Sustainability and Infrastructure Committee

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the first Ever Sustainability and Infrastructure Committee meeting. I say this is the first meeting because this is the combining of the current president has made some changes to some committees. and one of those is to combine open space environment and energy and public utility public works. So this would be the first Meeting of that committee. So welcome all. Before we get into any agenda items, I'm going to read this blurb that allows us to do this meeting remotely. So pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of a City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will post an audio recording, audio-video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible. after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels.

I am the chair of this committee, Jesse Clingan, and we have tonight clerking. Delaney, I'm sorry, Clerk.

My last name is too much. Just Madam Clerk or Clerk Delaney, but my last name is Fisher Cascio.

That's right. Yeah. All right, Madam Clerk. And then we'd also have a substitution this evening. Councilor Scott had a conflict, so we have Councilor Link in place of him. Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll to establish quorum?

Yep, this is roll call. Councilor Hardt. Here. Chair Clingan.

Present.

And subbing in for Councilor Scott, Councilor Link.

Here.

All right. With that, we do have all members present.

All right, great. And then just some housekeeping. If you could just read... So items one and two are approval of minutes of both of the previous... Committees. Number one would be the approval of the minutes of the Public Utility Public Works Committee meeting from October 15, 2025. And I'm going to take that up at the same time. We can, yeah, we'll vote on both of these at the same time. And then number two, approval of the minutes of the Open Space Environment Energy Committee meeting of December 3rd, 2025. Can you call a roll on approval of those minutes, please, Madam Clerk?

Yep, on approval of the minutes, items number one and two. Councilor Hardt? Yes. Chair Clingan?

Yes.

Councilor Link?

Yes.

All right, that is all votes in the affirmative.

Okay, so we have a light agenda. You know, I just don't like things to languish in the box too much, but there are five items sent for discussion to this committee. Should be a fairly quick meeting. I've been asked to take a few items out of order. We have Interim Commissioner Weissman here, DPW Commissioner Weissman, who's joining us to speak on these items. There is a memo attached, which is pretty much, it's suffice to address these issues. But I thought, you know, in case if... Committee members have any questions you know it's always good just to the public knows when we send these to committee and so you know for any of the members of the public who maybe live near the Womank Center you know that that The Board, Councilor, Venue, and Campen as well as the Mayor have met with members of the community over there and heard their concerns and so they're taking these concerns very seriously.

So Councilor Ewen-Campen did put in a few orders. We're going to take those up together all at once and we'll have the Commissioner, Interim Commissioner Weissman here to speak on those. and also it looks like emergency management director Bill Fisher is here as well. I'm assuming on those he's also been part of the team monitoring the warming center and making sure that everything is going according to everybody's needs and also making sure that we're not disrupting the neighborhood. So I'll just read quickly items five, six, and seven. Ewen-Campen, that the commissioner, number 5-260-118, that the commissioner of public works install waste receptacles near the entrance of the warming center on Prescott Street.

6, which is item ID number 26-0119 by Councilor Ewen-Campen that the Commissioner of Public Works perform regular litter cleanups along Prescott Street near the warming center. And finally, item number seven, which is ID number 26-0120 by Councilor Ewen Campen, that the administration investigate the possibility that deliveries, emergency vehicles, pickups, etc. occur in the Cummings School parking lot rather than on Prescott Street. As I mentioned, we do have a memo attached to the agenda this evening to two of those items and it's pretty brief I can read and then we'll open it for discussion but on item 260118 regarding the waste receptacles The DPW has installed the trash barrel in front of the entrance to the warming center. The barrel will be added to the collection route of the Grounds Division.

and then item ending in 0119 about the regular litter cleanups. While the warming center is in operation, the grounds division will add Prescott Street to their parks and playground debris route At least once a week, during debris operations, staff visit each park and collect debris and trash. The Grounds Division Already services the lot adjacent to the warming center and will expand their activity to any accessible fetters and sidewalks. Please note that the debris route will be suspended. When there is snow cover, any biohazards encountered will be forwarded to inspectional services. So we'll address those two quickly. So obviously we've had some snow cover, but just to kind of check in since these were added, I guess, two and a half weeks ago now or. They were put on the regular council meeting agenda at the last council meeting.

