. My understanding is that we just voted to send those open meeting law. That's on the agenda tonight. My open meeting law complaints are on the agenda tonight. They're public records. So I'm not sure where this allegation is coming from. but nothing inappropriate occurred. I'm not aware of revealing any privilege information from executive session, but I would love to find out what you thought was privileged.

I don't have the executive session minutes, but there were there was information that was on the open meeting law complaint that you submitted that was spoken about in the executive session that should not have been released at that time. They're released now. because you sent them out but that those portions would have been redacted.

My understanding is that my open media law complaint had to do with the fact that in my opinion we we crossed into impermissible deliberation. Other councillors shared that concern. Impermissible deliberation in executive session is not privileged. If someone decides to tell me or even if it's just a random thing. If Councilor Crowe wants to tell me that she had a ham sandwich for lunch in executive session, just because you told me you had a ham sandwich for lunch in executive session does not make that a privileged matter. Additionally, doing something that's not permitted in an executive session is not privileged. That was the whole basis of my open meeting law complaint. So to try to turn this as I was doing something unethical, I think is unethical on your part, to be completely honest with you. But I appreciate your opinion. I don't agree with it. And I look forward to hearing where this goes.

I would, as a reply, again, the purpose of my communication was twofold. To one, bring to the attention what the proper procedure is, again, as to request, and to make sure there is a delineation between what the departments, department heads do versus what the council does. And I unfortunately do not have the open meeting law complaint with me, but if I were to read the open meeting law complaint, I would have redacted some of the information that was present on the open media law complaint. And I believe that's why it wasn't attached originally to the first, at the first time when the complaint was made.

That's correct. We didn't attach it to the agenda for that reason. I do have a light from Councilor McDonald.

Yeah, thank you so much. I hate to even have to say this, but O'Malley, I do not, it is not appropriate for us as counselors to malign our city staff and describe their actions as unethical in the middle of this meeting. I mean, we're having a whole conversation about norms and I can guarantee you one of the things that needs to be in our norms is respect of our city appointed officials publicly. So that includes characterizing their actions as unethical. So I want to say that. That actually wasn't what I turned my light on to say. Thank you, Ali, for this clarification. I do want us to say thank you to Joanne, who has a big job. and does it well and with professionalism. I actually just wanted to ask, do you know of other cities like Malden that have to have an entire specialized record access officer due to the volume of requests they receive?

No, I do not. In fact, we looked at some statistics today and our volume has increased 60% from last year.

60% from last year, six zero.

Yes, six zero.

and to be clear, we hired this position prior to that increase because the demand on city staff time was up. So it was so great we had to hire a specialized physician to handle the amount of public records requests and then that workload went up 60%? Yes, that is correct. Do you have a sense of how different this is? Like how the volume of requests that we're fielding compared to Medford or Everett? Any other cities and towns?

I do not have that information, but I'm sure that we can do some digging and find that out.

Okay. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate you highlighting this. I think it is important for the public to understand that the volume of public records requests that this city receives, the only way to manage it is with a very specialized professional staff person and that that is not a common reality. And so I really appreciate what you bring to this because Every week, our docket has another piece to this puzzle. And we really couldn't do it without you. But I think it's important for the public to understand the resources that it requires to comply with state law in this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

McDonald. Thank you, Councilor McDonald. Councilor O'Malley, I'm going to take Councilor Colón Hayes because she hasn't spoken yet, and then I'm going to come right back to you.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Nice to meet you. we've ever met, or did you say someone was in here from your office, or no? Oh, hi, there you are, okay. Anyway, I was just checking to see what you had just, listed as the procedure, just to see if it was on there. I'm thinking maybe that would be helpful if somebody else has a question. And if not, or is that okay, that process you just explained to go on the website under like where our request, are just like the process there? I don't know.

Well, the process for the department heads, or the departments, rather, they already have the process. So it's not really for the city council. It's for the internal.

Yes, it's for the departments, yes. Okay, that was it. I was just looking. Oh, it's very helpful on this page and just didn't know if there was a place where that would fit. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Colón Hayes.

Councilor O'Malley for the second time.