DPW, Interim Commissioner Weissman, have... Have they been able to get, you know, there's been snow cover basically since that time. So any updates on? Sounds like the waste receptacle, is it being used? Uh properly you know they noticed a lot of litter because you know one of the things I always think about with regards to a lot of this stuff is and I'm not saying it isn't the warming center it is the warming center but I just have found in the last 10 years or so The amount of rideshare vehicles that basically work out of their vehicles and sometimes, you know, when they can't find a nearby barrel, they just Litter stuff onto our streets. So, you know, I'm just curious if there's any report back on the litter, type of litter, like, you know, what the scene's like down there. Sure.

Yeah.

Thank you, Chair. Eric Wiseman, Interim Commissioner of the Department of Public Works. Yeah, so we put a trash barrel last week. That's right by the entrance. Just to set the scene, there were already two Big Bell units within the taut lot, but this is like an additional unit. and so our grounds division has a rotation through all the parks playgrounds throughout the city so they were already going by this spot but added this additional Unit as part of that collection and then just inform them to expand the area because my understanding is that some of the complaints were not Just directly in front of the Cummings School or the Warming Center, but along the street. So...

We've been somewhat preoccupied with snow recently, but I did go by today to see. I did see some... It appeared somebody had put out a box of free stuff that had kind of... Spilled onto the sidewalk there, so I did direct them for an additional pickup there. I think, you know, like... Debris in the parks tends to be seasonal in nature. The more people are in the parks, the more pickups that are needed. This will be part of their route and I'm sure I will hear if there are any unusual pickups that need to happen.

Actually, I mean, it's probably a little early, you know, to know really, like, like you said, we'll hear about it either through constituents through the counselor or whatnot, but some sounds like so far so good. I'm going to open it up to colleagues. Any questions or comments from committee members? Okay, so I saw Councilor Link's hand go up first, Councilor Link, and then Councilor Hardt.

Through the chair, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate Taking really quick action on this, I'm actually in kind of the neighborhood, so I get to see how well utilized, you know, just the other day I saw, you know, on the really cold day we had yesterday. People lined up outside ready to get in. And, you know, it's clearly something that we really want to have in the city. So helping to ease the burden on our neighbors is really important so that they're not going to fight this really great thing. So I just wanted to. share my appreciation thank you very much for the chair thank you

Yes, thank you. I'll echo that appreciation. Thank you so much from your work and addressing this right away. I did want to just ask for my own knowledge when when you say that the the pickup is suspended during snow cover I mean is that how far after a snow event I mean the snow could be here for Another who knows? I hate to guess how long. So I'm just curious how long that lasts.

Sure, through the chair. I think what I was getting at was, like, we wouldn't be, like, shoveling the lot to look for debris or something like that. It's... Debris that's observed will be picked up. You're talking about the litter. Both debris and trash collection pick up in the warmer weather as we see volumes go up. You know, because we don't do snow removal from the entire tot lot, we don't tend to like tramp through the snow or something like that to look for debris. But if there's debris that is observed... Thank you so much for clarifying.

Appreciate it.

Sure.

Sorry if that was confusing.

Okay. All right. Excellent. So yeah, so those two items and then we're taking up the third one as well, which I think emergency management director is probably here to speak on a little bit as well. So just addressing item number seven, either one of you. That the administration investigate the possibility of deliveries, emergency vehicles, pickups, etc. occur in the Cummings School parking lot rather than on Prescott Street. I'm coming at this as I didn't, you know, I don't. So were there, have there been deliveries and pickups? Like, has there been activity on Prescott Street? and that's I'm assuming that that's what the folks in the area are responding to so I guess kind of just an overall like so so they're Have there been and has that changed to the parking lot or are we able to do the parking lot? You could just speak to this, whoever wants to speak to it.

With the chair, I can take this one. So there was some complaints from the residents. I went to the resident meeting with the mayor and Councilor Ewen-Campen. We had a great discussion with the residents around the warming center. And some of the issues we're aware of, but some of the issues were new to us. But the big thing for me was the context that we got by just talking directly with these folks. and so this particular item because there's staff working at the center that was parking on the street and then there's deliveries and that sort of thing it was limiting the amount of access on the street for for residents as you know in in Somerville parking is a A limited commodity. So, you know, obviously, you know, the residents are very proud to have this in their neighborhoods, but they don't want to have these type of impacts, if at all possible, to mitigate. And someone brought up the Rear parking lot now that was not being used previously because it was being used to stage construction equipment that has since changed and we hadn't identified that that change had happened that we could make that that switch and so when they brought it up we checked with with uh

Commissioner Wiseman, as well as some other departments. We found out that the lot's available to be used, and so we've made that transition with a couple caveats. So the staff is using the lot all the time now. So for parking for the staff, they're not parking on the street. They're using the lot. And that'll leave it in a lot of the parking. The part that is going to remain the same is drop-offs and pickups. I'm not going to have them park way on the other side of the building just to run stuff in. They're literally there for two seconds. The other piece was in here they put in emergency vehicles and that's I'm not going to delay emergency response to have them park in the parking lot walk around the building so that'll remain in front of the building hopefully that's limited as well but I don't want to delay emergency responders and the final thing it's not in here but we did um respond to the residents and let them know that if somebody has an accessibility parking permit they'd still be able to allow them to park in front of the building because we want to make sure you have the direct

Thank you for watching. and the people parking on the street, the parking was greatly reduced. I reached out to Commissioner Wiseman, who then... who responded over there and removed the snow and we're able to get back to the constituent and let them know the snow's moved and that we're putting the people in the parking lots so they should have more parking available.

Questions from colleagues or anything to add, Commissioner?

Nope, I think for the chair, I think Bill covered it.

All right, anything from colleagues? Sounds like everybody's satisfied. Oh, Liaison Radhasi.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Yasmin Erdasi, Legislative Liaison with IGA in the Mayor's Office. I just wanted to thank Director Fischer and Commissioner Weisman for their collaboration on this, as well as Director Carroll. We, as you mentioned, met with, or the mayor's office in coordination with several departments met with residents in the area. So just wanted to reiterate our willingness to keep in contact with residents as these issues come up and help coordinate. Thank you so much for joining us.

Great. Yeah, thank you. You know, I'll report back to Councilor Ewen-Campen. And if anybody is watching this now, or I know we have one more member from the public, it looks like, or if they watch this later, like you said, if they have follow-ups... They can do so with Councilor Ewen-Campen or the Mayor's Office. Great. All right. So I think that's it for you both. so you're free to go thank you for coming this evening we really appreciate it you know just adds obviously a memo would have been suffice but I really do think it's important especially where this you know the neighbors have you know voice their concerns and I appreciate you taking the time to come here this evening so thank you thank you chair yep all righty so we'll go back to the top of the order um

Chair Clingan, just to confirm, we want to mark these items work complete or is there a...

Yes, sorry, I'm set. This position is work complete.

Great.

Apologies. So then we're going to go back to the order business, which is item number three. And so one of the reasons why, you know, Councilor Scott couldn't be here and Councilor Link did have these have a couple items in that. may warrant a little bit of discussion. Also, I think there's a... Yeah, there'll be... So there's some information to come out of these items. So I'm just going to Start with number three from Councilor Link that the Director of Public Space and Urban Forestry developed a report on a standardized green score for public parks and identify appropriate benchmarks and expectations for publicly owned parkland. So I wanted Councilor Link to come here to be able to like, you know, give any sort of like thoughts he had with regards to this order just in terms of, you know, what he... I mean, it's pretty straightforward as to what you're looking for.

But basically, too, you know, we have various sort of working documents regarding Green Score and OpenSpace. And so I thought maybe we could just kind of Come to some understanding of how we address your question and this answer, or if it's being addressed, or how we want to move forward. and the other thing I was thinking about is like you know I just I recognize that we have a very active community out there that wants you know certainly we want to um any chance we can get add um natural um Terrain, if you will, you know, dirt, trees and stuff like that. When we're redoing parks, oftentimes a lot of our parks are sort of They serve as playgrounds.

So there's a lot of different competing priorities around making things accessible as far as ADA goes. That can take, you know, making sure that there's something for everyone. And so how we sort of thread that needle around making sure that we're adding actual Plant life and dirt is an important thing that we need to really stay on top of as we try to add that to the warming effect of being such a concrete heavy city. Yeah, this is definitely, I know, a priority for all of us. So let's start with item number three. And I think, oh, we do have somebody. That's right. I'm sorry. Estella, you are here. My apologies. To kind of, yeah, to speak on this, we'll kind of... John, did you want to just kind of like give some context to the order, though?

Uh... Chair, I think you actually did a pretty good job of contextualizing it. I'm happy with that introduction.

But this is your concern, right? Is making sure that when we're doing parks that we're... Adding... Is there a certain percentage that... Yeah, I don't have a percentage in mind.