Yeah, just to respond to Councilor McDonald. I have a duty as an attorney to... Attorneys are a self-governing entity. we have to hold each other to the highest ethical standards. I have a duty when it comes to my oath to the Commonwealth I hope that my fellow attorneys will hold me to the highest ethical oath also, but I will say that me responding to an open meeting law complaint or a public records request or me blowing a whistle to what I believe is inappropriate behavior is not an unethical thing. To try to characterize it as such I think is inappropriate and unethical. Whether it is another elected official or an appointed official or anyone in between. I have every right to say that. It's my truly held felt belief.

I'm not doing this to be performative. This is how I truly feel. I think you can all understand that. Whether or not you agree with me or not or whether or not the city solicitor agrees with me or not is a completely different thing. I don't want to belabor the point, but I will say respect is mutual. I think we should all try our best to show each other mutual respect. I think we should all try to hold ourselves to the highest ethical standard. I have seen a lot. I have opinions on it. I think the public deserves to know and I will continue to do that. Thank you.

May I? Of course. This, again, is not about Councillor O'Malley filing an open meeting law complaint. He has every right to do that. This is about the process of responding to a records request. And in that process of responding, confidential information that I would not have released To the public was released by Council O'Malley. The job of the records access officer is to answer requests from the public. And if it was done in the past, I, again, can only speak from my point of view. If it was done in the past, right now, this is a learning experience. I would hope for all of us that moving forward, it should come through my office to Ms. Perperian.

Thank you. I hope everybody has heard loud and clear what's been said tonight because I think I want to underscore not just this piece, but we are also beginning to receive and so forth. And I think it's important that we send complaints from the public via other, this has happened not just recently but in other, in past years as well. Members of the public sometimes send complaints via members of the body that are not the Chair or the Clerk, entities to receive open meeting law complaints. I want to underscore, as you're bringing this to us, that the Clerk and I are the only two members that can properly receive open meeting law complaints. at a time when we're sitting up here talking about reducing folks' pay and cutting city services, I know there's a lot of chatter on social media about whether we're really going to eliminate city staff, whether we overspend on legal services, whether the councilor should take a pay cut.

for a $3,000 a year stipend, I essentially every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, have to liaise with our legal department and the clerk's office on a records request, open meeting law complaint, sometimes a complaint about that complaint, That's my job, I want to be really clear, but this is not a full-time position, and yet I am the point of contact for all of the complaints that we get, sometimes from within our own body. So this is becoming so voluminous that if we can't even follow the rules, we're truly making this harder on ourselves. And we absolutely have to set an example for ourselves. The members of the public and the board, We all have a right to do this. We can issue complaints against each other. We can put in records requests. That's a foundation to our democracy. But if we are not, if we're disrespecting our staff, and if we're putting these in, in what I view to be a harassing manner, we're not doing the work of the city.

And I would just ask that we use our common sense and not disrespect one another in the way that we're doing this. I really feel that this has gotten to a point where it's affecting our ability to get other city business done. I know we have a norms committee and we're taking up some of these common sense rules. I hope we can get some consensus on that. I know that that committee has been meeting I really hope we can make some progress on some of these things because I just think some of this behavior is not befitting the council. I take very seriously my role. to keep decorum and to bring out, I hope, the best in all of my colleagues. I want to run an efficient meeting and I want us to get through the business. We have an extremely dire budget season before us. We need to be doing that work to the extent possible, not doing this against each other. I really believe that. And I'm sorry, Councilor Sica, I see that you have a light on.

I think I pressed it after you started speaking anyway. I apologize. But really quickly, I just wanted to go on the record as stating, this is my 13th year, I think, as a city council, and I don't think I've ever received open meeting law or a public records request myself, other than when I was Council President. And if I had, law degree or no law degree, Councilor O'Malley, no disrespect, but I don't think I would have directly responded to the person requesting the information. So I just want the public to know this is not something that normally happens to us city councilors. Again, I've only received them when I was council president, not as J.D. and Sica would a councilor.

and I usually have, since Joanne's been on, she will send an email if there's a FOIA request pertaining to anything that involves me and whatever I have for the timeline that she is requesting, I send it back to her. I don't send it to the person that's requesting the information. And before that, it was the city, I think she's been on as long as you've been here, maybe? Because I don't remember having to deal with this with you. I've had to give it to Clerk Lucy. I've had to give information to Clerk Brennan, Karen Anderson. I've never personally delivered the information that was being requested and myself. So I just felt like the public should know that that's not something that is normally done and just to make sure that they were aware of that. Thank you.