I think... So yeah, I guess... To fill out a little more, I'll just say like, you know, there's, I think there's kind of a couple of concerns that you brought up. One, like we have so many parks. Maintenance can be a challenge and of course we want to build adorable and maintainable parks but we also want to make sure that that you know they they are actually green you know like we have these um and I don't I the intention was not to say that we apply the green score criteria that we have for private development to our parks because it wouldn't quite make sense. Um, but, uh, to develop our own green score for our own parks and our own public spaces, it wouldn't almost make sense. But, um, but that's adding, so I'm not gonna say that. Uh, and, um,

I guess the other part is of course you know like looking at our making sure we're not just focused on like the shiny and new things that like you know we've got some sort of way and I do know and want to acknowledge that we've got the um I forget what the title of it is here I've got it right here it'll be like uh The open space and recreation plan. I know we have that. So, you know, like making sure that we're properly accounting and not just chasing the shiny new thing. We've got some parks that definitely need Some TLC and... and I think you know acknowledging kind of what the chair said about like you know there's all these competing interests but we do know you know like for example one of the big things is like heat island effects that we're talking about but When we have pavers and the rubberized services, they all get very, very, very hot in the summer. And especially if it's a new park, there's generally speaking no...

Shade yet.

And you know that's kind of like why I wanted to sort of like set up a conversation where and this may be for longer term you know offline or something but but just to kind of like encapsulated in the like we don't necessarily or maybe we do but you know and I think Estella was here to speak to this or um um I don't I've haven't had a chance to speak to uh Luisa who's the head of the APSOF unit but um We don't necessarily every park is a little different in the sense that we don't have like a formula that we use so you do you'll see a park like Central Street which is like almost all natural materials and so on or even Chucky Harris Park has a lot of those the plantings like the low level you know I don't know what they're called, but you know, the type of the plantings that are kind of on the hillside, like meadow style plantings and stuff like that.

So, right, it's something that we do well, but the question is, is when we're, say, redoing a... Say, for instance, like the Kennedy Schoolyard, you know, this is right now, this is basically what we call like the old prison yard style, which is what I call it up at the Healy when we have that redone. You know, there's, there's a A lot of attention being put on that Kennedy School right now as to sort of, you know, accessibility and what we're getting, what we're going to have there. But we know that it's definitely going to be an improvement from The asphalt that's there. But the question is, how are we making sure that we're having enough of that heat island effect that we're addressing that? All right, that's all to say. That's just kind of to give you some background, Estella. Estella, if you want to go ahead and introduce yourself and the floor is yours.

No pressure. We're just here to have a discussion on this issue as it is important to a lot of people in the community.

Of course, thank you, Chairman. And to introduce myself, my name is Estelle O'Reganit, and I am a senior public space planner with PSUF, Public Space and Urban Forestry, and serving as a proxy for Director Oliveira while she's participating in a public meeting for Art Farm. So, yes, thank you for bringing this up, Councilor Link. And just to give you all some context, the green score, separate from this conversation, though, is just a sort of review metric by which Our division requires all by-right and large developments to achieve a certain threshold of updates to their landscapes to try and get them to be more permeable, to be more planted, etc. And so our green score works to ensure that private-owned Thank you for joining us.

I mean, we kind of touched base a bit on this with the sort of different competing interests and different to compare each park to one another, apples to apples, right? Sometimes Our park and open space might need a more pervious or might need a more passive recreation space while others, based off of community input, and all of our parks and open spaces are vetted by the community might want more sports courts which are less permeable right so the the tricky thing is how to apply a one-size-fits-all metric onto a Thank you so much for joining us.

putting up green feature educational signs when they exist, making sure that we have stormwater infrastructure to move all the water and grade it so that it's going into plant beds that are able to percolate the water instead of having it go into our drainage systems as much as possible to the extent that we can. and to also make sure that our parks and open spaces adhere to our pollinator action plan and the plants that we select and where we locate them and all of the trees also are creating the shade that Have some immediate benefit, but we'll have that big shade benefit impact in the future. So this also sort of works in tandem with our design guidelines for public space. And as you mentioned, Councilor Link to the OSRP. which has a sort of a lot of information especially in the appendices that has those benchmarks as well as expectations goals and action plans and

Especially the priority renovation and upgrade parks and open spaces. So once the funding is there, these are the spaces that as you're pointing to, Councilor Link, are more permeable, but do require that the renovation so as soon as we get the financing and the community input those are the the parks and open spaces that we want to prioritize and I think with all of the work that we've done within the last few years with the pollinator action plan with the OSRP and you won't be seeing sort of full blacktop courts but again the the implementation of a single metric to Quantify or try and quantify the amount of permeable space or plants planted just is very difficult and challenging for the range of parks and open spaces within our city.

What? Just a question, Estella. Thank you for that, by the way. But I mean, couldn't we establish like a bare minimum percentage of any, you know, new park development? Like... Couldn't we establish some sort of guidelines to at least make sure that we're getting Some natural plantings, native plantings, whatever, other than just materials.

Yeah, and part of that, Chair, thank you, would be to, or for us to understand what that threshold looks like. Again, similar to What we're talking about with the Kennedy School, right? Like that requires a lot more impermeable surfacing because of the place surfacing that's required because of the actual needs of the community there. That's a pretty good example where we have a lot of open space. We're trying to fit all of these competing interests and programs. I do want to stress that our division does have or is comprised of five landscape architects and two arborists. So we're constantly trying to figure out where we can Add as much green space, as much ground cover or trees as we can. For example, Kennedy School and Junction Park are two ends of that spectrum.

In Kennedy School, we were bound to these specific programs that make it such that the minimum planting threshold if we set it might not be met right because of the just area itself as opposed to a place like junction that is much more passive in nature We're able to plant significantly. We're able to have a lot of trees, a lot of ground cover, a lot of permeable surfaces. So to set a minimum for the wide range of needs is really challenging to accomplish.

Yeah, well, there you go. Something else to bring back. I know the word green score kind of throws us in one direction of thinking about, like you said, through zoning and new developments, but I think the spirit of this... It's a good question, conversation to have internally, I think, is to sort of, you know, how do we establish, like I said, maybe, you know, maybe it's a, I don't want to say like a bare minimum thing, because if it's like based on if there isn't a lot of Wiggle Room around, you know, what we need to do. Like you said, each park is specific, you know, has its own needs, you know, but maybe we're trying to get in at least a whole sort of like little wall of like planters with some Some things. But yeah. Colleagues, questions, comments, anything on this particular item? Councilor Link?

Yes, thank you. Through the chair, I just want to say, first of all, thank you so much for coming to speak to this item. I guess I want to lead with this to just be clear that this was not intended to be in any way a criticism of the great work that your department is doing. I'm only looking to make sure that we're continuing to push ourselves as far as we can and to make sure that we're always doing the best and make sure that we've got different ways to look at things. Towards that, you know, I guess as Chair Clingan mentioned, I don't know necessarily if we need even like a bare minimum, but some sort of like, it would be nice if there was...

and I should I guess step back to say maybe this exists already but like a rubric of some kind even to understand like how or Maybe even like a, you know, a scorecard. You know, so this... this is what we've done like these are the things like this is where we've really excelled in this park and kind of understanding like how how I guess bringing to the surface how maybe the what the goal was of the park versus and I guess and how how well that was executed um you know like I look at uh Junction Park which I love um it's a gorgeous gorgeous park and I look at Ken Kelly which is also a gorgeous park but also like has like a lot of

like non-permeable surface or I mean I understand that the pavers themselves are permeable but I believe there's a lot of like cement paths which I'm sure are there for ADA reasons or I'm almost sure I'm assuming but like it's a there's a lot of it there so you know like understanding like even just having like I guess maybe being as transparent as possible not just for the city council but for for our residents so they understand like all right well you know like This is where it's not working well, but it's not working well because of this thing. I think it would be helpful in having that on record. But I also think that going back a little bit, Like I understand in our open space recreation plan, like, you know, we've done, you guys have done, I mean, it's a voluminous document. And there's been a lot of hard work done in there. The

the range the date range though gives me like pause because I'm just like oh we've got like I think it's until 2035, which is a full nine years from now. And there are some parks that, you know, like Kennedy, I think, you know, obviously it's a high impact park. But I look at also things like Perkins Park where there's, there's a, it's in like the, you know, an environment, a justice neighborhood and we I had a very long conversation with the constituent when I was doing my campaigning and we talked a lot about how how that park is a miss and obviously no one here um I don't think that anyone it's an old I think it's over 20 years old I think is what I saw so I don't think anyone here is designed to that but um you know I want to make sure that

I guess I'm unclear on how these different parts are getting prioritized. I know that it's ranked highly as needing replacement, but I don't know if that means... that I but I know Kennedy was actually ranked I think below it um obviously I'm not saying we shouldn't do Kennedy we should do Perkins but what I am uh curious about is just like how where uh you know if we're focusing on Just new parks and, you know, because Ken Kelly is a brand new park. Are we focusing on... How are we prioritizing? I'm sorry, I'm rambling. How are we prioritizing? This is my question to the chair.