And it shouldn't happen, but I'm seeing it increasingly happen. And I think it's not counselors, it's coming from external. And I think if we're not reminding folks of what you should do, we're putting ourselves at risk. That is why I think We've docketed this and why we have our solicitor's office here. We need to be clear on the rules. We take our ethics test every other year, but your mind can slip, you cannot remember what the right thing to do is, and we have to hold each other accountable. I see Councilor Simonelli, and then I'll take you, Councilor Winslow.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I just want to echo Councilor Sica's sentiments, because I was just thinking that. I've been on the Council for about 16 years now, Besides being council president, I don't even think I got that many during the times I was council president. And I would just be firm to either legal or the clerk's office. because I'm not gonna, it's just common, well, for me, it's common sense not to, you know, touch things I don't really know much about and that it's not my expertise. I understand you're an attorney, so, you know, you have your ethical reason for doing it. But we all have our reasons too, because we've all taken oaths up here as city councilors when we get inaugurated. I think something like that, it should be like just really streamlined and channeled to the proper authorities.

and directors and department heads, because we're just part-time city councilors, so we shouldn't be taking on those roles. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councillor Simonelli. Councillor Winslow.

Yeah, I mean, you know, having worked in both state government and city government, having to at times handle public records requests, sometimes because they're few and far between, it can be somewhat chaotic and they come through. given that we did commit as a city and vote for the funding as a council to set up this process, I think it's important that it be respected and I appreciate you bringing this up, Solicitor McNeil. you know we have this process it is a way to take a burden off ourselves this is burdensome and you know I think that it is for the best of us to respect the process and we do have the duties we have to keep things confidential and we have to have that conscious and make that, that's why we have professionals to be independent and they always say, The attorneys, being your own client is not the best thing to do.

We have situations where even though we're attorneys, we have to rely on the professional judgment of the people that are actually having that role. So you don't want to be your own attorney when there's being challenged like this. You need that independent view. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Councilor Winslow. Any final words that you wanted to say? No, I do not. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. We appreciate the reminder. And we just need a voice vote to place this communication on file. Okay, so moved by Councilor McDonald, seconded by Councilor Simonelli. All in favor of placing this on file? Aye. Present. Present, Councilor O'Malley. That is placed on file. Next order of business.

Paper 149-26, Committee Report. The Standing Committee on Personnel and Appointments, whom was referred Papers 123 and 125, Series of 2026, having considered the same, make the following report. The committee recommends these papers out favorably to the full council.

Okay, on a motion by Councillor Crowe, seconded by Councillor Taylor to receive the committee report. Oh, wait, we just need to place this on file. My apologies.

We're going to receive and place on file.

Receive and place on file. Sorry, I was not looking at the other side. All in favor of receiving the committee report? Aye. Okay, Councilor Crowe.

Let me read paper 123-26. Mayoral reappointment, Yim Lip of 28 Constitution Road, Boston, as a City Engineer, Director of the Engineering Department. said term to commence upon confirmation by the City Council and expire on March 1st, 2029.

Thank you, Madam President. So actually, it's usually when you give the committee reports, it's not something that usually kind of comment on public comment. but since this has been a couple of weeks, I did want to say something for our first appointment there. And really because despite the information that's often taken out of context, Yum's employment record has been excellent in the time that he's been here. cases settled we all know for different reasons and you cannot take a snippet of that information especially from social media and believe that you have the full story. So Yim has done a great job to the best of his ability and this is why the city is adamantly defending Mr. Yim. Yeah. Mr. Lip, sorry, during that lawsuit.

And last week we did meet with both the next two appointments in personal appointments committee and we really had a conversation and was really highlighting all the work that happens in the departments. really what they have to touch. And I think that we have talked about, as Ms. Luis has mentioned in her public comment, all the things that fall under the engineering department and all the things that that department has to do and Mr. Lipp's direction. And so after that conversation and people had opportunities to ask our appointments questions, how they felt, we voted to unanimously reappoint Mr. Lipp's appointment. So I make that motion.