Well, before you go, first of all, John, I want to say you don't need to apologize. When you put an order in like this, this is for this discussion. This is why I see this order when you put it. I don't. Like you said, for all I know, we already have this standardized screen thing, and that's how we kind of figure these things out. As these questions come up and we have these conversations publicly. So yeah, it definitely sounds like we have two things, two questions here, which one being... And I guess I would pose the question to Estella as, do we have a Parks Master Plan? See, I don't know. It's hard to know everything. There's a lot to know. Do we have a Parks Master Plan? So, like, is there a, you know... And then... to also you know sorry to step on your questions John but but yeah but basically I was hearing two different questions in there one was how do we like do we have a parks master plan and two um

How are we determining, like with the Ken Kelly Park, how would the public know how we came to the determination to not put more green stuff in?

Yeah, and we could have, you know, if we could have put more reason, why didn't we?

Sure. And part of that, Cherry, is yes, we do have the Parks Master Plan, which Link referenced, which is our OSRP open space and recreation plan. I am happy to send that to you all after this. And as Councilor Link said, it is quite a hefty document. But towards the end of that document on Appendix C is where we list the prioritization of parks as well as the sort of criteria that we use to sort of rank them so some of that includes the park condition itself whether or not this adds open space acreage whether or not this creates more nature as an experience so all of the or almost all of the parks that are up for priority do that and then a potential for accessible amenities so

like in addition to other criteria so there are quite a list of things that we measure in order to prioritize each of these and similar to what you were saying right like the arcs that we what we this is a 10-year plan or I believe it's a Thank you for joining us. Park and Open Space. But a park like Perkins, yes, while it might have been a little bit older, it is still a priority park for us. So as soon as The funds are available. It's going to be one of the next in line. And again, maybe the question about that to your

to context of the competing interests and is making sure that all of That is being communicated as well to Council Link. Your point about goals and not having a sort of one size fits all scenario is being explicit with the way that we do engagement and how we are communicating the goals per project. right and so making sure that we are benchmarking what each of the project needs are from the very beginning and then at the end doing an analysis of are we are we meeting the goals that we set for from the beginning of the project right that might be a more A beneficial way to address whether or not we are meeting the expectations of the community as well as the sort of constraints of the site, the inherent constraints of the site.

and so I think that that's a great sort of happy medium to say this site the community members want a lot a lot a lot of green space and are we able to deliver on that

Altar High. Bonjour.

Thank you. This is really useful discussion. Thank you, everyone. And I just wanted to, this is to kind of piggyback off of Planner Ragonitz comments just now that maybe as a way like I love the signage around the parks that say like what you know like that these are native Plants or that this is a catching rainwater, you know, that really helps do that education and also kind of explain the decisions in the park. and I haven't seen the same for like accessibility and I was just thinking that would be another great opportunity to raise awareness and visibility of some of those decisions as well and thereby also educating

I think we'd be very open to that as well. Any opportunity that we can to educate the public to make it... To educate them just to know that each decision that we make alongside our designers is a deliberate one. So similar to what Councilor Link was saying, things might look impermeable, but they have a reason. And that reason might be ADA, accessibility. I think we can do a lot better to communicate all of the amazing features that each park has and even do a lot more outward focusing communication and I think with this new administration we're very excited to see how we can do that as well.

Great.

Anything else from anybody? Okay, so I'll just say, you know, somewhat to what Councilor Link said, like, you guys are all doing an amazing job designing parks. We have the best parks around. Yeah, this type of question is just more so that we can understand how, you know. Totally.

Yeah. Thank you, Chairman. And I, Councilor Link, I threw the chair. I didn't take it as a criticism at all. None of us did, I think. We're very excited to be on the agenda to talk about the work that we do always. So thank you all for having us.

All right. Councilor, are you satisfied with your work completing that? Yes. Yes, I am. Thank you. So that brings us to our final agenda item, item number four on the agenda, which is 26-0067, that the administration explore the feasibility of a year with no swag as detailed within. Zeleny, do you have the amount of clerk? Do you have the extended version of that resolution? But anyway, while you're pulling that up, Liaison Redici I know we I forget we spoke about this briefly um you know what does the administration want to do they have a statement to make on on this um

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I am going to be totally frank and say that I got to this item a little late. I, as you may know, have I did reach out to the city clerk's financial analyst who can help with financial analysis. for the City Councilors. So I've asked him to take a look at calculating some of the cost associations with SWAG across departments. So he's currently working on that. and I can connect with Councilor Link offline to make sure that you get that information once it's been finalized. Other than that, I'm mostly here to listen and get a little bit more context about the request. But again, happy to follow up on the data piece related to the cost Impacts.

No, absolutely. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I know that we had said that we may have to keep this one in committee, depending on what Council Lake wants to do, just as it may require some more data mining and digging and stuff like that. Yeah, actually, I should open it up to Link first just to kind of get his thought process around, you know, what kind of what led him to this or what, you know, what the thinking is behind this order while the clerk's pulling up the extended... I don't have it in front of me and I know that it details a little bit about what specifically you're talking about.

Chair Clingan, sorry to interrupt. I am not seeing an attachment with this item.

Yeah, no, I think it's just, yeah, if you go in there, is it not in there?

Through the chair, if you hit the text tab, it should pull up the whole text of the item.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go.

Sorry, I totally misunderstood you. Here we go. Sorry, guys.

Yeah, so yeah, the official text is that the administration explore the feasibility of a year with no swag in which city departments limit or eliminate the purchase of branded promotional items. and report back to this council on potential cost savings, environmental impacts and alternative ways to engage residents without single use or low value materials. So I'll turn it over to Councilor Link. This brings up certain For me, I'm sure we all have thoughts and opinions on it. Councilor Link, if you want to just go ahead and what the spirit of the order is about.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. So I think. um so obviously the idea would not be to eliminate all all swag um But rather to make sure we're looking at it and make sure we're finding the things that we are buying that they have a value. beyond the the like some sort of draw into uh draw into like a table when someone's um you know uh Out there uh with their doing the different tabling events I guess um so you know there's oftentimes there's things that I that I look at and I I see um without naming names or or casting like judgment but I like okay I'm like okay I I People aren't going to keep that. That's going to go into like a best case scenario, a recycle bin, worst case scenario, a trash can.

And just the volume of it sometimes can be maybe... It begs the question to me, especially in a time where we're having to maybe do more with less, if we can maybe just kind of look at what we're doing and say, yeah maybe like this is a good idea and maybe we can eliminate these four things um still have uh other ways of engaging um i think like a really great example that the um at the The MLK event, the Women's Commission just had like Jenga on the table and that actually brought people over. They looked to me just as much as... you know the the little plastic bottle that was um you know made of like the same material that you'd get a regular you know bottle of water at the grocery store and um

So yeah, the spirit of it is not to say like, let's just stop spending on all these branded things, but more about like, you know, where can we reduce? Where does it make sense? And are we sure that the things Is there something else?

Yeah, no, I get it. You're just saying we need to be, we should try to be more intentional and mindful about the type of things that we're getting because, you know, yeah, it runs the gamut, right? I mean, You're talking about like one of those clear plastic water bottles that, you know, someone may collect because they're free. They put it into the mesh bag that's also free. You know, you go, you know, make the rounds around the table and then who knows, you know, that might end up in the trash somewhere versus you know if you have a domestic violence like magnet that's going to go on a fridge and actually has some use or actually i was watching that show the pit and they uh they had these pens and um It's for when people are suspected of being trafficked inside the When you unscrew the pen, there's like an emergency number, you know, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the pen. Anyway, so there's a lot. So this stuff can be really like tools and ways to engage people that are, you know, Unsafe Situations. But yeah, no, I hear you.

I mean, I definitely, I think for sure, I always think about those, the water bottles, you know, unless they're like a metal bottle Bottle, which we're not really giving those out for free at an event, but outside of those, it's almost like, are people really going to hold on to this, or is this worth the money that we're putting out? But we definitely utilize a lot of These things as tools. So there are some uses for them outside of just being a little free thing to get people over the tables. But that makes sense to me. I don't know. Hardt, you have anything on this particular one? I think this is more just like a, you know, something for the administration to consider, you know, through a department-wide, you know, administration-wide, you Just take a look at what we're doing. The things that each department is using.