Okay, I see a light by Councilor Winslow. Were you looking to second, or did you want to speak to the paper?

No, and I just, I don't want to belabor the point, but I wholeheartedly agree with Councilor Crowe's assessment, as well as Maria Louise's. I mean... Very similar comments in committee, off committee. But I've worked a lot with Mr. Lipp and been impressed. And I know over the past eight years, the way our engineering services are delivered have improved tremendously. He has a tremendous staff and I think we need to reappoint him so that work can continue. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councilor Winslow. So on a motion by Councilor Crowe, seconded by Councilor Winslow. Oops, sorry, Councilor O'Malley, I see your light.

Yeah, I just also want to echo that, you know, I think YEM has done a great job as our city engineer. and when it comes to traffic safety, our sidewalks, there's so many things that he's involved in. As Maria Louise mentioned, the lead service lines, I mean, there's nothing that YAM doesn't touch. I think all of us can improve in different ways and I think that providing the environment to succeed is crucial there. Part of that is holding each other accountable. and you know I truly believe that Yem is a great city engineer and I look forward to working with him in the next term that he's here but you know I think that to try to you know Put the mistakes of, you know, potentially others onto YEM, I think would be inappropriate. So I'm fully in support of YEM's reappointment and look forward to serving with them, like I said. Thanks.

Thank you, Councilor O'Malley. Okay, so I had a motion by Councilor Crowe, seconded by Councilor Winslow. We do need a roll call vote to confirm.

Councilor Colón Hayes? Yes. Yes. Councilor Condon? Yes. Yes. Councilor Crowe? Yes. Yes. Councilor LeJuan? Yes, Councilor McDonald? Yes. Yes. Councilor O'Malley? Yes. Yes. Councilor Sica? No. No. Councilor Simonelli? Yes. Yes. Councilor Taylor? Yes. Yes. Councilor Winslow? Yes. Yes, Council President Linehan. Yes. Okay, so that has been confirmed by a 10 to 1 vote. Okay, so Mr. Lipp is confirmed. Next order of business. Paper 125-26, Mayor will reappointment Anthony Rodriguez of 100 Tremont Street, Malden as Director of Information Technology. said term to commence upon confirmation by the City Council and expire on March 1st, 2029. Okay, Councilor Crowe.

Thank you again. and we also had a conversation with Mr. Rodriguez and just really talked about all the things that IT in the digital age really what they're responsible for for a community this size. And when we had data breaches and pulling in everything underneath the IT department, the schools, the police working together, It really is a big job. And so it was really great to be able to hear about some of the projects people have been working on, what they have planned going forward. and so we make a motion to approve Mr. Rodriguez's appointment and that was voted out unanimously as well.

Okay, and I see a second by Councilor Luong. We again need a roll call to confirm.

Councilor Colón Hayes. Yes, Council Condon. Yes. Yes, Council Crowe. Yes. Yes, Council Luong. Yes. Yes, Council McDonald. Yes. Yes, Council O'Malley. Yes. Yes, Council Sica. Yes. Yes, Council Simonelli. Yes, Councilor Taylor? Yes. Yes, Councilor Winslow? Yes. Yes, Council President Linehan? Yes. Okay, so that confirmation has been approved unanimously of 11 to 0. Unanimously approved, okay.

Next order of business? That would be your docket. Okay, so does anybody want personal privilege? I have Councilor Winslow first.

Yeah, I just wanna let folks know there's a meeting I'm having tomorrow night at Linden School about proposals for speed humps on Elwell, Beachview, and Olive Avenue. This is a result about a lot of input from the community for safer streets up there. So that's 630 tomorrow at the Linden Auditorium. Lieutenant Tuxbury will be there explaining what the safety issues are up there. The engineering department will present the plan for the speed hump. So please attend that meeting. And then March 28th, I'm organizing with the support of Bike to the Sea my annual cleanup starting behind Salemwood School of the bike trail. So please come out at 9 o'clock in the morning and we do as much of the trail as we can. and always appreciate the support of DPW on that. Thank you. Great.

Thank you, Councillor Winslow, Councillor Simonelli.