I mean, I know RSJ, they probably had a pretty hefty budget on. They have a lot of materials. I'm not criticizing or... I'm not calling any particular one out, but I'm just saying as one counselor, I've noticed that, you know, and there's probably reasons behind that. Like, I'm not, you know, like some, maybe somebody from, it's completely... Part of a strategy. And that's all we really need. And if that's the case, that's all we really need to hear. But at least then we know. So it's the park thing. Then we know that there's thought behind this. Councilor Hardt.

Thank you, Chair, and through you to Councilor Link, I just wanted to appreciate you for bringing this up, and just to you, Chair, and to everyone. I'm supportive of this idea and like Councilor Link mentioned, we're entering into a much more constrained financial situation. Definitely, we're in a constrained environmental situation. I like the idea of just being very intentional with these things. That'd be great.

Well, I mean, one thing off the top of my head is just like anything that ever had said any, hopefully we've never really made many things that have like the mayor's name on them. because I mean you can then you can totally see those going straight out the window you know when we have an administration change so um But yeah, so you get it, right? It is our radacity, kind of what we're going for here. As far as like bringing back any, you know, sounds like the... Financial Analysts is working on potential cost savings. Yeah, that's a big job there, John, what you're asking there. A lot of you, that, you know, That's somebody's, that's like a little side six-month project, probably. So you may need to, you know, put something else in. We may need to, like, just work, complete this and...

Actually, we can keep this one in committee. I'll touch base with the administration a few months down the road and see if this is something So, I mean, do you all plan on sort of, I mean, as deep a dive as you can go with whatever bandwidth and, you know, people you have on hand?

Oh, yes. So the financial analyst actually did a pretty good job given the like day and a half's notice that I gave him. but still need to do like a thorough review and would probably need to loop in several departments to go more in depth over what kind of materials they put out um and then as well determining what would be considered like a single use or low value material. As you know, we recently hired a new director of sustainability and environment. So they're still getting up to speed on everything so would probably want to loop them in into any conversations on this so just not quite ready to share anything yet but happy to be here and listen and once I get those more finalized numbers from the financial analyst happy to relay those as well

Link.

Thank you, Chair. I do want to say just, you know, I don't necessarily, the intention wasn't necessarily for this to be I'm extremely granular because obviously I don't want to give as the chair mentioned, it could be a pretty large project. But I do think that, you know, and many more. and just requesting that the administration maybe offer even just guidance around these things would be in the spirit, I think, of what my agenda item was there.

I mean, it's an easy fix and probably if we start a moratorium right now and just have every, you know, type of order like this go through, you know, the new director of sustainability, you know, so we could definitely pinch it off now. All I meant, John, just for the public watching Councilor Link, is that it just depends on how These have been put in. So like if it's not like, you know, because, you know, when it comes to the city, like it might in terms of just looking at this an office's overall budget, it's probably like not obvious like what was, you know, spent. So they'd have to go through receipts, you know. But I think this is a great conversation. Like I said, in terms of going forward, it's really probably easily fixable. If like, you know, if the mayor says we're putting a moratorium on swag, Well, no, we're going to do swag, but we want to kind of just run it through, whatever.

But yeah, so there's definitely a lot of good that could come out of this and just in terms of being more mindful and intentional. around what we're ordering and stuff like that. So certainly it's definitely something good going forward for sure. So you can take all this back to the... Mayor's Office, Liaison, Radassi and um all right we'll leave this one in committee just you know I'll keep it in the box and we'll we'll touch base whatever like down the road um because I do think it's it's one that we should keep our eye on so yeah all right anything else from anybody on the committee all right well Just before seven. It's a little longer than I expected, but what time is the art farm meeting going?

I think it goes until four more minutes, Chair.

Oh, really? So it's just six to seven? I believe so, yeah. I figured it would be an hour and a half one. All right. Well, anyway, so we're going to keep that one in committee, Madam Clerk. Everything else will be work complete and then Councilor Hardt moves to adjourn. If you could. Call the roll for adjournment.

All right. On adjournment, Councilor Hardt. Yes. Chair Clingan.

Yes.

Councilor Link.

Yes.

Alright, with that it is 6.58 and we are adjourned.

Alright, thank you everybody. Good night.