Thank you, Madam President. I just want to apologize to both of my colleagues, Councilor Peg Crowe and Councilor J.D. and Sica. I think I was a little overly passionate a couple of weeks ago and kind of went overboard a little bit maybe. I apologize for that. My meeting, I meant the meeting, but I didn't mean the delivery as much as I put it out there. So, you know, when I'm wrong, I admit I'm wrong, and I apologize for that. I think you're both great counselors, and I like working with both of you. Thanks. Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you, Councilor Simonelli. Councilor McDonald. Well, that was very nice, Councilor Simonelli.

I don't worry. I don't have any deeply held beliefs to share. but I will remind folks that early voting starts for our upcoming special election on the override. It starts on Monday and is the next two weeks. So whenever City Hall is open, Monday through Thursday, including late on Tuesdays, excuse me, you can come and vote early at the Clerk's office. It's not too late to request a mail-in ballot, but it's getting pretty close. So if you wanna do that, you should go pretty quick. and then a reminder that the special election is on March 31st, that Tuesday. It's a regular election at your regular polling place, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Folks may also have seen that the school committee voted to close all K-8 schools and the ELC since they serve as polling locations. so there will be no regular school. The high school, however, is open.

And I also just wanna remind folks that we have two more public forums on the override and the city's budget challenges. The next one is Monday the 16th at 6 p.m. at the Ferryway School. And the final one will be on Wednesday, March 25th at 6 p.m. at Linden STEAM Academy. So if you want to come and learn more, we had a great conversation at the Beebe School last week. Finally, I just want to announce that we do have a confirmed date and time for this year's Green Malden Fair. It's going to be Saturday, April 25th from 12 to 3 p.m. This will be maybe the for the fourth year, I think, that the city is doing this. It's always a great opportunity to learn about everything from tree planting to composting to the city's climate action work. So come check that out. It's going to be at the Fieldhouse at Pine Banks Park. And if you're interested in being a vendor, you can email the city's Green Malden email address.

So thank you very much.

Great. Thank you, Councilor McDonald. Councilor Sica. Thank you, Council.

Oops, sorry, that didn't work. Go ahead. Thank you, Council President. I just wanted to let everyone know we still have a few tickets left for this Friday. Friday the 13th, come fresh your luck at Pocketbook Bingo. That is going to be, we're running it for the benefit of the Maldon Teen Enrichment Center, former Councilor Craig Spadafora, myself, along with the Friends of M-Tech. The doors open at 5.30. The tickets are $60. It's for 30 bingo cards, daubes, door prizes, dinner. It's a lot of fun. You don't win money, you win a pocketbook. I've been shopping for the last couple weeks. And if you can't make it out that night but you still want to contribute, we are also raffling off a $3,000 Louis Vuitton Neverfull bag. All this information is on my website, excuse me, not my website, my Facebook page.

You can send a Venmo to the EmTech directly. If it's just for the Louis bag, you just put LV raffle in the comments. If you want to buy a ticket, it's $60, so we kind of know where that's going. if we still have tickets, you can buy them at the door, some people have been asking, but I just don't know if that will be the case, because we were at a, We were pretty close to it a few days ago. I don't know the exact number. I forgot to check today. But if you got nothing to do and you want to push your luck on lucky Friday the 13th, will be at Anthony's of Malden. Doors open at 5.30. Dinner's at 6.30. Bingo starts at 7. It's a lot of fun. I think the mayor's coming to call some bingo games, which ought to be fun. And one more thing, April, what day is Easter on? Is it the fifth? I keep getting confused. The fifth?

So on Saturday, April 4th at 10 a.m. at Linden Park, we're doing our Ward 8 annual egg hunt. Starts at 10 a.m. sharp. Make sure you bring your kids with a bag. and the bunny himself will be there for some photos if you got nothing to do the day before Easter. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Sica. Councilor O'Malley.

Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to let everyone know that I had forwarded them the open meeting law complaint and my response to the public records request that we were discussing in the meeting tonight. I think that y'all deserve to know what the open meeting law complaint stated and the actions that I took. I believe that the way they were characterized by our legal department was inappropriate, and I just wanted you all to see that. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, seeing no other lights, do we have a motion to adjourn? Okay, on a motion by Councilor Sica, seconded by Councilor Simonelli. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned at 8.43. Thanks, everyone.

Read the Room.